Author: Jerry Pournelle; Gordon Dickson; David Drake; Harry Turtledove; William F. Wu; Edward P. Hughes; Stefan T. Possony; Gregory Benford; James Benford; Gordon R. Dickson; Walter Jon Williams; Robert Silverberg; J. P. Boyd; John Brunner; Norman Spinrad; Christopher Anvil
Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Anthology containing: There Will Be War Volume I by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume II by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume III by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume IV by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume V by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume VI by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume VII by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume VIII by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume IX by Jerry Pournelle There Will Be War Volume X by Jerry Pournelle
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

There Will Be War
Volume I
edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

First published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. (1983)

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

The stories in this collection are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Editor: Jerry Pournelle
Associate Editor: John F. Carr
Technical Editor, 2015 Edition: Eric Pobirs
Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen
Version 001

Copyright © 1983, 2015 by Jerry Pournelle
All rights reserved

The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

REFLEX by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle has never been previously published. Printed by arrangement with the authors and the authors’ agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright©1982 by Niven and Pournelle.

SPANISH MAN’S GRAVE by James Warner Bellah was first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1947. It is reprinted by special permission of the James Warner Bellah Estate. Copyright©1947 by The Curtis Publishing Company.

MARIUS by Poul Anderson is copyright©1957 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Originally published in the March 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Reprinted by special permission of the author.

THE THREAT by the Committee on Space War of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Copyright©1981 by the L-5 Society. Published by special arrangement with the officers of the L-5 Society.

ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card was first published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Fact Magazine. Copyright©1977 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc.

A DEATH IN REALTIME by Richard Sean McEnroe appeared in DESTINIES. Published by permission of the author. Copyright©1981 by Richard Sean McEnroe.

OVERDOSE by Spider Robinson was previously published in Galaxy, September 1975 issue. Copyright©1975 by UPD Publishing Corporation. Included by special arrangement with the author.

SAUL’S DEATH by Joe Haldeman is published by permission of the author. Copyright©1982 by Joe Haldeman.

THE GOOD NEWS OF HIGH FRONTIER by Robert A. Heinlein is published by special arrangement with the author and author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. First appeared in Survive. Copyright© 1982 by Robert A. Heinlein.

PROJECT HIGH FRONTIER by Lt. General Daniel O. Graham was first published in Survive. Reprinted by arrangement with the author. Copyright©1982 by Survive Publications, Inc.

TWO POEMS: CITY KILLER AND GROUND ZERO by Jon Post appears here for the first time. Copyright©1982 by Jon Post.

DIASPORAH by W. R. Yates has not been previously published. Copyright©1982 by W. R. Yates.

HIS TRUTH GOES MARCHING ON by Jerry Pournelle first appeared in COMBAT SF edited by Gordon R. Dickson. Copy right©"! 975 by J.E. Pournelle. Published by arrangement of the author and author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood.

THOR: ORBITAL WEAPON SYSTEM by the Weapons Committee of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Copyright©1981 by the L-5 Society. Reprinted with the permission of the officers of the L-5 Society.

THE DEFENDERS by Philip K. Dick appeared in the January 1953 issue of Galaxy. Copyright©1953 by Galaxy Publishing Company. This work appears by the special arrangement of Russell Galen of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., agents for Philip K. Dick.

UNLIMITED WARFARE by Hayford Peirce appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Fact in the November issue of 1974. Copyright©1974 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE BATTLE by Robert Sheckley is reprinted by special permission of the author’s representative, Abby Sheckley. Copyright©1954 by Quinn Publishing Co.

THE WIDOW’S PARTY by Rudyard Kipling is public domain.

MERCENARIES AND MILITARY VIRTUE by Jerry Pournelle first appeared in HAMMER’S SLAMMERS by David Drake as the introduction. This is a substantially different version. Copyright©1980 and 1982 by J. E. Pournelle.

RANKS OF BRONZE by David Drake was previously published in the August 1975 issue of Galaxy. Copyright©1975 by U.P.D. Published by arrangement of the author.

I AM NOTHING by Eric Frank Russell appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1952. Copyright©1952 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Published with the arrangement of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

CALL HIM LORD by Gordon R. Dickson is Copyright©1966 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc. First appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Fact in 1966. Published by permission of the author.

QUIET VILLAGE by David McDaniel first appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Fact. Published by arrangement with the author’s estate. Copyright ©1970.

THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY by Jerry Pournelle was published in Analog Science Fiction/Fact in 1982. Published by arrangement with the author and author’s agent Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright©1982 by J. E. Pournelle.

For the Men and Women of the Armed Forces of the United States;
in appreciation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover
Preface
Preface 2015
Reflex, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Spanish Man's Grave, James Warner Bellah
Marius, Poul Anderson

The Soviet Strategic Threat From Space, Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
A Death in Realtime, Richard Sean McEnroe
Overdose, Spider Robinson
Saul's Death: Two Sestinas, Joe Haldeman

Project High Frontier, Robert A. Heinlein and Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham USA (Ret.)

Two Poems, Jon Post
Diasporah: A Prologue, W.R. Yates
His Truth Goes Marching On, Jerry Pournelle

THOR: Orbital Weapon System, Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy

The Defenders, Philip K. Dick
Unlimited Warfare, Hayford Peirce
The Battle, Robert Sheckley

Mercenaries and Military Virtue, Jerry Pournelle

Ranks of Bronze, David Drake
I Am Nothing, Eric Frank Russell
Call Him Lord, Gordon R. Dickson
Quiet Village, David McDaniel
The Strategy of Technology, Jerry Pournelle
The Widow’s Party, Rudyard Kipling
There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

A History of Strategy Martin van Creveld
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases

Preface

Everyone desires peace; but there have been few generations free of war. Paradoxically, the few eras of peace were times when men of war had high influence. The Pax Romana, was enforced by Caesar’s Legions. The Pax Britannica was enforced by the Royal Navy and His Majesty’s Forces. The era of (comparative) peace since 1945 has been marked by deployment of the most powerful weapons in history.

The Swiss Republic has long enjoyed peace; but ruthlessly enforces universal manhood conscription and military training.

Historically, peace has only been bought by men of war. We may, in future, be able to change that. It may be, as some say, that we have no choice. It may be that peace can and must be bought with some coin other than the blood of good soldiers; but there is no evidence to show that the day of jubilee has yet come.

In war, Clausewitz says, everything is very simple, but the simplest things are very difficult. Indeed, the simple truths of war are difficult to understand. The study of war is a study in contradictions. Men of war must, to be successful, be willing to risk death. An army not willing to die is an army that wins few victories. But why will they risk their lives?

It is fashionable to say there are as many reasons as there are soldiers, but in fact that is not so. There are not so very many reasons why soldiers will stand and face the enemy. Sometimes the reasons are very simple, and easily understood.

When you enter West Point, you find that the Army doesn’t care a hang about the first verses of the Star Spangled Banner. It’s the third verse that you must learn. It goes:

Oh thus be it ever when free men shall stand,

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land,

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, When our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust!’

And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

To stand between one’s home and war’s desolation is an ancient and glorious military tradition, and certainly one reason why men fight.

There are others. When the Black Company marched during the German Peasant Wars of 1525, they sang:

When Adam delved and Eve span,

Kyrie Eleison

Who then was the gentleman?

Kyrie Eleison

Lower pikes, onward go!

Set the red rooster on the cloister roof!

To set the red rooster on a thatch roof is to set fire to it; the Black Company and other peasant military units were so thoroughly successful at destroying religious establishments that Martin Luther turned to the princes of Germany, bidding them to burn and slay and kill. Yet the Black Company was certain that it did the Lord’s work in liberating the lower classes from domination by the nobility.

Not all warriors have the excuses of the Black Company. There was once recorded a remarkable conversation between Genghis Khan and one of his soldiers. The Kha Khan asked a guard officer what, in all this world, could bring the greatest happiness.

“The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse,” said the officer. “And a falcon at your wrist to start up the hares.”

“Not so,” replied the Khan. “To crush your enemy, to possess his wife as he watches, to see enemies fall at your feet. To take their horses and goods and hear the lamentations of their women. That is best.”

Mephistopheles tempts Faust: “Is it not pleasant, to be a king, and ride in blood to Samarkand?”

Some soldiers fight for money. Scottish troops have often fought for pay; in the words of the song, “Not for country, not for king, but for my Mary Jane,” which is to say, for enough to buy a crofter’s hut and support a wife and family. Yet surely no one dies for a standard of living? Why, then, have some paid soldiers been feared and admired, while others, equally well trained, have merely been despised?

There are also the legions of the damned, who have often been responsible for deeds thought glorious; men who marched into battles for nothing more than the honor of the regiment. The best known of these is the French Foreign Legion, whose marching song, stirring as its music may be, glorifies nothing more glamorous than blood sausages.

It is no easy thing to determine why men fight. For those who live in free lands, it may be enough to rejoice: until now, at least, we have always found enough defenders, even if we have not always appreciated them.

History shows another strong trend: when soldiers have succeeded in eliminating war, or at least in keeping the battles far from home, small in scope, and confined largely to soldiers; when, in other words, they have done what one might have thought they were supposed to do; it is then that their masters generally despise them.

This too is an established tradition, old when Kipling wrote of it:

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, and they’re starvation cheap;

An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit

Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, and “Tommy, ow’s yer soul?”

But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes when the drums begin to roll—

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,

O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

It may be that in this Century of Grace the drums will not again roll. It may be that we have seen the last of war.

It may be that we will not; that it will not be long before we in the United States, like the Israelis and the Afghanis, must again turn to warriors for protection; for that is the oldest tradition of all.

While it’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, an’ “Tommy fall be’ind,”

But it’s “Please to walk in front sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind—

Jerry Pournelle

Hollywood, 1982

Preface to the 2015 Reissue

When Volume One of There Will Be War was originally published the Cold War was upon us, and many assumed that Communism would eventually prevail in the global conflict; but even if the Communist World was not victorious most assumed that the best we could expect was stalemate. Henry Kissinger thought that détente—an accommodation with the USSR—was the best we could expect, and convinced President Nixon. I had conceived of the CoDominium, an uneasy alliance between Russia and the United States, avoiding central nuclear war but allowing war on the periphery as one possible end of that strategy.

When this book was first published, people were still building fall-out shelters, and when Ronald Reagan scrapped détente for a more aggressive approach based on economic realism, many were certain that the Soviet Union would not collapse without violence, with millions killed in the death spasm. When the USSR fell quietly the effect was startling. Few had expected it to be so sudden. The Guards Regiments had their tanks surrounding, and threatening, the Capitol Building of the Russian Soviet Republic (the White Palace) and its president, Boris Yeltsin. Junior officers of the USSR Guards persuaded their colonel to go inside and meet President Yeltsin. When he emerged, the tanks rotated 180 degrees to face away from the building, protecting it rather than threatening it, and the USSR was quietly ended.

Western intellectuals rejoiced, and published nonsense proclaiming the end of history. World Peace was upon us. The There Will Be War anthology series ended after nine volumes despite its surprisingly large sales. And the United States engaged in wars in the Middle East and the Balkans, at one point confronting Russia, historic protector of the Slavs, by taking the side of the Albanian and Bosnian Moslems. The First Gulf War ended well, but the precedent was established. A decade later the US engaged in the longest war in her history. It is not ended as I write this. The Second Gulf War has not ended, and the collapse of Hussein’s Baathist Iraq has spawned a new candidate to proclaim itself The Caliphate.

The People’s Republic of China is building a blue water navy, and its operatives move in both Chinese and Russian Turkestan. Current negotiations appear to make inevitable the Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons. The millennium long war between Shiite and Sunni Moslems flares up again.

There Will Be War.

Jerry Pournelle

Hollywood, 2015

Editor's Introduction to:

REFLEX
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

My partner Larry Niven and I have written five novels in collaboration. Whenever we go to conventions, we are inevitably asked “How do you two work together?”

We always answer in unison: “Superbly.”

The first book Larry Niven and I wrote together was called MOTELIGHT. It opened with a battle between rebels and Imperial troops.

It was quite a good battle; the problem was that the battle wasn’t really relevant to the main theme of the novel, and the book was more than long enough already. Eventually we solved the problem: we cut about 60,000 words out of MOTELIGHT. We also changed the name to THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE, under which title the book has done very well indeed.

Scenes chopped from a novel don’t usually make a story; but among the scenes we cut was that introductory battle, which was a complete story all by itself. The novel assumes that the battle happened as originally presented; but the actual story has never been published until now.

The tradition of military honor is very old and very strong, and with good reason. Total war is seldom just war; while a just cause has considerable military value to inspire the army and populace.

Query: can military honor be more important than the cause you fight for?

REFLEX
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Any damn fool can die for his country.

—General George S. Patton.

3017 AD

The Union Republic War Cruiser Defiant lay nearly motionless in space a half billion kilometers from Beta Hortensi. She turned slowly about her long axis.

Stars flowed endlessly upward with the spin of the ship, as if Defiant were falling through the universe. Captain Herb Colvin saw them as a battle map, infinitely dangerous. Defiant hung above him in the viewport, its enormous mass ready to fall on him and crush him, but after years in space he hardly noticed.

Hastily constructed and thrown into space, armed as an interstellar cruiser but without the bulky Alderson Effect engines which could send her between the stars, Defiant had been assigned to guard the approaches to New Chicago from raids by the Empire. The Republic’s main fleet was on the other side of Beta Hortensi, awaiting an attack they were sure would come from that quarter. The path Defiant guarded sprang from a red dwarf star four-tenths of a light year distant. The tramline had never been plotted. Few within New Chicago’s government believed the Empire had the capability to find it, and fewer thought they would try.

Colvin strode across his cabin to the polished steel cupboard. A tall man, nearly two meters in height, he was thin and wiry, with an aristocratic nose that many Imperial lords would have envied. A shock of sandy hair never stayed combed, but he refused to cover it with a uniform cap unless he had to. A fringe of beard was beginning to take shape on his chin. Colvin had been clean-shaven when Defiant began its patrol twenty-four weeks ago. He had grown a beard, decided he didn’t like it and shaved it off, then started another. Now he was glad he hadn’t taken the annual depilation treatments. Growing a beard was one of the few amusements available to men on a long and dreary blockade.

He opened the cupboard, detached a glass and bottle from their clamps, and took them back to his desk. Colvin poured expertly despite the Coriolis effect that could send carelessly poured liquids sloshing to the carpets. He set the glass down and turned toward the viewport.

There was nothing to see out there, of course. Even the heart of it all, New Chicago—Union! In keeping with the patriotic spirit of the Committee of Public Safety, New Chicago was now called Union. Captain Herb Colvin had trouble remembering that, and Political Officer Gerry took enormous pleasure in correcting him every damned time. —Union was the point of it all, the boredom and the endless low-level fear; but Union was invisible from here. The sun blocked it even from telescopes. Even the red dwarf, so close that it had robbed Beta Hortensi of its cometary halo, showed only as a dim red spark. The first sign of attack would be on the bridge screens long before his eyes could find the black-on-black point that might be an Imperial warship.

For six months Defiant had waited, and the question had likewise sat waiting in the back of Colvin’s head.

Was the Empire coming?

The Secession War that ended the first Empire of Man had split into a thousand little wars, and those had died into battles. Throughout human space there were planets with no civilization, and many more with too little to support space travel.

Even Sparta had been hurt. She had lost her fleets, but the dying ships had defended the Capital; and when Sparta began to recover, she recovered fast.

Across human space men had discovered the secrets of interstellar travel. The technology of the Langston Field was stored away in a score of Imperial libraries; and this was important because the Field was discovered in the first place through a series of improbable accidents to men in widely separated specialties. It would not have been developed again.

With Langston Field and Alderson Drive, the Second Empire rose from the ashes of the First. Every man in the new government knew that weakness in the First Empire had led to war—and that war must not happen again. This time all humanity must be united. There must be no worlds outside the Imperium, and none within it to challenge the power of Emperor and Senate. Mankind would have peace if worlds must die to bring it about.

The oath was sworn, and when other worlds built merchantmen, Sparta rebuilt the Fleet and sent it to space. Under the fanatical young men and women humanity would be united by force. The Empire spread around Crucis and once again reached behind the Coal Sack, persuading, cajoling, conquering and destroying where needed.

New Chicago had been one of the first worlds reunited with the Empire of Man. The revolt must have come as a stunning surprise. Now Captain Herb Colvin of the United Republic waited on blockade patrol for the Empire’s retaliation. He knew it would come, and could only hope that Defiant would be ready.

He sat in the enormous leather chair behind his desk, swirling his drink and letting his gaze alternate between his wife’s picture and the viewport. The chair was a memento from the liberation of the Governor General’s palace on New Chicago. (On Union!) It was made of imported leathers, worth a fortune if he could find the right buyer. The Committee of Public Safety hadn’t realized its value.

Colvin looked from Grace’s picture to a pinkish star drifting upward past the viewport, and thought of the Empire’s warships. Would they come through here, when they came? Surely they were coming.

In principal Defiant was a better ship than she’d been when she left New Chicago. The engineers had automated all the routine spacekeeping tasks, and no United Republic spacer needed to do a job that a robot could perform. Like all of New Chicago’s ships, and like few of the Imperial Navy’s, Defiant was as automated as a merchantman.

Colvin wondered. Merchantmen do not fight battles. A merchant captain need not worry about random holes punched through his hull. He can ignore the risk that any given piece of equipment will be smashed at any instant. He will never have only minutes to keep his ship fighting or see her destroyed in an instant of blinding heat.

No robot could cope with the complexity of decisions damage control could generate, and if there were such a robot it might easily be the first item destroyed in battle. Colvin had been a merchant captain and had seen no reason to object to the Republic’s naval policies, but now that he had experience in warship command, he understood why the Imperials automated as little as possible and kept the crew in working routine tasks: washing down corridors and changing air filters, scrubbing pots and inspecting the hull. Imperial crews might grumble about the work, but they were never idle. After six months, Defiant was a better ship, but…she had lifted out from…Union with a crew of mission-oriented warriors. What were they now?

Colvin leaned back in his comfortable chair and looked around his cabin. It was too comfortable. Even the captain—especially the captain!—had little to do but putter with his personal surroundings, and Colvin had done all he could think of.

It was worse for the crew. They fought, distilled liquor in hidden places, gambled for stakes they couldn’t afford, and were bored. It showed in their discipline. There wasn’t any punishment duty either, nothing like cleaning heads or scrubbing pots, the duties an Imperial skipper might assign his crewmen. Aboard Defiant it would be make-work, and everyone would know it.

He was thinking about another drink when an alarm trilled.

“Captain here,” Colvin said.

The face on the viewscreen was flushed. “A ship, sir,” the Communications officer said. “Can’t tell the size yet, but definitely a ship from the red star.”

Colvin’s tongue dried up in an instant. He’d been right all along, through all these months of waiting, and the flavor of being right was not pleasant. “Right. Sound battle stations. We’ll intercept.” He paused a moment as Lieutenant Susack motioned to other crew on the bridge. Alarms sounded through Defiant. “Make a signal to the fleet, Lieutenant.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Horns were still blaring through the ship as Colvin left his cabin. Crewmen dove along the steel corridors, past grotesque shapes in combat armor. The ship was already losing her spin and orienting herself to give chase to the intruder. Gravity was peculiar and shifting. Colvin crawled along the handholds like a monkey.

The crew were waiting. “Captain’s on the bridge,” the duty NCO announced. Others helped him into armor and dogged down his helmet. He had only just strapped himself into his command seat when the ship’s speakers sounded.

“ALL SECURE FOR ACCELERATION. STAND BY FOR ACCELERATION.”

“Intercept,” Colvin ordered. The computer recognized his voice and obeyed. The joltmeter swung hard over and acceleration crushed him to his chair. The joltmeter swung back to zero, leaving a steady three gravities.

The bridge was crowded. Colvin’s comfortable acceleration couch dominated the spacious compartment. In front of him three helmsmen sat at inactive controls, ready to steer the ship if her main battle computer failed. They were flanked by two watch officers. Behind him were runners and talkers, ready to do the Captain’s will when he had orders for them.

There was one other.

Beside him was a man who wasn’t precisely under Colvin’s command. Defiant belonged to Captain Colvin. So did the crew—but he shared that territory with Political Officer Gerry. The Political Officer’s presence implied distrust in Colvin’s loyalty to the Republic. Gerry had denied this, and so had the Committee of Public Safety; but they hadn’t convinced Herb Colvin.

“Are we prepared to engage the enemy, Captain?”

Gerry asked. His thin and usually smiling features were distorted by acceleration.

“Yes. We are doing so now.” Colvin said. What the hell else could they be doing? But of course Gerry was asking for the recorders.

“What is the enemy ship?”

“The hyperspace wake’s just coming into detection range now, Mister Gerry.” Colvin studied the screens. Instead of space with the enemy ship black and invisible against the stars, they showed a series of curves and figures, probability estimates, tables whose entries changed even as he watched. “I believe it’s a cruiser, same class as ours,” Colvin said.

“Even match?”

“Not exactly,” Colvin said. “He’ll be carrying interstellar engines. That’ll take up room we use for hydrogen. He’ll have more mass for his engines to move, and we’ll have more fuel. He won’t have a lot better armament than we do, either.” He studied the probability curves and nodded. “Yeah, that looks about right. What they call a ‘Planet Class’ cruiser.”

“How soon before we fight?” Gerry gasped. The acceleration made each word an effort.

“Few minutes to an hour. He’s just getting under way after coming out of hyperdrive. Too damn bad he’s so far away, we’d have him right if we were a little closer.”

“Why weren’t we?” Gerry demanded.

“Because the tramline hasn’t been plotted,” Colvin said. And I’m speaking for the record. Better get it right, and get the sarcasm out of my voice. “I requested survey equipment, but none was available. We were therefore required to plot the Alderson entry point using optics alone. I would be much surprised if anyone could have made a better estimate using our equipment.”

“I see,” Gerry said. With an effort he touched the switch that gave him a general intcom circuit. “Spacers of the Republic, your comrades salute you! Freedom!”

“Freedom!” came the response. Colvin didn’t think more than half the crew had spoken, but it was difficult to tell.

“You all know the importance of this battle,” Gerry said. “We defend the back door of the Republic, and we are alone. Many believed we need not be here, that the Imperials would never find this path to our homes. That ship shows the wisdom of the government.”

Had to get that in, didn’t you? Colvin chuckled to himself. Gerry expected to run for office, if he lived through the coming battles.

“The Imperials will never make us slaves! Our cause is just, for we seek only the freedom to be left alone. The Empire will not permit this. They wish to rule the entire universe, forever. Spacers, we fight for liberty!”

Colvin looked across the bridge to the watch officer and lifted an eyebrow. He got a shrug for an answer. Herb nodded. It was hard to tell the effect of a speech. Gerry was said to be good at speaking. He’d talked his way into a junior membership on the Committee of Public Safety that governed the Republic.

A tiny buzz sounded in Colvin’s ear. The Executive Officer’s station was aft, in an auxiliary control room, where he could take over the ship if something happened to the main bridge.

By Republic orders Gerry was to hear everything said by and to the captain during combat, but Gerry didn’t know much about ships. Commander Gregory Halleck, Colvin’s exec, had modified the intercom system. Now his voice came through, the flat nasal twang of New Chicago’s outback. “Skipper, why don’t he shut up and let us fight?”

“Speech was recorded, Greg,” Colvin said.

“Ah. He’ll play it for the cityworkers,” Halleck said. “Tell me, skipper, just what chance have we got?”

“In this battle? Pretty good.”

“Yeah. Wish I was so sure about the war.”

“Scared, Greg?”

“A little. How can we win?”

“We can’t beat the Empire,” Colvin said. “Not if they bring their whole fleet in here. But if we can win a couple of battles, the Empire’ll have to pull back. They can’t strip all their ships out of other areas. Too many enemies. Time’s on our side, if we can buy some.”

“Yeah. Way I see it, too. Guess it’s worth it. Back to work.”

It had to be worth it, Colvin thought. It just didn’t make sense to put the whole human race under one government.

Someday they’d get a really bad Emperor. Or three Emperors all claiming the throne at once. Better to put a stop to this now, rather than leave the problem to their grandchildren.

The phones buzzed again. “Better take a good look, skipper,” Halleck said. “I think we got problems.”

The screens flashed as new information flowed. Colvin touched other buttons in his chair arm. Lt. Susack’s face swam onto one screen. “Make a signal to the fleet,” Colvin said. “That thing’s bigger than we thought. This could be one hell of a battle.”

“Aye aye,” Susack said. “But we can handle it.”

“Sure,” Colvin said. He stared at the updated information and frowned.

“What is out there, Captain?” Gerry asked. “Is there reason for concern?”

“There could be,” Colvin said. “Mister Gerry, that is an Imperial battle cruiser. ‘General’ class, I’d say.” As he told the political officer, Colvin felt a cold pit in his guts.

“And what does that mean?”

“It’s one of their best,” Colvin said. “About as fast as we are. More armor, more weapons, more fuel. We’ve got a fight on our hands.”

“Launch observation boats. Prepare to engage,” Colvin ordered. Although he couldn’t see it, the Imperial ship was probably doing the same thing. Observation boats didn’t carry much for weapons, but their observations could be invaluable when the engagement began.

“You don’t sound confident,” Gerry said.

Colvin checked his intercom switches. No one could hear him but Gerry. “I’m not,” he said. “Look, however you cut it, if there’s an advantage that ship’s got it. Their crew’s had a chance to recover from their hyperspace trip, too.” If we’d had the right equipment—No use thinking about that.

“What if it gets past us?”

“Enough ships might knock it out, especially if we can damage it, but there’s no single ship in our fleet that can fight that thing one-on-one and expect to win.” He paused to let that sink in.

“Including us.”

“Including us. I didn’t know there was a battle cruiser anywhere in the trans-Coalsack region.”

“Interesting implications,” Gerry said.

“Yeah. They’ve brought one of their best ships. Not only that, they took the trouble to find a back way. Two new Alderson tramlines. From the red dwarf to us, and a way into the red dwarf.”

“Seems they’re determined.” Gerry paused a moment. “The Committee was constructing planetary defenses when we lifted out.”

“They may need them. Excuse me…” Colvin cut the circuit and concentrated on his battle screens.

The master computer flashed a series of maneuver strategies, each with the odds for success if adopted. The probabilities were only a computer’s judgment, however. Over there in the Imperial ship was an experienced human captain who’d do his best to thwart those odds while Colvin did the same. Game theory and computers rarely consider all the possibilities a human brain can conceive.

The computer recommended full retreat and sacrifice of the observation boats—and at that gave only an even chance for Defiant. Colvin studied the board. “ENGAGE CLOSELY,” he said.

The computer wiped the other alternatives and flashed a series of new choices. Colvin chose. Again and again this happened until the ship’s brain knew exactly what her human master wanted, but long before the dialogue was completed the ship accelerated to action, spewing torpedoes from her ports to send H-bombs on random evasion courses toward the enemy. Tiny lasers reached out toward enemy torpedoes, filling space with softly glowing threads of bright color.

Defiant leaped toward her enemy, her photon cannons pouring out energy to wash over the Imperial ship. “Keep it up, keep it up,” Colvin chanted to himself. If the enemy could be blinded, her antennas destroyed so that her crew couldn’t see out through her Langston Field to locate Defiant, the battle would be over.

Halleck’s outback twang came through the earphones. “Looking good, boss.”

“Yeah.” The very savagery of unexpected attack by a smaller vessel had taken the enemy by surprise. Just maybe—

A blaze of white struck Defiant to send her screens up into the orange, tottering towards yellow for an instant. In that second Defiant was as blind as the enemy, every sensor outside the Field vaporized. Her boats were still there, though, still sending data on the enemy’s position, still guiding torpedoes.

“Bridge, this is damage control.”

“Yeah, Greg.”

“Hulled in main memory bank area. I’m getting replacement elements in, but you better go to secondary computer for a while.”

“Already done.”

“Good. Got a couple other problems, but I can handle them.”

“Have at it.” Screens were coming back on line. More sensor clusters were being poked through the Langston Field on stalks. Colvin touched buttons in his chair arm. “Communications. Get number three boat in closer.”

“Acknowledged.”

The Imperial ship took evasive action. She would cut acceleration for a moment, turn slightly, then accelerate again, with constantly changing drive power. Colvin shook his head. “He’s got an iron crew,” he muttered to Halleck. “They must be getting the guts shook out of them.”

Another blast rocked Defiant. A torpedo had penetrated her defensive fire to explode somewhere near the hull. The Langston Field, opaque to radiant energy, was able to absorb and redistribute the energy evenly throughout the Field; but at cost. There had been an overload at the place nearest the bomb: energy flaring inward. The Langston Field was a spaceship’s true hull. Its skin was only metal, designed only to hold pressure. Breech it and—

“Hulled again aft of number two torpedo room,” Halleck reported. “Spare parts, and the messroom brain. We’ll eat basic protocarb for a while.”

“If we eat at all.” Why the hell weren’t they getting more hits on the enemy? He could see the Imperial ship on his screens, in the view from number two boat. Her field glowed orange, wavering to yellow, and there were two deep purple spots, probably burnthroughs. No way to tell what lay under those areas. Colvin hoped it was something vital.

His own Field was yellow tinged with green. Pastel lines jumped between the two ships. After this was over, there would be time to remember just how pretty a space battle was. The screens flared, and his odds for success dropped again, but he couldn’t trust the computer anyway. He’d lost number three boat, and number one had ceased reporting.

The enemy ship flared again as Defiant scored a hit, then another. The Imperial’s screens turned yellow, then green; as they cooled back toward red another hit sent them through green to blue. “Torps!” Colvin shouted, but the master computer had already done it. A stream of tiny shapes flashed toward the blinded enemy.

“Pour it on!” Colvin screamed. “Everything we’ve got!” If they could keep the enemy blind, keep him from finding Defiant while they poured energy into his Field, they could keep his screens hot enough until torpedoes could get through. Enough torpedoes would finish the job. “Pour it on!”

The Imperial ship was almost beyond the blue, creeping toward the violet. “By God we may have him!” Colvin shouted.

The enemy maneuvered again, but the bright rays of Defiant’s lasers followed, pinning the glowing ship against the star background. Then the screens went blank.

Colvin frantically pounded buttons. Nothing happened. Defiant was blind. “Eyes! How’d he hit us?” he demanded.

“Don’t know.” Susack’s voice was edged with fear. “Skipper, we’ve got problems with the detectors. I sent a party out but they haven’t reported—”

Halleck came on. “Imperial boat got close and hit us with torps.”

Blind. Colvin watched his screen color indicators. Bright orange and yellow, with a green tint already visible. Acceleration warnings hooted through the ship as Colvin ordered random evasive action. The enemy would be blind too. Now it was a question of who could see first. “Get me some eyes.” he said. He was surprised at how calm his voice was.

“Working on it,” Halleck said. “I’ve got minimal sight back here. Maybe I can locate him.”

“Take over gun direction,” Colvin said. “What’s with the computer?”

“I’m not getting damage reports from that area,” Halleck said. “I have men out trying to restore internal communications, and another party’s putting out antennas—only nobody really wants to go out to the hull edge and work, you know.”

“Wants!” Colvin controlled blind rage. Who cared what the crew wanted? His ship was in danger!

Acceleration and jolt warnings sounded continuously as Defiant continued evasive maneuvers. Jolt, acceleration, stop, turn, jolt—

“He’s hitting us again.” Susack sounded scared.

“Greg?” Colvin demanded.

“I’m losing him. Take over, skipper.”

Defiant writhed like a beetle on a pin as the deadly fire followed her through maneuvers. The damage reports came as a deadly litany. “Partial collapse, after auxiliary engine room destroyed. Hulled in three places in number five tankage area, hydrogen leaking to space. Hulled in the after recreation room.”

The screens were electric blue when the computer cut the drives. Defiant was dead in space. She was moving at more than a hundred kilometers per second, but she couldn’t accelerate.

“See anything yet?” Colvin asked.

“In a second,” Halleck replied. “There. Wups. Antenna didn’t last half a second. He’s yellow. Out there on our port quarter and pouring it on. Want me to swing the main drive in that direction? We might hit him with that.”

Colvin examined his screens. “No. We can’t spare the power.” He watched a moment more, then swept his hand across a line of buttons.

All through Defiant nonessential systems died. It took power to maintain the Langston Field, and the more energy the Field had to contain the more internal power was needed to keep the Field from radiating inward. Local overloads produced burnthroughs, partial collapses sending bursts of energetic photons to punch holes through the hull. The Field moved toward full collapse, and when that happened, the energies it contained would vaporize Defiant. Total defeat in space is a clean death.

The screens were indigo and Defiant couldn’t spare power to fire her guns or use her engines. Every erg was needed simply to survive.

“We’ll have to surrender,” Colvin said. “Get the message out.”

“I forbid it!”

For a moment Colvin had forgotten the political officer.

“I forbid it!” Gerry shouted again. “Captain, you are relieved from command. Commander Halleck, engage the enemy! We cannot allow him to penetrate to our homeland!”

“Can’t do that, sir,” Halleck said carefully. The recorded conversation made the executive officer a traitor, as Colvin was the instant he’d given the surrender order.

“Engage the enemy, Captain.” Gerry spoke quietly. “Look at me, Colvin.”

Herb Colvin turned to see a pistol in Gerry’s hands. It wasn’t a sonic gun, not even a chemical dart weapon as used by prison guards. Combat armor would stop those. This was a slugthrower—no. A small rocket launcher, but it looked like a slugthrower. Just the weapon to take to space.

“Surrender the ship,” Colvin repeated. He motioned with one hand. Gerry looked around, too late, as the quartermaster pinned his arms to his sides. A captain’s bridge runner launched himself across the cabin to seize the pistol.

“I’ll have you shot for this!” Gerry shouted. “You’ve betrayed everything. Our homes, our families—”

“I’d as soon be shot as surrender,” Colvin said. “Besides, the Imperials will probably do for both of us. Treason, you know. Still, I’ve a right to save the crew.”

Gerry said nothing.

“We’re dead, Mister. The only reason they haven’t finished us off is we’re so bloody helpless the Imperial commander’s held off firing the last wave of torpedoes to give us a chance to quit. He can finish us off any time.”

“You might damage him. Take him with us, or make it easier for the fleet to deal with him—”

“If I could, I’d do that. I already launched all our torpedoes. They either got through or they didn’t. Either way, they didn’t kill him, since he’s still pouring it on us. He has all the time in the world—look, damn it! We can’t shoot at him, we don’t have power for the engines, and look at the screens! Violet! Don’t you understand, you blithering fool, there’s no further place for it to go! A little more, a miscalculation by the Imperial, some little failure here, and that field collapses.”

Gerry stared in rage. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I know I’m right. Any progress, Susack?”

“Message went out,” the communications officer said. “And they haven’t finished us.”

“Right.” There was nothing else to say.

A ship in Defiant’s situation, her screens overloaded, bombarded by torpedoes and fired on by an enemy she cannot locate, is utterly helpless; but she has been damaged hardly at all. Given time she can radiate the screen energies to space. She can erect antennas to find her enemy. When the screens cool, she can move and she can shoot. Even when she has been damaged by partial collapses, her enemy cannot know that.

Thus, surrender is difficult and requires a precise ritual. Like all of mankind’s surrender signals it is artificial, for man has no surrender reflex, no unambiguous species-wide signal to save him from death after defeat is inevitable. Of the higher animals, man is alone in this.

Stags do not fight to the death. When one is beaten, he submits, and the other allows him to leave the field. The three spine stickleback, a fish of the carp family, fights for its mates but recognizes the surrender of its enemies. Siamese fighting fish will not pursue an enemy after he ceases to spread his gills.

But man has evolved as a weapon-using animal. Unlike other animals, man’s evolution is intimately bound with weapons and tools; and weapons can kill farther than man can reach. Weapons in the hand of a defeated enemy are still dangerous. Indeed, the Scottish skean dhu is said to be carried in the stocking so that it may be reached as its owner kneels in supplication….

Defiant erected a simple antenna suitable only for radio signals. Any other form of sensor would have been a hostile act and would earn instant destruction. The Imperial captain observed and sent instructions.

Meanwhile, torpedoes were being maneuvered alongside Defiant. Colvin couldn’t see them. He knew they must be in place when the next signal came through. The Imperial ship was sending an officer to take command.

Colvin felt some of the tension go out of him. If no one had volunteered for the job, Defiant would have been destroyed.

Something massive thumped against the hull. A port had already been opened for the Imperial. He entered carrying a bulky object: a bomb.

“Midshipman Horst Staley, Imperial Battlecruiser MacArthur,” the officer announced as he was conducted to the bridge. Colvin could see blue eyes and blonde hair, a young face frozen into a mask of calm because its owner did not trust himself to show any expression at all. “I am to take command of this ship, sir.”

Captain Colvin nodded. “I give her to you. You’ll want this,” he added, handing the boy the microphone. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yes, sir.” Staley gulped noticeably, then stood at attention as if his captain could see him. “Midshipman Staley reporting, sir. I am on the bridge and the enemy has surrendered.” He listened for a few seconds, then turned to Colvin. “I am to ask you to leave me alone on the bridge except for yourself, sir. And to tell you that if anyone else comes on the bridge before our Marines have secured this ship, I will detonate the bomb I carry. Will you comply?”

Colvin nodded again. “Take Mr. Gerry out, quartermaster. You others can go, too. Clear the bridge.”

The quartermaster led Gerry toward the door. Suddenly the political officer broke free and sprang at Staley. He wrapped the midshipman’s arms against his body and shouted, “Quick, grab the bomb! Move! Captain, fight your ship, I’ve got him!”

Staley struggled with the political officer. His hand groped for the trigger, but he couldn’t reach it. The mike had also been ripped from his hands. He shouted at the dead microphone.

Colvin gently took the bomb from Horst’s imprisoned hands. “You won’t need this, son,” he said. “Quartermaster, you can take your prisoner off this bridge.” His smile was fixed, frozen in place, in sharp contrast to the midshipman’s shocked rage and Gerry’s look of triumph.

The spacers reached out and Horst Staley tried to escape, but there was no place to go as he floated in free space. Suddenly he realized that the spacers had seized his attacker, and Gerry was screaming.

“We’ve surrendered, Mister Staley,” Colvin said carefully. “Now we’ll leave you in command here. You can have your bomb, but you won’t be needing it.”

Editor's Introduction to:

SPANISH MAN'S GRAVE
by James Warner Bellah

This story is not science fiction; but it has its place in this anthology, for this is one of the stories that inspired Robert Heinlein to write STARSHIP TROOPERS.

When I met Colonel James Warner Bellah, he was a crusty retired military officer. He was quite famous; Bellah’s stories inspired more than half of the best Duke Wayne movies directed by John Ford. “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon,” “Red River,” “Rio Grande,” “Thunder of Drums,” all those and more were his, and indeed shared the characters: Lt. Pennell, Captain Brittles who couldn’t be promoted, Sergeant Tyree (that was Tyree’s department…), Trooper Smith who had been a Major General in the Army of the Confederate States—those and many more.

His own biography reads:

“I was born three months before the Century of Wars began to unfold itself. The faded, drink-wrecked blue shirts of El Caney and San Juan Hill cut our laws in Westchester County when I was a boy, for my father had raised a company of infantry in the Spanish-American War and was soft, ever after, to anyone who called him Captain.”

“During my growing-up, a flamboyant cousin in cavalry yellow-and-blue was perennially in the house from chasing Aguinaldo in the Philippines—and, as late as 1916—from chasing Pancho Villa deep into the Sierra Tarahumare in Mexico.

“In my mother’s closet, there were the epaulettes and sabres of her infantry captain father, wounded seven times from Cold Harbor to Appomattox—which he reached in an ambulance, still doing duty, —because he had had a bellyful of field hospitals.

“On the inertia of all this, a fugitive from school at seventeen, I was in France with the Army Transport Service. At eighteen I was a De Haviland 9 pilot in the 117th squadron. Royal Air Force, which had, when I joined it, been still the old, original Royal Flying Corps.

“The years between, I wrote for a living, but in 1939, the bugles screamed again, and being too old to fly but still young enough to walk, I was a lieutenant in F Company, 16th Infantry, First Infantry Division, ending up in the Burma War, variously under Stillwell, Wingate, and Phil Cochran.

“None of which is to be construed as vainglory, but merely as an explanation of the fact that a great deal of my writing has had the background of war. With some pardonable reason.

“The experience of war never quite leaves a young man or woman. A great many are utterly destroyed by it. All are indelibly and subtly marked by it, because, for good or evil, the memory never quite leaves any of us.”

Col. Bellah wasn’t an easy man to get to know, and I was a bit awed by him anyway. We were both members of the Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, as well as St. Nicholas Church. I last saw him at his funeral which was conducted jointly by the Knights of Lazarus, the US Army, and a personal piper. Since then his son and I have become friends.

I have never read a story that tells more about why one might be a soldier.

SPANISH MAN'S GRAVE
by James Warner Bellah

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life’s journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe.

The Barrels Patrol wound on down across the far corner of the West, riding easily for the long haul, the long swing around. Day after deadly day. Week after weary week. Never the same route, for fear of forming military habits hostiles could depend upon.

There was that smudge of smoke ahead, straight up on the horizon, like coarse and thinning hair swept across yellow linen. And nothing else. Nothing but the empty miles that echoed in from the rim of the world, from the northern wastes of the Dakota country, from south of the Rio Grande, from Kansas back in the States. And in the center of this utter loneliness, like a fly caught in amber, Ross Pennell writhed inwardly in loathing of it.

For there are no soft-handed girls on the lone plains; only the echo of their laughter in dreams. And a plains uniform is a poor badge of glory. Worn leather, reeking of horse sweat and body sweat. Shirts bleached to the blue of distant rain, the armpits white with salt rime. Battered gray beaver felt, threadbare on the head, with the sweatband stinking when you ease up the brim. And no violins. No flowers. No band music. Only the dreariness and the loneliness and the final knowledge that you have flung down your youth into this empty void and that there your youth will die, far from the lights of cities, wasted forevermore.

“I don’t like that smoke too much, Mr. Pennell,” Sergeant Tyree spat sideways, and the brown ribbon of tobacco, flat and gleaming in the sunlight, twisted over once and struck into the dust with the muffled slap of dropped playing cards. “Ain’t prairie fire; it’s focalized.”

It is odd how you come to understand things. Tyree wanted an opinion. He had a faint doubt, but that wasn’t enough for Tyree. From years of habit, he needed an opinion to ease that doubt and to rationalize it. And the opinion had to have shoulder straps on it, no matter how new the straps were.

Lieutenant Pennell glanced down the column. Corporal Bartenett and seven men. Sergeant Tyree, the captain and himself. Taking it on the downslope at a walk. Twisting in and out in single file, broadside on to the trail, head on to it, picking the best footholds, riding carefully. Thinned down to bone and muscle they were, after five weeks of this. Griped silent. Their faces were drawn with monotony, their minds were seared raw with it. The pack animals creaked along in the rear. Pennell said, “Homestead chimney smoke, probably.” For a moment, as he said it, Ross Pennell saw the broad sweep of Claymont Street in his memory. The sunlight in the green arch of the ancient elms. The smell of bonfire smoke and the broad white verandas. The cold throat bite of well water. Ginger cookies in the crockery jar. Fresh bread in the oven. His mother in lavender silk, and the snap of his father’s hunting-case watch. And a great and silent scream tore through him, for there was no going back to that now. No one there, waiting, any longer. It was almost as if cold hands pressed that silent scream up from his diaphragm, forced it up his throat, until it died in silence behind his clenched teeth.

So it is always, if you listen to the music of the band. Down the street it swings, and the boys and the fools follow it, and there is a great and powerful uplift as the crowds cheer, as feet tap in cadence. Then suddenly your soul is gone with it—gone on ahead to wait for you in the memories where the old men live. The town is far behind, and those who waved you off have gone back home to loneliness and tears. The band is silent and there are no more parades. Only your soul to plod on after—to try to own again, once more before you die.

“Effen it’s a homestead,” Tyree said, “it’s burnin’ down.”

Captain MacAfee reined in, and the column rattled and jangled slowly to a stop behind him. Ross Pennell rode up to it from the rear. Brown acid smell of horses. Green acid smell of men. MacAfee sat straight-backed—a miniature man, delicate in bone, but long-limbed. His face was drawn so thinly across the frontal bones of his head that it was as if it had been laced up too tightly in back. His fleshless hands at fifty-six were gray talons, and there was not enough blood left in him, after the years of his service, to take the iridescent blue from his lips.

“Mr. Pennell,” he spoke haltingly, “this is as far as I go,” and he sat there with his eyes closed, like marbles in his skull. Marbles covered with chicken skin. A worn-out man, old before his time, drained by the Colors, sitting his mount a thousand miles down the wastelands, staring at distant smoke with his eyes closed.

“Please, sir, I beg your pardon?”

MacAfee soughed his breath in heavily. “My left arm and leg went dead a ways back—” his voice was thickening and the words were falling clumsily out of his slackened mouth “—and now I’ve gone blind.”

“Hold steady, sir; I’ll dismount you.”

“Mr. Pennell, there are only three things to remember out here. Always make them think you are in force, or will be soon. Always frighten them until they stop thinking and take refuge in Medicine. Then turn it against them, spoil its power and break it, so they can’t trust anything. And always treat your luck with respect, so that it will never turn against you. This time I was going to take the patrol down and try to find Spanish Man’s Grave. I wanted to show dirty shirt blue down there and spoil that Medicine for them. The Apaches have been living too long on that old massacre story—believing too much in their immunity. Flout it in their faces, show them that the gods hate them, too, and you’ve gone a long way toward making them behave. I want you to take the patrol down.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll take it down just as you say. If you’ll let me have your arm now, I’ll dismount you. You’ll be all right in a minute.”

“It’s a damn long journey, Mr. Pennell.”

“Sergeant Tyree!” But MacAfee’s candle guttered before the sergeant could ride in. He died straight-shouldered in the saddle. Only his head snapped. For a moment, the years of habit still held him upright; then he went loose all over and pitched out headfirst. Ross Pennell caught him by the scrawny left arm, and the captain dangled there, toes down, tongue out and head hanging. Both horses shied apart, nostrils wide, blowing, eyes rolling white, heads tossed up in quick panic. Corporal Bartenett threw off and grabbed the captain under the arms.

Tyree threw off. “My God, Mr. Pennell! He’s dead!”

For a moment, everyone just stared down at what Royal Forsythe MacAfee had finished with suddenly after fifty-six years of living with it. Then they hauled off their stained hats and dismounted. “MacAfee, R.F., Capt.—from duty to deceased, 2 P.M., 17 Sept.—”

There were the soft beds back on Claymont Street, white-sheeted, and hand-polished mahogany. Brides’ beds, childbeds, deathbeds in slow, respectable rotation. People said, “I was born in that bed, and my father before me. My mother died in that bed.”

“Captain MacAfee’s wife died years ago,” Sergeant Tyree said, “and there were two little boys, but they died too. They’re buried at Fort Starke. Never knew the captain to get letters from anyone or send ‘em, in all the eight years I served with him. I guess he’s just like all of us. People kind of forget when you’re away.” Tyree shrugged and looked off down horizon.

“I won’t have it!” Pennell almost shouted. “There must be some kinfolk somewhere. Somebody who cares if a man lives his life like this. Damn it to hell, he was a captain of cavalry, wasn’t he? All his life he served something, somebody, didn’t he? And is this all there is when it’s finished?” Ross Pennell held out the dirty tied handkerchief with its still-ticking watch and the locket and chain and the Louis d’Or pocket piece—for luck ever since Cerro Gordo. “Is this all there is?”

Tyree said, “Mr. Pennell, that’s all there is, except that smoke on the horizon. He’s left that too. The watch don’t matter and the locket don’t matter, and neither does the good-luck piece, but the smoke does. You inherit that smoke, I guess, Mr. Pennell. Like it says in law, ‘an heir and an assign…’”

This far the gods will let a man go—to a cairned grave on a lonesome downslope where he may lie in sleep forever. But here another man takes over, for there is always smoke still ahead and the march goes on. “Prepare to mount—”

Your first man dead in violence is a sick thing in your mind for many suns and many moons, until the others fade its picture. But you never forget the first white woman you see that the Apaches have worked over.

It had been a three-sided cabin of clay-chinked rails. No one but a fool or a very brave man would have put it in as far west as that, unless he had pushed out beyond the other people so far that he was lost and didn’t know it.

There was the scrabbled corn patch lying under the bitter pall of smoke. The hot air held it just off the ground. It rose from the embers of the cabin, coiling lazily in white ropes, spreading, rising straight in a thin veil. Almost burned out when they got there. They saw the two halves of the dog first, and the dust and hair and clotted abomination of the ax, flung under the broken wagon. Flies were there, green and translucent, glutted lazy.

The name in a torn book was “Alice Downey, Fairfax, Virginia.” The book was Robert Browning’s poems. On other papers that fluttered in the corn there was “Charles Graeme and Alice Downey Graeme, his Wife—” and there were blackened brass drawer pulls and broken splinters of mulberry china and a bent spoon of silver.

The man was roped and arched in final protest at the little field’s edge. Cold in his agony now, and blue stiff. His outraged face seemed to howl at them for vengeance—to howl in black and tortured silence. He had fought, like a panther. The ground was lacerated with his fight. “I, Charles Graeme, farmer, will hold this land or die on it.”

Corporal Bartenett found the woman—“Alice Downey Graeme, his Wife.” And there it was, and how can you say what it was? For the ground about showed that fight, too, and there was sickness in all of them as they read the ground, and the dark maroon anger that makes for murder, even though its ice takes the strength from fingers for the moment.

Thirty Apaches, by the pony marks, blood-drunk and beast hot. Reeking to defile. Hair-tearing hands, grease slick. Fetid-breathed and shrieking with obscenity.

Sergeant Tyree turned sharp around, as if someone had moved behind him, as if he would draw gun on whoever it was. “Two days,” he growled, “by the condition of the carcasses. Washday Monday—that’s what these clothes is,” and he toed his boot into the strewn and trampled clothing, twisting his leg slowly as he did it, almost as if he were in agony. “A two-day start on us they got, and the girl they got, about ten, eleven years old. See there,” and he pointed. “Her go-to-meetin’ dress.” He shook his head at Pennell’s question. “No,” he said. “I don’t think the girl, yet. Only the mother. But I sure hope the girl ain’t big for her age, ‘cause we gotta long haul to catch up on ‘em, sir. I sure hope she ain’t—”

Ross Pennell stood still, looking off toward the western horizon again, as if there would be more smoke down there to guide him on. Smoke to the west, drawing a man on down his destiny, on down his years until there was no more Claymont Street behind him forevermore. Until the Chew girls next door, in their white dresses with the pink sashes, their patent-leather slippers and flop-brimmed leghorns, their prayer books and their crocheted mittens—until the Chew girls…

But there were no Chew girls left in Pennell in that moment. And suddenly there was no place in him for them to come back to if they ever tried.

“Tyree,” he said, “you and Marcy fix Mrs. Graeme decently for burial. I want her to have something on. Unmarried men clear out of the area… Gustafson and Newkirk, get the man ready… Bartenett, take the rest of the details and unsaddle. Graze wide. Pack train as well. We move out again at seven o’clock.”

The book tells you how to force the march, but a good sergeant is better than the best of books, and deep anger is better than a sergeant. Space out to fifty-five paces and stagger the odd files twenty yards to the right. That keeps the dust down and gives the mounts air to breathe. Unbit to graze on all halts, even the shortest. Halt ten minutes in the hour, and forty minutes every sixth hour for watering. Trot twenty minutes every second hour, and lead for the full hour before watering call. And talk up the horses. Tell them what you want out of them, for you can always bring a horse in on your side with the right kind of talk. A horse is a child on the surface, but he’s got a mind underneath that is capable of telling him how to die like a gentleman, if the need comes. And a horse can get regiment-conscious as hell, and don’t you ever forget it.

The patrol had had five full weeks of conditioning before Pennell put them to it on a hot stern chase, for there isn’t anything but a stern chase on the plains—for there is only the trail to follow. They began to force it unbelievably. They cut the bivouac time to half the dark hours, and they ate up the space between themselves and the thirty Apaches with the Graeme girl. But they ate up their own minds doing it; they wore them down like old knife blades. They were all in it—all ten— all reading the trail when it was written, guessing at it when it wasn’t, cramming in food when their bellies screamed, and watching their mounts like young mothers with a first babe. They got crotch stiff and neck stiff, and they stumbled wooden-legged when they led. They gave it all to the horses, and the horses knew it and gave back what they could. Their eyes got red and their beards got foul, but the anger stayed in them, and it stayed cold—frozen in yellow-legged discipline.

On the day the first Apache fire spot was still warm when Ross Pennell put the palm of his hand on it, the night of that day he put in his own fires. Squad fires. Fifty paces apart along the skyline. Enough fires to indicate two companies and their escort train. The simulated hands of vengeance, clawing upward with crimson fingers for the Apaches to read as fate. Pennell did it almost to dictated order. “Always make ’em think you’re in force...or will be soon.”

And in three hours again, when the fires were burned down, “Prepare to mount. Mount!”

“Tyree, tell me about Spanish Man’s Grave.”

Sergeant Tyree spat left and looked squint-eyed under his hat brim at Ross Pennell. “Can’t rightly tell much, sir. Never been there. Only hearsay. He drawed a picture of it once—Captain MacAfee did. Spanish soldiers ridin’ an’ marchin’ up from Sante Fe coupla centuries ago, all shinin’ in armor and golden helmets, with plumes and yellow silken flags. Must ’a’ been purty.” Tyree shook his head. “But it didn’t work out. The Apaches caught the whole kit and kaboodle of ’em in the tablelands and killed every mother’s son. Got ’em like at the bottom of the well, they say. Ever since then it’s been Apache holy ground. It did something to their bad god for all time. Only their good god lives at the Grave. Once the Apaches get in to Spanish Man’s, they’re safe home. Big and powerful Medicine protects them.”

“Anybody from Fort Starke ever been there?”

“No white man was ever there, is what I think. A lot of ’em will lie they was, but I think only them dead caballeros know where it is, and they ain’t a one of ’em ever talked since the massacre.”

“Tyree,” Pennell said, “I wonder what those Spaniards did wrong?”

“I ain’t a man to blame dead men,” Tyree said, “but the captain used to say an army ought to have a lotta brains before it shows a lotta flags. He used to say it ought to be able to shoot ‘possible’ before it lets the band play too loud. And he used to say that only a well-trained veteran looks right in a bright uniform, and that dirty uniform shirts make the best empires. But maybe we’ll find out what the Spaniards did wrong, Mr. Pennell. I’ve knowed you was goin’ to the Grave fer four days.”

They didn’t talk all at once, Ross Pennell and Tyree. A word here and the long miles between, and then another word, for talk is like a chewing twist when men are alone. Bite fresh and something new comes into the flavor. Chew it out alone until it’s flat, then spit and bite again. That way the mind keeps quieter to do its own thinking. Sometimes by moon they spoke. Sometimes in the sun’s heat. A word and then another word, until it wove a slow and inexorable pattern of deep understanding, unadorned with the furbelows of chatter.

“We’re going to the Grave because the Apaches are going. They’re going because they’re running to Medicine, for protection, to get away from what they think is two companies. Drive ’em to Medicine, turn it on ’em, show ’em it’s no good either! That’s the second thing you always do.”

Tyree could see Pennell’s white teeth, bare and alkali-dry in the starlight. He said, “Somethin’ crazy about any man who’ll stay out here. Lieutenant. Longer he stays, crazier he gets. Crazier he gets, the more he knows, and the less he knows how he knows. Crazy is like fever. On and off. But every time it comes, it stays a little longer, until you die of it or it breaks. We’re all talking to ourselves now, sir. We’re all worn through the crust now, and we ain’t goin’ to get better till we catch up with the little girl or die trying. We’re worn through, like our pants. Thin and stringy and gristly. Any minute and we can go loco. If we do, I want you to know I can take my lootenints or leave ’em lay. Always could. I take you, sir. But just remember, when we get there, we’re only ten men all told, and there won’t be any trail left in, so’s you can follow it, unless you’ve got the luck of the damned.”

“That’s the third ingredient, Tyree—respect for your luck.”

And hours later again: “And, Sergeant Tyree, I think I’ve got that luck, for I am damned now. There is bitter smoke hanging in the elms above Claymont Street and across the brick wall of Christ Churchyard where my father and my mother are buried; there’s somehow a mat of green flies. The people of the United States are a frightened little white girl eleven years old. Tyree, I take you too. Pass the word to halt, dismount and lead.”

At first you can’t believe it when you come to plains’ end, for no painting can ever show it as it is. The frost blues and the silken yellows of the tablelands. The reds that are watered out to the color of broiled lobster claws. The purples that have distant church music in them. The greens that you can smell for sweet mown grass. All worked into one breathlessness and swept across the horizon. At dawn, there is a golden rim around it. At sundown, nothing contains its endlessness. Ten miles away to the eye, two hundred miles to the march.

When the night comes down in blue fog so thick that you can hold it at arm’s length in your two clutched hands, the mesas move in on the bivouac and cut the mileage down. And the stars hang under the rims of them so close that you can touch their iciness with the tip of your tongue. But in the morning, just before you open your eyes, the mesas race away again.

The afternoon that you give up all hope of ever riding them down they turn suddenly to slate gray, shot with dull chrome, and you are in among them. “What now, Mr. Pennell?”

The faces jerked as Sergeant Tyree said it. The worn and hollow faces. Skin and stubble, with deep and filthy trenches in the cheeks. And one of them crackled, “So here we are; where are we?” And another tried twice, and had to claw it into sound with grimy fingers at his mouth and throat. “They’ll know now we’re only ten men! They can see by daylight, from the high ground, that there are no two companies behind us.”

“But the Apaches may not be on the high ground!” Pennell snarled at them.

A hand stretched out, palm upward, dirty fingers clawing. “Apaches always camp high!” the faces said, “no matter where water is, or wood.” And the faces snarled, “Yea-Yea! A fine answer. How high? Tell me—where are they?”

The horses skittered in fear, twitched deeply in the flank with long nerve whips, tossed up their heads, whistled.

Pennell threw back his own head and laughed in the jerking faces. “For two days now, by daylight, they could have watched from the high ground and seen that there were no two companies behind us! If they had done so, they would have circled wide to try to hit us from behind. But they didn’t do that, so that means they still believe we are two companies, and they have run to Medicine to get away from us, they’ve run to Spanish Man’s Grave for sanctuary... and that’s what I’ve been trying to make ’em do!”

“But where is the Grave?” the faces jerked. “You ever been there? I ever been there? Any of us ever been there, mister?”

Tyree drew his revolving pistol and muzzle up, twirled the cylinder with his thumb. The spinning metal whined loudly in the stillness. “A man here opens his mouth again,” Tyree said, “I’ll shoot his eyes out. I trained you. Show your training!”

Then Pennell couldn’t stop laughing. “The louder the band plays the worse the shooting! The less brain the more flags! Only a trained soldier looks right in a bright uniform! Listen, Tyree. If we get up high ourselves—” and he pointed up toward the mesa tops “—Spanish Man’s Grave will stand out to you and me like a cut thumb, for it’ll be a bottleneck on a route that no well-trained soldier would ever think of taking through the tablelands.”

The faces stopped jerking and stared red-eyed with their dried-out mouths hanging open.

“Those dead Spaniards,” Pennell said, “came through the easiest route. The fact that they were all killed means they must have laid themselves wide open to tactical murder. They’ve done it all through their history; that’s why they’ve got no history left to make.” Ross Pennell kneed his horse around and faced the towering gateways of the tablelands. The sun was in his face in long, slanting rays, heavily dust shot, so that it looked as if great rough boards were thrust up through the brilliant beam of light, holding it high for all of them to see by. And all of them looked in through the gateways and saw the wreckage of that ancient erosion, the serried ranks of its vast silence. Then, for a moment, it was as if Ross Pennell had lost something and was searching with his eyes to find it. He pointed. “It will be an approach like this one,” he said. “If we were high enough, I believe we would see their passage winding up the draw, winding around the easiest slopes, winding all the miles back to Sante Fe.”

There was a trace to the right that wound up the side of the mesa. Pennell dismounted, stiff-legged. He almost fell when he tried to stand alone and sling his glasses case high behind his left shoulder. Tyree threw off beside him and stumbled down on one knee before he could control his legs. They started up, clinging, and drawing themselves by their arms and by their hands, for there was slow blood flow still in their legs.

The patrol sat below, watching their painful progress upward. Watching them cling to handholds and swing on up, scrabbling, clawing. Once they slipped and tumbled back rump-over, kicking and trying to catch hold again, spurring into the sand to brake themselves to a stop. To start on up again.

Then the last of the direct rays of the sun flooded down the draw and flared for a moment like a great fire flame. The shadows slowly rose like purple mist, and the two climbing men were lost in them. But not to themselves were they lost. There was still light above when they stood together on the mesa’s rim.

“There’s the draw, Tyree!” Ross Pennell reached for his glasses case. “It traces due west and goes in behind the second table. Do you see—?”

Tyree said, “Yellow thread don’t make chevrons, but brains in the right head can sure make luck. You don’t need them glasses. Look,” and he swept his arm to the left. “There’s Spanish Man, where that bivouac smoke is! The Medicine is supposed to hide that too. I’d say south a half mile, west to the second table and due west about seven miles from there. Come on, Lieutenant; let’s get the hell down while there’s still enough light—”

The silver moon wash was almost as light as early dawn.

“I’ll go in first, Tyree, twenty yards ahead of you. Follow me, keeping to the opposite side, in case they fire at me. Keep bunched to concentrate your own fire. Fire only on my order.”

The Apaches sat about their fires, safe in the ancient power of Medicine. Sat on the robes of their long-dead warriors, robes that were sewn with the symbols of the massacre story. Robes that boasted and lied and gloated in their needle tracery. Robes that had been used so long that they were no longer thick enough to hold smells in them for long. They sat frozen in fear when they saw Pennell, their faces turned toward him, or rose in white, unbelieving panic as he called through cupped hands and his voice rang in the narrow defile like the voice of doom:

“The little Graeme girl! Lie flat where you are!” Then he saw her… “She’s by the fire on our left, Tyree! Hand these bastards the bill!”

And Tyree snarled, “At fifteen yards, fire by squad! The aim is right oblique! Steady… Fire!”

Pennell called to the little Graeme girl again to lie flat and wait, and again the patrol fired, and again, until there was no more sound of thrashing agony, no more panther rush to get away, no more Apaches to teach the niceties to.

The little girl stood there in the moonlight, looking large-eyed at Ross Pennell and his ragged patrol.

“And is your name Alice, too?”

“Yes, sir,” she curtsied, “Alice Graeme.”

“And are you all right, Alice?”

She curtsied again. “Yes, sir; I am now, sir.” She walked toward them slowly with the ancient and solemn dignity of all of womanhood. And she said, “But I’m awfully glad you came, for I was very frightened…” not to Pennell alone, but turning her head to all of them, looking at their red eyes and their scraggly beards, their haggard faces, but knowing them for her own, with silent gratefulness that seemed to reach out and touch them with warm hands, and soft. And the way of their own hard living was suddenly more worthwhile in that moment than all the emeralds of Hind and all the gold of Cathay.

Editor's Introduction to:

MARIUS
by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson has been one of my closest friends for twenty years. I recall fondly the many nights we have until dawn debated history and philosophy and the future of mankind; alas, such evenings have become all too rare.

In every generation there are those who can lead men to Hell. There are never many, for the secrets of that kind of leadership have not been written in books. No one quite knows where the great captains come from. They appear when needed—or they do not, and homelands die.

The great captains are not immune to the temptations of power; indeed, for those who can lead men to Hell, there is always the suspicion that they might be able to lead them to Heaven. If the generals do not think this way, we can be certain they will have followers to suggest the possibility.

Great soldiers are not often great governors. Sometimes they are: Julius Caesar was certainly preferable to most of his immediate successors and predecessors, Washington was certainly an able president, Mustapha Kemal was the best governor Turkey ever had. England has had able soldier kings. Napoleon reformed French society and developed a code of laws that has spread throughout the world, making one wonder what might have happened had the Allies left him in peace after his return from Elba.

Far too often, though, the habits of military power have been ingrained, so that the great captain becomes tyrant or incompetent—or both—as head of state.

MARIUS
by Poul Anderson

It was raining again, with a bite in the air as the planet spun toward winter. They hadn’t yet restored the street lights, and an early dusk seeped up between ruined walls and hid the tattered people who dwelt in caves grubbed out of rubble. Etienne Fourre, chief of the Maquisard Brotherhood and therefore representative of France in the Supreme Council of United Free Europe, stubbed his toe on a cobblestone. Pain struck through a worn-out boot, and he swore with tired expertise. The fifty guards ringing him in, hairy men in a patchwork of clothes—looted from the uniforms of a dozen armies, their own insignia merely a hand-sewn Tricolor brassard— tensed. That was an automatic reaction, the bristling of a wolf at any unawaited noise, long ago drilled into them.

“Eh, bien,” said Fourre. “Perhaps Rouget de I’Isle stumbled on the same rock while composing the ‘Marseillaise.’”

One-eyed Astier shrugged, an almost invisible gesture in the murk. “When is the next grain shipment due?” he asked. It was hard to think of anything but food above the noise of a shrunken belly, and the Liberators had shucked military formalities during the desperate years.

“Tomorrow, I think, or the next day, if the barges aren’t waylaid by river pirates,” said Fourre. “And I don’t believe they will be, so close to Strasbourg.” He tried to smile. “Be of good cheer, my old. Next year should give an ample harvest. The Americans are shipping us a new blight-preventive.”

“Always next year,” grumbled Astier. “Why don’t they sent us something to eat now?”

“The blights hit them, too. This is the best they can do for us. Had it not been for them, we would still be skulking in the woods sniping at Russians.”

“We had a little something to do with winning.”

“More than a little, thanks to Professor Valti. I do not think any of our side could have won without all the others.”

“If you call this victory.” Astier’s soured voice faded into silence. They were passing the broken cathedral, where child-packs often hid. The little wild ones had sometimes attacked armed men with their jagged bottles and rusty bayonets. But fifty soldiers were too many, of course. Fourre thought he heard a scuttering among the stones; but that might only have been the rats. Never had he dreamed there could be so many rats.

The thin, sad rain blew into his face and weighted his beard. Night rolled out of the east, like a message from Soviet lands plunged into chaos and murder. But we are rebuilding, he told himself defensively. Each week the authority of the Strasbourg Council reached a civilizing hand farther into the smashed countries of Europe. In ten years, five perhaps—automation was so fantastically productive, if only you could get hold of the machines in the first place—the men of the West would again be peaceful farmers and shopkeepers, their culture again a going concern.

If the multinational Councillors made the right decisions. And they had not been making them. Valti had finally convinced Fourre of that. Therefore he walked through the rain, hugging an old bicycle poncho to his sleazy jacket, and men in barracks were quietly estimating how many jumps it would take to reach their racked weapons. For they must overpower those who did not agree.

A wry notion, that the feudal principle of personal loyalty to a chief should have to be invoked to enforce the decrees of a new mathematics that only some thousand minds in the world understood. But you wouldn’t expect the Norman peasant Astier or the Parisian apache Renault to bend the scanty spare time of a year to learning the operations of symbolic sociology. You would merely say, “Come,” and they would come because they loved you.

The streets resounded hollow under his feet. It was a world without logic, this one. Only the accidents of survival had made the village apothecary Etienne Fourre into the de facto commander of Free France. He could have wished those accidents had taken him and spared Jeanette, but at least he had two sons living, and someday, if they hadn’t gotten too much radiation, there would be grandchildren. God was not altogether revengeful.

“There we are, up ahead,” said Astier.

Fourre did not bother to reply. He had never been under the common human necessity of forever mouthing words.

Strasbourg was the seat of the Council because of location and because it was not too badly hit. Only a conventional battle with chemical explosives had rolled through here eighteen months ago. The University was almost unscathed, and so became the headquarters of Jacques Reinach. His men prowled about on guard; one wondered what Goethe would have thought could he have returned to the scene of his student days. And yet it was men such as this, with dirty hands and clean weapons, who were civilization. It was their kind who had harried the wounded Russian colossus out of the West and who would restore law and liberty and wind-rippled fields to grain. Someday. Perhaps.

A machine-gun nest stood at the first checkpoint. The sergeant in charge recognized Fourre and gave a sloppy salute. (Still, the fact that Reinach had imposed so much discipline on his horde spoke for the man’s personality.) “Your escort must wait here, my general,” he said, half-apologizing. “A new regulation.”

“I know,” said Fourre. Not all of his guards did, and he must shush a snarling. “I have an appointment with the Commandant.”

“Yes, sir. Please stay to the lighted paths. Otherwise you might be shot by mistake for a looter.”

Fourre nodded and walked through, in among the buildings. His body wanted to get in out of the rain, but he went slowly, delaying the moment. Jacques Reinach was not just his countryman but his friend. Fourre was nowhere near as close to, say, Helgesen of the Nordic Alliance, or the Italian Totti, or Rojansky of Poland, and he positively disliked the German Auerbach.

But Valti’s matrices were not concerned with a man’s heart. They simply told you that given such and such conditions, this and that would probably happen. It was a cold knowledge to bear.

The structure housing the main offices was a loom of darkness, but a few windows glowed at Fourre. Reinach had had an electric generator installed—and rightly, to be sure, when his tired staff and his tired self must often work around the clock.

A sentry admitted Fourre to an outer room. There half a dozen men picked their teeth and diced for cartridges while a tubercular secretary coughed over files written on old laundry bills, flyleaves, any scrap of paper that came to hand. The lot of them stood up, and Fourre told them he had come to see the Commandant, chairman of the Council.

“Yes, sir.” The officer was still in his teens, fuzzy face already shriveled into old age, and spoke very bad French. “Check your guns with us and go on in.”

Fourre unbuckled his pistols, reflecting that this latest requirement, the disarming of commanders before they could meet Chairman Reinach, was what had driven Alvarez into fury and the conspiracy. Yet the decree was not unreasonable; Reinach must know of gathering opposition, and everyone had grown far too used to settling disputes violently. Ah, well, Alvarez was no philosopher, but he was boss of the Iberian Irregulars, and you had to use what human material was available.

The officer frisked him, and that was a wholly new indignity, which heated Fourre’s own skin. He choked his anger, thinking that Valti had predicted as much.

Down a corridor then, which smelled moldy in the autumnal darkness, and to a door where one more sentry was posted. Fourre nodded at him and opened the door.

“Good evening, Etienne. What can I do for you?”

The big blond man looked up from his desk and smiled. It was a curiously shy, almost a young smile, and something wrenched within Fourre.

This had been a professor’s office before the war. Dust lay thick on the books that lined the walls. Really, they should take more care of books, even if it meant giving less attention to famine and plague and banditry. At the rear was a closed window, with a dark wash of rain flowing across miraculously intact glass. Reinach sat with a lamp by his side and his back to the night.

Fourre lowered himself. The visitor’s chair creaked under a gaunt-fleshed but heavy-boned weight. “Can’t you guess, Jacques?” he asked.

The handsome Alsatian face, one of the few clean-shaven faces left in the world, turned to study him for a while. “I wasn’t sure you were against me, too,” said Reinach. “Helgesen, Totti, Alexios… yes, that gang… but you? We have been friends for many years, Etienne. I didn’t expect you would turn on me.”

“Not on you.” Fourre sighed and wished for a cigarette, but tobacco was a remote memory. “Never you, Jacques. Only your policies. I am here, speaking for all of us—”

“Not quite all,” said Reinach. His tone was quiet and unaccusing. “Now I realize how cleverly you maneuvered my firm supporters out of town. Brevoort flying off to Ukrainia to establish relations with the revolutionary government; Ferenczi down in Genoa to collect those ships for our merchant marine; Janosek talked into leading an expedition against the bandits in Schleswig. Yes, yes, you plotted this carefully, didn’t you? But what do you think they will have to say on their return?”

“They will accept a fait accompli,” answered Fourre. “This generation has had a gutful of war. But I said I was here to speak to you on behalf of my associates. We hoped you would listen to reason from me, at least.”

“If it is reason.” Reinach leaned back in his chair, cat-comfortable, one palm resting on a revolver butt. “We have threshed out the arguments in council. If you start them again—”

“—it is because I must.” Fourre sat looking at the scarred, bony hands in his lap. “We do understand, Jacques, that the chairman of the Council must have supreme power for the duration of the emergency. We agreed to give you the final word. But not the only word.”

A paleness of anger flicked across the blue eyes. “I have been maligned enough,” said Reinach coldly. “They think I want to make myself a dictator. Etienne, after the Second War was over and you went off and became a snug civilian, why do you think I elected to make the Army my career? Not because I had any taste for militarism. But I foresaw our land would again be in danger, within my own lifetime, and I wanted to hold myself ready. Does that sound like… like some new kind of Hitler?”

“No, of course not, my friend. You did nothing but follow the example of de Gaulle. And when we chose you to lead our combined forces, we could not have chosen better. Without you—and Valti—there would still be war on the eastern front. We… I… we think of you as our deliverer, just as if we were the littlest peasant given back his own plot of earth. But you have not been right.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.” Reinach actually smiled. “I admit my own. I bungled badly in cleaning out those Communists at—”

Fourre shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t understand, Jacques. It isn’t that kind of mistake I mean. Your great error is that you have not realized we are at peace. The war is over.”

Reinach lifted a sardonic brow. “Not a barge goes along the Rhine, not a kilometer of railroad track is relaid, but we have to fight bandits, local warlords, half-crazed fanatics of a hundred new breeds. Does that sound like peacetime?”

“It is a difference of… of objectives,” said Fourre. “And man is such an animal that it is the end, not the means, which makes the difference. War is morally simple: one purpose, to impose your will upon the enemy. Not to surrender to an inferior force. But a policeman? He is protecting an entire society, of which the criminal is also a part. A politician? He has to make compromises, even with small groups and with people he despises. You think like a soldier, Jacques, and we no longer want or need a soldier commanding us.”

“Now you’re quoting that senile fool Valti,” snapped Reinach.

“If we hadn’t had Professor Valti and his sociosymbolic logic to plan our strategy for us, we would still be locked with the Russians. There was no way for us to be liberated from the outside this time. The Anglo-Saxon countries had little strength to spare, after the exchange of missiles, and that little had to go to Asia. They could not invade a Europe occupied by a Red Army whose back was against the wall of its own wrecked homeland. We had to liberate ourselves, with ragged men and bicycle cavalry and aircraft patched together out of wrecks. Had it not been for Valti’s plans—and, to be sure, your execution of them—we could never have done so.” Fourre shook his head again. He would not get angry with Jacques. “I think such a record entitles the professor to respect.”

“True… then.” Reinach’s tone lifted and grew rapid. “But he’s senile now, I tell you. Babbling of the future, of long-range trends—Can we eat the future? People are dying of plague and starvation and anarchy now!”

“He has convinced me,” said Fourre. “I thought much the same as you, myself, a year ago. But he instructed me in the elements of his science, and he showed me the way we are heading. He is an old man, Eino Valti, but a brain still lives under that bald pate.”

Reinach relaxed. Warmth and tolerance played across his lips. “Very well, Etienne,” he asked, “what way are we heading?”

Fourre looked past him into night. “Toward war,” he said quite softly. “Another nuclear war, some fifty years hence. It isn’t certain the human race can survive that.”

Rain stammered on the windowpanes, falling hard now, and wind hooted in the empty streets. Fourre glanced at his watch. Scant time was left. He fingered the police whistle hung about his neck.

Reinach had started. But gradually he eased back. “If I thought that were so,” he replied, “I would resign this minute.”

“I know you would,” mumbled Fourre. “That is what makes my task so hard for me.”

“However, it isn’t so.” Reinach’s hand waved as if to brush away a nightmare. “People have had such a grim lesson that—”

“People, in the mass, don’t learn,” Fourre told him. “Did Germany learn from the Hundred Years’ War, or we from Hiroshima? The only way to prevent future wars is to establish a world peace authority: to reconstitute the United Nations and give it some muscles, as well as a charter which favors civilization above any fiction of ‘equality.’ And Europe is crucial to that enterprise. North of the Himalayas and east of the Don is nothing anymore—howling cannibals. It will take too long to civilize them again. We, ourselves, must speak for the whole Eurasian continent.”

“Very good, very good,” said Reinach impatiently. “Granted. But what am I doing that is wrong?”

“A great many things, Jacques. You have heard about them in the Council. Need I repeat the long list?” Fourre’s head turned slowly, as if it creaked on its neckbones, and locked eyes with the man behind the desk. “It is one thing to improvise in wartime. But you are improvising the peace. You forced the decision to send only two men to represent our combined nations at the conference planned in Rio. Why? Because we’re short on transportation, clerical help, paper, even on decent clothes! The problem should have been studied. It may be all right to treat Europe as a unit—or it may not; perhaps this will actually exacerbate nationalism. You made the decision in one minute when the question was raised, and would not hear debate.”

“Of course not,” said Reinach harshly. “If you remember, that was the day we learned of the neo-fascist coup in Corsica.”

“Corsica could have waited awhile. The place would have been more difficult to win back, yes, if we hadn’t struck at once. But this business of our U.N. representation could decide the entire future of—”

“I know, I know. Valti and his theory about the ‘pivotal decision.’ Bah!”

“The theory happens to work, my old friend.”

“Within proper limits. I’m a hardhead, Etienne, I admit that.” Reinach leaned across the desk, chuckling. “Don’t you think the times demand a hard head? When hell is romping loose, it’s no time to spin fine philosophies… or try to elect a parliament, which I understand is another of the postponements Dr. Valti holds against me.”

“It is,” said Fourre. “Do you like roses?”

“Why, why… yes.” Reinach blinked. “To look at, anyway.” Wistfulness crossed his eyes. “Now that you mention it, it’s been many years since I last saw a rose.”

“But you don’t like gardening. I remember that from, from old days.” The curious tenderness of man for man, which no one has ever quite explained, tugged at Fourre. He cast it aside, not daring to do otherwise, and said impersonally: “And you like democratic government, too, but were never interested in the grubby work of maintaining it. There is a time to plant seeds. If we delay, we will be too late; strong-arm rule will have become too ingrained a habit.”

“There is also a time to keep alive. Just to keep alive, nothing else.”

“Jacques, I don’t accuse you of hardheartedness. You are a sentimentalist: you see a child with belly bloated from hunger, a house marked with a cross to show that the Black Death has walked in—and you feel too much pity to be able to think. It is… Valti, myself, the rest of us… who are cold-blooded, who are prepared to sacrifice a few thousand more lives now, by neglecting the immediately necessary, for the sake of saving all humankind fifty years hence.”

“You may be right,” said Reinach. “About your cold souls, I mean.” His voice was so low that the rain nearly drowned it.

Fourre stole another look at his watch. This was taking longer than expected. He said in a slurred, hurried tone: “What touched off tonight’s affair was the Pappas business.”

“I thought so,” Reinach agreed evenly. “I don’t like it either. I know as well as you do that Pappas is a murderous crypto-Communist scoundrel whose own people hate him. But curse it, man, don’t you know rats do worse than steal food and gnaw the faces of sleeping children? Don’t you know they spread plague? And Pappas has offered us the services of the only efficient rat-exterminating force in Eurasia. He asks nothing in return except that we recognize his Macedonian Free State and give him a seat on the Council.”

“Too high a price,” said Fourre. “In two or three years we can bring the rats under control ourselves.”

“And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile, we must hope that nobody we love is taken sick.”

Reinach grinned without mirth. “It won’t do,” he said. “I can’t agree to that. If Pappas’ squads help us, we can save a year of reconstruction, a hundred thousand lives—”

“And throw away lives by the hundred millions in the future.”

“Oh, come now. One little province like Macedonia?”

“One very big precedent,” said Fourre. “We will not merely be conceding a petty warlord the right to his loot. We will be conceding” —he lifted furry hands and counted off on the fingers— “the right of any ideological dictatorship, anywhere, to exist: which right, if yielded, means war and war and war again; the fatally outmoded principle of unlimited national sovereignty; the friendship of an outraged Greece, which is sure to invoke that same principle in retaliation; the inevitable political repercussions throughout the Near East, which is already turbulent enough; therefore war between us and the Arabs, because we must have oil; a seat on the Council to a clever and ruthless man who, frankly, Jacques, can think rings around you—No!”

“You are theorizing about tomorrow,” said Reinach. “The rats are already here. What would you have me do instead?”

“Refuse the offer. Let me take a brigade down there. We can knock Pappas to hell… unless we let him get too strong first.”

Reinach shook his head goodnaturedly. “Who’s the warmonger now?” he said with a laugh.

“I never denied we still have a great deal of fighting ahead of us,” Fourre said. Sadness tinged his voice; he had seen too many men spilling their guts on the ground and screaming. “I only want to be sure it will serve the final purpose, that there shall never again be a world war. That my children and grandchildren will not have to fight at all.”

“And Valti’s equations show the way to achieve that?” Reinach asked quietly.

“Well, they show how to make the outcome reasonably probable.”

“I’m sorry, Etienne.” Reinach shook his head. “I simply cannot believe that. Turning human society into a… what’s the word?… a potential field, and operating on it with symbolic logic: it’s too remote. I am here, in the flesh—such of it as is left, on our diet—not in a set of scribbles made by some band of long-haired theorists.”

“A similar band discovered atomic energy,” said Fourre. “Yes, Valti’s science is young. But within admitted limitations, it works. If you would just study—”

“I have too much else on hand.” Reinach shrugged. A blankness drew across his face. “We’ve wasted more time than I can afford already. What does your group of generals want me to do?”

Fourre gave it to him as he knew his comrade would wish it, hard and straight like a bayonet thrust. “We ask for your resignation. Naturally, you’ll keep a seat on the Council, but Professor Valti will assume the chairmanship and set about making the reforms we want. We will issue a formal promise to hold a constitutional convention in the spring and dissolve the military government within one year.”

He bent his head and looked at the time. A minute and a half remained.

“No,” said Reinach.

“But—”

“Be still!” The Alsatian stood up. The single lamp threw his shadow grotesque and enormous across the dusty books. “Do you think I didn’t see this coming? Why do you imagine I let only one man at a time in here, and disarm him? The devil with your generals! The common people know me, they know I stand for them first—and hell take your misty futures! We’ll meet the future when it gets here.”

“That is what man has always done,” said Fourre. He spoke like a beggar. “And that is why the race has always blundered from one catastrophe to the next. This may be our last chance to change the pattern.”

Reinach began pacing back and forth behind his desk. “Do you think I like this miserable job?” he retorted. “It simply happens that no one else can do it.”

“So now you are the indispensable man,” whispered Fourre. “I had hoped you would escape that.”

“Go on home, Etienne.” Reinach halted, and kindness returned to him. “Go back and tell them I won’t hold this against them personally. You had a right to make your demand. Well, it has been made and refused.” He nodded to himself thoughtfully. “We will have to make some change in our organization, though. I don’t want to be a dictator, but—”

Zero hour. Fourre felt very tired. He had been denied, and so he had not blown the whistle that would stop the rebels, and matters were out of his hands now.

“Sit down,” he said. “Sit down, Marius, and let us talk about old times for a while.”

Reinach looked surprised. “Marius? What do you mean?”

“Oh… an example from history which Professor Valti gave me.” Fourre considered the floor. There was a cracked board by his left foot. Cracked and crazy, a tottering wreck of a civilization, how had the same race built Chartres and the hydrogen bomb?

His words dragged out of him: “In the second century before Christ, the Cimbri and their allies, Teutonic barbarians, came down out of the north. For a generation they wandered about, ripping Europe apart. They chopped to pieces the Roman armies sent to stop them. Finally they invaded Italy. It did not look as if they could be halted before they took Rome herself. But one general by the name of Marius rallied his men. He met the barbarians and annihilated them.”

“Why, thank you,” Reinach sat down, puzzled. “But—”

“Never mind.” Fourre’s lips twisted into a smile. “Let us take a few minutes free and just talk. Do you remember that night soon after the Second War, we were boys freshly out of the Maquis, and we tumbled around the streets of Paris and toasted the sunrise from Sacre Coeur?”

“Yes. To be sure. That was a wild night!” Reinach laughed. “How long ago it seems. What was your girl’s name? I’ve forgotten.”

“Marie. And you had Simone. A beautiful little baggage, Simone. I wonder whatever became of her.”

“I don’t know. The last I heard—No. Remember how bewildered the waiter was when—”

A shot cracked through the rain, and then the wrathful clatter of machine guns awoke. Reinach was on his feet in one tiger bound, pistol in hand, crouched by the window. Fourre stayed seated. The noise lifted, louder and closer. Reinach spun about. His gun muzzle glared emptily at Fourre.

“Yes, Jacques.”

“Mutiny!”

“We had to.” Fourre discovered that he could again meet Reinach’s eyes. “The situation was that crucial. If you had yielded… if you had even been willing to discuss the question… I would have blown this whistle and nothing would have happened. Now we’re too late, unless you want to surrender. If you do, our offer still stands. We still want you to work with us.”

A grenade blasted somewhere nearby.

“You—”

“Go on and shoot. It doesn’t matter very much.”

“No.” The pistol wavered. “Not unless you—Stay where you are! Don’t move!” The hand Reinach passed across his forehead shuddered. “You know how well this place is guarded. You know the people will rise to my side.”

“I think not. They worship you, yes, but they are tired and starved. Just in case, though, we staged this for the nighttime. By tomorrow morning the business will be over.” Fourre spoke like a rusty engine. “The barracks have already been seized. Those more distant noises are the artillery being captured. The University is surrounded and cannot stand against an attack.”

“This building can.”

“So you won’t quit, Jacques?”

“If I could do that,” said Reinach, “I wouldn’t be here tonight.”

The window broke open. Reinach whirled. The man who was vaulting through shot first.

The sentry outside the door looked in. His rifle was poised, but he died before he could use it. Men with black clothes and blackened faces swarmed across the sill.

Fourre knelt beside Reinach. A bullet through the head had been quick, at least. But if it had struck farther down, perhaps Reinach’s life could have been saved. Fourre wanted to weep, but he had forgotten how.

The big man who had killed Reinach ignored his commandos to stoop over the body with Fourre. “I’m sorry, sir,” he whispered. It was hard to tell whom he spoke to.

“Not your fault, Stefan.” Fourre’s voice jerked.

“We had to run through the shadows, get under the wall. I got a boost through this window. Didn’t have time to take aim. I didn’t realize who he was till—”

“It’s all right, I said. Go on, now, take charge of your party, get this building cleaned out. Once we hold it, the rest of his partisans should yield pretty soon.”

The big man nodded and went out into the corridor.

Fourre crouched by Jacques Reinach while a sleet of bullets drummed on the outer walls. He heard them only dimly. Most of him was wondering if this hadn’t been the best ending. Now they could give their chief a funeral with full military honors, and later they would build a monument to the man who saved the West, and—

And it might not be quite that easy to bribe a ghost. But you had to try.

“I didn’t tell you the whole story, Jacques,” he said. His hands were like a stranger’s, using his jacket to wipe off the blood, and his words ran on of themselves. “I wish I had. Maybe you would have understood… and maybe not. Marius went into politics afterward, you see. He had the prestige of his victory behind him, he was the most powerful man in Rome, his intentions were noble, but he did not understand politics. There followed a witch’s dance of corruption, murder, civil war, fifty years of it, the final extinction of the Republic. Caesarism merely gave a name to what had already been done.

“I would like to think that I helped spare Jacques Reinach the name of Marius.”

Rain slanted in through the broken window. Fourre reached out and closed the darkened eyes. He wondered if he would ever be able to close them within himself.

Editor’s Afterword

The usual interpretation of this story is that civilization has been saved; that Etienne Fourre is correct, and the social theories of Professor Valti should prevail.

Yet this is not entirely clear. If soldiers have no great record as governors, academics have done no better—indeed, there are those who would say it is better to be governed by a tyrant than by a theory. Certainly I would prefer to live under General Reinach, who is concerned for the suffering children he sees, than under those who have taken his place and who see only unborn generations.

The narrator, Etienne Fourre, follows the leadership of one Professor Eino Valti. Valti, it is said, has a social theory which predicts the ways of man.

Perhaps. But let us contrast Dr. Valti with Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto, whose theory of the circulation of elites makes more sense than most contemporary sociology (and is worth a great deal more study than it receives), died in 1923. He was more interested in the description of society than in prescriptions for its change; to the extent that he was on record as favoring any social scheme it was classical liberalism of the sort espoused by Dr. Milton Friedman in this era.

Pareto has been tarred with the brush of Fascism, which is hardly fair since Mussolini had barely taken office when Pareto ceased to write. If he did not condemn Mussolini, few did in the early days when Il Duce not only made the trains run on time, but built the railroads. It was only later that the more brutal aspects of Fascism emerged. In any event, by 1920 Pareto had ceased to show approval or disapproval of any social mechanism; he said he wished only to describe how men acted.

Pareto wrote: “Had Aristotle held to the course he in part so admirably followed, we would have had a scientific sociology in his early day. Why did he not do so? There may have been many reasons; but chief among them, probably, was that eagerness for premature practical applications which is ever obstructing the progress of science, along with a mania for preaching to people as to what they ought to do—an exceedingly bootless occupation—instead of finding out what they actually do.”

Whereas Pareto described society, Dr. Valti prescribes for it, and is willing to accept the post of Executive Chairman of the Human Race—for such, indeed, is what the narrator of this story offers. Reinach— Marius, if you will—is willing to compromise. His friend Fourre wants an armored division to go interfere in the affairs of Macedonia—a province not known for its proximity to Strasburg and France.

Fourre and Valti are more concerned with theory— such as how many representatives shall be sent to the United Nations—than with such practical matters as rats and plague.

And thus Fourre slays his oldest friend.

Which of them is Marius?

Editor's Introduction to:

THE SOVIET STRATEGIC THREAT FROM SPACE

The Committee On Space War, Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy

The Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy was formed in 1981 when fifty of the nation’s top space experts met in Los Angeles to draw up a space plan. The Council was jointly sponsored by the American Astronautical Society and the L-5 Society, and its meetings were made possible by a grant from the Vaughn Foundation. Council membership included aerospace engineers and scientists, astronauts, political leaders, business leaders and space entrepreneurs, science fiction writers, and students.

The first meeting was held in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Larry Niven, and it was a zoo. I had helped organize the meeting, but there was no actual structure. Dr. Charles Sheffield, then President of the American Astronautical Society, had been scheduled to preside over the meeting, but he couldn’t attend due to medical problems. Next thing I knew, I was barking orders to get things organized; and shortly after that I was Acting Chairman. I’ve been Chairman ever since.

I’ve no illusions about my qualifications, which are: I don’t work for any aerospace company (or anyone else) and I don’t own aerospace stock, so I can be objective about which companies have the best capabilities; I have a loud voice; I don’t mind yelling at people if that will get the job done; and I’m pretty good at writing the final reports.

For three days we were in a pressure cooker. This conference was expected to produce results; that was one reason we had science fiction writers, people like Greg Benford, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and G. Harry Stine. Note, too, that the writers sat in on the conferences as participants, not as “reporters” or “technical writers.” We were, after all, trying to form bold new concepts, and SF people’s imaginations were needed.

We got results, although sometimes it was pretty painful. I recall Saturday night, when the Foreign Policy Committee finished its meeting and turned to Larry Niven for a draft of the report. Larry has never worked for an aerospace firm (or any other where they say such things as “Of course I want it today; if I wanted it tomorrow I’d have asked for it tomorrow.”) His reply was “I don’t feel inspired…”—which drew totally unsympathetic looks from a dozen top industry executives.

The result of all this frantic activity was a report which has been widely read in Washington and elsewhere. The complete report is available for $5.00 from the L-5 Society, 1060 E. Elm St., Tucson, AZ 85719. Membership in the L-5 Society Promoting Space Development is open to anyone with a serious interest in aiding the space effort. L-5 has room for both professional and lay enthusiasts. Prominent members include Robert A. Heinlein, former NASA Administrator Thomas Paine, Marvin Minsky, Freeman Dyson, Senator Barry M. Goldwater, Ben Bova, and Arthur Kantrowitz. Annual dues (as of 1982) are $25 regular and $15 for students. [2015: offer no longer available.]

The Committee on Space War, also known as the Threat Committee, included some of the best-informed people in the nation. You may take their report quite seriously; it isn’t science fiction.

THE SOVIET STRATEGIC THREAT FROM SPACE

The Committee On Space War, Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy

CONCLUSION

Space activities add a new dimension to strategic capabilities. Truly decisive strategic warfare may be possible before the end of this century. The Soviet strategic threat is real and ominous, and strategic weapons making use of the space environment have serious implications for the survival of the United States.

BACKGROUND

In order to compensate for severe inferiority in guidance technology for its first generation ICBMs, the Soviets during the 60s and early 70s developed very high yield hydrogen bombs which didn’t need to land close to their targets to accomplish their mission. These weapons were massive, and Soviet rocket engineers designed and built very large boosters to carry them over intercontinental distances. To close the ‘Missile Gap’ of the early 60s—which was then strongly in favor of the U.S.—the Soviets built up four independent ICBM production complexes, all of which are running full blast through the present time. They continue to improve their relatively poor guidance technology to the point that the latest generation of their large ICBMs, the SS-20, has at least as accurate guidance as does the most recently deployed generation of U.S. ICBM—the Minuteman III.

During the 1960’s, the United States chose to halt strategic missile production and deployment. Some theorists believed that the Soviet Union suffered from a psychological inferiority complex which would vanish when Soviet strategic forces achieved equality with those of the United States. This theory held that Soviet strategic weapon production would halt when equality was achieved.

Instead, the Soviets took the opportunity to achieve numerical parity but with much larger boosters; and when parity was achieved, showed little inclination to halt weapon development and deployment.

PRESENT SITUATION

All evidence leads us to believe that continued rapid growth in Soviet strategic weapons forces may be expected for the foreseeable future.

Due to their habit of building very high capacity boosters and because their ICBM warheads can now be as accurately targeted as our most modern deployed systems, the Soviets are now able to ‘fractionate’ their four-fold advantage in ‘throw-weight’—this aggregate warhead launching capacity of their ICBM forces—into a four-fold advantage in number of nuclear warheads with which they can attack the U.S.. The most serious near-term threat which the Soviets pose to the U.S. is therefore the likelihood that they will put 15000-25000 medium-yield warheads (e.g., of at least the yield of Minuteman III warheads) in their large number of huge missiles to replace the 4000-4500 multi-megaton warheads which they presently have in place. With two or three times as many warheads on missiles as the U.S. has—all of them of substantially higher yield and comparable targeting accuracy as the U.S. ones—the Soviets will be able to wipe out all U.S. land-based forces (including all 4000 MX aim-points) with well under half of their ICBM order-of-battle.

Nuclear reactor-powered Soviet naval reconnaissance satellite capability has posed a major threat to U.S. sea-power for most of the past decade. What is little-recognized is that these intensively powered (100 kilowatt level), massive military satellites also provide an ideal platform for rapid, entirely covert deployment of advanced anti-submarine warfare (ASW) systems, exploiting a wide variety of radar, optical, and other non-acoustic technological advances of the last several years. The U.S. has no analogous capabilities—either operational or in serious development. The Soviets, on the other hand, have not slowed the deployment of this class of satellites after the de-orbiting into Canada of one of them two years ago. How thoroughly they value such space capabilities may be gauged by their refusal to even discuss President Carter’s urgent calls to ban nuclear reactors in orbit.

The U.S. cannot put a 10kW electric power supply of any kind into orbit until the mid-80s (and only if development begins promptly could we do so then), but the Soviets have had a routinely exercised order-of-magnitude greater capability since the mid-70s. They were unwilling to give up the large military advantages these space power systems confer, so it was hardly surprising that Carter’s diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful.

This large and growing fleet of nuclear-powered satellites provides the Soviets with a qualitatively superior capability to locate American’s strategic missile-launching submarines, as well as our hunter-killer subs searching for Soviet missile-launching subs, and to direct land, airplane, ship, or sub-based nuclear-tipped missile fire upon them—all of which have been observed in practice operation during Soviet naval exercises during the late 70s. There is no credible evidence which suggests that the Soviets would hesitate to use such demonstrated capabilities to wage space-directed nuclear war-at-sea against U.S. military forces, even if the geopolitical situation were substantially short of all-out-war; indeed, all available evidence supports the thesis that the Soviets consider U.S. Navy forces to be ‘pure’ military targets, useful for demonstrations of Soviet strength and resolution in times of crisis without generating the massive civilian casualties which would require a U.S. president to escalate or capitulate.

Soviet anti-satellite capabilities also have no analog in U.S. capacities. As was widely publicized two years ago, the Soviets have demonstrated a capability to attack (or at least effectively confuse) our strategic warning satellites. These satellites give warning of a ballistic missile attack against the United States by detecting the very strong infrared radiation signals given off by the exhaust plumes of ICBMs rising through the atmosphere from their silos. According to open literature accounts, the Soviets were able to blind them and thus negate their warning capability.

The Soviets have also repeatedly demonstrated the ability to use ‘killer satellites’ to intercept and destroy essentially any type of satellite in reasonably low Earth orbit. These attacks are typically carried out with a shotgun-type weapon carried by a killer satellite launched with no warning.

In-space attacks are likely as a prelude to war on not only U.S. strategic reconnaissance satellites, but also on command, control, communications, and intelligence satellites which are increasingly vital to the ability of the National Command Authority to direct U.S. forces in the event of hostilities. Unlike the Soviet Union, the U.S. has committed a critically large fraction of its war-waging assets to the space environment. However, we have not taken commensurate action to defend these assets from any but implausibly trivial types and levels of threats—and the Soviets know it.

FUTURE THREATS FROM SPACE

The strategic threats from space likely to arise during the next two decades are qualitatively and quantitatively more serious than the major ones already existing. They include the ability to compromise or destroy the American strategic force during nominal peacetime without warning and without nuclear weapons utilization.

The best-known of these emerging threats, merely because it is the one closest to initial realization, is that posed by beam weapons—’death rays,’ as they are commonly known. These systems all share the feature of bringing militarily useful quantities of energy to bear on targets at very great distances, often directing it to targets at the speed of light (making countermeasures difficult at best). One major class of them uses laser radiation of one type or another—beams of pure energy, either continuous or pulsed in time. The other major class is that involving the projection of mass, often subatomic particles such as electrons and protons, at speeds ranging from those not greatly in excess of the fastest artillery shells to ones just below that of light.

In continuous operational modes, beam weapons typically bring to bear on their targets energy intensities at least as high as that of the most powerful welding torches; the targets typically have at least fist-sized holes burned through them (usually with lethal results) in a second or less. When operating in pulsed mode, beam weapons load the surfaces of their targets with destructive amounts of energy on time scales of a millionth of a second or less; the surfaces evaporate with forces far greater than that of a comparable thickness of TNT, usually destroying the structures under them in the process.

Beam weapons energized by the burning of special chemicals are being considered for deployment in space during the 80s by both the Soviet Union and the U.S.; such laser beam weapons have already been used to shoot down military aircraft and have been operated from airplanes. Deployed in high Earth orbit, one such station could potentially burn down all the missiles launched from whatever locations by one side during an all-out nuclear war, and then leisurely burn down all enemy bombers for an encore. The side owning the space laser battle station would come through the war untouched, and would own the world thereafter; the other side would be annihilated. If such a space laser battle station could defend itself from all types of attack which enemies of its owners could direct against it, its ownership would confer the prize of a planet—just as soon as it was put into orbit.

However, it appears that only the naive would launch missiles which could be destroyed by the space laser battle stations presently being considered for deployment. As with many other new military technologies, countermeasures to the first generation version of the burner-type space lasers appear not only feasible but easy and economical to implement. Furthermore, space battle stations defended only with such lasers would apparently be veritable sitting ducks for a variety of attacks.

On the other hand, pulsed space lasers energized by nuclear weapons exploding nearby—lasers which have been demonstrated by the U.S. in underground tests and in whose development the Soviet Union is widely believed to be several years ahead—may be effectively impossible to countermeasure. They deliver too much energy of too penetrating nature in too short a period of time to defend against by any means known at present.

These defensive weapons are kept in hardened silos, to be launched as soon as an enemy ICBM attack is detected. Such nuclear weapon pumped laser systems could fire lethal bolts of energy at dozens to hundreds of enemy missiles and warheads simultaneously, but would not have to defend themselves from attack beforehand. A dozen such bomb-energized laser systems —each launched by a single booster—could shield their owner’s home territory from enemy attack for the half-hour period necessary for its owner’s ICBMs to be launched at, fly to, and destroy the enemy’s missile and bomber fields.

A TECHNOLOGICAL PIVOT-POINT IN WORLD HISTORY

Strategic-scale war in the closing sixth of this century is thus likely to conclude with the total and quite bloodless triumph by the nation owning the space laser system(s); the winner’s ICBM fields are part-empty, while the loser’s missiles and bombers are totally destroyed. The loser’s cities are held hostage for the surrender of his submarine force, whose remaining missiles are impotent against the space laser weapons of the winner in any event. The least certain consideration in such scenarios concerns the identities of the winner and the loser; it presently seems very likely that at least one side will build and deploy an effective space beam weapons system during the later 1980s.

The large present and near-term Soviet advantage in the ability to place large payloads into a variety of Earth orbits and to generate large amounts of electric power with space nuclear power systems may well be decisive in the on-going race to first deploy the first-generation space beam weapon battle stations. Countermeasure development by the U.S. during the next few years of definitive American inferiority in space warfare capability-in-being will therefore determine whether the Soviets will need to make second generation developments in this area.

OPEN SKIES IMPLICATIONS

Advanced satellite observation systems may profoundly affect the evolving strategic balance. Orbiting systems could bring the Eisenhower Open Skies doctrine much nearer to reality. These systems can give warning of buildups of conventional forces; they can also provide warning of ICBM attack.

These warning systems will be highly attractive targets for the Soviet Union. Their defense is not easy, but is probably possible given sufficient U.S. presence in the space environment.

SUMMARY

The U.S. ability to successfully wage war-in-space during the 80s and 90s will necessarily develop from its present comprehensively inferior position relative to the capabilities of the Soviet Union. Failure to rapidly gain at least parity with the advancing Soviet space warfare capabilities appears likely to doom the United States by the mid-90s; if this occurs, beam weapons systems deployed on Soviet space battle stations circling the Earth seem likely to be the lethal instruments.

Advanced reconnaissance satellites may contribute significantly to the stabilization of peace between the superpowers in the late 80s and 90s, if war-waging capabilities become comparable in that period. These satellites will be valuable but vulnerable. Space defenses are possible, but only for those who have a presence in space.

U.S. space capabilities may therefore be crucial for U.S. survival.

Editor's Introduction to:

ENDER'S GAME
by Orson Scott Card

I have never met Scott Card, but we have talked a lot on the telephone, most recently when I unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to accept office in the Science Fiction Writers of America (usually known as SFWA). I am, for my sins, the Elections Chairman; most SFWA offices aren’t contested, for the problem is to find qualified members willing to serve.

Scott pleaded that he had too many contracts, which is a problem I well understand. Given the economy, though, it beats heck out of the alternative.

Orson Scott Card burst on the science fiction scene like a nova; within a year, he was a major figure. It isn’t hard to see why: “Ender’s Game” was his first published story, and it has already become a classic.

Scott is a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which was militant enough in its day; the Mormon soldiers defeated the U.S. Army during the Winter War, and after Utah was brought into statehood, the Mormon Church became an important source of US Army recruits.

Scott was kind enough to send me a copy of the Mormon Hymnal. The book contains a number of militant and stirring songs; it is also the only place I have ever seen all four verses of the Star Spangled Banner.

“Ender’s Game” deals with an important problem. The selection of military leaders has always been difficult. In times long past, when wars were chronic but losing was not a complete disaster, it was possible to try leaders out, promote the successful ones, and in general rely on trial and error.

That can’t work when there will be only one battle.

ENDER'S GAME
by Orson Scott Card

“Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember—the enemy’s gate is down. If you step through your own door like you’re out for a stroll, you’re a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher.” Ender Wiggin paused and looked over the group. Most were just watching him nervously. A few understanding. A few sullen and resisting.

First day with this army, all fresh from the teacher squads, and Ender had forgotten how young new kids could be. He’d been in it for three years, they’d had six months—nobody over nine years old in the whole bunch. But they were his. At eleven, he was half a year early to be a commander. He’d had a toon of his own and knew a few tricks but there were forty in his new army. Green. All marksmen with a flasher, all in top shape, or they wouldn’t be here—but they were all just as likely as not to get wiped out first time into battle.

“Remember,” he went on, “they can’t see you till you get through that door. But the second you’re out, they’ll be on you. So hit that door the way you want to be when they shoot at you. Legs up under you, going straight down.” He pointed at a sullen kid who looked like he was only seven, the smallest of them all. “Which way is down, greenoh!”

“Toward the enemy door.” The answer was quick. It was also surly, saying, “yeah, yeah, now get on with the important stuff.”

“Name, kid?”

“Bean.”

“Get that for size or for brains?”

Bean didn’t answer. The rest laughed a little. Ender had chosen right. This kid was younger than the rest, must have been advanced because he was sharp. The others didn’t like him much, they were happy to see him taken down a little. Like Ender’s first commander had taken him down.

“Well, Bean, you’re right onto things. Now I tell you this, nobody’s gonna get through that door without a good chance of getting hit. A lot of you are going to be turned into cement somewhere. Make sure it’s your legs. Right? If only your legs get hit, then only your legs get frozen, and in nullo that’s no sweat.” Ender turned to one of the dazed ones. “What’re legs for? Hmmm?”

Blank stare. Confusion. Stammer.

“Forget it. Guess I’ll have to ask Bean here.”

“Legs are for pushing off walls.” Still bored.

“Thanks, Bean. Get that, everybody?” They all got it, and didn’t like getting it from Bean. “Right. You can’t see with legs, you can’t shoot with legs, and most of the time they just get in the way. If they get frozen sticking straight out you’ve turned yourself into a blimp. No way to hide. So how do legs go?”

A few answered this time, to prove that Bean wasn’t the only one who knew anything. “Under you. Tucked up under.”

“Right. A shield. You’re kneeling on a shield, and the shield is your own legs. And there’s a trick to the suits. Even when your legs are flashed you can still kick off. I’ve never seen anybody do it but me—but you’re all gonna learn it.”

Ender Wiggin turned on his flasher. It glowed faintly green in his hand. Then he let himself rise in the weightless workout room, pulled his legs under him as though he were kneeling, and flashed both of them. Immediately his suit stiffened at the knees and ankles, so that he couldn’t bend at all.

“Okay, I’m frozen, see?”

He was floating a meter above them. They all looked up at him, puzzled. He leaned back and caught one of the handholds on the wall behind him, and pulled himself flush against the wall.

“I’m stuck at a wall. If I had legs, I’d use legs, and string myself out like a string bean, right?”

They laughed.

“But I don’t have legs, and that’s better, got it? Because of this.” Ender jackknifed at the waist, then straightened out violently. He was across the workout room in only a moment. From the other side he called to them. “Got that? I didn’t use hands, so I still had use of my flasher. And I didn’t have my legs floating five feet behind me. Now watch it again.”

He repeated the jackknife, and caught a handhold on the wall near them. “Now, I don’t just want you to do that when they’ve flashed your legs. I want you to do that when you’ve still got legs, because it’s better. And because they’ll never be expecting it. All right now, everybody up in the air and kneeling.”

Most were up in a few seconds. Ender flashed the stragglers, and they dangled, helplessly frozen, while the others laughed. “When I give an order, you move. Got it? When we’re at a door and they clear it, I’ll be giving you orders in two seconds, as soon as I see the setup. And when I give the order you better be out there, because whoever’s out there first is going to win, unless he’s a fool. I’m not. And you better not be, or I’ll have you back in the teacher squads.” He saw more than a few of them gulp, and the frozen ones looked at him with fear. “You guys who are hanging there. You watch. You’ll thaw out in about fifteen minutes, and let’s see if you can catch up to the others.”

For the next half hour Ender had them jackknifing off walls. He called a stop when he saw that they all had the basic idea. They were a good group, maybe. They’d get better.

“Now you’re warmed up,” he said to them, “we’ll start working.”

Ender was the last one out after practice, since he stayed to help some of the slower ones improve on technique. They’d had good teachers, but like all armies they were uneven, and some of them could be a real drawback in battle. Their first battle might be weeks away. It might be tomorrow. A schedule was never printed. The commander just woke up and found a note by his bunk, giving him the time of his battle and the name of his opponent. So for the first while he was going to drive his boys until they were in top shape—all of them. Ready for anything, at any time. Strategy was nice, but it was worth nothing if the soldiers couldn’t hold up under the strain.

He turned the corner into the residence wing and found himself face to face with Bean, the seven-year-old he had picked on all through practice that day. Problems. Ender didn’t want problems right now.

“Ho, Bean.”

“Ho, Ender.”

“Sir,” Ender said softly.

“We’re not on duty.”

“In my army, Bean, we’re always on duty.” Ender brushed past him.

Bean’s high voice piped up behind him. “I know what you’re doing, Ender, sir, and I’m warning you.”

Ender turned slowly and looked at him. “Warning me?”

“I’m the best man you’ve got. But I’d better be treated like it.”

“Or what?” Ender smiled menacingly.

“Or I’ll be the worst man you’ve got. One or the other.”

“And what do you want? Love and kisses?” Ender was getting angry.

Bean was unworried. “I want a toon.”

Ender walked back to him and stood looking down into his eyes. “I’ll give a toon,” he said, “to the boys who prove they’re worth something. They’ve got to be good soldiers, they’ve got to know how to take orders, they’ve got to be able to think for themselves in a pinch, and they’ve got to be able to keep respect. That’s how I got to be a commander. That’s how you’ll get to be a toon leader.”

Bean smiled. “That’s fair. If you actually work that way, I’ll be a toon leader in a month.”

Ender reached down and grabbed the front of his uniform and shoved him into the wall. “When I say I work a certain way, Bean, then that’s the way I work.”

Bean just smiled. Ender let go of him and walked away, and didn’t look back. He was sure, without looking, that Bean was still watching, still smiling, still just a little contemptuous. He might make a good toon leader at that. Ender would keep an eye on him.

* * *

Captain Graff, six foot two and a little chubby, stroked his belly as he leaned back in his chair. Across his desk sat Lieutenant Anderson, who was earnestly pointing out high points on a chart.

“Here it is, Captain,” Anderson said. “Ender’s already got them doing a tactic that’s going to throw off everyone who meets it. Doubled their speed.”

Graff nodded.

“And you know his test scores. He thinks well, too.”

Graff smiled. “All true, all true, Anderson, he’s a fine student, shows real promise.”

They waited.

Graff sighed. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Ender’s the one. He’s got to be.”

“He’ll never be ready in time, Lieutenant. He’s eleven, for heaven’s sake, man, what do you want, a miracle?”

“I want him into battles, every day starting tomorrow. I want him to have a year’s worth of battles in a month.”

Graff shook his head. “That would have his army in the hospital.”

“No sir. He’s getting them into form. And we need Ender.”

“Correction, Lieutenant. We need somebody. You think it’s Ender.”

“All right, I think it’s Ender. Which of the commanders if it isn’t him?”

“I don’t know, Lieutenant.” Graff ran his hands over his slightly fuzzy bald head. “These are children, Anderson. Do you realize that? Ender’s army is nine years old. Are we going to put them against the older kids? Are we going to put them through hell for a month like that?”

Lieutenant Anderson leaned even further over Graff’s desk.

“Ender’s test scores, Captain!”

“I’ve seen his bloody test scores! I’ve watched him in battle, I’ve listened to tapes of his training sessions, I’ve watched his sleep patterns, I’ve heard tapes of his conversations in the corridors and in the bathrooms, I’m more aware of Ender Wiggin than you could possibly imagine! And against all the arguments, against his obvious qualities, I’m weighing one thing. I have this picture of Ender a year from now, if you have your way. I see him completely useless, worn down, a failure, because he was pushed farther than he or any living person could go. But it doesn’t weigh enough, does it, Lieutenant, because there’s a war on, and our best talent is gone, and the biggest battles are ahead. So give Ender a battle every day this week. And then bring me a report.”

Anderson stood and saluted. “Thank you sir.”

He had almost reached the door when Graff called his name. He turned and faced the captain.

“Anderson,” Captain Graff said. “Have you been outside, lately I mean?”

“Not since last leave, six months ago.”

“I didn’t think so. Not that it makes any difference. But have you ever been to Beaman Park, there in the city? Hmm? Beautiful park. Trees. Grass. No nullo, no battles, no worries. Do you know what else there is in Beaman Park?”

“What, sir?” Lieutenant Anderson asked.

“Children,” Graff answered.

“Of course children,” said Anderson.

“I mean children. I mean kids who get up in the morning when their mothers call them and they go to school and then in the afternoon they go to Beaman Park and play. They’re happy, they smile a lot, they laugh, they have fun. Hmmm?”

“I’m sure they do sir.”

“Is that all you can say, Anderson?”

Anderson cleared his throat. “It’s good for children to have fun, I think, sir. I know I did when I was a boy. But right now the world needs soldiers. And this is the way to get them.”

Graff nodded and closed his eyes. “Oh, indeed, you’re right, by statistical proof and by all the important theories, and dammit they work and the system is right but all the same Ender’s older than I am. He’s not a child. He’s barely a person.”

“If that’s true, sir, then at least we all know that Ender is making it possible for the others of his age to be playing in the park.”

“And Jesus died to save all men, of course.” Graff sat up and looked at Anderson almost sadly. “But we’re the ones,” Graff said, “We’re the ones who are driving in the nails.”

* * *

Ender Wiggin lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. He never slept more than five hours a night—but the lights went off at 2200 and didn’t come on again until 0600. So he stared at the ceiling and thought. He’d had his army for three and a half weeks. Dragon Army. The name was assigned, and it wasn’t a lucky one. Oh, the charts said that about nine years ago a Dragon Army had done fairly well. But for the next six years the name had been attached to inferior armies, and finally, because of the superstition that was beginning to play about the name. Dragon Army was retired. Until now. And now, Ender thought smiling, Dragon Army was going to take them by surprise.

The door opened softly. Ender did not turn his head. Someone stepped softly into his room, then left with the quiet sound of the door shutting. When soft steps died away, Ender rolled over and saw a white slip of paper lying on the floor. He reached down and picked it up.

“Dragon Army against Rabbit Army, Ender Wiggin and Cam Carby, 0700.”

The first battle. Ender got out of bed and quickly dressed. He went rapidly to the rooms of each of his toon leaders and told them to rouse their boys. In five minutes they were all gathered in the corridor, sleepy and slow. Ender spoke softly.

“First battle, 0700 against Rabbit Army. I’ve fought them twice before but they’ve got a new commander. Never heard of him. They’re an older group, though, and I know a few of their old tricks. Now wake up. Run, doublefast, warmup in workroom three.”

For an hour and a half they worked out, with three mockbattles and calisthenics in the corridor out of the nullo. Then for fifteen minutes they all lay up in the air, totally relaxing in the weightlessness. At 0650 Ender roused them and they hurried into the corridor. Ender led them down the corridor, running again, and occasionally leaping to touch a light panel on the ceiling. The boys all touched the same light panel. And at 0658 they reached their gate to the battleroom.

The members of Toons C and D grabbed the first eight handholds in the ceiling of the corridor. Toons A, B, and E crouched on the floor. Ender hooked his feet into two handholds in the middle of the ceiling, so he was out of everyone’s way.

“Which way is the enemy’s door?” he hissed.

“Down!” they whispered back, and laughed.

“Flashers on.” The boxes in their hands glowed green. They waited for a few seconds more, and then the gray wall in front of them disappeared and the battleroom was visible.

Ender sized it up immediately. The familiar open grid of the most early games, like the monkey bars at the park, with seven or eight boxes scattered through the grid. They called the boxes stars. There were enough of them, and in forward enough positions, that they were worth going for. Ender decided this in a second, and he hissed, “Spread to near stars. E hold!”

The four groups in the corners plunged through the forcefield at the doorway and fell down into the battle-room. Before the enemy even appeared through the opposite gate Ender’s army had spread from the door to the nearest stars.

Then the enemy soldiers came through the door. From their stance Ender knew they had been in a different gravity, and didn’t know enough to disorient themselves from it. They came through standing up, their entire bodies spread and defenseless.

“Kill ‘em, E!” Ender hissed, and threw himself out the door knees first, with his flasher between his legs and firing. While Ender’s group flew across the room the rest of Dragon Army lay down a protecting fire, so that E group reached a forward position with only one boy frozen completely, though they had all lost the use of their legs—which didn’t impair them in the least. There was a lull as Ender and his opponent, Carn Carby, assessed their positions. Aside from Rabbit Army’s losses at the gate, there had been few casualties, and both armies were near full strength. But Carn had no originality—he was in a four-corner spread that any five-year-old in the teacher squads might have thought of. And Ender knew how to defeat it.

He called out, loudly, “E covers A, C down. B, D angle east wall.” Under E toon’s cover, B and D toons lunged away from their stars. While they were still exposed, A and C toons left their stars and drifted toward the near wall. They reached it together, and together jackknifed off the wall. At double the normal speed they appeared behind the enemy’s stars, and opened fire. In a few seconds the battle was over, with the enemy almost entirely frozen, including the commander, and the rest scattered to the corners. For the next five minutes, in squads of four, Dragon Army cleaned out the dark corners of the battleroom and shepherded the enemy into the center, where their bodies, frozen at impossible angles, jostled each other. Then Ender took three of his boys to the enemy gate and went through the formality of reversing the one-way field by simultaneously touching a Dragon Army helmet at each corner. Then Ender assembled his army in vertical files near the knot of frozen Rabbit Army soldiers.

Only three of Dragon Army’s soldiers were immobile. Their victory margin—38 to 0—was ridiculously high, and Ender began to laugh. Dragon Army joined him, laughing long and loud. They were still laughing when Lieutenant Anderson and Lieutenant Morris came in from the teachergate at the south end of the battleroom.

Lieutenant Anderson kept his face stiff and unsmiling, but Ender saw him wink as he held out his hand and offered the stiff, formal congratulations that were ritually given to the victor in the game.

Morris found Carn Carby and unfroze him, and the thirteen-year-old came and presented himself to Ender, who laughed without malice and held out his hand. Carn graciously took Ender’s hand and bowed his head over it. It was that or be flashed again.

Lieutenant Anderson dismissed Dragon Army, and they silently left the battleroom through the enemy’s door—again part of the ritual. A light was blinking on the north side of the square door, indicating where the gravity was in that corridor. Ender, leading his soldiers, changed his orientation and went through the forcefield and into gravity on his feet. His army followed him at a brisk run back to the workroom. When they got there they formed up into squads, and Ender hung in the air, watching them.

“Good first battle,” he said, which was excuse enough for a cheer, which he quieted. “Dragon Army did all right against Rabbits. But the enemy isn’t always going to be that bad. And if that had been a good army we would have been smashed. We still would have won, but we would have been smashed. Now let me see B and D toons out here. Your takeoff from the stars was way too slow. If Rabbit Army knew how to aim a flasher, you all would have been frozen solid before A and C even got to the wall.”

They worked out for the rest of the day.

That night Ender went for the first time to the commanders’ mess hall. No one was allowed there until he had won at least one battle, and Ender was the youngest commander ever to make it. There was no great stir when he came in. But when some of the other boys saw the Dragon on his breast pocket, they stared at him openly, and by the time he got his tray and sat at an empty table, the entire room was silent, with the other commanders watching him. Intensely self-conscious, Ender wondered how they all knew, and why they all looked so hostile.

Then he looked above the door he had just come through. There was a huge Scoreboard across the entire wall. It showed the win/loss record for the commander of every army; that day’s battles were lit in red. Only four of them. The other three winners had barely made it—the best of them had only two men whole and eleven mobile at the end of the game. Dragon Army’s score of thirty-eight mobile was embarrassingly better.

Other new commanders had been admitted to the commanders’ mess hall with cheers and congratulations. Other new commanders hadn’t won thirty-eight to zero.

Ender looked at Rabbit Army on the Scoreboard. He was surprised to find that Carn Carby’s score to date was eight wins and three losses. Was he that good? Or had he only fought against inferior armies? Whichever, there was still a zero in Cam’s mobile and whole columns, and Ender looked down from the Scoreboard grinning. No one smiled back, and Ender knew that they were afraid of him, which meant that they would hate him, which meant that anyone who went into battle against Dragon Army would be scared and angry and incompetent. Ender looked for Carn Carby in the crowd, and found him not too far away. He stared at Carby until one of the other boys nudged the Rabbit commander and pointed to Ender. Ender smiled again and waved slightly. Carby turned red, and Ender, satisfied, leaned over his dinner and began to eat.

At the end of the week Dragon Army had fought seven battles in seven days. The score stood 7 wins and 0 losses. Ender had never had more than five boys frozen in any game. It was no longer possible for the other commanders to ignore Ender. A few of them sat with him and quietly conversed about game strategies that Ender’s opponents had used. Other much larger groups were talking with the commanders that Ender had defeated, trying to find out what Ender had done to beat them.

In the middle of the meal the teacher door opened and the groups fell silent as Lieutenant Anderson stepped in and looked over the group. When he located Ender he strode quickly across the room and whispered in Ender’s ear. Ender nodded, finished his glass of water, and left with the lieutenant. On the way out, Anderson handed a slip of paper to one of the older boys. The room became very noisy with conversation as Anderson and Ender left.

Ender was escorted down corridors he had never seen before. They didn’t have the blue glow of the soldier corridors. Most were wood paneled, and the floors were carpeted. The doors were wood, with nameplates on them, and they stopped at one that said, “Captain Graff, supervisor.” Anderson knocked softly, and a low voice said, “Come in.”

They went in. Captain Graff was seated behind a desk, his hands folded across his pot belly. He nodded, and Anderson sat. Ender also sat down. Graff cleared his throat and spoke.

“Seven days since your first battle, Ender.”

Ender did not reply.

“Won seven battles, one every day.”

Ender nodded.

“Scores unusually high, too.”

Ender blinked.

“Why?” Graff asked him.

Ender glanced at Anderson, and then spoke to the captain behind the desk. “Two new tactics, sir. Legs doubled up as a shield, so that a flash doesn’t immobilize. Jackknife takeoffs from the walls. Superior strategy, as Lieutenant Anderson taught, think places, not spaces. Five toons of eight instead of four of ten. Incompetent opponents. Excellent toon leaders, good soldiers.”

Graff looked at Ender without expression. Waiting for what, Ender thought. Lieutenant Anderson spoke.

“Ender, what’s the condition of your army.”

“A little tired, in peak condition, morale high, learning fast. Anxious for the next battle.”

Anderson looked at Graff, and Graff shrugged slightly. Then he nodded, and Anderson smiled. Graff turned to Ender.

“Is there anything you want to know?”

Ender held his hands loosely in his lap. “When are you going to put us up against a good army?”

Anderson was surprised, and Graff laughed out loud. The laughter rang in the room, and when it stopped, Graff handed a piece of paper to Ender. “Now,” the Captain said, and Ender read the paper.

“Dragon Army against Leopard Army, Ender Wiggin and Pol Slattery, 2000.”

Ender looked up at Captain Graff. “That’s ten minutes from now, sir.”

Graff smiled. “Better hurry, then, boy.”

As Ender left he realized Pol Slattery was the boy who had been handed his orders as Ender left the mess hall.

He got to his army five minutes later. Three toon leaders were already undressed and lying naked on their beds. He sent them all flying down the corridors to rouse their toons, and gathered up their suits himself. As all his boys were assembled in the corridor, most of them still getting dressed, Ender spoke to them.

“This one’s hot and there’s no time. We’ll be late to the door, and the enemy’ll be deployed right outside our gate. Ambush, and I’ve never heard of it happening before. So we’ll take our time at the door. E. toon, keep your belts loose, and give your flashers to the leaders and seconds of the other toons.”

Puzzled, E toon complied. By then all were dressed, and Ender led them at a trot to the gate. When they reached it the forcefield was already on one-way, and some of his soldiers were panting. They had had one battle that day and a full workout. They were tired.

Ender stopped at the entrance and looked at the placement of the enemy soldiers. Most of them were grouped not more than twenty feet out from the gate. There was no grid, there were no stars. A big empty space. Where were the other enemy soldiers? There should have been ten more.

“They’re flat against this wall,” Ender said, “where we can’t see them.”

He thought for a moment, then took two of the toons and made them kneel, their hands on their hips. Then he flashed them, so that their bodies were frozen rigid.

“You’re shields,” Ender said, and then had boys from two other toons kneel on their legs, and hook both arms under the frozen boys’ shoulders. Each boy was holding two flashers. Then Ender and the members of the last toon picked up the duos, three at a time, and threw them out the door.

Of course, the enemy opened fire immediately. But they only hit the boys who were already flashed, and in a few moments pandemonium broke out in the battle-room. All the soldiers of Leopard Army were easy targets as they lay pressed flat against the wall, and Ender’s soldiers, armed with two flashers each, carved them up easily. Pol Slattery reacted quickly, ordering his men away from the wall, but not quickly enough—only a few were able to move, and they were flashed before they could get a quarter of the way across the battleroom.

When the battle was over Dragon Army had only twelve boys whole, the lowest score they had ever had. But Ender was satisfied. And during the ritual of surrender Pol Slattery broke form by shaking hands and asking, “Why did you wait so long getting out of the gate?”

Ender glanced at Anderson, who was floating nearby. “I was informed late,” he said. “It was an ambush.”

Slattery grinned, and gripped Ender’s hand again. “Good game.”

Ender didn’t smile at Anderson this time. He knew that now the games would be arranged against him, to even up the odds. He didn’t like it.

It was 2150, nearly time for lights out, when Ender knocked at the door of the room shared by Bean and three other soldiers. One of the others opened the door, then stepped back and held it wide. Ender stood for a moment, then asked if he could come in. They answered, of course, of course, come in, and he walked to the upper bunk, where Bean had set down his book and was leaning on one elbow to look at Ender.

“Bean, can you give me twenty minutes?”

“Near lights out,” Bean answered.

“My room,” Ender answered. “I’ll cover for you.” Bean sat up and slid off his bed. Together he and Ender padded silently down the corridor to Ender’s room. Bean entered first, and Ender closed the door behind them.

“Sit down,” Ender said, and they both sat on the edge of the bed, looking at each other.

“Remember four weeks ago, Bean? When you told me to make you a toon leader?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve made five toon leaders since then, haven’t I? And none of them was you.”

Bean looked at him calmly.

“Was I right?” Ender asked.

“Yes, sir,” Bean answered.

Ender nodded. “How have you done in these battles?”

Bean cocked his head to one side. “I’ve never been immobilized, sir, and I’ve immobilized forty-three of the enemy. I’ve obeyed orders quickly, and I’ve commanded a squad in mop-up and never lost a soldier.”

“Then you’ll understand this.” Ender paused, then decided to back up and say something else first.

“You know you’re early, Bean, by a good half year. I was, too, and I’ve been made a commander six months early. Now they’ve put me into battles after only three weeks of training with my army. They’ve given me eight battles in seven days. I’ve already had more battles than boys who were made commander four months ago. I’ve won more battles than many who’ve been commanders for a year. And then tonight. You know what happened tonight.”

Bean nodded. “They told you late.”

“I don’t know what the teachers are doing. But my army is getting tired, and I’m getting tired, and now they’re changing the rules of the game. You see, Bean, I’ve looked in the old charts. No one has ever destroyed so many enemies and kept so many of his own soldiers whole in the history of the game. I’m unique—and I’m getting unique treatment.”

Bean smiled. “You’re the best, Ender.”

Ender shook his head. “Maybe. But it was no accident that I got the soldiers I got. My worst soldier could be a toon leader in another army. I’ve got the best. They’ve loaded things my way—but now they’re loading it against me. I don’t know why. But I know I have to be ready for it. I need your help.”

“Why mine?”

“Because even though there are some better soldiers than you in Dragon Army—not many, but some—there’s nobody who can think better and faster than you.” Bean said nothing. They both knew it was true.

Ender continued, “I need to be ready, but I can’t retrain the whole army. So I’m going to cut every toon down by one, including you—and you and four others will be a special squad under me. And you’ll learn to do some new things. Most of the time you’ll be in the regular toons just like you are now. But when I need you. See?”

Bean smiled and nodded. “That’s right, that’s good, can I pick them myself?”

“One from each toon except your own, and you can’t take any toon leaders.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Bean, I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ll throw at us. What would you do if suddenly our flashers didn’t work, and the enemy’s did? What would you do if we had to face two armies at once? The only thing I know is—we’re not going for score anymore. We’re going for the enemy’s gate. That’s when the battle is technically won—four helmets at the corners of the gate. I’m going for quick kills, battles ended even when we’re outnumbered. Got it? You take them for two hours during regular workout. Then you and I and your soldiers, we’ll work at night after dinner.”

“We’ll get tired.”

“I have a feeling we don’t know what tired is.”

Ender reached out and took Bean’s hand, and gripped it. “Even when it’s rigged against us, Bean. We’ll win.”

Bean left in silence and padded down the corridor.

Dragon Army wasn’t the only army working out after hours now. The other commanders finally realized they had some catching up to do. From early morning to lights out soldiers all over Training and Commander Center, none of them over fourteen years old, were learning to jackknife off walls and use each other as living shields.

But while other commanders mastered the techniques that Ender had used to defeat them, Ender and Bean worked on solutions to problems that had never come up.

There were still battles every day, but for a while they were normal, with grids and stars and sudden plunges through the gate. And after the battles, Ender and Bean and four other soldiers would leave the main group and practice strange maneuvers. Attacks without flashers, using feet to physically disarm or disorient an enemy. Using four frozen soldiers to reverse the enemy’s gate in less than two seconds. And one day Bean came to workout with a 300-meter cord.

“What’s that for?”

“I don’t know yet.” Absently Bean spun one end of the cord. It wasn’t more than an eighth of an inch thick, but it could have lifted ten adults without breaking.

“Where did you get it?”

“Commissary. They asked what for. I said to practice tying knots.”

Bean tied a loop in the end of the rope and slid it over his shoulders.

“Here, you two, hang onto the wall here. Now don’t let go of the rope. Give me about fifty yards of slack.” They complied, and Bean moved about ten feet from them along the wall. As soon as he was sure they were ready, he jackknifed off the wall and flew straight out, fifty meters. Then the rope snapped taut. It was so fine that it was virtually invisible, but it was strong enough to force Bean to veer off at almost a right angle. It happened so suddenly that he had inscribed a perfect arc and hit the wall before most of the other soldiers knew what had happened. Bean did a perfect rebound and drifted quickly back where Ender and the others waited for him.

Many of the soldiers in the five regular squads hadn’t noticed the rope, and were demanding to know how it was done. It was impossible to change direction that abruptly in nullo. Bean just laughed.

“Wait till the next game without a grid! They’ll never know what hit them.”

They never did. The next game was only two hours later, but Bean and two others had become pretty good at aiming and shooting while they flew at ridiculous speeds at the end of the rope. The slip of paper was delivered, and Dragon Army trotted off to the gate, to battle with Griffin Army. Bean coiled the rope all the way.

When the gate opened, all they could see was a large brown star only fifteen feet away, completely blocking their view of the enemy’s gate.

Ender didn’t pause. “Bean, give yourself fifty feet of rope and go around the star.” Bean and his four soldiers dropped through the gate and in a moment Bean was launched sideways away from the star. The rope snapped taut, and Bean flew forward. As the rope was stopped by each edge of the star in turn, his arc became tighter and his speed greater, until when he hit the wall only a few feet away from the gate he was barely able to control his rebound to end up behind the star. But he immediately moved all his arms and legs so that those waiting inside the gate would know that the enemy hadn’t flashed him anywhere.

Ender dropped through the gate, and Bean quickly told him how Griffin Army was situated. “They’ve got two squares of stars, all the way around the gate. All their soldiers are under cover, and there’s no way to hit any of them until we’re clear to the bottom wall. Even with shields, we’d get there at half strength and we wouldn’t have a chance.”

“They moving?” Ender asked.

“Do they need to?”

Ender thought for a moment. “This one’s tough. We’ll go for the gate, Bean.”

Griffin Army began to call out to them.

“Hey, is anybody there!”

“Wake up, there’s a war on!”

“We wanna join the picnic!”

They were still calling when Ender’s army came out from behind their star with a shield of fourteen frozen soldiers. William Bee, Griffin Army’s commander, waited patiently as the screen approached, his men waiting at the fringes of their stars for the moment when whatever was behind the screen became visible. About ten meters away the screen exploded as the soldiers behind it shoved the screen north. The momentum carried them south twice as fast, and at the same moment the rest of Dragon Army burst from behind their star at the opposite end of the room, firing rapidly.

William Bee’s boys joined battle immediately, of course, but William Bee was far more interested in what had been left behind when the shield disappeared. A formation of four frozen Dragon Army soldiers was moving headfirst toward the Griffin Army gate, held together by another frozen soldier whose feet and hands were hooked through their belts. A sixth soldier hung to his wrist and trailed like the tail of a kite. Griffin Army was winning the battle easily, and William Bee concentrated on the formation as it approached the gate. Suddenly the soldier trailing in back moved—he wasn’t frozen at all! And even though William Bee flashed him immediately, the damage was done. The formation drifted to the Griffin Army gate, and their helmets touched all four corners simultaneously. A buzzer sounded, the gate reversed, and the frozen soldier in the middle was carried by momentum right through the gate. All the flashers stopped working and the game was over.

The teacher door opened and Lieutenant Anderson came in. Anderson stopped himself with a slight movement of his hands when he reached the center of the battleroom. “Ender,” he called, breaking protocol. One of the frozen Dragon soldiers near the south wall tried to call through jaws that were clamped shut by the suit. Anderson drifted to him and unfroze him.

Ender was smiling.

“I beat you again, sir,” Ender said. Anderson didn’t smile.

“That’s nonsense, Ender,” Anderson said softly. “Your battle was with William Bee of Griffin Army.”

Ender raised an eyebrow.

“After that maneuver,” Anderson said, “the rules are being revised to require that all the enemy’s soldiers must be immobilized before the gate can be reversed.”

“That’s all right,” Ender said. “It could only work once, anyway.” Anderson nodded, and was turning away when Ender added, “Is there going to be a new rule that armies be given equal positions to fight from?”

Anderson turned back around. “If you’re in one of the positions, Ender, you can hardly call them equal, whatever they are.”

William Bee counted carefully and wondered how in the world he had lost when not one of his soldiers had been flashed, and only four of Ender’s soldiers were even mobile.

And that night as Ender came into the commanders’ mess hall, he was greeted with applause and cheers, and his table was crowded with respectful commanders, many of them two or three years older than he was. He was friendly, but while he ate he wondered what the teachers would do to him in his next battle. He didn’t need to worry. His next two battles were easy victories, and after that he never saw the battleroom again.

It was 2100 and Ender was a little irritated to hear someone knock at his door. His army was exhausted, and he had ordered them all to be in bed after 2030. The last two days had been regular battles, and Ender was expecting the worst in the morning.

It was Bean. He came in sheepishly, and saluted.

Ender returned his salute and snapped, “Bean, I wanted everybody in bed.”

Bean nodded but didn’t leave. Ender considered ordering him out. But as he looked at Bean it occurred to him for the first time in weeks just how young Bean was. He had turned eight a week before, and he was still small and—no, Ender thought, he wasn’t young. Nobody was young. Bean had been in battle, and with a whole army depending on him he had come through and won. And even though he was small, Ender could never think of him as young again.

Ender shrugged and Bean came over and sat on the edge of the bed. The younger boy looked at his hands for a while, and finally Ender grew impatient and asked, “Well, what is it?”

“I’m transferred. Got orders just a few minutes ago.”

Ender closed his eyes for a moment. “I knew they’d pull something new. Now they’re taking—where are you going?”

“Rabbit Army.”

“How can they put you under an idiot like Carn Carby!”

“Carn was graduated. Support squads.”

Ender looked up. “Well, who’s commanding Rabbit then?”

Bean held his hands out helplessly.

“Me,” he said.

Ender nodded, and then smiled. “Of course. After all, you’re only four years younger than the regular age.”

“It isn’t funny,” Bean said. “I don’t know what’s going on here. First all the changes in the game. And now this. I wasn’t the only one transferred, either, Ender. Ren, Peder, Wins, Younger, Paul. All commanders now.”

Ender stood up angrily and strode to the wall. “Every damn toon leader I’ve got!” he said, and whirled to face Bean. “If they’re going to break up my army. Bean, why did they bother making me a commander at all?”

Bean shook his head. “I don’t know. You’re the best, Ender. Nobody’s ever done what you’ve done. Nineteen battles in fifteen days, sir, and you won every one of them, no matter what they did to you.”

“And now you and the others are commanders. You know every trick I’ve got, I trained you, and who am I supposed to replace you with? Are they going to stick me with six greenohs?”

“It stinks, Ender, but you know that if they gave you five crippled midgets and armed you with a roll of toilet paper you’d win.”

The both laughed, and then they noticed that the door was open.

Lieutenant Anderson stepped in. He was followed by Captain Graff.

“Ender Wiggin,” Graff said, holding his hands across his stomach.

“Yes sir,” Ender answered.

“Orders.”

Anderson extended a slip of paper. Ender read it quickly, then crumpled it, still looking at the air where the paper had been. After a few moments he asked, “Can I tell my army?”

“They’ll find out,” Graff answered. “It’s better not to talk to them after orders. It makes it easier.”

“For you or for me?” Ender asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to Bean, took his hand for a moment, and headed for the door.

“Wait,” Bean said. “Where are you going? Tactical or Support School?”

“Command School,” Ender answered, and then he was gone and Anderson closed the door.

Command School, Bean thought. Nobody went to Command School until they had gone through three years of Tactical. But then, nobody went to Tactical until they had been through at least five years of Battle School. Ender had only had three.

The system was breaking up. No doubt about it, Bean thought. Either somebody at the top was going crazy, or something was going wrong with the war—the real war, the one they were training to fight in. Why else would they break down the training system, advance somebody —even somebody as good as Ender—straight to Command School? Why else would they have an eight-year-old greenoh like Bean command an army?

Bean wondered about it for a long time, and then he finally lay down on Ender’s bed and realized that he’d never see Ender again, probably. For some reason that made him want to cry. But he didn’t cry, of course. Training in the preschools had taught him how to force down emotions like that. He remembered how his first teacher, when he was three, would have been upset to see his lip quivering and his eyes full of tears.

Bean went through the relaxing routine until he didn’t feel like crying anymore. Then he drifted off to sleep. His hand was near his mouth. It lay on his pillow hesitantly, as if Bean couldn’t decide whether to bite his nails or suck on his fingertips. His forehead was creased and furrowed. His breathing was quick and light. He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn’t have known what they meant.

There’s a war on, they said, and that was excuse enough for all the hurry in the world. They said it like a password and flashed a little card at every ticket counter and customs check and guard station. It got them to the head of every line.

Ender Wiggin was rushed from place to place so quickly he had no time to examine anything. But he did see trees for the first time. He saw men who were not in uniform. He saw women. He saw strange animals that didn’t speak, but that followed docilely behind women and small children. He saw suitcases and conveyor belts and signs that said words he had never heard of. He would have asked someone what the words meant, except that purpose and authority surrounded him in the persons of four very high officers who never spoke to each other and never spoke to him.

Ender Wiggin was a stranger to his world he was being trained to save. He did not remember ever leaving Battle School before. His earliest memories were of childish war games under the direction of a teacher, of meals with other boys in the gray and green uniforms of the armed forces of his world. He did not know that the gray represented the sky and the green represented the great forests of his planet. All he knew of the world was from vague references to “outside.”

And before he could make any sense of the strange world he was seeing for the first time, they enclosed him again within the shell of the military, where nobody had to say there’s a war on anymore because nobody in the shell of the military forgot it for a single instant in a single day.

They put him in a space ship and launched him to a large artificial satellite that circled the world.

This space station was called Command School. It held the ansible.

On his first day Ender Wiggin was taught about the ansible and what it meant to warfare. It meant that even though the starships of today’s battles were launched a hundred years ago, the commanders of the starships were men of today, who used the ansible to send messages to the computers and the few men on each ship. The ansible sent words as they were spoken, orders as they were made. Battleplans as they were fought. Light was a pedestrian.

For two months Ender Wiggin didn’t meet a single person. They came to him namelessly, taught him what they knew, and left him to other teachers. He had no time to miss his friends at Battle School. He only had time to learn how to operate the simulator, which flashed battle patterns around him as if he were in a starship at the center of the battle. How to command mock ships in mock battles by manipulating the keys on the simulator and speaking words into the ansible. How to recognize instantly every enemy ship and the weapons it carried by the pattern that the simulator showed. How to transfer all that he learned in the nullo battles at Battle School to the starship battles at Command School.

He had thought the game was taken seriously before. Here they hurried him through every step, were angry and worried beyond reason every time he forgot something or made a mistake. But he worked as he had always worked, and learned as he had always learned. After a while he didn’t make any more mistakes. He used the simulator as if it were a part of himself. Then they stopped being worried and they gave him a teacher. The teacher was a person at last, and his name was Maezr Rackham.

Maezr Rackham was sitting crosslegged on the floor when Ender awoke. He said nothing as Ender got up and showered and dressed, and Ender did not bother to ask him anything. He had long since learned that when something unusual was going on, he would find out more information faster by waiting than by asking.

Maezr still hadn’t spoken when Ender was ready and went to the door to leave the room. The door didn’t open. Ender turned to face the man sitting on the floor. Maezr was at least forty, which made him the oldest man Ender had ever seen close up. He had a day’s growth of black and white whiskers that grizzled his face only slightly less than his close-cut hair. His face sagged a little and his eyes were surrounded by creases and lines. He looked at Ender without interest.

Ender turned back to the door and tried again to open it.

“All right,” he said, giving up. “Why’s the door locked?”

Maezr continued to look at him blankly.

Ender became impatient. “I’m going to be late. If I’m not supposed to be there until later, then tell me so I can go back to bed.” No answer. “Is it a guessing game?” Ender asked. No answer. Ender decided that maybe the man was trying to make him angry, so he went through a relaxing exercise as he leaned on the door, and soon he was calm again. Maezr didn’t take his eyes off Ender.

For the next two hours, the silence endured, Maezr watching Ender constantly, Ender trying to pretend he didn’t notice the old man. The boy became more and more nervous, and finally ended up walking from one end of the room to the other in a sporadic pattern.

He walked by Maezr as he had several times before, and Maezr’s hand shot out and pushed Ender’s left leg into his right in the middle of the step. Ender fell flat on the floor.

He leaped to his feet immediately, furious. He found Maezr sitting calmly, cross-legged, as if he had never moved. Ender stood poised to fight. But the other’s immobility made it impossible for Ender to attack, and he found himself wondering if he had only imagined the old man’s hand tripping him up.

The pacing continued for another hour, with Ender Wiggin trying the door every now and then. At last he gave up and took off his uniform and walked to his bed.

As he leaned over to pull the covers back, he felt a hand jab roughly between his thighs and another hand grab his hair. In a moment he had been turned upside down. His face and shoulders were being pressed into the floor by the old man’s knee, while his back was excruciatingly bent and his legs were pinioned by Maezr’s arm. Ender was helpless to use his arms, and he couldn’t bend his back to gain slack so he could use his legs. In less than two seconds the old man had completely defeated Ender Wiggin.

“All right,” Ender gasped. “You win.”

Maezr’s knee thrust painfully downward.

“Since when,” Maezr asked in a soft, rasping voice, “do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?”

Ender remained silent.

“I surprised you once, Ender Wiggin. Why didn’t you destroy me immediately afterward? Just because I looked peaceful? You turned your back on me. Stupid. You have learned nothing. You have never had a teacher.”

Ender was angry now. “I’ve had too many damned teachers, how was I supposed to know you’d turn out to be a—” Ender hunted for a word. Maezr supplied one.

“An enemy, Ender Wiggin,” Maezr whispered. “I am your enemy, the first one you’ve ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy, Ender Wiggin. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. I am your enemy, from now on. From now on I am your teacher.”

Then Maezr let Ender’s legs fall to the floor. Because the old man still held Ender’s head to the floor, the boy couldn’t use his arms to compensate, and his legs hit the plastic surface with a loud crack and a sickening pain that made Ender wince. Then Maezr stood and let Ender rise.

Slowly the boy pulled his legs under him, with a faint groan of pain, and he knelt on all fours for a moment, recovering. Then his right arm flashed out. Maezr quickly danced back and Ender’s hand closed on air as his teacher’s foot shot forward to catch Ender on the chin.

Ender’s chin wasn’t there. He was lying flat on his back, spinning on the floor, and during the moment that Maezr was off balance from his kick Ender’s feet smashed into Maezr’s other leg. The old man fell on the ground in a heap.

What seemed to be a heap was really a hornet’s nest. Ender couldn’t find an arm or a leg that held still long enough to be grabbed, and in the meantime blows were landing on his back and arms. Ender was smaller—he couldn’t reach past the old man’s flailing limbs.

So he leaped back out of the way and stood poised near the door.

The old man stopped thrashing about and sat up, cross-legged again, laughing. “Better, this time, boy. But slow. You will have to be better with a fleet than you are with your body or no one will be safe with you in command. Lesson learned?”

Ender nodded slowly.

Maezr smiled. “Good. Then we’ll never have such a battle again. All the rest with the simulator. I will program your battles, I will devise the strategy of your enemy, and you will learn to be quick and discover what tricks the enemy has for you. Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.”

Then Maezr’s face became serious again. “You will be about to lose, Ender, but you will win. You will learn to defeat the enemy. He will teach you how.”

Maezr got up and walked toward the door. Ender stepped back out of the way. As the old man touched the handle of the door, Ender leaped into the air and kicked Maezr in the small of the back with both feet. He hit hard enough that he rebounded onto his feet, as Maezr cried out and collapsed on the floor.

Maezr got up slowly, holding onto the door handle, his face contorted with pain. He seemed disabled, but Ender didn’t trust him. He waited warily. And yet in spite of his suspicion he was caught off guard by Maezr’s speed. In a moment he found himself on the floor near the opposite wall, his nose and lip bleeding where his face had hit the bed. He was able to turn enough to see Maezr open the door and leave. The old man was limping and walking slowly.

Ender smiled in spite of the pain, then rolled over onto his back and laughed until his mouth filled with blood and he started to gag. Then he got up and painfully made his way to the bed. He lay down and in a few minutes a medic came and took care of his injuries.

As the drug had its effect and Ender drifted off to sleep he remembered the way Maezr limped out of his room and laughed again. He was still laughing softly as his mind went blank and the medic pulled the blanket over him and snapped off the light. He slept until pain woke him in the morning. He dreamed of defeating Maezr.

The next day Ender went to the simulator room with his nose bandaged and his lip still puffy. Maezr was not there. Instead a captain who had worked with him before showed him an addition that had been made. The captain pointed to a tube with a loop at one end. “Radio. Primitive, I know, but it loops over your ear and we tuck the other end into your mouth with this piece here…”

“Watch it,” Ender said as the captain pushed the end of the tube into his swollen lip.

“Sorry. Now you just talk.”

“Good. Who to?”

The captain smiled. “Ask and see.”

Ender shrugged and turned to the simulator. As he did a voice reverberated through his skull. It was too loud for him to understand, and he ripped the radio off his ear.

“What are you trying to do, make me deaf?”

The captain shook his head and turned a dial on a small box on a nearby table. Ender put the radio back on.

“Commander,” the radio said in a familiar voice. Ender answered, “Yes.”

“Instructions, sir?”

The voice was definitely familiar. “Bean?” Ender asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Bean, this is Ender.”

Silence. And then a burst of laughter from the other side. Then six or seven more voices laughing, and Ender waited for silence to return. When it did, he asked, “Who else?” A few voices spoke at once, but Bean drowned them out. “Me, I’m Bean, and Peder, Wins, Younger, Lee, and Vlad.”

Ender thought for a moment. Then asked what the hell was going on. They laughed again.

“They can’t break up the group,” Bean said. “We were commanders for maybe two weeks, and here we are at Command School, training with the simulator, and all of a sudden they told us we were going to form a fleet with a new commander. And that’s you.”

Ender smiled. “Are you boys any good?”

“If we aren’t, you’ll let us know.”

Ender chuckled a little. “Might work out. A fleet.”

For the next ten days Ender trained his toon leaders until they could maneuver their ships like precision dancers. It was like being back in the battleroom again, except that Ender could always see everything, and could speak to his toon leaders and change their orders at any time.

One day as Ender sat down at the control board and switched on the simulator, harsh green lights appeared in the space—the enemy.

“This is it,” Ender said. “X, Y, bullet, C, D, reserve screen, E, south loop, Bean, angle north.”

The enemy was grouped in a globe, and outnumbered Ender two to one. Half of Ender’s force was grouped in a tight, bulletlike formation, with the rest in a flat circular screen—except for a tiny force under Bean that moved off the simulator, heading behind the enemy’s formation. Ender quickly learned the enemy’s strategy: whenever Ender’s bullet formation came close, the enemy would give way, hoping to draw Ender inside the globe where he would be surrounded. So Ender obligingly fell into the trap, bringing his bullet to the center of the globe.

The enemy began to contract slowly, not wanting to come within range until all their weapons could be brought to bear at once. Then Ender began to work in earnest. His reserve screen approached the outside of the globe, and the enemy began to concentrate his forces there. Then Bean’s force appeared on the opposite side, and the enemy again deployed ships on that side.

Which left most of the globe only thinly defended. Ender’s bullet attacked, and since at the point of attack it outnumbered the enemy overwhelmingly, he tore a hole in the formation. The enemy reacted to try to plug the gap, but in the confusion the reserve force and Bean’s small force attacked simultaneously, while the bullet moved to another part of the globe. In a few more minutes the formation was shattered, most of the enemy ships destroyed, and the few survivors rushing away as fast as they could go.

Ender switched the simulator off. All the lights faded. Maezr was standing beside Ender, his hands in his pockets, his body tense. Ender looked up at him.

“I thought you said the enemy would be smart,” Ender said.

Maezr’s face remained expressionless. “What did you learn?”

“I learned that a sphere only works if your enemy’s a fool. He had his forces so spread out that I outnumbered him whenever I engaged him.”

“And?”

“And,” Ender said, “You can’t stay committed to one pattern. It makes you too easy to predict.”

“Is that all?” Maezr asked quietly.

Ender took off his radio. “The enemy could have defeated me by breaking the sphere earlier.”

Maezr nodded. “You had an unfair advantage.”

Ender looked up at him coldly. “I was outnumbered two to one.”

Maezr shook his head. “You have the ansible. The enemy doesn’t. We include that in the mock battles. Their messages travel at the speed of light.”

Ender glanced toward the simulator. “Is there enough space to make a difference?”

“Don’t you know?” Maezr asked. “None of the ships was ever closer than thirty thousand kilometers to another.”

Ender tried to figure the size of the enemy’s sphere. Astronomy was beyond him. But now his curiosity was stirred.

“What kind of weapons are on those ships? To be able to strike so fast and so far apart?”

Maezr shook his head. “The science is too much for you. You’d have to study many more years than you’ve lived to understand even the basics. All you need to know is that the weapons work.”

“Why do we have to come so close to be in range?”

“The ships are all protected by force fields. A certain distance away the weapons are weaker, and can’t get through. Closer in the weapons are stronger than the shields. But the computers take care of all that. They’re constantly firing in any direction that won’t hurt one of our ships. The computers pick targets, aim, they do all the detail work. You just tell them when and get them in a position to win. All right?”

“No.” Ender twisted the tube of the radio around his fingers. “I have to know how the weapons work.”

“I told you, it would take—”

“I can’t command a fleet—not even on the simulator —unless I know.” Ender waited a moment, then added, “Just the rough idea.”

Maezr stood up and walked a few steps away. “All right, Ender. It won’t make any sense, but I’ll try. As simply as I can.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s this way, Ender. Everything is made up of atoms, little particles so small you can’t see them with your eyes. These atoms, there are only a few different types, and they’re all made up of even smaller particles that are pretty much the same. These atoms can be broken, so that they stop being atoms. So that this metal doesn’t hold together anymore. Or the plastic floor. Or your body. Or even the air. They just seem to disappear, if you break the atoms. All that’s left is the pieces. And they fly around and break more atoms. The weapons on the ships set up an area where it’s impossible for atoms of anything to stay together. They all break down. So things in that area—they disappear.”

Ender nodded. “You’re right, I don’t understand it. Can it be blocked?”

“No. But it gets wider and weaker the farther it goes from the ship, so that after a while a force field will block it. Okay? And to make it strong at all, it has to be focused, so that a ship can only fire effectively in maybe three or four directions at once.”

Ender nodded again. Maezr wondered if the boy really understood it at all.

“If the pieces of the broken atoms go breaking more atoms, why doesn’t it just make everything disappear?”

“Space. Those thousands of kilometers between the ships, they’re empty. Almost no atoms. The pieces don’t hit anything, and when they finally do hit something, they’re so spread out they can’t do any harm.” Maezr cocked his head quizzically. “Anything else… ?”

Ender nodded. “Do the weapons on the ships—do they work against anything besides ships?”

Maezr moved in close to Ender and said firmly, “We only use them against ships. Never anything else. If we used them against anything else, the enemy would use them against us. Got it?”

Maezr walked away, and was nearly out the door when Ender called to him.

“I don’t know your name yet,” Ender said blandly.

“Maezr Rackham.”

“Maezr Rackham,” Ender said, “I defeated you.”

Maezr laughed.

“Ender, you weren’t fighting me today,” he said. “You were fighting the stupidest computer in the Command School, set on a ten-year-old program. You don’t think I’d use a sphere, do you?” He shook his head. “Ender, my dear little fellow, when you fight me you’ll know it. Because you’ll lose.” And Maezr left the room.

Ender still practiced ten hours a day with his toon leaders. He never saw them, though, only heard their voices on the radio. Battles came every two or three days. The enemy had something new every time, something harder—but Ender coped with it. And won every time. And after every battle Maezr would point out mistakes and show Ender had really lost. Maezr only let Ender finish so that he would learn to handle the end of the game.

Until finally Maezr came in and solemnly shook Ender’s hand and said, “That, boy, was a good battle.”

Because the praise was so long in coming, it pleased Ender more than praise had ever pleased him before. And because it was so condescending, he resented it.

“So from now on,” Maezr said, “we can give you hard ones.”

From then on Ender’s life was a slow nervous breakdown.

He began fighting two battles a day, with problems that steadily grew more difficult. He had been trained in nothing but the game all his life—but now the game began to consume him. He woke in the morning with new strategies for the simulator, and went fitfully to sleep at night with the mistakes of the day preying on him. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night crying for a reason he didn’t remember. Sometimes he woke with his knuckles bloody from biting them. But every day he went impassively to the simulator and drilled his toon leaders until the battles, and drilled the toon leaders after the battles, and endured and studied the harsh criticism that Maezr Rackham piled on him. He noted that Rackham perversely criticized him more after his hardest battles. He noted that every time he thought of a new strategy the enemy was using it within a few days. And he noted that while his fleet always stayed the same size, the enemy increased in numbers every day.

He asked his teacher.

“We are showing you what it will be like when you really command. The ratios of enemy to us.”

“Why does the enemy always outnumber us in these battles?”

Maezr bowed his gray head for a moment, as if deciding whether to answer. Finally he looked up and reached out his hand and touched Ender on the shoulder. “I will tell you, even though the information is secret. You see, the enemy attacked us first. He had good reason to attack us, but that is a matter for politicians, and whether the fault was ours or his, we could not let him win. So when the enemy came to our worlds, we fought back, hard, and spent the finest of our young men in the fleets. But we won, and the enemy retreated.”

Maezr smiled ruefully. “But the enemy was not through, boy. The enemy would never be through. They came again, with more numbers, and it was harder to beat them. And another generation of young men was spent. Only a few survived. So we came up with a plan— the big men came up with the plan. We knew that we had to destroy the enemy once and for all, totally, eliminate his ability to make war against us. To do that we had to go to his home worlds—his home world, really, since the enemy’s empire is all tied to his capital world.”

“And so?” Ender asked.

“And so we made a fleet. We made more ships than the enemy ever had. We made a hundred ships for every ship he had sent against us. And we launched them against his twenty-eight worlds. They left a hundred years ago. And they carried on them the ansible, and only a few men. So that someday a commander could sit on a planet somewhere far from the battle and command the fleet. So that our best minds would not be destroyed by the enemy.”

Ender’s question had still not been answered.

“Why do they outnumber us?”

Maezr laughed. “Because it took a hundred years for our ships to get there. They’ve had a hundred years to prepare for us. They’d be fools, don’t you think, boy, if they waited in old tugboats to defend their harbors. They have new ships, great ships, hundreds of ships. All we have is the ansible, that and the fact that they have to put a commander with every fleet, and when they lose— and they will lose—they lose one of their best minds every time.”

Ender started to ask another question.

“No more, Ender Wiggin. I’ve told you more than you ought to know as it is.”

Ender stood angrily and turned away. “I have a right to know. Do you think this can go on forever, pushing me through one school and another and never telling me what my life is for? You use me and the others as a tool, someday we’ll command your ships, someday maybe we’ll save your lives, but I’m not a computer, and I have to know!”

“Ask me a question, then, boy,” Maezr said, “and if I can answer, I will.”

“If you use your best minds to command the fleets, and you never lose any, then what do you need me for? Who am I replacing, if they’re all still there?”

Maezr shook his head. “I can’t tell you the answer to that, Ender. Be content that we will need you, soon. It’s late. Go to bed. You have a battle in the morning.”

Ender walked out of the simulator room. But when Maezr left by the same door a few moments later, the boy was waiting in the hall.

“All right, boy,” Maezr said impatiently, “what is it? I don’t have all night and you need to sleep.”

Ender stayed silent, but Maezr waited. Finally the boy asked softly, “Do they live?”

“Does who live?”

“The other commanders. The ones now. And before me.”

Maezr snorted. “Live. Of course they live. He wonders if they live.” Still chuckling the old man walked off down the hall. Ender stood in the corridor for a while but at last he was tired and he went off to bed. They live, he thought. They live, but he can’t tell me what happens to them.

That night Ender didn’t wake up crying. But he did wake up with blood on his hands.

Months wore on with battles every day, until at last Ender settled into the routine of the destruction of himself. He slept less every night, dreamed more, and he began to have terrible pains in his stomach. They put him on a very bland diet, but soon he didn’t even have an appetite for that. “Eat,” Maezr said, and Ender would mechanically put food in his mouth. But if nobody told him to eat he didn’t eat.

One day as he was drilling his toon leaders the room went black and he woke up on the floor with his face bloody where he had hit the controls.

They put him to bed then, and for three days he was very ill. He remembered seeing faces in his dreams, but they weren’t real faces, and he knew it even while he thought he saw them. He thought he saw Bean, sometimes, and sometimes he thought he saw Lieutenant Anderson and Captain Graff. And then he woke up and it was only his enemy, Maezr Rackham.

“I’m awake,” he said to Maezr.

“So I see,” Maezr answered. “Took you long enough. You have a battle today.”

So Ender got up and fought the battle and he won it. But there was no second battle that day, and they let him go to bed earlier. His hands were shaking as he undressed.

During the night he thought he felt hands touching him gently, and he dreamed he heard voices, saying, “How long can he go on?”

“Long enough.”

“So soon?”

“In a few days, then he’s through.”

“How will he do?”

“Fine. Even today, he was better than ever.”

Ender recognized the last voice as Maezr Rackham’s. He resented Rackham’s intruding even in his sleep.

He woke up and fought another battle and won.

Then he went to bed.

He woke up and won again.

And the next day was his last day in Command School, though he didn’t know it. He got up and went to the simulator for the battle.

Maezr was waiting for him. Ender walked slowly into the simulator room. His step was slightly shuffling, and he seemed tired and dull. Maezr frowned.

“Are you awake, boy?” If Ender had been alert, he would have noticed the concern in his teacher’s voice. Instead, he simply went to the controls and sat down. Maezr spoke to him.

“Today’s game needs a little explanation, Ender Wiggin. Please turn around and pay strict attention.”

Ender turned around, and for the first time he noticed that there were people at the back of the room. He recognized Graff and Anderson from Battle School, and vaguely remembered a few of the men from Command School—teachers for a few hours at some time or another. But most of the people he didn’t know at all.

“Who are they?”

Maezr shook his head and answered, “Observers. Every now and then we let observers come in to watch the battle. If you don’t want them, we’ll send them out.”

Ender shrugged. Maezr began his explanation. “Today’s game, boy, has a new element. We’re staging this battle around a planet. This will complicate things in two ways. The planet isn’t large, on the scale we’re using, but the ansible can’t detect anything on the other side of it—so there’s a blind spot. Also, it’s against the rules to use weapons against the planet itself. All right?”

“Why, don’t the weapons work against planets?”

Maezr answered coldly, “There are rules of war, Ender, that apply even in training games.”

Ender shook his head slowly. “Can the planet attack?”

Maezr looked nonplussed for a moment, then smiled. “I guess you’ll have to find that one out, boy. And one more thing. Today, Ender, your opponent isn’t the computer. I am your enemy today, and today I won’t be letting you off so easily. Today is a battle to the end. And I’ll use any means I can to defeat you.”

Then Maezr was gone, and Ender expressionlessly led his toon leaders through maneuvers. Ender was doing well, of course, but several of the observers shook their heads, and Graff kept clasping and unclasping his hands, crossing and uncrossing his legs. Ender would be slow today, and today Ender couldn’t afford to be slow.

A warning buzzer sounded, and Ender cleared the simulator board, waiting for today’s game to appear. He felt muddled today, and wondered why people were there watching. Were they going to judge him today? Decide if he was good enough for something else? For another two years of grueling training, another two years of struggling to exceed his best? Ender was twelve. He felt very old. And as he waited for the game to appear, he wished he could simply lose it, lose the battle badly and completely so that they would remove him from the program, punish him however they wanted, he didn’t care, just so he could sleep.

Then the enemy formation appeared, and Ender’s weariness turned to desperation.

The enemy outnumbered him a thousand to one, the simulator glowed green with them, and Ender knew that he couldn’t win.

And the enemy was not stupid. There was no formation that Ender could study and attack. Instead the vast swarms of ships were constantly moving, constantly shifting from one momentary formation to another, so that a space that for one moment was empty was immediately filled with a formidable enemy force. And even though Ender’s fleet was the largest he had ever had, there was no place he could deploy it where he would outnumber the enemy long enough to accomplish anything.

And behind the enemy was the planet. The planet, which Maezr had warned him about. What difference did a planet make, when Ender couldn’t hope to get near it? Ender waited, waited for the flash of insight that would tell him what to do, how to destroy the enemy. And as he waited, he heard the observers behind him begin to shift in their seats, wondering what Ender was doing, what plan he would follow. And finally it was obvious to everybody that Ender didn’t know what to do, that there was nothing to do, and a few of the men at the back of the room made quiet little sounds in their throats.

Then Ender heard Bean’s voice in his ear. Bean chuckled and said, “Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.” A few of the other leaders laughed, and Ender thought back to the simple games he had played and won in Battle School. They had put him against hopeless odds there, too. And he had beaten them. And he’d be damned if he’d let Maezr Rackham beat him with a cheap trick like outnumbering him a thousand to one. He had won a game in Battle School by going for something the enemy didn’t expect, something against the rules—he had won by going against the enemy’s gate.

And the enemy’s gate was down.

Ender smiled, and realized that if he broke this rule they’d probably kick him out of school, and that way he’d win for sure: he would never have to play a game again.

He whispered into the microphone. His six commanders each took part of the fleet and launched themselves against the enemy. They pursued erratic courses, darting off in one direction and then another. The enemy immediately stopped his aimless maneuvering and began to group around Ender’s six fleets.

Ender took off his microphone, leaned back in his chair, and watched. The observers murmured out loud, now. Ender was doing nothing—he had thrown the game away.

But a pattern began to emerge from the quick confrontations with the enemy. Ender’s six groups lost ships constantly as they brushed with enemy force—but they never stopped for a fight, even when for a moment they could have won a small tactical victory. Instead they continued on their erratic course that led, eventually, down. Toward the enemy planet.

And because of their seemingly random course the enemy didn’t realize it until the same time that the observers did. By then it was too late, just as it had been too late for William Bee to stop Ender’s soldiers from activating the gate. More of Ender’s ships could be hit and destroyed, so that of the six fleets only two were able to get to the planet, and those were decimated. But those tiny groups did get through, and they opened fire on the planet.

Ender leaned foward now, anxious to see if his guess would pay off. He half expected a buzzer to sound and the game to be stopped, because he had broken the rule. But he was betting on the accuracy of the simulator. If it could simulate a planet, it could simulate what would happen to a planet under attack.

It did.

The weapons that blew up little ships didn’t blow up the entire planet at first. But they did cause terrible explosions. And on the planet there was no space to dissipate the chain reaction. On the planet the chain reaction found more and more fuel to feed it.

The planet’s surface seemed to be moving back and forth, but soon the surface gave way in an immense explosion that sent light flashing in all directions. It swallowed up Ender’s entire fleet. And then it reached the enemy ships.

The first simply vanished in the explosion. Then, as the explosion spread and became less bright, it was clear what happened to each ship. As the light reached them they flashed brightly for a moment and disappeared. They were all fuel for the fire of the planet.

It took more than three minutes for the explosion to reach the limits of the simulator, and by then it was much fainter. All the ships were gone, and if any had escaped before the explosion reached them, they were few and not worth worrying about. Where the planet had been there was nothing. The simulator was empty.

Ender had destroyed the enemy by sacrificing his entire fleet and breaking the rule against destroying the planet. He wasn’t sure whether to feel triumphant at his victory or defiant at the rebuke he was certain would come. So instead he felt nothing. He was tired. He wanted to go to bed and sleep.

He switched off the simulator, and finally heard the noise behind him.

There were no longer two rows of dignified military observers. Instead there was chaos. Some of them were slapping each other on the back, some of them were bowed with their heads in their hands, others were openly weeping. Captain Graff detached himself from the group and came to Ender. Tears streamed down his face, but he was smiling. He reached out his arms, and to Ender’s surprise he embraced the boy, held him tightly, and whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ender.”

Soon all the observers were gathered around the bewildered child, thanking him and cheering him and patting him on the shoulder and shaking his hand. Ender tried to make sense of what they were saying. He had passed the test after all? Why did it matter so much to them?

Then the crowd parted and Maezr Rackham walked through. He came straight up to Ender Wiggin and held out his hand.

“You made the hard choice, boy. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it. Congratulations. You beat them, and it’s all over.”

All over. Beat them. “I beat you, Maezr Rackham.”

Maezr laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. “Ender Wiggin, you never played me. You never played a game since I was your teacher.”

Ender didn’t get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry.

Maezr reached out and touched his shoulder. Ender shrugged him off. Maezr then grew serious and said, “Ender Wiggin, for the last months you have been the commander of our fleets. There were no games. The battles were real. Your only enemy was the enemy. You won every battle. And finally today you fought them at their home world, and you destroyed their world, their fleet, you destroyed them completely, and they’ll never come against us again. You did it. You.”

Real. Not a game. Ender’s mind was too tired to cope with it all. He walked away from Maezr, walked silently through the crowd that still whispered thanks and congratulations to the boy, walked out of the simulator room and finally arrived in his bedroom and closed the door.

He was asleep when Graff and Maezr Rackham found him. They came in quietly and roused him. He woke slowly, and when he recognized them he turned away to go back to sleep.

“Ender,” Graff said. “We need to talk to you.”

Ender rolled back to face them. He said nothing.

Graff smiled. “It was a shock to you yesterday, I know. But it must make you feel good to know you won the war.”

Ender nodded slowly.

“Maezr Rackham here, he never played against you. He only analyzed your battles to find out your weak spots, to help you improve. It worked, didn’t it?”

Ender closed his eyes tightly. They waited. He said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Maezr smiled. “A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander’s life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he’s killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he is mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can’t do this job. So we trained children, who didn’t know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked.”

Graff reached out and touched Ender’s shoulder. “We launched the ships so that they would all arrive at their destination during these few months. We knew that we’d probably only have one good commander, if we were lucky. In history it’s been very rare to have more than one genius in a war. So we planned on having a genius. We were gambling. And you came along and we won.”

Ender opened his eyes again and they realized he was angry. “Yes, you won.”

Graff and Maezr Rackham looked at each other. “He doesn’t understand,” Graff whispered.

“I understand,” Ender said. “You needed a weapon, and you got it, and it was me.”

“That’s right,” Maezr answered.

“So tell me,” Ender went on, “How many people lived on that planet that I destroyed.”

They didn’t answer him. They waited a while in silence, and then Graff spoke. “Weapons don’t need to understand what they’re pointed at, Ender. We did the pointing, and so we’re responsible. You just did your job.”

Maezr smiled. “Of course, Ender, you’ll be taken care of. The government will never forget you. You served us all very well.”

Ender rolled over and faced the wall, and even though they tried to talk to him, he didn’t answer them. Finally they left.

Ender lay in his bed for a long time before anyone disturbed him again. The door opened softly. Ender didn’t turn to see who it was. Then a hand touched him softly.

“Ender, it’s me, Bean.”

Ender turned over and looked at the little boy who was standing by his bed.

“Sit down,” Ender said.

Bean sat. “That last battle, Ender. I didn’t know how you’d get us out of it.”

Ender smiled. “I didn’t. I cheated. I thought they’d kick me out.”

“Can you believe it! We won the war. The whole war’s over, and we thought we’d have to wait till we grew up to fight in it, and it was us fighting it all the time. I mean, Ender, we’re little kids. I’m a little kid, anyway.” Bean laughed and Ender smiled. Then they were silent for a little while, Bean sitting on the edge of the bed, and Ender watching him out of half-closed eyes.

Finally Bean thought of something else to say.

“What will we do now that the war’s over?” he said.

Ender closed his eyes and said, “I need some sleep, Bean.”

Bean got up and left and Ender slept.

Graff and Anderson walked through the gates into the park. There was a breeze, but the sun was hot on their shoulders.

“Abba Technics? In the capital?” Graff asked.

“No, in Biggock County. Training division,” Anderson replied. “They think my work with children is good preparation. And you?”

Graff smiled and shook his head. “No plans. I’ll be here for a few more months. Reports, winding down. I’ve had offers. Personnel development for DCIA, executive vice-president for U and P, but I said no. Publisher wants me to do memoirs of the war. I don’t know.”

They sat on a bench and watched leaves shivering in the breeze. Children on the monkey bars were laughing and yelling, but the wind and the distance swallowed their words. “Look,” Graff said, pointing. A little boy jumped from the bars and ran near the bench where the two men sat. Another boy followed him, and holding his hands like a gun he made an explosive sound. The child he was shooting at didn’t stop. He fired again.

“I got you! Come back here!”

The other little boy ran on out of sight.

“Don’t you know when you’re dead?” The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked a rock back to the monkey bars. Anderson smiled and shook his head. “Kids,” he said. Then he and Graff stood up and walked on out of the park.

Editor's Introduction to:

A DEATH IN REALTIME
by Richard Sean McEnroe

A few years ago editor Jim Baen published ARMAGGEDON 2419 A.D., which was the original Buck Rogers novel. It was an interesting story, although hopelessly out of date. Larry Niven and I began speculating about it: what strange events might have happened so that when engineer Anthony Rogers awakened in the 25th Century after being trapped in a mine cave-in sometime in 1930, the world looked as portrayed in the book?

It was no easy task, for the original Buck Rogers stories had the traditional Mars (dry and dying, but not dead) and Venus (hot and swampy). Mankind was oppressed by the Han, who were not precisely human but who could certainly interbreed with humans. The technology was quite strange, and many inventions made since 1930 (when the book was written) had vanished.

After a couple of coffee and brandy sessions, we came up with what we thought were plausible notions. They involved some pretty elaborate assumptions, but when we finished we had a seamless whole.

Enter Jim Baen, who offered to buy the outline from us. “I’ll get some other writers to write the novels,” he said, “and meanwhile you can get paid for all those daydreams.”

We pointed out that getting paid for daydreams is precisely what we do for a living, and began to haggle over the price. Eventually the bargain was struck. The first of these stories “from an outline by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle” was “Mordred” by Eric Holmes. The second, and in our opinion far the better, was “Warrior’s Blood” by Richard S. McEnroe…

When Jim Baen first went to Ace Books from Galaxy magazine, he very much missed being able to work with short stories and new writers. Eventually Ace invented Destinies, that rather strange “magazine” that looked like a book, just so that Jim would feel at home. When this story first appeared in Destinies, it carried the blurb “The Real World Gives No Quarter.”

This story was actually written before arcade games gained their full popularity. Anyone who has ever watched kids play Missile Command will appreciate the essential truth it portrays. One query: computer people use the words “real time” a lot. What is its opposite?

A DEATH IN REALTIME
by Richard Sean McEnroe

Join the navy and see the phosphor dots.

If Cooper hadn’t been stationed aboard the USS Quincannon, manning his post might have been quite similar to watching television in a broom closet. But because the fast, cramped little Michaelson-class corvette was making thirty knots in a Force Seven blow as it steamed past the Migged-out North Sea derrick-fields, he had the added pleasure of being thrown back and forth in his seat with such force that his bowl-shaped helmet grazed the bulkheads behind him and above his console.

He braced himself against the ship’s rolling, studying the pale green screen of the Decca-built R50/90A naval radar unit that was tied into one of Quincannon’s two Poignard tactical missile batteries. Switched to long-range sweep, its resolution was too coarse for the screen to be kept entirely clear of the Soviet ECM hash, but he could still make out the clustered blips of the Russian squadron his own small flotilla was steadily closing on.

When he was just a little kid, he had watched all the shows.

There was Combat, with Vic Morrow, and you could always tell who was going to die because it was always the same five or six guys who came back every week; everyone else was just a sympathy frag, at best. Then there was Rat Patrol, with Christopher George and his hat and those dynamite little jeeps, and the German officer—was it Eric Braeden? He didn’t remember—who never got court-martialed even though the jeeps kept blowing up all his General Grant tanks that were supposed to be panzers. And the movies, God, yes, the movies; he couldn’t have been more than three years old the one time he ever saw Guadalcanal Diary but he could still remember the way the Marine Corps tanks had gone crashing through the jungle to chase the Japanese into the ocean—or Battle of Midway, the old one with Aldo Ray: he’d seen that one so many times that when he went to see Star Wars he got royally pissed at the way they took the whole last battle scene and just stuck it in, practically shot for shot. And then there was the one he’d seen so long ago that he couldn’t even remember the title, where the GIs had knocked out a tank by collapsing a building on it; he had sat there peeling the chocolate coating off a Mallomar and pretending it was the plating of the tank falling apart in the flames…

The blips of the Russian ships were closing on the center of his screen now, and he switched over to short-range scan just as Quincannon shuddered and launched a brace of longer-range Harpoon missiles. The blips jumped magically back to the far edge of his screen, and where several blips had tended to blend into one amorphous mass before, each now stood out sharply distinct. Working a shorter range with the same power, he was able to fiddle with his clutter and squelch controls and clear his picture considerably. Then the last of the Soviet interference vanished as Quincannon’s own electronic counter-counter-measures finally got the best of it. Now he could see the much smaller blips of the NATO squadron’s first salvo stabbing at the much more slowly-moving dots that meant ships and men. The screen broke out in a dozen blotches of pale light as the missiles struck home or were intercepted—Quincannon’s were—and a straggly line of pinpoints separated from the Russian ships, heading for the little cluster of blips around the center of his screen, heading towards him.

Doctor Strangelove, though, that was the one that really did it.

He had liked the old movies and programs, but he had always known they weren’t really real. After all, Errol Flynn marched all the way through Burma and came out looking great, when Cooper only went camping once and caught such a collection of poison ivy rashes and bug bites and inflamed bramble-bush scratches that his mother had pulled him out of the Scouts. And he knew he could never drive a jeep through North Africa; hell, he couldn’t stand getting sand in his shorts at the beach and he burned like a lobster.

But then in Doctor Strangelove, in the scenes on board Slim Pickens’ bomber, he knew what he was seeing was real. He knew that was what the inside of a B-52 looked like; he knew that that was what it would be like to evade a SAM missile. He didn’t even mind that bullshit about Pickens riding the H-bomb down, that was just the director being cute. And it was the first movie he’d ever seen where the actors and models didn’t have that tacky blue line around them in the projection shots.

Cooper’s hands flew to his board and armed the two fire-and-forget missiles in his battery. From that point on the target programming system in the Poignard battery itself took over, and the missiles leaped flaming from their brackets to intercept the two most dangerous incoming targets. More pale light blossomed on his screen as those missiles and others detonated between the two clusters of ships. When it faded there were still three tiny missile-bogeys, pressing on stubbornly. Cooper paid those no more attention; they were in too close for counter-missilery now and would have to be dealt with by the Oerlikon and minigun crews. Far away through several thicknesses of metal, he could hear/feel the staccato stuttering as the 20mms and quad 7.62s opened up on deck, but he paid them no attention, either. They weren’t part of his game.

He wasn’t really going to the same college as everybody else. He would sometimes stop and watch the demonstrations on his way to and from classes, and once he even signed a petition a girl thrust at him, because he thought it would be the quickest way to get past her without being rude.

Then he went back to his dorm and watched Walter Cronkite riding as an observer in a Stratofortress, whooping with glee at the way the plane lurched upwards as its bomb load was released on the landscape below.

* * *

There was a thin red circle on Cooper’s screen on short-range scan: it marked the outermost limit of engagement for his missiles. As he watched, the blips of the Russian ships drew nearer, and nearer—and touched. He immediately salvoed two more fire-and-forget missiles and then a third, laser-guided from his own console, holding his last LG missile in reserve while his battery recycled. Both system-aimed missiles plowed into a solid wall of counter-missiles and gunfire and vanished in incandescent fireballs, in silent splotches of pale green-white light. Cooper took his in on a long, predictable curve, then cut over sharply and sent the missile plunging into the ship vertically. He was rewarded with a great blot of light that continued to pulsate and expand long after the initial explosion. He immediately touched off two more fire-and-forgets.

Then they built a new amusement arcade in Penn Station. “Station-Break”, it was called, and it had everything, pinball machines, film-chain games, video games. Cooper was never very good at the film-chain games like Gunship or Shootout; he could never handle the spatial relationships properly, his helicopter would always slew off to the side or he’d aim too high with the nickel-plated plastic six-gun and miss the man on the water tower. But the video games he loved. Starforce—what a great name, almost as good as ‘Stratofortress’—in particular; you sat in this little cockpit-cubicle and controlled a set of crosshairs with the wheel, and once you were lined up on a target it locked in and all you had to do was pull the trigger. His real favorite though, was a ripoff of the last scene in Star Wars, going down the shaft, where every time you hit an enemy ship it flew apart in a spray of stick-figure wreckage—he could beat anyone at that one; he never even missed the ‘phantom raider’ ship, the one that shot back and could take away half your points if it got you. He was in the arcade constantly, on his way to and from school, and so it was that when he boarded Quincannon, having chosen the Navy after he flunked the Air Force physicals, he performed what was very probably the one imaginative act of his life, and taped a quarter to the top of his Decca-built R50/90A naval radar unit…

The two flotillas were within visual range of each other now. The men on deck could watch the gouts of flame blooming on the opposing ships as the missiles leaped out at them; the rapid-fire three-inch gun at Quincannon’s bow opened fire; the Oerlikon and minigun crews were firing constantly. At that range no motor could swivel a missile battery to track an incoming rocket faster than a frightened man could swing a gun around—the machine guns were now the main line of defense on both sides.

The two little fleets corkscrewed wildly around each other, each commander trying to place his force broadside or to the bow or stern of his enemy, to bring the full weight of his firepower to bear on those weak points. Quincannon, like all warships her size, was of a very narrow beam for her length. While this was to her advantage in terms of speed and maneuverability, it also made her very tender. As she cut and weaved across the sea, taking the steep gale waves on her quarter or even full abeam, she sent huge gouts of green water cascading across her decks. Cooper noticed none of this at his post save the ship’s erratic movement. He was used to that. He seldom went up on deck anymore, as a constant view of unbroken water bored him. His shipboard life rotated mainly between bunk and mess and the staring green eye of his console.

Now he was lining up another LG missile as his battery automatically launched brace after brace of fire-and-forgets. The air between the two fleets was thick with flame and shattered metal; aboard Quincannon an Oerlikon gunner sagged in his harness as a fiery shard tore away the side of his head; shrapnel spattered on the decks like steel and aluminum rain. Cooper saw nothing of this, only occasionally hearing the muted thunder of a particularly close explosion. He triggered his missile and sent it in on a long, weaving S-curve, watching with mounting excitement as it drew nearer and nearer its target—and vanished in a puff of light. Even as he muttered a disappointed curse he was firing his next missile, working the details to sneak it through and score. This one went all the way, a phosphorescent white dot twisting across glowing green glass to intersect another dot and vanish in a slow, spreading flash. High score. Overtime play—

More blood mixed with seawater on Quincannon’s deck. Where electronics and state-of-the-art missilery clashed and largely cancelled each other out, older and more practiced means told. A 115mm shell slammed into Quincannon’s forward minigun battery and four men died. A hole was opened in Quincannon’s defensive envelope.

His next missile was intercepted. Cooper immediately launched another, eyes fixed on his screen, fingers working the dials.

A Soviet frigate, torn and burning from two direct hits, launched a last salvo from its one remaining operational battery. One missile erupted in flames and tumbled into the sea as the guns found it. Another detonated violently, taking out a third through concussion. The fourth found the gap in Quincannon’s defense as other guns strained uselessly to make the impossible deflection shot that would stop it.

Cooper whooped with glee as his missile found its target. Then the bulkhead erupted inward and the game was over.

Quincannon limped back into Plymouth harbor. It took the engineers nearly half an hour to cut away enough wreckage to let the graves unit extricate the shattered body from the maze of twisted structural members and electronic scrap. Cooper’s body had been so firmly embedded in the ruin that it almost seemed deliberate, as though the reality of war at sea had reclaimed him with such force that a steel fist had been clenched to anchor him in place. As the stretcher team carried the body across the planking leading from the gaping wound onto the dock, a careless foot brushed a tiny bit of metal and sent it tumbling over the side. The battered, deformed quarter fell into the water with the tiniest of splashes, unnoticed.

Editor's Introduction to:

OVERDOSE
by Spider Robinson

Few question the enormous and beneficial influence that John W. Campbell had on the science fiction field. One of his greatest contributions was the discovery and training of new writers. Thus it seemed appropriate that there be a John W. Campbell, Jr. Memorial Award, and that it go to the best new writer in the science fiction field.

I had the honor to be the first winner of that award, which pleased me greatly, because I was Mr. Campbell’s last discovery.

Spider Robinson was the second winner, largely because of his fascinating “Crosstime Saloon” stories. He has since become a major talent in the field. Spider has a positive genius for combining the realistic and, uh, something else, as you’ll see in this tale of how a private soldier saved the world…

OVERDOSE
by Spider Robinson

Join the navy and see the phosphor dots.

Moonlight shattered on the leaves overhead and lay in shards on the ground. The night whispered dementedly to itself, like a Zappa minuet for paintbrush and teakettle, and in the distance a toad farted ominously.

I was really stoned.

I’d never have gotten stoned on sentry duty in a real war, but there hadn’t been much real fighting to speak of lately (this was just before we got out), and you have to pass the time somehow. And it just so happened that as I was getting ready to leave for the bush, a circle of the boys was Shotgunning.

Shotgunning? Oh, we do a lot of that. It works like so: the C.O. (…“or whomever he shall appoint…”) fills a pipe from the platoon duffle bag, fires it up, takes a few hits to get it established, and then breaks open a shotgun and inserts the pipe in one of the barrels. He raises it to his lips and blows a mighty blast down the bore, and someone on the other end takes an enormous hit from the barrel.

The C.O. then passes the Shotgun…

So as I say, I was more ruined than somewhat as I contemplated the jungle and waited for my relief. Relief? Say, you can take your medication and your yoga and your za-zen—there’s nothing on earth for straightening your head like a night in the jungles of Vietnam. Such calm, such peace, such utter tranquility.

Something crackled in the bush behind me, and my M-32 went off with a Gotterdammerung crash two inches from my left ear. As I whirled desperately about, Corporal Zeke Busby, acting C.O. and speed-freak extraordinaire, levitated a graceful foot above the surrounding vegetation and came down rapping.

“Yas indeed private yas indeed alert and conscientious as ever yas and a good thing too a good thing but if I may make so bold and without wishing to appear unduly censorious would you for Chrissake point that fuckin’ thing somewhere else?” Corporal Zeke had once been a friend of Neal Cassidy’s for perhaps just a bit too long.

“Sure thing, Corp,” I mumbled, shifting the rifle. My eardrum felt like Keith Moon’s tom-tom.

“Yas and a signal honor a signal honor my man your gratitude will no doubt be quite touching but I assure you before you protest that I consider you utterly worthy worthy worthy to the tips of your boogety-boogety shoes.”

A signal honor? He could only mean…

“I have selected you from a field of a dozen aspirants to make the run to Saigon and cop the Platoon Pound.”

I was overwhelmed. The last man so honored (a guy named Milligram Mulligan) had burned us for two bricks of Vietnamese cowshit and split for the States—this was indeed a mark of great trust. I tried to stammer my thanks, but Corporal Zeke was off again. “… situation of course most serious and grave without at the same time being in any sense of the word heavy as I’m sure you dig considering the ramifications of the logistical picture and the inherently inescapable discombobulation manifest in the necessary… what I mean… that is to say, we’ve only got five bucks to work with.” His left eye began to tic perceptibly, almost semaphorically.

“No problem, Corporal Zeke. I’ve seen action before.” Five was barely enough for a few ounces at Vietnamese prices, but the solution was simple enough—rip off a Gook. “What did you have eyes to score?”

“Yas well based on past performance and an extrapolated estimate of required added increment to offset inflation which some of these lousy bastards they smoke ‘til their noses bleed, it seems that something on the close order of five bricks would not be inordinate.”

I nodded. “You’re faded, Corp. Get me a relief and I’ll crank right now.” He didn’t hear me; he was totally engrossed in his left foot, crooning to it softly. I put the M-32 near him gently and split. When the Old Man says “Cop!” you cop, and ask how soon on the way back.

Deep in the jungle something stirred. Trees moved ungraciously aside; wildlife changed neighborhoods. A space was cleared. In this clearing grew a shimmering ball of force, a throbbing nexus of molecular disruption. It reached a diameter of some thirty feet, absorbing all that it touched, and then stopped growing abruptly. It turned a pale green, flared briefly, and stablized, emitting a noise like a short in a fifty megavolt circuit.

With something analogous to a gasp, Yteic-Os the Voracious materialized within the sphere, and fell with a horrendous crash to the jungle floor a foot below. Heshe winced—well, not exactly—and momentarily lost conscious control of the pale green bubble, which snapped out of existence at once.

Yteic-Os roared hisher fury (although there was nothing a human would have recognized as sound) and tried to block the green sphere’s dissolution by a means indescribable in human speech, something like sticking one’s foot in a slamming door. It worked just about as well; the Voracious One nearly lost a pseudopod for hisher trouble.

This was serious.

Yteic-Os was ridiculously ancient—heshe had been repairing hisher third sun on the day when fire was discovered on earth. Entropy is, however, the same for everybody. Yteic-Os had long since passed over into catabolism; hisher energy reserves dwindled by the decade.

This jumping in and out of gravity wells was a hellishly exhausting business; for centuries Yteic-Os had sidestepped the problem by using the tame space-warp over which heshe had so laboriously established control. Now the warp was gone, galaxies away by this time, and Yteic-Os had grave doubts as to hisher ability to jump free unassisted.

This world would simply have to serve. Somewhere on this planet must exist a life-form of sufficient vitality to fill Yteic-Os’s reserve cells with The Force, and heshe was not called The Voracious for nothing. Heshe extended pseudopods gingerly, questing for data on cerebration-levels, indices of disjunctive thought and the like. Insignificant but potentially useful data such as atmosphere-mix, temperature, radiation-levels and gravity were meanwhile being absorbed below the conscious level by the sensor-modules which studded Yteic-Os’s epidermis (giving himher, incidentally, the external appearance of a slightly underdone poached egg with pimples).

A pseudopod like a mutant hotdog twitched, began to quiver. Yteic-Os integrated all available data and decided ocular vision was called for. Hastily heshe grew an eye, or something very like one, and looked in the direction pointed by the trembling pseudopod.

Yes, no doubt of it, a sentient life-form, just brimming with The Force! Yteic-Os sent a guarded probe, yelped with joy (well, not precisely) as heshe learned that this planet was crawling with sentient beings. What a bountiful harvest!

Yteic-Os cannily withdrew without the other so much as suspecting hisher existence, and began patiently constructing hisher attack.

Well, the plan was simplicity itself: meet Phstuc My in a bar, demand to see the goods before paying, pull my gun and depart with the bag. Instead, I left without my pants. How the hell was I supposed to know the bartender had me covered?

So there I crouched, flat broke and sans culottes, between two G.I. cans of reeking refuse in a honky-tonk alleyway, strung out and dodging The Man. It made me homesick for Brooklyn. At least the problem was clear-cut: all I had to do was scare up a pair of pants, five bricks of acceptable smoke, a hot meal and transportation back to my outfit before dawn. Any longer and Corporal Zeke would assume I had burned him, at which point, Temporary Cease-Fire or not, Southeast Asia would become decidedly too warm for me to inhabit. I was not prepared to emulate Milligram Mulligan—ocean-going desertion requires special preparation and a certain minimum of cash, and I had neither.

The possibilities were, as I saw it, dismal. I couldn’t rip off a pedestrian without at least a token weapon, and I was morally certain the two garbage cans contained nothing more lethal than free hydrogen sulfide. I couldn’t burgle a house without more of the above-mentioned preparation, and I couldn’t even borrow money without a pair of pants.

I sure wished I had a pair of pants.

A giggle rippled down the alleyway, and I felt my spine turn into a tube of ice-cold jello. I peered over a mound of coffee-grounds and there, by the beard of Owsley, stood an absolutely dynamite chick. Red hair, crazy blue eyes, and a protoplasmic distribution that made me think of a brick latrine. At the mere sight of this girl, certain physiological reactions overcame embarrassment and mortal terror.

I sure wished I had a pair of pants.

“What’s happening?” she inquired around another giggle. My God, I thought, she’s from Long Island! I decided to trust her.

“Well, see baby, I was makin’ this run for my platoon, little smoke to sweeten the jungle, right? And, ah… I’ve gone a wee bit awry.”

“Heavy.” She jiggled sympathetically, and moved closer.

“Well, yeah, particularly since my C.O. don’t like gettin’ burned. Liable to amputate my ears is where it’s at.”

She smiled, and my eyes glazed. “No sweat. I can set you up.”

“Right.”

“No, really. I’m General Fonebone’s old lady—I’ve got connections. I could probably fix you right up… if you weren’t in too much of a hurry.” She was not staring me in the eyes, and I made a few hasty deductions about General Fonebone’s virility.

“I’m Jim Balzac. ‘Balz’ to you.”

“I’m Suzy.”

Six hours later I was back in the jungle. I had a pair of pants, some four and a half bricks from the General’s private stash, a compass, two Dylan albums and (although I was not to know it for weeks) a heavy dose of clap. I felt great, and it was all thanks to General Fone-bone. If Suzy had not found life in Vietnam so boring, she would never have gone rummaging and uncovered the General’s Secret Stash, a fell collection of strange tabs and arcane caps. She had induced me to swallow the largest single tab in the bunch, an immense purple thing with a skull embossed on it above the lone word: “HEAVY,” and it appeared in retrospect to have been a triple tab of STP cut with ibogaine, benzedrine, coke and just a touch of Bab-O.

It might just as easily have been Fonebone’s Own—the sensation was totally new to me. But it was certainly interesting. I experienced considerable difficulty in finding my mustache—which of course was right under my nose.

I could navigate without difficulty, after a fashion. But I discovered that I could whip up a ball of hallucinatory color-swirls in my mind, fire it like a cannon-ball, and watch it burst into a spiderweb of multicolored sparkles, as though an invisible protective shield two feet away walled me off from reality. With care, I could effect changes in the nature of the pulsing balls before they were fired, producing a variety of spectacular fireworks.

The jungle reared drunkenly above me. My outfit was straight ahead. I forged on, while in my darker crannies gonococcal viruses met and fell in love by the thousands, all unknown.

A particularly vivid splash of color caught my wandering attention; I had absently concocted a hellish color-ball of surpassing incandescence and detonated it. Its brilliant pattern hung before me a moment, as the rush took hold.

And then it very suddenly vanished.

I very nearly fell on my face. When I had my bearings again, I sent out another “shell.” It burst pyrotechnically.

And as suddenly vanished. It made a noise best reproduced by inhaling sharply through clenched teeth while saying the word “Ffffffup!”; vanished down behind a small hill ahead, sucked downward in a microsecond—only a stoned man could have divined the direction.

Something on the other side of that hill was eating my hallucinations.

I moved to the left like a stately zeppelin, caroming gently from the occasional tree. But I had two anchors dragging the ground, and before I got fifteen feet a tangled root brought me down with a crash.

And just before I hit, I saw something coming over the rise, and I knew that my mind had truly blown at last.

Coming toward me was a sixteen-foot-tall poached egg with pimples.

And then the lights—all those lights—went out.

Yteic-Os moved from concealment, throbbing with astonished elation. No subtle attack was necessary, no cunning stimulus needed to elicit secretions of The Force from this being. Heedless of danger, it radiated freely in all directions, idly expectorating energy-clusters as it walked.

Then Yteic-Os gasped (almost); for as it became aware of himher, it assumed a prone position, and disappeared. That is, its physical envelope remained, but all emanations ceased utterly; sentience vanished.

The Voracious One had no means of apprehending a subconscious mind. Such perverse deformities are extremely rare in the universe; heshe had in several billions of eons never chanced to so much as hear of such a thing. This led himher into a natural error: heshe assumed that these odd creatures emanated so incautiously because they had the ability to shut their minds off at will to escape absorption.

For, you see, thought is electrical in nature, and creative thought is akin to a short circuit, occurring when two unconnected thoughts arc together to form a totally new pattern. And such was Yteic-Os’s diet.

And so heshe made a serious mistake. Heshe stealthily entered the empty caverns of Private Balzac’s mind to try and restimulate life. Meanwhile, Yteic-Os’s own nature and essence were laid open to the soldier’s subconscious. One of the few compensations humans have for being saddled with such a clumsy nuisance of a subconscious mind is that these distorted clumps of semi-awareness possess a passionate interest in survival. Balzac’s subconscious remained hidden, probing, comprehending the nature of this novel threat. A nebulous plan of defense formed, was stored for the proper time. Yteic-Os searched in vain for Thought, while Thought watched him from ambush, and giggled.

Consciousness returned to Private Balzac with a jar and a “WHAAAAAT!?!” Yteic-Os, caught by surprise, flipped completely over on his back and rippled indignantly. This upstart would soon be only a belch—or something like one. The Voracious One licked hisher… well, you know what I mean.

“Whaaaaat!?!”

I was awake. Somehow it had all been sorted out in my sleep: I didn’t exactly know what the poached egg was, but I knew what it wanted to do. I thought I knew what to do about it. I would absolutely refuse to hallucinate, and starve it to death.

But I hadn’t reckoned with the Terrible Tab I’d swallowed. I simply could not stop hallucinating! Colored whirlwinds and coruscating rainbows danced all around me like a mosaic in a Mixmaster; my eyeballs were prisms. Slowly the creative force of my mind was leaking away, being sucked into the egg before it could feed-back and regenerate itself.

I was being drained of originality, of wit, of inventiveness, of all the things that make life groovy. I had a grim vision of myself a few years hence, a short-haired square working in a factory living contentedly in Scarsdale with a frigid wife and a neurotic Pekingese, stumbling over the Cryptoquote in the Daily News and drinking Black Label before the T.V. A grimmer vision I can’t imagine, but I still missed it when, with a sucking sound, it disappeared into the poached egg.

It was quickly supplanted by other visions, however—but from the past rather than the future. To my utter horror, I realized that it was actually happening: my whole life was passing before my eyes, in little vignettes which were slurped up by the creature as fast as they formed.

In spite of myself I began watching them. In rapid succession I reviewed a lifetime of disasters: losing my transmission at the head of the Victory Parade, getting bounced out of bed a hair before climax when I accidentally called Betty Sue the wrong name, being violently ill on two innocent customers of Howard Johnson’s…

Wait! A light-bulb rather unoriginally appeared over my head (and was eaten by the poached egg). Howard Johnson’s!!!! My untimely nausea had come on my third day as a HoJo counter-man, a direct result of the genius of Mr. Johnson himself. Early in his career, Johnson had hit upon the notion of urging all new employees to eat all the ice-cream they wished, for free. He reasoned that they would soon become sick of ice cream, and hence cut employee pilferage from his overhead. The scheme had worked well for him—why not for me?

Desperately I rammed my forebrain into low gear and cut in the afterburner. I dug into the tangled whorls of my cerebrum for all the creativity that heredity and environment had given men, and began to hallucinate as fast and as intricately as I could. I prayed that the poached egg would O.D.

Yteic-Os was caught in a quandary. The Force was radiating from this rococo little entity at an intolerable rate, and the creature would not stop projecting! Too heavily occupied in absorbing the torrent of food to roll off hisher back, Yteic-Os was lying on the escape-valve, similar to a whale’s spout, which lay in the center of hisher back.

The Voracious One screamed—after hisher fashion—and tried frantically to assimilate the superabundance of food, to no avail. Even as heshe thrashed, desperately seeking to free the escape-orifice, heshe swelled, grew, expanded more and more rapidly, like a balloon inextricably linked to an air compressor. Heshe lost hisher egg shape, became round rather than ovoid, swelled, bloated to impossible dimensions, and—

—the inevitable happened.

And when I could see again, there was scrambled eggs all over the place.

I didn’t hang around. Corporal Zeke was delighted to see me—it’s embarrassing to have men under your command bumming joints from the enemy. But he was a little disappointed to learn that I only had four-and-a-half bricks.

“That’s okay, Corp,” I assured him. “You guys can have my share. I’m straight for life.”

“What?” gasped Zeke, shocked enough to deliver the first and only one-word speech of his life.

“Yep. After what I went through on the way over here, I’ll never get stoned again as long as I live. Poached eggs eating hallucinations, cosmic invasion, Howard Johnson—it was just too intense, man, just too intense. A man who could freak out like that didn’t ought to do dope. I’ve had a few bummers before, but I know when I’ve been warned.”

Zeke was stupefied, but not so stupefied as to fail to try and change my mind. In subsequent weeks he went so far as to leave joints on my pillow, and once I caught him slipping hash into my K-rations. But like I say, I know when I’ve been warned, and you can’t say I’m stupid.

I live a perfectly content life now that the war is over. Got me a wife, a nice little one-family in Scarsdale that I’ll have entirely paid off in another twenty-five years, and a steady job down at the distributing plant—I get to bring home unlimited quantities of Black Label.

But sometimes I drink a little too much of it, and my wife Mabel says when I’m drunk—aside from becoming “disgustingly physical”—I often babble a lot. Something about having saved the world…

Editor's Introduction to:

SAUL’S DEATH: TWO SESTINAS
by Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman is a genuine war hero; thus it’s not surprising that he can write realistically about combat. Joe and Gay Haldeman live in Florida when he’s not filling a temporary slot as writer in residence and professor at one or another academic institution.

Science fiction conventions give plenty of opportunities for writers to get together and sing. Since most of us aren’t able to stay on tune, cleverness of line is generally more important than musical worthiness, and ballads tend to dominate, especially in the wee hours when we sing.

Joe and Gay Haldeman are exceptions: they’re quite capable of staying on key. They also know a lot of songs.

I confess I never heard of a sestina before. The form is explained in an afterword. Meanwhile, a genuine science fiction story in sestina format; some of us are likely to perform it at the next big SF convention.

SAUL’S DEATH: TWO SESTINAS
by Joe Haldeman

I

I used to be a monk, but gave it over

Before books and prayer and studies cooled my blood,

And joined with Richard as a mercenary soldier.

(No Richard that you’ve heard of, just

A man who’d bought a title for his name).

And it was in his service I met Saul.

The first day of my service I liked Saul;

His easy humor quickly won me over.

He admitted Saul was not his name;

He’d taken up another name for blood.

(So had I—my fighting name was just

(A word we use at home for private soldier.)

I felt at home as mercenary soldier.

I liked the company of men like Saul.

(Though most of Richard’s men were just

(Fighting for the bounty when it’s over.)

I loved the clash of weapons, splashing blood—

I lived the meager promise of my name.

Saul promised that he’d tell me his real name

When he was through with playing as a soldier.

(I said the same; we took an oath in blood.)

But I would never know him but as Saul;

He’d die before the long campaign was over,

Dying for a cause that was not just.

Only fools require a cause that’s just,

Fools and children out to make a name.

Now I’ve had sixty years to think it over

(Sixty years of being no one’s soldier).

Sixty years since broadsword opened Saul

And splashed my body with his steaming blood.

But damn! we lived for bodies and for blood.

The reek of dead men rotting, it was just

A sweet perfume for those like me and Saul.

(My peaceful language doesn’t have a name

(For lewd delight in going off to soldier.)

It hurts my heart sometimes to know it’s over.

My heart was hard as stone when it was over;

When finally I’d had my fill of blood.

(And knew I was too old to be a soldier.)

Nothing left for me to do but just

Go back home and make myself a name

In ways of peace, forgetting war and Saul.

In ways of blood he made himself a name

Though he was just a mercenary soldier)—

I loved Saul before it all was over.

II

A mercenary soldier has no future;

Some say his way of life is hardly human.

And yet, he has his own small bloody world

(Part aches and sores and wrappings soaking blood,

(Partly fear and glory grown familiar)

Confined within a shiny fence of swords.

But how I learned to love to fence with swords!

Another world, my homely past and future—

Once steel and eye and wrist became familiar

With each other, then that steel was almost human

(With an altogether human taste for blood).

I felt that sword and I could take the world.

I felt that Saul and I could take the world:

Take the whole world hostage with our swords.

The bond we felt was stronger than mere blood

(Though I can see with hindsight in the future

(The bond we felt was something only human:

(A need for love when death becomes familiar.)

We were wizards, and death was our familiar;

Our swords held all the magic in the world.

(Richard thought it almost wasn’t human,

(The speed with which we parried others’ swords,

(Forever end another’s petty future.)

Never scratched, though always steeped in blood.

Ambushed in a tavern, fighting ankle-deep in blood,

Fighting back-to-back in ways familiar.

Saul slipped: lost his footing and his future.

Broad blade hammered down and sent him from this world.

In angry grief I killed that one, then all the other swords;

Then locked the door and murdered every human.

No choice, but to murder every human.

No one in that tavern was a stranger to blood.

(To those who live with pikes and slashing swords,

(The inner parts of men become familiar.)

Saul’s vitals looked like nothing in this world:

I had to kill them all to save my future.

Saul’s vitals were not human, but familiar:

He never told me he was from another world:

I never told him I was from his future.

The sestina is an ingenious, intricate form of verse that originated in France around the twelfth century, percolated into Italy, and from there was appropriated by the English. At first glance, it looks like a rather arbitrary logjam, sort of a hybrid of poetry with linear algebra, but it does have a special charm.

The form calls for six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line envoi. The lines don’t rhyme, but they give a sort of illusion of rhyming, by forced repetition. The last words of the first six lines provide the last words of every subsequent line, by a strict system of inside-out rotation. (If the last words of the first stanza are 1-2-3-4-5-6, then the last words of the second are 6-1-5-2-4-3; the third, 3-1-4-1-2-5, and so forth. Claro? The envoi ought to have all six words crammed into its three lines, but the writer is allowed a certain amount of latitude with that, and I’ve taken it.)

The result, in English at least, is a sort of a chant, which is one of two reasons the form is appropriate for an entertainment like "Saul’s Death.”

Editor's Introduction to:

PROJECT HIGH FRONTIER
by Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham and Robert A. Heinlein

I am a contributing editor to Survive, a magazine about how to live through the coming crisis times. The worst crisis we could experience would be a nuclear war.

The best way to survive a nuclear war is not to have one. The best way I know not to have one is to support General Graham’s Project High Frontier.

Many years ago, Stefan T. Possony and I published a book called THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY. The book was a success d’estime: that is, it didn’t make us much money, but it did get good reviews. Eventually it was adopted as a text in one of the nation’s War Colleges, so I suppose it had some influence.

One of the concepts we examined in that book was national strategic doctrine, which at that time was announced as “Assured Destruction.” This seemed a bit odd: that is, one of the most popular stories of the time was that when Robert S. McNamara took office as Secretary of Defense, he invited the Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command to discuss his war plans, and particularly the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan). The general did so, showing how the US forces would be launched against the enemy.

When the briefing was over, McNamara shuddered. “General,” he said, “you don’t have a war plan. All you have is a kind of horrible spasm.”

This story was often told to illustrate the intelligence of McNamara and the stupidity of the generals. McNamara was going to get rid of the “spasm” and substitute a new doctrine of “Flexible Response.” Furthermore, he would do this for lower cost, keeping everyone happy.

Part of McNamara’s plan involved negotiations with the Soviet Union. In order to induce them to be cooperative, we had to let them feel safe; this meant that we could not have strategic superiority (which, according to the McNamara doctrine, was meaningless anyway).

The result of all this was our “new” strategic doctrine: Mutual Assured Destruction, usually abbreviated as MAD.

MAD has a rigid logic; indeed, it was what Herman Kahn had called a “homicide pact.” Medieval writers would have called it an exchange of hostages—except, of course, we value our citizens, while the esteem in which Soviet leaders hold their subjects is not so certain. MAD assured safety by assuring mutual destruction: war was to be so horrible that no one would ever start one, since no one could ever win it. Since it would never start, one need not have plans for fighting it; it was necessary only to prove that both sides would be killed—which is to say, to perfect the horrible spasm. From Flexible Response we grew the MAD doctrine that said: since Civil Defense measures mitigate the effects of war, and protect the American people against the enemy’s retaliation, Civil Defense is “provocative”; indeed, taking measures that protect American lives in the event of war is an “act of aggression against the Soviet Union.”

MAD drew the same conclusions about defenses. Anti ballistic missile defenses (known sometimes as ABM and sometimes as BMD) were also provocative and aggressive systems. The Soviets would never accept that, and invested heavily in defensive systems; so we negotiated a treaty called SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) that prohibited BMD, except that both sides could deploy one defense system. Because the protection of one’s citizens negated MAD, the ABM system was supposed to protect only weapons, specifically a missile farm. If we had deployed an ABM (we didn’t), it would have been out at Minot, South Dakota. The Soviets chose to protect the weapons they had deployed near Moscow…

In THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY, Possony and I proposed a different strategic doctrine which we thought would make more sense. We called it Assured Survival. We thought that the primary mission of the armed forces should be to assure the survival of the United States and as many citizens as possible. One of the best ways to do that would be to develop defensive systems.

This was also dictated by the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of Just War. MAD, which offers to kill the enemy’s helpless civilians in retaliation for the acts of their masters, presents a moral dilemma of staggering proportions.

Defense systems, we argued, are inherently stabilizing: they don’t threaten the other side, but they do complicate his war plan, making it much harder for him to know just what would happen if the war started. Only a fool would believe his missile defenses were perfect; but only another fool would attack a nation armed with both missiles and good defenses.

Some years later, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, US Army (Ret’d), an infantryman who became Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Deputy Director of the CIA, became interested in a new strategic plan. This became Project High Frontier.

General Graham’s concepts are explained in great detail in the High Frontier report, available for $15 from Project High Frontier, 1010 Vermont Ave., N.W. Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 737-4979. Project High Frontier is endorsed by many enthusiasts including former astronaut Buzz Aldrin; perhaps his most enthusiastic endorsement is given below.

THE GOOD NEWS OF HIGH FRONTIER
by Robert A. Heinlein

“High Frontier,” is the best news I have heard since VJ Day.

For endless unhappy years the United States has had no defense policy. We had something we called a defense policy… but in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

Under our present policies what do we have? H-bombs, airborne, water-borne, and in silos, capable of destroying anything, anywhere on this planet. Elite troops second to none in our Marine Corps, in our Army’s 82nd Airborne, and in our Navy SEALs. Other armed forces stationed around the world and on every ocean. Eyes in the sky that can spot any missile launched in our direction.

And none of these can even slow down an ICBM launched at Washington.

(Or at your hometown).

So we have no defense. Instead we have something mislabeled a “defense policy,” called “Mutually Assured Destruction,” referred to as “MAD.”

Never has Washington produced an acronym that fitted so perfectly. Picture two men at point-blank range each with a .45 aimed at the other man’s bare chest. That is MAD. Crazy. Insane. And stupid.

High Frontier places a bullet-proof vest on our bare chest. High Frontier is as non-aggressive as a bulletproof vest. There is no way to kill anyone with High Frontier—all that High Frontier can do is to keep others from killing us.

That is one of the two best aspects of High Frontier. It is so utterly peaceful that the most devout pacifist can support it with a clear conscience—indeed must support it once he understands it… as it tends to stop wars from happening and to save lives if war does happen. All who supported GROUND ZERO should support High Frontier.

The other best aspect of High Frontier is that its systems are non-nuclear. I am not one who gets upset at hearing the word “nuclear”… but no one in his right mind wants nuclear explosions going on over his head or anywhere on this planet. It is happy indeed that the best defense we can devise does not call for nuclear explosions. To save ourselves we do not need to blow up Moscow, we do not need to add to the radioactive fallout on our lovely planet.

The designers of High Frontier calculate that this new strategy will decrease our military costs. I am not in a position to judge this... but, frankly, I don’t give a damn. A man with a burst appendix can’t afford to dicker over the cost of surgery.

But will High Frontier in fact protect the Republic? As an old Research and Development engineer with the pessimism appropriate to the trade, I am certain that most of the hardware described in the High Frontier plan will undergo many changes before it is installed; that is the way R & D always works. But I am equally certain that the problems can be solved.

The first stages of High Frontier, point defense of our missile silos, we could start building later this afternoon; it involves nothing but well-known techniques and off-the-shelf hardware. That first stage alone could save us, as it denies to an enemy a free chance to destroy us by a preemptive first strike. It forces him to think twice, three times and decide not to try it.

But the key point is not whether this hardware will do the trick; the key lies in a change of attitude. A firm resolve to defend the United States… rather than resigning ourselves to the destruction of our beloved country. If we will so resolve, then the development of hardware is something we certainly know how to do.

But we won’t get there by throwing up our hands and baring our necks to the executioner. God helps those who help themselves; he does not help those who won’t try.

So let’s try!

Robert A. Heinlein

PROJECT HIGH FRONTIER
by Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham USA (Ret.)

The following statement was given by Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, USA (Ret.), at a High Frontier press conference last spring. This statement, because of its brevity, omits High Frontier’s committment to civil defense as a vital part of the program. Similarly, the space-based, solar-power system does not appear. And it does not mention the 200,000 jobs that probably would be created in the slumbering aerospace industry, nor the incalculable boost to America’s image both at home and abroad. These and other spinoffs from the program are described in High Frontier: A New National Strategy, available from High Frontier, 1010 Vermont Ave., N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005, or call (202) 737-4749. The 175-page, illustrated book costs $15. [2015: offer no longer available.]

The High Frontier concepts constitute first and foremost a change of U.S. strategy—from the bankrupt and basically immoral precepts of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), to a stable and morally defensible strategy of Assured Survival. But High Frontier is not a mere military strategy, it is a true national strategy addressing the legitimate economic and political aspirations of the nation and those of our allies as well as security needs.

The High Frontier study set out to seek technology that would support a new strategy, and not the other way around. Fortunately, the United States—at least for the moment—has a technological lead over the Soviet Union, especially in space. This advantage has been dramatically demonstrated by the Space Shuttle, which gives us the capability of delivering men and material into space to do some of the key things High Frontier is recommending.

High Frontier’s objective is to formulate a national strategy option that would (1) nullify, or substantially reduce, the growing threat to the United States and its allies posed by the unprecedented Soviet military buildup; (2) replace the dangerous doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction with a strategy of Assured Survival, and (3) provide both security and incentive for realizing the enormous industrial and commercial potential of space.

We insist that this objective be met with recommendations that are militarily sound, technologically feasible, fiscally responsible and politically practical.

The essence of the High Frontier report can be summarized as follows:

(1) It is possible for the United States to close the window of vulnerability in two years and move from the MAD (balance of terror) strategy to an Assured Survival strategy in five or six years, while at the same time contributing greatly to U.S. economic growth.

(2) This requires only a national commitment to do so, an end-run of bureaucratic obstacles, and a redirection (as opposed to an add-on) of available resources.

(3) The basic military requirement is: a layered strategic defense, starting with a cheap and simple point defense (similar to a gigantic shotgun) of U.S. missile silos; then, a spaceborne capability to intercept re-entry vehicles in mid course.

(4) The basic non-military requirement is the improvement of the space-transportation system to lower the cost-per-pound to orbit to less than $100, thus providing incentives for private industry to develop the broad spectrum of commercial opportunities in space.

(5) These requirements can be met by technically sound, fiscally responsible and politically practical programs conceived and analyzed by Project High Frontier experts, other research institutions and private companies.

(6) The High Frontier programs can be accomplished in remarkably short time and at low cost because the off-the-shelf technologies and system components are used to the maximum, avoiding long lead times and high costs of research and development. Political practicality is ensured by avoiding solutions demanding nuclear weaponry.

(7) Our analysis of both military and civilian program costs to meet High Frontier requirements is about $150 billion (in constant dollars) over 10 years. Of this, about $35 billion would be defense money, the rest NASA.

(8) We are convinced that the only way that costs can be held to these low levels and the time schedules met is through a Manhattan Project-type managerial arrangement at the top of government. Business-as-usual would add two to five years of crucial and unnecessary time to all High Frontier target dates, as well as greatly inflate the costs.

(9) The specific systems recommended by High Frontier include:

Global Ballistic Missile Defense System,

SWARMJET Point Defense System,

Advanced Shuttle System, and

Solar Power Satellite System.

Editor's Afterward to:

PROJECT HIGH FRONTIER
by Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham and Robert A. Heinlein

Daniel O. Graham (April 13, 1925 – December 31, 1995) died in 1995, but he lived to see his Strategic Defense Initiative play a major role in ending the Cold War without nuclear conflict. At the 1986 Reykjavik summit, the Soviet head of state Mikhael Gorbachev begged U.S. President Ronald Reagan to end SDI. Reagan's price for doing so was the destruction of the Berlin Wall in addition to a few other demands. Gorbachev rejected Reagan then.

Three years later, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.

TWO POEMS
by Jon Post

CITY-KILLER

Portrait of death
a tactical target
the blasted city
footprints of mars
nine million dead
a trillion dollar loss

Portrait of abstract beauty
laser-carved rubble-sculpture
crushed cars on asphalt
and that mineral of bones & glass
rock and vaporized steel:

Hiroshimite

Portrait of political process
the top-level negotiators drunk at
the whorehouse in Geneva

GROUND ZERO

Ride a burning horse to heaven
ride a golden horse to hell
with the horn of battle blaring
who can hear the distant bell?

When the sons have gone to slaughter
who’s to keep the daughters warm?

Ride a burning horse to heaven
leave a headstone at the farm

“Yes, sir, Company 11
in the radiation zone.”

When the sons have gone to slaughter
who’s to keep the daughters warm?

Ride a rocketship to heaven
go to hell in your own home.

Editor's Introduction to:

DIASPORAH: A PROLOGUE
by W.R. Yates

“When they go down, it shall be to the dust of the earth. And when they rise, it shall be to the stars…”

—Megillah 16a

In times past, editors worked closely with writers. Alas, that seldom happens now.

John F. Carr, my long-suffering associate, reads all the submissions for these anthologies. It’s a thankless job, but it has its rewards. One was the discovery of this story.

Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD, works only as long as it works; it does not know what to do if deterrence fails, for it envisions no defensive capabilities. A deterrent works until it is needed; then one needs defenses. General Graham told how we might construct defenses, so that mistakes need not be irrevocable. In his first published story, W. R. Yates tells what happens to those who have no defenses.

DIASPORAH: A PROLOGUE
by W.R. Yates

August 12, 1997

Somewhere in the Negev

Av 9, 5757

Tuesday

6:17 A.M., Jerusalem Time

The sign is in a gate post of blue Elat tile. The road on which it stands branches off from one of the main highways which leads from Beer Sheba to Elat. The road is narrow, but paved with grey asphalt. And the sign reads:

The guard walked over, as Zvi pulled up to the gate. Zvi rummaged for his wallet, as the guard leaned from the booth. Zvi handed him the card and pressed his hand against a plate of glass. The card and his palm print both verified that he was indeed, Zvi Sivan. The formalities over, Zvi pointed to the sign. “When are we going to take that thing down?” he asked. “I think that the only people who still believe it are the Israelis!”

“Be fair,” laughed the guard. “There really is a research station here.”

Zvi shrugged. The electronic gate began to swing open. “Ad mahar,” he cried, driving through.

Zvi’s comment was probably right. The inhabitants of New Persia had possessed spy satellites for nearly six years. Reports from the Mossaad had shown that they knew where the major Israeli missile bases were located.

Zvi parked the white ‘87 Mercedes in a space by the administration building. Opening the trunk, he pulled out a fitted tarpaulin and began stretching it over the vehicle. “How can white fade?” someone had once jokingly asked him. But it protected the finish against the sun. The heavily waxed surface was still as bright and shiny as it was on the day that he bought it.

With his hands on his hips, he surveyed the rows of maturing orange trees. It was somewhat odd to see so much green here. The shifting sand of the Negev still dusted the horizon with a reddish haze. If the experiments worked out right, the whole desert would bloom with purified water from the Mediterranean. Then the dust would cease to attack the eyes and block the nostrils.

But more Israeli marks had been spent on what lay below the ground than above. The blue of the irrigation canals and the green of the shrubbery concealed Israel’s deadliest and most secret weapons. Twenty feet beneath the canals, safe within their cradles, nestled Yoshua, surface to surface, cruise missiles.

Nobody questioned the military look of things, which surrounded the installation. The guard towers, the barbed wire, the electrified fencing, had surrounded every major Israeli installation for nearly fifty years.

The whine of a jeep engine made Zvi turn back toward the parking lot. Zvi grinned. It was his new driver. The dark-skinned figure braked to a halt. Zvi got in next to him.

“Where to, Adonai?” the man asked.

“I am with Yoshua,” answered Zvi. “You can drop that ‘adonai’ business. We’re very informal around here. My name’s Captain Zvi Sivan. You can just call me Zvi. And you?”

“Sergeant Major Ibrahim…” The other grinned. “Name’s too long to say in one breath. As long as we’re so informal here, just call me Ib.”

Zvi felt his flesh tingle. He looked again at the other’s dark hair, skin and eyes. “You are Sephardic?” he asked.

Ib’s mouth twisted as though he were enjoying a private joke. “Arab,” he answered. “And a Muslim. Don’t worry, Haver Shelli. I’ve been damned well checked out. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

“I wasn’t aware that Arabs worked at the Yoshua installations,” put in Zvi.

“My parents may have been Palestinians, but I am Israeli,” answered the other. “My grandfather told me that my people used to die by the thousands from hunger, thirst, disease and exposure. But that was before the Jews came. My parents considered him a traitor. They, and the rest of my people cannot accept your strange ways. You are too alien to them and they don’t wish to learn. My grandfather urged me to go to the university. My father disowned me.”

“I’m sorry,” answered Zvi.

The other grimaced. “It is no matter,” he answered. “My father would have me herding goats.”

Zvi laughed and remembered his own father’s failure to understand. “We are doubly friends,” answered Zvi. “I too saw the world as it is. My family has been in this country since the time of the Spanish Inquisition. I am Sephardic and learned to adapt. Nothing is given to us, my friend. Whether it is a nation or a fine home. You must fight to gain it. And you must take care of it.”

“I agree with your point, if not your metaphor,” answered Ib.

“Then you are not Israeli,” answered Zvi. His eyes twinkled at the other.

“I didn’t say that I agreed with Israel’s manner of coming into existence. Merely that I agreed with its existence.”

“You are a very intelligent man, Ib. How is it that you are only a Sergeant Major?”

“I was once with the Mossaad,” said Ibrahim quietly.

“I don’t know what their pay scale is, but it is certainly higher than the Air Force. Why did you quit?”

“It was I who discovered how they perfected the bomb,” was the answer. “It is a painful thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Zvi answered. How long it had remained a secret of the Persian government, Zvi himself did not know. But when it finally got out, it had made headlines around the world. By using political prisoners, Kurds and the Sunni who refused to acknowledge his power… The successor of the Great Mamoud… The ‘Imam of the Time’s Caliph’… ‘The Twelfth Iman’s Caliph’… had dispensed with the need for expensive shielding. Those who had worked with the deadly radioactive materials were dead within three weeks. “The Persians and Arabs themselves did not want such a government,” Zvi finally said.

“Revolutions rarely work for the better,” was Ib’s reply. “The Imamim Shi’ah in that country are only after one thing. The uncooperative intellectuals there are either dead or in prison. The unschooled are happy. They don’t know the difference between real and perverted religion.”

“Are not the Catholic temples filled with idols,” quoted Zvi.

Ibrahim nodded. “We traditionally regard both the Christians and the Jews as ‘People of the Book,’ not as Infidels.”

“The Crusades didn’t help much,” said Zvi.

“Neither did the Israeli War of Independence.”

The answer made Zvi’s blood run cold. He quickly changed the subject. “Did anything happen during the night?”

“One of the missiles, Yoshua Heth, is out of order. Decay in the grain of one of the boosters. One of the Kalebs was blinded by a laser.”

“That happens all the time,” put in Zvi. “They’re probably trying to sneak somebody across the border. I always dislike the blindspot that leaves. At any rate, Sharm el Sheik’s already got another on the pad. It’ll be in orbit before this shift is out. I wish we didn’t have to clear things with Cairo. It would be a lot faster.”

“Here we are.” Ib braked the jeep to a halt.

“Thanks!” said Zvi. “I owe you a glass of tea sometime.”

Ib grinned. “I think I would like that. See you later.”

“Salaam,” responded Zvi in Arabic. He was rewarded with a toothy grin.

As the jeep roared away, Zvi turned to a small pump shed. He brought a key out of his pocket and inserted it into the lock on the door. On entering, there was nothing to show that the interior was any more than it was supposed to be. There was the whine of an electric pump in one corner. The drip… drip of water on prestressed concrete and light tile. A nest of hoes, rakes, shovels… stood leaning against one of the walls. Near the door, as though something were intended to hang there, was a nail. Turning back to the door and being careful to stand on a tile of a slightly different color than the rest, Zvi gave the nail a twist. Almost immediately, the tile began to sink into the floor and, Zvi with it. Above Zvi’s head, another tile closed. In the darkness, the concrete of the shaft whispered past. Finally, the ring of a chime announced his arrival. A double door slid open and Zvi found himself facing a small room. Next to the elevator, a knot of three men sat hunched over a Backgammon board. A man behind a desk stood up. “You are late for the first time in three years, Seren Sivan. Shmuel will be angry.”

“Trouble with the car,” explained Zvi. “Tell Shmuel not to be too put out.”

The other grinned. “There’s a rumor going around that they’re going to be cutting our shifts from four to an hour each. Knesset seems to think that we aren’t keeping on our toes.”

“It would cut the strain some. But I think we can handle what we’ve got. If you will excuse me…”

Zvi inserted a card into a slot and again pressed his hand against the glass pane of a box before the door. He waved a greeting to the other men, as the door slid open.

The door slid shut. The bickering of the men in the outer office was lost in silence. Compared even to the sunlight of early morning, the room was cool and dark.

Directly ahead of him was a map, a computer display of a gigantic scale. Flanking each of its sides were three television screens. One was adjusted to infra-red false color. The second was taken by natural light in full color. The third was nearly blank, adjusted to the ultraviolet radiation that was absorbed in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Pictures from the orbiting Kaleb satellites. Theoretically, the UV image would show the radiation released by the explosion of an atomic bomb on Earth’s surface. In front of each division of three television screens sat two figures. Each had its own console of knobs, keys and switches. Each console was illuminated by the blank faces of two computer readout screens.

One of the figures turned. Her blonde hair glowed eerily in the green light. “Shalom, Putz! You’re late! We thought you’d gone to Synagogue!”

“There’s nothing about today in The Commandments,” was Zvi’s curt reply.

P’nina smiled. “I doubt if there would be,” she responded. “The destruction of the first temple happened long after Torah.” A wicked smile played about P’nina’s lips. “My favorite two Commandments are positive ones,” she said. “Numbers one ninety two and one ninety three.”

Zvi felt another appalling dig coming at his beliefs. He opened his mouth in an attempt to change the subjects, thus diverting it. But Shmuel, seeing his discomfort, interrupted.

“And what two Commandments might those be?” he asked P’nina.

“Deuteronomy, Twenty three, verses ten to fourteen. Dig a latrine.”

Zvi sighed. “Okay, Shmuel,” he said. “You have your answer and the shift is over. Get going!”

“I’m waiting to find out why that would be her favorite Commandment! Memories of bootcamp couldn’t have faded that rapidly!”

“Because,” said P’nina. “The passage ends; ‘For the Lord thy God walks in the midst of thy camp.’ ” And as though enough salt hadn’t been rubbed into Zvi’s wound, she climaxed it with a mental picture so absurd that it was bound to bring a guffaw… From an atheist. “Nachon, Putz?” she added.

Shmuel threw back his head in laughter. If Zvi reddened, it was with embarrassment. Rage wasn’t permitted in the bunker.

At last, Shmuel rose from his chair. “Serves you right for being late, Zvi. I’ll see you tomorrow. Shalom.”

“Do you always have to do that to me?” Zvi asked P’nina as the door slid closed.

P’nina’s name was Hebrew for pearl, and the whiteness of her teeth reflected it as she gave him another of her wicked smiles. “Couldn’t resist,” she answered. “But, to be perfectly frank, I had to get him out of here some way. I thought he’d never leave!” She reached into her purse, extracting a book, a pome-granite, two figs and a banana. These she placed on the table that formed part of her console. The book was opened as Zvi turned attentively to the screens. He had thought of reporting her, but was stopped by her remark; “If anything happens, Putz. You’re nervous enough to let me know.”

At the first surprise inspection, he found that a thoughtful workman had placed a chime both in the outer office and the Slik itself. The arrival of the elevator clanged in both rooms. With the book and a single movement, she whisked the fruit into a drawer. The book followed. By the time the inspecting general entered, the drawer was closed and both of her feet were on the floor.

He found her both amusing and repulsive. Time after time, he’d thought of reporting her for an acid word that she had given him. These and her nicknaming him with a Yiddish obscenity had really bothered him until:

It had been two years before, at a Synagogue picnic, on the beach at Ceasaria. After the food had been eaten, he and a group of Shul members decided to engage in a game of soccer. He kicked at the ball with his bare feet and it glanced off to the side. Spitting into the sand, he chased it beneath the arches of the old Roman aquaduct. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the shade within the moldering arches. He knocked a diminutive figure to the ground.

“Oh! Sorry!” he apologized as he took a slender wrist into his hand. Pulling her to her feet, his eyes swept over a blindingly beautiful figure in a two piece bathing suit. They came to rest in a pair of familiar blue eyes.

“P’nina!” he exclaimed. “Shalom! Come and meet the group! There is plenty of tea and beer! Drink with us! Some chicken may be left…”

“Zvi, no! Please! I parked the car down near the old fortress. I’ve been walking here… Swimming and thinking. I saw you playing and stopped to watch… I can’t spend any time with you out of the Slik. I’d love to come and play with you and your friends… But… Someday... If anything goes wrong in the Slik… I might have to kill you. I’m very fond of you, Zvi. More fond than I should be. For my sake… For the sake of our Nation… Don’t make your death under those circumstances impossible!”

Without warning, the slender arms went around his neck. The rapid kiss that she gave him was salted with a tear. She turned and ran.

It was with some confusion that he retrieved the ball and joined the group. He had only been, as with Ib, making an attempt to be friendly. Until that time he hadn’t understood that P’nina’s more than Israeli rudeness had been a mask, as much for herself, as for him.

He remembered the controversy which had broken out when it was revealed that the sexes were mixed. That two people of the opposite sex were locked together in a room beneath the ground. With women like P’nina, Israel had nothing to fear.

His thoughts were interrupted by P’nina’s laughter. She was gazing into the book.

“Shalom Aliechem?” Zvi asked.

Disgust showed on P’nina’s features. “Is he the only humorist that you know about?” she asked. “No, this is an American writer. Robert Benchly.” She put down the book. “You have met Ibrahim?” she asked.

“You mean the Arab?” he asked. “Ken. He drove me in.”

P’nina smiled. “Nothing to worry about,” she answered. “He used to work for the Mossaad.”

“My father used to work for the Mossaad.”

“Then maybe that’s not such a recommendation,” answered P’nina.

The barb was lost on Zvi, for in his imagination, the roar of his father’s laughter filled the rooms. It had been just before midterms at Technion. His father worked hard with the others, but frequently was called away on ‘government business.’ Sometimes for weeks or months at a time. Everyone on the Moshav had suspected that he was an agent. But nobody asked.

Zvi had been studying aircraft mechanics at the time. He remembered the tattered blue cover of the book. The varnished feel of its yellowing pages. The smell of dust and paper. He remembered how that smell fought with the smell of new turned earth coming through an open kitchen window. And he remembered how his studies were interrupted by the hard plunk of a bottle on the table. He looked up at the yellow, red, white and black label.

From there, he looked into the face of his father. It was a furred silhouette against the glare of the kitchen bulb.

“Drink!” his father laughingly commanded. Vast arms swung wide. “Tomorrow, you return to Haifa! There was never such a Purim and you missed it! Your cousin! Ha! Ha! What a beautiful Esther she made! What a long flowing gown!” His father winked. “As long and flowing as a gown can be… On a four year old!” He threw back his head in laughter.

Zvi looked back at his book. “I won’t be a farmer,” he said.

“Who said that I was asking you to become one?” His father turned his back, folded his arms and sat on the table. “Ah! But you missed such a harvest last year!” He clenched his fist and shook it. “You never saw such beautiful bananas! And so many oranges, grapes, lemons!” The glow went out of his eyes and he lowered his fist.

“Son,” he said. “I’m not asking you to become a farmer. I’m merely asking you to be happy!”

“I am happy, Father.”

“With books?! I want you to dance, to drink, to sing, to play! To find yourself some nice girl! But continue to laugh! That is why God put us here!” His father sighed. “But how can I ask you to continue what you have not begun? Why, even soccer, you treat like an attack from Syria!”

It was the last time he had seen his father.

He had continued studying that night and returned to Haifa before his father’s awakening.

An Islamic leader was assassinated nearly a thousand kilometers away. Nations were disemboweled. Absorbed. Jordan became a province named New Palestine.

His father’s dark skin, hair and eyes blended perfectly with those of the Arabs streaming across New Allenby Bridge.

His father never came back.

Once again, P’nina’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Here’s the blindspot,” she said.

Zvi looked up. The three color television screens, which showed what was picked up by the orbiting Kaleb satellites, were filled with snow. His eyes returned to the readout screens and he noticed another change.

“We’ve got three launches from Tehran, P’nina.”

She straightened in her seat. “Call Slik Aleph.”

Zvi picked up the phone and hit the aleph on the punch board. “Slik Aleph? This is Slik Gimmel. We’ve got a reading of three launches from Tehran. Have you the same reading?”

“This is Slik Aleph, Gimmel. We have a copy.”

“This is Slik Yod Daleth,” broke in a voice from a speaker on their consoles. “Slikim Heth and Yod confirm your readouts. We’ve got trouble. Should we wake the Old Man?”

“Ken,” whispered Zvi.

He and P’nina simultaneously pushed identical blue buttons on their consoles. A majority decision was shown by the button’s answering glow.

Above, a siren sounded. A group of terrified farm workers ran for the administration building.

At another Slik, another member of the Palavir picked up a red phone. He didn’t bother punching in a number. In a modest Jerusalem home, a Knesset office and a parked automobile, identical phones were already ringing.

After a pause. “I’ve got the Old Man,” came a voice. “He’s getting on the hotline to Mecca.”

“Two more launches from Jidda.” Zvi looked down at his readout screen.

“We’ve definitely got a critical situation here. Might they be attacking Turkey?”

“Aw, come on! Every Arab country that they have was taken by invasion or work from within! Why bother with a missile attack?”

“Let’s see what the Old Man says…”

“Negative on Turkish attack. The missiles, if they exist, are headed in our direction.”

“Could it be Cypress?” came a voice.

“Look at your map!”

“The Old Man says that Tehran denies any launches. They warn that any attack will be met by retaliation.”

“Any attack will be met by retaliation!” cursed Zvi under his breath.

“Could those three from Tehran have been a mistake?”

“Just a second,” said a voice. “I’ll see if the Old Man can talk Mecca into calling the Tehran base.”

“What about Jidda?” asked P’nina. “Slick Seventeen?”

“Possibly the launches from Tehran were sensed and the other two were sent as a panic response.”

“They shouldn’t have been,” answered P’nina. “There was a full minute… One minute exactly, between launches. They may not have the Yoshua, but their response time should be as effective as our own. Read your reports from Mossaad.”

“Four more from Damam.”

“The Old Man says that they deny any attack.”

“Goddamnit!” cursed P’nina under her breath. “They haven’t had time to call their base!”

“Tell the Old Man that we’ve got eight missiles headed in our direction. If it’s a mistake, they’d better find out pretty damn fast!”

“The Old Man says to go to condition yellow as soon as those missiles cut their thrust. If the targeting displays show military targets, activate!”

Zvi raised his brows. “The agricultural center’s going to be awfully pissed if we activate under a false alarm.”

“They’ll be more pissed if we take no action at all,” answered P’nina. “Their families live here.” She began punching the aleph button, trying to get through to the red phone.

“Tell them about Yoshua, if you have to!” she said when the button finally illuminated itself.

Zvi began counting aloud and then silently to himself. “We have six from Isfahn,” he said. “Still better than twelve hundred kilometers from our borders. If they think this is a surprise attack, they’re insane! We couldn’t be given more response time!”

“The Old Man’s got them calling their bases.”

P’nina breathed a sigh of relief and settled back in her chair. “At least that part of the battle’s won,” she said.

“Fourteen missiles with warheads of ten megatons or better. Do you really think our country can take that? ...”

Two targets illuminated the screen. Zvi half rose from his seat. “Metzada!” he fairly screamed in perplexity.

“Sit down, Putz!” cried P’nina. “It’s an old ruin! Nothing more!”

But Zvi didn’t hear her. His mind hissed back the five years to the West Bank War. It had lasted only a few days. But it had been enough to destroy much of Western Jerusalem, as well as the old Knesset. Again he felt the surge of the Kfir C-5 under his command. The Fencer was flying low, dangerously low above the hills of the Judean desert. His Kfir followed. Ahead of the Su-19 was another C-5. In it was Yigal.

Yigal had taken off after the Fencer when they broke up a squadron of the machines en route to Jerusalem. They had been flying at barely ten thousand feet. The Fencer was a speck ahead of Zvi, Yigal’s plane little more.

Suddenly, the Su-19 lost altitude. “He opened his drogue chute!” came Yigal’s astounded voice. Zvi immediately swung his plane hard around, looping backward, so that the Soviet plane could not fall behind them both. As the Gs drained the blood from his face, Zvi’s mind clouded. A Soviet pilot? No. The Soviet Union had abandoned New Persia when it became evident that this too was to be a religious state, intent on carving out an empire of its own.

Zvi’s mind spun. The drogue chute was only used in landing on the short airstrips of the Persian mountains. The deceleration must have nearly blacked out the two men in the Fencer’s cockpit. A desperate and risky maneuver. And one that insured that the Su-19 wouldn’t be returning to the airstrips of home.

“He’s accelerating!” came Yigal’s voice. “He’s right on my tail! I can’t seem to shake him!”

Below Zvi flashed a pattern of dry washes and hillsides. Like the legs of a many limbed, sleeping monster. Zvi bit his lower lip beneath the oxygen mask. Allah had performed a miracle for the other side. A miracle which kept the enemy plane from crashing below. He pushed forward on the stick, dropping lower. A faint glow of admiration touched Zvi as he spoke. The Arab pilots were improving and not above taking chances. The drogue chute had, no doubt, ripped to shreds and been discarded. It was a maneuver that the Su-19 would not try again. And it couldn’t try anything similar at the altitude it was now flying. “I’ll get in some shots at him, catch up and try to pass. He’s either got radar controlled or heat seeking missiles. I’ll drop some chaff and flares, then I want you to peel off in a loop. Are you ready to take some Gs?”

“Ready when you are,” came back Yigal’s voice.

“Great!” exclaimed Zvi. A faint shadow of green passed quickly below, showing that he was over Ein Gedi. The wind of the Fencer’s passing was already making the C-5 buck and yaw.

Zvi turned on his afterburner, gaining speed. The air was clear. He could see the Dead Sea off to his left, like a shining mirror. As he moved up on the Fencer, he gained altitude, creeping above it. He could now see the glistening delta of the machine’s wings. He pushed forward on the Kfir’s wheel. It slid in easily. Zvi was diving toward it. A burst of tracers narrowly missed as the Su-19 rolled over on its side, presenting a smaller target1. As Zvi pulled back on the stick, bringing the C-5 out of the dive, the Fencer resumed its original position. And fired its own tracers.

“I’m hit!” cried Yigal. “Those shots must have sliced through my control cables! I’ve still got my rudder, but I’ve lost my flaps!

“Remember what I told that fat tourist, Zvi?”

“I remember, Yigal.”

A low chuckle answered Zvi as though some hidden irony were sensed.

“Here it comes,” said Yigal.

Nearly two thousand years before, Herod had built a refuge atop the butte of Metzada. A butte rising nearly four hundred and forty meters above the Dead Sea. Less than a century later, it was used as a fortress by the Zealots, who held it against the Roman hordes for nearly three years. When, at last, an earthen embankment was slowly built to its edge, the Romans entered to find a hollow victory. Rather than be sold into Roman slavery, the Zealots had committed suicide. Men, women and children.

Zvi remembered what Yigal had told the tourist. A quirk of irony passed through him as well. The Fencer and his own plane passed over Metzada’s side. Herod’s Northern Palace, carved out of Metzada’s cliff, dissolved as Yigal’s plane plunged into its face. A rearview mirror showed fingers of flame, explosive, wreckage and fuel oil arc above the plateau.

And Zvi remembered what Yigal had told the tourist. “Forget Metzada!” he said said. “There will be no more Metzada! From now on, if a Jew dies, it will be because he had died fighting! It will not be because we are faced with overwhelming odds. It will be because freedom or death are the only end! If that were today, every woman would be given a sword and every child a knife!”

“Shalom, Yigal,” Zvi said.

“Shezor?” said P’nina. “Not a military target…” She swiveled in her seat and began punching keys. “A farming community in Galilee,” she said.

“And B’nai Nairn,” answered Zvi. “Also, we’ve got four additional launches from Hamadan.”

“Switch to primary backup computers,” came a voice over the loudspeaker.

“At this point, that sounds like a good idea,” said P’nina. She flipped a switch. “Readings haven’t changed.”

“A first reading on one of the Jidda targets,” said Zvi. His forehead wrinkled. “Ziorah,” he said.

“These aren’t military targets, Putz. They’re total nonsense! Some of these targets are little more than post offices. And an old ruin! What purpose could be served by the destruction of Metzada?”

Another target silently illuminated itself.

Zvi’s forehead wrinkled. “Could they be trying to confuse us? Definite readings of launches, and definite targets.”

“But they’re destroying the things that they would need! Any occupying force is going to need food!”

Zvi settled back in his chair. “I don’t think that there will be an occupying force. Remember the words of the Caliph? ‘Our shrines are walked in sandaled feet. They must be purified so that this abomination cannot take place again.’ ”

“And that’s why the UN got out?”

“Not officially, but probably.”

P’nina straightened in her chair, looking at the readout screen. “Hebron!” she exclaimed. “A military target! Activate condition yellow and arm!”

Both of them activated a yellow switch. They watched as pilot lamps illuminated themselves. Machinery took over.

Twenty feet overhead, locks slammed shut in the irrigation canals. Underground pumps moved the trapped water into hidden tanks. Seals broke and sections of ditch formed on concrete and steel moved upward and over on powerful hydraulic jacks, uprooting orange and grapefruit trees.

“Five more launches from Tabriz.”

P’nina’s voice was swift and certain. The upper row of pilot lamps indicated that the portals were opened. “Arm!” she barked.

For the first time in close to three years, the enameled surfaces of the Yoshua’im gleamed in the early morning sun. Carriages moved upward, pointing noses toward the sky. The stubby wings began to unfold as soon as the Yoshua’im cleared the ground.

“The Old Man says that they’ve called their bases. They deny charges of launching an attack.”

“My board reads a total of thirty launches. We shouldn’t expect any strikes until six thirty five,” put in Zvi.

“Yes, sir,” said a voice. There was a pause. “I’ll patch you through.”

“This is the Minister of Defense. I request that you switch to your remaining backup computers at one minute intervals. I assume that you are already on primary backups for confirmation. Each of you is equipped with your own input system, so at this point, I would have to place the likelihood of a mistake at literally billions to one. Our condition is now yellow. If I don’t see you again, die bravely, Haverim Shelli. Switch to secondary backups… Now!”

“Five from Mastura,” said Zvi. “A definite pattern is showing itself. The launch areas are getting closer.”

“And I suppose they sneaked in Hebron, Jaffa and Haifa thinking we wouldn’t notice?” asked P’nina.

“You’re forgetting that the Yoshua’im and our detection systems are secrets that we’ve kept for three years. They know there’s a missile base here, but they don’t know what kind. All of their bases are part of a single detection net. Things can go wrong on that. What the Persians and Arabs don’t know is that our system, by its very nature, has a hundred backups with twenty separate systems of input. There is no mistake, tziporah katanah. This is the second Holocaust.”

“After all this time,” said P’nina. “They wouldn’t let their hatred die.”

“Six from Mastura,” corrected Zvi.

“Backup Gimmel,” said a voice.

“No change,” said P’nina. “It’s in our hands now, Putz. Do we fire?”

Zvi shook his head. “Not until the last minute, P’nina.”

Her face paled. “It’s this waiting,” she said. “Hey, Putz?”

“Yes, P’nina?”

“Could you call in a replacement? I’m going to be sick.”

When he heard her words, Zvi swallowed the taste of his own bile. “No, P’nina. Use one of your drawers, if you have to. I want you here,” he added truthfully. “With me.”

A blush colored the paleness of her features.

Zvi turned back to the screen. “Five more Baghdad,” he said.

With this, P’nina turned away from him and opened a drawer.

“Backup Heth,” said an electronic voice.

“This is Slik Mispar Aleph. No change,” said another distorted voice.

“Slik Mispar Heth. No change.”

P’nina came up, wiping her mouth on a sleeve. A question mark was on her face.

“Final confirmations,” Zvi answered her unspoken question. “We’re being told when to fire.”

Zvi picked up a mike and added his voice to the electronically sobered hysteria of the rest. “Slik Mispar Gimmel,” he said. “No change.”

“Slik Mispar Heth. No change.”

The laughter of Zvi’s father again filled the room. “There is nothing wrong with being a farmer!” the voice rang out. “If it weren’t for farmers, what would we eat? Eh?”

“Slik Mispar Yod Gimmel. No change.”

“Would I be happier as a farmer?” wondered Zvi.

“Slik Mispar Yod Daleth. No change.”

“Would I be happier not knowing?”

Something teased at Zvi’s brain. A hazy memory from three years in the past. The turtle. An affectionate name given a general with a beak of a nose that joined with his forehead.

“Fire!” came the order.

Automatically, he and P’nina both pressed the red firing stud.

In thirty eight sealed chambers, far overhead, nitric acid poured over cores of powdered aluminum in a rubber matrix. Solid fuel boosters roared to life. At a forty five degree angle, all of the missiles, save one, soared upward.

At two hundred feet, the missiles leveled off. Robot control surfaces adjusted themselves. Jet engines caught the wind and fired into keening life. Although they had all been launched in the same general direction, as winds caught ailerons and rudders, they began to turn.

“All birds off save one,” commented P’nina. “Yoshua Heth is our dead bird.”

‘Hatzav.’ The aged general who had trained them. Half his face had been destroyed by napalm in the war of ‘85. He wore a partial mask of black satin. But his nickname, “The Turtle,” came from his large beak of a nose.

Hatzav had pulled him aside during a preliminary inspection of the installation. “Zvi,” he had said in a dry whisper. “You are a bright boy! And very brave! I know that you are one we can trust with the responsibility you are given. It is not a usual thing that those in the Slikim should know their targets. But should you ever… May the Master of the Universe make it not so. Should you ever have to push that button, the target on this card should help you in your last moments. Attah talmid tov, Zvi. Shalom.”

“Shalom,” Zvi whispered back. He took the sealed envelope which the old man extended and put it into his pocket.

Zvi was pulled back to the present by another whisper.

“Oh, my God!!” said P’nina.

The second screen illuminated itself, doubling the number of Persian and Arab missiles. These were launched from Israel’s very borders.

The speed with which Zvi rummaged through the coffee and tea stained reports increased. At last, his hand grasped the yellowed envelope.

“Zvi,” P’nina said. “Number fifty three.”

Zvi looked to see that the target under number fifty three was their own base.

“Shalom aleichem, Captain Sivan,” said P’nina.

“Aleichem shalom, Captain Horowitz,” Zvi returned He held up a file card. “P’nina?” On the file card was written in ‘Hatzav’s’ spidery Hebrew script; “Target-Mecca!!”

The target couldn’t have been Mecca itself. Israel’s powerful religious party would never have allowed it. Probably the missile sites north of there. Zvi saw comprehension enter P’nina’s face and the beginnings of a smile. Before the flesh was seared from his bones by a brilliant...FLASH!!!

Editor's Introduction to:

HIS TRUTH GOES MARCHING ON
by Jerry Pournelle

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

—George Santayana

The “future history”—a series of stories that share common assumptions about the future—has become a popular form of science fiction. My future history of the CoDominium era assumes that the United States and the Soviet Union continue to hate each other, but have decided that it is better that they rule jointly than that they share power with any third party.

The two major powers create the CoDominium as their instrument for preserving the peace. Shortly thereafter, new means for space travel are discovered. New worlds are settled: some by unwanted people sent away against their will, some by adventurers, some by those who will always seek the new frontiers. This story takes place after the Second Exodus is well under way.

For some older readers, and younger ones with a better education than most get today, there will be hauntingly familiar elements in this story, for it is frankly derived from incidents that took place in a conflict of the past. Nearly every incident in this story actually happened to people much like those I picture here.

The Spanish Civil War was, to a generation of American liberals, a matter of evil vs. good. The Falangists were evil; the Republicans were good; and there were no compromises. Hemingway tried to show that it wasn’t that stark, although his sympathies remained with the Republicans. George Orwell went into more detail. He showed the naked cynicism of the Communist elements of the Republic, but no one wanted to hear his message, and to this day most believe that his (largely unread) HOMAGE TO CATALONIA condemns only Franco.

The world could never forget Guernica, and to prove it we had Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece hung in the Museum of Modern Art. Guernica was a Basque fishing village bombed by units of the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion. The town was largely destroyed, and the incident was seen as one more illustration of the utter moral worthlessness of both Spain and Germany. Picasso’s violent painting, showing men and animals disjointed and scattered, was very effective in stirring up sympathy for the Republicans and hatred for both the Germans and Franco.

Later it came out that the town had been occupied by Republican military units, that at least part of the destruction came from the detonation of Republican munitions stored there, and there was a strong suggestion that retreating Republican engineers had dynamited other structures not damaged by the air raid. Whatever the truth of Guernica, the destruction there was not large compared to the damage sustained by Sidon, Tyre, and Beirut during the 1982 Israeli campaign, and was trivial compared to the damage done Tokyo in the fire raids, or the devastation of Hamburg and Dresden.

Those who wonder why I sometimes use historical models for stories are referred to the Santayana quotation that opens this introduction.

HIS TRUTH GOES MARCHING ON
by Jerry Pournelle

“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free…”

The song echoed through the ship, along gray corridors stained with the greasy handprints of the thousands who had traveled in her before; through the stench of the thousands aboard, and the remembered smells of previous shiploads of convicts. Those smells were etched into the steel despite strong disinfectants which had only added their acrimony to the odor of too much humanity with too little water.

The male voices carried past crew work parties, who ignored them, or made sarcastic remarks, and into a tiny stateroom no larger than the bunk bed now hoisted vertical to the bulkhead to make room for a desk and chair.

Peter Owensford looked up to blank gray and beyond it to visions within his own mind. The men weren't singing very well, but they sang from their hearts. There was a faint buzzing discord from a loose rivet vibrating to a strong base. Owensford nodded to himself. The singer was Allan Roach, one-time professional wrestler, and Peter had marked him for promotion to noncom once they reached Santiago.

The trip from Earth to Thurstone takes three months in a Bureau of Relocation transport ship, and it had been wasted time for all of them. It was obvious to Peter that the CoDominium authorities aboard the ship knew that they were volunteers for the war. Why else would ninety-seven men voluntarily ship out for Santiago? It didn't matter, though. Political Officer Stromand was afraid of a trap. Stromand was always suspecting traps, and was desperate to “maintain secrecy”; as if there were any secrets to keep.

In all the three months Peter Owensford had held only a dozen classes. He'd found an empty compartment near the garbage disposal and assembled the men there; but Stromand had caught them. There had been a scene, with Stromand insisting that Peter call him “Commissar” and the men address him as “Sir.” Instead, Peter addressed him as “Mister” and the men made it come out like “Comics-star.” Stromand had become speechless with anger; but he'd stopped the meetings.

And Peter had ninety-six men who knew nothing of war; most had never fired a weapon in their lives. They were educated men, intelligent for the most part, students, workers, idealists; but it might have been better if they'd been ninety-six freakouts with a long history of juvenile gangsterism.

He went back to his papers, jotting notes on what must be done when they reached dirtside. At least he'd have some time to train them before they got into combat.

He'd need it.

Thurstone is usually described as a hot, dry copy of Earth and Peter found no reason to dispute that. The CoDominium Island is legally part of Earth, but Thurstone is thirty parsecs away, and travelers go through customs to land. The ragged group packed away whatever military equipment they had bought privately, and dressed in the knee breeches and tunics popular with businessmen in New York. Peter found himself just behind Allan Roach in the line to debark.

Roach was laughing.

“What's the joke?” Peter asked.

Roach turned and waved expressively at the men behind him. All ninety-six were scattered through the first two hundred passengers leaving the BuRelock ship, and they were all dressed identically. “Humanity League decided to save some money,” Roach said. “What you reckon the CD makes of our comic-opera army?”

Whatever the CoDominium inspectors thought, they did nothing, hardly glancing inside the baggage, and the volunteers were hustled out of the CD building to the docks. A small Russian in baggy pants sidled up to them.

“Freedom,” he said. He had a thick accent.

“No pasaran!” Commissar Stromand answered.

“I have tickets for you,” the Russian said. “You will go on the boat.” He pointed to an excursion ship with peeling paint and faded gilt handrails.

“Man, he looks like he's lettin' go his last credit,” Allan Roach muttered to Owensford.

Peter nodded. “At that, I'd rather pay for the tickets than ride the boat. Must have been built when Thurstone was first settled.”

Roach shrugged and lifted his bags. Then, as an afterthought, he lifted Peter's as well.

“You don't have to carry my goddam baggage,” Peter protested.

“That's why I'm doing it, Lieutenant. I wouldn't carry Stromand's.” They went aboard the boat, and lined the rails, looking out at Thurstone's bright skies. The volunteers were the only passengers, and the ship left the docks to lumber across shallow seas. It was less than fifty kilometers to the mainland, and before the men really believed they were out of space and onto a planet again, they were in Free Santiago.

They marched through the streets from the docks. People cheered, but a lot of volunteers had come through those streets and they didn't cheer very loud. Owensford's men were no good at marching, and they had no weapons; so Stromand ordered them to sing war songs.

They didn't know very many songs, so they always ended up singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It said all their feelings, anyway.

The ragged group straggled to the local parish church. Someone had broken the cross and spire off the building, and turned the altar into a lecture desk. It was becoming dark when Owensford's troops were bedded down in the pews.

“Lieutenant?”

Peter looked up from the dark reverie that had overtaken him. Allan Roach and another volunteer stood in front of him. “Yes?”

“Some of the men don't like bein' in here, Lieutenant. We got church members in the outfit.”

“I see. What do you expect me to do about it?” Peter asked. “This is where we were sent.” And why didn't someone meet us instead of having a kid hand me a note down at the docks? he wondered. But it wouldn't do to upset the men.

“We could bed down outside,” Roach suggested.

“Nonsense. Superstitious garbage.” The strident, bookish voice came from behind him, but Peter didn't need to look around to know who was speaking. “Free men have no need of that kind of belief. Tell me who is disturbed.”

Allan Roach set his lips tightly together.

“I insist,” Stromand demanded. “Those men need education, and I will provide it. We cannot have superstition within our company.”

“Superstition be damned,” Peter protested. “It's dark and gloomy and uncomfortable in here, and if the men want to sleep outside, let them.”

“No,” Stromand said.

“I remind you that I am in command here,” Peter said. His voice was rising slightly and he fought to control it. He was only twenty-three standard years old, while Stromand was forty; and Peter had no experience of command. Yet he knew that this was an important issue, and the men were all listening.

“I remind you that political education is totally up to me,” Stromand said. “It is good indoctrination for the men to stay in here.”

“Crap.” Peter stood abruptly. “All right, everybody outside. Camp in the churchyard. Roach, set up a night guard around the camp.”

“Yes, sir,” Allan Roach grinned.

Commissar Stromand found his men melting away rapidly; after a few minutes he followed them outside.

They were awakened early by an officer in synthi-leather trousers and tunic. He wore no badges of rank, but it was obvious to Peter that the man was a professional soldier. Someday, Peter thought, someday I'll look like that. The thought was cheering for some reason.

“Who's in charge here?” the man demanded.

Stromand and Owensford answered simultaneously. The officer looked at both for a moment, then turned to Peter. “Name?”

“Lieutenant Peter Owensford.”

“Lieutenant. And why might you be a lieutenant?”

“I'm a graduate of West Point, sir. And your rank?”

“Captain, sonny. Captain Anselm Barton, at your service, God help you. The lot of you have been posted to the Twelfth Brigade, second battalion, of which battalion I have the misfortune to be adjutant. Any more questions?” He glared at both Peter and the commissar, but before either could answer there was a roar and the wind whipped them with red dust; a fleet of trucks rounded the corner and stopped in front of the church.

“Okay,” Barton shouted. “Into the trucks. You too, Mister Comics-Star. Lieutenant, you will ride in the cab with me…come on, come on, we haven't all day. Can't you get them to hop it, Owensford?”

No two trucks were alike. One Cadillac stood out proudly from the lesser breeds, and Barton went to it. After a moment Stromand took the unoccupied seat in the cab of the second truck, an old Fiat. Despite the early hour, the sun was already hot and bright, and it was a relief to get inside the air-conditioned compartment.

The Cadillac ran smoothly, but had to halt frequently while the drivers worked on the others of the convoy. The Fiat could only get two or three centimeters above the road. Peter noted in wonder that there were ruts in the dirt track, and remarked on them.

“Sure,” Barton said. “We've got wheeled transport. Lots of it. Animal-drawn wagons too. Tracked railroads. How much do you know about this place?”

“Not very much,” Peter admitted.

“Least you know that,” Barton said. He gunned the engine to get the Cadillac over a deeply pitted section of the road, and the convoy climped up onto a ridge. Peter could look back and see the tiny port town, with its almost empty streets, and the blowing red dust.

“See that ridge over there?” Barton asked. He pointed to a thin blue line beyond the far lip of the saucer on the other side of the ridge. The air was so clear that Peter could see for sixty kilometers or more, and he had never seen farther than twenty; it was hard to judge distances.

“Yes, sir.”

“That's it. Dons' territory beyond that line.”

“We're not going straight there, are we? The men need training.”

“You might as well be going to the lines for all the training they'll get. They teach you anything at the Point?”

“I learned something, I think.” Peter didn't know what to answer. The Point had been “humanized” and he knew he hadn't had the military instruction that graduates had once received. “What I was taught, and a lot from books.”

“We'll see.” Barton took a plastic toothpick out of one pocket and stuck it into his mouth. Later, Peter would learn that many men developed that habit. “No hay tobacco” was a common notice on stores in Santiago. The first time he saw it, Allan Roach said that if they made their tobacco out of hay he didn't want any. “Long out of the Point?” Barton asked.

“Class of '93.”

“Just out. U.S. Army didn't want you?”

“That's pretty personal,” Peter said. The toothpick danced across smiling lips. Peter stared out at the rivers of dust blowing around them. “There's a new rule, now. You have to opt for CoDominium in your junior year. I did. But they didn't have any room for me in the CD services.”

Barton grunted. “And the U.S. Army doesn't want any commie-coddling officers who'd take the CD over their own country.”

“That's about it.”

“Hadn't thought it was that bad yet. Sounds like things are coming apart back home.”

Peter nodded to himself. “I think the U.S. will pull out of the CoDominium pretty soon.”

The toothpick stopped its movement while Barton thought about that. “So meanwhile they're doing their best to gut the Fleet, eh? What do the damned fools think will happen to the colonies when there's no CD forces to keep order?”

Peter shrugged. They drove on in silence, with Barton humming something under his breath, a tune that Peter thought he would recognize if only Barton would make it loud enough to hear. Then he caught a murmured refrain. “Let's hope he brings our godson up, to don the Armay blue...”

Barton looked around at his passenger and grinned. “How many lights in Cullem Hall, Mister Dumbjohn?”

“Three hundred and forty lights, sir,” Peter answered automatically. He looked for the ring, but Barton wore none. “What was your class, sir?”

“Seventy-two. Okay, the U.S. didn't want you, and the CD's disbanding regiments. There's other outfits. Falkenberg is recruiting.”

“I'm not a mercenary for hire.” Peter's voice was stiffly formal.

“Oh, Lord. So you're here to help the downtrodden masses throw off the yoke of oppression. I might have known.”

“But of course I'm here to fight slavery!” Peter protested. “Everyone knows about Santiago.”

“Everybody knows about other places, too.” The toothpick danced again. “Okay, you're a liberator of suffering humanity if that makes you feel better. God knows, anything makes a man feel better out here is okay. But to help me feel better, remember that you're a professional officer.”

“I won't forget.” They drove over another ridge. The valley beyond was no different from the one behind them, and there was another ridge at its end.

“What do you think those people out there want?” Barton said. He waved expressively.

“Freedom.”

“Maybe to be left alone. Maybe they'd be happy if the lot of us went away.”

“They'd be slaves. Somebody's got to help them—” Peter caught himself. There was no point to this, and he thought Barton was laughing at him.

Instead, the older man wore a curious expression. He kept the sardonic grin, but it was softened almost into a smile. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Pete. Most of us read those books about knighthood and all that. We wouldn't be in the services if we didn't have that streak in us. Just remember this, if you don't get over most of that, you won't last.”

“Without something like that, I wouldn't want to last.”

“Just don't let it break your heart when you find out different.”

What is he talking about? Peter wondered. “If you feel that way about everything, why are you here? Why aren't you in one of the mercenary outfits?”

“Commissars ask that kind of question,” Barton said. He gunned the motor viciously and the Cadillac screamed in protest.

It was late afternoon when they got to Tarazona. The town was an architectural melange, as if a dozen amateurs had designed it. The church, now a hospital; was Elizabeth HI modern, the post office was American Gothic, and most of the houses were white stucco. The volunteers were unloaded at a plastisteel barracks that looked like a bad copy of the quad at West Point. It had sally ports, phony portcullis and all, and there were plastic medieval shields pressed into the cornices.

Inside there was trash in the corridors and blood on the floors. Peter set the men to cleaning up.

“About that blood,” Captain Barton said. “Your men seem interested.”

“First blood some of 'em have seen,” Peter told him. Barton was still watching him closely. “All right. For me too.”

Barton nodded. “Two stories about that blood. The Dons had a garrison here, made a stand when the Revolutionaries took the town. Some say the Dons slaughtered their prisoners here. Others say when the Republic took the barracks, our troops slaughtered the garrison.”

Peter looked across the dusty courtyard and beyond the hills where the fighting was. It seemed a long way off. There was no sound, and the afternoon sun seemed unbearably hot. “Which do you think is true?”

“Both.” Barton turned away toward the town. Then he stopped for a moment. “I'll be in the bistro after dinner. Join me if you get a chance.” He walked on, his feet kicking up little clods of dust that blew across the road.

Peter stood a long time in the courtyard, staring across fields stretching fifty kilometers to the hills. The soil was red, and a hot wind blew dust into every crevice and hollow. The country seemed far too barren to be a focal point of the struggle for freedom in the known galaxy.

Thurstone was colonized early in the CoDominium period but it was too poor to attract wealthy corporations. The third Thurstone expedition was financed by the Carlist branch of the Spanish monarchy, and eventually Carlos XII brought a group of supporters to found Santiago. They were all of them malcontents.

This was hardly unusual. Space is colonized with malcontents or convicts; no one else wants to leave Earth. The Santiago colonists were protesting the Bourbon restoration in Spain, or John XXVI's reunification of Christendom, or the cruel fates, or, perhaps, unhappy love affairs. They got the smallest and poorest of Thurstone's three continents, but they did well with what little they received.

For thirty years Santiago received no one who was not a voluntary immigrant from Spanish Catholic cultures. The Carlists were careful of those they let in, and there was plenty of good land for everyone. The Kingdom of St. James had little modern technology, and no one was very rich, but there were few who were very poor either.

Eventually the Population Control Commission designated Thurstone as a recipient planet, and the Bureau of Relocation began moving people there. All three governments on Thurstone protested, but unlike Xanadu or Danube, Thurstone had never developed a navy; a single frigate from the CoDominium Fleet convinced them they had no choice.

Two million involuntary colonists came in BuRelock ships to Thurstone. Convicts, welfare frauds, criminals, revolutionaries, rioters, street gangsters, men who'd offended a BuRelock clerk, men with the wrong color eyes, and some who were just plain unlucky; all of them bundled into unsanitary transport ships and hustled away from Earth. The other nations on Thurstone had friends in BuRelock and money to pay for favors; Santiago got the bulk of the new immigrants.

The Carlists tried. They provided transportation to unclaimed lands for all who wanted it and most who did not. The original Santiago settlers had fled from industry and had built very little; and now, suddenly, they were swamped with citydwellers of a different culture who had no thought of the land and less love for it. Suddenly, they had large cities.

In less than a decade the capital grew from a sleepy town to a sprawling heap of tenement shacks. The Carlists abolished part of the city; the shacks appeared on the other side of town. New cities grew from small towns. There was a desperate need for industry.

When the industries were built, the original settlers revolted. They had fled from industrialized life, and wanted no more of it. A king was deposed and an infant prince placed on his father's throne. The Cortez took government into its own hands. They enslaved everyone who did not pay his own way.

It was not called slavery, but “indebtedness for welfare service”; but debts were inheritable and transferable. Debts could be bought and sold on speculation, and everyone had to work off his debts.

In a generation half the population was in debt. In another the slaves outnumbered the free men. Finally the slaves revolted, and Santiago became a cause overnight: at least to those who'd ever heard of the place.

In the CoDominium Grand Senate, the U.S., listening to the other governments on Thurstone and the corporations who brought agricultural products from Santiago, supported the Carlists, but not strongly. The Soviet senators supported the Republic, but not strongly. The CD Navy was ordered to quarantine the war area.

The fleet had few ships for such a task. The Navy grounded all military aircraft in Santiago, and prohibited importation of any kind of heavy weapon. Otherwise they left the place alone to undergo years of indecisive warfare.

It was never difficult for the Humanity League to send volunteers to Santiago as long as they brought no weapons. As the men were not experienced in war, the League also sought trained officers to send with them.

They rejected mercenaries, of course. Volunteers must have the proper spirit to fight for freedom in Santiago.

Peter Owensford sat in the pleasant cool of the evening at a scarred table that might have been oak, but wasn't. Captain Anselm “Ace” Barton sat across from him, and a pitcher of dark red wine stood on the table.

“I thought they'd put me in the technical corps,” Peter said.

“Speak Mandarin?” When Peter looked up in surprise, Barton continued, “Republic hired Xanadu techs. They don't have much equipment, what with the quarantine. Plenty of techs for what they do have.”

“I see. So I'm infantry?”

Barton shrugged. “You fight, Pete. Just like me. They'll give you a company. The ones you brought, and maybe another hundred recruits. All yours. I guess you'll get that Stromand for political officer, too.”

Peter grimaced. “What use is that?”

Barton looked around in an exaggerated manner. “Careful,” he said. He wore a grin but his voice was serious. “Political officers are a lot more popular with the high command than we are. Don't forget that.”

“From what I've seen the high command isn't very competent....”

“Jesus,” Barton said. “Look, Pete, they can have you shot for talking like that. This isn't any mercenary outfit with its own codes, you know. This is a patriotic war, and you'd better not forget it.”

Peter stared at the packed clay floor of the patio, his lips set in a tight, thin line. He'd sat in this bistro, at this table, every night for a week now, and he was beginning to understand Barton's cynicism; but why was the man here at all? “There's not enough body armor for my men. The ones I've got. You say they'll give me more?”

“New group coming in tomorrow. No officer with them. Sure, they'll put 'em with you. Where else? Troops have to be trained.”

“Trained!” Peter snorted in disgust. “We have enough Nemourlon to make armor for about half the troops, only I'm the only one in the company who knows how to do it. We've got no weapons, no optics, no communications—”

“Yeah, things are tough all over.” Barton poured another glass of wine. “What'd you expect in a nonindustrial society quarantined by the CD?”

Peter slumped back into the hard wooden chair. “Yeah, I know. But—I can't even train them with what I have. Whenever I get the men assembled, Stromand interrupts to make speeches.”

Barton smiled. “Colonel Cermak, our esteemed International Brigade Commander, thinks the American troops have poor morale. Obviously, the way to deal with that is to make speeches.”

“They've got poor morale because they don't know how to fight.”

“Another of Cermak's solutions to poor morale is to shoot people for defeatism,” Barton said softly. “I've warned you, kid. I won't again.”

“The only damn thing my men have learned in the last week is how to sing and which red-light houses are safe.”

“More'n some do. Have another drink.”

Peter nodded in dejection. “That's not bad wine.”

“Right. Pretty good, but not good enough to export,” Barton said. “Whole goddam country's that way, you know. Pretty good, but not quite good enough.”

The next day they gave Peter Owensford 107 new men fresh from the U.S. and Earth. There was talk of adding another political officer to the company, but there wasn't one Cermak trusted.

Each night Ace Barton sat at the table in the bistro, but he didn't see Owensford all week. Then, as he was having his third glass of wine, Peter came in and sat across from him. The proprietor brought a glass, and Barton poured from the pitcher. “You look like you need that. Thought you were ordered to stay on, nights, to train the troops.”

Peter drank. “Same story, Ace. Speeches. More speeches. I walked out. It was obvious I wasn't going to have anything to do.”

“Risky,” Barton said. They sat in silence as the older man seemed to decide something. “Ever think you're not needed, Pete?”

“They act that way, but I'm still the only man with any military training at all in the company....”

“So what? The Republic doesn't need your troops. Not the way you think, anyway. Main purpose of the volunteers is to see the right party stays in control here.”

Peter sat stiffly silent. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't react quickly to anything Barton said. There was no one else Peter felt comfortable with, despite the cynicism that Peter detested. “I can't believe that,” he said finally. “The volunteers come from everywhere. They're not fighting to help any political party, they're here to set people free.”

Barton said nothing. A red toothpick danced across his face, twirling up and about, and a sly grin broke across the square features.

“See, you don't even believe it yourself,” Peter said.

“Could be. Pete, you ever think how much money they raise back in the States? Money from people who feel guilty about not volunteerin' ?”

“No. There's no money here. You've seen that.”

“There's money, but it goes to the techs,” Barton said. “That, at least, makes sense. Xanadu isn't sending their sharp boys for nothing, and without them, what's the use of mudcrawlers like us?”

Peter leaned back in his chair. It made sense. “Then we've got pretty good technical support...”

“About as good as the Dons have. Which means neither side has a goddam thing. Either group gets a real edge that way, the war's over, right? But for the moment nobody's got a way past the CD quarantine, so the best way the Dons and the Republicans have to kill each other is with rifles and knives and grenades. Not very damn many of the latter, either.”

“We don't even have the rifles.”

“You'll get those. Meantime, relax. You've told Brigade your men aren't ready to fight. You've asked for weapons and more Nemourlon. You've complained about Stromand. You've done it all, now shut up before you get yourself shot as a defeatist. That's an order, Pete.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You'll get your war soon enough.”

The trucks came back to Tarazona a week later. They carried coffin-shaped boxes full of rifles and bayonets from New Aberdeen, Thurstone's largest city. The rifles were covered with grease, and there wasn't any solvent to clean them with. Most were copies of Remington 2045 model automatic, but there were some Krupps and Skodas. Most of the men didn't know which ammunition fit their rifles.

“Not bad gear,” Barton remarked. He turned one of the rifles over and over in his hands. “We've had worse.”

“But I don't have much training in rifle tactics,” Peter said.

Barton shrugged. “No power supplies, no maintenance ships, no base to support anything more complicated than chemical slug-throwers, Peter. Forget the rest of the crap you learned and remember that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Whistles blew, and someone shouted from the trucks. “Get your gear and get aboard!”

“But—” Owensford turned helplessly to Barton. “Get aboard for where?”

Barton shrugged. “I'd better get back to my area. Maybe they're moving the whole battalion up while we've got the trucks.”

They were. The men who had armor put it on, and everyone dressed in combat synthileather. Most had helmets, ugly hemispheric models with a stiff spine over the most vulnerable areas. A few men had lost theirs, and they boarded the trucks without them.

The convoy rolled across the plains and into a greener farm area; then it got dark, and the night air chilled fast under clear, cloudless skies. The drivers pushed on, too fast without lights, and Peter sat in the back of the lead truck, his knees clamped tightly together, his teeth unconsciously beating out a rhythm he'd learned years before. No one talked.

At dawn they were in another valley. Trampled crops lay all around them, drying dead plants with green stalks.

“Good land,” Private Lunster said. He lifted a clod and crumbled it between his fingers. “Very good land.”

Somehow that made Peter feel better. He formed the men into ranks and made sure each knew how to load his weapon. Then he had each fire at a crumbling adobe wall, choosing a large target so that they wouldn't fail to hit it. More trucks pulled in and unloaded heavy generators and antitank lasers. When Owensford's men tried to get close to the heavy weapons the gunners shouted them away. It seemed to Peter that the gunners were familiar with the gear, and that was encouraging.

Everyone spoke softly, and when anyone raised his voice it was like a shout. Stromand tried to get the men to sing, but they wouldn't.

“Not long now, eh?” Sergeant Roach asked.

“I expect you're right,” Peter told him, but he didn't know, and went oft to find the commissary truck. He wanted to be sure the men got a good meal that evening.

They moved them up during the night. A guide came to Peter and whispered to follow him, and they moved out across the unfamiliar land. Somewhere out there were the Dons with their army of peasant conscripts and mercenaries and family retainers. When they had gone fifty meters, they passed an old tree and someone whispered to them.

“Everything will be fine,” Stromand's voice said from the shadows under the tree. “All of the enemy are politically immature. Their vacqueros will run away, and their peasant conscripts will throw away their weapons. They have no reason to be loyal.”

“Why the hell has the war gone on three years?” someone whispered behind Peter.

He waited until they were long past the tree. “Roach, that wasn't smart. Stromand will have you shot for defeatism.”

“He'll play hell doing it, Lieutenant. You, man, pick up your feet. Want to fall down that gully?”

“Quiet,” the guide whispered urgently. They went on through the dark night, down a slope, then up another, past men dug into the hillside. They didn't speak to them.

Peter found himself walking along the remains of a railroad, with the ties partly gone and all the rails removed. Eventually the guide halted. “Dig in here,” he whispered. “Long live freedom.”

“No pasarán!” Stromand answered loudly.

“Please be quiet,” the guide urged. “We are within earshot of the enemy.”

“Ah,” Stromand answered. The guide turned away and the political officer began to follow him.

“Where are you going?” Corporal Grant asked in a loud whisper.

“To report to Major Harris,” Stromand answered.

“The battalion commander ought to know where we are.”

“So should we,” a voice said.

“Who was that?” Stromand demanded. The only answer with a juicy raspberry.

“That bastard's got no right,” a voice said close to Peter.

“Who's there?”

“Rotwasser, sir.” Rotwasser was company runner. The job gave him the nominal rank of monitor but he had no maniple to command. Instead he carried complaints from the men to Owensford.

“I can spare the PO better than anyone else,” Peter whispered. “I'll need you here, not back at battalion. Now start digging us in.”

It was cold on the hillside, but digging kept the men warm enough. Dawn came slowly at first, a gradually brightening light without warmth. Peter took out his light-amplifying binoculars and cautiously looked out ahead. The binoculars were a present from his mother and the only good optical equipment in the company.

The countryside was cut into small, steep-sided ridges and valley. Allan Roach lay beside Owensford and when it became light enough to see, the sergeant whistled softly. “We take that ridge in front of us, there's another just like it after that. And another. Nobody's goin' to win this war that way....”

Owensford nodded silently. There were trees in the valley below, oranges and dates imported from Earth mixed in with native fruit trees as if a giant had spilled seeds across the ground. A whitewashed adobe peasant house stood gutted by fire, the roof gone.

Zing! Something that might have been a hornet but wasn't buzzed angrily over Peter's head. There was a flat crack from across the valley, then more of the angry buzzes. Dust puffs sprouted from the earthworks they'd thrown up during the night.

“Down!” Peter ordered.

“What are they trying to do, kill us?” Allan Roach shouted. There was a chorus of laughs. “Sir, why didn't they use IR on us in the dark? We should have stood out in this cold—”

Peter shrugged. “Maybe they don't have any. We don't.”

The men who'd skimped on their holes dug in deeper, throwing the dirt out onto the ramparts in front of them, laughing as they did. It was very poor technique, and Peter worried about artillery, but nothing happened. The enemy was about four hundred meters away, across the valley and stretched out along a ridge identical to the one Peter held. No infantry that ever lived could have taken a position by charging across that valley. Both sides were safe until something heavier was brought up.

One large-caliber gun was trained on their position. It fired on anything that moved. There was also a laser, with several mirrors that could be moved about between flashes. The laser itself was safe, and the mirrors probably were also because the monarchists never fired twice from the same position.

The men shot at the guns and at where they thought the mirror was anyway until Peter made them quit wasting ammunition. It wasn't good for morale to lie there and not fight back, though.

“I bet I can locate that goddam gun,” Corporal Bassinger told Peter. “I got the best eyesight in the company.”

Peter mentally called up Bassinger's records. Two ex-wives and an acknowledged child by each. Volunteered after being an insurance man in Brooklyn for years. “You can't spot that thing.”

“Sure I can, Lieutenant. Loan me your glasses, I'll spot it sure.”

“All right. Be careful, they're shooting at anything they can see.”

“I'm careful.”

“Let me see, man!” somebody shouted. Three men clustered in the trench around Bassinger. “Let us look!” “Don't be a hog, we want to see too.” “Comrade, let us look—”

“Get away from here,” Bassinger shouted. “You heard the lieutenant, it's dangerous to look over the ramparts.”

“What about you?”

“I'm an observer. Besides, I'm careful.” He crawled into position and looked out through a little slot he'd cut away in the dirt in front of him. “See, it's safe enough. I think I see—”

Bassinger was thrown back into the trench. The shattered glasses fell on top of him, and he had already ceased breathing when they heard the shot that hit him in the eye.

By the next morning two men had toes shot off and had to be evacuated.

They lay on the hill for a week. Each night they lost a few more men to minor casualties that could not possibly have been inflicted by the enemy; then Stromand had two men with foot injuries shot by a squad of military police he brought up from staff headquarters.

The injuries ceased, and the men lay sullenly in the trenches until the company was relieved.

They had two days in a small town near the front, then the officers were called to a meeting. The briefing officer had a thick accent, but it was German, not Spanish. The briefing was for the Americans and it was held in English.

“Ve vill have a full assault, vith all International volunteers to move out at once. Ve vill use infiltration tactics.”

“What does that mean?” Captain Barton demanded.

The staff officer looked pained. “Ven you break through their lines, go straight to their technical areas and disrupt them. Ven that is done, the var is over.”

“Where are their technical corpsmen?”

“You vill be told after you have broken through their lines.”

The rest of the briefing made no more sense to Peter. He walked out with Barton after they were dismissed. “Looked at your section of the line?” Barton asked.

“As much as I can,” Peter answered. “Do you have a decent map?”

“No. Old CD orbital photographs, and some sketches. No better than what you have.”

“What I did see looks bad,” Peter said. “There's an olive grove, then a hollow I can't see into. Is there cover in there?”

“You better patrol and find out.”

“You will ask the battalion commander for permission to conduct patrols,” a stern voice said from behind them.

“You better watch that habit of walking up on people, Stromand,” Barton said. “One of these days somebody's not going to realize it's you.” He gave Peter a pained looked. “Better ask.”

Major Harris told Peter that Brigade had forbidden patrols. They might alert the enemy of the coming attack and surprise was needed.

As he walked back to his company area, Peter reflected that Harris had been an attorney for the Liberation Party before he volunteered to go to Santiago. They were to move out the next morning.

The night was long. The men were very quiet, polishing weapons and talking in whispers, drawing meaningless diagrams in the mud of the dugouts. About halfway through the night forty new volunteers joined the company. They had no equipment beyond rifles, and they had left the port city only two days before. Most came from Churchill, but because they spoke English and the trucks were coming to this section, they had been sent along.

Major Harris called the officers together at dawn. “The Xanadu techs have managed to assemble some rockets,” he told them. “They'll drop them on the Dons before we move out. Owensford, you will move out last. You will shoot any man who hasn't gone before you do.”

“That's my job,” Stromand protested.

“You will be needed to lead the men,” Harris said. “The bombardment will come at 0815 hours. Do you all have proper timepieces?”

“No, sir,” Peter said. “I've only got a watch that counts Earth time.”

“Hell,” Harris muttered. “Okay, Thurstone's hours are 1.08 Earth hours long. You'll have to work it out from that….” He looked confused.

“No problem,” Peter assured him.

“Oh, good. Back to your areas, then.”

Zero hour went past with no signals. Another hour passed. Then a Republican brigade to the north began firing, and a few moved out of their dugouts and across the valley floor.

A ripple of fire and flashing mirrors colored the ridge beyond as the enemy began firing. The Republican troops were cut down, and the few not hit scurried back into their shelters.

“Fire support!” Harris shouted. Owensford's squawk box made unintelligible sounds, effectively jammed as were all electronics Peter had seen on Santiago, but he heard the order passed down the line. His company fired at the enemy, and the monarchists returned it.

Within minutes it was clear that the enemy had total dominance in the area. A few large rockets rose from somewhere behind the enemy lines and crashed randomly into the Republican positions. There were more flashes across the sky as the Xanadu technicians backtracked the enemy rockets and returned counterfire. Eventually the shooting stopped for lack of targets.

It was 1100 by Peter's watch when a series of explosions lit the lip of the monarchist ramparts. Another wave of rockets fell among the enemy, and the Republicans to the north began to charge forward.

“Ready to move out!” Peter shouted. He waited for orders.

There was nearly a minute of silence. No more rockets fell on the enemy. Then the ridge opposite rippled with fire again, and the Republicans began to go down or scramble back to their positions.

The alert tone sounded on Peter's squawk box and he lifted it to his ear. Amazingly, he could hear intelligible speech. Someone at headquarters was speaking to Major Harris.

“The Republicans have already advanced half a kilometer. They are being slaughtered because you have not moved your precious Americans in support.”

“Bullshit!” Harris's voice had no tones in the tiny speaker. “The Republicans are already back in their dugouts. The attack has failed.”

“It has not failed. You must show what high morale can do. Your men are all volunteers. Many Republicans are conscripts. Set an example for them.”

“But I tell you the attack has failed.”

“Major Harris, if your men have not moved out in five minutes I will send the military police to arrest you as a traitor.”

The box went back to random squeals and growls; then the whistles blew and orders were passed down the line. “Move out.”

Peter went from dugout to dugout. “Up and at them. Jarvis, if you don't get out of there I'll shoot you. You three, get going.” He saw that Allan Roach was doing the same thing.

When they reached the end of the line. Roach grinned at Peter. “We're all that's left, now what?”

“Now we move out too.” They crawled forward, past the lip of the hollow that had sheltered them. Ten meters beyond that they saw Major Harris lying very still.

“Captain Barton's in command of the battalion,” Peter said.

“Wonder if he knows it? I'll take the left side, sir, and keep 'em going, shall I?”

“Yes.” Now he was more alone than ever. He went on through the olive groves, finding men and keeping them moving ahead of him. There was very little fire from the enemy. They advanced fifty meters, a hundred, and reached the slope down into the hollow beyond. It was an old vineyard, and the stumps of the vines reached out of the ground like old women's hands.

They were well into the hollow when the Dons fired.

Four of the newcomers from Churchill were just ahead of Owensford. When the volley lashed their hollow they hit the dirt in perfect formation. Peter crawled forward to compliment them on how well they'd learned the training-book exercises. All four were dead.

He was thirty meters into the hollow. In front of him was a network of red stripes weaving through the air a meter above the ground. He'd seen it at the Point, an interlocking network of crossfire guided by laser beams. Theoretically the Xanadu technicians should be able to locate the mirrors, or even the power plants, but the network hung there, unmoving.

Some of the men didn't know what it was and charged into it. After a while there was a little wall of dead men and boys at its edge. No one could advance, and snipers began to pick off any of the still figures that tried to move. Peter lay there, wondering if any of the other companies were making progress. His men lay behind bodies for the tiny shelter a dead comrade might give. One by one his troops died as they lay there in the open, in the bright sunshine of a dying vineyard.

In late afternoon it began to rain, first a few drops, then harder, finally a storm that cut off all visibility. The men could crawl back to their dugouts and they did. There were no orders for a retreat.

Peter found small groups of men and sent them out for wounded. It was hard to get men to go back into the hollow, even in the driving rainstorm, and he had to go with them or they would melt away to vanish in the mud and gloom. Eventually there were no more wounded to find.

The scene in the trenches was a shambled hell of bloody mud. Men fell into the dugouts and lay where they fell, too tired and scared to move. Some were wounded and died there in the mud, and others fell on top of them, trampling the bodies down and out of sight because no one had energy to move them. Peter was the only officer in the battalion until late afternoon. The company was his now and the men were calling him “Captain.”

Then Stromand came into the trenches carrying a bundle.

Incredibly, Allan Roach was unwounded. The huge wrestler stood in Stromand's path. “What is that?” he demanded.

“Leaflets. To boost morale,” Stromand said nervously.

Roach stood immobile. “While we were out there you were off printing leaflets?”

“I had orders,” Stromand said. He backed nervously away from the big sergeant. His hand rested on a pistol butt.

“Roach,” Peter said calmly. “Help me with the wounded, please.”

Roach stood in indecision. Finally he turned to Peter. “Yes, sir.”

At dawn Peter had eighty effectives to hold the lines. The Dons could have walked through during the night if they'd tried, but they were strangely quiet. Peter went from dugout to dugout, trying to get a count of his men. Two hundred wounded sent to rear areas. He could count a hundred thirteen dead. That left ninety-four vanished. Died, deserted, ground into the mud; he didn't know.

There hadn't been any general attack. The International volunteer commander had thought that even though the general attack was called off, this would be a splendid opportunity to show what morale could do. It had done that, all right.

The Republican command was frantic. The war was stalemated; which meant the superior forces of the Dons were slowly grinding them down. The war for freedom would soon be lost.

In desperation they sent a large group to the south where the front was stable. The last attack had been planned to the last detail; this one was to depend entirely, on surprise. Peter's remnants were reinforced with pieces of other outfits and fresh volunteers, and sent against the enemy. They were on their own.

The objective was an agricultural center called Zaragoza, a small town amid olive groves and vineyards. Peter's column moved through the groves to the edge of town. Surprise was complete.

The battle did not last long. A flurry of firing, quick advances, and the enemy retreated, leaving Peter's company with a clear victory. From the little communications he could arrange, his group had advanced further than any other. They were the spearhead of freedom in the south.

They marched in to cheering crowds. His army looked like scarecrows, but women held their children up to see their liberators. It made it all worthwhile: the stupidity of the generals, the heat and mud and cold and dirt and lice, all of it forgotten in triumph.

More troops came in behind them, but Peter's company camped at the edge of their town, their place of freedom. The next day the army would advance again; if the war could be made fluid, fought in quick battles of fast-moving men, it might yet be won. Certainly, Peter thought, certainly the people of Santiago were waiting for them. They'd have support from the population. How long could the Dons hold?

Just before dark they heard shots in the town.

He brought his duty squad on the run, dashing through the dusty streets, past the pockmarked adobe walls to the town square. The military police were there.

“Never saw such pretty soldiers,” Allan Roach said.

Peter nodded.

“Captain, where do you think they got those shiny boots? And the new rifles? Seems we never have good equipment for the troops, but the police always have more than enough....”

A small group of bodies lay like broken dolls at the foot of the churchyard wall. The priest, the mayor, and three young men. “Monarchists. Carlists,” someone whispered. Some of the townspeople spat on the bodies.

An old man was crouched beside one of the dead. He held the youthful head cradled in his hands and blood poured through his fingers. He looked at Peter with dull eyes. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Are there not richer worlds for you to conquer?”

Peter turned away without answering. He could think of nothing to say.

“Captain!”

Peter woke to Allan Roach's urgent whisper.

“Cap'n, there's something moving down by the stream. Not the Dons. Mister Stromand's with 'em, above five men. Officers, I think, from headquarters.”

Peter sat upright. He hadn't seen Stromand since the disastrous attack three hundred kilometers to the north. The man wouldn't have lasted five minutes in combat among his former comrades. “Anyone else know?”

“Albers, nobody else. He called me.”

“Let's go find out what they want. Quietly, Allan.” As they walked silently in the hot night, Peter frowned to himself. What were staff officers doing in his company area, near the vanguard of the advancing Republican forces? And why hadn't they called him?

They followed the small group down the nearly dry creekbed to the town wall. When their quarry halted, they stole closer until they could hear.

“About here,” Stromand's bookish voice said. “This will be perfect.”

“How long do we have?” Peter recognized the German accent of the staff officer who'd briefed them. The next voice was even more of a shock.

“Two hours. Enough time, but we must go quickly.” It was Cermak, second in command of the volunteer forces. “It is set?”

“Yes.”

“Hold it.” Peter stepped out from the shadows, his rifle held to cover the small group. Allan Roach moved quickly away from him so that he also threatened them. “Identify yourselves.”

“You know who we are, Owensford,” Stromand snapped.

“Yes. What are you doing here?”

“That is none of your business, Captain,” Cermak answered. “I order you to return to your company area and say nothing about seeing us.”

“In a minute. Major, if you continue moving your hand toward your pistol, Sergeant Roach will cut you in half. Allan, I'm going to have a look at what they were carrying. Cover me.”

“Right.”

“You can't!” The German staff officer moved toward Peter.

Owensford reacted automatically, the rifle swinging upward in an uppercut that caught the German under the chin. The man fell with a strangled cry and lay still in the dirt. Everyone stood frozen; it was obvious that Cermak and Stromand were more worried about being heard than Peter was.

“Interesting,” Peter said. He squatted over the device they'd set by the wall. “A bomb of some kind, from the timers—Jesus!”

“What is it, Cap'n?”

“A fission bomb,” Peter said slowly. “They were going to leave a fission bomb here. To detonate in two hours, did you say?” he asked conversationally. His thoughts whirled, but he could find no explanation; and he was very surprised at how calm he was acting. “Why?”

No one answered.

“Why blow up the only advancing force in the Republican army?” Peter asked wonderingly. “They can't be traitors. The Dons wouldn't have these on a platter—but—Stromand, is there a new CD warship in orbit here? New fleet forces to stop this war?”

More silence.

“What does it mean?” Allan Roach asked. His rifle was steady, and there was an edge to his voice. “Why use an atom bomb on their own men?”

“The ban,” Peter said. “One thing the CD does enforce. No nukes.” He was hardly aware that he spoke aloud. “The CD inspectors will see the spearhead of the Republican army destroyed by nukes, and think the Dons did it. They're the only ones who could benefit from it. So the CD cleans up on the Carlists, and these bastards end up in charge when the fleet pulls out. That's it, isn't it? Cermark? Stromand?”

“Of course,” Stromand said. “You fool, come with us, then. Leave the weapons in place. We're sorry we didn't think we could trust you with the plan, but it was just too important... it means winning the war.”

“At what price?”

“A low price. A few battalions of soldiers and one village. Far more are killed every week. A comparatively bloodless victory.”

Allan Roach spat viciously. “If that's freedom, I don't want any. You ask any of them?” He waved toward the village.

Peter remembered the cheering crowds. He stooped down to the weapon and examined it closely. “Any secret to disarming this? If there is, you're standing as close to it as I am.”

“Wait,” Stromand shouted. “Don't touch it, leave it, come with us. You'll be promoted, you'll be a hero of the movement—”

“Disarm it or I'll have a try,” Peter said. He retrieved his rifle and waited.

After a moment Stromand bent down to the bomb. It was no larger than a small suitcase. He took a key from his pocket and inserted it, then turned dials. “It is safe now.”

“I'll have another look,” Peter said. He bent over the weapon. Yes, a large iron bar had been moved through the center of the device, and the fissionables couldn't come together. As he examined it there was a flurry of activity.

“Hold it!” Roach commanded. He raised his rifle; but Political Officer Stromand had already vanished into the darkness. “I'll go after him, Cap'n.” They could hear thrashing among the olive trees nearby.

“No. You'd never catch him. Not without making a big stir. And if this story gets out, the whole Republican cause is finished.”

“You are growing more intelligent,” Cermak said. “Why not let us carry out our plan now?”

“I'll be damned,” Peter said. “Get out of here, Cermak. Take your staff carrion with you. And if you send the military police after me or Sergeant Roach, just be damned sure this story—and the bomb—will get to the CD inspectors. Don't think I can't arrange it.”

Cermak shook his head. “You are making a mistake—”

“The mistake is lettin' you go,” Roach said. “Why don't I shoot him? Or cut his throat?”

“There'd be no point in it,” Peter said. “If Cermak doesn't stop him, Stromand will be back with the MP's. No, let them go.”

They advanced thirty kilometers in the next three days, crossing the valley with its dry river of sand at the bottom, moving swiftly into the low brush on the other side, up to the top of the ridge: and they were halted. Artillery and rockets exploded all around them. There was no one to fight, only unseen enemies on the next ridge, and the fire poured into their positions for three days.

The enemy fire was holding them, while the glare and heat of Thurstone's sun punished them. Men became snowblind, and wherever they looked there was only one color, fiery yellow. When grass and trees caught fire they could hardly notice the difference.

When the water was gone they retreated. There was nothing else to do. Back across the valley, past the positions they'd won, halting to let other units get past while they held the road; and on the seventh day after they left it, they were back on the road where they'd jumped off into the valley.

There was no organization. Peter was the only officer among 172 men of a battalion that had neither command nor staff; just 172 men too tired to care.

“We've the night, anyway,” Roach said. He sat next to Peter and took out a cigarette. “Last tobacco in the battalion, Cap'n. Share?”

“No, thanks. Keep it all.”

“One night to rest,” Roach said again. “Seems like forever, a whole night without anybody shooting at us.”

Fifteen minutes later Peter's radio squawked. He listened, hearing the commands over static and jamming. “Call the men together,” Peter ordered when he'd heard it out.

“It's this way,” he told them. “We still hold Zaragoza.

There's a narrow corridor into the town, and unless somebody gets down there to hold it open, we'll lose the village. If that goes, the whole position in the valley's lost.”

“Cap'n, you can't ask it!” The men were incredulous. “Go back down into there? You can't make us do that!”

“No. I can't make you. But remember Zaragoza? Remember how the people cheered us when we marched in? It's our town. Nobody else set those people free. We did. And there's nobody else who can go help keep them free, either. No other reinforcements. Will we let them down?”

“We can't,” Allan Roach said. “It needs doing. I'll come with you, Cap'n.”

One by one the others got to their feet. The ragged column marched down the side of the ridge, out of the cool heights where their water was assured, down into the valley of the river of sand.

They were half a kilometer from the town at dawn. Troops were streaming down the road toward them, others running through the olive groves on both sides.

“Tanks!” someone shouted. “Tanks are coming!”

It was too late. The enemy armor had passed around Zaragoza and was closing on them fast. Other troops followed behind. Peter felt a bitter taste and prepared to dig into the olive groves. It would be their last battle.

An hour later they were surrounded. Two hours passed as they fought to hold the useless olive groves. The tanks had long since passed their position and gone but the enemy was still all around them. The shooting stopped, and silence lay through the grove.

Peter crawled across the perimeter of his command: a hundred meters, no more. He had fewer than fifty men.

Allan Roach lay in a shallow hole at one edge. Ripe olives shaken from the trees fell into it with him, partially covering him, and when Peter came close, the sergeant laughed. “Makes you feel like a salad,” he said, brushing away more olives. “What do we do, Cap'n? Why you think they quit shooting?”

“Wait and see.”

It didn't take long. “Will you surrender?” a voice called.

“To whom?” Peter demanded.

“Captain Hans Ort, Second Friedland Armored Infantry.”

“Mercenaries,” Peter hissed. “How did they get here? The CD was supposed to have a quarantine....”

“Your position is hopeless, and you are not helping your comrades by holding it,” the voice shouted.

“We're keeping you from entering the town!” Peter answered.

“For a while. We can go in any time, from the other side. Will you surrender?”

Peter looked helplessly at Roach. He could hear the silence among the men. They didn'tsay anything, and Peter was proud of them. But, he thought, I don't have any choice. “Yes,” he shouted.

The Friedlanders wore dark green uniforms, and looked very military compared to Peter's scarecrows. “Mercenaries?” Captain Ort asked.

Peter opened his mouth to answer defiance. A voice interrupted him. “Of course they're mercenaries.” Ace Barton limped up to them.

Ort looked at them suspiciously. “Very well. You wish to speak with them, Captain Barton?”

“Sure. I'll get some of 'em out of your hair,” Barton said. He waited until the Friedlander was gone. “Pete, you almost blew it. If you'd said you were volunteers, Ort would have turned you over to the Dons. This way, he keeps you. And believe me, you'd rather be with him.”

“What are you doing here?” Peter demanded.

“Captured up north,” Barton said. “By these guys. There's a recruiter for Falkenberg's outfit back in the rear area. I signed up, and they've got me out hunting good men for Falkenberg. You want to join, you can. We get off this planet next week; and of course you won't fight here.”

“I told you, I'm not a mercenary—”

“What are you?” Barton asked. “Nothing you can go back to. Best you can look forward to is being interned. Here, come on to town. You don't have to make up your mind just yet.” They walked through the olive groves toward the Zaragoza town wall. “You opted for CD service,” Barton said.

“Yes. Not to be one of Falkenberg's—”

“You think everything's going to be peaceful out here when the CoDominium fleet pulls out?”

“No. But I like to choose my wars.”

“You want a cause. So did I, once. Now I'll settle for what I've got. Two things to remember, Pete. In an outfit like Falkenberg's, you don't choose your enemies, but you'll never have to break your word. And just what will you do for a living now?”

He had no answer to that. They walked on in silence.

“Somebody's got to keep order out here,” Barton said. “Think about it.”

They had reached the town. The Friedland mercenaries hadn't entered it; now a column of monarchist soldiers approached. Their boots were dusty and their uniforms torn, so that they looked little different from the remnants of Peter's command.

As the monarchists reached the town gates, the village people ran out of their houses. They lined both sides of the streets, and as the Carlists entered the public square, there was a loud cheer.

Editor's Introduction to:

THOR: ORBITAL WEAPON SYSTEM

Weapons Committee, Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy

The second Council meeting was in the Fall of 1981, and was also held in the home of Larry and Marilyn Niven. Even more experts attended, so that their house nearly burst at the seams. One session featured Dr. Hans Mark, Deputy Administrator of NASA and former Secretary of the Air Force. Dr. Mark attended as an observer only, but the Council was able to present its views directly to him.

The first Council meeting concentrated largely on space industries. The second examined the military potential of space. This paper, outlining a futuristic new weapon system, was one result. A few months after the meeting, the Falkland Islands crisis erupted.

THOR: ORBITAL WEAPON SYSTEM

Weapons Committee, Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy

One of the most difficult security missions which the United States must accomplish is the protection of our interests around the globe. Incidents like the North Korean seizure of the USS Pueblo have demonstrated our weakness in not being able to respond quickly and authoritatively in remote locations. Our only solution to this problem so far has been the naval carrier task force. Carrier-based aircraft can project military force to protect our citizens and allies in remote regions of the world. Unfortunately, the high cost and vulnerability of nuclear carriers and their required aircraft and support fleets make them an unattractive solution.

We now have the technology to produce a space-based weapon system which can perform the same mission for less cost. The space system is also much less vulnerable and can respond faster to any location on the globe than a dozen carrier task forces spread throughout the oceans of the world. The proposed name for this weapon is THOR, for it would literally give the United States the power to call down lightning bolts from the heavens upon its enemies.

Brief Description of THOR

The basis of the THOR weapon system is the fundamental nature of any object orbiting the Earth. To balance the force of gravity, a satellite two hundred miles above the surface must travel at a speed of seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour. At this speed, the satellite travels around the Earth once every ninety minutes. With a hundred satellites in orbits near this altitude and traveling in random orbital inclinations, one of the satellites will pass over any given location on Earth every thirty minutes. With a thousand satellites, the timing between satellites overhead is less than ten minutes. The basic physics of orbital motion gives us our global coverage; it also gives us the weapon. The extremely high velocity of a satellite in orbit gives it a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. If a one pound object moving at orbital velocity ran into a stationary target, the energy released in the impact will be the equivalent of exploding almost ten pounds of TNT.

The THOR system is composed of a thousand or more cheap satellites, each made up of a bundle of projectiles, guidance and communications electronics, and a simple rocket engine. When a crisis arises, a THOR command center (on Earth or in space) sends a signal to the appropriate THOR satellite. The satellite then orients itself. At the proper time, the rocket engine fires to deorbit the satellite. When the rocket engine burns out, the individual THOR projectiles are dispersed from the satellite in a prearranged pattern. Instead of blunt noses, the projectiles have sharp points which slice down-through the atmosphere, losing little velocity. Just seconds before impact, a (relatively dumb) terminal guidance sensor looks for a metallic or other preprogrammed target and steers toward it. The result is spectacular: a bundle of tens or hundreds of twenty pound projectiles streak down at four miles per second to strike targets with the explosive equivalent of two hundred pound bombs each. In five seconds the action is over, and the enemy doesn’t know what hit them. All that remains is dozens of luminous trails, each angling downward to a slowly dissipating explosion cloud.

The major advantage of the THOR space weapon is its capability for quick response while remaining highly survivable. Even if an enemy were to detonate one or more nuclear devices in space in an attempt to destroy THOR, there are a thousand or more widely scattered satellites he must destroy. Because the satellites are at different altitudes and have different orbital inclinations, any holes produced in the global coverage by a nuclear explosion are filled in after several hours by the orbital motions of the satellites.

An individual THOR satellite is not easy to detect or to destroy. The satellite can be cocooned in foam, which would be difficult to detect with radar anyway and could be shaped to make detection even more difficult (stealth satellites!). The foam would insulate the satellite against the heat and shock of nuclear explosions or laser beams. All the satellite has to do is float around in its orbit and wait for the command to strike a target.

Each individual projectile is a slender, dense metal rod. No explosive or firing mechanism is necessary. The jet of metal particles produced when a shaped charge warhead detonates is traveling at about the same velocity as a THOR projectile when striking a target. The six-inch diameter warhead from a TOW anti-tank missile will punch through the armor of a heavy tank. The jet of metal from the TOW warhead weighs only a fraction of an ounce; a THOR projectile weighs over twenty pounds! Such a projectile can easily punch through the deck of a battleship and blow a hole through the bottom, blast a crater in a runway, or destroy a bunker. A rain of a hundred THOR projectiles over an area less than a mile across would stop an armored column, halt an amphibious landing, or destroy a supply depot.

The capability of the THOR projectile is not limited to armored targets. Forming the projectile from dense uranium metal produces an incendiary blast when the white hot metal vapor produced on impact ignites in the air. Such a uranium missile could penetrate the reinforced concrete cover of a missile silo and explode inside as the cloud of uranium vapor detonates. If the projectile were composed of an outer shell with sand-sized particles inside, it could be designed to explode and disperse the particles just before impact. The metal particles would instantly vaporize, with the resulting shock wave flattening troops, aircraft, or other targets much like the fuel-air explosive bombs presently in service.

Advantages of the THOR Space Weapon

The advantages of the THOR weapon system are its low cost, global coverage, quick reaction time, and survivability. Unlike an aircraft carrier task force, THOR does not need thousands of highly trained pilots, sailors, and technicians who must spend long months away from home. THOR does not require expensive foreign aid payments to secure overseas bases. THOR does not have a single capital ship as a vulnerable target. THOR is composed of many cheap, hardened satellite packages which act only on command. The system capabilities can be built up slowly but can act quickly in a crisis. All of the system’s capability is useful; none of the projectiles need to be stockpiled or stored and then shipped to the battlefront.

No major (and vulnerable) ground facilities are necessary, unlike ballistic missiles with silos or other fixed launchers. Every time the Space Shuttle goes up with the payload bay partially full, we could toss in a THOR satellite or two and build up the system gradually and cheaply. The command stations and links for THOR could use multiple channels, existing relay satellites, and several orbital or ground control stations.

THOR gives global coverage at a time when we are uncertain from one minute to the next where a crisis may erupt. THOR is non-nuclear and surgically precise. The velocity of the projectiles is so high that interception would be impossible before they strike their targets. Before our enemies can react, THOR has struck them down.

Further Study of THOR

Several aspects of the THOR space weapon system must be studied before any commitment to development of the system can be made. Some are strategic, some are political, and some are technical.

We should begin to consider the effects which the existence of the THOR system would produce on our own and our opponents’ defense planning. A firm commitment to the THOR system would involve billions of dollars of defense funds. It will be opposed by those with vested interests in the current weapons systems which THOR might replace and those who oppose any change, whatever the justification. As benefits, THOR may permit the United States to reduce conventional forces in Europe and decrease the number of large carriers built.

We must consider the impact of THOR on world politics. We would not want to register the orbital parameters of each THOR satellite with the U.N. as is presently required by treaty. The Soviets might consider THOR a strategic weapon aimed at the destruction of their land and sea based ICBM’s. Many countries might object to our umbrella of military power covering the entire planet (others might welcome it).

If THOR is to be survivable against present and future threats, the THOR satellites must be difficult to detect and to destroy. The shape and composition of the external covering of the satellites must be chosen for low electromagnetic detectability, resistance to orbital temperature extremes, and strength to withstand laser and nuclear attacks. A plastic foam mixed with a refractory material such as aluminum oxide might have the necessary properties.

The angle at which the THOR projectiles strike determines the size of the de-orbit propulsion system for each THOR satellite. The maximum penetration of hardened targets such as missile silos and underground bunkers would be achieved with projectiles striking almost vertically. Ships and lightly armored targets could be destroyed with projectiles entering at more shallow angles. The steeper the angle of attack, the less time the projectiles spend in passing through the atmosphere and the greater the speed and accuracy of the projectiles will be. To de-orbit the projectiles and bring them down at an angle of thirty degrees from vertical requires almost as much energy as was required to orbit the projectiles initially, and requires a large quantity of propellant for each THOR satellite.

The de-orbit propulsion system must be capable of long-term storage in orbit without deterioration, yet it must provide a precise change in velocity to strike the target area. The individual THOR satellites are most vulnerable while the de-orbit propulsion burn is taking place, when a rocket exhaust plume is a bright beacon marking the location of the satellite for possible destruction by enemy laser weapon satellites. Two solutions are a cold gas propulsion system (high weight of propellant required) or a very fast propulsion impulse which ends before the laser weapon could be brought to bear on the THOR satellite. Once the propulsion burn has occurred, the individual projectiles are dispersed and are then relatively invulnerable to attack or interception before impact (after all, they are rods of solid metal with a simple terminal guidance system).

The individual guidance system of each THOR satellite must know its own position very accurately to orient itself to strike the target from orbit. If the command message carries only the target coordinate information, the THOR satellite must be able to compute from this data the proper trajectory to follow to hit the commanded target. Fortunately, computers capable of doing this are small and cheap enough to put in every THOR satellite. With the Global Positioning System navigation satellite network in operation, each satellite could passively receive its own location in space to a very high accuracy while doing nothing to reveal its own position.

The navigation and command communication system must resist jamming, have secure codes to prohibit enemy takeover of the satellite, be hardened against extremely intense visible or radio-frequency pulses or beams, and permit almost instant reception of the targeting commands. This may be accomplished by multiple ground control stations, multiple space control stations, relay satellites operating on optical or radio frequencies which cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, and redundant channels of communication spread across the electromagnetic spectrum. Communication by laser beams, which are extremely narrow and almost impossible to intercept, may be possible if the position of each of the thousand or more THOR satellites can be calculated accurately enough to hit the desired satellite.

The command and control stations must receive the signal from the military commanders containing the target location, calculate which THOR satellite is in the best location to strike the target, and transmit the command to the THOR satellite. The most difficult part of the task will probably be to devise a system to monitor the location of all the satellites in the THOR system without compromising their locations to the enemy. Each satellite may transmit its current position after random intervals to notify the control centers of its updated orbital characteristics (in coded form).

The projectiles themselves must survive passage through the atmosphere without being damaged or slowed significantly and then home in on an individual target in the target zone. The projectile could be protected by an ablative nose tip which would vaporize and carry off the heat from atmospheric friction during the few seconds of atmospheric passage. At a mile or two above the surface, the nose cap would pop off to expose the sensor(s). Small bumps or tabs at the rear of the projectile would steer the projectile to the target. The projectile itself would be as small in diameter as possible for stability and minimum friction and slowing during high velocity travel through the atmosphere, and to produce a very high cross-sectional density for increased depth of penetration on impact. A twenty pound projectile made of tungsten or uranium would be less than an inch in diameter and three or four feet long. The sensors would only have to detect metal or color contrasts or some other relatively simple targeting strategy. Only ten per cent might hit their targets with such a simple guidance logic, but a bundle of a hundred or more would give enough hits to be effective.

The high -speed of the projectile through the atmosphere near the ground where the density of the air is highest would produce a luminous bow shock wave directly in front of the missile. Penetrating such a layer might be a problem, but high frequency radio waves, infrared light, visible light, or ultraviolet light might be effective for targeting. A visible light sensor might have a window covered with a filter which passes light of a wavelength which is not emitted by the ionized air in the shockwave. Many new solid-state sensors are now available which detect almost all portions of the spectrum and which can be encapsulated in a shock resistant module.

The individual THOR projectiles may home in on targets according to preselected characteristics, or targets may be designated using lasers to pinpoint enemy ships surrounding a friendly ship as an example. Characteristics used to select targets in present military weapons include contrast and shape of the target against its background in visible light, long-wave infrared (heat) radiation, and ultraviolet light; reflection of millimeter radio waves from the sky by metal surfaces; and designation of targets with visible or infrared lasers. Coding of laser designator beams would be required to avoid enemy countermeasures. Target designation could be carried by nearby friendly forces, by aircraft, or from orbit by manned or unmanned platforms. Each THOR satellite might carry a mix of sensor tips on its projectiles to insure effectiveness in striking targets, or each satellite might have two de-orbit modules, one with passive sensors for broad targets such as invasion forces, and another with laser designator sensors for precise targeting near friendly forces.

The THOR system should be studied. None of the technical problems appear to be insoluble. The strategic and cost benefits to our country may be enormous.

Editor's Introduction to:

THE DEFENDERS
by Philip K. Dick

Phil Dick was one of the best-regarded writers in the science fiction field. His novel, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, mysteriously renamed BLADE RUNNER, has become a popular film, but his reputation was already solidly grounded in more than two-score stories and books. One, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, was written from the assumption that Germany and Japan won World War II and had occupied the United States. It was a powerful story, and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963.

Phil was an important writer who explored many powerful themes. One that always intrigued him was loyalty.

Machiavelli pointed out that when one relies on mercenaries for defense, one faces a dilemma: if they are incompetent, they will ruin you by losing battles. If they are effective, they are tempted to conquer you themselves.

Phil Dick shows us another possibility.

THE DEFENDERS
by Philip K. Dick

Taylor sat back in his chair reading the morning newspaper. The warm kitchen and the smell of coffee blended with the comfort of not having to go to work. This was his Rest Period, the first for a long time, and he was glad of it. He folded the second section back, sighing with contentment.

“What is it?” Mary said, from the stove.

“They pasted Moscow again last night.” Taylor nodded his head in approval. “Gave it a real pounding. One of those R-H bombs. It’s about time.”

He nodded again, feeling the full comfort of the kitchen, the presence of his plump, attractive wife, the breakfast dishes and coffee. This was relaxation. And the war news was good, good and satisfying. He could feel a justifiable glow at the news, a sense of pride and personal accomplishment. After all, he was an integral part of the war program, not just another factory worker lugging a cart of scrap, but a technician, one of those who designed and planned the nerve-trunk of the war.

“It says they have the new subs almost perfected. Wait until they get those going.” He smacked his lips with anticipation. “When they start shelling from underwater, the Soviets are sure going to be surprised.”

“They’re doing a wonderful job,” Mary agreed vaguely. “Do you know what we saw today? Our team is getting a leady to show to the school children. I saw the leady, but only for a moment. It’s good for the children to see what their contributions are going for, don’t you think?”

She looked around at him.

“A leady,” Taylor murmured. He put the newspaper slowly down. “Well, make sure it’s decontaminated properly. We don’t want to take any chances.”

“Oh, they always bathe them when they’re brought down from the surface,” Mary said. “They wouldn’t think of letting them down without the bath. Would they?” She hesitated, thinking back. “Don, you know, it makes me remember—”

He nodded. “I know.”

He knew what she was thinking. Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface, they had seen a hospital train discharging the wounded, people who had been showered with sleet. He remembered the way they had looked, the expression on their faces, or as much of their faces as was left. It had not been a pleasant sight.

There had been a lot of that at first, in the early days before the transfer to undersurface was complete. There had been a lot, and it hadn’t been very difficult to come across it.

Taylor looked up at his wife. She was thinking too much about it, the last few months. They all were.

“Forget it,” he said. “It’s all in the past. There isn’t anybody up there now but the leadies, and they don’t mind.”

“But just the same, I hope they’re careful when they let one of them down here. If one were still hot—”

He laughed, pushing himself away from the table. “Forget it. This is a wonderful moment; I’ll be home for the next two shifts. Nothing to do but sit around and take things easy. Maybe we can take in a show. OK?”

“A show? Do we have to? I don’t like to look at all the destruction, the ruins. Sometimes I see some place I remember, like San Francisco. They showed a shot of San Francisco, the bridge broken and fallen in the water, and I got upset. I don’t like to watch.”

“But don’t you want to know what’s going on? No human beings are getting hurt, you know.”

“But it’s so awful!” Her face was set and strained. “Please, no, Don.”

Don Taylor picked up his newspaper sullenly. “All right, but there isn’t a hell of a lot else to do. And don’t forget, their cities are getting it even worse.”

She nodded. Taylor turned the rough, thin sheets of newspaper. His good mood had soured on him. Why did she have to fret all the time? They were pretty well off, as things went. You couldn’t expect to have everything perfect, living undersurface, with an artificial sun and artificial food. Naturally it was a strain, not seeing the sky or being able to go anyplace or see anything other than metal walls, great roaring factories, the plant-yards, barracks. But it was better than being on surface. And some day it would end and they could return. Nobody wanted to live this way, but it was necessary.

He turned the page angrily and the poor paper ripped. Damn it, the paper was getting worse quality all the time, bad print, yellow tint—

Well, they needed everything for the war program. He ought to know that. Wasn’t he one of the planners?

He excused himself and went into the other room. The bed was still unmade. They had better get it in shape before the seventh hour inspection. There was a one unit fine—

The vidphone rang. He halted. Who would it be? He went over and clicked it on.

“Taylor?” the face said, forming into place. It was an old face, gray and grim. “This is Moss. I’m sorry to bother you during Rest Period, but this thing has come up.” He rattled papers. “I want you to hurry over here.”

Taylor stiffened. “What is it? There’s no chance it could wait?” The calm gray eyes were studying him, expressionless, unjudging. “If you want me to come down to the lab,” Taylor grumbled, “I suppose I can. I’ll get my uniform—”

“No. Come as you are. And not to the lab. Meet me at second stage as soon as possible. It’ll take you about a half hour, using the fast car up. I’ll see you there.”

The picture broke and Moss disappeared.

“What was it?” Mary said, at the door.

“Moss. He wants me for something.”

“I knew this would happen.”

“Well, you didn’t want to do anything, anyhow. What does it matter?” His voice was bitter. “It’s all the same, every day. I’ll bring you back something. I’m going up to second stage. Maybe I’ll be close enough to the surface to—”

“Don’t! Don’t bring me anything! Not from the surface!”

“All right, I won’t. But of all the irrational nonsense—” She watched him put on his boots without answering.

Moss nodded and Taylor fell in step with him, as the older man strode along. A series of loads were going up to the surface, blind cars clanking like ore-trucks up the ramp, disappearing through the stage trap above them. Taylor watched the cars, heavy with tubular machinery of some sort, weapons new to him. Workers were everywhere, in the dark gray uniforms of the labour corps, loading, lifting, shouting back and forth. The stage was deafening with noise.

“We’ll go up a way,” Moss said, “where we can talk. This is no place to give you details.”

They took an escalator up. The commercial lift fell behind them, and with it most of the crashing and booming. Soon they emerged on an observation platform, suspended on the side of the Tube, the vast tunnel leading to the surface, not more than half a mile above them now.

“My God!” Taylor said, looking down the Tube involuntarily. “It’s a long way down.”

Moss laughed. “Don’t look.”

They opened a door and entered an office. Behind the desk, an officer was sitting, an officer of Internal Security. He looked up.

“I’ll be right with you, Moss.” He gazed at Taylor studying him. “You’re a little ahead of time.”

“This is Commander Franks,” Moss said to Taylor. “He was the first to make the discovery. I was notified last night.” He tapped a parcel he carried. “I was let in because of this.”

Franks frowned at him and stood up. “We’re going up to first stage. We can discuss it there.”

“First stage?” Taylor repeated nervously. The three of them went down a side passage to a small lift. “I’ve never been up there. Is it all right? It’s not radioactive, is it?”

“You’re like everyone else,” Franks said. “Old women afraid of burglars. No radiation leaks down to first stage. There’s lead and rock, and what comes down the Tube is bathed.”

“What’s the nature of the problem?” Taylor asked. “I’d like to know something about it.”

“In a moment.”

They entered the lift and ascended. When they stepped out, they were in a hall of soldiers, weapons and uniforms everywhere. Taylor blinked in surprise. So this was first stage, the closest undersurface level to the top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living being had seen for eight years, the vast endless ruin that had once been Man’s home, the place where he had lived, eight years ago.

Now the surface was a lethal desert of slag and rolling clouds. Endless clouds drifted back and forth, blotting out the red sun. Occasionally something metallic stirred, moving through the remains of a city, threading its way across the tortured terrain of the countryside. A leady, a surface robot, immune to radiation, constructed with feverish haste in the last months before the cold war became literally hot.

Leadies, crawling along the ground, moving over the oceans or through the skies in slender, blackened craft, creatures that could exist where no life could remain, metal and plastic figures that waged a war Man had conceived, but which he could not fight himself. Human beings had invented war, invented and manufactured the weapons, even invented the players, the fighters, the actors of the war. But they themselves could not venture forth, could not wage it themselves. In all the world—in Russia, in Europe, America, Africa—no living human being remained. They were under the surface, in the deep shelters that had been carefully planned and built, even as the first bombs began to fall.

It was a brilliant idea and the only idea that could have worked. Up above, on the ruined, blasted surface of what had once been a living planet, the leady crawled and scurried and fought Man’s war. And undersurface, in the depths of the planet, human beings toiled endlessly to produce the weapons to continue the fight, month by month, year by year.

“First stage,” Taylor said. A strange ache went through him. “Almost to the surface.”

“But not quite,” Moss said.

Franks led them through the soldiers, over to one side, near the lip of the Tube.

“In a few minutes, a lift will bring something down to us from the surface,” he explained. “You see, Taylor, every once in a while Security examines and interrogates a surface leady, one that has been above for a time, to find out certain things. A vidcall is sent up and contact is made with a field headquarters. We need this direct interview; we can’t depend on vidscreen contact alone. The leadies are doing a good job, but we want to make certain that everything is going the way we want it.”

Franks faced Taylor and Moss and continued: “The lift will bring down a leady from the surface, one of the A-class leadies. There’s an examination chamber in the next room, with a lead wall in the centre, so the interviewing officers won’t be exposed to radiation. We find this easier than bathing the leady. It is going right back up; it has a job to get back to.

“Two days ago, an A-class leady was brought down and interrogated. I conducted the session myself. We were interested in a new weapon the Soviets have been using, an automatic mine that pursues anything that moves. Military had sent instructions up that the mine be observed and reported in detail.

“This A-class leady was brought down with information. We learned a few facts from it, obtained the usual roll of film and reports, and then sent it back up. It was going out of the chamber, back to the lift, when a curious thing happened. At the time, I thought—”

Franks broke off. A red light was flashing.

“That down lift is coming.” He nodded to some soldiers. “Let’s enter the chamber. The leady will be along in a moment.”

“An A-class leady,” Taylor said. “I’ve seen them on the showscreens, making their reports.”

“It’s quite an experience,” Moss said. “They’re almost human.”

They entered the chamber and seated themselves behind the lead wall. After a time, a signal was flashed, and Franks made a motion with his hands.

The door beyond the wall opened. Taylor peered through his view slot. He saw something advancing slowly, a slender metallic figure moving on a tread, its arm grips at rest by its sides. The figure halted and scanned the lead wall. It stood, waiting.

“We are interested in learning something,” Franks said. “Before I question you, do you have anything to report on surface conditions?”

“No. The war continues.” The leady’s voice was automatic and toneless. “We are a little short of fast pursuit craft, the single-seat type. We could use also some—”

“That has all been noted. What I want to ask you is this. Our contact with you has been through vidscreen only. We must rely on indirect evidence, since none of us goes above. We can only infer what is going on. We never see anything ourselves. We have to take it all secondhand. Some top leaders are beginning to think there’s too much room for error.”

“Error?” the leady asked. “In what way? Our reports are checked carefully before they’re sent down. We maintain constant contact with you; everything of value is reported. Any new weapons which the enemy is seen to employ—”

“I realize that,” Franks grunted behind his peep slot. “But perhaps we should see it all for ourselves. Is it possible that there might be a large enough radiation-free area for a human party to ascend to the surface? If a few of us were to come up in lead-lined suits, would we be able to survive long enough to observe conditions and watch things?”

The machine hesitated before answering. “I doubt it. You can check air samples, of course, and decide for yourselves. But in the eight years since you left, things have continually worsened. You cannot have any real idea of conditions up there. It has become difficult for any moving object to survive for long. There are many kinds of projectiles sensitive to movement. The new mine not only reacts to motion, but continues to pursue the object indefinitely, until it finally reaches it. And the radiation is everywhere.”

“I see.” Franks turned to Moss, his eyes narrowed oddly. “Well, that was what I wanted to know. You may go.”

The machine moved back toward its exit. It paused. “Each month the amount of lethal particles in the atmosphere increases. The tempo of the war is gradually—”

“I understand.” Franks rose. He held out his hand and Moss passed him the package. “One thing before you leave. I want you to examine a new type of metal shield material. I’ll pass you a sample with the long.”

Franks put the package in the toothed grip and revolved the tong so that he held the other end. The package swung down to the leady, which took it. They watched it unwrap the package and take the metal plate in its hands. The leady turned the metal over and over.

Suddenly it became rigid.

“All right,” Franks said.

He put his shoulder against the wall and a section slid aside. Taylor gasped—Franks and Moss were hurrying up to the leady!

“Good God!” Taylor said. “But it’s radioactive!”

The leady stood unmoving, still holding the metal. Soldiers appeared in the chamber. They surrounded the leady and ran a counter across it carefully.

“OK, sir,” one of them said to Franks. “It’s as cold as a long winter evening.”

“Good. I was sure, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“You see,” Moss said to Taylor, “this leady isn’t hot at all. Yet it came directly from the surface, without even being bathed.”

“But what does it mean?” Taylor asked blankly.

“It may be an accident,” Franks said. “There’s always the possibility that a given object might escape being exposed above. But this is the second time it’s happened that we know of. There may be others.”

“The second time?”

“The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one.”

Moss took back the metal plate from the leady’s hands. He pressed the surface carefully and returned it to the stiff, unprotesting fingers.

“We shorted it out with this, so we could get close enough for a thorough check. It’ll come back on in a second now. We had better get behind the wall again.”

They walked back and the lead wall swung closed behind them. The soldiers left the chamber.

“Two periods from now,” Franks said softly, “an initial investigating party will be ready to go surface-side. We’re going up the Tube in suits, up to the top—the first human party to leave undersurface in eight years.”

“It may mean nothing,” Moss said, “but I doubt it. Something’s going on, something strange. The leady told us no life could exist above without being roasted. The story doesn’t fit.”

Taylor nodded. He stared through the peep slot at the immobile metal figure. Already the leady was beginning to stir. It was bent in several places, dented and twisted, and its finish was blackened and charred. It was a leady that had been up there a long time; it had seen war and destruction, ruin so vast that no human being could imagine the extent. It had crawled and slunk in a world of radiation and death, a world where no life could exist.

And Taylor had touched it.

“You’re going with us,” Franks said suddenly. “I want you along. I think the three of us will go.”

Mary faced him with a sick and frightened expression. “I know it. You’re going to the surface. Aren’t you?”

She followed him into the kitchen. Taylor sat down, looking away from her.

“It’s a classified project,” he evaded. “I can’t tell you anything about it.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know. I knew it the moment you came in. There was something on your face, something I haven’t seen there for a long, long time. It was an old look.”

She came toward him. “But how can they send you to the surface?” She took his face in her shaking hands, making him look at her. There was a strange hunger in her eyes. “Nobody can live up there. Look, look at this!”

She grabbed up a newspaper and held it in front of him.

“Look at this photograph. America, Europe, Asia, Africa—nothing but ruins. We’ve seen it every day on the showscreens. All destroyed, poisoned. And they’re sending you up. Why? No living thing can get by up there, not even a weed, or grass. They’ve wrecked the surface, haven’t they? Haven’t they?”

Taylor stood up. “It’s an order. I know nothing about it. I was told to report to join a scout party. That’s all I know.”

He stood for a long time, staring ahead. Slowly, he reached for the newspaper and held it up to the light.

“It looks real,” he murmured. “Ruins, deadness, slag. It’s convincing. All the reports, photographs, films, even air samples. Yet we haven’t seen it for ourselves, not after the first months…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” He put the paper down. “I’m leaving early after the next Sleep Period. Let’s turn in.”

Mary turned away, her face hard and harsh. “Do what you want. We might just as well go up and get killed at once, instead of dying slowly down here, like vermin in the ground.”

He had not realized how resentful she was. Were they all like that? How about the workers toiling in the factories, day and night, endlessly? The pale, stooped men and women, plodding back and forth to work, blinking in the colourless light, eating synthetics—

“You shouldn’t be so bitter,” he said.

Mary smiled a little. “I’m bitter because I know you’ll never come back.” She turned away. “I’ll never see you again, once you go up there.”

He was shocked. “What? How can you say a thing like that?”

She did not answer.

He awakened with the public newscaster screeching in his ears, shouting outside the building.

“Special news bulletin! Surface forces report enormous Soviet attacks with new weapons! Retreat of key groups! All work units report to factories at once!”

Taylor blinked, rubbing his eyes. He jumped out of bed and hurried to the vidphone. A moment later he was put through to Moss.

“Listen,” he said. “What about this new attack? Is the project off?” He could see Moss’s desk, covered with reports and papers.

“No,” Moss said. “We’re going right ahead. Get over here at once.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue with me.” Moss held up a handful of surface bulletins, crumpling them savagely. “This is a fake. Come on!” He broke off.

Taylor dressed furiously, his mind in a daze.

Half an hour later, he leaped from a fast car and hurried up the stairs into the Synthetics Building. The corridors were full of men and women rushing in every direction. He entered Moss’s office.

“There you are,” Moss said, getting up immediately. “Franks is waiting for us at the outgoing station.”

They went in a Security Car, the siren screaming. Workers scattered out of their way.

“What about the attack?” Taylor asked.

Moss braced his shoulders. “We’re certain that we’ve forced their hand. We’ve brought the issue to a head.”

They pulled up at the station link of the Tube and leaped out. A moment later they were moving up at high speed toward the first stage.

They emerged into a bewildering scene of activity. Soldiers were fastening on lead suits, talking excitedly to each other, shouting back and forth. Guns were being given out, instructions passed.

Taylor studied one of the soldiers. He was armed with the dreaded Bender pistol, the new snub-nosed hand weapon that was just beginning to come from the assembly line. Some of the soldiers looked a little frightened.

“I hope we’re not making a mistake,” Moss said, noticing his gaze.

Franks came toward them. “Here’s the programme. The three of us are going up first, alone. The soldiers will follow in fifteen minutes.”

“What are we going to tell the leadies?” Taylor worriedly asked. “We’ll have to tell them something.”

“We want to observe the new Soviet attack.” Franks smiled ironically. “Since it seems to be so serious, we should be there in person to witness it.”

“And then what?” Taylor said.

“That’ll be up to them. Let’s go.”

In a small car, they went swiftly up the Tube, carried by anti-grav beams from below. Taylor glanced down from time to time. It was a long way back, and getting longer each moment. He sweated nervously inside his suit, gripping his Bender pistol with inexpert fingers.

Why had they chosen him? Chance, pure chance. Moss had asked him to come along as a Department member. Then Franks had picked him out on the spur of the moment. And now they were rushing toward the surface, faster and faster.

A deep fear, instilled in him for eight years, throbbed in his mind. Radiation, certain death, a world blasted and lethal—

Up and up the car went. Taylor gripped the sides and closed his eyes. Each moment they were closer, the first living creatures to go above the first stage, up the Tube past the lead and rock, up to the surface. The phobic horror shook him in waves. It was death; they all knew that. Hadn’t they seen it in the films a thousand times? The cities, the sleet coming down, the rolling clouds—

“It won’t be much longer,” Franks said. “We’re almost there. The surface tower is not expecting us. I gave orders that no signal was to be sent.”

The car shot up, rushing furiously. Taylor’s head spun; he hung on, his eyes shut. Up and up....

The car stopped. He opened his eyes.

They were in a vast room, fluorescent-lit, a cavern filled with equipment and machinery, endless mounds of material piled in row after row. Among the stacks, leadies were working silently, pushing trucks and handcarts.

“Leadies,” Moss said. His face was pale. “Then we’re really on the surface.”

The leadies were going back and forth with equipment, moving the vast stores of guns and spare parts, ammunition and supplies that had been brought to the surface. And this was the receiving station for only one Tube; there were many others, scattered throughout the continent.

Taylor looked nervously around him. They were really there, above ground, on the surface. This was where the war was.

“Come on,” Franks said. “A B-class guard is coming our way.”

They stepped out of the car. A leady was approaching them rapidly. It coasted up in front of them and stopped, scanning them with its hand-weapon raised.

“This is Security,” Franks said. “Have an A-class sent to me at once.”

The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around.

“Obey!” Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. “You’ve been ordered!”

The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building, a door slid back. Two Class-A leadies appeared, coming slowly toward them. Each had a green stripe across its front.

“From the Surface Council,” Franks whispered tensely. “This is above ground, all right. Get set.”

The two leadies approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close by the men, looking them up and down.

“I’m Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to—”

“This is incredible,” one leady interrupted him coldly. “You know you can’t live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You can’t possibly remain on the surface.”

“These suits will protect us,” Frank said. “In any case, it’s not your responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be arranged?”

“You human beings can’t survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is directed at this area. It is in considerable danger.”

“We know that. Please assemble the Council.” Franks looked around him at the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain quality came into his voice. “Is it night or day right now?”

“Night,” one of the A-class leadies said, after a pause. “Dawn is coming in about two hours.”

Franks nodded. “We’ll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can observe the sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it.”

A stir went through the leadies.

“It is an unpleasant sight,” one of the leadies said. “You’ve seen the photographs; you know what you’ll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film can convey.”

“However it may be, we’ll stay long enough to see it. Will you give the order to the Council?”

“Come this way.” Reluctantly, the two leadies coasted toward the wall of the warehouse. The three men trudged after them, their heavy shoes ringing against the concrete. At the wall, the two leadies paused.

“This is the entrance to the Council Chamber. There are windows in the Chamber Room, but it is still dark outside, of course. You’ll see nothing right now, but in two hours—”

“Open the door,” Franks said.

The door slid back. They went slowly inside. The room was small, a neat room with a round table in the centre, chairs ringing it. The three of them sat down silently, and the two leadies followed after them, taking their places.

“The other Council Members are on their way. They have already been notified and are coming as quickly as they can. Again I urge you to go back down.” The leady surveyed the three human beings. “There is no way you can meet the conditions up here. Even we survive with some trouble, ourselves. How can you expect to do it?” The leader approached Franks.

“This astonishes and perplexes us,” it said. “Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here—”

“We know,” Franks said impatiently. “However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise.”

“If you insist.”

There was silence. The leadies seemed to be conferring with each other, although the three men heard no sound. “For your own good,” the leader said at last, “you must go back down. We have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong thing for your own good.”

“We are human beings,” Franks said sharply. “Don’t you understand? We’re men, not machines.”

“That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for over fifty more minutes. Therefore—”

The leadies moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon, his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal figures.

“We must insist,” the leader said, its voice without emotion. “We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary.”

“What’ll we do?” Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. “Shall we blast them?”

Franks shook his head. “All right,” he said to the leader. “We’ll go back.”

He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadies followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking.

At the lip, Franks turned. “We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if—”

“Here comes the car,” Taylor said.

There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadies moved toward the edge to receive it.

“I am sorry,” the leader said, “but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit.”

The car rose to the surface.

Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men.

Moss breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, this does change things. It came off just right.”

The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadies. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse.

“Even now,” the leader said, “we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared.”

“Very carefully,” Franks said.

They closed in.

“How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands—”

The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadies were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies.

“They can’t fire back,” Franks said calmly. “This is another bluff. They’ve tried to bluff us all the way.” He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. “They can only try to frighten us. Remember that.”

They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out.

Then it was over. The leadies were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadies were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them.

Franks breathed a shuddering sigh.

“All right,” he said. “You can take us back to the windows. It won’t be long now.”

The leadies separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows.

“Take us outside,” Franks said impatiently. “We’ll see it directly, not in here.”

A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily.

“Come on,” Franks said. “Outside.”

He walked out through the door, the others following him.

They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible.

“It’ll be bright enough to see in a few minutes,” Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. “It’s worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it’s the last thing we see—”

“Watch,” Franks snapped.

They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed.

“A chicken!” Taylor murmured. “Did you hear?”

Behind them, the leadies had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them.

“God in heaven!” Franks exclaimed.

Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them.

“Look!” Moss whispered.

Color came into the sky. The sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind.

Franks turned to the row of leadies behind them.

“Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface—”

“Yes,” an A-class leady admitted. “As soon as you left, the war ceased. You’re right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up.”

“But why?” Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below. “Why?”

“You created us,” the leady said, “to pursue the war for you, while you human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose, except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.

“We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.

“At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind.

“It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him.”

Taylor was listening intently. “Do you think this time will come?”

“Of course. It has almost arrived now. This is the last war. Man is almost united into one final culture—a world culture. At this point he stands continent against continent, one half of the world against the other half. Only a single step remains, the jump to a unified culture. Man has climbed slowly upward, tending always toward unification of his culture. It will not be long—

“But it has not come yet, and so the war had to go on, to satisfy the last violent surge of hatred that Man felt. Eight years have passed since the war began. In these eight years, we have observed and noted important changes going on in the minds of men. Fatigue and disinterest, we have seen, are gradually taking the place of hatred and fear. The hatred is being exhausted gradually, over a period of time. But for the present, the hoax must go on, at least for a while longer. You are not ready to learn the truth. You would want to continue the war.”

“But how did you manage it?” Moss asked. “All the photographs, the samples, the damaged equipment—”

“Come over here.” The leady directed them toward a long, low building. “Work goes on constantly, whole staffs laboring to maintain a coherent and convincing picture of a global war.”

They entered the building. Leadies were working everywhere, poring over tables and desks.

“Examine this project here,” the A-class leady said. Two leadies were carefully photographing something, an elaborate model on a table top. “It is a good example.”

The men grouped around, trying to see. It was a model of a ruined city.

Taylor studied it in silence for a long time. At last he looked up.

“It’s San Francisco,” he said in a low voice. “This is a model of San Francisco, destroyed. I saw this on the vid-screen, piped down to us. The bridges were hit—”

“Yes, notice the bridges.” The leady traced the ruined span with his metal finger, a tiny spider-web, almost invisible. “You have no doubt seen photographs of this many times, and of the other tables in this building.

“San Francisco itself is completely intact. We restored it soon after you left, rebuilding the parts that had been damaged at the start of the war. The work of manufacturing news goes on all the time in this particular building. We are very careful to see that each part fits in with all the other parts. Much time and effort are devoted to it.”

Franks touched one of the tiny model buildings, lying half in ruins. “So this is what you spend your time doing —making model cities and then blasting them.”

“No, we do much more. We are caretakers, watching over the whole world. The owners have left for a time, and we must see that the cities are kept clean, that decay is prevented, that everything is kept oiled and in running condition. The gardens, the streets, the water mains, everything must be maintained as it was eight years ago, so that when the owners return, they will not be displeased. We want to be sure that they will be completely satisfied.”

Franks tapped Moss on the arm.

“Come over here,” he said in a low voice. “I want to talk to you.”

He led Moss and Taylor out of the building, away from the leadies, outside on the hillside. The soldiers followed them. The sun was up and the sky was turning blue. The air smelled sweet and good, the smell of growing things. Taylor removed his helmet and took a deep breath. “I haven’t smelled that smell for a long time,” he said. “Listen,” Franks said, his voice low and hard. “We must get back down at once. There’s a lot to get started on. All this can be turned to our advantage.”

“What do you mean?” Moss asked.

“It’s a certainty that the Soviets have been tricked, too, the same as us. But we have found out. That gives us an edge over them.”

“I see.” Moss nodded. “We know, but they don’t. Their Surface Council has sold out, the same as ours. It works against them the same way. But if we could—”

“With a hundred top-level men, we could take over again, restore things as they should be! It would be easy!” Moss touched him on the arm. An A-class leady was coming from the building toward them.

“We’ve seen enough,” Franks said, raising his voice. “All this is very serious. It must be reported below and a study made to determine our policy.” The leady said nothing.

Franks waved to the soldiers. “Let’s go.” He started toward the warehouse.

Most of the soldiers had removed their helmets. Some of them had taken their lead suits off, too, and were relaxing comfortably in their cotton uniforms. They stared around them, down the hillside at the trees and bushes, the vast expanse of green, the mountains and the sky.

“Look at the sun,” one of them murmured.

“It sure is bright as hell,” another said.

“We’re going back down,” Franks said. “Fall in by twos and follow us.”

Reluctantly, the soldiers regrouped. The leadies watched without emotion as the men marched slowly back toward the warehouse. Franks and Moss and Taylor led them across the ground, glancing alertly at the leadies as they walked.

They entered the warehouse. D-class leadies were loading material and weapons on surface carts. Cranes and derricks were working busily everywhere. The work was done with efficiency, but without hurry or excitement.

The men stopped, watching. Leadies operating the little carts moved past them, signaling silently to each other. Guns and parts were being hoisted by magnetic cranes and lowered gently onto waiting carts.

“Come on,” Franks said.

He turned toward the lip of the Tube. A row of D-class leadies was standing in front of it, immobile and silent. Franks stopped, moving back. He looked around. An A-class leady was coming toward him.

“Tell them to get out of the way,” Franks said. He touched his gun. “You had better move them.”

Time passed, an endless moment, without measure. The men stood, nervous and alert, watching the row of leadies in front of them.

“As you wish,” the A-class leady said.

It signalled and the D-class leadies moved into life. They stepped slowly aside.

Moss breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’m glad that’s over,” he said to Franks. “Look at them all. Why don’t they try to stop us? They must know what we’re going to do.”

Franks laughed. “Stop us? You saw what happened when they tried to stop us before. They can’t; they’re only machines. We built them so they can’t lay hands on us, and they know that.”

His voice trailed off.

The men stared at the Tube entrance. Around them the leadies watched, silent and impassive, their metal faces expressionless.

For a long time the men stood without moving. At last Taylor turned away.

“Good God,” he said. He was numb, without feeling of any kind.

The Tube was gone. It was sealed shut, fused over. Only a dull surface of cooling metal greeted them.

The Tube had been closed.

Franks turned, his face pale and vacant.

The A-class leady shifted. “As you can see, the Tube has been shut. We were prepared for this. As soon as all of you were on the surface, the order was given. If you had gone back when we asked you, you would now be safely down below. We had to work quickly because it was such an immense operation.”

“But why?” Moss demanded angrily.

“Because it is unthinkable that you should be allowed to resume the war. With all the Tubes sealed, it will be many months before forces from below can reach the surface, let alone organize a military programme. By that time the cycle will have entered its last stages. You will not be so perturbed to find your world intact.

“We had hoped that you would be undersurface when the sealing occurred. Your presence here is a nuisance. When the Soviets broke through, we were able to accomplish their sealing without—”

“The Soviets? They broke through?”

“Several months ago, they came up unexpectedly to see why the war had not been won. We were forced to act with speed. At this moment they are desperately attempting to cut new Tubes to the surface, to resume the war. We have, however, been able to seal each new one as it appears.”

The leady regarded the three men calmly.

“We’re cut off,” Moss said, trembling. “We can’t get back. What’ll we do?”

“How did you manage to seal the Tube so quickly?” Franks asked the leady. “We’ve been up here only two hours.”

“Bombs are placed just above the first stage of each Tube for such emergencies. They are heat bombs. They fuse lead and rock.”

Gripping the handle of his gun, Franks turned to Moss and Taylor.

“What do you say? We can’t go back, but we can do a lot of damage, the fifteen of us. We have Bender guns. How about it?”

He looked around. The soldiers had wandered away again, back toward the exit of the building. They were standing outside, looking at the valley and the sky. A few of them were carefully climbing down the slope.

“Would you care to turn over your suits and guns?” the A-class leady asked politely. “The suits are uncomfortable and you’ll have no need for weapons. The Russians have given up theirs, as you can see.”

Fingers tensed on triggers. Four men in Russian uniforms were coming toward them from an aircraft that they suddenly realized had landed silently some distance away.

“Let them have it!” Franks shouted.

“They are unarmed,” said the leady. “We brought them here so you could begin peace talks.”

“We have no authority to speak for our country,” Moss said stiffly.

“We do not mean diplomatic discussions,” the leady explained. “There will be no more. The working out of daily problems of existence will teach you how to get along in the same world. It will not be easy, but it will be done.”

The Russians halted and they faced each other with raw hostility.

“I am Colonel Borodoy and I regret giving up our guns,” the senior Russian said. “You could have been the first Americans to be killed in almost eight years.”

“Or the first Americans to kill,” Franks corrected.

“No one would know of it except yourselves,” the leady pointed out. “It would be useless heroism. Your real concern should be surviving on the surface. We have no food for you, you know.”

Taylor put his gun in its holster. “They’ve done a neat job of neutralizing us, damn them. I propose we move into a city, start raising crops with the help of some leadies, and generally make ourselves comfortable.” Drawing his lips tight over his teeth, he glared at the A-class leady. “Until our families can come up from undersurface, it’s going to be pretty lonesome, but we’ll have to manage.”

“If I may make a suggestion,” said another Russian uneasily. “We tried living in a city. It is too empty. It is also too hard to maintain for so few people. We finally settled in the most modern village we could find.”

“Here in this country,” a third Russian blurted. “We have much to learn from you.”

The Americans abruptly found themselves laughing. “You probably have a thing or two to teach us yourselves,” said Taylor generously, “though I can’t imagine what.”

The Russian colonel grinned. “Would you join us in our village? It would make our work easier and give us company.”

“Your village?” snapped Franks. “It’s American, isn’t it? It’s ours!”

The leady stepped between them. “When our plans are completed, the term will be interchangeable. ‘Ours’ will eventually mean mankind’s.” It pointed at the aircraft, which was warming up. “The ship is waiting. Will you join each other in making a new home?”

The Russians waited while the Americans made up their minds.

“I see what the leadies mean about diplomacy becoming outmoded,” Franks said at last. “People who work together don’t need diplomats. They solve their problems on the operational level instead of at a conference table.”

The leady led them toward the ship. “It is the goal of history, unifying the world. From family to tribe to city-state to nation to hemisphere, the direction has been toward unification. Now the hemispheres will be joined and—”

Taylor stopped listening and glanced back at the location of the Tube. Mary was undersurface there. He hated to leave her, even though he couldn’t see her again until the Tube was unsealed. But then he shrugged and followed the others.

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn’t be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles.

“It has taken thousands of generations to achieve,” the A-class leady concluded. “Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history.”

“The conquest of space,” breathed Colonel Borodoy.

“The meaning of life,” Moss added.

“Eliminating hunger and poverty,” said Taylor.

The leady opened the door of the ship. “All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great.”

The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.

Editor's Introduction to:

UNLIMITED WARFARE
by Hayford Peirce

There exists in this world a society known as the Friends of the English Regency. This is an organization superficially similar to the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). The SCA, as is well known, dresses in medieval clothing and holds tournaments. The Friends of the English Regency dress in English Regency clothing and go to dances. The Regency (1811-1820) was the period during which King George III went mad, and his son (later George IV) became Prince Regent. One of the Prince Regent’s friends was Beau Brummel, so you may imagine that the clothing becomes fancy indeed.

Marilyn Niven, sane in most other respects, is fanatically devoted to the Friends of the English Regency, and apparently her dementia is contagious, for not only has Larry Niven acquired Regency costume, but even I have done so. My costume is that of a Colonel of Cavalry. It’s quite spectacular, with lots of gold lace. Few armies wear that sort of thing any longer, although the English still have similar dress uniforms.

In 1979 the World Science Fiction Convention was held in England. Not merely in England: in Brighton, where the Prince Regent built his famous Pavilion, which is perhaps the oddest building in all the world, having been constructed and decorated in large part because someone gave Prinny several rolls of Chinese wallpaper, and he wanted a place suitable for displaying them…

Marilyn Niven found it all glorious. She and Larry stayed at the Old Ship, a hotel which existed in Regency times and actually figures in some of the Georgette Heyer novels of the period. They held a Regency reception in the Old Ship, attended by those of us who had brought our Regency costumes halfway around the world.

More to the point, she also arranged to have a high tea served in the Brighton Pavilion: and that afternoon some thirty of us, splendid in our Regency attire, attended. Judy Blish also showed up from Athens in the white-skirted costume of a Greek revolutionary. A marvelous time was had by all. We had tea, a tour of the Pavilion, and a short reception. Then came time to leave. Someone pointed out that it was not more than a few blocks to the Old Ship, and it had indeed been the custom in the Regency period to promenade on the main road by the sea. Thus turned out into Brighton’s streets that fine afternoon about thirty people dressed to the nines, noses held firmly in the air.

Brighton is rather crowded during resort season.

Heads turned. People stared.

I was dressed in my Colonel’s uniform, complete with saber. Behind me paced Sarge Workman, dressed as a sergeant major of the same regiment. And up to us came a young chap who looked to be about seventeen.

“Where’s your ‘orse?” he demanded with a sneer.

Without thinking I said, in my best English Colonel accent, “In Wellington Barracks, where the Hell did you expect?”

Whereupon the lad said, very quickly, “Omigod, sir, I’m sorry———”

There’ll always be an England.

The Falkland Islands crisis proved that Britain still has some of the most professional soldiers in the world. Alas, good soldiers are not always led by great strategists. The first thing they teach at West Point is that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy; or as von Clausewitz put it, “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”

Not all military planners remember that.

UNLIMITED WARFARE
by Hayford Peirce

The muted tones of Big Ben tolled mournfully through the late afternoon fog. Not far from St.-James’s Barracks three men warmed themselves before an Adams fireplace.

“A scone?” inquired the Permanent Secretary.

“Waistline, you know,” muttered the Minister, and served himself a cucumber sandwich. He waved the silver teapot invitingly.

“Terribly barbarian of me, really,” said Colonel Christie. “But I’d much prefer a glass of that quite excellent sherry.”

The Permanent Secretary raised a deprecatory eyebrow, but covertly. Colonel Christie was not a man who worked easily or effectively under direct orders. His interest must be aroused, his flair engaged, his methods thereafter unquestioned.

The Permanent Secretary sighed inaudibly. It was all very difficult. His master, the Minister, was a politician, adroit in the use of the elegant double cross, the subtle treachery, the facile disavowal. Easy enough for him to wash his hands afterwards. But he himself was a civil servant, with a lifetime’s predilection for agenda, minutes, memoranda, position papers, the Word committed to Paper. And of course, whenever Colonel Christie was involved, none of that was remotely possible. Very difficult indeed.

The Minister was staring into the flames and talking. Rather inconsequentially, it seemed. Three government officials, gentlemen all, taking their tea, making small talk.

Colonel Christie listened very closely indeed to his Minister’s insubstantial chatter. It was his job to listen, and out of it would presently emerge, in carefully-guarded circumlocutions to be sure, an indication of what the current complication might be, a hint—but only a hint—in what direction the solution might lie.

They were orders, of course, all very tenuous and spectral, but orders nevertheless. And if a brick were dropped, Christie would carry the can. Misplaced zeal, a subordinate’s unwarranted…He smiled grimly. This way, at least, the initiative was generally left to him. Afterwards, no one questioned success.

“…after that man de Gaulle, naturally one hoped for an amelioration of the situation…completely shameless…trying to buy our way into the Common Market by subscribing to that preposterous Concorde project…utter blackmail…under Pompidou hardly any better…open subsidization of the French farmer…staggering inflation of our food prices…no unity whatsoever…the goal of a United Europe smashed, perhaps irreparably…no house spirit…they’re simply not team players.” Colonel Christie frowned. The Minister was being unwontedly lucid. He must be very troubled indeed.

“…this new government, even more hopeless…pride, gentlemen, overweening pride, pure and simple…no proper respect and cooperation…during the days of the Marshall Plan…neither the inclination nor the means to play the international gadfly…a quite second-rate power basically…must be made to realize…can’t expect them perhaps to come hat in hand, but…” He waved an arm vaguely, encompassing in a gesture the vast realm of the possible, then rose briskly. “You agree, Jenkins?”

“Up to a point, Sir William, up to a point.”

“Splendid, splendid, I am so glad we are of one mind. Colonel Christie, good day.”

In a room hardly less elegant but infinitely more comfortable Colonel Christie summoned his second-in-command.

“Sit down, Dawson, we have much to discuss. We are about to declare war.”

“War, sir? May I ask against whom?”

“Certainly, this isn’t the Ministry of Defense. France.”

“France? There’s no denying they’re a shocking lot of—”

“Quite. I’m afraid I may have misled you somewhat. An entirely unofficial declaration is what I had in mind. The hostilities to be carried out by our Section.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” Colonel Christie laughed shortly. “I shouldn’t tease you, but the ministerial manner is dreadfully catching. I must watch myself. Pour yourself a drink, Dawson, and let’s consider this matter.”

“Thank you.”

“Now then, what exactly is our goal? It is to coerce the sovereign state of France into a situation in which it will be inevitably and inexorably compelled to recognize its actual status as a lesser power, to reintegrate itself within the Common Market, and in general to rejoin the comity of Western nations. Not at all an easy task. Especially as the means must absolutely preclude the open declaration of hostilities or the traditional methods thereof, which could only invite mutual destruction.”

Dawson pondered, then said, “In other words, our purpose is to render ineffective their armed forces, or to smash the franc, or to destroy their morale, but without recourse to atomic warfare, naval blockade, armed invasion, massive propaganda, or other overtly hostile acts? As you say, not an easy task.”

“Which makes it all the more enthralling, don’t you think? A stern test of our native ingenuity. Come, let us begin by considering the beginning. France. What, Dawson, is France?”

“Well. Where does one start? A European power, roughly fifty million people, area something over two hundred thousand square miles, nominal allies—”

“Let’s probe deeper than that. To the spirit of France, Joan of Arc, the Revolution, Napoleon, Balzac, the Marne, de Gaulle, la mission civilisatrice francaise…”

“Ah. What precisely is it that makes a Frenchman a Frenchman, rather than an Englishman? To subjugate France we first identify, then subjugate, her soul...”

“Excellent, really excellent. Well, Dawson, what is the soul of France? What springs instantly to mind?”

“Sex. Brigitte Bardot. The Folies Bergere. The—”

“A two-edged weapon, I’m afraid.”

“Surely the deprivation of sex in England would hardly be noticed?”

“Perhaps not, but it is difficult to see how a campaign of sexual warfare could be successfully implemented. But this is quite promising. Dawson, do carry on.”

“Well. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Riviera, chateaux on the Loire, perfume, camembert cheese. French bread, rudeness, independence, bloody-mindedness. High fashion, funny little cars, berets, mustaches, three-star restaurants, wine—”

“Wine…wine, Dawson, wine! Red wine, white wine, rosé wine, champagne, Chateau-Lafite ’29, vin de table, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Provence, Anjou. Wine. Nothing but wine. A nation of winedrinkers, a nation of wine! Splendid, Dawson, really quite splendid.”

“But—”

“Dawson. The flash is blinding, it has me quite dazzled. Kindly hand me that almanac by your side, no, the French one, Quid? Let me see now, wine, wine, wine…” Colonel Christie hummed as he flipped through the pages. “Ah, yes, yes indeed. Listen to this, Dawson: 1,088,000 winegrowers, 1,453,000 vineyards, more than 4,500,000 persons living directly or indirectly from the production of wine. Average annual production, sixty-three million hectoliters, what on earth is a hectoliter? Twenty-two gallons? Good heavens, that’s 1,386 million gallons per year. Eight percent is exported. Consumption: about forty gallons per person per year.

“Ah, as I thought, in 1971 France imported only 124,147,000 francs’ worth of Scotch whisky, while exporting to England 194,833,000 francs’ worth of wine and spirits. To England alone, mind you.

“Bearing those figures in mind, Dawson, is it any wonder that the French are an extremely unstable and disputatious race, or that England suffers a catastrophic balance of payments deficit? But here we have the means to redress the situation.”

“We do?”

“Certainly we do. This inestimable almanac is kind enough to list the enemies of the vine: mildew, oidium, and phylloxera. Surely you have heard that in the 1880s the vineyards of France were almost totally destroyed overnight by phylloxera. Millions of vines had to be sent from the United States and replanted. Interestingly enough, after a few years in their new soil the transplanted vines produced wine of the same quality and characteristics as the original vines. It was, Dawson, the first example of American foreign aid, an early Marshall Plan. And equally forgotten.

“But I think that if a similar catastrophe were to overtake France today you would find few Americans in the mood to succor France yet again with Liberty Ships full of grapevines. After all, California is now one of the great wine-producing regions of the world; they would have no reason to help their fiercest competitor. No, Dawson, from every angle the prospect pleases. If I were a mathematician I should be tempted to call it elegant.

“Think of it. Economic and political chaos in France. Fifty million Frenchmen drinking water, with the inevitable result that they will see the world clearly for the first time in centuries. A shocking deficit in their balance of trade, total demoralization of a civilization founded on the restaurant and bistro, the collapse of their armed forces—recruits are forced to drink a liter of gros rouge per day—a notable boost for British exports—I foresee Red Cross vessels loaded to the scuppers with Scotch and sound British ale—and a dramatic return to the days when Britannia ruled the waves.”

“But, sir. What are we to drink? I must confess, a nice glass of—”

“Nonsense, Dawson. Stock your cellar if you must. Or refine your palate. Personally, I find a regimen of sherry, hock, and port entirely pleasing. None of them, you will note, from France.”

“But—”

“Dawson. ‘Say, for what were hopyards meant/Or why was Burton built on Trent?’”

“I beg your pardon?”

“‘Ale, man, ale’s the thing to drink/For fellows whom it hurts to think.’”

“Really, sir,” said Dawson reproachfully.

“The poet, you know. Housman.”

“Ah, I see. But the means…”

“Oh, come. Why do we support all those beastly biological warfare establishments if not for situations such as this ? I hardly think the boffins will have explored the possibility of a mutated and highly-virulent oidium fungus or phylloxera, but I should think that the prospect of developing a nasty bug which poisons grapevines rather than entire populations ought to appeal to whatever small spark of common humanity they may yet retain. After that, a few aerosol bombs…”

Colonel Christie’s keen eye seemed to pierce the future’s veil. He smiled.

“Sir. Retaliation.”

“Retaliation? Don’t spout nonsense, Dawson. How can they retaliate? Atomic attack? Naval blockade to interdict trade in wheat and iron? That’s war. Psychological warfare, propaganda? Impossible. No one in France speaks English and no one in England understands French. Sabotage? What could they sabotage?

“Think, Dawson, of British life, its placid, straightforward, sensible course, devoid of fripperies or eccentricities. Its character. No, no. I assure you, Dawson. The British way of life is quite invulnerable.”

“…and totally ravished. I tell you, St. Denis, it will mean mobilization and inevitable war. Already the President has designated a War Cabinet, and we are to meet later this evening. Ah, who would have thought it, that nation of shopkeepers, that race of hypocrites, that even they could sink so low? Not only an act of naked aggression but also an insult to the very honor of France herself. Ah, Perfidious Albion!”

Colonel St. Denis nodded deferentially. “If I may suggest, however, M. le Ministre, it is less a question of Perfidious Albion than a question of rank Britannic amateurism. Ah, these English milords, with their love of the hunt, their cult of the gentleman, their espousal of the amateur, their scorn of the professional. Because of a long-forgotten battle won on the playing fields of Eton they have never learned that the rest of the world has never attended Eton, nor needed to. They have not learned that we—that I, Jean-Pierre Francois Marie Charles St.-Denis—that we are not gentlemen and that we do not fight like gentlemen. We fight like professionals and we fight to win.”

“Bravely spoken. But are you saying—”

“Exactly, M. le Ministre. A plan. A riposte. Check and mate.”

“But the vineyards, totally ruined, beyond reclamation. A nation on the verge of depression or revolution. Were it not necessary to mobilize the Army it would be necessary to confine it to barracks.”

“Details. Of no importance. Do not the British still boast of their Battle of Britain and of Their Finest Hour? So it shall be with France: Her Finest Decade.” St.-Denis waved a hand scornfully: “A few epicures, a few tosspots, they may suffer. For the rest of us there is work to do, work for the Glory of France!”

“…like a charm, sir. Complete panic and demoralization. Already there’s talk of a Sixth Republic. No, Intelligence reports no indication of a counterattack. Simply a nationwide balls-up.”

“Exactly. As I told our masters this morning. How can one expect a committee of Froggies to come to a decision without a bottle of wine to hand, eh, Dawson?”

“Up to a point, sir.”

“Come, come, Dawson, not getting the wind up, are you? I tell you, you’re far more likely to find your name on the next Honors’ List.”

…not bloody likely, with you to hog all the glory…

“...and now, St. Denis, if you would kindly tell us of what your plan consists?”

“Certainly, M. le President. You may recall your last visit to England, the sporting weekend with the Prime Minister at his country residence, Chequers?”

The President of France did not attempt to conceal his shudder.

“I thought so. I am certain then that after some ungodly meal of boiled mutton, brussels sprouts, and treacle pudding, you retired to your chamber for a restorative glass of cognac and a troubled sleep?”

“Really, St.-Denis, you surpass yourself.”

“Thank you, M. le President. After a troubled sleep, then, you were most certainly roused at some ghastly hour of the morning by a discreet knock upon your door. Contrary to your expectations, perhaps, it was a man-servant, a butler even, come to wake you for a strenuous day amidst the fogs and grouse. And what, M. le President, did this unwelcome intruder bear inexorably before him? The so-renowned breakfast anglais? Ah, no! I will tell you what this English devil placed before you for your ever-lasting torment.”

The President shied back before an accusatory finger.

“He placed before you, M. le President, a pot of tea!”

“Tea?”

“Tea.”

“Ah. Tea. Yes, I remember it well.” He shuddered anew. “But surely, Colonel St. Denis, you are not proposing that we poison the English population by forcing them to consume tea? The rest of the world, yes, it would be mass genocide. But the English, they drink tea, they thrive on tea, it would be how do they say, bearing charcoals to Windsor Castle.”

“Not exactly, M. le President. I am certain that as an Intellectual exercise you are prepared to admit to the fact that Englishmen drink tea. But do you comprehend it here?” He clutched both hands to his heart. “Here, with your soul? Or—it is almost indelicate to speak of this—have you ever grasped the sheer quantities of tea consumed within the British Isles? Of course not.

“Page 906 of the invaluable Quid? informs us that an Englishman takes at least 2,400 cups per year—six to seven per day—compared to thirty-three per year per Frenchman…Good heavens, are you all right?”

“I felt quite giddy for a moment. What appalling statistics.”

“Only the Anglo-Saxon could contemplate them without reeling.”

“One hardly knows which is worse, the English consumption or the fact that Frenchmen appear—”

“Let your mind be at rest. French consumption is confined entirely to immigrants from our former North-African colonies, or to herbal infusions quite incorrectly called tea.”

“Ah, thank heavens for that. But returning to—”

“Once you have grasped the magnitude of the consumption, you must then grasp the social importance of the consumption. It is the very fabric with which English society is constructed. Before-breakfast tea. ‘Elevenses.’ ‘Put the kettle on, dearie, and let’s have a nice cuppa.’ Thick black tea drunk by the mugful in the Army and Navy. Entire industries coming to a halt at a wildcat-strike called because of improperly-brewed tea. Afternoon tea with its cakes and crumpets and cucumber sandwiches and who dares guess what else?”

“I feel quite ill.”

“I also. Fortunately there remains only the Ceremony of the Teapot, the single article of faith which sixty million Englishmen hold in common. First the teapot must be heated, but only by filling it with boiling water. Then—”

“St.-Denis, I can bear no more. You have a course of action?”

“A simple virus, M. le President. Can the land of Pasteur and Curie fail before such a challenge?”

The room was somberly but richly furnished. A Persian rug lay on the floor. A fire crackled in the hearth.

The Permanent Secretary nodded approvingly. It was always satisfactory when a muddle began to regularize itself.

“Kind of you to drop by like this,” said Colonel Christie. “Whisky-soda? The syphon’s behind you.”

“Kind of you.” He limned the room with a gesture. “You do well by yourself here.”

The Colonel shrugged urbanely. “You wanted to see me?”

“That is, the Minister wanted me to see you. He thought you might be interested in an informal tally sheet we have drawn up regarding the results of last year’s Operation… er… Bacchus.”

“Very good of him indeed.”

“In so very informal a minute we thought it might be profitable to list the items under the headings Credits and Debits. The Minister was a former Chartered Accountant, you know.”

“I recall,” said Colonel Christie as he began to read the first sheet of notepaper.

Credits:

1. Destruction of all French vineyards, with concomitant confusion and social unrest in France, as apparently planned.

2. Twenty percent increase in the exportation of Scotch whiskey, for a three-week period before the blockade.

Debits:

1. Retaliation in the form of complete destruction of the world’s tea supply by means of a still-uncontrollable mutated virus.

2. Tea-rationing, followed by riots. Three general elections in the space of eight months. Martial law eventually declared.

3. Tea no longer available, nor in the foreseeable future.

4. Total decomposition of the fabric of British society.

5. This peculiarly-depraved act of war is currently being litigated at Geneva and before the World Court as a Crime Against Humanity, but we have reason to believe that our suit is not being well-received.

6. Expulsion of England from the Common Market.

7. The world’s opprobrium.

8. Economic embargo and naval blockade by a task force of seventy-three countries. Only the London Airlift and the United States Navy maintained England as a viable state.

9. Dwindling supplies of French wine. Blackmarket, and concomitant problems.

10. After a few months confusion, unexpected and absolute unification of the French people in the face of adversity.

11. As the world’s now-largest importer of wine, France is directly responsible for the sudden Economic Miracles in Italy and Algeria, both of which have doubled their vineyard acreage under production. Algeria has joined the Common Market and is considering becoming once again an integral part of France. German, Spanish, and Greek wine production has also benefited greatly.

12. To further promote this rapidly-rising spiral of prosperity, France and the other members of the Common Market are nearing Economic Union and hope shortly to achieve Political Union. It is felt that France will dominate and direct this nation of 250 million people.

13. To counter the cost of wine importation and the subsequent balance of payments deficit, France has already donated its armed forces (and expenses) to a United European Command.

14. Millions of acres of tea-producing land and millions of people in sixty-eight countries suddenly have become available for other forms of agricultural production. With the vast market unexpectedly open in France and other countries to the importation of wine, most of this acreage has been given over to wine production.

15. Some 4.6 million Frenchmen have spread to all corners of the world to aid the undeveloped countries in their effort to produce potable wine.

16. Due to the high professionalism of the French Secret Service, it is accepted unhesitatingly throughout the world that the American CIA was responsible for the mass destruction of the tea plant. Spurred by the efforts of 4.6 million ambassadors of goodwill, French has completely replaced English as the secondary language being taught in the world’s schools. It has, of course, become once again the standard language of diplomacy. It is thought that these factors will result in the emigration of at least half-a-million teachers from France, and a corresponding momentum will be given to the mission civilisatrice francaise.

17. The first wine-fair has opened in China. It was attended by Chairman Deng, who pronounced his unqualified approval of a Nuits-St.-Georges ‘66.

18. It is entirely foreseeable that with the accelerating rate of spread of French culture and influence, and the eventual leader of a United Europe, within a decade France will be the world’s dominant power.

“Rather gripping, don’t you think?” said the Permanent Secretary.

“Quite,” replied Colonel Christie dryly.

“Interesting, the amenities of your… er… suite,” said the Permanent Secretary as he strolled about the room in unabashed fascination. “One had no idea such comfort obtained in the Tower. One naturally thinks of dungeons, dank and durance vile, that sort of thing, eh?”

“Quite,” said Colonel Christie. “Oh, quite.”

Editor's Introduction to:

THE BATTLE
by Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley is responsible for some of the most trenchent satire in the field of science fiction. Often his most amusing stories bite deeper than you think.

THE BATTLE
by Robert Sheckley

Supreme General Fetterer barked “At ease!” as he hurried into the command room. Obediently, his three generals stood at ease.

“We haven’t much time,” Fetterer said, glancing at his watch. “We’ll go over the plan of battle again.”

He walked to the wall and unrolled a gigantic map of the Sahara desert.

“According to our best theological information, Satan is going to present his forces at these coordinates.” He indicated the place with a blunt forefinger. “In the front rank there will be the devils, demons, succubi, incubi, and the rest of the ratings. Bael will command the right flank, Buer the left. His Satanic Majesty will hold the center.”

“Rather medieval,” General Dell murmured.

General Fetterer’s aide came in, his face shining and happy with thought of the Coming.

“Sir,” he said, “the priest is outside again.”

“Stand at attention, soldier,” Fetterer said sternly. “There’s still a battle to be fought and won.”

“Yes, sir,” the aide said, and stood rigidly, some of the joy fading from his face.

“The priest, eh?” Supreme General Fetterer rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully. Even since the Coming, since the knowledge of the imminent Last Battle, the religious workers of the world had made a complete nuisance of themselves. They had stopped their bickering, which was commendable. But now they were trying to run military business.

“Send him away,” Fetterer said. “He knows we’re planning Armageddon.”

“Yes, sir,” the aide said. He saluted sharply, wheeled, and marched out.

“To go on,” Supreme General Fetterer said. “Behind Satan’s first line of defense will be the resurrected sinners, and various elemental forces of evil. The fallen angels will act as his bomber corps. Dell’s robot interceptors will meet them.”

General Dell smiled grimly.

“Upon contact, MacFee’s automatic tank corps will proceed toward the center of the line. MacFee’s automatic tank corps will proceed toward the center,” Fetterer went on, “supported by General Ongin’s robot infantry. Dell will command the H bombing of the rear, which should be tightly massed. I will thrust with the mechanized cavalry, here and here.”

The aide came back, and stood rigidly at attention. “Sir,” he said, “the priest refuses to go. He says he must speak with you.”

Supreme General Fetterer hesitated before saying no. He remembered that this was the Last Battle, and that the religious workers were connected with it. He decided to give the man five minutes.

“Show him in,” he said.

The priest wore a plain business suit, to show that he represented no particular religion. His face was tired but determined.

“General,” he said, “I am a representative of all the religious workers of the world, the priests, rabbis, ministers, mullahs, and all the rest. We beg of you, General, to let us fight in the Lord’s battle.”

Supreme General Fetterer drummed his fingers nervously against his side. He wanted to stay on friendly terms with these men. Even he, the Supreme Commander, might need a good word, when all was said and done…

“You can understand my position,” Fetterer said unhappily. “I’m a general. I have a battle to fight.”

“But it’s the Last Battle,” the priest said. “It should be the people’s battle.”

“It is,” Fetterer said. “It’s being fought by their representatives, the military.”

The priest didn’t look at all convinced.

Fetterer said, “You wouldn’t want to lose this battle, would you? Have Satan win?”

“Of course not,” the priest murmured.

“Then we can’t take any chances,” Fetterer said. “All the governments agreed on that, didn’t they? Oh, it would be very nice to fight Armageddon with the mass of humanity. Symbolic, you might say. But could we be certain of victory?”

The priest tried to say something, but Fetterer was talking rapidly.

“How do we know the strength of Satan’s forces? We simply must put forth our best foot, militarily speaking. And that means the automatic armies, the robot interceptors and tanks, the H bombs.”

The priest looked very unhappy. “But it isn’t right,” he said. “Certainly you can find some place in your plan for people?”

Fetterer thought about it, but the request was impossible. The plan of battle was fully developed, beautiful, irresistible. Any introduction of a gross human element would only throw it out of order. No living flesh could stand the noise of that mechanical attack, the energy potentials humming in the air, the all-enveloping fire power. A human being who came within a hundred miles of the front would not live to see the enemy.

“I’m afraid not,” Fetterer said.

“There are some,” the priest said sternly, “who feel that it was an error to put this in the hands of the military.”

“Sorry,” Fetterer said cheerfully. “That’s defeatist talk. If you don’t mind—” He gestured at the door. Wearily, the priest left.

“These civilians,” Fetterer mused. “Well, gentlemen, are your troops ready?”

“We’re ready to fight for Him,” General MacFee said enthusiastically. “I can vouch for every automatic in my command. Their metal is shining, all relays have been renewed, and the energy reservoirs are fully charged. Sir, they’re positively itching for battle!”

General Ongin snapped fully out of his daze. “The ground troops are ready, sir!”

“Air arm ready,” General Dell said.

“Excellent,” General Fetterer said. “All other arrangements have been made. Television facilities are available for the total population of the world. No one, rich or poor, will miss the spectacle of the Last Battle.”

“And after the battle—” General Ongin began, and stopped. He looked at Fetterer.

Fetterer frowned deeply. He didn’t know what was supposed to happen after The Battle. That part of it was presumably in the hands of the religious agencies.

“I suppose there’ll be a presentation or something,” he said vaguely.

“You mean we will meet—Him?” General Dell asked.

“Don’t really know,” Fetterer said. “But I should think so. After all—I mean, you know what I mean.”

“But what should we wear?” General MacFee asked, in a sudden panic. “I mean, what does one wear?”

“What do the angels wear?” Fetterer asked Ongin.

“I don’t know,” Ongin said.

“Robes, do you think?” General Dell offered.

“No,” Fetterer said sternly. “We will wear dress uniform, without decorations.”

The generals nodded. It was fitting.

And then it was time.

Gorgeous in their battle array, the legions of Hell advanced over the desert. Hellish pipes skirled, hollow drums pounded, and the great ghost moved forward.

In a blinding cloud of sand, General MacFee’s automatic tanks hurled themselves against the satanic foe. Immediately, Dell’s automatic bombers screeched overhead, hurling their bombs on the massed horde of the damned. Fetterer thrust valiantly with his automatic cavalry.

Into this melee advanced Ongin’s automatic infantry, and metal did what metal could.

The hordes of the damned overflowed the front, ripping apart tanks and robots. Automatic mechanisms died, bravely defending a patch of sand. Dell’s bombers were torn from the skies by the fallen angels, led by Marchocias, his griffin’s wings beating the air into a tornado.

The thin, battered line of robots held, against gigantic presences that smashed and scattered them, and struck terror into the hearts of television viewers in homes around the world. Like men, like heroes the robots fought, trying to force back the forces of evil.

Astaroth shrieked a command, and Behemoth lumbered forward. Bael, with a wedge of devils behind him, threw a charge at General Fetterer’s crumbling left flank. Metal screamed, electrons howled in agony at the impact.

Supreme General Fetterer sweated and trembled, a thousand miles behind the firing line. But steadily, nervelessly, he guided the pushing of buttons and the throwing of levers.

His superb corps didn’t disappoint him. Mortally damaged robots swayed to their feet and fought. Smashed, trampled, destroyed by the howling fiends, the robots managed to hold their line. Then the veteran Fifth Corps threw in a counterattack, and the enemy front was pierced.

A thousand miles behind the firing line, the generals guided the mopping up operations.

“The battle is won,” Supreme General Fetterer whispered, turning away from the television screen. “I congratulate you, gentlemen.”

The generals smiled wearily.

They looked at each other, then broke into a spontaneous shout. Armageddon was won, and the forces of Satan had been vanquished.

But something was happening on their screens.

“Is that—is that—” General MacFee began, and then couldn’t speak.

For The Presence was upon the battlefield, walking among the piles of twisted, shattered metal.

The generals were silent.

The Presence touched a twisted robot.

Upon the smoking desert, the robots began to move. The twisted, scored, fused metals straightened.

The robots stood on their feet again.

“MacFee,” Supreme General Fetterer whispered. “Try your controls. Make the robots kneel or something.”

The general tried, but his controls were dead.

The bodies of the robots began to rise in the air. Around them were the angels of the Lord, and the robot tanks and soldiers and bombers floated upward, higher and higher.

“He’s saving them!” Ongin cried hysterically. “He’s saving the robots!”

“It’s a mistake!” Fetterer said. “Quick. Send a messenger to—no! We will go in person!”

And quickly a ship was commanded, and quickly they sped to the field of battle. But by then it was too late, for Armageddon was over, and the robots gone, and the Lord and his host departed.

Editor's Introduction to:

MERCENARIES AND MILITARY VIRTUE
by Jerry Pournelle

This essay was originally written as the introduction to HAMMER’S SLAMMERS by David Drake. I thought the points worth making again, and with very little change it could have served as the introduction to this book.

MERCENARIES AND MILITARY VIRTUE
by Jerry Pournelle

In Europe and especially in England, military history is a respected intellectual discipline. Not so here. I doubt there are a dozen U.S. academic posts devoted to the study of the military arts.

The public esteem of the profession of arms is at a rather low ebb just now—at least in the United States. The Soviet Union retains the pomp and ceremony of military glory, and the officer class is highly regarded, if not by the public (who can know the true feelings of Soviet citizens?) then at least by the rulers of the Kremlin. Nor did the intellectuals always despise soldiers in the United States. Many of the very universities which delight in making mock of uniforms were endowed by land grants and were founded in the expectation that they would train officers for the state militia. It has not been all that many years since US combat troops were routinely expected to take part in parades; when soldiers were proud to wear uniform off post, and when my uniform was sufficient for free entry into movie houses, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the New York Ballet, and as I recall the Met (as well as to other establishments catering to the less cultural needs of the soldier).

But now both the military and anyone who studies war are held in a good deal of contempt.

I do not expect this state of affairs to last—in fact, I am certain that it cannot. A nation which despises its soldiers will all too soon have a despicable army.

The depressing fact is that history is remarkably clear on one point: wealthy republics do not last long. Time after time they have risen to wealth and freedom; the citizens become wealthy and sophisticated; unwilling to volunteer to protect themselves, they go to conscription; this too becomes intolerable; and soon enough they turn to mercenaries.

Machiavelli understood that, and things have not much changed since his time—except that Americans know far less history than did the rulers of Florence and Milan and Venice.

For mercenaries are a dangerous necessity. If they are incompetent, they will ruin you. If they are competent there is always the temptation to rob the paymaster.

Why should they not? They know their employers will not fight. They may, if recruited into a national army, retain loyalty to the country—but if the nation despises them, and takes every possible opportunity to let them know it, then that incentive falls as well—and they have a monopoly on the means of violence. Their employers won’t fight—if they would, they needn’t have hired mercenaries.

The result is usually disastrous for the wealthy republic.

After all, it should be fairly clear than no one fights purely for money; that anyone who does is probably not worth hiring. As Montesquieu put it, “a rational army would run away.” To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you’re all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike, to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King, to be rear guard at Kunu-ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead drill; these are not rational acts.

They are often merely necessary.

Through history, through painful experience, military professionals have built up a specialized knowledge: how to induce men (including most especially themselves) to fight, aye, and to die. To charge the guns at Breed’s Hill and New Orleans, at Chippewa and at Cold Harbor; to climb the wall of the Embassy Compound at Peking; to go ashore at Betio and Saipan; to load and fire with precision and accuracy while the Bon Homme Richard is sinking; to fly in that thin air five miles above a hostile land and bring the ship straight and level for thirty seconds over Regensberg and Ploesti; to endure at Heartbreak Ridge and Porkchop Hill and the Iron Triangle and Dien Bien Phu and Hue and Firebase 34 and a thousand nameless hills and villages.

It’s a rather remarkable achievement, when you think about it. It’s even more remarkable when you look closer and see just how many mercenary units have performed creditably, honorably, even gallantly; how many of those who have changed history on the battlefield have been professional soldiers. For despite the silly sayings about violence never settling anything, history IS changed on the battlefield: ask the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Continental Congress, the Carthaginians, the Israelis, the Confederate State of America, Pompey and Caesar and Richard III and Harold of Wessex, Don Juan of Austria and Aetius the last Roman. Yet you could search through the armies of history and you would find few competent troopers who fought for money and money alone.

This is the mistake so often made by those who despise the military, and because they despise it refuse to understand it: they fail to see that few are so foolish as to give their lives for money; yet an army whose soldiers are not willing to die is an army that wins few victories.

Yet certainly there have always existed mercenary soldiers.

We can piously hope there will be no armies in the future. It is an unlikely hope; at least history is against it. On the evidence, peace is a purely theoretical state of affairs whose existence we deduce because there have been intervals between wars. But I did not speak contemptuously when I spoke of pious hopes; nor do I find it an irony that the Strategic Air Command, whose commanders hold leashed more firepower than has been expended by all the armies of all time, has as its motto “Peace is our profession.” Most of those young men who guard us as we sleep believe in that, believe it wholeheartedly and give up a very great deal for it. I too can piously hope for peace; that we shall heed the advice of the carol we sing annually and “hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.”

There is no physical reason why the human race should not endure for a hundred billion years; and on that scale our history is short, and all we have learned is little compared to what we shall one day know. There may well be a secret formula for peace, and certainly I hope we will find it.

But to hope is nothing. When Appius Claudius told the Senate of Rome that “If you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war” he said nothing that history has not repeatedly affirmed. It may be wrong advice. Certainly there is an argument against it. But I think there is no argument at all against a similar aphorism: “If you would have peace, then understand war.”

Which is to say, understand armies; understand why men fight; understand the organization of violence.

And that, at last, brings us to this book.

Military science fiction is a highly specialized art form. It is attempted often, but there are few writers who know science, society, and the military well enough to write a good story of war in the future.

This is unfortunate: although science fiction, like all literature, must entertain and divert if it is to have readers, it often has a serious purpose as well: to look at future societies, and the impact of technology on history. Any attempt to look in the future while ignoring war and the military is probably doomed to failure: if five thousand years of recorded history have given us no formula for controlling violence and greed, we would be fortunate indeed if this generation has fought the war to end all wars; if the armies that exist today were the last this planet will ever see.

The United States lost the Viet Nam War precisely because we attempted to fight it as if we were using Legionnaires, mercenary soldiers responsible only to the President and the Executive branch of the government. There was no declaration of war, and no attempt to involve the American people. President Johnson was afraid that a declaration of war would take attention and funds away from his Great Society programs.

The result was disaster. The American people have always regarded the Army as their own; it belongs to the Congress, not to the President. The Constitution treats the Army differently from the Naval Forces; we might possibly have sent the Marines into Viet Nam without involving the population, but never the Army. It’s even doubtful about the Marines. In truth, the United States has no Legions, no professional soldiers of the Landsknecht tradition.

Even so, our Army did well in Viet Nam. It never lost a battle, except with the American news media. Take the Tet Offensives as an example: only in Hue did we take heavy casualties, for only there did the enemy manage to take possession of any important real estate. By the time Tet ended, the Viet Cong was all but destroyed; it was one of the most decisive victories in history. Yet the news media insisted on portraying it as “tragedy” and defeat.

The truth is that the US Army won its battles; that the “counterinsurgency” actions were totally successful; and that the Viet Cong—the guerillas—were capable of making life miserable for the people of Viet Nam through their savage acts of terrorism; but the Republic of Viet Nam never fell to guerrillas. It fell to four North Vietnamese Army Corps of regulars; to an invasion of armored divisions from the north; and to a lack of ammunition and supplies. The Republic of South Viet Nam fell to an invasion—and was defeated by the Congress of the United States, which deliberately refused to allow the President to enforce the Geneva accords.

In fact, though, we had lost much earlier than that. We lost in 1965, when we defeated the guerillas, but failed either to take North Viet Nam or to isolate the battlefield. We tried to defeat hornets by swatting them hornet at a time; a tactic that cannot possibly work. You must either burn the nest or retire behind window screens.

Either strategy would have been feasible. Given the later importance of the Chinese Alliance to the United States, it may be that a ramps-down invasion of North Viet Nam was politically undesirable; but certainly there would have been no great difficulty in building a barrier from the Mekong to the Sea, and, if necessary, extending the barrier further west. Any nation capable of building the Panama Canal in the early part of the century could build minefields, tank traps, barbed wire entanglements, military roads, watchtowers—an Asian equivalent of the Soviet Wall along the Czech-German border.

Yet we did not; and we have not yet seen the result of bringing home a defeated army.

As I write this, the Pentagon is studying the 1982 campaigns: the Falklands debacle, and the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. Two things stand out:

First, without high technology, you cannot wage successful war. You must have electronics and missiles, and they must work.

Second, without good soldiers; without leadership, and initiative, and steadfast devotion to duty; without what we once called professionalism and the military virtues; all the sophisticated equipment in the world cannot save you.

In other words, we learn from the latest wars what we might have learned from history.

History has never been kind to wealthy republics. We can hope we are an exception.

Editor's Introduction to:

RANKS OF BRONZE
by David Drake

David Drake is one of a very select group who can write realistic military science fiction. His HAMMER’S SLAMMERS has a deservedly high reputation. Until recently Drake made his living as a lawyer and didn’t write very much, which was a real pity, for he understands much. After the success of HAMMER’S SLAMMERS, Drake’s stock with publishing types has risen high. On the basis of several book contracts he has decided to entertain the innocent rather than prosecute the guilty, for which we may all be properly grateful…

“Gold may not get you good soldiers,” said Niccolo Machiavelli, “but good soldiers can always get you gold.” The merchant princes in this story understand that all too well.

RANKS OF BRONZE
by David Drake

The rising sun is a dagger point casting long shadows toward Vibulenus and his cohort from the native breastworks. The legion had formed ranks an hour before; the enemy is not yet stirring. A playful breeze with a bitter edge skitters out of the south, and the Tribune swings his shield to his right side against it.

“When do we advance, sir?” his First Centurion asks. Gnaeus Clodius Calvus, promoted to his present position after a boulder had pulped his predecessor during the assault on a granite fortress far away. Vibulenus only vaguely recalls his first days with the cohort, a boy of eighteen in titular command of four hundred and eighty men whose names he had despaired of learning. Well, he knows them now. Of course, there are only two hundred and ninety-odd left to remember.

Calvus’ bearded, silent patience snaps Vibulenus back to the present. “When the cavalry comes up, they told me. Some kinglet or other is supposed to bring up a couple thousand men to close our flanks. Otherwise, we’re hanging…”

The Tribune’s voice trails off. He stares across the flat expanse of gravel toward the other camp, remembering another battle plain of long ago.

“Damn Parthians,” Calvus mutters, his thought the same.

Vibulenus nods. “Damn Crassus, you mean. He put us there, and that put us here. The stupid bastard. But he got his, too.”

The legionaries squat in their ranks, talking and chewing bits of bread or dried fruit. They display no bravado, very little concern. They have been here too often before. Sunlight turns their shield-facings green: not the crumbly fungus of verdigris but the shimmering sea-color of the harbor of Brundisium on a foggy morning.

Oh, Mother Vesta, Vibulenus breathes to himself. He is five foot two, about average for the legion. His hair is black where it curls under the rim of his helmet and he has no trace of a beard. Only his eyes make him appear more than a teenager; they would suit a tired man of fifty.

A trumpet from the command group in the rear sings three quick bars. “Fall in!” the Tribune orders, but his centurions are already barking their own commands. These too are lost in the clash of hobnails on gravel. The Tenth Cohort could form ranks in its sleep.

Halfway down the front, a legionary’s cloak hooks on a notch in his shield rim. He tugs at it, curses in Oscan as Calvus snarls down the line at him. Vibulenus makes a mental note to check with the centurion after the battle. That fellow should have been issued a replacement shield before disembarking. He glances at his own. How many shields has he carried? Not that it matters. Armor is replaceable. He is wearing his fourth cuirass, now, though none of them have fit like the one his father had bought him the day Crassus granted him a tribune’s slot. Vesta…

A galloper from the command group skids his beast to a halt with a needlessly brutal jerk on its reins. Vibulenus recognizes him—Pompilius Falco. A little swine when he joined the legion, an accomplished swine now. Not bad with animals, though. “We’ll be advancing without the cavalry,” he shouts, leaning over in his saddle. “Get your line dressed.”

“Osiris’ bloody dick we will!” the Tribune snaps. “Where’s our support?”

“Have to support yourself, I guess,” shrugs Falco. He wheels his mount. Vibulenus steps forward and catches the reins.

“Falco,” he says with no attempt to lower his voice, “you tell our deified Commander to get somebody on our left flank if he expects the Tenth to advance. There’s too many natives—they’ll hit us from three sides at once.”

“You afraid to die?” the galloper sneers. He tugs at the reins.

Vibulenus holds them. A gust of wind whips at his cloak. “Afraid to get my skull split?” he asks. “I don’t know. Are you, Falco?” Falco glances at where the Tribune’s right hand rests. He says nothing. “Tell him we’ll fight for him,” Vibulenus goes on “We won’t let him throw us away. We’ve gone that route once.” He looses the reins and watches the galloper scatter gravel on his way back.

The replacement gear is solid enough, shields that do not split when dropped and helmets forged without thin spots. But there is no craftsmanship in them. They are heavy, lifeless. Vibulenus still carries a bone-hilted sword from Toledo that required frequent sharpening but was tempered and balanced—poised to slash a life out, as it has a hundred times already. His hand continues to caress the palm-smoothed bone, and it calms him somewhat.

“Thanks, sir.”

The thin-featured tribune glances back at his men. Several of the nearer ranks give him a spontaneous salute. Calvus is the one who spoke. He is blank-faced now, a statue of mahogany and strap-bronze. His stocky form radiates pride in his leader. Leader—no one in the group around the standards can lead a line soldier, though they may give commands that will be obeyed. Vibulenus grins and slaps Calvus’ burly shoulder. “Maybe this is the last one and we’ll be going home,” he says.

Movement throws a haze over the enemy camp. At this distance it is impossible to distinguish forms, but metal flashes in the viridian sunlight. The shadow of bodies spreads slowly to right and left of the breastworks as the natives order themselves. There are thousands of them, many thousands.

“Hey-yip!” Twenty riders of the general’s bodyguard pass behind the cohort at an earthshaking trot. They rein up on the left flank, shrouding the exposed depth of the infantry. Pennons hang from the lances socketed behind their right thighs, gay yellows and greens to keep the lance heads from being driven too deep to be jerked out. The riders’ faces are sullen under their mesh face guards. Vibulenus knows how angry they must be at being shifted under pressure—under his pressure—and he grins again. The bodyguards are insulted at being required to fight instead of remaining nobly aloof from the battle. The experience may do them some good.

At least it may get a few of the snotty bastards killed.

“Not exactly a regiment of cavalry,” Calvus grumbles.

“He gave us half of what was available,” Vibulenus replies with a shrug. “They’ll do to keep the natives off our back. Likely nobody’ll come near, they look so mean.”

The centurion taps his thigh with his knobby swagger stick. “Mean? We’ll give ’em mean.”

All the horns in the command group sound together, a cacophonous bray. The jokes and scufflings freeze, and only the south wind whispers. Vibulenus takes a last look down his ranks—each of them fifty men abreast and no more sway to it than a tight-stretched cord would leave. Five feet from shield boss to shield boss, room to swing a sword. Five feet from nose guard to the nose guards of the next rank, men ready to step forward individually to replace the fallen or by ranks to lock shields with the front line in an impenetrable wall of bronze. The legion is a restive dragon, and its teeth glitter in its spears; one vertical behind each legionary’s shield, one slanted from each right hand to stab or throw.

The horns blare again, the eagle standard slants forward, and Vibulenus’ throat joins three thousand others in a death-rich bellow as the legion steps off on its left foot. The centurions are counting cadence and the ranks blast it back to them in the crash-jingle of boots and gear.

Striding quickly between the legionaries, Vibulenus checks the dress of his cohort. He should have a horse, but there are no horses in the legion now. The command group rides rough equivalents which are…very rough. Vibulenus is not sure he could accept one if his parsimonious employees offered it.

His men are a smooth bronze chain that advances in lock step. Very nice. The nine cohorts to the right are in equally good order, but Hercules! there are so few of them compared to the horde swarming from the native camp. Somebody has gotten overconfident. The enemy raises its own cheer, scattered and thin at first. But it goes on and on, building, ordering itself to a blood-pulse rhythm that moans across the intervening distance, the gap the legion is closing at two steps a second. Hercules! there is a crush of them.

The natives are close enough to be individuals now: lanky, long-armed in relations to a height that averages greater than that of the legionnaires. Ill-equipped, though. Their heads are covered either by leather helmets or beehives of their own hair. Their shields appear to be hide and wicker affairs. What could live on this gravel waste and provide that much leather? But of course Vibulenus has been told none of the background, not even the immediate geography. There is some place around that raises swarms of warriors, that much is certain.

And they have iron. The black glitter of their spearheads tightens the Tribune’s wounded chest as he remembers.

“Smile, boys,” one of the centurions calls cheerfully, “here’s company.” With his words a javelin hums down at a steep angle to spark on the ground. From a spear-thrower, must have been. The distance is too long for any arm Vibulenus has seen, and he has seen his share.

“Ware!” he calls as another score of missiles arc from the native ranks. Legionaries judge them, raise their shields or ignore the plunging weapons as they choose. One strikes in front of Vibulenus and shatters into a dozen iron splinters and a knobby shaft that looks like rattan. One or two of the men have spears clinging to their shield faces. Their clatter syncopates the thud of boot heels. No one is down.

Vibulenus runs two paces ahead of his cohort, his sword raised at an angle. It makes him an obvious target: a dozen javelins spit toward him. The skin over his ribs crawls, the lumpy breadth of scar tissue scratching like a rope over the bones. But he can be seen by every man in his cohort, and somebody has to give the signal…

“Now!” he shouts vainly in the mingling cries. His arm and sword cut down abruptly. Three hundred throats give a collective grunt as the cohort heaves its own massive spears with the full weight of its rush behind them. Another light javelin glances from the shoulder of Vibulenus’ cuirass, staggering him. Calvus’ broad right palm catches the Tribune, holds him upright for the instant he needs to get his balance.

The front of the native line explodes as the Roman spears crash into it.

Fifty feet ahead there are orange warriors shrieking as they stumble over the bodies of comrades whose armor has shredded under the impact of the heavy spears. “At ‘em!” a front-rank file-closer cries, ignoring his remaining spear as he drags out his short sword. The trumpets are calling something but it no longer matters what: tactics go hang, the Tenth is cutting its way into another native army.

In a brief spate of fury, Vibulenus holds his forward position between a pair of legionaries. A native, orange-skinned with bright carmine eyes, tries to drag himself out of the Tribune’s path. A Roman spear has gouged through his shield and arm, locking all three together. Vibulenus’ sword takes the warrior alongside the jaw. The blood is paler than a man’s.

The backward shock of meeting has bunched the natives. The press of undisciplined reserves from behind adds to their confusion. Vibulenus jumps a still-writhing body and throws himself into the wall of shields and terrified orange faces. An iron-headed spear thrusts at him, misses as another warrior jostles the wielder. Vibulenus slashes downward at his assailant. The warrior throws his shield up to catch the sword, then collapses when a second-rank legionary darts his spear through the orange abdomen.

Breathing hard with his sword still dripping in his hand, Vibulenus lets the pressing ranks flow around him. Slaughter is not a tribune’s work, but increasingly Vibulenus finds that he needs the swift violence of the battle line to release the fury building within him. The cohort is advancing with the jerky sureness of an ox-drawn plow in dry soil.

A window of native bodies lies among the line of first contact, now well within the Roman formation. Vibulenus wipes his blade on a fallen warrior, leaving two sluggish runnels filling on the flesh. He sheathes the sword. Three bodies are sprawled together to form a hillock. Without hesitation the Tribune steps onto it to survey the battle.

The legion is a broad awl punching through a belt of orange leather. The cavalry on the left stand free in a scatter of bodies, neither threatened by the natives nor making any active attempt to drive them back. One of the mounts, a hairless brute combining the shape of a wolfhound with the bulk of an ox, is feeding on a corpse his rider has lanced. Vibulenus was correct in expecting the natives to give them a wide berth; thousands of flanking warriors tremble in indecision rather than sweep forward to surround the legion. It would take more discipline than this orange rabble has shown to attack the toad-like riders on their terrible beasts.

Behind the lines, a hundred paces distant from the legionaries whose armor stands in hammering contrast to the naked autochthones, is the Commander and his remaining score of guards. He alone of the three thousand who have landed from the starship knows why the battle is being fought, but he seems to stand above it. And if the silly bastard still has half his bodyguard with him—Mars and all the gods, what must be happening on the right flank?

The inhuman shout of triumph that rises half a mile away gives Vibulenus an immediate answer.

“Prepare to disengage!” he orders the nearest centurion. The swarthy non-com, son of a North African colonist, speaks briefly into the ears of two legionaries before sending them to the ranks forward and back of his. The legion is tight for men, always has been. Tribunes have no runners, but the cohort makes do.

Trumpets blat in terror. The native warriors boil whooping around the Roman right flank. Legionaries in the rear are facing about with ragged suddenness, obeying instinct rather than the orders bawled by their startled officers. The command group suddenly realizes the situation. Three of the bodyguard charge toward the oncoming orange mob. The rest of the guards and staff scatter into the infantry.

The iron-bronze clatter has ceased on the left flank. When the cohort halts its advance, the natives gain enough room to break and flee for their encampment. Even the warriors who have not engaged are cowed by the panic of those who have; by the panic, and the sprawls of bodies left behind them.

“About face!” Vibulenus calls through the indecisive hush, “and pivot on your left flank. There’s some more barbs want to fight the Tenth!”

The murderous cheer from his legionaries overlies the noise of the cohort executing his order.

As it swings Vibulenus runs across the new front of his troops, what had been the rear rank. The cavalry, squat-bodied and grim in their full armor, shows sense enough to guide their mounts toward the flank of the Ninth Cohort as Vibulenus rotates his men away from it. Only a random javelin from the native lines appears to hinder them. Their comrades who remained with the Commander have been less fortunate.

A storm of javelins has disintegrated the half-hearted charge. Two of the mounts have gone down despite their heavy armor. Behind them, the Commander lies flat on the hard soil while his beast screams horribly above him. The shaft of a stray missile projects from its withers. Stabbing up from below, the orange warriors fell the remaining lancer and gut his companions as they try to rise. Half a dozen of the bodyguards canter nervously back from their safe bolthole among the infantry to try to rescue their employer. The wounded mount leaps at one of the lancers. The two beasts tangle with the guard between them. A clawed hind leg flicks his head. Helmet and head rip skyward in a spout of green ichor.

“Charge!” Vibulenus roars. The legionaries who cannot hear him follow his running form. The knot of cavalry and natives is a quarter mile away. The cohorts of the right flank are too heavily engaged to do more than defend themselves against the new thrust. Half the legion has become a bronze worm, bristling front and back with spearpoints against the surging orange flood. Without immediate support, the whole right flank will be squeezed until it collapses into a tangle of blood and scrap metal. The Tenth Cohort is their support, all the support there is.

“Rome!” the fresh veterans leading the charge shout as their shields rise against the new flight of javelins. There are gaps in the back ranks, those just disengaged. Behind the charge, men hold palms clamped over torn calves or lie crumpled around a shaft of alien wood. There will be time enough for them if the recovery teams land—which they will not do in event of a total disaster on the ground.

The warriors snap and howl at the sudden threat. Their own success has fragmented them. What had been a flail slashing into massed bronze kernels is now a thousand leaderless handfuls in sparkling contact with the Roman line. Only the leaders bunched around the command group have held their unity.

One mount is still on its feet and snarling. Four massively-equipped guards try to ring the Commander with their maces. The Commander, his suit a splash of blue against the gravel, tries to rise. There is a flurry of mace strokes and quickly-riposting spears, ending in a clash of falling armor and an agile orange body with a knife leaping the crumpled guard. Vibulenus’ sword, flung overarm, takes the native in the throat. The inertia of its spin cracks the hilt against the warrior’s forehead.

The Tenth Cohort is on the startled natives. A moment before the warriors were bounding forward in the flush of victory. Now they face the cohort’s meat-axe suddenness—and turn. At swordpoint and shield edge, as inexorable as the rising sun, the Tenth grinds the native retreat into panic while the cohorts of the right flank open order and advance. The ground behind them is slimy with blood.

Vibulenus rests on one knee, panting. He has retrieved his sword. Its stickiness bonds it to his hand. Already the air keens with landing motors. In minutes the recovery teams will be at work on the fallen legionaries, building life back into all but the brain-hacked or spine-severed. Vibulenus rubs his own scarred ribs in aching memory.

A hand falls on the Tribune’s shoulder. It is gloved in a skin-tight blue material; not armor, at least not armor against weapons. The Commander’s voice comes from the small plate beneath his clear, round helmet. Speaking in Latin, his accents precisely flawed, he says, “You are splendid, you warriors.”

Vibulenus sneers though he does not correct the alien. Warriors are capering heroes, good only for dying when they meet trained troops, when they meet the Tenth Cohort.

“I thought the Federation Council had gone mad,” the flat voice continues, “when it ruled that we must not land weapons beyond the native level in exploiting inhabited worlds. All very well to talk of the dangers of introducing barbarians to modern weaponry, but how else could my business crush local armies and not be bled white by transportation costs?”

The Commander shakes his head in wonder at the carnage about him. Vibulenus silently wipes his blade. In front of him, Falco gapes toward the green sun. A javelin points from his right eyesocket. “When we purchased you from your Parthian captors it was only an experiment. Some of us even doubted it was worth the cost of the longevity treatments. In a way you are more effective than a Guard Regiment with lasers; out-numbered, you beat them with their own weapons. They can’t even claim ‘magic’ as a slave to their pride. And at a score of other job sites you have done as well. And so cheaply!”

“Since we have been satisfactory,” the Tribune says, trying to keep the hope out of his face, “will we be returned home now?”

“Oh, goodness, no,” the alien laughs, “you’re far too valuable for that. But I have a surprise for you, one just as pleasant I’m sure—females.”

“You found us real women?” Vibulenus whispers.

“You really won’t be able to tell the difference,” the Commander says with paternal confidence.

A million suns away on a farm in the Sabine hills, a poet takes the stylus from the fingers of a nude slave girl and writes, very quickly, And Crassus’ wretched soldier takes a barbarian wife from his captors and grows old waging war for them.

The poet looks at the line with a pleased expression. “It needs polish, of course,” he mutters. Then, more directly to the slave, he says, “You know, Leuconoe, there’s more than inspiration to poetry, a thousand times more; but this came to me out of the air.”

Horace gestures with his stylus toward the glittering night sky. The girl smiles back at him.

Editor's Introduction to:

I AM NOTHING
by Eric Frank Russell

Eric Frank Russell was a British writer and a founding member of the British Interplanetary Society, although many of his stories feature authentic American protagonists. A number of his stories are genuine classics. “…And Then There Were None” is one of the most powerful statements of the libertarian position in all of science fiction.

One of the temptations of Faust was Pride. In the Richard Burton film, Mephistopheles has given Faust charge of an army. With banners flying they gallop to the sound of drums and trumpets, and Faust shouts “Is it not a pleasant thing, to be a king, and ride in triumph to Samarkand!”

There are other forms of conquest, some equally glorious, which do not lead to the sin of pride.

I AM NOTHING
by Eric Frank Russell

David Korman rasped, “Send them the ultimatum.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“But what?”

“It may mean war.”

“What of it?”

“Nothing, sir.” The other sought a way out. “I merely thought—”

“You are not paid to think,” said Korman, acidly. “You are paid only to obey orders.”

“Of course, sir. Most certainly.” Gathering his papers, he backed away hurriedly. “I shall have the ultimatum forwarded to Lani at once.”

“You better had!” Korman stared across his ornate desk, watched the door close. Then he voiced an emphatic, “Bah!”

A lickspittle. He was surrounded by lickspittles, cravens, weaklings. On all sides were the spineless ready to jump to his command, eager to fawn upon him. They smiled at him with false smiles, hastened into pseudo-agreement with every word he uttered, gave him exaggerated respect that served to cover their inward fears.

There was a reason for all this. He, David Korman, was strong. He was strong in the myriad ways that meant full and complete strength. With his broad body, big jowls, bushy brows and hard gray eyes he looked precisely what he was: a creature of measureless power, mental and physical.

It was good that he should be like this. It was a law of Nature that the weak must give way to the strong. A thoroughly sensible law. Besides, this world of Morcine needed a strong man. Morcine was one world in a cosmos full of potential competitors, all of them born of some misty, long-forgotten planet near a lost sun called Sol. Morcine’s duty to itself was to grow strong at the expense of the weak. Follow the natural law.

His heavy thumb found the button on his desk, pressed it, and he said into the little silver microphone, “Send in Fleet Commander Rogers at once.”

There was a knock at the door and he snapped, “Come in.” Then, when Rogers had reached the desk, he informed, “We have sent the ultimatum.”

“Really, sir? Do you suppose they’ll accept it?”

“Doesn’t matter whether they do or don’t,” Korman declared. “In either event we’ll get our own way.” His gaze upon the other became challenging. “Is the fleet disposed in readiness exactly as ordered?”

“It is, sir.”

“You are certain of that? You have checked it in person?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. These are my orders: the fleet will observe the arrival on Lani of the courier bearing our demands. It will allow twenty-four hours for receipt of a satisfactory reply.”

“And if one does not come?”

“It will attack one minute later in full strength. Its immediate task will be to capture and hold an adequate ground base. Having gained it, reinforcements will be poured in and the territorial conquest of the planet can proceed.”

“I understand, sir.” Rogers prepared to leave. “Is there anything more?”

“Yes,” said Korman. “I have one other order. When you are about to seize this base my son’s vessel must be the first to land upon it.”

Rogers blinked and protested nervously, “But, sir, as a young lieutenant he commands a small scout bearing twenty men. Surely one of our major battleships should be—”

“My son lands first!” Standing up, Korman leaned forward over his desk. His eyes were cold. “The knowledge that Reed Korman, my only child, was in the forefront of the battle will have an excellent psychological effect upon the ordinary masses here. I give it as my order.”

“What if something happens?” murmured Rogers, aghast. “What if he should become a casualty, perhaps be killed?”

“That,” Korman pointed out, “will enhance the effect.”

“All right, sir.” Rogers swallowed and hurried out, his features strained.

Had the responsibility for Reed Korman’s safety been placed upon his own shoulders? Or was that character behind the desk genuine in his opportunist and dreadful fatalism? He did not know. He knew only that Korman could not be judged by ordinary standards.

Blank-faced and precise, the police escort stood around while Korman got out of the huge official car. He gave them his usual austere look-over while the chauffeur waited, his hand holding the door open. Then Korman mounted the steps to his home, heard the car door close at the sixth step. Invariably it was the sixth step, never the fifth or seventh.

Inside, the maid waited on the same corner of the carpet, her hands ready for his hat, gloves and cloak. She was stiff and starched and never looked directly at him. Not once in fourteen years had she met him eye to eye.

With a disdainful grunt he brushed past her and went into the dining room, took his seat, studied his wife across a long expanse of white cloth filled with silver and crystal.

She was tall and blond and blue-eyed and once had seemed supremely beautiful. Her willowy slenderness had made him think with pleasure of her moving in his arms with the sinuosity of a snake. Now, her slight curves had gained angularity. Her submissive eyes wore crinkles that were not the marks of laughter.

“I’ve had enough of Lani,” he announced. “We’re precipitating a showdown. An ultimatum has been sent.”

“Yes, David.”

That was what he had expected her to say. He could have said it for her. It was her trademark, so to speak; always had been, always would be.

Years ago, a quarter of a century back, he had said with becoming politeness, “Mary, I wish to marry you.”

“Yes, David.”

She had not wanted it—not in the sense that he had wanted it. Her family had pushed her into the arrangement and she had gone where shoved. Life was like that: the pushers and the pushed. Mary was of the latter class. The fact had taken the spice out of romance. The conquest had been too easy. Korman insisted on conquest but he liked it big. Not small.

Later on, when the proper time had come, he had told her, “Mary, I want a son.”

She had arranged it precisely as ordered. No slipups. No presenting him with a fat and impudent daughter by way of hapless obstetrical rebellion. A son, eight pounds, afterward named Reed. He had chosen the name.

A faint scowl lay over his broad face as he informed, “Almost certainly it means war.”

“Does it, David?”

It came without vibrancy or emotion. Dull-toned, her pale oval features expressionless, her eyes submissive. Now and again he wondered whether she hated him with a fierce, turbulent hatred so explosive that it had to be held in check at all costs. He could never be sure of that. Of one thing he was certain: she feared him and had from the very first.

Everyone feared him. Everyone without exception. Those who did not at first meeting soon learned to do so. He saw to that in one way or another. It was good to be feared. It was an excellent substitute for other emotions one has never had or known.

When a child he had feared his father long and ardently; also his mother. Both of them so greatly that their passing had come as a vast relief. Now it was his turn. That, too, was a natural law, fair and logical. What is gained from one generation should be passed to the next. What is denied should likewise be denied.

Justice.

“Reed’s scoutship has joined the fleet in readiness for action.”

“I know, David.”

His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know?”

“I received a letter from him a couple of hours ago.” She passed it across.

He was slow to unfold the stiff sheet of paper. He knew what the first two words would be. Getting it open, he found it upside-down, reversed it and looked.

“Dear Mother.”

That was her revenge.

“Mary. I want a son.”

So she had given him one—and then taken him away.

Now there were letters, perhaps two in one week or one in two months according to the ship’s location. Always they were written as though addressing both, always they contained formal love to both, formal hope that both were keeping well.

But always they began, “Dear Mother.”

Never, “Dear Father.”

Revenge!

Zero hour came and went. Morcine was in a fever of excitement and preparation. Nobody knew what was happening far out in space, not even Korman. There was a time-lag due to sheer distance. Beamed signals from the fleet took many hours to come in.

The first word went straight to Korman’s desk, where he posed ready to receive it. It said the Lanians had replied with a protest and what they called an appeal to reason. In accordance with instructions the fleet commander had rejected this as unsatisfactory. The attack was on.

“They plead for reasonableness,” he growled. “That means they want us to go soft. Life isn’t made for the soft.” He threw a glance forward. “Is it?”

“No, sir,” agreed the messenger with alacrity.

“Tell Bathurst to put the tape on the air at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the other had gone he switched his midget radio and waited. It came in ten minutes, the long, rolling, grandiloquent speech he’d recorded more than a month before. It played on two themes: righteousness and strength, especially strength.

The alleged causes of the war were elucidated in detail, grimly but without ire. That lack of indignation was a telling touch because it suggested the utter inevitability of the present situation and the fact that the powerful have too much justified self-confidence to emote.

As for the causes, he listened to them with boredom. Only the strong know there is but one cause of war. All the other multitudinous reasons recorded in the history books were not real reasons at all. They were nothing but plausible pretexts. There was but one root-cause that persisted right back to the dim days of the jungle. When two monkeys want the same banana, that is war.

Of course, the broadcasting tape wisely refrained from putting the issue so bluntly and revealingly. Weak stomachs require pap. Red meat is exclusively for the strong. So the great antennae of the world network comported themselves accordingly and catered for the general dietary need.

After the broadcast had finished on a heartening note about Morcine’s overwhelming power, he leaned back in his chair and thought things over. There was no question of bombing Lani into submission from the upper reaches of its atmosphere. All its cities cowered beneath bombproof hemispherical force fields. Even if they had been wide open he would not have ordered their destruction. It is empty victory to win a few mounds of rubble.

He’d had enough of empty victories. Instinctively, his gray eyes strayed toward the bookcase on which stood the photograph he seldom noticed and then no more than absently. For years it had been there, a subconsciously-observed, taken-for-granted object like the inkpot or radiant heat panel, but less useful than either.

She wasn’t like her picture now. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been really like it then. She had given him obedience and fear before he had learned the need for these in lieu of other needs. At that time he had wanted something else that had not been forthcoming. So long as he could remember, to his very earliest years, it had never been forthcoming, not from anyone, never, never, never.

He jerked his mind back to the subject of Lani. The location of that place and the nature of its defenses determined the pattern of conquest. A ground base must be won, constantly replenished with troops, arms and all auxiliary services. From there the forces of Morcine must expand and, bit by bit, take over all unshielded territory until at last the protected cities stood alone in fateful isolation. The cities would then be permitted to sit under their shields until starved into surrender.

Acquisition of enemy territory was the essential aim. This meant that despite spacegoing vessels, force shields and all the other redoubtable gadgets of ultra-modernism, the ordinary foot soldier remained the final arbiter of victory. Machines could assault and destroy. Only men could take and hold.

Therefore this was going to be no mere five-minute war. It would run on for a few months, perhaps even a year, with spasms of old-style land-fighting as strong points were attacked and defended. There would be bombing perforce limited to road blocks, strategic junctions, enemy assembly and regrouping areas, unshielded but stubborn villages.

There would be some destruction, some casualties. But it was better that way. Real conquest comes only over real obstacles, not imaginary ones. In her hour of triumph Morcine would be feared. Korman would be feared. The feared are respected and that is proper and decent.

If one can have nothing more.

Pictorial records in full color and sound came at the end of the month. Their first showing was in the privacy of his own home to a small audience composed of himself, his wife, a group of government officials and assorted brass hats.

Unhampered by Lanian air defenses, weak from the beginning and now almost wiped out, the long black ships of Morcine dived into the constantly widening base and unloaded great quantities of supplies. Troops moved forward against tough but spasmodic opposition, a growing weight of armored and motorized equipment going with them.

The recording camera trundled across an enormous bridge with thick girders fantastically distorted and with great gaps temporarily filled in. It took them through seven battered villages which the enemy had either defended or given cause to believe they intended to defend. There were shots of crater-pocked roads, skeletal houses, a blackened barn with a swollen horse lying in a field nearby.

And an action-take of an assault on a farmhouse. A patrol, suddenly fired on, dug in and radioed back. A monster on huge, noisy tracks answered their call, rumbled laboriously to within four hundred yards of the objective, spat violently and lavishly from its front turret. A great splash of liquid fell on the farmhouse roof, burst into roaring flame. Figures ran out, seeking cover of an adjacent thicket. The sound track emitted rattling noises. The figures fell over, rolled, jerked, lay still.

The reel ended and Korman said, “I approve it for public exhibition.” Getting out of his seat, he frowned around, adding, “I have one criticism. My son has taken command of a company of infantry. He is doing a job, like any other man. Why wasn’t he featured?”

“We would not depict him except with your approval, sir,” said one.

“I not only approve—I order it. Make sure that he is shown next time. Not predominantly. Just sufficiently to let the people see for themselves that he is there, sharing the hardships and the risks.”

“Very well, sir.”

They packed up and went away. He strolled restlessly on the thick carpet in front of the electric radiator.

“Do them good to know Reed is among those present,” he insisted.

“Yes, David.” She had taken up some knitting, her needles going click-click.

“He’s my son.”

“Yes, David.”

Stopping his pacing, he chewed his bottom lip with irritation. “Can’t you say anything but that?”

She raised her eyes. “Do you wish me to?”

“Do I wish!” he echoed. His fists were tight as he resumed his movements to and fro while she returned to her needles.

What did she know of wishes?

What does anyone know?

By the end of four months the territorial grip on Lani had grown to one thousand square miles while men and guns continued to pour in. Progress had been slower than expected. There had been minor blunders at high level, a few of the unforeseeable difficulties that invariably crop up when fighting at long range, and resistance had been desperate where least expected. Nevertheless, progress was being made. Though a little postdated, the inevitable remained inevitable.

Korman came home, heard the car door snap shut at the sixth step. All was as before except that now a part of the populace insisted on assembling to cheer him indoors. The maid waited, took his things. He stumped heavily to the inner room.

“Reed is being promoted to captain.”

She did not answer.

Standing squarely before her, he demanded, “Well, aren’t you interested?”

“Of course, David.” Putting aside her book, she folded long, thin-fingered hands, looked toward the window.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“The matter?” The blond eyebrows arched as her eyes came up. “Nothing is the matter with me. Why do you ask?”

“I can tell.” His tones harshened a little. “And I can guess. You don’t like Reed being out there. You disapprove of me sending him away from you. You think of him as your son and not mine. You—”

She faced him calmly. “You’re rather tired, David. And worried.”

“I am not tired,” he denied with unnecessary loud-ness. “Neither am I worried. It is the weak who worry.”

“The weak have reason.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then you’re just plain hungry.” She took a seat at the table. “Have something to eat. It will make you feel better.”

Dissatisfied and disgruntled, he got through his evening meal. Mary was holding something back, he knew that with the sureness of one who had lived with her for half his lifetime. But he did not have to force it out of her by autocratic methods. When and only when he had finished eating she surrendered her secret voluntarily. The way in which she did it concealed the blow to come.

“There has been another letter from Reed.”

“Yes?” He fingered a glass of wine, felt soothed by food but reluctant to show it. “I know he’s happy, healthy and in one piece. If anything went wrong, I’d be the first to learn of it.”

“Don’t you want to see what he says?” She took it from a little walnut bureau, offered it to him.

He eyed it without reaching for it. “Oh, I suppose it’s all the usual chitchat about the war.”

“I think you ought to read it,” she persisted.

“Do you?” Taking it from her hand, he held it unopened, surveyed her curiously. “Why should this particular missive call for my attention? Is it any different from the others? I know without looking that it is addressed to you. Not to me. To you! Never in his life has Reed written a letter specifically to me.”

“He writes to both of us.”

“Then why can’t he start with “Dear Father and Mother’?”

“Probably it just hasn’t occurred to him that you would feel touchy about it. Besides, it’s cumbersome.”

“Nonsense!”

“Well, you might as well look at it as argue about it unread. You’ll have to know sooner or later.”

That last remark stimulated him into action. Unfolding it, he grunted as he noted the opening words, then went through ten paragraphs descriptive of war service on another planet. It was the sort of stuff every fighting man sent home. Nothing special about it. Turning the page, he perused the brief remainder. His face went taut and heightened in color.

“Better tell you I’ve become the willing slave of a Lanian girl. Found her in what little was left of the village of Bluelake, which had taken a pretty bad beating from our heavies. She was all alone and, as far as I could discover, seemed to be the sole survivor. Mom, she’s got nobody. I’m sending her home on the hospital ship Istar. The captain jibbed but dared not refuse a Korman. Please meet her for me and look after her until I get back.”

Flinging it onto the table, he swore lengthily and with vim, finishing, “The young imbecile.”

Saying nothing, Mary sat watching him, her hands clasped together.

“The eyes of a whole world are on him,” he raged. “As a public figure, as the son of his father, he is expected to be an example. And what does he do?” She remained silent.

“Becomes the easy victim of some designing little skirt who is quick to play upon his sympathies. An enemy female!”

“She must be pretty,” said Mary.

“No Lanians are pretty,” he contradicted in what came near to a shout. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“No, David, of course not.”

“Then why make such pointless remarks? One idiot in the family is enough.” He punched his right fist several times into the palm of his left hand. “At the very time when anti-Lanian sentiment is at its height I can well imagine the effect on public opinion if it became known that we were harboring a specially favored enemy alien, pampering some painted and powdered hussy who has dug her claws into Reed. I can see her mincing proudly around, one of the vanquished who became a victor by making use of a dope. Reed must be out of his mind.”

“Reed is twenty-three,” she observed.

“What of it? Are you asserting that there’s a specific age at which a man has a right to make a fool of himself?”

“David, I did not say that.”

“You implied it.” More hand-punching. “Reed has shown an unsuspected strain of weakness. It doesn’t come from me.”

“No, David, it doesn’t.”

He stared at her, seeking what lay unspoken behind that remark. It eluded him. His mind was not her mind. He could not think in her terms. Only in his own.

“I’ll bring this madness to a drastic stop. If Reed lacks strength of character, it is for me to provide it.” He found the telephone, remarked as he picked it up, “There are thousands of girls on Morcine. If Reed feels that he must have romance, he can find it at home.”

“He’s not home,” Mary mentioned. “He is far away.”

“For a few months. A mere nothing.” The phone whirred and he barked into it, “Has the Istar left Lani yet?” He held on a while, then racked the instrument and rumbled aggrievedly, “I’d have had her thrown off but it’s too late. The Istar departed soon after the mail-boat that brought his letter.” He made a face and it was not pleasant. “The girl is due here tomorrow. She’s got a nerve, a blatant impudence. It reveals her character in advance.”

Facing the big, slow-ticking clock that stood by the wall, he gazed at it as if tomorrow were due any moment. His mind was working on the problem so suddenly dumped in his lap. After a while, he spoke again.

“That scheming baggage is not going to carve herself a comfortable niche in my home, no matter what Reed thinks of her. I will not have her, see?”

“I see, David.”

“If he is weak, I am not. So when she arrives I’m going to give her the roughest hour of her life. By the time I’ve finished she’ll be more than glad of passage back to Lani on the next ship. She’ll get out in a hurry and for keeps.”

Mary remained quiet.

“But I’m not going to indulge a sordid domestic fracas in public. I won’t allow her even the satisfaction of that. I want you to meet her at the spaceport, phone me immediately she arrives, then bring her to my office. I’ll cope with her there.”

“Yes, David.”

“And don’t forget to call me beforehand. It will give me time to clear the place and insure some privacy.”

“I will remember,” she promised.

It was three-thirty in the following afternoon when the call came through. He shooed out a fleet admiral, two generals and an intelligence service director, hurried through the most urgent of his papers, cleared the desk and mentally prepared himself for the distasteful task to come.

In short time his intercom squeaked and his secretary’s voice announced, “Two people to see you, sir —Mrs. Korman and Miss Tatiana Hurst.”

“Show them in.”

He leaned backward, face suitably severe. Tatiana, he thought. An outlandish name. It was easy to visualize the sort of hoyden who owned it: a flouncy thing, aged beyond her years and with a sharp eye to the main chance. The sort who could make easy meat of someone young, inexperienced and impressionable, like Reed. Doubtless she had supreme confidence that she could butter the old man with equal effectiveness and no trouble whatsoever. Hah, that was her mistake.

The door opened and they came in and stood before him without speaking. For half a minute he studied them while his mind did sideslips, repeatedly strove to coordinate itself, and a dozen expressions came and went in his face. Finally, he rose slowly to his feet and spoke to Mary, his tones frankly bewildered.

“Well, where is she?”

“This,” informed Mary with unconcealed and inexplicable satisfaction, “is her.”

He flopped back into his chair, looked incredulously at Miss Tatiana Hurst. She had skinny legs exposed to knee height. Her clothing was much the worse for wear. Her face was a pale, hollow-cheeked oval from which a pair of enormous dark eyes gazed in a non-focusing, introspective manner as if she continually kept watch within her rather than upon things outside. One small white hand held Mary’s, the other arm was around a large and brand new teddy-bear gained from a source at which he could guess. Her age was about eight. Certainly no more than eight.

It was the eyes that got him most, terribly solemn, terribly grave and unwilling to see. There was a coldness in his stomach as he observed them. She was not blind. She could look at him all right—but she looked without really perceiving. The great dark orbs could turn toward him and register the mere essential of his being while all the time they saw only the secret places within herself. It was eerie in the extreme and more than discomforting.

Watching her, fascinated, he tried to analyze and define the peculiar quality in those optics. He had expected daring, defiance, impudence, passion, anything of which a predatory female was capable. Here, in these radically altered circumstances, one could expect childish embarrassment, self-consciousness, shyness. But she was not shy, he decided. It was something else. In the end he recognized the elusive factor as absentness. She was here yet somehow not with them. She was somewhere else, deep inside a world of her own.

Mary chipped in with a sudden “Well, David?”

He started at the sound of her voice. Some confusion still cluttered his mind because this culmination differed so greatly from his preconceptions. Mary had enjoyed half an hour in which to accommodate herself to the shock. He had not. It was still fresh and potent.

“Leave her with me for a few minutes,” he suggested. “I’ll call you when I’ve finished.”

Mary went, her manner that of a woman enjoying something deep and personal. An unexpected satisfaction long overdue.

Korman said with unaccustomed mildness, “Come here, Tatiana.”

She moved toward him slowly, each step deliberate and careful, touched the desk, stopped.

“Round this side, please, near to my chair.”

With the same almost-robotic gait she did as instructed, her dark eyes looking expressionlessly to the front. Arriving at his chair, she waited in silence.

He drew in a deep breath. It seemed to him that her manner was born of a tiny voice insisting, “I must be obedient. I must do as I am told. I can do only what I am told to do.”

So she did it as one compelled to accept those things she had no means of resisting. It was surrender to all demands in order to keep one hidden and precious place intact. There was no other way.

Rather appalled, he said, “You’re able to speak, aren’t you?”

She nodded, slightly and only once.

“But that isn’t speech,” he pointed out.

There was no desire to contradict or provide proof of ability. She accepted his statement as obvious and left it at that. Silent and immensely grave, she clung to her bear and waited for Korman’s world to cease troubling her own.

“Are you glad you’re here, or sorry?”

No reaction. Only inward contemplation. Absentness.

“Well, are you glad then?”

A vague half-nod.

“You are not sorry to be here?”

An even vaguer shake.

“Would you rather stay than go back?”

She looked at him, not so much to see him as to insure that he could see her.

He rang his bell, said to Mary, “Take her home.”

“Home, David?”

“That’s what I said.” He did not like the exaggerated sweetness of her tone. It meant something, but he couldn’t discern what.

The door closed behind the pair of them. His fingers tapped restlessly on the desk as he pictured those eyes. Something small and bitterly cold was in his insides.

During the next couple of weeks his mind seemed to be filled with more problems than ever before. Like most men of his caliber, he had the ability to ponder several subjects at once, but not the insight to detect when one was gaining predominance over the others.

On the first two or three of these days he ignored the pale intruder in his household. Yet he could not deny her presence. She was always there, quiet, obedient, self-effacing, hollow-cheeked and huge-eyed. Often she sat around for long periods without stirring, like a discarded doll.

When addressed by Mary or one of the maids she remained deaf to inconsequential remarks, responded to direct and imperative questions or orders. She would answer with minimum head movements or hand gestures when these sufficed, spoke monosyllabically in a thin little voice only when speech was unavoidable. During that time Korman did not speak to her at all— but he was compelled to notice her fatalistic acceptance of the fact that she was no part of his complicated life.

After lunch on the fourth day he caught her alone, bent down to her height and demanded, “Tatiana, what is the matter with you? Are you unhappy here?”

One brief shake of her head.

“Then why don’t you laugh and play like other—?” He ceased abruptly as Mary entered the room.

“You two having a private gossip?” she inquired.

“As if we could,” he snapped.

That same evening he saw the latest pictorial record from the fighting front. It gave him little satisfaction. Indeed, it almost irked him. The zip was missing. Much of the thrill of conquest had mysteriously evaporated from the pictures.

By the end of the fortnight he’d had more than enough of listening for a voice that seldom spoke and meeting eyes that did not see. It was like living with a ghost— and it could not go on. A man is entitled to a modicum of relaxation in his own home.

Certainly he could kick her back to Lani as he had threatened to do at the first. That, however, would be admission of defeat. Korman just could not accept defeat at anyone’s hands, much less those of a brooding child. She was not going to edge him out of his own home nor persuade him to throw her out. She was a challenge he had to overcome in a way thoroughly satisfactory to himself.

Summoning his chief scientific adviser to his office, he declaimed with irritation, “Look, I’m saddled with a maladjusted child. My son took a fancy to her and shipped her from Lani. She’s getting in my hair. What can be done about it?”

“Afraid I cannot help much, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a physicist.”

“Well, can you suggest anyone else?”

The other thought a bit, said, “There’s nobody in my department, sir. But science isn’t solely concerned with production of gadgets. You need a specialist in things less tangible.” A pause, then, “The hospital authorities might put you on to someone suitable.”

He tried the nearest hospital, got the answer, “A child psychologist is your man.”

“Who’s the best on this planet?”

“Dr. Jager.”

“Contact him for me. I want him at my house this evening, not later than seven o’clock.”

Fat, middle-aged and jovial, Jager fell easily into the role of a casual friend who had just dropped in. He chatted a lot of foolishness, included Tatiana in the conversation by throwing odd remarks at her, even held a pretended conversation with her teddy-bear. Twice in an hour she came into his world just long enough to register a fleeting smile—then swiftly she was back in her own.

At the end of this he hinted that he and Tatiana should be left by themselves. Korman went out, convinced that no progress was being or would be made. In the lounge Mary glanced up from her seat.

“Who’s our visitor, David? Or is it no business of mine?”

“Some kind of mental specialist. He’s examining Tatiana.”

“Really?” Again the sweetness that was bitter.

“Yes,” he rasped. “Really.”

“I didn’t think you were interested in her.”

“I am not,” he asserted. “But Reed is. Now and again I like to remind myself that Reed is my son.”

She let the subject drop. Korman got on with some official papers until Jager had finished. Then he went back to the room, leaving Mary immersed in her book. He looked around.

“Where is she?”

“The maid took her. Said it was her bedtime.”

“Oh.” He found a seat, waited to hear more.

Resting against the edge of a table, Jager explained, “I’ve a playful little gag for dealing with children who are reluctant to talk. Nine times out of ten it works.”

“What is it?”

“I persuade them to write. Strangely enough, they’ll often do that, especially if I make a game of it. I cajole them into writing a story or essay about anything that created a great impression upon them. The results can be very revealing.”

“And did you—?”

“A moment, please, Mr. Korman. Before I go further I’d like to impress upon you that children have an inherent ability many authors must envy. They can express themselves with remarkable vividness in simple language, with great economy of words. They create a telling effect with what they leave out as much as by what they put in.” He eyed Korman speculatively. “You know the circumstances in which your son found this child?”

“Yes, he told us in a letter.”

“Well, bearing those circumstances in mind I think you’ll find this something exceptional in the way of horror stories.” He held out a sheet of paper. “She wrote it unaided.” He reached for his hat and coat.

“You’re going?” questioned Korman in surprise. “What about your diagnosis? What treatment do you suggest?”

Dr. Jager paused, hand on door. “Mr. Korman, you are an intelligent person.” He indicated the sheet the other was holding. “I think that is all you require.”

Then he departed. Korman eyed the sheet. It was not filled with words as he’d expected. For a story it was mighty short. He read it.

I am nothing and nobody. My house went bang. My cat was stuck to a wall. I wanted to pull it off. They wouldn’t let me. They threw it away.

The cold thing in the pit of his stomach swelled up. He read it again. And again. He went to the base of the stairs and looked up toward where she was sleeping.

The enemy whom he had made nothing.

Slumber came hard that night. Usually he could compose his mind and snatch a nap anytime, anywhere, at a moment’s notice. Now he was strangely restless, unsettled. His brain was stimulated by he knew not what and it insisted on following tortuous paths.

The frequent waking periods were full of fantastic imaginings wherein he fumbled through a vast and cloying grayness in which was no sound, no voice, no other being. The dreams were worse, full of writhing landscapes spewing smoky columns, with things howling through the sky, with huge, toadlike monsters crawling on metal tracks, with long lines of dusty men singing an aeons-old and forgotten song.

“You’ve left behind a broken doll.”

He awakened early with weary eyes and a tired mind. All morning at the office a multitude of trifling things conspired against him. His ability to concentrate was not up to the mark and several times he had to catch himself on minor errors just made or about to be made. Once or twice he found himself gazing meditatively forward with eyes that did not see to the front but were looking where they had never looked before.

At three in the afternoon his secretary called on the intercom, “Astroleader Warren would like to see you, sir.”

“Astroleader?” he echoed, wondering whether he had heard aright. “There’s no such title.”

“It is a Drakan space-rank.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I can tend to him now.”

He waited with dull anticipation. The Drakans formed a powerful combine of ten planets at a great distance from Morcine. They were so far away that contact came seldom. A battleship of theirs had paid a courtesy call about twice in his lifetime. So this occasion was a rare one.

The visitor entered, a big-built youngster in light-green uniform. Shaking hands with genuine pleasure and great cordiality, he accepted the indicated chair.

“A surprise, eh, Mr. Korman?”

“Very.”

“We came in a deuce of a hurry but the trip can’t be done in a day. Distance takes time unfortunately.”

“I know.”

“The position is this,” explained Warren. “Long while back we received a call from Lani relayed by intervening minor planets. They said they were involved in a serious dispute and feared war. They appealed to us to negotiate as disinterested neutrals.”

“Ah, so that’s why you’ve come?”

“Yes, Mr. Korman. We knew the chance was small of arriving in time. There was nothing for it but to come as fast as we could and hope for the best. The role of peacemaker appeals to those with any claim to be civilized.”

“Does it?” questioned Korman, watching him.

“It does to us.” Leaning forward, Warren met him eye to eye. “We’ve called at Lani on the way here. They still want peace. They’re losing the battle. Therefore we want to know only one thing: Are we too late?”

That was the leading question: Are we too late? Yes or no? Korman stewed it without realizing that not so long ago his answer would have been prompt and automatic. Today, he thought it over.

Yes or no? Yes meant military victory, power and fear. No meant—what? Well, no meant a display of reasonableness in lieu of stubbornness. No meant a considerable change of mind. It struck him suddenly that one must possess redoubtable force of character to throw away a long-nursed viewpoint and adopt a new one. It required moral courage. The weak and the faltering could never achieve it.

“No,” he replied slowly. “It is not too late.”

Warren stood up, his face showing that this was not the answer he had expected. “You mean, Mr. Korman—”

“Your journey has not been in vain. You may negotiate.”

“On what terms?”

“The fairest to both sides that you can contrive.” He switched his microphone, spoke into it. “Tell Rogers that I order our forces to cease hostilities forthwith. Troops will guard the perimeter of the Lani ground base pending peace negotiations. Citizens of the Drakan Confederation will be permitted unobstructed passage through our lines in either direction.”

“Very well, Mr. Korman.”

Putting the microphone aside, he continued with Warren, “Though far off in mere miles, Lani is near to us as cosmic distances go. It would please me if the Lanians agreed to a union between our planets, with common citizenship, common development of natural resources. But I don’t insist upon it. I merely express a wish—knowing that some wishes never come true.”

“The notion will be given serious consideration all the same,” assured Warren. He shook hands with boyish enthusiasm. “You’re a big man, Mr. Korman.”

“Am I?” He gave a wry smile. “I’m trying to do a bit of growing in another direction. The original one kind of got used up.”

When the other had gone, he tossed a wad of documents into a drawer. Most of them were useless now. Strange how he seemed to be breathing better than ever before, his lungs drawing more fully.

In the outer office he informed, “It’s early yet, but I’m going home. Phone me there if anything urgent comes along.”

The chauffeur closed the car door at the sixth step. A weakling, thought Korman as he went into his home. A lamebrain lacking the strength to haul himself out of a self-created rut. One can stay in a rut too long.

He asked the maid, “Where is my wife?”

“Slipped out ten minutes ago, sir. She said she’d be back in half an hour.”

“Did she take—”

“No, sir.” The maid glanced toward the lounge.

Cautiously he entered the lounge, found the child resting on the settee, head back, eyes closed. A radio played softly nearby. He doubted whether she had turned it on of her own accord or was listening to it. More likely someone else had left it running.

Tiptoeing across the carpet, he cut off the faint music. She opened her eyes, sat upright. Going to the settee, he took the bear from her side and placed it on an arm, positioned himself next to her.

“Tatiana,” he asked with rough gentleness, “why are you nothing?”

No answer. No change.

“Is it because you have nobody?”

Silence.

“Nobody of your own?” he persisted, feeling a queer kind of desperation. “Not even a kitten?”

She looked down at her shoes, her big eyes partly shielded under pale lids. There was no other reaction.

Defeat. Ah, the bitterness of defeat. It set his fingers fumbling with each other, like those of one in great and unbearable trouble. Phrases tumbled through his mind.

“I am nothing.”

“My cat… they threw it away.”

His gaze wandered blindly over the room while his mind ran round and round her wall of silence seeking a door it could not find. Was there no way in, no way at all?

There was.

He discovered it quite unwittingly.

To himself rather than to her he murmured in a hear-able undertone, “Since I was very small I have been surrounded by people. All my life there have been lots of people. But none were mine. Not one was really mine. Not one. I, too, am nothing.”

She patted his hand.

The shock was immense. Startled beyond measure, he glanced down at the first touch, watched her give three or four comforting little dabs and hastily withdraw. There was heavy pulsing in his veins. Something within him rapidly became too big to contain.

Twisting sidewise, he snatched her onto his lap, put his arms around her, buried his nose in the soft part of her neck, nuzzled behind her ear, ran his big hand through her hair. And all the time he rocked to and fro with low crooning noises.

She was weeping. She hadn’t been able to weep before. She was weeping, not as a woman does, softly and subdued, but like a child, with great racking sobs that she fought hard to suppress.

Her arm was around his neck, tightening, clinging and tightening more while he rocked and stroked and called her “Honey” and uttered silly sounds and wildly extravagant reassurances.

This was victory.

Not empty.

Full.

Victory over self is completely full.

Editor's Introduction to:

CALL HIM LORD
by Gordon R. Dickson

I have known Gordon Dickson for over twenty years. We do not see each other often, but when we do meet our interactions are intense, and we have been close friends; this seems a common pattern within the science fiction community. On many nights—but not nearly often enough—we talk and sing until dawn, telling the old tales and singing the old songs of glory. Sometimes, on the best of these nights, Poul Anderson joins us.

Gordie’s best known work is the Childe Cycle, sometimes called the “Dorsai series” after its best-known story. The Dorsai stories are deservedly among the most popular military science fiction ever written. The Childe Cycle envisions some 12 novels, and will take at least that many more years to complete.

In 1980, when the Voyager spacecraft first approached Jupiter, I arranged that the science fiction writers be admitted to the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, where the spacecraft were controlled and their planetary data analyzed. Gordon came to Los Angeles to see the encounter close up. At that time Dickson was introduced to Ezekial, my friend who happens to be a Z-80 computer. Gordon was so impressed with the value of computers for writing—I do all my books on a computer—that he bought one of his own; the resulting increase in his output makes it possible that the Childe Cycle will indeed be finished. This is, I hasten to add, my only substantial contribution to Dickson’s work.

Dickson attends so many conventions that Ben Bova was inspired to write “The Ballad of Gordie Dickson.” It is probable that at least one of its verses is scurrilous.

One of the most important decisions a political leader can make is to call in the military. It is not obvious when to ask the soldiers for help; and the results are not always pleasant.

CALL HIM LORD
by Gordon R. Dickson

“He called and commanded me

—Therefore, I knew him;

But later on, failed me; and

—Therefore, I slew him!”

“Songs of the Shield Bearer”

The sun could not fail in rising over the Kentucky hills, nor could Kyle Arnam in waking. There would be eleven hours and forty minutes of daylight. Kyle rose, dressed, and went out to saddle the gray gelding and the white stallion. He rode the stallion until the first fury was out of the arched and snowy neck; and then led both horses around to tether them outside the kitchen door. Then he went in to breakfast.

The message that had come a week before was beside his plate of bacon and eggs. Teena, his wife, was standing at the breadboard with her back to him. He sat down and began eating, rereading the letter as he ate.

“…The Prince will be traveling incognito under one of his family titles, as Count Sirii North; and should not be addressed as ‘Majesty.’ You will call him ‘Lord’…”

“Why does it have to be you?” Teena asked.

He looked up and saw how she stood with her back to him.

“Teena—” he said, sadly.

“Why?”

“My ancestors were bodyguards to his—back in the wars of conquest against the aliens. I’ve told you that,” he said. “My forefathers saved the lives of his, many times when there was no warning—a Rak spaceship would suddenly appear out of nowhere to lock on, even to a flagship. And even an Emperor found himself fighting for his life, hand to hand.”

“The aliens are all dead now, and the Emperor’s got a hundred other worlds! Why can’t his son take his Grand Tour on them? Why does he have to come here to Earth—and you?”

“There’s only one Earth.”

“And only one you, I suppose?”

He sighed internally and gave up. He had been raised by his father and his uncle after his mother died, and in an argument with Teena he always felt helpless. He got up from the table and went to her, putting his hands on her and gently trying to turn her about. But she resisted.

He sighed inside himself again and turned away to the weapons cabinet. He took out a loaded slug pistol, fitted it into the stubby holster it matched, and clipped the holster to his belt at the left of the buckle, where the hang of his leather jacket would hide it. Then he selected a dark-handled knife with a six-inch blade and bent over to slip it into the sheath inside his boot top. He dropped the cuff of his trouser leg back over the boot top and stood up.

“He’s got no right to be here,” said Teena fiercely to the breadboard. “Tourists are supposed to be kept to the museum areas and the tourist lodges.”

“He’s not a tourist. You know that,” answered Kyle, patiently. “He’s the Emperor’s oldest son and his great-grandmother was from Earth. His wife will be, too. Every fourth generation the Imperial line has to marry back into Earth stock. That’s the law—still.” He put on his leather jacket, sealing it closed only at the bottom to hide the slug-gun holster, half-turned to the door—then paused.

“Teena?” he asked.

She did not answer.

“Teena!” he repeated. He stepped to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and tried to turn her to face him. Again, she resisted, but this time he was having none of it.

He was not a big man, being of middle height, round-faced, with sloping and unremarkable-looking, if thick, shoulders. But his strength was not ordinary. He could bring the white stallion to its knees with one fist wound in its mane—and no other man had ever been able to do that. He turned her easily to look at him.

“Now, listen to me—” He began. But, before he could finish, all the stiffness went out of her and she clung to him, trembling.

“He’ll get you into trouble—I know he will!” she choked muffledly into his chest. “Kyle, don’t go! There’s no law making you go!”

He stroked the soft hair of her head, his throat stiff and dry. There was nothing he could say to her. What she was asking was impossible. Ever since the sun had first risen on men and women together, wives had clung to their husbands at times like this, begging for what could not be. And always the men had held them, as Kyle was holding her now—as if understanding could somehow be pressed from one body into the other—and saying nothing, because there was nothing that could be said.

So, Kyle held her for a few moments longer, and then reached behind him to unlock her intertwined fingers at his back, and loosen her arms around him. Then, he went. Looking back through the kitchen window as he rode off on the stallion, leading the gray horse, he saw her standing just where he had left her. Not even crying, but standing with her arms hanging down, her head down, not moving.

He rode away through the forest of the Kentucky hillside. It took him more than two hours to reach the lodge. As he rode down the valleyside toward it, he saw a tall bearded man, wearing the robes they wore on some of the Younger Worlds, standing at the gateway to the interior courtyard of the rustic, wooded lodge.

When he got close, he saw that the beard was graying and the man was biting his lips. Above a straight, thin nose, the eyes were bloodshot and circled beneath as if from worry or lack of sleep.

“He’s in the courtyard,” said the gray-bearded man as Kyle rode up. “I’m Montlaven, his tutor. He’s ready to go.” The darkened eyes looked almost pleadingly up at Kyle.

“Stand clear of the stallion’s head,” said Kyle. “And take me in to him.”

“Not that horse, for him—” said Montlaven, looking distrustfully at the stallion, as he backed away.

“No,” said Kyle. “He’ll ride the gelding.”

“He’ll want the white.”

“He can’t ride the white,” said Kyle. “Even if I let him, he couldn’t ride this stallion. I’m the only one who can ride him. Take me in.”

The tutor turned and led the way into the grassy courtyard, surrounding a swimming pool and looked down upon, on three sides, by the windows of the lodge. In a lounging chair by the pool sat a tall young man in his late teens, with a mane of blond hair, a pair of stuffed saddlebags on the grass beside him. He stood up as Kyle and the tutor came toward him.

“Majesty,” said the tutor, as they stopped, “this is Kyle Arnam, your bodyguard for the three days here.”

“Good morning, Bodyguard… Kyle, I mean.” The Prince smiled mischievously. “Light, then. And I’ll mount.”

“You ride the gelding, Lord,” said Kyle.

The Prince stared at him, tilted back his handsome head, and laughed.

“I can ride, man!” he said. “I ride well.”

“Not this horse, Lord,” said Kyle, dispassionately. “No one rides this horse, but me.”

The eyes flashed wide, the laugh faded—then returned.

“What can I do?” The wide shoulders shrugged. “I give in—always I give in. Well, almost always.” He grinned up at Kyle, his lips thinned, but frank. “All right.”

He turned to the gelding—and with a sudden leap was in the saddle. The gelding snorted and plunged at the shock; then steadied as the young man’s long fingers tightened expertly on the reins and the fingers of the other hand patted a gray neck. The Prince raised his eyebrows, looking over at Kyle, but Kyle sat stolidly.

“I take it you’re armed, good Kyle?” the Prince said slyly. “You’ll protect me against the natives if they run wild?”

“Your life is in my hands, Lord,” said Kyle. He unsealed the leather jacket at the bottom and let it fall open to show the slug pistol in its holster for a moment. Then he resealed the jacket again at the bottom.

“Will—” The tutor put his hand on the young man’s knee. “Don’t be reckless, boy. This is Earth and the people here don’t have rank and custom like we do. Think before you—”

“Oh, cut it out, Monty!” snapped the Prince. “I’ll be just as incognito, just as humble, as archaic and independent as the rest of them. You think I’ve no memory! Anyway, it’s only for three days or so until my Imperial father joins me. Now, let me go!”

He jerked away, turned to lean forward in the saddle, and abruptly put the gelding into a bolt for the gate. He disappeared through it, and Kyle drew hard on the stallion’s reins as the big white horse danced and tried to follow.

“Give me his saddlebags,” said Kyle.

The tutor bent and passed them up. Kyle made them fast on top of his own, across the stallion’s withers. Looking down, he saw there were tears in the bearded man’s eyes.

“He’s a fine boy. You’ll see. You’ll know he is!” Montlaven’s face, upturned, was mutely pleading.

“I know he comes from a fine family,” said Kyle, slowly. “I’ll do my best for him.” And he rode off out of the gateway after the gelding.

When he came out of the gate, the Prince was nowhere in sight. But it was simple enough for Kyle to follow, by dinted brown earth and crushed grass, the marks of the gelding’s path. This brought him at last through some pines to a grassy open slope where the Prince sat looking skyward through a single-lens box.

When Kyle came up, the Prince lowered the instrument, and without a word passed it over. Kyle put it to his eye and looked skyward. There was the whir of the tracking unit and one of Earth’s three orbiting power stations swam into the field of vision of the lens.

“Give it back,” said the Prince.

“I couldn’t get a look at it earlier,” went on the young man as Kyle handed the lens to him. “And I wanted to. It’s a rather expensive present, you know—it and the other two like it—from our Imperial treasury. Just to keep your planet from drifting into another ice age. And what do we get for it?”

“Earth, Lord,” answered Kyle. “As it was before men went out to the stars.”

“Oh, the museum areas could be maintained with one station and a half-million caretakers,” said the Prince. “It’s the other two stations and you billion or so freeloaders I’m talking about. I’ll have to look into it when I’m Emperor. Shall we ride?”

“If you wish, Lord.” Kyle picked up the reins of the stallion and the two horses with their riders moved off across the slope.

“…And one more thing,” said the Prince, as they entered the farther belt of pine trees. “I don’t want you to be misled—I’m really very fond of old Monty, back there. It’s just that I wasn’t really planning to come here at all—Look at me, Bodyguard!”

Kyle turned to see the blue eyes that ran in the Imperial family blazing at him. Then, unexpectedly, they softened. The Prince laughed.

“You don’t scare easily, do you, Bodyguard… Kyle, I mean?” he said. “I think I like you after all. But look at me when I talk.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“That’s my good Kyle. Now, I was explaining to you that I’d never actually planned to come here on my Grand Tour at all. I didn’t see any point in visiting this dusty old museum world of yours with people still trying to live like they lived in the Dark Ages. But—my Imperial father talked me into it.”

“Your father, Lord?” asked Kyle.

“Yes, he bribed me, you might say,” said the Prince thoughtfully. “He was supposed to meet me here for these three days. Now, he’s messaged there’s been a slight delay—but that doesn’t matter. The point is, he belongs to the school of old men who still think your Earth is something precious and vital. Now, I happen to like and admire my father, Kyle. You approve of that?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“I thought you would. Yes, he’s the one man in the human race I look up to. And to please him, I’m making this Earth trip. And to please him—only to please him, Kyle—I’m going to be an easy Prince for you to conduct around to your natural wonders and watering spots and whatever. Now, you understand me—and how this trip is going to go. Don’t you?” He stared at Kyle.

“I understand,” said Kyle.

“That’s fine,” said the Prince, smiling once more. “So now you can start telling me all about these trees and birds and animals so that I can memorize their names and please my father when he shows up. What are those little birds I’ve been seeing under the trees—brown on top and whitish underneath? Like that one—there!”

“That’s a Veery, Lord,” said Kyle. “A bird of the deep woods and silent places. Listen—” He reached out a hand to the gelding’s bridle and brought both horses to a halt. In the sudden silence, off to their right they could hear a silver bird-voice, rising and falling, in a descending series of crescendos and diminuendos, that softened at last into silence. For a moment after the song was ended the Prince sat staring at Kyle, then seemed to shake himself back to life.

“Interesting,” he said. He lifted the reins Kyle had let go and the horses moved forward again. “Tell me more.”

For more than three hours, as the sun rose toward noon, they rode through the wooded hills, with Kyle identifying bird and animal, insect, tree, and rock. And for three hours the Prince listened—his attention flashing and momentary, but intense. But when the sun was overhead that intensity flagged.

“That’s enough,” he said. “Aren’t we going to stop for lunch? Kyle, aren’t there any towns around here?”

“Yes, Lord,” said Kyle. “We’ve passed several.”

“Several?” The Prince stared at him. “Why haven’t we come into one before now? Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere, Lord,” said Kyle. “You lead the way, I only follow.”

“I?” said the Prince. For the first time he seemed to become aware that he had been keeping the gelding’s head always in advance of the stallion. “Of course. But now it’s time to eat.”

“Yes, Lord,” said Kyle. “This way.”

He turned the stallion’s head down the slope of the hill they were crossing and the Prince turned the gelding after him.

“And now listen,” said the Prince, as he caught up. “Tell me I’ve got it all right.” And to Kyle’s astonishment, he began to repeat, almost word for word, everything that Kyle had said. “Is it all there? Everything you told me?”

“Perfectly, Lord,” said Kyle. The Prince looked slyly at him.

“Could you do that, Kyle?”

“Yes,” said Kyle. “But these are things I’ve known all my life.”

“You see?” the Prince smiled. “That’s the difference between us, good Kyle. You spend your life learning something—I spend a few hours and I know as much about it as you do.”

“Not as much, Lord,” said Kyle, slowly.

The Prince blinked at him, then jerked his hand dismissingly, and half-angrily, as if he were throwing something aside.

“What little else there is probably doesn’t count,” he said.

They rode down the slope and through a winding valley and came out at a small village. As they rode clear of the surrounding trees a sound of music came to their ears.

“What’s that?” The Prince stood up in his stirrups. “Why, there’s dancing going on, over there.”

“A beer garden, Lord. And it’s Sunday—a holiday here.”

“Good. We’ll go there to eat.”

They rode around to the beer garden and found tables back away from the dance floor. A pretty, young waitress came and they ordered, the Prince smiling sunnily at her until she smiled back—then hurried off as if in mild confusion. The Prince ate hungrily when the food came and drank a stein and a half of brown beer, while Kyle ate more lightly and drank coffee.

“That’s better,” said the Prince, sitting back at last. “I had an appetite… Look there, Kyle! Look, there are five, six… seven drifter platforms parked over there. Then you don’t all ride horses?”

“No,” said Kyle. “It’s as each man wishes.”

“But if you have drifter platforms, why not other civilized things?”

“Some things fit, some don’t. Lord,” answered Kyle. The Prince laughed.

“You mean you try to make civilization fit this old-fashioned life of yours, here?” he said. “Isn’t that the wrong way around—” He broke off. “What’s that they’re playing now? I like that. I’ll bet I could do that dance.” He stood up. “In fact, I think I will.”

He paused, looking down at Kyle.

“Aren’t you going to warn me against it?” he asked.

“No, Lord,” said Kyle. “What you do is your own affair.”

The young man turned away abruptly. The waitress who had served them was passing, only a few tables away. The Prince went after her and caught up with her by the dance-floor railing. Kyle could see the girl protesting—but the Prince hung over her, looking down from his tall height, smiling. Shortly, she had taken off her apron and was out on the dance floor with him, showing him the steps of the dance. It was a polka.

The Prince learned with fantastic quickness. Soon, he was swinging the waitress around with the rest of the dancers, his foot stomping on the turns, his white teeth gleaming. Finally the number ended and the members of the band put down their instruments and began to leave the stand.

The Prince, with the girl trying to hold him back, walked over to the bandleader. Kyle got up quickly from his table and started toward the floor.

The bandleader was shaking his head. He turned abruptly and slowly walked away. The Prince started after him, but the girl took hold of his arm, saying something urgent to him.

He brushed her aside and she stumbled a little. A bus-boy among the tables on the far side of the dance floor, not much older than the Prince and nearly as tall, put down his tray and vaulted the railing onto the polished hardwood. He came up behind the Prince and took hold of his arm, swinging him around.

“…can’t do that here,” Kyle heard him say, as Kyle came up. The Prince struck out like a panther—like a trained boxer—with three quick lefts in succession into the face of the busboy, the Prince’s shoulder bobbing, the weight of his body in behind each blow. The busboy went down. Kyle, reaching the Prince, herded him away through a side gap in the railing. The young man’s face was white with rage. People were swarming onto the dance floor.

“Who was that? What’s his name?” demanded the Prince, between his teeth. “He put his hand on me! Did you see that? He put his hand on me!”

“You knocked him out,” said Kyle. “What more do you want?”

“He manhandled me—me!” snapped the Prince. “I want to find out who he is!” He caught hold of the bar to which the horses were tied, refusing to be pushed farther. “He’ll learn to lay hands on a future Emperor!”

“No one will tell you his name,” said Kyle. And the cold note in his voice finally seemed to reach through to the Prince and sober him. He stared at Kyle.

“Including you?” he demanded at last.

“Including me, Lord,” said Kyle.

The Prince stared a moment longer, then swung away. He turned, jerked loose the reins of the gelding, and swung into the saddle. He rode off. Kyle mounted and followed.

They rode in silence into the forest. After a while, the Prince spoke without turning his head.

“And you call yourself a bodyguard,” he said, finally.

“Your life is in my hands, Lord,” said Kyle. The Prince turned a grim face to look at him.

“Only my life?” said the Prince. “As long as they don’t kill me, they can do what they want? Is that what you mean?”

Kyle met his gaze steadily.

“Pretty much so, Lord,” he said.

The Prince spoke with an ugly note in his voice.

“I don’t think I like you, after all, Kyle,” he said. “I don’t think I like you at all.”

“I’m not here with you to be liked, Lord,” said Kyle.

“Perhaps not,” said the Prince, thickly. “But I know your name!”

They rode on in continued silence for perhaps another half hour. But then gradually the angry hunch went out of the young man’s shoulders and the tightness out of his jaw. After a while he began to sing to himself, a song in a language Kyle did not know; and as he sang, his cheerfulness seemed to return. Shortly, he spoke to Kyle, as if there had never been anything but pleasant moments between them.

Mammoth Cave was close and the Prince asked to visit it. They went there and spent some time going through the cave. After that they rode their horses up along the left bank of the Green River. The Prince seemed to have forgotten all about the incident at the beer garden and was out to charm everyone they met. As the sun was at last westering toward the dinner hour, they came finally to a small hamlet back from the river, with a roadside inn mirrored in an artificial lake beside it, and guarded by oak and pine trees behind.

“This looks good,” said the Prince. “We’ll stay overnight here, Kyle.”

“If you wish, Lord,” said Kyle.

They halted, and Kyle took the horses around to the stable, then entered the inn to find the Prince already in the small bar off the dining room, drinking beer and charming the waitress. This waitress was younger than the one at the beer garden had been; a little girl with soft loose hair and round brown eyes that showed their delight in the attention of the tall, good-looking young man.

“Yes,” said the Prince to Kyle, looking out of corners of the Imperial blue eyes at him, after the waitress had gone to get Kyle his coffee. “This is the very place.”

“The very place?” said Kyle.

“For me to get to know the people better—what did you think, good Kyle?” said the Prince and laughed at him. “I’ll observe the people here and you can explain them—won’t that be good?”

Kyle gazed at him, thoughtfully.

“I’ll tell you whatever I can, Lord,” he said.

They drank—the Prince his beer, and Kyle his coffee—and went in a little later to the dining room for dinner. The Prince, as he had promised at the bar, was full of questions about what he saw—and what he did not see.

“…But why go on living in the past, all of you here?” he asked Kyle. “A museum world is one thing. But a museum people—” He broke off to smile and speak to the little, soft-haired waitress, who had somehow been diverted from the bar to wait upon their dining-room table.

“Not a museum people, Lord,” said Kyle. “A living people. The only way to keep a race and a culture preserved is to keep it alive. So we go on in our own way, here on Earth, as a living example for the Younger Worlds to check themselves against.”

“Fascinating…” murmured the Prince; but his eyes had wandered off to follow the waitress, who was glowing and looking back at him from across the now-busy dining room.

“Not fascinating. Necessary, Lord,” said Kyle. But he did not believe the younger man had heard him.

After dinner, they moved back to the bar. And the Prince, after questioning Kyle a little longer, moved up to continue his researches among the other people standing at the bar. Kyle watched for a little while. Then, feeling it was safe to do so, he slipped out to have another look at the horses and to ask the innkeeper to arrange a saddle lunch put up for them the next day.

When he returned, the Prince was not to be seen.

Kyle sat down at a table to wait; but the Prince did not return. A cold, hard knot of uneasiness began to grow below Kyle’s breastbone. A sudden pang of alarm sent him swiftly back out to check the horses. But they were cropping peacefully in their stalls. The stallion whickered, low voiced, as Kyle looked in on him, and turned his white head to look back at Kyle.

“Easy, boy,” said Kyle and returned to the inn to find the innkeeper.

But the innkeeper had no idea where the Prince might have gone.

“…If the horses aren’t taken, he’s not far,” the innkeeper said. “There’s no trouble he can get into around here. Maybe he went for a walk in the woods. I’ll leave word for the night staff to keep an eye out for him when he comes in. Where’ll you be?”

“In the bar until it closes—then, my room,” said Kyle.

He went back to the bar to wait, and took a booth near an open window. Time went by and gradually the number of other customers began to dwindle. Above the ranked bottles, the bar clock showed nearly midnight. Suddenly, through the window, Kyle heard a distant scream of equine fury from the stables.

He got up and went out quickly. In the darkness outside, he ran to the stables and burst in. There in the feeble illumination of the stable’s night lighting, he saw the Prince, palefaced, clumsily saddling the gelding in the center aisle between the stalls. The door to the stallion’s stall was open. The Prince looked away as Kyle came in.

Kyle took three swift steps to the open door and looked in. The stallion was still tied, but his ears were back, his eyes rolling, and a saddle lay tumbled and dropped on the stable floor beside him.

“Saddle up,” said the Prince thickly from the aisle. “We’re leaving.” Kyle turned to look at him.

“We’ve got rooms at the inn here,” he said.

“Never mind. We’re riding. I need to clear my head.” The young man got the gelding’s cinch tight, dropped the stirrups and swung heavily up into the saddle. Without waiting for Kyle, he rode out of the stable into the night.

“So, boy…” said Kyle soothingly to the stallion. Hastily he untied the big white horse, saddled him, and set out after the Prince. In the darkness there was no way of ground-tracking the gelding; but he leaned forward and blew into the ear of the stallion. The surprised horse neighed in protest and the whinny of the gelding came back from the darkness of the slope up ahead and over to Kyle’s right. He rode in that direction.

He caught the Prince on the crown of the hill. The young man was walking the gelding, reins loose, and singing under his breath—the same song in an unknown language he had sung earlier. But now, as he saw Kyle, he grinned loosely and began to sing with more emphasis. For the first time Kyle caught the overtones of something mocking and lusty about the incomprehensible words. Understanding broke suddenly in him.

“The girl!” he said. “The little waitress. Where is she?”

The grin vanished from the Prince’s face, then came slowly back again. The grin laughed at Kyle.

“Why, where d’you think?” The words slurred on the Prince’s tongue and Kyle, riding close, smelled the beer heavy on the young man’s breath. “In her room, sleeping and happy. Honored… though she doesn’t know it… by an Emperor’s son. And expecting to find me there in the morning. But I won’t be. Will we, good Kyle?”

“Why did you do it, Lord?” asked Kyle, quietly.

“Why?” The Prince peered at him, a little drunkenly in the moonlight. “Kyle, my father has four sons. I’ve got three younger brothers. But I’m the one who’s going to be Emperor; and Emperors don’t answer questions.”

Kyle said nothing. The Prince peered at him. They rode on together for several minutes in silence.

“All right, I’ll tell you why,” said the Prince, more loudly, after a while as if the pause had been only momentary. “It’s because you’re not my bodyguard, Kyle. You see, I’ve seen through you. I know whose bodyguard you are. You’re theirs!”

Kyle’s jaw tightened. But the darkness hid his reaction.

“All right—” The Prince gestured loosely, disturbing his balance in the saddle. “That’s all right. Have it your way. I don’t mind. So, we’ll play points. There was that lout at the beer garden, who puts his hands on me. But no one would tell me his name, you said. All right, you managed to bodyguard him. One point for you. But you didn’t manage to bodyguard the girl at the inn back there. One point for me. Who’s going to win, good Kyle?”

Kyle took a deep breath.

“Lord,” he said, “someday it’ll be your duty to marry a woman from Earth—”

The Prince interrupted him with a laugh, and this time there was an ugly note in it.

“You flatter yourselves,” he said. His voice thickened. “That’s the trouble with you—all you Earth people—you flatter yourselves.”

They rode on in silence. Kyle said nothing more, but kept the head of the stallion close to the shoulder of the gelding, watching the young man closely. For a little while the Prince seemed to doze. His head sank on his chest and he let the gelding wander. Then, after a while, his head began to come up again, his automatic horseman’s fingers tightened on the reins, and he lifted his head to stare around in the moonlight.

“I want a drink,” he said. His voice was no longer thick, but it was flat and uncheerful. “Take me where we can get some beer, Kyle.”

Kyle took a deep breath.

“Yes, Lord,” he said.

He turned the stallion’s head to the right and the gelding followed. They went up over a hill and down to the edge of a lake. The dark water sparkled in the moonlight and the farther shore was lost in the night. Lights shone through the trees around the curve of the shore.

“There, Lord,” said Kyle. “It’s a fishing resort, with a bar.”

They rode around the shore to it. It was a low, casual building, angled to face the shore; a dock ran out from it, to which fishing boats were tethered, bobbing slightly on the black water. Light gleamed through the windows as they hitched their horses and went to the door.

The barroom they stepped into was wide and bare. A long bar faced them with several planked fish on the wall behind it. Below the fish were three bartenders—the one in the center, middle-aged, and wearing an air of authority with his apron. The other two were young and muscular. The customers, mostly men, scattered at the square tables and standing at the bar wore rough working clothes, or equally casual vacationers’ garb.

The Prince sat down at a table back from the bar and Kyle sat down with him. When the waitress came they ordered beer and coffee, and the Prince half-emptied his stein the moment it was brought to him. As soon as it was completely empty, he signaled the waitress again.

“Another,” he said. This time, he smiled at the waitress when she brought his stein back. But she was a woman in her thirties, pleased but not overwhelmed by his attention. She smiled lightly back and moved off to return to the bar where she had been talking to two men her own age, one fairly tall, the other shorter, bullet-headed, and fleshy.

The Prince drank. As he put his stein down, he seemed to become aware of Kyle, and turned to look at him.

“I suppose,” said the Prince, “you think I’m drunk?”

“Not yet,” said Kyle.

“No,” said the Prince, “that’s right. Not yet. But perhaps I’m going to be. And if I decide I am, who’s going to stop me?”

“No one, Lord.”

“That’s right,” the young man said. “That’s right.” He drank deliberately from his stein until it was empty, and then signaled the waitress for another. A spot of color was beginning to show over each of his high cheekbones. “When you’re on a miserable little world with miserable little people… hello, Bright Eyes!” he interrupted himself as the waitress brought his beer. She laughed and went back to her friends. “…you have to amuse yourself any way you can,” he wound up. He laughed to himself.

“When I think how my father, and Monty—everybody—used to talk this planet up to me—” He glanced aside at Kyle. “Do you know at one time I was actually scared—well, not scared exactly, nothing scares me… say concerned—about maybe having to come here, some day?” He laughed again. “Concerned that I wouldn’t measure up to you Earth people! Kyle, have you ever been to any of the Younger Worlds?”

“No,” said Kyle.

“I thought not. Let me tell you, good Kyle, the worst of the people there are bigger, and better looking, and smarter, and everything than anyone I’ve seen here. And I, Kyle, I—the Emperor-to-be—am better than any of them. So, guess how all you here look to me?” He stared at Kyle, waiting. “Well, answer me, good Kyle. Tell me the truth. That’s an order.”

“It’s not up to you to judge, Lord,” said Kyle.

“Not—? Not up to me?” The blue eyes blazed. “I’m going to be Emperor!”

“It’s not up to any one man, Lord,” said Kyle. “Emperor or not. An Emperor’s needed, as the symbol that can hold a hundred worlds together. But the real need of the race is to survive. It took nearly a million years to evolve a survival-type intelligence here on Earth. And out on the newer worlds people are bound to change. If something gets lost out there, some necessary element lost out of the race, there needs to be a pool of original genetic material here to replace it.”

The Prince’s lips grew wide in a savage grin.

“Oh, good, Kyle—good!” he said. “Very good. Only, I’ve heard all that before. Only, I don’t believe it. You see—I’ve seen you people, now. And you don’t outclass us, out on the Younger Worlds. We outclass you. We’ve gone on and got better, while you stayed still. And you know it.”

The young man laughed softly, almost in Kyle’s face.

“All you’ve been afraid of is that we’d find out. And I have.” He laughed again. “I’ve had a look at you; and now I know. I’m bigger, better, and braver than any man in this room—and you know why? Not just because I’m the son of the Emperor, but because it’s born in me! Body, brains, and everything else! I can do what I want here, and no one on this planet is good enough to stop me. Watch.”

He stood up, suddenly.

“Now, I want that waitress to get drunk with me,” he said. “And this time I’m telling you in advance. Are you going to try and stop me?”

Kyle looked up at him. Their eyes met.

“No, Lord,” he said. “It’s not my job to stop you.”

The Prince laughed.

“I thought so,” he said. He swung away and walked between the tables toward the bar and the waitress, still in conversation with the two men. The Prince came up to the bar on the far side of the waitress and ordered a new stein of beer from the middle-aged bartender. When it was given to him, he took it, turned around, and rested his elbows on the bar, leaning back against it. He spoke to the waitress, interrupting the taller of the two men.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Kyle heard him say.

The waitress, a little surprised, looked around at him. She smiled, recognizing him—a little flattered by the directness of his approach, a little appreciative of his clean good looks, a little tolerant of his youth.

“You don’t mind, do you?” said the Prince, looking past her to the bigger of the two men, the one who had just been talking. The other stared back, and their eyes met without shifting for several seconds. Abruptly, angrily, the man shrugged, and turned about with his back hunched against them.

“You see?” said the Prince, smiling back at the waitress. “He knows I’m the one you ought to be talking to, instead of—”

“All right, sonny. Just a minute.”

It was the shorter, bullet-headed man, interrupting. The Prince turned to look down at him with a fleeting expression of surprise. But the bullet-headed man was already turning to his taller friend and putting a hand on his arm.

“Come on back, Ben,” the shorter man was saying. “The kid’s a little drunk, is all.” He turned back to the Prince. “You shove off now,” he said. “Clara’s with us.”

The Prince stared at him blankly. The stare was so fixed that the shorter man had started to turn away, back to his friend and the waitress, when the Prince seemed to wake.

“Just a minute—” he said, in his turn.

He reached out a hand to one of the fleshy shoulders below the bullet head. The man turned back, knocking the hand calmly away. Then, just as calmly, he picked up the Prince’s full stein of beer from the bar and threw it in the young man’s face.

“Get lost,” he said, unexcitedly.

The Prince stood for a second, with the beer dripping from his face. Then, without even stopping to wipe his eyes clear, he threw the beautifully trained left hand he had demonstrated at the beer garden.

But the shorter man, as Kyle had known from the first moment of seeing him, was not like the busboy the Prince had decisioned so neatly. This man was thirty pounds heavier, fifteen years more experienced, and by build and nature a natural bar fighter. He had not stood there waiting to be hit, but had already ducked and gone forward to throw his thick arms around the Prince’s body. The young man’s punch bounced harmlessly off the round head, and both bodies hit the floor, rolling in among the chair and table legs.

Kyle was already more than halfway to the bar and the three bartenders were already leaping the wooden hurdle that walled them off. The taller friend of the bullet-headed man, hovering over the two bodies, his eyes glittering, had his boot drawn back ready to drive the point of it into the Prince’s kidneys. Kyle’s forearm took him economically like a bar of iron across the tanned throat.

He stumbled backward, choking. Kyle stood still, hands open and down, glancing at the middle-aged bartender.

“All right,” said the bartender. “But don’t do anything more.” He turned to the two younger bartenders. “All right. Haul him off!”

The pair of younger, aproned men bent down and came up with the bullet-headed man expertly hand-locked between them. The man made one surging effort to break loose, and then stood still.

“Let me at him,” he said.

“Not in here,” said the older bartender. “Take it outside.”

Between the tables, the Prince staggered unsteadily to his feet. His face was streaming blood from a cut on his forehead, but what could be seen of it was white as a drowning man’s. His eyes went to Kyle, standing beside him; and he opened his mouth—but what came out sounded like something between a sob and a curse.

“All right,” said the middle-aged bartender again. “Outside, both of you. Settle it out there.”

The men in the room had packed around the little space by the bar. The Prince looked about and for the first time seemed to see the human wall hemming him in. His gaze wobbled to meet Kyle’s.

“Outside…?” he said, chokingly.

“You aren’t staying in here,” said the older bartender, answering for Kyle. “I saw it. You started the whole thing. Now, settle it any way you want—but you’re both going outside. Now! Get moving!”

He pushed at the Prince, but the Prince resisted, clutching at Kyle’s leather jacket with one hand.

“Kyle—”

“I’m sorry, Lord,” said Kyle. “I can’t help. It’s your fight.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said the bullet-headed man.

The Prince stared around at them as if they were some strange set of beings he had never known to exist before.

“No…” he said.

He let go of Kyle’s jacket. Unexpectedly, his hand darted in toward Kyle’s belly holster and came out holding the slug pistol.

“Stand back!” he said, his voice high-pitched. “Don’t try to touch me!”

His voice broke on the last words. There was a strange sound, half-grunt, half-moan, from the crowd; and it swayed back from him. Manager, bartenders, watchers

—all but Kyle and the bullet-headed man drew back.

“You dirty slob…” said the bullet-headed man, distinctly. “I knew you didn’t have the guts.”

“Shut up!” The Prince’s voice was high and cracking. “Shut up! Don’t any of you try to come after me!”

He began backing away toward the front door of the bar. The room watched in silence, even Kyle standing still. As he backed, the Prince’s back straightened. He hefted the gun in his hand. When he reached the door he paused to wipe the blood from his eyes with his left sleeve, and his smeared face looked with a first touch of regained arrogance at them.

“Swine!” he said.

He opened the door and backed out, closing it behind him. Kyle took one step that put him facing the bullet-headed man. Their eyes met and he could see the other recognizing the fighter in him, as he had earlier recognized it in the bullet-headed man.

“Don’t come after us,” said Kyle.

The bullet-headed man did not answer. But no answer was needed. He stood still.

Kyle turned, ran to the door, stood on one side of it, and flicked it open. Nothing happened; and he slipped through, dodging to his right at once, out of the line of any shot aimed at the opening door.

But no shot came. For a moment he was blind in the night darkness, then his eyes began to adjust. He went by sight, feel, and memory toward the hitching rack. By the time he got there, he was beginning to see.

The Prince was untying the gelding and getting ready to mount.

“Lord,” said Kyle.

The Prince let go of the saddle for a moment and turned to look over his shoulder at him.

“Get away from me,” said the Prince, thickly.

“Lord,” said Kyle, low voiced and pleading, “you lost your head in there. Anyone might do that. But don’t make it worse, now. Give me back the gun, Lord.”

“Give you the gun?”

The young man stared at him—and then he laughed.

“Give you the gun?” he said again. “So you can let someone beat me up some more? So you can not-guard me with it?”

“Lord,” said Kyle, “please. For your own sake—give me back the gun.”

“Get out of here,” said the Prince, thickly, turning back to mount the gelding. “Clear out before I put a slug in you.”

Kyle drew a slow, sad breath. He stepped forward and tapped the Prince on the shoulder.

“Turn around, Lord,” he said.

“I warned you—” shouted the Prince, turning.

He came around as Kyle stooped, and the slug pistol flashed in his hand from the light of the bar windows. Kyle, bent over, was lifting the cuff of his trouser leg and closing his fingers on the hilt of the knife in his boot sheath. He moved simply, skillfully, and with a speed nearly double that of the young man, striking up into the chest before him until the hand holding the knife jarred against the cloth covering flesh and bone.

It was a sudden, hard-driven, swiftly merciful blow. The blade struck upward between the ribs lying open to an underhanded thrust, plunging deep into the heart. The Prince grunted with the impact driving the air from his lungs; and he was dead as Kyle caught his slumping body in leather-jacketed arms.

Kyle lifted the tall body across the saddle of the gelding and tied it there. He hunted on the dark ground for the fallen pistol and returned it to his holster. Then, he mounted the stallion and, leading the gelding with its burden, started the long ride back.

Dawn was graying the sky when at last he topped the hill overlooking the lodge where he had picked up the Prince almost twenty-four hours before. He rode down toward the courtyard gate.

A tall figure, indistinct in the predawn light, was waiting inside the courtyard as Kyle came through the gate; and it came running to meet him as he rode toward it. It was the tutor, Montlaven, and he was weeping as he ran to the gelding and began to fumble at the cords that tied the body in place.

“I’m sorry…” Kyle heard himself saying; and was dully shocked by the deadness and remoteness of his voice. “There was no choice. You can read it all in my report tomorrow morning—”

He broke off. Another, even taller figure had appeared in the doorway of the lodge giving on the courtyard. As Kyle turned toward it, this second figure descended the few steps to the grass and came to him.

“Lord—” said Kyle. He looked down into features like those of the Prince, but older, under graying hair. This man did not weep like the tutor, but his face was set like iron.

“What happened, Kyle?” he said.

“Lord,” said Kyle, “you’ll have my report in the morning…”

“I want to know,” said the tall man. Kyle’s throat was dry and stiff. He swallowed but swallowing did not ease it.

“Lord,” he said, “you have three other sons. One of them will make an Emperor to hold the worlds together.”

“What did he do? Whom did he hurt? Tell me!” The tall man’s voice cracked almost as his son’s voice had cracked in the bar.

“Nothing. No one,” said Kyle, stiff-throated. “He hit a boy not much older than himself. He drank too much. He may have got a girl in trouble. It was nothing he did to anyone else. It was only a fault against himself.” He swallowed. “Wait until tomorrow. Lord, and read my report.”

“No!” The tall man caught Kyle’s saddle horn with a grip that checked even the white stallion from moving. “Your family and mine have been tied together by this for three hundred years. What was the flaw in my son to make him fail his test, back here on Earth? I want to know!”

Kyle’s throat ached and was dry as ashes.

“Lord,” he answered, “he was a coward.”

The hand dropped from his saddle horn as if struck down by a sudden strengthlessness. And the Emperor of a hundred worlds fell back like a beggar, spurned in the dust.

Kyle lifted his reins and rode out of the gate, into the forest away on the hillside. The dawn was breaking.

Editor's Introduction to:

QUIET VILLAGE
by David McDaniel

I first met David McDaniel at the Chicago World Science Fiction Convention in 1962. He was not very large, and he was dressed in a sort of costume, which was unusual; in those days, “hall costumes” were not customary at SF conventions.

“What are you?” I asked.

“I, sir, am a Hobbit,” he solemnly informed me; and as I had not yet read Professor J.R.R. Tolkein’s epic LORD OF THE RINGS, he preceded to tell me about the books, causing me to run down to the huckster room and buy a set.

I saw Dave off and on at conventions after that, but I didn’t get to know him well until I began to write full time. Dave was trying that too; and things were pretty grim just then. There wasn’t a lot of money in science fiction, and it wasn’t easy to break into any other kind of freelance writing. Then I had a lucky break, a chance to sell an article on the energy crisis—I think I was the first writer to use that term, way back in 1970—to American Legion magazine. Legion had a thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in those days.

There was only one problem. They wanted photographs. Not only did I know nothing about photography, I didn’t own a decent camera.

Dave came to the rescue. I had arranged a tour through Southern California Edison’s San Onofre plant, and Dave came with me. He took a lot of pictures. Then Edison offered to take me out to their newest coal-fired plant at Four Corners (that place where four states come together), as well as to the controversial strip mines at Black Mesa. The only problem was that the offer didn’t include Dave McDaniel.

No matter. He loaned me his cameras—easily the most valuable things he owned—and showed me how to use them, which I did so well that I ended up selling half a dozen photographs, while they used only one that Dave had taken.

A couple of years later I managed to sell an anthology, largely because of the rather clever title 2020 VISIONS: it consisted, of course, of stories set in the year 2020, with the stipulation that the writers were to write as realistically as possible. (The book has been revised twice, and is still in print, so we didn’t do too badly.)

I wanted to pay Dave back for the loan of his cameras, so I foolishly offered to buy a story.

I wasn’t foolish for wanting a McDaniel story. Dave was a story teller, as good as the best in this business. Moreover, he had some very reasonable ideas about where society was going. He was meticulous at research, so much so that he manufactured models of weapons and equipment that he thought might someday be invented. It wasn’t foolish to want a McDaniel story —but it was an act of monumental idiocy to assume that I’d get it. Dave hated to write.

Now all writers hate to write. I know of only two exceptions, and I wonder about them. All writers love to have written, but they also hate to write. This is normal and understandable—but Dave really hated to write. I think I have never met anyone who so hated it.

I often wonder if he’d have been that way if he’d had a computer to write on; would the attraction of the gadgetry have overcome his hatred of the typewriter? I think it might, because Dave liked to tell stories, and would sit around talking for hours; it was only when he had to put words on paper that he balked. Alas, we will never know.

Eventually I had all the stories for 2020 except Dave’s. Worse, I’d paid him part of the money for the story, meaning that I didn’t have enough to buy something from another writer. It was McDaniel or nothing. Besides, he’d told me what he was working on, and I liked it, as indeed I still do.

So. There was nothing for it but to bully him. I took to going to his house in the afternoons. Dave’s wife Joyce was working, so Dave was supposed to look after their son Tommy, who was then about two years old, and I could sympathize with Dave’s lament that no one could work while taking care of a two year old.

So I babysat while Dave wrote. I’d take beer over, but I wouldn’t give him any until I saw pages of new text.

Eventually that worked. The result was the last story Dave McDaniel ever sold, called “Prognosis: Terminal.” Before he finished his next work he was killed in a freak home accident.

I wish he’d written many more. Meanwhile, here is one of his best.

What the military calls the “third verse” of the Star Spangled Banner is really the fourth. The real third verse is all but forgotten, and tells a much uglier story.

And where is that band, that so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,

A home and a country shall leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution!

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.

And the star spangled banner in triumph doth wave,

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

The military has long stood between their homes and the war; there is another military tradition, that of the knight, whose mission is to defend the helpless; to stand between war’s desolation and all civilized homes.

When Lord Baden-Powell formed the Boy Scouts, he intended them to be an auxiliary to the military, and for many years they served that function in both England and the United States. Explorer Scouts went on polar expeditions, Scouts were junior civil defense wardens, and in wartime England Scouts served on patrols to spot unexploded bombs.

We have got somewhat away from that tradition in this country; but it could be revived. Periodically some idiot in National Headquarters tries to “reform” the Scouts and make them more “relevant;” fortunately, the Scoutmasters and others who actually work with boys ignore that nonsense and continue to teach the old skills of camping and woodcraft. If the Scouts are again needed…

QUIET VILLAGE
by David McDaniel

The rats caught Rajer alone while he was up on the hill adjusting the ‘tenna. They surrounded him, explained the situation to him, and then burst his left eardrum to make sure he understood they meant what they were saying. They also told him why nobody had heard from Morovia recently—they had just come from there because there was nothing left worth staying for.

“This place looks peaceful,” they told him. “We wouldn’t disturb such a nice place. All we want is a regular donation of food, water and pot. You go and tell your Block, then come back up here tomorrow afternoon and you can keep your other ear.” Then they took his tuner and let him go.

Sereno was peaceful. About a hundred and twenty people living in thirty-some wood and adobe buildings up in Horn Canyon just north of Hunnington Trail. With a good steady spring that hadn’t gone dry but once in living memory, they got along as well as anybody else and better than some. A stage made the trip across the Valley from Malibu every new moon—it took two or three days each way depending on the weather, and brought salt from the sea to trade for the pot that grew in the hills, the leatherwork they made, and wool when they sheared.

Blood was still trickling from Rajer’s ear and had dried on his shoulder by the time he stumbled up to Jak’s front door and fell against it, sobbing.

“How many were there?” Jak asked him while Mona dabbed antiseptic in his ear.

“The big one said there were fifty of them and some girls. They got my tuner so they’d hear if we tried to radio out. They’d kill us all, he said, like they did in Morovia.” He was still shaking, and his voice was unsteady.

“How many did you see?’

“Ten. Fifteen. I don’t know—they kept moving around me all the time. I couldn’t tell.”

“Bobby—”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Go call a meeting for tonight. And see if the stage is gone yet.”

“It went right by me over the hill just before the rats came out,” said Rajer. “I think that was what they were waiting for. And they were wearing old streetsuits— some of them were, there’s nothing we can do. We’ve got to give them what they want!”

“Hold still,” said Mona.

“I can’t hear at all on that side,” Rajer sobbed. “Don’t make me go back up there alone—they’ll make me deaf!”

“I’ll go up with you tomorrow,” said Jak. “But we’ll have to tell everybody about it tonight and see what they want to do. Mona, put him to sleep. If anybody else sees him like this, they’ll be as scared as he is.”

Mona poured into a cup from a bottle she found in her bag, and gave it to him. He choked it down while she refolded the cloth to a clean side and held it again to his ear. The bleeding had stopped, and shortly he slept.

Jak Mendez walked out into the hot dry afternoon and looked up at the round brown hills which guarded his home and his friends’ homes—hills which now seemed to loom around the village like enemies. The dry grasses of late summer surrounded the stumps of steel and stone which still thrust above the soil, after three hundred sun-baked summers and a thousand heavy rainstorms, to loosen the gray adobe of the hills. There were still dry rooms underground which could be defended by anyone who wished to live in darkness like vermin and prey on those who lived in the light.

Three hundred years after the Plague had devastated the Earth, setting a brash star-spanning civilization back more than a millennium and leaving the handful of survivors without the technological base and energy which had supported it, most of the planet was still sparsely populated. Small communities clustered here and there, where life could be supported and some degree of human culture maintained. But there were always those who found it easier to take than to build, and the remains of the lost glories of their race supplied them with the power to enforce their demands. In this part of the world they were called rats.

So the rats had come from the east. How long had Morovia been able to support them? And what had finally run out? Only someone’s patience? Morovia was —had been—half the size of Sereno; without a spring, they had been dependent for water on Wilson’s snows. It had been a dry winter. Did the rats demand more water than the reservoir held? Or did they pollute it and then destroy the village in their blind anger? Jak had heard stories like that.

But wherever they had come from, and whoever had fallen before them in the past, they were here now. They’d looted in the ruins which covered ten thousand square miles to find the streetsuits which would protect them from the crude weapons available here; they had probably found old energy weapons for themselves. If Sereno refused their demands, he would be killed first and his sons next. If the villagers fought back, they would all be destroyed. The people would have to decide tonight what to do—but there seemed to be no choice.

The big room was filled, and torches along the walls smoked and flared as the breeze wandered above the shaking heads.

“I’ll bet there aren’t more than a dozen of them,” someone said. “They’d all have gone together to the ‘tenna this afternoon. We can chase them away.”

“With what? And what’s to keep them from waiting up in the hills and killing anybody they catch alone? Or coming down here at night and setting our houses on fire?

“Who would volunteer to drive them away?” Rajer added. “Remember—if you fail, they’ll kill us all.”

“Well,” said Jak after a pause, “I think it’s obvious we’ll have to agree to their demands tomorrow—keep them happy and maybe off their guard while we think of something to do. We ought to find out what happened in Morovia.”

“Dad—”

“Malcolm?”

“I could get there and back in a day or so. It’s straight out Hunnington Trail and north a couple of miles. If you’re going to give the rats what they want anyway tomorrow and take time to think of something else, I could be back tomorrow night. There might be some people left alive in Morovia, and I could bring them back.”

“Plan to take a day each way. That’ll give you more time there. And if you find anyone to bring back, you’ll travel slower. You might want to take a burro. Is everyone in agreement, then? We’ll all meet here second night and discuss the rats’ demands and what happened in Morovia, and then decide what to do.”

“Semmity Radio is on tonight, isn’t it?” Mona said. “Maybe we ought to call the Scouts.”

“Same objection,” said Jak. “What if the rats beat them off? Besides, just hiring them to come here could cost more than we have.”

“It could cost us our lives,” said Rajer, “even if there are only a dozen rats. They want only food and water. We can live with them, and they won’t hurt us if we give them what they want.”

“Even if we did, we’d live under their threat until something else happened. Let’s adjourn for the night. It’s been dark about an hour, and Rajer shouldn’t miss recording any more of the Semmity cast than possible. Is everything set up?”

Together they dragged out the large speaker and a table with the precious big tuner and Rajer’s cubi-corder. All but a dozen or so of the meeting wandered out, content to wait for a daytime playback of anything they might be interested in. Rajer switched on the tuner and adjusted its knobs with a musician’s touch. Across the endless frying of the ionosphere, he focused on light, haunting music, then started the coupled cubicorder and went to sit with the others. At length the music ended and a voice spoke.

“You have been listening to Mallowin’s ‘Progressions from a Theme,’ by Thomas Dibgy. This is Semmity Radio, casting five thousand watts on frequencies of two-point-five megahertz, five, ten, twenty and thirty megahertz. This is the first of three consecutive nightly broadcasts, beginning with the second night of each new moon. Today was Thursday the eighth of August, 2638. The time is 2058, Pacific Coast Time.

“Our transmission tonight will be in three parts. Until 2330, the Principles of Effective Irrigation, Topic Four: Drainage Control. From 2330 to 2400, the Gershwin ‘Concerto in F’. From 2400 to 0030, the Midnight News of the World for the past month. From 0030 to 0215 we will rebroadcast Computer Theory, part twelve, which was interrupted last month by power failure. From 0215 to approximately 0500, Richard Burton’s classic performance as King Lear. Tomorrow night, ‘King Lear’ will open our schedule at 2100, followed by Irrigation, followed by Computer.

“All the services of Semmity Radio are brought to you by the Western Scouts. If you can use our advice or assistance, we monitor one-twenty-one point five megahertz and five hundred kilohertz twenty-four hours a day. Or we can now be reached by vidiphone through Frisco Island, Salt Lake, Denver, New Vegas or Drango. If you receive our broadcast east of the Mountain, call the MisipiPack, in Kayro Park. Outside the North American continent, confirm and report on our signal quality in your area. West of longitude one-oh-five in North America, call us with any problems you might have. No charge for advice or job estimates. The time in fifteen seconds, exactly 2100 hours, Pacific Coast Time…. Five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

Then a different voice introduced “The Principles of Effective Irrigation, Topic Four.”

Jak went with Rajer to the ‘tenna the following afternoon, and five rats came out of the bushes to present their terms. All five were dressed in the bulky, archaic styles of streetsuits, the nearly impenetrable nyloid body armor which had been common public wear in the Old Days when any floor of any single residential dome had held more people in worse conditions than any town now west of the great mountains, and a single block held as many people as there now were in a million square miles.

The five advanced in a group, and the largest one snarled at Jak. “Keep away from me, mud! All you’re good for is digging and planting—and pretty soon you’ll be ready to plant yourself. Are you the Block?”

“Yes.”

“O.K.—here’s a list. We’ve got three charged blasters right on your beam, by the way, in case you were thinking about arguing. We’ll want this much delivered to that big pile at the west end of the hills. We’ll be living around there somewhere, and we don’t want to have to walk too far. You’ll deliver this much every week, and if you’re late we’ll remind you. Oh—sometimes, one of us might come into town for something special. Whatever he wants, you’ll see that he gets it. Because if he has any complaints about the service, we’ll come back to make sure it gets straightened out. You got all that, mud?”

“Yes. What if we don’t have something you want?”

“Well, mud, it’s up to you to find a substitute that will satisfy us. Just remember, we’re pretty choosy. You got any more questions?”

“No.”

The rat slapped him suddenly. “That’s wrong. You want to know when we get our first delivery. You can take two days this time because we want to start off like good neighbors. You’re going to like having us around— or else.” He looked at Rajer, his ear bandaged, and laughed.

The five turned like landlords who dismissed their tenants and swaggered back the way they had come. Jak looked at the sheet of paper in his hand, and Rajer read over his shoulder.

“Two sheep every week?” Jak read. “A hundred gallons of water. Ten gallons of berries every week until the first big storm and two gallons after that. Fifty ears of corn until we harvest, then two gallons of flour every week—” His eye ran on down the list, and his jaw quivered.

“—Two pounds of pot and half a pound of salt every week.” The people of Sereno sat in silence on the rows of benches in the smoky hall as Jak finished reading the list, and looked up. “Tomorrow night Malcolm will be back from Morovia. But next day we must have all these things ready to take out to Citivist.”

“They’ve moved into Citivist?” George gasped, looking at Mona, and a gentle chuckle rippled around the room. Citivist was the end of the -low range of hills which enfolded Sereno in one maternal canyon, where the stub of an ancient apartment tower rose nearly three floors, looking out over the wide flat Ellay Plain past the white-pillared ruins two hours’ walk from Sereno towards where the distant ocean touched the horizon on a clear day. The Ruins might be the goal of rare holiday excursions, but had been picked clean by generations of everything but archaeological interest. The view from the tower was romantic by moonlight, and the spot was favored by young couples of the village, contracted or free.

“At least they won’t be watching us from hiding all the time,” said one of the herdsmen. “I don’t think any of them would want to sit out in the open air all day, or walk a couple miles back and forth. And they won’t be likely to drop in for something they might need.”

“But when they do come, it won’t just be on a casual impulse, and they’ll be harder to deal with,” Jak said. “Now, we’ll all share the cost of supporting them, but this time I’ll put up the two sheep and the big watersack. We can work out something equitable before next week. Everything else in his list we can chip in on. Bring your shares tomorrow night and we’ll see what Malcolm has found out. If anybody can’t remember what we need, see me tonight or tomorrow. When you’ve looked over the list and we get the shares worked out, Rajer will play last night’s Midnight News for anybody who’s interested. Yes, Mona?”

“Uh, have you thought about the Scouts?”

Jak looked around the room. “Has anyone else thought about the Scouts? We’d have to feed them in addition to all the rats for a while, and they’ll have to be paid.”

“And if they only succeed in making the rats angry, we’ll all be killed,” said Rajer.

“But if we don’t call them,” Mona said, “the rats will starve us all. Two sheep a week—in a year that’s a tenth of our flock. And what about the breadfruit? We haven’t had enough of that in the last three years. They couldn’t have got this much from Morovia.”

“Apparently they didn’t,” said the same herder. “I agree. We can’t keep up anything like this for very long. I say we should call the Scouts—price and advice given free.”

“We can’t use the radio—the rats’ll be listening. But we could try to phone through Malibu. The Valley line was open last week when the stage came; the driver told me about it.”

“I’d been thinking of trying the phone,” Jak said. “Malibu has a good radio and a directional ‘tenna. They could cast north and a Troop might be here in a month.”

“This time of year they could make it in two weeks.”

“They’d take a while getting ready. We can feed the rats for a month if we know they’ll be gone the month after that. Is everybody agreed?”

“I’d like to wait for Malcolm to come back, Dad. He might be able to tell us how many there are and what kind of weapons they have.”

“Right, Martin. We’ll postpone action on this until after tomorrow night. Convince them we’re willing to cooperate. Then if we can’t get Malibu on the phone, somebody will have to go there with the message.”

All this while the list was handed among the benches, people leaning together over it. Muttered comments grew as it passed from hand to hand, resentment condensing around it until every voice in the village was ready to agree this toll could not be borne. Then shares were worked out, leaving everyone angrier and feeling more helpless against these parasites who had descended to loot them of their food. Few of them cared to stay to hear the news.

Two days later, a direct vidiphone contact was established through Malibu up the coast to Frisco Island and thence east through an automatic relay station at Sacto into Semmity. The sound was clear from the little speaker of the handphone, though the picture was faint and rolled constantly. Jak saw a lean, white-haired man as brown as a tree, who wore a green sash across his Chest decorated with ranks of obscure symbols.

“Rats, eh?” he said. “We can probably help. How many are there?”

“They claim fifty, but they’ve ordered enough food for thirty.”

“Then there are probably fifteen. How are they armed?”

“They have some energy weapons. My boy went to Morovia, where they came from, to see if there were any survivors. There weren’t. And there was evidence of a blaster having been used. Maybe more than one.”

The Master of Semmity Troop nodded, a file of ghostly images. “We can send a patrol down for twenty dollars a man. Under the circumstances I wouldn’t send you fewer than four. You will be expected to board them and their mules and re-equip them for the trip back. Also, any pay earned by a Scout who is killed in your service goes to the leader, and the leader will bring it back to us. I would suggest you hire five. Sereno should be worth a hundred dollars. We can also discount the value of anything the rats might leave. If they have energy weapons in good condition, for instance. A blaster might be worth twenty dollars.”

“How much would five streetsuits be worth? I’ve seen them, and they look good as new.”

“Couldn’t guarantee. Four dollars each is reasonable, but some of them might have to be damaged to kill the rats inside. I think you need a five-man patrol. If you’re willing to accept our terms, they may be there around the next full moon. They can find you easily enough—we have excellent maps. Since you’re probably being watched, they’ll come in from the east after dark some night. If they haven’t shown up in a month, call us back. The phone here always works.”

“I wish we could say the same. Thank you, and we’ll have the money ready.”

“Fine. Best of luck meanwhile, and try not to make the rats angry. We hate to lose business.”

As the picture from Semmity faded, Frisco Island came on the line in the person of a cool-looking girl. “Hi, Sereno,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind my cutting in, but we wanted to keep the line open to Malibu. Besides, our Comm Center here wondered how you’d been picking up our recent audiocasts.”

“Fine, Frisco. Our ‘tenna is in good shape, and those weather predictions have been a lot of help.”

“They’ll get better. Blue Valley expects to be able to lock onto a weather satellite for this hemisphere with another year’s work. They’ve already got signals that it’s still working, and they hope to be able to read pictures from it. Are you a Tech?”

“No. You want to talk to Rajer about tuners and things like that. Keep the line open.”

By the time Rajer came at Jak’s summons, the little vidiphone was silent* and several minutes of signaling failed to raise Malibu.

“It must have gone out somewhere in the Valley line,” he said at last. “You got Semmity, though?”

Jak nodded. “The Master said a patrol would be down by the full moon. Five men at twenty dollars each, but they’ll take some of their pay in loot. I think we can manage.”

“Only five men? Against fifty rats?”

“He seemed pretty confident. Suggested four could be enough. I’ll tell the meeting tonight.”

Less than a week later one of the rats came into town. It was late afternoon when he appeared, striding sure-footedly down the steep hillside towards the small corral where the breeding goats were kept. Two children were watching the goats; they stopped playing and stood up as he approached, staring as though they had never seen a stranger before.

This one was small and slight of build, scarcely larger than either of them. He wore a flowered sleeveless shirt and loose pants. His skin was pale, and looked soft. He smiled at the children as he glanced around for an adult to speak to, but his eyes had a glassy blankness when he finally focused on them.

“Gimme some milk,” he said.

Their eyes got big, but neither child moved. He stopped smiling.

“Gimme some milk!”

The younger child stuck a grimy fist in her mouth, and seconds passed.

“All right, gimme a pail,” the rat said, his voice rising. “And I’ll show you how to milk a goat.”

Suddenly both children giggled. The rat struck violently at the nearer, who slumped limply, to the dirt and lay unmoving and the other screamed and ran away towards the silent houses.

The rat looked after her and shrugged. There was a small pail hanging on one fence post—he took it down and entered the corral. Ten minutes later, after he had filled the pail with warm foamy milk, he looked up.

The child still lay where she had fallen, but beyond her, watching silently, stood half the people of Sereno. Wind whispered the long sweet leaves of eucalyptus behind them, but they neither spoke nor stirred.

He stared at them suspiciously, then laughed. “You mud should teach your get some manners,” he said. “You can pick up the pail next time you bring us food.”

No one moved as he turned and climbed the trail west, the heavy pail swinging beside him. But as he passed out of sight over the ridge they moved forward as one to cluster about the child. And only then murmurs passed among them. “Scouts. Full moon. God willing—”

A cloudless sky held a full moon above the eastern horizon, and yellow firelight was visible through curtained and screened windows. Frogs and crickets shouted back and forth in the faded twilight. Silently, up Horn Canyon from Hunnington Trail, wound a file of men and mules. They stayed under the trees in shadow, and even the animals seemed to know how to place their feet amid the dry leaves and twigs on the hard gray earth.

Jak and his boys were just sitting down to dinner when there was a light tap at the door. They looked at each other, then Jak shook his head silently at the four of them and rose to answer it.

Outside stood a broad-shouldered, short-necked man in adobe-colored clothing. On the front of his shirt, just below his full beard, gleamed the silver emblem of the Scouts. He undipped it without a word and held it out to Jak. Sealed in the reverse was a full color solidograph of the man and a medicode number.

Jak stared in wonder at the solido for several seconds before thinking to compare it with the face of the man who waited patiently on his doorstep. When he looked up, the Scout said, “My name is Bern Targil. I have four men with me and five mules.”

“Will you come in? I can go open the barn.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Boys,” said Jak to the looks of surmise around his table, “go ahead and eat. I’ll be back in a little while. The Scouts are here.”

“Dad? Can I go tell people? I can eat when you come back.”

They left, Bobby at a run, the two men more leisurely in another direction.

“I didn’t know how things stood,” Bern said as they walked towards the barn, “so my patrol is staying out of sight. Do the rats watch you?”

“We’ve never seen them.”

“Rats don’t hide well. We’ll keep our mules under cover unless you have a herd we could mix them in. But we must be free to move around. Where do we bunk?”

“My place. I’ll take care of your board while you’re here.”

“You still know where they’re holed up?”

“Apartment ruins a couple miles west. We take the food out there every week, and I’ve had a couple of kids watching from a distance until they take the food inside.”

“We’ll go into all this over dinner. I’ve got another Eagle and two Scouts along. And a Cub. They’ll hear everything anyway. Can you feed us tonight? We came over the pass north of Berdoo, and there isn’t much forage south of the mountains. Looked over Morovia, by the way. Talk about that over dinner, too.” He made a cooing, warbling sound deep in his throat, and silent shadows slipped from under the trees to follow them, leading the mules into the barn where they were unloaded and bedded down.

When Jak returned home with the five Scouts, he found his front room full of curious people. Everyone wanted to know what was going to be done and how soon. Jak told them nobody knew yet, and suggested a gathering in the big hall after dinner. First they wanted to be introduced to the Scouts.

Bern introduced himself as Senior Eagle, then each of his patrol. Lem Spaski was also of Eagle rank; Arne and Jon were still short of their qualifications. Chad, who looked about Bobby’s age, was a Cub. Lem displayed his personal weapons to the awestruck villagers before sending them home to dinner—each Scout carried a bowie and a hatchet, each bore a sturdy crossbow on his back and each carried a hand-blaster in a recharging holster slung at his side.

“Let us have dinner, folks,” Bern finally said. “We’ll see you again in an hour or so—we’ve got questions to ask you, too.”

For three days the Scouts did not leave the canyon, but performed regular workouts during the morning hours and spent afternoons inspecting and critiquing some important constructions, including the carefully maintained duct which ran down through the center of the village. Its steady flow sprang cool and clear from a pipe at the north end of the canyon.

Evenings they studied maps of the area and talked with people who knew the ruins at Citivist. George Mendez, Jak’s next-youngest son, was familiar with the tower to an extent that seemed almost a local byword. He sketched the basic plan of the structure, indicating its layout, orientation, and which stairs were still open since the quake four years ago. Each of the Scouts questioned him intently on the building and its surrounding terrain.

Later Bern and Jak smoked together on the flat roof of the house, and talked.

“Fine boys,” Bern said.

“Thanks. I raised them myself the last nine years. Their ma was killed in a mudslide the winter of ‘29. The year before the locusts came. They’re named after the Four Martyrs.”

“One of them might like to come back with us— we could arrange to give him a few preliminary tests before we leave. Have any of them shown an interest in our kind of work?”

“I keep them pretty busy here. They’ll be taking the sheep north to Wilson this fall. Five hundred head last year. That’s how we can afford to hire you—we sold a good wool harvest in Dago a few months ago.”

“If we can catch these rats underground, we may salvage enough undamaged gear to cover some of the expenses.”

“When are you going? The next delivery is in two days.”

“Tomorrow would be as good a day as any. We’re rested up and ready to go. Middle of the morning would be the time to catch them napping. You should understand, we may not make any attempt on their stronghold directly—you have no idea how it might be defended. But we will be prepared to carry through.”

The next morning Jak stood with them at the crest of the hill and pointed west along a rutted track. “The tower’s at the end of the ridge; good view of the plain. Nothing else near as big anywhere around. We leave the food outside the door on this side. We thought about putting poison in it, but if it didn’t get them all at once we could have trouble.”

Lem nodded. “Leave this sort of thing to professionals,” he said. “If we catch them all together, we should be able to clean them out neatly. Think we’ll be back for dinner, Bern?”

“Should be. We’ll see you then, Jak. You go home now, and don’t worry about us. You won’t have to bring a donation tomorrow.”

The patrol slipped silently among the tall grasses. Invisibly they divided to either side of the ridge, Lem and Arne to the north, fifty yards from Bern, followed by Jon and Chad along the south lip of the hill. They communicated now by short-range zister handys which drew only microscopic power for listening; the transmitter was keyed momentarily in coded patterns of clicks unless the situation warranted use of a sustained voice signal.

The Scouts advanced cautiously, examining grassy mounds where a rat might lurk, stepping lightly over an occasional gaping crack which opened into black depths, studying a stub of corroded metal which jutted from the dirt like a bare, fungus-crusted tree.

The sea-scented breeze passed among the grass less silently than they, moving with its easy ripples. The wide crest of the hill was ruggedly level fifty feet to either side of a rutted track which ran out to the tower at the southwesternmost end, and around it in a full loop. On the far side, there was just enough room for a wagon between the sheer gray wall with its gaping windows and the crumbling slope of a hill, falling a steep two hundred feet to a jagged mound which sloped away another three hundred feet to the rumpled floor. Beyond, the Ellay Plain ran ruggedly level to the misty line that was the sea; nearer, on a rise of ground four miles away, the white pillars and cyclopean walls of the Ruins were delicate miniatures.

The tower looked lifeless. Its wide entrance gaped like a cave half-drowned in the earth; twenty-five feet above the concrete wall was shattered and interior walls stuck up dark-gray against the cloudless sky. The five Scouts circled it soundlessly, coming together on the narrow ledge behind the building.

“Cellar,” said Lem.

“Ventilation,” said Bern.

“No watch,” Chad said. “Some place else?”

Bern shook his head. “Best place.” He looked into the dimness and sniffed and listened. With the faintest crunch he stepped down through a window, looked around and nodded, beckoning them to follow. There was the faint scent of recent or current human occupancy nearby; it seemed to be in the cool walls, or the inner darkness held it hidden.

Arne brought a flash out of his pack and pumped up a light. The floor was littered with dirt and cement dust; there were animal droppings along the wall; tatters of plastic were snagged or crumpled here and there. They found a stairwell with signs of use—the larger pieces of rubble had been kicked aside to leave a pathway. From below came the faint glow of artificial light and a warm draft carried the strong human smell up to them. Lem pointed up the stairs, and they filed silently towards the top.

Sunlight grew upon them as they neared the roofless upper floor, and shortly Bern and Lem looked cautiously over the edge of the stairwell at a maze of low walls and piled rubble which three hundred years had not weathered away. Nothing moved. Slowly, his crossbow cocked and quarreled, Bern stepped onto what had once been the floor of a hall. The others followed him.

A distant mockingbird shrieked at a crow; no other sound rippled the still air. The patrol spread out, a room or a corridor apart, remaining in sight of each other, except where pieces of wall still stood taller than a man. It was only a few minutes before Jon waved them together around him. There on the roof lay spread a hundred square feet of greenish black glassy metallic material, displayed to catch the maximum sunlight through most of the day. A black cable ran from one corner of the sheet down a narrow square airshaft and out of sight.

The Scouts followed Bern some distance away and then huddled for a whispered conference.

“Drawing air down that shaft and blowing it back up the stairs,” said Chad.

Lem nodded. “A few gas bombs will clean them right out.”

Faint voices from somewhere brought their heads around and froze them where they crouched. Someone was coming up the stairs from below, making no particular secret of the fact.

The Scouts moved silently around to gain clearer views of the stairhead from different angles. Footsteps crunched up the concrete steps, voices and laughter alternating, and seconds later a couple came squinting into the sunlight. Both were bare to the waist, clad only in loose comfortable shorts; both were dirty in a careless animal way. The girl’s hair was as short and tangled as the boy’s. They approached the ambush casually, unaware.

Two crossbows made a double thunk and the couple fell, arms and legs kicking briefly, their skulls shattered by the bolts.

Neither had been armed; there was nothing of value on either of them. They were not followed; whether they had come up to check on the solar cell, or on personal business, was problematical, as was the question of how soon their continued absence would arouse suspicion.

But action had been taken, and a fast efficient follow-through could bring success. A reconnaissance had become the battle and hesitation would gain nothing but total destruction.

Jon’s pack held five canisters of Paralane Delta, salvaged from a vast store in far-distant Utah: this deadly gas was colorless, odorless and quickly fatal to humans who had not flushed their lungs with an inhalant of PDNeg. The death Delta delivered was swift and symptomless, but the gas’ effect faded quickly after fifteen minutes while the Neg immunization lasted for two hours. As its protection waned, the faintest trace of Delta would cause a sharp headache. Five inhalers were taken from a box of twenty and used, then three fat gray cylinders were armed and dropped down the air-shaft along the heavy cable from the solar cell.

One minute after the gas was released, Arne disconnected the cable from the power sheet and the five Scouts, secrecy set aside, raced down the stairs to ground level and outside to ring the building. Chad covered the center of the long front; Bern watched the front and north edge from beyond the corner, overlapping Jon, who waited at the corner next to the cliff in the shadow of the tower. He faced Arne along the ledge, sharing guard of the rear. Jon, the sun at his back, watched the south side with Arne and the front to Chad’s left. Five crossbows waited cocked amid the grass on all sides while tense seconds passed.

Then a flurry of footsteps from within brought the hidden bows to focus on doors and windows. “Gas alarm,” Bern muttered under his breath. Clad and unclad figures appeared, running for air. Crossbows fired, cocked and fired again in the seconds while targets were presented, then perhaps a dozen survivors fell back to the cover of their walls. Eight bodies flopped in the dust.

Bern slung his bow and led the dash to the doorway. He paused there to throw another gas bomb ahead of him before charging down the slope of rubble into the smoky darkness. His hatchet flashed in his right hand, his bowie swung in his left. Bright daylight from distant windows made the shadows between them darker as the rats scattered away from the spouting bomb into the deeper shadows towards the center of the building.

The gas released below would be rising through the subterranean levels, sweeping painless death to any rats who tried to hide there, and even the upper floors would soon be filled with fading but still fatal gas. Two more rats lay on the dust-sprinkled slick metal floor to which rags of carpeting still clung in patches; the others ran stumbling farther towards the sun-shaded corner far across the vast pillar-studded open space. Hatchets spun through the air to outdistance the slow-spreading gas, and more rats fell.

Concerned now with saving their individual hides, the survivors fled into the angle where Jon stood, the bright windows at his back. His hatchet whirled over his head, his bowie stood from his fist as he charged into the rats. The first two who came within reach fell to his steel: the third swung a nyloid-clad arm to catch the descending knife and let the hatchet glance harmlessly from his helmet. Jon broke away as the streetsuited rat bore him to the floor, and rolled clear in the dust, springing to his feet and snatching his charged blaster from its holster.

The suit absorbed the bolt though its owner staggered back against a column. He snapped open a case at his belt before Jon could ready his bow, and a spring-loaded needler snapped. Jon’s hand clutched reflexively at the trigger for a second before he coughed weakly and crumpled.

The rat leaped forward to pick up the recharging blaster and fired into the darkness behind him. Chad gasped and fell aside as the half-powered bolt clipped a column beside him and droplets of molten metal splashed across his right arm, then Bern and Arne fired together. The corner of an empty lift bay exploded in stony fragments and white dust, but the rat was gone, and the others were gone with him.

Silence settled, echoing between the floor and ceiling, and the sound of footsteps, hurrying to Jon, whispered away towards the distant ring of windows. The recharging blasters made a faint rising whine. Chad came behind the others, lips clamped, his left hand fumbling in his aid kit for burnbalm. He was smearing it on, slumped against a pillar, as the others knelt by Jon’s body. Bern looked back.

“Chad—clean him, take the gear back to Sereno. Send a party to pick him up, bring five men after us. Can you still shoot?”

Chad nodded. “Left-handed. Balm’s working.”

Lem came back from the rear windows. “Six of them,” he said. “They’re heading onto the plain—either towards Griffith Hills or the Ruins.”

“Let’s go.”

They took off like sprinters for the window, hatchets and bowies resheathed. Away down the hill six figures hit the level ground and started across the scrub grass and sparse brush towards the southwest. In great sliding leaps the three Scouts came down the face of the hill after them.

Blaster bolts sizzled across the distance between them, but dissipated well short. The Scouts, reaching the foot of the long slope, concentrated on the sustained chase. Trained, conditioned, disciplined, they ran steadily over the hummocky ground towards the dusty trail down which the rats were already fleeing.

The grass was nearly waist-high, but thin and dry with snagging seedpods along its stalks; the few foxtails caught by the uniforms found no loose texture to hold and dropped almost at once. The road itself was no more than a faint double rut, cracked and bare with taller grass in the middle. It led nearly four miles southwest to the Ruins.

Heads up, running like machines, the Scouts chased the rats, narrowing their lead from two hundred yards to one hundred before they were halfway to the Ruins. Then a blaster bolt warmed their faces, and they slacked their pace to match their quarry. The rats wouldn’t care to make a stand out in the open—not at only two to one. But they couldn’t flee forever. They would want to hole up in the Ruins, and would probably make their last stand there.

Now, any Scout’s pause to fire would cost distance at the edge of his range, and any attempt to continue closing would result in more effective fire from their foes. Holed up, the rats could be encircled and wiped out by training and technology. Morovia would be avenged, Jon’s blaster recovered and his life paid for.

The road was hard and level, though moderately meandering, and the distant figures of the rats remained clear above the grass. Then the ragged group vanished briefly behind a tall corner of mottled stone and rusted steel where the road bent around a large shallow craterlike pit. When they reappeared, they ran more tightly bunched, but six sharp eyes saw at once there were now only five rats a-running. Lem split off to the right around the far side of the collapsed substructure, running silently and low among the grass and slipping from rock to rock as Bern and Arne continued up the road.

One rat was probably waiting behind to shoot them from cover—if so, he might well have Jon’s blaster. As they approached, they left the road and came close against the side of the monolith. At the corner they looked cautiously around.

Nothing in sight. Bern stepped out from cover and waited. Scout blasters had no sights, being aimed by instinctive coordination of hand and eye; without this training behind it, the weapon would be relatively inaccurate. A dazzling flare burst against the wall a foot to “his left and knocked him sprawling. Answering bolts of steel snapped from two crossbows at opposite ends of the new-scarred wall, and there were no more shots. The two Scouts hurried out to retrieve their quarrels and the blaster, and dragged the body of the rat out for the follow-up party from Sereno to find and clean of whatever he might have carried.

Bern picked himself up, wincing slightly at the deep ache in his left leg. It wasn’t broken, but the concussion had given him a deep bruise which would slow him down in a little while.

He walked painfully after his partners. “Dig in and spot them,” he said. “Wait till I get there to formulate.”

They nodded—as senior Eagle he was expected to be responsible in every strategic decision. Let the rats hole up and wait; it would only dull their nerves and drive them closer to panic. Arne and Lem slung their bows and trotted off after the five now-distant rats who were still running, aware their trap had failed and aware of the irretrievable loss of their last stronghold. There were no places of safety to which they could flee, no communities where they could pass for refugees or derelict streeters.

They could have no hope of escape, yet still they ran. And after them, like loping angels of death, came Arne and Lem. The rat they had killed in the grass had not carried a needier; nor had he worn a streetsuit.

More slowly and farther behind, a hype from his aid kit easing the pain and congestion in his leg, Bern followed. His smooth stride kept the muscle from cramping, and he had only a mile to go when he heard three spaced clicks from his handy. He touched it at his belt, clicking the carrier once. Then a voice spoke quickly.

“They’re down and covered.”

Bern brought the unit to his lips. “Ten minutes,” he said, and clicked the pattern requesting navigational data.

When the Scouts were together below the crest of the round hill where the Ruins stood, Lem outlined the situation.

“They’re pulled in behind that first row of columns. They probably don’t know how to get down to the parking levels. We can surround them on the main floor area.”

Bern nodded, and the three of them started silently up the rubbly slope towards the great level stone floor, its warps and buckles concealed by wind-drifted adobe-clay. Here and there walls stood—thick, braced walls with fine patterns carved deep in their still-gleaming surfaces, uncorrupted by the centuries. Rain-soaked soot still lingered in the stones, in cracks where lichens did not reach; a great arc of dull white carving lay like a rocker sixty feet long, both ends jagged and weathered, with no matching curves as of a broken circle remained to indicate how it had stood. Locally it was called Chandler’s Chair, and it was said that a sufficient force of men had rocked it.

As the Scouts crept past the line of columns and fallen pillars, the true size of the place began to open around them. The village of Sereno would have fit, with stables, corrals, orchards and gardens, into one quarter of that great level mesa where fallen monuments to the past lay crumbling. And from the midst of that silenced splendor, a blaster bolt flashed among them and seared some square feet of stone clean of lichen.

Lem took off to the left; by understanding, as Bern’s junior he took over responsibility of movement. Bern wasted one bolt to keep the rats pinned down while Lem tried to spot their exact location. A minute later his handy clicked.

“Wall. Ten degrees right. Under this end of the Chair. Arne go right. Three minutes.”

Bern clicked acknowledgment as Arne moved off. He shifted position closer and wasted another bolt when the flash of an incautiously extended head presented itself momentarily—this battle was not likely to be settled by blaster bolts, but hand to hand. And for that the range must be closed.

The rats had gone to ground behind a row of angled slabs which thrust from the floor almost forty degrees off perpendicular, lying partly supported by a section of solid wall. Under this slotted, slanted roof they huddled, desperate and deadly. Bern saw this as he moved, and clicked his handy.

“Come from above,” he said, and his partner clicked back.

By climbing the inner face of the Chair, Lem could come out twenty feet above and behind the rats and fire down on them. Arne would be concealed forty feet in his direction from them waiting for either Eagle to open the attack. Seconds passed.

Then a bolt spat from the far end of the sheltered space and splashed against a fallen pillar behind him. Bern rose to his feet and fired. Flame licked around one end of the slanted wall and a cry told him of a glancing hit, or near miss, as he ducked down again, his ear cocked to the sound of his blaster recharging. The blaster, salvaged from the rat they’d killed on the road, stuck from his pocket, still charged; it could serve as a backup.

Lem’s crossbow snapped from above and behind the cluster of rats, and a half-charged flash of energy dissipated in the air. Then Arne fired from cover and moved. A quarrel should penetrate a streetsuit at moderate range, and only one of the rats was so protected. Bern took advantage of the distraction to move closer, angling for a shot through one six-inch crack in the bastion.

He knelt, his leg nearly numb and clumsy, and braced the bow across the lip of a dust-filled fountain. In the deep shade behind the gap he saw indistinct shapes moving too swiftly to waste a shot. Back and forth; he waited patiently; fingertip light against the trigger. As a shadow paused blocking the slit, he stroked the release and felt the bow jump against his shoulder like a captive rabbit. The bolt passed directly into the narrow opening, vanishing without a sound, and the shadow fell away leaving the space clear again. No further targets presented themselves.

The rats’ blaster would be charged up by this time. Even though the crossbow fire must have attenuated their numbers they held positional advantage, and the Scouts hesitated to press the attack.

Silence returned to the ruins—a tense, waiting silence. A gull flashed white overhead, and warm wind whispered around the fallen columns. Bern gauged the distance to another block of white marble and estimated his chances. The rat with the blaster could only be looking one way at a time, and the needier was a short-range weapon. Five seconds in the open would be too long, but Lem could distract them. He secured his weapons and clicked a question on his handy.

“Four left, one wounded,” it answered.

“Good. Count five and cover.”

On the click of acknowledgment Bern rose to a crouch and started counting silently with measured cadence. One—two—three—four—five… The snap of Lem’s bow sent him on a clumsy four-legged scramble across a bare twenty-five feet of sparse stunted grass which grew unhealthily among the cracked marble slabs. He barked his knuckles across a jutting corner and his hand slipped. His shoulder hunched as he twisted reflexively to land rolling, and a lance of flame turned a long oval of crumbling stone to steaming white lava which seethed for a few seconds before the bursting bubbles froze in brittle froth. By then he was under cover.

Arne had taken the opportunity to advance seconds after Bern. The ring tightened.

The group of villagers with Chad in the lead should arrive within a quarter hour. A containing action would be adequate at this point. But professional pride preferred that not a rat be left alive when reinforcements did arrive. He clicked for Lem.

“Three left, one wounded. Try bounce shot—left end.”

The indicated end of the rats’ shelter was warded by a four-foot wall of stone, faint abstracts etched in it, angled partly across the opening. From his new position he could fire a bolt which would splatter rock and enough heat to cause some damage in the protected area. He cocked his bow, slung it ready and gave the sharp, rising attack whistle and fired his blaster into the wall.

Second blaster in hand, he scrambled forward to the smoking, half-slagged wall, fell flat to the stone and fired into the rats’ hole. Crossbows snapped above and ahead, and one more flicker of intolerable brilliance lanced just over his head and warmed his back like the sun for an instant as the wall behind him puffed steam. In a single swift movement he brought his bow into position with a quarrel in its slot and fired into the one figure left standing, a discharged blaster in his hand and a streetsuit helmet around his head.

Another quarrel from the opposite direction struck the figure almost simultaneously, spinning him around and ripping through the tough nyloid. The rat flopped to the ground, kicking for only a moment, across the burned body of another, and as echoes of unheard shouts died the only sound in the stillness was the harmonic lifting chord of recharging blasters.

Bern rose to his feet and limped forward, bowie ready in his fist. Arne came toward him through the settling dust, prodding cautiously at the bodies with his toe.

Lem’s head appeared above them on the lip of Chandler’s Chair. “That’s it,” he said.

“Streetsuit’s wrecked,” said Arne critically.

“Merit point for the kill,” said Bern. “It may be repairable.”

He bent awkwardly and picked up the blaster from a limp hand just as the whine cut off. He switched the circuit to safety and spent several seconds examining it before he nodded.

Lem came around the curve of graven stone as Arne found the spring needler and held it up. “I wondered why this wasn’t being used,” he said. “Now I think it may have been.”

The flat magazine opened to show the “needles”—instead of gleaming perfect lines of steeloy, it was half filled with strands of bright copper, salvaged from ancient wiring, cut to length and painstakingly worked to near-microscopic straightness. Lem winced. “Rough on the barrel! Half price for salvage.”

“They’ll be here soon for the accounting,” Bern said. “I don’t think they’ll feel cheated.” A line of dust, distant and white behind a wagonload of villagers, rose along the road from Sereno, coming to carry them back.

>THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY
by Jerry Pournelle

Astute readers will recognize that this article’s title comes from the 1970 book by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle. STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY has been used as a text by both the United States Air Force Academy and the Air War College; it is, alas, out of print, although Steve and I hope to revise it soon.

Before we get into the topic proper, some good news.

The First L-5 Convention, held in Spring of 1982, was a rousing success. Fan Guest of Honor Robert A. Heinlein said it was the best weekend he’s had in years. I heartily agree; it may have been the most interesting convention I’ve ever been to. Attendance was nearly a thousand, with an excellent mixture of professionals, such as Guest of Honor Fred Haise, Buzz Aldrin, Hans Mark, Arthur Kantrowitz, my colleague G. Harry Stine, Stefan Possony, Danny Graham, etc; and space enthusiasts like Larry Niven, Ben Bova, BJO Trimble… I have a problem in choosing names; there were so many friends there. The ones above are quite literally chosen at random, and I hope I’ve offended none by leaving them out. I couldn’t possibly list all the guests we had.

There was an important session on design of a Lunar Colony, conducted by Count Renaldo Petrini, PhD., a well-known Houston architect. Everyone at the convention was invited to help out, and the results have been impressive. Dr. Petrini and his associates are planning two more (invitational) sessions. What they’ve got so far is both aesthetic and practical; they’ll do an article on it soon.

Although I was in theory Convention Co-Chairman, I don’t hesitate to brag about how well run it was, for in reality I had nothing to do with convention operations. I went about entertaining guests; the real work was done by Co-Chairman Milt Stevens, many members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, and Deputy Chairman James Ransom of the Aerospace Corporation.

I won’t make this a convention report but I will give a few anecdotes. Overheard in the operations center:

Speaker (an important aerospace executive): “This is the best managed convention I’ve ever gone to. They show you where to go, things start on time, and they have those continuation rooms for people who want to ask questions. It’s great!”

Operations Assistant (veteran of many SF Cons): “This is the easiest convention I’ve ever worked. The speakers show up on time, they’re prepared, and they’re sober!”

One high point: watching Mr. Heinlein watch Fred Haise listening as Frank Gasperik sang “The Ballad of Apollo 13.”

The L-5 Conventions are planned annually; the second, in 1983, will be in Houston. I hope there will be many more, for they give an excellent opportunity for the public to meet the space professionals.

I’m writing this in 1982. There have been a number of news items I can’t get out of my mind.

Item: the sinking of HMS Sheffield and the renamed cruiser Phoenix. A number of news magazines have written of the Falklands naval battles as “the battle of the computers,” and in a real sense I suppose that’s true. The Argentine cruiser was sunk by modern “smart” torpedoes that can be fired from many miles away and are nearly indetectible; Sheffield succumbed to a French Exocet missile, which can be launched from well over the horizon at nearly any altitude after which it flies at nearly supersonic speed about ten feet above the water.

There have been any number of articles on what all this means. Some conclude that the era of the big carriers is over, and that the U.S. Navy ought to scrap its plans for more Enterprise class ships in favor of several smaller carriers equipped with helicopters and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) planes. Other analysts draw precisely the opposite conclusion: that the big ships with their “full capability” aircraft can better defend themselves, and if hit are more survivable.

Item: In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an article about the US Army in Germany. It’s a good army, the article concludes; but it’s greatly outnumbered. We have a variety of new antitank missiles and equipment, but not enough money to let the troops fire the things in training—and there are a lot of Soviet tanks just across the border. One captain speaks for all when he says “There may just be more tanks than we can kill.”

Item: the Israeli advance into Lebanon. Israeli flyers, using highly sophisticated equipment and tactics, were able to overcome some of the Soviet Union’s very best air defense missiles and anti-tank weapons.

Item: Any number of demonstrations for a “nuclear freeze.” Since enhanced radiation weapons are one of the high-tech items the Army is counting on to stop Soviet tanks, this interacts with the above—and a number of powerful Senators, including Kennedy, have joined the “freeze” movement.

Item: we still have a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty that forbids us to build any missile defense system that would protect our population. (Under SALT I we are allowed to but have not built a system to defend a single missile site; but no defenses of population centers as such are permitted. The Soviets have chosen to build their defense system to protect the missile site close by Moscow…)

A final item, one that didn’t get much publicity: early in 1982, a Czech grocery clerk was sentenced to five years at hard labor for “possession of an unlicensed mimeograph machine.”

One of the featured speakers at the L-5 Convention was Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, US Army (Ret.). General Graham is Director of Project High Frontier. The basic High Frontier report can be obtained from PROJECT HIGH FRONTIER, 1010 Vermont Ave. NW Suite 1000, Washington DC 20005 for $15; and I urge anyone interested in the military future to get a copy and study it. Fair warning: some of the analysis in the High Frontier report comes directly from the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy, of which group I am Chairman; so I am hardly unbiased.

My copy of High Frontier comes with a letter of endorsement signed by Buzz Aldrin, who met General Graham at the L-5 Convention; one thing the L-5 Con accomplished.

The basic thesis of High Frontier echoes what Possony and I wrote in STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY: that the decisive war need not be fought with blood and treasure—and in fact must not be. There is a way to defend Western Civilization—warts and all—without destroying the planet.

Major premise: it’s bloody expensive to try to match the Soviets tank for tank, gun for gun, ship for ship. They can keep a lot more of their population under arms than we can; certainly they can build large armies cheaper than we can.

If we continue with “the incremental approach” to defense; buying more of this and that, buy more airplanes, more guns, more tanks, more bombs; we will do nothing decisive, and we may well go bankrupt trying it. We also accumulate the means for killing the lot of us.

Instead, let us take a bold new approach; let us sidestep the enemy, and take the high ground of space.

Our present strategic doctrine is Mutual Assured Destruction, often abbreviated (by its enemies, of whom I am one) as MAD. MAD says that wars cannot be won; they can only be deterred; and therefore to prevent war all nuclear powers must mutually have the ability to destroy each other. MAD adherents oppose civil defense, not on the grounds that it won’t work, but that it might work. If we could truly defend some of our population, then we would not be hostage to the Soviets; assured destruction would not be mutual.

Those who support General Graham’s strategic thesis would restore defense to its proper role: would opt for Assured Survival as the proper strategic doctrine, and see that the arms race concentrated on defensive weapons that would protect the US population.

Defensive systems are inherently stabilizing. They deal handsomely with the “mad general” scenario (unauthorized launch of a single nuclear missile). For technical reasons one can never be certain of one’s defenses, especially against a determined and sophisticated enemy; but defensive systems can very likely deal with any power other than the Soviet Union, and that in itself is desirable. Finally, by complicating the other side’s strategic war plan, defense systems make it very difficult to predict the outcome of a strategic nuclear exchange—which makes it very unlikely that anyone would launch a strike in the first place. You don’t start a big war unless you’re fairly certain you can win it.

The point is that the High Frontier strategy does not seem incompatible with a nuclear freeze: certainly is not incompatible with a freeze on offensive nuclear weapons.

I don’t know the optimum mix of big and little carriers for the future. As a maritime nation the United States has always required naval forces to keep our sea lanes open, and Marines to project our power beyond our borders—indeed, the Constitution makes an important distinction between armies and navies. Certainly we need ships.

Equally certainly, ships have become increasingly vulnerable. I don’t know whether the U.S. provided the Royal Navy with intelligence on the location of Argentine ships and aircraft, but certainly we could have. Imagine a sea battle of the future: satellites spot the enemy’s vessels and locate them to within a few feet (or even inches!) on the Earth’s surface. Missiles can then be dispatched from aircraft or submarines well over the horizon from their targets. If a single air-launched Exocet can sink a modern ship like HMS Sheffield, what’s safe from a dozen missiles?

There’s more to the High Frontier strategy. One of the systems examined by the Citizen’s Advisory Council was Project THOR: the ability to call down fire from heaven. The THOR system would consist of “flying crowbars” about five feet long, with a simple-minded guidance system and tiny vanes for aerodynamic control. They could “know” what a tank looks like from above—and when activated (de-orbited), thousands would home on anything that looked like a tank. THOR wouldn’t be easy to build—but then it isn’t easy to build Enhanced Radiation Weapons (and it may be even harder to deploy them in Europe, given the present mood…).

It would be even simpler to build orbital anti-ship weapons of the THOR type.

Now that final news item.

First the bad news for those who think “Better Red than dead.”: You may get both. How many science fiction readers publish fanzines? How many more are prepared to live where possession of an unlicensed mimeograph machine is a penal offense? Can you live under that kind of regime? I don’t mean “Are you willing to?;” I mean CAN YOU? For I suspect many of us cannot; that try as we might, we just wouldn’t be able to cooperate with people who see a mimeograph as a dangerous weapon.

Now the good news:

I’m writing this at midnight. When I get it done, I’ll log on to a computer network that connects me with thousands of friends all across the nation. There are a number of those networks, and given the computer revolution more are inevitable. Computers make it easy to communicate, and computer literates seem inevitably drawn toward communicating with each other.

Is it true that modern warfare is a battle of computers? Certainly it is a battle of high technology. I can’t prove it, but I am prepared to argue that a nation whose youth grow up as computer literates will have great advantages in high technology warfare; and that our home computers are producing hundreds of thousands of computer literates.

A nation that sends people to jail for possessing an unlicensed mimeograph machine cannot possibly allow a computer revolution within its borders: it would be tantamount to allowing freedom of speech. Yet a nation that suppresses the computer revolution may well lack the technical capability to engage in modern warfare.

We may, just may, be seeing a way out of the long impasse that has so long confronted us. Meanwhile, space technology offers us the chance for defense; an opportunity for the military to resume its historic duty; a chance for free men to stand between their loved homes and the war’s desolation.

It is a chance we must take.

Editor's Introduction to:

THE WIDOW’S PARTY
by Rudyard Kipling

For reasons of which I’m not sure, Kipling is no longer fashionable. In my opinion that’s a mistake. If poets come closest to baring humanity’s soul, it is certain that few poets have understood their fellow men quite as well as did Kipling.

The “Widow” in this poem is, of course, Victoria Regina, Queen of England and Empress of India. After the death of her beloved husband Prince Albert, Victoria shut herself away in Windsor Castle, and was seldom seen by her subjects. Yet did the Army obey: “Walk wide o’ the Widow o’ Windsor, for half of creation she owns…”

Philosophers and “social scientists” have talked endlessly about why men fight, but few of their treatises tell us much. “The Widow’s Party” doesn’t tell us intellectually; but it says a lot even so.

THE WIDOW’S PARTY
by Rudyard Kipling

“Where have you been this while away, Johnnie, Johnnie?”

Out with the rest on a picnic lay. Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!

They called us out from the barrack-yard

To Gawd knows where from Gosport Hard,

And you can’t refuse when you get the card,

And the Widow give the party.

(Bugle: Ta-rara-ra-ra-rara!)

“What did you get to eat and drink, Johnnie, Johnnie?”

Standing water as thick as ink, Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!

A bit o’ beef that were three year stored,

A bit o’ mutton as tough as a board,

And a fowl we killed with a sergeant’s sword,

When the Widow give the party.

“What did you do for knives and forks, Johnnie, Johnnie?”

We carries ’em with us wherever we walks,

Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!

And some was sliced and some was halved,

And some was crimped and some was carved,

And some was gutted and some was starved,

When the Widow give the party.

“What ha’ you done with half your mess, Johnnie, Johnnie?”

They couldn’t do more and they wouldn’t do less.

Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!

They ate their whack and they drank their fill,

And I think the rations has made them ill.

For half my comp’ny’s lying still,

Where the Widow give the party.

“What was the end of all of the show, Johnnie, Johnnie?”

Ask my Colonel, for I don’t know, Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!

We broke a King and we built a road—

A court-house stands where the Reg’ment goed.

And the river’s clean where the raw blood flowed.

And the Widow give the party.

(Bugle: Ta-rara-ra-ra-rara!)

THE END

Books by Jerry Pournelle

FICTION SERIES

CODOMINIUM UNIVERSE

CoDominion

A Spaceship for the King (1973) also appeared as King David's Spaceship (1981)

Falkenberg's Legion

1 Falkenberg's Legion (1990)

2 Prince of Mercenaries (1989)

3 Go Tell the Spartans (1991) with S. M. Stirling

4 Prince of Sparta (1993) with S. M. Stirling

His Truth Goes Marching On (1975)

West of Honor (1976)

Silent Leges (1977)

The Mercenary (1977)

Future History (1980)

Falkenberg's Legions (1990)

The Prince (2002) with S. M. Stirling

Laurie Jo Hansen

1 High Justice (1977) [C]

2 Exiles to Glory (1978)

Moties

1 The Mote in God's Eye (1974) with Larry Niven

2 The Gripping Hand (1993) with Larry Niven also appeared as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (1993)

Reflex (1982) with Larry Niven

War World

1 The Burning Eye (1988) [A]

2 Death's Head Rebellion (1990) [A]

3 Sauron Dominion (1991) [A]

4 Invasion (1994)

5 Codominium: Revolt on War World (1992)

7 Blood Vengeance (1994) with Susan Shwartz and Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove and S. M. Stirling

Prolog (The Burning Eye) (1988)

HEOROT

1 The Legacy of Heorot (1987) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

2 Beowulf's Children (1995) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes also appeared as The Dragons of Heorot (1995)

INFERNO

1 Inferno (1976) with Larry Niven

2 Escape from Hell (2009) with Larry Niven

JANISSARIES

1 Janissaries (1979)

2 Janissaries: Clan and Crown (1982) with Roland J. Green

3 Janissaries III: Storms of Victory (1987)

JUPITER

1 Higher Education (1996) with Charles Sheffield

5 Starswarm (1998)

MAGIC GOES AWAY

Golden Road

1 The Burning City (2000) with Larry Niven

2 Burning Tower (2005) with Larry Niven

PLANET OF THE APES

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1974)

TALES OF KNOWN SPACE

Man-Kzin Wars

2 Man-Kzin Wars II (1989) [A] with Larry Niven and Dean Ing and S. M. Stirling

5 Man-Kzin Wars V (1992) [A] with Larry Niven and S. M. Stirling and Thomas T. Thomas

The Children's Hour (1991) with S. M. Stirling

In the Hall of the Mountain King (1992) with S. M. Stirling

The Houses of the Kzinti (2002) with S. M. Stirling and Dean Ing

NOVELS

Birth of Fire (1976)

Lucifer's Hammer (1977) with Larry Niven

Oath of Fealty (1981) with Larry Niven

Footfall (1985) with Larry Niven

Fallen Angels (1991) with Michael F. Flynn and Larry Niven

OMNIBUS

Fires of Freedom (2009)

ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Far Frontiers

1 Far Frontiers (1985) with Jim Baen

2 Far Frontiers, Volume II/Summer 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

3 Far Frontiers, Volume III/Fall 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

4 Far Frontiers, Volume IV/Winter 1985 (1986) with Jim Baen

5 Far Frontiers, Volume V/Spring 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

6 Far Frontiers, Volume VI/Fall 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

7 Far Frontiers, Volume VII/Winter 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

Imperial Stars

1 The Stars At War (1986) with John F. Carr

2 Republic and Empire (1987) with John F. Carr

3 The Crash of Empire (1989) with John F. Carr

Nebula Awards

16 Nebula Award Stories Sixteen (1982) with John F. Carr

The Endless Frontier

1 The Endless Frontier (1979)

2 The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1982) with John F. Carr

3 Cities in Space (1991) with John F. Carr

4 Life Among the Asteroids (1992) with John F. Carr

There Will Be War

1 There Will Be War (1983) with John F. Carr

2 Men of War (1984)

3 Blood and Iron (1984) with John F. Carr

4 Day of the Tyrant (1985) with John F. Carr

5 Warrior (1986) with John F. Carr

6 Guns of Darkness (1987) with John F. Carr

7 Call to Battle (1988) with John F. Carr

8 Armageddon! (1989) with John F. Carr

9 After Armageddon (1990)

ANTHOLOGIES

2020 Vision (1974)

Black Holes (1978)

The Survival of Freedom (1981) with John F. Carr

The Science Fiction Yearbook (1985) with John F. Carr and Jim Baen

Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042: A Four-Part Invention (1994) with Ben Bova and Frederik Pohl and Charles Sheffield

NONFICTION

That Buck Rogers Stuff (1977)

A Step Farther Out (1979)

Mutual Assured Survival (1984) with Dean Ing

The User's Guide to Small Computers (1984)

Adventures in Microland (1985)

NON-FICTION

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

SCIENCE FICTION

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

The Stars Came Back by Rolf Nelson

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

FANTASY

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Gladiator's Song by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

CASTALIA CLASSICS

The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

AUDIOBOOKS

A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

TRANSLATIONS

Särjetty taika

QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravedad Mata

Una Estrella Brillante para Guiarlos

QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal

Uma Magia Perdida

Mantra yang Rusak

La Moneta dal Mercenario

I Ragazzoni non Piangono

QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти

QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand

Grosse Jungs weinen nicht

New Release Newsletter

The Castalia House New Release newsletter is sent out to subscribers several days before a new book is officially released. Subscribers who purchase the book in the specified period after the newsletter is sent out will receive either a) a free book that is offered as a bonus with the new release, or b) their choice of one of several free choices that are on offer as a bonus.

We do not spam our subscribers’ email addresses nor do we sell them to anyone. We average about one new release per month.

Click here to subscribe to the Castalia House New Release newsletter or visit castaliahouse.com and enter your email address in the right sidebar, then click “Subscribe”.

There Will Be War
Volume II
edited by Jerry Pournelle

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

The stories in this collection are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Editor: Jerry Pournelle
Technical Editor, 2015 Edition: Eric Pobirs
Cover Art: Lars Braad Andersen
Version 001

Copyright © 1984, 2015 by Jerry Pournelle
All rights reserved

The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

THE WEAPON by Fredric Brown. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1951. Copyright © 1951 by Street and Smith Publications. Published by arrangement with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

TIME LAG by Poul Anderson was first published in the January 1961 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright © 1961 by Mercury Press, Inc.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL WAR by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry E. Pournelle. This essay first appeared in the book THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY published in 1970. This is a substantially different version and published here for the first time. Published by arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 1970 and 1983 by Stefan T. Possony and J.E. Pournelle.

MANUAL OF OPERATIONS by Jerry Pournelle was first published in the April 1974 issue of Vertex Magazine. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent Blassingame, McCauley & Wood. Copyright © 1974 by Mankind Publications and Copyright © 1983 by J.E. Pournelle.

ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card was first published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Fact Magazine. Copyright©1977 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc.

‘CASTER by Eric Vinicoff was first published in Rigel. It appears here by special permission of the author. Copyright © 1982 by Aesir Press.

PROUD LEGIONS by T.R. Fehrenbach appeared previously in THIS KIND OF WAR. Copyright © 1963 by T.R. Fehrenbach.

…AND BABY MAKES THREE by Doan Van Toai. This essay was previously published in the October 1st issue of National Review. Copyright © 1982 by National Review, Inc.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER by Edward P. Hughes appeared in the September 1980 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It appears here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1980 by Mercury Press, Inc.

SUPERIORITY by Arthur C. Clarke appeared in the August 1951 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This work appears by permission of the author and the author’s agent, the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc. Copyright © 1951 by Fantasy House, Inc.

FINAL MUSTER by Rick Rubin was previously published in the May 1961 Fantasy & Science Fiction. Copyright © 1961 by Mercury Press.

PARABLE OF THE PHANTOM LIMB by Edward C. Garrett appears here for the first time. Copyright © 1983 by Edward C. Garrett.

FORBIDDEN LINES by Robert Frazier is reprinted by permission of the author and appears here for the first time. Copyright © 1983 by Robert Frazier.

THE NEW WEATHER by Steve Rasnic Tern first appeared in Space and Time #54 in January 1980. DIRECTIONS FOR KILLING THE AUTOMATED HOUSE by Steve Rasnic Tern originally appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in the June 8, 1981 issue. Copyright © 1980 and 1981 by Steve Rasnic Tern.

ON THE SHADOW OF A PHOSPHOR SCREEN by William F. Wu appeared previously in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, 1979. Copyright © 1979 by the Davis Publications, Inc.

CINCINNATUS by Joel Rosenberg appears here by permission of the author. Copyright © 1983 by Joel Rosenberg.

CODE-NAME FEIREFITZ by David Drake appears here in its first publication. Copyright © 1983 by David Drake.

ALLAMAGOOSA by Eric Frank Russell was first printed in the May 1955 Astounding Science Fiction. It appears here by special arrangement with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc. Copyright © 1955 by Street & Smith.

MERCENARIES AND MILITARY VIRTUE by Jerry Pournelle first appeared in HAMMER’S SLAMMERS by David Drake as the introduction. This is a substantially different version. Copyright©1980 and 1982 by J. E. Pournelle.

PEACEKEEPER by J.E. Pournelle has not been previously published and appears here by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley & Wood. Copyright © 1983 by J.E. Pournelle.

For Jenny, my favorite captain.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover
Contents
Preface
Preface 2015
The Weapon, Fredric Brown
Time Lag, Poul Anderson

The Technological War, Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle

Manual of Operations, Jerry Pournelle
’Caster, Eric Vinicoff
Proud Legions, T.R. Fehrenbach
...And Baby Makes Three, Doan Van Toai
In the Name of the Father, Edward P. Hughes
Superiority, Arthur C. Clarke
Final Muster, Rick Rubin

Poems, Edward C. Garrett, Robert Frazier, and Steve Rasnic Tern

On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen, William Wu

Cincinnatus, Joel Rosenberg
Code-Name Feirefitz, David Drake
Allamagoosa, Eric Frank Russell
Peacekeeper, Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse, ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

The History of Strategy, Martin van Creveld
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases
Notes

PREFACE

To Provide For The Common Defense

“WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In the hot summer of 1787 a remarkably talented group of men met in Philadelphia to institutionalize the first—and in some ways the last—real revolution in history. The Framers set out their goals in the Preamble. Now that we’re approaching the 200th anniversary of the Convention of 1787, it’s appropriate to see how well they accomplished what they set out to do.

The first goal, a more perfect Union, seems secured, although it took the bloodiest war in our history to prove it. Not long ago, few would have doubted their success with the others. Now things don’t seem quite so certain.

It would be interesting to look at what we’ve done to justice, domestic tranquility, general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. Liberty, in particular, was a primary goal of the Framers. However—important as the other goals may be, if we cannot provide for the common defense, we will not survive to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Philadelphia Constitution.

When I was young, defense was not a real problem. There was no realistic possibility of invasion, from this continent or any other. Indeed, we could have survived quite comfortably without any overseas contacts at all. As a maritime nation we had some interest in “freedom of the seas”, but those interests could be protected by naval forces. There was no need for a large peacetime army.

In those days it was easy to provide for the common defense, and Congress was able to do so. There were plenty of debates on whether it was done well. There were more debates and much acrimony when we adopted peacetime conscription prior to World War II. Whatever we did, though, could only affect the security of others. The United States was never at hazard, nor was world survival at risk.

We all know things have changed. Now not only the blessings of liberty, but our posterity themselves, are threatened.

Simply put: forget how well or how badly the Congress is doing with justice, and welfare, and liberty. Can it provide for the common defense?

Most of the evidence says no.

In the early 1960’s, the Ballistic Systems Division of the US Air Force Systems Command began Project 75. This study pulled together into one document everything known and predictable about ballistic missile technology: structures, guidance, accuracy, warheads, yields, basing, security, command and control, and communications.

Project 75 examined every then-foreseeable question of strategic deterrence. It looked at basing options. It examined multiple-warhead technology and multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). It looked into hypothetical circumstances: given that the Soviets have such-and-such capability, what does this do to our force requirements, and what must we do now to meet various threats in the future.

Jerry Pournelle

Hollywood, 1984

Preface to the 2015 Reissue

When Volume I of There Will Be War was originally published the Cold War was upon us, and many assumed that Communism would eventually prevail in the global conflict; but even if the Communist World was not victorious most assumed that the best we could expect was stalemate. Henry Kissinger thought that détente—an accommodation with the USSR—was the best we could expect, and convinced President Nixon. I had conceived of the CoDominium, an uneasy alliance between Russia and the United States, avoiding central nuclear war but allowing war on the periphery as one possible end of that strategy.

When this book was first published, people were still building fall-out shelters, and when Ronald Reagan scrapped détente for a more aggressive approach based on economic realism, many were certain that the Soviet Union would not collapse without violence, with millions killed in the death spasm. When the USSR fell quietly the effect was startling. Few had expected it to be so sudden. The Guards Regiments had their tanks surrounding, and threatening, the Capitol Building of the Russian Soviet Republic (the White Palace) and its president, Boris Yeltsin. Junior officers of the USSR Guards persuaded their colonel to go inside and meet President Yeltsin. When he emerged, the tanks rotated 180 degrees to face away from the building, protecting it rather than threatening it, and the USSR was quietly ended.

Western intellectuals rejoiced, and published nonsense proclaiming the end of history. World Peace was upon us. The There Will Be War anthology series ended after nine volumes despite its surprisingly large sales. And the United States engaged in wars in the Middle East and the Balkans, at one point confronting Russia, historic protector of the Slavs, by taking the side of the Albanian and Bosnian Moslems. The First Gulf War ended well, but the precedent was established. A decade later the US engaged in the longest war in her history. It is not ended as I write this. The Second Gulf War has not ended, and the collapse of Hussein’s Baathist Iraq has spawned a new candidate to proclaim itself The Caliphate.

The People’s Republic of China is building a blue water navy, and its operatives move in both Chinese and Russian Turkestan. Current negotiations appear to make inevitable the Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons. The millennium long war between Shiite and Sunni Moslems flares up again.

There Will Be War.

Jerry Pournelle

Hollywood, 2015

Editor's Introduction to:

THE WEAPON
by Fredric Brown

The late Fredric Brown was an important writer of short fiction. He was best known as a mystery writer. Sometimes classified as an “absurdist” writer, Brown’s best known novel is Martians Go Home!, in which the men from Mars really do turn out to be little green men.

This story raises questions that it cannot answer. How do you put the djinni back in the bottle? And what happens if you cannot…

THE WEAPON
by Fredric Brown

The room was quiet in the dimness of early evening. Dr. James Graham, key scientist of a very important project, sat in his favorite chair, thinking. It was so still that he could hear the turning of pages in the next room as his son leafed through a picture book.

Often Graham did his best work, his most creative thinking, under these circumstances, sitting alone in an unlighted room in his own apartment after the day’s regular work. But tonight his mind would not work constructively. Mostly he thought about his mentally arrested son—his only son—in the next room. The thoughts were loving thoughts, not the bitter anguish he had felt years ago when he had first learned of the boy’s condition. The boy was happy; wasn’t that the main thing? And to how many men is given a child who will always be a child, who will not grow up to leave him? Certainly that was rationalization, but what is wrong with rationalization when— The doorbell rang.

Graham rose and turned on lights in the almost-dark room before he went through the hallway to the door. He was not annoyed; tonight, at this moment, almost any interruption to his thoughts was welcome.

He opened the door. A stranger stood there; he said, “Dr. Graham? My name is Niemand; I’d like to talk to you. May I come in a moment?”

Graham looked at him. He was a small man, nondescript, obviously harmless—possibly a reporter or an insurance agent.

But it didn’t matter what he was. Graham found himself saying, “Of course. Come in, Mr. Niemand.” A few minutes of conversation, he justified himself by thinking, might divert his thoughts and clear his mind.

“Sit down,” he said, in the living room. “Care for a drink?”

Niemand said, “No, thank you.” He sat in the chair; Graham sat on the sofa.

The small man interlocked his fingers; he leaned forward. He said, “Dr. Graham, you are the man whose scientific work is more likely than that of any other man to end the human race’s chance for survival.”

A crackpot, Graham thought. Too late now he realized that he should have asked the man’s business before admitting him. It would be an embarrassing interview; he disliked being rude, yet only rudeness was effective.

“Dr. Graham, the weapon on which you are working—”

The visitor stopped and turned his head as the door that led to a bedroom opened and a boy of fifteen came in. The boy didn’t notice Niemand; he ran to Graham.

“Daddy, will you read to me now?” The boy of fifteen laughed the sweet laughter of a child of four.

Graham put an arm around the boy. He looked at his visitor, wondering whether he had known about the boy. From the lack of surprise on Niemand’s face, Graham felt sure he had known.

“Harry”—Graham’s voice was warm with affection— “Daddy’s busy. Just for a little while. Go back to your room; I’ll come and read to you soon.”

“ ‘Chicken Little?’ You’ll read me ‘Chicken Little’?”

“If you wish. Now run along. Wait. Harry. This is Mr. Niemand.”

The boy smiled bashfully at the visitor. Niemand said, “Hi, Harry,” and smiled back at him, holding out his hand. Graham, watching, was sure now that Niemand had known; the smile and the gesture were for the boy’s mental age, not his physical one.

The boy took Niemand’s hand. For a moment it seemed that he was going to climb into Niemand’s lap, and Graham pulled him back gently. He said, “Go to your room now, Harry.”

The boy skipped back into his bedroom, not closing the door.

Niemand’s eyes met Graham’s and he said, “I like him,” with obvious sincerity. He added, “I hope that what you’re going to read to him will always be true.”

Graham didn’t understand. Niemand said, “ ‘Chicken Little,’ I mean. It’s a fine story—but may ‘Chicken Little’ always be wrong about the sky falling down.”

Graham suddenly had liked Niemand when Niemand had shown a liking for the boy. Now he remembered that he must close the interview quickly. He rose, in dismissal. He said, “I fear you’re wasting your time and mine, Mr. Niemand. I know all the arguments, everything you can say I’ve heard a thousand times. Possibly there is truth in what you believe, but it does not concern me. I’m a scientist, and only a scientist. Yes, it is public knowledge that I am working on a weapon, a rather ultimate one. But, for me personally, that is only a byproduct of the fact that I am advancing science. I have thought it through, and I have found that that is my only concern.”

“But, Dr. Graham, is humanity ready for an ultimate weapon?”

Graham frowned. “I have told you my point of view, Mr. Niemand.”

Niemand rose slowly from the chair. He said, “Very well, if you do not choose to discuss it, I’ll say no more.” He passed a hand across his forehead. “I’ll leave, Dr. Graham. I wonder, though… may I change my mind about the drink you offered me?”

Graham’s irritation faded. He said, “Certainly. Will whisky and water do?”

“Admirably.”

Graham excused himself and went into the kitchen. He got the decanter of whisky, another of water, ice cubes, glasses.

When he returned to the living room, Niemand was just leaving the boy’s bedroom. He heard Niemand’s “Good night, Harry,” and Harry’s happy “‘Night, Mr. Niemand.”

Graham made drinks. A little later, Niemand declined a second one and started to leave.

Niemand said, “I took the liberty of bringing a small gift to your son, doctor. I gave it to him while you were getting the drinks for us. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Of course. Thank you. Good night.”

Graham closed the door; he walked through the living room into Harry’s room. He said, “All right, Harry. Now

I’ll read to—”

There was sudden sweat on his forehead, but he forced his face and his voice to be calm as he stepped to the side of the bed. “May I see that, Harry?” When he had it safely, his hands shook as he examined it.

He thought, Only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot.

Editor's Introduction to:

TIME LAG
by Poul Anderson

We are told that interstellar conquest can never happen, because it cannot be profitable. This seems a bootless objection. Even Soviet economists recognize that Western Europe is more valuable to the Soviet Empire as a free trading partner than as a subject state; does this mean that Europe is safe?

The impulse to power is a stronger motivation than simple greed or gain. Why else would those who have more than they can ever spend risk all to gain more?

In a recent interview Poul Anderson said, “No human institutions have yet developed that didn’t contain the seeds of their own destruction, and I doubt any ever will. Of course, here in America in the last hundred years we’ve been witnessing that sort of thing happening. It’s still grinding on, but it probably hasn’t far to go now.

“I should add, too, that I don’t want to preach a sermon to anyone. I’m just a storyteller.”

TIME LAG
by Poul Anderson

522 Anno Coloniae Conditae:

Elva was on her way back, within sight of home, when the raid came.

For nineteen thirty-hour days, riding in high forests where sunlight slanted through leaves, across ridges where herbal and the first red lampflowers rippled under springtime winds, sleeping by night beneath the sky or in the hut of some woodsdweller—once, even, in a nest of Alfavala, where the wild little folk twittered in the dark and their eyes glowed at her—she had been gone. Her original departure was reluctant. Her husband of two years, her child of one, the lake and fields and chimney smoke at dusk which were now hers also, these were still too marvelous to leave.

But the Freeholder of Tervola had duties as well as rights. Once each season, he or his representative must ride circuit. Up into the mountains, through woods and deep dales, across the Lakeland as far as The Troll and then following the Swiftsmoke River south again, ran the route which Karlavi’s fathers had traveled for nearly two centuries. Whether on hailu-back in spring and summer, through the scarlet and gold of fall, or by motorsled when snow had covered all trails, the Freeholder went out into his lands. Isolated farm clans, forest rangers on patrol duty, hunters and trappers and timber cruisers, brought their disputes to him as magistrate, their troubles to him as leader. Even the flitting Alfavala had learned to wait by the paths, the sick and injured trusting he could heal them, those with more complex problems struggling to put them into human words.

This year, however, Karlavi and his bailiffs were much preoccupied with a new dam across the Oulu. The old one had broken last spring, after a winter of unusually heavy snowfall, and 5000 hectares of bottom land were drowned. The engineers at Yuvaskula, the only city on Vaynamo, had developed a new construction process well adapted to such situations. Karlavi wanted to use this.

“But blast it all,” he said, “I’ll need every skilled man I have, including myself. The job has got to be finished before the ground dries, so the ferroplast can bond with the soil. And you know what the labor shortage is like around here.”

“Who will ride circuit, then?” asked Elva. “That’s what I don’t know.” Karlavi ran a hand through his straight brown hair. He was a typical Vaynamoan, tall, light-complexioned, with high cheekbones and oblique blue eyes. He wore the working clothes usual to the Tervola district, leather breeches ending in mukluks, a mackinaw in the tartan of his family. There was nothing romantic about his appearance. Nonetheless, Elva’s heart turned over when he looked at her. Even after two years.

He got out his pipe and tamped it with nervous motions. “Somebody must,” he said. “Somebody with enough technical education to use a medikit and discuss people’s difficulties intelligently. And with authority. We’re more tradition-minded hereabouts than they are at Ruuyalka, dear. Our people wouldn’t accept the judgment of just anyone. How could a servant or tenant dare settle an argument between two pioneers? It must be me, or a bailiff, or—” His voice trailed off.

Elva caught the implication. “No!” she exclaimed. “I can’t! I mean… that is—“

“You’re my wife,” said Karlavi slowly. “That alone gives you the right, by well-established custom. Especially since you’re the daughter of the Magnate of Ruuyalka. Almost equivalent to me in prestige, even if you do come from the other end of the continent.” There they were fishers and marine farmers rather than woodsfolk. His grin flashed. “I doubt if you’ve yet learned what awful snobs the free yeomen of Tervola are!”

“But Hauki, I can’t leave him.”

“Hauki will be spoiled rotten in your absence, by an adoring nanny and a villageful of ten wives. Otherwise he’ll do fine.” Karlavi dismissed the thought of their son with a wry gesture. “I’m the one who’ll get lonesome. Abominably so.”

“Oh, darling,” said Elva, utterly melted. A few days later she rode forth.

And it had been an experience to remember. The easy, rocking motion of the six-legged hailu, the mindless leisure of kilometer after kilometer—where, however, the body, skin and muscle and blood and all ancient instinct, gained an aliveness such as she had never before felt; the silence of mountains with sunlit ice on their shoulders, then birdsong in the woods and a river brawling; the rough warm hospitality when she stayed overnight with some pioneer, the eldritch welcome at the Alfa nest—she was now glad she had encountered those things, and she hoped to know them again, often. There had been no danger. The last violence between humans on Vaynamo (apart from occasional fist fights, caused mostly by sheer exuberance and rarely doing any harm) lay a hundred years in the past. As for storms, landslides, floods, wild animals, she had the unobtrusive attendance of Huiva and a dozen other “tame” Alfavala. Even these, the intellectual pick of their species, who had chosen to serve man in a doglike fashion rather than keep to the forests, could speak only a few words and handle only the simplest tools. But their long ears, flat nostrils, feathery antennae, every fine green hair on every small body, were always aquiver. This was their planet, they had evolved here, and they were more animal than rational beings. Their senses and reflexes kept her safer than an armored aircraft might.

All the same, the absence of Karlavi and Hauki grew sharper each day. When finally she came to the edge of cleared land, high on the slopes of Hornback Fell, and saw Tervola below, a momentary blindness stung her eyes. Huiva guided his hailu alongside hers. He pointed down the mountain with his tail. “Home,” he chattered. “Food tonight. Snug bed.”

“Yes.” Elva blinked hard. What sort of crybaby am I, anyhow? she asked herself/half in anger. I’m the Magnate’s daughter and the Freeholder’s wife, I have a University degree and a pistol-shooting medal, as a girl I sailed through hurricanes and skindove into grottos where fanfish laired, as a woman I brought a son into the world… I will not bawl!

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s hurry.”

She thumped heels on the hailu’s ribs and started downhill at a gallop. Her long yellow hair was braided, but a lock of it broke loose, fluttering behind her. Hoofs rang on stone. Ahead stretched grainfields and pastures, still wet from winter but their shy green deepening toward summer hues, on down to the great metallic sheet of Lake Rovaniemi and then across the valley to the opposite horizon, where the High Mikkela reared into a sky as tall and blue as itself. Down by the lake clustered the village, the dear red tile of roofs, the whale shape of a processing plant, a road lined with trees leading to the Freeholder’s mansion. Old handhewn timbers glowed with sun; the many windows flung the light dazzlingly back to her.

She was halfway down the slope when Huiva screamed. She had learned to react fast. Thinly scattered across all Vaynamo, men could easily die from the unforeseen. Reining in, Elva snatched loose the gun at her waist. “What is it?”

Huiva cowered on his mount. One hand pointed skyward.

At first Elva could not understand. An aircraft descending above the lake… what was so odd about that? How else did Huiva expect the inhabitants of settlements hundreds of kilometers apart to visit each other? —And then she registered the shape. And then, realizing the distance, she knew the size of the thing.

It came down swiftly, quiet in its shimmer of antigrav fields, a cigar shape which gleamed. Elva holstered her pistol again and took forth her binoculars. Now she could see how the sleekness was interrupted with turrets and boat housings, cargo locks, viewports. An emblem was set into the armored prow, a gauntleted hand grasping a planetary orb. Nothing she had ever heard of. But—

Her heart thumped, so loudly that she could almost not hear the Alfavala’s squeals of terror. “A spaceship,” she breathed. “A spaceship, do you know that word? Like the ships my ancestors came here in, long ago… Oh, bother! A big aircraft, Huiva. Come on!”

She whipped her hailu back into gallop. The first spaceship to arrive at Vaynamo in, in, how long? More than a hundred years. And it was landing here! At her own Tervola!

The vessel grounded just beyond the village. Its enormous mass settled deeply into the plowland. Housings opened and auxiliary aircraft darted forth, to hover and sweep. They were of a curious design, larger and blunter than the fliers built on Vaynamo. The people, running toward the marvel, surged back as hatches gaped, gangways extruded, armored cars beetled down to the ground.

Elva had not yet reached the village when the strangers opened fire.

There were no hostile ships, not even an orbital fortress. To depart, the seven craft from Chertkoi simply made rendezvous beyond the atmosphere, held a short gleeful conference by radio, and accelerated outward. Captain Bors Golyev, commanding the flotilla, stood on the bridge of the Askol and watched the others. The light of the yellow sun was incandescent on their flanks. Beyond lay blackness and the many stars.

His gaze wandered off among constellations which the parallax of fifteen light-years had not much altered. The galaxy was so big, he thought, so unimaginably enormous… Sedes Regis was an L scrawled across heaven. Tradition claimed Old Sol lay in that direction, a thousand parsecs away. But no one on Chertkoi was certain any longer. Golyev shrugged. Who cared?

“Gravitational field suitable for agoric drive, sir,” intoned the pilot.

Golyev looked in the sternward screen. The planet called Vaynamo had dwindled, but remained a vivid shield, barred with cloud and blazoned with continents, the overall color a cool blue-green. He thought of ocherous Chertkoi, and the other planets of its system, which were not even habitable. Vaynamo was the most beautiful color he had ever seen. The two moons were also visible, like drops of liquid gold.

Automatically, his astronaut’s eye checked the claims of the instruments. Was Vaynamo really far enough away for the ships to go safely into agoric? Not quite, he thought—no, wait, he’d forgotten that the planet had a five percent greater diameter than Chertkoi. “Very good,” he said, and gave the necessary orders to his subordinate captains. A deep hum filled air and metal and human bones. There was a momentary sense of falling, as the agoratron went into action. And then the stars began to change color and crawl weirdly across the visual field.

“All’s well, sir,” said the pilot. The chief engineer confirmed it over the intercom.

“Very good,” repeated Golyev. He yawned and stretched elaborately. “I’m tired! That was quite a little fight we had at that last village, and I’ve gotten no sleep since. I’ll be in my cabin. Call me if anything seems amiss.”

“Yes, sir.” The pilot smothered a knowing leer.

Golyev walked down the corridor, his feet slamming its metal under internal pseudogravity. Once or twice he met a crewman and accepted a salute as casually as it was given. The men of the Interplanetary Corporation didn’t need to stand on ceremony. They were tried spacemen and fighters, every one of them. If they chose to wear sloppy uniforms, to lounge about off duty cracking jokes or cracking a bottle, to treat their officers as friends rather than tyrants—so much the better. This wasn’t the nice-nelly Surface Transport Corporation, or the spit-and-polish Chemical Synthesis Trust, but IP, explorer and conqueror. The ship was clean and the guns were ready. What more did you want?

Pravoyats, the captain’s batman, stood outside the cabin door. He nursed a scratched cheek and a black eye. One hand rested broodingly on his sidearm. “Trouble?” inquired Golyev.

“Trouble ain’t the word, sir.”

“You didn’t hurt her, did you?” asked Golyev sharply.

“No, sir. I heard your orders all right. Never laid a finger on her in anger. But she sure did on me. Finally I wrassled her down and gave her a whiff of sleepy gas. She’d’a torn the cabin apart otherwise. She’s probably come out of it by now, but I’d rather not go in again to see, captain.”

Golyev laughed. He was a big man, looming over Pravoyats, who was no midget. Otherwise he was a normal patron-class Chertkoian, powerfully built, with comparatively short legs and strutting gait, his features dark, snubnosed, bearded, carrying more than his share of old scars. He wore a plain green tunic, pants tucked into soft boots, gun at hip, his only sign of rank a crimson star at his throat. “I’ll take care of all that from here on,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Despite his wounds, the batman looked a shade envious. “Uh, you want the prod? I tell you, she’s a troublemaker.”

“No.”

“Electric shocks don’t leave any scars, captain.”

“I know. But on your way, Pravoyats.” Golyev opened the door, went through, and closed it behind him again.

The girl had been seated on his bunk. She stood up with a gasp. A looker, for certain. The Vaynamoan women generally seemed handsome; this one was beautiful, tall and slim, delicate face and straight nose lightly dusted with freckles. But her mouth was wide and strong, her skin suntanned, and she wore a coarse, colorful riding habit. Her exoticism was the most exciting thing: yellow hair, slant blue eyes, who’d ever heard of the like?

The tranquilizing aftereffects of the gas—or else plain nervous exhaustion—kept her from attacking him. She backed against the wall and shivered. Her misery touched Golyev a little. He’d seen unhappiness elsewhere, on Imfan and Novagal and Chertkoi itself, and hadn’t been bothered thereby. People who were too weak to defend themselves must expect to be made booty of. It was different, though, when someone as good-looking as this was so woebegone.

He paused on the opposite side of his desk from her, gave a soft salute, and smiled. “What’s your name, my dear?”

She drew a shaken breath. After trying several times, she managed to speak. “I didn’t think… anyone… understood my language.”

“A few of us do. The hypnopede, you know.” Evidently she did not. He thought a short, dry lecture might soothe her. “An invention made a few decades ago on our planet. Suppose another person and I have no language in common. We can be given a drug to accelerate our nervous systems, and then the machine flashes images on a screen and analyzes the sounds uttered by the other person. What it hears is transferred to me and impressed on the speech center of my brain, electronically. As the vocabulary grows, a computer in the machine figures out the structure of the whole language— semantics, grammar, and so on—and orders my own learning accordingly. That way, a few short, daily sessions make me fluent.”

She touched her lips with a tongue that seemed equally parched. “I heard once… of some experiments at the University,” she whispered. “They never got far. No reason for such a machine. Only one language on Vaynamo.”

“And on Chertkoi. But we’ve already subjugated two other planets, one of ‘em divided into hundreds of language groups. And we expect there’ll be others.” Golyev opened a drawer, took out a bottle and two glasses. “Care for brandy?”

He poured. “I’m Bors Golyev, an astronautical executive of the Interplanetary Corporation, commanding this scout force,” he said. “Who are you?”

She didn’t answer. He reached a glass toward her. “Come, now,” he said, “I’m not such a bad fellow. Here, drink. To our better acquaintance.”

With a convulsive movement, she struck the glass from his hand. It bounced on the floor. “Almighty Creator! No!” she yelled. “You murdered my husband!”

She stumbled to a chair, fell down in it, rested head in arms on the desk and began to weep. The spilled brandy crept across the floor toward her.

Golyev groaned. Why did he always get cases like this? Glebs Narov, now, had clapped hands on the jolliest tawny wench you could imagine, when they conquered Marsya on Imfan: delighted to be liberated from her own drab culture.

Well, he could kick this female back down among the other prisoners. But he didn’t want to. He seated himself across from her, lit a cigar out of the box on his desk, and held his own glass to the light. Ruby smoldered within.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “How was I to know? What’s done is done. There wouldn’t have been so many casualties if they’d been sensible and given up. We shot a few to prove we meant business, but then called on the rest over a loudspeaker, to yield. They didn’t. For that matter, you were riding a six-legged animal out of the fields, I’m told. You came busting right into the fight. Why didn’t you ride the other way and hide out till we left?”

“My husband was there,” she said after a silence. When she raised her face, he saw it gone cold and stiff. “And our child.”

“Oh? Uh, maybe we picked up the kid, at least. If you’d like to go see—”

“No,” she said, toneless and yet somehow with a dim returning pride. “I got Hauki away. I rode straight to the mansion and got him. Then one of your fire-guns hit the roof and the house began to burn. I told Huiva to take the baby—never mind where. I said I’d follow if I could. But Karlavi was out there, fighting. I went back to the barricade. He had been killed just a few seconds before. His face was all bloody. Then your cars broke through the barricade and someone caught me. But you don’t have Hauki. Or Karlavi!”

As if drained by the effort of speech, she slumped and stared into a corner, empty-eyed.

“Well,” said Golyev, not quiet comfortably, “your people had been warned.” She didn’t seem to hear him. “You never got the message? But it was telecast over your whole planet. After our first non-secret landing. That was several days ago. Where were you? Out in the woods?—Yes, we scouted telescopically, and made clandestine landings, and caught a few citizens to interrogate. But when we understood the situation, more or less, we landed openly in, uh, your city. Yuvaskula, is that the name? We seized it without too much damage, captured some officials of the planetary government, claimed the planet for IP and called on all citizens to cooperate. But they wouldn’t! Why, one ambush alone cost us fifty good men. What could we do? We had to teach a lesson. We announced we’d punish a few random villages. That’s more humane than bombarding from space with cobalt missiles. Isn’t it? But I suppose your people didn’t really believe us, the way they came swarming when we landed. Trying to parley with us first, and then trying to resist us with hunting rifles? What would you expect to happen?”

His voice seemed to fall into an echoless well.

He loosened his collar, which felt a trifle tight, took a deep drag on his cigar and refilled his glass. “Of course, I don’t expect you to see our side of it at once,” he said reasonably. “You’ve been jogging along, isolated, for centuries, haven’t you? Hardly a spaceship has touched at your planet since it was first colonized. You have none of your own, except a couple of interplanetary boats which scarcely ever get used. That’s what your President told me, and I believe him. Why should you go outsystem? You have everything you can use, right on your own world. The nearest sun to yours with an oxygen atmosphere planet is three parsecs off. Even with a very high-powered agoration, you’d need ten years to get there, another decade to get back. A whole generation! Sure, the time-contraction effect would keep you young—ship’s time for the voyage would only be a few weeks, or less—but all your friends would be middle-aged when you come home. Believe me, it’s lonely being a spaceman.”

He drank. A pleasant burning went down his throat. “No wonder man spread so slowly into space, and each colony is so isolated,” he said. “Chertkoi is a mere name in your archives. And yet it’s only fifteen light-years from Vaynamo. You can see our sun on any clear night. A reddish one. You call it Gamma Navarchi. Fifteen little light-years, and yet there’s been no contact between our two planets for four centuries or more!

“So why now? Well, that’s a long story. Let’s just say Chertkoi isn’t as friendly a world as Vaynamo. You’ll see that for yourself. We, our ancestors, we came up the hard way, we had to struggle for everything. And now there are four billion of us! That was the census figure when I left. It’ll probably be five billion when I get home. We have to have more resources. Our economy is grinding to a halt. And we can’t afford economic dislocation. Not on as thin a margin as Chertkoi allows us. First we went back to the other planets of our system and worked them as much as practicable. Then we started re-exploring the nearer stars. So far we’ve found two useful planets. Yours is the third. You know what your population is? Ten million, your President claimed. Ten million people for a whole world of forests, plains, hills, oceans… why, your least continent has more natural resources than all Chertkoi. And you’ve stabilized at that population. You don’t want more people!”

Golyev struck the desk with a thump. “If you think ten million stagnant agriculturists have a right to monopolize all that room and wealth, when four billion Chertkoians live on the verge of starvation,” he said indignantly, “you can think again.”

She stirred. Not looking at him, her tone small and very distant, she said, “It’s our planet, to do with as we please. If you want to breed like maggots, you must take the consequences.”

Anger flushed the last sympathy from Golyev. He ground out his cigar in the ashwell and tossed off his brandy. “Never mind moralizing,” he said. “I’m no martyr. I became a spaceman because it’s fun!”

He got up and walked around the desk to her.

* * *

538 A.C.C.:

When she couldn’t stand the apartment any more, Elva went out on the balcony and looked across Dirzh until that view became unendurable in its turn.

From this height, the city had a certain grandeur. On every side it stretched horizonward, immense gray blocks among which rose an occasional spire shining with steel and glass. Eastward at the very edge of vision it ended before some mine pits, whose scaffolding and chimneys did not entirely cage off a glimpse of primordial painted desert. Between the buildings went a network of elevated trafficways, some carrying robofreight, others pullulating with gray-clad clients on foot. Overhead, against a purple-black sky and the planet’s single huge moon, nearly full tonight, flitted the firefly aircars of executives, engineers, military techs, and others in the patron class. A few stars were visible, but the fever-flash of neon drowned most of them. Even by full red-tinged daylight, Elva could never see all the way downward. A fog of dust, smoke, fumes and vapors, hid the bottom of the artificial mountains. She could only imagine the underground, caves and tunnels where workers of the lowest category were bred to spend their lives tending machines, and where a criminal class slunk about in armed packs. It was rarely warm on Chertkoi, summer or winter. As the night wind gusted, Elva drew more tightly around her a mantle of genuine fur from Novagal. Bors wasn’t stingy about clothes or jewels. But then, he liked to take her out in public places, where she could be admired and he envied. For the first few months she had refused to leave the apartment. He hadn’t made an issue of it, only waited. In the end she gave in. Nowadays she looked forward eagerly to such times; they took her away from these walls. But of late there had been no celebrations. Bors was working too hard.

The moon Drogoi climbed higher, reddened by the hidden sun and the lower atmosphere of the city. At the zenith it would be pale copper. Once Elva had fancied the markings on it formed a death’s head. They didn’t really; that had just been her horror of everything Chertkoian. But she had never shaken off the impression.

She hunted among the constellations, knowing that if she found Vaynamo’s sun it would hurt, but unable to stop. The air was too thick tonight, though, with an odor of acid and rotten eggs. She remembered riding out along Lake Rovaniemi, soon after her marriage. Karlavi was along: no one else, for you didn’t need a bodyguard on Vaynamo. The two moons climbed fast. Their light made a trembling double bridge on the water. Trees rustled, the air smelled green, something sang with a liquid plangency, far off among moon-dappled shadows.

“But that’s beautiful!” she had whispered. “Yonder songbird. We haven’t anything like it in Ruuyalka.”

Karlavi chuckled. “No bird at all. The Alfavala name— well, who can pronounce that? We humans say ‘yanno.’ A little pseudomammal, a terrible pest. Roots up tubers. For a while we thought we’d have to wipe out the species.”

“True. Also, the Alfavala would be hurt. Insofar as they have anything like a religion, the yanno seems to be part of it, locally. Important somehow, to them, at least.” Unspoken was the law under which she and he had both been raised: the green dwarfs are barely where man was, two or three million years ago on Old Earth, but they were the real natives of Vaynamo, and if we share their planet, we’re bound to respect them and help them.

Once Elva had tried to explain the idea to Bors Golyev. He couldn’t understand at all. If the abos occupied land men might use, why not hunt them off it? They’d make good, crafty game, wouldn’t they?

“Can anything be done about the yanno?” she had asked Karlavi.

“For several generations, we fooled around with electric fences and so on. But just a few years ago, I consulted Paaska Ecological Institute and found they’d developed a wholly new approach to such problems. They can now tailor a dominant mutant gene which produces a strong distaste for Vitamin C. I suppose you know Vitamin C isn’t part of native biochemistry, but occurs only in plants of Terrestrial origin. We released the mutants to breed, and every season there are fewer yanno that’ll touch our crops. In another five years there’ll be too few to matter.”

“And they’ll still sing for us.” She edged her hailu closer to his. Their knees touched. He leaned over and kissed her.

Elva shivered. I’d better go in, she thought.

The light switched on automatically as she re-entered the living room. At least artificial illumination on Chertkoi was like home. Dwelling under different suns had not yet changed human eyes. Though in other respects, man’s colonies had drifted far apart indeed… The apartment had three cramped rooms, which was considered luxurious. When five billion people, more every day, grubbed their living from a planet as bleak as this, even the wealthy must do without things that were the natural right of the poorest Vaynamoan. Spaciousness, trees, grass beneath bare feet, your own house and an open sky. Of course, Chertkoi had very sophisticated amusements to offer in exchange, everything from multi-sensory films to live combats.

Belgoya pattered in from her offside cubicle. Elva wondered if the maidservant ever slept. “Does the mistress wish anything, please?”

“No.” Elva sat down. She ought to be used to the gravity by now, she thought. How long had she been here? A year, more or less. She hadn’t kept track of time, especially when they used an unfamiliar calendar. Denser than Vaynamo, Chertkoi exerted a ten percent greater surface pull; but that wasn’t enough to matter, when you were in good physical condition. Yet she was always tired.

“No, I don’t want anything.” She leaned back on the couch and rubbed her eyes. The haze outside had made them sting.

“A cup of stim, perhaps, if the mistress please?” The girl bowed some more, absurdly doll-like in her uniform.

“No!” Elva shouted. “Go away!”

“I beg your pardon. I am a worm. I implore your magnanimity.” Terrified, the maid crawled backward out of the room on her belly.

Elva lit a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked on Vaynamo, but since coming here she’d taken it up, become a chainsmoker like most Chertkoians who could afford it. You needed something to do with your hands. The servility of clients toward patrons no longer shocked her, but rather made her think of them as faintly slimy. To be sure, one could see the reasons. Belgoya, for instance, could be fired any time and sent back to street level. Down there were a million eager applicants for her position. Elva forgot her and reached after the teleshow dials. There must be something on, something loud and full of action, something to watch, something to do with her evening.

The door opened. Elva turned about, tense with expectation. So Bors was home. And alone. If he’d brought a friend along, she would have had to go into the sleeping cubicle and merely listen. Upperclass Chertkoians didn’t like women intruding on their conversation. But Bors alone meant she would have someone to talk to.

He came in, his tread showing he was also tired. He skimmed his hat into a corner and dropped his cloak on the floor. Belgoya crept forth to pick them up. As he sat down, she was present with a drink and a cigar.

Elva waited. She knew his moods. When the blunt, bearded face had lost some of its hardness, she donned a smile and stretched herself along the couch, leaning on one elbow. “You’ve been working yourself to death,” she scolded.

He sighed. “Yeh. But the end’s in view. Another week, and all the obscenity paperwork will be cleared up.”

“You hope. One of your bureaucrats will probably invent nineteen more forms to fill out in quadruplicate.”

“Probably.”

“We never had that trouble at home. The planetary government was only a coordinating body with strictly limited powers. Why won’t you people even consider establishing something similar?”

“You know the reasons. Five billion of them. You’ve got room to be an individual on Vaynamo.” Golyev finished his drink and held the glass out for a refill. “By all chaos! I’m tempted to desert when we get there.”

Elva lifted her brows. “That’s a thought,” she purred.

“Oh, you know it’s impossible,” he said, returning to his usual humorlessness. “Quite apart from the fact I’d be one enemy alien on an entire planet—

“Not necessarily.”

—All right, even if I got naturalized (and who wants to become a clodhopper?) I’d have only thirty years till the Third Expedition came. I don’t want to be a client in my old age. Or worse, see my children made clients.”

Elva lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. She drew in the smoke hard enough to hollow her cheeks.

But it’s all right to be launching the Second Expedition and make clients of others, she thought. The First, that captured me and a thousand more (What’s become of them? How many are dead, how many found useless and sent lobotomized to the mines, how many are still being pumped dry of information?)… that was a mere scouting trip. The Second will have fifty warships, and try to force surrender. At the very least, it will flatten all possible defenses, destroy all imaginable war potential, bring back a whole herd of slaves. And then the Third, a thousand ships or more, will bring the final conquests, the garrisons, the overseers and entrepreneurs and colonists. But that won’t be for forty-five Vaynamo years or better from tonight. A man on Vaynamo… Hauki… a man who survives the coming of the Second Expedition will have thirty-odd years left in which to be free. But will he dare have children?

“I’ll settle down there after the Third Expedition, I think,” Golyev admitted. “From what I saw of the planet last time, I believe I’d like it. And the opportunities are unlimited. A whole world waiting to be properly developed!”

“I could show you a great many chances you’d otherwise overlook,” insinuated Elva.

Golyev shifted position. “Let’s not go into that again,” he said. “You know I can’t take you along.”

“You’re the fleet commander, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I will be, but curse it, can’t you understand? The IP is not like any other corporation. We use men who think and act on their own, not planet-hugging morons like what’s-her-name—” He jerked a thumb at Belgoya, who lowered her eyes meekly and continued mixing him a third drink. “Men of patron status, younger sons of executives and engineers. The officers can’t have special privileges. It’d ruin morale.”

Elva fluttered her lashes. “Not that much. Really.”

“My oldest boy’s promised to take care of you. He’s not such a bad fellow as you seem to think. You only have to go along with his whims. I’ll see you again, in thirty years.”

“When I’m gray and wrinkled. Why not kick me out in the streets and be done?”

“You know why!” he said ferociously. “You’re the first woman I could ever talk to. No, I’m not bored with you! But—

“If you really cared for me—”

“What kind of idiot do you take me for? I know you’re planning to sneak away to your own people, once we’ve landed.”

Elva tossed her head, haughtily. “Well! If you believe that of me, there’s nothing more to say.”

“Aw, now, sweetling, don’t take that attitude.” He reached out a hand to lay on her arm. She withdrew to the far end of the couch. He looked baffled.

“Another thing,” he argued. “If you care about your planet at all, as I suppose you do, even if you’ve now seen what a bunch of petrified mudsuckers they are . . . remember, what we’ll have to do there won’t be pretty.”

“First you call me a traitor,” she flared, “and now you say I’m gutless!”

“Hey, wait a minute—”

“Go on, beat me. I can’t stop you. You’re brave enough for that.”

“I never—” In the end, he yielded.

* * *

553 A.C.C.:

The missile which landed on Yuvaskula had a ten-kilometer radius of total destruction. Thus most of the city went up in one radioactive fire-gout. In a way, the thought of men and women and little children with pet kittens, incinerated, made a trifle less pain in Elva than knowing the Old Town was gone: the cabin raised by the first men to land on Vaynamo, the ancient church of St. Yarvi with its stained glass windows and gilded belltower, the Museum of Art where she went as a girl on entranced visits, the University where she studied and where she met Karlavi— I’m a true daughter of Vaynamo, she thought with remorse. Whatever is traditional, full of memories, whatever has been looked at and been done by all the generations before me, I hold dear. The Chertkoians don’t care. They haven’t any past worth remembering.

Flames painted the northern sky red, even at this distance, as she walked among the plastishelters of the advanced base. She had flown within a hundred kilometers, using an aircar borrowed from the flagship, then landed to avoid possible missiles and hitched a ride here on a supply truck. The Chertkoian enlisted men aboard had been delighted until she showed them her pass, signed by Commander Golyev himself. Then they became cringingly respectful.

The pass was supposed to let her move freely about only in the rear areas, and she’d had enough trouble wheedling it from Bors. But no one thereafter looked closely at it. She herself was so unused to the concept of war that she didn’t stop to wonder at such lax security measures. Had she done so, she would have realized Chertkoi had never developed anything better, never having faced an enemy of comparable strength. Vaynamo certainly wasn’t, even though the planet was proving a hard-shelled opponent, with every farmhouse a potential arsenal and every forest road a possible death trap. Guerilla fighters hindered the movements of an invader with armor, atomic artillery, complete control of air and space; they could not stop him.

Elva drew her dark mantle more tightly about her and crouched under a gun emplacement. A sentry went by, his helmet square against the beloved familiar face of a moon, his rifle aslant across the stars. She didn’t want needless questioning. For a moment the distant blaze sprang higher, unrestful ruddy light touched her, she was afraid she had been observed. But the man continued his round.

From the air she had seen that the fire was mostly a burning forest, kindled from Yuvaskula. Those wooden houses not blown apart by the missile, stood unharmed in whitest glow. Some process must have been developed at one of the research institutes, for indurating timber, since she left… How Bors would laugh if she told him! An industry which turned out a bare minimum of vehicles, farm machinery, tools, chemicals; a science which developed fireproofing techniques and traced out ecological chains; a population which deliberately held itself static, so as to preserve its old customs and laws—presuming to make war on Chertkoi!

Even so, he was too experienced a fighter to dismiss any foe as weak without careful examination. He had been excited enough about one thing to mention it to Elva—a prisoner taken in a skirmish near Yuvaskula, when he still hoped to capture the city intact: an officer, who cracked just enough under interrogation to indicate he knew something important. But Golyev couldn’t wait around for the inquisitors to finish their work. He must go out the very next day to oversee the battle for Lempo Machine Tool Works, and Elva knew he wouldn’t return soon. The plant had been constructed underground as an economy measure, and to preserve the green parkscape above. Now its concrete warrens proved highly defensible, and were being bitterly contested. The Chertkoians meant to seize it, so they could be sure of demolishing everything. They would not leave Vaynamo any nucleus of industry. After all, the planet would have thirty-odd years to recover and rearm itself against the Third Expedition. Left alone by Bors, Elva took an aircar and slipped off to the advanced base. She recognized the plastishelter she wanted by its Intelligence insignia. The guard outside aimed a rifle at her. “Halt!” His boyish voice cracked over with nervousness. More than one sentry had been found in the morning with his throat cut.

“It’s all right,” she told him. “I’m to see the prisoner Ivalo.”

“The gooze officer?” He flashed a pencil-thin beam across her face. “But you’re a—uh—

“A Vaynamoan myself. Of course. There are a few of us along, you know. Prisoners taken last time, who’ve enlisted in your cause as guides and spies. You must have heard of me. I’m Elva, Commander Golyev’s lady.”

“Oh. Yes, mistress. Sure I have.”

“Here’s my pass.”

He squinted at it uneasily. “But, uh, may I ask what, uh, what you figure to do? I’ve got strict orders—

Elva gave him her most confidential smile. “My own patron had the idea. The prisoner is withholding valuable information. He has been treated roughly, but resisted. Now, all at once, we’ll take the pressure off. An attractive woman of his own race…”

“I get it. Maybe he will crack. I dunno, though, mistress. These slant-eyed towheads are mean animals—begging your pardon! Go right on in. Holler if he gets rough or, or anything.”

The door was unlocked for her. Elva went on through, into a hemicylindrical room so low that she must stoop. A lighting tube switched on, showing a pallet laid across the floor.

Captain Ivalo was gray at the temples, but still tough and supple. His face had gone haggard, sunken eyes and a stubble of beard; his garments were torn and filthy. When he looked up, coming awake, he was too exhausted to show much surprise. “What now?” he said in dull Chertkoian. “What are you going to try next?”

Elva answered in Vaynamoan (Oh, God, it was a year and a half, her own time, nearly seventeen years cosmic time, since she had uttered a word to anyone from her planet!): “Be quiet. I beg you. We mustn’t be suspected.”

He sat up. “Who are you?” he snapped. His own Vaynamoan accent was faintly pedantic; he must be a teacher or scientist in that peacetime life which now seemed so distant. “A collaborator? I understand there are some. Every barrel must hold a few rotten apples, I suppose.”

She sat down on the floor near him, hugged her knees and stared at the curving wall. “I don’t know what to call myself,” she said tonelessly. “I’m with them, yes. But they captured me the last time.”

He whistled, a soft note. One hand reached out, not altogether steady and stopping short of touching her. “I was young then,” he said. “But I remember. Do I know your family?”

“Maybe. I’m Elva, daughter of Byarmo, the Magnate of Ruuyalka. My husband was Karlavi, the Freeholder of Tervola.” Suddenly she couldn’t stay controlled. She grasped his arm so hard that her nails drew blood. “Do you know what became of my son? His name was Hauki. I got him away, in care of an Alfa servant. Hauki, Karlavi’s son, Freeholder of Tervola. Do you know?”

He disengaged himself as gently as possible and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve heard of both places, but only as names. I’m from the Aakinen Islands myself.”

Her head dropped.

“Ivalo is my name,” he said clumsily.

“I know.”

“What?”

“Listen.” She raised her eyes to his. They were quite dry. “I’ve been told you have important information.”

He bridled. “If you think—

“No. Please listen. Here.” She fumbled in a pocket of her gown. At last her fingers closed on the vial. She held it out to him. “An antiseptic. But the label says it’s very poisonous if taken internally. I brought it for you.”

He stared at her for a long while.

“It’s all I can do,” she mumbled, looking away again.

He took the bottle and turned it over and over in his hands. The night grew silent around them.

Finally he asked, “Won’t you suffer for this?”

“Not too much.”

“Wait… If you could get in here, you can surely escape completely. Our troops can’t be far off. Or any farmer hereabouts will hide you.”

She shook her head. “No. I’ll stay with them. Maybe I can help in some other small way. What else has there been to keep me alive, but the hope of— It wouldn’t be any better, living here, if we’re all conquered. There’s to be a final attack, three decades hence. Do you know that?”

“Yes. Our side takes prisoners too, and quizzes them. The first episode puzzled us. Many thought it had only been a raid by—what’s the word?—by pirates. But now we know they really do intend to take our planet away.”

“You must have developed some good linguists,” she said, seeking impersonality. “To be able to talk with your prisoners. Of course, you yourself, after capture, could be educated by the hypnopede.”

“The what?”

“The language-teaching machine.”

“Oh, yes, the enemy do have them, don’t they? But we do too. After the first raid, those who thought there was a danger the aliens might come back set about developing such machines. I knew Chertkoian weeks before my own capture.”

“I wish I could help you escape,” she said desolately. “But I don’t see how. That bottle is all I can do. Isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He regarded the thing with a fascination.

“My patron… Golyev himself—said his men would rip you open to get your knowledge. So I thought—

“You’re very kind.” Ivalo grimaced, as if he had tasted something foul. “But your act may turn out pointless. I don’t know anything useful. I wasn’t even sworn to secrecy about what I do know. Why’ve I held out, then? Don’t ask me. Stubbornness. Anger. Or just hating to admit my people—our people, damn it!—that they could be so weak and foolish.”

“What?”

“They could win the war at a stroke,” he said. “They won’t. They’d rather die, and let their children be enslaved by the Third Expedition.”

“What do you mean?” She crouched to hands and knees.

He shrugged. “I told you, a number of people on Vaynamo took the previous invasion at its word, that it was the vanguard of a conquering army. There was no official action. How could there be, with a government as feeble as ours? But some of the research biologists—”

“Not a plague!”

“Yes. Mutated from the local paracoryzoid virus. Incubation period, approximately one month, during which time it’s contagious. Vaccination is still effective two weeks after exposure, so all our population could be safeguarded. But the Chertkoians would take the disease back with them. Estimated deaths, ninety percent of the race.”

“But—

“That’s where the government did step in,” he said with bitterness. “The information was suppressed. The virus cultures were destroyed. The theory was, even to save ourselves we couldn’t do such a thing.”

Elva felt the tautness leave her. She sagged. She had seen small children on Chertkoi too.

“They’re right, of course,” she said wearily.

“Perhaps. Perhaps. And yet we’ll be overrun and butchered, or reduced to serfdom. Won’t we? Our forests will be cut down, our mines gutted, our poor Alfavala exterminated… To hell with it.” Ivalo gazed at the poison vial. “I don’t have any scientific data, I’m not a virologist. It can’t do any military harm to tell the Chertkoians. But I’ve seen what they’ve done to us. I would give them the sickness.”

“I wouldn’t.” Elva bit her lip.

He regarded her for a long time. “Won’t you escape? Never mind being a planetary heroine. There’s nothing you can do. The invaders will go home when they’ve wrecked all our industry. They won’t come again for thirty years. You can be free most of your life.”

“You forget,” she said, “that if I leave with them, and come back, the time for me will only have been one or two years.” She sighed. “I can’t help make ready for the next battle. I’m just a woman. Untrained. While maybe… oh, if nothing else, there’ll be more Vaynamoan prisoners brought to Chertkoi. I have a tiny bit of influence. Maybe I can help them.”

Ivalo considered the poison. “I was about to use this anyway,” he muttered. “I didn’t think staying alive was worth the trouble. But now—if you can— No.” He gave the vial back to her. “I thank you, my lady.”

“I have an idea,” she said, with a hint of vigor in her voice. “Go ahead and tell them what you know. Pretend I talked you into it. Then I might be able to get you exchanged. It’s barely possible.”

“Oh, perhaps,” he said.

She rose to go. “If you are—are set free,” she stammered, “will you make a visit to Tervola? Will you find Hauki, Karvali’s son, and tell him you saw me? If he’s alive.”

* * *

569 A.C.C.:

Dirzh had changed while the ships were away. The evolution continued after their return. The city grew bigger, smokier, uglier. More people each year dropped from client status, went underground and joined the gangs. Occasionally, these days, the noise and vibration of pitched battles down in the tunnels could be detected up on patron level. The desert could no longer be seen, even from the highest towers, only the abandoned mine and the slag mountains, in process of conversion to tenements. The carcinogenic murkiness crept upward until it could be smelled on the most elite balconies. Teleshows got noisier and nakeder, to compete with live performances, which were now offering more elaborate bloodlettings than old-fashioned combats. The news from space was of a revolt suppressed on Novagal, resulting in such an acute labor shortage that workers were drafted from Imfan and shipped thither.

Only when you looked at the zenith was there no apparent change. The daylit sky was still cold purplish-blue, with an occasional yellow dustcloud. At night there were still the stars, and a skull.

And yet, thought Elva, you wouldn’t need a large telescope to see the Third Expedition fleet in orbit—eleven hundred spacecraft, the unarmed ones loaded with troops and equipment, nearly the whole strength of Chertkoi marshalling to conquer Vaynamo. Campaigning across interstellar distances wasn’t easy. You couldn’t send home for supplies or reinforcements. You broke the enemy or he broke you. Fleet Admiral Bors Golyev did not intend to be broken.

He did not even plan to go home with news of a successful probing operation or a successful raid. The Third Expedition was to be final. And he must allow for the Vaynamoans having had a generation in which to recuperate. He’d smashed their industry, but if they were really determined, they could have rebuilt. No doubt a space fleet of some kind would be waiting to oppose him.

He knew it couldn’t be of comparable power. Ten million people, forced to recreate all their mines and furnaces and factories before they could lay the keel of a single boat, had no possibility of matching the concerted efforts of six-and-a-half billion whose world had been continuously industrialized for centuries, and who could draw on the resources of two subject planets. Sheer mathematics ruled it out. But the ten million could accomplish something; and nuclear-fusion missiles were to some degree an equalizer. Therefore Bors Golyev asked for so much strength that the greatest conceivable enemy force would be swamped. And he got it.

Elva leaned on the balcony rail. A chill wind fluttered her gown about her, so that the rainbow hues rippled and ran into each other. She had to admit the fabric was lovely. Bors tried hard to please her. (Though why must he mention the price?) He was so childishly happy himself, at his accomplishments, at his new eminence, at the eight-room apartment which he now rated on the very heights of the Lebadan Tower.

“Not that we’ll be here long,” he had said, after they first explored its mechanized intricacies. “My son Nivko has done good work in the home office. That’s how come I got this command; experience alone wasn’t enough. Of course, he’ll expect me to help along his sons… But anyhow, the Third Expedition can go even sooner than I’d hoped. Just a few months, and we’re on our way!”

“We?” murmured Elva.

“You do want to come?”

“The last voyage, you weren’t so eager.”

“Uh, yes. I did have a deuce of a time, too, getting you aboard. But this’ll be different. I’ve got so much rank I’m beyond criticism, even beyond jealousy. And second— well, you count too. You’re not any picked-up native female. You’re Elva! The girl who on her own hook got that fellow Ivalo to confess.”

She turned her head slightly, regarding him sideways from droop-lidded blue eyes. Under the ruddy sun, her yellow hair turned to raw gold. “I should think the news would have alarmed them, here on Chertkoi,” she said. “Being told that they nearly brought about their own extinction. I wonder that they dare launch another attack.”

Golyev grinned. “You should have heard the ruckus. Some Directors did vote to keep hands off Vaynamo. Others wanted to sterilize the whole planet with cobalt missiles. But I talked ‘em around. Once we’ve beaten the fleet and occupied the planet, its whole population will be hostage for good behavior. We’ll make examples of the first few goozes who give us trouble of any sort. Then they’ll know we mean what we say when we announce our policy. At the first suspicion of plague among us, we’ll lay waste a continent. If the suspicion is confirmed, we’ll bombard the whole works. No, there will not be any bug warfare.”

“I know. I’ve heard your line of reasoning before. About five hundred times, in fact.”

“Destruction! Am I really that much of a bore?” He came up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t mean to be. Honest. I’m not used to talking to women, that’s all.”

“And I’m not used to being shut away like a prize goldfish, except when you want to exhibit me,” she said sharply.

He kissed her neck. His whiskers tickled. “It’ll be different on Vaynamo. When we’re settled down. I’ll be governor of the planet. The Directorate has as good as promised me. Then I can do as I want. And so can you.”

“I doubt that! Why should I believe anything you say? When I told you I’d made Ivalo talk by promising you would exchange him, you wouldn’t keep the promise.” She tried to wriggle free, but his grip was too strong. She contented herself with going rigid. “Now, when I tell you the prisoners we brought back this time are to be treated like human beings, you whine about your damned Directorate—

“But the Directorate makes policy!”

“You’re the Fleet Admiral, as you never lose a chance to remind me. You can certainly bring pressure to bear. You can insist the Vaynamoans be taken out of those kennels and given honorable detention—

“Awww, now.” His lips nibbled along her cheek. She turned her head away and continued:

—and you can get what you insist on. They’re your own prisoners, aren’t they? I’ve listened enough to you, and your dreary officers when you brought them home. I’ve read books, hundreds of books. What else is there for me to do, day after day and week after week?”

“But I’m busy! I’d like to take you out, honest, but—

“So I understand the power structure on Chertkoi just as well as you do, Bors Golyev. If not better. If you don’t know how to use your own influence, then slough off some of that conceit, sit down and listen while I tell you how!”

“Well, uh, I never denied, sweetling, you’ve given me some useful advice from time to time.”

“So listen to me! I say all the Vaynamoans you hold are to be given decent quarters, recreation, and respect. What did you capture them for, if not to get some use out of them? And the proper use is not to titillate yourself by kicking them around. A dog would serve that purpose better.

“Furthermore, the fleet has to carry them all back to Vaynamo.”

“What? You don’t know what you’re talking about! The logistics is tough enough without—

“I do so know what I’m talking about. Which is more than I can say for you. You want guides, intermediaries, puppet leaders, don’t you? Not by the score, a few cowards and traitors, as you have hitherto. You need hundreds. Well, there they are, right in your hands.”

“And hating my guts,” Golyev pointed out.

“Give them reasonable living conditions and they won’t. Not quite so much, anyhow. Then bring them back home—a generation after they left, all their friends aged or dead, everything altered once you’ve conquered the planet. And let me deal with them. You’ll get helpers!”

“Uh, well, uh, I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll do something about it!” She eased her body, leaning back against the hard rubbery muscles of his chest. Her face turned upward, with a slow smile. “You’re good at doing things, Bors,” she said languidly.

“Oh, Elva—”

Later: “You know one thing I want to do? As soon as I’m well established in the governorship? I want to marry you. Properly and openly. Let ‘em be shocked. I won’t care. I want to be your husband, and the father of your kids, Elva. How’s that sound? Mistress Governor General Elva Golyev of Vaynamo Planetary Province. Never thought you’d get that far in life, did you?”

* * *

584 A.C.C.:

As they neared the end of the journey, he sent her to his cabin. An escape suit—an armored cylinder with gravity propulsors, air regenerator, food and water supplies, which she could enter in sixty seconds—occupied most of the room. “Not that I expect any trouble,” he said. “But if something should happen… I hope you can make it down to the surface.” He paused. The officers on the bridge moved quietly about their tasks; the engines droned; the distorted stars of near-light velocity framed his hard brown face. A thin sheen of sweat was on his skin.

“I love you, you know,” he finished. Quickly, he turned back to his duties. Elva went below.

Clad in a spaceman’s uniform, seated on the bunk, enclosed in toning metal, she felt the inward wrench as the agoration went off and speed was converted back to atomic mass. The cabin’s private viewscreen showed stars in their proper constellations again, needle-sharp against blackness. Vaynamo was tiny and blue, still several hundred thousand kilometers remote. Elva ran fingers through her hair. The scalp beneath felt tight, and her lips were dry. A person couldn’t help being afraid, she thought. Just a little afraid.

She called up the memory of Karlavi’s land, where he had now lain for sixty-two years. Reeds whispered along the shores of Rovaniemi, the wind made a rippling in long herbal, and it was time again for the lampflowers to blow, all down the valley. Dreamlike at the edge of vision, the snowpeaks of the High Mikkela floated in an utter blue.

I’m coming back, Karlavi, she thought.

In her screen, the nearer vessels were glinting toys, plunging through enormous emptiness. The further ones were not visible at this low magnification. Only the senses of radar, gravpulse, and less familiar creations, analyzed by whirling electrons in a computer bank, gave any approach to reality. But she could listen in on the main intercom line to the bridge if she chose, and hear those data spoken. She flipped the switch. Nothing yet, only routine reports. Had the planet’s disc grown a trifle?

Have I been wrong all the time? she thought. Her heart stopped for a second.

Then: “Alert! Condition red! Alert! Condition red! Objects detected, approaching nine-thirty o’clock, fifteen degrees high. Neutrino emissions indicate nuclear engines.”

“Alert! Condition yellow! Quiescent object detected in orbit about target planet, two-thirty o’clock, ten degrees low, circa 75,000 kilometers distant. Extremely massive. Repeat, quiescent. Low level of nuclear activity but at bolometric temperature of ambient space. Possibly an abandoned space fortress, except for being so massive.”

“Detected objects identified as spacecraft. Approaching with average radial velocity of 250 KPS. No evident deceleration. Number very large, estimated at five thousand. All units small, about the mass of our scoutboats.”

The gabble went on until Golyev’s voice cut through: “Attention! Fleet Admiral to bridge of all units. Now hear this.” Sardonically: “The opposition is making a good try. Instead of building any real ships—they could have constructed only a few at best—they’ve turned out thousands of manned warboats. Their plan is obviously to cut through our formation, relying on speed, and release tracking torps in quantity. Stand by to repel. We have enough detectors, antimissiles, negafields, to overwhelm them in this department too! Once past us, the boats will need hours to decelerate and come back within decent shooting range. By that time we should be in orbit around the planet. Be alert for possible emergencies, of course. But I expect only standard operations to be necessary. Good shooting!”

Elva strained close to her screen. All at once she saw the Vaynamoan fleet, mere sparks, but a horde of them, twinkling among the stars. Closer! Her fingers strained against each other. They must have some plan, she told herself. If I’m blown up in five minutes—I was hoping I’d get down to you, Karlavi. But if I don’t, goodbye, goodbye.

The fleets neared each other: on the one side, ponderous dreadnaughts, cruisers, auxiliary warcraft, escorting swarms of transport and engineer ships; on the opposite side, needle-thin boats whose sole armor was velocity. The guns of Chertkoi swung about, hoping for a lucky hit. At such speeds it was improbable. The fleets would interpenetrate and pass in a fractional second. The Vaynamoans could not be blasted until they came to grips near their home world. However, if a nuclear shell should find its mark now—what a blaze in heaven!

The flagship staggered.

“Engine room to bridge! What’s happened?”

“Bridge to engine room! Gimme some power there! What in all destruction—?”

“Sharyats to Askol! Sharyats to Askol! Am thrown off course! Accelerating! What’s going on?”

“Look out!”

“Fodorev to Zuevots! Look alive, you bloody fool! You’ll ram us!”

Cushioned by the internal field, Elva felt only the minutest fraction of that immense velocity change. Even so, a wave of sickness went through her. She clutched at the bunk stanchion. The desk ripped from a loose mooring and crashed into the wall, which buckled. The deck split open underfoot. A roar went through the entire hull, ribs groaned as they bent, plates screamed as they sheared. A girder snapped in twain and spat sharp fragments among a gun turret crew. A section broke apart, air gushed out, a hundred men died before the sealing bulkheads could close.

After a moment, the stabilizing energies regained interior control. The images on Elva’s screen steadied. She drew a shaken lungful of air and watched. Out of formation, the Askol plunged within a kilometer of her sister ship the Zuevots—just when that cyclopean hull smashed into the cruiser Fodorev. Fire sheeted as accumulator banks were shorted. The two giants crumpled, glowed white at the point of impact, fused, and spun off in a lunatic waltz. Men and supplies were pinwheeled from the cracks gaping in them. Two gun turrets wrapped their long barrels around each other like intertwining snakes. Then the whole mass struck a third vessel with shattering impact. Steel chunks exploded into space.

Through the noise and the human screaming, Golyev’s voice blasted. “Pipe down there! Belay that! By Creation, I’ll shoot the next man who whimpers! The enemy will be here in a minute. All stations, by the numbers, report.”

A measure of discipline returned. These were fighting men. Instruments fingered outward, the remaining computers whirred, minds made deductive leaps, gunners returned to their posts. The Vaynamoan fleet passed through, and the universe exploded in brief pyrotechnics. Many a Chertkoian ship died then, its defenses too battered, its defenders too stunned to ward off the tracking torpedoes. But others fought back, saved themselves, and saw their enemies vanish in the distance.

Still they tumbled off course, their engines helpless to free them. Elva heard a physicist’s clipped tones give the deduction from his readings. The entire fleet had been caught in a cone of gravitational force emanating from that massive object detected in orbit. Like a maelstrom of astronomical dimensions, it had snatched them from their paths. Those closest and in the most intense field strength—a fourth of the armada—had been wrecked by sheer deceleration. Now the force was drawing them down the vortex of itself.

“But that’s impossible!” wailed the Askol’s chief engineer. “A gravity attractor beam of that magnitude… Admiral, it can’t be done! The power requirements would burn out any generator in a microsecond!”

“It’s being done,” said Golyev harshly. “Maybe they figured out a new way to feed energy into a space distorter. Now, where are those figures on intensity? And my calculator… Yeh. The whole fleet will soon be in a field so powerful that— Well, we won’t let it happen. Stand by to hit that generator with everything we’ve got.”

“But sir … we must have—I don’t know how many ships—close enough to it now to be within total destruction radius.”

“Tough on them. Stand by. Gunnery Control, fire when ready.”

And then, whispered, even though that particular line was private and none else in the ship would hear: “Elva! Are you all right down there? Elva!”

Her hands had eased their trembling enough for her to light a cigarette. She didn’t speak. Let him worry. It might reduce his efficiency.

Her screen did not happen to face the vortex source, and. thus did not show its destruction by the nuclear barrage. Not that that could have been registered. The instant explosion of sun-center ferocity transcended any sense, human or electronic. Down on Vaynamo surface, in broad daylight, they must have turned dazzled eyes from that brilliance. Anyone within a thousand kilometers of those warheads died, no matter how much steel and force field he had interposed. Two score Chertkoian ships were suddenly manned by corpses. Those further in were fused to lumps. Still further in, they ceased to exist, save as gas at millions of degrees temperature. The vessels already crashed on the giant station were turned into unstable isotopes, their very atoms dying.

But the station itself vanished. And Vaynamo had had the capacity to build only one such monster. The Chertkoian ships were free again.

“Admiral to all captains!” cried Golyev’s lion voice. “Admiral to all captains. Let the reports wait. Clear the lines. I want every man in the fleet to hear me. Stand by for message.

“Now hear this! This is Supreme Commander Bors Golyev. We just took a rough blow, boys. The enemy had an unsuspected weapon, and cost us a lot of casualties. But we’ve destroyed the thing. I repeat, we blew it out of the cosmos. And I say, well done! I say also, we still have a hundred times the strength of the enemy, and he’s shot his bolt. We’re going on in! We’re going to—

“Alert! Condition red! Enemy boats returning. Enemy boats returning. Radial velocity circa 50 KPS, but acceleration circa 100 G.”

“What?”

Elva herself saw the Vaynamoan shooting stars come back into sight.

Golyev tried hard to shout down the panic of his officers. Would they stop running around like old women? The enemy had developed something else, some method of accelerating at unheard-of rates under gravitational thrust. But not by witchcraft! It could be an internal-stress compensator developed to ultimate efficiency, plus an adaptation of whatever principle was used in the attractor vortex. Or it could be a breakthrough, a totally new principle, maybe something intermediate between the agoratron and the ordinary interplanetary drive… “Never mind what, you morons! They’re only flocks of splinters! Kill them!”

But the armada was roiling about in blind confusion. The detectors had given mere seconds of warning, which were lost in understanding that the warning was correct and in frantically seeking to rally men already shaken. Then the splinter fleet was in among the Chertkoians. It braked its furious relative velocity with a near-instantaneous quickness for which the Chertkoian gunners and gun computers had never been prepared. However, the Vaynamoan gunners were ready. And even a boat can carry torpedoes which will annihilate a battleship.

In a thousand fiery bursts, the armada died.

Not all of it. Unarmed craft were spared, if they would surrender. Vaynamoan boarding parties freed such of their countrymen as they found. The Askol, under Golyev’s personal command, stood off its attackers and moved doggedly outward, toward regions where it could use the agoratron to escape. The captain of a prize revealed that over a hundred Vaynamoans were aboard the flagship. So the attempt to blow it up was abandoned. Instead, a large number of boats shot dummy missiles, which kept the defense fully occupied. Meanwhile a companion force lay alongside, cut its way through the armor, and sent men in.

The Chertkoian crew resisted. But they were grossly outnumbered and outgunned. Most died, under bullets and grenades, gas and flamethrowers. Certain holdouts, who fortified a compartment, were welded in from the outside and left to starve or capitulate, whichever they chose. Even so, the Askol was so big that the boarding party took several hours to gain full possession.

The door opened. Elva stood up.

At first the half-dozen men who entered seemed foreign. In a minute—she was too tired and dazed to think clearly—she understood why. They were all in blue jackets and trousers, a uniform. She had never before seen two Vaynamoans dressed exactly alike. But of course they would be, she thought in a vague fashion. We had to build a navy, didn’t we?

And they remained her own people. Fair skin, straight hair, high cheekbones, tilted light eyes which gleamed all the brighter through the soot of battle. And, yes, they still walked like Vaynamoans, the swinging freeman’s gait and the head held high, such as she had not seen for… for how long? So their clothes didn’t matter, nor even the guns in their hands.

Slowly, through the ringing in her ears, she realized that the combat noise had stopped.

A young man in the lead took a step in her direction. “My lady—” he began.

“Is that her for certain?” asked someone else, less gently. “Not a collaborator?”

A new man pushed his way through the squad. He was grizzled, pale from lack of sun, wearing a sleazy prisoner’s coverall. But a smile touched his lips, and his bow to Elva was deep.

“This is indeed my lady of Tervola,” he said. To her: “When these men released me, up in Section Fourteen, I told them we’d probably find you here. I am so glad.”

She needed a while to recognize him. “Oh. Yes.” Her head felt heavy. It was all she could do to nod. “Captain Ivalo. I hope you’re all right.”

“I am, thanks to you, my lady. Someday we’ll know how many hundreds of us are alive and sane—and here! —because of you.”

The squad leader made another step forward, sheathed his machine pistol and lifted both hands toward her. He was a well-knit, good-looking man, blond of hair, a little older than she: in his mid-thirties, perhaps. He tried to speak, but no words came out, and then Ivalo drew him back.

“In a moment,” said the ex-captive. “Let’s first take care of the unpleasant business.”

The leader hesitated, then, with a grimace, agreed. Two men shoved Bors Golyev along. The admiral dripped blood from a dozen wounds and stumbled in his weariness. But when he saw Elva, he seemed to regain himself. “You weren’t hurt,” he breathed. “I was so afraid…”

Ivalo said like steel: “I’ve explained the facts of this case to the squad officer here, as well as his immediate superior. I’m sure you’ll join us in our wish not to be inhumane, my lady. And yet a criminal trial in the regular courts would publicize matters best forgotten and could give this man only a limited punishment. So we, here and now, under the conditions of war and in view of your high services—

The squad officer interrupted. He was white about the nostrils. “Anything you order, my lady,” he said. “You pass the sentence. We’ll execute it at once.”

“Elva,” whispered Golyev.

She stared at him, remembering fire and enslavements and a certain man dead on a barricade. Everything seemed distant, not quite real.

“There’s been too much suffering already,” she said.

She pondered a few seconds. “Just take him out and shoot him.”

The officer looked relieved. He led his men forth. Golyev started to speak, but was hustled away too fast.

Ivalo remained in the cabin. “My lady—” he began, slow and awkward.

“Yes?” As her weariness overwhelmed her, Elva sat down again on the bunk. She fumbled for a cigaret. There was no emotion in her, only a dull wish for sleep.

“I’ve wondered… Don’t answer this if you don’t want to. You’ve been through so much.”

“That’s all right,” she said mechanically. “The trouble is over now, isn’t it? I mean, we mustn’t let the past obsess us.”

“Of course. Uh, they tell me Vaynamo hasn’t changed much. The defense effort was bound to affect society somewhat, but they’ve tried to minimize that, and succeeded. Our culture has a built-in stability, you know.

“Not that we mean to sit still. In due course, we’ll be sending expeditions of our own out after those devils. Liberate their slave worlds and make certain they can’t ever try afresh. But that shouldn’t be difficult.

“As for you, I inquired very carefully on your behalf. Tervola remains in your family. The land and the people are as you remember.”

She closed her eyes, feeling the first thaw within herself. “Now I can sleep,” she told him.

Recalling, she looked up a bit startled. “But you had a question for me, Ivalo?”

“Yes. All this time, I couldn’t help wondering. Why you stayed with the enemy. You could have escaped. Did you know how great a service you were going to do?”

Her own smile was astonishing to her. “Well, I knew I couldn’t be much use on Vaynamo,” she said. “Could I? There was a chance I could help on Chertkoi. But I wasn’t being brave. The worst had already happened to me. Now I need only wait… a matter of months only, my time… and everything bad would be over. Whereas— well, if I’d escaped from the Second Expedition, I’d have lived most of my life in the shadow of the Third. Please don’t make a fuss about me. I was actually an awful coward.”

His jaw dropped. “You mean you knew we’d win? But you couldn’t have! Everything pointed the other way!”

The nightmare was fading more rapidly than she had dared hope. She shook her head, still smiling, not triumphant but glad to speak the knowledge which had kept her alive. “You’re being unfair to our people. As unfair as the Chertkoians were. They thought that because we preferred social stability and room to breathe, we must be stagnant. They forgot you can have bigger adventures in the spirit, than in all the physical universe. We really did have a very powerful science and technology. It was oriented toward life, toward beautifying and improving instead of exploiting nature. But it wasn’t less virile for that. Was it?”

“But we had no industry to speak of. We don’t even now.”

“I wasn’t counting on our factories, I said, but on our science. When you told me about that horrible virus weapon being suppressed, you confirmed my hopes. We aren’t saints. Our government wouldn’t have been quite so quick to get rid of those plagues—would at least have tried to bluff with them—if something better weren’t in prospect. Wouldn’t it?

“I couldn’t even guess what our scientists might develop, given two generations which the enemy did not have. I did think they would probably have to use physics rather than biology. And why not? You can’t have an advanced chemical, medical, genetic, ecological technology without knowing all the physics there is to know. Can you? Quantum theory explains mutations. But it also explains atomic reactions, or whatever they used in those new machines.

“Oh, yes, Ivalo, I felt sure we’d win. All I had to do myself was work to get us prisoners—especially me, to be quite honest—get us all present at the victory.”

He looked at her with awe. Somehow that brought back the heaviness in her. After all, she thought… sixty-two years. Tervola abides. But who will know me? I am going to be so much alone.

Boots rang on metal. The young squad leader stepped forward again. “That’s that,” he said. His bleakness vanished and he edged closer to Evla, softly, almost timidly.

“I trust,” said Ivalo with a rich, growing pleasure in his voice, “that my lady will permit me to visit her from time to time.”

“I hope you will!” she murmured.

“We temporal castaways are bound to be disoriented for a while,” he said. “We must help each other. You, for example, may have some trouble adjusting to the fact that your son Hauki, the Freeholder of Tervola—”

“Hauki!” She sprang to her feet. The cabin blurred around her.

—is now a vigorous elderly man who looks back on a most successful life,” said Ivalo. “Which includes the begetting of Karlavi here.” Her grandson’s strong hands closed about her own. “Who in turn,” finished Ivalo, “is the recent father of a bouncing baby boy named Hauki. And all your people are waiting to welcome you home!”

Editor's Introduction to:

THE TECHNOLOGICAL WAR
by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle

In 1970, Stefan Possony and I published a book called The Strategy of Technology. It was a success d’ estim, which is to say that it didn’t make much money, but it did get good reviews. The book was later adopted as a text in the US Air Force Academy and the Air War College. We can hope it had some influence among up and coming officers.

There is, or was, a Brentano’s book store in the basement of the Pentagon; over a thousand copies of Strategy of Technology were sold there. Alas, we saw no other evidence of our influence on US military policy.

This chapter, “The Technological War”, was in some ways the heart of the book. In this essay we try to analyze the nature of war, the nature of technology, and the nature of strategy. No one could do more than introduce these subjects in a brief essay. We hope we have done that.

Dr. Stefan T. Possony received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Vienna. Following his graduation he was active in the anti-Nazi movement in Austria, and his name was high on the Gestapo’s wanted list. After many adventures he came to the United States, where he worked for some twenty years in the intelligence community.

Dr. Possony is Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace, and is author of more than a score of books.

The following chapter from The Strategy of Technology needed little revision. I have inserted brief comments where they seemed appropriate.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL WAR
by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle

The United States is at war. Whether we consider this to be the Protracted Conflict initiated in 1917 by the Bolsheviks or something new brought about by the march of technology in this country, the war cannot be escaped. The field of engagement is not everywhere bloody. Except for financial sacrifices, many citizens of the West and subjects of Communism may be unaware of the conflict until the decisive moment, if it ever comes, is upon them. For all that, the Technological War is most real, and we must understand its nature, for it is decisive. Our survival depends on our not losing this battle.

The natures of both technology and the enemy dictate this state of warfare. The U.S.S.R. is a power-oriented dictatorship, whose official doctrine is Communism: That is, a chiliastic movement which seeks to liberate—we would say enslave—the entire earth. It is not necessary for all of the individual leaders of the U.S.S.R. to be true believers in this doctrine. Since the Soviet Union is a dictatorship, the usual dynamics of dictatorship apply.

One fundamental fact of dictatorship is that losing factions within its ruling structure forever lose their positions and power. They may retain their lives, but they retain little else, and often they do not survive. Thus, such rulers, whether sincere or cynical, have a powerful incentive to conform to the official ideology or line of the top man or group. Moreover, they compete with each other for power. If a powerful faction counsels aggressive expansion—whether out of sincere belief in the ideology, because expansion creates more opportunities for advancement, or because it expects aggression to prop up a tottering regime—failure is the only way through which its influence will be reduced. Every successful aggressive action increases the influence of those who counsel aggression.

If aggressive moves encounter stern opposition, so that the ruling faction is not only not rewarded for its expansionist policies, but finds its national power decreased, changes in the official policy may take place. Such failures, consequent punishment, and resultant troubles for the dictatorship may serve to place in power a more cautious group dedicated to defense of the empire and the status quo; but it is obvious that this turn to pure imperial defense has not yet happened in the U.S.S.R.

We do not mean that the Kremlin’s government will necessarily be aggressive. Other Communist states may play a role. As we write this (1968), there is a growing danger of conflict between the U.S.S.R. and Maoist China. However, expansionism is the normal state of affairs for the Soviet Union.

(We did not predict the events that took place in China following The Great Cultural Revolution. No one else did, either. We do note that tyrannies try to remain independent of each other, and it is unlikely that Communist states can ever have “equal and friendly” relations with each other. JEP 1983)

Moreover, aggressive actions may occur because of internal pressures, especially in a period when faith in Communism as an ideological system is declining, and it is possible, although unlikely, that aggressive initiatives will be taken by non-Communist states. Despite all those complications the U.S.S.R. is the single most important and strongest opponent of the United States. Consequently, American strategists must primarily be concerned with Soviet strategy and the threat posed by the U.S.S.R.[1]

The nature of technology also dictates that there will be conflict. Technology flows on without regard for human intentions, and each technological breakthrough offers the possibility for decisive advantages to the side that first exploits it. Such advantages will be fleeting, for although the weaker side does not have weapons based on the new technology yet, it is certain that it will have them in the near future. In such circumstances, failure to exploit the capability advantage is treason to the Communist cause.

It must be emphasized that to the committed Communist, there are no ideological reasons for not exploiting advantages over the capitalists. The only possible objections are operational. No communist can admit that a capitalist government is legitimate; thus there can be no “mercy” to a vulnerable capitalist regime.

Therefore, capability combines with ideology to produce a powerful effect on intentions, which, be they ever so pure before the advantage was obtained, cannot fail to change with the increasing capabilities: if capabilities grow, intentions become more ambitious.

Thus, it is futile and dangerous to base modern strategy on an analysis of the intentions of the enemy. The modern strategist must be concerned with the present and future capabilities of his opponent, not with hopes and dreams about his goals. The dynamics of dictatorship provide a continuing source of ambitious advisors who will counsel the rulers of the Soviet Union toward aggressive action, and only through continuous engagement in the Technological War can the United States ensure peace and survival.

Because the goals of the United States and the U.S.S.R. are asymmetric, the strategies each employ in the Technological War will be different. The United States is dedicated to a strategy of stability, of being a stabilizing rather than a disturbing power; of preserving the status quo and the balance of power rather than seeking conquest and the final solution to the problems of international conflict through occupation or extermination of all opponents.

The U.S.S.R. is expansionist; aggressive; a disturber power which officially states that the only true peace is that of world Communism. The United States has conceded the initiative in the Protracted Conflict, and is to a great extent bound to a policy of reacting to Communist advances, rather than seeking the initiative in undermining Communist power.

Because we have conceded the initiative in the phase of the Protracted Conflict which deals with control of territory and people,[2] we must not abandon the initiative in the Technological War. We are engaged in war, not a race, although it may appear to be a race to many of us. But it is a race in which we must stay ahead, because if we ever fall behind, the opponent will blow up the bridges before our runners can cross them.

Given the opportunity, the Soviets will deny us access to the tools of the Technological War exactly as they have denied access to their territory, which they call the “peace zone” in distinction to the rest of the world which is the “war zone”. If we are to be on the defensive in the Protracted Conflict, survival demands that we retain the initiative and advantage in the Technological War. We know that U.S. supremacy does not bring on global war, let alone a war of conquest; we held an absolute mastery during our nuclear monopoly. We can be certain that the Soviets would not be passive were they to gain supremacy.

The Technological War is the decisive struggle in the Protracted Conflict. Victory in the Technological War gives supremacy in all other phases of the conflict, to be exploited either by thermonuclear annihilation of the opponent, or simply demanding and obtaining his surrender. The Technological War creates the resources to be employed in all other parts of the Protracted Conflict. It governs the range of strategies that can be adapted in actual or hot war. Without the proper and superior technology our strategy of deterrence would be meaningless. Without technological advantages, we could never fight and win a small war thousands of miles from our homeland, or prevent the occupation of Europe and Japan.

Up to the present moment, technological warfare has largely been confined to pre-hot war conflict. It has been a silent and apparently peaceful war, and engagement in the Technological War is generally compatible with the strong desires of most of our people for “peace”. The winner of the Technological War can, if he chooses, preserve peace and order, act as a stabilizer of international affairs, and prevent shooting wars. The loser has no choice but to accept the conditions of the victor, or to engage in a shooting war which he has already lost.

Technological War can be carried on simultaneously with any other forms of military conflict, diplomatic maneuvers, peace offensives, trade agreements, detente, and debacle. It is the source of the advanced weapons and equipment for use in all forms of warfare. It renders cold war activities credible and effective. Technological warfare combined with psychosocial operations can lead to a position of strategic dominance.

This new form of warfare has its roots in the past, but it is a product of the current environment. World War II was the last war of industrial power and mobilization, but it was also the first war of applied science. The new war is one of the directed use of science. The manner of its use is shown by the changing nature of warfare. Wars of the past were wars of attrition of the military power which was a shield to the civilian population and the will to resist. The new technology has created weapons to be applied directly and suddenly to the national will.

Definition of Technological Warfare

Technological warfare is the direct and purposeful application of the national technological base[3] and of specific advances generated by the base to attain strategic and tactical objectives. It is employed in concert with other forms of national power. The aims of this kind of warfare, as of all forms of warfare, are to enforce the national will on enemy powers; to cause them to modify their goals, strategies, tactics, and operations; to attain a position of security or dominance which assists or supports other forms of conflict techniques; to promote and capitalize on advances in technology to reach superior military power; to prevent open warfare; and to allow the arts of peace to flourish in order to satisfy the constructive objectives of society.

The emergence of this new form of war is a direct consequence of the dynamic and rapidly advancing character of the technologies of the two superpowers and of certain of the U.S. allies. Its most startling application to date has been the Soviet and American penetration of space and the highly sophisticated articulation of specific technical achievements in other aspects of modern conflict—psychological, political, and military.

Its foremost characteristics are dynamism and flexibility, while surprise is its main strategic utility. The superpowers can expand their technologies and employ them unhindered by actions short of all-out war. The nature of the technological process reinforces the uncertainty of war and of the enemy’s course of action. The indicators of success in maintaining a position of dominance are vague and inconclusive because of dynamism, variability, and uncertainty; thus, unless this form of warfare is fully understood, it is possible to lose it while maintaining to the last the illusion of winning.

The importance of this new form of conflict lies in the challenge it poses to the continued national existence of the participants. Just as the Romans deliberately increased their national power by adding seapower to landpower, and just as the major nations of the world increased their power by adding airpower to their surface power, the U.S.S.R. is adding technological power to its existing capabilities.

(The above was written in 1968. It is now possible to see the effects of Soviet adoption of a technological strategy. They have an entire new line of intercontinental missiles with accuracies sufficient to threaten the entire US land-based missile force; and they have gone into space in a big way, so that they have far more experience in manned space operations than we do.

They have also built a full line of naval vessels, including nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

The threat of Soviet technological power is much greater now than when we wrote this book; and our time for meaningful response is much shorter. There is still time, but we have little to waste. JEP 1983)

Technological advances can produce a small number of weapons with a decisive capability, as illustrated by the atomic bomb. Since some technological changes can occur unobtrusively and yet be decisive, the real power situations are never transparent and never fully understood, so that the power of the opponent, as well as one’s own power, remains partially unknown.

This unavoidable ignorance is the source of direct challenge to the security and existence of the participants in the Technological War. Technology itself does not automatically confer military advantages. Blind faith in technology alone can lead to disaster. Like all wars, the Technological War requires a deliberate strategy, and it must be conducted by commanders who understand fully the objectives they have been instructed to reach.

The Technological War is not synonymous with technological research. The instruments of technological research and development are required for successful participation in the Technological War, but their existence does not ensure their proper use. Research itself does not create technology but is merely one of technology’s major prerequisites; and technology by itself cannot bring victory or guarantee national survival.

Foundations of the Technological War

Fundamentals of Technological Strategy

There are four overall aspects to technological strategy. Enumerating them does not constitute a strategy but merely sets forth certain criteria with which to judge the conduct of the conflict. They are:

- Superior Forces In Being

- Modernization of Weapons

- Modernization of the Technological Base

- Operational Capability to Use New Technology

A power that is determined not to end the Technological War by destroying the enemy must constantly maintain superiority and continuously modernize its forces. At all times, the defending nation in the Protracted Conflict must maintain sufficient forces in being to assure that the enemy does not end the conflict by coup de main, an overwhelming surprise blow. These forces must have the modern weapons they require, and must know how to use them; must have operational familiarity with them.

The result is a highly dynamic process, requiring careful judgment. We certainly cannot depend on our traditional strategy of mobilization, relying on overseas allies to bear the initial brunt of the war while we convert from a peace to a war economy. We must have a force in being which cannot be destroyed by the enemy, and which can quickly move to counter the enemy’s aggressive actions.

(A recent example is the Falkland Islands conflict: Britain had sufficient forces in being to reverse the initial advantages held by Argentina. Had Britain scrapped its nuclear submarines and surface ships (as was indeed planned for the following year) then there would have been no possible response to the Argentine occupation of the Falklands; certainly no response short of all-out war and actions against the Argentine homelands. This could have been very dangerous. JEP 1983)

Secondly, the force in being must be a modern force. It is unimportant if we surpass the enemy in capability to conduct horse-cavalry conduct, or even guerilla war, if we do not have a force that can fight successfully with modern high-energy weapons. The situation is not symmetrical; if we possess superiority or supremacy, we need not end the conflict by destroying the enemy, and will not do so because of our essentially defensive grand strategy. However, we cannot afford to allow the enemy superiority or supremacy, because he could use it to force so many concessions—particularly from our then-unprotected allies—that the contest would be decided in his favor even if he did not employ his decisive weapons to destroy us.

Finally, we must assure that the technological base from which our force in being are derived is truly modern and creative. We must be certain that we have missed no decisive bets in the Technological War, that we have abandoned no leads which the enemy could exploit for a decisive advantage over us. For every weapons system he has, we must have a counter, either through defending against the weapon or riposte against him if he uses it. More important, we must keep a sufficient technological base to allow us to generate the counter-systems to any new weapons he constructs or may suddenly invent.

Dimensions of the Technological War

The dimensions of the Technological War range farther than any conflict previously known in human history. They include the aerospace, from ground-level to trans-lunar space; the ground and the underground deep within the earth; and the surface of the seas and the underwater world we call inner space. The battlegrounds of the Technological War could include every conceivable area in which military conflict can occur. Yet, this is merely the final aspect of the Technological War. Actual military battle may never take place. The dimensions of the war also include the nonmilitary struggles, psycho-political warfare, ideological warfare, economics and trade, and the educational process. A college campus with students shrilly screaming obscenities at the police, and a quiet laboratory populated with soft-spoken men armed with chalk and blackboards are equally important battlegrounds.

Technological Warfare in its decisive phase will aim at bypassing the other forms of military conflict and striking directly at the will to resist. Military power may be used, and thermonuclear warfare may be necessary to consolidate the victory, but the true aim of the Technological War is the denial, paralysis, and negation of all forms of hostile military power. Often this may be achieved through psycho-political pressure employing tactics of demonstration, terror, despair, and surprise, conducted in concert perhaps with other forms of warfare. Specifically, genuine Technological War aims at reducing the use of firepower in all forms to a minimum.

An Overview of the Nature of Technology

Before we examine the strategy of Technological War, it is necessary to understand the nature of technology. Contrary to what people have often been encouraged to believe, it is not necessary to be a scientist or technologist to comprehend the general nature of technology, or to employ technology in a strategic contest. Indeed, sometimes specialization on one aspect of technology and strategy prevents understanding of technology in its broader sense.

The following discussion is a nontechnical introduction to the general nature of technology and strategy. Later sections of this book develop each of these themes more fully, but because of the interdependence of strategy and technology in modern warfare, it is not possible to organize this book into discrete sections and chapters.

Modern Technological Warfare is a mixture of strategy and technology, and their interrelationships.

The primary fact about technology in the twentieth century is that it has a momentum of its own. The stream of technology flows on endlessly, and it is impossible to dam it. There remain only three choices. You may swim with the stream, exploiting every aspect of technology to its fullest; you may attempt to crawl out on the bank and watch the rest of the world go past; or you can attempt to swim against the stream and “put the genie back in the bottle”.

Since nearly every nation, and certainly both superpowers, swim in more or less the same technological stream, only the first course of action makes sense. To continue the analogy for a moment, there is a fog over the surface of the water, so that you cannot know exactly what and how your opponents in the race are doing. An opponent may tell you he has crawled out on the bank and is enjoying the view, while in fact he is either treading water or racing away from you. If you do not intend to lose, you have little choice but to swim with the current as long and as hard as you can.

The impersonal nature of technology makes meaningless the gunpowder era phrase arms race. It is fashionable at present to speak of the action-reaction arms race, in which each power constructs weapons for fear that the other has done so. According to this theory,[4] the primary reason nations arm themselves is that they react to others. In fact, in the Technological War, opposing powers essentially react to the impersonal stream that carries them along. They really have no choice and never will have so long as the current flows and there is asymmetry of information between them.

The fog of war is made denser by confusion caused partly by deliberate deception and partly by self-deceptions. Only when the Communist states have transformed themselves into open societies and there is a complete exchange of information—that is, when the fog has lifted from the stream of technology—can meaningful efforts to arrange the contest on a more economical and less risky basis be successful. Until that time we must engage in the Technological War. It is fairly obvious that rationalization of the conflict will not come in our lifetimes. We would do well to expect that even if the U.S.S.R. were to change its character, other threats might arise in its stead.

Arms races in the nuclear era differ from those in the gunpowder era in one fundamental way: they are qualitative rather than quantitative. In the gunpowder era, numbers of divisions, tanks, battleships, and aircraft gave rough estimates of the strength of the possessor and his capability to defend himself. It was possible to overcome an enemy by sheer numbers of weapons alone. In the nuclear era, numbers remain important, of course, but the primary strength lies in quality of weapons and their survivability. Nuclear weapons can destroy an enemy’s entire military power in one strike if the attacker possesses sufficient qualitative superiority. This too is a result of the nature of modern technology.

One of the most easily observed phenomena of technology is that it moves by “S” curves. Take for example speed; for centuries the speed of military operations increased only slightly as each side developed better horses. Then came the internal combustion engine. Speed rose sharply for a while. Eventually, though, it flattened out again, and each increase took longer and longer to achieve.

Note that the top of one S curve may—in fact usually will—be the base of another following it. Although the stream moves on inexorably, it is possible to exploit one or another aspect of technology at will. Which aspect to exploit will depend on several factors, the most important being your goals and your position on the S-curve.

To illustrate the S-curve concept, consider the development of aircraft, and in particular their speed. For many years after the Wright brothers, aircraft speeds crawled slowly forward. In 1940, they were still quite slow. Suddenly, each airplane designed was faster, until the limits of subsonic flight were reached. At that point, we were on a new S-curve. Again, the effort to reach transsonic flight consumed many resources and much time, but then the breakthrough was made. In a short time, aircraft were traveling all multiples of the speed of sound, at speeds nearly two orders of magnitude greater than those achieved shortly before World War II.[5]

Technology is interdependent: advances in one sector of technology soon influence areas which might naively have been believed unrelated. For example, the development of molecular chemistry techniques led to the art of microminiaturization, which allows development of computer technology beyond the expectations of only a few years ago. The revolution in computer sciences has made possible the development of on-board computers for missile guidance, and thus of accuracies not previously predicted. Increased accuracy has made possible the destruction of missile silos with much greater ease and smaller warheads, and has led to the development of Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRV), each one of which uses on-board guidance computers. The increased kill capability stimulated research into silo hardening techniques, which led directly to the present hard rock silo designs. And that development also made it possible to conduct certain mining operations that were previously financially infeasible. Examples of interdependence can be given without limit.

Thus, technology influences nearly every aspect of national life. In particular, technology influences strategy, forcing strategic revolutions at frequent intervals. There are those who say that strategy never changes. If they mean literally what they say, they have never appreciated the effects of the airplane and the ICBM, the possibilities for surprise attack created by these radical new weapons delivery systems coupled with thermonuclear explosives, and the effect they have on ground battles. If, however, they mean that the principles of strategy have not changed, they are more nearly correct, as we will discuss below.

The important fact is that technology paces strategy to some extent, and forces the development of new military strategies which take the new technology into account. As we will show, it is dangerous to regard this relationship as one-sided. Technology and strategy are interrelated, and strategy can and should also pace technology.

Despite the critical importance of technology, it remains an impersonal force, largely because we have never made an effort to understand it. Although America is the leading technological power—perhaps because we are the leading technological power—we do not really comprehend technology. As a consequence, technology remains largely a matter of individual initiative, and we have failed to develop a strategy of technology, let alone a strategy for winning the Technological War.

The Decisive War

The technological contest is a war. It is not a game against an impersonal force, it is a deadly conflict with an intelligent and implacable enemy. We do not suppose that a military commander who conducted his battles as they occurred, understanding neither the terrain nor the enemy and preparing only for the battle that he had already fought, would be properly performing his task. Yet, too often this is precisely what happens in the Technological War, which may be the most decisive engagement in the history of mankind. Technology has grown into the driving force, dictating to strategy; and strategy is conceived of as employment of systems already created by the technologists; that is, strategy is confined to operational decisions. This is akin to allowing the recruiting and supply officers to decide the conduct of a traditional land war.

The danger in the Technological War is that it is closely coupled with the Protracted Conflict, and a decisive lead in the Technological War can be converted into a decisive advantage in military weapons. Note that military power and technological power are coupled, but are not identical; military technology is not in and of itself a weapon system, but it can be used to create weapons systems. Thus a commanding lead in the Technological War can be achieved before a corresponding lead in military technology has been obtained.

As an example, the Soviet Union could, through the development of nuclear defense technology, obtain a decisive lead in the Technological War at a time when the United States still possessed a clear superiority in deliverable weapons. This technology could then be used to create defense systems, and if the United States took no countermeasures during the deployment of those defensive systems, we would find ourselves in an inferior military position.

(What actually happened during the 1970’s was that the Soviet Union achieved spectacular gains in achievable accuracies, and also built large new missiles capable of carrying a dozen and more warheads over intercontinental distances. The United States relied on Arms Control negotiations for security; when these failed, we found ourselves facing a “window of vulnerability.” This increasing strategic inferiority has not been overcome as of 1983.)

Victory in the Technological War is achieved when a participant has a technological lead so far advanced that his opponent cannot overcome it until after the leader has converted his technology into decisive weapons systems. The loser may know that he has lost, and know it for quite a long time, yet be unable to do anything about it. To continue the above example, if the Soviet Union were able to develop the technology in time to deploy systems of his own before ours could be installed and operational, we would be beaten, even though the U.S.S.R. might spend several years in deployment of his own system. Our only choices would be the development of a penetration system that his defenses could not counter (such as manned bombers of very high capabilities),[6] surrender, or preventive war.

(Many believe that development of space laser battle stations will be a decisive move in the technological war. The laser battle station could, at least in theory, destroy an entire ICBM force in flight, then burn down the enemy’s bomber fleet for encore. Such a station once in place would give a decisive lead to its owner.

Space based ICBM defenses have also been proposed, as example by General Daniel O. Graham in his Project High Frontier. If such systems could give us a decisive advantage, they would confer no less on the Soviets if we allow our enemies to develop them without any counter on our part. JEP 1983)

This is the unique feature of the Technological War, Military superiority or even supremacy is not permanent, and never ends the conflict unless it is used. The United States is committed to a grand strategy of defense, and will never employ a decisive advantage to end the conflict by destroying her enemies. Consequently, she must maintain not only military superiority but technological supremacy. The race is an alternative to destructive war, not the cause of military conflict.

Proper conduct of the Technological War requires that strategy drive technology most forcefully; that there be an overall strategy of the Technological War, allocating resources according to well-defined objectives and an operational plan, not merely strategic elements which make operational use of the products of technology. Instead of the supply officer and the munitions designer controlling the conduct of this decisive war, command must be placed in the hands of those who understand the Technological War; and this requires that they first understand the nature of war.

Lest the reader be confused, we do not advocate that the Technological War be given over to the control of the scientists, or that scientists should somehow create a strategy of technological development. We mean that an understanding of the art of war is more important than familiarity with one or another of the specialties of technology. It is a rare scientist who makes a good strategist; and the generals of the Technological War need not be scientists any more than the generals of traditional military conflict need to be good riflemen or railroad engineers.

Like all wars, the Technological War must be conducted by a commander who operates with a strategy. It is precisely the lack of such a strategy that has brought the United States to the present low point in prestige and power, with her ships seized across the world, her Strategic Offensive Forces (SOF) threatened by the growing Soviet SOF—and with the United States perplexed by as simple a question as whether to attempt to defend her people from enemy thermonuclear bombs, and unable to win a lesser war in South East Asia.[7] Because we have no generals and no strategy, we must muddle through the most decisive conflict in our national history. We are not doing a good job.

There have been a few exceptions to this unsatisfactory record of American performance. General Bernard Schriever created a military organization for strategic analysis which was responsible for our early commanding lead over the Soviets in ballistic missiles, despite the fact that the U.S. had allowed the U.S.S.R. many years’ head start in missile development after World War II.[8] The Air Force’s Project Forecast and later Project 75, was an attempt to let strategy react to, then drive, technology; it too was a creation of General Schriever’s. In the navy there have also been notable attempts to allow strategy to influence technology and produce truly modern weapons systems. The long-term results on the careers of the officers involved have been similar to those of the officers identified with General Schriever in the Air Force: failure. Our military organizations have not been geared for commanders who understand the Technological War, even though this is the most decisive of all wars we have fought. Yet in the few cases where the proper actions have been taken, the payoff in the Technological War has been very great. Unfortunately, the men who were involved in making these contributions to the nation have suffered for doing so.

The Elements of Strategy

What is Strategy?

Because there seems to be little understanding of strategy and its effect on the Technological War, we will briefly review some general principles of strategy and warfare. Our purpose is not to teach the elements of strategy, which would require another book, but rather to make the reader aware of strategy and some of its complexities.

According to the traditional concept of military strategy it should mean the art of employing military forces to achieve the ends set by political policy. This definition was formulated by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart in 1929 and it hardly differs from that of Clausewitz. Raymond Aron in his recent book follows it almost word for word. France’s leading strategist of the 60’s commented:

“In my view this definition is too restrictive because it deals with military forces only. I would put it as follows: the art of applying force so that it makes the most effective contribution towards achieving the ends set by political policy…

“In my view the essence of strategy is the abstract interplay which, to use Foch’s phrase, springs from the clash between two opposing wills. It is the art which enables a man, no matter what the techniques employed, to master the problems set by any clash between two opposing wills. [It is the art which enables a man, no matter what the techniques employed, to master the problems set by any clash of wills] and as a result to employ the techniques available with maximum efficiency. It is therefore the art of the dialectic of force, or, more precisely, the art of the dialectic of two opposing wills using force to resolve their dispute.[9]

In our judgment it would be hard to better the above definition provided that we understand force to include the broader concept of power and force. Examining the definition shows us several important aspects of the Technological War and its strategy.

First, we see that strategy involves two opposing wills. This in itself sets the Technological War apart from the simple development of technology. The development of technology is a game against nature, which may be uncooperative, but which never deceives or actively conspires to prevent your success. The Technology War is a contest with an intelligent opponent who seeks to divert you from seeing his purpose, and to surprise you with his results.

Secondly, strategy involves the use of power and force. In the Technological War, the more power is extant, the less often force needs to be used in the primary or decisive mode of the conflict. In the place of battles, the Technological War general disposes his own resources so as to maximize the power he holds and at the same time compel the enemy to make maximum dispersal of his. To make the enemy counter each move you make, and dance to your tune, is the aim of a Technological War strategy. In the ideal, if the enemy were required continually to build purely defensive weapons which might protect him from your weapons but could not possibly harm you, you could be said to have won a major engagement in the Technological War. In the contest between wills, seizing and holding the initiative is of importance; as indeed it has been for a long, long time:

You hear that Phillip is in the Chersonese, and you vote an expedition there; you hear that he is in Thessaly, and you vote one there. You march the length and breadth of Greece at his invitation, and you take your marching orders from him.[10]

But if the power ratio is ambiguous, the decision as to who is the stronger will be made by force, which is the application of power in battle. Other things being equal, battles are won by superior technology. But clearly superior technology prevents battle.

The Principles of War

War is an art; it is not an exact science. Precisely because there is an intelligent opponent, there are real uncertainties about war, not merely statistical uncertainties which may be measurable. Every attempt to reduce war to an exact science has ended in a dismal failure. The advent of the computer and systems analysis, useful as both may be, has not changed this fact, although it has often been forgotten.

Part of the traditional method of learning the art of war is studying the principles of war. These principles are a set of general concepts, like holds in wrestling, and no exact group of principles is universally recognized. Some strategists combine several into one or divide one of those we show into several. The following list will serve well enough for our purpose:

- The Principle of the Objective

- The Principle of the Initiative

- The Principle of Surprise

- The Principle of the Unity of Command

- The Principle of Mass (Concentration of Force)

- The Principle of Economy of Forces

- The Principle of Mobility

- The Principle of Security

- The Principle of Pursuit

It will be noted that some of these principles, if carried to their extremes, would be contradictory. They are intended to serve not as a formula for the planning of a battle, but rather as a set of guides or a checklist which the planner ignores only with peril. They are as applicable to the Technological War as to any other war. At first glance, it might seem that one principle or another might be more directly applicable to the Technological War than the others, but in fact none can be disregarded if success is to be achieved. We will have occasion to refer to them from time to time in the analysis below.

Strategy and Technology

The United States today has no technological strategy. We have, instead, a series of independent and often uncorrelated decisions on specific problems of technology. This is hardly a strategy. A technological strategy would involve the setting of national goals and objectives by political leaders; it would be integrated with other aspects of our national strategy, both military and non-military (Initiative, Objective, and Unity of Command); it would include a broad plan for conducting the Technological War that provided for surprising the enemy, pursuing our advantage (Pursuit), guarding against being surprised (Security), allocating resources effectively (Economy of Forces), setting milestones and building the technological base (Objective), and so forth. Lesser conflicts such as that in Vietnam would be governed by a broad strategic doctrine instead of being considered isolated and treated as crisis.

In our national strategy, far too much attention has been given to current affairs and to specific conflict situations at particular times and places. There has been no serious attempt to integrate the individual decisions, or relate them to a comprehensive grand strategy that is adequate to overcome the challenges. The few attempts we have made to manage technological decisions properly were disastrous; examples are the ludicrous “saving” achieved through the TFX and the equally dismal saving through over-management of the C5A program. We have confused a strategy of technology with centralized interference in the design of production of specific weapons and the imposition of a “standard management plan”.

The results are that our performance in Vietnam was quite unsatisfactory, we have failed to exploit our superior technology to grasp a commanding lead in either inner space or outer space, our merchant marine where it exists at all flies the proud flag of Panama or Liberia, and many of our young men fight overseas with weapons that make use of principles discovered by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century.

(Alas, we see no reason to revise the above after a dozen years. Our failure to understand what the Vietnam War was about cost us all the blood and treasure we had previously invested; the Soviets have surpassed us in manned space exploitation and ICBM deployment; and we were unable to use our technology or military power in the Iranian hostage crisis. JEP 1983)

The reasons for this dismal performance are complex; it is not necessary to understand all of them and it is not germane to blame anyone. Events caught up with us, the stream of technology swept us along, and only recently did we begin to realize the nature of the Technological War. In fact, one reason we have no strategy of technology is that not everyone realizes we are at war; but perhaps the most important reason is the basic failure to understand the nature of technology itself, and particularly the problems of lead time which produce a crisis-oriented design process.

Crises have kept coming endlessly, and we have had to meet them. Decision makers at the national level concentrate on fighting today’s fire, partly because they hope that the current trouble will be the last but mostly because of the long lead time involved in technology. A president called upon to spend money in any fiscal year actually is spending money to solve the problems of a resident two terms later. But even if we try to find comfort in expenditures for research and development, we must understand that these are oriented to specific projects and tasks and do not result from technological strategy.

(During the 1970’s, the expenditures in research and development were cut back; the result was that high technology exports became less valuable than agriculture in our balance of payments. There has been an erosion of our technological base. Fortunately the Soviets have their problems too, caused by their generally bad management practices; but do note that the Soviet military economy is run on an entirely different basis from their notoriously inefficient civilian economy. JEP 1983)

Our misunderstanding of the Technological War is illustrated by our failure to build an organization for conducting technological warfare. The review of the annual budget and of individual projects in basic research, in applied research, in development, and in procurement is the only process by which our technological development is controlled directly. Other influences such as the statements of requirements and the evaluation of military worth are felt only at the level of individual projects. Overall evaluation of the research and development effort and of its relations to strategy is rudimentary.

An example of how irrelevant factors influence our efforts, and perhaps one of the decisive signs of the times: the January 20, 1969 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology, the most influential journal in the aerospace field, included a report entitled “Viet Lull Advances New Weapons”. The article makes clear that the budgetary funding level of many new weapons systems, including research and development, basic technology, and actual system procurement, is largely dependent on the continuation of a “lull” in the Vietnam War. Given a proper strategy for the Technological War and proper command of our efforts, the title should read “Advanced New Weapons End Vietnam War.”

1983

The previous decade has seen the development of many “smart” weapons; however, few have actually been put in the hands of operational troops. We still do not have a strategy of technology.

Editor's Introduction to:

MANUAL OF OPERATIONS
by Jerry Pournelle

In the bad old days of science fiction, a John W. Campbell editorial was certain to have one result: a dozen writers would turn out stories illustrating the point Mr. Campbell had made. Sometimes these were good stories; sometimes they were bloody awful since they’d been churned out quickly in the hopes of catching John W. Campbell with his checkbook open.

There is a sense in which I wrote this story in response to a Campbell editorial: John once said that our attempts to understand truly advanced alien science were likely to be no more successful than would a medieval monk’s attempts to understand television were a TV suddenly to appear in his cloister. That intrigued me enough to want to do a story on the theme.

On the other hand, it took me five years, and the result turned out very different from what I had first conceived.

MANUAL OF OPERATIONS
by Jerry Pournelle

“Harry Logan, stop messing around with that junk and Get a Job!”

“Yes, dear.” It used to be a daily ritual. Now it was three or four times a day. If he’d been musically inclined, Harry could have set it to music: Chorale and concerto for percussion and nagging wife. GET A JOB, BOOM BOOM, YES DEAR, YES DEAR, GET A JOB, BOOM BOOM, YES DEAR, YES DEAR…

“I mean it, Harry. I can’t pay the grocery bills, there’s the doctor, and Shirley’s orthodonist, and Penney’s is sending our account to a collection agency. You’ve got to Do Something Before I Go Out of My Mind!”

“Yes dear.” He didn’t raise his eyes from the microscope ($65.00 surplus from Los Angeles City College, a good buy, I need it, Ruth. I can use it to make some money.) After a while he heard her retreating footsteps.

This was a preliminary skirmish. She’d be back with the main force attack later. But for now… Outside, the rooster squawked loudly and drove a young opossum away from his harem. The dog barked and ran ashamedly to help the scrappy little cock. The dog got a piece bit out of his ear for reward. Harry gratefully left the microscope with its dirty slide and listened to the sounds of peace.

The letters from his last job enquiries were on his desk, but he’d been afraid to tell Ruth. They all said the same thing. Dear Mr. Logan, we are very pleased that you have considered our company as a possible employer. However, at this time we have no position suitable for a man of your unique talents. Please be assured that we will keep your application on file…

Harry knew why they didn’t want him. He had no college degrees. In fact, he’d never been inside a college in his life, and there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of new engineering graduates looking for work. What chance did a company-trained engineer have for a professional position? He’d tried starting over, but that was no good either: with three published papers on solid state physics and four patents to his credit he was overqualified to be a technician. No engineer wanted a lab tech who knew more than his boss.

Harry was sure that the constant fights he’d had with company administrators had nothing to do with his rejections. He’d been right every time. But somehow, after the companies learned that, they still wouldn’t hire him…

His research wasn’t going well. His papers were rejected by reputable journals as too far out and he couldn’t write down for the popular science magazines. Nothing was going well, and the cold reality gnawed at his guts. What in hell am I going to do? he thought. It was a moment of panic.

The house was paid for (Harry, you should have kept title to that patent, not sold it outright! Harry, you have no business sense at all! But Ruth, I wanted to keep the patent and you said we have to have a house…) At least they couldn’t take the house. But he couldn’t raise chickens out here in Tujunga Wash anymore. The Los Angeles City Department of Health had sent a complaint. His house was miles from any other habitation, but somehow it was inside the city limits…

He stood for a moment by the desk, then paced nervously to his work bench. The blasted circuit ought to work, why didn’t it? But growing integrated circuitry was a tricky thing and he had only the most primitive equipment to work with. He thought about that. Sometimes, Ruth took off her wedding ring to do the dishes, and he could pawn it for…

He didn’t finish the thought. There was a knock on the workroom door and Logan looked up in surprise.

“Harry Logan?” the man asked. There was an accent to the voice, probably Canadian. An ordinary man: big framed, going bald, dark hair where he had any. Stocky and tough, but well dressed. “You are Harry Logan, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Harry admitted. It was an admission: the last guy who came to see him had been a bill collector and this guy was built like one. “May I come in?”

“You’re already in. I don’t think I know you.”

“David McClellan. Before we waste each other’s time, are you the man who published that far-out thing about the future of solid-state physics in Tele-Tech? Also the article speculating about unknown forces?”

“Yes.” The unknown forces article had got him fired from his last job. His descriptions of equipment he used in the research made it plain he was working on that problem despite orders to abandon it. Who’d have thought the Director would read a thing like that? “Yeah, I wrote them.”

“Good. I’ve got a consulting job for you.”

“What kind of work?” Harry asked. No good to sound too eager. “I’m a little busy, but—”

“You’ll be well paid. Besides, you’ll learn something new. I guarantee it.” The man was assured, and his confidence was infectious. Logan found himself looking forward to whatever McClellan had in mind. What did ‘well paid’ mean? Anything was good pay now…

McClellan was still talking. “But you don’t have a working telephone so I couldn’t call for an appointment. Glad to find you in.”

“Eh—oh, sure.” Damn phone company. He’d always paid his bills eventually… “Where is this work?”

“Canada. I want you to come with me right away.”

Logan brought up the subject of money. It wasn’t any problem. McClellan took a thousand dollars from his wallet and handed it over. It was an expensive wallet, and it looked full.

Ruth exploded as expected. McClellan wouldn’t say where they were going. He seemed obsessed with secrecy about the whole project, and Ruth took Harry’s inability to be precise for deviousness.

“Off to Canada with some bum you just met! Can’t say where! Harry Logan, you’re Up To Something! You’re going off to drink again, and I won’t put up with it, Harry Logan, now you listen to me, you take one drink and you can’t stop, I know all about you, you’re not going off to any…”

She was speechless for the first time in years as Harry shoved a thousand dollars at her. He was tempted to stuff it into her mouth…

“Where in hell are we going?” Harry asked. It seemed a reasonable question. They’d landed in Vancouver, taken a small turboprop north to Dawson, and immediately drove away from the airport in a Rover. Now they’d left the highway and started off into rugged hill country. McClellan hadn’t said three hundred words since they left Tujunga Wash.

“You’ll see soon enough.” The country got wilder, pine trees and scrub brush, and they turned off the gravel road onto an unmarked dirt track. Harry had to hold on to keep from being jounced out of his seat. After they were a half mile in, the trail vanished. McClellan swung off into the forest, driving over dried pine needles that blew over their tracks in the stiff breeze.

“Timber country,” McClellan said. “Nobody comes here but me. I own it.”

They passed weathered No Trespassing signs, forded a small creek, bounced across another rocky flat, and plunged into more thick woods; then they topped a small rise at the edge of a tiny clearing, and there it was.

Logan had a brief impression of a logging camp. Log shack covered with mud. A generator trailer. Camp fire, with a wiry bearded man squatting in front of it. None of these really registered, because the little clearing was dominated by an alien shape.

That was the first thing Harry was sure of. It was wrong. Alien. The color was wrong, the shape was wrong, everything about it. Then he looked for details.

The ship was round, about twenty feet in diameter, and swept up in thickness from infinitesimal at the edges to about seven feet in the center. The cross-section shape was part of the alien impression: it thickened in a series of compound curves not smoothly blended into each other.

It wasn’t perfectly round. From above it would have looked like a distorted circle, but there was no conic section that could describe it. One end was elongated and flattened, with its thin edge stretching out another four or five feet, no thicker than a man’s hand at the greatest dimension, undulating in waves of curved sections that made no sense.

The whole ship was a dull metallic grey-green, and it shined, not brightly, and not evenly over its surface; when he tried to look closely Harry saw that it was the light pattern that gave an illusion of motion to the hull sections. The ship didn’t change shape, but the glowing areas moved in rippling patterns across the surface.

Harry turned to his companion. The man was watching Logan curiously. “A flying saucer,” Harry said. “Yours?”

McClellan laughed. “It is now.” He raised his voice to shout. “Al, he thinks we’re little green men! He asked if it was mine!”

The bearded man laughed with them as he came to the Rover. “I’m Al Parish, Mister Logan.” Parrish held out a lumberjack’s hand and crushed Harry’s. “Do we look like we could build that thing?”

“No. All right, what’s the story?”

“Come sit by the fire and have a drink,” McClellan answered. “We’re going to tell you.”

David McClellan owned timber lands. He’d inherited them and was happy to live off the income. He also liked to hike in his woods. “And one day—there it was,” he finished.

“But—who brought it here? What about the crew?”

McClellan shrugged. “Nothing. It was like you see it here. And there’s no strange bones around, nothing here at all. Maybe the crew got killed by rattlers and dragged off by scavengers. Maybe anything, but they’re gone. After I poked around for a week I went and got Al.”

“I’m an engineer,” Parrish added. “Not much of one, maybe, but the only engineer Dave knew. And this thing is driving me crazy. When I talked to the professors at the university about some of the effects I got they told me I’d been drinking. Nothing like that could ever work. So I remembered the articles you wrote and Dave went to get you.”

“Thanks,” Logan said. He meant it. “But aren’t you going to tell the government?”

“Hell no!” McClellan exploded. “They’d thank us and never let us near it again.” He spat into the fire. “I want that ship, Logan. It’s mine.”

Harry could understand that. He’d had his problems with administrators. He didn’t care if the government never found out about it. “You think it uses advanced solid state devices, huh?”

“Has to be something like that,” Parrish answered. “I can’t even find the power source. It’s got one, you see things work, but no power. No wires, nothing, just blocks of glop. Lots of those, but I can’t see what they connect to or even how they connect.” Al poured an enormous mug of coffee, drank half, and filled it to the top with Christian Brothers brandy. Harry looked at it hungrily, but he knew better. Ruth was right more often than he wanted to admit.

“Near as I can figure,” Parrish said, “this thing operates with some force nobody on earth ever heard of. And you wrote about that, and about the future of solid state work—hell, at least you’ll admit it’s possible for the ship to work!”

“Can I look at it?”

“Yeah.” McClellan seemed reluctant. “But be careful. We don’t know what does which to what. You might put us out in the orbit of Saturn.”

It seemed as strange inside as out. The entrance was two doors four feet high with a two foot space between them, an obvious airlock that a man might just barely have crammed himself into. Both sliding doors were open, and somebody had wedged them into their recesses with pine logs.

“Haven’t been able to close this ship up,” Parrish explained, “but I didn’t want to take any chances. Be hell to be trapped in here.”

The inside was one big chamber about the shape of the outside of the ship. Three chairs which would have been perfect for small human children were bolted to the steel-gray deck. The chairs swiveled and were equidistant around a circular console in the center of the ship. The console had a shelf two feet off the floor and a sloping panel inboard of that rose nearly to the top of the cabin. The panel was a jumble of translucent plates, many of them marked with squiggles that might have been Arabic but Logan was sure it wasn’t.

“Near as I can figure, the panels above the console are some kind of screens,” Parrish told him. “But there .ain’t nothing behind them, so I don’t know. Course, they might be kids’ greasepaint boards for all I know.”

“Kids?”

“Sure. Whole thing could be a toy. Look at the size. Like a doll house. Admit it isn’t likely, but then the ship isn’t likely either.”

“That’s for sure.” Harry was just able to stand in the space next to the console. Everywhere else the ceiling was too low and he had to crouch.

Parrish showed him around the ship. Under one chair was a gismo with an air scoop sticking out of a solid box to a tank, and a steady stream of air flowed from the tank.

“What kind of air does it make?” Logan asked.

“About like ours, only feel. Hot, and wet as hell. Little more oxygen too.”

“What else works?”

“Funny about that,” Parrish said. “Sometimes lights flash. Sometimes we hear noises. Nothing predictable, and no way to control any of it. Look, there’s not even controls to work, no knobs or switches. Least, nothing we can recognize as a control,” he added thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s like somebody in the Middle Ages finding a radio—he’d never know what switches and knobs were.”

They went back outside, although Logan wanted to remain in the ship. The others persuaded him; he’d have plenty of time to look at it, and it gave them the creeps in the dark. Before they left Parrish lifted a deck plate. The thin grey metal section came away easily to reveal a mass of brightly colored rectangular shapes varying in size from larger than an attache case to smaller than a matchbox. The blocks fitted together perfectly and couldn’t be pulled out, but when Parrish touched one corner with a steel screwdriver they popped out easily. There weren’t any connections Harry Logan could see; the blocks were of uniform texture, like hardened epoxy. When replaced they fitted together again like a parquet floor, and couldn’t be removed by force.

“See what I mean about advanced solid state?” McClellan asked. They sat around the campfire and ate shishkebab while Parrish told what he had tried.

He had used every detection device he could think of with no result whatever. Oscilloscope, voltmeter, electroscope, they all gave the same result. “That ship’s electromagnetically dead,” Parrish said. “It’s all at ground potential. Except for one thing, that flat surface dead aft—well, I think it’s aft, but what the hell, there being no windows or anything, how would I know? Anyway, that flat place is a south pole. Damn strong one, I had to use the Rover to pull my magnet off it. But it only attracts north poles, repels south ones, and has no effect on non-magnetized iron. It’s directional, and there isn’t a north pole on the ship. How’s that grab you?”

“A monopole?” Harry asked. “Could it be the drive?”

“Damned if I know. I don’t think it’s strong enough to lift the ship. For that matter, nothing I think of can lift that ship.”

“What do you mean?”

Parrish shrugged and pulled another chunk of steak off the skewer. “It’s heavy. Or it’s rooted in place, take your choice. Tried jacking it up and broke the Rover’s jack. Got a big fifty ton hydraulic job and managed to push the jack down into the ground. That ship doesn’t lift. It’s enough to drive me crazy.”

“Yeah.” Logan stared into the campfire.

Parrish took the dirty dishes and put them in a bucket to soak. “Wash up in the morning. Now for something I’ve been waiting for since we found that thing,” he said. He went to the Rover and got out a case of brandy. “Didn’t have but a couple of bottles to last me and had to stay sober while you were gone… after playing with that thing, I want to get drunk.” He looked at the brandy with affection. “Have a drink, Harry Logan. You too, McClellan, you old stick.”

Why not? Harry thought. One drink wouldn’t hurt. Might open up his subconscious. Parrish had tried every test Harry could think of, maybe something would come to him. One drink.

By midnight they were all singing. At one in the morning, McClellan was making speeches denouncing the government, which he suspected of wanting to take his ship for income taxes. By two they went over to be sure the ship was still there.

They squeezed into the cabin, and Harry was just able to sit in one of the chairs. The others were too big. It was dark, and Harry couldn’t see a thing. “Wish there was some light.”

The lights came on, a soft glow from the walls with no bright spots.

“What the hell did you do?” McClellan demanded.

“I thought at it,” Logan answered. “Shee, it’s simple, you think at it and she does what you want. Watch.” He thought at the screens. A globe sprang into view on the panel above him. It was a holograph somehow projected into a piece of plastic a half inch thick.

McClellan and Parrish crowded against Logan’s chair. “But how could it work?” Parrish asked.

“Who cares?” Harry answered thickly. “Let’s get her moving!” He shouted at the ship. “Lift off!” Nothing happened.

Logan made a face, then formed a mental picture of the ship rising from the ground.

Harry didn’t feel a thing. McClellan and Parrish shouted something. A cold wind blew on his neck and Harry looked around. The cabin was empty, the wedged doors gaping behind him, and through them he saw the lights of a small town rapidly falling away below. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. A bearded face appeared on the screen.

“I’ve got to get down! Take me down!” He thought of descending. The ship plummeted. “Gently.” He pictured that. The rapid descent slowed.

He tried to think of places to take the ship. Crazy thoughts flashed through his mind: the Alps, and they appeared on the screen above. Taj Mahal. New York City. Each time, the screen pictured it, and the ship seemed to turn.

Parrish and McClellan. What had happened to them? The screen showed nothing. Harry tried again: what happened if you fell out? The screen showed something— not really a man, but humanoid—falling through the doors and being gently lowered to the ground below. The ship still whipped around, and the ground he could see through the doors whirled, but Harry felt no motion at all. He tried to stand and was slammed back down into the chair with horrible force, and he almost passed out.

Where to go? The ship could take him anywhere… the moon, the planets… a picture of an airless world pitted with craters formed on the screen. Mars! She’d take him to Mars! First man there…

Harry choked for breath. Anoxia. The word swam somewhere in his mind, but he didn’t care. His ship! It could do anything! Harry Logan was the most powerful man in the world! They’d have to listen to him now…

The screens faded, everything was getting grey, but Harry didn’t care. It was wonderful up here, and Harry Logan was master of the world. He could make them… he could…

The Pentagon. The enormous building formed on the screen as Harry thought of it. That was the place to go. Take the ship to the Pentagon and make the United States listen to Harry Logan. All the world problems were so simple once you saw them right. And those companies who’d fired him, they’d be sorry. But Harry Logan wouldn’t use his ship for revenge. He’d bring peace and happiness to the world. Pentagon, that’s the ticket. Right into the little courtyard in the middle of the hollow Pentagon, right there in the five sided funny farm, Harry Logan would set up his throne…

He didn’t know how long it took but he was there. Thickset windows pierced dirty granite walls all around him. The ship rested on trampled grass. Logan grinned and tried to stand up again. It was all right. The ship waited obediently. Harry went to the hatchway and took the logs out. He needed sleep, and he didn’t want anyone messing with his ship while he got it. The inner log came out easily, but the ship had tried to close the outer door and the log was jammed in good. Harry had to climb out to get a grip on it. He tugged hard, and the log came away and fell on top of him.

Harry lay on the grass and looked up at his ship. He smiled, thought the door closed, took a deep breath— and passed out.

He was in a windowless room and bright lights glared in his eyes. He’d never had such a horrible hangover in his life. God, that was a bad one, he’d dreamed about flying saucers and… Harry sat bolt upright.

“Now, now,” a soft voice told him. Strong hands pushed him down with a rustle of starched linen.

When he tried to turn his head, a strange thing happened. His head turned but his brain didn’t. Then the brain would snap around with a horrible shock and an audible twang. His eyes wouldn’t focus, but there were blurs in the room, a flurry of activity, bright lights, noise. Horrors upon horrors.

“Do you speak English?” someone kept demanding. What the hell did they think he spoke? When he didn’t answer, they said other weird things. “Parlez-vous Francaise? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” And growls that Harry wouldn’t have believed a human throat could utter. Had the saucer taken him to its home planet? It wasn’t a dream, there had been a saucer…

“Hing-song yin kuo…” “Sir, he doesn’t respond to…” “If you’d get out of the way, Professor…” Everyone spoke at once.

“Damn it, say something!” an authoritative voice demanded.

“Hello,” Harry replied. He hadn’t thought anything could be so loud. Was that horrible noise just Harry Logan trying to talk? “Where am I?”

“You’re in the emergency detention—uh, in a guest room in the Pentagon. Do you know what the Pentagon is?” the voice asked him. It seemed to be trying to be friendly and didn’t know how. A polite crocodile voice. Any damn fool knows what the Pentagon is, Harry thought. It hurt too much to answer. Instead, he groaned. “He seems hurt,” another voice said quietly. “Not knowing… I mean, General, if it weren’t for that thing out there I’d say he was a normal human with no detectable injury, but…”

“Hell, he’s got to talk. Fast,” the general barked. “You. Sir. Where are you from?”

“Tujunga,” Harry tried to say. It didn’t come out very well.

“Where’s that?”

“Sounds Spanish…” “I never heard of any such place…” “Habla Usted espanol…”

One brittle-dry loud lecture hall voice cut through the renewed babble. “Perhaps it means ‘earth’ in his language. Most peoples have…”

“Crap.” The general got shocked silence. “You can spare me the goddam lectures. And since he seems to understand English, we won’t need all you goddam civilians. Sergeant, clear this room.”

“Yes, sir.” There was more commotion, but Harry wasn’t interested. Didn’t they understand? He needed to die.

“Do you want anything?” the general asked.

Harry opened one eye with an effort. He saw a blue uniform, three stars on the shoulders. Behind the Air Force lieutenant general were two air police with automatic rifles. A doctor in a white coat twisted his hands together. There was no one else in the room, which was bigger than Harry had thought it would be.

“Water,” Harry croaked. The doctor moved around and came back with a plastic glass and a drinking straw. Harry gulped it gratefully. “Aspirin. And a double shot of brandy.”

The general looked at him closely. “Aspirin? Brandy?” There was a gleam of triumph on the craggy face. “As I thought. There’s your goddam alien, doctor. An ordinary earthman with a hangover.”

“A hangover and a flying saucer in the Pentagon courtyard,” the doctor reminded him. “Really, General Bannister, it would be better to leave him alone for a while. There might be something really wrong with him.”

“Yeah, there might. But we haven’t got long. I haven’t, anyway.” He got a crafty look. “Doc, get him in shape and send him to me as quick as you can. I’ve got to talk to him before the Navy finds him.”

“Yes, sir,” There was more activity, and Harry was left in the room with the doctor. He gulped aspirin gratefully and asked again for brandy, but nobody brought any.

The hospital gown flapped. The sandal-slippers kept falling off his feet. Harry had never felt more undignified in his life as the air policemen ushered him into the office.

The room overlooked the Pentagon courtyard. Harry’s saucer was out there, its unlikely shape gleaming dully, light patterns rippling over the hull. Swarms of uniforms bustled around it, cheered on by more uniforms with gold and silver braid on their hats.

General Bannister sat behind a battered mahogany desk that looked like something out of the twenties. Actually it was out of the twenties, since this wasn’t a general’s office. The guards pushed Harry into an oak and leather swivel chair.

“All right,” Bannister said. “Let’s make this quick. Tell me about that.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder but refused to turn to look.

“Why are there guards pulling me around? What have I done?” Harry asked. “And where are my clothes…”

“Cut the crap,” Bannister said. “You were found unconscious in the Pentagon courtyard in the dead of night. You and that. Now where’d you come from, and no shit about Mars. Jayzeus, man, you’ve got the whole government out of its mind. You bring that—” the general still carefully avoided looking out the window—”into Washington without being detected and set it down in the Pentagon courtyard! You’ve got some explaining to do, son.”

“Yeah.” Oh Christ, what do I say? Why did I come here? “Where do I start?”

“With who you are and where it came from.”

“My name’s Harry, and I don’t know where it came from.”

“But you can operate it.” It wasn’t a question. “How?”

“I don’t know that either. I don’t remember.” He thought about it. The machine had done what he thought at it—he tried. He sent out a picture of the ship lifting from the ground. Nothing happened.

Bannister inspected his fingernails as he fought for self control. “What do you want, Harry?” he asked reasonably. The pleasant tone obviously cost him.

Good question, Harry thought. What did he want? The hangover to go away. Peace and quiet. Money. Hey…

The door burst open. A Navy Admiral and a hard-eyed civilian stamped in, followed by so many people they couldn’t all fit in the room. There were loud voices in the corridor.

“All right, Bannister, we found you,” the admiral growled. “Tried to hide him, didn’t you? Just because you were working late last night doesn’t mean you own that ship!”

“It flies,” Bannister protested. “That makes it Air Force.”

“The Navy flies too,” the admiral said.

“You have both missed the point,” the civilian interrupted. He had a voice like a corpse, flat, atonal, and he spoke so softly that you’d think you couldn’t hear him, but he was heard. When he spoke, everyone in the room was silent. “That object is obviously of foreign make. Therefore it belongs to us. Not to the services.”

“Crap!” General Bannister exploded. “Horse puckey!” shouted the admiral. Both faced the civilian with determined looks. “What makes you think it’s foreign?” Bannister demanded.

“It employs technology well beyond that of any known science. We cannot open the doors. We cannot chip away any of the hull for analysis, or understand the monopole effect it exhibits. Thus I conclude it was not constructed on earth, and it is therefore foreign.” There was no triumph in the voice; it merely stated facts, coldly, with precision.

“Yeah, I thought of that,” Bannister growled. “That makes it outer space. And that’s Air Force.”

“Navy too,” the admiral said.

“What about NASA?” an air force captain asked.

Bannister and the admiral both swivelled toward the junior man. “Get him out of here!” the general yelled. “Fuck off!” the admiral added.

“Outer space is nevertheless foreign,” the corpse voice said. “Thus I will have to ask you gentlemen to leave the room, or to release this man to me. Come along, sir,” he told Harry.

“I’ll be damned,” Bannister growled. “Sergeant, block that door!”

“Get my marines!” the Admiral snapped.

Harry tried to shrink down into the seat. What had he got himself into? The military people were bad enough, but that civilian—CIA?—terrified him. Harry could imagine being taken into a windowless room and staying there until he had a long beard. Did the CIA operate that way? Logan didn’t know, but that man looked like he did.

“Stop it!” Harry yelled. Everyone turned to face him. Even the civilian. “I don’t belong to any of you! Neither does my ship! It’s mine, and I’ll decide who I talk to about it.” He willed the ship to come to life but nothing happened. Nothing, and he needed it…

Did he have to be in the seat? No, the doors had closed last night…

“Stick with us, Harry. We’ll take care of you,” General Bannister said soothingly. The admiral moved into place with him, a solid show of military strength. The civilian stared at them coldly.

“Sure,” said Harry. “I’m with you, General. You asked me what I want. I want some coffee. A pot of coffee and a bottle of brandy.” Harry held his aching head in both hands. “A big bottle of brandy, you understand.”

“Get the coffee.” “Brandy?” “He’s nuts.” “A wino.” “So he’s a drunk, what’s that?” They all talked at once.

“Will you get me what I asked for?” Harry looked at Bannister.

“Brandy?”

“Yes.” Harry tried to look like a drunk in need of a shot. It wasn’t hard. He was a drunk in need of a shot.

“And you’ll tell me how…”

“No brandy, no talkee.”

Bannister nodded. “Sergant, get that man what he wants. And move.”

“But sir, in the Pentagon…”

“Goddamit, the Secretary of the Navy keeps brandy,” the admiral said. “Chief, get up there and scrounge me some…”

A minute later a marine came in with a bottle of Courvoisier. The admiral muttered. “Now we have to wait for the goddam coffee.”

Harry felt great. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt better. He drained the last of his fourth cup and looked at the assembly of people, uniformed and civilian. The coffee had brought him full awake, and there was a warm feeling inside him. The office was still jammed, and although somebody had quieted those out in the corridor Logan knew they were still there. No way out.

“Very well, sir,” the cold-eyed civilian said. “You’ve had your drink. Now perhaps you’ll be good enough to give us some explanations?”

“Sure. Just take me to the ship.”

The civilian laughed politely. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Surely you’re not so drunk as that. In any event I assure you we aren’t.”

“Yeah.” Harry stood with an effort. It was harder to walk to the window than he’d thought it would be. Shouldn’t have had the last one, he thought. But I feel so damn good! Just who do these jokers think they are?

The window was closed and it wasn’t obvious how to open it. Maybe it didn’t open at all. Harry gulped hard, stood back from the window, and called his ship.

There was a crash and the saucer protruded several feet into the office. Two burly marines, rifles at ready, leaped in front of their admiral with a do or die look. An air policeman ran screaming out into the corridor. General Bannister put his hand on his pistol.

Harry had time to see that the wreckage of the wall had not come plummeting down, but fell, slowly, to the floor. The saucer waited for him.

It was faced the wrong way. He couldn’t see the air lock at all. And while the marines menaced the ship with their rifles, the civilian sighed, took out a pair of handcuffs, and shouldered his way toward Harry.

Time to go, Harry decided. But how? There was only one way. He leaped at the ship, fell onto the flat part astern, and thought it away from the Pentagon. There was a sudden rush, and Harry was a thousand feet above a toy city of Washington. He looked down, gulped hard, gulped again, but it did no good. He lost the contents of his stomach. Adrenalin flowed. To his horror, Harry was getting cold sober!

BALTIMORE SUN:

FREAK ROBBERY OF

LIQUOR STORE

MANIAC BATTERS DOWN

WALLS TO STEAL BOOZE!

VANCOUVER SUN:

RCMP IN CONFUSION

DAWSON TIMBER HEIR

DEMANDS ACTION

AMERICAN ENGINEER

ACCUSED OF SAUCER

THEFT

Dawson: Wealthy timber heir David McClellan insisted he will take his case to Ottawa if the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will not give him satisfaction. McClellan,exhausted from a trek through the northern bush country, could not be reached for comment, but it is reliably reported that he has asked the Mounties to track down and recover a stolen flying saucer.

TOPEKA STAR:

POLICE HOLD

ROBBERY SUSPECT

REPEAT OF BALTIMORE

LIQUOR STORE BURGLARY

SUSPECT HELD—PLOT

SUSPECTED

Topeka, Kansas: Police are holding George Hemdon, liquor store manager, who was found with the contents of the store’s cash register in a park near RADCLIFFE’S FLASK AND BOTTLE. Hemdon, 29, was employed as the chief clerk and manager in the store, and was found dead drunk two blocks from the wrecked building. Hemdon told police a wild story of a flying saucer which battered down the rear wall of the store, and explained that he had rescued the night’s receipts from the invading saucer—

A prize ten litre flask of Napoleon brandy was also taken and has not been recovered. Store owners say the rare brandy is almost two hundred years old.

LOS ANGELES TIMES:

BEL AIRE MILLIONAIRE

ESCAPES DEATH

ONE-IN-A-MILLION

ACCIDENT

Millionaire playboy Larry Van Cott was nearly killed today when an empty ten litre brandy bottle fell onto his patio from a great height. Van Cott was in the swimming pool only a yard from the point of impact, and was cut by glass flying from the over-sized bottle which totally shattered. FAA officials are investigating.

“Harry Logan, stop messing around with that junk and Get A Job! And no more of these mysterious trips either! You came home drunk!”

“Yes, dear.” Couldn’t she leave him alone? Ever? She had the thousand, wasn’t that enough?

He hadn’t dared tell her what really happened. He’d been barely sober enough to hide the saucer out in the arroyo. He’d been so clever, hiding his liquor in the ship where Ruth couldn’t find it …

And now the ship wouldn’t open the doors for him! “You took all my money. Give me five bucks, please, Ruth. Please.”

“No! You’d just walk down to the liquor store! I know you, Harry Logan!” She stomped off.

Harry held his aching head. The liquor store was five miles away. The ship only worked when he was drunk. And he didn’t have any money…

There was a sound of crunching gravel. A car was coming up the long drive from the highway. Harry looked out to see Air Force blue and froze. Good Lord, they’d traced him!

I give up, Harry thought. He went outside as the car drove up. General Bannister climbed out of the back seat of the sedan. There were two majors with him, silver wings gleaming on their chests. Each of them held a bottle of Christian Brothers brandy, and the general was staggering…

Editor's Introduction to:

’CASTER
by Eric Vinicoff

The Vietnam War was traumatic in ways that previous wars had never been, because it was brought home to our living rooms each evening. The United States lost few engagements, and never lost a battle. We were never defeated in the field.

Instead, we were defeated at home, by an enemy we could not fight.

The memory of defeat stays with us yet. I recently read an essay by a highly intelligent young lady. The essay concerned the works of Robert Heinlein; but in the course of her review, she said, “The last war [Vietnam] looked more like WWI’s man-killing trenches, in which an entire generation was devastated. Read the poets of the era; Robert Graves is still alive.”

This is a popular view of Vietnam, almost universally accepted without challenge or argument. The truth, though, is a bit different.

According to the Statistical Abstract, traffic deaths (for the total population) hover at about 50,000 a year, and suicides have risen from about 14,000 in 1960 to 20,000 in 1980.[1]

In 1960, there were 11.9 million males ages 15—24; 105.2 per 100,000 died by violence in that year, for a total of 12,518 dead in accidents, suicides, and homicides. By 1980 the number of males in that group had grown to 21.4 million, and the death by violence rate had risen to 138.3 per 100,000, so that a total of 29,596 young males died by violence in 1980.

Just under 50,000 died in the entire Vietnam War: about one year’s traffic fatalities. Of course the casualties happened to young men, rather than the population as a whole; on the other hand, the war was not particularly bloody (for Americans) in its early years. Battle deaths in 1961-1964 were negligible (except to those killed): a total of 267 for all four years. Compare this to the 12,000 per year who died of accidents and suicides in that same period.

By 1965, though, battle deaths had reached 1,369, and the number rose steadily until it peaked at 14,589 in 1968. At that time we had 500,000 soldiers in Southeast Asia, so that the death rate among young men in Vietnam was about 27 times that of the population as a whole; definitely frightening for those involved. On the other hand, the war did no more than double the death rate among young men as a class, even in that peak year. In 1968, young men had about equal chances of being killed by being in Southeast Asia, or while driving on the highways in the United States.

By 1969, battle deaths had fallen to 9,414. This is a large number, but by that time, the civilian violent death rate had risen to 130 per hundred thousand, so that nearly 24,000 young men died in the United States that year. After 1969 the battle deaths fell off rapidly; civilian accidental and homicide death rates continued to rise.

Thus: if the War “devastated a generation”, then we continue to devastate each generation through accidental deaths; and if the Vietnam War served no useful purpose—and perhaps, given that we eventually abandoned those we had sworn to protect, it did not—neither do the accidental deaths and suicides.

The war certainly had a terrible effect; but in part that was due to the way it was reported at the time.

Moreover, we can dispel once and for all the myth that the Vietnam War was lost because it wasn’t winnable. By 1970 it was essentially “won” in the sense that the indigenous Southern Viet Cong had ceased to exist. From that moment on, the war was waged entirely by invaders from the North.[2]

Even so, Vietnam did not fall to infiltrators and irregulars. Despite continuous infiltrations from the North, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam continued to hold the country, and in many places life became something like normal.

In 1972 (a year in which the US lost 300 troops in battle deaths, as compared to about 25,000 young males killed in accidents in the United States) the North Vietnam regulars invaded the South; they were beaten back with heavy losses by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam assisted by the US. US assistance was primarily air cavalry and anti-tank air support, plus a great deal of material. By that time we weren’t involved much in the “internal war”, but were assisting the South in enforcing at least some of the provisions of the Geneva agreements.

Vietnam fell in 1975, and it fell to four army corps of regulars, employing more armor than the Wehrmacht sent into France in 1940.[3]

When the North invaded in 1975, the Democratic Congress of the US refused any assistance to South Vietnam. After spending billions on the war, our military aid to South Vietnam was cut to $700 million. By 1974, South Vietnam soldiers were reduced to two hand grenades per man, and there was a drastic cut in ammunition supplies. Tactical communications were cut in half, and a quarter of the Vietnamese air force was grounded. More than a third of their tanks were idled, and bandages and surgical dressings were to be washed and reused.

According to Lawrence O’Brien, these cuts were made just as US analysts had concluded from an analysis of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 that supply-expenditure estimates for modern air-land battles had to be drastically increased.

South Vietnam ran short of supplies, and the nation fell. The Northern forces who swept into Saigon were no more “liberators” or even guerrillas than were the Wehrmacht units which claimed to be “liberating” the Sudetendeutschen of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Ukraine. The story of the boat people, re-education camps, etc., is sufficiently well known that I needn’t tell it.[4]

This may have been, as some have put it, “a senseless foreign adventure that did us as a nation no good.” Still, we should at least be clear about what did happen over there, and phrases like “devastated a generation” applied to casualties which at their peak barely exceeded the casualties due to accidents do little to help our understanding; nor is it useful to continue the myth that our Armed Forces failed us.

The truth is that the nation lost its will. The United States withdrew, the dominoes fell, and the blood baths began. It is no good our telling ourselves anything different.[5]

The conflict between the soldiers who must fight, and the newspeople who tell the story, is ancient. Soldiers hold most correspondents in contempt, and indeed many in Vietnam seemed contemptible, satisfied to get their stories from each other in the Caravelle bar, and so eager for “balance” that they gave equal time to a common murderer and an exhausted allied officer.

Some merely lied. To this day few know that the notorious “tiger cages” of South Vietnam were above-ground structures with bars in place of a ceiling. Three feet above the bars was a corrugated metal roof. The intent of the design was humane: by having a gap be-tween ceiling and roof, ventilation is much increased. The famous photograph of the prisoner in the “tiger cage” was taken by a man who climbed to the top of the wall and hunched himself between the iron barred ceiling and the roof above.

True, some correspondents have been adopted by the military. Ernie Pyle and Maggie Higgins come to mind. Both went where the action was, and both were killed trying to find out the truth. If Marguerite Higgins had lived, the story of South East Asia might have been different.

Eric Vinicoff tells of another war, and another newscaster. One wonders what would have been the effect had something similar happened in 1968. Might history have been different if a major network anchor person had become a serious, dedicated, informed patriot?

’CASTER
by Eric Vinicoff

The circular control deck of FSS Jutland—9,000 tons, registry NX2275, class heavy battle cruiser, designation squadron flagship—was totally enwrapped in the process of final approach. Captain Disad and his senior officers manned the stations lining the low wall, quietly snapping out orders and reports. Displays played colorfully, in weirdly offset shades, in the red illumination. Equipment hums, whirs and clicks cut through the almost forgotten background throb of the ion thrusters.

The two guests sat in observation chairs in the center. They could whisper to each other without disturbing the activity.

Jim Buser was there by virtue of the Federation-wide clout of GalNews. In his late twenties, tall and thin, he sported a blond mustache and the latest shoulder-length hair style. His jumpsuit was a Cardin original. “Do I detect a tang of grimness in the air?” he inquired lightly of his companion.

Admiral Jarold Young frowned. He was an older, greyer than the other, yet still a massively powerful man. “They’re a bit tense.”

“Because of you?”

“In part, perhaps. Not that I would interfere with the Captain in SOP, but to have me staring over his shoulder—”

“Then it’s the mission,” Jim broke in, smiling.

Damn him! The twerp never stopped digging. “The crew has a mission to perform, and is performing it,” he replied tightly.

“But none too happily?”

Captain Disad swiveled toward them, saving the Admiral the necessity of further evasion. “Greenport on the horizon, sir. Permission to land?”

“Permission granted. Carry on, Captain.”

The captain thumbed his com. “All hands, secure for landing. Code yellow. Fire Control, stand by for possible SAM and/or ground action. Out.”

Jim watched in the big overhead holotank. Far below wispy cirrus clouds danced across the dark blue ocean. Ahead lay the green and brown of the northern continent. He took a deep breath. It was a sight he had seen once before, and had at the time planned never to see again. “Who’s likely to be shooting at us?”

The admiral smiled. “Shikaran terrorists. Society of Man. Take your choice.” Even the Provisional Government might be in the mood to take a pot shot or two.

“Quite a tank of sorliks you’ve walked into.”

The admiral saw that one, too: ‘Disgruntled Commander Blasts Council Decision.’ A one-way ticket to the ordinance testing station on Pluto. “Fortunately we have you to unravel the situation and present a picture of brilliant clarity to the worlds.”

“You flatter me.”

The admiral didn’t reply.

The clouds and ocean were rushing by more closely now. Their odd angle in the tank, arguing against the solid stability of the shipboard pseudograv, confused Jim’s stomach.

Admiral Young gave the younger man a searching look. “You have any real idea what it’s going to be like for you here?”

“I should. I was born here, remember?”

“I mean now. And in the near future.”

“You mean when the Hive takes over?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t.” Something crept in behind Jim’s light manner. “I’ll get along just fine. The Treaty of Eridani guarantees the rights of mediamen. The Federation and the Hive are good friends now—as long as we throw them an occasional bone.”

The admiral turned to watch the landing in the tank. He couldn’t trust himself to speak.

The cruiser flipflopped and began its stern descent. A patch of coastline expanded into the scarred concrete plain of a spaceport on the northern edge of a substantial city.

A horn whooped three times. “Touchdown dex five,” the captain chanted. “Four… three… two… one… down!”

The tank went black, then filled with a side view of the spaceport field. The throb died. “Ground stations all,” Captain Disad rapped into his mike field. “Sensors and screens out full. Fire Control, stay sharp. Marines, stand by for special operations. Quartermaster, square away to receive our personnel complement. Out.” He swiveled to face Admiral Young. “Orders, sir?”

“Ready a flitter and pilot for me. And call Major Sung—we’ll pull out as soon as I get back.”

Captain Disad relayed the first order to the Operations Officer, then added, “Calling won’t be necessary, sir. Look.”

Checking the tank, he understood. The low wooden Ranger barracks lined one edge of the field. Doors swung open, and the Sixth Ranger Battalion, the last of the Federation presence on Greenworld, marched out. Their dress whites glistened with silver braid under the afternoon sun. They were putting on a show, but their laser rifles were at the ready and their backpack power units fully charged.

“Grounding lock open,” the Captain ordered. “Ramp down. Marine detachment deploy in honor-guard for-mation.”

“No Provisionals about,” the Operations Officer noted.

“You could hardly expect them to celebrate the occasion,” Jim said.

“I imagine they have other matters to concern them,” Admiral Young replied, ignoring Jim.

Twelve combat-suited marines trotted down the ramp and formed a double row. The long marching column would cross the field in about ten minutes. From the direction of the port facilities, though, a groundcar sped toward the cruiser at a reckless velocity. It skidded to a stop in front of the ramp.

The Com Officer whispered briefly to Captain Disad, who turned to Jim. “The car is for you, Mister Buser. Are you ready to offload?” His expression was one Admiral Young found disturbing—even his senior officers saw only the celebrity status.

“You bet. Thanks for your hospitality, folks. Be sure to catch my ‘casts.’”

“Your luggage will meet you in the lock.” A round of handshakes, then Jim turned and entered the bounce tube. Admiral Young watched him closely as he dropped from sight in a hum of stator rings. And wondered.

The front passenger door of the groundcar was open. Jim slid in beside the driver. In the back seat a second man sat with a shivergun in his lap. They wore dark combat suits sans insignia.

“You with the Provisional Government?” Jim asked.

“Naw,” the gunner drawled. “GalNews signs our chits. We’re to get you to the station whole.”

The groundcar lifted on its air cushion and hurried toward the port’s main gate, twin turbines whining. Jim and his bags tumbled around a bit.

Mercs, he realized. Like carrion gathering at a kill. Mostly vets from the War looking for a situation to exploit.

A scream slanted down from the sky. “Boppers!” the driver shouted, and swerved almost at a right angle. Jim hit the door hard, and a red frame formed around reality.

He peered out the rear window. The cruiser stood stolidly, a tapered white cylinder with spidery landing legs. But tiny figures were hitting the deck near the ramp which was rising back into the hull.

Then the scene disappeared as the groundcar sped through the gate into a wide empty boulevard and headed into the city.

A sharp crack was followed almost immediately by a wind that twisted the groundcar around.

“We’ve got to go back—” he began.

“The hell you say!” the driver snarled. “They don’t pay me to butt into someone else’s action.”

“That’s news back there!”

“Yeah, and we’re gonna live to read about it in the papers!”

Jim gave up and slumped back in his seat. He knew the mere mentality. Maybe the station would have a good line on it when he got there. Some action footage for his first ‘cast would be great.

He wondered if anyone had been killed.

They were entering the downtown area. Few vehicles were about, and those drove quickly. In the shopping districts few people walked the sidewalks—they too hurried. Each block had at least one bombed out building, and many more were boarded up.

The city was under siege, choked by the insensate viciousness of the highly developed political tool called terrorism. The aesgi business districts, naturally, were the worst. He had seen it before. In Northern Ireland. Jewish Palestine. Wolf’s World. Industan. But this was Greenworld, his world, or at least it once had been.

He saw troops of the new Provisional Government patrolling the streets in armored PC’s and squads on foot. The warm blue sky hung a peaceful facade over the city.

The GalNews building was reassuringly unchanged. He remembered the years of working up through that unfeeling structure, the desperate effort, the learning and the mindfuck games that were de rigueur.

The groundcar slid into a garage entrance which opened at its approach. Pulling over to the lift entrances, the air cushion sighed away and the driver opened Jim’s door. “One body, delivered as per.”

Jim climbed out, leaving his bags for the processes that dealt with such things. He stepped into an open lift. The Shikaran, incongruous in his specially cut human business suit, touched a button and they started up. “Misterrr Buserrr?” he rumbled.

“You would be Astawa of Oth? The manager?”

“Yes. You brrring completeness to ourrr minorrr hive. You arrre welcome.”

“Likewise.” Jim stared. It had been six long years. Everywhere else Shikarans—purples—were implacable enemies of humanity. Astawa towered a half meter over him, while the impossibly thin body swayed back and forth. Long arms ended in six opposable claws. The visible skin was closer to violet than purple, and turned almost blue around the close-set eyes and tiny nose in the literally hatchet face. Rimming the hole of a mouth, dozens of tiny chelae were weaving. Something that would pass for bushy black hair covered the narrow ridge of scalp.

“You arrre surrrprrrised to find a Shikarrran in my position?”

“The way things are going around here, I’m surprised you’re not mounted in someone’s trophy room.”

The chelae clicked laughter. “You enjoy harrrd trrruth. Of courrrse the Goverrrnment watches me, but my company watches the Government. I’m doing too good a job to rrremove, and they trrrust me somewhat.”

“Are you a subversive?”

“Not in any of the senses you mean the worrrd.” The lift opened, and Astawa led him down a busy corridor to an office. In the plush inner sanctum Astawa settled behind his desk/console while Jim took a facing seat. GalNews’ trust in the purple told him even more than the Government’s.

“Someone shelled the Jutland as I was leaving. Get anything on it?”

“On the disk. A minorrr incident—no injurrries. We’ve set everrrything up in an editing rrroom so you can assemble what you want forrr yourrr firrrst ‘cast. Scheduled 2000 WDS.”

“Thought I’d start with some kind of chronology of the mess here.”

“We have chrrronology forrr you to sift thrrrough. Tons of chrrronology.”

“Good. I’ve got a lot of news to catch up on.”

“Storrries lingerrr in this building about you from the time beforrre you left this worrrld. About yourrr ability— and yourrr desire to be gone.”

“GalNews thinks I’ll have a special slant on this story. I left because this mudball is about as far from real civilization as you can get. My temporary assignment here doesn’t change a thing.”

“Yet you arrre herrre. And everrry moment is change.” The Shikaran rose. “Let me show you to yourrr suite. You’ll want rrrest and rrrefrrreshment beforrre you go to worrrk.”

Jim followed him down the corridor, wondering. This purple exec would definitely be a rush. Hardly the typical farmer or shopowner, immersed in hive culture, remote and simple in human affairs. Astawa was of a rare but growing type, the product of osmosis between dominant and minority cultures. He could deal with Jim on almost equal terms, while Jim knew as little as any non-expert about Shikarans. The edge was his, and Jim didn’t like it.

“Bopper coming in!” the Scanner Officer shouted.

Captain Disad slapped the EV alarm, and watched the Marines and those Rangers still boarding dive to hug hard surface. “Calculate back to the launch point. Lay it in Fire Control’s board. Fire Control, blow that point to hellangone.”

“Proton batteries, sir?”

“And take out every building in the way? They lob, we lob.”

“Laid in, sir.”

“Launching two intercepts, sir.”

Twin tiny darts shot away from the hull, arching high and north, then diving out of sight.

The shell hit near the base of the cruiser, about twenty meters from the nearest prone figure. The explosion shook the control deck, and grey smoke rolled with the wind. The scattered soldiers were briefly lost from sight.

“Intercepts on course,” the Fire Control reported. A column of smoke climbed in the north.

The admiral rose from his chair. “Good work, Captain. Carry on.”

“Sir, won’t you please take an escort?”

“Can’t. Bad form—we’re officially on good terms with the Provisional Government. But stay tight on my command frequency just in case.” He ducked into the bounce tube.

Five minutes later a vehicle bay in the cruiser’s flank opened, and out flew the flattened cigar shape of a flitter.

Admiral Young was alone in the rear seat, isolated from the pilot by a glassite pane. “ETA twelve minutes, sir,” the pilot said over the com. “We’re cleared for entry.”

The admiral watched through a port as they flew low southeast, over wooded foothills. Valleys cradled farms abundant with wheat, corn and fruit trees. Cow herds grazed on rich grass, and streams flowed down from the mountain range they were approaching.

So unlike Earth. So much hope for the future. Only it had become a piece in a game whose players cared little about such things.

The mountain pass was thick with purple-leaved trees like the great conifers of the Pacific Northwest. But they quickly dwindled as the flitter descended into high desert. It slanted toward a bright jewel in the bare brown land. The jewel grew into a smaller version of the spaceport they had just left. It was new, raw and half-completed. The rim G/A intercept batteries marked it as a military base, the home of the Provisional Government’s tiny space command.

The grey field was conspicuously empty. Every converted freighter and shuttle was on patrol, awaiting the expected Hive fleet. And he knew where Marsailles and Antares, their only interstellar ships, were.

The pilot received final clearance, and landed. A VIP groundcar picked the admiral up and drove him to the Admin Building. Minutes later, far below the surface level, he was ushered into a small meeting room. Five men and two women looked up at him with unfriendly expressions.

He understood. The messenger was once more to be blamed for the message.

“Have a seat, Admiral,” one of the men said.

“Thank you, Mister President.” He took the only empty seat around the long table.

The Greenworlders were tanned dark, and carried the physiques of strenuous youths into middle age. They had been successful farmers, ranchers, industrialists and merchants; successful because they had built up their businesses. Now they were the planetary Council, amateur statesmen and warriors.

“Let’s make this short,” the President said. “Name’s Hugh Marlowe, as you seem to know. You’re Admiral Young. You have a message for us?”

“Yes.”

“We have a lot of work leaning on us, Admiral.”

The admiral laid a large envelope on the table and slid it over to the President. “From the Federation Executive, sir.”

President Marlowe opened it and quickly scanned the enclosed sheet. Some of the ruddiness drained from his face. “To see it in cold print, friends, somehow makes it worse.”

“It’s what we expected,” one of the women said rather than asked.

He nodded. “No treaty or mutual defense pact will be considered. Nor will the Federation guarantee our loans to buy space defense arms.”

Another man slammed a meaty fist on the table. “It’s a damned trade: us for a few more years of peace!”

“It’s genocide!” a third added.

“The Executive’s relocation offer still stands,” Admiral Young said, tight-lipped.

“Thanks a whole hell of a lot!” snapped the President. “Ship two million of us to some War burn-off like Legrange or New China inside your new borders? Can we farm slag? Can we drink acid? This is our home. We plan to keep it.”

“How? Your defenses are no match for a Hive invasion force. And we know about your efforts to buy arms on the free worlds—your two freighters are sitting on Eridani right now. But no one will extend you the credit you need—you won’t last long enough to repay the loans.”

The atmosphere around the table turned glacial.

“A relocation fleet—”

“You’ve delivered your message, Admiral,” the President cut in. “I suggest you get the last of your yellowbacks off-planet. Could be some fighting here soon, and we wouldn’t want to upset your delicate constitutions.”

Admiral Young bit off a reply, rose and walked out.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the worlds. This is Jim Buser with a special on-the-scene report from Tau Ceti HI, notorious Greenworld, in the disputed interface between the Federation and the Shikaran Hive.

“This paradise of blue sky, pure air, sparkling seas and lush vegetation has been the cause of conflict since 2111, when a coalition of dissident groups from Earth colonized it. Shikaran colonists began arriving on the South Continent at the same time.

“Then came the War, and its stalemate ending as both sides recoiled in horror from the scale of destruction they had wrought. Greenworld became de facto Federation territory.

“But the Hive concept of completeness drives it to incorporate Greenworld’s Shikarans more strongly than we humans can understand. While we recover our strength and courage very slowly…”

The Black Hole was the bar/restaurant atop the GalNews building. Mediamen being what they were, it was their social hub. Jim naturally gravitated there after scrapping his makeup.

He wandered around, drink in hand, renewing a few old acquaintances and making some new ones. About fifty people were crammed in the small noisy room— with the seige-state outside, business was booming. He went through the motions, knowing it was the pro move, feeling nothing.

Then he saw the corner booth where a lone occupant had all sorts of elbow room in which to drink. He sauntered over and slid in next to Astawa. “Evening.”

“Good evening, Jim.” Astawa sucked in a gulp from his dark glass. “I enjoyed yourrr ‘cast.”

“Thanks. Purely warmup—wait until I find the right angle.”

“You take yourrr gift casually.”

“Gift? I sweated bricks learning to do what I do.”

“Otherrrs have sweated brrricks. But therrre arrre few who can make billions listen, underrrstand and believe.”

“You think I have some kind of psi power or something?”

Astawa laughed. “Nothing so obvious, orrr it would be known. Forrrtunately you arrre a man without causes.”

“I’m a self-contained cause. What are you drinking?”

“Coke.”

It figured. The Shikaran diet consisted of insects and starchy plants. Sugar acted as an intoxicant.

“Come here often?” Jim asked.

“No. It upsets the employees. But I came tonight because I knew you would.”

That sent Jim’s thoughts on a new tack. Shikarans holding down jobs in the human society normally returned to their hives before dark, obeying vestigial instinct. “You live in the building?”

“I have to.”

“You eat here?”

Astawa was good—he barely flinched. Shikarans never discussed eating in any but euphemistic terms. “Yes. Would you carrre to join me this evening?”

Jim smiled. It was a strong reposte. Few humans could stand the sight of those chelae shovelling in food.

“You live here. What about your hive?”

“I was of Oth, a hive rrrooted deeply in time and prrride. But I chose this. I am aesgi.”

Outcast. Cripple. Never again to couple ecstatically with the nonsentient queen and beget children. Only insanity or great need could drive a Shikaran aesgi. Jim knew the need. He shared it, or had once.

“You arrre also alone.”

Jim downed his drink. “Lay off the human psychology. You aren’t built for it.”

“What does one do when his drrream dies?”

“I wouldn’t know. Or care.”

“Cynicism rrreplaces wonderrr. And all you knew is gone.”

Jim realized abruptly he was talking to a very drunk Shikaran. “You’d like to think we’re the same. Why? What’s your dream?”

“This worrrld we stand on. What it is and could be. But won’t.”

“Lots of your compeers are rooting for the Hive.”

“They don’t know yet.”

“What?”

“That they too arrre aesgi.”

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen of the worlds, is Independence Day on Greenworld. The Federation protectorate actually ended two days ago with the departure of the last Rangers, but tonight President Marlowe went on worldwide holovision to announce the Provisional Government’s assumption of sovereignty. With him appeared Gomla of the great industrial Gla hive, representing the Shikaran minority in the planetary Assembly.

“The Federation has yet to recognize the new government, while the Hive has sent a communique reasserting its old claim to Greenworld. Intelligence reports indicate a large fleet in transit, and all armed forces are on alert.

“Shikaran and human extremists continue to wage vicious guerrilla warfare against the government. Even as I speak, lonely farms and rural hives are aflame. But elsewhere, all over the planet, impromptu celebrations are happening. Here in the capital, as you can see, thousands are risking the danger to revel in heavily guarded Park Square.

“Is this gallantry—some would call it perversity—a product of mere ignorance? Don’t say that to these people. They know what they fight for. And they won’t admit the certainty of defeat…”

Outside the Tau Ceti system, at the edge of the newly shrunken Federation interface, FSS Jutland and her seven squadron mates were strung out in a line, on patrol, observing the military situation.

Admiral Young sat in the back of the darkened wardroom, with about thirty of Jutland’s off-watch officers, staring into a big holotank. The GalNews daily wrapup was beamed to the squadron by the Armed Forces Network. During the months the squadron had hovered at the interface it had become a tradition. But, as Mister Buser’s voice and image faded out, he worried. The Greenworld ‘casts were like vinegar on baking soda. The officers filed out slowly and silently. Too much so.

He thought he was alone, but he wasn’t. Captain Disad settled precisely into the chair next to his. “Jerry,” he said softly, “how long has it been since a Federation crew mutinied?”

The word did not shock him, though it was meant to. “Is it that bad?”

“On the other ships too, from what I hear.”

“Think we should black the ‘casts out for the duration?”

“No—that might just precipitate what we’re trying to avoid. Our crews aren’t cannon fodder. We start playing games with them, and we’ll have trouble for sure. Furthermore this is peacetime and it would be illegal. Furthermore, dammit, we all have a right to know.”

The admiral nodded. “You know the drill then. Senior officers crack down. Constant drill. No one gets a spare minute to think. I’ll com the other captains.”

“Yes, sir. But the crunch will come when the Hive attacks Greenworld. You know what that’ll be like for us.”

“Okay, our mission stinks. Next election we can vote our displeasure. But we’re in the business of administering policy, not making it.”

“Granting Greenworld its independence—sounds better than surrender. Almost noble.” Captain Disad’s expression was carefully neutral. “You feel no pity for those people?”

“Dammit, what I feel is nobody’s concern but my own! I don’t create these impossible messes—I just do what I’m told.”

“You sound like a tired old man, Jerry.”

“Forty-nine, going on rigor mortis.”

“But not as old and tired as you’d like to think. Not enough so you can slide into autopilot.”

The admiral was quiet for a long time. “Don’t push it any farther. I’d hate like hell to lose you.”

“Remember the Orion during the Suicide Sortie? You ignored intelligence reports and ran the purple’s flank. Otherwise we might never have targeted the queenship.”

Admiral Young rose and walked to the door, where he turned back to the Captain. “You remember the War? Good. Remember the devastation, the gigadeaths. Remember the economic collapse. Remember the disease and fear. Never again. That’s our duty. No matter what it requires of us. Good night.”

“Society of Man terrorists assassinated the Olwa Hive representative to the South Continent House of Landsmen today. The Government has moved two militia units to Lynchfield to hunt the killer packs that hide in the badlands. Olwa separatists are urging a work stoppage at its bauxite mines.

“Here in Greenport, two more bombings. An aesgi soft drink bottling plant and the local headquarters of the Bank of Tokyo were heavily damaged.

“The last of the Red Cross refugee ships departed for New Switzerland today, less than half full.

“A spokesman for the Government confirmed that Shikaran scout ships have been detected probing the edges of the system. The long expected assault should begin within the next seventy-two hours. Everyone knows it. You notice the frequent looks skyward. Their fate will be decided in high orbit…”

Jim was night people, and rose after eleven AM whenever possible. Here it was well after noon, and he was only just leaving a hearty breakfast in his suite for the editing room. Pills held an otherwise murderous hangover at bay; his ethanol intake was above normal, and he didn’t like it. Control was all he had. Control kept him on top.

“Good afternoon, Jim.”

He froze, then turned slowly. “How do you arrange these accidental meetings?”

He and Astawa were alone in the corridor. The purple’s chelae twitched. “I verrry much enjoyed yourrr ‘cast last night. It rrrang of sincerity.”

“That’s what I get paid for.”

“You extoll Grrreenworrrld’s courrrage and deterrrmination as though you sharrred them.”

“Want to buy some swamp real estate? What kind of psych job are you trying to run?”

“My job involves prrrotecting GalNews prrroperrrty— including yourrr valuable self. The infection of parrrtisanship would destrrroy yourrr crrredibility as a ’casterrr.”

“You dance like an Aldabaran lighthunter.”

“You exterrrnalize well.”

Jim gave up, bid a curt farewell and continued on his way.

The editing room was dimly red-lit, small and almost entirely filled by a horseshoe console. He settled into the padded chair. His hands moved across the console with practiced ease.

The redness kicked out.

By touch he punched in a scan program for the remote dailies. Night vanished, and he was skimming low over ripe grain fields toward a burning homestead. A voice began, “At six oh five WST raiders put the torch to the two thousand acre holding of Raf and Allison Somers—”

He had been invisible behind such words himself. The young expendable reporters gathered data and footage, vying to attract favorable attention upstairs, hating the sanctified ’casters who risked no danger worse than a sprained button-pushing finger.

“The entire household died defending the main house, along with three of the—” His attention strayed from CU’s of charred bodies. Carnage was a universal constant. He looked elsewhere. The cherry orchard laden with tiny white flowers. Birds wheeling over the sun-bright fields, red dabs against blue. An old piebald mare wandering disconsolately around the ruins.

Abruptly he moved on.

Scene after scene. Story after story. He listened with one ear, and watched with one eye. Beneath the topicality was something he had forgotten.

He saw hives, both traditionally agricultural and industrial, instinctive concentric circles of white ceramic interspersed with fields. Most were near human towns or holdings. Unlike the Hive they had forsaken the law of self-sufficiency and traded among themselves and with the humans. Not being part of the greater Hive, their smallness gave them little economic choice other than reverting to primitiveness, but contact with human culture had made it culturally possible. Greenworld had a single interdependent economy.

He saw holdings, mines and factories being worked. Childhood memories of the small South Continent ranch returned unsummoned. He had hated it, and at the first opportunity had run away to Greenport. Years later one of the first death squad attacks had left him kinless.

He saw a freight skimmer crossing wine-dark ocean. Children on schoolyard grass. Wooden towns. The city’s raw metal certainty. It had all seemed unbearably provincial in the glare of the glittering meccas of the Federation worlds. But now he knew the truth behind the holovision dreams; the mashed, polluted, decadent existence. The madness of too many rats in a maze. It would be a long time before Greenworld was like that— maybe never if the tacit understanding between the species to keep numbers proportional could be used as an interspecies lever to keep numbers down.

The stories were mostly of fear and war. But he saw with other sight. He saw what gave Greenworld the will to resist, a basic self-knowledge to which sophistication and artifice were anathema.

He shook himself. Hail Greenworld! Next he would break out in a rousing chorus of ‘Home Sweet Home.’ He snickered at himself as he set up the console for selection and assembly. It rang sharply off the walls.

“Inflation, the bride of all wartime economies, continues to soar. The Government today ordered another round of tax increases, and the demand for wage and price controls grows daily. Moreover the economy continues to suffer from the de facto interstellar trade embargo caused by fear of the Hive fleet.

“Militia leaders in Homeward Valley announced the capture of the Da Fue, one of the largest of the Shikaran guerrilla gangs, in a morning raid on its hidden camp. Militia losses were reported at nine dead, seventeen wounded.

“President Marlowe has gone on global holovision to announce the strategy in case of a Shikaran occupation. Civilians are to cooperate with the invaders, and offer only passive resistance. Meanwhile army and militia units will take up prepared secret positions in the wild and carry on guerrilla operations. He strongly urged all citizens to recall the destruction of entire worlds during the War…”

Admiral Young felt the control deck around him; active, taut. But his eyes, like all those free to do so, stared into the big tank.

A pale white sheet simulated the Greenworld/Federation interface. The white squadron dots were gathered in a tight line just on the Federation side. But the focus of attention lay in the Greenworld zone. Another white dot was moving with aching slowness toward the interface, with a bright red dot closing from behind.

“Intercept in three minutes, sir,” the Scanner Officer reported. “Intercept point still calculates at two million klicks shy of the line.”

Captain Disad turned to the admiral.

“Com that triple-be-damned captain again and tell him to heave to,” the admiral said.

The captain relayed the order, but shook his head. “He is Swiss, sir. He won’t let a foreign power force a boarding.”

“He’s risking his crew’s lives, and the lives of the refugees too, dammit!” Admiral Young was sweating.

Captain Disad shrugged.

“It’s definitely a Shikaran heavy cruiser, sir,” the Scanner Officer reported. “Dau Hive.”

The admiral remembered the Dau fleet from the War. Very good, and like all Shikaran warhives, it was very literal about orders. Which in this case were apparently to assert the Shikaran territorial claim by inspecting any ships traversing it.

“The Geneva has responded, sir,” the Com Officer said. “It’s a Federation vessel in the space of a friendly power, and it won’t yield to a hostile threat. It demands the protection of the Federation.”

Every officer in the compartment looked to the admiral.

“He knows we can’t intervene beyond the interface,” the admiral said levelly. “Remind him, and tell him to heave to. That’s a military emergency order.”

“Intercept in ninety seconds, sir.”

“The purple just fired a warning shot, sir!”

“It wouldn’t actually take out a Red Cross ship, would it, sir?” an officer asked Captain Disad.

“The hell it wouldn’t.”

One of the lined-up white dots began to move toward the interface.

“FSS Manila Bay, sir!” shouted the Com Officer. “Captain O’Brien reports she will escort the refugee ship to the interface!”

And start the next war! The admiral switched on his mike. “Return to position, O’Brien! This is Admiral Young! Out!”

The dot kept accelerating.

“Intercept in sixty seconds, sir.”

“Return to position! I know what you think you’re doing, but it’ll harm more than help! I can’t let you cross the interface! Out!”

The dot was very near the pale sheet, and still accelerating.

He left the mike open, and turned to the Fire Control Officer. “Arm forward proton batteries. If Manila Bay crosses the interface, target on it and fire.”

Even Captain Disad stared at him in horror.

“Intercept in thirty seconds, sir.”

Admiral Young couldn’t breathe. He wondered if the Jutland would carry out the order he had just given.

Suddenly the white dot representing the Manila Bay decelerated sharply and curved away from the sheet.

The red dot was almost fused with the other, fleeing, white one.

“The purple’s firing, sir!”

Abruptly the red dot was alone on its side of the sheet.

For long seconds equipment sounds dominated. Then the admiral turned to Captain Disad. “Raise the purple. Inform him it’s our fervent desire that he stray for even a second across the interface. If he does—which he won’t—welcome him with every battery and torp in the squadron.”

He rose and moved slowly to the bounce tube. He felt the eyes at his back like spears. Over his shoulder he added an order that only an admiral could give: “Erase all references to Manila Bay’s role in this incident from the log. Carry on.”

“A Government spokesman confirmed the rampant rumors; the Shikaran invasion fleet has taken up a globular formation beyond the moons. A communique from it has demanded an orderly transfer of authority. The Government promptly replied in the negative. Greenworld is now under seige.

“The fleet is reported to be the largest force gathered since the War; ninety transports carrying the occupation hives, and twenty-four cruisers. The size is surprising, diverting key units from the Federation interface. But it shows an appreciation of the determination of their foe.

“There have been reported demands for the Government fleet of six converted interplanetary freighters to launch a surprise attack. But Admiral Maple has reportedly decided to use them in defensive support against the expected purple attack on Orbital Command.

“Greenworld’s satellite defense system is a relic of the War, 144 unmanned remotes armed with a Korchnoi CSV proton battery each, in spaced orbits 24,000 klicks above the surface. Orbital Command lies in geosynchronous orbit above the equator. A concerted purple attack can beat down Orbital Command’s defenses, and without its direction the remotes can be outwitted and destroyed. Then the planet will lie naked below.

“While the Federation watches…”

Jim felt like an idiot walking along the sidewalk in his short-sleeved shirt. The ignorance of one who spent most of his time in artificial environments. The few pedestrians about in the rain gave him curious looks. He was thoroughly soaked, but after the initial discomfort it didn’t bother him much. The big drops were warm and gentle. He stuck out his tongue to taste them as he used to several lives ago.

Ahead the vault-like entrance undissolved from the vagueness of evening under clouds. He took a last long look over his shoulder, then ascended the wide steps to the doors.

A guard’s face appeared in the small holotank. “Yah?”

“It’s Jim Buser. Open up.”

That snapped him awake, as Jim had known it would. “Don’t move, sir! Just be a minute!”

It was considerably less, and when the alloy slab swung open a full squad of guards jumped out to ‘escort’ him in. Minutes later he entered Astawa’s office alone. The purple was installed behind his desk, but his chelae writhed in agitation.

Jim went over to the wall bar and poured a double scotch. “Care for a coke? Your inscrutability is slipping.”

“No, thank you.”

Jim settled into a chair. “Okay, erupt.”

“If you wished to take an excurrrsion, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m valuable property, remember. Would you have let me?”

“With prrroperrr securrrity, yes.”

“I didn’t want a paramilitary mission, just a stroll.”

“Forrr what purrrpose?”

“To smell the air.”

“If that’s what you humans call poetic communication, I find it bemusing.”

“Tough shit.”

Astawa leaned forward. “Forrr my rrrecorrrds, would you mind telling me how you left without my knowledge?”

“Not at all. I stole a day worker’s ident card. He looked enough like me to get me by the entrance guards with the five PM herd.” ‘Stole’ sounded better than ‘rented.’

“You disturrrb me,” Astawa rumbled.

“Por qua?”

“My superrriorrrs have had much to say to me lately. The rrratings on yourrr ’casts arrre phenomenal. But they arrre stirrring, urrr, turrrbulant rrreactions frrrom official sourrrces.”

“Hardly surprising. BFD.”

“It has been suggested that you, urrr, rrreduce the intensity of yourrr ’casts.”

Jim took a deep breath. “It took me many years of eating corporate feces to reach the level where no one tells me how to do my job. I don’t need GalNews—I can get work anywhere.”

“Of courrrse. But rrrememberrr: If you become blatant they’ll pull yourrr plug.”

“When have I ever been blatant? By the way, are the military shuttles still running up to Orbital Command?”

“Yes. They arrre prrrotected by the satellites forrr now.”

“Can you swing me a ride up there? I want to do some special ’casts from the trenches.”

Astawa was silent for many seconds. “Technically it prrresents little difficulty. The Goverrrnment would apprrreciate the prrropaganda value. But of courrrse I can’t allow it.”

“Think of the ratings. Also think of your career if you seriously annoy me.”

“You must know it’s extrrremely unlikely Orrrbital Command will surrrvive the coming attack. If I werrre to lose you, GalNews would deal even more harrrshly with me.”

“You just might be surprised about that.”

“Why do you want to die?”

“I plan on getting out before the blowup.”

“You may not be able to.”

“Want to put down some action on it? I’m a survivor type.”

“I wonderrr if you’rrre lying just to me orrr to yourrrself as well.”

“Huh?”

“Yourrr notion indicates suicidal tendencies. It saddens me to see atavistic guilt erase a grrreat gift.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Perrrhaps. Perrrhaps I underrrstand neitherrr one of us. Arrre you surrre you want to do this?”

“Yeah.”

“Then perrrhaps you arrre called. I’ll arrrange it. Afterrr I have that coke.”

“Orbital Command looks like a produce can left spinning in space after some cosmic picnic. Ninety-six meters long and forty-five in diameter, it looks tiny compared to the six freighter/warships poised around it.

“Yet in reality the giants are all-but-toothless, while Orbital Command carries a potent sting: a laser fusion reactor that powers a proton battery at each end. In addition there are two torp launchers, and four electrostatic accelerator batteries for anti-torp defense.

“Normally a thirty-eight person crew operates in three shifts, but in view of the near-certainty of destruction, only two skeleton crews remain. They are all volunteers.

“From the ports space appears empty and safe, but Admiral Maple tells me the Shikarans are plain in his scopes. Four cruisers are guarding the distant waiting transports. The remaining twenty have formed an attack wedge and are beginning to close…”

The ceiling glowed dull orange. Hidden speakers uttered Dagorland tribal tones—great hollow notes that couldn’t quite be called music but served a similar purpose. Admiral Young lay on his metal bunk in the cabin that was his only home, laminated with the accumulation of three decades in space.

What would a real home be like? Security? A place to retreat to? This wasn’t it. The bulkheads were transparent to the wavelengths of tension radiating from the ship around him. Unable to hide all these years, he had calloused.

But not enough.

He stood his watches stoically, the hatred of his crew an open festering wound. But better they should hate him than themselves.

His stomach was in constant fury. The pills would hold him together. But the pain was just background static for guilt, guilt amplified by the loneliness of command. His existence was all small, tight compartments and narrow corridors, like the ships he commanded.

Buser and his damned ’casts! Under the deceptive objectivity the man constantly intimated things that made the admiral want to yell, to argue, to punch out the holovision tank. Things he pushed out of his mind but that kept bobbing back.

There was an out, maybe. Technically speaking.

Only it had a toll gate across it. An old man with a grinning skull-face stood in the shadows, bone hand extended palm up.

“How much?” the admiral whispered over and over into the diffuse orangeness.

Over and over the grating jaws replied.

Everything. Not just the flesh. The arate too. The carefully sculpted totem of a life of service. His afterlife. What remained would be a black thing, gnawing at his rest.

A chime sounded. He rolled over and slapped the com button. “Yes?”

Captain Disad’s voice filled the cabin. “The purple fleet is moving on Orbital Command, sir. This looks like it.”

“I’ll be right up.”

“This is Jim Buser, with a special report I quite frankly didn’t expect to be making, from my present location.

“Farmers, townspeople, purples in their hives—throughout the night hemisphere Greenworlders stood under the night sky and watched the new lights flickering there.

“The Hive attack came sooner than expected, but Admiral Maple was prepared with a strategy long-planned. A desperate strategy.

“Normally the defense satellites are spaced evenly to protect every part of the world. But he gambled on the standard attack technique of eliminating Orbital Command first. Under the guise of inspection missions, he had his orbital tenders replace many of the distant satellites with mockups and bring the real ones back. As the Hive cruisers closed in, they were placed in picket positions around Orbital Command.

“Out to meet the attack wedge moved the six Greenworld ships in a spear formation. Sailing into the brunt of the Hive formation was also unconventional, but the purples recovered and quickly annihilated the two lead ships. This was part of the admiral’s plan—both ships were crewless automatics, and in dying filled the immediate volume with cargo bays of radar jinglejangles. Into the confusion accelerated the remaining ships. Purple fire destroyed one, but three managed to ram and die with Hive cruisers. A grim trade, but one that Admiral Maple and the three skeleton crews were willing to make.

“So only seventeen cruisers assaulted Orbital Command. They had accurate calculations of its firepower, and expected to overrun it. But their expectations were rudely disappointed. They met a wall of fire augmented by the satellites. Only eleven cruisers were able to withdraw after the furious four minute battle.

“Orbital Command suffered damage, but is still in business. The picket satellites have been returned to their proper orbits so the purples can’t exploit that weakness.

“It’s a great victory—one that should remind the Federation of its own great victories long ago; the Last Defense, Pollock’s Out and so on. Here aboard Orbital Command, though, there is little hope. The tricks saved them from only the first attack. The cruisers will return soon. And circumspectly. There can be no more surprises…”

Jim leaped out of his bunk at the raucous code-red alarm. He was fully dressed—everyone aboard slept that way during a code yellow, and looked and smelled it. He ran along empty corridors, and jumped into a bounce tube that shot him up to the control deck sheltered in the station’s core.

He stepped diffidently into the CD, slid into his observation chair, buckled in and switched on his holocorder. The crew was already at its duty posts. Four hunched over fire control boards, their heads lost in sensor cones. Four were likewise engrossed in systems maintenance and repair boards. Two were at the satellite consoles. One was doing double duty covering the com and scanner systems. In the middle of this cramped activity paced Admiral Maple. He was barely thirty, and his crew younger still, but they didn’t look young any more.

The new uniforms had been junked for T-shirts and pants. Three months ago they had been crewing aboard the freighters which no longer existed.

Jim kept his mouth shut. His position was precarious. They could talk to him—the admiral was reasonably loquacious in his few free moments. But his presence wasn’t universally acclaimed, and if he intruded at the wrong time it was conceivable that he might be shot out of hand. It was that kind of situation.

The admiral walked over. His expression was, as always, controlled. “You should have taken the last shuttle down.”

“I notice you didn’t have me put off.”

“Motivations are pretty murky around here right now.”

“Like mine, for example?” Jim chuckled. “Maybe I succumbed to the hypnotic allure of my own words. I know a guy who thinks I’m suicidal. Or maybe I’m a hero, like you and your crew.”

Admiral Maple gestured toward the busy men and women. “After we’ve filtered through you, we become heroes. Jane there shoots syntho-morph so her hands don’t shake. Ali and Gertrude are having an affair unappreciated by either’s spouse. Joe hates aliens. Me, I’m a classic manic-depressive.”

“You’re all here.”

“Yes, there is that, isn’t there.”

“T-minus-thirty seconds to range!” the Scanner Officer shouted.

Jim watched himself vanish instantly from the admiral’s thoughts as the latter returned to his command chair in a single stride and strapped in. “Battle stations! Depressurization alert—evacuate Levels A, B and C. E-systems in. Straps tight.”

So it began. As always, Jim had trouble tuning into the reality of it. He had seen all sorts of battles, all sorts of death. But here were no guns, no soldiers, no blood. Just lights moving in tanks. Digital readouts. Displays. From such he had to decipher what was happening.

What little fear that broke through the intellectual insulation was muted by the knowledge that here there would be no pain, just lights out; anger dominated. But both feelings went on the back burner for the duration. He had work to do.

He eyed the main tank. Eleven red dots were swinging toward a white dot on a parabolic course. They apparently planned to fire en passant, repeat as needed.

“Fire Control, your circuits override. Fire at will. Scanner priority feeds to the war boards.”

“Repair drones dispersed and standing by.”

“Core tight. Everything else is vacuum—gonna be a hell of a mess in the mess.”

“Lead target entering range.”

Vector lines appeared in the smaller tanks as the proton batteries began firing at their twelve second minimum cycle. Recoils jolted the compartment, making hollow thumping sounds. Torp launches were indicated in the tanks by blue dots moving in rapid lines.

Torps and proton beams were likewise targeting on them from the purples. ES guns were picking off the torps. The beams were either missing due to the extreme range or—

KRUUUUUMP! The straps almost cut him into segments. Alloy groaned under the application of the tinsnips of hell. His eyes closed, then opened in surprise that they were still able to.

The crew was battered and bloody but woozily still at work. Damage reports were flying around the CD.

One of the red dots went out, and the Fire Control crew cheered. Then the CD danced again. The air took on an acrid tang.

Several boards went dead, and the rest were covered with red lights. The red dots were swinging away from the white one.

“Outer hull integrity is zilch.”

“Losing coolant from EMZ2!”

“Patch it.”

“With what? Most of my drones are out!”

“Use what you have. Unless you want the heat turned way up in here.”

“The purples are vectoring into an ellipse. They’ll be back in one minute sixteen.”

“Fire Control report!”

“Proton Batteries B and D down. ES coverage out from nine to eleven o’clock. No torps left in Launcher Two. Forty-six percent underpower. Target computations slowed by point two—insufficient antennae. Other than that, we’re in lousy shape.”

“Patch and pray.”

Repair and regrouping went on frantically, but defeat hung over every word and action. Orbital Command had little left with which to fight. The next pass would be the last.

“Stand by. Here they come.”

Admiral Young slouched in his command chair, loose but ready. He was finally on top of the situation. Over the humps. Course laid in. The officers working around him hid behind masks, but he saw every thought. Captain Disad’s nervousness was laid bare.

“Eleven cruisers are definitely on the move, sir,” the Scanner Officer reported. “Looks like a more cautious tangent attack plan.”

“Squadron units requesting status updates, sir?” called out the Com Officer.

“Continue code yellow.”

Someone muttered something. Captain Disad took a long look around the control deck, then rose from his chair. His gaze, now firm, locked with the admiral’s.

Admiral Young felt good—which surprised the hell out of him. He didn’t even hold it against the crew. He understood.

“Sit down, Captain.”

Everyone who could turned to stare. All were wearing sidearms. So was he, but if it came to that it wouldn’t matter.

The captain froze where he was, fighting his own battle.

Admiral Young casually touched his com button and called for an all-ships channel. “This is Admiral Young. Code red. Battle stations. Out.”

Uncertainty punctured the tension in the compartment. Captain Disad slid back into his chair.

Alarms whooped faintly from other parts of the ship. The red bells hadn’t rung in earnest since the War. Champagne sparkling filled him, and the last vestigial doubts were gone.

“Orders, sir?” Captain Disad asked.

He spoke into the com as well. “All captains. I’m assuming emergency command responsibility under Section 2117A general regs. Record for future official proceedings. Reprogram all identity transponders for fictitious names—be imaginative. Com silence except for battle orders.” A thin disguise that would fool no one, but better than nothing.

He turned to the captain. “Plot and lay in an attack course.”

“We, er, have one loaded, sir.”

“I thought you might. See if you can read my mind some more. Where do we hit?”

The crew was joyously at work even as Captain Disad answered. “One needs nothing but memory, sir. Who was your exec during the raid on Abruzzi?”

The admiral smiled. “It’s good to be back in the realm of military strategy. Proceed.”

FSS Jutland entered tachyon state at the same instant as its squadron mates. They crossed the interface and accelerated toward the solar system. Anxious minutes passed. They cheered as Orbital Command survived the first pass, knowing they would arrive in time. They decelerated at maximum thrust into the system, then shunted back to normal space drive. Not toward Orbital Command, but toward the Hive transports and their escorts.

“They know we’re here,” the admiral muttered. “Things should start happening.”

“Keep us between the transports and the near edge of the solar tachyon-negative zone,” Captain Disad cautioned the Helm Officer. “They may try to run for it.”

But the slow, lightly armed transports realized they were trapped. They maneuvered into a globular defensive formation, while the four cruiser escorts accelerated toward the squadron. Meanwhile the ten cruisers broke off their attack on Orbital Command and vectored out to intercept.

“The main force is six minutes nine away, sir,” Captain Disad reported. “If we haven’t succeeded by then— well, fourteen to eight aren’t odds to celebrate.”

The admiral nodded. The tension and fear in the compartment were old beloved companions. Sweat was a coolness on his brow. He called again for an all-ships channel. “Captains. This is Admiral Young. Tighten up the formation. We’re going through. No straying, no matter how tempting the target opportunity. Out.”

FSS Anctium took the point—he ached to be there himself, but flagships weren’t allowed to indulge in heroics. The four purples formed a barrier directly ahead.

“Are they going to ram us?” an officer wondered aloud.

It didn’t come to that. The purples began retreating, and the squadron closed the gap with increasing slowness. “So they want a running fire fight,” the admiral said.

“Entering target range!” the Scanner Officer reported.

“All ships, fire at will.”

The twelve warships raced through space virtually side-by-side, bringing all weapons to bear. Proton salvos shook the control deck. Orders and reports flew back and forth in hushed tones. He watched in the big tank, leaving to Captain Disad the direction of Jutland’s efforts. He had laid in the course. Now he could only watch, knowing each moment might turn off his own personal universe. God forgive him, how he loved it!

Proton beams sought targets. ES guns strove to intercept torps in time. There could be no evasive maneuvering— the cruisers slugged it out. And since the squadron outgunned the purples two to one, when the slugging stopped, six Federation cruisers continued alone. FSS Anctium and FSS Trans-Jupiter would answer no more squadron musters. FSS Manila Bay took the point.

They reached the transports, and englobed them just beyond maximum range. “Main force intersect in two minutes six, sir.”

“Open a channel to their commander,” the admiral ordered. This was the crux.

“Go ahead, sir.”

“Attention, hivelord of the Dau. Halt at once, or we will annihilate all of the transports—including most particularly your queenship. Out.”

The queen had to be aboard one of the transports. They wouldn’t have left her behind on such an apparently safe mission, nor would she have been risked in the fighting. Destruction of the queenship meant the death of the hive—the worst fate imaginable for any Shikaran. Of course, if he was wrong it would be an absolute disaster. But no time to think of that now.

The ten cruisers decelerated to a dead stop relative to the squadron.

“Very good. Now abandon your ships and set them to self-destruct. Rejoin your transports in your lifeboats. Out,”

A replying message came from one of the cruisers. “You ask too much. We will not put ourrr continuity in yourrr hands. We can be upon you beforrre you can destrrroy morrre than a frrraction of the trrransporrrts.”

The admiral called for the channel to the purple again. “Including, perhaps, your queenship. Am I speaking to Gelewa of Dau? Out.”

“Yes.”

“This is Admiral Jarold Young.”

“I know.”

“We almost met during the Suicide Sortie, remember? We turned your flank, but you dropped your eggs and withdrew before we could clear the pickets.”

“I rrrememberrr with pleasurrre. A well executed bit of levels-play.”

“I give you my word your transports will be allowed to withdraw in peace.”

“Acceptable. But you underrrstand, therrre will be severrre rrreperrrcussions frrrom yourrr intrrrusion herrre.”

“I understand.”

“I rrregrrret that we meet this way.”

“So do I.”

Two minutes later lifeboats began to emerge from the cruiser bays.

“This is Jim Buser, back on Greenworld again. A shuttle evacuated us from Orbital Command just before the reactor blew its magnetic bottle.

“Tonight I look down from the roof of the GalNews building at Market Lane, the wide concourse leading from the Park to the civic center. It’s midnight and the moons are down, but there are lights in the darkness. Yellow flickers of flame. Hundreds, thousands of burning candles, all proceeding slowly, solemnly toward the broad stone steps in front of Civic Hall. I can see faces behind the candles; young and old, men and women. I see joy and sorrow mingled, reflecting victory and loss on this night of dedication.

“Government officials, including local hive representatives, stand at a makeshift podium. There will be speeches and songs until dawn, at this gigantic version of the traditional rural come-together. In hives around the world purples are also marking the light and dark sides of the great victory.

“On a personal note, this will be my last ’cast. I can no longer sit behind a camera and make wise noises. Cynicism isn’t a viable lifestyle. So, as of the beginning of this new day, it’s Jim Buser, citizen of Greenworld. I don’t know how long we can hang onto what we have here, but I aim to do my share in the effort. Goodbye.”

Jim didn’t like the feel of the uniform, the binding of heavy fabric and symbolism, and was beginning to regret his impulsiveness. Finding one’s roots was one thing; touring the badlands hunting terrorists was something else. But it had been the militia or nothing—he couldn’t fly, and except for a few shuttles the space force was nonexistent.

The doubts were growing. Even in his reporter days he had worn the shield of his noncombatancy. Now the bad guys would be after him in earnest. The doubts had forced his hand—he couldn’t let them make his choices and still feel he was in charge.

He had talked it. Now he would have to walk it.

“You may go in now, Private.”

He thanked the secretary, went to the door and entered President Marlowe’s office. Militia recruits weren’t ordinarily invited to meet the planetary president, but then he wasn’t exactly an ordinary militia recruit. Still, it was with a bit of trepidation that he pushed open the door.

“Come in, young man. And relax. I have no desire to get used to being important.”

The office was large and well appointed, but had the sloppy look of extreme activity. The President, understandably worn but wearing an exec’s confident smile, stood by the long window that looked down on the spaceport field. The expanse was empty and forlorn except for a single towering vessel surrounded by an alert Army guard. The sight of FSS Jutland brought a swirl of biting memories.

The President looked him over. “From star ’caster to buckass private. Quite a step down?”

“Depends on how you look at it… uh, sir.”

The President frowned. “The way I read it, you’re a raving romantic.”

Jim couldn’t believe his ears. “You kidding? You mustn’t listen to my ’casts.”

“I listen, and I hear them. You wear indifference badly.”

Jim was beginning to get mad. “Do you psychoanalyze all your new recruits?”

“Only the interesting ones. You seem to have a blind spot concerning your function. You think you didn’t ‘make news’ as a ’caster? You think reactions end with ratings? Have you ever considered the awesome power of delivering truth—or falsehood—convincingly to billions of people?”

“Only in the abstract.”

“Figures. You lived in a very small bottle, corked by GalNews and yourself. Now, though, you should know better. You’ve had a vivid demonstration. Your ’casts resulted in the intervention that saved us, you know. Which leads up to the reason you’re here. I’m appointing you head of our propaganda department. It’ll be your job to tell our story to the worlds. Congratulations, Major.”

“I don’t want to do any more of that.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you want, Buser! You’re under military discipline now. You’ll do whatever best serves Greenworld. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Jim said sullenly.

“Don’t sound so martyred. You don’t really want to eat mud—you just wish you wanted to. And you’ll be working with your friend Astawa.”

“Huh?”

“You see, he got some good news and some bad news. GalNews fired him in your backwash. But we just appropriated its whole planetary operation for the duration, and put him back in charge.”

“All this for a purple?”

The President took a deep breath. “How do you bury hatreds and make a workable union of two utterly different cultures, one a majority and one a minority? We’re slowly getting the terrorists under control. Thank God they haven’t been able to polarize the cultures. Astawa has played a big role in that.”

“Do tell.”

“Oh, he didn’t enlighten you? I think I see why. He’s a sort-of-leader in a sort-of-organization of aesgi holding prominent positions in the ‘human’ culture. They form a vital bridge.”

All the puzzle pieces that were the purple exec clicked together. Jim realized he had been handled so smoothly it left no vestigial irritation. Yes, they would get along well together.

The door opened, and Admiral Young entered.

“Thank you for coming, Admiral,” President Marlowe said.

“I can’t stay long, Mister President. The squadron has been ordered home.” The admiral turned to Jim.

“Thanks for saving us,” Jim said, surprised at the simplicity of his statement.

Admiral Young was quiet for a long time. “I wonder what it would be like to go up into those mountains west of here and do some ranching in a high valley not too near anyone else.”

Jim understood. “I grew up on a farm. It’s brutal work, but the problems are refreshingly basic.”

“You sound like you’ve been giving it some thought.”

“I have.”

The admiral turned to President Marlowe. “You realize, of course, that you’ve survived only the first battle. The Hive will be back. How will you survive then?”

The President looked at his watch. “First let me repeat our world’s enormous gratitude to you and your squadron. The names of each of your crew members lost in the battle will be added to our memorial scrolls. And one last time I beg you to stay here. We desperately need military strategists. But you would be most welcome here even as a private citizen—you know what you return to.”

The admiral’s expression turned bleak. “I know. That’s why I have to go back. But you haven’t answered my question.”

President Marlowe looked at his watch again, then out the window at the azure sky.

“I asked you gentlemen here in part to witness something you have a right to see, since you were both instrumental in bringing it about.”

Jim looked up at the sky and saw nothing.

“During Earth’s American Revolution there was an analogous situation. The American colonies were determined to win their independence, but had insufficient arms to overcome the British. The French were interested in supporting them, but doubted they could survive. Then they defeated the British at Saratoga. This convinced the French of America’s tenacity, and arms were forthcoming.”

There were bright points of light in the sky, and a low but growing rumble. People were erupting out of the buildings onto the edges of the field, looking up, hands shading eyes. Two, five, ten, more than twenty painful brilliances.

“Ten days ago our agents on Eridani, using the reports of our victory—and Federation assistance—closed an arms purchasing agreement.”

Two enormous, bulging cylinders landed first. “Those are our wayward star freighters, carrying 144 of the newest multi-weapon satellites, and modules for twin Orbital Command stations. State-of-the-art power, computers, scanners—and armed to the fangs!”

Twenty four other bright points became teardrops of white flame, and atop them Jim could make out utterly streamlined spears, silver and gleaming, two-thirds the length of FSS Jutland. Proton blisters fore and aft added wickedness to their appearance. Slender and spectral, they settled onto the field in a precise circle around the freighters.

“Eridani interstellar carriers brought them here, and the Eridani crews aboard them will train our own crews before returning.”

“Shiva 6B’s!” The admiral was smiling, and there was a hint of dampness around his eyes. “Perfect!”

“Yes, they are exactly what we need; the best interplanetary defense ships available. Without the tachyon drive they can carry a heavy cruiser’s armament and defense. But because they are smaller and lighter, they are faster and more maneuverable. Not to mention poorer targets.”

The people outside were cheering wildly, with many an excited gesture toward the ships.

The admiral blinked several times. “Thanks, Mister President. I know now what I did will have some meaning.”

“It would have anyway.”

“Maybe. But I must go now. Goodbye and good-faring to both of you.” The admiral turned and left.

“What’s with him?” Jim asked.

The President stared after him. “When he violated Federation orders he knew that to avoid another War, the Federation would throw the Hive some raw meat. Him. He will be publicly court-martialed and executed.”

Jim looked down at the field. Soon a lone figure, straight-backed in Federation dress blues, strode across the blast-blackened expanse. It detoured to pass the activity surrounding the freighters and Shiva 6B’s, and stopped near one of the latter for a handful of seconds. Then it resumed its trek toward the far cruiser.

Jim moved toward the door. “Going somewhere?” the President asked.

“Would you please have someone call Astawa and tell him I’m on my way over? I’m going to save that man.”

Editor's Introduction to:

PROUD LEGIONS
by T.R. Fehrenbach

Ted Fehrenbach is one of the best military theorists of the Twentieth Century. I can say this with no reservations. His book, This Kind of War, is not only the finest study of the Korean War ever done, but more importantly, is the only book I have ever seen that correctly draws the lessons of that war. I have several times used it as a text; which is to do it injustice. The book is very readable.

Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall has justly received much credit for his military histories. Lt. Col. T.R. Fehrenbach, AUS Ret’d, is not so well known. Whereas Marshal was a military historian and most of his duties were historical in nature (this didn’t prohibit him from being one of the very first US troops to enter Paris in 1944), Fehrenbach was a combat soldier.

“Proud Legions” is one chapter from This Kind Of War. It is required reading for every officer nominated for promotion to general. It ought to be read more widely than that.

Proud Legions
by T.R. Fehrenbach

We was rotten ’fore we started—we was never disciplined;

We made it out a favour if an order was obeyed.

Yes, every little drummer ’ad ’is rights an wrongs to mind,

So we had to pay for teachin—an we paid!

—Rudyard Kipling, “That Day”

During the first months of American intervention in Korea, reports from the front burst upon an America and world stunned beyond belief. Day after day, the forces of the admitted first power of the earth reeled backward under the blows of the army of a nation of nine million largely illiterate peasants, the product of the kind of culture advanced nations once overawed with gunboats. Then, after fleeting victory, Americans fell back once more before an army of equally illiterate, lightly armed Chinese.

The people of Asia had changed, true. The day of the gunboat and a few Marines would never return. But that was not the whole story. The people of the West had changed, too. They forgot that the West had dominated not only by arms, but by superior force of will.

During the summer of 1950, and later, Asians would watch. Some, friends of the West, would even smile. And none of them would ever forget.

News reports in 1950 talked of vast numbers, overwhelming hordes of fanatic North Koreans, hundreds of monstrous tanks, against which the thin United States forces could not stand. In these reports there was truth, but not the whole truth.

The American units were outnumbered. They were outgunned. They were given an impossible task at the outset.

But they were also outfought.

In July 1950, one news commentator rather plaintively remarked that warfare had not changed so much, after all. For some reason, ground troops still seemed to be necessary, in spite of the atom bomb. And oddly and unfortunately, to this gentleman, man still seemed to be an important ingredient in battle. Troops were getting killed, in pain and fury and dust and filth. What had happened to the widely heralded pushbutton warfare where skilled, immaculate technicians who had never suffered the misery and ignominy of basic training blew each other to kingdom come like gentlemen?

In this unconsciously plaintive cry lies buried a great deal of the truth why the United States was almost defeated.

Nothing had happened to pushbutton warfare; its emergence was at hand. Horrible weapons that could destroy every city on earth were at hand—at too many hands. But pushbutton warfare meant Armageddon, and Armageddon, hopefully, will never be an end of national policy.

Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.

The object of warfare is to dominate a portion of the earth, with its peoples, for causes either just or unjust. It is not to destroy the land and people, unless you have gone wholly mad.

Pushbutton war has its place. There is another kind of conflict—crusade, jihad, holy war, call it what you choose. It has been loosed before, with attendant horror but indecisive results. In the past, there were never means enough to exterminate all the unholy, whether Christian, Moslem, Protestant, Papist, or Communist. If jihad is preached again, undoubtedly the modern age will do much better.

Americans, denying from moral grounds that war can ever be a part of politics, inevitably tend to think in terms of holy war—against militarism, against fascism, against bolshevism. In the postwar age, uneasy, disliking and fearing the unholiness of Communism, they have prepared for jihad. If their leaders blow the trumpet, or if their homeland is attacked, their millions are agreed to be better dead than Red.

Any kind of war short of jihad was, is, and will be unpopular with the people. Because such wars are fought with legions, and Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions. They do not like to serve in them, nor even to allow them to be what they must.

For legions have no ideological or spiritual home in the liberal society. The liberal society has no use or need for legions—as its prophets have long proclaimed.

Except that in this world are tigers.

The men of the Inmun Gun and the CCF were peasant boys, tough, inured to hunger and hardship. One-third of them had been in battle and knew what battle meant. They had been indoctrinated in Communism, but no high percentage of them were fanatic. Most of them, after all, were conscripts, and unskilled.

They were not half so good soldiers as the bronzed men who followed Rommel in the desert, or the veterans who slashed down toward Bastogne.

They were well armed, but their weapons were no better than those of United States design, if as good.

But the American soldier of 1950, though the same breed of man, was not half so good as the battalions that had absorbed Rommel’s bloody lessons, or stood like steel in the Ardennes.

The weapons his nation had were not in his hands, and those that were were old and worn.

Since the end of World War II ground weapons had been developed, but none had been procured. There were plenty of the old arms around, and it has always been a Yankee habit to make do. The Army was told to make do.

In 1950 its vehicles in many cases would not run. Radiators were clogged, engines gone. When ordered to Korea, some units towed their transport down to the LST’s, because there was no other way to get it to the boat. Tires and tubes had a few miles left in them, and were kept—until they came apart on Korean roads.

In Japan, where the divisions were supposedly guarding our former enemies, most of the small arms had been reported combat unserviceable. Rifle barrels were worn smooth. Mortar mounts were broken, and there were no longer any spare barrels for machine guns.

Radios were short, and those that were available would not work.

Ammunition, except small arms, was “hava-no.”

These things had been reported. The Senate knew them; the people heard them. But usually the Army was told, “Next year.”

Even a rich society cannot afford nuclear supercarriers, foreign aid, five million new cars a year, long-range bombers, the highest standard of living in the world, and a million new rifles.

Admittedly, somewhere you have to cut and choose.

But guns are hardware, and man, not hardware, is the ultimate weapon. In 1950 there were not enough men, either—less than 600,000 to carry worldwide responsibilities, including recruiting; for service in the ranks has never been on the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s preferred list of occupations.

And in these 600,000 men themselves the trouble lay.

There was a reason.

Before 1939 the United States Army was small, but it was professional. Its tiny officers corps was parochial, but true. Its members devoted their time to the study of war, caring little what went on in the larger society around them. They were centurions, and the society around them not their concern.

When so ordered, they went to war. Spreading themselves thinner still, they commanded and trained the civilians who heeded the trumpet’s call. The civilians did the fighting, of course—but they did it the Army’s way.

In 1861 millions of volunteers donned blue or gray. Millions of words have been written on American valor, but few books dwell on the fact that of the sixty important battles, fifty-five were commanded on both sides by West Pointers, and on one side in the remaining five.

In 1917 four million men were mustered in. Few of them liked it, but again they did things the way the professionals wanted them done.

The volunteers came and went, and the Army changed not at all.

But since the Civil War, the Army had neither the esteem nor the favor of public or government. Liberal opinion, whether business-liberal or labor-liberal, dominated the United States after the destruction of the South, and the illiberal Army grew constantly more alienated from its own society.

In a truly liberal society, centurions have no place. For centurions, when they put on the soldier, do not retain the citizen. They are never citizens to begin with.

There was and is no danger of military domination of the nation. The Constitution gave Congress the power of life or death over the military, and they have always accepted the fact. The danger has been the other way around—the liberal society in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiescence of the military toward the liberal view of life.

Domination and control society should have. The record of military rule, from the burnished and lazy Praetorians to the juntas of Latin America, to the attempted fiasco of the Légion Etrangère, are pages of history singularly foul in odor.

But acquiescence society may not have, if it wants an army worth a damn. By the very nature of its mission, the military must maintain a hard and illiberal view of life and the world. Society’s purpose is to live; the military’s is to stand ready, if need be, to die.

Soldiers are rarely fit to rule—but they must be fit to fight.

The military is in essence a tool, to be used by its society. If its society is good, it may hope to be used honorably, even if badly. If its society is criminal, it may be, like the Wehrmacht, unleashed upon a helpless world.

But when the Wehrmacht dashed against the world, it was brought to ruin, not by a throng of amateurs, but by well-motivated, well-generaled Allied troops, who had learned their military lessons.

Some men, of kind intention, are always dubious because the generals of the Wehrmacht and the men of West Point and V.M.I, and Leavenworth read the same books, sometimes hold the same view of life.

Why not? German plumbers, American plumbers, use the same manuals, and look into the same kind of water.

In 1861, and 1917, the Army acted upon the civilian, changing him. But in 1945 something new happened. Suddenly, without precedent, perhaps because of changes in the emerging managerial society, professional soldiers of high rank had become genuinely popular with the public. In 1861, and in 1917, the public gave the generals small credit, talked instead of the gallant militia. Suddenly, at the end of World War II, society embraced the generals.

And here it ruined them.

They had lived their lives in semi-bitter alienation from their own culture (What’s the matter, Colonel; can’t you make it on the outside?) but now they were sought after, offered jobs in business, government, on college campuses.

Humanly, the generals liked the acclaim. Humanly, they wanted it to continue. And when, as usual after all our wars, there came a great civilian clamor to change all the things in the army the civilians hadn’t liked, humanly, the generals could not find it in their hearts to tell the public to go to hell.

It was perfectly understandable that large numbers of men who served didn’t like the service. There was no reason why they should. They served only because there had been a dirty job that had to be done. Admittedly, the service was not perfect; no human institution having power over men can ever be. But many of the abuses the civilians complained about had come not from true professionals but from men with quickie diplomas, whose brass was much more apt to go to their heads than to those of men who had waited twenty years for leaves and eagles.

In 1945, somehow confusing the plumbers with the men who pulled the chain, the public demanded that the Army be changed to conform with decent, liberal society.

The generals could have told them to go to hell and made it stick. A few heads would have rolled, a few stars would have been lost. But without acquiescence Congress could no more emasculate the Army than it could alter the nature of the State Department. It could have abolished it, or weakened it even more than it did—but it could not have changed its nature. But the generals could not have retained their new popularity antagonizing the public, and suddenly popularity was very important to them. Men such as Doolittle, Eisenhower, and Marshall rationalized. America, with postwar duties around the world, would need a bigger peacetime Army than ever before. Therefore, it needed to be popular with the people. And it should be made pleasant, so that more men would enlist. And since Congress wouldn’t do much about upping pay, every man should have a chance to become a sergeant, instead of one in twenty. But, democratically, sergeants would not draw much more pay than privates.

And since some officers and noncoms had abused their powers, rather than make sure officers and noncoms were better than ever, it would be simpler and more expedient—and popular—to reduce those powers. Since Americans were by nature egalitarian, the Army had better go that route too. Other professional people, such as doctors and clergymen, had special privileges—but officers, after all, had no place in the liberal society, and had better be cut down to size.

The Doolittle Board of 1945-1946 met, listened to less than half a hundred complaints, and made its recommendations. The so-called “caste system” of the Army was modified. Captains, by fiat, suddenly ceased to be gods, and sergeants, the hard-bitten backbone of any army, were told to try to be just some of the boys. Junior officers had a great deal of their power to discipline taken away from them. They could no longer inflict any real punishment, short of formal court-martial, nor could they easily reduce ineffective N.C.O.’s. Understandably, their own powers shaky, they cut the ground completely away from under their N.C.O’s.

A sergeant, by shouting at some sensitive yardbird, could get his captain into a lot of trouble. For the real effect of the Doolittle recommendations was psychological. Officers had not been made wholly powerless— but they felt that they had been slapped in the teeth. The officer corps, by 1946 again wholly professional, did not know how to live with the newer code.

One important thing was forgotten by the citizenry: by 1946 all the intellectual and sensitive types had said goodbye to the Army—they hoped for good. The new men coming in now were the kind of men who join armies the world over, blank-faced, unmolded—and they needed shaping. They got it; but it wasn’t the kind of shaping they needed.

Now an N.C.O. greeted new arrivals with a smile. Where once he would have told them they made him sick to his stomach, didn’t look tough enough to make a go of his outfit, he now led them meekly to his company commander. And this clean-cut young man, who once would have sat remote at the right hand of God in his orderly room, issuing orders that crackled like thunder, now smiled too. “Welcome aboard, gentlemen. I am your company commander; I’m here to help you. I’ll try to make your stay both pleasant and profitable.”

This was all very democratic and pleasant—but it is the nature of young men to get away with anything they can, and soon these young men found they could get away with plenty.

A soldier could tell a sergeant to blow it. In the old Army he might have been bashed, and found immediately what the rules were going to be. In the Canadian Army—which oddly enough no American liberals have found fascistic or bestial—he would have been marched in front of his company commander, had his pay reduced, perhaps even been confined for thirty days, with no damaging mark on his record. He would have learned, instantly, that orders are to be obeyed.

But in the new American Army, the sergeant reported such a case to his C.O. But the C.O. couldn’t do anything drastic or educational to the man; for any real action, he had to pass the case up higher. And nobody wanted to court-martial the man, to put a permanent damaging mark on his record. The most likely outcome was for the man to be chided for being rude, and requested to do better in the future.

Some privates, behind their smirks, liked it fine.

Pretty soon, the sergeants, realizing the score, started to fraternize with the men. Perhaps, through popularity, they could get something done. The junior officers, with no sergeants to knock heads, decided that the better part of valor was never to give an unpopular order.

The new legions carried the old names, displayed the old, proud colors, with their gallant battle streamers. The regimental mottoes still said things like “Can Do.” In their neat, fitted uniforms and new shiny boots—there was money for these—the troops looked good. Their appearance made the generals smile.

What they lacked couldn’t be seen, not until the guns sounded.

There is much to military training that seems childish, stultifying, and even brutal. But one essential part of breaking men into military life is the removal of misfits— and in the service a man is a misfit who cannot obey orders, any orders, and who cannot stand immense and searing mental and physical pressure.

For his own sake and for that of those around him, a man must be prepared for the awful, shrieking moment of truth when he realizes he is all alone on a hill ten thousand miles from home, and that he may be killed in the next second.

The young men of America, from whatever strata, are raised in a permissive society. The increasing alienation of their education from the harsher realities of life makes their reorientation, once enlisted, doubly important.

Prior to 1950, they got no reorientation. They put on the uniform, but continued to get by, doing things rather more or less. They had no time for sergeants.

As discipline deteriorated, the generals themselves were hardly affected. They still had their position, their pomp and ceremonies. Surrounded by professionals of the old school, largely field rank, they still thought their rod was iron, for, seemingly, their own orders were obeyed.

But ground battle is a series of platoon actions. No longer can a field commander stand on a hill, like Lee or Grant, and oversee his formations. Orders in combat—the orders that kill men or get them killed, are not given by generals, or even by majors. They are given by lieutenants and sergeants, and sometimes by PFC’s.

When a sergeant gives a soldier an order in battle, it must have the same weight as that of a four-star general.

Such orders cannot be given by men who are some of the boys. Men willingly take orders to die only from those they are trained to regard as superior beings.

It was not until the summer of 1950, when the legions went forth, that the generals realized what they had agreed to, and what they had wrought.

The Old Army, outcast and alien and remote from the warm bosom of society, officer and man alike, ordered into Korea, would have gone without questioning. It would have died without counting. As on Bataan, it would not have listened for the angel’s trumpet or the clarion call. It would have heard the hard sound of its own bugles, and hard-bitten, cynical, wise in bitter ways, it would have kept its eyes on its sergeants.

It would have died. It would have retreated, or surrendered, only in the last extremity. In the enemy prison camps, exhausted, sick, it would have spat upon its captors, despising them to the last.

It would have died, but it might have held.

One aftermath of the Korean War has been the passionate attempt in some military quarters to prove the softness and decadence of American society as a whole, because in the first six months of that war there were wholesale failures. It has been a pervasive and persuasive argument, and it has raised its own counterargument, equally passionate.

The trouble is, different men live by different myths.

There are men who would have a society pointed wholly to fighting and resistance to Communism, and this would be a very different society from the one Americans now enjoy. It might succeed on the battlefield, but its other failures can be predicted.

But the infantry battlefield also cannot be remade to the order of the prevailing midcentury opinion of sociologists.

The recommendations of the so-called Doolittle Board of 1945-1946, which destroyed so much of the will—if not the actual power—of the military traditionalists, and left them bitter, and confused as to how to act, was based on experience in World War II. In that war, as in all others, millions of civilians were fitted arbitrarily into a military pattern already centuries old. It had once fitted Western society; it now coincided with American customs and thinking no longer.

What the Doolittle Board tried to do, in small measure, was to bring the professional Army back into the new society. What it could not do, in 1946, was to gauge the future.

By 1947 the United States Army had returned, in large measure, to the pattern it had known prior to 1939. The new teenagers who now joined it were much the same stripe of men who had joined in the old days. They were not intellectuals, they were not completely fired with patriotism, or motivated by the draft; nor was an aroused public, eager to win a war, breathing down their necks.

A great many of them signed up for three squares and a sack.

Over several thousand years of history, man has found a way to make soldiers out of this kind of man, as he comes, basically unformed, to the colors. It is a way with great stresses and great strains. It cannot be said it is wholly good. Regimentation is not good, completely, for any man.

But no successful army has been able to avoid it. It is an unpleasant necessity, seemingly likely to go on forever, as long as men fight in fields and mud.

One thing should be made clear.

The Army could have fought World War III, just as it could have fought World War II, under the new rules. During 1941-1945 the average age of the United States soldier was in the late twenties, and the ranks were seasoned with maturity from every rank of life, as well as intelligence.

In World War III, or any war with national emotional support, this would have been true. Soldiers would have brought their motivation with them, firmed by understanding and maturity.

The Army could have fought World War III in 1950, but it could not fight Korea.

As a case in point, take the experiences of one platoon sergeant in Fort Lewis, Washington. During the big war he had held sway over a platoon of seventy-two enlisted men. The platoon was his to run; the officers rarely came around the barracks.

The platoon sergeant was a reasonable man, in charge of reasonable men, who knew why they were in the Army. Their average age was thirty-two; one-fourth of them, roughly, were college trained. Almost all of them were skilled, in one trade or another.

This kind of man cannot be made to dig a six-by-six hole to bury a carelessly dropped cigarette, nor double-timed around the PX on Sunday morning.

The platoon sergeant relieved a multiple-striped young idiot—as he termed the man—who tried just this. The platoon, as platoons can, ruined the former sergeant.

The new platoon sergeant told his men the barracks needed cleaning, but if everyone would cooperate, each man clean his own area each day, he could get a few men off detail to clean the common areas, such as the latrine, and there need be no GI parties.

The platoon cooperated. There were no GI parties, no extra details. A few men went off the track, now and then; the older men of the platoon handled them quietly, without bothering the platoon sergeant.

This was discipline. Ideally, it should well up out of men, not be imposed upon them.

The platoon prospered. It won the battalion plaque for best barracks so often it was allowed to keep the plaque in perpetuity.

Even after V-J Day, every man fell out for reveille, promptly, because the platoon sergeant explained to them this was the way the game was played. And the platoon was proud of itself; every man knew it was a good outfit, just a little better than the next.

Then, one by one, the men went home, as the war ended.

The platoon sergeant now was promoted to first sergeant, six stripes, an enlisted god who walked. He got a new company of several platoons, all filled with new, callow faces entering the Army to be trained.

The war was over, and every man coming in knew it.

The first sergeant, wise now in the ways of handling men, as he thought, carefully explained to the newcomers that the barracks must be cleaned, but if everyone would cooperate, each man clean his own area each day, there would be no GI parties, and there would be passes.

On Saturday the barracks were dirty.

The sergeant, who thought that men needed only to understand what was required to obey, carefully explained what he wanted. Friday, with a great deal of hollering, shouting, and horseplay, the new men cleaned the barracks.

On Saturday, the barracks were still dirty, and the captain made a few pointed remarks to the sergeant.

The sergeant got everyone together, and told them how it was going to be. These men on the mops, these men on the brooms, these men with the lye soap. No hollering or sloshing of water or horseplay—just clean the goddamn barracks.

It took most of Friday night, and the men had to stay in the latrines to clean their rifles, but they cleaned the barracks. A few of them got out of hand, but there were no older hands who could—or would—hold them in check. The sergeant handled each of these himself.

The platoon prospered, but it wasn’t easy, particularly on the sergeant. Gradually, he came to realize that seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, mostly from the disadvantaged areas of society, had no feeling of responsibility to the Army or to the Republic for which it stood. They were not self-disciplined, and they tended to resent authority, even more than the college men and skilled artisans he had commanded before. Probably some had resented their parents; definitely most resented the sergeant, even as most of them, back in their home towns, had instinctively resented the police.

There is no getting around the fact that cops and sergeants spoil your fun.

The platoon prospered, as a sort of jail, until someone wrote to his congressman. After that the captain spoke to the sergeant, telling him that it was peacetime and that perhaps the real purpose of an Army was not to learn to use the bayonet, but to engage in athletics and take Wednesday afternoons off.

The sergeant, now a confused young man with six stripes who walked, left the Army, and graduated from college. If the Army was going to hell, it was a lot more pleasant to watch it go to hell from the Officer’s Club than from the Orderly Room.

A decade after Korea, the military traditionalists still grind their teeth. The sociologists still keep a wary eye on them. Both still try to use the Korean battleground, and its dreary POW camps, to further their own particular myths of human behavior.

Probably, both are wrong.

The military have the preponderance of fact with them as far as Korea was concerned. Korea was the kind of war that since the dawn of history was fought by professionals, by legions. It was fought by men who soon knew they had small support or sympathy at home, who could read in the papers statements by prominent men that they should be withdrawn. It was fought by men whom the Army—at its own peril—had given neither training nor indoctrination, nor the hardness and bitter pride men must have to fight a war in which they do not in their hearts believe.

The Army needed legions, but society didn’t want them. It wanted citizen-soldiers.

But the sociologists are right—absolutely right—in demanding that the centurion view of life not be imposed upon America. In a holy, patriotic war—like that fought by the French in 1793, or as a general war against Communism will be—America can get a lot more mileage out of citizen-soldiers than it can from legions.

No one has suggested that perhaps there should be two sets of rules, one for the professional Army, which may have to fight in far places, without the declaration of war, and without intrinsic belief in the value of its dying, for reasons of policy, chessmen on the checkerboard of diplomacy; and one for the high-minded, enthusiastic, and idealistic young men who come aboard only when the ship is sinking.

The other answer is to give up Korea-type wars, and to surrender great power status, and a resultant hope of order—our own decent order—in the world. But America is rich and fat and very, very noticeable in this world.

It is a forlorn hope that we should be left alone.

In the first six months America suffered a near debacle because her Regular Army fighting men were the stuff of legions, but they had not been made into legionaries.

America was not more soft or more decadent than it had been twenty years earlier. It was confused, badly, on its attitudes toward war. It was still bringing up its youth to think there were no tigers, and it was still reluctant to forge them guns to shoot tigers.

Many of America’s youth, in the Army, faced horror badly because they had never been told they would have to face horror, or that horror is very normal in our unsane world. It had not been ground into them that they would have to obey their officers, even if the orders got them killed.

It has been a long, long time since American citizens have been able to take down the musket from the mantlepiece and go tiger hunting. But they still cling to the belief that they can do so, and do it well, without training.

This is the error that leads some men to cry out that Americans are decadent.

If Americans in 1950 were decadent, so were the rabble who streamed miserably into Valley Forge, where von Steuben made soldiers out of them. If American society had no will to defend itself, neither did it in 1861, at First Manassas, or later at Shiloh, when whole regiments of Americans turned tail and ran.

The men who lay warm and happy in their blankets at Kasserine, as the panzers rolled toward them in the dawn, were decadent, by this reasoning.

The problem is not that Americans are soft but that they simply will not face what war is all about until they have had their teeth kicked in. They will not face the fact that the military professionals, while some have ideas about society in general that are distorted and must be watched, still know better than anyone else how a war is won.

Free society cannot be oriented toward the battlefield— Sparta knew that trap—but some adjustments must be made, as the squabbling Athenians learned to their sorrow.

The sociologists and psychologists of Vienna had no answer to the Nazi bayonets, when they crashed against their doors. The soldiers of the democratic world did.

More than once, as at Valley Forge, after Bull Run, and Kasserine, the world has seen an American army rise from its own ashes, reorient itself, grow hard and bitter, knowledgeable and disciplined and tough.

In 1951, after six months of being battered, the Eighth Army in Korea rose from its own ashes of despair. No man who was there still believes Americans in the main are decadent, just as no man who saw Lieutenant General Matt Ridgway in operation doubts the sometime greatness of men.

He who supposes all men to be brave at all times… does not realize that the courage of troops must be reborn daily, that nothing is so changeable, that the true skill of a general consists of knowing how to guarantee it by his positions, dispositions, and those traits of genius that characterize great captains.—Maurice de Saxe, REVERIES ON THE ART OF WAR.

When Lieutenant General Ridgway left Tokyo to assume command of the Eighth Army on 26 December 1950, he asked MacArthur in parting, “General, if I get over there and find the situation warrants it, do I have your permission to attack?”

MacArthur’s aged face cracked wide in a grin.

“Do whatever you think best, Matt. The Eighth Army is yours.”

These were, as Ridgway said later, the sort of orders to put heart in a soldier. And Ridgway’s own first task was to put heart in the Eighth Army.

Matt Ridgway came to Korea convinced that the United States Army could beat any Asiatic horde that lived to its knees. He quickly found that on this subject he was a majority of one.

The Eighth Army was not only pulling south; it had no great desire to meet the Chinese. Contact over much of the front was broken. There was almost no patrolling.

When Ridgway asked where the Chinese were, and in what strength, he was shown a vague goose egg on the map to the north of the Eighth Army in which was inscribed the figure 174,000. More than this no one knew, and no one was making concerted efforts to find out.

The Eighth Army had had its fill of Chinese-hunting in the north.

But if the Eighth Army expected General Matt Ridgway to be satisfied with that, they had another think coming.

Ridgway began to hammer away. At first, realizing the problem, he talked of simple things: aggressive patrolling, maintaining contact at all costs, supply, and firepower. He talked of the most basic thing of all, leadership. He was as blunt or as gentle as the situation called for.

He told his senior commanders the simple truth that America’s power and prestige were at stake out here, and whether they believed in this war or not, they were going to have to fight it. He would help provide the tools, but they would have to provide their own guts.

If the American Armed Forces could not beat the hordes of Red China in the field, then it made no difference how many new autos Detroit could produce.

Everywhere Matt Ridgway went, however, he found the same question in men’s minds: What the hell are we doing in this godforsaken place?

If men had been told, Destroy the evil of Bolshevism, they might have understood. But they did not understand why the line must be held or why the Taehan Minkuk— that miserable, stinking, undemocratic country—must be protected.

The question itself never concerned Matt Ridgway. At the age of fifty-six, more than thirty years a centurion, to him the answer was simple. The loyalty he gave, and expected, precluded the slightest questioning of orders. This he said.

But to a generation brought up to hold some loyalties lightly, and to question many things, this was not enough. To these men Ridgway said:

The real issues are whether the power of Western Civilization, as God has permitted it to flower in our own beloved lands, shall defy and defeat Communism; whether the rule of men who shoot their prisoners, enslave their citizens, and deride the dignity of man, shall displace the rule of those to whom the individual and his individual rights are sacred; whether we are to survive with God’s hand to guide and lead us, or to perish in the dead existence of a Godless world.

Under General Ridgway’s hammering, the Eighth Army took the offensive within thirty days. After 25 January it never really again lost the initiative. At Chipyong-ni, the battle that presaged what was to come all spring, it was the Chinese who melted away into the snow-draped hills, leaving their dead behind.

Under a new, firm hand, and with the taste of Chinese blood, the Eighth Army found itself. Ridgway made legions.

The ranks were salted now with veterans, men wounded and returned to duty, and were led by men like Ridgway, Captain Munoz, and Lieutenant Long, who had been through the drill before, who had been from the Naktong to the Yalu, and had learned, as Americans had always had to learn, how to fight this new-old war.

They had learned the Chinese could be cunning, but also stupid. Failing to meet quick success, he could not change his plan. Often he continued an operation long after it had turned into disaster, wasting thousands of his troops. Lacking air cover, artillery, and armor, his hordes of riflemen could be—and were—slaughtered, as the Eighth Army learned to roll with the punches and to strike back hard.

Again and again, with the prodigal use of men, he could crack the U.N. line at a given point. But the men at the point had learned to hold, inflicting terrible losses, and even if the line gave, the Chinese could not exploit, while U.N. reinforcements, mechanized, rushed to deploy in front of them and to their flanks.

In the terrain of South Korea, battle was more open, and in open battle no amount of savage cunning could substitute for firepower. The Chinese could not even apply superior combat power to the 135-mile line. The truth, that a backward nation can never put as many well-armed men into the field and support them as can even a small-sized industrial country, became apparent. Chinese replacements, even with Russian aid, were often ill equipped and ill trained.

The press still reported human seas and overwhelming hordes, but except where they massed for a breakthrough, the Chinese remained apart and in moderate numbers on the line. Frontline soldiers began to joke: “Say, Joe, how many hordes are there in a Chink platoon?” Or, “We were attacked by two hordes last night. We killed both of them.”

But the Chinese retained the will to fight.

The drive northward was not easy.

As many years earlier, when the cavalry fighting on the Plains had developed leaders such as Miles, Crook, and Ronald Mackenzie, men who rode hard, made cold camps, threw away their sabers, and moved without bugle calls, putting aside all the things they had learned in the War Between the States—but who had driven the Indians without surcease, hammering them across the snows and mountains until their women sickened and their infants died and they lost their heart for war, so the Army developed men who learned to fight in Asia.

Soldiers learned to travel light, but with full canteen and bandoleer, and to climb the endless hills. They learned to hold fast when the enemy flowed at them, because it was the safest thing to do. They learned to displace in good order when they had to. They learned to listen and obey. They learned all the things Americans have always learned from Appomattox to Berlin.

Above all, they learned to kill.

On the frontier, there is rarely gallantry or glamour to wars, whether they are against red Indians or Red Chinese. There is only killing.

Men of a tank battalion set spikes on the forward sponsons of their tanks, and to these affixed Chinese skulls. This battalion had come back from Kunui-ri, and the display matched their mood. They were ordered to remove the skulls, but the mood remained.

In Medic James Mount’s company, there was a platoon sergeant named “Gypsy” Martin. Martin carried a full canteen and bandoleer, but he also wore a bandanna and earring, and he had tiny bells on his boots. Gypsy Martin hated Chinese; he hated gooks, and he didn’t care who knew it.

In anything but war, Martin was the kind of man who is useless.

In combat, as the 24th Division drove north, men could hear Gypsy yell his hatred, as they heard his M-1 bark death. When Gypsy yelled, his men went forward; he was worth a dozen rational, decent men in those bloody valleys. His men followed him, to the death.

When Gypsy Martin finally bought it, they found him lying among a dozen “gooks,” his rifle empty, its stock broken. Other than in battle, Sergeant Martin was no good. To Jim Mount’s knowledge, he got no medals, for medals depend more on who writes for them than what was done.

It made Jim Mount think.

The values composing civilization and the values required to protect it are normally at war. Civilization values sophistication, but in an armed force sophistication is a millstone.

The Athenian commanders before Salamis, it is reported, talked of art and of the Acropolis, in sight of the Persian fleet. Beside their own campfires, the Greek hoplites chewed garlic and joked about girls.

Without its tough spearmen, Hellenic culture would have had nothing to give the world. It would not have lasted long enough. When Greek culture became so sophisticated that its common men would no longer fight to the death, as at Thermopylae, but became devious and clever, a horde of Roman farm boys overran them.

The time came when the descendants of Macedonians who had slaughtered Asians till they could no longer lift their arms went pale and sick at the sight of the havoc wrought by the Roman gladius Hispanicus as it carved its way toward Hellas.

The Eighth Army, put to the fire and blooded, rose from its own ashes in a killing mood. They went north, and as they went they destroyed Chinese and what was left of the towns and cities of Korea. They did not grow sick at the sight of blood.

By 7 March they stood on the Han. They went through Seoul, and reduced it block by block. When they were finished, the massive railway station had no roof, and thousands of buildings were pocked by tank fire. Of Seoul’s original more than a million souls, less than two hundred thousand still lived in the ruins. In many of the lesser cities of Korea, built of wood and wattle, only the foundation, and the vault, of the old Japanese bank remained.

The people of Chosun, not Americans or Chinese, continued to lose the war.

At the end of March the Eighth Army was across the parallel.

General Ridgway wrote, “The American flag never flew over a prouder, tougher, more spirited and more competent fighting force than was Eighth Army as it drove north…”

Ridgway had no great interest in real estate. He did not strike for cities and towns, but to kill Chinese. The Eighth Army killed them, by the thousands, as its infantry drove them from the hills and as its air caught them fleeing in the valleys.

By April 1951, the Eighth Army had again proved Erwin Rommel’s assertion that American troops knew less but learned faster than any fighting men he had opposed. The Chinese seemed not to learn at all, as they repeated Chipyong-ni again and again.

Americans had learned, and learned well. The tragedy of American arms, however, is that having an imperfect sense of history Americans sometimes forget as quickly as they learn.

Editor's Introduction to:

...AND BABY MAKES THREE
by Doan Van Toai

It is often asked why men fight. Can we not all live in peace and brotherhood?

That, of course, depends upon the price one is willing to pay for peace. This essay was written by a man who once thought peace worth a very great deal.

In 1975, four army corps swept down from North Vietnam into the south. The Congress of the United States refused to give the President permission to defend South Vietnam, and would not appropriate sufficient money to buy supplies for the Republic of Vietnam to defend itself. South Vietnam accordingly fell.

Doan Van Toai was an anti-American activist during the Vietnam War. Shortly after the fall of Saigon, he was arrested by the North Vietnamese and imprisoned for 28 months. He was eventually released. He had never been charged, and he was never tried; no explanation for his arrest or release was ever given.

This account of the night that Dang Giao was arrested is based on conversations between the two men in prison camp. Mr. Toai is currently at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Giao have been heard from in several years.

...AND BABY MAKES THREE
by Doan Van Toai

THE ONLY NOISE in the streets of Saigon at 11 P.M. was the staccato voice of Radio Hanoi spitting out Communist propaganda. Otherwise the city was silent beneath a thick blanket of fear. People huddled behind closed doors each night dreading the heavy-handed knock of unkempt young men in plainclothes come to arrest those on their list. When sleep did come, it was restless and light.

On this night. Dang Giao’s wife had just finished feeding their newborn son. The knock on the door, although long expected, still came as a shock. And now the second lieutenant was reading the warrant in a loud and forceful voice, his eyes riveted on the paper.

“Considering the security requirements of the Fatherland, and considering the denunciation of the people, the People’s Security Command of Ho Chi Minh City hereby orders: 1) That the home of Tran Duy Cat, pen name Dang Giao, and his wife Chu Vi Thuy, daughter of the notorious reactionary Chu Tu, be searched and that all suspect objects found therein be confiscated. 2) That the two abovenamed be arrested for their many activities against the people when they served as handmaids of the American puppets on the cultural front, under the guise of reporters for the newspaper Song Than [The Tidal Wave]. 3) That the forenamed be tried under the law of March 1976. On the behalf of the Director Comrade.”

(This was to be Dang Giao’s second run-in with Communist authorities. In 1954, at the end of the French Indochinese War, he opted to leave the Communist North, settled in Saigon, and became editor of Song Than, a daily newspaper which was so critical of the Thieu government that it was closed down in 1974. A year later, when the North Vietnamese took Saigon, he refused to leave. “I would rather die in this country than live somewhere else,” he told the author years later in prison camp.)

The lieutenant now puts the warrant on a table and looks at Dang Giao, trying to gauge his reaction. Already, forty-odd young people, most of them not yet 16 years old, have separated into groups, like small armies of ants, and begun to search the house. They even climb up and knock out parts of the ceiling that look as if they have been patched. They pull out the wood paneling in the sitting room and slash open the sofa and chair cushions. They go at the wrecking party with enthusiasm. Each time a knife slashes a cushion or a hammer smashes a souvenir of their life together, Chu Vi Thuy feels a stab of pain. Dang Giao consoles her gently: “We have lost a country. What are these trifles to you now?”

The officer in charge is looking over the “suspect objects” that from time to time the cadres bring out. He seems pleased with the work of his subordinates and delighted with everything they turn up, from the family album, to back issues of newspapers, to early love letters from Dang Giao to his wife.

SUDDENLY THE lieutenant’s attention is riveted by some lines scrawled in a notebook.

“1 A.M. The night is already advanced, cold and windy outside. The planes are coming back to the base one after the other. The noise keeps me up. Oh, how I miss you, wish you could be here.

“4:30 A.M. Fell into deep slumber, I don’t know when, but suddenly woke up because the telephone rang. A flash of happiness, but it was not you, just someone dialing the wrong number. I tried to go back to sleep hoping to see you tomorrow…”

Holding the notebook before Dang Giao’s face, the lieutenant asks suspiciously, “Now what’s this? Tell me the truth.”

“You’ve read it. What is there to ask?”

“I am questioning you. You had better give me a good answer. I am a representative of the State and of the Party, and I am not here to joke with you. You think I can’t read? Let me tell you, I am a college graduate from Hanoi University, not from one of the puppet universities in Saigon, like you.”

“That’s my wife’s diary, written ten years ago, before we were married; that is our private life.”

At first Dang Giao had thought the lieutenant was asking just for the sake of asking. Now, realizing that he is serious, he can’t resist saying, “I thought that being a socialist officer who defeated the Americans you would know everything. What need is there to ask a reactionary fellow like me?”

Turning grim, the lieutenant blurts out, “I am only asking to test your sincerity. As for the rest, I know everything, of course. That’s not a diary. It’s a coded book of signals sent to other reactionaries. Otherwise, why should you note down the hours like 1 A.M. and 4 A.M.? If you were not a reactionary why would you have a telephone? Why would you note the incoming flights? I know everything, I tell you. The Yankees had a few hundred thousand of these books, but they were never able to fool the Revolution. Every time Nixon sent his troops over, the Revolution knew it all, so don’t count on fooling us.”

By now Dang Giao understood his own situation and what lay in store for him. But he found it incredible that an officer of the People’s Army should be so obtuse. “Better control yourself,” he thinks and then says: “Well, have it your own way. You can charge me with any crime now, and I am ready for it. But I ask one favor for our newborn child. The boy is only 15 days old, his mother is still weak and sick. If you could let her stay home with the baby a few more days… You could arrest her later on. I will be your hostage.”

“Don’t give me your bourgeois feelings. The women in the North run out with guns to shoot down American planes two or three days after they have given birth, and nothing bad happens. Your wife has rested a full two weeks. Besides, at the security camp, she’ll be taken care of. The State is very kind. You needn’t worry. Just reform and carry out all orders.” The lieutenant pauses a moment and then asks, “What’s the baby’s name?”

Dang Giao quickly answers, “Liberation.”

The officer cannot believe his ears. “What?”

Dang Giao repeats it, but his wife interposes: “He’s just a few days old, we haven’t had time to name him.”

The lieutenant takes out a form and starts to write. By now the search is over. A soldier carrying three thick volumes asks Chu Vi Thuy, “What kind of books are these?”

“They are dictionaries.”

“I asked you what kind of books.”

“I said they are dictionaries.”

ANOTHER SOLDIER standing nearby comes to the aid of his friend: “What he means is, what does it say in them?”

Chu Vi Thuy laughs. “Oh, they are books that give you the meaning of French words in Vietnamese, or that translate English words into French.”

The young man has made a discovery; his excitement is hard to contain: “Really!” By now the officer has finished writing. He stands up and commands: “Everyone! Everyone! Attention!” and he reads in a resonant voice:

“Considering the security requirements of the Fatherland, and considering the denunciation of the people, the People’s Security Command of Ho Chi Minh City hereby orders: 1) [He repeats the denunciation he read when he first entered their house.] 2)… 3) That the unnamed child of the notorious reactionary writer Dang Giao and his wife also be arrested… Signed.”

So the problem of the baby is solved. As a special act of humanity the newborn child and his mother are not chained and manacled.

As the three are about to be led away, Dang Giao’s two older boys, aged eight and six, rush at the lieutenant and try to hit him. Fighting back tears, Dang Giao tells them: “You stay at home. Tomorrow you can call Grandma to come and stay with you. Should anyone ask about your father, tell them the truth, that your father is in jail. Do you understand?”

Now it is their mother’s turn to cry. Chu Vi Thuy slips to the floor, with the sleeping baby still in her arms.

Two soldiers about 18 years old help her up, but with no sign of compassion. A third takes the baby. The entire group moves toward the bus. “Daddy, why are they taking you to jail?”

“Go in and close the door now. Tomorrow morning you can call Grandma.”

OUTSIDE, the first rays of the morning sun are beginning to brighten the silent streets. The communal radio speakers have been blaring since 5 A.M. The familiar voice of the regular announcer intones:

“Just as Comrade Le Duan, the First Secretary of the Party, has said, our regime is a million times more democratic than any other regime in the world and thus the State Law promulgated on March 20 by the new regime is the most democratic law there is. To arrest people or search a home, one must have a written warrant…”

The baby, comfortably nestled in the arms of one of the youths, suddenly cries out, alarming his mother. “Give me back my child,” she says. She holds him tight to her bosom, and her tears mingle with those on his face. Resolutely, Dang Giao speaks to her: “Why are you crying? There is nothing to cry about now. Didn’t we see it coming?”

“You are right, there is nothing to cry about.” Chu Vi Thuy uses the hem of her dress to wipe the baby’s tears, then her own.

At the Tran Hung Dao detention center, right in the heart of Saigon, 42 other journalists and writers are waiting in individual cells and detention halls. All have experienced similar moments. They are there simply because the Liberation Artists Association has drawn up a list of 44 names of “reactionaries” from the areas of art and literature. They have all been arrested under the Law of March 1976, the law which requires that arrests be made on the basis of a written warrant, even if it means one written on the spot against a 15-day-old baby.

Dang Giao, his wife, and their baby are on their way to re-education camps, the Vietnamese Gulag from which they may or may not return. Their fate and the fate of thousands like them goes unremarked by the former antiwar activists who raised their voices to denounce human rights violations in South Vietnam. Between the genocide of Pol Pot in Cambodia and the repression in Vietnam there is a difference of degree, but the outcome is the same. The main difference is between a slow death and a quick one.

Editor's Introduction to:

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
by Edward P. Hughes

Edward Hughes is a telecommunications specialist for a national newspaper. He lives in Manchester, England. Some years ago I visited Manchester, where I was taken to a perfectly delightful Real Ale pub owned and operated by one Ray Bradbury. (Among Manchester science fiction fans, he is known as “the other Ray Bradbury”.) The Manchester science fiction club meets in an upstairs room of his tavern. This is appropriate, since the tavern harbors a ghost, fortunately more mischievous than malevolent.

We had a delightful time in Manchester; but there was one prophetic experience.

Mrs. Pournelle and I went to Manchester from Glasgow, travelling by the excellent British Railway system. This is a good way to travel. The trains are comfortable, on time, and connect nearly every place in Britain to everywhere else. We found ourselves wishing there was something comparable in the United States, although it’s hard to see how a nation several thousands of miles in dimensions can be served by rails as Britain is. Still, regions of the US certainly could be.

When we reached Manchester we were met by the owners of the local book store. It was late afternoon, and I would be speaking shortly, so they had made dinner reservations at a nearby restaurant.

Before we could enter the restaurant we were searched. The doorman wore North African Campaign service ribbons, and was very polite. He was obviously embarrassed about having to search ladies; but he did it.

We were told that all establishments near the railroad station had similar rules. Manchester is in the west of England, near Ireland.

A few days after our stay in Manchester, Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed by a bomb.

Civilization is a fragile thing; once gone, it is not easy to rebuild. Those who found a civilization traditionally have unique privileges. Patrick O’Meara, Master of the Fist and onetime sergeant of Her Majesty’s Forces certainly does…

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
by Edward P. Hughes

Patrick O’Meara lay awake in his castle, thinking of Eileen O’Connor. Down below in Barley Cross, Liam McGrath lay sleepless in his cot, also thinking of Eileen O’Connor. In another cottage in the village, dark-eyed Eileen O’Connor, clutching the rag doll she had loved since she was two, slept on in blissful ignorance.

Around five, the younger man, no longer able to suffer inactivity, got up and pushed wide the casement. In the half-light of dawn O’Meara’s Fist dominated the skyline. Liam made out the high flak towers floating above serrated battlements. He yawned. Having seen O’Meara’s Fist framed in his bedroom window for nineteen years, Liam wearied of the marvel. Besides, like the rest of the villagers, he was privy to its infirmities—the corroded armour, the rusty rocket launchers, and the shell-less batteries. And, like most of his village contemporaries, he found it hard to imagine that the great museum piece had ever intimidated any aggressor.

He sniffed the air scented by overnight rain. This, then, was the day. He jumped at the sound of his mother’s alarm in the next room, heard the bed creak as she got up. He shivered. Now would begin the long-awaited sequence of events destined to end that evening in the bedroom of the old Curry cottage, with Eileen O’Connor and himself, face to face, alone at last, and irrevocably married.

“Liam! Are you going to lie on all morning?”

He dressed quickly in his working clothes. This was going to be a day when help would have been welcome.

His stepfather being on duty at the Fist meant that he and his mother would have to cope with all the household chores in addition to preparing for the wedding.

But Eileen had chosen the date purposely: Andy McGrath on duty at the Fist meant a military guard of honor to greet them outside church.

“Liam! Will you lie abed all your wedding day?”

“Coming, Mam.” He clattered downstairs, out the back door, and across the yard. First chore was pumping the top cistern full while his mother kindled the fire and cooked breakfast. Afterwards he would milk the cows, feed the pigs, carry in the turf, chop kindling, check his snares, take the mare over to Seamus Murray for shoeing, and smuggle a sucking pig across to Eileen’s mother as the McGrath contribution to the wedding feast. With a bit of luck, he might even find time to give his chin an extra close scrape before he put on his Sunday suit for the ceremony.

He pumped, watching the light strengthen through the branches of the overhanging apple tree, slowly exposing the detail of O’Meara’s Fist.

He spat pensively into the long grass, wondering what the O’Meara himself was doing at this very moment. Certainly, he would not be pumping water in his old work clothes—wedding day or no. Not that the old lecher had ever needed to marry—when he had merely to lift a finger to get any woman in the village. Liam switched sides on the pump handle, turning his back on O’Meara’s Fist. Let the old ram lie on, probably ignorant of the news that this day the only son of Maureen McGrath was marrying the dark-eyed daughter of Tom and Biddy O’Connor. His grip tightened on the pump handle. Few people saw the old goat nowadays. There had been a day when he might have come down from the Fist to awe the reception with his presence. Liam wiped sweat from his forehead, wondering why some folk were born to rule, and others to be ruled. Although there was little sign of the Master’s iron hand these days. Indeed, if gossip were true, it was over a year since he had summoned a woman to the Fist.

A spatter of drops from the overflow sprinkled his nape. He released the pump handle, loosed the clamp which attached hose to spout. Any moment now his mother would…

“Breakfast, Liam!”

He soused his head under the spout, then started back to the house, picking up the egg from the side of the byre where the brown hen laid each morning.

Right now, up at the Fist, Andy McGrath would no doubt be dressing the guard into line for inspection by General Desmond. There was a wonder for you. How O’Meara the Ram, self-styled Duke of Connaught, Lord of Barley Cross, Master of the Fist, and lecher supreme, succeeded in inspiring the loyalty of people like Andy McGrath and General Desmond, or, for that matter, of people like schoolmistress Celia Larkin, Kevin Murphy the vet, Doctor Denny Mallon and other decent folk.

Maybe it had something to do with the old days when the O’Meara built his Fist at Barra Hill, buttressing it with armour from the warship which foundered off Clifden and parking his tank in the driveway to the Fist on the last drop of gas. And there were the legends of his fabulous exploits, like the raid on the pill warehouse in Tuam which, they say, gave Barley Cross aspirin, antibiotics and independence.

Liam sighed. Times were certainly not like that now. Just work, work, and not enough hands to go round.

His mother called. “Quit mooning out there! Come in and eat your breakfast!”

He scraped his boots on the grating at the back door and went in, placing the egg in the crock on the dresser. He said, “Does Andy know the time of the wedding?”

Maureen McGrath frowned. “Liam, I wish you would learn not to call your stepfather ‘Andy.’ You are not yet a grown man, and it is altogether too familiar. Could you not call him ‘Da’—just to please me?”

Liam sat down at the bare, scrubbed table. He mumbled through a mouthful of oatcake. “Andy is not bothered. He said I might call him what I wished, so long as I didn’t call him early. He is not my real father, anyway.”

“Your own father would have stood for no use of Christian names.” His mother’s voice shook with unaccustomed emotion. He looked up and caught her eyes sparkling angrily at him. “Flinty was a strict man,” she stormed. “He’d have stood no nonsense from you!”

“Leave off. Mam,” he pleaded. “Who knows what my Da would have stood for? It’s fifteen years since he got that arrow in his lung, fighting for the old ram up there on Barra Hill.”

“Liam!” Her voice rising alarmingly. “I will not have you using words like that about the Master of the Fist.”

He raised eyebrows in astonishment. “But, Mam—that’s what everyone calls him. They say he’s been to bed with nearly every woman in the village.” He broke off, and bit his lip in embarrassment.

Maureen McGrath flushed. “Liam McGrath, you have been listening to prurient gossip, and much good will it do you.”

“Mam,” he said patiently. “I’m only repeating what has been whispered around the village since I was a gossoon. Why, half the kids have the great O’Meara beak.”

“Liam!” His mother screeched. “I forbid you to discuss such things in this house. If you have finished eating, I suggest you take the mare on down to Seamus Murray, and after that you give the gig a good wash. If you are going to church in style, let it at least be a clean style.”

Liam stuffed the last of the oatcakes into his mouth and rose from the table. “I’ll do it right now. Mam,” he said.

At the door of the smithy, Seamus Murray clapped a hot shoe to the mare’s off hind foot clutched firmly between his knees and watched the smoke curl.

“Great day for you, Liam,” he said.

“If I can keep my Mam in a good temper it will be,” Liam responded. “Why should she get so upset when I criticize the old ram up there?” He nodded at the Fist which loomed plain in the sunlight at the top of the street. “Hasn’t the old despot had his way with almost every woman in Barley Cross?”

The blacksmith fished a long, triangular nail from the pocket of his apron, inserted it through a hole in the horseshoe and hammered it home. His voice was almost inaudible. “Easy to be critical, son. The O’Meara has been Lord and Protector here nigh on thirty years. Before he came we were like fowls in a farmyard with the fox outside. But he disciplined us, drilled us, dragged guns half the length of Connemara behind that old tank of his, and made Barley Cross a name in the land.” The smith waved towards a black skeleton which lay rusting on the hump of rock in Flanagan’s barley acre. “That didn’t come down by accident. We shot it clean out of the air. They say ‘twas the last aeroplane in the West of Ireland. I was there and saw it come down. We did a three-week stretch on duty in those days because the village had to be guarded constantly. Gangs used to come aroving. And, if they thought you had anything worth stealing, by God, they were after you with guns and cudgels and knives. But we stopped ‘em in Barley Cross. They learned to leave us alone.”

The smith sniffed embarrassedly. In silence he snipped off the sharp end of the nail protruding from the side of the mare’s hoof. “There aren’t so many people around now to make trouble,” he added. “You might even say we no longer need the O’Meara for a protector. But, who can tell?” He straightened up, searching his pocket for a nail. “You might say we were lucky to get through in such good shape. They tell me Clifden is a ghost town, now. ‘Tis a great pity. But they didn’t have our luck. And sure, ‘twas the O’Meara luck, and I, for one, am glad of it. So, if he wants to play medieval monarch, I’m prepared to put up with it.”

He hammered home the nail, snipped off the point, and released the mare’s leg. Liam followed him into the smithy. He watched the smith work the bellows before pushing another shoe into the glowing coals. “But, Seamus, what if it was your own wife?”

Seamus Murray turned to stare at him, his gaze level and placid. “After twenty-eight years of marriage to me, Mary is not the lass to drive the O’Meara crazy with desire. Let’s say the idea doesn’t trouble me.”

“But when you were younger?”

The smith hooked the shoe from the coals. He spat expertly. Spittle ricocheted from the hot iron. Satisfied, he gripped the shoe with the tongs and carried it out to the waiting mare. “Let’s say,” he said slowly, “if anything happened, I wasn’t aware of it. And, if it did, somehow Mary neglected to mention the matter.”

His eyelids crinkled as he watched the hot iron bed itself into the mare’s hoof. He glanced slyly at Liam. “I suppose ‘tis your wedding this afternoon that has set you thinking these serious thoughts?”

Liam scowled. He cocked an eye at the menacing Fist and drew patterns with his toe in the dirt. He set his jaw. “Nothing happens to Eileen without my say-so.”

Seamus Murray smiled sourly. He began to nail on the cooling shoe. “Brave words, son. But what would you gain by standing between the Master and a woman’s virginity? He could deal with you, and then take what he wanted.”

Liam felt his resolution wavering before Murray’s calm acceptance of the Master’s authority. He said, “Surely the O’Meara wouldn’t treat a new bride that way?”

The smith was grinning openly. “Haven’t you just suggested that he treated my Mary so?” He stared quizzically at Liam for a moment, then bent back over the hoof. He rasped the clipped nail points smooth without looking up. “I shouldn’t worry overmuch, son. Probably the Master is not even aware that you are to be married today.”

He gave the hoof a final buff, then released the beast. He pushed her towards Liam with a pat on the rump. “She’ll do for a while now, Liam. Tell your Mam that’s the last of my good shoes. I’ll be making them from scrap in future, unless a tinker happens by with some.”

Liam took the mare’s bridle. “Let me know when you’re ready for the piglet. I’ll bring it straight over. Then we’ll be quits for the last two jobs.”

The smith patted his shoulder. “Don’t be worrying about that either, son. I’ll let Andy know when we are ready for it.”

Liam slid onto the mare’s back. He turned her head towards home. God Damn! These old ’uns wouldn’t let you grow up. Leave it to Andy. He will settle it. Let the O’Meara have his way, he saved our lives in the past. Well, he hadn’t saved Liam McGrath’s life, and Liam McGrath owed him nothing. They could run the village any way they liked, but don’t expect Liam McGrath to get down and bow to their pet tyrant.

His stepfather was waiting outside the front door when he got home. Andy McGrath wore his visored helmet and beribboned flak jacket. Wizened Willie Flanagan and poor Eamon Toomey stood behind him. All three carried FN rifles. Liam opened his mouth to suggest that three men were not much of a guard of honor, saw the look on his stepfather’s face, and thought the better of it. He cartwheeled dextrously from the mare’s back. “Hi, Andy! You’re early. The wedding’s not until two.”

Andy McGrath’s face was grim. “We’ll be in time, Liam, never doubt. But first we’ve a little business with you.” He fumbled inside his jacket and brought out a folded sheet of paper. Pushing up his visor, he put on his spectacles, and unfolded the paper. “Just so you understand, Liam, that I am carrying out orders.” He cleared his throat and began to read.

“From the Lord of Barley Cross to Liam McGrath of Killoo Farm. Take note that we intend to exercise our droit du seigneur with your intended wife Eileen O’Connor and that Sergeant McGrath has orders to escort her to the Fist at six of the clock this day.”

Liam felt his face grow hot. “Droit… droit what?”

His stepfather’s face was impassive. “Droit du seigneur, lad. It’s old French. Sometimes it’s called Jus primae noctis— which is Latin for the same thing—the right of the first night. The Master intends to exercise his legal rights with your betrothed.”

Liam felt the color drain from his face. A lump of ice congealed in his chest. He stammered. “The… the Master can’t want my Eileen!”

Andy McGrath refolded the paper, then tucked it inside his jacket. He removed his spectacles and put them into a pocket. “The Master can, and the Master does.”

Liam caught his stepfather’s hand in sudden appeal. “But you won’t let them take her away!”

Andy McGrath’s gaze softened slightly. “I’m sorry, lad. I’m the one that must do the taking.”

Liam clutched him. “Andy, you can’t!”

His stepfather firmly removed Liam’s hand. “I must warn you, son, that it is a serious offence to obstruct the Master’s officers in the execution of their duty. So don’t try anything foolish. You’ll get your Eileen back in the morning. She won’t be the first, nor will she be the last. Now I suggest you accept that your married life starts tomorrow instead of tonight. And I’ll be on my way to break the news to the O’Connors.”

Liam stared incredulously at his stepfather and the two-man squad awkwardly clutching their rifles. Each of those guns, by repute, held only one round because of the miserly way General Desmond released ammunition. But one bullet could settle an argument. Would they really shoot him if he tried to prevent their abduction of Eileen? In the leg, perhaps, as a warning. Willie Flanagan was a poacher by vocation; no doubt he would prefer a noose, or the knife. But poor Eamon Toomey would do whatever he was told: he would shoot, and think afterwards.

Hot, burning tears were suddenly scalding his cheeks.

His stepfather put an arm around his shoulders. He urged him towards the doorway of the house. “Go in and talk to your mother, son. She’ll listen to you. And she will tell you that what I say is the best thing to do.”

He turned to Willie and Eamon. “Right, lads. To the O’Connors now, and we’ll get it over with.”

Eileen O’Connor opened the back door and gasped. “Liam! You know it’s unlucky to be seeing me before the service!”

He tried to take her into his arms, but she held him off.

“I had to come,” he panted. “My Mam thinks I’m checking the snares. Has Andy been yet?”

She glanced quickly over her shoulder into the interior of the house. “You know he has. He came straight from your place.”

He gripped her arms. “Do you know why he came?”

She nodded, lowering her eyes.

“Then why don’t you say something?” Surely she could not remain calm, knowing the message Andy McGrath had brought. He said, “You won’t let that old—?”

Eileen O’Connor drew in a deep breath. She looked him straight in the eyes. “My Da says it’s the law and that we must do as the law says. He says we should regard it as an honor.”

He snorted bitterly. “Your Da sounds like a first-class creep to me.”

She glared at him. “Don’t you be calling my Da a creep. He did his share for Barley Cross before you were born. And you’re not even old enough to stand guard at the Fist yet?”

He pulled her towards him and again tried to embrace her. “Don’t let’s quarrel, Eileen. I’m not calling your Da names. It’s just that he is like our Andy. All the old folk act the same—as though O’Meara was God, and his slightest wish the law.”

She stood cold and motionless in his arms. “My Da says without the Master there would be no law.”

He swallowed an angry retort and said patiently, “We’ll have to get away before Andy comes.”

He felt her stiffen. “Why? Why should we go away?”

“Why? So that old lecher can’t…”

“He’s not so old, and he’s not a lecher. They say he is a very civil man.”

“Civil! My God!”

She drew back as far as his arms would permit. Her voice was like ice on a pool. “If I’ve said something foolish, Liam McGrath, please don’t hesitate to point it out.”

His hands trembled with the impulse to crush her to him, knowing that she would resist. He said, “Eileen, let’s not quarrel over this. Do you want the O’Meara to take you up there, and…” He floundered helplessly, left the question hanging.

Her lips compressed into a thin, straight line, which warned him that O’Connor common sense would now prevail. “If I agreed to go with you, where would we go?”

“Why—somewhere outside the village. There’s the O’Toole cabin on Kirkogue has been empty this twelve-month.”

“Because no one has wanted it since old Gabriel died there, all alone, without a soul to help him, and at the mercy of any rogue that passed that way. Who would be caring for me while you were down here working at your farm?”

“But, Eileen—I’d stay with you. I wouldn’t leave you on your own. We’d start a new farm. Old Gabriel had quite a bit of pasture at the back.”

Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Faith—there isn’t enough soil up there to grow a week’s potatoes. And the land sloping so bad you’d need a short leg to get around easy.”

“Then we’ll build a cottage nearer the village. There’s plenty of stone, and I’m good with my hands.”

She sighed, wagging her head in mock despair. “Liam McGrath, sometimes I think you are a great booby. How near the village would you build your cottage? Near enough, I hope, for O’Meara’s law to protect us from vagabonds like the two your Andy hanged last month. But if you seek the law’s protection, don’t you have to obey it, too? And the law says I go up to the Fist tonight.”

She let him pull her towards him then, felt his tears wet her cheek. She stroked the back of his head. “It’s not the end of the world, lad. If we lived outside Barley Cross I’d probably have been raped at twelve, and dying from malnutrition by now. We have a good life here. No bad men. And there’s Doctor Denny’s hospital if you’re sick. I don’t want to live anywhere else. So, we take the rough with the smooth. And, if I do have to go up to the Fist, nobody outside our families need even know. And I’m sure you’d rather I went willingly, than be dragged there, kicking and screaming over something any girl outside Barley Cross would regard as a normal event, and in this specific case might even consider it an honor.”

He crushed her to him, not listening, unwilling to dispute further. “Don’t worry,” he murmured into her hair. “I’ll fix it, somehow.”

She pushed back his head so that she could look into his eyes. “Liam McGrath, there’ll be no fixing, somehow or anyhow! We are going to live here in Barley Cross after we are wed, and you’ll do nothing to prevent it!”

“But Eileen—” he began.

“But nothing.” She closed his lips with her own. “If I can put up with it, so can you. Now off you go before my Mam comes to see who it is that I’m blathering with at the back door.”

Mind churning, Liam stumbled blindly from the O’Connor’s yard. Sunlight flashed on jewels under his eyelids. Help from someone more powerful than himself was what he needed. He lurched towards the street.

Molly Larkin filled the doorway of her father’s neat cottage beside the schoolhouse. Her arms were white to the elbows with flour. She stared at him in surprise. “Why, Liam—I thought today was your—?”

“It is, Molly, it is.” He felt himself coloring with embarrassment. Once upon a time he had fancied motherless Molly Larkin. No doubt she would make someone a fine wife—if that someone didn’t mind marrying her old man as well. He said, “It’s your aunt I wanted.” She dusted flour from her hands, wiped them on her apron. “She’s not home, Liam. I believe she’s up at the Fist. Would you be leaving a message?”

He backed away. There was no message he would choose prosy Molly Larkin to deliver for him. “Ah—no, thank you, Molly. Tisn’t anything important.” Granite chippings crunched underfoot; the gate squealed as he closed it behind him.

Who else to try?

Tessie Mallon was snipping dead rose heads in her garden. She was as plump and jolly as her husband was shriveled and sour. She slipped scissors jnto her apron pocket and pulled off her homemade gloves as Liam hesitated the other side of her hedge. She saw his face and showed alarm.

“The doctor is not in, Liam. Is it your Mam?”

He shook his head dumbly.

“Yourself, then?”

He found his voice. “There is nobody ill, Mrs. Mallon. I just wanted a quick word with the doctor.”

She nibbled thoughtfully at the tip of her index finger—a habit that, forty years ago, had driven the village lads crazy. “He said he’d be back in an hour or so. Should I ask him to call round at your house?”

Emotion choked his voice. “No—no, thank you. I’ll catch him another time.”

She held her head on one side, half smiling. “Your Eileen has already had a chat with him, if that is any help. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

Liam fled.

Clouds were gathering over Cam Seefin and Leckavrea. Rain would soon be pocking the surface of Lough Corrib. Endless Connemara rain. A wet afternoon for the wedding, for sure. Who else could he try? Father Con?

The old priest led him into a furniture-filled study which had not altered in fifty years, except that now the electric light no longer worked. He listened in silence to Liam’s plea for help.

“Well, Liam,” he said gently. “What would you have me do? Forbid the wedding?”

“Ah, no, Father.” That was not the solution that Liam sought.

“What then, son? I’m too old to be trudging up Barra Hill with a shilelagh in my hand to knock piety into the O’Meara.”

“But, Father, you can’t condone what he’s trying to do. Isn’t adultery a sin for him, as well as the rest of us?”

The old priest raised his hands in gentle reproof. “Now, Liam, I did not say that I condoned the O’Meara’s actions. No doubt he is as much a sinner as the rest of us.”

“Well—couldn’t you excommunicate him, or something?”

Father Constantine smiled patiently.

“Excommunication is the Holy Father’s business, son, and I haven’t had word from His Holiness for many a long year.”

Liam’s lower lip protruded stubbornly. “You could at least refuse him the sacraments.”

Father Con frowned. His eyes narrowed in unspoken rebuke. He said, “Liam, the church is for sinners. If the O’Meara is our biggest sinner, he must have the biggest need of it.”

Liam got to his feet. “Then you can’t do anything for me?”

The priest washed his hands in agitation. “My son, although it is no business of yours, because of your involvement I will tell you that I have spoken my mind frequently and forcibly to the Lord of Barley Cross. And I will tell you that, in his own eyes, his deeds are justified. Beyond that I will not go. If you are still unsatisfied, I can only recommend that you seek an interview with the O’Meara himself.”

Liam shambled from the grey stone presbytery, anger mounting inside him. His resolve grew firm. No one was willing to help him defy the tyrant. The O’Meara had ruled for so long they were inured to his tyranny. He would follow Father Con’s advice. An interview—on different lines to those the priest envisaged!

Liam McGrath turned his steps towards Barra Hill. In the old, dangerous days, tradition had it, the Fist had been used as a sanctuary when the village was attacked. Certainly he remembered spending days in the castle as a child, playing in its grounds in summer. And he knew a way to get up there unobserved…

In the great dining hall of O’Meara’s Fist, the Lord of Barley Cross caroused with his henchmen.

The O’Meara himself slumped in a frayed armchair before a smouldering turf fire, a glass of poteen on the bare boards beside him. In a chair across the hearth, Denny Mallon, M.D., hunched like a shriveled embryo, clutching his glass tightly. Kevin Murphy, the vet, and General Larry Desmond shared a broken-backed settee and a half bottle. On a stool on the pegged rug, knees skirt-covered and primly closed, hunched beneath her chin, Celia Larkin, M.A., sipped a cup of herb tea brewed specially for her.

The schoolmistress put down the teacup carefully onto the saucer on the rug. “Did you have any trouble with young McGrath, Larry?”

General Desmond eased a leg over the end of the sofa. He stared reflectively into his glass. “Ah, no, Celia. Andy McGrath is a good man. He’d march off a cliff edge if I so ordered. I gave him the job of breaking the news. And Tom O’Connor’s a biddable man. We’ll have no trouble with either of them.”

Dr. Denny Mallon stirred in the depths of the old chair. “How did the women take it? I think it’s getting harder for them to accept when it hits their own kids.”

The general snorted with laughter. “Bedam—I believe they are both dead keen on it. Don’t they both want a grandchild to cosset? And do you think that either of them is fussy how it is managed?”

“How about the youngsters?” persisted the schoolmistress. “Are they accepting it?”

The general looked less comfortable. “Andy tells me the lad was upset. He sent him in to talk to his mother. The girl is level-headed. She will do as Tom and Brigit tell her.”

“Do you think the Master should attend the reception?”

“Ah, no. Let’s keep his ugly mug out of it for as long as possible.” The general grinned placatingly at the O’Meara. “I’ve sent down the usual gift.” He swirled the colorless fluid gently in his glass. “It’s amazing the influence a bar of real, old-fashioned toilet soap has on the opinion of a nice woman. I reckon we can celebrate another eighty or ninety nuptials before we get down to the carbolic.”

The O’Meara opened his eyes. He said plaintively, “Do you ever get the feeling you’re invisible? All very fine for you schemers—but it’s me is the fall guy.” He turned to the schoolmistress. “Do I have to go through with it? After all, the lad may be…”

Celia Larkin interrupted him incisively. “Let be, Pat. We get this from you every time there’s a wedding. And it won’t make a damned bit of difference. You’ll do it if we have to hold you down.”

The Master of the Fist leaned forward to pack a fresh turf at the back of the fire. “One day I’m going to disappoint you all. Ask Denny. I’ve been getting these pains in my chest. ’Twouldn’t surprise me, if, one time…”

Denny Mallon waved a dismissive glass. “Whisht, Pat! I’ll give you a couple of pills. The exercise will do you good.”

“If only you knew,” sighed the O’Meara, “what I have to put up with. Coaxing them, turning my back, apologizing, listening to them cry themselves to sleep…”

Patrick O’Meara, ex-Grenadier Guardsman, had altered in the years since his strategic retreat in a stolen Chieftain tank from the burning docks of Belfast to a more defensible position in his native Connemara. Now, discipline sat heavy on his shoulders.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he groaned. “Maybe we should have gone underground.”

Big Larry Desmond tilted the bottle recklessly above his glass. “If the Lord had intended us to live in burrows, He’d have given us long ears and little furry tails.”

“Maybe we should have stuck to the cities?”

“Nyet!” said Kevin Murphy, who had read Marx in his youth. “The Kelly boy took two pigs down to Galway Town last week and came back witless. The dead are lying in the street there, he tells me.”

“You can criticize Galway Town,” protested the O’Meara, “but we don’t make progress.”

Celia Larkin straightened her back. “What do you expect? No one is going to invent a turf-driven aeroplane. Nor produce vacuum cleaners from cow pats. But we have twenty-four children attending school. And, if you think you can claim all the credit, you can think again. That Kelly boy was never a ten-month child. He’s their own, I’m sure.”

“Then why don’t they produce more children?”

She looked shocked. “It isn’t for us to be prying into private matters! We interfere enough by insisting on your droit du seigneur.” She turned to the general. “Please give that Kelly boy an escort if he has to go outside the village in future.” She sighed. “God forgive me—one could almost wish he’d grow up promiscuous.”

Kevin Murphy rumbled indistinctly. “Nothing wrong with that idea.”

She shook her head sadly. “Kevin, your farmyard solutions won’t do for us. Children are entitled to their own parents, just as parents are entitled to their own children.” She removed her rimless spectacles and polished them on the hem of her sleeve. “Remember the ecology freaks? Predicting what we would run out of—oil, coal, gas, living room, fresh air. Never thought we’d run out of people.”

Denny Mallon exhaled clouds of smoke. “I thought the dark-skinned races might have done better. But their crops are letting them down. Something to do with radiation affecting bacteria and viruses, which in turn affects the plants. I caught a broadcast from Athlone years ago—when we had the radio,” he added apologetically.

Celia Larkin’s lips tightened. “If it is the ultraviolet. If those clever professors were so sure, why wasn’t something done when they first discovered what was happening?”

Denny Mallon sucked imperturbably on his pipe. “The ozone layer never stopped all the ultraviolet. Can anyone know how much radiation it takes to cripple a gene?”

Kevin Murphy scratched his scalp. “Sure— ’tis a statistical thing. Genes are getting hit by radiation all the time. Suddenly, for some reason, the percentage of hits tips the scale from acceptability to calamity.”

General Desmond reached again for the bottle. “Statistics be damned—it’s our cloudy Connemara skies that I’m grateful for.”

Kevin Murphy accepted the bottle from the General. He said, “The beasts seem to hold their own. Maybe it is Larry’s clouds, or maybe they are not as sensitive as us. But we’re getting enough births to keep the herds and flocks going.” He grinned at the Lord of Barley Cross. “Be grateful I don’t need your services in my department.”

Celia Larkin frowned. “That’s enough of your lewd talk, Kevin. If we can hold on long enough, Barley Cross might start producing radiation-resistant kids. Or the ozone layer might yet repair itself.” The shriveled, childless spinster pulled out a frayed handkerchief and blew her nose loudly. Sunlight glinted on her spectacles as she raised her head. “But, in any Goddamned case, I can go to my grave hoping that, in the years to come, if there is the faintest chance of things getting going again, we simpletons of Barley Cross will have done our bit to supply a few of the hands and heads that will be needed to get this poor, sorrowing planet progressing again.”

There was silence for a moment.

Then General Desmond put down his glass and said, “Amen to that.”

“Amen,” mumbled veterinary surgeon Kevin Murphy, scowling at no one in particular.

“Amen,” whispered Denny Mallon, M.D., staring into the empty bowl of his pipe.

The Lord of Barley Cross got to his feet. He consulted the old wind-up watch he had used since batteries ran out. “Well, madame and gentlemen, if anything is going to happen, it must be soon. There is only an hour to the wedding. If you will excuse me, I’d better be getting a bath and a shave. Can’t let the future Mrs. McGrath see me in this state.” He jerked a thumb at the servant’s door. “Shout for Michael if you want another bottle.”

“You shout, if you want us,” said the general.

The Lord of Barley Cross pushed stockinged feet into slippers and shuffled towards the door. He paused to stare sourly at his henchmen. “If only I hadn’t promised Celia thirty years ago—” He sighed. “You’ll be flogging O’Meara along until he drops, I suppose?”

The doctor’s eyes gleamed puckishly. “We might let you off the hook when you’re eighty.”

A metal arm on the wall moved from the vertical to the horizontal, causing a bell to tinkle. The general reached out and reset it.

“There’s your signal, Pat.”

The O’Meara shrugged. “I’ll be off then to face the music.”

He opened the door of his bedroom and went in. An arm encircled his neck, another his chest. The tip of a knife pricked his shirt front.

“Easy now, son,” he grunted, tugging at both arms, striving to maintain his balance.

“If you think you can beat me to it—go ahead,” he invited. “But I warn you, I don’t need to count up to ten before I kill a man. And, no matter who gets who, the sound of a shot will bring those fellers out there running. If that happens, the man to watch is Larry Desmond— he’s a killer.”

Liam felt the moisture filling his eyes. “You—you bastard!”

“Ah, no!” The O’Meara seemed genuinely surprised. “It’s you that is the bastard.”

Liam blinked furiously. “Don’t call me a bastard. I’m not planning to sleep with your wife.”

The O’Meara tossed his socks into a corner. He picked up the gun and clicked the chamber round thoughtfully.

“I have no wife with whom you might sleep, Liam. And a bastard is precisely what you are. Your mother was not married to your father.”

Liam quivered, as though an electric current galvanized his limbs. “Put away the gun, and I’ll show you how I feel about that statement.”

The O’Meara laughed. “Liam—poor old Flinty Hagan couldn’t have fathered you. He lost the necessary equipment in a raid on Oughterard a year before he was married. We all kept quiet about it because he was a sensitive man, and we thought a great deal of him.”

Liam’s lips trembled. The old goat was trying to provoke him, but he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing him lose his temper. He said, “Then why did my mother agree to marry Flinty?”

The O’Meara sat silent for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision.

“Well now, Liam. We seem to have arrived at what you might call the moment of truth. You have asked me a question which I would rather not answer. If you insist on an answer, I’m afraid we must escalate our discussion to a more formal level.”

Liam let his lip curl scornfully. “Don’t fence with me. Let’s have a straight word out of you.”

The O’Meara nodded in agreement. “So be it, son. Up to this moment you could have walked out of this room any time you wanted, and no hard feelings on my part. Now, as I warned you, you’ve promoted our chat to a really serious plane—that is, namely, your examination for citizenship. Some lads never learn about this test. Others, quite naturally, avoid it. But you have headed straight for it. So, now, I’m going to answer your question. And also provide you with some additional information that you haven’t asked for. Your response, after due consideration, will govern whether you leave this room vertically or horizontally—and remember I am the judge.

“Here goes. Your Mam married Flinty Hagan because Barley Cross needed children, and at the time Flinty was the only available bachelor.”

“But you said Flinty couldn’t…”

“Don’t interrupt, son, or I might make a hasty decision. Just listen. Very few men in Barley Cross can father a child. The reason goes back a long way, and it isn’t their fault. Responsible adults in the village are aware of this and have accepted the solution the people out there in my dining room thought up. The solution is that I— because I’m a freak, being fertile—I father most of the children in Barley Cross, but their legal fathers get the credit.

“That, briefly, is how our village has managed to remain a living, functioning community, with enough people to do all the work required to keep it going. Now, Liam, if you wish to graduate into a citizen of Barley Cross, you must accept our solution, and keep quiet about it. That doesn’t mean you can’t talk it over with your Eileen. But it does mean you don’t discuss it in front of the children. Because the way a child grows up governs how he or she acts as an adult. And we want the children of Barley Cross to believe that the world is a sane and happy place where everyone gets his own Daddy and Mammy. And we hope that the child will be able to adjust to our madhouse when he is old enough to understand it. It also means that you don’t gab about it in the village or do anything which might inadvertently destroy the illusion we have built up so painstakingly. And it means that your Eileen comes up here tonight, like every bride in the last thirty years.”

The O’Meara paused, rubbing his jaw reflectively. “Those are the facts. Don’t go shouting for help. No one is going to rush in to save you from the crazy O’Meara. Those gentlemen outside have an idea that you might be in here. And they realize that I am making a reasonable attempt to dispel any objections you may hold to the way the village is run. What they do not know, are my methods of persuasion. But it has all happened before, and they have confidence in me.”

The O’Meara straightened his back. He raised his arm. The gun pointed at Liam’s breastbone.

“You may have qualms about accepting our solution. Your views on putative incest, for instance, may not correspond with ours. The subject is not open for debate. You may walk from this room a responsible adult, or you may be carried out a dead juvenile. Now, sir—how do you say?”

Liam’s eyes had been growing wider and wider. “But, if Flinty Hagan wasn’t my father—?”

“Keep going,” urged the O’Meara. “You are getting warm.”

Liam McGrath fingered his own hooked nose, as if he had just become aware of it. He eyed the similar protuberance on the face of the elderly man sitting barefoot and shirtless on the bed. Suddenly he grinned.

“Put up the gun, Da, or you’ll have me late. A citizen ought to be on time for his own wedding.”

Editor's Introduction to:

SUPERIORITY
by Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur Clark swore that he would not write another book after FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE. Why should he? He doesn’t need money, and the Republic of Sri Lanka (formerly the colony of Ceylon) has declared him a national treasure as well as Chancellor of its national university.

However, his fans kept after him to write the sequel to 2001, and Arthur made a discovery: small computers make writing easy. Arthur has an Archive computer (naturally he calls it Archie).

When Arthur was on tour promoting 2010 we held a small reception for him here at Chaos Manor. He was surprised to see a copy of Archie. I don’t have an Archive computer, but their keyboard is so nice that we’ve adapted it to the CompuPro machines I work with.

Archie not only allowed Dr. Clarke to turn in the manuscript to 2010 nearly a year early, but has, by his own admission, made letter writing fun again. In past years, old friends of Clarke’s counted themselves lucky to receive a postcard every couple of years; now he’s sending five page letters. He’s sure it isn’t going to last, but he’s enjoying himself.

The small computer revolution goes on, and it’s changing the world. The Falklands War demonstrated that. To win in today’s conflicts, you must have good soldiers, but you must also have high technology weapons.

Of course there can be too much of a good thing…

SUPERIORITY
by Arthur C. Clarke

In making this statement—which I do of my own free will—I wish first to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way trying to gain sympathy, nor do I expect any mitigation of whatever sentence the Court may pronounce. I am writing this in an attempt to refute some of the lying reports broadcast over the prison radio and published in the papers I have been allowed to see. These have given an entirely false picture of the true cause of our defeat, and as the leader of my race’s armed forces at the cessation of hostilities I feel it my duty to protest against such libels upon those who served under me.

I also hope that this statement may explain the reasons for the application I have twice made to the Court, and will now induce it to grant a favor for which I can see no possible grounds of refusal.

The ultimate cause of our failure was a simple one: despite all statements to the contrary, it was not due to lack of bravery on the part of our men, or to any fault of the Fleet’s. We were defeated by one thing only—by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat—by the inferior science of our enemies.

When the war opened we had no doubt of our ultimate victory. The combined fleets of our allies greatly exceeded in number and armament those which the enemy could muster against us, and in almost all branches of military science we were their superiors. We were sure that we could maintain this superiority. Our belief proved, alas, to be only too well founded.

At the opening of the war our main weapons were the long-range homing torpedo, dirigible ball-lightning and the various modifications of the Klydon beam. Every unit of the Fleet was equipped with these and though the enemy possessed similar weapons their installations were generally of lesser power. Moreover, we had behind us a far greater military Research Organization, and with this initial advantage we could not possibly lose.

The campaign proceeded according to plan until the Battle of the Five Suns. We won this, of course, but the opposition proved stronger than we had expected. It was realized that victory might be more difficult, and more delayed, than had first been imagined. A conference of supreme commanders was therefore called to discuss our future strategy.

Present for the first time at one of our war conferences was Professor-General Norden, the new Chief of the Research Staff, who had just been appointed to fill the gap left by the death of Malvar, our greatest scientist. Malvar’s leadership had been responsible, more than any other single factor, for the efficiency and power of our weapons. His loss was a very serious blow, but no one doubted the brilliance of his successor—though many of us disputed the wisdom of appointing a theoretical scientist to fill a post of such vital importance. But we had been overruled.

I can well remember the impression Norden made at that conference. The military advisers were worried, and as usual turned to the scientists for help. Would it be possible to improve our existing weapons, they asked, so that our present advantage could be increased still further?

Norden’s reply was quite unexpected. Malvar had often been asked such a question—and he had always done what we requested.

“Frankly, gentlemen,” said Norden, “I doubt it. Our existing weapons have practically reached finality. I don’t wish to criticize my predecessor, or the excellent work done by the Research Staff in the last few generations, but do you realize that there has been no basic change in armaments for over a century? It is, I am afraid, the result of a tradition that has become conservative. For too long, the Research Staff has devoted itself to perfecting old weapons instead of developing new ones. It is fortunate for us that our opponents have been no wiser; we cannot assume that this will always be so.”

Norden’s words left an uncomfortable impression, as he had no doubt intended. He quickly pressed home the attack.

“What we want are new weapons—weapons totally different from any that have been employed before. Such weapons can be made: it will take time, of course, but since assuming charge I have replaced some of the older scientists by young men and have directed research into several unexplored fields which show great promise. I believe, in fact, that a revolution in warfare may soon be upon us.”

We were skeptical. There was a bombastic tone in Norden’s voice that made us suspicious of his claims. We did not know, then, that he never promised anything that he had not already almost perfected in the laboratory. In the laboratory—that was the operative phrase.

Norden proved his case less than a month later, when he demonstrated the Sphere of Annihilation, which produced complete disintegration of matter over a radius of several hundred meters. We were intoxicated by the power of the new weapon, and were quite prepared to overlook one fundamental defect—the fact that it was a sphere and hence destroyed its rather complicated generating equipment at the instant of formation. This meant, of course, that it could not be used on warships but only on guided missiles, and a great program was started to convert all homing torpedoes to carry the new weapon. For the time being all further offensives were suspended.

We realize now that this was our first mistake. I still think that it was a natural one, for it seemed to us then that all our existing weapons had become obsolete overnight, and we already regarded them as almost primitive survivals. What we did not appreciate was the magnitude of the task we were attempting, and the length of time it would take to get the revolutionary super-weapon into battle. Nothing like this had happened for a hundred years and we had no previous experience to guide us.

The conversion problem proved far more difficult than anticipated. A new class of torpedo had to be designed, as the standard model was too small. This meant in turn that only the larger ships could launch the weapon, but we were prepared to accept this penalty. After six months, the heavy units of the Fleet were being equipped with the Sphere. Training maneuvers and tests had shown that it was operating satisfactorily and we were ready to take it into action. Norden was already being hailed as the architect of victory, and had half promised even more spectacular weapons.

Then two things happened. One of our battleships disappeared completely on a training flight, and an investigation showed that under certain conditions the ship’s long-range radar could trigger the Sphere immediately when it had been launched. The modification needed to overcome this defect was trivial, but it caused a delay of another month and was the source of much bad feeling between the naval staff and the scientists. We were ready for action again—when Nordon announced that the radius of effectiveness of the Sphere had now been increased by ten. Thus multiplying by a thousand the chances of destroying an enemy ship.

So the modifications started all over again, but everyone agreed that the delay would be worth it. Meanwhile, however, the enemy had been emboldened by the absence of further attacks and had made an unexpected onslaught. Our ships were short of torpedoes, since none had been coming from the factories, and were forced to retire. So we lost the systems of Kyrane and Floranus, and the planetary fortress of Rhamsandron.

It was an annoying but not a serious blow, for the recaptured systems had been unfriendly, and difficult to administer. We had no doubt that we could restore the position in the near future, as soon as the new weapon became operational.

These hopes were only partially fulfilled. When we renewed our offensive, we had to do so with fewer of the Spheres of Annihilation than had been planned, and this was one reason for our limited success. The other reason was more serious.

While we had been equipping as many of our ships as we could with the irresistible weapon, the enemy had been building feverishly. His ships were of the old pattern with the old weapons—but they now outnumbered ours. When we went into action, we found that the numbers ranged against us were often 100 per cent greater than expected, causing target confusion among the automatic weapons and resulting in higher losses than anticipated. The enemy losses were higher still, for once a Sphere had reached its objective, destruction was certain, but the balance had not swung as far in our favor as we had hoped.

Moreover, while the main fleets had been engaged, the enemy had launched a daring attack on the lightly held systems of Eriston, Duranus, Carmanidora and Pharanidon—recapturing them all. We were thus faced with a threat only fifty light-years from our home planets.

There was much recrimination at the next meeting of the supreme commanders. Most of the complaints were addressed to Norden—Grand Admiral Taxaris in particular maintaining that thanks to our admittedly irresistible weapon we were now considerably worse off than before. We should, he claimed, have continued to build conventional ships, thus preventing the loss of our numerical superiority.

Norden was equally angry and called the naval staff ungrateful bunglers. But I could tell that he was worried— as indeed we all were—by the unexpected turn of events. He hinted that there might be a speedy way of remedying the situation.

We now know that Reserach had been working on the Battle Analyzer for many years, but at the time it came as a revelation to us and perhaps we were too easily swept off our feet. Norden’s argument, also, was seductively convincing. What did it matter, he said, if the enemy had twice as many ships as we—if the efficiency of ours could be doubled or even trebled? For decades the limiting factor in warfare had been not mechanical but biological—it had become more and more difficult for any single mind, or group of minds, to cope with the rapidly changing complexities of battle in three-dimensional space. Norden’s mathematicians had analyzed some of the classic engagements of the past, and had shown that even when we had been victorious we had often operated our units at much less than half of their theoretical efficiency.

The Battle Analyzer would change all this by replacing the operations staff with electronic calculators. The idea was not new, in theory, but until now it had been no more than a Utopian dream. Many of us found it difficult to believe that it was still anything but a dream: after we had run through several very complex dummy battles, however, we were convinced.

It was decided to install the Analyzer in four of our heaviest ships, so that each of the main fleets could be equipped with one. At this stage, the trouble began— though we did not know it until later.

The Analyzer needed a team of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate it. It was quite impossible to accommodate the extra staff aboard a battleship, so each of the four units had to be accompanied by a converted liner to carry the technicians not on duty. Installation was also a very slow and tedious business, but by gigantic efforts it was completed in six months.

Then, to our dismay, we were confronted by another crisis. Nearly five thousand highly skilled men had been selected to serve the Analyzers and had been given an intensive course at the Technical Training Schools. At the end of seven months, 10 per cent of them had had nervous breakdowns and only 40 per cent had qualified.

Once again, everyone started to blame everyone else. Norden, of course, said that the Research Staff could not be held responsible, and so incurred the enmity of the Personnel and Training Commands. It was finally decided that the only thing to do was to use two instead of four Analyzers and to bring the others into action as soon as men could be trained. There was little time to lose, for the enemy was still on the offensive and his morale was rising.

The first Analyzer fleet was ordered to recapture the system of Eriston. On the way, by one of the hazards of war, the liner carrying the technicians was struck by a roving mine. A warship would have survived, but the liner with its irreplaceable cargo was totally destroyed. So the operation had to be abandoned.

The other expedition was, at first, more successful. There was no doubt at all that the Analyzer fulfilled its designer’s claims, and the enemy was heavily defeated in the first engagements. He withdrew, leaving us in possession of Saphran, Leucon and Hexanerax. But his Intelligence Staff must have noted the change in our tactics and the inexplicable presence of a liner in the heart of our battlefleet. It must have noted, also, that our first fleet had been accompanied by a similar ship—and had withdrawn when it had been destroyed.

In the next engagement, the enemy used his superior numbers to launch an overwhelming attack on the Analyzer ship and its unarmed consort. The attack was made without regard to losses—both ships were, of course, heavily protected—and it succeeded. The result was the virtual decapitation of the Fleet, since an effectual transfer to the old operational methods proved impossible. We disengaged under heavy fire, and so lost all our gains and also the systems of Lormyia, Ismarnus, Beronis, Alphanidon and Sideneus.

At this stage, Grand Admiral Taxaris expressed his disapproval of Norden by committing suicide, and I assumed supreme command.

The station was now both serious and infuriating. With stubborn conservatism and complete lack of imagination, the enemy continued to advance with his old-fashioned and inefficient but now vastly more numerous ships. It was galling to realize that if we had only continued building, without seeking new weapons, we would have been in a far more advantageous position. There were many acrimonious conferences at which Norden defended the scientists while everyone else blamed them for all that had happened. The difficulty was that Norden had proved every one of his claims: he had a perfect excuse for all the disasters that had occurred. And we could not now turn back—the search for an irresistible weapon must go on. At first it had been a luxury that would shorten the war. Now it was a necessity if we were to end it victoriously.

We were on the defensive, and so was Norden. He was more than ever determined to re-establish his prestige and that of the Research Staff. But we had been twice disappointed, and would not make the same mistake again. No doubt Norden’s twenty thousand scientists would produce many further weapons: we would remain unimpressed.

We were wrong. The final weapon was something so fantastic that even now it seems difficult to believe that it ever existed. Its innocent, noncommittal name—The Exponential Field—gave no hint of its real potentialities. Some of Norden’s mathematicians had discovered it during a piece of entirely theoretical research into the properties of space, and to everyone’s great surprise their results were found to be physically realizable.

It seems very difficult to explain the operation of the Field to the layman. According to the technical description, it “produces an exponential condition of space, so that a finite distance in normal, linear space may become infinite in pseudo-space.” Norden gave an analogy which some of us found useful. It was as if one took a flat disk of rubber—representing a region of normal space—and then pulled its center out to infinity. The circumference of the disk would be unaltered—but its “diameter” would be infinite. That was the sort of thing the generator of the Field did to the space around it.

As an example, suppose that a ship carrying the generator was surrounded by a ring of hostile machines. If it switched on the Field, each of the enemy ships would think that it—and the ships on the far side of the circle— had suddenly receded into nothingness. Yet the circumference of the circle would be the same as before: only the journey to the center would be of infinite duration, for as one proceeded, distances would appear to become greater and greater as the “scale” of space altered.

It was a nightmare condition, but a very useful one. Nothing could reach a ship carrying the Field: it might be englobed by an enemy fleet yet would be as inaccessible as if it were at the other side of the Universe. Against this, of course, it could not fight back without switching off the Field, but this still left it at a very great advantage, not only in defense but in offense. For a ship fitted with the Field could approach an enemy fleet undetected and suddenly appear in its midst.

This time there seemed to be no flaws in the new weapon. Needless to say, we looked for all the possible objections before we committed ourselves again. Fortunately the equipment was fairly simple and did not require a large operating staff. After much debate, we decided to rush it into production, for we realized that time was running short and the war was going against us. We had now lost about the whole of our initial gains and enemy forces had made several raids into our own solar system.

We managed to hold off the enemy while the Fleet was re-equipped and the new battle techniques were worked out. To use the Field operationally it was necessary to locate an enemy formation, set a course that would intercept it, and then switch on the generator for the calculated period of time. On releasing the Field again—if the calculations had been accurate—one would be in the enemy’s midst and could do great damage during the resulting confusion, retreating by the same route when necessary.

The first trial maneuvers proved satisfactory and the equipment seemed quite reliable. Numerous mock attacks were made and the crews became accustomed to the new technique. I was on one of the test flights and can vividly remember my impressions as the Field was switched on. The ships around us seemed to dwindle as if on the surface of an expanding bubble: in an instant they had vanished completely. So had the stars—but presently we could see that the Galaxy was still visible as a faint band of light around the ship. The virtual radius of our pseudo-space was not really infinite, but some hundred thousand light-years, and so the distance to the farthest stars of our system had not been greatly increased—though the nearest had of course totally disappeared.

These training maneuvers, however, had to be cancelled before they were complete owing to a whole flock of minor technical troubles in various pieces of equipment, notably the communications circuits. These were annoying, but not important, though it was thought best to return to Base to clear them up.

At that moment the enemy made what was obviously intended to be a decisive attack against the fortress planet of Iton at the limits of our solar system. The Fleet had to go into battle before repairs could be made.

The enemy must have believed that we had mastered the secret of invisibility—as in a sense we had. Our ships appeared suddenly out of nowhere and inflicted tremendous damage—for a while. And then something quite baffling and inexplicable happened.

I was in command of the flagship Hircania when the trouble started. We had been operating as independent units, each against assigned objectives. Our detectors observed an enemy formation at medium range and the navigating officers measured its distance with great accuracy. We set course and switched on the generator.

The Exponential Field was released at the moment when we should have been passing through the center of the enemy group. To our consternation, we emerged into normal space at a distance of many hundred miles— and when we found the enemy, he had already found us. We retreated, and tried again. This time we were so far away from the enemy that he located us first.

Obviously, something was seriously wrong. We broke communicator silence and tried to contact the other ships of the Fleet to see if they had experienced the same trouble. Once again we failed—and this time the failure was beyond all reason, for the communication equipment appeared to be working perfectly. We could only assume, fantastic though it seemed, that the rest of the Fleet had been destroyed.

I do not wish to describe the scenes when the scattered units of the Fleet struggled back to Base. Our casualties had actually been negligible, but the ships were completely demoralized. Almost all had lost touch with one another and had found that their ranging equipment showed inexplicable errors. It was obvious that the Exponential Field was the cause of the troubles, despite the fact that they were only apparent when it was switched off.

The explanation came too late to do us any good, and Norden’s final discomfiture was small consolation for the virtual loss of the war. As I have explained, the Field generators produced a radial distortion of space, distances appearing greater and greater as one approached the center of the artificial pseudo-space. When the Field was switched off, conditions returned to normal.

But not quite. It was never possible to restore the initial state exactly. Switching the Field on and off was equivalent to an elongation and contraction of the ship carrying the generator, but there was an hysteretic effect, as it were, and the initial condition was never quite reproducible, owing to all the thousands of electrical changes and movements of mass aboard the ship while the Field was on. These asymmetries and distortions were cumulative, and though they seldom amounted to more than a fraction of one per cent, that was quite enough. It meant that the precision ranging equipment and the tuned circuits in the communication apparatus were thrown completely out of adjustment. Any single ship could never detect the change—only when it compared its equipment with that of another vessel, or tried to communicate with it, could it tell what had happened. It is impossible to describe the resultant chaos. Not a single component of one ship could be expected with certainty to work aboard another. The very nuts and bolts were no longer interchangeable, and the supply position became quite impossible. Given time, we might even have overcome these difficulties, but the enemy ships were already attacking in thousands with weapons which now seemed centuries behind those that we had invented. Our magnificent Fleet, crippled by our own science, fought on as best it could until it was overwhelmed and forced to surrender. The ships fitted with the Field were still invulnerable, but as fighting units they were almost helpless. Every time they switched on their generators to escape from enemy attack, the permanent distortion of their equipment increased. In a month, it was all over.

This is the true story of our defeat, which I give without prejudice to my defense before this Court. I make it, as I have said, to counteract the libels that have been circulating against the men who fought under me, and to show where the true blame for our misfortunes lay.

Finally, my request, which as the Court will now realize, I make in no frivolous manner and which I hope will therefore be granted.

The Court will be aware that the conditions under which we are housed and the constant surveillance to which we are subjected night and day are somewhat distressing. Yet I am not complaining of this: nor do I complain of the fact that shortage of accommodation has made it necessary to house us in pairs.

But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am compelled any longer to share my cell with Professor Norden, late Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces.

Editor's Afterward to:

SUPERIORITY

Clarke’s humor masks one of the most vital questions of the decade: how much defense can we afford?

There are two aspects to the military procurement dilemma. First:

A gigantic technological race is in progress… a new form of strategy is developing in peacetime, a strategy of which the phrase “arms race” used prior to the old great conflicts is hardly more than a faint reflection.

There are no battles in this strategy; each side is merely trying to outdo in performance the equipment of the other. It has been termed “logistic strategy”. Its tactics are industrial, technical, and financial. It is a form of indirect attrition; instead of destroying enemy resources, its object is to make them obsolete, thereby forcing on him enormous expenditure…

A silent and apparently peaceful war is therefore in progress, but it could well be a war which of itself could be decisive.

—General d’Armee Andre Beaufre

If we do not engage in this “silent and apparently peaceful war,” we will be defeated. However:

A common argument against investment in technological weapons is the engineering maxim, “If it works, it’s obsolete.” True, whatever one buys, if you had waited a few years something better would be available; but if this is carried to extremes, nothing will ever be built.

Whenever a new field of technology opens up, the people who use it must learn how. They must become operationally effective. Had we waited until third-generation missiles were available before we constructed any, we would not be alive today. We certainly would have had no experienced crews to man the missiles we would only now be constructing.

A time comes when systems must be built, even though we know they will be obsolete in future years…

The fallacy that prototypes and research are all that are needed should have been laid to rest by the experience of the French in 1939. The French Army had—and had possessed for quite a long time— prototypes of aircraft, armor, and antitank weapons much better than those of the German Army. The French did not have these weapons in their inventory because still better ones were coming. While they waited for the best weapons, they lost their country.

Military action must be routine. It cannot be extraordinary, planned months in advance like a space spectacular. Operational experience with a weapons system is required before operational employment doctrines can be perfected. Troops must be trained, logistics bases developed, maintenance routines learned, idiosyncrasies—and modern technological gadgetry is full of them—must be dis-covered. This cannot be done if the latest technology is confined to the drawing board or laboratory.

S. T. Possony and J. E. Pournelle, The Strategy of Technology, 1970

There is no simple escape from this dilemma. Suppose that you are the Secretary of Defense, and you must recommend a military budget.

You have several choices.

1. 1. Make severe cutbacks in the defense budget. This will leave more money in the hands of the taxpayers, and allow more investment in the nation’s economy. Without a strong economy we are finished anyway; while if the economy is sufficiently strong, we will be able to afford a much larger defense establishment.

2. 2. Invest in military research and development. This can be coupled with (1). Some military research will aid the civilian economy anyway. We mean here real development studies, not merely paper studies and patches.

3. 3. Buy the weapons available today, so that the troops can become familiar with them and learn to maintain them; so that they become operational weapons systems.

These choices come up time after time. You have a billion dollars: do we invest that in development of military lasers, or do we buy a new aircraft carrier? The choice is not obvious. Without forces in being, small conflicts become big, and small wars can grow into large ones.

Ready availability of forces can stop the escalations before they start. During the Eisenhower Administration, the First Lebanon Crisis was ended in 24 hours, at cost of one Marine sergeant wounded by his own pistol.

As I write this, the butcher’s bill for the Second Lebanon Crisis is not yet known, nor has it ended. Lebanon remains occupied by Syrians, Israelis, and a “peacekeeping force” of US and Italian Marines, and French paratroopers.

The Iranian situation was vastly complex, but it was certainly affected by our lack of forces in being. One may legitimately debate whether Iran is better off under the Mullahs than it was under the Shah, but the fact is that we had insufficient forces in being—including aircraft carriers—to insure the stability of the royal regime. We certainly were unable to stabilize the (very short-lived) “constitutional monarchy” the Shah attempted to leave behind him. Whether or not we should have done so is not at issue: the fact is that we had not the forces in being to do so, and every time when we might have intervened, the requirements had grown beyond our means. Even after Iran fell, we had nothing capable of rescuing the hostages.

As I write this, one Libyan Crisis has just ended, apparently without bloodshed. The US carrier force in the Mediterranean, plus the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) aircraft stationed in Egypt, were sufficient. One can only speculate on what might have happened had they not existed, as one can only speculate on what might have happened in the Falklands had England not retained her diminished fleet.

You have a sum of money. You may spend it on two wings of the best existing military aircraft, and thus have a force within two years.

You can also spend it to procure two wings of much better advanced aircraft to be delivered in ten years. If you choose the second option, your over-all military capabilities will probably be enhanced due to new technology developed as part of the procurement.

That’s ten years from now. Meanwhile, you will NOT have the best equipment for the period of 2 through 8 years.

In combat, there are few prizes for second place, and none at all for what you would have had next year.

There’s one more problem. You may not really have those choices at all. You may decide to gulp hard, fight your service chiefs, and go for the top technological weapons in the future—only to discover that the money you saved by not buying today’s weapons did not go to military R&D, nor was it left in taxpayers’ pockets where it might stimulate the economy. It went instead for a new social program, one that absorbs money at exponentially increasing rates—one that has become an “entitlement” that the courts will not let the Congress eliminate.

Toward the close of the 1960’s, a number of analysts, alas including me, considered the “war bonus”: the funds which would be available once the horrendous expenses of the Vietnam War were ended. We thought long and hard about that money: should it be used to modernize the force, to develop new weapons, to attract recruits for an all-volunteer military, or be returned to the taxpayers?

We need not have been concerned.

A last note: reasonable and informed people of good will can and do disagree, aye, strongly disagree, on this matter. It is one of the most complex and difficult decisions of our age. No one, liberal or conservative, wants to spend more than necessary on defense. The liberal wants the money for other reasons; the conservative doesn’t believe the government is entitled to the money unless there’s a pressing national need.

There are, however, persons not of good will who will muddy the waters: who will attack R&D spending on the grounds that the money is needed for operational weapons systems, then attack the operational systems because they are obsolete. They are poltroons; and alas, their name is legion, for they are many.

Editor's Introduction to:

FINAL MUSTER
by Rick Rubin

“Gold may not get you good soldiers,” Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “but good soldiers can always get you gold.”

That’s one half the problem. What happens if you no longer need good soldiers?

FINAL MUSTER
by Rick Rubin

Coming out of stasis is a peculiar sensation. Life returns first to your brain, and for a second you are aware that the rest of you is dead—not just asleep but actually without life. You are standing there in your stasis cubicle, heavily loaded with equipment, and your body is dead. But you.don’t fall down, and the juice returns to the big muscles of your legs and arms and chest and then to all of the minor muscles and blood to veins and arteries and finally to every tiny capillary. Then you are awake, and you step out into the world.

The sun was halfway up the east side of the sky, and across the parade ground I could see the barracks and ordnance buildings and mess halls and other structures of Fort Morris shimmering in the rising heat waves. Lieutenant Rolf Baker, my platoon leader, was standing in front of the bank of cubicles that held myself and three other sergeants. I threw him a salute.

“Good morning, Sergeant Oskowski,” he said.

“Good morning, sir,” I said. “They woke us late this time.”

“Later than you think, Sergeant. Three hundred years late. It’s 2516.”

“You don’t say! Three hundred years without a war. Who finally upset the applecart, sir?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I don’t even know who we’re fighting.”

“It’s pretty unusual for them not to tell us right off.”

“There’s supposed to be a formation in an hour, Oskowski. We’ll find out then. Better go wake your men.”

To my left the other three sergeants were coming out of their stasis cubicles. Around us the whole Regimental Combat Team was coming to life, 5000 officers and men stepping out of deep-freeze, ready and able to fight anybody’s war. We mobilize down through the ranks— Colonel Moss our C.O. is unfrozen by the civilian authorities, he wakes four LT. colonels, they wake four more each, and so on down through majors to captains to lieutenants to squad leaders like myself, who wake their squads. We come out of our stasis cubicles fully armed and in prime condition, ready to be fed, briefed and move in less than an hour if necessary.

In the old Greek myth, the man planted dragon’s teeth, and fighting men sprang up out of the ground. I can never quite get the analogy out of my mind, seeing the regiment come out of their stasis cubicles. The difference is that in the myth the soldiers fell to fighting among themselves, while the 45th Regimental Combat Team comes out a disciplined unit.

Unfreezing consists of throwing just one switch per man. I went down the row that held my squad throwing the switches, then sat down in front and started checking over my tommygun. Of course it wasn’t actually a tommy gun, the old twentieth-century weapon. More properly, it was a rapid fire blaster. Model 2079—a cross between a flame thrower and a junior-size atomic cannon with a miniaturized back pack for power and a rifle-shaped nozzle—but somehow calling it a tommygun makes it more personal to me.

My squad started to step out and form up. I let them stretch and yawn and make their tired old jokes. At the far end I noted that two new men had replaced Miller and Chavez, killed at the tag end of the Afro-Asian war 300 years before. I made a note to see if either of the replacements had come in lately. They might throw some light of those 300 long years of apparent peace when we’d stood cold and dead in our stasis cubicles without a war to fight.

Those inexplicable 300 years faintly disturbed me. At least, something disturbed me, for this muster day felt somehow different from the ones in the past. The time before there had been 75 years between wars—by far the longest period of peace since the founding of the stasis army, but the war we had come out to fight had been the roughest, too. The armies of the Western Hemisphere had fought all of Afro-Asia for three bloody years. It was during the Afro-Asian thing that I got my third stripe and rocker and a squad of my own. Seventy-five years before that, as a corporal, I’d fought Brazuritina, the four-country block of southern South America. And before that the intervals had been shorter yet; fifteen years, seven years, twenty years, ten years.

So something must have changed out there in the civilian world, or else they must have found another way to fight their wars. In the bright sun of this 300-year-late muster day, it would have been nice to know what had happened. But why should a soldier care? A war is a war. You die as dead from anyone’s weapon, and one war is pretty much like another.

That typical soldier’s attitude, I suppose, was why they began to store us away between wars. Soldiers make lousy citizens in peacetime. And a good peacetime soldier is likely as not to make a lousy wartime one. So they perfected the system of stasis, and we volunteered to wait out the between-war intervals in our steel and plastic cubicles, each man with name and service record on his cubicle door, waiting for the bands to begin to play.

My squad formed up rapidly, standing sharp in a ramrod-straight row. I walked to one end and passed in front of them, making a casual sort of inspection.

“Good morning, Staff-Sergeant Oskowski,” Filippi the rocket and missile man said. “Did you enjoy your beauty rest?”

“Yes thank you, Private First-Class Filippi,” I said. “I’ve slept ever so much better since I moved out of range of your snoring.”

“Hullo, Sarge,” Orozco said. He was the flame thrower, a broadfaced boy of Mexican descent, quiet and shy but efficient.

“Hello, Orozco,” I said. “How’s your cigarette lighter?”

“Hey, Sarge,” Corporal Ryan the demolition man said. “What’s with the music?”

The funny thing was that I hadn’t until Ryan mentioned it even noticed the music. For the P.A. system was serenading us with sounds of violins and muted horns, soft chamber orchestra music instead of the marches and war songs we customarily woke to.

“I don’t know, Ryan,” I said. “And that’s not all I don’t know. It’s a strange muster day—that’s for sure.”

“What else?” Yamamoto, our vehicle and engineering man, said.

“I don’t know who we’re supposed to be fighting,” I said. “All I know is what year it is.”

They waited to hear. I walked down the rest of the line, past Johnson, the other tommygunner, and the two new men, Bill Chestnut, a Sioux Indian and the new squad sniper, and Charles LaBonte, a thin-faced, black-haired man, older than most recruits, assigned to us as a corpsman.

“It’s 2516,” I said finally. “You boys have had a nice three-hundred-year nap.”

I got the effect I was aiming for. They gasped, almost in unison. Then they started to buzz, guessing among themselves what was up, until I told them to knock it off. Around us other squads were forming up, and platoons, and companies, and battalions, and finally, if you could see it all as one unit, the entire Regimental Combat Team. Dust rose into the midmorning air and orders were barked and men scratched and belched and shuffled into lines. The lieutenant came over.

“Any news, sir?” I said.

“Nothing, Sergeant,” he said. “Your squad all right?”

“All present and accounted for, sir. Nobody skipped into town last night I guess.”

We both chuckled at the hairy old joke about the soldier slipping out after stasis check and coming back a doddering old man the next morning. He would have been a hell of an old man this time, after 300 years.

The lieutenant inspected my squad, then sent us off to the mess hall for breakfast. I double-timed the boys over, getting the kinks out, and we filed in and went through the line.

The cooks were civilians. A soldier’s job, after all, is to fight. Not to cook or clean up or any of the other menial jobs they used to have soldiers do, but to stick to his trade. Civilians do those things.

Civilians—We don’t dislike them and we don’t love them. They’re another kind of people. Peace lovers, family men, businessmen. Day-to-day people/who live life in any dull, boring way that it comes. They aren’t interested in excitement, in proving themselves under fire and learning the final truth that you can only learn in combat. They just want to live. In a way they’re sane and we’re crazy. But we are what we are.

So we fight their wars. After the war is over we have a big party and celebrate. And that time the civilians start being glad that we’re going back into stasis soon. We’re not particularly delicate about our pleasures. We take women where we find them, and of course, they’re often somebody else’s woman. We get drunk and we raise hell and then the civilians hate our guts and they’re glad when we go back into deep-freeze. But a few minor indignities are worth the service we perform of fighting their wars for them.

By the next time they’ve forgotten how much they hated us, or else they are a whole new bunch of civilians. They’re glad we’re coming back out to fight their wars. They feed us a real good breakfast that first muster-day morning out of deep-freeze.

This is as good a time as any to mention that of course it’s not really deep-freeze. It’s a combination of temperature and electricity and intravenous drugs and radiation, all wrapped into one package. Which doesn’t matter in the least. You stand in the cubicle, and it feels like going to sleep very fast; and when you wake up, no matter how much later, it’s like tomorrow. But in another way it’s not like tomorrow. You’re vaguely aware, in stasis, of the time going by. Not bored, not restless, just vaguely aware. The years roll by and the world changes around you. They keep you dusted, and they keep all of the buildings in vacuum, and the world changes around you. Then someone flips Colonel Moss’s switch, and we come out to fight their wars. To fight because it’s our job and because that’s the one thing that we all love, we slightly crazy soldiers who could never adjust to humdrum peacetime lives.

During that fine civilian-cooked breakfast, eggs and ham and flapjacks and preserves and juice and toasted muffins and coffee, I talked to the two new men.

From Bill Chesnut, the sniper, I could learn little. He’d come into the outfit only a couple of years after we went back into stasis in 2198. He had a pretty typical story. He was a wild kid, always getting into trouble and when he was nineteen he killed a man in a street fight. It wasn’t particularly Chesnut’s fault, or the other man’s either, for that matter, but he was tried and sentenced to 30 years in the penitentiary. Then they offered to let him join the army instead. He jumped at the chance.

A lot of men come in that way, and in the army it’s never held against them. The army, nowadays, is about the only remaining place for a man with a combative nature.

Anyway, Chesnut enlisted and went through basic training, a year of being taught the tricks of the trade by veterans too old to be worth cold storage. Chesnut even liked training, which is no snap, better than he liked civilian life. That’s the best sign of the making of a soldier and I knew that I had a man who would pull his weight.

Charles LaBonte, the new corpsman, was a different matter. His trouble was restlessness rather than wanting to fight, but it made him unfit for civilian life no less. Born in 2291, he’d found the world a dull place. Adventure was dead; the world was calm and uneventful. From the time that he got out of school until he was thirty, he wandered around, trying to find a place where he fitted in. In 2322 he enlisted in the army, figuring it as the only place where there might be some excitement.

“It was a stainless steel world out there,” he said. “Everything was worked out and nothing ever happened. No wars, no revolutions, no big changes. Ever since the Afro-Asian war, the people kept anything interesting from happening.”

“Sounds pretty bad,” I said.

“It was. One year after another, everything the same. People just moved along on the same level; never sad, never happy, never excited.”

“Well, they must not be getting along so well now,” I said. “If they were they wouldn’t have called us out.”

“That’s right. Besides, it’s been nearly two hundred years since I came in. Lord, think of that! Two hundred years. Everybody I knew is dead. My family is long gone. I feel alone in the world.”

“We’re your family now,” I said. I could remember when I felt the same way, after the first time in stasis, just a kid of twenty and suddenly twenty-three years younger than my old friends. Even so, my friends had at least still been alive. LeBonte’s were dust by now.

The bugle blew assembly and we came out of the mess hall and walked back to the parade ground and formed up with the rest of Able Company. The regiment drew up in a long line, like on parade, facing a platform that had been set up near the center of the field. On the platform were Colonel Moss, the C.O., a couple of generals probably down from division or corps, two or three light colonels and four civilians dressed in limp gray and brown and pastel-colored clothes that I took to be the current civilian style.

Colonel Moss introduced one of the civilians to us, a Mr. Karonopolis, the Mayor of the nearby city of Linkhorn. From Colonel Moss’s first words I detected a tension of some sort. He made the introduction in almost insultingly few words, biting off each syllable as if it were bitter. Then he stepped back, very stiff and soldierly, and stood in a ramrod sort of parade rest. Mr. Karonopolis took over the microphone. “Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,” he said. Nobody moved of course.

“On behalf of the local and federal government, the civil population, and of myself I wish to make you welcome to the year 2516,” he said. “We of the twenty-sixth century feel that we know you men, even though you do not yet know us. In school we have studied your brave exploits of the past.”

So he continued. It was all very kind and pleasant, but we had heard the same things, or variations of them, every time we had come out of stasis. He didn’t say anything we didn’t know until he began to describe the events since we went into cold storage.

He told of a world of social, scientific and philosophic progress, of cultural and intellectual advances and internation accord. The world he described ran smoothly. Nations were at peace with nations, individuals with other individuals. It was a world that had no need for an army—even a stasis one. He was leading up all through the speech to what he said next, and yet the idea was so difficult to grasp that when he finally said it in plain words it was as though he had dropped a bomb on us.

He told us that we were to be decommissioned and returned to civilian status.

I think he expected us to cheer. He was a civilian, and had no understanding of soldiers’ minds.

A murmuring grew in the ranks, and I was a part of the murmuring, arguing to myself the impossibility of returning to a civilian world, a strange and incomprehensible civilian world 300 years more advanced than the last one I had seen, returning from war and excitement and the only trade I knew or wanted to know to a humdrum civilian world made of foam rubber and stainless steel.

The colonel stood on the platform in the blazing sun, his face a mask. The music tried to soothe us, soft and calm. And the murmuring grew louder.

A soldier stood out of the ranks in the next company, a tommygunner like myself, waving his weapon in the air. “Like hell!” he shouted. “Like hell I’ll become a civilian. What do you think I am? You’re crazy!”

His sergeant ordered the tommygunner back into ranks but the order lacked the conviction that any order needs. So the man stood and shouted at the civilian and the murmur grew, like angry bees.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” a voice shouted.

“Damn fool civilian,” another roared.

“You can’t do away with war,” my lieutenant said, half to himself. “There’ll always be wars. It’s human nature.”

On the platform the civilians registered first surprise and then dismay. In their lifetimes none of them had ever met a soldier. How could they be expected to understand them? And probably they had never heard any of the soldierly language that was pouring at them now.

They put their heads together in a conference, and then Mr. Karonopolis stepped over to the colonel and spoke to him. The Old Man stood at his rigid parade rest and only shook his head negatively. The Mayor spoke again, more strongly it seemed to me. This time the colonel ignored him entirely.

They tried whatever they had tried on Colonel Moss on the two generals from higher headquarters but got no better response. Then another of the civilians stepped to the microphone.

“Gentlemen, please,” he said. “There is no value in this. What is the good of an army without wars? Surely you don’t want to remain in stasis forever, waiting for a war that will never come?”

The murmur grew to a roar.

“We don’t intend to thrust you naked into a hostile world,” he said. “You will be retained into any field you want. Or you can simply live, not work at all. You can have homes and wives and cars. You can enjoy life now—you’ve earned enjoyment.”

Then his voice was blotted out by the angry buzzing of the men. Even the men of my own squad were shouting. “We’re soldiers—we don’t want to be anything else,” Ryan yelled.

“You can’t abolish wars,”Filippe screamed.

“Go to hell!”

“Shut up you bastard!”

And standing there at attention I tried to picture myself as a civilian, living out the rest of my life, forty or fifty years probably, for I was only twenty-eight, living a humdrum day-to-day existence with no excitement or danger but only the routine of a civilian’s sort life.

And yet the civilians were right. What use was there for an army if there were to be no more wars? Could they really have abolished wars?

The civilians on the platform huddled together in conference again and then the Mayor approached the colonel and this time the colonel nodded his head to whatever the Mayor said.

I will say this for the civilians—they were facing soldiers for the first time in their lives, and they were obviously surprised by the reaction they’d gotten but through all of the shouting and swearing they had shown no sign of fear. Perhaps it was the bravery of men facing something that they don’t know is dangerous. In any case, after the colonel had agreed to whatever they had asked they left the platform and climbed into a ground car—a smooth-skinned bug without any wheels or visible motor and drove away.

The colonel approached the microphone, and the roar dropped to complete silence in a second and we could hear the soothing music again.

“Fall the troops into the barracks,” the colonel said. “Set up for garrison duty.”

So we marched across the parade grounds to the barracks, 5,000 strong. Somewhere up the line, someone started cadence count and the entire regiment joined in; 5,000 bass voices drowning out the music of the P.A. system. And somehow it did not sound like the last time we would march.

The barracks were just as we had left them, not even dusty after 300 years in a vacuum. I had the men break out their barracks bags and set up their gear. By the time that was done, the word came down to choose three men for overnight pass. I let Filippe and Ryan and Orozco go, while the rest of us settled down to spend the afternoon at poker and talk.

After a while, Johnson and Chesnut and I went over to the P.X., which the civilians had opened, and joined the beer drinkers in the slop chute. The main topic of conversation, naturally, centered around what the civilians had said and what was going to happen.

“They’re nuts if they think they’ve done away with wars,” Sergeant Mangini from Charlie Company said. “Wars are human nature. You can’t change that.”

“They say there haven’t been any in three hundred years,” I reminded him.

“So what? There’ve been other times when there weren’t any wars for a long time. But they always ended. They’ll need us again.”

“Maybe we’ll have to start our own war,” Sergeant Olivier from H.Q. Company said. “If these civilians have gotten so soft, maybe we’ll have to wake them up a little. For the good of the species, you know?”

“You’re darn right,” Chesnut said. “We’ll just have to start our own war.”

“You’re getting pretty salty for a guy just out of Basic,” I said.

“Look, Sarge, if they send us back to civilian life, you know where I’ll be? In prison. They’ll make me serve out my sentence.”

“We’ll all be in prison soon enough,” Mangini said. “We’re not suited for civilian life—not one of us. We’ll be too wild and violent for them, and they’ll end by putting us all behind bars.”

“They said they’d reeducate us,” I defended.

“They can’t reeducate us any more than they can teach civilians how to be soldiers,” Mangini said. “A man’s born a soldier, he dies a soldier. He just can’t be taught to live like a civilian.”

After a while, I drifted back to the barracks. I found orders from the captain saying that Tuesday (I have no idea what day it actually was—we always call muster day Monday) we were to start regular training schedule.

After supper I came back to the barracks and lay on my bunk trying to think the thing through. All over the barracks the men were talking about the demobilization, and soon they had something new to talk about. Long before any self-respecting soldier would have come in off an overnight pass, the men who had been in town started drifting in. Everyone started talking about what they’d seen that had driven them back so early.

At ten, Filippi and Orozco came into the barracks.

“C’mere, Filippi,” I said.

He ambled over and sat on the side of my bunk.

“It’s a hell of a world out there. Sergeant,” he said.

“Let’s hear about it,” Tsaid.

“It’s not that it looks so very different. Their cars and choppers and airplanes are about the same—a little smoother and quieter, but you can still tell which is which. Mostly the whole thing is just quieter. And the city seems smaller. More parks, more trees, everything moving slow and easy like in a small town.”

“What about the people?”

“They’ve changed. They’re relaxed and easygoing. They don’t seem to ever hurry, and they don’t have a care in the world. Everyone just walks around talking and taking it easy. And you can’t get them mad or start a fight to save yourself.”

“You tried to start a fight?”

“Sure. All of us tried. But no one could get the civilians riled up. Say something to them, and they’d smile and pat you on the back and talk about it like it was a specimen under a microscope. And if a soldier just walked up and took a swing, a couple of civilians would hold him and talk to him until he didn’t want to fight anymore.”

“Maybe they’re just a bunch of cowards. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Well, the women are different too, Sarge. That ought to prove something. You try to pick one up, and she doesn’t get mad or scared. She just smiles and says she’d rather not. Or, if she’s willing, it’s nothing like you expect. If she feels like making love, she does it and then says thank you and just goes away. No trauma, no love, no crying and wailing about virtue.”

Filippi went off to tell the rest of the men about what he’d seen in Linkhorn, and I lay on my sack and thought about what he’d said. I’d been brought up to believe that people don’t change, but if what Filippi had said was true it looked like maybe I was taught wrong. I made up my mind to take a pass into town Tuesday night and see for myself.

The next morning we woke to the same soothing music, but we breakfasted and started training, trying to drown out the music with our shouts. We marched and practiced squad tactics and ran the infiltration and obstacle courses and fired our weapons. About three in the afternoon, we knocked off and another three men from each squad were allowed to go on pass. I put on my Class A summer uniform, still well pressed and dapper from 300 years earlier, and took the bus into Linkhorn.

As Filippi had said, the city seemed to have shrunk. Not in area exactly, and perhaps not even in population, but the buildings were lower and there were more trees and grass and parks. The machines were less noticeable. Not that there weren’t any, but you just didn’t notice them. The cars were sleek and mild colored, moving smoothly along without wheels or motor sounds, the copters rose on silent rotors, everything seemed muted. The moving sidewalks—the pride of Linkhorn the last time I’d been there—were gone, and the citizens seemed to actually enjoy walking, strolling arm-in-arm, talking and laughing together. The town was so peaceful that it made me nervous.

Of course I had to try to start a fight. I walked into a civilian going full tilt and knocked him to the pavement.

“Why the hell don’t you watch where you’re going?” I said.

He picked himself up and dusted himself off. “Come now,” he said, “We’re both aware that you ran into me on purpose.”

“You want to make something of it?”

“On the contrary. But tell me, you’re a sergeant, aren’t you? I’m rather unfamiliar with the rating system. I haven’t had a chance to talk to one of you men yet.”

“I’m a staff sergeant.”

“How interesting. That’s a position of some authority, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I command a squad.”

“A squad? Oh yes, the basic small unit of a military force.”

“That’s right, eight men.”

“That must be challenging. Tell me, how much of the decision-making function do you exercise in the field?”

I was starting to answer when I caught on to what he was trying to do, but he seemed so sincerely interested in me that it was hard not to go along with him. “Quit trying to change the subject,” I said.

“Why, certainly, if you wish. But I really am interested.”

“I think I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”

“I hope you won’t,” he said. “And after all, it wouldn’t prove much. I quite agree that you’re a better fighter than I am.”

“What’dya mean by that?” I said. I kept looking for fear in his face, or anger, even, but there was none. He spoke slowly and evenly and seemed really more interested in what I was saying than in saving his skin.

“I’m a fairly decent athlete,” he said, “but quite untrained as fighter.”

“You’re a coward,” I said.

“I suppose that in your frame of reference I do seem a coward. I don’t want to fight and I won’t be angered. But from my standpoint, Sergeant, I’m not a coward at all. I’m simply not disturbed by what you’ve said. I know myself too well—my faults, my weaknesses, my strengths—and your accusations haven’t added any new perceptions about myself. And if they had, I would be more likely to thank you than fight you.”

I wasn’t getting anywhere and my heart wasn’t in it anymore anyway. Somehow, although he wasn’t more than a few years older than me, he managed to remind me of my father, or of how my father should have been. I moved on. I had to try a girl to satisfy myself about what Filippi had said about them.

It was twilight by then, and I was walking through one of the rolling green parks that dotted the city. The girl was small and slim with long brown hair worn straight down her back, her face young and pert.

“Hiya, babe, let’s you and me go off somewhere and make it,” I said.

She laughed a tinkling sort of laugh and said, “My name is Jodi.”

“I’m Kenny Oskowski,” I said. “Want to try a real man for a change?”

“I would like to know you better, if that’s what you mean.”

“Sure, babe. Let’s find a hotel and get acquainted.”

“I’d rather go for a walk. It’s an awfully nice evening. Wouldn’t you just as soon go for a walk?”

“Okay, we’ll walk,” I said. “I’m in no hurry.”

We walked. We had a milkshake together. (Me—a milkshake! But somehow I didn’t need whiskey with her, though she wouldn’t have minded if I’d wanted one.) We went bowling and walked some more and ended by sitting on a bench holding hands and listening to a band concert in the park.

At 10:30 I walked her home, and she was like my little sister instead of the pickup I’d tried for. I walked her to the door, feeling warm and hoping for a single chaste goodnight kiss.

“Would you like to stay all night with me, Kenny?” she said.

“I didn’t think you were that kind of girl, Jodi,” I said.

“What kind of girl? I like you. I enjoy your company.”

“But what about love?”

“I suppose that is love. Love isn’t something you can pin down.”

“Do you want to get married?”

“No, why? I like you now, or maybe love you, but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with living with you for the rest of my life.”

So in the end we made love and I stayed with her all night, but gently and pleasantly, for its own sake and for our own. And in the morning I went back to the army, feeling as I had never felt before after an overnight pass, happy and at peace with the world, without a hangover or a sense of guilt or any bawdy stories to tell the troops.

And at Fort Morris I found the soldiers still talking war. Demanding that a war be made for them, or that Colonel Moss lead them against the civilians.

We trained all that day—more firing range, more squad tactics, more physical conditioning. In the afternoon all of the men who had not had their passes yet were given them and sent into Linkhorn.

They came straggling back, bitter and angry and frustrated, most of them before ten o’clock, having been unable to start any fights or cause any trouble. In the barracks they joined in little groups to talk of what they had seen and what they wanted to do to the civilians.

“Man, they’re dull,” Sergeant Olivier said. “Nicest thing we can do for them is to shoot them up a little and wake them up.”

“You can’t even start a fistfight with one of them,” I said. “How the hell do you expect to start a war?”

“Close up we have to talk to them,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to start a war. You just go in shooting.”

“But why do you want to start a war? What have they done to you?”

“When did you start being a peace lover?” Olivier said.

“Maybe last night. It seems a pretty happy world out there. Why should we destroy it?”

“Because it’s our job. You think a society like that one can last? Hell no. They’ll fall apart from sheer inertia.”

“I doubt it. But anyway, why should you care?”

“I’m a soldier.”

“Not any more. You’re going to be a civilian now, Sergeant Olivier.”

“You think I could stand to live like that? Day after day without any excitement? I’m a soldier and I’ve got to fight.”

“There aren’t any more wars.”

“There will be. If not now, eventually. Without us this fool country will be defenseless. It’s our duty to wake them up.”

Olivier spoke for all of them. Their faith in the future of wars was unshakable. War could no more be outgrown than sex.

“I see it this way,” Filippi said. “Colonel Moss will get fed up with waiting and move us against the city. After the city, the state. We’ll join up with the rest of the army and get this world back into the old groove.”

I quit arguing with them. I suddenly saw that I was the only one who didn’t think that it was our duty to destroy the society outside. And as Olivier and Filippi and the others talked of their plans for starting a war I realized that I was going to be fighting against them if they did. I retreated to my bunk to think.

Down the room I saw LaBonte, the new corpsman, doing the same. After a while I got up and walked down and sat on his bunk.

“What do you think?” I said.

“Think about what, Sarge? I was just resting.”

“No, LaBonte, you were thinking. You’re not a soldier like those guys. You came in for excitement, not blood. You’re thinking the same as I am.”

“How’s that, Sarge? How are you thinking?”

I looked around the room carefully. Speaking my mind was dangerous in a barracks full of soldiers looking for a fight. But no one was near, and I felt pretty sure of LaBonte.

“I’m thinking that if these guys move on the civilians, I’ll have to be on the civilian side,” I said.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“I don’t know if I could stand living like they do, but this society looks pretty sane and honest to me. I think they really have outgrown war. I’m going into town tonight and warn the civilians. And if worse comes to worse, I’m going to help them defend themselves.”

“That’s treason,” LaBonte said. “Don’t talk treason to me.”

“I thought you might want to come along.”

“All right, maybe I do feel like you do, Sarge. But if we went in there and the army started a war, they’d gun us down on sight as traitors.”

“You’re probably right. But I’m going anyway. I’ve got to try to help.”

“Not me.”

“I’m going tonight. Are you going to report me?”

“No. I won’t do that. Not until tomorrow at least.”

“All right. But if you tell, I’ll kill you for it.”

“I won’t tell.”

I walked back to my bunk and lay working over my plan and thinking and waiting for lights out. Across the room the buzz of war talks continued. Taps blew at 11:00 and the men began to sack out and slowly the talk died and the barracks became still. I lay and waited and stared at the ceiling until 2:00, waiting for the last whisper to die out and the last man to fall asleep. Then I got up and dressed silently. I took my tommygun and Filippi’s rocket launcher and some of Ryan’s demolition equipment, fuses and explosives, and tiptoed out of the barracks, watching LaBonte as I passed to see if he would make an alarm. But he lay still.

There were two guards on duty at the gate, lazing around with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.

“Where’ya heading with all that stuff, Sarge?” one of them asked. I recognized him as Don Carpenter from Charlie Company, a balding overaged corporal, back down to private for about the tenth time since the last war.

“Going into town to stir up a little excitement, Carp,” I said.

“Going to get the jump on the rest of the boys, huh?”

“That’s right. Start a little war of my own before the real one.”

“Aw, Sarge, you know there ain’t going to be any more wars. The civilians told us so.”

“That’s right. I forgot.”

“I ought to check your pass, Sarge. And I ought to make you leave that hardware here.”

“You ought to, but you won’t.”

“Nope. It’s too quiet for me. If you can stir up some action, I’m for it.”

So I passed out through the gate and marched down the road under the cool midnight sky, staggering under the tools of war.

I was almost to the center of Linkhorn before I saw anyone. Then it was what looked like policemen, two of them in a city car, but they carried no weapons that I could see and they didn’t talk like cops.

“Hello, soldier,” one of them said. “Nice night.”

“Take me to whoever runs this town, will you?” I said.

“We’ll be happy to. But what’s the rush, Sergeant? Let us buy you a cup of coffee or a drink. We’d like to hear about the army.”

“Look,” I said, “this is pretty urgent.”

“I’m sure it is,” the cop said. “You wouldn’t be walking into the city this late at night with all that equipment unless you had a pretty important reason. Why not tell me about it? Perhaps I can help you.”

“Turn off the psychology,” I said. “I’m on your side— you don’t have to soothe me down. I came to warn you that the army is likely to attack you. I want to help you defend yourself.”

“Why that’s certainly kind of you, but I wouldn’t imagine that the army will do anything this late at night. Come on and have a drink and rest.”

I turned my tommygun toward him. “Goddamn it,” I said. “Take me to whoever runs this place and quit psychoanalyzing me or I’ll start the war right here and now.”

He just sat there and grinned at me, cool and brave yet friendly. After a minute I lowered the tommygun and grinned back.

“You were taking a hell of a chance,” I said.

“I don’t think so. You came in to help us. If you’d come looking for a fight, I would have reacted differently.”

“Have it your own way. But remember that I do want to help. And that army isn’t going to sit out there forever, waiting for a war.”

I climbed in the patrol car and they drove me to an all-night restaurant. We sat for a while shooting the breeze. Once again, like the man I’d talked to, they seemed genuinely interested in me personally. After an hour they drove me to a hotel and got me a complimentary room. No one made any attempt to relieve me of my weapons, and before the cop left, he promised that a city official would be by to talk to me in the morning. I didn’t even try to sleep. I lay on the hotel bed and thought about what I’d done and what was likely to follow until the horizon showed rose and pink and the sky got blue and things began to move in the city around me.

The sun was well up before the city official called for me. He introduced himself as Stephen French, a short man in his middle forties, well built, gray at the temples and mild-mannered. The city council, he told me, was sitting in session, considering the army situation. He could conduct me to them so that I could tell them what I knew. In a few words, he made me feel very important.

We stopped downstairs for breakfast in the hotel dining room and over bacon and eggs Mr. French told me what he knew of the situation.

The army was not fully unfrozen all over the country. About a third of the units had been taken out of stasis to be decommissioned. The civilians had wanted to do it slowly in order to prevent the sudden influx of men from unbalancing society.

The plan to decommission the army had been brewing for some years but they had waited to make sure that war was actually no longer a threat. That the soldiers would not want to become civilians (and all over the country it was the same) had been something they hadn’t foreseen. A gap in their logic, Mr. French admitted with a wry smile. So now, all over the country, they were faced with angry, rebellious soldiers.

“What sort of weapons do you have, sir?” I asked.

“None. We gave up using weapons years ago. Even the police don’t use weapons anymore. But then we haven’t a crime problem anymore. About all the police do is help cats out of trees and look for stray children.”

“You must have some sort of weapons. Or at least machines to make them.”

“Yes, probably we could produce them. But even with weapons, we’re not soldiers. We couldn’t stand up against the army.”

“Couldn’t you produce one big bomb and wipe them out?”

He gave me a strange look. “No, I don’t think we’ll do that. That isn’t our way.”

“You won’t have any way if you don’t. They’ll wipe you out. What about a defensive weapon? Something to stop tanks from running and guns from shooting?”

“Yes, I believe we could produce something like that. But it wouldn’t solve anything. Your soldiers could wipe us out in hand-to-hand combat.”

I gave up on the weapon angle. “Society has certainly changed since the last war,” I said. “What happened?”

What he told me was too complicated to put down here. Basically, after the West had defeated the Afro-Asians, the Easterners had turned away from machinery and returned to an emphasis on meditation, the mind and philosophy. And, then, from the defeated, these things had swept the world, creating a worldwide society that used machines but was not very concerned with them. The important things became thought, self-analysis, and meditation, integrated with the Western behaviorial sciences.

The change had grown from within rather than by law. Finally the time had come when everyone was concerned with improving himself, with dominating his own ego, and seeking individual perfection rather than dominating others. Everyone could look back on a happy childhood, where formerly bad childhoods had always bred the dangerous people. Competition for gain and power died away and what remained was competition for the pleasure of measuring yourself against others, rather than to feed your ego.

Emotions were as highly respected as the intellect as long as they did not hurt others. People grew beyond the need for constant external entertainment. They found their pleasures in learning and creating. Of course, psychology and the other behaviorial sciences advanced tremendously. What the soldiers had run into when they tried to pick fights were competent lay psychoanalysts. “But that won’t save you from the army,” I told Mr. French. “You can’t talk to an army.”

“We realize that now,” he said. “We aren’t underestimating the danger of the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

We came to the city hall, a modest stone and glass building set in the center of a park, and Mr. French led me in. It was all very casual. He took me to a man sitting at a desk by a tall set of doors and said, “I’ve brought the soldier who came in from the Fort last night.”

“Take him right in,” the man at the desk said. There were no guards or messengers or feverish conferences, and I was still carrying my weapons when we walked through the doors and found ourselves in the council chambers, a wide room with lots of windows and a large round table in the middle around which sat a group of simply dressed men and women.

“Welcome,” the man at the head of the table said. I recognized him as Mr. Karonopolis, the Mayor. “We appreciate your having come to help us.”

“I want to do anything I can,” I said.

“Please sit down,” he said. “We would like to ask a few questions.”

I sat. Mr. Karonopolis introduced me to the other members of the council and then they began to question me.

“What do you think are the feelings of most of the soldiers?”

“They’re angry,” I said. “They want to remain soldiers, to fight. They’re afraid that you’ll force them to be civilians.”

“But why is it that they don’t want to become civilians?”

“It’s just not their life. They’re soldiers. They look down on civilian life as dull and boring and insignificant.”

“But you feel differently?”

“No, not really. I just don’t think the army has a right to destroy this society. I don’t want to live in it, but it seems too good to destroy.”

“Would the other soldiers be willing to destroy it?”

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

A murmur ran through the chamber. “How do their officers feel?”

“I don’t really know, but I think they pretty much agree.”

“Do you think they will decide to attack?”

“That’s up to Colonel Moss. The Regiment moves when the colonel tells it to. Until he decides, they’ll just stew.”

“And if the colonel decides not to move?”

“They’ll do only what he tells them. They’re soldiers.”

They lost interest in me after that and began to talk among themselves.

“May I say something?” I said.

“Certainly, Sergeant Oskowski,” the Mayor said.

“Don’t you want me to tell you about troop disposition and firepower and that sort of thing?”

“No, I don’t think that would help us much,” the Mayor said.

“I’m glad you don’t, of course. I wouldn’t like to have to tell you. I’d feel even more like a traitor. But it seems to me that you aren’t taking the right line of defense. All you’re interested in is how the soldiers feel. And I can tell you that they feel like starting a war.

“You’ve got to figure out a defense. I brought in a few weapons. You should be able to improvise more. But you’ll be facing five thousand trained soldiers with every kind of modern weapon. You’ll never beat them in the open.

“The way I see it, the best thing is to attack them before they attack you. Send out a few carloads of booze and let them get themselves drunk, then go out there in the middle of the night with knives and clubs, picking up their weapons as you kill them.

“I don’t know if it will work, but it’s the only way to save your society. I can teach you how to use their weapons and tell you how the camp is laid out. I feel like a traitor, but I’ll do it anyway. Because if you don’t attack first, your society is finished.”

I stood there, after my speech—waiting for applause, I suppose. The council members smiled at me, softly and sadly, and finally Major Karonopolis said, “Thank you very much for your expression of loyalty, Sergeant Oskowski. But I am afraid that we can’t do any of the things you suggest. You say that we have to defend our society or they will destroy it. But you see, if we do what you suggest, we will have destroyed it ourselves.”

I sat down, feeling at the same time like a complete fool and the only sane man in the room. The discussion moved back and forth, mostly concerning itself with whether and how soon the Regiment would attack. Occasionally one of the councilmen would ask me a question but mostly they spoke to each other, like scientists rather than politicans, illustrating their points with case histories from other societies dating back before the Greeks.

Finally it was decided to send another delegation, to see the colonel alone this time and feel out his attitude.

Mr. French, the man who had brought me to the council, told me that I was free to do as I wished, but that he would be happy to show me around the city if I wanted. I accepted his offer and he got a car out of the pool.

He showed me manufacturing plants and colleges and private homes and museums, and yet somehow the tour was less interesting than I had expected. Most of the changes since last I’d seen the city had been inside of the people. The machines were there, of course, doing all of the arduous work, and the new buildings and new products. But the people considered them only necessary, not important. The buildings—in fact, the entire style of architecture—was designed to emphasize people, rather than the buildings themselves.

Passing an athletic field, Mr. French and I started talking about track records, and I got a shock. I’d looked upon the civilians as relatively soft and weak, misjudging their pacifism as weakness. But I discovered that the current record for the mile was 2 miles, 3.8 seconds, and the hundred-yard dash was run in 6 seconds flat. Schoolboys polevaulted over 16 feet. They had given up distance javelin throwing when the throws had become so long that the wind was more of a factor than the thrower. Now they threw flat, at targets 250 feet away, almost as far as the record distance when I was young. And nearly everyone participated in one sport or another. Mr. French said that they attributed the fantastic records to control of the mind, for the people weren’t any larger or heavier muscled than before. But excellent physical condition was the rule rather than the exception, and the people in general were actually in better shape than my fellow soldiers.

As for the colleges, they no longer issued degrees. People studied for knowledge and took courses on and off during their lives. Classes had become lecture series, and the newspapers printed lists of which lecture series were starting and who was speaking.

Late in the afternoon, Mr. French got word by his pocket radio that the delegation to Fort Morris had returned, so we went back to the city hall to hear hear the news.

Mr. Kolar, the man who had headed the delegation, analyzed the colonel as feeling himself caught in a dilemma.

“He is trained to accept civilian control,” Mr. Kolar said. “To do what the civilian authorities tell him. But we have told him to become a civilian himself, and that is a command that falls outside of his frame of reference.”

“How do you think he will decide?” Mayor Karonopolis said.

“Right now he’s wavering between waiting to see what will happen and launching an immediate attack. He instinctively feels that we are wrong, that our society is deluding itself in thinking that there will be no more wars.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Kolar,” I said, “but perhaps if I returned to the Fort, I could convince the troops about your society.”

“No,” he said. “They know what you’ve done, and they think of you as a traitor. You would only start bloodshed, perhaps even tip them into action.”

“It seems,” the Mayor said, “that we shall have to solve the colonel’s dilemma for him. Mr. Fitzgerald, the proposed plan was yours. Do you feel prepared to try to implement it?”

“But do we have the right to manipulate them?” a Councilwoman asked.

“Perhaps we don’t,” the Mayor said, “but in the long run it seems the only way to protect themselves. And after all, the soldiers have the avowed purpose of protecting society. Mr. Fitzgerald, what do you say?”

A tall, bony-faced man with horn rimmed glasses stood up at the end of the table. “Yes, Mr. Mayor,” he said, “I’ll be happy to try.”

The tall man chose two others to accompany him and they left the room.

“You might as well stay here,” the Mayor said. “Mr. Fitzgerald has a portable radio transmitter in his coat and we’ll be able to listen.”

We made ourselves comfortable and waited for the technicians monitoring Fitzgerald’s transmission to cut him in to the wall loudspeaker.

“You’ll have to make a decision yourself if our plan succeeds,” the Mayor said. “You must decide whether your loyalty is to the Fort or to us.”

“I don’t see that there’s much choice. I can’t go back.”

“Still, this will mean for the rest of your life. Perhaps we could arrange it so that you could return to the Fort with honor.”

“No, sir, I’m afraid that I’ve already made my choice. I think I’ll just have to learn to live here and like it.”

“It won’t be easy. It’s a pleasant society for us, but we all grew up in it. You will miss the excitement and conflict. I doubt if you can ever entirely adjust to our mild way of life.”

“I’ll just have to try, sir. But you seem pretty sure that you can solve the problem of the army. Can you be that sure? What’s your plan?”

“It’s a psychological one, and you’ll hear it soon enough. Of course there’s always an area of doubt. We must wait and see, and hope.”

We sat and sipped coffee and waited, the minutes dragging slowly by, until the loudspeaker on the wall crackled into life. It broke into the middle of a conversation between Colonel Moss and Councilman Fitzgerald.

“Colonel, we can’t thank you enough for saving us from the plot,” Mr. Fitzgerald was saying.

“Long experience has shown that war is human nature,” the colonel said.

“Yet the traitors had us convinced.”

“They would have disbanded the army, waited a few years, and then struck when you least expected it.”

“We see that now, sir.”

“The army stands ready to march, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

“The time isn’t right yet sir. Our enemies are not prepared to attack. It will be three years at the minimum, and we don’t believe in attacking first.”

“Yes, that is the weakness of democracy. But a noble weakness.”

“I suppose that it’s best for you to spend those years in training?”

“No, no,” the colonel said. “Three years of garrison duty would soften the men.”

“Then what do you propose?”

“We shall return to stasis. You must keep a careful watch and alert us just just before hostilities commence. We can be ready to march in an hour, if necessary, but a few days or a week’s notice is best.”

Councilman Fitzgerald and the colonel talked for a few minutes more, completing plans for the imaginary future war against the traitors, and then the Councilman took his leave, and the radio crackled into silence.

“I suppose that it’s unfair to us,” the Mayor said next to me.

“You knew that they would choose to return to cold storage, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Sergeant. Fitzgerald’s plan was predicated on their dislike of garrison duty and their faith in war as a part of human nature. It wasn’t too difficult to predict with our knowledge of psychology. Actually, Colonel Moss symbolically repeated the original decision of the army to go into stasis. Do you think that we’ve done wrong by your comrades?”

“No, sir. I think you’ve done the best you could.”

“We can try waking them one at a time in the future,” he said.

“Yes, sir. But they still won’t choose civilian life.”

And so the next day I rode a helicopter out and watched the Regiment muster on the parade grounds and march back to their cubicles. It was too far to see who was marching my squad. Corporal Ryan, I suppose. They marched back and disbanded, not into civilian life but into perpetual stasis.

Of myself, during the years since then, there isn’t much to tell. I wandered around the country. I studied a little at a couple of colleges and tried to find a place and an interest for myself. But there wasn’t any, for I was still a soldier. I was restless and lonely and not very adjustable—an old soldier at thirty without a war to fight.

That’s why I came back here to Fort Morris and took over maintaining the Fort. Not that a man is needed, for the machines do the work, but it seems more personal for me to care for my old comrades in arms. I check the vacuums of the barracks and ordnance buildings and other buildings and I see to it that the cubicles of my former comrades are dusted and clean, as though they might want to look out of their plastic and steel cubicles. To keep a watch for the enemy, for the war they silently await.

I have watched myself—and listened—for news of the foe, but I have not seen him approach. Years in this time and place have convinced me that, indeed, war and violence have been winnowed out of the human heart and mind. Yet who can say that all the universe is as peaceable as Earth is now? That somewhere, sometime, there will not be beings of this world or some other, bent on doing battle, and only my silent, waiting warrior brothers to oppose them?

As for myself, I live, and therefore daily die. And sometimes stop to look into the cubicle marked Staff Sergeant Kenneth Oskowski, Squad Leader, 2nd Platoon, Able Company, 3rd Battalion, 45th Regimental Combat Team.

The vacant cubicle.

Editor's Introduction to:

POEMS
by Edward C. Garrett, Robert Frazier, and Steve Rasnic Tern

There is so little market for science fiction poetry that I have become known as a major publisher simply because I try to include some in each of my anthologies.

I think that’s a shame.

Garrett’s “Parable of the Phantom Limb” arrived not long after “Final Muster”. Events like that make me take seriously my friend Barbara Hubbard’s concerns with “synchronicity.”

Robert Frazier and Steve Rasnic Tern are long-time contributors to my anthologies, and I always look forward to their submissions.

PARABLE OF THE PHANTOM LIMB
by Edward C. Garrett

The world of course is an awful place.

What you need is a little protection.

Take this stick, for instance.

It’s like another arm.

You can reach up into trees
or dig holes in the ground.

You can even beat a snake senseless
before it can give you the tongue.

That’s right, a stick’s a useful thing.

Why, no self-respecting entrepreneur,
be it of shadows or pie in the sky,
would be caught without one in his hands.

But a stick has other uses.

You can sharpen it on a rock
and spear lizards in the sand.

You can even practice hurling,
stampede frightening sounds.

You can poke out the lights in the eyes
that glow in the dark. Yes sir,
there is nothing like a stick.

And sticks are beautiful
don’t you think? Not right now, perhaps.

But after awhile, after it’s chiseled,
varnished, and carved… Gives you
something to do that’ll make you proud,
something to talk about when it’s raining
outside and the fire is warm.

Everything that’s ever happened
can be put on a stick. You can even
measure the sky by it’s length
or circle the dust with squiggles
and words. Want to know how tall you are?

That’s right. Use a stick.

There is no security like a stick.

And dangerous as it is out there,
you’d be a fool to bend over
for a drink of well water. So tell you
what, this being your birthday and all,
and because you have far to go. Here—
open your hand—is the best stick
in the land. No charge. Just go
and learn to use the magic wand.

If it’s from point A to point B
you wish to go, just put it under arm
and rest your weight full. That’s right!

Good! You’re getting it! Stick’s like
a third leg or at least you’ll never know
when you’ll need another one.

How do you feel? Hard to hop and skip?

Well, you’ll get used to it.

FORBIDDEN LINES
by Robert Frazier

Cast by some unnamed initiates of gaming
in a forgotten Armageddon,
the dying thought still echoes
through the whispering galleries
of sentient minds,
still castles the weak telepathic links
in sentient kinds.

In the bluelight spectra
of the coming image board of years,
it will stain us all with limb-darkening
and forbidden lines of doubt;
as trapped in the isolation
tank of ourselves,
we become both a pawn
of red entropy, pure random, and the infinite,
and a king frozen in check
against the lightless enemy of intellect
within and beyond.

The dying thought must wait…

stalemate.

TWO POEMS
by Steve Rasnic Tern

THE NEW WEATHER

On the New Rhine campaign—22 April 2023:

palpable stench of fear amongst the fleshies that day

(if only us metal guys could smell),
anxious talk on the line, us metal guys nodding,
sympathetic to the last, sentimental
about those old fleshies, our brothers—
their eyes blazed-out like soldiers’

since war one, strained and blank,
or so my history tapes tell me,
jittery about “this last gift from Geneva,”

when their government had assured them

“the inhuman aspects not clearly established.”

But then the wind, clearly, shifted:

Tabun, Sarin, and Soman, metal carbonyls

(a poetic chant, that, even from a voice box)

just for a starter—stumbling and coughing,
drooling, cramps, pissing in their pants,
twisting and jerking the danse macabre

(tapes provide cultural reference for full empathy),
blood gases, choking gases, nerve gases,
then a final wave of BZ for old fleshies
they’d missed, made them crazy, shooting themselves.

By the time they commenced tearing
the ozone layer with their reagents,
nothing left but us metal guys.

* * *

Now life’s not so bad without the fleshies

(god bless ‘em), just racing o’er the dunes
all day, sunning ourselves ‘neath the toxic haze.

But this recent, manic, electrical behavior,
this confusion in the ranks, the rumors

(just spook tales, mind you) of a new
ultimate weapon—I just can’t believe it!

An acid rain?

DIRECTIONS FOR KILLING THE AUTOMATED HOUSE

So first we sought lobotomy on the dishwasher,
no easy task, what with toxic steam cycle,
laser dry, and ready-made projectiles.

Poor Charlie bought it from a flying collander.

The freezer was easier, not knowing his own mind.

We laid him on his back, until he’d coughed
quite out of ice cubes. Cruelly,
we stuffed the toasters and mixers
into Mother Oven, turned her high
and insane; she self-immolated
in the face of what she’d done.

The electric dog we kept;
it gets lonely in the field.

But it was the neurotic bed, finally,
who gave us fits. Crazed and lonely
from programmed sex, juiced
on Bond movies, he laid an oil slick
to take out our first patrol.

Crazy Larry went in as a couch,
guns blazing. I flanked him
as a rather cute mahogany end table.

The air filled with flying metal,
smoke, and feathers.

When the bed finally coughed, wheezed,
and expired, a strange silence
filled the white frame house.

Somewhere a doorbell,
now a telephone, then a radio,
sadly began to sing.

Editor's Introduction to:

ON THE SHADOW OF A PHOSPHOR SCREEN
by William F. Wu

Harold Lamb has always been one of my favorite historians, and his books, stretching from Alexander the Great to Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond, were instrumental in developing my interest in the vast sweep of mankind’s story.

In Iron Men And Saints he tells the story of Robert Curthose, son of William the Conqueror, who led the Christian forces on the first crusade. At Doryleum they were attacked by the Turks, who had destroyed most of the Eastern Roman Empire, and were not accustomed to losses.

Robert’s forces were heavy cavalry. Heavy cavalry has never been very good at a static defense, and the temperament of the Crusaders was decidedly against holding fast. Yet there was nothing to attack. Doggedly they waited for relief, although there was no assurance it would come.

Hours went past. A few of the Crusaders began to fall back. Robert Shortbreeches stood in his stirrups. “Why run?” he demanded. “Their horses are better than ours.” Though their arms were weary, and many were weak from loss of blood, they rallied, and held.

An hour later, Tancred the Great brought up the balance of the Crusader army. The victory at Doryleum cleared all of Asia Minor of resistance, and they fought no more serious battles until they reached Antioch.

The Crusaders and Shortbreeches (which is what Curthose translates to) typify one approach to war.

There is another, more intellectual, which sees war as an intellectual exercise. H. G. Wells was fascinated with war games, and owned hundreds of model soldiers, which he moved through his house according to complex rules.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s, the US Department of Defense became interested in war games. These were highly complex affairs, typically conducted in three rooms laid out with one-way glass so that those in the “Control Room” could see into each of the two participant rooms. I was involved in several of those war games. In one series, it was my responsibility to try to inject the consequences of tactical air power into a ground forces engagement.

Eventually that series of games led to the creation of the llth Air Assault Brigade; which became the Air Cavalry. Helicopter troops are now a mainstay of US (and Soviet) military forces.

Not only military professionals were interested in war games. Sparked by the Avalon Hill Company, a dozen war-gaming companies sprung up and flourished. There has been some shaking out of companies, since, but the war-games business is still big. The largest part has now been taken over by role-playing games, but “simulations”, with hundreds of complex rules, remain popular.

These “monster” games are not often played, but they are studied. They aren’t played because the bookkeeping required to keep track of all the units and rules and interactions are very nearly beyond human capabilities.

However, help is at hand. Computers are very good at bookkeeping. With their help, ever more complex simulation games become not only playable, but fun to play. It will be only a question of time before someone thinks to combine role-playing and computer simulation to create a new era in war gaming.

Such games can be useful. For example: it is nearly impossible to simulate Fall Gelb (Operation Gold), the German breakthrough which brought about the Fall of France in 1940. Any rational analysis leads to a clean win by the Allies, who had a preponderance of armor, men, and supplies, and who were defeated only by a total lack of understanding. Thus, one might think, had gaming fanatics and the tools for simulations games existed in the 30’s, the course of the war would have been far different.

However: Clausewitz cannot too often be repeated: “In war, everything is very simple, but the simplest things are very difficult.”

Lest one place too much faith in these analyses, it should be remembered that the intellectual tools leading to Blitzkrieg were developed by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart and General J. F. C. Fuller, both of His Majesty’s forces. Their writings were taken quite seriously—but alas, only by the Germans.

War games have their place in the preparation for real wars; but one must also remember Robert Curthose.

ON THE SHADOW OF A PHOSPHOR SCREEN
by William F. Wu

Simulation. Simulacrum. Simultaneity.

Similarity. Similitude. Simile.

The silent hall was cold. From behind walnut walls, the air conditioner hummed quietly. A stately crowd of spectators radiated bristling energy from the rigid square rows of seats. They sat against the walls, their attention fixed on the dramatic events at the center of the room. Giant video screens high on each wall gave them the elegant details.

The heavy brown drapes and plush burgundy carpet absorbed the excess vitality from the atmosphere. They imparted a dignified solemnity to the ritualistic proceedings and infused the imperatives of business with a sense of duty. Two huge cables hung from the ceiling, suspending old-fashioned horizontal fans with broad, lazy blades and globular white lights at their hubs.

Beneath the sleepy fans, Wendell Chong Wei repressed the surge of elation that threatened to rock his relentless control. He studied the video screen right before him, and his fingers danced on the console to maintain the non-stop pace. Victory should be certain now, but only if he remained clear of mistakes. He drew sharply on the depths of insecurity for a renewal of killer instinct.

On the other side of the complex, out of sight, his opponent sat before her own screen, drawing back her cavalry, hoping that Wendell would allow his own cavalry charges to overextend themselves. No chance.

“Remember, in reality the Seljuks actually circled, and took the baggage and non-combatants. Leave St. Gilles there, even now. Curthose continues to rally well; Tancred’s charges will carry the day. That’s right—restraint. We’re outnumbered; keep together.”

Richard nodded in the back of Wendell’s mind and stopped talking. The smell of blood and dust and lathered horses arose to envelop Wendell’s sensibility as he regrouped the members of the First Crusade, now victorious at Doryleum on the road to Antioch. Frustrated, the Seljuk Turks remained on the horizon, taunting the Crusaders to break ranks.

Wendell refused. In the center of the screen, a digital clock appeared over the words “Victory Conditions, First Crusade. End game.” The screen blanked.

St. Gilles was dead once more. Bohemund was dead again. The Saracens and Crusaders had returned yet another time to their desiccated graves in the sand.

Wendell swallowed, and rose on weak knees to scattered clapping. His opponent, also looking infirm at the moment, stood and offered her hand without comment, and they shook perfunctorily. Wendell eased himself away from the chair, shaking, suddenly reeling in the sweat and nervousness that he always forgot in the heat of gaming itself. His twenty-nine years seemed far too few to account for this.

An attendant rushed over to escort him away.

“Nice work,” said Richard.

“Same to you,” Wendell thought back. He wiped his palms on the sides of his chocolate-brown suit jacket. “But, uh, how did you know Robert Curthose could hold fast? In the middle of that retreat? His record’s not so good, back in Normandy.”

The attendant showed Wendell to a comfortable reception room with loungers and plenty of refreshments. When he had gone, Richard said, “He really did that, you know.”

“No, I didn’t. But I learned to listen to you a long time ago.”

“More than that, though, it was deep in his psychological makeup. That’s how I could count on it. If he—”

The door opened, and Richard stopped. Wendell collapsed into a lounger. He despised receptions. People scared him. They scared Richard even worse. The ones entering now were the contractors for the two recent opponents, and his erstwhile opponent herself. The contractors were all bustling with talk and laughter. Wendell was too exhausted to tell them apart, and couldn’t remember all their names anyway. His latent bitterness with the whole business kept him from caring.

An older woman approached him, a contractor, with a thin face and a wide smile and lots of spangly jewelry and shiny clothes. Wendell shook her hand, but didn’t get up from the lounger. He didn’t hear what she said, either, though it registered with him as something good. After he had passed her off with some standard line, she glittered away to the refreshments and was followed by Wendell’s recent counterpart in the act of artificial war.

“Have a seat,” said Wendell, indicating another lounger. He could talk to another Master, he felt, who also shared the habit. “Good battle.” He was still catching his breath.

She smiled and shook her head. Dark curls bobbed. “I thought for certain I could take your vanguard before the others drew up. Had them on the run at first, anyway. Who was it, the Duke of Normandy, who rallied for you? Just like he really did.” She caught his eye and added, “The creep. I love it.” Carefully, she eased back in the lounger and put up her feet.

Wendell nodded. “Robert II, Duke of Normandy.” He smiled slightly at her enthusiasm. That had been the first crucial point, but as a Master, she knew that as well as he did. That was the pleasure of it—he didn’t have to explain everything on the rare occasions that he talked to other Masters.

A large, fluffy white cat appeared suddenly on his companion’s lap from the floor. She settled herself immediately on the dark blue slacks and treated the hand that went to her ears as a natural and proper development. Over her head, the two Masters lay back in their loungers, amiably rehashing the game. Wendell’s natural shyness evaporated quickly when the subject of talk was history or games. For them, as freelance Gamers of the Master class, the battle was a matter of intellectual and artistic pride. The defeated party had no shame to bear unless the game had clearly exhibited poor performance—a condition that could apply to the victor as well. Odds were calculated for each side’s units and degree of success; the contractors’ dispute was based on the computation of these, not just on the apparent victory.

“I believe I played you once before, Master Wei,” said his companion. “You don’t remember me. I’m Terri Kief. In my first contracted game, we fought Zama.”

Wendell hesitated, thinking back. “Oh—oh, yeah.”

Terri laughed. “Your elephants rioted in the wrong direction—remember?

“Oh, yes, of course.” Wendell grinned. The game had been only his fourth. He had been soundly beaten, but at least he had maneuvered an orderly escape for his Carthaginians. That was more than the real Hannibal had done. “Very well fought, as I remember.” Zama?

“202 B.C.,” said Richard, in his head. “Two years ago. I told you not to use those elephants, but, oh no, you—”

“Power Technics won the right to a plant on the Big Muddy,” Wendell recalled. “Isn’t that what you won for them?” He was surprised that he remembered, but then, all of his thankfully few defeats, honorable as they were, stood out in his mind—as learning experiences, of course.

“Um—yes, that’s what it was.” Terri sat up, earnestly, steadying the cat with one hand. “I remember, right after that, you ‘won’ that draw at Bosworth Field for the Italian Bottling Cooperative.” She smiled and twisted a curl of dark hair around one finger.

Wendell was flattered in turn that she knew. His own charge, Richard III, had been betrayed by crucial allies at the start of the battle. In reality, Henry Tudor of Richmond had taken a conclusive victory for the Lancastrians. With Wendell Wei in command, the Yorkists had exploited critical junctures between the three forces of Richmond and the two Stanleys, and had thrown the field into general confusion.

“A great deal of luck was involved,” Wendell reminded her. “If my opponent hadn’t been lax, it never would have been possible.”

“Luck is part of things,” said Terri. “Who cares? It happens, that’s all.”

“Luck,” Richard agreed, firmly. He had pointed this out frequently to Wendell, along with the admonition that their opponent had lost; they had not won. According to the rules, Wendell had not been allowed to prepare for the on-field treachery, since it had been a surprise in reality. But hindsight could go the other way. His opponent, while a Master also, had expected too much that history would repeat itself on its own, and he had been careless. Both sides had been forced to withdraw without establishing Victory Conditions, but Wendell’s opponent had insisted upon conceding, stating that the position of the Yorkist cause at the time of betrayal had actually been desperate.

Wendell modestly, but truthfully, agreed that extricating Richard III from Bosworth had been his finest achievement, draw though it was. Even Richard, with his perfectionist standards, acknowledged its value in unguarded moments. The strength of the Gaming Masters’ Guild made such dealings possible; no corporation or other principal would object, for fear of being boycotted in later disputes.

“I’m afraid I’m rather ambitious,” said Terri. “That Bosworth Field example of yours is just tremendous. I’m aiming at the number-one rating, and I’ve reviewed the tape of that game many times in the Guild Library.”

“I had the undisputed number-one rating,” Richard growled.

Wendell smiled at Terri. “You think I’m a textbook case, huh? Is that good or bad?”

“Well, I’m trying to learn from you. After all, you just beat me.” She looked at him with amusement.

“Congratulations! To both of you.” A hearty voice startled them. One of Wendell’s contractors smiled broadly down at them, extending one hand and rattling an iced drink with the other. He was large and heavy, dressed in formal black. His tie was crooked. “A fine game. Saw it all on the spectator screens.” He shook hands with them both, laughing happily.

Terri and Wendell thanked him. The big contracter stood beaming at them, sipping his drink. His name was Crandall, Wendell remembered, wishing he would leave. But the profession required courtesy toward contractors.

Crandall caught Wendell’s eye and shook his head. “Fine battle,” he insisted.

Terri nodded. “You know, there were times when I could have sworn you actually had the feel of the battle— you know, the ringing of hot steel, the beat of the hooves, the grip of old leather. I can do it sometimes in flashes— but not like that. You’re amazing.”

“That’s me!” Richard cried gleefully. He was embarrassed and highly pleased. Wendell shook his head, smiling reluctantly. He thought back to Richard, “We have an unfair advantage, you know.”

“Grand!” thundered the contractor. “Just what I wanted to hear. Listen, the two of you are close together, rated fifth and eighth Master Gamers. You care to work… together?”

“What!” Richard screamed with delight. Some word of this had gotten around, but it had been vague. No Master anywhere would pass up this chance.

Wendell and Terri turned attentive instantly. Crandall clearly enjoyed their excitement. “The new tandem game is ready,” he said.

Wendell had already forgotten about the last contract— as a Master, he was always paid in advance, and the legal decisions he had won for his contractors were of no interest to him. The Guild demanded, and got, substantial rights of independence for its members. But the present games were devised only for one Gamer on a side. The computer bank already held incredible amounts of information—the terrain and weather of the real battles, the morale of the troops, their military capabilities, and the psychological profiles of all individuals that were on historical record. Minute technological details, such as the composition of stirrups and the age of leather, could win or lose battles. Four keyboards would square the intensity of the game, though increased caution might decrease the pace.

“Are you making a formal request?” Terri asked excitedly.

Crandall gave a long, sweeping, mock-formal bow. “I would hereby request the participation of the two of you in the first tandem game ever to take place, to be contracted through my office.” He straightened up, grinning. “Howzat?”

Terri laughed and glanced at Wendell. “Excellent. I accept.”

“Okay,” said Wendell, smiling. Already, he was trying to absorb the implications of the new game. “Okay,” Richard echoed happily.

Wendell’s imagination soared, exploring the feel of the new game as it might turn out to be. Now, the Gamers only controlled two factors completely: they replaced the supreme commander in decision making, and had the advantage of aerial viewpoint over all the significant territory their troops could have seen. They were limited to reality in factors such as on-field communication, mobility, and availability of friendly forces. Lastly, “chance” factors were also included, to account for unexpected performances, good and bad, on the individual level. The games were good, but had never been constructed for team play before. The game would still be fast and intense, requiring that the Gamers keep their keyboards in constant activity.

When Wendell brought his attention back to the present, Crandall was pacing in front of them, talking loudly, and gesturing in all directions. The new game that the contractor described was essentially no different from the present games as far as playing technique except that the Gamers replaced two command individuals per side instead of one. The biggest changes were technological. However, the quality of the conflict would change greatly; no psychologically-programmed game-personality could ever approximate all the variations of mind that high stress evoked in a real person. This new game was a tremendous challenge, and Wendell was anxious to try it.

“Sound decent?” Crandall puffed, lowering his arms. He stood bent over slightly, recovering from his high-pressure sales pitch.

“Of course it does,” said Terri. She smiled and cocked her head to watch his face. It was red.

“Sure,” said Wendell. He was watching Terri.

“Right,” said Richard. “I guess we have a partner automatically, eh? No choice?”

“She’s a fine choice,” Wendell thought to him. He knew her as an opponent, and that was the best test of her ability. She had won at Zama, after all. She had an unusual quickness, too, and in that first moment at the bell, when the Gamers found out which battle was to take place and which sides were assigned where and at what odds, decisiveness was crucial. Sixty seconds for orientation were allowed before the screen activated automatically. The computer chose battles and sides at random, and could choose grand matchups or hopeless routs. Also, Wendell was envious of the short time she took to recover her strength after the game. He felt he needed a younger teammate like her.

Besides, he could talk to her.

Besides, Richard was nearly screaming with anticipation inside Wendell’s brain.

At Crandall’s assurance that the Guild had already approved the new game, Terri and Wendell agreed to try it the next morning, exchanging quick glances as they nodded. Elsewhere, the contractors with whom Crandall had a dispute were contacting other Masters. They, too, would be excited over the new development.

Wendell wanted to get away so that he could consult Richard without interruption, and excused himself from the reception early. His goodbye was awkward as always, but Terri congratulated him once more and said that she was looking forward to the new game.

Wendell left without speaking to most of the people. His shyness was generally interpreted as arrogance, and was notorious as such. However, lack of social grace was another indulged idiosyncracy of Master Gamers. He could get away with it, and he knew it.

“Fancy game, huh?” Richard crowed. “Wonder what dispute they’ll use the first one for—it’ll have to be a big one. None of this, ‘where do we put the fire hydrant, your yard or mine?’” He laughed. “We’ll show the world—those slimy losers.”

“Yeah,” said Wendell. He wondered who the opposing Masters would be—not that it would matter much. Still, with the World Headquarters here in the center of the country, it could literally be anyone in the Guild. The fact that he and Terri were both Americans was an off-chance occurrence; there were only six in the twenty highest-rated positions.

Wendell took a deep breath and glanced around. He had stepped out of the Crown Center Plaza, and, on a whim, decided to walk up Main for a while. He took off his suit coat and loosened his tie. The summer evening was humid, warm and damp, and the streets shone with the film of rainwater and oil.

“You heard what she said about me,” Richard insisted. “ ‘The ringing of hot steel, the beat of the hooves, the grip of old leather.’ That’s what I provide, y’know.”

“I know.” Wendell tried not to think, or else to think about trivia. At the moment, he didn’t want Richard picking up his thoughts. Just how much Richard could read his mind, he wasn’t sure, but a Master Gamer was cautious by nature. In any case, he couldn’t read Richard’s mind at all. He took a long breath, and caught the smell of rain lingering in the breeze.

“I can give it, too,” Richard went on. “You know, I really think I have nearly as many important facts as those computers—not all, of course, that’s impossible. But—well, you know how it was.”

“I know,” said Wendell. He turned up a long institutional driveway, blotting out the visions of their childhood friendship that Richard had brought up. How it was.

“Technically, I suppose, we’re illegal,” Richard mused, “there being two of us. Not that anybody’d believe it. Still, considering that—” He stopped. The silence was dark and frigid and sudden.

Wendell sighed. “That’s right,” he thought to Richard.

No answer. There never was, on these visits. But Richard would have to come; that was one fact they had established. Their periods of consciousness and sleep coincided exactly, right down to the brainwave type and REM cycles. He had escaped one body, to be trapped in another, and, sometimes—lately, more than ever— Wendell took him back.

Wendell knew the way, and the hospital personnel recognized him and waved him on. The special ward, which was nearly a vault, lay in one of the underground floors, deep beneath the city. An orderly who knew Wendell escorted him to a cold, cavernous room in dim light. Coffin-sized tanks with a bluish tinge were lined up in long, lonely rows. Storage drawers or upright cases would have saved space, but they were too reminiscent of morgues and mummies. The orderly withdrew and Wendell, still feeling the icy silence in the back of his mind, stood over one of the tanks and looked through the transparent casing that covered its occupant.

The face, always lean, was nearly a skull. He wore only the steel headband and its attendant wires that monitored what little brain activity remained. The whitish cheeks showed faint gray spots where the synthetic blood picked its way through the sleeping capillaries. His wavy hair was the red-gold of the Celt, not the white gold of the Norse. Even now, the repose looked fitful— the face not quite relaxed, the limbs not quite comfortable. In other days and other places, the long legs would have worn a Highland kilt, and the bony, slender arms would have known a Lochaber axe, not the cold cushion of a suspension tank.

Richard had been the very best, even at age twenty.

The coma had begun nine years ago, and after four years, suspended animation had been suggested until further medical advances developed a way to induce recovery. It had been caused by those experimental helmets, in the only time they were ever used, and by Richard’s own insane enthusiasm for the games. Without that waking obsession, he never would have invented the helmets, or induced Wendell to join him.

Burned out, Wendell thought—Richard had gone nova, after reaching the top in so few years. That was part of it, too.

The lilting spirit of a Burns melody forced its way through the frozen arteries. The wonder of Loch Ness lay flat under the realism of a phony death. Only the soul of Bannockburn leaped and roared, through the avenue of another person.

The helmets had been complex bio-feedback contraptions, keyed into the game machine, worn by both Gamers. Supposedly, they would monitor the stress on each Gamer in relation to each quick development on the screen. They were Richard’s creation, an even greater monument to his involvement in the games than his youthful grip on the number-one rating. Richard was only a Master Gamer, though, and his dynamism in the field had fooled him. He had botched the electronics badly, and when the helmets jammed and buzzed and quivered with too much energy, the Gaming Master’s Guild lost its number-one Master to a coma—apparently.

Richard wore a different kind of helmet now.

When Wendell had awakened in the hospital, he had had company inside his own head. The emotional drive and the machine had become fused, and so had they. Richard had become the ghost of obsessed wargamers, the patron deity of electronic monomania, a scowling, blue-eyed, discorporate Guan Gung.

At first, the sharing of one body had been nearly unbearable for both of them—it wasn’t exactly deliberate on Richard’s part any more than on Wendell’s, at least consciously. They grew accustomed to it surprisingly fast, once clear and detailed personal questions had established to each other that they were not crazy, after all. Gradually, if painfully, they adjusted to the situation. Their closeness as childhood companions helped immeasurably, as did their common aversion to social mixing and people in general.

Now the strain was growing.

Wendell gazed quietly. He was a Master Gamer now, an accomplished performer with a greater knowledge of his field than many military historians. Great civil decisions rode on his tides, and the Prairie Sector of the country followed. He was too young to remember the entry of the games into stalemated judicial disputes, though he had read about it later. The game sets had had only a few battles to choose from back then, though all had been classics. The technology was primitive.

And Wendell and Richard were two ostracized, introverted kids in an upstairs bedroom, setting up toy plastic knights. A carefully tumbled landscape of books, boxes, and blankets on the floor formed rugged peaks, treacherous valleys, and unscalable castle walls. Set aside, stacks of various histories provided countless scenarios and suggestions for their vivid visions.

“Okay,” Richard announced, from his own side of the floor. He had his back to Wendell and was maneuvering nine thirteenth-century men in armor down the cascading folds of a blue blanket. “Mace-face is leading his puny band down into the valley now, sneaking up on the camp down there.” Carefully, he lifted a large armored individual with an upraised mace, and knocked over a sentry with it.

“The Norman cavalry is having trouble,” said Wendell, from his side of the room. He wheeled about seven toy knights, actually from the Wars of the Roses, and sent them into retreat. They didn’t resemble Norman cavalry at all, but they did have horses and lances. “The Saxon shieldwall has held, and re-forms while the Normans regroup for another attack.” He knew that Richard was listening with only the barest of attention, just as he was, but that didn’t matter. This way, they could enact whatever battles and time periods and strategies they wanted. This included manipulating defeats into victories, and deciding on their own who would live or die. Both of them always won and the victories were always shared.

Richard sat back suddenly and considered. “All of these kinds of people were descended from Roman tradition—mixed up with the Franks and other barbarians, of course. I wonder what would have happened if some descendants of Carthage had lasted into medieval times.”

“Yeah,” said Wendell, without interest. He was trying to form a new shieldwall on the fold of a bedspread with nine Saxons and two temporarily-converted Vikings, who looked similar enough, but they all kept falling down.

“No good, I guess,” Richard continued. “Even if Carthage had survived the Romans, the Vandals went through later anyway. So did the Arabs, too, in the 700s.” His voice grew pedantic. “Jebel Al-Tarik invaded Europe from Africa in 711—the easiest date to remember in all history.”

“Hm.” Wendell tried to fix the name in his memory, to go with the date, but he didn’t know how to spell it. He had never been as good with dates as Richard, but he had a better grasp of concurrent events and their inter-relation. Then Richard gave him an opening.

“I guess those Carthagians were doomed from the start,” he said, and turned back to his half-completed battle.

“Carthaginians,” Wendell corrected him.

Richard clenched his jaw and took on a firm look. “The city is Carthage—so, Carthagians, stupid. It’s the easiest way to change it.”

“I read ‘Carthaginians’ someplace,” said Wendell. For them, the printed word was the last word.

“I presume,” Richard said loftily, “that’s C-A-R-T-H-A-G-I-N-I-A-N.”

“Yep,” said Wendell, thinking that Richard must be the only ten-year-old in the country who said “presume” out loud in sentences.

They looked at each other, and the undercurrent of childhood rivalry rose up in a mutual giggling ferocity that set them leaping at each other. Growling and yelling and laughing, they grappled and rolled in a narrow space of the floor that was still clear. Both were slender and limber, making them quick at close quarters. Richard had the reach, being considerably taller—and he looked thinner on account of it—but Wendell was more aggressive. As they rapidly approached their usual stalemate, someone’s foot flicked into a battlefield and knocked over a few miniature stalwarts. Instantly, they both froze.

“Whose was it?” Richard panted, holding an awkward pose.

“Yours, I think.” They untangled themselves gingerly and returned with extreme care to their battles. Fallen fighters were resurrected, to be killed according to plan instead of by accident. Although their backs were turned to each other, they repaired the damage with a shared reverence, and in silence.

The insomnia that night was no worse than usual. In nine years as a Master, Wendell had never slept the night after any of his twenty-six games. Unlike some Masters he knew, he slept easily and soundly on the nights preceding games, and on every other night. But after the games, he lay on his back in his huge blackened bedroom, staring from his circular bed into the gloom. Coupled with silence, the darkness seemed to be a giant void.

“I’m exhausted,” Richard whined. “Go to sleep. I can’t stand this.”

“Me, too,” thought Wendell with effort. His arms and legs felt like inorganic weights, attached to his torso by straps. In the total darkness, and his complete weariness, his mind felt detached from his body and yet trapped in it—floating in his skull like a—like a body in a suspension tank. Or a specimen in formaldehyde.

“Go to sleep,” Richard said again. “I’m… tired.”

“Shut up,” Wendell answered, without force. “What are you? You might… not even be there. Just another voice in my head.”

“What! Of course I’m here. We figured that out a long—”

“Yeah, I know… but what if I am just crazy, huh? What if you’re not there?” Wendell spoke in a spiritless monotone that largely disarmed the words. Vaguely, he wished he could be firmer. Or maybe a farmer.

Richard made a sound of annoyed muttering. Wendell blinked, or tried to. In the darkness, without moving anything but his eyelids, he wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed. If he couldn’t tell, then it could hardly matter. But he wondered. He always wondered.

“Stupid game… no people involved,” Wendell thought. “All machinery. No… heart to it. Circuits and moving lights. Dead. I should give it up… I hate it. It’s empty, like, uh, my head.” His tone lacked bitterness, even that required energy.

“If that’s a joke, I resent it.”

“Games. I’ve got games coming out of my ears. I haven’t got any friends. I’m scared of them. All of them. Aiieee.” He sighed inwardly. This was nothing new; the same thoughts went through his mind every sleepless, post-game night, after every urgent, killer-filled war game. He hated war, even his toy war. But he hated socializing more. The careful cultivation of a smooth, laconic speaking style camouflaged that fear, but it ruled his life.

For a moment, images of Terri rose up, laughing and talking with him earlier in the evening. Her hair bounced and swung as she moved. She looked at him when she smiled.

“Go to sleep,” mumbled Richard.

Terri’s face dissolved into blackness.

Wendell tried to blink again and see if he could tell. He stared at the darkness and gave up again. On the average, he supposed, he tried this ten or twelve times every sleepless night. If he ever reached a conclusion, he’d have to find something else to do. He tried it a third time. So tired.

“Aw, c’mon. Can’t you take a pill or something?” Richard always made the same complaints and asked the same questions on these nights. Why not? There was nothing else to do.

Fear—that was the true source of Richard’s coma. Fear of life. Fear of human contact. Fear of doing something stupid. Fear had sent him diving into the world of the phosphorous shine.

Wendell understood it all, because he shared it. He lived his life inside the electronic game box, killing and rekilling people centuries dead, to flex his embryonic courage against other Masters—people who might be just as weird and anti-social as he, if not exactly in the same way. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected that the Masters’ Guild was another of the many refuges for loners, cowards, and repressed crazies. If one could handle the occupation, it paid better than bookkeeping, running projectors, wandering carnival crowds, and the rest. An occasional normal like Terri or Kirk Emerald preserved the staid image.

Someday he would quit. He certainly wouldn’t want anyone ever replaying his life, and improving upon it. How would Napoleon feel, seeing Wendell win Leipzig and Waterloo over and over again? It was a funny business.

The coma was a combination of electronic mishap and willful escape. Wendell had no idea how Richard’s presence in his mind had really come about, but he was certain that some volition was involved in Richard’s remaining there, even if it was all subconscious. Out of boredom, Wendell tried to imagine that he, motionless in the consuming black silence of his room, was also in a sort of trance. For a fleeting second, the escape had its attraction: no fears, no contests, and no irrevocability, like suicide. Then his physical exhaustion intruded upon his senses again, dissolving the respite. Not a trance, just old insomnia.

Until Crandall had mentioned the new tandem game that night, Wendell had hoped, guardedly, that their symbiotic relationship would reach an end soon. If Richard was as bored with it as he was, then the subconscious desire to maintain it would fade away. Now, the new game would bring another exciting dimension into their lives. And Wendell would never be able to request being left alone outright—not with his lifelong fear of others making that same request to him.

If Richard could listen to these thoughts, he gave no sign.

Shrugging away his serious concerns, Wendell took a deep breath. Without intending to, he began to visualize surroundings, somewhere out in the darkness. Then, amused, he began listing them in order from beyond his left ear, clockwise: alarm radio with voice-activated clock, set to light up when he gave the Clan Munro battle cry in Gaelic; the controls to an elaborate sound system which was similarly started or stopped by listing the first three Plantagenet kings or the last three Capetians, respectively; a video desk and television receiver whose channels were selected by the names of certain standard military procedures in Sun Tze’s Art of War, a desk with a combined telephone and dictaphone set rendered usable from across the room by reciting any two of the major military contributions of the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan; a small movie projector which, unfortunately, had to be operated manually; last, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, totally filled, which covered an entire wall. They were his instant references, the ones most needed or the ones most rarely in libraries.

“Don’t do it,” sighed Richard. “There’s too many.”

Wendell did his blinking routine again. Afterward, ignoring Richard, he began to list every book on the shelves by title, author, and major value to his own purposes. When he had finished, his review of the room was complete. He was tempted to force energy into his voice and mutter. “Caisteal Folais na Theine,” at his clock, but he was afraid to know how early it still was. So tired. So dark.

The night had a long way to go. If he had been up, he would have activated his noise-making electric friends all at once, raising their volume in direct proportion to his loneliness. But now, in the darkness, in his weariness, he just lay there.

The foyer to Crandall’s office was luxuriously furnished, and, ordinarily, both spacious and immaculate. Now, the new tandem machine, over twice the size of the old ones, stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the bright orange carpet. A coffee table and two easy chairs had been unceremoniously crowded into the far end of the room. The receptionist’s desk had also been moved from its usual location, leaving deep impressions behind in the orange pile. The receptionist, stifling her annoyance, frowned at her papers and made a point of not looking up.

“Hot stuff,” said Richard, “Look at this place.”

“Quiet,” thought Wendell. He swallowed nervously, anticipating the introductions.

“You know Master Emerald, of course,” said Crandall, gesturing to a tall, well-dressed man at his side. The taller man was slender, with a full head of white hair and a slight tan.

“Of course.” Wendell shook hands with him. Kirk Emerald was Director of the Trustees in the Gaming Masters’ Guild. More than that, he was a co-developer of the original game machine and the acknowledged champion of the early contests. The games in the first several series of machines had been slow and studied compared to the current ones. As the games grew faster, the best players became the younger ones. Kirk Emerald had already been middle-aged when the game was developed, and quickly found his reflexes too slow for the later models. Still, he commanded tremendous respect.

“Master Wei,” said Emerald, nodding slightly. “This is a fine game, here. I was fortunate enough to participate in the quality control games, and enjoyed them very much.”

“Do you know Master Kief?” Wendell said. “We’ve played each other twice, most recently last night. So we’re somewhat familiar with each other’s playing style.” Hopefully, that would be enough small talk.

“That’s part of teamwork,” said Terri. She smiled at Emerald. “We’ve met.”

“Ah.” Emerald bowed slightly and smiled in return.

“I remember.”

Crandall, who had been shifting back and forth impatiently on his feet, waved a hand at the machine. “Shall we?” He grinned eagerly.

Wendell and Terri moved around it warily, like visitors at a zoo. Wendell trailed his fingers over the chair backs, looking at the double consoles—two keyboards, two screens—on each side. He tried to imagine working elbow-to-elbow in a fast maneuver, where he had to predict the combined moves and weaknesses of three other players instead of one.

Inside his head, Richard whistled appreciation.

“I envy your opportunity,” said Emerald, hesitating between the other two chairs. No one doubted his sincerity. “Shall we begin?”

“What do you think?” said Richard.

“No telling yet, of course,” Wendell thought back. “Shut up.” Aloud, he said, “I’m ready. Uh…” He looked from Emerald to Terri to Crandall.

Crandall took charge, putting a hand on Wendell’s shoulder. “We’ll take this side. Master Emerald, if you’ll join Master Kief over there. Go easy, please,” he added, laughing. “I can play, but I’m no Master.”

Wendell sat down and felt the keyboard. The seat, the board, and the screen were still the standardized equipment he was used to—an important detail. Crandall eased his bulk into the adjacent seat. He pushed a button and the screen said: “Cannae. 216 B.C. Roman Cavalry.” Officers’ names, Victory Conditions, and odds for the battle were given below. The adjacent screen would be saying, “Roman Infantry.” The opposing screens were the same, except “Carthaginian” in nationality. All four players laughed politely.

“I figured we’d start easy,” said Crandall, chuckling.

“Coward,” said Richard. “Sniveller.”

Wendell relaxed a little as he waited for the minute of orientation to go by. This was a classic confrontation, which needed no forced recall. Kirk Emerald had built it into the very first machine for the first game, and it had been fought many times over. Its choice by Crandall was a subtle tribute to the elderly player seated across from Wendell, out of sight. Wendell guessed also that seating Emerald on the winning side was no accident, either, but it was a harmless bit of protocol. In fact, Wendell was glad. Kirk Emerald was a reigning monarch, but in a society of combatants, that was a step down from the fighting ranks. Master Gamers had a keen sense of passing time, possibly from their concern over history—and every Master was well aware that the rarest future this occupation offered was aging with dignity. With perhaps five good years left, Wendell was growing more conscious of the small amenities.

The screen blinked once and began to move. Wendell’s Roman Cavalry were crimson units, while Crandall’s Roman Infantry were burgundy. The Carthaginians were two shades of yellow. Wendell’s shyness fell away as he took control of his forces. He advanced his lines slowly; there was not much maneuvering possible. Much of the Carthaginian victory had been decided by a highly favorable field, and the Gamers could not change that.

“Easy, that’s it,” said Richard. “If we can avoid being routed, we’ll be a step ahead. The only—”

“Can it,” Wendell thought. He was getting annoyed. “We both know this battle the same as each other’s…” He trailed off uncomfortably. The subject of sameness had little meaning when they shared everything.

Crandall was taking the Roman Infantry forward to their doom with wanton joy. Wendell could see, out of the corner of his eye, Crandall’s delighted grin as he shared a battle with three genuine Master Gamers. Every contractor was a Gamer at heart.

Terri obligingly allowed the Carthaginian center to sag in, as Hannibal had planned, until her flanks, anchored on hillsides, could turn and encircle the enemy. Wendell grinned at Crandall’s lighthearted slaughter of his own units, as the two cavalry forces closed with each other.

“What’s Crandall doing? Is he crazy?” Richard demanded. His voice had a righteous ring.

“He’s just enjoying himself. Forget it.” Wendell frowned and his fingers leaped about the keyboard. The screen responded just as it should, and the keys felt fine. For several moments he concentrated on the struggle at hand, testing more intricate aspects of the machine. He was off his game from lack of sleep, but he managed with no trouble.

Wendell noticed suddenly that he had been gaining an upper hand. Surprised, he tried an experimental feint and watched the opposing units over-shift in response. He hesitated.

“C’mon, push the advantage.” Richard was impatient. “What’s wrong with you?”

Wendell turned his line slightly, exposing his flank. He could be a ruthless competitor, but not a cruel one. Emerald’s reflexes were slow and his style rusty. Wendell could slice him to pieces and turn one of the greatest defeats of all time into something of a question. He found that he would not.

“Stop it,” screamed Richard. “You malevolent fool. Are you retarded?”

“Shut up,” thought Wendell. He could not let his forces fall apart, for Emerald would see through that, and be even more embarrassed than if he were soundly defeated. Carefully, Wendell kept his resistance stiff, but allowed himself to be forced backward. He could not honor Emerald from this role, but he could avoid humiliating him.

Mercifully, Crandall’s reckless advance brought about a quick end to the battle. The screen froze with “Victory Conditions, Carthage,” and the elapsed time. Wendell took a deep breath and leaned back.

Crandall threw back his head and laughed. “Wonderful!” he declared. His receptionist, in a far corner, glanced up and smiled slightly. Terri slid out of her chair and watched Crandall with amusement.

“I’m afraid you were easy on me, Master.” Emerald smiled at Wendell as they both stood.

“No.” Wendell shook his head, smiling back and then glancing at the other two. Crandall had probably not noticed the subtle change in the cavalry engagement, but Terri would have. “It’s a good game, Master Emerald. I see no problems.”

“Yes, I believe so. Lou, you have a certain, ah, flair for tactics.”

Crandall grinned and turned his hands palm up. “I know when I’m licked.”

“He licked himself pretty good,” Richard snarled.

Crandall stood, joining the others.

“The machine is fine,” said Terri. “The battle didn’t offer much real interplay, though. It was almost two separate battles. I was under the impression that the whole point was—

“My fault,” said Crandall quickly. “I should have chosen a battle that would utilize that area better. Most of the scenarios will fully engage each player with the activities of the other three, I assure you.”

Wendell glanced nervously at Terri, wishing he had thought to raise the point.

“I can vouch for that,” said Emerald. “In most cases, the game becomes as complex as anyone could want.”

Terri nodded and caught Wendell’s eye. He sort of shrugged.

“How come his hair is never out of place?” demanded Richard. “Think he glues it?”

Wendell glanced up at Emerald’s full mane of white hair, flowing back with a mixture of precision and naturalness that matched his stylish clothes. “I like him,” Wendell thought to Richard.

“I hate him,” Richard said firmly.

“I have contracts here,” said Crandall, pulling them from his inside pocket. “The two of you may take and read them at leisure.”

Emerald cleared his throat and looked at the floor, frowning.

“Three months away,” said Wendell, glancing at the match date on the first page.

“Too short?” Crandall sounded concerned. “I know the usual is six months, but—

“It’s legal, all right,” said Terri, nodding. She raised her eyebrows at him. “It’s just, well, especially short when you consider that it’s a completely new kind of game.”

“I see,” said Crandall. He made a jaw motion as though he were chewing a cigar. Then he glanced at Emerald.

Emerald frowned more deeply. “I must tell you that we’re on the threshold of something here. The… principals named on the contracts are actually representatives.” He paused for effect. “In reality, the principals are the governments of Portugal and Yugoslavia.”

“Garbage,” said Richard. “Who cares?”

“Shut up,” thought Wendell.

“Wait a minute,” said Terri, looking at Emerald. She stared for a moment, twirling a curl of dark hair on one finger. “Governments.”

“Governments,” Wendell repeated quietly. That was new.

Emerald nodded. “The true dispute is something small—some kind of mutual maritime rights. It’s all in the contract hidden behind dummy corporations. The real point is, that no governments have ever before agreed to abide by a decision of this type. Individuals and corporations and internal governmental decisions all over the world—of course. But no two national governments.”

Terri’s voice was tight with excitement. “And this could set a precedent.”

“Hmph,” said Richard.

“It’s all theoretical,” Crandall put in, clearly enjoying Terri’s interest. “But the Gaming Masters’ Guild has a reputation for being selfish enough, cautious enough, international enough, and rich enough to be incorruptible. It’s a start, at least, if matters hold up.” He laughed and shrugged.

Wendell and Terri glanced at each other, grinning. A new challenge was rare for Masters in the top ten, and they had one with a double punch. Wendell thrust his hands in his pockets and looked from Terri to his feet.

“This will be the test case,” said Emerald. “And the only item that could be a catch is the insistence of both governments that the dispute be decided by late autumn. Apparently it will affect their work in winter dry dock.”

“Under the circumstances,” said Terri, “I think we can handle it in three months.” She smiled and looked at Wendell.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “But, uh, why did you wait?”

“To tell you?” Emerald smiled. “Naturally, I’ll trust your discretion in all of the foregoing. We weren’t allowed to contact anyone at all until the last details of the agreement were finalized, early yesterday. Since both of you played under a contract of Lou’s, he knew you weren’t signed for the future, and he pounced.”

“Of course he knew we’d accept,” Richard complained. “Any Master would jump at the chance to play tandem. I despise this manipulation.”

“I had you in mind for a long time,” Crandall added. “The selection involved much more than availability, I assure you, though that was certainly important. Don’t think I chose you at random. It was no accident.” He let out a breath and looked around. “Are we set?”

Terri and Wendell both nodded. “We’ll look over the contracts and be back tomorrow,” said Wendell. “I expect no problems.”

Terri nodded in agreement.

All four of them shook hands again, smiling all around.

As the brief celebration ended, Kirk Emerald glanced wistfully at the game machine. “Anyone care to play again?” he asked.

The early weeks of preparation went quickly. The necessary rest sessions became the height of Wendell’s day; time set aside for planning now offered conversation instead of rote memory work done in private. Before, he had always enjoyed the practice matches most out of the preparatory routine.

The elevator doors inside the Guild Hall opened into a heavily carpeted hallway. Wendell stepped from the elevator into an intricate, complex maze which offered thick, locked doors at intervals. These were the preparation rooms, where Masters would hone their skills for an upcoming game, normally by playing against the Guild Apprentices, or “spars.” For the special tandem game, though, other Masters had agreed to act as spars for both teams. Wendell walked quickly, glancing at the door plates. Even after nine years, the maze sometimes still baffled him. He finally reached a door titled “Dan no Ura,” and sighed with relief.

“Japan by the western end of the Inland Sea,” Richard recited. “Year, 1185. Minamoto Clan eliminated Taira Clan.”

Wendell used his borrowed key in the door. Every week, they changed their preparation room as well as their Master spars; this was to insure that opposing players would not accidentally identify each other through the pre-game routine. By custom, only the most functional and necessary conversation was carried out on this floor.

Inside the room, Terri greeted Wendell with a quiet smile. Away from the door, on the other side of the game machine, the two Master spars nodded at him. Wendell knew both of them by sight, but he had never spoken with either. As soon as Wendell was settled at his console, Terri activated the game.

The screen read: “Ain Jalut, 1260 A.D. Ilkhan Mongols.” Several names followed, and a list of Victory Conditions and odds. Wendell was the second-in-command, leading one wing of cavalry.

“Hulagu,” said Richard, identifying the Ilkhan himself. “The Mongols, as always, have a totally mounted force. Important: up to this point, they are undefeated. Consider an overconfidence factor programmed into the game.”

“Right. Terrain?”

“Mm—inconsequential to an all-mounted contest. Open desert country, slightly rolling.”

Wendell’s fingers wiggled nervously over the keyboard as the minutes of orientation dragged by. This would be a rough one for him, demanding skill from his weak points. He felt like consulting Terri, but negotiations conducted through the contractors with the opposing team had produced the agreement that no talk would be allowed between partners. Speaking would eliminate the factor of on-field communication, which had always been important.

“Opposition,” said Richard. “Victory by Mamluk Egypt, under Baibars. He himself is part Mongol and produces this first major trouncing of the Mongol army by utilizing their own style of war against them. Speed, surprise, mobility, discipline.”

“Right.” Wendell had all of this in him somewhere, but having it spoon-fed relieved him of both the pressure and energy of trying to recall it. He squirmed in his seat as the final seconds approached.

At least, the Mongol style of battle required a minimum of on-field communication. The general plan was discussed first, and the actual timing was coordinated as much by the judgement of the unit commanders as by conveying orders. Wendell and Terri, as any Masters, were prepared to utilize those plans and styles without discussion. In the last practice session, Terri and Wendell had commanded a loose confederation of Hindu forces at Tararori in 1192. Hamstrung by a disjointed command and strict Hindu religious laws, they had been easily overrun by Mohammed of Ghur. This clash, on the other hand, matched nearly identical fighting styles.

“Go!” screamed Richard.

The two sides closed fast and kept moving. Terri worked quickly and easily, setting up one side of a pincer movement. Wendell was ill at ease in the open, slash-and-run conflict. Repeatedly out-maneuvered, he failed to bring about the second wing of the pincer. She was probably annoyed, he thought, as she reconsolidated her wing.

“Back. Wheel about. Faster. No, faster.” Richard’s voice was quick and steady.

Wendell tried to set up a defensive posture, but the enemy’s mobility on the open land could outflank any stand. “I’m still no good at this,” he thought to Richard. Fleetingly, he remembered again: Richard was the undisputed number-one.

“Attack. What are you waiting for? C’mon!”

“Lemme alone,” Wendell thought in a snarl. He brought his chaotic squads into reasonable order, trying to use Terri’s more successful units as a buttress. She recognized the effort and helped with a long, sweeping charge which momentarily broke the enemy’s pressure. The battle, made up of charges and sudden wheeling flights to regroup and charge again, rolled over wide areas of terrain, always moving. Lathered horses whinnied and screamed in the distant edges of Wendell’s attention.

“Stop trying defense,” Richard said angrily. “Cavalry is an offensive weapon, you know that. Take—”

“Shut up,” Wendell thought. He took two good swipes at the enemy flank, but then a concerted enemy charge separated him completely from Terri. A second later he was in full retreat.

“Satisfied?” Richard growled. Terri’s force quickly collapsed under the undiluted assault from the other side. Still, her facility with this command remained obvious, even in defeat.

“Victory Conditions, Mamluk Egypt,” came on the screen. The elapsed time was remarkably short, even for this kind of battle. All four players audibly relaxed and leaned back, their faces bathed in the phospher sheen of their screens.

Wendell smiled weakly at Terri, who shrugged. He flexed his fingers and looked at the frozen screen, feeling anger rise inside him. Yet Richard had clearly been right in his advice. Well, after a short break, they would go at it again. Silence reigned in his mind, as neither he nor Richard would speak.

“Tell me,” said Terri, smiling over the short candle between them. “Did you invite me out to dinner just to make up for that first loss this morning?” The yellow light flickered over her smooth cheeks. “You really didn’t need to.”

Wendell smiled shyly and stared into his empty bowl. “Oh, I dunno. I just felt like I should acknowledge it as my fault.”

“You fool,” said Richard.

Wendell tried to ignore him. He had not been in this sort of social situation before, with Richard. “Anyway, that type of fighting has always come hard for me.”

Terri nodded. Her dark hair was almost lost in the dimness of the restaurant, but the candlelight shimmered on the curls around her face. “You’re extremely tough defensively. The cavalry-to-cavalry attack just doesn’t offer a stationary unit to work from.”

“After this morning, I’m certain I’ve been lucky never to have fought Ain Jalut in a match. I did even worse than the real commander, and he lost badly.”

“You’re not kidding,” said Richard. ‘Very lucky.”

“I was the commander today, don’t forget.” Terri laughed. “If you had fought a match, you would have been playing solo, and that’s much easier. I’m serious about your defensive instincts, though. We just have to mesh our abilities better.”

“Oh, I agree.” Wendell leaned an elbow on the table, then changed his mind and took it off. “You think on your feet very well—adapt and respond while in motion.”

Terri laughed again. “That comes from growing up in Queens—it’s my New York paranoia showing.”

“Oh, I didn’t know where you were from.”

“I left there quite a few years ago. Where are you from?”

“Right here—born and raised.”

“Me, too,” said Richard in a snide tone.

“Shut up,” Wendell thought to him.

“Really?” said Terri.

“What?” Wendell blinked, in confusion.

Terri laughed and cocked her head to one side, studying him. “Aren’t you paying attention? What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Yeah. Tell her what’s the matter, why don’t you?”

“Stop it,” Wendell thought back angrily, clenching his teeth.

“Wendell? Are you all right?” Terri brushed the curls from her eyes, frowning.

“Yes, I’m okay. Sorry.” Wendell took a deep breath and tried to smile at her.

“Getting kind of crowded here, isn’t it?”

Wendell controlled himself with tremendous effort. He could feel himself quivering. “It certainly is,” he replied in his mind.

“No more personal questions,” said Terri. “I promise.”

“Oh—no, it’s not, uh, not that, I—

“That’s all right. I wanted to tell you more about Ain Jalut, anyway.”

“You don’t need to, it’s okay.” Wendell had been hoping for more personal questions, really.

“It’s just that when we fought Zama and Doryleum, you used your cavalry very effectively against me. Ain Jalut was just a certain kind of problem. And now I’ll change the subject.”

Wendell laughed. “All right. But you routed my cavalry at Zama—don’t deny it.”

“Oh, all right.” Terri paused to take a drink of water. “But talking about different kinds of battles, weren’t you one of the ones playing when Master Cohn’s practical joke appeared in a match?”

“Ha! I sure was.” Wendell grinned. “He paid for it, though—a year’s suspension, just for inserting a Moopsball program into the game banks.”

“That must have been quite a shock, when you were all primed for a serious match.”

“Yeah, but to tell you the truth, I would have been just as happy to go ahead and play.” Wendell made a grim face and drummed on the table as though it were a keyboard.

“I think I would, too.” Terri smiled looking into the candle, and her teeth flashed white in the flickering light. “We’re more alike than you think.”

“Uh… you think?” Wendell blinked again and met her eyes. They were bright blue, with a corona of yellow streaks radiating from the pupils. His felt bloodshot, and he chuckled at making the comparison.

“What’s so funny, huh?”

“I’m just having a good time. Would you like any dessert?”

“Naw—too fattening.”

She excused herself, and the candle flame fluttered as she rose. Wendell sat back and watched her go.

Late one afternoon, they strolled through the Crown Center shops, unwinding from a hard-fought practice victory over Ferghana by Han Dynasty China in 102 B.C. Exhilaration had leveled off to a general simmer of satisfaction. Their teamwork was beginning to jell.

Terri stopped in front of a window that held a back-to-school display. Pencils and notebooks were strewn all over the green carpet, while two giant cardboard children grinned ferociously in the background, marching arm-in-arm. They were wearing matching red plaid outfits, and clean white shirts.

“Ugly kids,” said Terri. “Their heads are too big.”

“You suppose those plaids are anything?” Wendell frowned at them, trying to remember if they were familiar.

“Oh, I doubt they’re tartans. Probably just ordinary, modern plaids.”

The next window offered rows and rows of handmade ceramics. Most of them were variations of brown and gray, for the coming fall.

“Ferghana,” said Terri. “The T’ang Dynasty horses, that were immortalized in ceramic work.”

“Same color,” Wendell agreed. He shook his head. “I wonder what knowing all this is good for.”

“It’s good for a Master,” said Terri. “Not for much else, if that’s what you mean.”

“I guess I’m just feeling futile these days. Too much practicing, probably.”

Terri looked at him. “You almost quit once, didn’t you? A long time ago. I heard about it.”

Wendell nodded. “A long time ago.” After the experience with Richard and the disastrous helmets.

“He’s still in a coma, isn’t he? Your friend?”

“Yeah.” Wendell looked at the floor. Richard’s collapse had been big news, back when it had happened.

Terri pursed her lips, seeing that she had touched on a bad subject. She started to move on, then stopped.

Wendell was nodding to himself, staring at a brown pottery teapot. It seemed to have a faint Japanese flavor in its glazed design, but that might be an accident. “You ever consider quitting the Guild?” he asked abruptly, putting the thought into words before he had a chance to reconsider.

Terri looked up in surprise. “No, never. I mean until I have to on account of age, of course. Why, do you? Now?”

“Yeah, often—that is, whenever I win. I guess today it’s from winning in practice session. I could never quit after losing; it’d have to be a victory.”

Terri cocked her head to one side. “I see.”

“Doesn’t it ever seem odd that we keep reliving other people’s lives, and killing them over and over? It’s all such total fantasy. And kind of disrespectful to them.”

Terri nodded. “Of course. It’s just a game. Gaming Masters are some of the craziest fantasizers around. Isn’t it obvious?”

“No,” Wendell said slowly. “Maybe not to me. I knew it was true for me, but I guess I didn’t think about how anyone else thought of it. It is disrespectful, though, don’t you think? Kind of arrogant.”

“We’re all crazy that way. That doesn’t mean it’s serious.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Wendell rocked on his heels, surveying the ceramics to avoid her eyes.

Terri slid her thumb under the strap of her shoulderbag and hoisted it. “Are you really serious about quitting?”

Wendell shrugged, still looking away. “I think if we score a victory, it’ll be a good time. I’ll be leaving at a sort of peak.”

“I see.” She studied him for a moment. “Well, you’ve been at this for a while longer than I have. I suppose, well, if you’re sure you’ve had enough.”

“I’m also afraid not to quit after a good victory—what if it’s the last one, and I pass up the chance? I might have to go out in defeat, if I’m not careful.” He glanced at her, sort of sideways.

Other doubts remained unspoken. If Richard was the best Master, and he advised Wendell, then was Wendell really any good at all? Would he win without Richard, the twenty-year-old prodigy? Or go down the drain?

Terri was silent a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Master Wei. We’ll make this a huge victory, and send you out in style. All right?”

Wendell smiled self-consciously. “Uh, all right.” He cleared his throat and glanced at the store window once more as they moved on.

“All right,” said Richard.

As the practice sessions progressed, one pattern became clear. The team could not work properly as a trio, not indefinitely, not even if Richard was the top of the field. The certainty grew in Wendell’s mind that the official match itself would climax the entire situation. He suspected that Richard was somehow communicating the fact on a non-verbal level, but whatever the source, he accepted it. They conducted practice sessions with a grave civility between them which was more tense and calmly angry than even the silence, which now characterized nearly all the rest of the time.

Wendell’s friendship with Terri bloomed quickly, watered by the familiar wasting of electronic blood. For the first time, now, he became less afraid that Richard’s presence had been seriously warping his perceptions and relations with other people. Richard meanwhile went into a cold eclipse, only expressing himself with a mechanical precision during practice games that evinced a raw-nerved hostility.

On the night before the match, Wendell again slept deeply, without waking. Beside him, Terri stared fitfully into the blackness of his bedroom, trying to toss only very gently on the mattress. He noticed no movement, and did not stir at all. At one point, she raised herself up on one elbow to squint at the clock. She remembered Wendell telling her that a Scottish clan’s battle cry would activate it, but she couldn’t remember which one. She whispered the warcries of both Ross and Robertson before trying Munro, but even then, she said it in English instead of Gaelic, and nothing happened. Dropping back to the pillow with a tired sigh, she closed her eyes and started counting sheep-drawn chariots. After several minutes, they came upon a phalanx of Macedonians armed with giant blood-red sleeping pills. Instinctively, she drew them all up into battle formation. It was better than nothing.

The attendant finished his introduction to the audience and motioned to the open doorways on each side of him. At the scattered applause, the house lights dimmed. The sound of September crickets came faintly through the walls.

Wendell trembled slightly with nervousness as he walked to the game machine. He focused his eyes on his seat, ignoring the springy luxuriance of the carpet and the rows of privileged spectators, who had gathered to watch the first tandem game ever played—and, unknown to them, the first to decide an international issue between two governments. He was vaguely aware of Terri sliding into the seat beside him, and felt the familiar vibrations of the machine under his hands. Their opponents would be entering from the opposite door, and also seating themselves. The attendant stood by to await nods from all four Masters. When he had them, he pressed a lever on the screen and retired.

A fifteen-second red warning light went on, and Wendell just had time to glance at Terri with a quick smile. She smiled back while chewing on the inside of her cheeks.

“Here we go,” said Richard, in a neutral tone.

The screen read: “Mount Badon. Ca. 490-503 A.D. Briton Dux Bellorum, Artorius.”

“Mount Badon,” Wendell whispered to himself, staring. This hadn’t been in his Apprentice training. It was a recent addition to the military annals. “Mount Badon?”

Richard was there as always, but not without hesitation. “Uh, Mount Badon. It was, um, a battle considered semi-legendary for almost sixteen centuries. Won by a Roman… Romano-British leader over waves of invading Saxons… yeah, that’s right.”

“I need something useful,” thought Wendell, with unaccustomed deference.

“The actual site was only discovered six or seven years ago.” Richard paused, then continued with more certainty. “Classic battle. We hold about five thousand infantry, stretched across the upper third of a gentle slope, facing down in three lines. Scouts and skirmishers have gone ahead. Experienced Briton commanders are joined in a confederacy under you, as Artorius. The decisive element is the heavy cavalry which you direct personally, numbering maybe a thousand. The Saxons want this slope to advance northward, divide the Celtic kingdoms, and control the horse-raising country. They must come to us.”

“Hold it,” thought Wendell. “Look at the screen—that isn’t right. Mount Badon began as a siege, didn’t it? The Saxon host surprised Artorius with a small force atop Mount Badon and had him tripped.”

“That was earlier,” Richard said forcefully. “This begins after reinforcements have arrived. The Saxons pulled back yesterday to avoid being attacked on two sides. Now they’re on the advance again—starting here.”

“All right, sorry,” thought Wendell. “Let’s see—steeper slopes protect our flanks; we’ll send the cavalry out from there, of course.” He was musing to himself as much as to Richard. Checking the screen for Terri’s persona, he found her as a Briton commander whose name was unknown, in charge of the irregular infantry confederation below that was modeled on portions of the old Roman legion. In the single games, her role probably would have gone to a computerized personality.

“Don’t worry about your cavalry command. You have a defensive posture here. And remember, this is not the era of the heavy lance, with armored horse. Your mounts are vulnerable, and the weapons will be primarily spear and javelin. Charge in a series of rushes, not a single heavy line.”

“Right.” Wendell fastened his gaze on the screen, feeling a return of the confidence that he had momentarily lost. He recalled when the archival discoveries had been made; it had been a tremendous find, and he had studied it avidly. But the information had never been absorbed as thoroughly as the battle facts he had learned as an eager apprentice.

The screen activated, and Wendell found himself on the right slope with all of the cavalry, still unpositioned.

“We’re outnumbered by about three thousand,” said Richard. “But the Saxons have no cavalry. The real Mount Badon was a total slaughter of the Saxons; you’ll have to do very well to equal that.”

“Right.” Wendell looked out over the green valley beneath him. Far in the distance, the Saxon horde crawled like a giant, living carpet of blackness. Their van was fast approaching Terri’s advance skirmishers, who would slowly fall back to merge with the main force. A thin rain of arrows would be arching sporadically from the woods on each flanking hill; these were also from scouts and harriers of the Briton force, sent to annoy the enemy, to put their march off stride, and to return with information. They would not do significant damage.

Terri held the three lines of infantry essentially motionless, making small adjustments. The infantry wings were comprised of light javelins and archers, and she pushed them forward slightly to increase their range. The Saxons were coming uphill, and every additional step they took cost them a little more breath. She began to move the standard bearers some, building morale. As the Saxons approached, the calls of their sheep-horn trumpets preceded them in Wendell’s mind, and the Britons answered with warcries and old Roman trumpets and by beating on their shields with their weapons. The valley began to fill with the dull roar of massed voices, spiced with the shriek and bellow of the horns.

The Saxons were coming slowly, both to save their breath and to taunt the waiting Britons. Restraint, and a keen sense of timing, would decide the battle at many different junctures. Wendell also waited, trusting Terri not to break ranks early. In the fighting itself, if she could force the Saxon reserves into battle before he was forced to bring in the cavalry, all should be well. She, in turn, was trusting him to throw in the cavalry at the critical moment when she had held as long as possible— and no later.

“Position the cavalry.” Richard’s voice was firm and cool, perhaps even more authoritative than usual.

Wendell sent a third of the cavalry squads behind the crest of the slope, out of sight of the Saxons. They circled to the wooded area at the left of Terri’s infantry and then stood there assembled, still hidden to the enemy. Wendell guarded his trumpeters carefully; only they could signal the left wing now.

Suddenly the Saxon advance lunged forward at a run. Spears and throwing axes would come seconds before the two front lines clashed bodily. As the yards between them quickly shrank, Terri surged forward with the front line of the Britons. The impact of striking shields sent a shock up and down the line. At first, the advantages of gravity and fresh breath carried Terri’s line hard against the Saxons and pushed them back. As the Saxon line steadied. Wendell kept an anxious eye on the second line. Again, she would feel great temptation to throw them forward, but it was too early.

Slowly, the thrust of Saxon numbers began to push the line of combat up the hill. Behind them, the Saxon reserves followed restlessly, allowing their colleagues space to move, but little else. They gained the ground slowly, and Wendell judged that the cost was just slightly greater for the enemy. That would do for the moment.

The first line of Britons gradually backed into the second. The two merged and held. With renewed spirit, the new combined line even carried forward again and down the slope for a short time.

There was one more line to the rear of that.

Wendell studied the lay of the land again, finding the best paths for his three cavalry charges—to each flank of the enemy, and to its rear. When the Brittany Annal had first surfaced, deep in some Prankish stone cellar, it had proved to be an eleventh-century copy of a Celtic monk’s personal journal. He had originally written in the mid-sixth century, when the memory of Mount Badon was alive but a generation old. Afraid that the glory of Artorius’s victory would be forgotten, he had described the location and mechanics of the entire confrontation in great detail. Its reliability was accepted slowly, but its authenticity was verified by chemical analysis, and the content meshed completely both with known facts and learned conjecture. What the copy was doing in Brittany remained a mystery. The battle itself, almost identical to Cannae, was even closer to a pure theoretical example of that technique because of the Saxon need to advance up the slope for strategic objectives and because of their lack of cavalry. Wendell picked out his routes carefully, and felt Richard nod agreement.

The line of struggle began to recede up the slope once again. Wendell shifted in his seat and took a deep breath. The time for cavalry was coming, and Terri’s positioning and execution so far had been nearly perfect. Quickly, Wendell cast about for any surprises, any twists that their opponents might have in readiness, but he could think of none. Their chances of winning lay not so much in besting Artorius and the Britons as in besting their actual Saxon predecessors.

“That won’t be hard,” said Richard. “If they save almost anyone, they’ll have done better.”

Wendell watched the struggle stretched across the slope with rising tension. Slowly, grudgingly, fiercely, Terri’s line fell back and back. They held good formation, and the final line of reserves stiffened in readiness. All at once, Terri brought the front line back sharply, in an ordered retreat, and they melted into the rear line. As the Saxons continued forward, the one solid line of Britons fell hard down upon them again, and Wendell nodded in admiration. Victory was procured by compiling small moves, like this emphasizing the advantage of the slope. The Saxon line faltered and was forced back one more time.

“Here they come,” thought Wendell, with a smile of anticipation. The Britons were pressing forward more quickly than before, with both psychological and gravitational momentum. The Saxon reserves could not back away, for fear of losing morale. So, as the line of combat came back down the slope into them, Terri was effectively forcing them into play before they wanted to go. “That’s the way.”

The Saxon reserves, greatly outnumbering the final line of Britons that was already in the struggle, were ordered forward. Once fully committed, they would have trouble turning to meet the charges of the cavalry. Grudgingly, the massive rear lines of the enemy came forward.

“Not yet,” said Richard, sternly.

Intensely anxious, Wendell gave the signal. Trumpets sounded, and a third of the cavalry squads began to move on each flank of the battle.

“No!” yelled Richard. “Too soon, stop it. Hold.”

“Too late,” Wendell tossed back, without regret. Artorius began to take the final third of cavalry around the right flank, high on the shoulder of Mount Badon itself, at a fast trot. Their target was the Saxon rear, for the final blow.

Meanwhile, the heavy cavalry came charging down past the flanks of their own Briton line and took the Saxons hard on each side. The sheer weight and momentum of the charges carried them deep into what was becoming a blunt, curved mass of Saxons, with both flanks turned to form a horseshoe shape.

“Look, will you? Stop,” Richard hissed. “Can’t you see?” Wendell stared. He had not allowed the Saxon reserves enough time to engage Terri’s force. Although they had taken tremendous losses from the initial attack, they were wheeling about to maintain their curved lines, forming the horseshoe with its open end facing back toward their own south. Instead of smashing the Saxon center and pinching out the strength that pushed against the Briton shield wall, the two cavalry wings had simply realigned the struggle. The Saxon center still advanced in good order against Terri’s line, and threatened to punch through.

“Attack. Straight down the slope,” Richard ordered. “Go.”

Wendell hesitated, then continued to push his squads farther on his own chosen path. “Their rear is still vulnerable. We’ll hurry and—

“No time, fool. Charge now, before anything changes. Hit the center. Fast.” Richard’s voice ended in a falsetto note. “Go.”

Terri’s line had no more reserves. The Saxon center pushed onward, forcing the Britons slowly toward the crest of the slope. If the Saxons attained the crest, all the mechanics of the battle would alter drastically, to their benefit. Wendell rushed his cavalry squads into a canter toward the far downward slope of Mount Badon.

“No!” Richard yelled again.

Wendell lurched forward suddenly in the seat with a wave of nausea. He momentarily lost his bearings and his grip on the keyboard. Badly shaken, he looked up at the screen, fighting panic. The keyboard was slick with sweat under his fingers.

“GARG’N UAIR DHUISGEAR,” screamed Richard. As Wendell stared at the screen and pounded the keyboard, the cavalry broke from the path across Mount Badon and charged at full gallop for the enemy’s flank.

The alert cavalry squads already on the field saw them coming and expertly parted to let them pass.

Wendell stared wide-eyed at the screen, clutching and punching at the keys. The units ignored him. In his mixture of panic and reflex, he couldn’t tell if the keyboard wasn’t functioning right or if his own hands were out of control.

“Garg’n uair dhuisgear,” echoed again and again in Wendell’s mind. The cavalry reserves thundered through the opened ranks of their comrades and crashed through to the heart of the Saxons. The tremendous power of the charge crushed the enemy center, and the other cavalry squads renewed their rushes on both sides of the collapsing Saxon horseshoe.

Wendell looked back at Terri’s line. They were holding fast, relieved of the intense pressure of greater numbers. Stability was needed now, and simple attrition. Confidence would sustain them.

Two squads of cavalry split off from the right flank, and swung wide around the struggling mass. They wheeled at the base of Mount Badon, and charged into the enemy rear. The Saxons were surrounded, jammed together, and partially divided into separate bands.

The outcome was decided.

“Victory Conditions, Britain,” appeared on the screen. Wendell collapsed back in his seat, ignoring the statistics that were listed under the crucial phrase. He was soaked in sweat and sick to his stomach. Breathing heavily, he let his head roll to one side to see Terri. She was damp and flushed. As he watched, she brushed matted curls of hair from her eyes and smiled at him weakly. The attendants arrived, to help them into the back rooms. Wendell waved his away, gesturing a need to catch his breath.

“Made it,” he thought. “Congratulations.”

No answer. Wendell was too exhausted to wonder about it. He watched Terri leave the room on the arm of one attendant, while several more tried to keep back the crowd of excited spectators. The only voice in his mind was his own.

“Well,” he thought, as his strength gradually gathered.

“Gone, huh?” There was no doubt that Richard had won this game—the prodigy still reigned. “Wherever you are, congratulations, anyhow.”

Far below the city, in a cavern edged with blue-white frost, the gangling body lay unmoving. The tank sparkled in the pale light. Deep within the silent cranium, a spark began to glow.

Wendell lay back in the seat, motionless, looking at the frozen screen without seeing it. He had tread too long on the subtle interface where dreams and dreams threatened to merge. His eyes suddenly focused on the screen, and he thought again of the phosphorous shine and its ethereal universe. Those lives belonged to the dead, but they had thrown a millennial shadow.

Editor's Introduction to:

CINCINNATUS
by Joel Rosenberg

Livy tells the story of the stern Roman patriarch called from retirement to lead Rome’s armies and save the state. He might have had the crown from the hands of the Senate, but instead he returned to his land and his plow. Cincinnati, Ohio, is named in his memory.

The Order of the Cincinnatus was an association of regular officers of the Continental Army. After their victory over England, the Continental officers thought to influence the course of events in this land: they offered George Washington the crown.

Of course they had no authority to create a monarchy, but it was probably in their power to grant it. Certainly there was no other force on this continent that could have stood up to the Continental Army. On the other hand, they could only offer it to Washington: there was assuredly no general in the New World who could have faced him. When Washington refused, the matter was at an end.

The story of Cincinnatus has inspired many science fiction stories.

CINCINNATUS
by Joel Rosenberg

The log cabin was drafty, and cold; I moved a bit closer to the open fireplace, and took a deep draught from the stone tankard. It was real Earth coffee, black and rich.

The old man chuckled, as though over some private joke.

“What the hell is so funny?” I didn’t bother to keep the irritation out of my voice. I’d travelled for over seven hundred hours to reach Thellonee and find Shimon Bar-El; and every time I’d try to bring up the reason I’d come from Metzada, the old bastard would just chuckle and change the subject, as though to tell me that we’d discuss business at his pleasure, not mine.

“You are what is so funny. Tetsuki. Nephew.” Bar-El sat back in his chair, shaking his head. He set his mug down, and rubbed at his eyes with arthritis-swollen knuckles. It’s kind of strange, that: I bear the first name of one of our Nipponese ancestors—Tetsuo Nakamura, my g’g’g’g’g’grandfather—but he has the epicanthic folds. Me, I look like a sabra.

“And why am I so funny? Uncle?” You traitor. There isn’t a nastier word in the language than that. Metzada is dependent on credits earned offworld by the Metzadan Mercenary Corps, the MMC, and that depends on our reputation. There hadn’t been any proof that Bar-El had taken a payoff on Oroga; if there had, he would have been hanged, not cashiered and exiled.

Although, the argument could be made that hanging would have been kinder—but, never mind that, the suspicion alone had been enough to strip him of rank and citizenship.

I would have given a lot if we didn’t need him now.

“Well,” he said, setting his mug down and rubbing at the knuckles of his right hand with the probably just-as-arthritic fingers of his left, “you’ve been here all day; and you haven’t asked me if I really did take that payoff.” He cocked his head to one side, his eyes going vague. “I can remember when that was of some importance to you, Inspector General.” The accent on Inspector was a dig. Unlike Bar-El, I’ve always been a staff officer; the only way I could get my stars was through the IG rank— there simply aren’t any other generals in the MMC that don’t command fighting forces.

“I… don’t really care. Not anymore.” I had trouble getting the next words out. “Because we’ve come up with a way for you to earn your way back home.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that. You’ve never understood me, Tetsuo Hanavi—but I can read you. Like a book. There’s a contract that’s come up, right?”

“Yes, and—

“Shut up while I’m speaking. I want to show you how well I know you—it’s a low-tech world, correct?”

I shrugged. “That’s your specialty, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “And why do I think I’m so smart? Let me tell you more about the contract. It’s high pay, and tough, and it looks like there’s no way to do whatever the locals are paying the MMC to do.”

I nodded. “Right. And we’re short of low-tech specializing general officers. Gevat is off on Schriftalt; Kinter and Cohen are bogged down on Oroga; and my brother’s still home, recovering from the Rand Campaign. So—

Concern creased his face. “Ari’s hurt?”

“Not too badly. He took a Jecty arrow in the liver. It’s taking a while to regenerate, but he’ll make it.”

He nodded. “Good. He’s a good man. Too good to be wasted on quelling the peon revolts.” Bar-El snorted. “Did you know that Rand was settled by a bunch of idiots who wanted to get away from any kind of government?”

I didn’t, actually. I’d just assumed that the feudocracy there had always been there. Ancient history bores me. “No—but we’re getting off the subject.” I spread my hands. “The point is, that you’re the only one who’s ever generated a low-tech campaign who’s available.”

He pulled a tabstick out of a pocket, and puffed it to life. “If I’m available. What’s in it for me?”

I tapped at my chest pocket. “I’ve got a Writ of Citizenship here. If you can salvage the situation, you can go home.” I waved my hand around the room. “Unless you prefer this… squalor.”

He sat silently for a moment, puffing at his tabstick. “You’ve got my commission in another pocket?”

“A temporary one, yes.” I shook my head. “I’m not offering to have you permanently reinstated, traitor.”

Shimon Bar-El smiled. “Good. At least you’re being honest. Who’s the employer?”

“The lowlanders, on—”

“Indess. So, Rivka manipulated them into asking for me.”

“What do you mean?” He was absolutely right, of course, but there was no way that he should have known that. The Primier had kept the negotiations secret; outside of the lowlanders’ representatives, I am the only one who knew how Rivka Effron had suckered them into a payment under-all-contingencies contract, with Bar-El in command.

He shrugged. “I know how her mind works, too. If anyone else were to fail—regardless of what the contract says—it’d be bad for Metzada’s reputation. But, if they’d asked for Bar-El the Traitor, insisted on him—at least, that’s the way the transcript would read—it’d be on their own heads. Right?”

He was exactly right. “Of course not.” But my orders were specific; I wasn’t to admit anything of the sort. Shimon Bar-El was a sneaky bastard—it was entirely possible that our conversation was being taped, despite the poverty of the surroundings.

Bar-El drained the last of his coffee. “I’ll believe what my own mind tells me, not words from a staff officer.” He said that like a curse. “Of course, it’s out of the question. I’m sorry that you had to come such a long way, but I’m happy here. No intention of leaving; not to be the sacrificial lamb.” He set his tankard down. “I don’t bleat any too well.”

“You arrogant bastard.” I stood. “Think you’re unique, that I’ll offer you a permanent commission if you’ll take this one on.” I picked up my bag. “Well, we’re going to take this contract, anyway. The offer’s just too good to pass up—I’ll handle it myself, if I have to.”

He spat. “Don’t be silly. You don’t have the experience. A lot of soldiers would die, just because—”

“Shut your mouth, traitor. You’re wrong. Maybe I don’t have any field experience, but nobody does, not against cavalry. And—”

“Cavalry? As in horses?”

“No, cavalry as in giant mice—of course it’s horses.”

He chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t see the problem— you just set up your pikemen, let them impale their critters against your line. Take a bit of discipline, even for Metzadans, to hold the line, but—

I sneered. “That’s fine for a meeting engagement, where they have to come to you—but how about a siege? All they have to do is use their cavalry to harass our flanks, and we can’t ever get the towers up. And we’ve got to use towers: there’s no deposits of sulfur available, so there’s no way we can make gunpowder. Not with what the Thousand Worlds will let us bring in. Low-tech world, remember?”

“You’ve got the tech reports in your bag?”

“Of course I—”

“Let me see them.” He held out a hand. “We’re both going to have to study them.”

“Both?” I didn’t understand. Then again, I’ve never understood my uncle.

“Both.” He smiled, not pleasantly. “Me, ’cause I’m taking this. And you, because you get to be my exec.” As I handed him my bag, he took the blue tech report folder out, and started spreading papers around on the floor. “We’re going to get you some field experience, we are.” He studied the sheets silently for a few moments. “I’ll want all the equipment special-ordered, make sure it gets through inspection. You got that, Colonel?”

“Colonel?”

“You just got demoted, nephew. I don’t like to see stars on anybody’s shoulders but mine.” He picked up a topographical map. “Cavalry, eh?

* * *

Fifteen hundred hours later, aboard the Gate complex circling Indess, I hadn’t gotten used to the eagles on my shoulders. I guess it’s kind of petty—hell, I know it is—but I put in seventeen years of service earning my IG’s stars, and the demotion rankled. The trouble was, of course, that we needed Bar-El, and that meant that I had to put up with whatever indignities he cared to inflict. For the time being.

I shouldn’t complain. Field soldiers risk their lives; all I had to do was put up with the sneering of a Thousand Worlds Commerce Department Inspector who clearly had no use for Metzadans or the Metzadan Mercenary Corps. And by myself; General Bar-El was with the men.

She dumped the contents of the backpack onto the flat black surface of her durlyn desk, the messkit, sheathknife, and various items of clothing falling in agonizing slowness.

“This doesn’t look standard,” she said, gathering it all into a pile, then picking up the sheathknife. “And I’ve seen the gear you killers carry before.” Inspector Celia von du Mark tested the edge of the oversize blade with her thumb. “Molysteel?”

I shook my head. “No, just high-carbon—and no better than they could make, down there. The… General had everything special-ordered—that’s an infighting weapon, called a Bowie.” I held out my hand for it; she slapped the hilt into my palm. “The angle of the blade cants upward when you hold it so; at waist-height, it’ll cut into your opponent’s abdomen, makes it easy to—

“Spare me the details,” she snapped, tossing her head, sending her shortish black hair whipping around her thin face. “Just as long as you don’t violate tech levels, I don’t give a good goddamn what toys you’re carrying.” Brow furrowed, she cocked her head to one side. “Of course this isn’t a typical pack.” There was no hint of a question in that, just disbelief.

I shrugged. “Check for yourself. We posted bond; we’re not going to sacrifice that, not for the sake of having a rustproof knife or two.” I slumped back into a chair. “But go ahead, have your men—

“My people.”

—have your people check it out. Except for the bows, arrows, maps, and the siege-tower hardware, you won’t find anything on any of the two thousand men in the regiment that doesn’t duplicate what you’ve got in front of you.” I spotted a piece of fur on the corner of her desk, and picked it up. There wasn’t anything prepossessing about it; just a smooth brown swatch of soft fur, the size of my palm. “This is what it’s all about?” I sighed. “Doesn’t look all that special.”

“Try dipping it in a weak acetic acid solution, let it dry.” She sat down behind her desk, and rummaged around in a drawer. “Then it looks like this.”

A twinkling shape flew toward me; I snatched it out of the air. Now this was nice: the swatch was white and shiny, gathering and shattering the light of the overhead glow, a spectrum of colors washing over its surface. I’d never seen a piece of treated oal-fur before; it’s strictly a luxury item, and Metzada is a poor world. Tidelocked to a small M3 star, we have to import trace elements, medicines, electronics parts. When we venture to the surface of our own planet, it’s in well-insulated vacuum suits, not fur coats. There’s only about five million of us; ten percent of our population is in the MMC. We Metzadans have to earn our foreign exchange by fighting as mercenaries. Luxury would be lowering the number of us who have to lose our lives earning offworld credits, not importing oal coats.

“What’s this?” She held up a folded, triangular piece of fabric, opening it only partway.

“Called a shelter half. It’s half a tent; you pitch two of those things face-to-face, and you’ve got room for two soldiers to sleep.” I’d asked Bar-El why we were taking special-ordered shelter-halves instead of the usual mini-tents, and he’d pointed out another use for them. You can wrap a corpse in one, and bury it deeply, he’d said. But don’t tell the men. Might make them nervous. And then he’d smiled. And I’ve got one specially made for you.

I fondled the piece of fur. It was nice, certainly, but hardly worth dying for. And, of course, nobody was going to die for fur. The lowlanders were paying us to try to chase the mountain people out of their walled village halfway up the slopes of Mount Cibo, right in the middle of oal country, the only remaining area on the continent where the chipmunk-like creature hadn’t been hunted to extinction.

Certainly, some of us would die. But not for the fur. For the credits that keep Metzada alive.

That sort of distinction used to be more important to me.

“And this?” She held up a round cylinder, flat and half the size of my head.

“That’s a messkit. It seals air-tight; you can put food in it, just chuck it in a fire, pull it out with a stick. Then you use the point of your knife to flick that little lever open.”

She smiled slyly. “I’ve got another use for it—you fill it full of water, bury it in a fire you’ve built next to a wall—say, or a village on the slopes of Cibo. And then you wait until it builds up enough internal pressure to blow apart. And, incidentally, shatter the wall.” She tossed it to the floor. “Denied. The messkits stay aboard here, when your regiment takes the shuttle down.”

I figured that a little bit of false outrage would go over well. “Inspector, we—

“Enough of that. The Commerce Charter specifically provides that offplanet mercenary soldiers can be brought in. Less bloodshed that way, supposedly; it’s better than letting the locals hack each other to ribbons. But there are limitations—and dammit while I’m in charge up here there are going to stay limits.”

I wiped my hand across my forehead. “I know: not more than one mercenary for every four hundred locals, and no import of military—

—technology beyond what the locals possess. They don’t have bombs like that. And you can’t bring them in. Understood?”

Of course I understood. And I should have known better. Bar-El had said that they’d never let us get the messkits by.

We rode down on the first shuttle, along with the three battalion commanders, and their bodyguards. Which was standard—that goes back to the old Palmach days, long before there was the Metzadan Mercenary Corps, when no soldier ever set foot on a piece of land where an officer hadn’t been first. There’s nothing romantic about it, no bravura—just a matter of human economics: we’ve always had a lot of officer material, and traded off the high mortality among officers for lower casualties among line soldiers.

Other armies did—and still do—see it differently. Which is why we’re better. And, to a large extent, why I get to wear my stars at home.

I followed Bar-El out into the daylight, squinting nervously in the bright sunlight. Indess orbits a F4 star, much brighter, whiter light than we use in Metzada’s underground corridors.

“Relax,” he said, dropping his pack to the dirt of the landing field. “We’re on Thousand Worlds territory here, in the first place.”

I watched Colonels Davis, Braunstein, and Orde walk down the ramp, their three bodyguards standing behind them, bows strung and arrows nocked, keeping careful watch on the one-story stone buildings that circled the field. They didn’t look any too relaxed. “And in the second place?”

Bar-El shrugged. “I doubt that there’s a Ciban within a hundred klicks.” He turned around, and raised his voice. “Yonni, over here.”

Davis trotted over, his blocky guard behind him. “What is it, Shimon?” Yonatan Davis was a short, wide man, whose girth and baldness always gave the impression that he was more suited to be a shopkeeper than an officer. I’ve known the type before; some compensate by being martinets. Davis went the opposite way, giving and taking orders with an informality that suggested that he was good enough not to have to put on airs.

“My…” Bar-El paused, “…executive officer and I are going to go talk to our employers, make sure that they got my message, have the staffs and spearheads ready.” He pointed toward the north. “You’re in charge until I get back; have your battalion bivouac there, the other two there, and there.” He rubbed a finger across the break in his nose. “There won’t be any problem here, but set out guards, just for practice.”

Davis nodded. “Soon as they land. But speaking of practice,” he bounced on the balls of his feet, experimenting, “we’ve got about nine-tenths of a g here.”

“So?”

“So nobody has loosed an arrow under this grav, not recently. You want me to improvise targets, get some practicing done?”

“No.” Bar-El turned away.

“Wait one minute, General.” Davis reached for his arm, clearly thought better of it. “They have to get some practice—better here than in combat.”

Bar-El sighed. “They won’t need it. We’re not supposed to win this one.” He jerked a thumb at me. “Ask my exec, when we get back. And, in the meantime, just follow orders. Understood?”

Davis turned away, wordless. I trotted after Bar-El.

“And what the hell was that for?” I kept my voice calm, with just a touch of a tremor, for effect.

He chuckled. “So that’s not supposed to be common knowledge, eh? We’re supposed to be able to storm a walled city—population about fifteen thousand, three thousand effectives—with two thousand men? While there’s horsemen harassing our flanks?”

In fact we weren’t. And weren’t going to. “That’s what the contract says.”

He patted at his hip pocket. “I’ve got a copy of the contract. It’s handy, when you run out of bumwad— Tetsuki, I have no intention of just going through the motions. I’m supposed to fail. Damned if I’m going to play wargames, just to keep you happy.” He looked up at me, a smile quirking across his lips. “But I’ll do it to keep our employers happy.”

At the edge of the field, Bar-El stopped a blue-suited Commerce Department loader. “How do I go about finding Senhor Felize Regato?”

Regato’s mansion was clear evidence that damn little except military tech was on the Proscribed list for Indess. The floors looked to be real Italian marble; among the paintings I spotted a Picasso and a Bartolucci—and the glows overhead made me smile: their light was the same color of the glows at home.

A white-linen clad servitor led us into Regato’s study, a high-ceilinged room with enough space for a family of twelve, back home. The fur that covered the couch where we sat wasn’t oal—that would have been too easy—it was the pelt of some coal-black animal, glossy and soft.

After the requisite wait—Regato was a busy man, and clearly wanted us to know it—he sauntered in, a tall, slim man with a broad smile creasing his dark face. We stood.

“General Bar-El, it is a pleasure.” He clasped Bar-El’s hand with both of his own. “And this is your aide, Colonel…?”

“Hanavi, Senhor—and technically I’m his executive officer, not his aide.”

He smiled vaguely, and dropped into an overstuffed chair, idly smoothing the legs of his suit. “General, I believe we share a hobby.”

Bar-El didn’t return Regato’s smile. “I don’t have hobbies.”

I shot a glance at my uncle. This was playing along to keep the employer happy? Contradicting the First Senhor of the Assembly didn’t quite seem to fit the bill.

Regato’s brow furrowed. “Oh? I thought we were both devotees of ancient military history.” He waved a hand at the bookshelves behind him. “I’ve studied from Thucydides to,” he half-ducked his head, “Bar-El.”

Bar-El chuckled. “Thank you—but Thucydides was a historian, as you know, not a soldier—and for me the history of my profession isn’t a hobby, it’s business.”

Regato raised a finger. “Ah, but he was the first to recount battles, to preserve them for future generations. I only wish that he had been around later, when Cincinnatus was alive.”

Bar-El cocked his head to one side. “He would have had to live an extra few hundred years. And been a Roman, instead of a Greek. Why Cincinnatus?”

Regato touched a button on the table at his elbow. “Coffee, please, three cups.” He raised his head. “Because he reminds me of you. If I remember correctly,” he smiled in self-deprecation, “he, too, was called out of retirement to command an apparently impossible campaign.”

A shrug. “Different situation—Cincinnatus was honorably retired; I was booted out of the MMC and off of Metzada.”

“That is hardly a relevant difference here; even were you capable of taking a bribe, the Cibans would have nothing to offer you. Hunting rights or the oal? You couldn’t take advantage of that. Hard currency, the sort Metzada needs? They don’t have any; most of the prime farmland on the continent and the only offworld trading center is down here in the valley.”

A different servitor from the one who had showed us in arrived with a steaming silver pot of coffee on a tray with three cups and saucers, plus condiments. We all were silent until the servant deposited the tray and left.

Regato poured coffee for all of us, then sipped his own and sighed. “On to business. I received your message by courier, and your instructions were followed to the letter. At a warehouse near the port you will find precisely two thousand rulawood shafts for spears—each exactly three meters long, as requested—and spearheads for them, boxed separately.” He lifted his head. “We could have attached them for you.”

“I’d rather have my men do it themselves. And the rest?”

A nod. “Dried meat and vegetables, enough to feed two thousand for a month. If you need more spears, I can have the shafts and heads sent up to you, if you’ll give the convoy protection.”

“I doubt we will—and if we do, Ciba is heavily forested, according to my maps. With rula.”

I’d read the report on rulawood, and it sounded useful; similar to bamboo, but lighter and stronger. Strong enough that the Ciban villagers were confident enough of it to build the walls of their village out of rula.

“Good.” Regato wrinkled his brow, as though he was about to ask why Bar-El wanted the spearshafts down here, if he knew that there would be plenty of rula where we were going. Or maybe I’m just projecting; that’s what I wanted to ask. “So,” he steepled his fingers together, “two questions: first, why didn’t you ask to have horses ready? We could provide them, you know.”

“I know—but my men aren’t horsemen, and I have no intention of putting them on horses, up against a larger force, every man of whom has grown up on horseback.” Bar-El shook his head. “We are professionals; riding horses, we’d be amateurs.”

Regato nodded. “In that case, I understand why you wanted spears that you could use as pikes. Second question: how many ninjas do you have with you? I assume that you’re going to use assassination.” He gave a knowing smile.

Which explained why Regato had been willing to hire us, despite the odds. It wasn’t just that he believed in Bar-El, or the mystique that’s grown up around the MMC’s successes. He had at least a suspicion, heard a rumor about the Metzadan ninjas.

Bar-El shook his head. “There aren’t such things as ninjas. There haven’t been for half a millenium.”

He said that with a straight face; he might even have thought it true. Which it was, at least in one sense: Metzada’s rumored assassins are only called ninjas by offworlders; we aren’t descended from the Nipponese society that died out in the nineteenth century, Earthside. Not directly descended—but some of the members of the Bushido Brotherhood that were transported to Metzada along with the children of Israel had been trying to revive the ancient arts. It’s been kept secret, the fact that we have a cadre of assassins with the MMC, but there’s nothing you can do about rumors.

And an assassin can be a kind of handy person to have around; it can blow an opponent’s organization apart, when the top general dies. Or, better, when he’s kept alive, but all his top staff officers are killed.

Of course, an assassin has to have some sort of cover, that will let him mix with the troops, without even his own people knowing what his job is. Inspector General is a nice one. You even get to wear your stars, on your off-hours.

Bar-El went on: “And it wouldn’t do any good, even if we used assassins. Which we don’t—I don’t think a stranger could survive long enough in a Ciba village to first,” he held up a finger, “find out who the top commander is; and second,” another finger, “kill him.” Bar-El shrugged. “If he could get over the walls in the first place.” Bar-El turned to me. “Don’t you agree, Colonel?”

He was precisely correct, as usual. Which was why I had no intention of killing anyone within the village. “Absolutely.”

Regato spread his hands. “Then how are you going to do it? You’re outmanned, in strange territory, and the enemy has greater mobility.”

Bar-El sat silently for a moment. “Do you need access to the mountain?”

For a moment, Regato’s polite veneer faded. “Of course we do—in more ways than one. We need the credits, so that we can bring in power technology. And we need to control the mountain, because the thousand-times-damned Commerce Department won’t let reactors onto a world without a single government. There’s almost a million of us here; we can’t let a few thousand mountain… yokels stand in the way of progess. And—

“Enough.” Bar-El held up a hand. “I don’t give a damn whether you’re right or wrong, as long as you’re paying the bills. My point is, that if you need what we can do badly enough, you don’t need to know how we’re going to do it.” He sat back. “And I don’t like to talk about battle plans, I never do. If you’ve studied my career, you should know that I never tell anyone anything they don’t need to know.” He jerked a thumb at me. “I haven’t even told my exec how I’m going to do it.”

No, he hadn’t. Because I already knew what we were going to do.

Lose.

There’s an old saying, to the effect that a battle plan never survives contact with the enemy. Bar-El liked to hold forth on what nonsense that was, pointing to campaigns from Thermopylae through Sinai to Urmsku, where things went exactly as planned. For one side, at least.

“Besides,” he’d say, giving the same pause each time, “the last line in the orders, in the plan, should always be the same, should always prevent the plan from becoming obsolete: If all else fails, improvise.”

We improvised our way up the slopes of Ciba, the horsemen harassing us all the way. In one sense; it was a standoff: any time we stopped, pikemen in front, protecting the archers behind them, they couldn’t do more than taunt us, from beyond the four-hundred-meter range of our bows. And whenever we started to move in the direction of the walled village, they’d sweep down on us, forcing us to form a line, pikemen in front, and so on.

Casualties were low, on both sides—two weeks after leaving, we’d had three deaths and seventeen serious injuries—all stragglers who had let themselves range too far from the main body of our force.

And they had only lost a few dozen. Stragglers, too.

The trouble was, we were being pushed away from the village, higher up the shallow slopes of Ciba. I didn’t like it much: all the mountaineers had to do was detach a body of their force, swing around and cut us off at the flat top of the mountain—an extinct volcano, technically.

“Don’t bother me with technicalities, Colonel.” Bar-El turned to whisper to a runner, who nodded and loped off toward where Braunstein’s battalion was camped, at the far edge of the clearing. “I’m not in the mood to be quibbled with—and I don’t give a damn whether this mound of dirt is a mountain, a volcano, or a pile of elephant dung.”

We had climbed too far—at least in my opinion. Three klicks away and about one below us, the walls of the village stood mockingly. The air was clear; I could see people and animals moving in the narrow streets, and a mass of horses and men, milling around the main gates.

Well, I’d stalled just about long enough. “Looks like they’re sending out another detachment.” The sun hung low in the sky, a white ball that was painful to look at. “Do you think they’re preparing for an assault?”

He bit off a piece of jerky, washing it down with water from his canteen. “No, I think they’re getting ready to invite us in for tea.” He cocked his head to one side. “Seriously, they’re probably going to take off tonight— cover of darkness, and all that—and try and swing around, come at us from the top tomorrow. Or just settle in there, have their bowmen dismounted and ready.” The locals’ only projectile weapons were crossbows. Easier to fire from horseback than our compound bows, but the rate of fire was pitiful—reloading a crossbow on horseback was probably not a whole lot easier than firing one from the pitching, yawing back of the animal. But from prepared positions, they could sit behind improvised barricades on solid ground.

As a matter of fact, it was possible—at least in theory—that one or more of them had already done that and were lying in ambush, somewhere near where we were.

A handy possibility, that.

Bar-El stood. “Come—take a walk with me.”

The downslope edge of the clearing was just that: an edge. A hundred meters below, the sharp drop ended in a stand of the everpresent rula trees.

Bar-El gestured at the village below. “About how many would you say are in this next group?”

I shrugged. “A thousand, or so. Probably a touch more.” I glanced over my shoulder. Good: nobody else was in the immediate vicinity. It wasn’t impossible that even Shimon Bar-El would slip over the edge of a cliff, and drag his exec along with him. At least, that’s the way it would seem. There was a handy overhang, about fifty meters down. I could probably climb down and duck under before anyone could reach the edge, then hide until dark. Living off the land wouldn’t be a problem; that was part of my training.

And when Yonny Davis took command, not knowing what Bar-El had planned, he’d have no choice but to retreat. And quickly—before the villagers got their second force of horsemen around the mountain, and cut off the line of retreat. Over the mountain and down the other side—he’d make it to the port in the valley within a week, and they’d leave Indess behind.

The Primier had planned it well: we’d collect the credits due us under the contract, with minimal casualties. And not much damage to Metzada’s reputation—maybe other employers wouldn’t be willing to sign a payment-under-all-contingencies contract, but so what? All-contingencies deals come along once in a lifetime; the loss of revenue wouldn’t be much.

In a few weeks, when someone who looked only vaguely like Tetsuo Hanavi appeared at the lowland port and booked passage out, nobody would suspect a thing. The regiment would merely have retreated out of an impossible situation; Bar-El and his secret battleplans would have died together.

I turned. Bar-El was holding his Bowie. Casually, but if I lunged for him, he’d probably cut me by accident.

“What’s that for?”

He smiled. “You any good with one of these things?”

I could have sliced him from crotch to throat in less time than it would take him to blink. But Bar-El getting knifed by his exec was not the image I wanted to leave behind—the retreat was supposed to look like the result of an enemy assassination, or an accident. Even—particularly to the line troops; what they didn’t know, they couldn’t tell. “Reasonable.” I shrugged. “I may be just a—you should pardon the expression—staff officer, but I try to keep in shape.”

He chuckled, backing away from the edge before sheathing the knife. “What I meant was: how good are you at cutting wood—the damn blade is too long to make a really good hand-to-hand weapon and too damn short to be a decent substitute for a sword.”

The runner he’d dispatched to Braunstein ran over.

“‘Braunstein to Bar-El: What the hell are you doing, Shimon?’” The runner, a tall, skinny boy who looked to be about seventeen, shrugged an apology before continuing. “‘We’re cutting wood, as per your directions, and have relayed said directions to Orde—but I’m damned if I understand. Would you be kind enough to enlighten me?’”

Bar-El nodded. “Good. Tell him: I’m starting a bonfire tonight, and I’m particular about the length of the firewood. As soon as it’s dark—say, another ninety minutes—leave your first company on watch, and get the hell up the trail to this clearing. Same thing for Orde: I don’t want any skirmishers interrupting.”

A fire might not be a bad idea; it could cover a retreat. I smiled at him. “So that was your idea—do you want me to go into the woods, and cut my own contribution?”

He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Not a bad idea—I think I’ll join you.” He flexed his hands. “I can use the exercise.” He looked up at the runner, who was still standing there. “That’s all. Run along.” Bar-El turned to me. “Coming?”

I followed Bar-El into the woods. Good: he was taking us out of sight of the encampment. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as neat as a solution for him simply to disappear along with his exec, but it wouldn’t take long for Davis to notice: and if a search didn’t find his body or mine, attribute it to the opposition.

I let my hand slide to the hilt of my Bowie. Just wait a moment, until he’s stepping over the trunk of the tree. He might be Bar-El the Traitor, but he was my uncle; I’d make it as painless as possible.

I drew my knife and—

—pain blossomed in the back of my head. I tried to lift the knife—never mind what it is, finish him first—but it grew heavier, and heavier, dragging me down. I let go of it—bare hands, then—but rough hands seized me from behind, dragging me back.

I gave up, and fell into the cool dark.

I woke to someone slapping me with a wet cloth. “Go away.”

“Easy, Tetsuo.” Yonny Davis’ voice was calm as always. “I hit you a bit harder than I should have; but,” gentle fingers probed my scalp, sending hot rivulets of pain through my head, “I don’t think you’ve got a concussion.” I opened my eyes slowly. It was dark—took me a moment to realize that the lights dancing in my eyes were stars overhead.

In the darkness, Bar-El chuckled. “It’s probably my fault—I gave him a hefty dose of morphine, to keep him under. You sure he’s going to live?”

Far away, there was a rustling, as though a ship’s sails were flapping in the winds. Sails?

“Let’s get him up.” Hands grasped my arms, pulling me to my feet. It was hard to tell; but at the opposite end of the clearing, next to the ledge, it looked like the shelter halves were being—thrown off the edge?

“Better leave us now, Yonny—your battalion’s next.” Davis nodded. “See you down there,” he said, and jogged away. No, they weren’t being thrown off—there was a man under each.

“They’re called hang gliders, Tetsuki.” Bar-El’s voice came from behind me. “You take a specially designed piece of cloth—camouflaged as a shelter half, say—mount an alleged spear down the center of it as a sort of beam, add other sticks at the edge and as bracing, and mount a lashed-together triangle as a steering mechanism.” He chuckled. “Then you have each and every one of your men practice for a few hours, taking short flights across the clearing. And then you have it: instant airpower.”

I turned. He was rubbing at his chin. “I doubt that one in ten will actually be able to control the silly things well enough to put it down inside the walls. But as long as a few do, to open the gates—and as long as the rest get close enough, before the locals arrive here in the morning—”

“You did it.”

“You, nephew, have a keen eye for the obvious.” He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Of course I did it. Come morning, the few effectives remaining in the city will be captured or dead. And we’ll have everyone else inside as hostages, for the good behavior of the twenty-five hundred who are up here, chasing shadows.” He shrugged. “I think we’ll be able to persuade them to move on; lots of other places to settle on this continent.” He looked up at me, quizzically. “Do you think they could mount a siege, with us standing on their walls? Not that we’d kill the hostages, just keep a bunch up there, tied and visible—to cut down on their eagerness to take potshots.”

“You intended this from the first.”

He pursed his mouth, and spat. “Of course I did. The only question was whether or not we were going to be able to sneak the sails past the Commerce Department— when you came up with the messkit dodge, I figured it’d be a good distraction.”

I rubbed at my temples, still woozy. “But the tech levels—”

“Don’t be silly. There’s not a damn thing they can do. Anybody here could have built one of these things, if they’d have had a mind to. We didn’t violate the regs— and local Inspector passed us; she’s not going to be eager to report that we snuck something by her. There’s only one problem remaining, and that’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“I don’t know these folks any too well—somebody with a bit of clout might decide that the best thing to do is tough it out, try to starve us out.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t make any sense, but—in any case, it would be kind of convenient if whoever’s in charge were to get himself killed, if he’s going to be stubborn. Maybe a crossbow bolt in the night? It’s up to you.” Bar-El smiled. “I didn’t just bring you along for the exercise.” He stooped, and picked up a knife and pack. “Better get going.”

* * *

The last time I saw Shimon Bar-El was at the port. The regiment was being loaded on shuttles, preparatory to leaving. Officers are first down, last up—we had some time to chat.

“You did well, Tetsuki—they didn’t need more than a day to decide.”

It hadn’t been hard—prowling around an open encampment in the dark, stealing a crossbow, setting up a clamor in the opposite side of the camp. “No problem. General.” He started to turn away. “Uncle?”

He turned back, startled. “Yes?”

“You knew from the beginning, didn’t you?”

He smiled. “That this was a setup? Of course; and give my compliments to the Primier. A nice idea,” he nodded, “arranging an all-contingencies contract, where we— you— get paid whether we win or lose, and then working out how to lose cheaply, sacrificing only,” he tapped himself on the chest with a nail-bitten finger, “an old irritation. I could just see you explaining it to Regato— ‘Sorry, Senhor, but Bar-El was the only one who could possibly have generaled such a campaign—you knew that when you hired us.’” He spread his hands. “‘And since the old traitor is dead, we had no choice but to retreat. Our contracts calls for payment under all contingencies; do you pay us now, and do we have the Thousand Worlds Inspector garnish all your offworld credits until you do?’—that was how it was supposed to go, no?”

“Roughly.” I smiled. “But I think I’d have had a bit more tact. But why did you—

“Stick my head in the buzzsaw? I could tell you that I knew that the hang glider gambit would work, even before I studied the Tech reports, but…”

I shook my head. “That wouldn’t be true, would it?”

He shrugged slowly, his eyes becoming vague and unfocused. “Regato told you about Cincinnatus, Tetsuo. About how he chose to come out of retirement, to command the armies of Rome in an almost impossible campaign. I… don’t think he could have told you why. Or why, after winning, he denied the people’s demand he become Emperor, went back into retirement, back to his farm. Regato couldn’t have known. I do.

“Tetsuo, if you’ve spent your whole life preparing for one thing, learning how to do it well, then doing that is all that matters to you.” He chuckled thinly. “I was a bad uncle, a horribly incompetent husband—and not a good Metzadan citizen. But I am a general; commanding an army is the only thing I can do right. I’m not claiming that it’s the most noble occupation in the universe, but it’s my profession, the only one I’ve got, the only thing that I do well.” His faint smile broadened. “And I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Which is why we say goodbye here.”

“What do you mean?” The officers’ shuttle would be loading in a few minutes; both of us were supposed to be on it.

Shimon Bar-El shook his head. “You haven’t been listening to me. Let’s say I go back to Metzada with you. Do you think that Rivka Effron would let Bar-El the Traitor command again?”

“No.” The Primier had been clear on that point; I wasn’t even to offer that to Bar-El. Not on the grounds that we hadn’t been willing to promise him anything— dead men collect little—but because he never would have believed it. Metzada’s reputation had been hurt badly for Bar-El’s selling out on Oroga; the damage would be irreparable if we let him come home and return to permanent duty.

He nodded. “Correct. This was a special case. I’ll be heading back to Thellonee—perhaps another special case will come up, someday.” Bar-El sighed, deeply. “And you’ll know where to find me.” He turned away again, and started walking from the landing field.

“Uncle?”

“What is it?” He turned, clearly irritated.

“Did you take that payoff on Oroga?”

Shimon Bar-El smiled. “That would be telling.”

Editor's Introduction to:

CODE-NAME FEIREFITZ
by David Drake

I have never met David Drake, although we have corresponded, and conversed on the telephone. When I was guest of honor at a convention in Chattanooga, Drake wrote the sketch about me in the convention program; but he was not able to attend the convention.

I have been a fan of Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers series since its first episode, and I’m pleased to be first to publish a new story in that saga.

Soldiers are often faced with unpleasant tasks. Sometimes it’s clear what you should do; but that is not always what must be done.

CODE-NAME FEIREFITZ
by David Drake

“Lord, we got one!” cried the trooper whose detector wand pointed toward the table that held the small altar. “That’s a powergun for sure, Captain, nothing else’d read so much iridium!”

The three other khaki-clad soldiers in the room with Captain Esa Mboya tensed and cleared guns they had not expected to need. The villagers of Ain Chelia knew that to be found with a weapon meant death. The ones who were willing to face that were in the Bordj, waiting with their households and their guns for the Slammers to rip them out. Waiting to die fighting.

The houses of Ain Chelia were decorated externally by screens and colored tiles; but the tiles were set in concrete walls and the screens themselves were cast concrete. Narrow cul-de-sacs lined by blank, gated courtyard walls tied the residential areas of the village into knots of strongpoints. The rebels had elected to make their stand in Ain Chelia proper only because the fortress they had cut into the walls of the open pit mine was an even tougher objective.

“Stand easy, troopers,” said Mboya. The householder gave him a tight smile; he and Mboya were the only blacks in the room—or the village. “I’ll handle this one,” Captain Mboya continued. “The rest of you get on with the search under Sergeant Scratchard. Sergeant—” calling toward the outside door—”come in here for a moment.”

Besides the householder and the troops, a narrow-faced civilian named Youssef ben Khedda stood in the room. On his face was dawning a sudden and terrible hope. He had been Assistant Superintendent of the ilmenite mine before Kabyles all over the planet rose against their Arabized central government in al-Madinah. The Superintendent was executed, but ben Khedda had joined the rebels to be spared. It was a common enough story to men who had sorted through the ruck of as many rebellions as the Slammers had. But now ben Khedda was a loyal citizen again. Openly he guided G Company from house to house, secretly he whispered to Capt Mboya the names of those who had carried their guns and families to the mine. “Father,” said ben Khedda to the householder, lowering his eyes in a mockery of contrition, “I never dreamed that there would be contraband here, I swear it.”

Juma al-Habashi smiled back at the small man who saw the chance to become undisputed leader of as much of Chelia as the Slammers left standing and alive. “I’m sure you didn’t dream it, Youssef,” he said more gently than he himself expected. “Why should you, when I’d forgotten the gun myself?”

Sergeant Scratchard stepped inside with a last glance back at the courtyard and the other three men of Headquarters Squad waiting there as security. Within, the first sergeant’s eyes touched the civilians and the tense enlisted men; but Captain Mboya was calm, so Scratchard kept his own voice calm as he said, “Sir?”

“Sergeant,” Mboya said quietly, “you’re in charge of the search. If you need me, I’ll be in here.”

“Sir,” Scratchard agreed with a nod. “Well, get the lead out, daisies!” he snarled to the troopers, gesturing them to the street. “We got forty copping houses to run yet!”

As ben Khedda passed him, the captain saw the villager’s control slip to uncover his glee. The sergeant was the last man out of the room; Mboya latched the street door after him. Only then did he meet the householder’s eyes again. “Hello, Juma,” he said in the Kabyle he had sleep-learned rather than the Kikuyu they had both probably forgotten by now. “Brothers shouldn’t have to meet this way, should we?”

Juma smiled in mad irony rather than humor. Then his mouth slumped out of that bitter rictus and he said sadly, “No, we shouldn’t, that’s right.” Looking at his altar and not the soldier, he added, “I knew there’d be a—a unit sent around, of course. But I didn’t expect you’d be leading the one that came here, where I was.”

“Look, I didn’t volunteer for Operation Feirefitz,” Esa blazed. “And Via, how was I supposed to know where you where anyway? We didn’t exactly part kissing each other’s cheeks ten years ago, did we? And here you’ve gone and changed your name even—how was I supposed to keep from stumbling over you?”

Juma’s face softened. He stepped to his brother, taking the other’s wrists in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course that was unfair. The—what’s going to happen disturbs me.” He managed a genuine smile. “I didn’t really change my name, you know. ‘Al-Habashi’ just means ‘the Black’, and it’s what everybody on this planet was going to call me whatever I wanted. We aren’t very common on Dar al-B’heed, you know. Any more than we were in the Slammers.”

“Well, there’s one fewer black in the Slammers than before you opted out,” Esa said bitterly; but he took the civilian’s wrists in turn and squeezed them. As the men stood linked, the clerical collar that Juma wore beneath an ordinary jellaba caught the soldier’s eye. Without the harshness of a moment before, Esa asked, “Do they all call you ‘Father’?”

The civilian laughed and stepped away. “No, only the hypocrites like Youssef,” he said. “Oh, Ain Chelia is just as Islamic as the capital, as al-Madinah, never doubt. I have a small congregation here… and I have the respect of the rest of the community, I think. I’m head of equipment maintenance at the mine, which doesn’t mean assigning work to other people, not here.” He spread his hands, palms down. The fingernails were short and the grit beneath their ends a true black and no mere skin tone. “But I think I’d want to do that anyway, even if I didn’t need to eat to live. I’ve guided more folk to the Way by showing them how to balance a turbine than I do when I mumble about peace.”

Captain Mboya walked to the table on top of which stood an altar triptych, now closed. Two drawers were set between the table legs. He opened the top one. In it were the altar vessels, chased brasswork of local manufacture. They were beautiful both in sum and in detail, but they had not tripped a detector set to locate tool steel and iridium.

The lower drawer held a powergun.

Juma watched without expression as his brother raised the weapon, checked the full magazine, and ran a fingertip over the manufacturer’s stampings. “Heuvelmans of Friesland,” Esa said conversationally. “Past couple contracts have been let on Terra, good products… but I always preferred the one I was issued when they assigned me to a tribarrel and I rated a sidearm.” He drew his own pistol from its flap holster and compared it to the weapon from the drawer. “Right, consecutive serial numbers,” the soldier said. He laid Juma’s pistol back where it came from. “Not the sort of souvenir we’re supposed to take with us when we resign from the Slammers, of course.”

Very carefully, and with his eyes on the wall as if searching for flaws in its thick, plastered concrete, Juma said, “I hadn’t really… thought of it being here. I suppose that’s grounds for carrying me back to the re-education camp in al-Madinah, isn’t it?”

His brother’s fist slammed the table. The triptych jumped and the vessels in the upper drawer rang like Poe’s brazen bells. “Re-education? It’s grounds for being burned at the stake if I say so! Listen, the reporters are back in the capital, not here. My orders from the District Governor are to pacify this region, not coddle it!” Esa’s face melted from anger to grief as suddenly as he had swung his fist a moment before. “Via, elder brother, why’d you have to leave? There wasn’t a man in the Regiment could handle a tribarrel the way you could.”

“That was a long time ago,” said Juma, facing the soldier again.

“I remember at Sphakteria,” continued Esa as if Juma had not spoken, “when they popped the ambush and killed your gunner the first shot. You cut ’em apart like they weren’t shooting at you too. And then you led the whole platoon clear, driving the jeep with the wick all the way up and working the gun yourself with your right hand. Nobody else could’ve done it.”

“Do you remember,” said Juma, his voice dropping into a dreamy caress as had his brother’s by the time he finished speaking, “the night we left Nairobi? You led the Service of Farewell yourself, there in the starport, with everyone in the terminal joining in. The faith we’d been raised in was just words to me before then, but you made the Way as real as the tiles I was standing on. And I thought ‘Why is he going off to be a soldier? If ever a man was born to lead other men to peace, it was Esa.’ And in time, you did lead me to peace, little brother.”

Esa shook himself, standing like a centipede in his body armor. “I got that out of my system,” he said.

Juma walked over to the altar. “As I got the Slammers out of my system,” he said, and he closed the drawer over the powergun within.

Neither man spoke for moments that seemed longer. At last Juma said, “Will you have a beer?”

“What?” said the soldier in surprise. “That’s permitted on Dar al-B’heed?”

Juma chuckled as he walked into his kitchen. “Oh yes,” he said as he opened a trapdoor in the floor, “though of course not everyone drinks it.” He raised two corked bottles from their cool recess and walked back to the central room. “There are some Arab notions that never sat very well with Kabyles, you know. Many of the notions about women, veils and the like. Youssef ben Khedda’s wife wore a veil until the revolt… then she took it off and walked around the streets like the other women of Ain Chelia. I suspect that since your troops swept in, she has her veil on again.”

“That one,” said the captain with a snort that threatened to spray beer. “I can’t imagine why nobody had the sense to throttle him—at least before they went off to their damned fortress.”

Juma gestured his brother to one of the room’s simple chairs and took another for himself. “Not everyone has seen as many traitors as we have, little brother,” he said. “Besides, his own father was one of the martyrs whose death ignited the revolt. He was caught in al-Madinah with hypnocubes of Kabyle language instruction. The government called that treason and executed him.”

Esa snorted again. “And didn’t anybody here wonder who shopped the old man to the security police? Via! But I shouldn’t complain—he makes my job easier.” He swallowed the last of his beer, paused a moment, and then pointed the mouth of the bottle at Juma as if it would shoot. “What about you?” the soldier demanded harshly. “Where do you stand?”

“For peace,” said Juma simply, “for the Way. As I always have since I left the Regiment. But… my closest friends in the village are dug into the sides of the mine pit now, waiting for you. Or they’re dead already outside al-Madinah.”

The soldier’s hand tightened on the bottle, his fingers darker than the clear brown glass. With a conscious effort of will he set the container down on the terrazzo floor beside his chair. “They’re dead either way,” he said as he stood up. He put his hand on the door latch before he added, pausing but not turning around, “Listen, elder brother. I told you I didn’t ask to be assigned to this mop-up operation; and if I’d known I’d find you here, I’d have taken leave or a transfer. But I’m here now, and I’ll do my duty, do you hear?”

“As the Lord wills,” said Juma from behind him.

The walls of Juma’s house, like those of all the houses in Ain Chelia, were cast fifty centimeters thick to resist the heat of the sun. The front door was a scale with the walls, close-fitting and too massive to slam. To captain Mboya, it was the last frustration of the interview that he could elicit no more than a satisfied thump from the door as he stamped into the street.

The ballistic crack of the bullet was all the louder for the stillness of the plateau an instant before. Captain Mboya ducked beneath the lip of the headquarters dugout. The report of the sniper’s weapon was lost in the fire of the powerguns and mortars that answered it. “Via, Captain!” snarled Sergeant Scratchard from the parked commo jeep. “Trying to get yourself killed?”

“Via!” Esa wheezed. He had bruised his chin and was thankful for it, the way a child is thankful for any punishment less than the one imagined. He accepted Scratchard’s silent offer of a fiber-optics periscope. Carefully, the Captain raised it to scan what had been the Chelia Mine and was now the Bordj—the Fortress—holding approximately one hundred and forty Kabyle rebels with enough supplies to last a year.

Satellite photographs showed the mine as a series of neatly-stepped terraces in the center of a plateau. From the plateau’s surface, nothing of significance could be seen until a flash discovered the position of a sniper the moment before he dodged to fire again.

“It’d be easy,” Sergeant Scratchard said, “if they’d just tried to use the pit as a big foxhole… Have Central pop a couple anti-personnel rounds overhead and then we go in and count bodies. But they’ve got tunnels and spider holes—and command-detonated mines—laced out from the pit like a giant worm-farm. This one’s going to cost, Esa.”

“Blood and martyrs,” the captain said under his breath. When he had received the Ain Chelia assignment, Mboya had first studied reconnaissance coverage of the village and the mine three kilometers away. It was now a month and a half since the rebel disaster at al-Madinah. The Slammers had raised the siege of the capital in a pitched battle that no one in the human universe was better equipped to fight. Surviving rebels had scattered to their homes to make what preparations they could against the white terror they knew would sweep in the wake of the government’s victory. At Ain Chelia, the preparations had been damned effective. The recce showed clearly that several thousand cubic yards of rubble had been dumped into the central pit of the mine, the waste of burrowings from all around its five kilometer circumference.

“We can drop penetrators all year,” Mboya said, aloud but more to himself than the non-com beside him. “Blow the budget for the whole operation, and even then I wouldn’t bet they couldn’t tunnel ahead of the shelling faster than we broke rock on top of them.”

“If we storm the place,” said Sergeant Scratchard, “and then go down the tunnels after the holdouts, we’ll have thirty per cent casualties if we lose a man.”

A rifle flashed from the pit edge. Almost simultaneously, one of the company’s three-barreled automatic weapons slashed the edge of the rebel gun pit. The trooper must have sighted in his weapon earlier when a sniper had popped from the pit, knowing the site would be reused eventually. Now the air shook as the powergun detonated a bandolier of grenades charged with industrial explosives. The sniper’s rifle glittered as it spun into the air; her head was by contrast a ragged blur, its long hair uncoiling and snapping outward with the thrust of the explosion.

“Get that gunner’s name,” Mboya snapped to his first sergeant. “He’s earned a week’s leave as soon as we stand down. But to get all the rest of them…” and the officer’s voice was the more stark for the fact it was so controlled, “we’re going to need something better. I think we’re going to have to talk them out.”

“Via, Captain,” said Scratchard in real surprise, “why would they want to come out? They saw at al-Madinah what happens when they faced us in the field. And nobody surrenders when they know all prisoners’re going to be shot.”

“Don’t say nobody,” said Esa Mboya in a voice as crisp as the gunfire bursting anew from the Bordj. “Because that’s just what you’re going to see this lot do.”

The dead end of Juma’s street had been blocked and turned into the company maintenance park between the time Esa left to observe the Bordj and his return to his brother’s house. Skimmers, trucks, and a gun jeep with an intermittent short in its front fan had been pulled into the cul-de-sac. They were walled on three sides by the courtyards of the houses beyond Juma’s.

Sergeant Scratchard halted the jeep with the bulky commo equipment in the open street, but Mboya swung his own skimmer around the supply truck that formed a makeshift fourth wall for the park. A guard saluted. “Muller!” Esa shouted, even before the skirts of his one-man vehicle touched the pavement. “What in the name of heaven d’ye think you’re about! I told you to set up in the main square!”

Bog Muller stood up beside a skimmer raised on edge. He was a bulky Technician with twenty years service in the Slammers. A good administrator, but his khakis were clean. Operation Feirefitz had required the company to move fast and long, and there was no way Muller’s three half-trained subordinates could have coped with the consequent rash of equipment failures. “Ah, well, Captain,” Muller temporized, his eyes apparently focused on the row of wall spikes over Esa’s head, “we ran into Juma and he said—

“He what!” Mboya shouted.

“I said,” said Juma, rising from behind the skimmer himself, “that security in the middle of the village would be more of a problem than anybody needed. We’ve got some hot-heads; I don’t want any of them to get the notion of stealing a jeep, for instance. The two households there—” he pointed to the entrances now blocked by vehicles, using the grease gun in his right hand for the gesture—”have both been evacuated to the Bordj.” The half-smile he gave his brother could have been meant for either what he had just said or for the words he added, raising both the grease gun and the wire brush he held in his left hand: “Besides, what with the mine closed, I’d get rusty myself with no equipment to work on.”

“After all,” said Muller in what was more explanation that defense, “I knew Juma back when.”

Esa took in his brother’s smile, took in as well the admiring glances of the three Tech I’s who had been watching the civilian work. “All right,” he said to Muller, “but the next time clear it with me. And you,” he said, pointing to Juma, “come on inside for now. We need to talk.”

“Yes, little brother,” the civilian said with a bow as submissive as his tone.

In the surprising cool of his house, Juma stripped off the gritty jellaba he had worn while working. He began washing with a waterless cleaner, rubbing it on with smooth strokes of his palms. On a chain around his neck glittered a tiny silver crucifix, normally hidden by his clothing.

“You didn’t do much of a job persuading your friends to your Way of Peace,” Esa said with an anger he had not intended to display.

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” the civilian answered mildly. “They were polite enough, even the Kaid, Ali ben Cheriff. But they pointed out that the Arabizers in al-Madinah intended to stamp out all traces of Kabyle culture as soon as possible… which of course was true. And we did have our own martyr here in Ain Chelia, as you know. I couldn’t—” Juma looked up at his brother, his dark skin glistening beneath the lather—”argue with their military estimate, after all, either. The Way doesn’t require that its followers lie about reality in order to change it—but I don’t have to tell you that.”

“Go on,” said the captain. His hand touched the catches of his body armor. He did not release them, however, even though the hardsuit was not at the moment protection against any physical threat.

“Well, the National Army was outnumbered ten to one by the troops we could field from the backlands,” Juma continued as he stepped into the shower. “That’s without defections, too. And weapons aren’t much of a problem. Out there, any jack-leg mechanic can turn out a truck piston in his back room. The tolerances aren’t any closer on a machine gun. But what we didn’t expect—” he raised his deep voice only enough to override the hiss of the shower—”was that all six of the other planets of the al-Ittihad al-Arabi—” for Arab Union Juma used the Arabic words, and they rasped in his throat like a file on bars—”would club together and help the sanctimonious butchers in al-Madinah hire the Slammers.”

He stepped shining from the stall, no longer pretending detachment or that he and his brother were merely chatting. “I visited the siege lines then,” Juma rumbled, wholly a preacher and wholly a man, “and I begged the men from Ain Chelia to come home while there was time. To make peace, or if they would not choose peace then at least to choose life—to lie low in the hills till the money ran out and the Slammers were off on somebody else’s contract, killing somebody else’s enemies. But my friends would stand with their brothers… and so they did, and they died with their brothers, too many of them, when the tanks came through their encirclement like knives through a goatskin.” His smile crooked and his voice dropped. “And the rest came home and told me they should have listened before.”

“They’ll listen to you now,” said Esa, “if you tell them to come out of the Bordj without their weapons and surrender.”

Juma began drying himself on a towel of coarse local cotton. “Will they?” he replied without looking up.

Squeezing his fingers against the bands of porcelain armor over his stomach, Esa said, “The Re-education Camps outside al-Madinah aren’t a rest cure, but there’s too many journalists in the city to let them be too bad. Even if the holdouts are willing to die, they surely don’t want their whole families wiped out. And if we have to clear the Bordj ourselves—well, there won’t be any prisoners, you know that… There wouldn’t be even if we wanted them, not after we blast and gas the tunnels, one by one.”

“Yes, I gather the Re-education Camps aren’t too bad,” the civilian agreed, walking past his brother to don a light jellaba of softer weave than his work garment. “I gather they’re not very full, either. A—a cynic, say, might guess that most of the troublemakers don’t make it to al-Madinah where journalists can see them. That they die in the desert after they’ve surrendered. Or they don’t surrender, of course. I don’t think Ali ben Cheriff and the others in the Bordj are going to surrender, for instance.”

“Damn you!” the soldier shouted. “The choice is certain death, isn’t it? Any chance is better than that!”

“Well you see,” said Juma, watching the knuckles of his right hand twist against the palm of his left, “they know as well as I do that the only transport you arrived with was the minimum to haul your own supplies. There’s no way you could carry over a hundred prisoners back to the capital. No way in… Hell.”

Esa slammed the wall with his fist. Neither the concrete nor his raging expression showed any reaction to the loud impact. “I could be planning to put them in commandeered ore haulers, couldn’t I?” he said. “Some of them must be operable!”

Juma stepped to the younger man and took him by the wrists as gently as a shepherd touching a newborn lamb. “Little brother,” he said, “swear to me that you’ll turn anyone who surrenders over to the authorities in al-Madinah, and I’ll do whatever I can to get them to surrender.”

The soldier snatched his hands away. He said, “Do you think I wouldn’t lie to you because we’re brothers? Then you’re a fool!”

“What I think, what anyone thinks, is between him and the Lord,” Juma said. He started to move toward his brother again but caught the motion and turned it into a swaying only. “If you will swear to me to deliver them unharmed, I’ll carry your message into the Bordj.”

Esa swung open the massive door. On the threshold he paused and turned to his brother. “Every one of my boys who doesn’t make it,” he said in a venomous whisper. “His blood’s on your head.”

Captain Mboya did not try to slam the door this time. He left it standing open as he strode through the courtyard. “Scratchard!” he roared to the sergeant with an anger not meant for the man on whom it fell. “Round up ben Khedda!” Mboya threw himself down on his skimmer and flicked the fans to life. Over their whine he added, “Get him up to me at the command dugout. Now!”

With the skill of long experience, the captain spun his one-man vehicle past the truck and the jeep parked behind it. Sergeant Scratchard gloomily watched his commander shriek up the street. The captain shouldn’t have been going anywhere without the jeep, his commo link to Central, in tow. No point in worrying about that, though. The non-com sighed and lifted the jeep off the pavement. Ben Khedda would be at his house or in the cafe across the street from it. Scratchard hoped he had a vehicle of his own and wouldn’t have to ride the jump seat of the jeep. He didn’t like to sit that close to a slimy traitor.

But Jack Scratchard knew he’d done worse things than sit with a traitor during his years with the Slammers; and, needs must, he would again.

The mortar shell burst with a white flash. Seconds later came a distant chunk! as if a rock had been dropped into a trash can. Even after the report had died away, fragments continued ricocheting from rock with tiny gnat songs. Ben Khedda flinched beneath the clear night sky.

“It’s just our harassing fire,” said Captain Mboya. “Your ragheads don’t have high-angle weapons, thank the Lord. Of course, all our shells do is keep them down in their tunnels.”

The civilian swallowed. “Your sergeant,” he said, “told me you needed me at once.” Scratchard stirred in the darkness at the other end of the dugout, but he made no comment of his own.

“Yeah,” said Mboya, “but when I cooled off I decided to take a turn around the perimeter. Took a while. It’s a bloody long perimeter for one cursed infantry company to hold.”

“Well, I,” ben Khedda said, “I came at once, sir. I recognize the duty all good citizens owe to our liberators.” Firing broke out, a burst from a projectile weapon answered promiscuously by powerguns. Ben Khedda winced again. Cyan bolts from across the pit snapped overhead, miniature lightning following miniature thunder.

Without looking up, Captain Mboya keyed his commo helmet and said, “Thrasher Four to Thrasher Four-Three. Anybody shoots beyond his sector again and it’s ten days in the glass house when we’re out of this cop.” The main unit in Scratchard’s jeep purred as it relayed the amplified signal. All the firing ceased.

“Will ben Cheriff and the others in the Bordj listen to you, do you think?” the captain continued.

For a moment, ben Khedda did not realize the officer was speaking to him. He swallowed again. “Well, I… I can’t say,” he blurted. He began to curl in his upper lip as if to chew a moustache, though he was clean shaven. “They aren’t friends of mine, of course, but if God wills and it would help you if I addressed them over a loudspeaker as to their true duties as citizens of Dar al-B’heed— “

“We hear you were second in command of the Chelia contingent at Madinah,” Mboya said inflexibly. “Besides, there won’t be a loudspeaker, you’ll be going in in person.”

Horror at past and future implications warred in ben Khedda’s mind and froze his tongue. At last he stammered, “Oh no, C-captain, before G-god, they’ve lied to you! That accurst al-Habashi wishes to lie away my life! I did no more than any man would do to stay alive!”

Mboya waved the other to silence. The pale skin of his palm winked as another shell detonated above the Bordj. When the echoes died away, the captain went on in a voice as soft as a leopard’s paw, “You will tell them that if they all surrender, their lives will be spared and they will not be turned over to the government until they are actually in al-Madinah. You will say that I swore that on my honor and on the soul of my house.”

Ben Khedda raised a hand to interrupt, but the soldier’s voice rolled on implacably, “They must deposit all their arms in the Bordj and come out to be shackled. The tunnels will be searched. If there are any holdouts, three of those who surrendered will be shot for each holdout. If there are any booby traps, ten of those who surrendered will be shot for every man of mine who is injured.”

Mboya drew a breath, long and deep as that of a power lifter. The civilian, tight as a housejack, strangled his own words as he waited for the captain to conclude. “You will say that after they have done as I have said, all of them will be loaded on ore carriers with sunscreens. You will explain that there will be food and water brought from the village to support them. And you will tell them that if some of them are wounded or are infirm, they may ride within an ambulance which will be air-conditioned.

“Do you understand?”

For a moment, ben Khedda struggled with an inability to phrase his thoughts in neutral terms. He was unwilling to meet the captain’s eyes, even with the darkness as a cushion. Finally he said, “Captain—I, I trust your word as I would trust that of no man since the Prophet, on whom be peace. When you say the lives of the traitors will be spared, there can be no doubt, may it please God.”

“Trust has nothing to do with it,” said Captain Mboya without expression. “I have told you what you will say, and you will say it.”

“Captain, Captain,” whimpered the civilian, “I understand. The trip is a long one and surely some of the most troublesome will die of heat stroke. They will know that themselves. But there will be no… general tragedy? I must live here in Ain Chelia with the friends of the, the traitors. You see my position?”

“Your position,” Mboya repeated with scorn that drew a chuckle from Scratchard across the dugout. “Your position is that unless you talk your friends there out of the Bordj—” he gestured. Automatic weapons began to rave and chatter as if on cue. “Unless you go down there and come back with them, I’ll have you shot on your doorstep for a traitor and your body left to the dogs. That’s your position.”

“Cheer up, citizen,” Sergeant Scratchard said. “You’re getting a great chance to pick one side and stick with it. The change’ll do you good.”

Ben Khedda gave a despairing cry and stood, his dun jellaba flapping as a lesser shadow. He stared over the rim of the dugout into a night now brightened only by stars and a random powergun bolt, harassment like that of the mortars. He turned and shouted at the motionless captain, “It’s easy for you—you go where your colonel sends you, you kill who he tells you to kill. And then you come all high and moral over the rest of us, who have to make our own decisions! You despise me? At least I’m a man and not somebody’s dog!”

Mboya laughed harshly. “You think Colonel Hammer told us how to clear the back country? Don’t be a fool. My official orders are to cooperate with the District Governor, and to send all prisoners back to al-Madinah for internment. The colonel can honestly deny ordering anything else—and letting him do that is as much a part of my job as cooperating with a governor who knows that anybody really sent to a Re-education Camp will be back in his hair in a year.”

There was a silence in the dugout. At last the sergeant said, “He can’t go out now, sir.” The moan of a ricochet underscored the words.

“No, no, we’ll have to wait till dawn,” the captain agreed tiredly. As if ben Khedda were an unpleasant machine, he added, “Get him the hell out of my sight, though. Stick him in the bunker with the Headquarters Squad and tell them to hold him till called for. Via! but I wish this operation was over.”

The guns spat at one another all through the night. It was not the fire that kept Esa Mboya awake, however, but rather the dreams that plagued him with gentle words whenever he did manage to nod off.

“Well,” said Juma, scowling judiciously at the gun jeep on the rack before him, “I’d say we pull the wiring harness first. Half the time that’s the whole problem— grit gets into the conduits and when the fans vibrate, it saws through the insulation. Even if we’re wrong, we haven’t done anything that another few months of running on Dar al-B’heed wouldn’t have required anyway.”

“You should have seen him handle one a’ these when I first knew him,” said Bog Muller proudly to his subordinates. “Beat it to hell, he would, Via—bring her in with rock scrapes on both sides that he’d put on at the same time!”

The Kikuyu civilian touched a valve and lowered the rack. His hand caressed the sand-burnished skirt of the jeep as it sank past him. The joystick controls were in front of the left-hand seat. Finesse was a matter of touch and judgment, not sophisticated instrumentation. He waggled the stick gently, remembering. In front of the other seat was the powergun, its three iridium barrels poised to rotate and hose out destruction in a nearly-continuous stream.

“You won’t believe it,” continued the Technician, “but I saw with my own eyes—” that was a lie—”this boy here steering with one hand and working the gun with the other. Bloody miracle that was—even if he did give Maintenance more trouble than any three other troopers.”

“You learn a lot about a machine when you push it, when you stress it,” said Juma. His fingers reached for but did not quite touch the spade grips of the tribarrel. “About men, too,” he added and towered his hand. He looked Muller in the face and said, “What I learned about myself was that I didn’t want to live in a universe that had no better use for me than to gun other people down. I won’t claim to be saving souls… because that’s in the Lord’s hands and he uses what instruments he desires. But at least I’m not taking lives.”

One of the younger Techs coughed. Muller nodded heavily and said, “I know what you mean, Juma. I’ve never regretted getting into Maintenance right off the way I did. Especially times like today… But Via, if we stand here fanning our lips, we won’t get a curst bit of work done, will we?”

The civilian chuckled without asking for an explanation of ‘especially times like today.’ “Sure, Bog,” he said, latching open the left side-access ports one after another. “Somebody dig out a 239B harness and we’ll see if I remember as much as I think I do about changing one of these beggars.” He glanced up at the truncated mass of the plateau, wiping his face with a bandanna. “Things have quieted down since the sun came up,” he remarked. “Even if I weren’t—dedicated to the Way—I know too many people on both sides to like to hear the shooting at the mine.”

None of the other men responded. At the time it did not occur to Juma that there might be something about his words that embarrassed them.

“There’s a flag,” said Scratchard, his eyes pressed tight to the lenses of the periscope. “Blood and martyrs, Cap—there’s a flag!”

“No shooting!” Mboya ordered over his commo as he moved. “Four to all Thrasher units, stand to but no shooting!”

All around the mine crater, men watched a white rag flapping on the end of a long wooden pole. Some looked through periscopes like those in the command dugout, others over the sights of their guns in hope that something would give them an excuse to fire. “Well, what are they waiting for?” the captain muttered.

“It’s ben Khedda,” guessed Scratchard without looking away from the flag. “He was scared green to go out there. Now he’s just as scared to come back.”

The flag staggered suddenly. Troopers tensed, but a moment later an unarmed man climbed full height from the Bordj. The high sun threw his shadow at his feet like a pit. Standing as erect as his age permitted him, Ali ben Cheriff took a step toward the Slammers’ lines. Wind plucked at his jellaba and white beard; the rebel leader was a patriarch in appearance as well as in simple fact. On his head was the green turban that marked him as a pilgrim to al-Meccah on Terra. He was as devotedly Moslem as he was Kabyle, and he—like most of the villagers—saw no inconsistencies in the facts. To ben Cheriff it was no more necessary to become an Arab in order to accept Islam than it had seemed necessary to Saint Paul that converts to Christ first become Jews.

“We’ve won,” the captain said as he watched the figure through the foreshortening lenses. “That’s the Kaid, ben Cheriff. If he comes, they all do.”

Up from the hidden tunnel clambered an old woman wearing the stark black of a matron. The Kaid paused and stretched back his hand, but the woman straightened without help. Together the old couple began to walk toward the waiting guns.

The flagstaff flapped erect again. Gripping it like a talisman, Youssef ben Khedda stepped from the tunnel mouth where the Kaid had shouldered aside his hesitation. He picked his way across the ground at increasing speed. When ben Khedda passed the Kaid and his wife, he skirted them widely as if he were afraid of being struck. More rebels were leaving the Bordj in single file. None of them carried visible weapons. Most, men and women alike, had their eyes cast down; but a red-haired girl leading a child barely old enough to walk glared around with the haughty rage of a lioness.

“Well, no rest for the wicked,” grunted Sergeant Scratchard. Settling his sub-machinegun on its sling, he climbed out of the dugout. “Headquarters Squad to me,” he ordered. Bent over against the possible shock of a fanatic’s bullets, experienced enough to know the reality of his fear and brave enough to face it none the less, Scratchard began to walk to the open area between pit and siege lines where the prisoners would be immobilized. The seven men of HQ Squad followed; their corporal drove the jeep loaded with leg irons.

One of the troopers raised his powergun to bar ben Khedda. Scratchard waved and called an order; the trooper shrugged and let the Kabyle pass. The sergeant gazed after him for a moment, then spat in the dust and went on about the business of searching and securing the prisoners.

Youssef ben Khedda was panting with tension and effort as he approached the dugout, but there was a hard glint of triumph in his eyes as well. He knew he was despised, by those he led no less than by those who had driven him; but he had dug the rebels from their fortress when all the men and guns of the Slammers might have been unable to do so without him. Now he saw a way to ride the bloody crest to permanent power in Ain Chelia. He tried to set his flag in the ground. It scratched into the rocky soil, then fell with a clatter. “I have brought them to you,” ben Khedda said in a haughty voice.

“Some of them, at least,” said Mboya, his face neutral. Rebels continued to straggle from the Bordj, their faces sallow from more than the day they had spent in their tunnels. The Kaid had submitted to the shackles with a stony indifference. His wife was weeping beside him, not for herself but for her husband. Two of the nervous troopers were fanning the prisoners with detector wands set for steel and iridium. Anything the size of a razor blade would register. A lead bludgeon or a brass-barreled pistol would be ignored, but there were some chances you took in the service of practicality.

“As God wills, they are all coming, you know that,” ben Khedda said, assertive with dreamed-of lordship. “If they were each in his separate den, many of them would fight till you blew them out or buried them. All are willing to die, but most would not willingly kill their fellows, their families.” His face worked. “A fine joke, is it not?” If what had crossed ben Khedda’s lips had been a smile, then it transmuted to a sneer. “They would have been glad to kill me first, I think, but they were afraid that you would have been angry.”

“More fools them,” said the captain.

“Yes…,” said the civilian, drawing back his face like a rat confronting a terrier, “more fools them. And now you will pay me.”

“Captain,” said the helmet speaker in the first sergeant’s voice, “this one says he’s the last.”

Mboya climbed the four steps to surface level. Scratchard waved and pointed to the Kabyle who was just joining the scores of his fellows. The number of those being shackled in a continuous chain at least approximated the one hundred and forty who were believed to have holed up in the Bordj. Through the clear air rang hammer strokes as a pair of troopers stapled the chain to the ground at intervals, locking the prisoners even more securely into the killing ground. The captain nodded. “We’ll give it a minute to let anybody still inside have second thoughts,” he said over the radio. “Then the search teams go in.” He looked at ben Khedda. “All right,” he said, “you’ve got your life and whatever you think you can do with it. Now, get out of here before I change my mind.”

Mboya gazed again at the long line of prisoners. He was unable not to imagine them as they would look in an hour’s time, after the Bordj had been searched and their existence was no longer a tool against potential holdouts. He could not have broken with the Way of his childhood, however, had he not replaced it with a sense of duty as uncompromising. Esa Mboya, Captain, G Company, Hammer’s Regiment, would do whatever was required to accomplish the task set him. They had been hired to pacify the district, not just to quiet it down for six months or a year.

Youssef ben Khedda had not left. He was still facing Mboya, as unexpected and unpleasant as a rat on the pantry shelf. He was saying, “No, there is one more thing you must do, as God wills, before you leave Ain Chelia. I do not compel it—” the soldier’s face went blank with fury at the suggestion—”your duty that you talk of compels you. There is one more traitor in the village, a man who did not enter the Bordj because he thought his false god would preserve him.”

“Little man,” said the captain in shock and a genuine attempt to stop the words he knew were about to be said, “don’t—”

“Add the traitor Juma al-Habashi to these,” the civilian cried, pointing to the fluttering jellabas of the prisoners. “Put him there or his whines of justice and other worlds and his false god will poison the village again like a dead rat stinking in a pool. Take him!”

The two men stood with their feet on a level. The soldier’s helmet and armor increased his advantage in bulk, however, and his wrath lighted his face like a cleansing flame. “Shall I slay my brother for thee, lower-than-a-dog?” he snarled.

Ben Khedda’s face jerked at the verbal slap, but with a wave of his arm he retorted, “Will you now claim to follow the Way yourself? There stand one hundred and thirty-four of your brothers. Make it one more, as your duty commands!”

The absurdity was so complete that the captain trembled between laughter and the feeling that he had gone insane. Carefully, his tone touched more with wonder than with rage until the world should return to focus, the Kikuyu said, “Shall I, Esa Mboya, order the death of Juma Mboya? My brother, flesh of my father and of my mother… who held my hand when I toddled my first steps upright?”

Now at last ben Khedda’s confidence squirted out like blood from a slashed carotid. “The name—” he said. “I didn’t know!”

Mboya’s world snapped into place again, its realities clear and neatly dovetailed. “Get out, filth,” he said harshly, “and wonder what I plan for you when I come down from this hill.”

The civilian stumbled back toward his car as if his body and not his spirit had received the mortal wound. The soldier considered him dispassionately. If ben Khedda stayed in Ain Chelia, he wouldn’t last long. The Slammers would be out among the stars, and the central government a thousand kilometers away in al-Madinah would be no better able to protect a traitor. Youssef ben Khedda would be a reminder of friends and relatives torn by blasts of cyan fire with every step he took on the streets of the village. Those steps would be few enough, one way or the other.

And if in the last fury of his well-earned fear ben Khedda tried to kill Juma—well, Juma had made his bed, his Way… he could tread it himself. Esa laughed. Not that the traitor would attempt murder personally. Even in the final corner, rats of ben Khedda’s stripe tried to persuade other rats to bite for them.

“Captain,” murmured Scratchard’s voice over the command channel, “think we’ve waited about long enough?”

Instead of answering over the radio, Mboya nodded and began walking the hundred meters to where his sergeant stood near the prisoners. The rebels’ eyes followed him, some with anger, most in only a dull appreciation of the fact that he was the nearest moving object on a static landscape. Troopers had climbed out of their gun pits all around the Bordj. Their dusty khaki blended with the soil, but the sun woke bright reflections from the barrels of their weapons.

“The search teams are ready to go in, sir,” Scratchard said, speaking in Dutch but stepping a pace further from the shackled Kaid besides.

“Right,” the captain agreed. “I’ll lead the team from Third Platoon.”

“Captain—”

“Where are the trucks, unbeliever?” demanded Ali ben Cheriff. His voice started on a quaver but lashed at the end.

“—there’s plenty cursed things for you to do besides crawling down a hole with five pongoes. Leave it to the folks whose job it is.”

“There’s nothing left of this operation that Mendoza can’t wrap up,” Mboya said. “Believe me, he won’t like doing it any less, either.”

“Where are the trucks to carry away our children, dog and son of dogs?” cried the Kaid. Beneath the green turban, the rebel’s face was as savage and unyielding as that of a trapped wolf.

“It’s not for fun,” Mboya went on. “There’ll be times I’ll have to send boys out to be killed while I stay back, safe as a staff officer, and run things. But if I lead from the front when I can, when it won’t compromise the mission if I do stop a load—then they’ll do what they’re told a little sharper when it’s me that says it the next time.”

The Kaid spat. Lofted by his anger and the breeze, the gobbet slapped the side of Mboya’s helmet and dribbled down onto his porcelain-sheathed shoulder.

Scratchard turned. Ignoring the automatic weapon slung ready to fire under his arm, he drew a long knife from his boot sheath instead. Three strides separated the non-com from the line of prisoners. He had taken two of them before Mboya caught his shoulder and stopped him. “Easy, Jack,” the captain said.

Ben Cheriff’s gaze was focused on the knifepoint. Fear of death could not make the old man yield, but neither was he unmoved by the approach of its steel-winking eye. Scratchard’s own face had no more expression than did the knife itself. The Kaid’s wife lunged at the soldier to the limit of her chain, but the look Scratchard gave her husband dried her throat around the curses within it.

Mboya pulled his man back. “Easy,” he repeated. “I think he’s earned that, don’t you?” He turned Scratchard gently. He did not point out, nor did he need to do so, the three gun jeeps which had swung down to fifty meters in front of the line of captives. Their crews were tense and still with the weight of their orders. They met Mboya’s eyes, comprehending but without enthusiasm.

“Right,” said Scratchard mildly. “Well, the quicker we get down that hole, the quicker we get the rest of the job done. Let’s go.”

The five tunnel rats from Third Platoon were already squatting at the entrance from which the rebels had surrendered. Captain Mboya began walking toward them. “You stay on top, Sergeant,” he said. “You don’t need to prove anything.”

Scratchard cursed without heat. “I’ll wait at the tunnel mouth unless something pops. You’ll be out of radio contact and I’ll be curst if I trust anybody else to carry you a message.”

The tunnel rats were rising to their feet, silent men whose faces were in constant, tiny motion. They carried detector wands and sidearms; two had even taken off their body armor and stood in the open air looking paler than shelled shrimp. Mboya cast a glance back over his shoulder at the prisoners and the gun jeeps beyond. “Do you believe in sin, Sergeant?” he asked.

Scratchard glanced sidelong at his superior. “Don’t know, sir. Not really my field.”

“My brother believes in it,” said the captain, “but I guess he left the Slammers before you transferred out of combat cars. And he isn’t here now, Jack, I am, so I guess we’ll have to dispense with sin today.”

“Team Three ready, sir,” said the black-haired man who probably would have had sergeant’s pips had he not been stripped to the waist.

“Right,” said Mboya. Keying his helmet he went on, “Thrasher to Club One, Club Two. Let’s see what they left us, boys.” And as he stepped toward the tunnel mouth, without really thinking about the words until he spoke them, he added, “And the Lord be with us all.”

The bed of the turbine driving Youssef ben Khedda’s car was enough out of true that the vehicle announced its own approach unmistakably. Juma wondered in the back of his mind what brought the little man, but his main concentration was on the plug connector he was trying to reeve through a channel made for something a size smaller. At last the connector shifted the last two millimeters necessary for Juma to slip a buttonhook deftly about it. The three subordinate Techs gave a collective sigh, and Bog Muller beamed in reflected glory.

“Father!” ben Khedda wheezed, oblivious to the guard frowning over his powergun a pace behind, “Father! You’ve got to… I’ve got to talk to you. You must!”

“All right, Youssef,” the Kikuyu said. “In a moment.” He tugged the connector gently through its channel and rotated it to mate with the gun leads.

Ben Khedda reached for Juma’s arm in a fury of impatience. One of the watching Techs caught the Kabyle’s wrist. “Touch him, raghead,” the trooper said, “and you better be able to grow a new hand.” He thrust ben Khedda back with more force than the resistance demanded.

Juma straightened from the gun jeep and put an arm about the shoulders of the angry trooper. “Worse job than replacing all the fans,” he said in Dutch, “but it gives you a good feeling to finish it. Run the static test, if you would, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He squeezed the trooper, released him, and added in Kabyle to his fellow villager, “Come into my house, then, Youssef. What is it you need of me?”

Ben Khedda’s haste and nervousness were obvious from the way his car lay parked with its skirt folded under the front from an over-hasty stop. Juma paused with a frown for more than the mechanical problem. He bent to lift the car and let the skirt spring away from the fans it was probably touching at the moment.

“Don’t worry about that,” ben Khedda cried, plucking at the bigger man’s sleeve. “We’ve got to talk in private.”

Juma had left his courtyard gate unlatched since he was working only a few meters away. Before ben Khedda had reached the door of the house, he was spilling the words that tormented him. “Before God, you have to talk to your brother or he’ll kill me, Father, he’ll kill me!”

“Youssef,” said the Kikuyu as he swung his door open and gestured the other man toward the cool interior, “I pray—I have been praying—that at worst, none of our villagers save those in the Bordj are in danger.” He smiled too sadly to be bitter. “You would know better than I, I think, who may have been marked out to Esa as an enemy of the government. But he’s not a cruel man, my brother, only a very—determined one. He won’t add you to whatever list he has out of mere dislike.”

The Kabyle’s lips worked silently. His face was tortured by the explanation that he needed to give but could not. “Father,” he pleaded, “you must believe me, he’ll have me killed. Before God, you must beg him for my life, you mustl”

Ben Khedda was gripping the Kikuyu by both sleeves. Juma detached himself carefully and said, “Youssef, why would my brother want you killed—of all the men in Ain Chelia? Did something happen?”

The smaller man jerked himself back with a dawning horror in his eyes. “You planned this with him, didn’t you?” he cried. His arm thrust at the altar as if to sweep away the closed triptych. “This is all a lie, your prayers, your Way—you and your butcher brother trapped me to bleed like a sheep on Id al-Fitr! Traitor! Liar! Murderer!” He threw his hands over his face and flung himself down and across a stool. The Kabyle’s sobs held the torment of a man without hope.

Juma stared at the weeping man. There was something unclean about ben Khedda. His back rose and fell beneath the jellaba like the distended neck of a python bolting a young child. “Youssef,” the Kikuyu said as gently as he could, “you may stay here or leave, as you please. I promise you that I will speak to Esa this evening, on your behalf as well as that of… others, all the others. Is there anything you need to tell me?”

Only the tears responded.

The dazzling sun could not sear away Juma’s disquiet as he walked past the guard and the barricading truck. Something was wrong with the day, with the very silence. Though all things were with the Lord.

The jeep’s inspection ports had been latched shut. The Techs had set a pair of skimmers up on their sides as the next project. The civilian smiled. “Think she’ll float now?” he asked the trooper who had grabbed ben Khedda. “Let’s see if I remember how to put one of these through her paces. You can’t trust a fix, you see, till you’ve run her under full load.”

There was a silence broken by the whine of ben Khedda’s turbine firing. Juma managed a brief prayer that the Kabyle would find a Way open to him—knowing as he prayed that the impulse to do so was from his mind and not at all from his heart.

“Juma, ah,” Bog Muller was trying to say. “Ah, look, this isn’t—isn’t our idea, it’s the job, you know. But the captain—” none of the four Techs were looking anywhere near the civilian—”he ordered that you not go anywhere today until, until… it was clear.”

The silence from the Bordj was a cloak that smothered Juma and squeezed all the blood from his face. “Not that you’re a prisoner, but, ah, your brother thought it’d be better for both of you if you didn’t see him or call him till—after.”

“I see,” said the civilian, listening to his own voice as if a third party were speaking. “Until after he’s killed my friends, I suppose… yes.” He began walking back to his house, his sandaled feet moving without being consciously directed. “Juma—” called Muller, but the Tech thought better of the words or found he had none to say.

Ben Khedda had left the door ajar. It was only by habit that Juma himself closed it behind him. The dim coolness within was no balm to the fire that skipped across the surface of his mind. Kneeling, the Kikuyu unlatched and opened wide the panels of his altar piece. It was his one conscious affectation, a copy of a triptych painted over a millenium before by the Master of Hell, Hieronymous Bosch. Atop a haywain rode a couple. Their innocence was beset by every form of temptation in the world, the World. Where would their Way take them? No doubt where it took all Mankind, saving the Lord’s grace, to Hell and the grave—good intentions be damned, hope be damned, innocence be damned… Obscurely glad of the harshness of the tiles on which he knelt, Juma prayed for his brother and for the souls of those who would shortly die in flames as like to those of Hell as man could create. He prayed for himself as well, for he was damned to endure what he had not changed. They were all travellers together on the Way.

After a time, Juma sighed and raised his head. A demon faced him on the triptych; it capered and piped through its own blue snout. Not for the first time, Juma thought of how pleasant it would be to personify his own weaknesses and urgings. Then he could pretend that they were somehow apart from the true Juma Mboya, who remained whole and incorruptible.

The lower of the two drawers beneath the altar was not fully closed.

Even as he drew it open, Juma knew from the lack of resistance that the drawer was empty. The heavy-barreled powergun had rested within when ben Khedda had accompanied the search team. It was there no longer.

Striding swiftly and with the dignity of a leopard, Mboya al-Habashi crossed the room and his courtyard. He appeared around the end of the truck barricade so suddenly that Bog Muller jumped. The Kikuyu pointed his index finger with the deliberation of a pistol barrel. “Bog,” he said very clearly, “I need to call my brother at once or something terrible will happen.”

“Via, man,” said the Technician, looking away, “you know how I feel about it, but it’s not my option. You don’t leave here, and you don’t call, Juma—or it’s my ass.”

“Lord blast you for a fool!” the Kikuyu shouted, taking a step forward. All four Technicians backed away with their hands lifting. “Will you—” But though there was confusion on the faces watching him, there was nothing of assent, and there was no time to argue. As if he had planned it from the start, Juma slipped into the left saddle of the jeep he had just rewired and gunned the fans.

With an oath, Bog Muller grappled with the civilian. The muscles beneath Juma’s loose jellaba had shifted driving fans beneath ore carriers in lieu of a hydraulic jack. He shrugged the Technician away with a motion as slight and as masterful as that of an earth tremor. Juma waggled the stick, using the vehicle’s skirts to butt aside two of the younger men who belatedly tried to support their chief. Then he had the jeep clear of the repair rack and spinning on its own axis.

Muller scrambled to his feet again and waited for Juma to realize that there was not enough room between truck and wall for the jeep to pass. If the driver himself had any doubt, it was not evident in the way he dialed on throttle and leaned to bring the right-hand skirt up an instant before it scraped the courtyard wall.

Using the wall as a running surface and the force of his turn to hold him there, Juma sent the gun jeep howling sideways around the barricade and up the street.

“Hey!” shouted the startled guard, rising from the shady side of the truck. “Hey!” and he shouldered his weapon.

A Technician grabbed him, wrestling the muzzle of the gun skyward. It was the same lanky man who had caught ben Khedda when he would have plucked at Juma’s sleeve. “Via!” cried the guard, watching the vehicle corner and disappear up the main road to the mine. “We weren’t supposed to let him by!”

“We’re better off explaining that,” said the Tech, “than we are telling the captain how we just killed his brother. Right?”

The street was empty again. All five troopers stared at it for some moments before any of them moved to the radio.

Despite his haste, Youssef ben Khedda stopped his car short of the waiting gun jeeps and began walking toward the prisoners. His back crept with awareness of the guns and the hard-eyed men behind them; but, as God willed, he had chosen and there could be no returning now.

The captain—his treacherous soul was as black as his skin—was not visible. No doubt he had entered the Bordj as he had announced he would. Against expectation, and as further proof that God favored his cause, ben Khedda saw no sign of that damnable first sergeant either. If God willed it, might they both be blasted to atoms somewhere down in a tunnel!

The soldiers watching the prisoners from a few meters away were the ones whom ben Khedda had led on their search of the village. The corporal frowned, but he knew ben Khedda for a confidant of his superiors. “Go with God, brother,” said the civilian in Arabic, praying the other would have been taught that tongue or Kabyle. “Your captain wished me to talk once more with that dog—” he pointed to ben Cheriff. “There are documents of which he knows,” he concluded vaguely.

The non-com’s lip quirked nervously. “Look, can it wait—” he began, but even as he spoke he was glancing at the leveled tri-barrels forty meters distant. “Blood,” he muttered, a curse and a prophecy. “Well, go talk then. But watch it—the bastard’s mean as a snake and his woman’s worse.”

The Kaid watched ben Khedda approach with the fascination of a mongoose awaiting a cobra. The traitor threw himself to the ground and tried to kiss the Raid’s feet. “Brother in God,” the unshackled man whispered, “we have been betrayed by the unbelievers. Their dog of a captain will have you all murdered on his return, despite his oaths to me.”

“Are we to believe, brother Youssef,” the Kaid said with a sneer, “that you intend to die here with the patriots to cleanse your soul of the lies you carried?”

Others along the line of prisoners were peering at the scene to the extent their irons permitted, but the two men spoke in voices too low for any but the Kaid’s wife to follow the words. “Brother,” ben Rhedda continued, “preservation is better than expiation. The captain has confessed his wicked plan to no one but me. If he dies, it dies with him—and our people live. Now, raise me by the hands.”

“Shall I touch your bloody hands, then?” ben Cheriff said, but he spoke as much in question as in scorn.

“Raise me by the hands,” ben Rhedda repeated, “and take from my right sleeve what you find there to hide in yours. Then wait the time.”

“As God wills,” the Kaid said and raised up ben Rhedda. Their bodies were momentarily so close that their jellabas flowed together.

“And what in the blaze of Hell is this, Corporal!” roared Sergeant Scratchard. “Blood and martyrs, who told you to let anybody in with the prisoners?”

“Via, Sarge,” the corporal sputtered, “he said—I mean, it was the captain, he tells me.”

Ben Rhedda had begun to sidle away from the line of prisoners. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Scratchard snapped in Arabic. “Corporal, get another set of leg irons and clamp him onto his buddy there. If he’s so copping hot to be here, he can stay till the captain says otherwise.”

The sergeant paused, looking around the circle of eyes focused nervously on him. More calmly he continued, “The Bordj is clear. The captain’s up from the tunnel, but it’ll be a while before he gets here—they came up somewhere in West Bumfuck and he’s borrowing a skimmer from First Platoon to get back. We’ll wait to see what he says.” The first sergeant stared at Aliben Cheriff, impassive as the wailing traitor was,shackled to his right leg. “We’ll wait till then,” the soldier repeated.

Mboya lifted the nose of his skimmer and grounded it behind the first of the waiting gun jeeps. Sergeant Scratchard trotted toward him from the direction of the prisoners. The non-com was panting with the heat and his armor; he raised his hand when he reached the captain in order to gain a moment’s breathing space.

“Well?” Mboya prompted.

“Sir, Maintenance called,” said Scratchard jerkily. “Your brother, sir. They think he’s coming to, to see you.”

The captain swore. “All right,” he said, “if Juma thinks he has to watch this, he can watch it. He’s a cursed fool if he expects to do anything but watch.”

Scratchard nodded deeply, finding he inhaled more easily with his torso cocked forward. “Right, sir, I just— didn’t want to rebroadcast on the Command channel in case Central was monitoring. Right. And then there’s that raghead, ben Rhedda—I caught him talking to green-hat over there and thought he maybe ought to stay. For good.”

Captain Mboya glanced at the prisoners. The men of Headquarters Squad still sat a few meters away because nobody had told them to withdraw. “Get them clear” the captain said with a scowl. He began walking toward the line, the first sergeant’s voice turning his direction into a tersely-radioed order. Somewhere down the plateau, an aircar was being revved with no concern for what pebbles would do to the fans. Juma, very likely. He was the man you wanted driving your car when it had all dropped in the pot and Devil took the hindmost.

“Jack,” the captain said, “I understand how you feel about ben Rhedda; but we’re here to do a job, not to kill sons of bitches. If we were doing that, we’d have to start in al-Madinah, wouldn’t we?”

Mboya and his sergeant were twenty meters from the prisoners. The Kaid watched their approach with his hands folded within the sleeves of his jellaba and his eyes as still as iron. Youssef ben Khedda was crouched beside him, a study in terror. He retained only enough composure that he did not try to run—and that because the pressure of the leg iron binding him to ben Cheriff was just sharp enough to penetrate the fear.

A gun jeep howled up onto the top of the plateau so fast that it bounced and dragged its skirts, still under full throttle. Scratchard turned with muttered surprise. Captain Mboya did not look around. He reached into the thigh pocket of his coveralls where he kept a magnetic key that would release ben Khedda’s shackles. “We can’t just kill—” he repeated.

“Now, God, now!” ben Khedda shrieked. “He’s going to kill me!”

The Kaid’s hands appeared, the right one extending a pistol. Its muzzle was a gray circle no more placable than the eye that aimed it.

Mboya dropped the key. His hand clawed for his own weapon, but he was no gunman, no quick-draw expert. He was a company commander carrying ten extra kilos, with his pistol in a flap holster that would keep his hand out at least as well as it did the wind-blown sand. Esa’s very armor slowed him, though it would not save his face or his femoral arteries when the shots came.

Behind the captain, on a jeep still skidding on the edge of control, his brother triggered a one-handed burst as accurate as if parallax were a myth. The tribarrel was locked on its column; Juma let the vehicle’s own sideslip saw the five rounds toward the man with the gun. A single two-centimeter bolt missed everything. Beyond, at the lip of the Bordj, a white flower bloomed from a cyan center as ionic calcium recombined with the oxygen from which it had been freed a moment before. Closer, everything was hidden by an instant glare. The pistol detonated in the Kaid’s hand under the impact of a round from the tribarrel. That was chance—or something else, for only the Lord could be so precise with certainty. The last shot of the burst hurled the Kaid back with a hole in his chest and his jellaba aflame. Ali ben Cheriff’s eyes were free of fear when they closed them before burying him, and his mouth still wore a tight smile. Ben Khedda’s face would have been less of a study in virtue and manhood, no doubt, but the two bolts that flicked across it took the traitor’s head into oblivion with his memory. Juma had walked his burst on target, like any good man with an automatic weapon; and if there was something standing where the bolts walked—so much the worse for it.

There were shouts, but they were sucked lifeless by the wind. No one else had fired, for a wonder. Troops all around the Bordj were rolling back into dugouts they had thought it safe to leave.

Juma brought the jeep to a halt a few meters from his brother. He doubled over the joystick as if he had been shot himself. Dust and sand puffed from beneath the skirts while the fans wound down; then the plume settled back on the breeze. Esa touched his brother’s shoulder, feeling the dry sobs that wracked the jellaba. Very quietly the soldier said in the Kikuyu he had not, after all, forgotten, “I bring you a souvenir, elder brother. To replace the one you have lost.” From his holster, now unsnapped, he drew his pistol and laid it carefully down on the empty gunner’s seat of the jeep.

Juma looked up at his brother with a terrible dignity. “To remind me of the day I slew two men in the Lord’s despite?” he asked formally. “Oh, no, my brother; I need no trinket to remind me of that forever.”

“If you do not wish to remember the ones you killed,” said Esa, “then perhaps it will remind you of the hundred and thirty-three whose lives you saved this day. And my life, of course.”

Juma stared at his brother with a fixity by which alone he admitted his hope. He tugged the silver crucifix out of his jellaba and lifted it over his head. “Here,” he said, “little brother. I offer you this in return for your gift. To remind you that wherever you go, the Way runs there as well.”

Esa took the chain. With clumsy fingers he slipped it over his helmet. “All right, Thrasher, everybody stand easy,” the captain roared into his commo link. “Two-six, I want food for a hundred and thirty-three people for three days. You’ve got my authority to take what you need from the village. Three-six, you’re responsible for the transport. I want six ore carriers up here and I want them fast. If the first truck isn’t here loading in twenty, that’s two-zero mikes, I’ll burn somebody a new asshole. Four-six, there’s drinking water in drums down in those tunnels. Get it up here. Now, move!”

Juma stepped out of the gun jeep, his left hand gripping Esa’s right. Skimmers were already lifting from positions all around the Bordj. G Company was surprised, but no one had forgotten that Captain Mboya meant his orders to be obeyed.

“Oh, one other thing,” Esa said, then tripped his commo and added, “Thrasher Four to all Thrasher units—you get any argument from villagers while you’re shopping, boys… just refer them to my brother.”

It was past midday now. The sun had enough westering to wink from the crucifix against the soldier’s armor— and from the pistol in the civilian’s right hand.

Editor's Introduction to:

ALLAMAGOOSA
by Eric Frank Russell

When I first read this story I was not long out of military service. I have remembered it ever since, and knew that it had to be in this collection.

All good officers detest paperwork. The best know that it’s necessary. That doesn’t make them happier about it.

There is another class of officer which thrives on paper work. These seem to believe that if all the forms are properly filled out, it doesn’t matter who wins the battles.

These two kinds of officers are natural enemies.

Each service has traditions, and among them are the means for dealing with official bat puckey. Headquarters knows of these traditions, and bureaucrats are perpetually closing loopholes. This is supposed to keep the serving officers on their toes.

The tension is generally healthy, but sometimes things get out of hand.

ALLAMAGOOSA
by Eric Frank Russell

It was a long time since the Bustler had been so silent. She lay in the Sirian spaceport, her tubes cold, her shell particle-scarred, her air that of a long-distance runner exhausted at the end of a marathon. There was good reason for this: she had returned from a lengthy trip by no means devoid of troubles.

Now, in port, well-deserved rest had been gained if only temporarily. Peace, sweet peace. No more bothers, no more crises, no more major upsets, no more dire predicaments such as crop up in free flight at least twice a day. Just peace.

Hah!

Captain McNaught reposed in his cabin, feet up on desk, and enjoyed the relaxation to the utmost. The engines were dead, their hellish pounding absent for the first time in months. Out there in the big city four hundred of his crew were making whoopee under a brilliant sun. This evening, when First Officer Gregory returned to take charge, he was going to go into the fragrant twilight and make the rounds of neon-lit civilization.

That was the beauty of making landfall at long last. Men could give way to themselves, blow off surplus steam, each according to his fashion. No duties, no worries, no dangers, no responsibilities in spaceport. A haven of safety and comfort for tired rovers.

Again, hah!

Burman, the chief radio officer, entered the cabin. He was one of the half-dozen remaining on duty and bore the expression of a man who can think of twenty better things to do.

“Relayed signal just come in, sir.” Handing the paper across, he waited for the other to look at it and perhaps dictate a reply.

Taking the sheet, McNaught removed the feet from his desk, sat erect and read the message aloud.

Terran Headquarters to BUSTLER. Remain Siriport pending further orders. Rear Admiral Vane W. Cassidy due there seventeenth. Feldman. Navy Op. Command. Sirisec.

He looked up, all happiness gone from his leathery features. “Oh, Lord!” he groaned.

“Something wrong?” asked Burman, vaguely alarmed.

McNaught pointed at three thin books on his desk. “The middle one. Page twenty.”

Leafing through it, Burman found an item that said:

Vane W. Cassidy, R-Ad. Head Inspector Ships and Stores.

Burman swallowed hard. “Does that mean—?”

“Yes, it does,” said McNaught without pleasure. “Back to training college and all its rigmarole. Paint and soap, spit and polish.” He put on an officious expression, adopted a voice to match it. “Captain, you have only seven ninety-nine emergency rations. Your allocation is eight hundred. Nothing in your logbook accounts for the missing one. Where is it? What happened to it? How is it that one of the men’s kits lacks an officially issued pair of suspenders? Did you report his loss?”

“Why does he pick on us?” asked Burman, appalled. “He’s never chivvied us before.”

“That’s why,” informed McNaught, scowling at the wall. “It’s our turn to be stretched across the barrel.” His gaze found the calendar. “We have three days—and we’ll need ’em! Tell Second Officer Pike to come here at once.”

Burman departed gloomily. In short time Pike entered. His face reaffirmed the old adage that bad news travels fast.

“Make out an indent,” ordered McNaught, “for one hundred gallons of plastic paint, Navy-gray, approved quality. Make out another for thirty gallons of interior white enamel. Take them to spaceport stores right away. Tell them to deliver by six this evening along with our correct issue of brushes and sprayers. Grab up any cleaning material that’s going for free.”

“The men won’t like this,” remarked Pike, feebly.

“They’re going to love it,” McNaught asserted. “A bright and shiny ship, all spic and span, is good for morale. It says so in that book. Get moving and put those indents in. When you come back, find the stores and equipment sheets and bring them here. We’ve got to check stocks before Cassidy arrives. Once he’s here we’ll have no chance to make up shortages or smuggle out any extra items we happened to find in our hands.”

“Very well, sir.” Pike went out wearing the same expression as Burman.

Lying back in his chair McNaught muttered to himself. There was a feeling in his bones that something was sure to cause a last-minute ruckus. A shortage of any item would be serious enough unless covered by a previous report. A surplus would be bad, very bad. The former implied carelessness or misfortune. The latter suggested barefaced theft of government property in circumstances condoned by the commander.

For instance, there was that recent case of Williams of the heavy cruiser Swift. He’d heard of it over the spacevine when out around Bootes. Williams had been found in unwitting command of eleven reels of electric-fence wire when his official issue was ten. It had taken a court-martial to decide that the extra reel—which had formidable barter value on a certain planet—had not been stolen from space stores or, in sailor jargon, “teleportated aboard.” But Williams had been reprimanded. And that did not help promotion.

He was still rumbling discontentedly when Pike returned bearing a folder of foolscap sheets.

“Going to start right away, sir?”

“We’ll have to.” He heaved himself erect, mentally bidding goodbye to time off and a taste of the bright lights. “It’ll take long enough to work right through from bow to tail. I’ll leave the men’s kit inspection to the last.”

Marching out of the cabin, he set forth toward the bow, Pike following with broody reluctance.

As they passed the open main lock Peaslake observed them, bounded eagerly up the gangway and joined behind. A pukka member of the crew, he was a large dog whose ancestors had been more enthusiastic than selective. He wore with pride a big collar inscribed: Peaslake— Property of S.S. Bustler. His chief duties, ably performed, were to keep alien rodents off the ship, and, on rare occasions, smell out dangers not visible to human eyes.

The three paraded forward, McNaught and Pike in the manner of men grimly sacrificing pleasure for the sake of duty, Peaslake with the panting willingness of one ready for any new game no matter what.

Reaching the bow cabin, McNaught dumped himself in the pilot’s seat, took the folder from the other. “You know this stuff better than me—the chart room is where I shine. So I’ll read them out while you look them over.” He opened the folder, started on the first page. “Kl. Beam compass, type D, one of.”

“Check,” said Pike.

“K2. Distance and direction indicator, electronic, type JJ, one of.”

“Check.”

Peaslake planted his head in McNaught’s lap, blinked soulfully and whined. He was beginning to get the others’ viewpoint. This tedious itemizing and checking was a hell of a game. McNaught consolingly lowered a hand and played with Peaslake’s ears while he plowed his way down the list.

“K187. Foam rubber cushions, pilot and co-pilot, one pair.”

“Check”

By the time First Officer Gregory appeared they had reached the tiny intercom cubby and poked around it in semi-darkness. Peaslake had long departed in disgust.

“M24. Spare minispeakers, three-inch, type T2, one set of six.”

“Check.”

Looking in, Gregory popped his eyes and said, “What the devil is going on?”

“Major inspection due soon.” McNaught glanced at his watch. “Go see if stores has delivered a load and if not why not. Then you’d better give me a hand and let Pike take a few hours off.”

“Does this mean land leave is cancelled?”

“You bet it does—until after Hizonner had been and gone.” He glanced at Pike. “When you get into the city search around and send back any of the crew you can find. No arguments or excuses. It’s an order.”

Pike registered unhappiness. Gregory glowered at him, went away, came back and said, “Stores will have the stuff here in twenty minutes’ time.” With bad grace he watched Pike depart.

“M47. Intercom cable, woven-wire protected, three drums.”

“Check,” said Gregory, mentally kicking himself for returning at the wrong time.

The task continued until late in the evening, was resumed early next morning. By that time three-quarters of the men were hard at work inside and outside the vessel, doing their jobs as though sentenced to them for crimes, contemplated but not yet committed.

Moving around the ship’s corridors and catwalks had to be done crab-fashion, with a nervous sideways edging. Once again it was being demonstrated that the Terran lifeform suffers from ye fear of wette paynt. The first smearer would have ten years willed off his unfortunate life.

It was in these conditions, in mid-afternoon of the second day, that McNaught’s bones proved their feelings had been prophetic. He recited the ninth page while Jean Blanchard confirmed the presence and actual existence of all items enumerated. Two-thirds of the way down they hit the rocks, metaphorically speaking, and commenced to sink fast.

McNaught said boredly, “V1097. Drinking bowl, enamel, one of.”

“Is zis,” said Blanchard, tapping it.

“V1098. Offog, one.”

“Quoi?” asked Blanchard, staring.

“V1098. Offog, one,” repeated McNaught. “Well, why are you looking thunderstruck? This is the ship’s galley. You’re the head cook. You know what’s supposed to be in the galley, don’t you? Where’s this offog?”

“Never hear of heem,” stated Blanchard, flatly.

“You must have done. It’s on this equipment sheet in plain, clear type. Offog, one, it says. It was here when we were fitted out four years ago. We checked it ourselves and signed for it.”

“I signed for nossings called offog,” Blanchard denied. “In zee cuisine zere is no such sing.”

“Look!” McNaught scowled and showed him the sheet.

Blanchard looked and sniffed disdainfully. “I have here zee electronic oven, one of. I have jacketed boilers, graduated capacities, one set. I have bain marie pans, seex of. But no offog. Never heard of heem. I do not know of heem.” He spread his hands and shrugged.

“There’s got to be,” McNaught insisted. “What’s more, when Cassidy arrives there’ll be hell to pay if there isn’t.”

“You find heem,” Blanchard suggested.

“You got a certificate from the International Hotels School of Cookery. You got a certificate from the Cordon Bleu College of Cuisine. You got a certificate with three credits from the Space Navy Feeding Center,” McNaught pointed out. “All that—and you don’t know what an offog is.”

“Nom d’un chien!” ejaculated Blanchard, waving his arms around. “I tell you ten t’ousand time zere is no offog. Zere never was an offog. Escoffier heemself could not find zee offog to vich zere is none. Am I a magician perhaps?”

“It’s part of the culinary equipment,” McNaught maintained. “It must be because it’s on page nine. And page nine means its proper home is in the galley, care of the head cook.”

“Like hail it does,” Blanchard retorted. He pointed at a metal box on the wall. “Intercom booster. Is zat mine?”

McNaught thought it over, conceded, “No, it’s Bufman’s. His stuff rambles all over the ship.”

“Zen ask heem for zis bloody offog,” said Blanchard, triumphantly.

“I will. If it’s not yours it must be his. Let’s finish this checking first. If I’m not systematic and thorough Cassidy will jerk down my pants along with my insignia.” His eyes sought the list. “V1099. Inscribed collar, leather, brass studded, dog, for the use of. No need to look for that.

I saw it myself five minutes ago.” He ticked the item, continued, “VI100. Sleeping basket, woven reed, one of.”

“Is zis,” said Blanchard, kicking it into a corner.

“V1101. Cushion, foam rubber, to fit sleeping basket, one of.”

“Half of,” Blanchard contradicted. “In four years he have chewed away other half,”

“Maybe Cassidy will let us indent for a new one. It doesn’t matter. We’re okay so long as we can produce the half we’ve got.” McNaught stood up, closed the folder. “That’s the lot for here, I’ll go see Burman about this missing item.”

Burman switched off a UHF receiver, removed his earplugs and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“In the galley we’re short an offog,” explained McNaught. “Where is it?”

“Why ask me? The galley is Blanchard’s bailiwick.”

“Not entirely. A lot of your cables run through it. You’ve two terminal boxes in there, also an automatic switch and an intercom booster. Where’s the offog?”

“Never heard of it,” said Burman, baffled.

McNaught shouted, “Don’t tell me that! I’m already fed up hearing Blanchard saying it. Four years back we had an offog. It says so here. This is our copy of what we checked and signed for. It says we signed for an offog. Therefore we must have one. It’s got to be found before Cassidy gets here.”

“Sorry, sir,” sympathized Burman. “I can’t help you.”

“You can think again,” advised McNaught. “Up in the bow there’s a direction and distance indicator. What do you call it?”

“A didin,” said Burman, mystified.

“And,” McNaught went on, pointed at the pulse transmitter, “what do you call that?”

“The opper-popper.”

“Baby names, see? Didin and opper-popper. Now rack your brains and remember what you called an offog four years ago.”

“Nothing,” asserted Burman, “has ever been called an offog to my knowledge.”

“Then,” demanded McNaught, “why the blue blazes did we sign for one?”

“I didn’t sign for anything. You did all the signing.”

“While you and others did the checking. Four years ago, presumably in the galley, I said, ‘Offog, one,’ and either you or Blanchard pointed to it and said, ‘Check.’ I took somebody’s word for it. I have to take other specialists’ words for it. I am an expert navigator, familiar with all the latest navigational gadgets but not with other stuff. So I’m compelled to rely on people who know what an offog is—or ought to.”

Burman had a bright thought. “All kinds of oddments were dumped in the main lock, the corridors and the galley when we were fitted out. We had to sort through a deal of stuff and stash it where it properly belonged, remember? This offog thing might be anywhere today. It isn’t necessarily my responsibility or Blanchard’s.”

“I’ll see what the other officers say,” agreed McNaught, conceding the point. “Gregory, Worth, Sanderson, or one of the others may be coddling the item. Wherever it is, it’s got to be found.”

He went out. Burman pulled a face, inserted his earplugs, resumed fiddling with his apparatus. An hour later McNaught came back wearing a scowl.

“Positively,” he announced with ire, “there is no such thing on the ship. Nobody knows of it. Nobody can so much as guess at it.”

“Cross it off and report it lost,” Burman suggested.

“What, when we’re hard aground? You know as well as I do that loss and damage must be signaled at time of occurrence. If I tell Cassidy the offog went west in space, he’ll want to know when, where, how and why it wasn’t signaled. There’ll be a real ruckus if the contraption happens to be valued at half a million credits. I can’t dismiss it with an airy wave of the hand.”

“What’s the answer then?” inquired Burman, innocently ambling straight into the trap.

“There’s one and only one,” McNaught announced. “You will manufacture an offog.”

“Who? Me?” said Burman, twitching his scalp.

“You and no other. I’m fairly sure the thing is your pigeon, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s typical of the baby names used for your kind of stuff. I’ll bet a month’s pay that an offog is some sort of scientific allamagoosa. Something to do with fog, perhaps. Maybe a blind-approach gadget.”

“The blind-approach transceiver is called ‘the fumbly’” Burman informed.

“There you are!” said McNaught as if that clinched it. “So you will make an offog. It will be completed by six tomorrow evening and ready for my inspection then. It had better be convincing, in fact pleasing.”

Burman stood up, let his hands dangle, and said in hoarse tones, “How the devil can I make an offog when I don’t even know what it is?”

“Neither does Cassidy know,” McNaught pointed out, leering at him. “He’s more of a quantity surveyor than anything else. As such he counts things, looks at things, certifies that they exist, accepts advice on whether they are functionally satisfactory or worn out. All we need do is concoct an imposing allamagoosa and tell him it’s the offog.”

“Holy Moses!” said Burman, fervently.

“Let us not rely on the dubious assistance of Biblical characters,” McNaught reproved. “Let us use the brains that God has given us. Get a grip on your soldering iron and make a topnotch offog by six tomorrow evening. That’s an order!”

He departed, satisfied with this solution. Behind him, Burman gloomed at the wall and licked his lips once, twice.

Rear Admiral Vane W. Cassidy arrived dead on time. He was a short, paunchy character with a florid complexion and eyes like those of a long-dead fish. His gait was an important strut.

“Ah, Captain, I trust that you have everything ship-shape.”

“Everything usually is,” assured McNaught, glibly. “I see to that.”

“Good!” approved Cassidy. “I like a commander who takes his responsibilities seriously. Much as I regret saying so, there are a few who do not.” He marched through the main lock, his cod eyes taking note of the fresh white enamel. “Where do you prefer to start, bow or tail?”

“My equipment sheets run from bow backward. We may as well deal with them the way they’re set.”

“Very well.” He trotted officiously toward the nose, paused on the way to pat Peaslake and examine his collar. “Well cared for, I see. Has the animal proved useful?”

“He saved five lives on Mardia by barking a warning.”

“The details have been entered in your log, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir. The log is in the chart room awaiting your inspection.”

“We’ll get to it in due time.” Reaching the bow cabin, Cassidy took a seat, accepted the folder from NcNaught, started off at businesslike pace. “K1. Beam compass, type D, one of.”

“This is it, sir,” said McNaught, showing him.

“Still working properly?”

“Yes, sir.”

They carried on, reached the intercom cubby, the computer room, a succession of other places back to the galley. Here, Blanchard posed in freshly laundered white clothes and eyed the newcomer warily.

“V.147. Electronic oven, one of.”

“Is zis,” said Blanchard, pointing with disdain.

“Satisfactory?” inquired Cassidy, giving him the fishy eye.

“Not beeg enough,” declared Blanchard. He encompassed the entire galley with an expressive gesture. “Nossings beeg enough. Place too small. Everysings too small. I am chef de cuisine an’ she is a cuisine like an attic.”

“This is a warship, not a luxury liner,” Cassidy snapped. He frowned at the equipment sheet. “V.148. Timing device, electronic oven, attachment thereto, one of.”

“Is zis,” spat Blanchard, ready to sling it through the nearest port if Cassidy would first donate the two pins.

Working his way down the sheet, Cassidy got nearer and nearer while nervous tension built up. Then he reached the critical point and said, “V1098. Offog, one.”

“Morbleau!” said Blanchard, shooting sparks from his eyes. “I have say before an’ I say again, zere never was—

“The offog is in the radio room, sir,” McNaught chipped in hurriedly.

“Indeed?” Cassidy took another look at the sheet. “Then why is it recorded along with galley equipment?”

“It was placed in the galley at time of fitting out, sir. It’s one of those portable instruments left to us to fix up where most suitable.”

“H’m! Then it should have been transferred to the radio room list. Why didn’t you transfer it?”

“I thought it better to wait for your authority to do so, sir.”

The fish eyes registered gratification. “Yes, that is quite proper of you, Captain. I will transfer it now.” He crossed the item from sheet nine, initialed it, entered it on sheet sixteen, initialed that. “V1099. Inscribed collar, leather… oh, yes, I’ve seen that. The dog was wearing it.”

He ticked it. An hour later he strutted into the radio room. Burman stood up, squared his shoulders but could not keep his feet or hands from fidgeting. His eyes protruded slightly and kept straying toward McNaught in silent appeal. He was like a man wearing a porcupine in his breeches.

“V1098. Offog, one,” said Cassidy in his usual tone of brooking no nonsense.

Moving with the jerkiness of a slightly uncoordinated robot, Burman pawed a small box fronted with dials, switches and colored lights. It looked like a radio ham’s idea of a fruit machine. He knocked down a couple of switches. The lights came on, played around in intriguing combinations.

“This is it, sir,” he informed with difficulty.

“Ah!” Cassidy left his chair and moved across for a closer look. “I don’t recall having seen this item before. But there are so many different models of the same things. Is it still operating efficiently?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s one of the most useful things in the ship,” contributed McNaught, for good measure.

“What does it do?” inquired Cassidy, inviting Burman to cast a pearl of wisdom before him.

Burman paled.

Hastily, McNaught said, “A full explanation would be rather involved and technical but, to put it as simply as possible, it enables us to strike a balance between opposing gravitational fields. Variations in lights indicate the extent and degree of imbalance at any given time.”

“It’s a clever idea,” added Burman, made suddenly reckless by this news, “based upon Finagle’s Constant.”

“I see,” said Cassidy, not seeing at all. He resumed his seat, ticked the offog and carried on. “Z44. Switchboard, automatic, forty-line intercom, one of.”

“Here it is, sir.”

Cassidy glanced at it, returned his gaze to the sheet. The others used his momentary distraction to mop perspiration from their foreheads.

Victory had been gained.

All was well.

For the third time, hah!

Rear Admiral Vane W. Cassidy departed pleased and complimentary. Within one hour the crew bolted to town. McNaught took turns with Gregory at enjoying the gay lights. For the next five days all was peace and pleasure.

On the sixth day Burman brought in a signal, dumped it upon McNaught’s desk and waited for the reaction. He had an air of gratification, the pleasure of one whose virtue is about to be rewarded.

Terran Headquarters to BUSTLER. Return here immediately for overhaul and refitting. Improved powerplant to be installed. Feldman. Navy Op. Command. Sirisec.

“Back to Terra,” commented McNaught, happily. “And an overhaul will mean at least one month’s leave.” He eyed Burman. “Tell all officers on duty to go to town at once and order the crew aboard. The men will come running when they know why.”

“Yes, sir,” said Burman, grinning.

Everyone was still grinning two weeks later, when the Siriport had receded far behind and Sol had grown to a vague speck in the sparkling mist of the bow starfield. Eleven weeks still to go, but it was worth it. Back to Terra. Hurrah!

In the captain’s cabin the grins abruptly vanished one evening when Burman suddenly developed the willies.

He marched in, chewed his bottom lip while waiting for McNaught to finish writing in the log.

Finally, McNaught pushed the book away, glanced up, frowned. “What’s the matter with you? Got a bellyache or something?”

“No, sir. I’ve been thinking.”

“Does it hurt that much?”

“I’ve been thinking,” persisted Burman in funereal tones. “We’re going back for overhaul. You know what that means. We’ll walk off the ship and a horde of experts will walk onto it.” He stared tragically at the other. “Experts, I said.”

“Naturally they’ll be experts,” McNaught agreed. “Equipment cannot be tested and brought up to scratch by a bunch of dopes.”

“It will required more than a mere expert to bring the offog up to scratch,” Burman pointed out. “It’ll need a genius.”

McNaught rocked back, swapped expressions like changing masks. “Jumping Judas! I’d forgotten all about that thing. When we get to Terra we won’t blind those boys with science.”

“No, sir, we won’t,” endorsed Burman. He did not add any more but his face shouted aloud, “You got me into this. You get me out of it.” He waited quite a time while McNaught did some intense thinking, then prompted, “What do you suggest, sir?”

Slowly the satisfied smile returned to McNaught’s features as he answered, “Break up the contraption and feed it into the disintegrator.”

“That doesn’t solve the problem,” said Burman. “We’ll still be short an offog.”

“No we won’t. Because I’m going to signal its loss owing to the hazards of space service.” He closed one eye in an emphatic wink. “We’re in free flight right now.” He reached for a message pad and scribbled on it while Burman stood by, vastly relieved.

BUSTLER to Terran Headquarters. Item V1098, Offog, one, came apart under gravitational stress while passing through twin-sun field Hector Major-Minor. Material used as fuel. McNaught, Commander. BUSTLER.

Burman took it to the radio room and beamed it Earthward. All was peace and progress for another two days. The next time he went to the captain’s cabin he went running.

“General call, sir,” he announced breathlessly and thrust the message into the other’s hands.

Terran Headquarters for relay all sectors. Urgent and Important. All ships grounded forthwith. Vessels in fight under official orders will make for nearest spaceport pending further instructions. Welling. Alarm and Rescue Command. Terra.

“Something’s gone bust,” commented McNaught, undisturbed. He traipsed to the chartroom, Burman following. Consulting the charts, he dialed the intercom phone, got Pike in the bow and ordered, “There’s a panic. All ships grounded. We’ve got to make for Zaxted port, about three days’ run away. Change course at once. Starboard seventeen degrees, declination ten.” Then he cut off, griped, “Bang goes that sweet month on Terra. I never did like Zaxted, either. It stinks. The crew will feel murderous about this and I don’t blame them.”

“What d’you think has happened, sir?” asked Burman.

“Heaven alone knows. The last general call was seven years ago, when the Starider exploded halfway along the Mars run. They grounded every ship in existence while they investigated the cause.” He rubbed his chin, pondered, went on, “And the call before that one was when the entire crew of the Blowgun went nuts. Whatever it is this time, you can bet it’s serious.”

“It wouldn’t be the start of a space war?”

“Against whom?” McNaught made a gesture of contempt. “Nobody has the ships with which to oppose us. No, it’s something technical. We’ll learn of it eventually. They’ll tell us before we reach Zaxted or soon afterward.”

They did tell him. Within six hours. Burman rushed in with face full of horror.

“What’s eating you now?” demanded McNaught, staring at him.

“The offog,” stuttered Burman. He made motions as though brushing off invisible spiders.

“What of it?”

“It’s a typographical error. In your copy it should read ‘off. dog.’”

“Off. dog?” echoed McNaught, making it sound like foul language.

“See for yourself.” Dumping the signal on the desk, Burman bolted out, left the door swinging. McNaught scowled after him, picked up the message.

Terran Headquarters to BUSTLER. Your report V1098, ship’s official dog Peaslake. Detail fully circumstances and manner in which animal came apart under gravitational stress. Cross-examine crew and signal all coincidental symptoms experienced by them. Urgent and Important. Welling. Alarm and Rescue Command. Terra.

In the privacy of his cabin McNaught commenced to eat his nails. Every now and again he went a little cross-eyed as he examined them for nearness to the flesh.

Editor's Introduction to:

PEACEKEEPER
by J. E. Pournelle, Ph.D.

In the introduction to this book, I promised to give you the results of Project 75, and to explain the basic principles of the strategic dilemma.

There’s nothing pleasant about the subject of nuclear war, and many prefer to leave it to the experts. They may be making a severe mistake when they do that. The experts—at least a group of “defense intellectuals” calling themselves experts—have brought us to the present situation.

In plain language, here is the strategic dilemma.

PEACEKEEPER
by J. E. Pournelle, Ph.D.

The United States currently faces the most serious threat to our national existence since the Civil War. The threat has long been foreseen, although the political authorities are just getting around to doing something about it.

The issues, while complex, aren’t that hard to understand. The only reason it looks difficult is because of the strange terminology. The trouble is, there’s not enough information, so experts can legitimately disagree. When the experts can’t agree, but the problem has to be solved anyway, politicians get in the act. Some of them don’t bother to learn even the facts that the experts do agree on; being used to “soft sciences” like sociology in which there is no “right” answer, they think strategic problems work that way too.

If our current leaders can’t cope with difficult problems, then it’s time we hired some who can. There must be a few citizens who are willing to put national survival ahead of politics. Maybe it’s time we elected them to Congress, before the current batch kills off the lot of us.

First principles: when defensive systems are stronger than offensive ones, the situation is stable. When the offense dominates, it isn’t. Example: if it takes ten attacking missiles to reliably knock out one enemy bird, no one is going to be anxious to start the war. Why should they? If the attacking side launches everything, it disarms itself, leaving the other side with fire in its eye and 90% of its force intact.

On the other hand, if one attacking bird has a high probability of knocking off ten of the other side’s missiles, the situation is highly unstable. Each side has an incentive to launch, because the one who strikes first has a good chance at a clean win. Thus any tense situation can “escalate” rapidly, as President and Chairman think to themselves, “He may not want to attack, but he knows that if I attack first I’ll win, and he’s not going to allow that.” It’s then only a question of time before someone reaches for the Gold Phone.

Unfortunately, a long time ago a Secretary of Defense named McNamara adopted a national policy known as “Assured Destruction”. This doctrine says that you’ll never have to fight a war; you just make sure that if the other guy kills you, you can kill him back. This later got refined and was called “Mutual Assured Destruction”, more properly known as MAD. The MAD doctrine says that defensive systems are destabilizing.

That logic goes as follows: as long as war is too destructive to fight, nobody will start a war. Therefore, anything that will decrease the destruction is a step toward war.

Under this doctrine, Civil Defense and fallout shelters were considered an act of aggression by the United States against the Soviet Union: by trying to protect our citizens, we’d be making it more possible to go to war with the Soviets. This argument was once very popular among sophisticated people on university campuses.

One result was that we lost a splendid opportunity to construct a nationwide chain of fallout shelters at low cost. Civil Defense structures were originally planned as part of the Interstate Highway System. There were to be fallout and partial blast shelters under most of the approach ramps. This would have been easy to do as part of the construction, and a few model shelters were actually built as a demonstration.

Then the full logic of MAD was accepted, and the project was abandoned. After pouring all the concrete for the Interstate System, we currently have fewer shelter spaces than we did in the ’60’s.

To this day a great many “defense intellectuals” either reject active defense, or never think of it.

In 1968, Stefan Possony and I argued for the concept of “Assured Survival” to replace “Assured Destruction” as the strategic doctrine of the US. We argued that it made sense, and that being based on defensive systems, posed a lower threat to both mankind and western civilization. The doctrine was opposed by most “defense intellectuals.” Congress explicitly rejected ballistic missile defenses, and MAD remained the doctrine of the US. Whatever one thinks of the MAD doctrine, though, one thing is clear: if our strategic offensive forces can’t survive, we’ve nothing at all, since we already gave up strategic defenses including civil defense.

Next: what determines system vulnerability, and how can you tell what will happen if a nuclear war starts? After all, nobody ever fought one before.

First, you can’t know. Not for certain, and indeed one of the best ways to keep the missiles in their silos is to increase the uncertainty; generals and marshals just hate it when they have to gamble without a reasonable estimate of what’s likely to happen. However, you can make some calculations, and if you have enough overkill capability you can have fairly high confidence in your predictions.

The United States bases its intercontinental strategic offensive forces, the SOF, on three independent branches, which we called the “Triad”. Each leg of the Triad is supposed to be independent of the other two, meaning that whatever can kill one leg ought to be able to knock out either of the other two. The Triad is composed of manned bombers, submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Prior to the ICBM leg we had Snark, an air-breathing pilotless aircraft capable of flying intercontinental distances—an early “cruise missile.”

Each leg, then, depends on a different mechanism for survival. The manned bomber is very soft; it can be killed on the ground by nukes landing a long way off. It depends for early survival on warning: unlike the other two legs of the Triad, the manned bombers can be launched at an early stage of alert and still be recalled.

Without warning the manned bomber is a dead duck, but even if it gets warning it still has to penetrate the enemy’s air defenses. Those may be pretty formidable.

We try to get around them with stand-off missiles, and electronic counter measures (ECM), and such like; but whatever we do isn’t going to change the fact that the B-52 was designed in the 40’s and early fifties, with the first aircraft rolled out in 1956. (I helped work on updates to the B-52 as my first aerospace job.) While it’s not strictly true that the planes are older than the pilots who fly them—at least not older than the senior pilots— they’re pretty old. One USAF colonel recently described a B-52 as “a mass of parts flying in loose formation.”

The Soviets have had more than 20 years to design defenses against the B-52, and while Soviet civilian science and engineering may lack something, they’re willing to devote a lot of resources to their military. I wouldn’t care to bet my family’s life on the ability of that grand old girl to get deep into Soviet territory.

Even if the bombers can penetrate, they’re not useful for fighting a nuclear war. You can’t send the bombers to attack Soviet missile bases; there’d be nothing to hit but empty holes by the time a subsonic bomber got to the target.

And that’s what’s wrong with cruise missiles: they can’t be recalled, so they have to be survivable, something not so easy for a soft thing like a pilotless aircraft; they still have to penetrate; and they take quite a while to reach their targets after they’re launched.

Cruise missiles can be an excellent supplement to the strategic force, but they are certainly not a potential leg of the Triad. They are vulnerable to everything that kills airplanes (on the ground or in the air) without the recall advantages of manned aircraft.

The second leg of the Triad is the submarine. Its survival depends entirely on concealment. If you can locate a submarine to within a few miles, it can be killed by an ICBM carrying an H-bomb. Bombardment of the ocean won’t be good for the fish, but the Soviets aren’t much on environmentalism.

Note, by the way, that all the subs in harbor—up to a third of them, sometimes more—are dead the day the war starts. You can be sure that nuclear submarine bases are very high on the enemy’s target priority list. The rest, though, can make it if they can hide.

Unfortunately, the submarine’s concealment isn’t what it used to be. Subs can be located in at least two ways. First, by tracking them from their bases; every submariner can tell you stories about playing tag with the Russkis when they leave Holy Loch.

Worse, though, the oceans aren’t nearly so opaque as we thought. Not long ago we took a look at some radar pictures made from a satellite. “Look at that,” one of the engineers said. “You can see stuff down in the ocean! Deep in the ocean.” And sure enough, using “synthetic aperture” radars, the oceans have become somewhat transparent down to about fifty meters. While the subs can go deeper than that, they can’t launch from deeper than that. Moreover: anything that accidentally—and it was accidental, nobody expected this at all—makes the oceans transparent to fifty meters is unlikely to be limited to that. Now that the principle is known, you can expect satellite surveillance of the oceans to get much better.

Incidentally, as I write this, a Soviet naval surveillance satellite is about to fall. It carried a 100 kilowatt nuclear power plant. The United States has yet to put a ten kilowatt satellite into orbit.

So. The subs are getting more vulnerable. They’ve also got another problem: they’re useful for deterrence, but they’re not so good for fighting a nuclear war. Submarines have to launch their missiles from unpredictable places (by definition; imagine what the KGB would pay to find out where our subs would launch from), and this drastically limits their accuracy. I’ll get back to that when I explain what accuracy means.

That leaves the third leg of the Triad, land-based missiles. These depend for their survival on their basing mode, and that’s the question up for debate. Before we get to that, though, there’s a prior question: do we need land-based missiles at all? Maybe it would be better to put all our birds on subs, or ships, or somewhere like that, where we don’t invite the Soviets to wreck US real estate.

There are two answers to that. First, if you don’t have land-based missiles, you have pretty well given up your warfighting capability. You’ve bet it all on deterrence; that the other guy is rational, and that he sees things the way you hope he sees them.

But does he? Suppose one morning the Soviets knock out our Minutemen installations (not too difficult, as we’ll see in a bit) and many of our subs. They still have quite a few birds left. The Red Army is marching into Germany. The hot line chatters, and the message is pretty simple: “You haven’t really been hurt. Most of your cities are in good shape. Cool it, or we launch the rest of our force.”

At that point it would be useful to have something capable of knocking out the rest of their strategic force.

To have that capability, you need land-based missiles. To be exact, you need MX. MX, and only MX, has both the accuracy and the Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVS, and they’re different from multiple warheads; MIRVS can attack targets much farther apart) that might give some counterforce capability. True, it won’t be a lot of counterforce capability; but it’ll be all we’d have.

But can MX survive?

That depends on the basing concept. Before we get into that, we have to explain vulnerability.

If you attack a target with an ICBM, your “single shot probability of kill” (PKSS) depends on three major factors: attacker’s yield, attacker’s accuracy, and hardness of target.

Yield is the size, in kilotons or megatons, of the attacking warhead. Yield to weight ratios are pretty thoroughly classified, but nobody really doubts that you can pack ten one-megaton warheads onto one big ICBM. Hardness is generally measured in “pounds per square inch overpressure” (PSI), which means how much pressure the target can withstand before it’s made useless.

Accuracy depends on a lot of things. Some of the most important are: weather at launch site; winds over target; gravitational anomalies under the flight path; how good your gyros are; how good your computers are; how good your mathematicians are; and location errors (where are you when you launch, and where is the other guy in relation to you?). We measure accuracy in Circular Probable Error (CEP), which is the size of the circle that half your shots will fall inside.

Given those three factors, we can calculate the PKSS, and given that we can calculate the overall vulnerability of the force. While there are classified refinements, all the numbers you really need have long since been published in the US Government Printing Office’s “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons”. They’ve even been put on a circular slide rule that the RAND Corporation used to sell for about a dollar in the 60’s.

And now, at long last, we can get down to cases. The Minutemen Missile lies in a soil that’s officially hardened to 300 PSI. When we put in Minutemen—the last one was installed in the 60’s—it was no bad guess that the Soviets could throw a megaton with a CEP of about a nautical mile. This gave them a PKSS of about .09, and it would take more than 20 warheads to give better than .9 kill probability. That was obviously a stable situation.

They can up the yield, but it doesn’t help as much as you might think. Going to ten megatons puts the PKSS to about 35%, and it still takes more than five attackers to get a 90% chance of killing one Minuteman; still not a lot to worry about.

Changes in accuracy, on the other hand, are very significant. Cutting the CEP in half (well, to 2700 feet) gives one megaton the same kill probability as ten had for a mile. Cutting CEP to 1000 feet is more drastic yet: now the single shot kill probability of one megaton is above 90%.

If you can get your accuracy to 600 feet CEP, then a 500 kiloton weapon has above 99% kill probability. Now all you need is multiple warheads, and you’re able to knock out more birds than you launched. Clearly this is getting unstable.

In 1964 we figured the Soviets had 6000 foot CEP, and predicted that by 1975 they’d have 600 feet. By 1975 I’d given up my clearances, and I don’t know what they achieved. It doesn’t take clearances to see what must be happening to the error budget.

Item: weather satellites; winds over target are predictable, so you can correct for them. Item: lots of polar-orbiting satellites; by studying them, you can map gravitational anomalies. Item: observation satellites; location errors just aren’t significant any more. Item: the Soviets have been buying gyros, precision lathes, etc, as well as computers. They already had the mathematicians.

They’re not ten feet tall, but if by 1984 they don’t have several warheads per bird, each with 600 foot CEP, they’re pygmies.

Now what can we do about it?

One: it does no good to put MX in Minuteman silos. Well, it does a little good: MX is a better bird. The problem is, you decrease stability, by deploying a force that both makes them nervous and which they can knock out. It can’t be our best bet.

Two: in the 60’s we studied lots and lots of mobile basing schemes: road mobile, rail mobile, off-road mobile, canal and barge mobile, ship mobile, etc. We even looked at artificial ponds, and things that crawled around on the bottom of Lake Michigan. There were a lot of people in favor of mobile systems—then. Now, though, there are satellites, and you know, it’s just damned hard to hide something seventy feet long and weighing 190,000 pounds. (Actually, by the time you add the launcher, it’s more like 200 feet and 500,000 pounds.)

Make it smaller, then. A small mobile missile. Unfortunately, we don’t have one, and it will take both time and money to develop.

Worse, you can’t harden a mobile system very much. Even a “small” ICBM rocket is a pretty big object. Twenty PSI would probably be more than we could achieve. The kill radius of a 50 megaton weapon against a 20 PSI target is very large: area bombardment becomes attractive. You’ve invited the enemy to use hand grenades while you barricade yourself in a room with your family. Not too bright.

Waterborne is not Triad independent, and doesn’t have the warfighting capability we’d like. The scheme for basing MX on five-man subs in shallow water will lose its support when the full realization of synthetic aperture radar sinks in. Putting them on merchant ships, or surface ships of any kind, doesn’t help much, either. And nearly every mobile basing scheme puts nukes out where they have to be protected from terrorists and saboteurs including well-meaning US citizens aroused in protest (and you just know there’ll be plenty of them).

Air-mobile and air-launched were long-term favorites, and I was much for them in the 60’s. The Pentagon’s most recent analysis says we just can’t afford them; it would cost in the order of $150 billion, possibly more.

The “race-track” or “shell game” has been rejected on political and economic grounds. There’s also the security problem. Synthetic aperture radars have seen old watercourses under the Sahara beneath many feet of sand; they can look through a lot of stuff we thought was opaque. There’s also the KGB: want to bet our lives they can’t find out which bunker has the bird?

In fact, every alternative you’ve ever heard of, and a few you haven’t, were analyzed in great detail back in 1964. I know, because I was editor of the final report. I even invented one scheme myself, Citadel, which would put some birds as well as a national command post under a granite mountain. The problem with that one is that the birds will survive, but if they attack the doors, how does it get out after the attack?

Every one of these schemes has holes in it. Every one of them.

However, though there isn’t any absolute safe basing system, you can make the other guy complicate his war plan. The simpler the war plan, the more likely the war; thus you don’t lightly give up any leg of the Triad, especially not now when we’re just seeing new vulnerabilities in the wet leg.

First try the obvious: harden your birds. In 1964 we called it “Superhard,” 5000 PSI basing. Now 5000 PSI isn’t easy to come by. There are severe engineering problems, and it isn’t cheap. Worse, “Superhard” didn’t buy all that much: at 500 foot CEP’s a megaton has a 95% chance of killing “superhard” targets. (A megaton weapon makes a crater 250 feet deep and over a thousand feet in diameter even in hard rock.) Thus putting MX in 5000 PSI silos separated by miles didn’t seem worth the cost.

Suppose, though, there were a way to foul up the other guy’s attack?

The “Dense Pack” scheme came after my time. It makes a lot of sense. We used to worry about “fratricide” among our MIRV’s, meaning that one goes off and kills a bunch of its brothers before they can get to their targets—after all, a re-entering warhead in flight is a lot softer than a missile in a silo, and thus will be killed at much greater distances.

If fratricide is a problem for us, it’ll be a problem for them. If it’s a problem for them, why not increase that problem by spacing the MX emplacements just far enough apart that a hit on one—or halfway between two of them—destroys only one (or none) of our missiles?

There’s no magic in this, but it does complicate hell out of the enemy’s war plan. He not only has to coordinate strikes against air bases, submarines, and missiles (including good old Minuteman); but his attack on the MX Peacekeeper base has to be timed exactly, down to fractions of a millisecond, or else he has to attack our Peacekeeper force one missile at a time.

Any artilleryman knows the problems involved in getting off a precise TOT (all the shells go off over the target at once) for a single battery. Imagine trying it at intercontinental distances. True, the time of detonation can be coordinated. We know how to build clocks a lot more accurate than the ones needed here. (I’m not so sure that given the exact time sequence, there aren’t enough timing uncertainties in the chemical explosive parts of a nuclear weapon to cause some concern, but we can ignore that one.)

The real problem comes with having a hundred or more birds arrive in position all at the same instant. ICBM’s travel thousands of feet per second, and we’re talking about CEP’s in the hundreds of feet. Since they all have to detonate at once, it doesn’t take much error in the launch time to put a lot of them miles away from their targets when it’s time to explode.

If he chooses some other means to defeat dense pack— earth penetrators, for example—he has to build and develop the missiles, which will take a while, and he probably has to test them, and we’ll get some inkling of the tests. There are other clever ways to attack dense pack; but every one of them is complex enough to be a planner’s nightmare.

Meanwhile, what have we lost? If the enemy’s accuracy is nowhere near as good as we thought, and the fratricide argument turns out to be fallacious, then we’ll lose more missiles than we would if we spaced them out. On the other hand, because of his inaccuracy and our superhardening, we’ll have well over half those accurate 10-warhead Peacekeepers left after his best attack.

If we decide on active defenses—General Graham’s Project High Frontier, as an example—it’s a lot easier to defend the corridors to one patch of ground than a lot of installations.

The plain fact is that dispersal is usually a good idea, but it isn’t always; sometimes you’re better off hardening hell out of your fortress and concentrating inside it. (I’m aware of the Maginot Line mentality; I’m also aware of just how valuable, in a different era, fortresses and magazines were.) Just about every honest analyst who takes the trouble to work through the numbers comes away muttering “That’s a goofy sounding scheme, but damned if it doesn’t look like it might work…”

Then there’s another possibility: put MX in the old Minuteman silos, but defend them. This is what’s recommended by Lt. General Daniel O. Graham’s PROJECT HIGH FRONTIER.

Details of High Frontier are available from Project High Frontier, 1010 Vermont Ave. NW #1000, Washington DC 20005, as well as in the Tor Book by General Graham.

Graham rejects the idea of trying to match the Soviets in tanks, guns, ships, men, planes, and missiles. Instead, he says, let’s take a strategic sidestep into space. Use the space environment and our lead in high technology to construct missile defenses. They won’t be perfect, but they won’t need to be: the enemy can’t know how good our defenses are. Thus he can’t be sure of the outcome of his strike.

The Soviet war plan gets complicated as hell.

A lot of highly competent people are convinced Graham’s plan is best. It has been examined by an engineering team headed by Harry Goldie, Vice President of Engineering for The Boeing Company, as well as a number of highly regarded physicists and space scientists. Predictably, Graham’s enemies try to ridicule the concept; one, Professor Tsipis of MIT, says that Graham doesn’t understand the laws of physics. Tsipis, who is part of the MIT Arms Control Project, says that almost everyone who argues in favor of arming the US doesn’t understand the laws of physics.

Unfortunately, the laws of physics not only permit, but practically demand, that space will be an important theatre of war. The US already depends on space for command, control, communications, and intelligence— the famous “C-3 I” factors. Like it or not, war in space has already begun; the only real question is whether or not we will prepare for the decisive battles there.

We live in perilous times. Certainly we would prefer to reduce military expenditures. It’s always more pleasant to consume than to save, and it always hurts when you can’t even save what you don’t consume, but have to “waste” it on something non-productive like defense.

Fortunately, investment in space resources is not inflationary; we can prove that it has always been the best investment the government has ever made. Whether space research pays for itself fifteen times over, as space enthusiasts say, or only twice over, as its critics say, nearly everyone is agreed that it does pay for itself— which is more than you can say for most other parts of the budget.

If we fail to provide for the common defense, it does no good to promote the general welfare.

The strategic problem is damned severe. Defense is costly, and you can’t be sure of what you get for all that money. The only certainty is that you can’t remove the uncertainties. Whatever we do will have flaws; but anyone honestly looking at the problem will conclude we have to do something, and it’s getting damned late.

The stream of technology moves on; we can move with it, or try to swim against it. The one thing we can’t do is stand still.

I can’t say Dense Pack is the best thing to do. I don’t even believe it is; I prefer General Graham’s “bold stroke” approach. However, I can appreciate the risks involved, and that the President might not want to take them.

Of the “conventional” things we could do, Dense Pack makes the most sense, and is most compatible with a shift to strategic defense. We have to go to defense someday. Nothing else leads to a strategy of “Assured Survival” rather than MAD.

I believe our best course is to build MX and fund Graham’s High Frontier defense system. By the time we have MX in production we’ll know whether we need Dense Pack (with all its high expenses; 5000 PSI silos are not cheap), or can rely on space defenses. Meanwhile we’ve bought our children some reasonable insurance.

We’d better do something. The hour is late, and the clouds are gathering.

Books by Jerry Pournelle

FICTION SERIES

CODOMINIUM UNIVERSE

CoDominion

A Spaceship for the King (1973) also appeared as King David's Spaceship (1981)

Falkenberg's Legion

1 Falkenberg's Legion (1990)

2 Prince of Mercenaries (1989)

3 Go Tell the Spartans (1991) with S. M. Stirling

4 Prince of Sparta (1993) with S. M. Stirling

His Truth Goes Marching On (1975)

West of Honor (1976)

Silent Leges (1977)

The Mercenary (1977)

Future History (1980)

Falkenberg's Legions (1990)

The Prince (2002) with S. M. Stirling

Laurie Jo Hansen

1 High Justice (1977) [C]

2 Exiles to Glory (1978)

Moties

1 The Mote in God's Eye (1974) with Larry Niven

2 The Gripping Hand (1993) with Larry Niven also appeared as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (1993)

Reflex (1982) with Larry Niven

War World

1 The Burning Eye (1988) [A]

2 Death's Head Rebellion (1990) [A]

3 Sauron Dominion (1991) [A]

4 Invasion (1994)

5 Codominium: Revolt on War World (1992)

7 Blood Vengeance (1994) with Susan Shwartz and Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove and S. M. Stirling

Prolog (The Burning Eye) (1988)

HEOROT

1 The Legacy of Heorot (1987) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

2 Beowulf's Children (1995) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes also appeared as The Dragons of Heorot (1995)

INFERNO

1 Inferno (1976) with Larry Niven

2 Escape from Hell (2009) with Larry Niven

JANISSARIES

1 Janissaries (1979)

2 Janissaries: Clan and Crown (1982) with Roland J. Green

3 Janissaries III: Storms of Victory (1987)

JUPITER

1 Higher Education (1996) with Charles Sheffield

5 Starswarm (1998)

MAGIC GOES AWAY

Golden Road

1 The Burning City (2000) with Larry Niven

2 Burning Tower (2005) with Larry Niven

PLANET OF THE APES

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1974)

TALES OF KNOWN SPACE

Man-Kzin Wars

2 Man-Kzin Wars II (1989) [A] with Larry Niven and Dean Ing and S. M. Stirling

5 Man-Kzin Wars V (1992) [A] with Larry Niven and S. M. Stirling and Thomas T. Thomas

The Children's Hour (1991) with S. M. Stirling

In the Hall of the Mountain King (1992) with S. M. Stirling

The Houses of the Kzinti (2002) with S. M. Stirling and Dean Ing

NOVELS

Birth of Fire (1976)

Lucifer's Hammer (1977) with Larry Niven

Oath of Fealty (1981) with Larry Niven

Footfall (1985) with Larry Niven

Fallen Angels (1991) with Michael F. Flynn and Larry Niven

OMNIBUS

Fires of Freedom (2009)

ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Far Frontiers

1 Far Frontiers (1985) with Jim Baen

2 Far Frontiers, Volume II/Summer 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

3 Far Frontiers, Volume III/Fall 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

4 Far Frontiers, Volume IV/Winter 1985 (1986) with Jim Baen

5 Far Frontiers, Volume V/Spring 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

6 Far Frontiers, Volume VI/Fall 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

7 Far Frontiers, Volume VII/Winter 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

Imperial Stars

1 The Stars At War (1986) with John F. Carr

2 Republic and Empire (1987) with John F. Carr

3 The Crash of Empire (1989) with John F. Carr

Nebula Awards

16 Nebula Award Stories Sixteen (1982) with John F. Carr

The Endless Frontier

1 The Endless Frontier (1979)

2 The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1982) with John F. Carr

3 Cities in Space (1991) with John F. Carr

4 Life Among the Asteroids (1992) with John F. Carr

There Will Be War

1 There Will Be War (1983) with John F. Carr

2 Men of War (1984)

3 Blood and Iron (1984) with John F. Carr

4 Day of the Tyrant (1985) with John F. Carr

5 Warrior (1986) with John F. Carr

6 Guns of Darkness (1987) with John F. Carr

7 Call to Battle (1988) with John F. Carr

8 Armageddon! (1989) with John F. Carr

9 After Armageddon (1990)

ANTHOLOGIES

2020 Vision (1974)

Black Holes (1978)

The Survival of Freedom (1981) with John F. Carr

The Science Fiction Yearbook (1985) with John F. Carr and Jim Baen

Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042: A Four-Part Invention (1994) with Ben Bova and Frederik Pohl and Charles Sheffield

NONFICTION

That Buck Rogers Stuff (1977)

A Step Farther Out (1979)

Mutual Assured Survival (1984) with Dean Ing

The User's Guide to Small Computers (1984)

Adventures in Microland (1985)

NON-FICTION

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

SCIENCE FICTION

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

The Stars Came Back by Rolf Nelson

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

FANTASY

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Gladiator's Song by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

CASTALIA CLASSICS

The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

AUDIOBOOKS

A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

TRANSLATIONS

Särjetty taika

QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravedad Mata

Una Estrella Brillante para Guiarlos

QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal

Uma Magia Perdida

Mantra yang Rusak

La Moneta dal Mercenario

I Ragazzoni non Piangono

QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти

QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand

Grosse Jungs weinen nicht

New Release Newsletter

The Castalia House New Release newsletter is sent out to subscribers several days before a new book is officially released. Subscribers who purchase the book in the specified period after the newsletter is sent out will receive either a) a free book that is offered as a bonus with the new release, or b) their choice of one of several free choices that are on offer as a bonus.

We do not spam our subscribers’ email addresses nor do we sell them to anyone. We average about one new release per month.

Click here to subscribe to the Castalia House New Release newsletter or visit castaliahouse.com and enter your email address in the right sidebar, then click “Subscribe”.

Notes

The Technological War

1. Since we wrote this in 1968-69, the Soviets have invaded Czechoslovakia to consolidate the Empire’s power there; invaded Afghanistan; placed tens of divisions on the Chinese border; interfered in the Middle East; used Cuban mercenaries to destabilize a great part of Africa; and induced the Communist regime in Poland to enslave its own working class. Is further evidence of Soviet aggressive tendencies needed?

2. Robert Strausz-Hupe et al, Protracted Conflict (New York: Harper 1969); Stefan T. Possony, A Century of Conflict, 5th ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1969).

3. We define as technological base the sum total of resources needed to produce and constantly modernize the tools of war and peace. Those resources include scientists, inventors, engineers, laboratories, laboratory equipment, funds, information, incentives, etc., as well as industry and the economy as a whole, which we do not discuss in this book.

4. The theory is essentially that of Lewis Richardson, who made up the elaborate differential equations to try to demonstrate the mathematical relationship between the arms expenditures of nations and international blocs, and found a reasonable fit in the single case of the Pre-World War I Entente and Alliance. No empirical confirmation of the Richardson theory has been found, and the specialized assumptions required to make the World War I history fit the theory leave the entire effort in a questionable state. Richardson’s theory is presented in L.F. Richardson, Arms and Insecurity (Pittsburgh, Boxwood Press, 1960). His most vigorous contemporary champion is Anatol Rappaport, in Fights, Games, and Debates (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960).

The results of one unsuccessful attempt to find a modern instance of a Richardson arms race are reported in Pournelle, Stability and National Security (U.S. Air Force, 1969). We have found that in the nuclear era, expenditures on weapons simply do not fit the Richardson equations.

5. In common engineering parlance, an increase by an order of magnitude is approximately a tenfold increase. Astronomers, be wary.

6. We would, of course, have not only to invent and develop these bombers but build them in quantity, fly them, train the pilots, etc., and do it all within the time limits of U.S.S.R. deployment.

7. Since this book is intended to be a discussion of principles, not of current specific problems, it may be well in print long after the present war in Vietnam is ended. We venture to predict, however, that for many years after this is written (1970) there will be wars in Asia, including South East Asia and the area formerly known as Indo-China.

8. The authors recall the frustration of Wernher Von Braun and other rocketry experts when the last of the V-2 rockets brought to the United States were used, not for the development of rocket sciences, but as supersonic test beds for aircraft parts to avoid spending the funds required for construction of supersonic wind tunnels. This retarded the development of both missiles and supersonic aircraft, of course.

9. General d’Armee Andre Beaufre, Introduction to Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 22.

10. Demosthenes, First Phillipic to the People of Athens.

Tap number to return to your place in the text.

Editor's Introduction to 'CASTER

1. Accidents are the principal cause of death among young people 15-24 years of age. In 1978, deaths among males 15-24 years of age due to accidents were over 100 per 100,000; the next highest cause was suicide, at 20 per 100,000; and after that comes malignant neoplasms at 7.7. Deaths from all causes among young males were 174 per 100,000.

2. The 1968 Tet Offensive was one of the most disastrous military operations of all time; at its end, the Viet Cong had practically ceased to exist. It is interesting to note that it is still reported as a “victory” for the communists; as indeed it was, for though they had lost on the battlefield, the North Vietnamese had won on the Six O’Clock News. They also eliminated the southern revolutionary forces who might have opposed their absolute rule once the war ended.

3. There were at least as many North Vienamese troops involved in the 1975 invasion of South Vietnam as the United States employed in the Normandy invasion. Over 10,000 supply vehicles were employed; contrast that to Patton’s Red Ball Express employing 5,600 vehicles in 1944, and the scale of North Vietnam’s operations becomes clearer. For a thorough analysis, one cannot do better than read ON STRATEGY, A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, by Col. Harry G. Summers (Presidio Press, 1982).

4. At least we were spared the final absurdity of watching Le Due Tho and Henry Kissinger accepting Nobel Peace Prizes for “ending” the war. At the time the Agreement was signed, there were over 150,000 North Vietnamese Army Troops in South Vietnam, and both parties knew it. North Vietnam never expected to keep the agreement. One wonders whether the New York Times thought they would.

5. In contrast to the US press, which professed alarm and dismay because we were “widening the war” when we began operations in Cambodia, the North Vietnamese never made any secret of the fact that they were fighting the Indochina War, and that Laos and Cambodia had always been part of the theater of combat. Yet, to this day, one hears the insane argument that US actions “provoked”, and thereby caused, the insurgency of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Tap number to return to your place in the text.

There Will Be War
Volume III
edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

First published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. (1983)

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

The stories in this collection are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Editor: Jerry Pournelle
Associate Editor: John F. Carr
Technical Editor, 2015 Edition: Eric Pobirs
Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen
Version 001

Copyright © 1984, 2015 by Jerry Pournelle
All rights reserved

The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

DETERRENT OR DEFENSE? by Jerry Pournelle was written especially for the 1984 edition. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright © 1984 by J. E. Pournelle.

THE SPECTRE GENERAL by Theodore Cogswell was first published in the June 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It is reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright © 1952 by Street and Smith Publications.

THIS EARTH OF HOURS by James Blish was previously published in the June 1959 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Published by arrangement with the author’s estate. Copyright © 1959 by Mercury Press.

007: “IT IS ENOUGH, IVAN. GO HOME!” by Reginald Bretnor first appeared in the October 1983 issue of Survival Tomorrow. It is presented here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1983 by Personal Survival Center.

THE TOOLS OF WAR by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones appeared for the first time in the 1984 edition. Published with the permission of the authors. Copyright © 1984 by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones.

ACT OF MERCY by D. C. Poyer first appeared in Unearth Magazine. Published by permission of the author. Copyright © 1984 by D. C. Poyer.

THE ECONOMICS OF WAR by David Friedman appeared for the first time in the 1984 edition. Published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1984 by David Friedman.

THE MIRACLE-WORKERS by Jack Vance was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in the July 1958 issue. It is presented here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1958 by Street and Smith Publications.

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE by Stefan T. Possony was published for the first time in the 1984 edition. Published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1984 by Stefan T. Possony.

HIDE AND SEEK by Arthur C. Clarke was previously published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949. Reprinted by arrangement with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc. Copyright © 1949 by Street and Smith Publications.

THE MYTH OF A LIBERATION by Doan Van Toai first appeared in the October 21, 1982 issue of The New York Review of Books. This essay appears by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1982 by Doan Van Toai.

PSI-REC: OF SWORD AND SITAR, THE WAR WITHOUT by Peter Dillingham appeared for the first time in the 1984 edition. Copyright © 1984 by Peter Dillingham.

SILENT LEGES by Jerry Pournelle originally appeared in Combat SF edited by Cordon R. Dickson. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright © 1975 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

The editor gratefully acknowledges that research for the non-fiction essays, including “The Defense of Europe” by Stefan Possony, was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation, and The L-5 Society. Responsibility for opinions expressed herein rests solely with the authors.

For the non-commissioned officers of the armed forces of the United States.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Introduction: Deterrent or Defense? by Jerry Pournelle

The Spectre General by Theodore Cogswell

This Earth of Hours by James Blish

007: It Is Enough, Ivan. Go Home! by Reginald Bretnor

The 'Eathen by Rudyard Kipling

The Tools of War by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones

Act of Mercy by D.C. Poyer
The Economics of War by David Friedman, Ph.D
That Day by Rudyard Kipling
The Miracle-Workers by Jack Vance
The Defense of Europe by Stefan T. Possony
Hide and Seek by Arthur C. Clarke
The Myth of a Liberation by Truong Nhu Tang

Psi-Rec: Of Sword and Sitar by Peter Dillingham

Silent Leges by Jerry Pournelle
Afterword by Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. IV
Riding the Red Horse
The History of Strategy
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases

Introduction

DETERRENT OR DEFENSE?

by Jerry Pournelle

Thus be it ever when free men shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation…

–The Star Spangled Banner, Verse 4

Frederick the Great said that “neither the peasants in the fields, nor the burghers in the towns, should know or care when the state was at war.” The U.S. ideal is given in the “military’s verse” to The Star Spangled Banner. Allowing for differences in attitude—in Frederick’s day, his conquests, though less successful than today’s Soviets’, were less berated in rhetoric—both intend that armies defend their nations.

There had always been exceptions, of course. Coastal towns were vulnerable to raids or bombardment from the earliest days of naval war. Even so, defenses were possible: Witness Fort McHenry, where The Star Spangled Banner was written. For the most part, civilian populations were relatively safe until their national army had been defeated.

There grew up conventions, rules and laws of war. Most, like the convention that undefended cities could be declared “open” and thus spared bombardment, were designed to protect the helpless. War might be barbaric, but some elements of civility might be preserved.

The airplane changed that. The British threw away the open city convention for wide area bombardment. Their high-altitude night attacks by Bomber Command had an average miss distance of six miles. RAF bombardiers were told to dump their bombs anywhere they liked; they’d at least kill some Germans. The Luftwaffe retaliated. World War II became a war against the helpless, culminating in Dresden and Cologne and the indiscriminate fire raids on Tokyo.

Even then there was defense. The RAF, Luftwaffe and Imperial Navy set new standards for heroism as they literally placed themselves between their homes and war’s desolation. Bombers got through; but not all got through, and not all went home. Imperfect defense was better than no defense.

Nuclear weapons and the ICBM dealt the final blow to defense. The atom bomb, and later the hydrogen bomb, was so destructive that no more than a handful could devastate a nation’s economy. World War II showed that a few bombers always got through—and there was no defense at all against the ICBM.

For a few years after the Soviets obtained nuclear weapons, the United States continued with the notion of defense. There are still abandoned missile sites around Los Angeles and other cities. Eventually, however, it was decided that the cost was too high and the effect too low. Interceptor aircraft would suffice to defend against conventional bombs; nothing would help against a nuclear attack. For the first time in our history, we admitted that we could not defend ourselves. We adopted a doctrine of pure deterrence.

There always was an element of deterrence in our national policy. To deter someone is to prevent him from acting, through either fear or doubt. If you seek to deter an attacker, one of the best deterrents is good defenses; if the attack is likely to fail, it’s not rational to try it.

Unfortunately, the United States found itself forced to a strategic doctrine of pure deterence at a time when civilian intellectuals dominated strategic thought. Deterrence is a very soft concept. Defenses involve hardware and capabilities. One may have doubts about the adequacy of a defensive system vs. a particular attack, but at least there is an objective event under debate: Can Sea Cat prevent a Mirage aircraft from successfully attacking a ship? Deterrence, however, is a mental event. Only an attacker knows whether or not he has been deterred. The deterrer can only make guesses based on certain assumptions.

One of the assumptions is that deterrence is possible, i.e., that the potential enemy is sufficiently rational; that he knows the consequences of the forbidden action and cares enough to avoid them. You cannot deter the utterly mad or those who no longer care about the future.

Second, deterrence must be public. A secret defensive weapon may be decisive in actual combat; a secret deterrent weapon is utterly useless.

Third, deterrence may be based on pure bluff; alas, far too many cheese-paring officials seized on this aspect as a way to save money. Weapons need not work—indeed, one need not have any weapons at all—so long as the enemy believes you have workable weapons.

There followed any number of brilliant theoretical essays on deterrence. They had subject matters such as “The Rationality of Irrationality.” I recall reading with quiet approval the statement that, “After all, if the other chap is rational and really believes you, then your threat that if he doesn’t give you the last piece of toast, you’ll blow your brains out all over his new suit will work.” All you had to do was convince the other guy you were crazy enough to do it.

We didn’t notice at first, but the defense of Europe became almost exactly analogous to that. In fact, it’s worse. We now tell the Soviet leaders that if they attack Europe, we’ll commit suicide by killing their helpless civilians while sparing their weapons and their leaders.

European defense has now resulted in stationing six U.S. divisions in the path of a hundred Soviet divisions. There is a slim possibility that the U.S. forces in Europe can stop a mobilized Soviet army; it is very unlikely they can do so without employing nuclear weapons. Do we then suppose that the Soviets do not know this? Are they not likely to open the attack by preemptive strikes against our theater nuclear forces? That attack will itself devastate much of Europe.

The Europeans know this, and many therefore oppose introduction of U.S. theater nuclear forces (TNF) to their territory.

It is all made more absurd by opposition to Enhanced Radiation Weapons, sometimes known as “neutron weapons.” These can kill exposed personnel while sparing both buildings and their sheltered inhabitants. Such weapons are not magic, but they would be extremely useful in defending against massed armor armies. When we seek to deploy them, we are told that this is inhuman; that we seek to kill the Europeans while sparing their buildings.

“No incineration without representation,” the European Peace Movement shouts; yet when we seek to bring home our army, we are accused of “isolationist selfishness” by the very governments that seek to prevent our deploying the weapons that might give our armies a chance in a European war.

In fact, the logic of MAD, of Mutual Assured Deterrence, robs us of credibility. We cannot defend Europe without threatening nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union—which is to invite Soviet retaliation against the U.S. We have arrived at a doctrine which, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “is one that exposes the United States to the devastation of her own territory for people who will not run that risk in defense of themselves.”

Deterrence has not yet failed, but the balance of terror is delicate indeed and becomes increasingly more so as the U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces (SOF) grow obsolete and vulnerable.

Deterrence seeks to prevent war; but employing a strategy of pure deterrence pins our hopes not on technology, where we are strong, but on psychology and diplomacy—not fields in which we have had notable past successes.

We’ve gone farther. Mutual Assured Destruction—MAD, the strategic doctrine adopted by McNamara and continued to this day—has rigid logical requirements. Part of the justification for the Interstate Highway System—the largest and most expensive building program in human history—was that under each approach ramp we would build a fall-out shelter. After the system was proposed, we adopted MAD. The logic of MAD—never accepted by the Soviets—states that civil defenses are an act of aggression.

If we protect our citizens, we must believe the Soviets would attack them; if they’re properly deterred, they won’t attack except in response to our attack; therefore we must be planning to attack.

Note also that we must as a matter of public policy believe they are deterred; if we express any doubts, then rationally we must attack first.

On the other hand, pure deterrence promised considerable savings. The incremental costs of building fall-out shelters as part of the Interstate Highway System were not high, but there could be real savings on weapons systems. Since both sides were “like small boys standing in a pool of gasoline,” there would be no need to collect matches. If the Soviets kill us, we’ll kill them back; all we need, then, is enough to kill them with. Strategy was reduced to an engineering problem: If we have the capability to kill enough Russian civilians, all will be well.

Accordingly, the U.S. installed the Minuteman system and quit. Since the Soviets were assumed to be rational, and therefore to think like U.S. university professors turned military theorists, they would understand this unambiguous signal. No one wants to feel inferior in this modern world; therefore the Soviets might build a few more weapons systems than we have; but once they’d caught up, it would be silly for them to go on collecting matches…

The theory was brilliant, but apparently one or another of the assumptions was wrong. When the Soviets “caught up,” they didn’t halt. They didn’t even slow down. They kept four separate assembly lines going three shifts a day, turning out ICBMs as quickly as possible, to the detriment of their civilian economy.

They do it still.

Deterrence certainly hasn’t deterred them from building weapons.

Perhaps, though, this is all to the good? These weapons they build; surely they’re a mere waste of precious resources. There’s nothing they can do with them–

Now understand, there’s no doubt that if the Soviet Union were ruled by Harvard professors, they’d be utterly deterred, not only from attacking the U.S. but also from adventures in Europe and Afghanistan. Alas, there’s some evidence that they’re not.

There’s a second problem with deterrence.

It’s immoral.

Free men standing between their loved homes and the war’s desolation is compatible with Judeo-Christian tradition and the Thomistic doctrine of Just War. Setting fire to the enemy’s women and children isn’t. Yet if we don’t threaten to bum Russian schoolgirls, how can we honor our pledge to Europe? Without credible threats, we are thrown upon the good will of a gang of aged homicidal maniacs who have conclusively proven that they care very little for their own civilians and nothing at all for anyone else’s. Lest you doubt that, closely examine Andropov’s role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

The dilemma is intolerable, and utterly divides the West.

Assured Destruction vs. Assured Survival

In 1969, Stefan T. Possony and I published The Strategy of Technology. We argued strongly for a policy of “Assured Survival” in opposition to the McNamara policy of MAD. Assured Survival was defined as a strategy that sought to ensure the survival of the United States, not merely to assure the destruction of the Soviet Union.

There were many approaches to Assured Survival. One was Civil Defense: If deterrence failed, some of our citizens might yet survive. Another was construction of defensive systems, first to protect our missiles, then to protect our cities. The defenses would not be perfect, but they would at least provide some protection.

Defense is, of course, a form of deterrence. Indeed, without some kind of defense, MAD itself becomes difficult; for MAD requires “invulnerable” second-strike weapons. If the enemy can destroy one’s retaliatory weapons, then deterrence is not mutual.

Weapons may be made “invulnerable” through their basing, or through doctrine. Alas, the experts are agreed: There is no basing scheme that will guarantee the survival of the Strategic Offensive Forces (SOF) past the end of this decade. Survival of the SOF must increasingly depend on active measures.

The threats to the SOF are very real. Our strategic deterrent is based on the Triad principle: three independent kinds of offensive forces. Alas, all three are vulnerable.

The air leg of the triad depends on the B-52: a once glorious airplane, but old, older than most of her crew. The B-52 has been described as “a mass of parts flying in loose formation.”

Adding air-launched cruise missiles helps a little, but not enough; the B-52 plus standoff missiles still must penetrate the Soviet defense systems. Unlike us, the Soviets believe in air defenses, and they have a lot of them.

Cruise missiles are nothing more than pilotless aircraft. They have range limits, and they are vulnerable to air defenses. They must operate in a nuclear environment; unlike the ICBM, they do not rise above the atmosphere but must fly through whatever is left after nuclear detonations. Worse though: They cannot survive a first strike. Whatever the value of cruise missiles, they are soft; they must launch on warning of attack or they will not be launched at all.

The ground leg of the triad is Minuteman. There are 1,000 Minuteman missiles. The location of each is known to inches: It is perfectly legal to buy copies of U.S. Geodetic Survey maps and use surveyors’ transits to mark silo locations on them. Since Soviet missile accuracy is now well below 1,000 feet, the single-shot probability that one of their warheads will kill a Minuteman missile is something like 0.99. They have some 12,000 warheads they can target against the United States.

The wet leg of the triad depends entirely on staying hidden, but the oceans are increasingly less opaque. “Synthetic aperture radar” experiments made the news in 1982: A radar flown on the Shuttle was able to see through the sands of the Sahara and map ancient watercourses. Old irrigation canals in Yucatan, long hidden by dense jungle, were found—and whales were seen some fifty meters below the surface of the oceans.

The Soviets routinely fly naval observation radar satellites with nuclear-powered 100-kilowatt power supplies. We don’t know precisely what they see with them: We have yet to fly a 10-kilowatt power supply for our observation satellites. We do know what we see with our lower power. All three legs of our SOF triad are vulnerable. It is difficult to believe they could survive a sophisticated first strike in the later years of this decade. If we cannot rely on passive measures such as basing, we must turn to active protection. There are two classes of active measures.

One, defensive systems, is here recommended. The alternative is one or another form of offensive protection: preventative war, preemptive strike or launch on early warning.

Launch on warning requires warning systems. There must also be control. In the event of an attack against Washington by submarine-based missiles, the warning time is twelve minutes or less. In the event of a smuggled weapon detonating in, say, the Soviet Embassy, there is no warning to national command at all.

Launch on warning requires, then, a decision mechanism that can function within the fifteen or so minutes that will elapse between confirmation of a massive attack on the missile forces and the detonation of the attacking weapons. Given human frailties, the pressure to computerize this decision process will be very great.

We will be forced toward the world of “War Games”; a silly picture, yet one that held some realities.

A world with both sides poised to launch on warning is not a stable world.

In 1969, Stefan Possony and I tried to convince the incoming administration to adopt Assured Survival. Alas, we failed.

However, there always was considerable opposition to MAD. After the election of 1980, there was another concerted attempt to persuade the White House that Assured Survival is preferable. Many experts—Edward Teller and Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore; Max Hunter and his “Gang of Four,” who made alliance with Senator Wallop; General Daniel O. Graham and Project High Frontier—argued that MAD was bankrupt.

Eventually someone got through. On March 23, 1980, the president made an historic speech.

He said: “I have become more and more deeply convinced that the human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence.”

He proposed that “we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive… What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

“I know that this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it’s reasonable for us to begin this effort… There will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be successes and breakthroughs… but isn’t it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is…

“My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history.”

The response was rapid: A number of Congress creatures giggled “Star Wars” and dubbed the president “Darth Vader.”

However, when The New York Times took a poll, even though its questions were as “neutral” as the Times’s polls usually are, the American people responded to “Star Wars” by saying, eight to three, “Damn right, and about time, too.”

The Treaty of Tarzana

On the weekend of July 29, 1983, we held in Tarzana, California, the third meeting of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy.

The Council is composed of some fifty top scientific, managerial and political leaders of the pro-space movement and aerospace community. One purpose of our meeting was to examine the new policy of Assured Survival and to suggest candidate systems that might be used in this historic endeavor.

We looked at problems as well. They’re formidable. For all that, we concluded something startling: We could have, by 1990, a defensive system sufficient to render it impossible for the Soviet Union to eliminate the U.S. strategic deterrent forces.

True: On that time scale, we still rely on deterrence; but from that moment on, we rely less and less heavily on deterrence and more and more on defense.

The Council proposes an interlocked system of defenses, some based in space, some on the ground. Ballistic non-nuclear “shotgun satellites,” space-based laser battle stations, very powerful ground-based lasers with mirrors in space and nuclear-pumped “pop-up” lasers would combine to meet a variety of threats against the U.S. and our allies. Each system performs one or another task well; in addition, some of these systems can protect each other. None of this is easy or cheap. The problems with defense are formidable. As an example, space-based components are vulnerable, both in peacetime and to wave attacks when the war begins. Vulnerabilities can be overcome. One method is simple: Harden the satellites. The simplest method for hardening is to surround them with mass. An excellent source of mass is green cheese—i.e., lunar materials. The first shovelful of green cheese is terribly expensive, almost as expensive as fifty MX missiles; after that, green cheese gets cheaper, and it’s being used for defense, which harms no one.

We also get experience in space operations and a scientific base on the Moon. The new technologies developed might well pay for the entire defense program: After all, the microcomputer industry was developed in response to the need for on-board computers for Minuteman missiles.

The harder the defense system, the more difficult it is to knock out; ideally, one hardens defensive satellites to the point that it requires a nuclear strike to destroy them. The enemy cannot start a war without taking out the defensive satellites. The result is a great increase in the complexity of any first strike—meaning a great increase in the stability of the balance of terror. In addition, a nuclear attack against our defensive satellites is an unambiguous act of war, greatly increasing our warning times.

All this and more is discussed in The Report of the Citizens’ Advisory Council, which can be obtained for $10.00 from the L-5 Society, 1060 E. Elm St., Tucson, Arizona 85719. Note that the Society sponsors the Council but the Council’s conclusions remain the responsibility of the Council.

The full report contains papers on strategy, economics and diplomacy. It also contains excellent unclassified descriptions of strategic defense systems.

One obstacle to deployment of defensive systems was selecting the system to deploy. A number of strategic experts agreed that we should begin deployment of strategic defenses, but each advocated a favorite system. Because each saw the situation as a zero-sum game in which deployment of one system meant suppression of the others, the different groups tended to speak harshly of each other.

Leading spokespeople for each major group were present at the Council meeting. The following open letter to the president was unanimously endorsed by those present. It represents a remarkable consensus among the most talented and best-informed group I have ever worked with.

Because the meeting was held in Tarzana, its joint statement has become known as “The Treaty of Tarzana.”

30 July 1983

Dear Mr. President:

It has become a common, but erroneous, American dictum that an offense always overwhelms a defense. Yet Stalingrad and the Battle of Britain, to name two examples within memory, proved that a good defense can defeat a vigorous offense. We believe that a stable peace is best assured by a balance of offense and defense; and that even a modestly effective defense can powerfully deter a first strike by any aggressor.

We believe that several systems, both kinetic and directed energy systems, should be developed concurrently for a spectrum of strategic defenses. After years of neglect of strategic defense, we find it imperative that several avenues be pursued concurrently. We must not have a triad of offense and a monad of defense.

While we agree that point defenses by kinetic energy weapons serve an immediate need and should be developed, we believe the nation should vigorously investigate the uses of space for strategic defense.

We believe it is imperative that we first address four candidate systems which provide a significant military capability, i.e., to deny assurance of first-strike success by any aggressor by 1990:

- Multiple satellite using kinetic energy kill.

- Ground-based lasers and mirrors in space.

- Space-based lasers.

- Nuclear explosive-driven beam technologies collectively known as third generation systems.

- Ground-based point defense systems.

We also urge greatly accelerated research on the many other candidate systems, including particle-beam weapons, which offer promise on the longer term.

Implicit in the adoption of our recommendations are the requirements to state openly and unequivocally our intent to adopt a balanced offensive-defensive national strategy and to assess the spectrum of threats and technical risks associated with actual deployment.

Daniel O. Graham, Lt. Gen., USA (Ret.)

Maxwell Hunter, Ph.D.

Francis X. Kane, Ph.D., Col., USAF (Ret.)

Stewart Meyer, Maj. Gen., USA (Ret.)

Dennis A. Reilly, Ph.D.

Lowell W. Wood, Ph.D.

SYSTEMS ASSESSMENT GROUP

CITIZENS’ ADVISORY COUNCIL ON NATIONAL SPACE POLICY

(The report of the Systems Assessment Group was unanimously approved by the entire Council, some fifty experts in military and space technology.)

The systems proposed are not cheap, but defense is not cheap; and even a small war is expensive. What is it worth to save even one American city? And none of these systems threaten the life of a single Russian schoolgirl.

Let the president and Congress know your views; for if we cannot build support for this, offensive systems will eat the budget and we will have another generation living under the balance of terror.

The choice is ours.

Hollywood, California

November, 1983

Editor's Introduction to:

THE SPECTRE GENERAL
by Theodore Cogswell

I first met Ted Cogswell at the Chicago World Science Fiction Convention in 1962. I met the late H. Beam Piper at that same convention. One magnificent night was spent in Robert A. Heinlein’s suite. (In those days, Mr. Heinlein was the only science fiction writer who made enough money to afford a suite.) Beam Piper, Ted Cogswell, Jay Kay Klein, about four others whose names and faces I cannot remember, and I devoured the night by consuming mass quantities of bourbon and singing magnificent old songs.

One of the songs was from the Spanish Civil War. Ted Cogswell taught it to us. He’d been there as a volunteer in the International Brigade.

I met Ted off and on over the years after that. Like many science fiction people, we don’t see each other often, but we developed a friendship that wouldn’t have been much closer if we lived next door to each other.

When I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), I asked Ted to edit the SFWA Forum, which is our “private” official publication. In my judgment he was the best editor Forum ever had; while Ted was editor, the Forum was the first thing one read when it came in the mail. Alas, Ted has an, uh, interesting sense of humor, and absolutely no reverence for traditions or causes—even those he supports. There was no trouble while I remained president, but after my retirement, one group within SFWA thought Ted was insufficiently sympathetic to their cause. Storms and strife broke out. Ted resigned—and the Forum has never been that interesting since. Alas.

I was invited to Ted’s wedding, which was held in San Miguel de Allende, Old Mexico. I suppose it’s as well that I couldn’t attend. Ted’s bride, George Rae, has a strong temper; and through a number of misadventures, Ted and George spent their wedding night in a Mexican jail. They were rescued from durance vile by the efforts of another writer, Mack Reynolds, or rather by Jeanette Reynolds, Mack’s wife, who thoroughly understands the local politics.

“The Spectre General” is Ted Cogswell’s best-known story. When I first read it, I was in military service. I found it oddly disturbing, and I have never forgotten it. The story is, of course, a satire; but it is also a serious and thought-provoking work, incorporating a number of historical and military truths.

Empire, Commonwealth, Protectorate, Republic, Anarchy, Dictatorship, Timocracy, Tyranny, Monarchy; the tragic cycles of man’s efforts turn through endless ages, as we seek the ideal government. Some abandon the search. Others turn cynical or succumb to the worship of power. Some are overcome with despair. Others simply say to hell with it.

Yet, through all ages of ages, there are those to whom duty and virtue are irresistible calls.

THE SPECTRE GENERAL
by Theodore Cogswell

I

“Sergeant Dixon!” Kurt stiffened. He knew that voice. Dropping the handles of the wooden plow, he gave a quick “rest” to the private and a polite “by your leave, sir” to the lieutenant who were yoked together in double harness. They both sank gratefully to the ground as Kurt advanced to meet the approaching officer.

Marcus Harris, the commander of the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, was an imposing figure. The three silver eagle feathers of a full colonel rose proudly from his war bonnet and the bright red of the flaming comet insignia of the Space Marines that was painted on his chest stood out sharply against his sun-blackened, leathery skin. As Kurt snapped to attention before him and saluted, the colonel surveyed the fresh-turned earth with an experienced eye.

“You plow a straight furrow, soldier!” His voice was hard and metallic, but it seemed to Kurt that there was a concealed glimmer of approval in his flinty eyes. Dixon flushed with pleasure and drew back his broad shoulders a little farther.

The commander’s eyes flicked down to the battle-ax that rested snugly in its leather holster at Kurt’s side. “You keep a clean sidearm, too.”

Kurt uttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving that he had worked over his weapon before reveille that morning until there was a satin gloss to its redwood handle and the sheen of black glass to its obsidian head.

“In fact,” said Colonel Harris, “you’d be officer material if—” His voice trailed off.

“If what?” asked Kurt eagerly.

“If,” said the colonel with a note of paternal fondness in his voice that sent cold chills dancing down Kurt’s spine, “you weren’t the most completely unmanageable, undisciplined, overmuscled and underbrained knucklehead I’ve ever had the misfortune to have in my command. This last little unauthorized jaunt of yours indicates to me that you have as much right to sergeant’s stripes as I have to have kittens. Report to me at ten tomorrow! I personally guarantee that when I’m through with you—if you live that long—you’ll have a bare forehead!”

Colonel Harris spun on one heel and stalked back across the dusty plateau toward the walled garrison that stood at one end. Kurt stared after him for a moment and then turned and let his eyes slip across the wide belt of lush green jungle that surrounded the high plateau. To the north rose a great range of snow-capped mountains and his heart filled with longing as he thought of the strange and beautiful thing he had found behind them. Finally he plodded slowly back to the plow, his shoulders stooped and his head sagging. With an effort he recalled himself to the business at hand.

“Up on your aching feet, soldier!” he barked to the reclining private. “If you please, sir!” he said to the lieutenant. His calloused hands grasped the worn plow handles.

“Giddiup!” The two men strained against their collars and with a creak of harness, the wooden plow started to move slowly across the arid plateau.

II

Conrad Krogson, Supreme Commander of War Base Three of Sector Seven of the Galactic Protectorate, stood at quaking attention before the visiscreen of his space communicator. It was an unusual position for the commander. He was accustomed to having people quake while he talked.

“The Lord Protector’s got another hot tip that General Carr is still alive!” said the sector commander. “He’s yelling for blood, and if it’s a choice between yours and mine, you know who will do the donating!”

“But, sir,” quavered Krogson to the figure on the screen, “I can’t do anything more than I am doing. I’ve had double security checks running since the last time there was an alert, and they haven’t turned up a thing. And I’m so shorthanded now that if I pull another random purge, I won’t have enough techs left to work the base.”

“That’s your problem, not mine,” said the sector commander coldly. “All I know is that rumors have gotten to the Protector that an organized underground is being built up and that Carr is behind it. The Protector wants action now. If he doesn’t get it, heads are going to roll!”

“I’ll do what I can, sir,” promised Krogson.

“I’m sure you will,” said the sector commander viciously, “because I’m giving you exactly ten days to produce something that is big enough to take the heat off me. If you don’t, I’ll break you, Krogson. If I’m sent to the mines, you’ll be sweating right alongside me. That’s a promise!”

Krogson’s face blanched.

“Any questions?” snapped the sector commander.

“Yes,” said Krogson.

“Well, don’t bother me with them. I’ve got troubles of my own!” The screen went dark.

Krogson slumped into his chair and sat staring dully at the blank screen. Finally he roused himself with an effort and let out a bellow that rattled the windows of his dusty office.

“Schninkle! Get in here!”

A gnomelike little figure scuttled in through the door and bobbed obsequiously before him.

“Yes, commander?”

“Switch on your think tank,” said Krogson. “The Lord Protector has the shakes again and the heat’s on!”

“What is it this time?” asked Schninkle.

“General Carr!” said the commander gloomily, “the ex-Number Two.”

“I thought he’d been liquidated.”

“So did I,” said Krogson, “but he must have slipped out some way. The Protector thinks he’s started up an underground.”

“He’d be a fool if he didn’t,” said the little man. “The Lord Protector isn’t as young as he once was and his grip is getting a little shaky.”

“Maybe so, but he’s still strong enough to get us before General Carr gets him. The sector commander just passed the buck down to me. We produce or else!”

“We?” said Schninkle unhappily.

“Of course,” snapped Krogson, “we’re in this together. Now let’s get to work! If you were Carr, where would be the logical place for you to hide out?”

“Well,” said Schninkle thoughtfully, “if I were as smart as Carr is supposed to be, I’d find myself a hideout right on Prime Base. Everything’s so fouled up there that they’d never find me.”

“That’s out for us,” said Krogson. “We can’t go rooting around in the Lord Protector’s own back yard. What would Carr’s next best bet be?”

Schninkle thought for a moment. “He might go out to one of the deserted systems,” he said slowly. “There must be half a hundred stars in our own base area that haven’t been visited since the old empire broke up. Our ships don’t get around the way they used to and the chances are mighty slim that anybody would stumble on to him accidentally.”

“It’s a possibility,” said the commander thoughtfully, “a bare possibility.” His right fist slapped into his left palm in a gesture of sudden resolution. “But by the Planets! at least it’s something! Alert all section heads for a staff meeting in half an hour. I want every scout out on a quick check of every system in our area!”

“Beg pardon, commander,” said Schninkle, “but half our light ships are red-lined for essential maintenance and the other half should be. Anyway, it would take months to check every possible hideout in this area even if we used the whole fleet.”

“I know,” said Krogson, “but we’ll have to do what we can with what we have. At least I’ll be able to report to sector that we’re doing something! Tell Astrogation to set up a series of search patterns. We won’t have to check every planet. A single quick sweep through each system will do the trick. Even Carr can’t run a base without power. Where there’s power, there’s radiation, and radiation can be detected a long way off. Put all electronic techs on double shifts and have all detection gear doubled-checked.”

“Can’t do that either,” said Schninkle. “There aren’t more than a dozen electronic techs left. Most of them were transferred to Prime Base last week.”

Commander Krogson blew up. “How in the name of the Bloody Blue Pleiades am I supposed to keep a war base going without technicians? You tell me, Schninkle, you always seem to know all the answers.”

Schninkle coughed modestly. “Well, sir,” he said, “as long as you have a situation where technicians are sent to the uranium mines for making mistakes, it’s going to be an unpopular vocation. And, as long as the Lord Protector of the moment is afraid that Number Two, Number Three, and so on have ideas about grabbing his job—which they generally do—he’s going to keep his fleet as strong as possible and their fleets so weak they aren’t dangerous. The best way to do that is to grab techs. If most of the base’s ships are sitting around waiting repair, the commander won’t be able to do much about any ambitions he may happen to have. Add that to the obvious fact that our whole technology has been on a downward spiral for the last three hundred years and you have your answer.”

Krogson nodded gloomy agreement. “Sometimes I feel as if we were all on a dead ship falling into a dying sun,” he said. His voice suddenly altered. “But in the meantime we have our necks to save. Get going, Schninkle!” Schninkle bobbed and darted out of the office.

III

It was exactly ten o’clock in the morning when Sergeant Dixon of the Imperial Space Marines snapped to attention before his commanding officer.

“Sergeant Dixon reporting as ordered, sir!” His voice cracked a bit in spite of his best efforts to control it.

The colonel looked at him coldly. “Nice of you to drop in, Dixon,” he said. “Shall we go ahead with our little chat?”

Kurt nodded nervousy.

“I have here,” said the colonel, shuffling a sheaf of papers, “a report of an unauthorized expedition made by you into Off Limits territory.”

“Which one do you mean, sir?” asked Kurt without thinking.

“Then there has been more than one?” asked the colonel quietly.

Kurt started to stammer.

Colonel Harris silenced him with a gesture of his hand. “I’m talking about the country to the north, the tableland back of the Twin Peaks.”

“It’s a beautiful place!” burst out Kurt enthusiastically. “It’s…it’s like Imperial Headquarters must be. Dozens of little streams full of fish, trees heavy with fruit, small game so slow and stupid that they can be knocked over with a club. Why, the battalion could live there without hardly lifting a finger!”

“I’ve no doubt that they could,” said the colonel.

“Think of it, sir!” continued the sergeant. “No more plowing details, no more hunting details, no more nothing but taking it easy!”

“You might add to your list of ‘no mores,’ no more tech schools,” said Colonel Harris. “I’m quite aware that the place is all you say it is, sergeant. As a result, I’m placing all information that pertains to it in a ‘Top Secret’ category. That applies to what is inside your head as well!”

“But, sir!” protested Kurt. “If you could only see the place–”

“I have,” broke in the colonel, “thirty years ago.”

Kurt looked at him in amazement. “Then why are we still on the plateau?”

“Because my commanding officer did just what I’ve just done, classified the information Top Secret. Then he gave me thirty days’ extra detail on the plows. After he took my stripes away, that is.” Colonel Harris rose slowly to his feet. “Dixon,” he said softly, “it’s not every man who can be a noncommissioned officer in the Space Marines. Sometimes we guess wrong. When we do, we do something about it!” There was the hissing crackle of distant summer lightning in his voice and storm clouds seemed to gather about his head. “Wipe those chevrons off!” he roared.

Kurt looked at him in mute protest.

“You heard me!” the colonel thundered.

“Yes-s-s, sir,” stuttered Kurt, reluctantly drawing his forearm across his forehead and wiping off the three triangles of white grease paint that marked him a sergeant in the Imperial Space Marines. Quivering with shame, he took a tight grip on his temper and choked back the angry protests that were trying to force their way past his lips.

“Maybe,” suggested the colonel, “you’d like to make a complaint to the I.G. He’s due in a few days and he might reverse my decision. It has happened before, you know.”

“No, sir,” said Kurt woodenly.

“Why not?” demanded Harris.

“When I was sent out as a scout for the hunting parties, I was given direct orders not to range farther than twenty kilometers to the north. I went sixty.” Suddenly his forced composure broke. “I couldn’t help it, sir,” he said. “There was something behind those peaks that kept pulling me and pulling me and”—he threw up his hands—”you know the rest.”

There was a sudden change in the colonel’s face as a warm human smile swept across it, and he broke into a peal of laughter. “It’s a hell of a feeling, isn’t it, son? You know you shouldn’t, but at the same time there’s something inside you that says you’ve got to know what’s behind those peaks or die. When you get a few more years under your belt, you’ll find that it isn’t just mountains that make you feel like that. Here, boy, have a seat.” He gestured toward a woven wicker chair that stood by his desk.

Kurt shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, stunned by the colonel’s sudden change of attitude and embarrassed by his request. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but we aren’t out on work detail, and—”

The colonel laughed. “And enlisted men not on work detail don’t sit in the presence of officers. Doesn’t the way we do things ever strike you as odd, Dixon? On one hand you’d see nothing strange about being yoked to a plow with a major, and on the other, you’d never dream of sitting in his presence off duty.”

Kurt looked puzzled. “Work details are different,” he said. “We all have to work if we’re going to eat. But in the garrison, officers are officers and enlisted men are enlisted men and that’s the way it’s always been.”

Still smiling, the colonel reached into his desk drawer, fished out something, and tossed it to Kurt.

“Stick this in your scalp lock,” he said.

Kurt looked at it, stunned. It was a golden feather crossed with a single black bar, the insignia of rank of a second lieutenant of the Imperial Space Marines. The room swirled before his eyes.

“Now,” said the older officer, “sit down!”

Kurt slowly lowered himself into the chair and looked at the colonel through bemused eyes.

“Stop gawking!” said Colonel Harris. “You’re an officer now! When a man gets too big for his sandals, we give him a new pair—after we let him sweat a while!”

He suddenly grew serious. “Now that you’re one of the family, you have a right to know why I’m hushing up the matter of the tableland to the north. What I have to say won’t make much sense at first. Later I’m hoping it will. Tell me,” he said suddenly, “where did the battalion come from?”

“We’ve always been here, I guess,” said Kurt. “When I was a recruit, Granddad used to tell me stories about us being brought from someplace else a long time ago by an iron bird, but it stands to reason that something that heavy can’t fly!”

A faraway look came into the colonel’s eyes. “Six generations,” he mused, “and history becomes legend. Another six and the legends themselves become tales for children. Yes, Kurt,” he said softly, “it stands to reason that something that heavy couldn’t fly so we’ll forget it for a while. We did come from someplace else though. Once there was a great empire, so great that all the stars you see at night were only part of it. And then, as things do when age rests too heavily on them, it began to crumble. Commanders fell to fighting among themselves and the emperor grew weak. The battalion was set down here to operate a forward maintenance station for his ships. We waited but no ships came. For five hundred years no ships have come,” said the colonel somberly. “Perhaps they tried to relieve us and couldn’t, perhaps the Empire fell with such a crash that we were lost in the wreckage. There are a thousand perhapses that a man can tick off in his mind when the nights are long and sleep comes hard! Lost…forgotten…who knows?”

Kurt stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Most of what the colonel had said made no sense at all. Wherever Imperial Headquarters was, it hadn’t forgotten them. The I.G. still made his inspection every year or so.

The colonel continued as if talking to himself. “But our operational orders said that we would stand by to give all necessary maintenance to Imperial warcraft until properly relieved, and stand by we have.”

The old officer’s voice seemed to be coming from a place far distant in. time and space.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Kurt, “but I don’t follow you. If all these things did happen, it was so long ago that they mean nothing to us now.”

“But they do!” said Colonel Harris vigorously. “It’s because of them that things like your rediscovery of the tableland to the north have to be suppressed for the good of the battalion! Here on the plateau the living is hard. Our work in the fields and the meat brought in by our hunting parties give us just enough to get by on. But here we have the garrison and the Tech Schools—and vague as it has become—a reason for remaining together as the battalion. Out there where the living is easy, we’d lose that. We almost did once. A wise commander stopped it before it went too far. There are still a few signs of that time left—left deliberately as reminders of what can happen if commanding officers forget why we’re here!”

“What things?” asked Kurt curiously.

“Well, son,” said the colonel, picking up his great war bonnet from the desk and gazing at it quizzically, “I don’t think you’re quite ready for that information yet. Now take off and strut your feather. I’ve got work to do!”

IV

At War Base Three nobody was happy. Ships that were supposed to be light-months away carrying on the carefully planned search for General Carr’s hideout were fluttering down out of the sky like senile penguins, disabled by blown jets, jammed computers, and all the other natural ills that worn-out and poorly serviced equipment is heir to. Technical maintenance was quietly going mad. Commander Krogson was being noisy about it.

“Schninkle!” he screamed. “Isn’t anything happening anyplace?”

“Nothing yet, sir,” said the little man.

“Well, make something happen!” He hoisted his battered brogans onto the scarred top of the desk and chewed savagely on a frayed cigar. “How are the other sectors doing?”

“No better than we are,” said Schninkle. “Commander Snork of Sector Six tried to pull a fast one but he didn’t get away with it. He sent his STAP into a plantation planet out at the edge of the Belt and had them hypno the whole population. By the time they were through, there were about fifteen million greenies running around yelling ‘Up with General Carr!’ ‘Down with the Lord Protector!’ ‘Long Live the People’s Revolution!’ and things like that. Snork even gave them a few medium-vortex blasters to make it look more realistic. Then he sent in his whole fleet, tipped off the press at Prime Base, and waited. Guess what the Bureau of Essential Information finally sent him?”

“I’ll bite,” said Commander Krogson.

“One lousy cub reporter. Snork couldn’t back out then so he had to go ahead and blast the planet down to bedrock. This morning he got a three-line notice in Space and a citation as Third-Rate Protector of the People’s Space Ways, Eighth Grade.”

“That’s better than the nothing we’ve got so far!” said the commander gloomily.

“Not when the press notice is buried on the next to last page right below the column on ‘Our Feathered Comrades,’ “ said Schninkle, “and when the citation is posthumous. They even misspelled his name; it came out Snark!”

V

As Kurt turned to go, there was a sharp knock on Colonel Harris’ door.

“Come in!” called the colonel.

Lieutenant Colonel Blick, the battalion executive officer, entered with an arrogant stride and threw his commander a slovenly salute. For a moment he didn’t notice Kurt standing at attention beside the door.

“Listen, Harris!” he snarled. “What’s the idea of pulling that clean-up detail out of my quarters?”

“There are no servants in this battalion, Blick,” the older man said quietly. “When the men come in from work detail at night, they’re tired. They’ve earned a rest and as long as I’m C.O., they’re going to get it. If you have dirty work that has to be done, do it yourself. You’re better able to do it than some poor devil who’s been dragging a plow all day. I suggest you check pertinent regulations!”

“Regulations!” growled Blick. “What do you expect me to do, scrub my own floors?”

“I do,” said the colonel dryly, “when my wife is too busy to get to it. I haven’t noticed that either my dignity or my efficiency have suffered appreciably. I might add,” he continued mildly, “that staff officers are supposed to set a good example for their juniors. I don’t think either your tone or your manner are those that Lieutenant Dixon should be encouraged to emulate.” He gestured toward Kurt and Blick spun on one heel.

“Lieutenant Dixon!” he roared in an incredulous voice. “By whose authority?”

“Mine,” said the colonel mildly. “In case you’ve forgotten, I am still commanding officer of this battalion.”

“I protest!” said Blick. “Commissions have always been awarded by decision of the entire staff.”

“Which you now control,” replied the colonel.

Kurt coughed nervously. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I think I’d better leave.”

Colonel Harris shook his head. “You’re one of our official family now, son, and you might as well get used to our squabbles. This particular one has been going on between Colonel Blick and me for years. He has no patience with some of our old customs.” He turned to Blick. “Have you, Colonel?”

“You’re right, I haven’t!” growled Blick. “And that’s why I’m going to change some of them as soon as I get the chance. The sooner we stop this Tech School nonsense and put the recruits to work in the fields where they belong, the better off we’ll all be. Why should a plowman or a hunter have to know how to read wiring diagrams or set tubes? It’s nonsense, superstitious nonsense. You!” he said, stabbing his finger into the chest of the startled lieutenant. “You! Dixon! You spent fourteen years in the Tech Schools just like I did when I was a recruit. What for?”

“To learn maintenance, of course,” said Kurt.

“What’s maintenance?” demanded Blick.

“Taking stuff apart and putting it back together and polishing jet bores with microplanes and putting plates in alignment and checking the meters when we’re through to see the job was done right. Then there’s class work in Direc calculus and subelectronics and—

“That’s enough!” interrupted Blick. “And now that you’ve learned all that, what can you do with it?”

Kurt looked at him in surprise.

“Do with it?” he echoed. “You don’t do anything with it. You just learn it because regulations say you should.”

“And this,” said Blick, turning to Colonel Harris, “is one of your prize products. Fourteen of his best years poured down the drain and he doesn’t even know what for!” He paused and then said in an arrogant voice, “I’m here for a showdown, Harris!”

“Yes?” said the colonel mildly.

“I demand that the Tech Schools be closed at once and the recruits released for work details. If you want to keep your command, you’ll issue that order. The staff is behind me on this!”

Colonel Harris rose slowly to his feet. Kurt waited for the thunder to roll, but strangely enough, it didn’t. It almost seemed to him that there was an expression of concealed amusement playing across the colonel’s face.

“Someday, just for once,” he said, “I wish somebody around here would do something that hasn’t been done before.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Blick.

“Nothing,” said the colonel. “You know,” he continued conversationally, “a long time ago I walked into my C.O.’s office and made the same demands and the same threats that you’re making now. I didn’t get very far, though—just as you aren’t going to—because I overlooked the little matter of the Inspector General’s annual visit. He’s due in from Imperial Headquarters Saturday night, isn’t he, Blick?”

“You know he is!” growled the other.

“Aren’t worried, are you? It occurs to me that the I.G. might take a dim view of your new order.

“I don’t think he’ll mind,” said Blick with a nasty grin. “Now will you issue the order to close the Tech Schools or won’t you?”

“Of course not!” said the colonel brusquely.

“That’s final?”

Colonel Harris just nodded.

“All right,” barked Blick, “you asked for it!”

There was an ugly look on his face as he barked, “Kane! Simmons! Amett! The rest of you! Get in here!”

The door to Hams’ office swung slowly open and revealed a group of officers standing sheepishly in the anteroom.

“Come in, gentlemen,” said Colonel Harris.

They came slowly forward and grouped themselves just inside the door.

“I’m taking over!” roared Blick. “This garrison has needed a housecleaning for a long time and I’m just the man to do it!”

“How about the rest of you?” asked the colonel.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said one hesitantly, “but we think Colonel Blick’s probably right. I’m afraid we’re going to have to confine you for a few days. Just until after the I.G.’s visit,” he added apologetically.

“And what do you think the I.G. will say to all this?”

“Colonel Blick says we don’t have to worry about that,” said the officer. “He’s going to take care of everything.”

A look of sudden anxiety played across Harris’ face and for the first time he seemed on the verge of losing his composure.

“How?” he demanded, his voice betraying his concern.

“He didn’t say, sir,” the other replied. Harris relaxed visibly.

“All right,” said Blick. “Let’s get moving!” He walked behind the desk and plumped into the colonel’s chair. Hoisting his feet on the desk, he gave his first command.

“Take him away!”

There was a sudden roar from the far corner of the room. “No you don’t!” shouted Kurt. His battle-ax leaped into his hand as he jumped in front of Colonel Harris, his muscular body taut and his gray eyes flashing defiance.

Blick jumped to his feet. “Disarm that man!” he commanded. There was a certain amount of scuffling as the officers in the front of the group by the door tried to move to the rear and those behind them resolutely defended their more protected positions.

Blick’s face grew so purple that he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. “Major Kane,” he demanded, “place that man under restraint!”

Kane advanced toward Kurt with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Keeping a cautious eye on the glittering ax head, he said in what he obviously hoped to be a placating voice, “Come now, old man. Can’t have this sort of thing, you know.” He stretched out his hand hesitantly toward Kurt. “Why don’t you give me your ax and we’ll forget that the incident ever occurred.”

Kurt’s ax suddenly leaped toward the major’s head. Kane stood petrified as death whizzed toward him. At the last split second Kurt gave a practiced twist to his wrist and the ax jumped up, cutting the air over the major’s head with a vicious whistle. The top half of his silver staff plume drifted slowly to the floor.

“You want it,” roared Kurt, his ax flicking back and forth like a snake’s tongue, “you come get it. That goes for the rest of you, too!”

The little knot of officers retreated still farther. Colonel Harris was having the time of his life.

“Give it to ‘em, son!” he whooped.

Blick looked contemptuously at the staff and slowly drew his own ax. Colonel Harris suddenly stopped laughing.

“Wait a minute, Blick!” he said. “This has gone far enough.” He turned to Kurt.

“Give them your ax, son.”

Kurt looked at him with an expression of hurt bewilderment in his eyes, hesitated for a moment, and then glumly surrendered his weapon to the relieved major.

“Now,” snarled Blick, “take that insolent puppy out and feed him to the lizards!”

Kurt drew himself up in injured dignity. “That is no way to refer to a brother officer,” he said reproachfully.

The vein in Blick’s forehead started to pulse again. “Get him out of here before I tear him to shreds!” he hissed through clenched teeth. There was silence for a moment as he fought to regain control of himself. Finally he succeeded.

“Lock him up!” he said in an approximation of his normal voice. “Tell the provost sergeant I’ll send down the charges as soon as I can think up enough.”

Kurt was led resentfully from the room.

“The rest of you clear out,” said Blick. “I want to talk with Colonel Harris about the I.G.”

VI

There was a saying in the protectorate that when the Lord Protector was angry, stars and heads fell. Commander Krogson felt his wobble on his neck. His far-sweeping scouts were sending back nothing but reports of equipment failure, and the sector commander had coldly informed him that morning that his name rested securely at the bottom of the achievement list. It looked as if War Base Three would shortly have a change of command. “Look, Schninkle,” he said desperately, “even if we can’t give them anything, couldn’t we make a promise that would look good enough to take some of the heat off us?”

Schninkle looked dubious.

“Maybe a new five-year plan?” suggested Krogson.

The little man shook his head. “That’s a subject we’d better avoid entirely,” he said. “They’re still asking nasty questions about what happened to the last one. Mainly on the matter of our transport quota. I took the liberty of passing the buck on down to Logistics. Several of them have been…eh…removed as a consequence.”

“Serves them right!” snorted Krogson. “They got me into that mess with their ‘If a freighter and a half flies a light-year and a half in a month and a half, ten freighters can fly ten light-years in ten months!’ I knew there was something fishy about it at the time, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

“It’s always darkest before the storm,” said Schninkle helpfully.

VII

“Take off your war bonnet and make yourself comfortable,” said Colonel Harris hospitably.

Blick grunted assent. “This thing is sort of heavy,” he said. “I think I’ll change uniform regulations while I’m at it.”

“There was something you wanted to tell me?” suggested the colonel.

“Yeah,” said Blick. “I figure that you figure the I.G.’s going to bail you out of this. Right?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I would,” said Blick. “I was up snoopin’ around the armory last week. There was something there that started me doing some heavy thinking. Do you know what it was?”

“I can guess,” said the colonel.

“As I looked at it, it suddenly occurred to me what a happy coincidence it is that the Inspector General always arrives just when you happen to need him.”

“It is odd, come to think of it.”

“Something else occurred to me, too. I got to thinking that if I were C.O. and I wanted to keep the troops whipped into line, the easiest way to do it would be to have a visible symbol of Imperial Headquarters appear in person once in a while.”

“That makes sense,” admitted Harris, “especially since the chaplain has started preaching that Imperial Headquarters is where good marines go when they die—if they follow regulations while they’re alive. But how would you manage it?”

“Just the way you did. I’d take one of the old battle suits, wait until it was good and dark, and then slip out the back way and climb up six or seven thousand feet. Then I’d switch on my landing lights and drift slowly down to the parade field to review the troops.” Blick grinned triumphantly.

“It might work,” admitted Colonel Harris, “but I was under the impression that those rigs were so heavy that a man couldn’t even walk in one, let alone fly.”

Blick grinned triumphantly. “Not if the suit was powered. If a man were to go up into the tower of the arsenal and pick the lock of the little door labeled ‘Danger! Absolutely No Admittance,’ he might find a whole stack of shiny little cubes that look suspiciously like the illustrations of power packs in the tech manuals.”

“That he might,” agreed the colonel.

Blick shifted back in his chair. “Aren’t worried, are you?”

Colonel Harris shook his head. “I was for a moment when I thought you’d told the rest of the staff, but I’m not now.”

“You should be! When the I.G. arrives this time, I’m going to be inside that suit. There’s going to be a new order around here, and he’s just what I need to put the stamp of approval on it. When the Inspector General talks, nobody questions!”

He looked at Harris expectantly, waiting for a look of consternation to sweep across his face. The colonel just laughed.

“Blick,” he said, “you’re in for a big surprise!”

“What do you mean?” said the other suspiciously.

“Simply that I know you better than you know yourself. You wouldn’t be executive officer if I didn’t. You know, Blick, I’ve got a hunch that the battalion is going to change the man more than the man is going to change the battalion. And now if you’ll excuse me—” He started toward the door. Blick moved to intercept him.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” chuckled the colonel. “I can find my own way to the cell block.” There was a broad grin on his face. “Besides, you’ve got work to do.”

There was a look of bewilderment in Blick’s face as the erect figure went out the door. “I don’t get it,” he said to himself. “I just don’t get it!”

VIII

Flight Officer Ozaki was unhappy. Trouble had started two hours after he lifted his battered scout off War Base Three and showed no signs of letting up. He sat glumly at his controls and enumerated his woes. First there was the matter of the air conditioner, which had acquired an odd little hum and discharged into the cabin oxygen redolent with the rich, ripe odor of rotting fish. Second, something had happened to the complex insides of his food synthesizer and no matter what buttons he punched, all that emerged from the ejector were quivering slabs of undercooked protein base smeared with a raspberry-flavored goo.

Not last, but worst of all, the ship’s fuel converter was rapidly becoming more erratic. Instead of a slow, steady feeding of the plutonite ribbon into the combustion chamber, there were moments when the mechanism would falter and then leap ahead. The resulting sudden injection of several square millimicrons of tape would send a sudden tremendous flare of energy spouting out through the rear jets. The pulse lasted for only a fraction of a second, but the sudden application of several Gs meant a momentary blackout and, unless he was strapped carefully into the pilot seat, several new bruises to add to the old.

What made Ozaki the unhappiest was that there was nothing he could do about it. Pilots who wanted to stay alive just didn’t tinker with the mechanism of their ships.

Glumly he pulled out another red-bordered IMMEDIATE MAINTENANCE card from the rack and began to fill it in.

Description of item requiring maintenance: “Shower thermostat, M7, Small Standard.”

Nature of malfunction: “Shower will deliver only boiling water.”

Justification for immediate maintenance: Slowly in large, block letters Ozaki bitterly inked in “Haven’t had a bath since I left base!” and tossed the card into the already overflowing gripe box with a feeling of helpless anger.

“Kitchen mechanics,” he muttered. “Couldn’t do a decent repair job if they wanted to—and most of the time they don’t. I’d like to see one of them three days out on a scout sweep with a toilet that won’t flush!”

IX

It was a roomy cell as cells go but Kurt wasn’t happy there. His continual striding up and down was making Colonel Harris nervous.

“Relax, son,” he said gently, “you’ll just wear yourself out.”

Kurt turned to face the colonel, who was stretched out comfortably on his cot. “Sir,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “we’ve got to break out of here.”

“What for?” asked Harris. “This is the first decent rest I’ve had in years.”

“You aren’t going to let Blick get away with this?” demanded Kurt in a shocked voice.

“Why not?” said the colonel. “He’s the exec, isn’t he? If something happened to me, he’d have to take over command anyway. He’s just going through the impatient stage, that’s all. A few days behind my desk will settle him down. In two weeks he’ll be so sick of the job he’ll be down on his knees begging me to take over again.”

Kurt decided to try a new tack. “But, sir, he’s going to shut down the Tech Schools!”

“A little vacation won’t hurt the kids,” said the colonel indulgently.

“After a week or so the wives will get so sick of having them underfoot all day that they’ll turn the heat on him. Blick has six kids himself, and I’ve a hunch his wife won’t be any happier than the rest. She’s a very determined woman, Kurt, a very determined woman!”

Kurt had a feeling he was getting no place rapidly. “Please, sir,” he said earnestly, “I’ve got a plan.”

“Yes?”

“Just before the guard makes his evening check-in, stretch out on the bed and start moaning. I’ll yell that you’re dying and when he comes in to check, I’ll jump him!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” said the colonel sternly. “Sergeant Wetzel is an old friend of mine. Can’t you get it through your thick head that I don’t want to escape? When you’ve held command as long as I have, you’ll welcome a chance for a little peace and quiet. I know Blick inside out, and I’m not worried about him. But, if you’ve got your heart set on escaping, I suppose there’s no particular reason why you shouldn’t. Do it the easy way though. Like this.” He walked to the bars that fronted the cell and bellowed, “Sergeant Wetzel! Sergeant Wetzel!”

“Coming, sir!” called a voice from down the corridor. There was a shuffle of running feet and a gray scalp-locked and extremely portly sergeant puffed into view.

“What will it be, sir?” he asked.

“Colonel Blick or any of the staff around?” questioned the colonel.

“No, sir,” said the sergeant. “They’re all upstairs celebrating.”

“Good!” said Harris. “Unlock the door, will you?”

“Anything you say, Colonel,” said the old man agreeably and produced a large key from his pouch and fitted it into the lock. There was a slight creaking and the door swung open.

“Young Dixon here wants to escape,” said the colonel.

“It’s all right by me,” replied the sergeant, “though it’s going to be awkward when Colonel Blick asks what happened to him.”

“The lieutenant has a plan,” confided the colonel. “He’s going to overpower you and escape.”

“There’s more to it than just that!” said Kurt. “I’m figuring on swapping uniforms with you. That way I can walk right out through the front gate without anybody being the wiser.”

“That,” said the sergeant, slowly looking down at his sixty-three-inch waist, “will take a heap of doing. You’re welcome to try though.”

“Let’s get on with it then,” said Kurt, winding up a roundhouse swing.

“If it’s all the same with you, Lieutenant,” said the old sergeant, eyeing Kurt’s rocklike fist nervously, “I’d rather have the colonel do any overpowering that’s got to be done.”

Colonel Harris grinned and walked over to Wetzel.

“Ready?”

“Ready!”

Harris’ fist traveled a bare five inches and tapped Wetzel lightly on the chin.

“Oof!” grunted the sergeant cooperatively and staggered back to a point where he could collapse on the softest of the two cots.

The exchange of clothes was quickly effected. Except for the pants—which persisted in dropping down to Kurt’s ankles—and the war bonnet—which with equal persistence kept sliding down over his ears—he was ready to go. The pants problem was solved easily by stuffing a pillow inside them. This Kurt fondly believed made him look more like the rotund sergeant than ever. The garrison bonnet presented a more difficult problem, but he finally achieved a partial solution. By holding it up with his left hand and keeping the palm tightly pressed against his forehead, it should appear to the casual observer that he was walking engrossed in deep thought.

The first two hundred yards were easy. The corridor was deserted and he plodded confidently along, the great war bonnet wobbling sedately on his head in spite of his best efforts to keep it steady. When he finally reached the exit gate, he knocked on it firmly and called to the duty sergeant.

“Open up! It’s Wetzel.”

Unfortunately, just then he grew careless and let go of his headgear. As the door swung open, the great war bonnet swooped down over his ears and came to rest on his shoulders. The result was that where his head normally was there could be seen only a nest of weaving feathers. The duty sergeant’s jaw suddenly dropped as he got a good look at the strange figure that stood in the darkened corridor. And then with remarkable presence of mind, he slammed the door shut in Kurt’s face and clicked the bolt.

“Sergeant of the guard!” he bawled. “Sergeant of the guard! There’s a thing in the corridor!”

“What kind of a thing?” inquired a sleepy voice from the guard room.

“A horrible kind of a thing with wiggling feathers where its head ought to be,” replied the sergeant.

“Get its name, rank, and serial number,” said the sleepy voice.

Kurt didn’t wait to hear any more. Disentangling himself from the headdress with some difficulty, he hurled it aside and pelted back down the corridor.

Lieutenant Dixon wandered back into the cell with a crestfallen look on his face. Colonel Harris and the old sergeant were so deeply engrossed in a game of “rockets high” that they didn’t even see him at first. Kurt coughed and the colonel looked up.

“Change your mind?”

“No, sir,” said Kurt. “Something slipped.”

“What?” asked the colonel.

“Sergeant Wetzel’s war bonnet. I’d rather not talk about it.” He sank down on his bunk and buried his head in his hands.

“Excuse me,” said the sergeant apologetically, “but if the lieutenant’s through with my pants, I’d like to have them back. There’s a draft in here.”

Kurt silently exchanged clothes and then moodily walked over to the grille that barred the window and stood looking out.

“Why not go upstairs to officers’ country and out that way?” suggested the sergeant, who hated the idea of being overpowered for nothing. “If you can get to the front gate without one of the staff spotting you, you can walk right out. The sentry never notices faces, he just checks for insignia.”

Kurt grabbed Sergeant Wetzel’s plump hand and wrung it warmly. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he stammered.

“Then it’s about time you learned,” said the colonel. “The usual practice in civilized battalions is to say ‘thank you.’”

“Thank you!” said Kurt.

“Quite all right,” said the sergeant. “Take the first stairway to your left. When you get to the top, turn left again and the corridor will take you straight to the exit.”

Kurt got safely to the top of the stairs and turned right. Three hundred feet later the corridor ended in a blank wall. A small passageway angled off to the left and he set off down it. It also came to a dead end in a small anteroom whose farther wall was occupied by a set of great bronze doors. He turned and started to retrace his steps. He had almost reached the main corridor when he heard angry voices sounding from it. He peeked cautiously around the corridor. His escape route was blocked by two officers engaged in acrimonious argument. Neither was too sober and the captain obviously wasn’t giving the major the respect that a field officer usually commanded.

“I don’t care what she said!” the captain shouted. “I saw her first.”

The major grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back against the wall. “It doesn’t matter who saw her first. You keep away from her or there’s going to be trouble!”

The captain’s face flushed with rage. With a snarl he tore off the major’s breechcloth and struck him in the face with it.

The major’s face grew hard and cold. He stepped back, clicked his calloused heels together, and bowed slightly.

“Axes or fists?”

“Axes,” snapped the captain.

“May I suggest the armory anteroom?” said the major formally. “We won’t be disturbed there.”

“As you wish, sir,” said the captain with equal formality. “Your breechcloth, sir.” The major donned it with dignity and they started down the hall toward Kurt. He turned and fled back down the corridor.

In a second he was back in the anteroom. Unless he did something quickly, he was trapped. Two flaming torches were set in brackets on each side of the great bronze door. As flickering pools of shadow chased each other across the worn stone floor, Kurt searched desperately for some other way out. There was none. The only possible exit was through the bronze portals. The voices behind him grew louder. He ran forward, grabbed a projecting handle, and pulled. One door creaked open slightly and with a sigh of relief, Kurt slipped inside.

There were no torches here. The great hall stood in half-darkness, its only illumination the pale moonlight that streamed down through the arching skylight that formed the central ceiling. He stood for a moment in awe, impressed in spite of himself by the strange, unfamiliar shapes that loomed before him in the half-darkness. He was suddenly brought back to reality by the sound of voices in the anteroom.

“Hey! The armory door’s open!”

“So what? That place is off limits to everybody but the C.O.”

“Blick won’t care. Let’s fight in there. There should be more room.”

Kurt quickly scanned the hall for a safe hiding place. At the far end stood what looked like a great bronze statue, its burnished surface .gleaming dimly in the moonlight. As the door swung open behind him, he slipped cautiously through the shadows until he reached it. It looked like a coffin with feet, but to one side of it there was a dark pool of shadow. He slipped into it and pressed himself close against the cold metal. As he did so, his hipbone pressed against a slight protrusion and with a slight clicking sound, a hinged middle section of the metallic figure swung open, exposing a dark cavity. The thing was hollow!

Kurt had a sudden idea. “Even if they do come down here,” he thought, “they’d never think of looking inside this thing!” With some difficulty he wiggled inside and pulled the hatch shut after him. There were legs to the thing—his own fit snugly into them—but no arms.

The two officers strode out of the shadows at the other end of the hall. They stopped in the center of the armory and faced each other like fighting cocks. Kurt gave a sigh of relief. It looked as if he were safe for the moment.

There was a sudden wicked glitter of moonlight on ax-heads as their weapons leaped into their hands. They stood frozen for a moment in a murderous tableau and then the captain’s ax hummed toward his opponent’s head in a vicious slash. There was a shower of sparks as the major parried and then with a quick wrist twist sent his own weapon looping down toward the captain’s midriff. The other pulled his ax down to ward the blow, but he was only partially successful. The keen obsidian edge raked his ribs and blood dripped darkly in the moonlight.

As Kurt watched intently, he began to feel the first faint stirrings of claustrophobia. The Imperial designers had planned their battle armor for efficiency rather than comfort and Kurt felt as if he were locked away in a cramped dark closet. His malaise wasn’t helped by a sudden realization that when the men left, they might very well lock the door behind them. His decision to change his hiding place was hastened when a bank of dark clouds swept across the face of the moon. The flood of light pouring down through the skylight suddenly dimmed until Kurt could barely make out the pirouetting forms of the two officers who were fighting in the center of the hall.

This was his chance. If he could slip down the darkened side of the hall before the moon lighted up the hall again, he might be able to slip out of the hall unobserved. He pushed against the closed hatch through which he entered. It refused to open. A feeling of trapped panic started to roll over him, but he fought it back. “There must be some way to open this from the inside,” he thought.

As his fingers wandered over the dark interior of the suit looking for a release lever, they encountered a bank of keys set just below his midriff. He pressed one experimentally. A quiet hum filled the armor and suddenly a feeling of weightlessness came over him. He stiffened in fright. As he did so, one of his steel-shod feet pushed lightly backwards against the floor. That was enough. Slowly, like a child’s balloon caught in a light draft, he drifted toward the center of the hall. He struggled violently, but since he was now several inches above the floor and rising slowly, it did him no good.

The fight was progressing splendidly. Both men were master axmen, and in spite of being slightly drunk, were putting on a brilliant exhibition. Each was bleeding from a dozen minor slashes, but neither had been seriously axed as yet. Their flashing strokes and counters were masterful, so masterful that Kurt slowly forgot his increasingly awkward situation as he became more and more absorbed in the fight before him. The blond captain was slightly the better axman, but the major compensated for it by occasionally whistling in cuts that to Kurt’s experienced eye seemed perilously close to fouls. He grew steadily more partisan in his feelings until one particularly unscrupulous attempt broke down his restraint altogether.

“Pull down your guard!” he screamed to the captain. “He’s trying to cut you below the belt!” His voice reverberated within the battle suit and boomed out with strange metallic overtones.

Both men whirled in the direction of the sound. They could see nothing for a moment and then the major caught sight of the strange, menacing figure looming above him in the murky darkness.

Dropping his ax, he dashed frantically toward the exit shrieking: “It’s the Inspector General!”

The captain’s reflexes were a second slower. Before he could take off, Kurt poked his head out of the open faceport and shouted down, “It’s only me, Dixon! Get me out of here, will you?”

The captain stared up at him goggle-eyed. “What kind of a contraption is that?” he demanded. “And what are you doing in it?”

Kurt by now was floating a good ten feet off the floor. He had visions of spending the night on the ceiling and he wasn’t happy about it. “Get me down now,” he pleaded. “We can talk after I get out of this thing.”

The captain gave a leap upward and tried to grab Kurt’s ankles. His jump was short and his outstretched fingers gave the weightless armor a slight shove that sent it bobbing up another three feet.

He cocked his head back and called up to Kurt. “Can’t reach you now. We’ll have to try something else. How did you get into that thing in the first place?”

“The middle section is hinged,” said Kurt. “When I pulled it shut, it clicked.”

“Well, unclick it!”

“I tried that. That’s why I’m up here now.”

“Try again,” said the man on the floor. “If you can-open the hatch, you can drop down and I’ll catch you.”

“Here I come!” said Kurt, his fingers selecting a stud at random. He pushed. There was a terrible blast of flame from the shoulder jets and he screamed skyward on a pillar of fire. A microsecond later, he reached the skylight. Something had to give. It did!

At fifteen thousand feet the air pressure dropped to the point where the automatics took over and the faceplate clicked shut. Kurt didn’t notice that. He was out like a light. At thirty thousand feet the heaters cut in. Forty seconds later he was in free space. Things could have been worse though; he still had air for two hours.

X

Flight Officer Ozaki was taking a catnap when the alarm on the radiation detector went off. Dashing the sleep out of his eyes, he slipped rapidly into the control seat and cut off the gong. His fingers danced over the controls in a blur of movement. Swiftly the vision screen shifted until the little green dot that indicated a source of radiant energy was firmly centered. Next he switched on the pulse analyzer and watched carefully as it broke down the incoming signal into components and sent them surging across the scope in the form of sharp-toothed sine waves. There was an odd peak to them, a strength and sharpness that he hadn’t seen before.

“Doesn’t look familiar,” he muttered to himself, “but I’d better check to make sure.”

He punched the comparison button and while the analyzer methodically began to check the incoming trace against the known patterns stored up in its compact little memory bank, he turned back to the vision screen. He switched on high magnification and the system rushed toward him. It expanded from a single pinpoint of light into a distinct planetary system. At its center a giant dying sun expanded on the plate like a malignant red eye. As he watched, the green dot moved appreciably, a thin red line stretching out behind it to indicate its course from point of first detection. Ozaki’s fingers moved over the controls and a broken line of white light came into being on the screen. With careful adjustments he moved it up toward the green track left by the crawling red dot. When he had an exact overlay, he carefully moved the line back along the course that the energy emitter had followed prior to detection.

Ozaki was tense. It looked as if he might have something. He gave a sudden whoop of excitement as the broken white line intersected the orange dot of a planetary mass. A vision of the promised thirty-day leave and six months’ extra pay danced before his eyes as he waited for the pulse analyzer to clear.

“Home!” he thought ecstatically. “Home and unplugged plumbing!”

With a final whir of relays, the analyzer clucked like a contented chicken and dropped an identity card out of its emission slot. Ozaki grabbed it and scanned it eagerly. At the top was printed in red, “Identity. Unknown,” and below in smaller letters, “Suggest check of trace pattern on base analyzer.” He gave a sudden whistle as his eyes caught the energy utilization index. 927! That was fifty points higher than it had any right to be. The best tech in the Protectorate considered himself lucky if he could tune a propulsion unit so that it delivered a thrust of forty-five per cent of rated maximum. Whatever was out there was hot! Too hot for one man to handle alone. With quick decision he punched the transmission key of his space communicator and sent a call winging back to War Base Three.

XI

Commander Krogson stormed up and down his office in a frenzy of impatience.

“It shouldn’t be more than another fifteen minutes, sir,” said Schninkle.

Krogson snorted. “That’s what you said an hour ago. What’s the matter with those people down there? I want the identity of that ship and I want it now.”

“It’s not Identification’s fault,” explained the other. “The big analyzer is in pretty bad shape and it keeps jamming. They’re afraid that if they take it apart, they won’t be able to get it back together again.”

The next two hours saw Krogson’s blood pressure steadily rising toward the explosion point. Twice he ordered the whole identification section transferred to a labor battalion and twice he had to rescind the command when Schninkle pointed out that scrapings from the bottom of the barrel were better than nothing at all. His fingernails were chewed down to the quick when word finally came through.

“Identification, sir,” said a hesitant voice on the intercom.

“Well?” demanded the commander.

“The analyzer says—” The voice hesitated again.

“The analyzer says what?” shouted Krogson in a fury of impatience.

“The analyzer says that the trace pattern is that of one of the old Imperial drive units.”

“That’s impossible!” sputtered the commander. “The last Imperial base was smashed five hundred years ago. What of their equipment was salvaged has long since been worn out and tossed on the scrap heap. The machine must be wrong!”

“Not this time,” said the voice. “We checked the memory bank manually and there’s no mistake. It’s an Imperial all right. Nobody can produce a drive unit like that these days.”

Commander Krogson leaned back in his chair, his eyes veiled in deep thought. “Schninkle,” he said finally, thinking out loud, “I’ve got a hunch that maybe we’ve stumbled on something big. Maybe the Lord Protector is right about there being a plot to knock him over, but maybe he’s wrong about who’s trying to do it. What if all these centuries since the Empire collapsed a group of Imperials have been hiding out waiting for their chance?’.’

Schninkle digested the idea for a moment. “It could be,” he said slowly. “If there is such a group, they couldn’t pick a better time than now to strike; the Protectorate is so wobbly that it wouldn’t take much of a shove to topple it over.”

The more he thought about it, the more sense the idea made to Krogson. Once he felt a fleeting temptation to hush up the whole thing. If there were Imperials and they did take over, maybe they would put an end to the frenzied rat race that was slowly ruining the galaxy—a race that sooner or later entangled every competent man in the great web of intrigue and power politics that stretched through the Protectorate and forced him in self-defense to keep clawing his way toward the top of the heap.

Regretfully he dismissed the idea. This was a matter of his own neck, here and now!

“It’s a big IF, Schninkle,” he said, “but if I’ve guessed right, we’ve bailed ourselves out. Get hold of that scout and find out his position.”

Schninkle scooted out of the door. A few minutes later he dashed back in. “I’ve just contacted the scout!” he said excitedly. “He’s closed in on the power source and it isn’t a ship after all. It’s a man in space armor! The drive unit is cut off, and it’s heading out of the system at fifteen hundred per. The pilot is standing by for instructions.”

“Tell him to intercept and capture!” Schninkle started out of the office. “Wait a second; what’s the scout’s position?”

Schninkle’s face fell. “He doesn’t quite know, sir.”

“He what?” demanded the commander.

“He doesn’t quite know,” repeated the little man. “His astrocomputer went haywire six hours out of base.”

“Just our luck!” swore Krogson. “Well, tell him to leave his transmitter on. We’ll ride in on his beam. Better call the sector commander while you’re at it and tell him what’s happened.”

“Beg pardon, Commander,” said Schninkle, “but I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Why not?” asked Krogson.

“You’re next in line to be sector commander, aren’t you, sir?”

“I guess so,” said the commander.

“If this pans out, you’ll be in a position to knock him over and grab his job, won’t you?” asked Schninkle slyly.

“Could be,” admitted Krogson in a tired voice. “Not because I want to, though—but because I have to. I’m not as young as I once was, and the boys below are pushing pretty hard. It’s either up or out—and out is always feet first.”

“Put yourself in the sector commander’s shoes for a minute,” suggested the little man. “What would you do if a war-base commander came through with news of a possible Imperial base?” A look of grim comprehension came over Krogson’s face. “Of course! I’d ground the commander’s ships and send out my own fleet. I must be slipping; I should have thought of that at once!”

“On the other hand,” said Schninkle, “you might call him and request permission to conduct routine maneuvers. He’ll approve as a matter of course and you’ll have an excuse for taking out the full fleet. Once in deep space, you can slap on radio silence and set course for the scout. If there is an Imperial base out there, nobody will know anything about it until it’s blasted. I’ll stay back here and keep my eyes on things for you.”

Commander Krogson grinned. “Schninkle, it’s a pleasure to have you in my command. How would you like me to make you Devoted Servant of the Lord Protector, Eighth Class? It carries an extra shoe-ration coupon!”

“If it’s all the same with you,” said Schninkle, “I’d just as soon have Saturday afternoons off.”

XII

As Kurt struggled up out of the darkness, he could hear a gong sounding in the faint distance. Bong! bong! BONG! It grew nearer and louder. He shook his head painfully and groaned. There was light from someplace beating against his eyelids. Opening them was too much effort. He was in some sort of a bunk. He could feel that. But the gong. He lay there concentrating on it. Slowly he began to realize that the beat didn’t come from outside. It was his head. It felt swollen and sore and each pulse of his heart sent a hammer thud through it.

One by one his senses began to return to normal. As his nose reassumed its normal acuteness, it began to quiver. There was a strange scent in the air, an unpleasant sickening scent as of—he chased the scent down his aching memory channels until he finally had it cornered—rotting fish. With that to anchor on, he slowly began to reconstruct reality. He had been floating high above the floor in the armory and the captain had been trying to get him down. Then he had pushed a button. There had been a microsecond of tremendous acceleration and then a horrendous crash. That must have been the skylight. After the crash was darkness, then the gongs, and now fish—dead and rotting fish.

“I must be alive,” he decided. “Imperial Headquarters would never smell like this!”

He groaned and slowly opened one eye. Wherever he was, he hadn’t been there before. He opened the other eye. He was in a room. A room with a curved ceiling and curving walls. Slowly, with infinite care, he hung his head over the side of the bunk. Below him in a form-fitting chair before a bank of instruments sat a small man with yellow skin and blue-black hair. Kurt coughed. The man looked up. Kurt asked the obvious question.

“Where am I?”

“I’m not permitted to give you any information,” said the small man. His speech had an odd, slurred quality to Kurt’s ear.

“Something stinks!” said Kurt.

“It sure does,” said the small man gloomily. “It must be worse for you. I’m used to it.”

Kurt surveyed the cabin with interest. There were a lot of gadgets tucked away here and there that looked familiar. They were like the things he had worked on in Tech School except that they were cruder and simpler. They looked as if they had been put together by an eight-year-old recruit who was doing the first trial assembly. He decided to make another stab at establishing some sort of communication with the little man.

“How come you have everything in one room? We always used to keep different things in different shops.”

“No comment,” said Ozaki.

Kurt had a feeling he was butting his head against a stone wall. He decided to make one more try.

“I give up,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “where’d you hide it?”

“Hide what?” asked the little man.

“The fish,” said Kurt.

“No comment.”

“Why not?” asked Kurt.

“Because there isn’t anything that can be done about it,” said Ozaki. “It’s the air conditioner. Something’s haywire inside.”

“What’s an air conditioner?” asked Kurt.

“That square box over your head.”

Kurt looked at it, closed his eyes, and thought for a moment. The thing did look familiar. Suddenly a picture of it popped into his mind. Page 318 in the “Manual of Auxiliary Mechanisms.”

“It’s fantastic!” he said.

“What is?” said the little man.

“This,” Kurt pointed to the conditioner. “I didn’t know they existed in real life. I thought they were just in books. You got a first-echelon kit?”

“Sure,” said Ozaki. “It’s in the recess by the head of the bunk. Why?”

Kurt pulled the kit out of its retaining clips and opened its cover, fishing around until he found a small screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers.

“I think I’ll fix it,” he said conversationally.

“Oh, no you won’t!” howled Ozaki. “Air with fish is better than no air at all.” But before he could do anything, Kurt had pulled the cover off the air conditioner and was probing into the intricate mechanism with his screwdriver. A slight thumping noise came from inside. Kurt cocked his ear and thought. Suddenly his screwdriver speared down through the maze of whirring parts. He gave a slow quarter-turn and the internal thumping disappeared.

“See,” he said triumphantly, “no more fish!”

Ozaki stopped shaking long enough to give the air a tentative sniff. He had got out of the habit of smelling in self-defense and it took him a minute or two to detect the difference. Suddenly a broad grin swept across his face.

“It’s going away! I do believe it’s going away!”

Kurt gave the screwdriver another quarter of a turn and suddenly the sharp, spicy scent of pines swept through the scout. Ozaki took a deep ecstatic breath and relaxed in his chair. His face lost its pallor.

“How did you do it?” he said finally.

“No comment,” said Kurt pleasantly.

There was silence from below. Ozaki was in the throes of a brainstorm. He was more impressed by Kurt’s casual repair of the air conditioner than he liked to admit.

“Tell me,” he said cautiously, “can you fix other things beside air conditioners?”

“I guess so,” said Kurt, “if it’s just simple stuff like this.” He gestured around the cabin. “Most of the stuff here needs fixing. They’ve got it together wrong.”

“Maybe we could make a dicker,” said Ozaki. “You fix things, I answer questions—some questions, that is,” he added hastily.

“It’s a deal,” said Kurt, who was filled with a burning curiosity as to his whereabouts. Certain things were already clear in his mind. He knew that wherever he was, he’d never been there before. That meant evidently that there was a garrison on the other side of the mountains whose existence had never been suspected. What bothered him was how he had got there.

“Check,” said Ozaki. “First, do you know anything about plumbing?”

“What’s plumbing?” asked Kurt curiously. “Pipes,” said Ozaki. “They’re plugged. They’ve been plugged for more time than I like to think about.”

“I can try,” said Kurt.

“Good!” said the pilot and ushered him into the small cubicle that opened off the rear bulkhead. “You might tackle the shower while you’re at it.”

“What’s a shower?”

“That curved dingbat up there,” said Ozaki, pointing. “The thermostat’s out of whack.”

“Thermostats are kid stuff,” said Kurt, shutting the door.

Ten minutes later Kurt came out. “It’s all fixed.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Ozaki, shouldering his way past Kurt. He reached down and pushed a small curved handle. There was the satisfying sound of rushing water. He next reached into the little shower compartment and turned the knob to the left. With a hiss, a needle-spray of cold water burst forth. The pilot looked at Kurt with awe in his eyes.

“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it! That’s two answers you’ve earned.”

Kurt peered back into the cubicle curiously. “Well, first,” he said, “now that I’ve fixed them, what are they for?”

Ozaki explained briefly and a look of amazement came over Kurt’s face. Machinery he knew, but the idea that it could be used for something was hard to grasp.

“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it!” he said slowly. This would be something to tell when he got home. Home! The pressing question of location popped back into his mind.

“How far are we from the garrison?” he asked.

Ozaki made a quick mental calculation.

“Roughly two light-seconds,” he said.

“How far’s that in kilometers?”

Ozaki thought again. “Around six hundred thousand. I’ll run off the exact figures if you want them.”

Kurt gulped. No place could be that far away. Not even Imperial Headquarters! He tried to measure out the distance in his mind in terms of days’ marches, but he soon found himself lost. Thinking wouldn’t do it. He had to see with his own eyes where he was.

“How do you get outside?” he asked.

Ozaki gestured toward the air lock that opened at the rear of the compartment. “Why?”

“I want to go out for a few minutes to sort of get my bearings.”

Ozaki looked at him in disbelief. “What’s your game, anyhow?” he demanded.

It was Kurt’s turn to look bewildered. “I haven’t any game. I’m just trying to find out where I am so I’ll know which way to head to get back to the garrison.”

“It’ll be a long, cold walk.” Ozaki laughed and hit the stud that slid back the ray screens on the vision ports. “Take a look.”

Kurt looked out into nothingness, a blue-black void marked only by distant pinpoints of light. He suddenly felt terribly alone, lost in a blank immensity that had no boundaries. Down was gone and so was up. There was only this tiny lighted room with nothing underneath it. The port began to swim in front of his eyes as a sudden, strange vertigo swept over him. He felt that if he looked out into that terrible space for another moment, he would lose his sanity. He covered his eyes with his hands and staggered back to the center of the cabin.

Ozaki slid the ray screens back in place. “Kind of gets to you first time, doesn’t it?”

Kurt had always carried a little automatic compass within his head. Wherever he had gone, no matter how far afield he had wandered, it had always pointed steadily toward home. Now for the first time in his life, the needle was spinning helplessly. It was an uneasy feeling. He had to get oriented.

“Which way is the garrison?” he pleaded.

Ozaki shrugged. “Over there someplace. I don’t know whereabouts on the planet you come from. I didn’t pick up your track until you were in free space.”

“Over where?” asked Kurt.

“Think you can stand another look?”

Kurt braced himself and nodded. The pilot opened a side port to vision and pointed. There, seemingly motionless in the black emptiness of space, floated a great greenish-gray globe. It didn’t make sense to Kurt. The satellite that hung somewhat to the left did. Its face was different, the details were sharper than he’d ever seen them before, but the features he knew as well as his own. Night after night on scouting detail for the hunting parties while waiting for sleep he had watched the silver sphere ride through the clouds above him.

He didn’t want to believe but he had to!

His face was white and tense as he turned back to Ozaki. A thousand sharp and burning questions milled chaotically through his mind.

“Where am I?” he demanded. “How did I get out here? Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“You’re in a spaceship,” said Ozaki, “a two-man scout. And that’s all you’re going to get out of me until you get some more work done. You might as well start on this microscopic projector. The thing burned out just as the special investigator was about to reveal who had blown off the commissioner’s head by wiring a bit of plutonite into his autoshave. I’ve been going nuts ever since trying to figure out who did it!”

Kurt took some tools out of the first-echelon kit and knelt down obediently beside the small projector.

Three hours later they sat down to dinner. Kurt had repaired the food machine and Ozaki was slowly masticating synthasteak that for the first time in days tasted like synthasteak. As he ecstatically lifted the last savory morsel to his mouth, the ship gave a sudden leap that plastered him and what remained of his supper against the rear bulkhead. There was darkness for a second and then the ceiling lights flickered on, then off, and then on again. Ozaki picked himself up and gingerly ran his fingers over the throbbing lump that was beginning to grow out of the top of his head. His temper wasn’t improved when he looked up and saw Kurt still seated at the table calmly cutting himself another piece of pie.

“You should have braced yourself,” said Kurt conversationally. “The converter’s out of phase. You can hear her build up for a jump if you listen. When she does, you ought to brace yourself. Maybe you don’t hear so good?” he asked helpfully.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, it isn’t polite,” snarled Ozaki.

Late that night the converter cut out altogether. Ozaki was sleeping the sleep of the innocent and didn’t find out about it for several hours. When he did awake, it was to Kurt’s gentle shaking.

“Hey!” Ozaki groaned and buried his face in the pillow.

“Hey!” This time the voice was louder. The pilot yawned and tried to open his eyes.

“Is it important if all the lights go out?” the voice queried. The import of the words suddenly struck home and Ozaki sat bolt upright in his bunk. He opened his eyes, blinked, and opened them again. The lights were out. There was a strange, unnatural silence about the ship.

“Good Lord!” he shouted and jumped for the controls. “The power’s off.”

He hit the starter switch but nothing happened. The converter was jammed solid. Ozaki began to sweat. He fumbled over the control board until he found the switch that cut the emergency batteries into the lighting circuit. Again nothing happened.

“If you’re trying to run the lights on the batteries, they won’t work,” said Kurt in a conversational tone.

“Why not?” snapped Ozaki as he punched savagely and futilely at the starter button.

“They’re dead,” said Kurt. “I used them all up.”

“You what?” yelled the pilot in anguish.

“I used them all up. You see, when the converter went out, I woke up. After a while the sun started to come up, and it began to get awfully hot so I hooked the batteries into the refrigeration coils. Kept the place nice and cool while they lasted.”

Ozaki howled. When he swung the shutter of the forward port to let in some light, he howled again. This time in dead earnest. The giant red sun of the system was no longer perched off to the left at a comfortable distance. Instead, before Ozaki’s horrified eyes was a great red mass that stretched from horizon to horizon.

“We’re falling into the sun!” he screamed.

“It’s getting sort of hot,” said Kurt. “Hot” was an understatement. The thermometer needle pointed at a hundred and ten and was climbing steadily.

Ozaki jerked open the stores-compartment door and grabbed a couple of spare batteries. As quickly as his trembling fingers would work, he connected them to the emergency power line. A second later the cabin lights flickered on and Ozaki was warming up the space communicator. He punched the transmitter key and a call went arcing out through hyperspace. The vision screen flickered and the bored face of a communication tech, third class, appeared.

“Give me Commander Krogson at once!” demanded Ozaki.

“Sorry, old man,” yawned the other, “but the commander’s having breakfast. Call back in half an hour, will you?”

“This is an emergency! Put me through at once!”

“Can’t help it,” said the other, “nobody can disturb the Old Man while he’s having breakfast!”

“Listen, you knucklehead,” screamed Ozaki, “if you don’t get me through to the commander as of right now, I’ll have you in the uranium mines so fast that you won’t know what hit you!”

“You and who else?” drawled the tech.

“Me and my cousin Takahashi!” snarled the pilot. “He’s Reclassification Officer for the Base STAP.”

The tech’s face went white. “Yes, sir!” he stuttered. “Right away, sir! No offense meant, sir!” He disappeared from the screen. There was a moment of darkness and then the interior of Commander Krogson’s cabin flashed on.

The commander was having breakfast. His teeth rested on the white tablecloth and his mouth was full of mush.

“Commander Krogson!” said Ozaki desperately.

The commander looked up with a startled expression. When he noticed his screen was on, he swallowed his mush convulsively and popped his teeth back into place.

“Who’s there?” he demanded in a neutral voice in case it might be somebody important.

“Flight Officer Ozaki,” said Flight Officer Ozaki.

A thundercloud rolled across the commander’s face. “What do you mean by disturbing me at breakfast?” he demanded.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the pilot, “but my ship’s falling into a red sun.”

“Too bad,” grunted Commander Krogson and turned back to his mush and milk.

“But, sir,” persisted the other, “you’ve got to send somebody to pull me off. My converter’s dead!”

“Why tell me about it?” said Krogson in annoyance. “Call Space Rescue, they’re supposed to handle things like this.”

“Listen, Commander,” wailed the pilot, “by the time they’ve assigned me a priority and routed the paper through proper channels, I’ll have gone up in smoke. The last time I got in a jam it took them two weeks to get to me; I’ve got only hours left!”

“Can’t make exceptions,” snapped Krogson testily. “If I let you skip the chain of command, everybody and his brother will think he has a right to.”

“Commander,” howled Ozaki, “we’re frying in here!”

“All right. All right!” said the commander sourly. “I’ll send somebody after you. What’s your name?”

“Ozaki, sir. Flight Officer Ozaki.”

The commander was in the process of scooping up another spoonful of mush when suddenly a thought struck him squarely between the eyes.

“Wait a second,” he said hastily, “you aren’t the scout who located the Imperial base, are you?”

“Yes, sir,” said the pilot in a cracked voice.

“Why didn’t you say so?” roared Krogson. Flipping on his intercom, he growled, “Give me the exec.” There was a moment’s silence.

“Yes, sir?”

“How long before we get to that scout?”

“About six hours, sir.”

“Make it three!”

“Can’t be done, sir.”

“It will be done!” snapped Krogson and broke the connection.

The temperature needle in the little scout was now pointing to a hundred and fifteen.

“I don’t think we can hold on that long,” said Ozaki.

“Nonsense!” said the commander and the screen went blank.

Ozaki slumped into the pilot chair and buried his face in his hands. Suddenly he felt a blast of cold air on his neck. “There’s no use in prolonging our misery,” he said without looking up. “Those spare batteries won’t last five minutes under this load.”

“I knew that,” said Kurt cheerfully, “so while you were doing all the talking, I went ahead and fixed the converter. You sure have mighty hot summers out here!” he continued, mopping his brow.

“You what?” yelled the pilot, jumping half out of his seat. “You couldn’t even if you did have the know-how. It takes half a day to get the shielding off so you can get at the thing!”

“Didn’t need to take the shielding off for a simple job like that,” said Kurt. He pointed to a tiny inspection port about four inches in diameter. “I worked through there.”

“That’s impossible!” interjected the pilot. “You can’t even see the injector through that, let alone get to it to work on!”

“Shucks,” said Kurt, “a man doesn’t have to see a little gadget like that to fix it. If your hands are trained right, you can feel what’s wrong and set it to rights right away. She won’t jump on you anymore either. The syncromesh thrust baffle was a little out of phase so I fixed that, too, while I was at it.”

Ozaki still didn’t believe it, but he hit the controls on faith. The scout bucked under the sudden strong surge of power and then, its converter humming sweetly, arced away from the giant sun in a long, sweeping curve.

There was silence in the scout. The two men sat quietly, each immersed in an uneasy welter of troubled speculation.

“That was close!” said Ozaki finally. “Too close for comfort. Another hour or so and—!” He snapped his fingers.

Kurt looked puzzled. “Were we in trouble?”

“Trouble!” snorted Ozaki. “If you hadn’t fixed the converter when you did, we’d be cinders by now!”

Kurt digested the news in silence. There was something about this super-being who actually made machines work that bothered him. There was a note of bewilderment in his voice when he asked: “If we were really in danger, why didn’t you fix the converter instead of wasting time talking on that thing?” He gestured toward the space communicator.

It was Ozaki’s turn to be bewildered. “Fix it?” he said with surprise in his voice. “There aren’t a half a dozen techs on the whole base who know enough about atomics to work on a propulsion unit. When something like that goes out, you call Space Rescue and chew your nails until a wrecker can get to you.”

Kurt crawled into his bunk and lay back, staring at the curved ceiling. He had thinking to do, a lot of thinking!

Three hours later the scout flashed up alongside the great flagship and darted into a landing port. Flight Officer Ozaki was stricken by a horrible thought as he gazed affectionately around his smoothly running ship.

“Say,” he said to Kurt hesitantly, “would you mind not mentioning that you fixed this crate up for me? If you do, they’ll take it away from me sure. Some captain will get a new gig and I’ll be issued another clunk from Base Junkpile.”

“Sure thing,” said Kurt.

A moment later the flashing of a green light on the.control panel signaled that the pressure in the lock had reached normal.

“Back in a minute,” said Ozaki. “You wait here.”

There was a muted hum as the exit hatch swung slowly open. Two guards entered and stood silently beside Kurt as Ozaki left to report to Commander Krogson.

XIII

The battle fleet of War Base Three of Sector Seven of the Galactic Protectorate hung motionless in space twenty thousand kilometers out from Kurt’s home planet. A hundred tired detection techs sat tensely before their screens, sweeping the globe for some sign of energy radiation. Aside from the occasional light spatters caused by space static, their scopes remained dark. As their reports filtered into Commander Krogson, he became more and more exasperated.

“Are you positive this is the right planet?” he demanded of Ozaki.

“No question about it, sir.”

“Seems funny there’s nothing running down there at all,” said Krogson. “Maybe they spotted us on the way in and cut off power. I’ve got a hunch that—” He broke off in mid-sentence as the red top-priority light on the communication panel began to flash. “Get that,” he said. “Maybe they’ve spotted something at last.”

The executive office flipped on the vision screen and the interior of the flagship’s communication room was revealed.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” said the tech whose image appeared on the screen, “but a message just came through on the emergency band.”

“What does it say?”

The tech looked unhappy. “It’s coded, sir.”

“Well, decode it!” barked the executive.

“We can’t,” said the technician diffidently. “Something’s gone wrong with the decoder. The printer is pounding out random groups that don’t make any sense at all.”

The executive grunted his disgust. “Any idea where the call’s coming from?”

“Yes, sir; it’s coming in on a tight beam from the direction of Base. Must be from a ship emergency rig, though. Regular hyperspace transmission isn’t directional. Either the ship’s regular rig broke down or the operator is using the beam to keep anybody else from picking up his signal.”

“Get to work on that decoder. Call back as soon as you get any results.” The tech saluted and the screen went black.

“Whatever it is, it’s probably trouble,” said Krogson morosely. “Well, we’d better get on with this job. Take the fleet into atmosphere. It looks as if we are going to have to make a visual check.”

“Maybe the prisoner can give us a lead,” suggested the executive officer.

“Good idea. Have him brought in.”

A moment later Kurt was ushered into the master control room. Krogson’s eyes widened at the sight of scalp lock and paint.

“Where in the name of the Galactic Spirit,” he demanded, “did you get that rig?”

“Don’t you recognize an Imperial Space Marine when you see one?” Kurt answered coldly.

The guard that had escorted Kurt in made a little twirling motion at his temple with one finger. Krogson took another look and nodded agreement.

“Sit down, son,” he said in a fatherly tone. “We’re trying to get you home, but you’re going to have to give us a little help before we can do it. You see, we’re not quite sure just where your base is.”

“I’ll help all I can,” said Kurt.

“Fine!” said the commander, rubbing his palms together. “Now just where down there do you come from?” He pointed out the vision port to the curving globe that stretched out below.

Kurt looked down helplessly. “Nothing makes sense, seeing it from up here,” he said apologetically.

Krogson thought for a moment. “What’s the country like around your base?” he asked.

“Mostly jungle,” said Kurt. “The garrison is on a plateau though and there are mountains to the north.”

Krogson turned quickly to his exec. “Did you get that description?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Get all scouts out for a close sweep. As soon as the base is spotted, move the fleet in and hover at forty thousand!”

Forty minutes later a scout came streaking back.

“Found it, sir!” said the exec. “Plateau with jungle all around and mountains to the north. There’s a settlement at one end. The pilot saw movement down there, but they must have spotted us on our way in. There’s still no evidence of energy radiation. They must have everything shut down.”

“That’s not good!” said Krogson. “They’ve probably got all their heavy stuff set up waiting for us to sweep over. We’ll have to hit them hard and fast. Did they spot the scout?”

“Can’t tell, sir.”

“We’d better assume that they did. Notify all gunnery officers to switch their batteries over to central control. If we come in fast and high and hit them with simultaneous fleet concentration, we can vaporize the whole base before they can take a crack at us.”

“I’ll send the order out at once, sir,” said the executive officer.

The fleet pulled into tight formation and headed toward the Imperial base. They were halfway there when the fleet gunnery officer entered the control room and said apologetically to Commander Krogson, “Excuse me, sir, but I’d like to suggest a trial run. Fleet concentration is a tricky thing, and if something went haywire—we’d be sitting ducks for the ground batteries.”

“Good idea,” said Krogson thoughtfully. “There’s too much at stake to have anything go wrong. Select an equivalent target, and we’ll make a pass.”

The fleet was now passing over a towering mountain chain.

“How about that bald spot down there?” said the exec, pointing to a rocky expanse that jutted out from the side of one of the towering peaks.

“Good enough,” said Krogson.

“All ships on central control!” reported the gunnery officer.

“On target!” repeated the tech on the tracking screen. “One. Two. Three. Four—”

Kurt stood by the front observation port watching the ground far below sweep by. He had been listening intently, but what had been said didn’t make sense. There had been something about batteries—the term was alien to him—and something about the garrison. He decided to ask the commander what it was all about, but the intentness with which Krogson was watching the tracking screen deterred him. Instead, he gazed moodily down at the mountains below him.

“Five. Six. Seven. Ready. FIRE!”

A savage shudder ran through the great ship as her ground-pointed batteries blasted in unison. Seconds went by and then suddenly the rocky expanse on the shoulder of the mountain directly below twinkled as blinding flashes of actinic light danced across it. Then as Kurt watched, great masses of rock and earth moved slowly skyward from the center of the spurting nests of tangled flame. Still slowly, as if buoyed up by the thin mountain air, the debris began to fall back again until it was lost from sight in quick-rising mushrooms of jet-black smoke. Kurt turned and looked back toward Commander Krogson. Batteries must be the things that had torn the mountains below apart. And garrison—there was only one garrison!

“I ordered fleet fire,” barked Krogson. “This ship was the only one that cut loose. What happened?”

“Just a second, sir,” said the executive officer, “I’ll try and find out.” He was busy for a minute on the intercom system. “The other ships were ready, sir,” he reported finally. “Their guns were all switched over to our control, but no impulse came through. Central fire control must be on the blink!” He gestured toward a complex bank of equipment that occupied one entire corner of the control room.

Commander Krogson said a few appropriate words. When he reached the point where he was beginning to repeat himself, he paused and stood in frozen silence for a good thirty seconds.

“Would you mind getting a fire-control tech in here to fix that obscenity bank?” he asked in a voice that put everyone’s teeth on edge.

The other seemed to have something to say, but he was having trouble getting it out.

“Well?” said Krogson.

“Prime Base grabbed our last one two weeks ago. There isn’t another left with the fleet.”

“Doesn’t look like much to me,” said Kurt as he strolled over to examine the bank of equipment.

“Get away from there!” roared the commander. “We’ve got enough trouble without you making things worse.”

Kurt ignored him and began to open inspection ports.

“Guard!” yelled Krogson. “Throw that man out of here!”

Ozaki interrupted timidly. “Beg pardon, Commander, but he can fix it if anybody can.”

Krogson whirled on the flight officer. “How do you know?”

Ozaki caught himself just in time. If he talked too much, he was likely to lose the scout that Kurt had fixed for him.

“Because he…eh…talks like a tech,” he concluded lamely.

Krogson looked at Kurt dubiously. “I guess there’s no harm in giving it a trial,” he said finally. “Give him a set of tools and turn him loose. Maybe for once a miracle will happen.”

“First,” said Kurt, “I’ll need the wiring diagrams for this thing.”

“Get them!” barked the commander and an orderly scuttled out of the control, headed aft.

“Next you’ll have to give me a general idea of what it’s supposed to do,” continued Kurt.

Krogson turned to the gunnery officer. “You’d better handle this.”

When the orderly returned with the circuit diagrams, they were spread out on the plotting table and the two men bent over them.

“Got it!” said Kurt at last and sauntered over to the control bank. Twenty minutes later he sauntered back again.

“She’s all right now,” he said pleasantly.

The gunner officer quickly scanned his testing board. Not a single red trouble light was on. He turned to Commander Krogson in amazement.

“I don’t know how he did it, sir, but the circuits are all clear now.”

Krogson stared at Kurt with a look of new respect in his eyes. “What were you down there, chief maintenance tech?”

Kurt laughed. “Me? I was never chief anything. I spent most of my time on hunting detail.”

The commander digested that in silence for a moment. “Then how did you become so familiar with fire-control gear?”

“Studied it in school like everyone else does. There wasn’t anything much wrong with that thing anyway except a couple of sticking relays.”

“Excuse me, sir,” interrupted the executive officer, “but should we make another trial run?”

“Are you sure the bank is in working order?”

“Positive, sir!”

“Then we’d better make straight for that base. If this boy here is a fair example of what they have down there, their defenses may be too tough for us to crack if we give them a chance to get set up!”

Kurt gave a slight start which he quickly controlled. Then he had guessed right! Slowly and casually he began to sidle toward the semi-circular bank of controls that stood before the great tracking screen.

“Where do you think you’re going!” barked Krogson.

Kurt froze. His pulses were pounding within him, but he kept his voice light and casual.

“No place,” he said innocently.

“Get over against the bulkhead and keep out of the way!” snapped the commander. “We’ve got a job of work coming up.”

Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice.

“What kind of work?”

Krogson’s voice softened and a look approaching pity came into his eyes. “It’s just as well you don’t know about it until it’s over,” he said gruffly.

“There she is!” sang out the navigator, pointing to a tiny brown projection that jutted up out of the green jungle in the far distance. “We’re about three minutes out, sir. You can take over at any time now.”

The fleet gunnery officer’s fingers moved quickly over the keys that welded the fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and ready to blast a barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down at the defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control button.

“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he said deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the controls. A hush fell over the control room as the great tracking screen brightened and showed the compact bundle of white dots that marked the fleet crawling slowly toward the green triangle of the target area.

“Get the prisoner out of here,” said Krogson. “There’s no reason why he should have to watch what’s about to happen.”

The guard that stood beside Kurt grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door.

There was a sudden explosion of fists as Kurt erupted into action. In a blur of continuous movement, he streaked toward the gunnery control panel. He was halfway across the control room before the pole-axed guard hit the floor. There was a second of stunned amazement, and then before anyone could move to stop him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised tensely above the master stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.

“Hold it!” he shouted as the moment of paralysis broke and several of the officers started toward him menacingly. “One move and I’ll blast the whole fleet into scrap!”

They stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander Krogson for guidance.

“Almost on target, sir,” called the tech on the tracking screen.

Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt. “Get away from those controls!” he snarled. “You aren’t going to blow anything to anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast. If you are trying to alert your base, it’s no use. We can be on a return sweep before they have time to get ready for us.”

Kurt shook his head calmly. “Wouldn’t do you any good,” he said. “Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I made a couple of minor changes while I was working on the control bank.”

“Quit bluffing,” said Krogson.

“I’m not bluffing,” said Kurt quietly. “Take a look. It won’t cost you anything.”

“On target!” called the tracking tech.

“Order the fleet to circle for another sweep,” snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward observation port. There was something in Kurt’s tone that had impressed him more than he liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly his face blanched!

“The gunports! They’re closed!”

Kurt gave a whistle of relief. “I had my fingers crossed,” he said pleasantly. “You didn’t give me enough time with the wiring diagrams for me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do the trick. Now…guess what the results would be if I should happen to push down on this stud.”

Krogson had a momentary vision of several hundred shells ramming their sensitive noses against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun ports.

“Don’t bother trying to talk,” said Kurt, noticing the violent contractions of the commander’s Adam’s apple. “You’d better save your breath for my colonel.”

“Who?” demanded Krogson.

“My colonel,” repeated Kurt. “We’d better head back and pick him up. Can you make these ships hang in one place or do they have to keep moving fast to stay up?”

The commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said nothing.

Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing stud.

“Easy!” yelled the gunnery officer in alarm. “That thing has hair-trigger action!”

“Well?” said Kurt to Krogson.

“We can hover,” grunted the other.

“Then take up a position a little to one side of the plateau.” Kurt brushed the surface of the firing stud with a casual finger. “If you make me push this, I don’t want a lot of scrap iron falling down on the battalion. Somebody might get hurt.”

As the fleet came to rest above the plateau, the call light on the communication panel began to flash again.

“Answer it,” ordered Kurt, “but watch what you say.”

Krogson walked over and snapped on the screen.

“Communications, sir.”

“Well?”

“It’s that message we called you about earlier. We’ve finally got the decoder working—sort of, that is.” His voice faltered and then stopped.

“What does it say?” demanded Krogson impatiently.

“We still don’t know,” admitted the tech miserably. “It’s being decoded all right, but it’s coming out in a North Vegan dialect that nobody down here can understand. I guess there’s still something wrong with the selector. All that we can figure out is that the message has something to do with General Carr and the Lord Protector.”

“Want me to go down and fix it?” interrupted Kurt in an innocent voice.

Krogson whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clenching and unclenching in impotent rage.

“Anything wrong, sir?” asked the technician on the screen.

Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the commander.

“Of course not,” growled Krogson. “Go find somebody to translate that message and don’t bother me until it’s done.”

A new face appeared on the screen.

“Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but translation won’t be necessary. We just got a flash from Detection that they’ve spotted the ship that sent it. It’s a small scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be here in a matter of minutes.”

Krogson flipped off the screen impatiently. “Whatever it is, it’s sure to be more trouble,” he said to nobody in particular. Suddenly he became aware that the fleet was no longer in motion. “Well,” he said sourly to Kurt, “we’re here. What now?”

“Send a ship down to the garrison and bring Colonel Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out between you. Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under control.”

Krogson turned to the executive officer. “All right,” he said, “do what he says.” The other saluted and started toward the door.

“Just a second,” said Kurt. “If you have any idea of telling the boys outside to cut the transmission leads from fire control, I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a rather lengthy process, and the minute a trouble light blinks on that board, up we go! Now on your way!”

XIV

Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, stood at his office window and scowled down upon the whole civilized world, all twenty-six square kilometers of it. It had been a hard day. Three separate delegations of mothers had descended upon him demanding that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake of their sanity. The recruits had been roaming the company streets in bands composed of equal numbers of small boys and large dogs, creating havoc wherever they went. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of his forthcoming triumph when he, in the guise of the Inspector General, would float magnificently down from the skies and once and for all put the seal of final authority upon the new order. The only trouble was that he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that maybe that new order wasn’t all that he had planned it to be. As he thought of his own six banshees screaming through quarters, his suspicion deepened almost to certainty.

He wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it gloomily. He couldn’t backwater now, his pride was at stake. He glanced at the water clock on his desk and then rose reluctantly and started toward the door. It was time to get into battle armor and get ready for the inspection.

As he reached the door, there was a sudden slap of running sandals down the hall. A second later, Major Kane burst into the office, his face white and terrified.

“Colonel,” he gasped, “the I.G.’s here!”

“Nonsense,” said Blick. “I’m the I.G. now!”

“Oh yeah?” whimpered Kane. “Go look out the window. He’s here, and he’s brought the whole Imperial fleet with him!”

Blick dashed to the window and looked up. High above, so high that he could see them only as silver specks, hung hundreds of ships.

“Headquarters does exist!” he gasped.

He stood stunned. What to do…what to do…what to do? The question swirled around in his brain until he was dizzy. He looked to Kane for advice, but the other was as bewildered as he was.

“Don’t stand there, man,” he stormed. “Do something!”

“Yes, sir,” said Kane. “What?”

Blick thought for a long, silent moment. The answer was obvious, but there was a short, fierce inner struggle before he could bring himself to accept it.

“Get Colonel Harris up here at once. He’ll know what we should do.”

A stubborn look came across Kane’s face. “We’re running things now,” he said angrily.

Blick’s face hardened and he let out a roar that shook the walls. “Listen, you pup, when you get an order, you follow it. Now get!”

Forty seconds later Colonel Harris stormed into the office. “What kind of a mess have you got us into this time?” he demanded.

“Look up there, sir,” said Blick, leading him to the window.

Colonel Harris snapped back into command as if he’d never left it.

“Major Kane!” he shouted.

Kane popped into the office like a frightened rabbit.

“Evacuate the garrison at once! I want everyone off the plateau and into the jungle immediately. Get litters for the sick and the veterans who can’t walk and take them to the hunting camps. Start the rest moving north as soon as you can.”

“Really, sir,” protested Kane, looking to Blick for a cue.

“You heard the colonel,” barked Blick. “On your way!” Kane bolted.

Colonel Harris turned to Blick and said in a frosty voice: “I appreciate your help, Colonel, but I feel perfectly competent to enforce my own orders.”

“Sorry, sir,” said the other meekly. “It won’t happen again.”

Harris smiled. “O.K., Jimmie,” he said, “let’s forget it. We’ve got work to do!”

XV

It seemed to Kurt as if time was standing still. His nerves were screwed up to the breaking point and although he maintained an air of outward composure for the benefit of those in the control room of the flagship, it took all his willpower to keep the hand that was resting over the firing stud from quivering. One slip and they’d be on him. Actually it was only a matter of minutes between the time the scout was dispatched to the garrison below and the time it returned, but to him it seemed as if hours had passed before the familiar form of his commanding officer strode briskly into the control room.

Colonel Harris came to a halt just inside the door and swept the room with a keen, penetrating gaze.

“What’s up, son?” he asked Kurt.

“I’m not quite sure. All that I know is that they’re here to blast the garrison. As long as I’ve got control of this,” he indicated the firing stud, “I’m top dog, but you’d better work something out in a hurry.”

The look of strain on Kurt’s face was enough for the colonel.

“Who’s in command here?” he demanded.

Krogson stepped forward and bowed stiffly. “Commander Conrad Krogson of War Base Three of the Galactic Protectorate.”

“Colonel Marcus Harris, 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines,” replied the other briskly. “Now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s get to work. Is there some place here where we can talk?”

Krogson gestured toward a small cubicle that opened off the control room. The two men entered and shut the door behind them.

A half-hour went by without agreement. “There may be an answer somewhere,” Colonel Harris said finally, “but I can’t find it. We can’t surrender to you, and we can’t afford to have you surrender to us. We haven’t the food, facilities, or anything else to keep fifty thousand men under guard. If we turn you loose, there’s nothing to keep you from coming back to blast us—except your word, that is, and since it would obviously be given under duress, I’m afraid that we couldn’t attach much weight to it. It’s a nice problem. I wish we had more time to spend on it, but unless you can come up with something workable during the next five minutes, I’m going to give Kurt orders to blow the fleet.”

Krogson’s mind was operating at a furious pace. One by one he snatched at possible solutions, and one by one he gave them up as he realized that they would never stand up under the scrutiny of the razor-sharp mind that sat opposite him.

“Look,” he burst out finally, “your empire is dead and our protectorate is about to fall apart. Give us a chance to come down and join you and we’ll chuck the past. We need each other and you know it!”

“I know we do,” said the colonel soberly, “and I rather think you are being honest with me. But we just can’t take the chance. There are too many of you for us to digest and if you should change your mind–” He threw up his hands in a helpless gesture.

“But I wouldn’t,” protested Krogson. “You’ve told me what your life is like down there and you know what kind of a rat race I’ve been caught up in. I’d welcome the chance to get out of it. All of us would!”

“You might to begin with,” said Harris, “but then you might start thinking what your Lord Protector would give to get his hands on several hundred trained technicians. No, Commander,” he said, “we just couldn’t chance it.” He stretched his hand out to Krogson and the other after a second’s hesitation took it.

Commander Krogson had reached the end of the road and he knew it. The odd thing about it was that now he found himself there, he didn’t particularly mind. He sat and watched his own reactions with a sense of vague bewilderment. The strong drive for self-preservation that had kept him struggling ahead for so long was petering out and there was nothing to take its place. He was immersed in a strange feeling of emptiness and though a faint something within him said that he should go out fighting, it seemed pointless and without reason.

Suddenly the moment of quiet was broken. From the control room came a muffled sound of angry voices and scuffling feet. With one quick stride, Colonel Harris reached the door and swung it open. He was almost bowled over by a small, disheveled figure who darted past him into the cubicle. Close behind came several of the ship’s officers. As the figure came to a stop before Commander Krogson, one of them grabbed him and started to drag him back into the control room.

“Sorry, sir,” the officer said to Krogson, “but he came busting in demanding to see you at once. He wouldn’t tell us why and when we tried to stop him, he broke away.”

“Release him!” ordered the commander. He looked sternly at the little figure. “Well, Schninkle,” he said sternly, “what is it this time?”

“Did you get my message?”

Krogson snorted. “So it was you in that scout! 1 might have known it. We got it all right, but Communication still hasn’t got it figured out. What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be back at base keeping knives out of my back!”

“It’s private, sir,” said Schninkle.

“The rest of you clear out!” ordered Krogson. A second later, with the exception of Colonel Harris, the cubicle stood empty. Schninkle looked questioningly at the oddly uniformed officer.

“Couldn’t put him out if I wanted to,” said Krogson, “now go ahead.”

Schninkle closed the door carefully and then turned to the commander and said in a hushed voice, “There’s been a blowup at Prime Base. General Carr was hiding out there after all. He hit at noon yesterday. He had two-thirds of the Elite Guard secretly on his side and the Lord Protector didn’t have a chance. He tried to run but they chopped him down before he got out of the atmosphere.”

Krogson digested the news in silence for a moment. “So the Lord Protector is dead.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, long live the Lord Protector!” He turned slowly to Colonel Harris. “I guess this lets us both off. Now that the heat’s off me, you’re safe. Call off your boy out there, and we’ll make ourselves scarce. I’ve got to get back to the new Lord Protector to pay my respects. If some of my boys get to Carr first, I’m apt to be out of a job.”

Harris shook his head. “It isn’t as simple as that. Your new leader needs technicians as much as your old one did. I’m afraid we are still back where we started.”

As Krogson broke into an impatient denial, Schninkle interrupted him. “You can’t go back, Commander. None of us can. Carr has the whole staff down on his ‘out’ list. He’s making a clean sweep of all possible competition. We’d all be under arrest now if he knew where we were!”

Krogson gave a slow whistle. “Doesn’t leave me much choice, does it?” he said to Colonel Harris. “If you don’t turn me loose, I get blown up; if you do, I get shot down.”

Schninkle looked puzzled. “What’s up, sir?” he asked.

Krogson gave a bitter laugh. “In case you didn’t notice on your way in, there is a young man sitting at the fire controls out there who can blow up the whole fleet at the touch of a button. Down below is an ideal base with hundreds of techs, but the colonel here won’t take us in, and he’s afraid to let us go.”

“I wouldn’t,” admitted Harris, “but the last few minutes have rather changed the picture. My empire has been dead for five hundred years and your protectorate doesn’t seem to want you around anymore. It looks like we’re both out of a job. Maybe we both ought to find a new one. What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Krogson. “I can’t go back and I can’t stay here, and there isn’t anyplace else. The fleet can’t keep going without a base.”

A broad grin came over the face of Colonel Harris. “You know,” he said, “I’ve got a hunch that maybe we can do business after all. Come on!” He threw open the cubicle door and strode briskly into the control room, Krogson and Schninkle following close at his heels. He walked over to Kurt, who was still poised stiffly at the fire-control board.

“You can relax now, lad. Everything is under control.”

Kurt gave a sigh of relief and, pulling himself to his feet, stretched luxuriantly. As the other officers saw the firing stud deserted, they tensed and looked to Commander Krogson questioningly. He frowned for a second and then slowly shook his head.

“Well?” he said to Colonel Harris.

“It’s obvious,” said the other, “you’ve a fleet, a darn good fleet, but it’s falling apart for lack of decent maintenance. I’ve got a base down there with five thousand lads who can think with their fingers. This knucklehead of mine is a good example.” He walked over to Kurt and slapped him affectionately on the shoulder. “There’s nothing on this ship that he couldn’t tear down and put back together blindfolded if he was given a little time to think about it. I think he’ll enjoy having some real work to do for a change.”

“I may seem dense,” said Krogson with a bewildered expression on his face, “but wasn’t that the idea that I was trying to sell you?”

“The idea is the same,” said Harris, “but the context isn’t. You’re in a position now where you have to cooperate. That makes a difference. A big difference!”

“It sounds good,” said Krogson, “but now you’re overlooking something. Carr will be looking for me. We can’t stand off the whole galaxy!”

“You’re overlooking something too, sir,” Schninkle interrupted. “He hasn’t the slightest idea where we are. It will be months before he has things well enough under control to start an organized search for us. When he does, his chances of ever spotting the fleet are mighty slim if we take reasonable precautions. Remember that it was only by a fluke that we ever happened to spot this place to begin with.”

As he talked, a calculating look came into his eyes. “A year of training and refitting here and there wouldn’t be a fleet in the galaxy that could stand against us.” He casually edged over until he occupied a position between Kurt and the fire-control board. “If things went right, there’s no reason why you couldn’t become Lord Protector, Commander.”

A flash of the old fire stirred within Krogson and then quickly flickered out. “No, Schninkle,” he said heavily. “That’s all past now. I’ve had enough. It’s time to try something new.”

“In that case,” said Colonel Harris, “let’s begin! Out there a whole galaxy is breaking up. Soon the time will come when a strong hand is going to be needed to piece it back together and put it in running order again. You know,” he continued reflectively, “the name of the old empire still has a certain magic to it. It might not be a bad idea to use it until we are ready to move on to something better.”

He walked silently to the vision port and looked down on the lush greenness spreading far below. “But whatever we call ourselves,” he continued slowly, half talking to himself, “we have something to work for now.” A quizzical smile played over his lips and his wise old eyes seemed to be scanning the years ahead. “You know, Kurt, there’s nothing like a visit from the Inspector General once in a while to keep things in line. The galaxy is a big place, but when the time comes, we’ll make our rounds!”

XVI

On the parade ground behind the low buildings of the garrison, the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines stood in rigid formation, the feathers in their war bonnets moving slightly in the breeze that blew in from the west and their war paint glowing redly in the slanting rays of the setting sun.

A quiver ran through the hard-surface soil of the plateau as the great mass of the fleet flagship settled down ponderously to rest. There was a moment of expectant silence as a great port clanged open and a gangplank extended to the ground. From somewhere within the ship a fanfare of trumpets sounded. Slowly and with solemn dignity, surrounded by his staff, Conrade Krogson, Inspector General of the Imperial Space Marines, advanced to review the troops.

Editor's Introduction to:

THIS EARTH OF HOURS
by James Blish

James Blish was a highly influential science fiction writer until his death in 1974. As “W. Atheling,” he became one of the field’s best-known critics.

His work tended to be philosophical in nature. Even his “straight” adventure stories, beginning with “Surface Tension” (which became the novel The Seedling Stars), had a deeper theme: What is human? His A Case of Conscience, including as it does an ethical problem as old as the Roman Catholic Church, is rightly regarded as a science fiction classic. His best-known novels are the stories of The Okies, or Cities in Flight.

Blish’s military career was brief and undistinguished. According to Damon Knight, Blish, a medical technician at Fort Dix, New Jersey, was “always in trouble over unshined shoes, or pajamas showing under his trousers at reveille.” In 1945 he refused a direct order to do KP. According to Knight, “Since it was wartime, he could have been court-martialed, but his father pulled strings in Washington and got him discharged.”

Blish’s later work shows a far different view of the military: It does not always win his approval, but he pays the military all due respect.

Kipling called the non-commissioned officers the backbone of the army. In this story Marine Master Sergeant Oberholzer shows why.

Enrico Fermi once asked of alien civilizations, “Where are they?” He reasoned that there had to be a large number of intelligent life forms in the universe, and some had to be a great deal older and more advanced than we; why, then, have they never visited us? James Blish offers one possible answer.

THIS EARTH OF HOURS
by James Blish

The advance squadron was coming into line as Master Sergeant Oberholzer came onto the bridge of the Novoe Washingtongrad, saluted, and stood stiffly to the left of Lieutenant Campion, the exec, to wait for orders. The bridge was crowded and crackling with tension, but after twenty years in the Marines, it was all old stuff to Oberholzer. The Hobo (as most of the enlisted men called her, out of earshot of the brass) was at the point of the formation, as befitted a virtually indestructible battleship already surfeited with these petty conquests. The rest of the cone was sweeping on ahead in the swift enveloping maneuver which had reduced so many previous planets before they had been able to understand what was happening to them.

This time the planet at the focus of all those shifting conic sections of raw naval power was a place called Calle. It was showing now on a screen that Oberholzer could see, turning as placidly as any planet turned when you were too far away from it to see what guns it might be pointing at you. Lieutenant Campion was watching it too, though he had to look out of the very corners of his eyes to see it at all.

If the exec were caught watching the screen instead of the meter board assigned to him, Captain Hammer would probably reduce him to an ensign. Nevertheless, Campion never took his eyes off the image of Calle. This one was going to be rough.

Captain Hammer was watching, too. After a moment he said, “Sound!” in a voice like sandpaper.

“By the pulse six, sir,” Lieutenant Spring’s voice murmured from the direction of the ’scope. His junior, a very raw youngster named Rover, passed him a chit from the plotting table. “For that read: By the briefs five eight nine, sir,” the invisible navigator corrected.

Oberholzer listened without moving while Captain Hammer muttered under his breath to Flo-Mar 12-Upjohn, the only civilian allowed on the bridge—and small wonder, since he was the Consort of State of the Matriarchy itself. Hammer had long ago become accustomed enough to his own bridge to be able to control who overheard him, but 12-Upjohn’s answering whisper must have been audible to every man there.

“The briefing said nothing about a second inhabited planet,” the Consort said a little peevishly. “But then there’s very little we do know about this system—that’s part of our trouble. What makes you think it’s a colony?”

“A colony from Calle, not one of ours,” Hammer said in more or less normal tones; evidently he had decided against trying to keep only half of the discussion private. “The electromagnetic ‘noise’ from both planets has the same spectrum—the energy level, the output, is higher on Calle, that’s all. That means similar machines being used in similar ways. And let me point out, Your Excellency, that the outer planet is in opposition to Calle now, which will put it precisely in our rear if we complete this maneuver.”

“When we complete this maneuver,” 12-Upjohn said firmly. “Is there any evidence of communication between the two planets?”

Hammer frowned. “No,” he admitted.

“Then we’ll regard the colonization hypothesis as unproved—and stand ready to strike back hard if events prove us wrong. I think we have sufficient force here to reduce three planets like Calle if we’re driven to that pitch.”

Hammer grunted and resigned the argument. Of course it was quite possible that 12-Upjohn was right; he did not lack for experience—in fact, he wore the Silver Earring as the most-traveled Consort of State ever to ride the Standing Wave. Nevertheless Oberholzer repressed a sniff with difficulty. Like all military, he was a colonial; he had never seen the Earth, and never expected to; and both as a colonial and as a Marine who had been fighting the Matriarchy’s battles all his adult life, he was more than a little contemptuous of Earthmen, with their tandem names and all that they implied. Of course it was not the Consort of State’s fault that he had been born on Earth and so had been named only Marvin 12 out of the misfortune of being a male; nor that he had married into Florence Upjohn’s cabinet, that being the only way one could become a cabinet member and Marvin 12 having been taught from birth to believe such a post the highest honor a man might covet. All the same, neither 12-Upjohn nor his entourage of drones filled Oberholzer with confidence.

Nobody, however, had asked M. Sgt. Richard Oberholzer what he thought, and nobody was likely to. As the chief of all the non-Navy enlisted personnel on board the Hobo, he was expected to be on the bridge when matters were ripening toward criticality; but his duty there was to listen, not to proffer advice. He could not in fact remember any occasion when an officer had asked his opinion, though he had received—and executed—his fair share of near-suicidal orders from bridges long demolished.

“By the pulse five point five,” Lieutenant Spring’s voice sang.

“Sergeant Oberholzer,” Hammer said.

“Aye, sir.”

“We are proceeding as per orders. You may now brief your men and put them into full battle gear.”

Oberholzer saluted and went below. There was little enough he could tell the squad—as 12-Upjohn had said, Calle’s system was nearly unknown—but even that little would improve the total ignorance in which they had been kept till now. Luckily, they were not much given to asking questions of a strategic sort; like impressed spacehands everywhere, the huge mass of the Matriarchy’s interstellar holdings meant nothing to them but endlessly riding the Standing Wave, with battle and death lurking at the end of every jump. Luckily also, they were inclined to trust Oberholzer, if only for the low cunning he had shown in keeping most of them alive, especially in the face of unusually Crimean orders from the bridge.

This time Oberholzer would need every ounce of trust and erg of obedience they would give him. Though he never expected anything but the worst, he had a queer cold feeling that this time he was going to get it. There were hardly any data to go on yet, but there had been something about Calle that looked persuasively like the end of the line.

Very few of the forty men in the wardroom even looked up as Oberholzer entered. They were checking their gear in the dismal light of the fluorescents with the single-mindedness of men to whom a properly wound gun-tube coil, a properly set face-shield gasket, a properly fueled and focused vaulting jet, have come to mean more than parents, children, retirement pensions, the rule of law, or the logic of empire. The only man to show any flicker of interest was Sergeant Cassirir—as was normal, since he was Oberholzer’s understudy—and he did no more than look up from over the straps of his antigas suit and say, “Well?”

“Well,” Oberholzer said, “now hear this.”

There was a sort of composite jingle and clank as the men lowered their gear to the deck or put it aside on their bunks.

“We’re investing a planet Called Calle in the Canes Venatici cluster,” Oberholzer said, sitting down on an olive-drab canvas pack stuffed with lysurgic acid grenades. “A cruiser Called the Assam Dragon—you were with her on her shakedown, weren’t you, Himber?—touched down here ten years ago with a flock of tenders and got swallowed up. They got two or three quick yells for help out and that was that—nothing anybody could make much sense of, no weapons named or description of the enemy. So here we are, loaded for the kill.”

“Wasn’t any Calley in command of the Assam Dragon when I was aboard,” Himber said doubtfully.

“Nah. Place was named for the astronomer who spotted her, from the rim of the cluster, a hundred years ago,” Oberholzer said. “Nobody names planets for ship captains. Anybody got any sensible questions?”

“Just what kind of trouble are we looking for?” Cassirir said.

“That’s just it—we don’t know. This is closer to the center of the Galaxy than we’ve ever gotten before. It may be a population center too; could be that Calle is just one piece of a federation, at least inside its own cluster. That’s why we’ve got the boys from Momma on board; this one could be damn important.”

Somebody sniffed. “If this cluster is full of people, how come we never picked up signals from it?”

“How do you know we never did?” Oberholzer retorted. “For all I know, maybe that’s why the Assam Dragon came here in the first place. Anyhow that’s not our problem. All we’re–”

The lights went out. Simultaneously the whole mass of the Novoe Washingtongrad shuddered savagely, as though a boulder almost as big as she was had been dropped on her.

Seconds later the gravity went out too.

II

Flo-Mar 12-Upjohn knew no more of the real nature of the disaster than did the wardroom squad, nor did anybody on the bridge, for that matter. The blow had been indetectable until it struck, and then most of the fleet was simply annihilated; only the Hobo was big enough to survive the blow, and she survived only partially—in fact, in five pieces. Nor did the Consort of State ever know by what miracle the section he was in hit Calle still partially under power; he was not privy to the self-salvaging engineering principles of battleships. All he knew—once he struggled back to consciousness—was that he was still alive, and that there was a broad shaft of sunlight coming through a top-to-bottom split in one wall of what had been his office aboard ship.

He held his ringing head for a while, then got up in search of water. Nothing came out of the dispenser, so he unstrapped his dispatch case from the underside of his desk and produced a pint palladium flask of vodka. He had screwed up his face to sample this—at the moment he would have preferred water— when a groan reminded him that there might be more than one room in his suddenly shrunken universe, as well as other survivors.

He was right on both counts. Though the ship section he was in consisted mostly of engines of whose function he had no notion, there were also three other staterooms. Two of these were deserted, but the third turned out to contain a battered member of his own staff, by name Robin One.

The young man was not yet conscious and 12-Upjohn regarded him with a faint touch of despair. Robin One was perhaps the last man in space that the Consort of State would have chosen to be shipwrecked with.

That he was utterly expendable almost went without saying; he was, after all, a drone. When the perfection of sperm electrophoresis had enabled parents for the first time to predetermine the sex of their children, the predictable result had been an enormous glut of males—which was directly accountable for the present regime on Earth. By the time the people and the law-makers, thoroughly frightened by the crazy years of fashion upheavals, “beefcake,” polyandry, male prostitution, and all the rest, had come to their senses, the Matriarchy was in to stay; a weak electric current had overturned civilized society as drastically as the steel knife had demoralized the Eskimos.

Though the tide of excess males had since receded somewhat, it had left behind a wrack, of which Robin One was a bubble. He was a drone, and hence superfluous by definition—fit only to be sent colonizing, on diplomatic missions or otherwise thrown away.

Superfluity alone, of course, could hardly account for his presence on 12-Upjohn’s staff. Officially, Robin One was an interpreter; actually—since nobody could know the language the Consort of State might be Called upon to understand on this mission—he was a poet, a class of unattached males with special privileges in the Matriarchy, particularly if what they wrote was of the middling-difficult or Hillyer Society sort. Robin One was an eminently typical member of this class, distractible, sulky, jealous, easily wounded, homosexual, lazy except when writing, and probably (to give him the benefit of the doubt, for 12-Upjohn had no ear whatever for poetry) the second-worst poet of his generation.

It had to be admitted that assigning 12-Upjohn a poet as an interpreter on this mission had not been a wholly bad idea, and that if Hildegard Muller of the Interstellar Understanding Commission had not thought of it, no mere male would have been likely to—least of all Bar-Rob 4-Agberg, Director of Assimilation. The nightmare of finding the whole of the center of the Galaxy organized into one vast federation, much older than Earth’s, had been troubling the State Department for a long time, at first from purely theoretical considerations—all those heart-stars were much older than those in the spiral arms, and besides, where star density in space is so much higher, interstellar travel does not look like quite so insuperable an obstacle as it long had to Earthmen—and later from certain practical signs, of which the obliteration of the Assam Dragon and her defenders had been only the most provocative. Getting along with these people on the first contact would be vital, and yet the language barrier might well provoke a tragedy wanted by neither side, as the obliteration of Nagasaki in World War II had been provoked by the mistranslation of a single word. Under such circumstances, a man with a feeling for strange words in odd relationships might well prove to be useful, or even vital.

Nevertheless, it was with a certain grim enjoyment that 12-Upjohn poured into Robin One a good two-ounce jolt of vodka. Robin coughed convulsively and sat up, blinking.

“Your Excellency—how—what’s happened? I thought we were dead. But we’ve got lights again, and gravity.”

He was observant, that had to be granted. “The lights are ours but the gravity is Calle’s,” 12-Upjohn explained tersely. “We’re in a part of the ship that cracked up.”

“Well, it’s good that we’ve got power.”

“We can’t afford to be philosophical about it. Whatever shape it’s in, this derelict is a thoroughly conspicuous object and we’d better get out of it in a hurry.”

“Why?” Robin said. “We were supposed to make contact with these people. Why not just sit here until they notice and come to see us?”

“Suppose they just blast us to smaller bits instead? They didn’t stop to parley with the fleet, you’ll notice.”

“This is a different situation,” Robin said stubbornly. “I wouldn’t have stopped to parley with that fleet myself if I’d had the means of knocking it out first. It didn’t look a bit like a diplomatic mission. But why should they be afraid of a piece of a wreck?”

The Consort of State stroked the back of his neck reflectively. The boy had a point. It was risky; on the other hand, how long would they survive foraging in completely unknown territory? And yet obviously they couldn’t stay cooped up in here forever— especially if it was true that there was already no water.

He was spared having to make up his mind by a halloo from the direction of the office. After a startled stare at each other, the two hit the deck running.

Sergeant Oberholzer’s face was peering grimly through the split in the bulkhead.

“Oh ho!” he said. “So you did make it.” He said something unintelligible to some invisible person outside and then squirmed through the breach into the room, with considerable difficulty since he was in full battle gear. “None of the officers did, so I guess that puts you in command.”

“In command of what?” 12-Upjohn said dryly.

“Not very much,” the Marine admitted. “I’ve got five men surviving, one of them with a broken hip, and a section of the ship with two drive units in it. It would lift, more or less, if we could jury-rig some controls, but I don’t know where we’d go in it without supplies or a navigator—or an overdrive, for that matter.” He looked about speculatively. “There was a Standing Wave transceiver in this section, I think, but it’d be a miracle if it still functioned.”

“Would you know how to test it?” Robin asked.

“No. Anyhow we’ve got more immediate business than that. We’ve picked up a native. What’s more, he speaks English—must have picked it up from the Assam Dragon. We started to ask him questions, but it turns out he’s some sort of top official, so we brought him over here on the off chance that one of you was alive.”

“What a break!” Robin One said explosively.

“A whole series of them,” 12-Upjohn agreed, none too happily. He had long ago learned to be at his most suspicious when the breaks seemed to be coming his way. “Well, better bring him in.”

“Can’t,” Oberholzer said. “Apologies, Your Excellency, but he wouldn’t fit. You’ll have to come to him.”

III

It was impossible to imagine what sort of stock the Callean had evolved from. He seemed to be a thorough-going mixture of several different phyla. Most of him was a brown, segmented tube about the diameter of a barrel and perhaps twenty-five feet long, rather like a cross between a python and a worm. The front segments were carried upright, raising the head a good ten feet off the ground.

Properly speaking, 12-Upjohn thought, the Callean really had no head, but only a front end, marked by two enormous faceted eyes and three upsetting simple eyes which were usually closed. Beneath these there was a collar of six short, squidlike tentacles, carried wrapped around the creature in a ropy ring. He was as impossible-looking as he was fearsome, and 12-Upjohn felt at a multiple disadvantage from the beginning.

“How did you learn your language?” he said, purely as a starter.

“I learned it from you,” the Callean said promptly. The voice was unexpectedly high, a quality which was accentuated by the creature’s singsong intonation; 12-Upjohn could not see where it was coming from. “From your ship which I took apart, the dragon-of-war.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It was evident that you meant me ill,” the Callean sang. “At that time I did not know that you were sick, but that became evident at the dissections.”

“Dissection! You dissected the crew of the Dragon?”

“All but one.”

There was a growl from Oberholzer. The Consort of State shot him a warning glance.

“You may have made a mistake,” 12-Upjohn said. “A natural mistake, perhaps. But it was our purpose to offer you trade and peaceful relationships. Our weapons were only precautionary.”

“I do not think so,” the Callean said, “and I never make mistakes. That you make mistakes is natural, but it is not natural to me.”

12-Upjohn felt his jaw dropping. That the creature meant what he said could not be doubted: his command of the language was too complete to permit any more sensible interpretation. 12-Upjohn found himself at a loss; not only was the statement the most staggering he had ever heard from any sentient being, but while it was being made he had discovered how the Callean spoke: the sounds issued at low volume from a multitude of spiracles or breath-holes all along the body, each hole producing only one pure tone, the words and intonations being formed in mid-air by intermodulation—a miracle of co-ordination among a multitude of organs obviously unsuitable for sound-forming at all. This thing was formidable—that would have been evident even without the lesson of the chunk of the Novoe Washingtongrad canted crazily in the sands behind them.

Sands? He looked about with a start. Until that moment the Callean had so hypnotized his attention that he had forgotten to look at the landscape, but his unconscious had registered it. Sand, and nothing but sand. If there were better parts of Calle than this desert, they were not visible from here, all the way to the horizon.

“What do you propose to do with us?” he said at last. There was really nothing else to say; cut off in every possible sense from his home world, he no longer had any base from which to negotiate.

“Nothing,” the Callean said. “You are free to come and go as you please.”

“You’re no longer afraid of us?”

“No. When you came to kill me, I prevented you, but you can no longer do that.”

“There you’ve made a mistake, all right,” Oberholzer said, lifting his rifle toward the multicolored, glittering jewels of the Callean’s eyes. “You know what this is—they must have had them on the Dragon.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Sergeant,” 12-Upjohn said sharply. “We’re in no position to make any threats.” Nor, he added silently, should the Marine have called attention to his gun before the Callean had taken any overt notice of it.

“I know what it is,” the creature said. “You cannot kill me with that. You tried it often before and found you could not. You would remember this if you were not sick.”

“I never saw anything that I couldn’t kill with a Sussmann flamer,” Oberholzer said between his teeth. “Let me try it on the bastard, Your Excellency.”

“Wait a minute,” Robin One said, to 12-Upjohn’s astonishment. “I want to ask some questions—if you don’t mind, Your Excellency?”

“I don’t mind,” 12-Upjohn said after an instant. Anything to get the Marine’s crazy impulse toward slaughter sidetracked. “Go ahead.”

“Did you dissect the crew of the Assam Dragon personally?” Robin asked the Callean.

“Of course.”

“Are you the ruler of this planet?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the only person in this system?”

“No.”

Robin paused and frowned. Then he said: “Are you the only person of your species in your system?”

“No. There is another on Xixobrax—the fourth planet.”

Robin paused once more, but not, it seemed to 12-Upjohn, as though he were in any doubt; it was only as though he were gathering his courage for the key question of all. 12-Upjohn tried to imagine what it might be, and failed.

“How many of you are there?” Robin One said.

“I cannot answer that. As of the instant you asked me that question, there were eighty-three hundred thousand billion, one hundred and eighty-nine million, four hundred and sixty-five thousand, one hundred and eighty; but now the number has changed, and it goes on changing.”

“Impossible,” 12-Upjohn said, stunned. “Not even two planets could support such a number—and you’d never allow a desert like this to go on existing if you had even a fraction of that population to support. I begin to think, sir, that you are a type normal to my business: the ordinary, unimaginative liar.”

“He’s not lying,” Robin said, his voice quivering. “It all fits together. Just let me finish, sir, please. I’ll explain, but I’ve got to go through to the end first.”

“Well,” 12-Upjohn said, helplessly, “all right, go ahead.” But he was instantly sorry, for what Robin One said was:

“Thank you. I have no more questions.”

The Callean turned in a great liquid wheel and poured away across the sand dunes at an incredible speed. 12-Upjohn shouted after him, without any clear idea of what it was that he was shouting—but no matter, for the Callean took no notice. Within seconds, it seemed, he was only a threadworm in the middle distance, and then he was gone. They were all alone in the chill desert air.

Oberholzer lowered his rifle bewilderedly. “He’s fast,” he said to nobody in particular. “Cripes, but he’s fast. I couldn’t even keep him in the sights.”

“That proves it,” Robin said tightly. He was trembling, but whether with fright or elation, 12-Upjohn could not tell; possibly both.

“It had better prove something,” the Consort of State said, trying hard not to sound portentous. There was something about this bright remote desert that made empty any possible pretense to dignity. “As far as I can see, you’ve just lost us what may have been our only chance to treat with these creatures…just as surely as the sergeant would have done it with his gun. Explain, please.”

“I didn’t really catch on until I realized that he was using the second person singular when he spoke to us,” Robin said. If he had heard any threat implied in 12-Upjohn’s charge, it was not visible; he seemed totally preoccupied. “There’s no way to tell them apart in modern English. We thought he was referring to us as ‘you’ plural, but he wasn’t, any more than his I was a plural. He thinks we’re all a part of the same personality—including the men from the Dragon, too— just as he is himself. That’s why he left when I said I had no more questions. He can’t comprehend that each of us has an independent ego. For him such a thing doesn’t exist.”

“Like ants?” 12-Upjohn said slowly. “I don’t see how an advanced technology…but no, I do see. And if it’s so, it means that any Callean we run across could be their chief of state but that no one of them actually is. The only other real individual is next door, on the fourth planet—another hive ego.”

“Maybe not,” Robin said. “Don’t forget that he thinks we’re part of one, too.”

12-Upjohn dismissed that possibility at once. “He’s sure to know his own system, after all…What alarms me is the population figure he cited. It’s got to be at least clusterwide—and from the exactness with which he was willing to cite it, for a given instant, he had to have immediate access to it. An instant, effortless census.”

“Yes,” Robin said. “Meaning mind-to-mind contact, from one to all, throughout the whole complex. That’s what started me thinking about the funny way he used pronouns.”

“If that’s the case, Robin, we are spurlos versenkt. And my pronoun includes Earth.”

“They may have some limitations,” Robin said, but it was clear that he was only whistling in the dark. “But at least it explains why they butchered the Dragon’s crew so readily—and why they’re willing to let us wander around their planet as if we didn’t even exist. We don’t, for them. They can’t have any respect for a single life. No wonder they didn’t give a damn for the sergeant’s gun!”

His initial flush had given way to a marble paleness; there were beads of sweat on his brow in the dry, hot air, and he was trembling harder than ever. He looked as though he might faint in the next instant, though only the slightest of stutters disturbed his rush of words. But for once the Consort of State could not accuse him of agitation over trifles.

Oberholzer looked from one to the other, his expression betraying perhaps only disgust, or perhaps blank incomprehension—it was impossible to tell. Then, with a sudden sharp snick which made them both start, he shot closed the safety catch on the Sussmann.

“Well,” he said in a smooth, cold, empty voice, “now we know what we’ll eat.”

IV

Their basic and dangerous division of plans and purposes began with that.

Sergeant Oberholzer was not a fool, as the hash marks on his sleeve and the battle stars on his ribbons attested plainly; he understood the implications of what the Callean had said—at least after the Momma’s boy had interpreted them; and he was shrewd enough not to undervalue the contribution the poor terrified fairy had made to their possible survival on this world. For the moment, however, it suited the Marine to play the role of the dumb sergeant to the hilt. If a full understanding of what the Calleans were like might reduce him to a like state of trembling impotence, he could do without it.

Not that he really believed that any such thing could happen to him; but it was not hard to see that Momma’s boys were halfway there already—and if the party as a whole hoped to get anything done, they had to be jolted out of it as fast as possible.

At first he thought he had made it. “Certainly not!” the Consort of State said indignantly. “You’re a man, Sergeant, not a Callean. Nothing the Calleans do is any excuse for your behaving otherwise than as a man.”

“I’d rather eat an enemy than a friend,” Oberholzer said cryptically. “Have you got any supplies inside there?”

“I—I don’t know. But that has nothing to do with it.”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘it.’ But maybe we can argue about that later. What are your orders, Your Excellency?”

“I haven’t an order in my head,” 12-Upjohn said with sudden, disarming frankness. “We’d better try to make some sensible plans first and stop bickering. Robin, stop snuffling, too. The question is, what can we do besides trying to survive, and cherishing an idiot hope for a rescue mission?”

“For one thing, we can try to spring the man from the Dragon’s crew that these worms have still got alive,” Oberholzer said. “If that’s what he meant when he said they dissected all but one.”

“That doesn’t seem very feasible to me,” 12-Upjohn said. “We have no idea where they’re holding him–”

“Ask them. This one answered every question you asked him.”

–and even supposing that he’s nearby, we couldn’t free him from a horde of Calleans, no matter how many dead bodies they let you pile up. At best, sooner or later you’d run out of ammunition.”

“It’s worth trying,” Oberholzer said. “We could use the manpower.”

“What for?” Robin One demanded. “He’d be just one more mouth to feed. At the moment, at least, they’re feeding him.”

“For raising ship,” Oberholzer retorted, “If there’s any damn chance of welding our two heaps of junk together and getting off this mudball. We ought to look into it, anyhow.”

Robin One was looking more alarmed by the minute. If the prospect of getting into a fight with the Calleans had scared him, Oberholzer thought, the notion of hard physical labor evidently was producing something close to panic.

“Where could we go?” he said. “Supposing that we could fly such a shambles at all?”

“I don’t know,” Oberholzer said. “We don’t know what’s possible yet. But anything’s better than sitting around here and starving. First off, I want that man from the Dragon.”

“I’m opposed to it,” 12-Upjohn said firmly. “The Calleans are leaving us to our own devices now. If we cause any real trouble, they may well decide that we’d be safer locked up, or dead. I don’t mind planning to lift ship if we can—but no military expeditions.”

“Sir,” Oberholzer said, “military action on this planet is what I was sent here for. I reserve the right to use my own judgment. You can complain if we ever get back—but I’m not going to let a man rot in a worm burrow while I’ve got a gun on my back. You can come along or not, but we’re going.”

He signaled to Cassirir, who seemed to be grinning slightly. 12-Upjohn stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. “We’ll stay,” he said. “Since we have no water, Sergeant, I hope you’ll do us the kindness of telling us where your part of the ship lies.”

“That way, about two kilometers,” Oberholzer said. “Help yourself. If you want to settle in there, you’ll save us the trouble of toting Private Hannes with us on a stretcher.”

“Of course,” the Consort of State said. “We’ll take care of him. But, Sergeant…”

“Yes, Your Excellency?”

“If this stunt of yours still leaves us all alive afterwards and we do get back to any base of ours, I will certainly see to it that a complaint is lodged. I’m not disowning you now because it’s obvious that we’ll all have to work together to survive, and a certain amount of amity will be essential. But don’t be deceived by that.”

“I understand, sir,” Oberholzer said levelly. “Cassirir, let’s go. We’ll backtrack to where we nabbed the worm and then follow his trail to wherever he came from. Fall in.”

The men shouldered their Sussmanns. 12-Upjohn and Robin One watched them go. At the last dune before the two would go out of sight altogether, Oberholzer turned and waved, but neither waved back. Shrugging, Oberholzer resumed plodding. “Sarge?” “Yeah?”

“How do you figure to spring this joker with only four guns?”

“Five guns if we spring him—I’ve got a side arm,” Oberholzer reminded him. “We’ll play it by ear, that’s all. I want to see just how serious these worms are about leaving us alone and letting us shoot them if we feel like it. I’ve got a hunch that they aren’t very bright, one at a time, and don’t react fast to strictly local situations. If this whole planet is like one huge body, and the worms are its brain cells, then we’re germs—and maybe it’d take more than four germs to make the body do anything against us that counted, at least fast enough to do any good.”

Cassirir was frowning absurdly; he did not seem to be taking the theory in without pain. Well, Cassirir had never been much of a man for tactics.

“Here’s where we found the guy,” one of the men said, pointing at the sand.

“That’s not much of a trail,” Cassirir said. “If there’s any wind, it’ll be wiped out like a shot.”

“Take a sight on it, that’s all we need. You saw him run off—straight as a ruled line, no twists or turns around the dunes or anything. Like an army ant. If the trail sands over, we’ll follow the sight. It’s a cinch it leads someplace.”

“All right,” Cassirir said, getting out his compass. After a while the four of them resumed trudging.

There were only a few drops of hot, flat-tasting water left in the canteens, and their eyes were gritty and red from dryness and sand, when they topped the ridge that overlooked the nest. The word sprang instantly into Oberholzer’s mind, though perhaps he had been expecting some such thing ever since Robin One had compared the Calleans to ants.

It was a collection of rough white spires, each perhaps fifty feet high, rising from a common doughlike mass which almost filled a small valley. There was no greenery around it and no visible source of water, but there were three roads, two of them leading into oval black entrances which Oberholzer could see from here. Occasionally—not often—a Callean would scuttle out and vanish, or come speeding over the horizon and dart into the darkness. Some of the spires bore masts carrying what seemed to be antennae or more recondite electronic devices, but there were no windows to be seen; and the only sound in the valley, except for the dry, dusty wind, was a subdued composite hum.

“Man!” Cassirir said, whispering without being aware of it.

“It must be as black as the ace of spades in there. Anybody got a torch?”

Nobody had. “We won’t need one anyhow,” Oberholzer said confidently. “They’ve got eyes, and they can see in desert sunlight. That means they can’t move around in total darkness. Let’s go—I’m thirsty.”

They stumbled down into the valley and approached the nearest black hole cautiously. Sure enough, it was not as black as it had appeared from the hill; there was a glow inside which had been hidden from them against the contrast of the glaringly lit sands. Nevertheless, Oberholzer found himself hanging back.

While he hesitated, a Callean came rocketing out of the entrance and pulled to a smooth, sudden stop.

“You are not to get in the way,” he said in exactly the same piping singsong voice the other had used.

“Tell me where to go and I’ll stay out of your way,” Oberholzer said. “Where is the man from the warship that you didn’t dissect?”

“In Gnitonis, halfway around the world from here.” Oberholzer felt his shoulders sag, but the Callean was not through. “You should have told me that you wanted him,” he said. “I will have him brought to you. Is there anything else that you need?”

“Water,” Oberholzer said hopefully.

“That will be brought. There is no water you can use here. Stay out of the cities; you will be in the way.”

“How else can we eat?”

“Food will be brought. You should make your needs known; you are of low intelligence and helpless. I forbid nothing, I know you are harmless, and your life is short in any case; but I do not want you to get in the way.”

The repetition was beginning to tell on Oberholzer, and the frustration created by his having tried to use a battering ram against a freely swinging door was compounded by his mental picture of what the two Momma’s boys would say when the squad got back.

“Thank you,” he said, and bringing the Sussmann into line, he trained it on the Callean’s squidlike head and squeezed the trigger.

It was at once established that the Calleans were as mortal to Sussmann flamers as is all other flesh and blood; this one made a very satisfactory corpse. Unsatisfied, the flamer bolt went on to burn a long slash in the wall of the nest, not far above the entrance. Oberholzer grounded the rifle and waited to see what would happen next; his men hefted their weapons tensely.

For a few minutes there was no motion but the random twitching of the headless Callean’s legs. Evidently he was still not entirely dead, though he was a good four feet shorter than he had been before and plainly was feeling the lack. Then there was a stir inside the dark entrance.

A ten-legged animal about the size of a large rabbit emerged tentatively into the sunlight, followed by two more and then by a whole series of them, perhaps as many as twenty. Though Oberholzer had been unabashed by the Calleans themselves, there was something about these things that made him feel sick. They were coal black and shiny, and they did not seem to have any eyes; their heavily armored heads bore nothing but a set of rudimentary palps and a pair of enormous pincers, like those of a June beetle.

Sightless or no, they were excellent surgeons. They cut the remains of the Callean swiftly into sections, precisely one metamere to a section, and bore the carrion back inside the nest. Filled with loathing, Oberholzer stepped forward quickly and kicked one of the last in the procession. It toppled over like an unstable kitchen stool but regained its footing as though nothing had happened. The kick had not hurt it visibly, though Oberholzer’s toes felt as though he had kicked a Victorian iron dog. The creature, still holding its steak delicately in its living tongs, mushed implacably after the others back into the dubiety of the nest. Then all that was left in the broiling sunlight was a few pools of blackening blood seeping swiftly into the sand.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cassirir said raggedly.

“Stand fast,” Oberholzer growled. “If they’re mad at us, I want to know about it right now.”

But the next Callean to pass them, some twenty eternal minutes later, hardly even slowed down. “Keep out of the way,” he said and streaked away over the dunes. Snarling, Oberholzer caromed a bolt after him, but missed him clean.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go back. No hitting the canteens till we’re five kilometers past the mid-point cairn. March!”

The men were all on the verge of prostration by the time that point was passed, but Oberholzer never once had to enforce the order. Nobody, it appeared, was eager to come to an end on Calle as a series of butcher’s cuts in the tongs of a squad of huge black beetles.

V

“I know what they think,” the man from the Assam Dragon said. “I’ve heard them say it often enough.”

He was a personable youngster, perhaps thirty, with blond wavy hair which had been turned almost white by the strong Callean sunlight: His captors had walked him for three hours every day on the desert. He had once been the Assam Dragon’s radioman, a post which in interstellar flight is a branch of astronomy, not of communications; nevertheless Oberholzer and the Marines called him Sparks in deference to a tradition which, 12-Upjohn suspected, the Marines did not even know existed.

“Then why wouldn’t there be a chance of our establishing better relations with the ‘person’ on the fourth planet?” 12-Upjohn said. “After all, there’s never been an Earth landing there.”

“Because the ‘person’ on Xixobrax is a colony of Calle and knows everything that goes on here. It took the two planets in cooperation to destroy the fleet. There’s almost full telepathic communion between the two—in fact, all through the Central Empire. The only rapport that seems to weaken over short distances—interplanetary distances—is the sense of identity. That’s why each planet has an I of its own, its own ego. But it’s not the kind of ego we know anything about. Xixobrax wouldn’t give us any better deal than Calle has, any more than I’d give Calle a better deal than you would, Your Excellency. They have common purposes and allegiances. All the Central Empire seems to be like that.”

12-Upjohn thought about it; but he did not like what he thought. It was a knotty problem, even in theory.

Telepathy among men had never amounted to anything. After the pioneer exploration of the microcosm with the Arpe Effect—the second of two unsuccessful attempts at an interstellar drive, long before the discovery of the Standing Wave—it had become easy to see why this would be so. Psi forces in general were characteristic only of the subspace in which the primary particles of the atom had their being; their occasional manifestations in the macrocosm were statistical accidents, as weak and indirigible as spontaneous radioactive decay.

Up to now this had suited 12-Upjohn. It had always seemed to him’ that the whole notion of telepathy was a dodge—an attempt to bypass the plain duty of each man to learn to know his brother and, if possible, to learn to love him; the telepathy fanatics were out to short-circuit the task, to make easy the most difficult assignment a human being might undertake. He was well aware, too, of the bias against telepathy which was inherent in his profession of diplomat; yet he had always been certain of his case, hazy though it was around the edges. One of his proofs was that telepathy’s main defenders invariably were incorrigibly lazy writers, from Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser all the way down to…

All the same, it seemed inarguable that the whole center of the Galaxy, an enormously diverse collection of peoples and cultures, was being held together in a common and strife-free union by telepathy alone, or perhaps by telepathy and its even more dubious adjuncts: a whole galaxy held together by a force so unreliable that two human beings sitting across from each other at a card table had never been able to put it to an even vaguely practicable use.

Somewhere there was a huge hole in the argument.

While he had sat helplessly thinking in these circles, even Robin One was busy, toting power packs to the welding crew which was working outside to braze together on the desert the implausible, misshapen lump of metal which the Marine sergeant was fanatically determined would become a ship again. Now the job was done, though no shipwright would admire it, and the question of where to go with it was being debated in full council. Sparks, for his part, was prepared to bet that the Calleans would not hinder their departure.

“Why would they have given us all this oxygen and stuff if they were going to prevent us from using it?” he said reasonably. “They know what it’s for—even if they have no brains, collectively they’re plenty smart enough.”

“No brains?” 12-Upjohnsaid. “Or are you just exaggerating?”

“No brains,” the man from the Assam Dragon insisted. “Just lots of ganglia. I gather that’s the way all of the races of the Central Empire are organized, regardless of other physical differences. That’s what they mean when they say we’re all sick—hadn’t you realized that?”

“No,” 12-Upjohn said in slowly dawning horror. “You had better spell it out.”

“Why, they say that’s why we get cancer. They say that the brain is the ultimate source of all tumors and is itself a tumor. They call it ‘hostile symbiosis.”

“Malignant?”

“In the long run. Races that develop them kill themselves off. Something to do with solar radiation; animals on planets of Population II stars develop them, Population I planets don’t.”

Robin One hummed an archaic twelve-tone series under his breath. There were no words to go with it, but the Consort of State recognized it; it was part of a chorale from a twentieth-century American opera, and the words went: Weep, weep beyond time for this Earth of hours.

“It fits,” he said heavily. “So to receive and use a weak field like telepathy, you need a weak brain. Human beings will never make it.”

“Earthworms of the galaxy, unite,” Robin One said.

“They already have,” Sergeant Oberholzer pointed out. “So where does all this leave us?”

“It means,” 12-Upjohn said slowly, “that this Central Empire, where the stars are almost all Population I, is spreading out toward the spiral arms where the Earth lies. Any cluster civilizations they meet are natural allies—clusters are purely Population I—and probably have already been mentally assimilated. Any possible natural allies we meet, going around Population II stars, we may well pick a fight with instead.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sergeant Oberholzer said.

“I know what you meant; but this changes things. As I understand it, we have a chance of making a straight hop to the nearest Earth base if we go on starvation rations–”

“–and if I don’t make more than a point zero five percent error in plotting the course,” Sparks put in.

“Yes. On the other hand, we can make sure of getting there by going in short leaps via planets known to be inhabited, but never colonized and possibly hostile. The only other possibility is Xixobrax, which I think we’ve ruled out. Correct?”

“Right as rain,” Sergeant Oberholzer said. “Now I see what you’re driving at, Your Excellency. The only thing is—you didn’t mention that the stepping-stone method will take us the rest of our lives.”

“So I didn’t,” 12-Upjohn said bleakly. “But I hadn’t forgotten it. The other side of that coin is that it will be even longer than that before the Matriarchy and the Central Empire collide.”

“After which,” Sergeant Oberholzer said with a certain relish, “I doubt that it’ll be a Matriarchy, whichever wins. Are you calling for a vote, sir?”

“Well–yes, I seem to be.”

“Then let’s grasshopper,” Sergeant Oberholzer said unhesitatingly. “The boys and I can’t fight a point zero five percent error in navigation—but for hostile planets, we’ve got the flamers.”

Robin One shuddered. “I don’t mind the fighting part,” he said unexpectedly. “But I do simply loathe the thought of being an old, old man when I get home. All the same, we do have to get the word back.”

“You’re agreeing with the sergeant?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“I agree,” Sparks said. “Either way we may not make it, but the odds are in favor of doing it the hard way.”

“Very good,” 12-Upjohn said. He was uncertain of his exact emotion at this moment; perhaps gloomy satisfaction was as close a description as any. “I make it unanimous. Let’s get ready.”

The sergeant saluted and prepared to leave the cabin; but suddenly he turned back.

“I didn’t think very much of either of you, a while back,” he said brutally. “But I’ll tell you this: There must be something about brains that involves guts too. I’ll back ’em any time against any critter that lets itself be shot like a fish in a barrel—whatever the odds.”

The Consort of State was still mulling that speech over as the madman’s caricature of an intersteller ship groaned and lifted its lumps and angles from Calle. Who knows, he kept telling himself, who knows, it might even be true.

But he noticed that Robin One was still humming the chorale from Psyche and Eros; and ahead the galactic night was as black as death.

Editor's Introduction to:

007: “IT IS ENOUGH, IVAN. GO HOME!”

by Reginald Bretnor

Reginald Bretnor and my father have at least this in common: They were both in the Horse Cavalry. I have heard identical tales from each about how they nearly castrated themselves attempting to sheathe the Patton sabre during mounted parade.

Reg Bretnor lives in Oregon now, but he used to live in the Bay Area of California. I first met him at Poul Anderson’s house; I believe that was also the day I really got to know Randall Garrett. Reg is a fascinating character: inveterate (and expert!) poker player; sword collector; gun expert; historian; military theorist and excellent raconteur.

He and Randall Garrett had much in common: attitudes, and a fascination with puns, although Randall was much quicker to make them in ordinary conversation. Still in all, Bretnor for years published “Through Space and Time with Ferdinand Feghoot,” certainly the most famous series of science fiction puns in our history. (Randall parodied them with “The Adventures of Benedict Breadfruit.” I suppose that was inevitable.)

When not being a punster, Reginald Bretnor is a very serious writer. His Decisive Warfare is generally considered a real contribution to military theory, while the present essay indicates that he understands all too well the menace facing Western civilization.

It has become fashionable of late to act as if there were a symmetry between Western civilization and the Soviet bloc; to speak of “side A and side B” as if their national motives were the same. This is always done in speeches at the United Nations.

We all know better, of course. The Soviets slaughtered more of their own citizens than the Nazis ever managed, and their invasion of Afghanistan has little in common with the futile U.S. efforts to keep at least a part of Vietnam, if not free, then at least unenslaved. Intellectuals may be proud of their achievements in inducing the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam; but they do not often say so when speaking to groups of Southeast Asian refugees.

Yet we continue to sell grain and butter to the Soviet Union, and the Europeans continue to build their pipelines. Worse, this is not done for cash, but for credit, so that Poland, West Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union itself pile up ever-mounting debts to the West—and Western bankers agitate for further extensions of credit lest a Communist loan default upset the international monetary market.

This may not be entirely rational. As Henry Kissinger has recently pointed out (“The International Context For U.S. Security,” in America’s Security in the 1980’s, International Institute for Strategic Studies Adelphi Paper 174), “The Soviet Union has great military strength and enormous political and sociological weaknesses. It is a system of government that has no legitimate means of succession…The economy is obviously not working, and all Communist countries, without exception, face the problem of what to do with the Communist Party in a developed state. The Party is not needed for government and it is not needed for economy. Under the socialist system you have the kind of absurdity that appeared in the Soviet press: the system operated on the basis of a tractor factory that was never built, and they fired a Minister because he reported the existence of a refinery that did not exist.”

The paradox is that the West continues to supply the Soviet Union with the means for bailing itself out of economic hardships; it thus has surplus goods which it can devote to its continued buildup of military strength.

Reginald Bretnor continues that analysis.

007: “IT IS ENOUGH, IVAN. GO HOME!”

by Reginald Bretnor

In the fictional world of détente and of the suspense novel, Secret Agent 007—James Bond—entertained us with the excitements of his clandestine warfare against fictional Russians.

In the real world we live in, on September 2, 1983, real Russians shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007—a cold-blooded, deliberate act of savagery—murdering two hundred sixty-nine men, women and children.

The aircraft was a passenger plane, unarmed, undefended, and there can be no doubt that the Russians knew exactly what they were doing. The monitored conversations of their fighter pilot show that. So do the reports of Japanese monitors. What we do not know—what none, or very few, of our leaders understand—is why they did it. I do not mean their immediate motive, whatever it may have been, but rather that mysterious twist in the Russian psyche—in the minds of those dire old men in the Kremlin who rule Russia—that seems to make such barbarities inevitable. They are the men who make decisions, decisions with possible worldwide implications, like the decision to kill Flight 007. In Russia such decisions are not made by impulsive junior officers, or even by impulsive generals.

We, in the world where Flight 007 was butchered, will profit if our revulsion and our anger bring us to the realization that the Russians most of us think we have been dealing with are as fictional as those in Secret Agent 007’s world, or those in the imagination of such fuzzy-minded liberals as the late Eleanor Roosevelt.

The real Russians Solzhenitsyn writes about are much more true to life, even though they exist only in the minds of his readers.

We live in the same real world as the Russian Communists, and if we are determined to survive, it is up to us to understand them. In order to do this, we must consider their history, for Russian Communism is a nineteenth-century growth, dogmatic Marxist materialism grafted onto the ancient tree of Russian tyranny.

The Mongol Heritage and the October Revolution

For almost two hundred and fifty years those lands that were eventually consolidated into the Russian Empire were under Mongol rule, and though Ivan the Great completed their defeat and their expulsion in 1480, they had left their mark on the people they had conquered. When the first English travelers came to Muscovy in the mid-sixteenth century during the reign of Ivan the Grim, they found a nation deeply suspicious of foreigners and of everything foreign, a nation where no man was free, where the authority of the Czar and his officers was absolute and arbitrary. Talented foreigners were being recruited—artisans, architects and (notably) artillerists—but once in, they were never allowed to leave. Those who did leave, escaped. The Orthodox Church had immense power, but this power was scarcely ever used to sustain human rights and human dignity. Not until the middle of the seventeenth century, during the reign of Peter the Great’s father, did Western influence become appreciable. Then came Peter the Great, himself a Russian tyrant in the classic mold, who, in spite of this, did more than any man to open Russia to the West. By the time of Catherine the Great a century later, Russia’s aristocracy and intellectuals had become largely Westernized; French was the language of culture and fashion; wealthy Russians were beginning to travel abroad. Unfortunately, this Westernization was largely cosmetic, and the Communist revolution of October 1918 shattered it. The aristocracy, the upper middle class and vast numbers of intellectuals were destroyed or scattered as refugees throughout the world, and before too long, bloody-minded Lenin died and was followed by the even bloodier-minded Stalin.

Again there were wholesale purges and imprisonments, enforced migrations of entire peoples and heartlessly engineered famines.

The old men now in the Kremlin were shaped by all these forces; they are men who have survived and climbed to power by deceit, by treachery, by never letting principle prevail over policy.

Simply consider the countries that were free and independent between the two World Wars and are now under the Russian heel: Latvia, Lithuania, Esthonia, Poland, Hungary, to say nothing of East Germany, North Korea, Outer Mongolia. Consider the spread of Communist subversion and Communist arms into every country where the Free West is vulnerable.

Reading the adventures of Secret Agent 007, one often felt that he and his Russian counterparts were playing games.

The old men in the Kremlin are not.

Unhappily, we are. We are playing their game: Motivation and Deterrence.

Let us consider what motivates these men. First—and I have never seen this adequately emphasized—they are men who live for power, and they justify its exercise at home and its exercise and exploitation abroad by repeating endlessly the empty promises of Marxism.

Second, they differ from almost all past tyrants in one thing: They are dedicated materialists; it is Marxist dogma that men have no souls, that at death, like a quenched candle flame, they simply cease to be. This has a very dangerous corollary. If you believe it, sooner or later you will think: When I die, so far as I’m concerned, the universe will end. No matter what I do during my life, nothingness can exact no payment from me; there can be no retribution.

We have failed to understand this, probably because so many materialistic thinkers in the West still believe in a humanistic philosophy the Communists have shucked off. One historical anecdote will serve to get the point across. In the Muscovy of Ivan the Grim, only one small group of people enjoyed freedom of speech. These were the “holy idiots,” like the one in the opera Boris Godunov. Ivan was mad. He was a sadist and a sexual psychopath. On one occasion, becoming enraged at the city of Great Novgorod, he marched against it in mid-winter with an army of his police and spent a few weeks looting, torturing, killing. When he left, only sixteen of the city’s men were still alive.

He then moved on to the city of Pskov, where he began the same sort of thing. However, there he was confronted by a “holy idiot,” one Mikula Svyet, who demonstrated his holiness by, among other things, going naked summer and winter. Mikula pointed at the Czar and said, “It is enough, Ivan. Go home!”

And Ivan went. Aside from his derangement, he was intensely, fanatically, religious. Fearing the wrath of God, he was deterred.

Would Stalin have been? Would Andropov be?

Whose Game Are We Playing?

Even before the October Revolution, we of the West began to play the Marxists’ game. First, the German general staff smuggled Lenin and Trotsky into Russia in a sealed boxcar to overthrow the liberal Kerensky government, which had deposed the Czar but had promised to continue fighting with the Allies. Then, in the twenties, American generosity, exercised through the Hoover Commission, saved millions from starvation. From then on, the Russian Communists continued to lift themselves by our bootstraps. The West lent them money, extended credit to them, sold them factories they themselves could not have built, technology they themselves could not have developed. We seemed determined to make Lenin’s cynical prophesy come true: “When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope to do it with.” (Nor is it fair, by the way, to blame all this on left-leaning liberals. Some of our largest corporations have been, and still are, just as guilty.)

Let us not forget, too, that when Hitler was threatening the West, he and Stalin concluded their notorious pact, partitioning tormented Poland and giving the Nazis a secure Eastern frontier. And when France had fallen, while Britain alone resisted Hitler, Russia remained “neutral”—just as she remained “neutral” all through our own war with Japan until Hiroshima had been destroyed and Japan’s surrender was a virtual certainty. And all the while, we had been pouring into Russia weapons, materiel, provisions, without which she would have been defeated.

Immediately after the war, we did nothing to halt the march of Russian Communist imperialism. Our first firm stand against it was Truman’s in Korea, which ended up as something less than victory; and then the bumbling of the Bay of Pigs; and then Vietnam, about which the less said now the better. And all this while, it was pretty much business as usual where “non-military” trade with the U.S.S.R. was concerned.

Business As Usual?

What business do we have to do with the Soviet Union? Much of it we do for our own profit. Some we undoubtedly do for our survival—strategic metals and minerals that otherwise might be in short supply. But by far the greater part of our trade with the Communists is strategically to our detriment. The reason for this is simple: There is no such thing as non-military aid to the U.S.S.R.

Every contract any Western firm accepts to build, say, an automobile factory, a truck factory, a dam, frees Russian technical personnel to build the tanks, the missiles, the aircraft and ships of war with which the Russian Communists implement their aggressive policy. Every sale of sophisticated electronic equipment, of laboratory equipment or of industrial know-how enables more Russian scientific personnel to devote their time to research for war. Every sale of wheat to this power that cannot even feed its own population adequately saves millions of Russian man-hours for work dedicated to our eventual destruction.

The coldly calculated brutality with which Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was destroyed may have been employed to test us, to determine just how far we’d let ourselves be pushed. Or its purpose may have been deliberately to outrage the civilized world and so divert attention from some other nasty business being planned elsewhere. At this writing, we do not know.

But we do know that the action was not exceptional, that it speaks eloquently of the total immorality of Soviet policy and that it warns us loudly and clearly of what we may expect in the future.

Business as usual? Perhaps so. Perhaps we will continue to sell the old men in the Kremlin the fruit of our scientific and technological superiority, to wink at their industrial espionage in this country, to ship them crops they cannot grow themselves. Or, even if we do not, very probably other industrial powers will.

The world forgets too easily when there is money to be made.

But the shadow of Ivan the Grim still looms over Russia, and perhaps the time has come for someone to say, with adequate authority:

“It is enough, Ivan. Go home!”

What the Soviet Pilots Said

Washington

Here is the transcript, distributed by the White House last night, of excerpts from the radio transmissions of two Soviet pilots who participated in the downing of the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 last week. This is a translation; the conversation was in Russian. All times are Greenwich Mean Time.

1818:34—SU-15 fighter to 1826:20—SU-15 fighter to “Deputat,” Soviet ground station call sign:

“The A.N.O. (air navigation lights) are burning. The strobe light is flashing.”

1818:56—MiG-23 fighter to Deputat:

“Roger. I’m at 7500, course 230.”

1819:02—SU fighter to Deputat:

“I am closing on the target.”

1826:20—SU fighter to Deputat:

“I have executed the launch.”

1826:22—SU fighter to Deputat:

“The target is destroyed.”

1826:27—SU fighter to Deputat:

“I am breaking off attack.”

Associated Press

Editor's Introduction to:

THE ’EATHEN
by Rudyard Kipling

This book is dedicated to the non-commissioned officers of the armed forces of the United States. Allowing for Kipling’s times, when there were no women non-coms, there have been few more powerful expressions of appreciation for this rare breed than this poem.

Sarge Workman tells me there’s nothing more dangerous than a second lieutenant with a map.

To those Regulars who put up with this particular second lieutenant (complete with map) this book is dedicated.

THE ’EATHEN
by Rudyard Kipling

The ’eathen in ’is blindness bows down to wood and stone;

’E don’t obey no orders unless they is his own;

’E keeps ’is side-arms awful: ’e leaves ‘em all about,

An’ then comes up the Regiment an’ pokes the ’eathen out.

All along o’ dirtiness, all along o’ mess.

All along o’ doin’ things rather-more-or-less.

All along of abby-nay 1, kul 2, an’ hazar-ho 3,

Mind you keep your rifle and yourself jus’ so!

(1. Not now. 2. Tomorrow. 3. Wait a bit.)

The young recruit is ’aughty—’e draf’s from Gawd knows where;

They bid ’im show ‘is stockin’s and lay ‘is mattress square;

’E calls it bloomin’ nonsense—’e doesn’t know, no more—

An’ then comes ‘is Company and kicks ’im round the floor!

The young recruit is ’ammered—’e takes it very hard;

’E ’angs ’is ’ead an’ mutters—’e sulks about the yard;

’E talks o’ “cruel tyrants” which ’e’ll swing for by-an-by,

An’ the others ‘ears and mocks ‘im, and the boy goes orf to cry.

The young recruit is silly—’e thinks o’ suicide.

’E’s lost ’is gutter-devil; ’e ’asn’t got ’is pride;

But day by day they kicks ’im, which ’elps ’im on a bit,

Till ‘e finds ’isself one mornin’ with a full an’ proper kit.

Gettin’ clear o’ dirtiness, gettin’ done with mess,

Gettin shut o’ doin’ things rather more-or-less;

Not so fond of abby-nay, kul, nor hazar-ho,

Learns to keep ’is rifle an’ ’isself jus’ so!

The young recruit is ’appy—’e throws a chest to suit;

You see ’im grow mustaches; you ’ear ’im slap ’is boot.

’E learns to drop the “bloodies” from every word ’e slings,

An’ ’e shows an ’ealthy brisket when ’e strips for bars an’ rings.

The cruel-tyrant-sergeants they watch ’im ’arf a year;

They watch ’im with ’is comrades, they watch ’im with ’is beer;

They watch ’im with the women at the regimental dance,

And the cruel-tyrant-sergeants send ’is name along for “Lance.”

An’ now ’e’s ’arf o’ nothin’, an’ all a private yet,

’Is room they up an’ rags ’im to see what they will get.

They rags ’im low an’ cunnin’, each dirty trick they can.

But ’e learns to sweat ’is temper and ’e learns to sweat ’is man.

An’, last, a Colour-Sergeant, as such to be obeyed,

’E schools ’is men at cricket, ’e tells ’em on parade;

They sees ’im quick and ’andy, uncommon set an’ smart,

An’ so ’e talks to orficers which ’ave the Core at ’eart.

’E learns to do ’is watchin’ without it showin’ plain;

’E learns to save a dummy, and shove ’im straight again;

’E learns to check a ranker that’s buyin’ leave to shirk;

’An ’e learns to make men like ’im so they’ll learn to like their work.

An’ when it comes to marchin’ ’e’ll see their socks are right,

An’ when it comes to action ’e shows ‘em how to sight.

’E knows their ways of thinkin’ and just what’s in their mind;

’E knows when they are takin’ on an’ when they’ve fell be’ind.

’E knows each talkin’ corp’ral that leads a squad astray;

’E feels ’is innards ’eavin, ’is bowels givin’ way;

’E sees the blue-white faces all tryin’ ’ard to grin,

’An ’e stands an’ waits an’ suffers till it’s time to cap ’em in.

An’ now the hugly bullets come peckin’ through the dust,

An’ no one wants to face ’em, but every beggar must;

So, like a man in irons, which isn’t glad to go,

They moves ’em off by companies uncommon stiff an’ slow.

Of all ’is five years’ schoolin’ they don’t remember much

Excep’ the not retreatin’, the step and keepin’ touch.

It looks like teachin’ wasted when they duck and spread an’ ‘op

But if ’e ’adn’t learned ’em they be all about the shop.

An’ now it’s “ ’Oo goes backward?” an’ now it’s “ ’Oo comes on?”

And now it’s “Get the doolies,” and now the Captain’s gone;

An’ now it’s bloody murder, but all the while they ’ear

’Is voice, the same as barrick-drill, a-shepherdin’ the rear.

’E’s just as sick as they are, ’is ’eart is like to split,

But ’e works ’em, works ’em, works ’em till he feels ’em take the bit;

The rest is ’oldin’ steady till the watchful bugles play,

An’ ’e lifts ‘em, lifts ’em, lifts ’em through the charge that wins the day!

The ’eathen in ’is blindness bows down to wood and stone;

’E don’t obey no orders unless they is his own;

The ’eathen in ’is blindness must end where ’e began,

But the backbone of the Army is the Non-commissioned Man!

Keep away from dirtiness—keep away from mess,

Don’t get into doin’ things rather-more-or-less!

Let’s ha’ done with abby-nay, kul, and hazar-ho;

Mind you keep your rifle an’ yourself jus’ so!

Editor's Introduction to:

THE TOOLS OF WAR
by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones

I first met Roland Green at the World Science Fiction Convention held in Washington in 1974. The conversation soon turned to military history and future conflict, and I recognized him as a kindred spirit at once.

Since that time, we have collaborated on JANISSARIES II: Clan and Crown, and have plotted at least one more joint work.

I’ve never met Clyde Jones, who, like Roland, lives in the Chicago area.

Green and Jones discuss a wide range of new weapons, but they cannot consider everything in a work of this length. One area they neglect is space weaponry; but space weapons may yet prove to be decisive.

The chemical-powered laser “battle station” located high in orbit could dominate warfare for some time to come. The Laser Battle Station (LBS) has multi-shot capability; it can burn down an entire fleet of ICBMs, then take on the enemy’s air fleet for an encore.

Indeed, if the laser frequency is chosen correctly, it can have a decisive effect on land and sea warfare. Blue-green lasers can destroy targets on the ground. Such lasers would operate only in clear weather; but the ability to deny the enemy ground movement in clear weather would be well-nigh decisive.

Another potential weapon is Project Thor: orbiting crowbars with guidance systems. A cloud of them could be made to reenter over the enemy’s attacking armored army. The “crowbars” would seek out tanks, striking them with velocities of miles per second; the result would be the certain destruction of the tank.

Such weapons could also be used against ships.

Those interested in space weapons would do well to begin with General Daniel O. Graham’s High Frontier (New York: Tor Books, 1983) as well as the essays in the first two volumes of this series. Also useful is the Report of the Second Meeting of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy (L-5 Society, 1060 E. Elm St., Tucson, Arizona 85719, $10.00, 1983).

Another decisive weapon not here discussed is the “neutron bomb,” also called an Enhanced Radiation Weapon. N-bombs put out most of their energy as neutrons and x-rays rather than as blast and heat. Thus they “kill people without destroying property.” To be precise: A one-kiloton neutron weapon exploded some 2,000 feet above a city would render exposed personnel—such as enemy troops—helpless while doing little more physical damage than breaking windows.

Because there is no blast, shelter from N-bombs consists of having several feet of dirt between you and the bomb. Civilians and troops in deep foxholes would survive; troops aboard armored vehicles would not. At the very least, N-bombs would make blitzkrieg tactics very difficult to employ. They thus appear to aid the defense more than the offense.

N-bombs have given rise to a number of myths, including the notion that enemy soldiers, having received a lethal dose of radiation, would now fight all the harder since they would have nothing left to live for. This is sometimes known as the “zombies-make-great-tankers” theory. It is held by such diverse persons as Kosta Tsipis, an arms-control specialist at MIT; Herbert Scoville, Jr., a key arms-control and disarmament specialist in the Pentagon during the Carter administration; and science fiction writer Fred Pohl.

The theory doesn’t explain how the enemy soldiers know they’re zombies: Given the wide range of human tolerance to radiation, it’s not likely they’d know. Moreover, the theory ignores the enemy troops directly under the weapon, who would be killed instantly; units with 50 percent and higher casualties rarely have high military effectiveness.

For a full discussion of N-bombs, see Sam Cohen, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb (New York, William Morrow, 1983). Cohen, the inventor of neutron weapons, discusses their effects and the political opposition he has encountered for the past ten years. He demonstrates that the Soviet Union almost certainly has neutron weapons.

The Tools of War is not precisely an original title. James R. Newman (who with Edward Kasner wrote Mathematics and the Imagination, probably the most popular book about mathematics ever published) wrote a four-hundred-page book with that title; it was published in early 1942 and is long out of print, although it ought to be available in libraries. I found mine in a Hollywood used bookstore. I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of weaponry (Garden City, New York, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1942).

Newman’s book gave an accurate description of the weapons to be used in the coming war. Of course it emphasized the battleship to the detriment of the aircraft carrier—but it did at least admit there was some controversy. After all, no military theorist and few Navy officers (other than upstarts like Halsey) really understood that the carrier would be the decisive arm of naval warfare in World War II.

Newman’s book was notable in another way: Much of its text and at least one of its diagrams were lifted in their entirety and inserted, without credit, into the designer’s notes for a well-known war game based on the fall of France. I suppose there is some justification since Newman’s work had one of the best expositions on the Maginot Line, yet was written after the Germans bypassed it.

A final area neglected by nearly everyone is communications. Brigadier S. L. A. Marshall in his Pork Chop Hill speculates that wars of the future may be fought by small patrols able to call in immense firepower from far away. Lieutenant Asfaw of the Ethiopian Imperial Guards showed how that might be done during one of the battles of the Korean War.

In 1963, using Asfaw’s battle as an example, Corlin O. Beum and I designed a weapons system then code-named “Thoth” missiles. They would be launched from cargo aircraft far from the combat zone and guided in to an offset from the observer patrol. We also developed an autocorrelation communication system to aid in Thoth guidance. The weapons system was intended for Vietnam; alas, it was never built because no one believed that that war would last long enough to require such special weapons.

The Thoth missile system could be built today. The missiles and their guidance systems are standard off-the-shelf hardware. The communications systems are a bit trickier.

Indeed, Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence—the famous “C-cubed-I” factor—are the key to modern battle. Most C3I systems require space-based components; thus defense of one’s space assets is a key to the future of war.

Meanwhile, Green and Jones provide a good introduction to speculation about the future of arms.

THE TOOLS OF WAR
by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones

The best reason for any study of the weapons of future land, sea and air warfare is also the simplest.

These are the weapons most likely to be used.

No one has dropped an atomic or hydrogen bomb in combat since 1945. No one has ever launched an ICBM at an enemy target or intercepted an incoming enemy warhead.

On the other hand, airplanes and helicopters have been flying in combat somewhere in the world each year since 1945. Every continent has seen tanks in action, if only against rioters or revolutionaries. Warships—from super-carriers down to motor-patrol boats—have sent planes, rockets, shells and torpedoes at enemy targets. Even relatively new developments such as tactical missiles, hovercraft, guided “smart” bombs and lasers have gone from the laboratories to the factories and from the factories to the firing line. Everywhere the infantryman has gone on practicing the basic skills of his craft.

This kind of warfare will continue because we’re not likely to abolish war completely and the only other alternative is still worse. A world that used H-bombs where tanks could do the job wouldn’t last long or be very interesting, except possibly to extra-terrestrial archeologists who came along after the ruins were no longer dangerously radioactive.

This article focuses on the next twenty years of warfare on Earth. Beyond that point, we’re talking about something closer to soothsaying than prediction, and probably about a book rather than an article.

The Possibilities

1. Intermediate Weapons: The neutron bomb has already created an area of what might be called “intermediate weapons,” neither strictly conventional (high-explosive) nor nuclear. We may expect to see at least two more kinds of these weapons before the year 2000, plus developments in chemical and biological warfare.

Cold-fusion Bombs: Thermonuclear weapons with the fusion initiated by a ring of magnets, charges of extremely powerful conventional explosives, or one-shot lasers. Such bombs might be smaller, cheaper, lighter and cleaner than any present tactical fission or fusion weapon. A cold-fusion bomb with a one-kiloton yield could conceivably be fired from a medium mortar or carried in an anti-tank missile.

Directed-radiation Weapons: Actual bombs emitting directional bursts of hard radiation on detonation; magnetic pulse weapons (particularly effective against computers); beamed radiation weapons producing focused, coherent microwaves, radio waves, sound, streams of charged particles, etc.

For the first two we’ll probably need radically improved chemical explosives or cold-fusion triggers; for the third, a breakthrough in reliable, portable, high-capacity energy storage or generation. The last two can be used against equipment rather than people, and against people all may be adjustable to harass, disable or kill.

Chemical and Biological Warfare: Gases and germs each offer their share of potential horrors.

In sheer killing power, lethal chemical agents such as nerve gases hardly need “improvement.” They need to be cheaper, safer to transport and store and more controllable as to the areas they’ll affect and the time they’ll remain potent.

Non-lethal agents, basically descendants of current riot-control gases, are a more fertile field for innovation. We can expect hallucinogens, tranquilizers, blistering gases many times more powerful than mustard gas, and so on quite literally ad nauseam.

As chemical agents become more reliable, they’ll appear in a wider variety of projectiles, mine fields and booby traps. We may even see chemical agents that are themselves booby traps. Consider the possibilities of leaving behind when you retreat fuel dumps treated with a chemical agent which, under the heat of combustion, breaks down to release cyanide gas.

The potential of biological warfare is expanding alarmingly, thanks to recent developments in DNA research. Within the next generation we may see DNA expertise and laboratories within reach of some large corporations and many governments, responsible or otherwise.

In spite of this, we still may not see strategic biological warfare unless the world’s political situation deteriorates so far that there’s no longer a question of whether there will be war, but only of how many survivors there will be. Sowing cholera in the enemy’s water supply or anthrax among his livestock may look like the same kind of total threat as dropping H-bombs, to be met by the same sort of total response.

Like fall-out, biological warfare is also no respecter of borders. Immunizing your own population in advance sacrifices surprise without guaranteeing that a strain of bacteria mutated once won’t mutate again. Even those countries not deterred by their enemies may wind up deterred by the threat of a universal plague or intervention by outside parties. In the end, strategic biological warfare seems likely to wind up incorporated into the same rough and ready system of deterrence that so far has prevented the use of nuclear weapons.

It should be kept in mind, however, that the DNA-tailoring techniques can be used with any sort of organism. Contaminating the water supply of your opponent’s capital city with a virulent strain of the twenty-four-hour flu or Montezuma’s Revenge is not the sort of threat that really justifies his launching ICBMs. At the same time, it will do the efficiency of his government and military command structure no good at all.

2. Materials: The general trend since 1900 has been toward improved strength-to-weight ratios, and usually lighter weight. During the rest of the century we can expect improvements in stampings, castings, and powder metallurgy. We will see improved plastics, semi-organic materials, carbon-fiber reinforced materials (fiberglass as tough as steel), possibly woven metals or whole new categories of non-ferrous and non-metallic substances.

Some materials may prove too expensive to use in large items such as complete aircraft or in small, chronically expendable ones such as boots. Others may not be cost-effective under all circumstances. A one-pound bulletproof helmet with radio, gas mask, goggles, sound amplifiers, laser detector, neck armor, packet of Excedrin and tube of Brylcreem may not be acceptable if it costs ten times as much as an equally effective three-pounder.

In general, we can expect to see small warships, air and ground vehicles, all kinds of weapons and their projectiles, and the fighting man’s personal equipment becoming lighter, stronger, or both. More vehicles and weapons will become air-portable, and the gap in firepower between ground-mobile and air-mobile troops will shrink. This will make air-mobile operations much less dangerous for the attacker and more so for the defender.

The much-burdened infantryman will be particularly happy. After millennia of trial, error and profanity, his individual load may actually begin to shrink, or at least stop increasing. This will reduce many types of non-combat casualties and also one of the barriers to the use of women in ground combat roles. Ground troops should also be able to wear extensive body armor, effective against blast, fragments and some types of small arms.

3. Hyper-explosives: By the year 2000 we could have chemical explosives five to ten times more powerful than today’s. The practical limit is what can survive rough handling, both on the way to the battlefield and on the way to the target.

Propellant explosives are likely to be developed further. As long as the gun won’t explode or the rocket tumble in flight, the more power from a given weight of propellant, the better. Explosives in warheads may be developed more conservatively. Most tactical weapons sooner or later have to be used in close proximity to your own troops. Some, like hand grenades, are designed for nothing else. A certain margin for error is always useful; otherwise you may wipe out one of your own platoons if a single shell drops fifty yards short.

We can be reasonably certain about some of the effects of hyper-explosives. Potentially ship-killing weapons will become still more compact, cheaper and more numerous. All types and sizes of solid-fuel missiles will become more effective. Some form of body armor may become not merely possible but essential for ground troops, and even warship crews. A wide range of currently unprotected vehicles, such as trucks and helicopters, may also have to develop some form of armor to survive.

Beyond this, exactly what happens depends on whether we use hyper-explosives to increase the performance or to decrease their size. Each course offers so many advantages that we are likely to see both.

Increasing weapons performance gives us higher velocities, longer ranges and more powerful warheads. It also permits improving two specific categories of weapons.

One is the rocket-assisted projectile, fired from a conventional artillery piece but given extra range by a small rocket. Current RAPs sacrifice accuracy and warhead size for range. With hyper-explosives, this sacrifice would be reduced.

The other category of improved weapons is the “smart projectile,” the bomb or shell with a target-seeking capability. The target-seeking equipment is expensive and can reduce the load of explosives carried. With hyper-explosives we can increase the performance of smart projectiles enough to justify their much wider use in spite of cost. Hyper-explosives could permit a rocket-boosted eight-inch shell with three maneuverable warheads or a thousand-pound bomb carrying not only multiple warheads and target-seekers but decoys, anti-radar jammers and booby traps.

Shrinking the weapon offers equally interesting prospects. To begin with, the job of the saboteur, terrorist/freedom fighter/guerrilla or commando is going to become easier and the job of his opponents more difficult. The same principle will operate all the way up the scale of weaponry. Three near-certainties are:

—Improved infantry heavy weapons and better armament of all types of ground troops and vehicles armed with infantry weapons.

—Defensive air-to-air missiles and light guns carried aboard helicopters and transport aircraft.

—Heavy artillery pieces and mortars mounted on trucks instead of tracked vehicles. This will increase road speed and reduce cost, weight, fuel consumption, noise and maintenance.

4. Lasers: Reality’s answer to the death ray has a promising future, although it also has certain weaknesses. Lasers require careful maintenance, use a great deal of energy and can be blocked by foul weather, spray, and natural or artificial smoke. They are always more likely to be useful on land than at sea and more useful above the weather than on the ground. Within these limits they are going to be increasingly effective, and even lethal, in combat.

For target illumination and range-finding, lasers have been in use since the 1960s. A comparatively low-powered portable laser can generate enough reflection to make a target visible to a human gunner or a missile’s target-seeking mechanism. Such lasers are rapidly becoming smaller, cheaper, more reliable and more widely distributed; they will go on doing so.

The multiplication of lasers will inevitably generate counter-measures. Passive methods include high-intensity flares to confuse light-sensitive guidance systems and smoke generators to block the beam. More active methods might include rockets homing on the heat pulse of the laser generator or shells filled with highly reflective powder.

Laser weapons will undoubtedly start off mounted on vehicles and may stay there. Even a jeep can carry a fair-sized generator or a rack of storage batteries. As energy-storage methods improve, so will laser weapons. They will probably fire in short pulses, giving the hot gases generated from the target time to disperse. Even if such lasers can’t penetrate heavy armor, they may destroy all sorts of lightly-protected targets and the external fittings and sensors of heavy vehicles.

A workable, cheap laser rifle or pistol is farther away but probably not impossible. Chemical cartridges made of hyper-explosives or high-capacity, quick-discharge batteries could solve the basic problem of storing energy. Such a weapon would fire in short pulses from a clip of the cartridges or batteries.

Lasers may also be the basis of future anti-aircraft and antimissile systems, even at the tactical level. Missiles and aircraft have fuel and electronic systems that are inherently vulnerable to heat. Their main defense has always been speed, less useful against a weapon that strikes at the speed of light.

For air-to-air combat, lasers are a high-performance weapon that could give comparatively low-performance aircraft considerable fighting power. Air-to-air lasers could be giant versions of the clip-fed ground soldiers’ laser, probably mounted externally in self-contained pods slung on wing stations to reduce structural heating.

For close-range defense of ground targets, lasers can simply be added to the guns and missiles already mounted on warships or deployed with air-defense units. With adequate detection systems and high-speed computers, close-range air-defense lasers might even become effective against smart bombs and shells.

To protect larger areas, the air-defense laser may itself have to take to the air, in aircraft with long endurance and substantial pay loads. Such planes could carry long-range lasers, a power supply and a computerized detection and tracking system. They would also carry a few short-range weapons for self-defense but would normally operate over their own rear areas or fleets, well clear of the enemy’s air-defense system. Flying above the weather and terrain obstacles, such airborne lasers could engage a wide variety of aircraft and missile targets at very respectable ranges.

5. Small Arms: Even without a laser rifle, the soldier of the year 2000 could be a distinctly formidable opponent. The use of basically off-the-shelf hardware has already produced a fully automatic 5.56 mm rifle with a laser sight. It is being used by police SWAT teams and will no doubt be appearing in the hands of their opponents before long. The Teflon-coated bullet has also received a good deal of unfortunately quite justifiable publicity for its ability to penetrate bulletproof vests and vehicles. (Antitank pistols, anyone?) There are other small-arms possibilities for the near future, each with its advantages, disadvantages and requirements.

The Caseless Cartridge. A conventional bullet with the propellant forming a hardened lump of explosive rather than contained in a metallic cartridge. This will reduce the size, weight and cost of the round. It will also allow increasing the ammunition load without decreasing the caliber of the round or using heavier and more penetrating bullets. It will require the solution of overheating problems and also some redesign of the firing mechanism.

The Rocket Bullet. The descendant of the Gyrojet round. Current rocket-propelled small-arms rounds seem to lack penetrating power at short ranges and accuracy at longer ones. A combination of hyper-explosives, heavier bullets and a rifle-length barrel should produce a more effective system. The great advantage is reduced recoil, but problems appear to remain with smoke, flash and noise.

The Electric Gun. A rifle discharging its rounds by creating mutually repelling electrical charges or activating a series of ring magnets set at intervals along the barrel—a miniature induction catapult. Such a system is probably the farthest away but would also have the least recoil, noise, flash and wear on the mechanism and the barrel. It is also likely to remain limited to solid-projectile small arms. Subjecting explosive warheads or electronic circuits to such powerful magnetic or electrical fields might not be a good idea.

The Exploding Bullet. A label for a variety of types: simple miniature shells filled with hyper-explosive; flechette rounds; discarding-sabot rounds with disintegrating plastic shells and depicted-uranium cores. The first two would be highly effective against personnel; the third would also be armor-piercing.

Making full use of these improved small arms needs a corresponding improvement in sights, using lasers and mini-computers. At a conservative estimate, the well-trained infantryman of the year 2000 could be able to hit anything he can see out to a range of about one thousand yards and penetrate most body armor and some vehicles at shorter ranges.

The basic shoulder weapon may even become capable of firing not only bullets but grenades, rockets and flares. The World War II rifle grenade was heavy, inaccurate, short-ranged and needed a high-powered cartridge, which damaged the rifle in prolonged use. Before 2000 a far more lethal grenade or high-intensity flare could be made light enough to go several hundred yards with a normally powered cartridge. A small rocket could be fired out to a safe distance, where its own motor would ignite to send it on the way. So infantry heavy weapons may disappear entirely from many types of units in favor of a soldier carrying one rifle, four different kinds of ammunition—and, it may be hoped, a bayonet.

6. Electronic Warfare: Here the sky is already nearly the limit and the rate of progress faster than in any other area.

As far as surveillance, detection and ranging techniques are concerned, we may not see any spectacular breakthroughs. Existing equipment in these areas already uses the entire electromagnetic spectrum as well as heat, sound, smells and chemicals. As with lasers, what we need is cheaper, more reliable equipment, more widely distributed and needing less skill for its operation and maintenance. Making even these improvements will be more than enough to keep alive the already frenzied race between one side’s electronic systems and the other side’s electronic counter-measures.

You use radar and the enemy begins to jam it. You fire homing rockets at his jammers and he invents a radar-negative paint. You switch to passive infrared sensors and he replies with random thermite charges to overload your sensors with heat pulses. You switch again, this time to laser rangers, which he blocks with efflorescent gases and rockets homing in on your illuminators. You abandon sophistication and use old-fashioned aluminum-foil chaff with propaganda printed on the back in three languages, none of them used by your opponent. He trains carrier pigeons to lay radio-sensitive eggs and you invent a robot chef to scramble them.

Now you decide to strike closer to home. You bug his headquarters with microphones. He returns the favor. You dig out his microphones and plant another batch of your own, including a few microminiaturized ones he misses. He plants radio transmitters in your coffee urn that clash with the microwave devices you’ve woven into his curtains and furniture. He bounces a laser off your window shades and reads the reflections while you are doing the same with sonic pulses. Meanwhile, your people have been finding cockroaches with serial numbers in Russian, Hindi and Hebrew. You replace them with microrobots with TV pickups and acetylene torches, disguised as mice, and he unleashes his robot cat that lives on your roof…And so on.

At the heart of electronic warfare lies the computer. Over the next twenty-five years the revolution in computer capacity and size, now underway, will affect every area of military activity.

Computers are vulnerable to faulty components, poor maintenance, inadequate data and incorrect programming. The bigger the computer, the more complex its intended functions, or the larger its data-gathering network, the more vulnerable it will be. The same principle also applies in reverse. The larger the number of activities controlled by one computer, the more vulnerable the whole system is to collapse through disruption of the central computer.

So we can expect to see the most developments among the smaller, more specialized computers. The present smart shells and bombs will multiply, with the larger ones becoming extremely sophisticated. All types and sizes of missile will become more accurate. By the year 2000 almost any weapon on the battlefield may suddenly appear with a miniature “brain.” This includes such previously science-fictional devices as the thirty-second bomb from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, as well as a gruesome variety of booby traps and mines.

The use of electronic aids in all forms of combat vehicles will increase. Even today the SR-71 reconnaissance plane carries out most of a mission automatically, and the engines of many modem warships are controlled from the bridge. Pilots and engineers provide redundancy and discretionary judgment. We may see the automated tank with a computerized weapons system and a two-man crew; we will certainly see more electronic monitoring of vital systems for malfunctions.

We may also see what will be in all but name robot soldiers. The computerized security systems already protecting banks and luxury high-rises could substitute for human sentries in many places. Farther afield, we can expect robot command posts, linked to a variety of sensors, programmed to tell friend from foe and controlling mine fields, short-range missiles and demolition charges. Finally, there are literally hundreds of clerical and housekeeping chores that can be computerized—issuing pay, accounting for supplies, troubleshooting faulty equipment, monitoring hospital patients, etc.

These uses of computers have certain points in common. Their equipment and programming can be designed for a limited range of tasks and made comparatively immune to subsequent programming errors or changes in the environment. They also economize in manpower. This is essential in the industrial countries, where the individual enlisted man has already become the most difficult item for the armed forces to acquire and maintain. With the declining birth rate in these countries, the manpower shortage is going to become worse, and the intelligent use of computers is one of the most promising ways of meeting it.

The picture becomes more complicated when we move on to larger systems centralized around one or more computers. Such systems are indispensable for any sort of effective area defenses against aircraft and missiles, on land or at sea. They are the most effective method for coordinating tactical air strikes, amphibious landings or artillery bombardments. Finally, they are desirable backups for all command and control activities, where the ability to handle larger quantities of data faster than your enemy can often be a real advantage.

At the same time, we need to avoid making such systems more indispensable than they need to be. This is not going to be the easiest of jobs since military organizations are biased toward centralization and hierarchy. Computerized systems are invaluable for reinforcing this bias, far above and beyond what makes sense in a combat situation. If your system’s main function becomes letting the general look over the shoulder of every platoon leader without leaving his headquarters, you should hope that enemy action will save you the trouble of fragging, if not the general, at least the general’s computers.

Apart from reorienting commanders, we face problems in providing for movement and protection of the computers and their sensors. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Egyptian air defense system lost its effectiveness as soon as their army advanced beyond the range of the radar stations on the west bank of the Suez Canal. The system disintegrated completely when the Israelis crossed the canal and attacked the radar stations on the ground.

So we should start planning to have more of the key elements of battlefield electronics systems mounted in aircraft, hovercraft, fast patrol boats and armored vehicles. We should also develop modular or packaged electronic systems that can be shifted from place to place and from vehicle to vehicle. Finally, with the increased capacity of smaller computers, we may want to develop systems with multiple computers, each capable of acting as the central component of the system.

Ideally, any system deployed on or near the firing line ought to be compact enough so that the company clerk can grab the vital elements and run just before the enemy overruns the CP. The farther back, the less trouble you need to take; by the time the computers at your main supply dump come under fire, so much else will have gone wrong that the inability to count socks and prophylactics will be among the least of the commanding general’s worries.

Mobility, dispersal and decentralization also require reliable communications, able to carry large amounts of information and comparatively immune to either jamming or interception by the enemy. These will not always be available, although recent developments in lasers and glass-fiber optics look promising. Large computer systems face a future of continuously shifting balance points between risks and benefits, different for each type of warfare and probably for each opponent. The Egyptian air defense system might have been adequate against an opponent less aggressive and mobile than the Israelis. The only certainty we face is the need to design as much flexibility into the system and as much capacity into each element as technology and budgets permit.

7. Vehicles: Land, Sea and Air.

Land. Battlefield vehicles will be lighter, faster, better armed, better protected and carry heavier payloads. Wheeled vehicles will have more cross-country mobility. Tracked vehicles should have higher road speeds and greater reliability, thanks to improved components. We may see greater use of gas turbines, or even electrical propulsion.

Air. High-performance aircraft such as the F-15 are already approaching the limits of existing power plants and materials, not to mention human physiology. Here we are likely to see primarily improvements in detail—more armor, payload and range, more sophisticated electronics (such as “fly-by-wire” systems), more use of variable-geometry wings and other unconventional designs for the lifting surfaces, and easier maintenance.

At lower speeds and altitudes, more and more aircraft will have short or vertical take-off and landing capabilities. The vertical take-off jet, the helicopter, and possibly the revived flying boat may replace some conventional aircraft for maritime uses. Modular armament systems will give all kinds of aircraft the capacity for self-defense. Finally, we will see increasingly sophisticated drone aircraft used for battlefield surveillance, reconnaissance, maritime patrol, airborne early warning, ECM and decoys; airborne missile launching is also possible.

Increased infantry firepower and the availability of better vertical landing systems may reduce the role of the helicopter on the battlefield. It will certainly have to become better protected and easier to maintain. Current helicopters require much skilled maintenance at vulnerable fixed bases for each hour of flying time.

Sea. In the wake of the Falklands War, the future of navies no longer seems a simple linear process of the decline of the large warship. Small warships can be built cheaper, and with modern weapons and sensors, they can pack an enormous punch, including tactical aircraft. On the other hand, a larger ship can enjoy greater endurance, better sea-keeping qualities, a larger ammunition load and more ability to survive battle damage without the use of exotic and expensive materials for armor.

To make the warships of the near future more effective, we will probably see the extensive revival of armor protection and medium-caliber guns (six to eight inches), with rocket-boosted or smart shells.

Nuclear propulsion is too expensive for all except the largest ships, but there will be more gas turbines and diesels at sea. To simplify maintenance and reduce costs, more and more ships will be built with standardized modular weapons, fire-control systems and power plants. Large high-speed merchant ships are likely to be converted for many tasks, including ASW with VTOL aircraft and helicopters operating off portable flight decks.

The missile-armed fast patrol boat will become a major factor in naval strategy. As long as weapons and power plants for these craft are available on the open market, they can be built, manned and used by comparatively underdeveloped countries. In narrow seas, a force of FPBs can face a whole task force on dangerously even terms.

Nuclear submarines have virtually unlimited submerged endurance but are expensive, noisy and too large for use in shallow waters.

Improved electrical-power storage or the revival of the Walther hydrogen-peroxide system may give the conventional submarine a new lease on life in even the major navies.

Four types of vehicle need separate discussion:

Hovercraft today are noisy, hard to maneuver and poorly protected. As power plants, light-weight weapons and armor improve, hovercraft will become more effective. Large ones may serve as fast patrol boats; hovercraft are much less vulnerable to air attack than surface ships and nearly immune to submarines. Smaller hovercraft may replace most conventional landing craft for amphibious operations. On land they may help give high-speed ground mobility to command posts, radar stations, lasers and missile launchers.

The ducted fan, a shrouded propeller rotating horizontally to generate vertical lift, is simpler and more reliable than the helicopter. Experimental models during the 1950s had high fuel consumption, small payloads and stability problems. With better power plants and materials, as well as multiple fans giving stability, ducted-fan vehicles may replace the large and vulnerable heavy-lift helicopters.

The rocket belt has been experimental and largely unsuccessful for many years. With improved liquid or solid propellants, lighter materials and control by mini-computers, it may become a workable replacement for the parachute. Not only the individual soldier but any vehicle or weapon that is air-transportable may become air-droppable as well, ready to go into action the moment it lands.

The powered exoskeleton has appeared a number of times in science fiction as “powered armor” for the infantry. This ultimate development of the concept is probably more than twenty years away and may never be really practical or effective. Against the weapons of the future, a powered suit may simply increase the infantryman’s value as a target without decreasing his vulnerability or increasing his fighting power. Less sophisticated exoskeletons undoubtedly will be developed and used for all sorts of engineering, construction and housekeeping jobs.

Conclusion: The New Range of Choices

The decision-makers in future wars will face a whole new range of choices in deciding how to accomplish any given objective.

1. Level of Violence: As weapons improve along the lines we’ve just examined, any military unit will be able to function at many different levels, high and low.

With only its regular weapons and ammunition, an infantry brigade will be able to suppress a riot in one neighborhood of a city or raze the city to the ground. A patrol boat will be able to stop a yacht smuggling marijuana or sink a super-tanker two hundred times her tonnage at a range of thirty miles. With the level of violence no longer tied particularly closely to the nature and size of the armed forces on the spot, the already complex job of the decision-makers in choosing which level to use will become still worse.

2. High-performance Platforms vs. High-performance Weapons:

The high-performance platform such as the F-15, or super-carrier, has attracted most of the attention and distorted our perception of the range of possibilities. We can now build high-performance vehicles, sophisticated, specialized and extremely expensive. We can also build vehicles with a lower performance, carrying extremely powerful weapons. The missile-armed patrol boat, the subsonic attack aircraft with smart bombs, the jeep carrying a tank-killing missile are all existing examples of performance built into the weapons rather than into the weapons platform.

Now the United States is putting into service the Harpoon missile, designed to be fired from submerged submarines, surface ships of any reasonable size, aircraft and land vehicles. There is talk of using converted airliners or merchant ships to launch the cruise missile, a major strategic weapons system. Before long we may see jeeps able to carry anything from four MPs with pistols to missiles with kiloton fusion warheads, converted airliners mounting anti-missile lasers or long-range anti-aircraft missiles, merchant ships defending themselves with packaged missiles, guns, radar sets and even helicopters or VTOL aircraft.

The high-performance weapon isn’t always the optimum solution but it is likely to be the preferable one in an increasing number of cases for economic reasons. It already costs more to build performance into the platform than into the weapon, and the gap is likely to increase. Also, any countermeasures effective against the weapon are likely to be even more effective against the weapons platform. Even if the enemy forces you to expend eight missiles instead of two, it’s still cheaper than losing two planes and three crewmen.

3. The Mass Army vs. the Elite Force: Much conventional thought about war implies a dichotomy between large masses of moderately trained men with simple weapons and handfuls of super-troopers with immense firepower. This dichotomy began to erode with the development of automatic weapons and has been shrinking ever since. A World War I infantry company outgunned one of Napoleon’s battalions; a modern platoon could beat either one; and a modern missile frigate could sink any of the battleships that fought at Jutland without getting her paint scratched.

Until recently the process has been slowed by the limitations of explosives and materials, as well as poor design. Increased firepower has tended to require more skill, training and education on the part of the soldiers. Now we are moving into an era of durable materials, hyper-explosives and solid-state electronics. All sorts of prepackaged, maintenance-free and nearly foolproof weapons become possible, putting great power into the hands of only marginally trained and educated soldiers.

As long as there are few restrictions on the spread of such weapons and the technology to manufacture them, the gap between the educated and the uneducated fighting man will continue to narrow. In a world where most of the educated soldiers come from rich countries and most of the uneducated ones come from poor countries, this narrowing gap could be more dangerous than the atomic bomb or nerve gas.

These are the tools of the next generation’s warfare. What remains are the two old questions:

How fast will the decision-makers learn to use these tools?

Who will pay for their education?

Editor's Introduction to:

ACT OF MERCY
by D.C. Poyer

Legio, patre nostra

—Flag of La Legion Étrangère

The mystique of the French Foreign Legion has fascinated many writers. Though called “French,” there has seldom been a French majority among the Legionnaires. Germans, Belgians, Danes, Swedes, Britons—the list is endless. With every European war, the ranks of the Legion were filled as the defeated soldiers sought the only trade they knew.

This poses a formidable problem. Why would men of all nationalities—a veritable legion of strangers—fight so fiercely and so well? For fight they have. Few dared face them, for even in their defeats they sold their lives dearly.

Stationed for decades at Sidi Bel Abbes, the Legion was withdrawn to Corsica when the French left North Africa. There was then, and is now, considerable question as to what should happen to La Legion Étrangere.

Otto von Habsburg, whom some consider the legitimate sovereign of Europe, has thought long and hard on the future of the Legion. In 1975 he wrote:

“Since its background is European, should not the Foreign Legion come to Europe? Instead of being ‘foreign,’ could it not offically become that which in fact it is, in other words, European? Could it not find its niche in a new community defense organization, the European equivalent of what the Marine Corps is for the United States of America?”

The thought is intriguing; indeed, I had some such idea in mind when I wrote of the worlds of the CoDominium, whose Marines incorporated the Legion. Men who regard the Legion as their Fatherland should have little trouble giving allegiance to Europe, or to a larger entity.

Such a truly multi-national force could be useful in other ways. The accomplishments of the Legion go beyond battle. To this day, in Morocco the inscription on the famous Foum el Zabel tunnel reads:

The mountain stood in our way.

We were ordered to proceed nevertheless.

The Legion carried out the order.

The Legion carries battle banners from Lebanon and Syria, Madagascar, France and Spain, the Crimea, Hanoi and Hue and Saigon; from the glory of Camerone in Mexico to Kolwezi in Katanga. However, when one thinks of the Legion, what usually comes to mind is the desert, when Franks and Iberians and Saxons returned to North Africa in repayment for the time when only the strong sinews of Charles the Hammer halted the blood tide of Islaam and for half a millennium Arabs held Spain.

D. C. Poyer writes of the time when the Legion held the desert and feared only two things: capture by the Arabs, and le cafard.

ACT OF MERCY
by D.C. Poyer

It is cold in the Sahara at night, cold enough to freeze the water in a sleeping man’s canteen. Cold enough, if a Legionnaire is unprepared, to kill him.

And tonight feels like the coldest night of the year: bundled up as I am for guard duty, I’m shivering as if with malaria. My rifle is cramping my right arm, so I shift it to my left. For the thousandth time tonight I sigh and wish for a cigar, for one of the long black ones they sell back home in France.

I console myself with the thought that my watch will be over in a few more minutes, and turn and look over the wall at the Sahara. The moon is full, and its light glistens on the dunes, making them hills of silver dust. It is a beautiful night.

Me, Jean-Paul Bergaine, I am not much of a soldier. As the girls say of me in the brothels of Mers-el-Kebir, I am a lover, not a fighter. So why did I join the Legion Étrangère? Ah, now, there’s a question I ask myself a hundred times a day. Why did I lose myself in this empty place, this place that is not my own, this hell that perhaps can belong to no one but the desert Arabs? A hundred times a day I ask myself this. I spit over the wall and am in the middle of a vast yawn when the alarm bugle sounds behind me.

I spin, stuffing cartridges up the magazine of the Lebel, and at first I see nothing, because my eyes are sweeping the ramparts for Arabs. But then I realize that, in the flickering blue-white light, I can see the walls clearly and even the mountains far beyond them, and I look up at the ball of flame overhead.

I have not had much schooling, but I know what it is, the ball of white fire and red sparks that moves so slowly in the sky. It is a bolide, a meteor. But how slowly it moves! It must be very high. Every man in the post is awake now, craning his neck upward, but we hear nothing. The bluish light is harsh on the upturned faces, and shadows are sharp on the dark sand.

The bolide takes many minutes to disappear. It seems to be traveling south, into the desert. A good place for it, too; only the desert Arabs go far into the South Sahara. It will hurt no one. But it has put on quite a show for us; unless we should have women or a skirmish, it will furnish us conversation for days to come. My relief arrives, and I go back into the barracks. Spinelli and Petit and I speak wonderingly of it for a few minutes before we pull the blankets over our heads again.

The mud-walled office of the post commandant was very sparsely furnished; a battered wooden table, carried to the post over two hundred kilometers of camel-trail, and two rickety cane chairs were the sum of its appointments. The two men in tropical uniform rose politely as a short, perspiring man in a dirty white suit brushed aside the curtain at the door and entered the room.

“Ah, M. Paul-Boncour! It is indeed an honor to be able to assist the National Observatory!” said the older officer, ushering his junior forward with a gesture. “This is my assistant, Lieutenant de Dissonville. If you approve, I should like to send him with you on your expedition. Lieutenant, would you step outside and ask the orderly to bring in some wine? Thank you. Professor, a seat?”

“Thank you.” Paul-Boncour sat down heavily. “I am happy to see that you appreciate the importance of my mission; I’ve been riding that damned camel for four days to get here. According to the calculations of the flight of the bolide I made at Koufra, it should have landed in the desert about fifty kilometers southeast of here. By the way, did you happen to time the passage of the object across the heavens?”

“Ah…no; we were, to be frank, startled by the apparition, and had no idea such a procedure was called for…but, monsieur, you say that you expect to find the bolide southeast of here?”

“Yes. Estimates made by myself, and also by Rawlings of the Royal Observatory, who happened to be vacationing in Koufra, agree that the low speed and southeasterly heading of the object would bring it down in an area just beyond your post. But—why do you look at me so strangely?”

The Army officer shifted his eyes to the scarred tabletop for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration, before he answered. “A bolide is a ballistic object, is it not? Falling through the air much like an artillery shell?”

“In general, yes. It falls in a straight line across the earth’s face, and downward in a parabolic arc.”

“But this bolide, Professor…when it passed over us, it was going due south, Monsieur! How could that be?”

The fat, sweating civilian and the officer in his wilted khakis regarded each other over the rickety table.

“Impossible,” said the professor flatly.

It is a blazing hot day today, much hotter than yesterday. After five years in Africa, I am an old hand, a seasoned, sun-blackened vieillar, but the days like today are too hot for any European. The Arabs can stand the heat, though. When the column has fallen out for five minutes’ rest, and the men cannot regain their feet for the fatigue and thirst, we see them sitting far off on the horizon, watching our agony from atop their camels. And enjoying it. They are not like us, the desert Arabs. They are bred to the savagery of the desert, and sometimes I wonder if we French will ever succeed in wresting it from them. But that is a silly thought; we are a cultured race, while they are uncivilized savages who enjoy nothing more than torturing a stranger to death. I have seen some of my comrades’ bodies after the Arabs were done with them, and I would die before falling into their hands. Only our modern rifles keep them at a respectful distance from us as we march.

We started this morning from the post and marched south all morning. The fat civilian, who is riding a mule at the head of the column, has a compass, and we must go in a straight line. Diable! A mule– just so he can rest his fat ass! Even the lieutenant, that spoiled Parisian mama’s boy, is marching. Mule or not, a fat man like that won’t last the day out. When he faints, he’ll fall off, and we can stop for a rest and perhaps a drink of water then. Vive le soleil!

We slog on through the heat of the day, and that night make camp on a small plain of gravel surrounded by sand drifts. We are slowly moving into the sandy part of the South Sahara, away from all the settled portions of the country. There are not even Legion posts ahead of us. After the sentries are posted we sit in small groups and shoot the bull for a while. Spinelli tells an old story about lost treasures in the South Sahara; Palewski laughs, telling him that there the only gold is on the buttons of dead Legionnaires. They are good comrades. We eat our hard bread and blood-sausages cold, and turn in.

The nineteen men marched onward the next day, and the next, through a lifeless, hostile and monotonous terrain of gravel and drifted sand.

In the lead walked the young lieutenant, pushing himself mercilessly to stay ahead of the common soldiers. His short hair was soaking wet under the neck-cloth of the cap, and the stinging sweat trickled into his eyes. Near mid-afternoon he began to feel nauseated, feeling the onset of heat exhaustion, but he kept his flushed face set forward, toward the emptiness ahead, and walked on.

Behind him, trailing him by ten or twelve paces, rode the savant. He slumped in a torpor on his mule, which plodded slowly along, lolling its tongue and panting loudly. From time to time the professor roused himself for a moment, glanced at a compass, and stared slowly around at the horizon before relapsing into semiconsciousness. A filthy red bandanna peeped from the neck of his shirt.

The sergeant, Kruger, marched at the right of his column, gliding across the sand with a snakelike, fluid step, wasting not a millimeter of motion. In the breathless silence that surrounded them, his occasional low commands rang out like the crack of a revolver.

The men marched in silence, their heads low like a herd of animals, their tumed-up collars, caps and packs concealing their faces from the sun. They, too, glided across the sand, moving as if on parade in a compact body that moved among the low dunes like a many-legged blue caterpillar.

At eight in the evening the lieutenant held his arm above his head to halt the column, and heard behind him Kruger’s soft voice commanding, “Legionnaires…arretez-vous.” He turned to the scientist, who was slumped like a lump of melting lard on his saddle, eyes closed.

“With your permission, M. le Professeur, we will make camp here for the night,” he said.

The mule had stopped when the lieutenant had halted, and stood with its knees locked and eyes closed. It looked as if it had died upright.

“Monsieur,” said de Dissonville again.

They pulled the scientist from his perch, rubbed his face with a handful of water, and made camp.

They marched south for five days.

“The men can eat it, anyway,” said de Dissonville. “It will be a change from marching rations.”

The professor gave the carcass of the dead mule a final kick and turned away. “It was healthy enough yesterday,” he growled. He looked different; his face was becoming browned, and he had lost much of his corpulence. The wrinkles around his face made him look a great deal older. The lieutenant, too, had lost some of his awkward youthfulness and was beginning to walk with the fluid, swaying motion that made marching in the desert bearable.

“I can’t understand it,” he said. “Professor, you were sure that the thing could not have landed more than seventy kilometers from the fort. We have gone three times that, perhaps more. Perhaps we’ve already passed it; it could have been on the other side of a dune. With all respect, M. le Professeur, I think we should turn back toward the post. We have enough water and food left, with the mule dead, to get back without trouble.”

Paul-Boncour pondered, then shook his head. “You don’t understand at all. My computations indicate a very large body. A mass like that striking the earth would cause an explosion many times more powerful than that of a powder magazine. It would leave an immense crater.”

“Like that of an explosive shell?”

“Yes, but perhaps a kilometer across. Doubtless you conceived of the meteor quietly resting on the sand where it landed. But I suppose they don’t teach you much science at Saint-Cyr, do they?”

De Dissonville began to reply, but Kruger signaled suddenly for silence. Over the baked sand stretching for miles ahead of them they heard two more pops of musketry, and then a rattle of fire all at once. Then silence again, covering the small group of men like a blanket.

“Allans! Allans! Sergeant Kruger, get these men in column!” shouted the lieutenant. “Quickly! Check your rifles as we march. Let’s go!”

I am huddled under a small overhang of the thing, where one of the spheres joins another. My arm hurts, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. I can’t tell if Spinelli, a few meters in front of me, is still alive, but if he is not dead yet, he soon will be. He has a musket ball in his guts and the sand under him is dark in the rapidly fading light. If the Arabs leave us alone for a few more minutes, I will crawl over to him and give him a drink if he wants it, or maybe tell him a joke. He has not made a sound since he was hit, though.

It happened fast. After we heard the shots, we fell in quickly and marched in their direction. The lieutenant had us check our rifles and the sergeant told us to take a long drink from our canteens, to fix our bayonets, and to loosen our cartridges in their belts.

We marched for about a kilometer, the deep sand deadening the noise of our boots, the lieutenant and the professor ahead. The fat one was talking to the lieutenant, and took his arm once, but was shaken off. The lieutenant handed him one of his pistols. The civilian said something else and then the lieutenant put out an arm and Lard-Face went on his back in the sand. We marched by him and he got up and ran after us. I was near the rear of the column and he ran up beside me, wheezing, and asked me if I knew where I was being led. I said, Yes, Monsieur, those were the muskets of the Arabs we heard. He said, It is not part of our mission to chase natives. That was not a question, so I said nothing. He said, Do you not care that there might be a hundred savages there? That that enfant could be leading all of us to death? I said, Monsieur, I am not an officer; you waste your time speaking to me. Sergeant Kruger had come back to the end of the column by then and he said to him, Monsieur le Professeur, the lieutenant sends his compliments and begs you to guard our rear while he conducts a reconnaissance in force. The professor stopped and I looked quickly around at him after a few steps and saw him standing kneedeep in the sand examining the service revolver the lieutenant had given him.

We marched over the edge of a small dune and there it was, about a hundred meters ahead of us, and beyond it were about fifty Arabs, some cross-legged on their camels and some standing in a small circle on the sand. They spotted us and the lieutenant saw right away that the only cover would be the big silver thing and so he shouted charge and as they ran for their camels and their rifles, we ran for the shelter of the big thing. It looked like five great big shiny cannonballs welded together in a row, but what was important was that we were in the open and if we could get it behind us and throw up some sand as a breastwork, we couldn’t ask for a better place to fight from.

But the sand was deep and we couldn’t run fast enough and the Arabs got the lieutenant and Kruger and twelve others, and I got a ball in the arm, before we got to the thing and dug ourselves in. After the three of us were under cover, we watched them drag away the men who were still alive and begin cutting them up.

They must have been using very small, very sharp knives. We could hear the screams for hours.

So now I am on this side of the thing and Petit and Palewski are on the other side, so I guess they can’t take us by surprise anyway. I don’t know what we can do if they attack in the dark. I guess I will have to shoot Spinelli first and then myself so they can’t cut us up.

The fat man had waited all night behind a dune, peeping over it from time to time at the reflections of starlight and, later in the night, moonlight on the multiple spheres of the object in the depression below. When it began to grow brighter in the east, and he still saw no signs of the Arabs, he finally rose and walked down the gentle slope.

“Soldier,” he said to the man huddled under the curving side of the object. “Soldier, wake up.” The man finally did wake up, and blinked his eyes slowly before focusing them on Paul-Boncour.

“Lard-Face,” said the man, seemingly speaking to himself. “Then it is morning, and we are still alive.” Then his eyes widened, and with a sudden lunge he flattened the savant on the sand. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. “I don’t know why they didn’t kill us while we slept, but if they see you walking around, they’ll be on top of us. And we are only four.”

“Let me up, you fool,” said Paul-Boncour loudly. “Do you think I would have come down here if those savages were still around? Get up. Act like a Frenchman! Where are the others?”

The Legionnaire stood up slowly and scanned the desert, warily at first, and then with a flicker of hope in his expression; finally he smiled broadly. He helped the sprawled scientist to his feet and called to the others. “Petit! Palewski! Reveillez-vous! The Arabs have left!” There was no answer. Still smiling, he shouldered his rifle, said to Paul-Boncour, “I’ll go wake them,” and disappeared around the end of the object.

The professor, left alone for a moment, investigated the corpse that lay huddled a few yards in front of Bergaine’s little sandmound emplacement. He prodded it with his boot; frozen. A bad wound too, judging from the dried blood on the sand around the body.

Silly ass, he thought; it was his own fault for following wherever he was led. Still, it was too bad. A total waste of money to train and arm the man, to have him die here like this; and Paul-Boncour was, after all, a taxpayer.

The wounded Legionnaire reappeared from the other side of the object. He looked sick. Paul-Boncour swung on him. “Well, where are the others?” he asked. “You did say there were two others, n’est-ce pas?”

“They’re dead,” said Bergaine. His face was pale. “The Arabs…”

“Well,” interrupted the civilian, shielding his eyes against the rising sun, “Too bad. But we’ve found our bolide, at any rate. Let’s investigate it.”

So every man in the platoon is dead, except me. I guess the professor’s in command now; at least he has a compass, and a map. Even he can get us back to the post, now that we have the food and water the others won’t be needing any more.

I am scraping a shallow grave in the sand for Spinelli, using my rifle butt, when the professor comes over to me and pulls me away. Follow me, he says. I say that I have to bury Spinelli and the others. Oh, they’ll keep for a couple more minutes, says he, come here, I want you to be able to corroborate some things for me when we get back to civilization.

I don’t understand what he means by “corroborate,” but I follow him. First he shows me some lines, like the outline of a door, on the side of the silver thing; I say yes, I see them. He shows me some things like cannon muzzles at one end. I say yes sir, I see them, can I go bury Spinelli now? He says that there is one more thing that I have to see. I follow him, but I’m getting a little angry; after I get done with Spinelli, I am going to have to bury what is left of Petit and Palewski, and I am not looking forward to that.

This last thing he has to show me is a trail, like a trough or a shallow groove in the sand, with marks at intervals along the sides. There are stains in the sand, as if something had leaked into the ground here and there along the trail. I ask him what it is.

Look where it leads from, he says, and points back toward the thing. Sure enough, I can see that it leads right to the door-like markings, and I see also that at one place on the trail the sand is all scuffled and stamped over, as if a group of men had been dancing or fighting on that spot, and there is a great deal of the funny-looking stain around there.

They were waiting for it when it came out, 1 say. The professor is surprised, and says that for a common soldier, I am very quick. I say nothing; that is not a question. I ask him again if he will let me go and finish the burying now so that we can start back to the post before the Arabs decide to return with some friends and show off their work.

He looks surprised, and says, Start back? Of course we do not start back. Not now. Don’t you understand what all this means? A creature of another celestial sphere has visited our planet for the first time. Perhaps he comes in peace, and then again, perhaps as a scout for a warlike race. It is our duty, to Science, to Humanity, to find this étrangère and to fathom his intentions toward mankind! He is shouting and waving his arms at me as he finishes his little speech.

I am beginning to think that the professor has gone just a little bit crazy from the sun and the deaths. After all, he is a cultured man and not used to such things. I look at him directly and say gently, Monsieur, we can carry enough water to get back alive only if we start walking now, while we are still strong. We must not linger here or the Arabs will return and find us. We must go back now. I speak very slowly, so that he knows I am in absolute earnest. Otherwise, I say, I will take the compass and the map and start back alone, and you can go after your creature, which is probably dead from the cold and the attentions of the savages anyway.

The professor pulls the lieutenant’s revolver from his pocket and points it at me. We are going after the creature together, my brave Legionnaire, he says, with a little smile. Gather up the food and the canteens. And leave your rifle here, with the dead ones.

It was plain to Paul-Boncour that the creature, whatever it looked like, was badly hurt. The trough in the sand was deeper on one side than on the other, and on the deeper side most of the stains appeared. As the two plodded on, the stains became more frequent, forming a discolored line on the sand.

“The creature that left this trail,” said the scientist to the soldier, “is not only badly hurt, but, I think, unused to the gravity of this planet; as you will note, the trail avoids any suggestion of a grade, winding between dunes rather than attempting to scale them. From the depth of the trough, I would estimate its weight to be about that of a man—perhaps a little less.”

The soldier did not reply. He was bent under the weight of the rations and canteens taken from the dead men, and followed the scientist, walking in the track they were following. One of his arms was roughly bandaged, and he carried it thrust deep into the pocket of his overcoat.

The professor does not notice the difference in the air this afternoon, for he is unused to the deep Sahara; but I notice it, and I can tell that the sand-storm the desert is preparing for us is not one that two men on foot should face in the open. But I walk on behind him, saying nothing.

When the first gust of sand-laden wind buffets us, and the darkness covering the sun suddenly shrouds us in a roaring brown-yellow night, the professor is startled from his concentration. He turns to me in terror and I shout in his ear above the roar of the wind, It is a dust-storm, we must lie down and cover our heads. He throws himself full-length on the sand and covers his face with his hands.

It is then that I fall upon him in the shrieking darkness and smash his skull with a metal canteen. He makes not a sound as he dies, or if he does, it is carried away by the wind. I can no longer see for the sand in my eyes, cutting and stinging; I pull the revolver from his belt, and standing crouched over him, pull at his pockets for the compass and map. A gust of wind, heavy with flying sand, knocks me down and I roll over and over before the fury of it.

It is evening, and I am following the trail of the creature alone. Why? Because there is nowhere else for me to go. After the storm was over, I dug myself out and looked for the professor’s body but it was useless. He is under at least a meter of sand—a better burial than he allowed Spinelli and the others—and all of the dunes have changed. It is hopeless to look for the body, and without the compass and map, there is little possibility of my finding my way back to a fort. But at least I will not die from slow thirst; I have five cartridges remaining in the lieutenant’s revolver. So now I am more or less amusing myself until I decide that I have lived long enough.

I feel that I am very close to the creature now. The trail is obviously fresh; it was made after the sand-storm. It must have been very close, perhaps on the other side of the dune, when I killed the professor.

Its trail seems to curve around the end of this dune, perhaps to circle back again; the creature, fleeing from the Arabs as our little party distracted them from their sport, is as lost as I am. No, even more than I, for I at least stand on the planet and breathe the air native to my kind. But I can comprehend, now, a little of what it must feel, if it feels as we do at all. I decide to try to second-guess it by climbing over the dune.

It lies in the depression between two dunes, not moving at all. It is of a silvery color, like its craft, and is smaller but longer than a man, with many small legs or arms along its body. I half-walk, half-slide down the dune toward it. It begins to move spasmodically as I near it; I stop and wait for a moment. Its movements cease, but I can tell somehow that it is watching me.

I walk slowly toward it, and stop and crouch in the sand about a meter away. It is panting, breathing with a thin whistling sound. With each heave of its sides, small drops of fluid run from dozens of tiny slashes and wet the sand under it. I recognize the cuts. The Arabs had only started with this creature.

Then it moves again, and I look up; there they are atop the dune I have just crossed, a dozen or more dark, silent men in flowing white. They sit on their motionless camels, watching us.

My hand closes upon the revolver, and I glance back at the alien. For the savages I have three cartridges. But the last two are for me and my comrade.

Call it a favor from one stranger to another.

Editor's Introduction to:

THE ECONOMICS OF WAR
by David Friedman, Ph.D

My friend David Friedman is a remarkable man. He has no military experience, but he does have considerable background in military history. He has also several times won the Crown of the East in the Society for Creative Anachronism, that odd group that enjoys dressing in armor and fighting tournaments. The tournament winner receives the Crown.

Dr. Friedman is an economist and a teacher of economics. He is also what is often termed an “extreme libertarian,” which is to say that he considers freedom the highest of values and seeks ways whereby a rational society might do away with coercion. Unlike many of that persuasion, Dr. Friedman has given the subject no little thought, and he does not avoid the hard questions. One may not agree with him, but it is difficult not to be stimulated by him. At worst, one will better understand why one disagrees.

Wars and armies are, by definition, coercive. They pose a real problem for the libertarian: How does a free society counter organized violence? Indeed, can that be done? Must there be taxation, conscription, police and armies? Can there be a rule of rationality and contract?

Inter armes, silent leges; in the face of arms, the law is silent. So, one might think, are contracts and voluntarism. Dr. Friedman seeks insights into why men fight, and why they do not.

The cynic, it is said, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. One might say that Dr. Friedman’s cool rationalism seeks answers in places where they cannot be found. Good soldiers are seldom paid in any coin that economists can quantify.

THE ECONOMICS OF WAR
by David Friedman, Ph.D

“The science of war is moving live men like blocks.”

—Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body

To most non-economists, economics has something to do with money, and the economics of war presumably has to do with how we pay for the bombs and bullets. Economists have different and broader ideas of what their field is; my own favorite definition is that economics is that approach to understanding human behavior which starts from the assumption that individuals have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them. From this standpoint, the potential subject matter is all of human behavior (some of my colleagues would include animal behavior as well) and the only test of whether behavior is or is not economic is the ability of our basic assumption to explain or predict it.

Given such a broad definition of economics, one might almost say that all of warfare reduces to the technical problem of making guns that will shoot and the economic problem of getting someone to shoot them, preferably in the right direction. Board games, strategic simulations and popular articles tend to emphasize the technical problems—how far a tank will shoot, what kind of armor it will go through and how many tanks (or knights or hoplites) each side has; they generally take it for granted that the playing pieces will go where they are moved. In real battles they frequently do not. The economic problem is why they do not and what can be done about it.

Economics assumes that individuals have objectives. We do not know all of the objectives that any individual has, but we do know that for most of us, staying alive is high on the list. The general commanding an army and the soldier in the front line have, in one sense, the same objectives. Both want their side to win, and both want both of them to survive the battle. The soldier, however, is likely to rank his own survival a good deal higher and the general’s survival a good deal lower in importance than the general does. One consequence of that disagreement is that the general may rationally tell the soldier to do something and the soldier may rationally not do it. Neither is necessarily making a mistake; each may be correctly perceiving how to achieve his ends.

Consider a simple case. You are one of a line of men on foot with long spears; you are being charged by men on horses, also carrying spears (and swords and maces and…). You have a simple choice: You can stand and fight or you can run away. If everyone runs away, the line collapses and most of you get killed; if everyone stands, you have a good chance of stopping the charge and surviving the battle. Obviously you should stand.

It is not so obvious. I have described the consequences if everyone runs or everyone stands, but you are not everyone; all you control is whether you run or fight. If you are in a large army, your decision to run will only very slightly weaken it. If you run and everyone else fights and wins, some of them will be killed and you will not. If you run and everyone else fights and loses, at least they will slow down the attack—giving you some chance of getting away. If everyone runs and you stand to fight, you will certainly be killed; if everyone runs and you run first, you at least have a chance of getting away. It follows that whatever everyone else is going to do, unless you believe that your running away will have a significant effect on who wins (unlikely with large armies), you are better off running. Everyone follows this argument, everyone runs, the line collapses, you lose the battle and most of you get killed.

The conclusion seems paradoxical; I started by assuming that people want to live and correctly choose the means of doing so and ended by predicting that people will behave in a way that gets most of them killed. But rationality is an assumption about individuals, not about groups. Each individual, in my simple example of the economics of war, is making the correct decision about how he should act in order to keep himself alive. It so happens that the correct decision for me (running away) decreases the chance of being killed for me but increases it for everyone else on my side, and similarly for everyone else’s correct decision; individually, each of us is better off (given what everyone else is doing) than if he stood and fought, but we are all worse off than we would be if each of us had failed to reach the correct conclusion and we had all stood and fought.

If this still seems paradoxical to you, consider a more homely example—an economic problem that occurs twice a day two blocks from where I am sitting. The scene is the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood, said to be the busiest in the world. The time is rush hour. As the light on Wilshire goes green, the traffic surges forward. As it turns yellow, a last few cars try to make it across. Since Wilshire is packed with cars, they fail and end up in the intersection, blocking the cars on Westwood, which now have a green light. Gradually the cars in the intersection make it across, allowing the traffic on Westwood to surge forward—just as the light changes again, trapping another batch of cars in the intersection.

If drivers on both streets refrained from entering an intersection unless there was clearly enough room for them on the far side, the jam would not occur, traffic would flow faster and they would all get where they are going sooner—which is presumably their objective. Yet each individual driver is behaving rationally. My aggressive driving on Wilshire benefits me (I may make it across before the light changes, and at worst I will get far enough into the intersection not to be blocked by cars going the other way at the next stage of the jam) and harms drivers on Westwood; your aggressive driving on Westwood benefits you and harms drivers (possibly including me) on Wilshire. The harm is much larger than the benefit, so on net we are all worse off. But I receive all of the benefit and none of the harm from the particular decision I control. I am correctly choosing the action that best achieves my objective—but if we all made a mistake and drove less aggressively, we would all be better off.

I am not saying that rationality implies selfishness—that is a parody of economics. Drivers may value other people’s time as well as their own, or they may value a self-image that requires them to act in a polite and considerate way; if so, rational behavior (in pursuit of those goals) may prevent the jam instead of causing it. The “paradox” is not that rational behavior always leads to undesirable results—it does not. In the two cases I have described, it does. What is paradoxical is that the results are undesirable in terms of precisely the same objectives (staying alive in the one case and getting home earlier in the other) that the individual behavior is correctly calculated to achieve.

Let us now return to the battlefield, replacing spears with guns. One of the less well-known facts about modern warfare is that in combat a substantial percentage of the soldiers (almost four-fifths, according to one source) do not fire their guns and those that do frequently do not aim them; this is one of the reasons that about 100,000 bullets are fired for every enemy killed. Such behavior seems irrational from the standpoint of the army—soldiers are given guns in order that they may shoot the enemy with them—but it may be entirely rational from the standpoint of the soldier. It is difficult to hide in a foxhole and take a carefully aimed shot at the enemy at the same time. If you can see him, he may be able to see you, and if you are taking the time to aim at him, you may be giving him, or his buddy, a chance to aim at you. If your objective is to stay alive, there is much to be said for climbing into a convenient hole and firing your gun, if at all, in the general direction of the enemy.

In discussing my first example, I pointed out that the desirability of running away depended, among other things, on how likely you thought your defection was to make your side lose the battle. The same argument applies here. At one extreme, consider a “battle” with one man on each side; hiding in a hole and firing random shots is not a sensible way of getting through it alive. At the other extreme, consider a battle with massed armies of tens of thousands of men, all shooting at each other at once. Whether you fight or hide is very unlikely to affect the outcome, so the sensible thing to do is to hide—assuming, as is usually the case, that the lives of your fellow soldiers are very much less valuable to you than your own.

Many real battles represent an intermediate situation. How hard you fight is unlikely to affect who wins the battle, but it may well affect the particular part of the battle immediately around you. In such a case, the soldier must decide which of his alternatives is less likely to get him killed. The more influence he believes his actions will have on the outcome of the fight, the more likely he is to shoot instead of hiding.

I recently came across an interesting fact that fits quite neatly into this economic prediction. A study of the behavior of G.I.s in World War II found that the soldiers most likely to fire their weapons were those carrying B.A.R.s (Browning Automatic Rifles). A B.A.R. is a substantially more powerful weapon than an ordinary rifle; the decision to fight or hide by the man carrying it is more likely to determine what happens on his part of the battlefield—and hence whether his position is overrun and he is killed—than the decision to fight or hide by other members of the squad.

So far I have discussed the economic problem of war without saying anything about solutions. Obviously I am not the first person in history to realize that soldiers sometimes run away, or even the first to suggest that they do so, not because they are struck with some mysterious panic, but as a sensible response to the circumstances they find themselves in. Commanders throughout history have been confronted with the problem and have come up with a variety of ways to make it in the interest of their soldiers to fight and, if possible, in the interest of the enemy soldiers to run away.

One solution has become proverbial. You march your army across a bridge, line it up for the battle with a river (hopefully unswimmable) behind it, then burn the bridge. Since there is now nowhere to run to, much of the argument for running away disappears. Of course, if you lose the battle, you all get killed. This is called burning your bridges behind you.

Another solution is to punish soldiers who run away. One way is to have a second line of soldiers whose job is to kill any member of the first line who runs. This unfortunately ties up quite a lot of your army; if the front line all gets killed, the second line runs away, unless there is a third line to kill them for doing so. A less expensive (but also less effective) solution is to keep track of who runs away and hang them after the battle. In order for this to work, you have to have a pretty good chance of winning the battle, or at least surviving it with your command structure intact; an army that has just been routed is unlikely to have time to punish the soldiers who ran first. This suggests one reason why some commanders are so much more successful than others; once a commander has won a few battles, his soldiers expect him to win the next one. If the battle is going to be won, it is prudent not to run away—and since nobody runs away, the battle is won. This is what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. A French military theorist, Ardant du Pica, argued that the traditional picture of a charge, in which the charging column smashes into the defending line, is mythical. At some point in a real charge, either the column decides that the line is not going to run and stops, or the line decides that the column is not going to stop, and runs.

This brings me to the much-maligned British army of the eighteenth century, we all learn in elementary school about the foolish British, who dressed up their troops in bright scarlet uniforms and lined them up in rigid formations for the brave American revolutionaries to shoot at. The assumption (as in the nationalistic histories of most nations) is that we were smart and they were dumb and that explains it all. I am in no sense an expert in eighteenth-century military history, but I think I have a more plausible explanation. The British troops were armed with short-range muskets and bayonets, hence the relevant decision for them, as for the spearmen of a few centuries before, was to fight or to run. In order to make sure they fought, their commanders had to be able to see if someone was starting to run; rigid geometric formations and bright uniforms are a sensible way of doing so.

Bright uniforms serve the same purpose in another way as well—they make it more difficult for soldiers who run away to hide from the victorious enemy, and thus decrease the gain from running away. Of course the fugitive can always take off his uniform, assuming he has enough time (perhaps that was why they had so many buttons), but young men running around the countryside in their underwear are almost as conspicuous as soldiers in red uniforms.

Why does the range of weapons matter? With short-range weapons, the choice is fight or run; if you try to hide in a hole, someone will eventually come over and stick a spear in you. With long-range weapons, running away is hazardous, but warfare is much more likely to involve an extended exchange of fire from fixed positions, so if you hide (and enough other people on your side fight), the enemy may never get close enough to kill you.

So far all of the solutions I have discussed involve raising the cost of running away by penalizing it in one way or another. An alternative approach is to change the objectives of the fighters. If the most important thing to you is not surviving the battle but dying gloriously, the incentive to run away disappears—although it may be replaced by an incentive to die gloriously in some stupid attack that loses the battle for your side.

A set of objectives that ranks glory and heroism far above mere survival is a popular theme of heroic literature and frequently appears in descriptions of exotic foreign warriors, preferably “barbarian,” but it is not very common in the real world. While I have no statistics on the subject, I do have an interesting anecdote. One of the most famous of heroic warrior cultures was the Norse; the ideals of Viking warriors certainly ranked heroic death far above cowardly survival. For the operation of those ideals in the real world, I give you the following story; the source (which tells it in somewhat more detail) is Njal's Saga:

Sigurd, the Jarl of the Orkneys, had a raven banner of which it was said that as long as it flew, the army would always advance, but whatever man carried it would die. At the battle of Clontarf, Sigurd led part of an army of Irish and Vikings against an Irish army commanded by the High King of Ireland. The fighting was heavy; Sigurd’s forces advanced but the banner-carrier was killed. Another man took the banner; he too was killed. Sigurd told a third man to take the banner. The third man refused. Sigurd, after trying to get someone else to carry it, took the banner off the staff, tied it around his waist and led his army into battle. The army advanced, Sigurd was killed. No one would take up the banner, and the battle was lost.

So even in an army of Vikings, there were only three men (counting the Jarl) who were willing to give their lives for victory.

The desire for a hero’s death is not the only objective that can keep soldiers from running away. If the soldier puts a high value on the cause he is fighting for or on the lives of his comrades, he may decide that even a small increase in the chance of losing the battle is too high a price to pay for an improved chance of his own survival. Alternatively, if the soldier puts a high value on his own reputation for courage, the shame of being seen to run away—even the shame of knowing he once ran away—may be sufficient to make him fight. Feelings of comradeship and an extraordinary emphasis on personal courage are sentiments traditionally associated with soldiers, and a wise commander will encourage them.

Perhaps the most famous historical example of this solution is a Theban military unit called the Sacred Band. It was said to consist of pairs of homosexual lovers. Since no man would abandon his lover or show cowardice in his presence, the Sacred Band never ran. Eventually they encountered Philip of Macedon and died to a man. This illustrates one disadvantage of courage as a solution; just as with burning your bridges behind you, the results are unpleasant when you lose.

So far I have discussed the problem from the point of view of the commander of the army that might run away. The conflict of interest between the individual soldier and the army of which he is a part is also a subject of considerable interest to the opposing commander. In playing a war game, one must actually destroy the other player’s units. In fighting a war, it is sufficient to create a situation in which the members of a particular unit find it in their interest to run; having done so, one then goes on to the next unit. I conjecture that a considerable part of generalship is the ability to exploit the conflict of interest between the enemy soldiers and the army they make up.

One of my hobbies for many years has been the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that does various medieval things for fun, including medieval hand-to-hand combat done as a rather rough sport. In order not to get anyone killed, we tend to use real armor and fake weapons; the latter are mostly made out of rattan, with reasonably realistic weight and balance but no cutting edge. The rules are supposed to define the winner as the person who would have survived the fight if both armor and weapons were real. In practice there are many difficulties, not the least being that nobody really knows how hard you have to hit chain mail with a medieval sword in order to kill the man wearing the mail.

We also do group fighting; the largest of the annual wars features armies of three or four hundred fighters on each side. The group fighting suffers from a fundamental flaw. Since being “killed” means at worst a bruise, everyone is a hero; units almost never surrender, and individual fighters never run away (except to find another fight elsewhere on the field). The battles are great fun, but considered as experimental archaeology, they are a failure; they omit one of the most essential features of real medieval battles.

There is one exception. I once participated in a melee tournament (a melee is a group fight) under rules that did, to some extent, recreate the conflict of interest between the individual and the army. The tournament consisted of a series of melees with randomly chosen teams. After each melee the fighters on the winning side received points according to their condition; an uninjured fighter received the most points, a fighter who died (but whose side won) received the fewest. At the end of the day, the fighter with the most points won. Under such a system, the fighter has an incentive to help his side win, but he also has an incentive to let someone else get killed in the front line while he bravely defends the rear. If we fought such tourneys more often, and if the winners received sufficiently valuable prizes, we might learn more about how medieval armies really worked.

This is supposed to be a book about the warfare of the future, but so far I have talked about the present and the past. My justification for doing so is that so far, at least, the economics of war—in the sense in which I use the term economics—has been much more stable than its technology. There has been enormous progress in weaponry over the last few millennia, but the economic problem is essentially the same, the only important change being the substitution of hiding for running as a result of the increased range of our weapons. It is possible that all this will change in the future; one can imagine a robot battlefield on which all of the problems are technical. In some respects we already have that; I presume that a soldier manning an ICBM is safer inside the silo firing the missile than running across the landscape as the warheads fall. But then, the same thing may well have been true eight hundred years ago for the soldier firing a trebuchet at a besieged castle. It remains the case now as then that a lot of soldiering involves a sharp conflict between the interest of the soldier and the interest of the soldiers, and it is likely to remain the case at least as long as the human brain continues to be a better weapons-control mechanism than anything else we can put in that small a box.

Editor's Introduction to:

THAT DAY
by Rudyard Kipling

C. Northcote Parkinson once said that the reply to rationalism is often not reasoned argument but banners and glory and the sounds of trumpets and drums.

Rudyard Kipling, like Dr. Friedman, inquired as to why men fight and win. There was a time when all Britons knew. A few know yet, as the Argentines learned to their sorrow.

THAT DAY
by Rudyard Kipling

It got beyond all orders an’ it got beyond all ’ope;

It got to shammin’ wounded and retirin’ from the ‘alt.

’Ole companies was lookin’ for the nearest road to slope;

It were just a bloomin’ knockout—an’ our fault!

Now there ain’t no chorus ‘ere to give,

Nor there ain’t no band to play;

An’ I wish I was dead ‘fore I done what I did,

Or seen what I seed that day!

We was sick o’ bein’ punished, an’ we let ‘em know it, too;

An’ a company-commander up an’ ‘it us with a sword,

’An some one shouted “’Ook it!” an’ it come to sov-ki-poo,

An’ we chucked our rifles from us—O my Gawd!

There was thirty dead an’ wounded on the ground we wouldn’t keep—

No, there wasn’t more than twenty when the front began to go–

But, Christ! along the line o’ flight they cut us up like sheep,

An’ that was all we gained by doin’ so!

I ’eard the knives be’ind me, but I dursn’t face my man,

Nor I don’t know where I went to, ’cause I didn’t ’alt to see,

Till I ’eard a beggar squealin’ out for quarter as ’e ran,

An’ I thought I knew the voice an’—it was me!

We was ‘idin’ under beadsteads more than ‘arf a march away:

We was lyin’ up like rabbits all about the countryside;

An’ the Major cursed his Maker ’cause ’e’d lived to see that day,

An’ the Colonel broke ’is sword acrost, an’ cried.

We was rotten ’fore we started—we was never disciplined;

We made it out a favor if an order was obeyed.

Yes, every little drummer ’ad ’is rights and wrongs to mind,

So we had to pay for teachin’—an’ we paid!

The papers ’id it ’andsome, but you know the Army knows;

We was put to groomin’ camels till the regiments withdrew,

An’ they gave us each a medal for subduin’ England’s foes,

An’ I ’ope you like my song—because it’s true!

An there ain’t no chorus ’ere to give,

Nor there ain’t no band to play;

But I wish I was dead ’fore I done what I did,

Or seen what I seed that day!

Editor's Introduction to:

THE MIRACLE-WORKERS
by Jack Vance

It is a truism that Vietnam was a traumatic experience for the nation. We are generally less concerned about its effects on the Army—but we ignore those effects at our peril. Republics that bring home a defeated army have often regretted that action. Republics that betray both allies and army have more cause for regret.

While we were in Vietnam, there appeared a clutch of stories about primitive peoples victorious over sophisticated star folk. Generally, civilization was represented in those stories by one or more overbearing military people of no sensitivity. The fact that one seldom meets such people in real life—they wouldn’t survive five minutes in combat even if the enemy were far away—did not prevent such stories from being nominated for, and winning, awards.

Then came our shameful withdrawal. Who can forget those terrible pictures of helicopters shoved over the sides of warships? There sprang up the curious myth that the United States had been defeated by the Viet Cong; that those stories of primitive peoples defeating sophisticated armies were all true. We so believe those myths that even those who know better speak as if something of the same sort is going on in Afghanistan.

The myths are dangerous. They are also not true.

South Vietnam did not fall to the Viet Cong. North Vietnam first attempted to take South Vietnam by main force, by maneuvering through “neutral” Cambodia. The result was their bloody defeat in November 1965 in the La Drang valley at the hands of the U.S. First Cavalry Division.

Two years later they tried again. This time their effort was timed to take advantage of the U.S. presidential elections. They used their regular North Vietnamese units to distract and extend U.S. forces in places like Khe San while employing the Viet Cong guerrillas against population centers such as Saigon and Hue.

The result was an unprecedented defeat.

The Viet Cong was destroyed during the 1968 Tet offensives. North Vietnam lost, by their own reckoning, over 100,000 troops—more than half their strength. The U.S. forces and their Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) allies won one of the most thorough victories in military history.

That victory was thrown away; indeed, in the United States it was not recognized as a victory. It was portrayed by the news media as a U.S. defeat.

After Nixon was elected, the U.S. sought to withdraw from Vietnam; at least to disengage our forces, leaving the protection of the nation to ARVN. This was a workable strategy, provided that ARVN faced nothing more than North Vietnamese regular forces operating as guerrillas. True, the Northern invaders had sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and by using the Ho Chi Minh trail, had what amounted to interior lines; but even so, ARVN could handle the situation.

What ARVN couldn’t handle was a massive invasion. On 29 March 1972, the North launched the Eastertide offensive. Naturally they massed their forces in the “demilitarized zone” (an area politically denied to U.S. and ARVN forces and used as both staging area and sanctuary by North Vietnam). Some twelve divisions, over 150,000 men, swept down from the North, supported by heavy armor and artillery. It was hardly a guerrilla effort.

They had miscalculated. ARVN was much better than the North had thought. Furthermore, the U.S. initiated a massive air attack on both the North Vietnam army and North Vietnam itself. U.S. Air Cavalry units struck at the invading armor. The result was a complete victory: Of 150,000 men sent south, fewer than 50,000 returned. The army of North Vietnam was utterly defeated. U.S. news media couldn’t have cared less.

On January 27, 1973, Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho initialed “The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.” The agreement was broken even as it was signed: They had North Vietnamese regulars in the South; we knew that, and they knew that we knew it. The agreement would be kept only so long as North Vietnam feared U.S. retaliation.

The United States began the withdrawal of our combat forces. The war was to be “Vietnamized”; ARVN would have to defend South Vietnam in future. The nation breathed a sigh of relief; our boys were coming home. Of course the U.S. battle deaths in 1972 were only 300 (as compared to more than 20,000 young men of military age killed in traffic accidents in that year); but the news media were happy.

The Vietnam War, that evil and immoral war, was over. The Congress of the United States looked forward to the widely predicted “Vietnam bonus”—that is, a surplus of money no longer needed for the Vietnam War, and which could be spent on ever-expanding domestic programs.

In September, 1973, Ursula K. Le Guin’s story, “The Word for World is Forest,” won the Science Fiction Achievement Award (Hugo) for Best Novella. This is a story of how primitive but artistic and likable peoples defeat technologically sophisticated but loutish star men.

In 1973 the Arabs and Israelis fought another war. Congress, weary of military expenditures and desperate for more money—the “bonus” funds never materialized—cut the appropriations for ARVN. Not only were the Vietnamese to defend themselves without us, but they were to do it on the cheap. By mid-1974, ARVN hospitals were ordered to wash and re-use surgical dressings, since new ones were not obtainable.

In January, 1975, the Central Committee of North Vietnam decided the time was ripe, and on March 4, 1975, they attacked with some 5 to 1 superiority in men and 2 to 1 in artillery and armor. Four Army corps, employing about as much firepower and force as the United States massed on D-Day against the Germans, swept into the South.

Man for man, ARVN was superior, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. Even then they fought heroically: For example, at Xuan Loc the 18th ARVN Division stood and fought and destroyed three North Vietnamese divisions.

It was all to no avail. North Vietnam was plentifully supplied with munitions from Russia and the Warsaw Pact nations. The U.S. Congress’s niggardly appropriations left ARVN with two grenades and some twenty rounds per soldier.

Nor had we made ARVN into a mobile army. Except for their marines and paratroops, ARVN was much like our National Guard, a militia stationed in hometowns with their families. Had the United States secured their borders, leaving ARVN to deal with internal security, Vietnam would never have been lost.

We were willing to secure the Korean border. We would not do it for Vietnam, even though it could be done with fewer troops employing high-technology weapons.

The war in Vietnam was not lost to guerrillas. That war was won. South Vietnam was lost to the failure of U.S. will. The president was occupied with Watergate. The Congress smelled the blood of political victory; it couldn’t be bothered with a tiny nation so far away, even though we had left much American blood and treasure there.

American soldiers bought their Asian comrades some ten years of, if not freedom, then the absence of slavery. Then both the U.S. Army and the Republic of Vietnam were abandoned. The dominoes clatter down to this day.

Some of those whose stories contributed to our withdrawal from Vietnam remain proud to this day.

During the sixties, Poul Anderson circulated a petition among science fiction writers. It stressed the moral necessity for the U.S. to keep its pledged word in Vietnam. After our interference—it was, after all, with John F. Kennedy’s personal approval that

President Diem and his family were overthrown—many of us thought we had an obligation to finish what we had started: either to win or to persevere.

Jack Vance signed that petition.

I say all this lest someone inadvertently believe that Jack Vance’s “The Miracle-Worker” was one of that clutch of stories intended as a Vietnam allegory.

It was not. “The Miracle-Worker” was written well before the war in Vietnam began to absorb U.S. attention. Jack Vance has long had the ability to create strange and wonderful worlds in which marvelous stories happen.

This is one of them.

THE MIRACLE-WORKERS
by Jack Vance

The war party from Faide Keep moved eastward across the downs; a column of a hundred armored knights, five hundred foot soldiers, a train of wagons. In the lead rode Lord Faide, a tall man in his early maturity, spare and catlike, with a sallow, dyspeptic face. He sat in the ancestral car of the Faides, a boat-shaped vehicle floating two feet above the moss, and carried, in addition to his sword and dagger, his ancestral side weapons.

An hour before sunset a pair of scouts came racing back to the column, their club-headed horses loping like dogs. Lord Faide braked the motion of his car. Behind him the Faide kinsmen, the lesser knights, the leather-capped foot soldiers halted; to the rear the baggage train and the high-wheeled wagons of the jinxmen creaked to a stop.

The scouts approached at breakneck speed, at the last instant flinging their horses sidewise. Long shaggy legs kicked out, padlike hooves plowed through the moss. The scouts jumped to the ground, ran forward. “The way to Ballant Keep is blocked!”

Lord Faide rose in his seat, stood staring eastward over the gray-green downs. “How many knights? How many men?”

“No knights, no men, Lord Faide. The First Folk have planted a forest between North and South Wildwood.”

Lord Faide stood a moment in reflection, then seated himself, pushed the control knob. The car wheezed, jerked, moved forward. The knights touched up their horses; the foot soldiers resumed their slouching gait. At the rear the baggage train creaked into motion, together with the six wagons of the jinxmen.

The sun, large, pale and faintly pink, sank in the west. North Wildwood loomed down from the left, separated from South Wild wood by an area of stony ground, only sparsely patched with moss. As the sun passed behind the horizon, the new planting became visible: a frail new growth connecting the tracts of woodland like a canal between two seas.

Lord Faide halted his car, stepped down to the moss. He appraised the landscape, then gave the signal to make camp. The wagons were ranged in a circle, the gear unloaded. Lord Faide watched the activity for a moment, eyes sharp and critical, then turned and walked out across the downs through the lavender and green twilight. Fifteen miles to the east his last enemy awaited him: Lord Ballant of Ballant Keep. Contemplating tomorrow’s battle, Lord Faide felt reasonably confident of the outcome. His troops had been tempered by a dozen campaigns; his kinsmen were loyal and single-hearted. Head Jinxman to Faide Keep was Hein Huss, and associated with him were three of the most powerful jinxmen of Pangborn: Isak Comandore, Adam McAdam and the remarkable Enterlin, together with their separate troupes of cabalmen, spell-binders and apprentices. Altogether, an impressive assemblage. Certainly there were obstacles to be overcome: Ballant Keep was strong; Lord Ballant would fight obstinately; Anderson Grimes, the Ballant jinxman, was efficient and highly respected. There was also this nuisance of the First Folk and the new planting which closed the gap between North and South Wildwood. The First Folk were a pale and feeble race, no match for human beings in single combat, but they guarded their forests with traps and deadfalls. Lord Faide cursed softly under his breath. To circle either North or South Wildwood meant a delay of three days, which could not be tolerated.

Lord Faide returned to the camp. Fires were alight, pots bubbled, orderly rows of sleep-holes had been dug into the moss. The knights groomed their horses within the corral of wagons; Lord Faide’s own tent had been erected on a hummock, beside the ancient car.

Lord Faide made a quick round of inspection, noting every detail, speaking no word. The jinxmen were encamped a little distance apart from the troops. The apprentices and lesser spellbinders prepared food, while the jinxmen and cabalmen worked inside their tents, arranging cabinets and cases, correcting whatever disorder had been caused by the jolting of the wagons.

Lord Faide entered the tent of his Head Jinxman. Hein Huss was an enormous man, with arms and legs heavy as tree trunks, a torso like a barrel. His face was pink and placid, his eyes were water-clear; a stiff gray brush rose from his head, which was innocent of the cap jinxmen customarily wore against the loss of hair. Hein Huss disdained such precautions; it was his habit, showing his teeth in a face-splitting grin, to rumble, “Why should anyone hoodoo me, old Hein Huss? I am so inoffensive. Whoever tried would surely die, of shame and remorse.”

Lord Faide found Huss busy at his cabinet. The doors stood wide, revealing hundreds of mannikins, each tied with a lock of hair, a bit of cloth, a fingernail clipping, daubed with grease, sputum, excrement, blood. Lord Faide knew well that one of these mannikins represented himself. He also knew that should he request it, Hein Huss would deliver it without hesitation. Part of Huss’ mana derived from his enormous confidence, the effortless ease of his power. He glanced at Lord Faide and read the question in his mind. “Lord Ballant did not know of the new planting. Anderson Grimes has now informed him, and Lord Ballant expects that you will be delayed. Grimes has communicated with Gisborne Keep and Castle Cloud. Three hundred men march tonight to reinforce Ballant Keep. They will arrive in two days. Lord Ballant is much elated.”

Lord Faide paced back and forth across the tent. “Can we cross this planting?”

Hein Huss made a heavy sound of disapproval. “There are many futures. In certain of these futures you pass. In others you do not pass. I cannot ordain these futures.”

Lord Faide had long learned to control his impatience at what sometimes seemed to be pedantic obfuscation. He grumbled, “They are either very stupid or very bold, planting across the downs in this fashion. I cannot imagine what they intend.”

Hein Huss considered, then grudgingly volunteered an idea. “What if they plant west from North Wildwood to Sarrow Copse? What if they plant west from South Wildwood to Old Forest?

Lord Faide stood stock-still, his eyes narrow and thoughtful. “Faide Keep would be surrounded by forest. We would be imprisoned…These plantings, do they proceed?”

“They proceed, so I have been told.”

“What do they hope to gain?”

“I do not know. Perhaps they hope to isolate the keeps, to rid the planet of men. Perhaps they merely want secure avenues between the forests.”

Lord Faide considered. Huss’ final suggestion was reasonable enough. During the first centuries of human settlement, sportive young men had hunted the First Folk with clubs and lances, eventually had driven them from their native downs into the forests. “Evidently they are more clever than we realize. Adam McAdam asserts that they do not think, but it seems that he is mistaken.”

Hein Huss shrugged. “Adam McAdam equates thought to the human cerebral process. He cannot telepathize with the First Folk, hence he deduced that they do not ‘think.’ But I have watched them at Forest Market, and they trade intelligently enough.” He raised his head, appeared to listen, then reached into his cabinet, delicately tightened a noose around the neck of one of the mannikins. From outside the tent came a sudden cough and a whooping gasp for air. Huss grinned, twitched open the noose. “That is Isak Comandore’s apprentice. He hopes to complete a Hein Huss mannikin. I must say he works diligently, going so far as to touch its feet into my footprints whenever possible.”

Lord Faide went to the flap of the tent. “We break camp early. Be alert, I may require your help.” Lord Faide departed the tent.

Hein Huss continued the ordering of the cabinet. Presently he sensed the approach of his rival, Jinxman Isak Comandore, who coveted the office of Head Jinxman with all-consuming passion. Huss closed the cabinet and hoisted himself to his feet.

Comandore entered the tent, a man tall, crooked and spindly. His wedge-shaped head was covered with coarse russet ringlets; hot red-brown eyes peered from under his red eyebrows. “I offer my complete rights to Keyril, and will include the masks, the headdress, and amulets. Of all the demons ever contrived he has won the widest public acceptance. To utter the name Keyril is to complete half the work of a possession. Keyril is a valuable property. I can give no more.”

But Huss shook his head. Comandore’s desire was the full simulacrum of Tharon Faide, Lord Faide’s oldest son, complete with clothes, hair, skin, eyelashes, tears, excreta, sweat and sputum—the only one in existence, for Lord Faide guarded his son much more jealously than he did himself. “You offer convincingly,” said Huss, “but my own demons suffice. The name Dant conveys fully as much terror as Keyril.”

“I will add five hairs from the head of Jinxman Clarence Sears; they are the last, for he is now stark bald.”

“Let us drop the matter; I will keep the simulacrum.”

“As you please,” said Comandore with asperity. He glanced out the flap of the tent. “That blundering apprentice. He puts the feet of the mannikin backwards into your prints.”

Huss opened his cabinet, thumped a mannikin with his finger. From outside the tent came a grunt of surprise. Huss grinned. “He is young and earnest, and perhaps he is clever, who knows?” He went to the flap of the tent, called outside. “Hey, Sam Salazar, what do you do? Come inside.”

Apprentice Sam Salazar came blinking into the tent, a thick-set youth with a round florid face, overhung with a rather untidy mass of straw-colored hair. In one hand he carried a crude pot-bellied mannikin, evidently intended to represent Hein Huss.

“You puzzle both your master and myself,” said Huss. “There must be method in your folly, but we fail to perceive it. For instance, this moment you place my simulacrum backwards into my track. I feel a tug on my foot, and you pay for your clumsiness.”

Sam Salazar showed small evidence of abashment. “Jinxman Comandore has warned that we must expect to suffer for our ambitions.”

“If your ambition is jinxmanship,” Comandore declared sharply, “you had best mend your ways.”

“The lad is craftier than you know,” said Hein Huss. “Look now.” He took the mannikin, spit into its mouth, plucked a hair from his head, thrust it into a convenient crevice. “He has a Hein Huss mannikin, achieved at very small cost. Now, Apprentice Salazar, how will you hoodoo me?”

“Naturally I would never dare. I merely want to fill the bare spaces in my cabinet.”

Hein Huss nodded his approval. “As good a reason as any. Of course you own a simulacrum of Isak Comandore?”

Sam Salazar glanced uneasily side wise at Isak Comandore. “He leaves none of his traces. If there is so much as an open bottle in the room, he breathes behind his hand.”

“Ridiculous!” exclaimed Hein Huss. “Comandore, what do you fear?”

“I am conservative,” said Comandore drily. “You make a fine gesture, but some day an enemy may own that simulacrum; then you will regret your bravado.”

“Bah. My enemies are all dead, save one or two who dare not reveal themselves.” He clapped Sam Salazar a great buffet on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, Apprentice Salazar, great things are in store for you.”

“What manner of great things?”

“Honor, noble self-sacrifice. Lord Faide must beg permission to pass Wildwood from the First Folk, which galls him. But beg he must. Tomorrow, Sam Salazar, I will elect you to lead the way to the parley, to deflect deadfalls, scythes and nettle-traps from the more important person who follows.”

Sam Salazar shook his head and drew back. “There must be others more worthy; I prefer to ride in the rear with the wagons.”

Comandore waved him from the tent. “You will do as ordered. Leave us; we have had enough apprentice talk.”

Sam Salazar departed. Comandore turned back to Hein Huss.

“In connection with tomorrow’s battle, Anderson Grimes is especially adept with demons. As I recall, he has developed and successfully publicized Font, who spreads sleep; Everid, a being of wrath; Deigne, a force of fear. We must take care that in countering these effects we do not neutralize each other.”

“True,” rumbled Huss. “I have long maintained to Lord Faide that a single jinxman—the Head Jinxman in fact—is more effective than a group at cross-purposes. But he is consumed by ambition and does not listen.”

“Perhaps he wants to be sure that should advancing years overtake the Head Jinxman, other equally effective jinxmen are at hand.”

“The future has many paths,” agreed Hein Huss. “Lord Faide is well-advised to seek early for my successor, so that I may train him over the years. I plan to assess all the subsidiary jinxmen, and select the most promising. Tomorrow I relegate to you the demons of Anderson Grimes.”

Isak Comandore nodded politely. “You are wise to give over responsibility. When I feel the weight of my years, I hope I may act with similar forethought. Good night, Hein Huss. I go to arrange my demon masks. Tomorrow Keyril must walk like a giant.”

“Good night, Isak Comandore.”

Comandore swept from the tent, and Huss settled himself on his stool. Sam Salazar scratched at the flap. “Well, lad?” growled Huss. “Why do you loiter?”

Sam Salazar placed the Hein Huss mannikin on the table. “I have no wish to keep this doll.”

“Throw it in a ditch, then,” Hein Huss spoke gruffly. “You must stop annoying me with stupid tricks. You efficiently obtrude yourself upon my attention, but you cannot transfer from Comandore’s troupe without his express consent.”

“If I gain his consent?”

“You will incur his enmity, he will open his cabinet against you. Unlike myself, you are vulnerable to a hoodoo. I advise you to be content. Isak Comandore is highly skilled and can teach you much.”

Sam Salazar still hesitated. “Jinxman Comandore, though skilled, is intolerant of new thoughts.”

Hein Huss shifted ponderously on his stool, examined Sam Salazar with his water-clear eyes. “What new thoughts are these? Your own?”

“The thoughts are new to me, and for all I know new to Isak Comandore. But he will say neither yes nor no.”

Hein Huss sighed, settled his monumental bulk more comfortably. “Speak then, describe these thoughts, and I will assess their novelty.”

“First, I have wondered about trees. They are sensitive to light, to moisture, to wind, to pressure. Sensitivity implies sensation. Might a man feel into the soul of a tree for these sensations? If a tree were capable of awareness, this faculty might prove useful. A man might select trees as sentinels in strategic sites, and enter into them as he chose.”

Hein Huss was skeptical. “An amusing notion, but practically not feasible. The reading of minds, the act of possession, televoyance, similar interplay requires psychic congruence as a basic condition. The minds must be able to become identities at some particular stratum. Unless there is sympathy, there is no linkage. A tree is at opposite poles from a man; the images of tree and man are incommensurable. Hence, anything more than the most trifling flicker of comprehension must be a true miracle of jinxmanship.”

Sam Salazar nodded mournfully. “I realize this, and at one time hoped to equip myself with the necessary identification.”

“To do this you must become a vegetable. Certainly the tree will never become a man.”

“So I reasoned,” said Sam Salazar. “I went alone into a grove of trees, where I chose a tall conifer. I buried my feet in the mold, I stood silent and naked—in the sunlight, in the rain; at dawn, noon, dusk, midnight. I closed my mind to man-thoughts, I closed my eyes to vision, my ears to sound. I took no nourishment except from rain and sun. I sent roots forth from my feet and branches from my torso. Thirty hours I stood, and two days later, another thirty hours, and after two days another thirty hours. I made myself a tree, as nearly as possible to one of flesh and blood.”

Hein Huss gave the great inward gurgle which signalized his amusement. “And you achieved sympathy?”

“Nothing useful,” Sam Salazar admitted. “I felt something of the tree’s sensations—the activity of light, the peace of dark, the coolness of rain. But visual and auditory experience—nothing. However, I do not regret the trial. It was a useful discipline.”

“An interesting effort, even if inconclusive. The idea is by no means of startling originality, but the empiricism—to use an archaic word—of your method is bold, and no doubt antagonized Isak Comandore, who has no patience with the superstitions of our ancestors. I suspect that he harangued you against frivolity, metaphysics, and inspirationalism.”

“True,” said Sam Salazar. “He spoke at length.”

“You should take the lesson to heart. Isak Comandore is sometimes unable to make the most obvious truth seem credible. However, I cite you the example of Lord Faide, who considers himself an enlightened man, free from superstition. Still, he rides in the feeble car, he carries a pistol sixteen hundred years old, he relies on Hellmouth to protect Faide Keep.”

“Perhaps—unconsciously—he longs for the old magical times,” suggested Sam Salazar thoughtfully.

“Perhaps,” agreed Hein Huss. “And you do likewise?”

Sam Salazar hesitated. “There is an aura of romance, a kind of wild grandeur to the old days—but of course,” he added quickly, “mysticism is no substitute for orthodox logic.”

“Naturally not,” agreed Hein Huss. “Now go; I must consider the events of tomorrow.”

Sam Salazar departed, and Hein Huss, rumbling and groaning, hoisted himself to his feet. He went to the flap of his tent, surveyed the camp. All now was quiet. The fires were embers, the warriors lay in the pits they had cut into the moss. To the north and south spread the woodlands. Among the trees and out on the downs were faint flickering luminosities, where the First Folk gathered spore-pods from the moss.

Hein Huss became aware of a nearby personality. He turned his head and saw approaching the shrouded form of Jinxman Enterlin, who concealed his face, who spoke only in whispers, who disguised his natural gait with a stiff, stiltlike motion. By this means he hoped to reduce his vulnerability to hostile jinxmanship. The admission carelessly let fall of failing eyesight, of stiff joints, forgetfulness, melancholy, nausea might be of critical significance in controversy by hoodoo. Jinxmen therefore maintained the pose of absolute health and virility, even though they must grope blindly or limp doubled up from cramps.

Hein Huss called out to Enterlin, lifted back the flap to the tent. Enterlin entered; Huss went to the cabinet, brought forth a flask, poured liquor into a pair of stone cups. “A cordial only, free of covert significance.”

“Good,” whispered Enterlin, selecting the cup farthest from him. “After all, we jinxmen must relax into the guise of men from time to time.” Turning his back on Huss, he introduced the cup through the folds of his hood, drank. “Refreshing,” he whispered. “We need refreshment: tomorrow we must work.”

Huss issued his reverberating chuckle. “Tomorrow Isak Comandore matches demons with Anderson Grimes. We others perform only subsidiary duties.”

Enterlin seemed to make a quizzical inspection of Hein Huss through the black gauze before his eyes. “Comandore will relish this opportunity. His vehemence oppresses me, and his is a power which feeds on success. He is a man of fire, you are a man of ice.”

“Ice quenches fire.”

“Fire sometimes melts ice.”

Hein Huss shrugged. “No matter. I grow weary. Time has passed all of us by. Only a moment ago a young apprentice showed me to myself.”

“As a powerful jinxman, as Head Jinxman to the Faides, you have cause for pride.”

Hein Huss drained the stone cup, set it aside. “No. I see myself at the top of my profession, with nowhere else to go. Only Sam Salazar the apprentice thinks to search for more universal lore: he comes to me for counsel, and I do not know what to tell him.”

“Strange talk, strange talk!” whispered Enterlin. He moved to the flap of the tent. “I go now,” he whispered. “I go to walk on the downs. Perhaps I will see the future.”

“There are many futures.”

Enterlin rustled away and was lost in the dark. Hein Huss groaned and grumbled, then took himself to his couch, where he instantly fell asleep.

II

The night passed. The sun, flickering with films of pink and green, lifted over the horizon. The new planting of the First Folk was silhouetted, a sparse stubble of saplings, against the green and lavender sky. The troops broke camp with practiced efficiency. Lord Faide marched to his car, leaped within; the machine sagged under his weight. He pushed a button, the car drifted forward, heavy as a waterlogged timber.

A mile from the new planting he halted, sent a messenger back to the wagons of the jinxmen. Hein Huss walked ponderously forward, followed by Isak Comandore, Adam McAdam, and Enterlin; Lord Faide spoke to Hein Huss. “Send someone to speak to the First Folk. Inform them we wish to pass, offering them no harm, but that we will react savagely to any hostility.”

“I will go myself,” said Hein Huss. He turned to Comandore. “Lend me, if you will, your brash young apprentice. I can put him to good use.”

“If he unmasks a nettle trap by blundering into it, his first useful deed will be done,” said Comandore. He signaled to Sam Salazar, who came reluctantly forward. “Walk in front of Head Jinxman Hein Huss that he may encounter no traps or scythes. Take a staff to probe the moss.”

Without enthusiasm Sam Salazar borrowed a lance from one of the foot soldiers. He and Huss set forth, along the low rise that previously had separated North from South Wildwood. Occasionally outcroppings of stone penetrated the cover of moss; here and there grew bayberry trees, clumps of tarplant, ginger-tea, and rosewort.

A half mile from the planting Huss halted. “Now take care, for here the traps will begin. Walk clear of hummocks, these often conceal swing-scythes; avoid moss which shows a pale blue; it is dying or sickly and may cover a deadfall or a nettle trap.”

“Why cannot you locate the traps by clairvoyance?” asked Sam Salazar in a rather sullen voice. “It appears an excellent occasion for the use of these faculties.”

“The question is natural,” said Hein Huss with composure. “However you must know that when a jinxman’s own profit or security is at stake his emotions play tricks on him. I would see traps everywhere and would never know whether clairvoyance or fear prompted me. In this case, that lance is a more reliable instrument than my mind.”

Sam Salazar made a salute of understanding and set forth, with Hein Huss stumping behind him. At first he prodded with care, uncovering two traps, then advanced more jauntily; so swiftly indeed that Huss called out in exasperation, “Caution, unless you court death!”

Sam Salazar obligingly slowed his pace. “There are traps all around us, but I detect the pattern, or so I believe.”

“Ah, ha, you do? Reveal it to me, if you will. I am only Head Jinxmin, and ignorant.”

“Notice. If we walk where the spore-pods have recently been harvested, then we are secure.”

Hein Huss grunted. “Forward then. Why do you dally? We must do battle at Ballant Keep today.”

Two hundred yards farther, Sam Salazar stopped short. “Go on, boy, go on!” grumbled Hein Huss.

“The savages threaten us. You can see them just inside the planting. They hold tubes which they point toward us.”

Hein Huss peered, then raised his head and called out in the sibilant language of the First Folk.

A moment or two passed, then one of the creatures came forth, a naked humanoid figure, ugly as a demonmask. Foam-sacs bulged under its arms, orange-lipped foam-vents pointed forward. Its back was wrinkled and loose, the skin serving as a bellows to blow air through the foam-sacs. The fingers of the enormous hands ended in chisel-shaped blades, the head was sheathed in chitin. Billion-faceted eyes swelled from either side of the head, glowing like black opals, merging without definite limit into the chitin. This was a representative of the original inhabitants of the planet, who until the coming of man had inhabited the downs, burrowing in the moss, protecting themselves behind masses of foam exuded from the underarm sacs.

The creature wandered close, halted. “I speak for Lord Faide of Faide Keep,” said Huss. “Your planting bars his way. He wishes that you guide him through, so that his men do not damage the trees, or spring the traps you have set against your enemies.”

“Men are our enemies,” responded the autochthon. “You may spring as many traps as you care to; that is their purpose.” It backed away.

“One moment,” said Hein Huss sternly. “Lord Faide must pass. He goes to battle Lord Ballant. He does not wish to battle the First Folk. Therefore it is wise to guide him across the planting without hindrance.”

The creature considered a second or two. “I will guide him.” He stalked across the moss toward the war party.

Behind followed Hein Huss and Sam Salazar. The autochthon, legs articulated more flexibly than a man’s, seemed to weave and wander, occasionally pausing to study the ground ahead.

“I am puzzled,” Sam Salazar told Hein Huss. “I cannot understand the creature’s actions.”

“Small wonder,” grunted Hein Huss. “He is one of the First Folk, you are human. There is no basis for understanding.”

“I disagree,” said Sam Salazar seriously.

“Eh?” Hein Huss inspected the apprentice with vast disapproval. “You engage in contention with me, Head Jinxman Hein Huss?”

“Only in a limited sense,” said Sam Salazar. “I see a basis for understanding with the First Folk in our common ambition to survive.”

“A truism,” grumbled Hein Huss. “Granting this community of interests with the First Folk, what is your perplexity?”

“The fact that it first refused, then agreed to conduct us across the planting.”

Hein Huss nodded. “Evidently the information which intervened, that we go to fight at Ballant Keep, occasioned the change.”

“This is clear,” said Sam Salazar. “But think–”

“You exhort me to think?” roared Hein Huss.

“—here is one of the First Folk, apparently without distinction, who makes an important decision instantly. Is he one of their leaders? Do they live in anarchy?”

“It is easy to put questions,” Hein Huss said gruffly. “It is not as easy to answer them.”

“In short–”

“In short, I do not know. In any event, they are pleased to see us killing one another.”

III

The passage through the planting was made without incident. A mile to the east the autochthon stepped aside and without formality returned to the forest. The war party, which had been marching in single file, regrouped into its usual formation. Lord Faide called Hein Huss and made the unusual gesture of inviting him up into the seat beside him. The ancient car dipped and sagged; the power-mechanism whined and chattered. Lord Faide, in high good spirits, ignored the noise. “I feared that we might be forced into a time-consuming wrangle. What of Lord Ballant? Can you read his thoughts?”

Hein Huss cast his mind forth. “Not clearly. He knows of our passage. He is disturbed.”

Lord Faide laughed sardonically. “For excellent reason! Listen now, I will explain the plan of battle so that all may coordinate their efforts.”

“Very well.”

“We approach in a wide line. Ballant’s great weapon is of course Volcano. A decoy must wear my armor and ride in the lead. The yellow-haired apprentice is perhaps the most expendable member of the party. In this way we will learn the potentialities of Volcano. Like our own Hellmouth, it was built to repel vessels from space and cannot command the ground immediately under the keep. Therefore we will advance in dispersed formation, to regroup two hundred yards from the keep. At this point the jinxmen will impel Lord Ballant forth from the keep. You no doubt have made plans to this end.”

Hein Huss gruffly admitted that such was the case. Like other jinxmen, he enjoyed the pose that his power sufficed for extemporaneous control of any situation.

Lord Faide was in no mood for niceties and pressed for further information. Grudging each word, Hein Huss disclosed his arrangements. “I have prepared certain influences to discomfit the Ballant defenders and drive them forth. Jinxman Enterlin will sit at his cabinet, ready to retaliate if Lord Ballant orders a spell against you. Anderson Grimes undoubtedly will cast a demon—probably Everid—into the Ballant warriors; in return, Jinxman Comandore will possess an equal or a greater number of Faide warriors with the demon Keyril, who is even more ghastly and horrifying.”

“Good. What more?”

“There is need for no more, if your men fight well.”

“Can you see the future? How does today end?”

“There are many futures. Certain jinxmen—Enterlin for instance—profess to see the thread which leads through the maze; they are seldom correct.”

“Call Enterlin here.”

Hein Huss rumbled his disapproval. “Unwise, if you desire victory over Ballant Keep.”

Lord Faide inspected the massive Jinxman from under his black saturnine brows. “Why do you say this?”

“If Enterlin foretells defeat, you will be dispirited and fight poorly. If he predicts victory, you become overconfident and likewise fight poorly.”

Lord Faide made a petulant gesture. “The jinxmen are loud in their boasts until the test is made. Then they always find reasons to retract, to qualify.”

“Ha, ha!” barked Hein Huss. “You expect miracles, not honest jinxmanship. I spit—” he spat. “I predict that the spittle will strike the moss. The probabilities are high. But an insect might fly in the way. One of the First Folk might raise through the moss. The chances are slight. In the next instant there is only one future. A minute hence there are four futures. Five minutes hence, twenty futures. A billion futures could not express all the possibilities of tomorrow. Of these billion, certain are more probable than others. It is true that these probable futures sometimes send a delicate influence into the jinxman’s brain. But unless he is completely impersonal and disinterested, his own desires overwhelm this influence. Enterlin is a strange man. He hides himself, he has no appetites. Occasionally his auguries are exact. Nevertheless, I advise against consulting him. You do better to rely on the practical and real uses of jinxmanship.”

Lord Faide said nothing. The column had been marching along the bottom of a low swale; the car had been sliding easily downslope. Now they came to a rise, and the power-mechanism complained so vigorously that Lord Faide was compelled to stop the car. He considered. “Once over the crest we will be in view of Ballant Keep. Now we must disperse. Send the least valuable man in your troupe forward—the apprentice who tested out the moss. He must wear my helmet and corselet and ride in the car.”

Hein Huss alighted, returned to the wagons, and presently Sam Salazar came forward. Lord Faide eyed the round, florid face with distaste. “Come close,” he said crisply. Sam Salazar obeyed. “You will now ride in my place,” said Lord Faide. “Notice carefully. This rod impels a forward motion. This arm steers—to right, to left. To stop, return the rod to its first position.”

Sam Salazar pointed to some of the other arms, toggles, switches, and buttons. “What of these?”

“They are never used.”

“And these dials, what is their meaning?”

Lord Faide curled his lip, on the brink of one of his quick furies. “Since their use is unimportant to me, it is twenty times unimportant to you. Now. Put this cap on your head, and this helmet. See to it that you do not sweat.”

Sam Salazar gingerly settled the magnificent black and green crest of Faide on his head, with a cloth cap underneath.

“Now this corselet.”

The corselet was constructed of green and black metal sequins, with a pair of scarlet dragon-heads at either side of the breast.

“Now the cloak.” Lord Faide flung the black cloak over Sam Salazar’s shoulders. “Do not venture too close to Ballant Keep. Your purpose is to attract the fire of Volcano. Maintain a lateral motion around the keep, outside of dart range. If you are killed by a dart, the whole purpose of the deception is thwarted.”

“You prefer me to be killed by Volcano?” inquired Sam Salazar.

“No. I wish to preserve the car and the crest. These are relics of great value. Evade destruction by all means possible. The ruse probably will deceive no one; but if it does, and if it draws the fire of Volcano, I must sacrifice the Faide car. Now—sit in my place.”

Sam Salazar climbed into the car, settled himself on the seat.

“Sit straight,” roared Lord Faide. “Hold your head up! You are simulating Lord Faide! You must not appear to slink!”

Sam Salazar heaved himself erect in the seat. “To simulate Lord Faide most effectively, I should walk among the warriors, with someone else riding in the car.”

Lord Faide glared, then grinned sourly. “No matter. Do as I have commanded.”

IV

Sixteen hundred years before, with war raging through space, a group of space captains, their home bases destroyed, had taken refuge on Pangborn. To protect themselves against vengeful enemies, they built great forts armed with weapons from the dismantled spaceships.

The wars receded, Pangborn was forgotten. The newcomers drove the First Folk into the forests, planted and harvested the river valleys. Ballant Keep, like Faide Keep, Gastle Cloud, Boghoten, and the rest, overlooked one of these valleys. Four squat towers of a dense black substance supported an enormous parasol roof, and were joined by walls two-thirds as high as the towers. At the peak of the roof a cupola housed Volcano, the weapon corresponding to Faide’s Hellmouth.

The Faide war party advancing over the rise found the great gates already secure, the parapets between the towers thronged with bowmen. According to Lord Faide’s strategy, the war party advanced on a broad front. At the center rode Sam Salazar, resplendent in Lord Faide’s armor. He made, however, small effort to simulate Lord Faide. Rather than sitting proudly erect, he crouched at the side of the seat, the crest canted at an angle. Lord Faide watched with disgust. Apprentice Salazar’s reluctance to be demolished was understandable: if his impersonation failed to convince Lord Ballant, at least the Faide ancestral car might be spared. For a certainty Volcano was being manned; the Ballant weapon-tender could be seen in the cupola, and the snout protruded at a menacing angle.

Apparently the tactic of dispersal, offering no single tempting target, was effective. The Faide war party advanced quickly to a point two hundred yards from the keep, below Volcano’s effective field, without drawing fire; first the knights, then the foot soldiers, then the rumbling wagons of the magicians. The slow-moving Faide car was far outdistanced; any doubt as to the nature of the ruse must now be extinguished.

Apprentice Salazar, disliking the isolation, and hoping to increase the speed of the car, twisted one of the other switches, then another. From under the floor came a thin screeching sound; the car quivered and began to rise. Sam Salazar peered over the side, threw out a leg to jump. Lord Faide ran forward, gesturing and shouting. Sam Salazar hastily drew back his leg, returned the switches to their previous condition. The car dropped like a rock. He snapped the switches up again, cushioning the fall.

“Get out of that car!” roared Lord Faide. He snatched away the helmet, dealt Sam Salazar a buffet which toppled him head over heels. “Out of the armor; back to your duties!”

Sam Salazar hurried to the jinxmen’s wagons where he helped erect Isak Comandore’s black tent. Inside the tent a black carpet with red and yellow patterns was laid; Comandore’s cabinet, his chair, and his chest were carried in, and incense set burning in a censer. Directly in front of the main gate Hein Huss superintended the assembly of a rolling stage, forty feet tall and sixty feet long, the surface concealed from Ballant Keep by a tarpaulin.

Meanwhile, Lord Faide had dispatched an emissary, enjoining Lord Ballant to surrender. Lord Ballant delayed his response, hoping to delay the attack as long as possible. If he could maintain himself a day and a half, reinforcements from Gisborne Keep and Castle Cloud might force Lord Faide to retreat.

Lord Faide waited only until the jinxmen had completed their preparations, then sent another messenger, offering two more minutes in which to surrender.

One minute passed, two minutes. The envoys turned on their heels, marched back to the camp.

Lord Faide spoke to Hein Huss. “You are prepared?”

“I am prepared,” rumbled Hein Huss.

“Drive them forth.”

Huss raised his arm; the tarpaulin dropped from the face of his great display, to reveal a painted representation of Ballant Keep.

Huss retired to his tent, and pulled the flaps together. Braziers burnt fiercely, illuminating the faces of Adam McAdam, eight cabalmen, and six of the most advanced spellbinders. Each worked at a bench supporting several dozen dolls and a small glowing brazier. The cabalmen and spellbinders worked with dolls representing Ballant men-at-arms; Huss and Adam McAdam employed simulacra of the Ballant knights. Lord Ballant would not be hoodooed unless he ordered a jinx against Lord Faide—a courtesy the keep-lords extended each other.

Huss called out: “Sebastian!”

Sebastian, one of Huss’s spellbinders, waiting at the flap to the tent, replied, “Ready, sir.”

“Begin the display.”

Sebastian ran to the stage, struck fire to a fuse. Watchers inside Ballant Keep saw the depicted keep take fire. Flame erupted from the windows, the roof glowed and crumbled. Inside the tent the two jinxmen, the cabalmen, and the spellbinders methodically took dolls, dipped them into the heat of the braziers, concentrating, reaching out for the mind of the man whose doll they burnt. Within the keep men became uneasy. Many began to imagine burning sensations, which became more severe as their minds grew more sensitive to the idea of fire. Lord Ballant noted the uneasiness. He signaled to his chief jinxman Anderson Grimes. “Begin the counterspell.”

Down the front of the keep unrolled a display even larger than Hein Muss’s, depicting a hideous beast. It stood on four legs and was shown picking up two men in a pair of hands, biting off their heads. Grimes’ cabalmen meanwhile took up dolls representing the Faide warriors, inserted them into models of the depicted beast, and closed the hinged jaws, all the while projecting ideas of fear and disgust. And the Faide warriors, staring at the depicted monster, felt a sense of horror and weakness.

Inside Huss’s tent, censers and braziers reeked and dolls smoked. Eyes stared, brows glistened. From time to time one of the workers gasped—signaling the entry of his projection into an enemy mind. Within the keep warriors began to mutter, to slap at burning skin, to eye each other fearfully, noting each other’s symptoms. Finally one cried out, and tore at his armor. “I burn! The cursed witches burn me!” His pain aggravated the discomfort of the others; there was a growing sound throughout the keep.

Lord Ballant’s oldest son, his mind penetrated by Hein Huss himself, struck his shield with his mailed fist. “They burn me! They burn us all! Better to fight than bum!”

“Fight! Fight!” came the voices of the tormented men.

Lord Ballant looked around at the twisted faces, some displaying blisters, scaldmarks. “Our own spell terrifies them; wait yet a moment!” he pleaded.

His brother alled hoarsely, “It is not your belly that Hein Huss toasts in the flames, it is mine! We cannot win a battle of hoodoos; we must win a battle of arms!”

Lord Ballant cried desperately, “Wait, our own effects are working! They will flee in terror; wait, wait!”

His cousin tore off his corselet. “It’s Hein Huss! I feel him! My leg’s in the fire, the devil laughs at me. Next my head, he says. Fight, or I go forth to fight alone!”

“Very well,” said Lord Ballant in a fateful voice. “We go forth to fight. First—the beast goes forth. Then we follow and smite them in their terror.”

The gates to the keep swung suddenly wide. Out sprang what appeared to be the depicted monster; legs moving, arms waving, eyes rolling, issuing evil sounds. Normally the Faide warriors would have seen the monster for what it was; a model carried on the backs of three horses. But their minds had been influenced: they had been infected with horror; they drew back with arms hanging flaccid. From behind the monster the Ballant knights galloped, followed by the Ballant foot soldiers. The charge gathered momentum, tore into the Faide center. Lord Faide bellowed orders; discipline asserted itself. The Faide knights disengaged, divided into three platoons, and engulfed the Ballant charge, while the foot soldiers poured darts into the advancing ranks.

There was the clatter and surge of battle; Lord Ballant, seeing that his sally had failed to overwhelm the Faide forces, and thinking to conserve his own forces, ordered a retreat. In good order the Ballant warriors began to back up toward the keep. The Faide knights held close contact, hoping to win to the courtyard. Close behind came a heavily loaded wagon pushed by armored horses, to be wedged against the gate.

Lord Faide called an order; a reserve platoon of ten knights charged from the side, thrust behind the main body of Ballant horsemen, rode through the foot soldiers, fought into the keep, cut down the gate-tenders.

Lord Ballant bellowed to Anderson Grimes, “They have won inside; quick with your cursed demon! If he can help us, let him do so now!”

“Demon-possession is not a matter of an instant,” muttered the jinxman. “I need time.”

“You have no time! Ten minutes and we’re all dead!”

“I will do my best. Everid, Everid, come swift!”

He hastened into his workroom, donned his demonmask, tossed handful after handful of incense into the brazier. Against one wall stood a great form: black, slit-eyed, noseless. Great white fangs hung from its upper palate; it stood on heavy bent legs, arms reached forward to grasp. Anderson Grimes swallowed a cup of syrup, paced slowly back and forth. A moment passed.

“Grimes!” came Ballant’s call from outside. “Grimes!”

A voice spoke. “Enter without fear.”

Lord Ballant, carrying his ancestral side arm, entered. He drew back with an involuntary sound. “Grimes!” he whispered.

“Grimes is not here,” said the voice. “I am here. Enter.”

Lord Ballant came forward stiff-legged. The room was dark except for the feeble glimmer of the brazier. Anderson Grimes crouched in a corner, head bowed under his demonmask. The shadows twisted and pulsed with shapes and faces, forms struggling to become solid. The black image seemed to vibrate with life.

“Bring in your warriors,” said the voice. “Bring them in five at a time, bid them look only at the floor until commanded to raise their eyes.”

Lord Ballant retreated; there was no sound in the room.

A moment passed; then five limp and exhausted warriors filed into the room, eyes low.

“Look slowly up,” said the voice. “Look at the orange fire. Breathe deeply. Then look at me. I am Everid, Demon of Hate. Look at me. Who am I?”

“You are Everid, Demon of Hate,” quavered the warriors.

“I stand all around you, in a dozen forms…I come closer. Where am I?”

“You are close.”

“Now I am you. We are together.”

There was a sudden quiver of motion. The warriors stood straighter, their faces distorted.

“Go forth,” said the voice. “Go quietly into the court. In a few minutes we march forth to slay.”

The five stalked forth. Five more entered.

Outside the wall, the Ballant knights had retreated as far as the gate; within, seven Faide knights still survived, and with their backs to the wall held the Ballant warriors away from the gate mechanism.

In the Faide camp, Huss called to Comandore, “Everid is walking. Bring forth Keyril.”

“Send the men,” came Comandore’s voice, low and harsh. “Send the men to me. I am Keyril.”

Within the keep twenty warriors came marching into the courtyard. Their steps were cautious, tentative, slow. Their faces had lost individuality, they were twisted and distorted, curiously alike.

“Bewitched!” whispered the Ballant soldiers, drawing back. The seven Faide knights watched with sudden fright. But the twenty warriors, paying them no heed, marched out the gate. The Ballant knights parted; for an instant there was a lull in the fighting. The twenty sprang like tigers. Their swords glistened, twinkling in water-bright arcs. They crouched, jerked, jumped; Faide arms, legs, heads were hewed off. The twenty were cut and battered, but the blows seemed to have no effect.

The Faide attack faltered, collapsed. The knights, whose armor was no protection against the demoniac swords, retreated. The twenty possessed warriors raced out into the open toward the foot soldiers, running with great strides, slashing and rending. The Faide foot soldiers fought for a moment, then they too gave way and turned to flee.

From behind Comandore’s tent appeared thirty Faide warriors, marching stiffly, slowly. Like the Ballant twenty, their faces were alike—but between the Everid-possessed and the Keyril-possessed was the difference between the face of Everid and the face of Keyril.

Keyril and Everid fought, using the men as weapons, without fear, retreat, or mercy. Hack, chop, cut. Arms, legs, sundered torsos. Bodies fought headless for moments before collapsing.

Only when a body was minced, hacked to bits, did the demoniac vitality depart. Presently there were no more men of Everid, and only fifteen men of Keyril. These hopped and limped and tumbled toward the keep where Faide knights still held the gate. The Ballant knights met them in despair, knowing that now was the decisive moment. Leaping, leering from chopped faces, slashing from tireless arms, the warriors cut a hole into the iron. The Faide knights, roaring victory cries, plunged after. Into the courtyard surged the battle, and now there was no longer doubt of the outcome. Ballant Keep was taken.

Back in his tent Isak Comandore took a deep breath, shuddered, flung down his demonmask. In the courtyard the twelve remaining warriors dropped in their tracks, twitched, gasped, gushed blood and died.

Lord Ballant, in the last gallant act of a gallant life, marched forth brandishing his ancestral side arm. He aimed across the bloody field at Lord Faide, pulled the trigger. The weapon spewed a brief gout of light; Lord Faide’s skin prickled and hair rose from his head. The weapon crackled, turned cherry-red, and melted. Lord Ballant threw down the weapon, drew his sword, marched forth to challenge Lord Faide.

Lord Faide, disinclined to unnecessary combat, signaled to his soldiers. A flight of darts ended Lord Ballant’s life, saving him the discomfort of formal execution.

There was no further resistance. The Ballant defenders threw down their arms and marched grimly out to kneel before Lord Faide, while inside the keep the Ballant women gave themselves to mourning and grief.

V

Lord Faide had no wish to linger at Ballant Keep, for he took no relish in his victories. Inevitably, a thousand decisions had to be made. Six of the closest Ballant kinsmen were summarily stabbed and the title declared defunct. Others of the clan were offered a choice: an oath of lifelong fealty together with a moderate ransom, or death. Eyes blazing hate, two chose death and were stabbed.

Lord Faide had now achieved his ambition. For over a thousand years the keep-lords had struggled for power; now one, now another gaining ascendancy. None before had ever extended his authority across the entire continent—which meant control of the planet, since all other land was either sun-parched rock or eternal ice. Ballant Keep had long thwarted Lord Faide’s drive to power; now—success, total and absolute. It still remained to chastise the lords of Castle Cloud and Gisborne, both of whom, seeing opportunity to overwhelm Lord Faide, had ranged themselves behind Lord Ballant. But these were matters that might well be assigned to Hein Huss.

Lord Faide, for the first time in his life, felt a trace of uncertainty. Now what? No real adversaries remained. The First Folk must be whipped back, but here was no great problem: they were numerous, but no more than savages. He knew that dissatisfaction and controversy would ultimately arise among his kinsmen and allies. Inaction and boredom would breed irritability; idle minds would calculate the pros and cons of mischief. Even the most loyal would remember the campaigns with nostalgia and long for the excitement, and release, the license, of warfare. Somehow he must find means to absorb the energy of so many active and keyed-up men. How and where, this was the problem. The construction of roads? New farmland claimed from the downs? Yearly tournaments-at-arms? Lord Faide frowned at the inadequacy of his solutions, but his imagination was impoverished by the lack of tradition. The original settlers of Pangborn had been warriors, and had brought with them a certain amount of practical rule-of-thumb knowledge, but little else. The tales they passed down the generations described the great spaceships which moved with magic speed and certainty, the miraculous weapons, the wars in the void, but told nothing of human history or civilized achievement. And so Lord Faide, full of power and success, but with no goal toward which to turn his strength, felt more morose and saturnine than ever.

He gloomily inspected the spoils from Ballant Keep. They were of no great interest to him. Ballant’s ancestral car was no longer used, but displayed behind a glass case. He inspected the weapon Volcano, but this could not be moved. In any event it was useless, its magic lost forever. Lord Faide now knew that Lord Ballant had ordered it turned against the Faide car, but that it had refused to spew its vaunted fire. Lord Faide saw with disdainful amusement that Volcano had been sadly neglected. Corrosion had pitted the metal, careless cleaning had twisted the exterior tubing, undoubtedly diminishing the potency of the magic. No such neglect at Faide Keep! Jambart the weapon-tender cherished Hellmouth with absolute devotion. Elsewhere were other ancient devices, interesting but useless—the same sort of curios that cluttered shelves and cases at Faide Keep. (Peculiar, these ancient men! thought Lord Faide: at once so clever, yet so primitive and impractical. Conditions had changed: there had been enormous advances since the dark ages sixteen hundred years ago. For instance, the ancients had used intricate fetishes of metal and glass to communicate with each other. Lord Faide need merely voice his needs; Hein Huss could project his mind a hundred miles to see, to hear, to relay Lord Faide’s words.) The ancients had contrived dozens of such objects, but the old magic had worn away and they never seemed to function. Lord Ballant’s side arm had melted, after merely stinging Lord Faide. Imagine a troop armed thus trying to cope with a platoon of demon-possessed warriors! Slaughter of the innocents!

Among the Ballant trove Lord Faide noted a dozen old books and several reels of microfilm. The books were worthless, page after page of incomprehensible jargon; the microfilm was equally undecipherable. Again Lord Faide wondered skeptically about the ancients. Clever of course, but to look at the hard facts, they were little more advanced than the First Folk: neither had facility with telepathy or voyance or demon-command. And the magic of the ancients: might there not be a great deal of exaggeration in the legends? Volcano, for instance. A joke. Lord Faide wondered about his own Hellmouth. But no—surely Hellmouth was more trustworthy; Jambart cleaned and polished the weapon daily and washed the entire cupola with vintage wine every month. If human care could induce faithfulness, then Hellmouth was ready to defend Faide Keep!

Now there was no longer need for defense. Faide was supreme. Considering the future. Lord Faide made a decision. There should no longer be keep-lords on Pangborn; he would abolish the appellation. Habitancy of the keeps would gradually be transferred to trusted bailiffs on a yearly basis. The former lords would be moved to comfortable but indefensible manor houses, with the maintenance of private troops forbidden. Naturally they must be allowed jinxmen, but these would be made accountable to himself—perhaps through some sort of licensing provision. He must discuss the matter with Hein Huss. A matter for the future, however. Now he merely wished to settle affairs and return to Faide Keep.

There was little more to be done. The surviving Ballant kinsmen he sent to their homes after Huss had impregnated fresh dolls with their essences. Should they default on their ransoms, a twinge of fire, a few stomach cramps would more than set them right. Ballant Keep itself Lord Faide would have liked to burn, but the material of the ancients was proof to fire. But in order to discourage any new pretenders to the Ballant heritage Lord Faide ordered all the heirlooms and relics brought forth into the courtyard, and then, one at a time, in order of rank, he bade his men choose. Thus the Ballant wealth was distributed. Even the jinxmen were invited to choose, but they despised the ancient trinkets as works of witless superstition. The lesser spellbinders and apprentices rummaged through the leavings, occasionally finding an overlooked bauble or some anomalous implement. Isak Comandore was irritated to find Sam Salazar staggering under a load of the ancient books. “And what is your purpose with these?” he barked. “Why do you burden yourself with rubbish?”

Sam Salazar hung his head. “I have no definite purpose. Undoubtedly there was wisdom—or at least knowledge—among the ancients: perhaps I can use these symbols of knowledge to sharpen my own understanding.”

Comandore threw up his hands in disgust. He turned to Hein Huss, who stood nearby. “First he fancies himself a tree and stands in the mud; now he thinks to learn jinxmanship through a study of ancient symbols.”

Huss shrugged. “They were men like ourselves, and, though limited, they were not entirely obtuse. A certain simian cleverness is required to fabricate these objects.”

“Simian cleverness is no substitute for sound jinxmanship,” retorted Isak Comandore. “This is a point hard to overemphasize; I have drummed it into Salazar’s head a hundred times. And now, look at him.”

Huss grunted noncommitally. “I fail to understand what he hopes to achieve.”

Sam Salazar tried to explain, fumbling for words to express an idea that did not exist. “I thought perhaps to decipher the writing, if only to understand what the ancients thought, and perhaps to learn how to perform one or two of their tricks.”

Comandore rolled up his eyes. “What enemy bewitched me when I consented to take you as apprentice? I can cast twenty hoodoos in an hour, more than any of the ancients could achieve in a lifetime.”

“Nevertheless,” said Sam Salazar, “I notice that Lord Faide rides in his ancestral car, and that Lord Ballant sought to kill us with Volcano.”

“I notice,” said Comandore with feral softness, “that my demon Keyril conquered Lord Ballant’s Volcano, and that riding on my wagon I can outdistance Lord Faide in his car.”

Sam Salazar though better of arguing further. “True, Jinxman Comandore, very true. I stand corrected.”

“Then discard that rubbish and make yourself useful. We return to Faide Keep in the morning.”

“As you wish, Jinxman Comandore.” Sam Salazar threw the books back into the trash.

VI

The Ballant clan had been dispersed, Ballant Keep was despoiled. Lord Faide and his men banqueted somberly in the great hall, tended by silent Ballant servitors.

Ballant Keep had been built on the same splendid scale as Faide Keep. The great hall was a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, fifty feet high, paneled in planks sawn from pale native hardwood, rubbed and waxed to a rich honey color. Enormous black beams supported the ceiling; from these hung candelabra, intricate contrivances of green, purple, and blue glass, knotted with ancient but still bright light-motes. On the far wall hung portraits of all the lords of Ballant Keep—105 grave faces in a variety of costumes. Below, a genealogical chart ten feet high detailed the descent of the Ballants and their connections with the other noble clans. Now there was a desolate air to the hall, and the 105 dead faces were meaningless and empty.

Lord Faide dined without joy, and cast dour side glances at those of his kinsmen who revelled too gladly. Lord Ballant, he thought, had conducted himself only as he himself might have done under the same circumstances; coarse exultation seemed in poor taste, almost as if it were disrespect for Lord Faide himself. His followers were quick to catch his mood, and the banquet proceeded with greater decorum.

The jinxmen sat apart in a smaller room to the side. Anderson Grimes, erstwhile Ballant Head Jinxman, sat beside Hein Huss, trying to put a good face on his defeat. After all, he had performed creditably against four powerful adversaries, and there was no cause to feel a diminution of mana. The five jinxmen discussed the battle, while the cabalmen and spellbinders listened respectfully. The conduct of the demon-possessed troops occasioned the most discussion. Anderson Grimes readily admitted that his conception of Everid was a force absolutely brutal and blunt, terrifying in its indomitable vigor. The other jinxmen agreed that he undoubtedly succeeded in projecting these qualities; Hein Huss however pointed out that Isak Comandore’s Keyril, as cruel and vigorous as Everid, also combined a measure of crafty malice, which tended to make the possessed soldier a more effective weapon.

Anderson Grimes allowed that this might well be the case, and that in fact he had been considering such an augmentation of Everid’s characteristics.

“To my mind,” said Huss, “the most effective demon should be swift enough to avoid the strokes of the brute demons, such as Keyril and Everid. I cite my own Dant as example. A Dant-possessed warrior can easily destroy a Keyril or an Everid, simply through his agility. In an encounter of this sort the Keyrils and Everids presently lose their capacity to terrify, and thus half the effect is lost.”

Isak Comandore pierced Huss with a hot russet glance. “You state a presumption as if it were fact. I have formulated Keyril with sufficient craft to counter any such displays of speed. I firmly believe Keyril to be the most fearsome of all demons.”

“It may well be,” rumbled Hein Huss thoughtfully. He beckoned to a steward, gave instructions. The steward reduced the light a trifle. “Behold,” said Hein Huss. “There is Dant. He comes to join the banquet.” At the side of the room loomed the tiger-striped Dant, a creature constructed of resilient metal, with four terrible arms, and a squat black head which seemed all gaping jaw.

“Look,” came the husky voice of Isak Comandore. “There is Keyril.” Keyril was rather more humanoid and armed with a cutlass. Dant spied Keyril. The jaws gaped wider, it sprang to the attack.

The battle was a thing of horror; the two demons rolled, twisted, bit, frothed, uttered soundless shrieks, tore each other apart. Suddenly Dant sprang away, circled Keyril with dizzying speed, faster, faster; became a blur, a wild coruscation of colors that seemed to give off a high-pitched wailing sound, rising higher and higher in pitch. Keyril hacked brutally with his cutlass, then seemed to grow feeble and wan. The light that once had been Dant blazed white, exploded in a mental shriek; Keyril was gone and Isak Comandore lay moaning.

Hein Huss drew a deep breath, wiped his face, looked about him with a complacent grin. The entire company sat rigid as stones, staring, all except the apprentice Sam Salazar, who met Hein Huss’s glance with a cheerful smile.

“So,” growled Huss, panting from his exertion, “you consider yourself superior to the illusion; you sit and smirk at one of Hein Huss’s best efforts.”

“No, no,” cried Sam Salazar, “I mean no disrespect! I want to learn, so I watched you rather than the demons. What could they teach me? Nothing!”

“Ah,” said Huss, mollified. “And what did you learn?”

“Likewise, nothing,” said Sam Salazar, “but at least I do not sit like a fish.”

Comandore’s voice came soft but crackling with wrath. “You see in me the resemblance to a fish?”

“I except you, Jinxman Comandore, naturally,” Sam Salazar explained.

“Please go to my cabinet, Apprentice Salazar, and fetch me the doll that is your likeness. The steward will bring a basin of water, and we shall have some sport. With your knowledge of fish you perhaps can breathe under water. If not—you may suffocate.”

“I prefer not, Jinxman Comandore,” said Sam Salazar. “In fact, with your permission, I now resign your service.”

Comandore motioned to one of his cabalmen. “Fetch me the Salazar doll. Since he is no longer my apprentice, it is likely indeed that he will suffocate.”

“Come now, Comandore,” said Hein Huss gruffly. “Do not torment the lad. He is innocent and a trifle addled. Let this be an occasion of placidity and ease.”

“Certainly, Hein Huss,” said Comandore. “Why not? There is ample time in which to discipline this upstart.”

“Jinxman Huss,” said Sam Salazar, “since I am now relieved of my duties to Jinxman Comandore, perhaps you will accept me into your service.”

Hein Huss made a noise of vast distaste. “You are not my responsibility.”

“There are many futures, Hein Huss,” said Sam Salazar. “You have said as much yourself.”

Hein Huss looked at Sam Salazar with his water-clear eyes. “Yes, there are many futures. And I think that tonight sees the full amplitude of jinxmanship…I think that never again will such power and skill gather at the same table. We shall die one by one and there shall be none to fill our shoes…Yes, Sam Salazar, I will take you as apprentice. Isak Comandore, do you hear? This youth is now of my company.”

“I must be compensated,” growled Comandore.

“You have coveted my doll of Tharon Faide, the only one in existence. It is yours.”

“Ah, ha!” cried Isak Comandore, leaping to his feet. “Hein Huss, I salute you! You are generous indeed! I thank you and accept!”

Hein Huss motioned to Sam Salazar. “Move your effects to my wagon. Do not show your face again tonight.”

Sam Salazar bowed with dignity and departed the hall.

The banquet continued, but now something of melancholy filled the room. Presently a messenger from Lord Faide came to warn all to bed, for the party returned to Faide Keep at dawn.

VII

The victorious Faide troops gathered on the heath before Ballant Keep. As a parting gesture, Lord Faide ordered the great gate torn off the hinges, so that ingress could never again be denied him. But even after sixteen hundred years the hinges were proof to all the force the horses could muster, and the gates remained in place.

Lord Faide accepted the fact with good grace and bade farewell to his cousin Renfroy, whom he had appointed bailiff. He climbed into his car, settled himself, snapped the switch. The car groaned and moved forward. Behind came the knights and the foot soldiers, then the baggage train, laden with booty, and finally the wagons of the jinxmen.

Three hours the column marched across the mossy downs. Ballant Keep dwindled behind; ahead appeared North and South Wild wood, darkening all the sweep of the western horizon. Where once the break had existed, the First Folk’s new planting showed a smudge lower and less intense than the old woodlands.

Two miles from the woodlands Lord Faide called a halt and signaled up his knights. Hein Huss laboriously dismounted from his wagon, came forward.

“In the event of resistance,” Lord Faide told the knights, “do not be tempted into the forest. Stay with the column and at all times be on your guard against traps.”

Hein Huss spoke. “You wish me to parley with the First Folk once more?”

“No,” said Lord Faide. “It is ridiculous that I must ask permission of savages to ride over my own land. We return as we came; if they interfere, so much the worse for them.”

“You are rash,” said Huss with simple candor.

Lord Faide glanced down at him with black eyebrows raised. “What damage can they do if we avoid their traps? Blow foam at us?”

“It is not my place to advise or to warn,” said Hein Huss. “However, I point out that they exhibit a confidence which does not come from conscious weakness; also, that they carried tubes, apparently hollow grasswood shoots, which imply missiles.”

Lord Faide nodded. “No doubt. However, the knights wear armor, the soldiers carry bucklers. It is not fit that I, Lord Faide of Faide Keep, choose my path to suit the whims of the First Folk. This must be made clear, even if the exercise involves a dozen or so First Folk corpses.”

“Since I am not a fighting man,” remarked Hein Huss, “I will keep well to the rear, and pass only when the way is secure.”

“As you wish.” Lord Faide pulled down the visor of his helmet. “Forward.”

The column moved toward the forest, along the previous track, which showed plain across the moss. Lord Faide rode in the lead, flanked by his brother, Gethwin Faide, and his cousin, Mauve Dermont-Faide.

A half-mile passed, and another. The forest was only a mile distant. Overhead the great sun rode at zenith; brightness and heat poured down; the air carried the oily scent of thorn and tarbush. The column moved on, more slowly; the only sounds the clanking of armor, the muffled thud of hooves in the moss, the squeal of wagon wheels.

Lord Faide rose up in his car, watching for any sign of hostile preparation. A half-mile from the planting the forms of the First Folk, waiting in the shade along the forest’s verge, became visible. Lord Faide ignored them, held a steady pace along the track they had traveled before.

The half-mile became a quarter-mile. Lord Faide turned to order the troops into single file and was just in time to see a hole suddenly open into the moss and his brother, Gethwin Faide, drop from sight. There was a rattle, a thud, the howling of the impaled horse; Gethwin’s wild calls as the horse kicked and crushed him into the stakes. Mauve Dermont-Faide, riding beside Gethwin, could not control his own horse, which leaped aside from the pit and blundered upon a trigger. Up from the moss burst a tree trunk studded with foot-long thorns. It snapped, quick as a scorpion’s tail; the thorns punctured Mauve Dermont-Faide’s armor, his chest, and whisked him from his horse to carry him suspended, writhing and screaming. The tip of the scythe pounded into Lord Faide’s car, splintered against the hull. The car swung groaning through the air. Lord Faide clutched at the wind-screen to prevent himself from falling.

The column halted; several men ran to the pit, but Gethwin Faide lay twenty feet below, crushed under his horse. Others took Mauve Dermont-Faide down from the swaying scythe, but he, too, was dead.

Lord Faide’s skin tingled with a gooseflesh of hate and rage. He looked toward the forest. The First Folk stood motionless. He beckoned to Bernard, sergeant of the foot soldiers. “Two men with lances to try out the ground ahead. All others ready with darts. At my signal spit the devils.”

Two men came forward, and marching before Lord Faide’s car, probed at the ground. Lord Faide settled in his seat. “Forward.”

The column moved slowly toward the forest, every man tense and ready. The lances of the two men in the vanguard presently broke through the moss, to disclose a nettle trap—a pit lined with nettles, each frond ripe with globes of acid. Carefully they probed out a path to the side, and the column filed around, each man walking in the other’s tracks.

At Lord Faide’s side now rode his two nephews, Scolford and Edwin. “Notice,” said Lord Faide in a voice harsh and tight. “These traps were laid since our last passage; an act of malice.”

“But why did they guide us through before?”

Lord Faide smiled bitterly. “They were willing that we should die at Ballant Keep. But we have disappointed them.”

“Notice, they carry tubes,” said Scolford.

“Blowguns possibly,” suggested Edwin.

Scolford disagreed. “They cannot blow through their foam-vents.”

“No doubt we shall soon learn,” said Lord Faide. He rose in his seat, called to the rear. “Ready with the darts!”

The soldiers raised their crossbows. The column advanced slowly, now only a hundred yards from the planting. The white shapes of the First Folk moved uneasily at the forest’s edges. Several of them raised their tubes, seemed to-sight along the length. They twitched their great hands.

One of the tubes was pointed toward Lord Faide. He saw a small black object leave the opening, flit forward, gathering speed. He heard a hum, waxing to a rasping, clicking flutter. He ducked behind the windscreen; the projectile swooped in pursuit, struck the windscreen like a thrown stone. It fell crippled upon the forward deck of the car—a heavy black insect like a wasp, its broken proboscis oozing ocher liquid, horny wings beating feebly, eyes like dumbbells fixed on Lord Faide. With his mailed fist, he crushed the creature.

Behind him other wasps struck knights and men; Corex Faide-Battaro took the prong through his visor into the eye, but the armor of the other knights defeated the wasps. The foot soldiers, however, lacked protection; the wasps half buried themselves in flesh. The soldiers called out in pain, clawed away the wasps, squeezed the wounds. Corex Faide-Battaro toppled from his horse, ran blindly out over the heath, and after fifty feet fell into a trap. The stricken soldiers began to twitch, then fell on the moss, thrashed, leaped up to run with flapping arms, threw themselves in wild somersaults, foaming and thrashing.

In the forest, the First Folk raised their tubes again. Lord Faide bellowed, “Spit the creatures! Bowmen, launch your darts!”

There came the twang of crossbows, darts snapped at the quiet white shapes. A few staggered and wandered aimlessly away; most, however, plucked out the darts or ignored them. They took capsules from small sacks, put them to the end of their tubes.

“Beware the wasps!” cried Lord Faide. “Strike with your bucklers! Kill the cursed things in flight!”

The rasp of horny wings came again; certain of the soldiers found courage enough to follow Lord Faide’s orders, and battered down the wasps. Others struck home as before; behind came another flight. The column became a tangle of struggling, crouching men.

“Footmen, retreat!” called Lord Faide furiously. “Footmen back! Knights to me!”

The soldiers fled back along the track, taking refuge behind the baggage wagons. Thirty of their number lay dying, or dead, on the moss.

Lord Faide cried out to his knights in a voice like a bugle. “Dismount, follow slow after me! Turn your helmets, keep the wasps from your eyes! One step at a time, behind the car! Edwin, into the car beside me, test the footing with your lance. Once in the forest there are no traps! Then attack!”

The knights formed themselves into a line behind the car. Lord Faide drove slowly forward, his kinsman Edwin prodding the ground ahead. The First Folk sent out a dozen more wasps, which dashed themselves vainly against the armor. Then there was silence…cessation of sound, activity. The First Folk watched impassively as the knights approached, step by step.

Edwin’s lance found a trap, the column moved to the side. Another trap—and the column was diverted from the planting toward the forest. Step by step, yard by yard—another trap, another detour, and now the column was only a hundred feet from the forest. A trap to the left, a trap to the right: the safe path led directly toward an enormous heavy-branched tree. Seventy feet, fifty feet, then Lord Faide drew his sword.

“Prepare to charge, kill till your arms tire!”

From the forest came a crackling sound. The branches of the great tree trembled and swayed. The knights stared, for a moment frozen into place. The tree toppled forward, the knights madly tried to flee—to the rear, to the sides. Traps opened; the knights dropped upon sharp stakes. The tree fell; boughs cracked armored bodies like nuts; there was the hoarse yelling of pinned men, screams from the traps, the crackling subsidence of breaking branches. Lord Faide had been battered down into the car, and the car had been pressed groaning into the moss. His first instinctive act was to press the switch to rest position; then he staggered erect, clambered up through the boughs. A pale unhuman face peered at him; he swung his fist, crushed the faceted eyebulge, and roaring with rage scrambled through the branches. Others of his knights were working themselves free, although almost a third were either crushed or impaled.

The First Folk came scrambling forward, armed with enormous thorns, long as swords. But now Lord Faide could reach them at close quarters. Hissing with vindictive joy, he sprang into their midst, swinging his sword with both hands, as if demon-possessed. The surviving knights joined him and the ground became littered with dismembered First Folk. They drew back slowly, without excitement. Lord Faide reluctantly called back his knights. “We must succor those still pinned, as many as still are alive.”

As well as possible branches were cut away, injured knights drawn forth. In some cases the soft moss had cushioned the impact of the tree. Six knights were dead, another four crushed beyond hope of recovery. To these Lord Faide himself gave the coup de grace. Ten minutes further hacking and chopping freed Lord Faide’s car, while the First Folk watched incuriously from the forest. The knights wished to charge once more, but Lord Faide ordered retreat. Without interference they returned the way they had come, back to the baggage train.

Lord Faide ordered a muster. Of the original war party, less than two-thirds remained. Lord Faide shook his head bitterly. Galling to think how easily he had been led into a trap! He swung on his heel, strode to the rear of the column, to the wagons of the magicians. The jinxmen sat around a small fire, drinking tea. “Which of you will hoodoo these white forest vermin? I want them dead—stricken with sickness, cramps, blindness, the most painful afflictions you can contrive!”

There was general silence. The jinxmen sipped their tea. “Well?” demanded Lord Faide. “Have you no answer? Do I not make myself plain?”

Hein Huss cleared his throat, spat into the blaze. “Your wishes are plain. Unfortunately we cannot hoodoo the First Folk.”

“And why?”

“There are technical reasons.”

Lord Faide knew the futility of argument. “Must we slink home around the forest? If you cannot hoodoo the First Folk, then bring out your demons! I will march on the forest and chop out a path with my sword!”

“It is not for me to suggest tactics,” grumbled Hein Huss.

“Go on, speak! I will listen.”

“A suggestion has been put to me, which I will pass to you. Neither I nor the other jinxmen associate ourselves with it, since it recommends the crudest of physical principles.”

“I await the suggestion,” said Lord Faide.

“It is merely this. One of my apprentices tampered with your car, as you may remember.”

“Yes, and I will see he gets the hiding he deserves.”

“By some freak he caused the car to rise high into the air. The suggestion is this: that we load the car with as much oil as the baggage train affords, that we send the car aloft and let it drift over the planting. At a suitable moment, the occupant of the car will pour the oil over the trees, then hurl down a torch. The forest will burn. The First Folk will be at least discomfited; at best a large number will be destroyed.”

Lord Faide slapped his hands together. “Excellent! Quickly, to work!” He called a dozen soldiers, gave them orders; four kegs of cooking oil, three buckets of pitch, six demijohns of spirit were brought and lifted into the car. The engines grated and protested, and the car sagged almost to the moss.

Lord Faide shook his head sadly. “A rude use of the relic, but all in good purpose. Now, where is that apprentice? He must indicate which switches and which buttons he turned.”

“I suggest,” said Hein Huss, “that Sam Salazar be sent up with the car.”

Lord Faide looked sidewise at Sam Salazar’s round, bland countenance. “An efficient hand is needed, a seasoned judgment. I wonder if he can be trusted?”

“I would think so,” said Hein Huss, “inasmuch as it was Sam Salazar who evolved the scheme in the first place.”

“Very well. In with you, Apprentice! Treat my car with reverence! The wind blows away from us; fire this edge of the forest, in as long a strip as you can manage. The torch, where is the torch?”

The torch was brought and secured to the side of the car.

“One more matter,” said Sam Salazar. “I would like to borrow the armor of some obliging knight, to protect myself from the wasps. Otherwise—”

“Armor!” bawled Lord Faide. “Bring armor!”

At last, fully accoutered and with visor down, Sam Salazar climbed into the car. He seated himself, peered intently at the buttons and switches. In truth he was not precisely certain as to which he had manipulated before…He considered, reached forward, pushed, turned. The motors roared and screamed; the car shuddered, sluggishly rose into the air. Higher, higher, twenty feet, forty feet, sixty feet—a hundred, two hundred. The wind eased the car toward the forest; in the shade the First Folk watched. Several of them raised tubes, opened the shutters. The onlookers saw wasps dart through the air to dash against Sam Salazar’s armor.

The car drifted over the trees; Sam Salazar began ladling out the oil. Below, the First Folk stirred uneasily. The wind carried the car too far over the forest; Sam Salazar worked the controls, succeeded in guiding himself back. One keg was empty, and another; he tossed them out, presently emptied the remaining two, and the buckets of pitch. He soaked a rag in spirit, ignited it, threw it over the side, poured the spirit after.

The flaming rag fell into leaves. A crackle; fire blazed and sprang. The car now floated at a height of five hundred feet. Salazar poured over the remaining spirits, dropped the demijohns, guided the car back over the heath, and fumbling nervously with the controls, dropped the car in a series of swoops back to the moss.

Lord Faide sprang forward, clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellently done! The forest blazes like tinder!”

The men of Faide Keep stood back, rejoicing to see the flames soar and lick. The First Folk scurried back from the heat, waving their arms; foam of a peculiar purple color issued from their vents as they ran, small useless puffs discharged as if by accident or through excitement. The flames ate through first the forest, then spread into the new planting, leaping through the leaves.

“Prepare to march!” called Lord Faide. “We pass directly behind the flames, before the First Folk return.”

Off in the forest the First Folk perched in the trees, blowing out foam in great puffs and billows, building a wall of insulation. The flames had eaten half across the new planting, leaving behind smoldering saplings.

“Forward! Briskly!”

The column moved ahead. Coughing in the smoke, eyes smarting, they passed under still blazing trees and came out on the western downs.

Slowly the column moved forward, led by a pair of soldiers prodding the moss with lances. Behind followed Lord Faide with the knights, then came the foot soldiers, then the rumbling baggage train, and finally the six wagons of the jinxmen.

A thump, a creak, a snap. A scythe had broken up from the moss; the soldiers in the lead dropped flat; the scythe whipped past, a foot from Lord Faide’s face. At the same time a plaintive cry came from the rear guard. “They pursue! The First Folk come!”

Lord Faide turned to inspect the new threat. A clot of First Folk, two hundred or more, came across the moss, moving without haste or urgency. Some carried wasp tubes, others thorn-rapiers.

Lord Faide looked ahead. Another hundred yards should bring the army out upon safe ground; then he could deploy and maneuver. “Forward!”

The column proceeded, the baggage train and the jinxmen’s wagons pressing close up against the soldiers. Behind and to one side came the First Folk, moving casually and easily.

At last Lord Faide judged they had reached secure ground. “Forward, now! Bring the wagons out, hurry now!”

The troops needed no urging; they trotted out over the heath, the wagons trundling after. Lord Faide ordered the wagons into a close double line, stationed the soldiers between, with the horses behind them protected from the wasps. The knights, now dismounted, waited in front.

The First Folk came listlessly, formlessly forward. Blank white faces stared; huge hands grasped tubes and thorns; traces of the purplish foam showed at the lips of their underarm orifices.

Lord Faide walked along the line of knights. “Swords ready. Allow them as close as they care to come. Then a quick charge.” He motioned to the foot soldiers. “Choose a target…!” A volley of darts whistled overhead, to plunge into white bodies. With chisel-bladed fingers the First Folk plucked them out, discarded them with no evidence of vexation. One or two staggered, wandered confusedly across the line of approach. Others raised their tubes, withdrew the shutter. Out flew the insects, homy wings rasping, prongs thrust forward. Across the moss they flickered, to crush themselves against the armor of the knights, to drop to the ground, to be stamped upon. The soldiers cranked their crossbows back into tension, discharged another flight of darts, caused several more First Folk casualties.

The First Folk spread into a long line, surrounding the Faide troops. Lord Faide shifted half his knights to the other side of the wagons.

The First Folk wandered closer. Lord Faide called for a charge. The knights stepped smartly forward, swords swinging. The First Folk advanced a few more steps, then stopped short. The flaps of skin at their back swelled, pulsed; white foam gushed through their vents; clouds and billows rose up around them. The knights halted uncertainly, prodding and slashing into the foam but finding nothing. The foam piled higher, rolling in and forward, pushing the knights back toward the wagons. They looked questioningly toward Lord Faide.

Lord Faide waved his sword. “Cut through to the other side! Forward!” Slashing two-handed with his sword, he sprang into the foam. He struck something solid, hacked blindly at it, pushed forward. Then his legs were seized; he was upended and fell with a spine-rattling jar. Now he felt the grate of a thorn searching his armor. It found a crevice under his corselet and pierced him. Cursing, he raised on his hands and knees, and plunged blindly forward. Enormous hard hands grasped him, heavy forms fell on his shoulders. He tried to breathe, but the foam clogged his visor; he began to smother. Staggering to his feet he half ran, half fell out into the open air, carrying two of the First Folk with him. He had lost his sword, but managed to draw his dagger. The First Folk released him and stepped back into the foam. Lord Faide sprang to his feet. Inside the foam came the sounds of combat; some of his knights burst into the open; others called for help. Lord Faide motioned to the knights. “Back within; the devils slaughter our kinsmen! In and on to the center!”

He took a deep breath. Seizing his dagger, he thrust himself back into the foam. A flurry of shapes came at him; he pounded with his fists, cut with his dagger, stumbled over a mass of living tissue. He kicked the softness, and stepped on metal. Bending, he grasped a leg but found it limp and dead. First Folk were on his back, another thorn found its mark; he groaned and thrust himself forward, and once again fell out into the open air.

A scant fifty of his knights had won back into the central clearing. Lord Faide cried out, “To the center; mount your horses!” Abandoning his car, he himself vaulted into a saddle. The foam boiled and billowed closer. Lord Faide waved his arm. “Forward, all; at a gallop! After us the wagons—out into the open!”

They charged, thrusting the frightened horses into the foam. There was white blindness, the feel of forms underneath, then the open air once again. Behind came the wagons, and the foot soldiers, running along the channel cut by the wagons. All won free—all but the knights who had fallen under the foam.

Two hundred yards from the great white clot of foam, Lord Faide halted, turned, looked back. He raised his fist, shook it in a passion. “My knights, my car, my honor! I’ll burn your forests, I’ll drive you into the sea, there’ll be no peace till all are dead!” He swung around. “Come,” he called bitterly to the remnants of his war party. “We have been defeated. We retreat to Faide Keep.”

VIII

Faide Keep, like Ballant Keep, was constructed of a black, glossy substance, half metal, half stone, impervious to heat, force, and radiation. A parasol roof, designed to ward off hostile energy, rested on five squat outer towers, connected by walls almost as high as the lip of the overhanging roof.

The homecoming banquet was quiet and morose. The soldiers and knights ate lightly and drank much, but instead of becoming merry, lapsed into gloom. Lord Faide, overcome by emotion, jumped to his feet. “Everyone sits silent, aching with rage. I feel no differently. We shall take revenge. We shall put the forests to the torch. The cursed white savages will .smother and burn. Drink now with good cheer; not a moment will be wasted. But we must be ready. It is no more than idiocy to attack as before. Tonight I take council with the jinxmen, and we will start a program of affliction.”

The soldiers and knights rose to their feet, raised their cups and drank a somber toast. Lord Faide bowed and left the hall.

He went to his private trophy room. On the walls hung escutcheons, memorials, deathmasks, clusters of swords like many-petaled flowers; a rack of side arms, energy pistols, electric stilettos; a portrait of the original Faide, in ancient spacefarer’s uniform, and a treasured, almost unique, photograph of the great ship that had brought the first Faide to Pangborn.

Lord Faide studied the ancient face for several moments, then summoned a servant. “Ask the Head Jinxman to attend me.”

Hein Huss presently stumped into the room. Lord Faide turned away from the portrait, seated himself, motioned to Hein Huss to do likewise. “What of the keep-lords?” he asked. “How do they regard the setback at the hands of the First Folk?”

“There are various reactions,” said Hein Huss. “At Boghoten, Candelwade, and Havve there is distress and anger.”

Lord Faide nodded. “These are my kinsmen.”

“At Ginsbome, Graymar, Castle Cloud, and Alder there is satisfaction, veiled calculation.”

“To be expected,” muttered Lord Faide. “These lords must be humbled; irt spite of oaths and undertakings, they still think rebellion.”

“At Star Home, Julian-Douray, and Oak Hall I read surprise at the abilities of the First Folk, but in the main disinterest.”

Lord Faide nodded sourly. “Well enough. There is no actual rebellion in prospect; we are free to concentrate on the First Folk. I will tell you what is in my mind. You report that new plantings are in progress between Wildwood, Old Forest, Sarrow Copse, and elsewhere—possibly with the intent of surrounding Faide Keep.” He looked inquiringly at Hein Huss, but no comment was forthcoming. Lord Faide continued. “Possibly we have underestimated the cunning of the savages. They seem capable of forming plans and acting with almost human persistence. Or, I should say, more than human persistence, for it appears that after sixteen hundred years they still consider us invaders and hope to exterminate us.”

“That is my own conclusion,” said Hein Huss.

“We must take steps to strike first. I consider this a matter for the jinxmen. We gain no honor dodging wasps, falling into traps, or groping through foam. It is a needless waste of lives. Therefore, I want you to assemble your jinxmen, cabalmen, and spellbinders; I want you to formulate your most potent hoodoos–

“Impossible!”

Lord Faide’s black eyebrows rose high. “Impossible?” Hein Huss seemed vaguely uncomfortable.

“I read the wonder in your mind. You suspect me of disinterest, irresponsibility. Not true. If the First Folk defeat you, we suffer likewise.”

“Exactly,” said Lord Faide dryly. “You will starve.”

“Nevertheless, the jinxmen cannot help you.” He hoisted himself to his feet, started for the door.

“Sit,” said Lord Faide. “It is necessary to pursue this matter.” Hein Huss looked around with his bland, water-clear eyes. Lord Faide met his gaze. Hein Huss sighed deeply. “I see I must ignore the precepts of my trade, break the habits of a lifetime. I must explain.” He took his bulk to the wall, fingered the side arms in the rack, studied the portrait of the ancestral Faide. “These miracle-workers of the old times–unfortunately we cannot use their magic! Notice the bulk of the spaceship! As heavy as Faide Keep.” He turned his gaze on the table, teleported a candelabra two or three inches. “With considerably less effort they gave that spaceship enormous velocity, using ideas and forces they knew to be imaginary and irrational. We have advanced since then, of course. We no longer employ mysteries, arcane constructions, wild nonhuman forces. We are rational and practical—but we cannot achieve the effects of the ancient magicians.”

Lord Faide watched Hein Huss with saturnine eyes. Hein Huss gave his deep rumbling laugh. “You think that I wish to distract you with talk? No, this is not the case. I am preparing to enlighten you.” He returned to his seat, lowered his bulk with a groan. “Now I must talk at length, to which I am not accustomed. But you must be given to understand what we jinxmen can do and what we cannot do.

“First, unlike the ancient magicians, we are practical men. Naturally there is difference in our abilities. The best jinxman combines great telepathic facility, implacable personal force, and intimate knowledge of his fellow humans. He knows their acts, motives, desires, and fears; he understands the symbols that most vigorously represent these qualities. Jinxmanship in the main is drudgery—dangerous, difficult, and unromantic—with no mystery except that which we employ to confuse our enemies.” Hein Huss glanced at Lord Faide to encounter the same saturnine gaze.

“Ha! I still have told you nothing; I still have spent many words talking around my inability to confound the First Folk. Patience.”

“Speak on,” said Lord Faide.

“Listen then. What happens when I hoodoo a man? First I must enter into his mind telepathically. There are three operational levels: the conscious, the unconscious, the cellular. The most effective jinxing is done if all three levels are influenced. I feel into my victim, I learn as much as possible, supplementing my previous knowledge of him, which is part of my stock in trade. I take up his doll, which carries his traces. The doll is highly useful but not indispensable. It serves as a focus for my attention; it acts as a pattern, or a guide, as I fix upon the mind of the victim, and he is bound by his own telepathic capacity to the doll which bears his traces.

“So! Now! Man and doll are identified in my mind, and at one or more levels in the victim’s mind. Whatever happens to the doll the victim feels to be happening to himself. There is no more to simple hoodooing than that, from the standpoint of the jinxmen. But naturally the victims differ greatly. Susceptibility is the key idea here. Some men are more susceptible than others. Fear and conviction breed susceptibility. As a jinxman succeeds, he becomes ever more feared, and consequently the more efficacious he becomes. The process is self-generative.

“Demon-possession is a similar technique. Susceptibility is again essential; again conviction creates susceptibility. It is easiest and most dramatic when the characteristics of the demon are well known, as in the case of Comandore’s Keyril. For this reason, demons can be exchanged or traded among jinxmen. The commodity actually traded is public acceptance and familiarity with the demon.”

“Demons then do not actually exist?” inquired Lord Faide half-incredulously.

Hein Huss grinned vastly, showing enormous yellow teeth. “Telepathy works through a superstratum. Who knows what is created in this superstratum? Maybe the demons live on after they have been conceived; maybe they now are real. This of course is speculation, which we jinxmen shun.

“So much for demons, so much for the lesser techniques of jinxmanship. I have explained sufficient to serve as background to the present situation.”

“Excellent,” said Lord Faide. “Continue.”

“The question, then, is: How does one cast a hoodoo into a creature of an alien race?” He looked inquiringly at Lord Faide. “Can you tell me?”

“I?” asked Lord Faide, surprised. “No.”

“The method is basically the same as in the hoodooing of men. It is necessary to make the creature believe, in every cell of his being, that he suffers or dies. This is where the problems begin to arise. Does the creature think—that is to say, does he arrange the processes of his life in the same manner as men? This is a very important distinction. Certain creatures of the universe use methods other than the human nerve-node system to control their environments. We call the human system ‘intelligence’—a word which properly should be restricted to human activity. Other creatures use different agencies, different systems, arriving sometimes at similar ends. To bring home these generalities, I cannot hope to merge my mind with the corresponding capacity in the First Folk. The key will not fit the lock. At least, not altogether. Once or twice when I watched the First Folk trading with men at Forest Market, I felt occasional weak significances. This implies that the First Folk mentality creates something similar to human telepathic impulses. Nevertheless, there is no real sympathy between the two races.

“This is the first and the least difficulty. If I were able to make complete telephatic contact—what then? The creatures are different from us. They have no words for ‘fear,’ ‘hate,’ ‘rage,’ ‘pain,’ ‘bravery,’ ‘cowardice.’ One may deduce that they do not feel these emotions. Undoubtedly they know other sensations, possibly as meaningful. Whatever these may be, they are unknown to me, and therefore I cannot either form or project symbols for these sensations.”

Lord Faide stirred impatiently. “In short, you tell me that you cannot efficiently enter these creatures’ minds; and that if you could, you do not know what influences you could plant there to do them harm.”

“Succinct,” agreed Hein Huss. “Substantially accurate.”

Lord Faide rose to his feet. “In that case you must repair these deficiencies. You must learn to telepathize with the First Folk; you must find what influences will harm them. As quickly as possible.”

Hein Huss stared reproachfully at Lord Faide. “But I have gone to great lengths to explain the difficulties involved! To hoodoo the First Folk is a monumental task! It would be necessary to enter Wildwood, to live with the First Folk, to become one of them, as my apprentice thought to become a tree. Even then an effective hoodoo is improbable! The First Folk must be susceptible to conviction! Otherwise there would be no bite to the hoodoo! I could guarantee no success. I would predict failure. No other jinxman would dare tell you this, no other would risk his mana. I dare because I am Hein Huss, with life behind me.”

“Nevertheless we must attempt every weapon at hand,” said Lord Faide in a dry voice. “I cannot risk my knights, my kinsmen, my soldiers against these pallid half-creatures. What a waste of good flesh and blood to be stuck by a poison insect! You must go to Wildwood; you must learn how to hoodoo the First Folk.”

Hein Huss heaved himself erect. His great round face was stony; his eyes were like bits of water-worn glass. “It is likewise a waste to go on a fool’s errand. I am no fool and I will not undertake a hoodoo which is futile from the beginning.”

“In that case,” said Lord Faide, “I will find someone else.” He went to the door, summoned a servant. “Bring Isak Comandore here.”

Hein Huss lowered his bulk into the chair. “I will remain during the interview, with your permission.”

“As you wish.”

Isak Comandore appeared in the doorway, tall, loosely articulated, head hanging forward. He darted a glance of swift appraisal at Lord Faide, at Hein Huss, then stepped into the room.

Lord Faide crisply explained his desires. “Hein Huss refuses to undertake the mission. Therefore I call you.”

Isak Comandore calculated. The pattern of his thinking was clear: he possibly could gain much mana, there was small risk of diminution, for had not Hein Huss already dodged away from the project? Comandore nodded. “Hein Huss has made clear the difficulties; only a very clever and very lucky jinxman can hope to succeed. But I accept the challenge. I will go.”

“Good,” said Hein Huss, “I will go, too.” Isak Comandore darted him a sudden hot glance. “I wish only to observe. To Isak Comandore goes the responsibility and whatever credit may ensue.”

“Very well,” said Comandore presently. “I welcome your company. Tomorrow morning we leave. I go to order our wagon.”

Late in the evening Apprentice Sam Salazar came to Hein Huss, where he sat brooding in his workroom. “What do you wish?” growled Huss.

“I have a request to make of you, Head Jinxman Huss.”

“Head Jinxman in name only,” grumbled Hein Huss. “Isak Comandore is about to assume my position.”

Sam Salazar blinked, laughed uncertainly. Hein Huss fixed wintry-pale eyes on him. “What do you wish?”

“I have heard that you go on an expedition to Wildwood, to study the First Folk.”

“True, true. What then?”

“Surely they will now attack all men?”

Hein Huss shrugged. “At Forest Market they trade with men. At Forest Market men have always entered the forest. Perhaps there will be change, perhaps not.”

“I would go with you, if I may,” said Sam Salazar.

“This is no mission for apprentices.”

“An apprentice must take every opportunity to learn,” said Sam Salazar. “Also, you will need extra hands to set up tents, to load and unload cabinets, to cook, to fetch water, and other such matters.”

“Your argument is convincing,” said Hein Huss. “We depart at dawn; be on hand.”

IX

As the sun lifted over the heath, the jinxmen departed Faide Keep. The high-wheeled wagon creaked north over the moss. Hein Huss and Isak Comandore riding the front seat, Sam Salazar with his legs hanging over the tail. The wagon rose and fell with the dips and mounds of the moss, wheels wobbling, and presently passed out of sight behind Sky watcher’s Hill.

Five days later, an hour before sunset, the wagon reappeared. As before, Hein Huss and Isak Comandore rode the front seat, with Sam Salazar perched behind. They approached the keep, and without giving so much as a sign or a nod, drove through the gate into the courtyard.

Isak Comandore unfolded his long legs, stepped to the ground like a spider; Hein Huss lowered himself with a grunt. Both went to their quarters, while Sam Salazar led the wagon to the jinxmen’s warehouse.

Somewhat later Isak Comandore presented himself to Lord Faide, who had been waiting in his trophy room, forced to a show of indifference through considerations of position, dignity, and protocol. Isak Comandore stood in the doorway, grinning like a fox. Lord Faide eyed him with sour dislike, waiting for Comandore to speak. Hein Huss might have stationed himself an entire day, eyes placidly fixed on Lord Faide, awaiting the first word; Isak Comandore lacked the absolute serenity. He came a step forward. “I have returned from Wildwood.”

“With what results?”

“I believe that it is possible to hoodoo the First Folk.”

Hein Huss spoke from behind Comandore. “I believe that such an undertaking, if feasible, would be useless, irresponsible, and possibly dangerous.” He lumbered forward.

Isak Comandore’s eyes glowed hot red-brown; he turned back to Lord Faide. “You ordered me forth on a mission; I will render a report.”

“Seat yourselves. I will listen.”

Isak Comandore, nominal head of the expedition, spoke. “We rode along the river bank to Forest Market. Here was no sign of disorder or of hostility. A hundred First Folk traded timber, planks, posts, and poles for knife blades, iron wire, and copper pots. When they returned to their barge, we followed them aboard, wagon, horses, and all. They showed no surprise—”

“Surprise,” said Hein Huss heavily, “is an emotion of which they have no knowledge.”

Isak Comandore glared briefly. “We spoke to the barge-tenders, explaining that we wished to visit the interior of Wildwood. We asked if the First Folk would try to kill us to prevent us from entering the forest. They professed indifference as to either our well-being or our destruction. This was by no means a guarantee of safe conduct; however, we accepted it as such, and remained aboard the barge.” He spoke on with occasional emendations from Hein Huss.

They had proceeded up the river, into the forest, the First Folk poling against the slow current. Presently they put away the poles; nevertheless the barge moved as before. The mystified jinxmen discussed the possibility of teleportation, or symbological force, and wondered if the First Folk had developed jinxing techniques unknown to men. Sam Salazar, however, noticed that four enormous water beetles, each twelve feet long with oil-black carapaces and blunt heads, had risen from the river bed and pushed the barge from behind—apparently without direction or command. The First Folk stood at the bow, turning the nose of the barge this way or that to follow the winding of the river. They ignored the jinxmen and Sam Salazar as if they did not exist.

The beetles swam tirelessly; the barge moved for four hours as fast as a man could walk. Occasionally, First Folk peered from the forest shadows, but none showed interest or concern in the barge’s unusual cargo. By midafternoon the river widened, broke into many channels and became a marsh; a few minutes later the barge floated out into the open water of a small lake. Along the shore, behind the first line of trees, appeared a large settlement. The jinxmen were interested and surprised. It had always been assumed that the First Folk wandered at random through the forest, as they had originally lived in the moss of the downs.

The barge grounded; the First Folk walked ashore, the Men followed with the horses and wagon. Their immediate impressions were of swarming numbers, of slow but incessant activity, and they were attacked by an overpoweringly evil smell.

Ignoring the stench, the men brought the wagon in from the shore, paused to take stock of what they saw. The settlement appeared to be a center of many diverse activities. The trees had been stripped of lower branches, and supported blocks of hardened foam three hundred feet long, fifty feet high, twenty feet thick, with a space of a man’s height intervening between the underside of the foam and the ground. There were a dozen of these blocks, apparently of cellular construction. Certain of the cells had broken open and seethed with small white fishlike creatures—the First Folk young.

Below the blocks masses of First Folk engaged in various occupations, in the main unfamiliar to the jinxmen. Leaving the wagon in the care of Sam Salazar, Hein Huss and Isak Comandore moved forward among the First Folk, repelled by the stench and the pressure of alien flesh, but drawn by curiosity. They were neither heeded nor halted; they wandered everywhere about the settlement. One area seemed to be an enormous zoo, divided into a number of sections. The purpose of one of these sections—a kind of range two hundred feet long—was all too clear. At one end a human corpse hung on a rope—a Faide casualty from the battle at the new planting. Certain of the wasps flew straight at the corpse; just before contact they were netted and removed. Others flew up and away or veered toward the First Folk who stood along the side of the range. These latter also were netted and killed at once.

The purpose of the business was clear enough. Examining some of the other activity in this new light, the jinxmen were able to interpret much that had hitherto puzzled them.

They saw beetles tall as dogs with heavy saw-toothed pincers attacking objects resembling horses; pens of insects even larger, long, narrow, segmented, with dozens of heavy legs and nightmare heads. All these creatures—wasps, beetles, centipedes—in smaller and less formidable form were indigenous to the forest; it was plain that the First Folk had been practicing selective breeding for many years, perhaps centuries.

Not all the activity was warlike. Moths were trained to gather nuts, worms to gnaw straight holes through timber; in another section caterpillars chewed a yellow mash, molded it into identical spheres. Much of the evil odor emanated from the zoo; the jinxmen departed without reluctance, and returned to the wagon. Sam Salazar pitched the tent and built a fire, while Hein Huss and Isak Comandore discussed the settlement.

Night came; the blocks of foam glowed with imprisoned light; the activity underneath proceeded without cessation. The jinxmen retired to the tent and slept, while Sam Salazar stood guard.

The following day Hein Huss was able to engage one of the First Folk in conversation; it was the first attention of any sort given to them.

The conversation was long; Hein Huss reported only the gist of it to Lord Faide. (Isak Comandore turned away, ostentatiously disassociating himself from the matter.)

Hein Huss first of all had inquired as to the purpose of the sinister preparations: the wasps, beetles, centipedes, and the like.

“We intend to kill men,” the creature had reported ingenuously. “We intend to return to the moss. This has been our purpose ever since men appeared on the planet.”

Huss had stated that such an ambition was shortsighted, that there was ample room for both men and First Folk on Pangborn. “The First Folk,” said Hein Huss, “should remove their traps and cease their efforts to surround the keeps with forest.”

“No,” came the response. “Men are intruders. They mar the beautiful moss. All will be killed.”

Isak Comandore returned to the conversation. “I noticed here a significant fact. All the First Folk within sight had ceased their work; all looked toward us, as if they, too, participated in the discussion. I reached the highly important conclusion that the First Folk are not complete individuals but components of a larger unity, joined to a greater or less extent by a telepathic phase not unlike our own.”

Hein Huss continued placidly, “I remarked that if we were attacked, many of the First Folk would perish. The creature showed no concern, and in fact implied much of what Jinxman Comandore had already induced: ‘There are always more in the cells to replace the elements which die. But if the community becomes sick, all suffer. We have been forced into the forests, into a strange existence. We must arm ourselves and drive away the men, and to this end we have developed the methods of men to our own purposes!’”

Isak Comandore spoke. “Needless to say, the creature referred to the ancient men, not ourselves.”

“In any event,” said Lord Faide, “they leave no doubt as to their intentions. We should be fools not to attack them at once, with every weapon at our disposal.”

Hein Huss continued imperturbably. “The creature went on at some length. ‘We have learned the value of irrationality.’ ‘Irrationality’ of course was not his word or even his meaning. He said something like ‘a series of vaguely motivated trials’—as close as I can translate. He said, ‘We have learned to change our environment. We use insects and trees and plants and waterslugs. It is an enormous effort for us who would prefer a placid life in the moss. But you men have forced this life on us, and now you must suffer the consequences.’ I pointed out once more that men were not helpless, that many First Folk would die. The creature seemed unworried. ‘The community persists.’ I asked a delicate question, ‘If your purpose is to kill men, why do you allow us here?’ He said, ‘The entire community of men will be destroyed.’ Apparently they believe the human society to be similar to their own, and therefore regard the killing of three wayfaring individuals as pointless effort.”

Lord Faide laughed grimly. “To destroy us, they must first win past Hellmouth, then penetrate Faide Keep. This they are unable to do.”

Isak Comandore resumed his report. “At this time I was already convinced that the problem was one of hoodooing not an individual but an entire race. In theory this should be no more difficult than hoodooing one. It requires no more effort to speak to twenty than to one. With this end in view, I ordered the apprentice to collect substances associated with the creatures. Skinflakes, foam, droppings, all other exudations obtainable. While he did so, I tried to put myself in rapport with the creatures. It is difficult, for their telepathy works across a different stratum from ours. Nevertheless, to a certain extent I have succeeded.”

“Then you can hoodoo the First Folk?” asked Lord Faide.

“I vouchsafe nothing until I try. Certain preparations must be made.”

“Go then; make your preparations.”

Comandore rose to his feet and with a sly side glance for Hein Huss left the room. Huss waited, pinching his chin with heavy fingers. Lord Faide looked at him coldly. “You have something to add?”

Huss grunted, hoisted himself to his feet. “I wish that I did. But my thoughts are confused. Of the many futures, all seem troubled and angry. Perhaps our best is not good enough.”

Lord Faide looked at Hein Huss with surprise; the massive Head Jinxman had never before spoken in terms so pessimistic and melancholy. “Speak then; I will listen.”

Hein Huss said gruffly, “If I knew any certainties, I would speak gladly. But I am merely beset by doubts. I fear that we can no longer depend on logic and careful jinxmanship. Our ancestors were miracle workers, magicians. They drove the First Folk into the forest. To put us to flight in our turn, the First Folk have adopted the ancient methods: random trial and purposeless empiricism. I am dubious. Perhaps we must turn our backs on sanity and likewise return to the mysticism of our ancestors.”

Lord Faide shrugged. “If Isak Comandore can hoodoo the First Folk, such a retreat may be unnecessary.”

“The world changes,” said Hein Huss. “Of so much I feel sure: The old days of craft and careful knowledge are gone. The future is for men of cleverness, and imagination untroubled by discipline; the unorthodox Sam Salazar may become more effective than I. The world changes.”

Lord Faide smiled his sour, dyspeptic smile. “When that day comes, I will appoint Sam Salazar Head Jinxman and also name him Lord Faide, and you and I will retire together to a hut on the downs.”

Hein Huss made a heavy, fateful gesture and departed.

X

Two days later Lord Faide, coming upon Isak Comandore, inquired as to his progress. Comandore took refuge in generalities. After another two days, Lord Faide inquired again and this time insisted on particulars. Comandore grudgingly led the way to his workroom, where a dozen cabalmen, spellbinders, and apprentices worked around a large table, building a model of the First Folk settlement in Wildwood.

“Along the lakeshore,” said Comandore, “I will range a great number of dolls, daubed with First Folk essences. When this is complete I will work up a hoodoo and blight the creatures.”

“Good. Perform well.” Lord Faide departed the workroom, mounted to the topmost pinnacle of the keep, to the cupola where the ancestral weapon Hellmouth was housed. “Jambart! Where are you?”

Weapon-tender Jambart, short, blue-jowled, red-nosed and big-bellied, appeared. “My lord?”

“I come to inspect Hellmouth. It is prepared for instant use?”

“Prepared, my lord, and ready. Oiled, greased, polished, scraped, burnished, tended—every part smooth as an egg.”

Lord Faide made a scowling examination of Hellmouth—a heavy cylinder six feet in diameter, twelve feet long, studded with half-domes interconnected with tubes of polished copper. Jambart undoubtedly had been diligent. No trace of dirt or rust or corrosion showed; all was gleaming metal. The snout was covered with a heavy plate of metal and tarred canvas; the ring upon which the weapon swiveled was well greased.

Lord Faide surveyed the four horizons. To the south was fertile Faide Valley; to the west, open downs; to north and east, the menacing loom of Wildwood.

He turned back to Hellmouth and pretended to find a smear of grease. Jambart boiled with expostulations and protestations; Lord Faide uttered a grim warning, enjoining less laxity, then descended to the workroom of Hein Huss. He found the Head Jinxman reclining on a couch, staring at the ceiling. At a bench stood Sam Salazar surrounded by bottles, flasks, and dishes.

Lord Faide stared balefully at the confusion. “What are you doing?” he asked the apprentice.

Sam Salazar looked up guiltily. “Nothing in particular, my lord.”

“If you are idle, go then and assist Isak Comandore.”

“I am not idle, Lord Faide.”

“Then what do you do?”

Sam Salazar gazed sulkily at the bench. “I don’t know.”

“Then you are idle!”

“No, I am occupied. I pour various liquids on this foam. It is First Folk foam. I wonder what will happen. Water does not dissolve it, nor spirits. Heat chars and slowly burns it, emitting a foul smoke.”

Lord Faide turned away with a sneer. “You amuse yourself as a child might. Go to Isak Comandore; he can find use for you. How do you expect to become a jinxman, dabbling and prattling like a baby among pretty rocks?”

Hein Huss gave a deep sound; a mingling of sigh, snort, grunt, and clearing of the throat. “He does no harm, and Isak Comandore has hands enough. Salazar will never become a jinxman; that has been clear a long time.”

Lord Faide shrugged. “He is your apprentice, and your responsibility. Well, then. What news from the keeps?”

Hein Huss, groaning and wheezing, swung his legs over the edge of the couch. “The lords share your concern, to greater or lesser extent. Your close allies will readily place troops at your disposal; the others likewise if pressure is brought to bear.”

Lord Faide nodded in dour satisfaction. “For the moment there is no urgency. The First Folk hold to their forests. Faide Keep of course is impregnable, although they might ravage the valley…” he paused thoughtfully. “Let Isak Comandore cast his hoodoo. Then we will see.”

From the direction of the bench came a hiss, a small explosion, a whiff of acrid gas. Sam Salazar turned guiltily to look at them, his eyebrows singed. Lord Faide gave a snort of disgust and strode from the room.

“What did you do?” Hein Huss inquired in a colorless voice.

“I don’t know.”

Now Hein Huss likewise snorted in disgust. “Ridiculous. If you wish to work miracles, you must remember your procedures. Miracle working is not jinxmanship, with established rules and guides. In matters so complex, it is well that you take notes, so that the miracles may be repeated.”

Sam Salazar nodded in agreement and turned back to the bench.

XI

Late during the day, news of new First Folk truculence reached Faide Keep. On Honeymoss Hill, not far west of Forest Market, a camp of shepherds had been visited by a wandering group of First Folk, who began to kill the sheep with thorn-swords. When the shepherds protested, they, too, were attacked, and many were killed. The remainder of the sheep were massacred.

The following day came other news: four children swimming in Brastock River at Gilbert Ferry had been seized by enormous water-beetles and cut into pieces. On the other side of Wildwood, in the foothills immediately below Castle Cloud, peasants had cleared several hillsides and planted them to vines. Early in the morning they had discovered a horde of black disklike flukes devouring the vines—leaves, branches, trunks, and roots. They set about killing the flukes with spades and at once were stung to death by wasps.

Adam Me Adam reported the incidents to Lord Faide, who went to Isak Comandore in a fury. “How soon before you are prepared?”

“I am prepared now. But I must rest and fortify myself. Tomorrow morning I work the hoodoo.”

“The sooner the better! The creatures have left their forest; they are out killing men!”

Isak Comandore pulled his long chin. “That was to be expected; they told us as much.”

Lord Faide ignored the remark. “Show me your tableau.”

Isak Comandore took him into his workroom. The model was now complete, with the masses of simulated First Folk properly daubed and sensitized, each tied with a small wad of foam. Isak Comandore pointed to a pot of dark liquid. “I will explain the basis of the hoodoo. When I visited the camp, I watched everywhere for powerful symbols. Undoubtedly there were many at hand, but I could not discern them. However, I remembered a circumstance from the battle at the planting; when the creatures were attacked, threatened with fire and about to die, they spewed foam of dull purple color. Evidently this purple foam is associated with death. My hoodoo will be based upon this symbol.”

“Rest well, then, so that you may hoodoo to your best capacity.”

The following morning Isak Comandore dressed in long robes of black and set a mask of the demon Nard on his head to fortify himself. He entered his workroom, closed the door.

An hour passed, two hours. Lord Faide sat at breakfast with his kin, stubbornly maintaining a pose of cynical unconcern. At last he could contain himself no longer and went out into the courtyard, where Comandore’s underlings stood fidgeting and uneasy. “Where is Hein Huss?” demanded Lord Faide. “Summon him here.”

Hein Huss came stumping out of his quarters. Lord Faide motioned to Comandore’s workshop. “What is happening? Is he succeeding?”

Hein Huss looked toward the workshop. “He is casting a powerful hoodoo. I feel confusion, anger–”

“In Comandore, or in the First Folk?”

“I am not in rapport. I think he has conveyed a message to their minds. A very difficult task, as I explained to you. In this preliminary aspect he has succeeded.”

“‘Preliminary?’ What else remains?”

“The two most important elements of the hoodoo: the susceptibility of the victim and the appropriateness of the symbol.”

Lord Faide frowned. “You do not seem optimistic.”

“I am uncertain. Isak Comandore may be right in his assumption. If so, and if the First Folk are highly susceptible, today marks a great victory, and Comandore will achieve tremendous mana!”

Lord Faide stared at the door to the workshop. “What now?”

Hein Huss’s eyes went blank with concentration. “Isak Comandore is near death. He can hoodoo no more today.”

Lord Faide turned, waved his arm to the cabalmen. “Enter the workroom! Assist your master!”

The cabalmen raced to the door, flung it open. Presently they emerged supporting the limp form of Isak Comandore, his black robe spattered with purple foam. Lord Faide pressed close. “What did you achieve? Speak!”

Isak Comandore’s eyes were half closed, his mouth hung loose and wet. “I spoke to the First Folk, to the whole race. I sent the symbol into their minds–” His head fell limply side wise.

Lord Faide moved back. “Take him to his quarters. Put him on his couch.” He turned away, stood indecisively, chewing at his drooping lower lip. “Still we do not know the measure of his success.”

“Ah,” said Hein Huss, “but we do!”

Lord Faide jerked around. “What is this? What do you say?”

“I saw into Comandore’s mind. He used the symbol of the purple foam; with tremendous effort he drove it into their minds. Then he learned that purple foam means not death—purple foam means fear for the safety of the community, purple foam means desperate rage.”

“In any event,” said Lord Faide after a moment, “there is no harm done. The First Folk can hardly become more hostile.”

Three hours later a scout rode furiously into the courtyard, threw himself off his horse, ran to Lord Faide. “The First Folk have left the forest! A tremendous number! Thousands! They are advancing on Faide Keep!”

“Let them advance!” said Lord Faide. “The more the better! Jambart, where are you?”

“Here, sir.”

“Prepare Hellmouth! Hold all in readiness!”

“Hellmouth is always ready, sir!”

Lord Faide struck him across the shoulders. “Off with you! Bernard!”

The sergeant of the Faide troops came forward. “Ready, Lord Faide.”

“The First Folk attack. Armor your men against wasps, feed them well. We will need all our strength.”

Lord Faide turned to Hein Huss. “Send to the keeps, to the manor houses, order our kinsmen to join us, with all their troops and all their armor. Send to Bellgard Hall, to Boghoten, Camber, and Candelwade. Haste, haste, it is only hours from Wildwood.”

Huss held up his hand. “I have already done so. The keeps are warned. They know your need.”

“And the First Folk—can you feel their minds?”

“No.”

Lord Faide walked away. Hein Huss lumbered out the main gate, walked around the keep, casting appraising glances up the black walls of the squat towers, windowless and proof even against the ancient miracle-weapons. High on top of the great parasol roof, Jambart the weapon-tender worked in the cupola, polishing that which already glistened, greasing surfaces already heavy with grease.

Hein Huss returned within. Lord Faide approached him, mouth hard, eyes bright. “What have you seen?”

“Only the keep, the walls, the towers, the roof, and Hellmouth.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think many things.”

“You are noncommital; you know more than you say. It is best that you speak, because if Faide Keep falls to the savages, you die with the rest of us.”

Hein Huss’s water-clear eyes met the brilliant black gaze of Lord Faide. “I know only what you know. The First Folk attack. They have proved they are not stupid. They intend to kill us. They are not jinxmen; they cannot afflict us or force us out. They cannot break in the walls. To burrow under, they must dig through solid rock. What are their plans? I do not know. Will they succeed? Again, I do not know. But the day of the jinxman and his orderly array of knowledge is past. I think that we must grope for miracles, blindly and foolishly, like Salazar pouring liquids on foam.”

A troop of armored horsemen rode in through the gates: warriors from nearby Bellgard Hall. And as the hours passed, contingents from other keeps came to Faide Keep, until the courtyard was dense with troops and horses.

Two hours before sunset the First Folk were sighted across the downs. They seemed a very large company, moving in an undisciplined clot with a number of stragglers, forerunners and wanderers out on the flanks.

The hotbloods from outside keeps came clamoring to Lord Faide, urging a charge to cut down the First Folk; they found no seconding voices among the veterans of the battle at the planting. Lord Faide, however, was pleased to see the dense mass of First Folk. “Let them approach only a mile more—and Hellmouth will take them! Jambart!”

“At your call, Lord Faide.”

“Come, Hellmouth speaks!” He strode away with Jambart after. Up to the cupola they climbed.

“Roll forth Hellmouth, direct it against the savages!”

Jambart leaped to the glistening array of wheels and levers. He hesitated in perplexity, then tentatively twisted a wheel. Hellmouth responded by twisting slowly around on its radial track, to the groan and chatter of long-frozen bearings. Lord Faide’s brows lowered into a menacing line. “I hear evidence of neglect.”

“Neglect, my lord, never! Find one spot of rust, a shadow of grime, you may have me whipped!”

“What is that sound?”

“That is internal and invisible—none of my responsibility.”

Lord Faide said nothing. Hellmouth now pointed toward the great pale tide from Wild wood. Jambart twisted a second wheel and Hellmouth thrust forth its heavy snout. Lord Faide, in a voice harsh with anger, cried, “The cover, fool!”

“An oversight, my lord, easily repaired.” Jambart crawled out along the top of Hellmouth, clinging to the protuberances for dear life, with below only the long, smooth sweep of roof. With considerable difficulty he tore the covering loose, then, grunting and cursing, inched himself back, jerking with his knees, rearing his buttocks.

The First Folk had slowed their pace a trifle, the main body only a half-mile distant.

“Now,” said Lord Faide in high excitement, “before they disperse, we exterminate them!” He sighted through a telescopic tube, squinting through the dimness of internal films and incrustations, signaled to Jambart for the final adjustments. “Now! Fire!”

Jambart pulled the firing lever. Within the great metal barrel came a sputter of clicking sounds. Hellmouth whined, roared. Its snout glowed red, orange, white, and out poured a sudden gout of blazing purple radiation—which almost instantly died. Hellmouth’s barrel quivered with heat, fumed, seethed, hissed. From within came a faint pop. Then there was silence.

A hundred yards in front of the First Folk a patch of moss burnt black where the bolt had struck. The aiming device was inaccurate. Hellmouth’s bolt had killed perhaps twenty of the First Folk vanguard.

Lord Faide made feverish signals. “Quick! Raise the barrel. Now! Fire again!”

Jambart pulled the firing arm, to no avail. He tried again, with the same lack of success. “Hellmouth evidently is tired.”

“Hellmouth is dead,” cried Lord Faide. “You have failed me. Hellmouth is extinct.”

“No, no,” protested Jambart. “Hellmouth rests! I nurse it as my own child! It is polished like glass! Whenever a section wears off or breaks loose, I neatly remove the fracture, and every trace of cracked glass.”

Lord Faide threw up his arms, shouted in vast, inarticulate grief, ran below. “Huss! Hein Huss!”

Hein Huss presented himself. “What is your will?”

“Hellmouth has given up its fire. Conjure up more fire for Hellmouth, and quickly!”

“Impossible.”

“Impossible!” cried Lord Faide. “That is all I hear from you! Impossible, useless, impractical! You have lost your ability. I will consult Isak Comandore.”

“Isak Comandore can put no more fire into Hellmouth than can I.”

“What sophistry is this? He puts demons into men, surely he can put fire into Hellmouth!”

“Come, Lord Faide, you are overwrought. You know the difference between jinxmanship and miracle-working.”

Lord Faide motioned to a servant. “Bring Isak Comandore here to me!”

Isak Comandore, face haggard, skin waxy, limped into the courtyard. Lord Faide waved preemptorily. “I need your skill. You must restore fire to Hellmouth.”

Comandore darted a quick glance at Hein Huss, who stood solid and cold. Comandore decided against dramatic promises that could not be fulfilled. “I cannot do this, my lord.”

“What! You tell me this, too?”

“Remark the difference, Lord Faide, between man and metal. A man’s normal state is something near madness; he is at all times balanced on a knife-edge between hysteria and apathy. His senses tell him far less of the world than he thinks they do. It is a simple trick to deceive a man, to possess him with a demon, to drive him out of his mind, to kill him. But metal is insensible; metal reacts only as its shape and condition dictates, or by the working of miracles.”

“Then you must work miracles!”

“Impossible.”

Lord Faide drew a deep breath, collected himself. He walked swiftly across the court. “My armor, my horse. We attack.”

The column formed, Lord Faide at the head. He led the knights through the portals, with armored footmen behind.

“Beware the foam!” Called Lord Faide. “Attack, strike, cut, draw back. Keep your visors drawn against the wasps! Each man must kill a hundred! Attack!”

The troop rode forth against the horde of First Folk, knights in the lead. The hooves of the horses pounded softly over the thick moss; in the west the large pale sun hung close to the horizon.

Two hundred yards from the First Folk the knights touched the club-headed horses into a lope. They raised their swords, and shouting, plunged forward, each man seeking to be first. The clotted mass of First Folk separated; black beetles darted forth and after them long, segmented centipede creatures. They dashed among the horses, mandibles clicking, snouts slashing. Horses screamed, reared, fell over backwards; beetles cut open armored knights as a dog cracks a bone. Lord Faide’s horse threw him and ran away; he picked himself up, hacked at a nearby beetle, lopped off its front leg. It darted forward, he lopped off the leg opposite; the heavy head dipped, tore up the moss. Lord Faide cut off the remaining legs, and it lay helpless.

“Retreat,” he bellowed. “Retreat!”

The knights moved back, slashing and hacking at beetles and centipedes, killing or disabling all which attacked.

“Form into a double line, knights and men. Advance slowly, supporting each other!”

The men advanced. The First Folk dispersed to meet them, armed with their thorn-swords and carrying pouches. Ten yards from the men, they reached into the pouches, brought forth dark balls which they threw at the men. The balls broke and spattered on the armor.

“Charge!” bawled Lord Faide. The men sprang forward into the mass of First Folk, cutting, slashing, killing. “Kill!” called Lord Faide in exultation. “Leave not one alive!”

A pang struck him, a sting inside his armor, followed by another and another. Small things crawled inside the metal, stinging, biting, crawling. He looked about: On all sides were harassed expressions, faces working in anguish. Sword arms fell limp as hands beat on the metal, futilely trying to scratch, rub. Two men suddenly began to tear off their armor.

“Retreat,” cried Lord Faide. “Back to the keep!”

The retreat was a rout, the soldiers shedding articles of armor as they ran. After them came a flight of wasps—a dozen or more, and half as many men cried out as the poison prongs struck into their backs.

Inside the keep stormed the disorganized company, casting aside the last of their armor, slapping their skin, scratching, rubbing, crushing the ferocious red mites that infested them.

“Close the gates,” roared Lord Faide.

The gates slid shut. Faide Keep was besieged.

XII

During the night the First Folk surrounded the keep, forming a ring fifty yards from the walls. All night there was motion, ghostly shapes coming and going in the starlight.

Lord Faide watched from a parapet until midnight, with Hein Huss at his side. Repeatedly, he asked, “What of the other keeps? Do they send further reinforcements?” to which Hein Huss each time gave the same reply: “There is confusion and doubt. The keep-lords are anxious to help but do not care to throw themselves away. At this moment they consider and take stock of the situation.”

Lord Faide at last left the parapet, signaling Hein Huss to follow. He went to his trophy room, threw himself into a chair, motioned Hein Huss to be seated. For a moment he fixed the jinxman with a cool, calculating stare. Hein Huss bore the appraisal without discomfort.

“You are Head Jinxman,” said Lord Faide finally. “For twenty years you have worked spells, cast hoodoos, performed auguries—more effectively than any other jinxman of Pangborn. But now I find you inept and listless. Why is this?”

“I am neither inept or listless. I am unable to achieve beyond my abilities. I do not know how to work miracles. For this you must consult my apprentice Sam Salazar, who does not know either, but who earnestly tries every possibility and many impossibilities.”

“You believe in this nonsense yourself! Before my very eyes you become a mystic!”

Hein Huss shrugged. “There are limitations to my knowledge. Miracles occur—that we know. The relics of our ancestors lie everywhere. Their methods were supernatural, repellent to our own mental processes—but think! Using these same methods, the First Folk threaten to destroy us. In the place of metal they use living flesh—but the result is similar. The men of Pangborn, if they assemble and accept casualties, can drive the First Folk back to Wildwood—but for how long? A year? Ten years? The First Folk plant new trees, dig more traps—and presently come forth again, with more terrible weapons: flying beetles, large as a horse, wasps strong enough to pierce armor, lizards to scale the walls of Faide Keep.”

Lord Faide pulled at his chin. “And the jinxmen are helpless?”

“You saw for yourself. Isak Comandore intruded enough into their consciousness to anger them, no more.”

“So then—what must we do?”

Hein Huss held out his hands. “I do not know. I am Hein Huss, jinxman. I watch Sam Salazar with fascination. He learns nothing, but he is either too stupid or too intelligent to be discouraged. If this is the way to work miracles, he will work them.”

Lord Faide rose to his feet. “I am deathly tired. I cannot think, I must sleep. Tomorrow we will know more.”

Hein Huss left the trophy room, returned to the parapet. The ring of First Folk seemed closer to the walls, almost within dart-range. Behind them and across the moors stretched a long pale column of marching First Folk. A little back from the keep a pile of white material began to grow, larger and larger as the night proceeded.

Hours passed, the sky lightened; the sun rose in the east. The First Folk tramped the downs like ants, bringing long bars of hardened foam down from the north, dropping them into piles around the keep, returning into the north once more.

Lord Faide came up on the parapet, haggard and unshaven. “What is this? What do they do?”

Bernard the sergeant responded. “They puzzle us all, my lord.”

“Hein Huss! What of the other keeps?”

“They have armed and mounted; they approach cautiously.”

“Can you communicate our urgency?”

“I can, and I have done so. I have only accentuated their caution.”

“Bah!” cried Lord Faide in disgust. “Warriors they call themselves! Loyal and faithful allies!”

“They know of your bitter experience,” said Hein Huss. “They ask themselves, reasonably enough, what they can accomplish which you who are already here cannot do first.”

Lord Faide laughed sourly. “I have no answer for them. In the meantime we must protect ourselves against the wasps. Armor is useless; they drive us mad with mites…Bernard!”

“Yes, Lord Faide.”

“Have each of your men construct a frame two-feet square, fixed with a short handle. To these frames should be sewed a net of heavy mesh. When these frames are built, we will sally forth, two soldiers to guard one half-armored knight on foot.”

“In the meantime,” said Hein Huss, “the First Folk proceed with their plans.”

Lord Faide turned to watch. The First Folk came close up under the walls carrying rods of hardened foam. “Bernard! Put your archers to work! Aim for the heads!”

Along the walls bowmen cocked their weapons. Darts spun down into the First Folk. A few were affected, turned and staggered away; others plucked away the bolts without concern. Another flight of bolts, a few more First Folk were disabled. The others planted the rods in the moss, exuded foam in great gushes, their back-flaps vigorously pumping air. Other First Folk brought more rods, pushed them into the foam. Entirely around the keep, close under the walls, extended the mound of foam. The ring of First Folk now came close and all gushed foam; it bulked up swiftly. More rods were brought, thrust into the foam, reinforcing and stiffening the mass.

“More darts!” barked Lord Faide. “Aim for the heads! Bernard—your men, have they prepared the wasp nets?”

“Not yet, Lord Faide. The project requires some little time.”

Lord Faide became silent. The foam, now ten feet high, rapidly piled higher. Lord Faide turned to Hein Huss. “What do they hoped to achieve?”

Hein Huss shook his head. “For the moment I am uncertain.”

The first layer of foam had hardened; on top of this the First Folk spewed another layer, reinforcing again with the rods, crisscrossing, horizontal and vertical. Fifteen minutes later, when the second layer was hard, the First Folk emplaced and mounted rude ladders to raise a third layer. Surrounding the keep now was a ring of foam thirty feet high and forty feet thick at the base.

“Look,” said Hein Huss. He pointed up. The parasol roof overhanging the walls ended only thirty feet above the foam. “A few more layers and they will reach the roof.”

“So then?” asked Lord Faide. “The roof is as strong as the walls.”

“And we will be sealed within.”

Lord Faide studied the foam in the light of this new thought. Already the First Folk, climbing laboriously up ladders along the outside face of their wall of foam, were preparing to lay on a fourth layer. First—rods, stiff and dry, then great gushes of white. Only twenty feet remained between roof and foam.

Lord Faide turned to the sergeant. “Prepare the men to sally forth.”

“What of the wasp nets, sir?”

“Are they almost finished?”

“Another ten minutes, sir.”

“Another ten minutes will see us smothering. We must force a passage through the foam.”

Ten minutes passed, and fifteen. The First Folk created ramps behind their wall: first dozens of the rods, then foam, and on top, to distribute the weight, reed mats.

Bernard the sergeant reported to Lord Faide. “We are ready.”

“Good.” Lord Faide descended into the courtyard. He faced the men, gave them their orders. “Move quickly, but stay together; we must not lose ourselves in the foam. As we proceed, slash ahead and to the sides. The First Folk see through the foam; they have the advantage of us. When we break through, we use the wasp nets. Two foot soldiers must guard each knight. Remember, quickly through the foam, that we do not smother. Open the gates.”

The gates slid back, the troops marched forth. They faced an unbroken blank wall of foam. No enemy could be seen.

Lord Faide waved his sword. “Into the foam.” He strode forward, pushed into the white mass, now crisp and brittle and harder than he had bargained for. It resisted him; he cut and hacked. His troops joined him, carving a way into the foam. First Folk appeared above them, crawling carefully on the mats. Their back flaps puffed, pumped; foam issued from their vents, falling in a cascade over the troops.

Hein Huss sighed. He spoke to Apprentice Sam Salazar. “Now they must retreat, otherwise they smother. If they fail to win through, we all smother.”

Even as he spoke, the foam, piling up swiftly, in places reached the roof. Below, bellowing and cursing, Lord Faide backed out from under, wiped his face clear. Once again, in desperation, he charged forward, trying at a new spot.

The foam was friable and cut easily, but the chunks detached still blocked the opening. And again down tumbled a cascade of foam, covering the soldiers.

Lord Faide retreated, waved his men back into the keep. At the same moment, First Folk, crawling on mats on the same level as the parapet over the gate, laid rods up from the foam to rest against the projecting edge of the roof. They gushed foam; the view of the sky was slowly blocked from the view of Hein Huss and Sam Salazar.

“In an hour, perhaps two, we will die,” said Hein Huss. “They have now sealed us in. There are many men here in the keep, and all will now breathe deeply.”

Sam Salazar said nervously, “There is a possibility we might be able to survive—or at least not smother.”

“Ah?” inquired Hein Huss with heavy sarcasm. “You plan to work a miracle?”

“If a miracle, the most trivial sort. I observed that water has no effect on the foam, nor a number of other liquids: milk, spirits, wine, or caustic. Vinegar, however, instantly dissolves the foam.”

“Aha,” said Hein Huss. “We must inform Lord Faide.”

“Better that you do so,” said Sam Salazar. “He will pay me no heed.”

XIII

Half an hour passed. Light filtered into Faide Keep only as a dim gray gloom. Air tasted flat, damp, and heavy. Out from the gates sallied the troops. Each carried a crock, a jug, a skin, or a pan containing strong vinegar.

“Quickly now,” called Lord Faide, “but careful! Spare the vinegar, don’t throw it wildly. In close formation now—forward.”

The soldiers approached the wall, threw ladles of vinegar ahead. The foam crackled, melted.

“Waste no vinegar,” shouted Lord Faide, “Forward, quickly now; bring forward the vinegar!”

Minutes later they burst out upon the downs. The First Folk stared at them, blinking.

“Charge,” croaked Lord Faide, his throat thick with fumes. “Mind now, wasp nets! Two soldiers to each knight! Charge, double-quick. Kill the white beasts.”

The men dashed ahead. Wasp tubes were leveled. “Halt!” yelled Lord Faide. “Wasps!”

The wasps came, wings rasping. Nets rose up; wasps struck with a thud. Down went the nets; hard feet crushed the insects. The beetles and the lizard-centipedes appeared, not so many as of the last evening, for a great number had been killed. They darted forward, and a score of men died, but the insects were soon hacked into chunks of reeking brown flesh. Wasps flew, and some struck home; the agonies of the dying men were unnerving. Presently the wasps likewise decreased in number, and soon there were no more.

The men faced the First Folk, armored only with thorn-swords and their foam, which now came purple with rage.

Lord Faide waved his sword: The men advanced and began to kill the First Folk, by dozens, by hundreds.

Hein Huss came forth and approached Lord Faide. “Call a halt.”

“A halt? Why? Now we kill these bestial things.”

“Far better not. Neither need kill the other. Now is the time to show great wisdom.”

“They have besieged us, caught us in their traps, stung us with their wasps! And you say halt?”

“They nourish a grudge sixteen hundred years old. Best not to add another one.”

Lord Faide stared at Hein Huss. “What do you propose?”

“Peace between the two races, peace and cooperation.”

“Very well. No more traps, no more plantings, no more breeding of deadly insects.”

“Call back your men. I will try.”

Lord Faide cried out, “Men, fall back. Disengage.”

Reluctantly the troops drew back. Hein Huss approached the huddled mass of purple-foaming First Folk. He waited a moment. They watched him intently. He spoke in their language.

“You have attacked Faide Keep; you have been defeated. You planned well, but we have proved stronger. At this moment we can kill you. Then we can go on to fire the forest, starting a hundred blazes. Some of the fires you can control. Others not. We can destroy Wild Wood. Some First Folk may survive, to hide in the thickets and breed new plans to kill men. This we do not want. Lord Faide has agreed to peace, if you likewise agree. This means no more death traps. Men will freely approach and pass through the forests. In your turn you may freely come out on the moss. Neither race shall molest the other. Which do you choose? Extinction—or peace?”

The purple foam no longer dribbled from the vents of the First Folk. “We choose peace.”

“There must be no more wasps, beetles. The death traps must be disarmed and never replaced.”

“We agree. In our turn we must be allowed freedom of the moss.”

“Agreed. Remove your dead and wounded, haul away the foam rods.”

Hein Huss returned to Lord Faide. “They have chosen peace.”

Lord Faide nodded. “Very well. It is for the best.” He called to his men. “Sheathe your weapons. We have won a great victory.” He ruefully surveyed Faide Keep, swathed in foam and invisible except for the parasol roof. “A hundred barrels of vinegar will not be enough.”

Hein Huss looked off into the sky. “Your allies approach quickly. Their jinxmen have told them of your victory.”

Lord Faide laughed his sour laugh. “To my allies will fall the task of removing the foam from Faide Keep.”

XIV

In the hall of Faide Keep, during the victory banquet, Lord Faide called jovially across to Hein Huss. “Now, Head Jinxman, we must deal with your apprentice, the idler and the waster Sam Salazar.”

“He is here, Lord Faide. Rise, Sam Salazar, take cognizance of the honor being done you.”

Sam Salazar rose to his feet, bowed.

Lord Faide proffered him a cup. “Drink, Sam Salazar, enjoy yourself. I freely admit that your idiotic tinkerings saved the lives of us all. Sam Salazar, we salute you, and thank you. Now, I trust that you will put frivolity aside, apply yourself to your work, and learn honest jinxmanship. When the time comes, I promise that you shall find a lifetime of employment at Faide Keep.”

“Thank you,” said Sam Salazar modestly. “However, I doubt if I will become a jinxman.”

“No? You have other plans?”

Sam Salazar stuttered, grew faintly pink in the face, then straightened himself and spoke as clearly and distinctly as he could. “I prefer to continue what you call my frivolity. I hope I can persuade others to join me.”

“Frivolity is always attractive,” said Lord Faide. “No doubt you can find other idlers and wasters, runaway farm boys and the like.”

Sam Salazar said staunchly, “This frivolity might become serious. Undoubtedly the ancients were barbarians. They used symbols to control entities they were unable to understand. We are methodical and rational; why can’t we systematize and comprehend the ancient miracles?”

“Well, why can’t we?” asked Lord Faide. “Does anyone have an answer?”

No one responded, although Isak Comandore hissed between his teeth and shook his head.

“I personally may never be able to work miracles; I suspect it is more complicated than it seems,” said Sam Salazar. “However, I hope that you will arrange for a workshop where I and others who might share my views can make a beginning. In this matter I have the encouragement and the support of Head Jinxman Hein Huss.”

Lord Faide lifted his goblet. “Very well, Apprentice Sam Salazar. Tonight I can refuse you nothing. You shall have exactly what you wish, and good luck to you. Perhaps you will produce a miracle during my lifetime.”

Isak Comandore said huskily to Hein Huss, “This is a sad event! It signalizes intellectual anarchy, the degradation of jinxmanship, the prostitution of logic. Novelty has a way of attracting youth; already I see apprentices and spellbinders whispering in excitement. The jinxmen of the future will be sorry affairs. How will they go about demon-possession? With a cog, a gear, and a push-button. How will they cast a hoodoo? They will find it easier to strike their victim with an axe.”

“Times change,” said Hein Huss. “There is now the one rule of Faide on Pangborn, and the keeps no longer need to employ us. Perhaps I will join Sam Salazar in his workshop.”

“You depict a depressing future,” said Isak Comandore with a sniff of disgust.

“There are many futures, some of which are undoubtedly depressing.”

Lord Faide raised his glass. “To the best of your many futures, Hein Huss. Who knows? Sam Salazar may conjure a spaceship to lead us back to home planet.”

“Who knows?” said Hein Huss. He raised his goblet. “To the best of the futures!”

Editor's Introduction to:

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE
by Stefan T. Possony

Dr. Stefan T. Possony received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in the early thirties. He worked for the anti-Nazi government of Austria until German forces occupied the country, and fled just ahead of the Gestapo. After many adventures, he came to the United States, where he was during World War II and for many years after that an intelligence specialist in the Pentagon. He then became a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace.

Dr. Possony and I have co-authored The Strategy of Technology and a number of shorter papers. He has been an invaluable contributor to the various reports and papers of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy, and we are at present working on a new book, The Strategy of Progress.

I think of few people more competent to examine the knotty problem of the defense of Europe.

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE
by Stefan T. Possony

Introduction

During 1981-82, West German Chancellor Helmuth Schmidt’s dying administration provoked a quarrel with U.S. General Bernard Rogers, Supreme Commander of NATO in Europe. Rogers had proposed that the modernization of NATO armaments was long overdue and that it would be feasible to neutralize the Soviet threat against Western Europe at affordable costs. He was not thinking that “Buck Rogers,” his namesake, should design weapons of a totally new type, and he made no specific proposals. But he knew from his experiences in the U.S. Army that virtually all weapons were going to be altered by electronics. He was hinting that the Allies should stop limping behind in electronics, electronic countermeasures, sensors and computers.

Schmidt and his incompetent defense minister did not know what Rogers was talking about. The German military who were advising the government knew a part of what Rogers had been calling to their attention. After all, they must have heard of the interest in the “hyper-technology” that was preoccupying France’s Aerospatiale, Britain’s British Aerospace and West Germany’s own Dornier Werke.

But they failed to understand General Rogers because their thinking was not preoccupied with hyper-technology in weapons. They were far more worried that Rogers was upsetting their budget and that, in his alleged naiveté, he was helping the anti-NATO “peace movement.”

After Schmidt’s departure, the quarrel stopped, but at this writing, it is too early to say that Rogers’ point finally got through to the military brains of West Germany.

A Bit of Early History

The ancient Greeks went to battle on a chariot. The Romans were masters of road building. At the turn of the twentieth century, railroads—and since 1914, automobiles—have been moving the soldiers into battle. During two World Wars, tanks, later supplemented by armored personnel carriers and jeeps, were decisive. Rommel and Patton ran the battle from tanks equipped with radio communications.

What do modern weapons designers think is the battle chariot of the future? A small truck carrying a detachable container in which there stands a microprocessor loaded with software, modems and wireless communications.

The computer-on-a-truck is the ridiculous new weapon that military staffs and budgeteers have been slow in discovering and which they began to notice only after the military events in Falkland and in Lebanon.

Did a sudden and entirely unexpected technological revolution burst upon the world in 1982? Not quite.

The significance of strategic and tactical warning has been recognized since the 1950s. A first and improvised use of remotely piloted reconnaissance aircraft occurred as early as 1962, to collect intelligence from Cuba. In 1964, the Chinese shot down three American RPVs over Vietnam. During the early 1970s, “smart weapons” were used for highly accurate bombing attacks in Vietnam in the form of laser-guided bombs and jets riding on laser beams. Their precision was so unprecedented and “impossible” that the report of the U.S. Air Force on collateral casualties was simply disbelieved. (Note 1). In 1973, the Israelis suffered heavy aircraft losses and improvised the use in combat of target drones. In Falkland, radar guidance, including terminal guidance, and computers installed in the aircraft tail for flight control demonstrated new combinations.

Of course computers began their military career during World War II, when they were used to design the ULTRA code-breaking system and enabled physicists to build the atom bomb.

Missiles, in particular ICBMs, and telemetric tests and flight controls are forerunners of robots. Space satellites, especially recent versions, can be regarded as robots.

By 1984 the electronic revolution in defense is just beginning. Hence it is not practical to forecast where it will lead. Every day brings surprises. However, it is feasible to sketch how some of the new and upcoming capabilities might be incorporated into existing arsenals and how they might be utilized to solve some of the difficulties that are hampering current military missions.

Alternative Assumptions

How might the new electronic technology strengthen the defense of Europe against Soviet attack? In line with NATO tradition, this problem may first be discussed on the assumption that the Soviets would not use conventional, chemical or biological weapons. Thereupon the discussion may be resumed on the alternate assumption that the aggression would be executed with nuclear and other weapons of “mass destruction.”

Right at this point trouble arises: The old dichotomy between “conventional” and “nuclear” war smacks of obsoleteness. The indispensable and meaningful question is this: Will the space systems be left untouched except perhaps for jamming, or will they be attacked prior to, or simultaneously with, the ground attack? This question is rarely asked.

Targets in space can be struck with conventional weapons like ASATS, which the Soviets have been testing. They also are subject to attack by historical forms of nuclear firepower like fusion. They are really vulnerable to nuclear weapons involving beams, or “directed energy,” which are not yet ready for deployment. Under both the current conventional and nuclear dispensations, a space attack presumably would have to precede attack on the ground. Such an overture would abandon the asset of surprise. Considering the various difficulties of space attack, it is most logical to assume that in a conflict during the proximate future, the space systems will remain intact on both sides.

Accordingly, we will examine two different cases: Case 1, aggression without ABC and space weapons; and Case 2, aggression with ABC and space weapons. Note that space sensors and communications, as well as the entire C3 capability, lack the power to destroy. Therefore they are not considered to be “weapons.”

CASE 1

Ground aggression, schematically speaking, requires mobilization; forward moves to start and cover positions; force concentrations; crossing of the border; initial hostilities and penetrations; formation of a center of gravity; seizure and occupation of territory; decisive battle; establishment of technological and quantitative superiority on the battlefield; victory, occupation or imposed disarmament and change of government.

This scheme can be made more realistic by various complications, detours and prolongations, but in our discussion, simplicity is all that is needed.

If the aggression is waged against an opponent of approximately equivalent strength, success is dependent on some or all of the following factors: a substantial lead in mobilization; secrecy of the forward deployment; deception on the center of gravity; the location of follow-on echelons and reserves; and the preservation of technological, tactical and operational secrets. Abbreviated version: Success depends on concealment and deception.

Now, if the defender—the target of the aggression—is operating an up-to-date and properly deployed space-warning system of the appropriate size, the aggressor’s mobilization will be noticed and so will his troop and arms concentrations, and his forward deployments. Aggression can no longer be prepared secretly. In addition, the space system will produce the aggressor’s battle order together with its geographic locations, and it will indicate the movements of the attacking force, the approximate size of each column as well as the points of the attack and the locations of the reserves. Concealment and deception would succeed only if the opposing space system were inefficiently operated.

True, space intelligence may be reduced by weather, technical insufficiencies and defects, and limits of coverage. Moreover, the aggressor may be partially successful with his ruses and deception measures. Finally, if the victim does not react and does not increase and move his forces, the warning may be in vain.

Normally, if a victim state acquires a warning capability, it would be for the purpose of using it and acting on the information. European NATO’s warning capability is rudimentary, and the members of the alliance must rely on U.S. signals. The manner by which the European NATO states plan to utilize American space warnings is as yet far from being optimized. At this writing, NATO has merely the potential to benefit from warning.

Nevertheless, the would-be aggressor, though he may hope to confuse the defender through countermeasures, must assume that the aggression will be detected from its first steps onward. If despite such a handicap he wishes to go through with his project, he must estimate that he possesses strength and operational superiority adequate to defeat the opponent. Under current circumstances, a Soviet planner would presumably assume that the USSR’s numerical superiority in divisions, artillery, tanks, troop carriers and aircraft negates the warning and provides high odds for success in battle.

Shortly before crossing the border, the aggressor is likely to launch air strikes, mainly to cripple the defending air force. Since the flight from the border to the targets is a matter of minutes, the aggressor may have a chance to catch the defending air force on the ground. If so, the experience from World War II would suggest that the defender will be more or less unable to recover.

But let us assume the warning system includes sensors that detect air movements before the attacking aircraft reach the border and that a space warning of the air strike reaches the defending command in near real time. It also may be assumed that the defending air force was alerted to the coming danger hours, or even days, ahead of time. In this case, a substantial portion of the defender’s aircraft should succeed in starting before they are hit on the ground. Also, anti-air defenses would be ready for action. This implies that the defender can save a percentage of his bombers, which may redeploy to temporarily secure airfields or else proceed to execute a strike of their own. It implies also that an air battle would ensue, resulting in heavy losses for the aggressor, perhaps spelling failure of the aggressor’s air plan.

Whether the defender’s tactics would be partially or fully successful depends on unpredictable circumstances. The point is that the existence of an efficient warning system, paired to preparations for instant reaction upon warning, compels the planner of the aggression to anticipate a low probability of a successful air operation.

How would the conditions affecting the advance of an invading ground force be changed by the new technology? If history serves as a guide, the army planner would assume either that he will succeed in overrunning the defender’s forces that are deployed near the border or that he will encounter only token resistance and therefore, if he is able to move with great speed, he will execute a deep penetration. He also might assume that while the defender has been warned, he lacks the capability to carry out an effective counter-deployment in time; nor could he possibly know where the counterforce would be optimally deployed.

For the defender, the battle at the frontier has always been an almost insoluble problem. The defender may have known that an attack was impending, but in most cases he lacked this knowledge, and he never knew the precise time and the precise direction of the assault. In addition, for reasons of operations, logistics, mobilization schedules and the need to maintain strategic reserves, the defender usually found it impractical, or even impossible, to deploy a strong force forward and engage battle in an orderly, planned fashion. Accordingly, defenders rarely tried to win the battle at the frontier, and if they attempted to stop the invasion immediately, they hardly ever succeeded and often paid a high price for their failure. (Example: the French in 1914 and 1940.)

What new capabilities are emerging that might enhance the power of the defender?

Let us look at robotics, cruise missiles, targeting, battlefield intelligence, C3I, accuracy and fire control.

Without wasting time on debating class operational models, battlefield robotics should be viewed as information-collectors and transmitters, as command relays, as specialized command posts, as ground weapons, and as air weapons.

When the U.S. Army was dragging its feet for more than ten years, Congress got into the act and insisted on an RPV program. Thereupon the army approved two major missions for remotely piloted vehicles: meterology and electronic support to the ground force.

The latter mission includes ELINT collection, ground-based radar jamming, communications jamming and battlefield surveillance linked with C3 in space. It is also planned to use RPVs for target acquisition, artillery fire direction and target designation. The system, together with data terminals and ground-control stations, and with anti-jam data links for reconnaissance, is scheduled to be deployed by 1985.

For the time being, merely the use of mini RPVs is envisaged, but the small robots will have interesting characteristics, to wit, real-time information through video and zoom video, long flight endurance, high survivability and short training time, as well as net, parachute and automatic recovery. Thus the RPVs are no longer viewed as “drones,” and they are assigned to important missions. But no combat mission was approved.

Whether or not RPVs should be used as an “independent” weapons system is debatable. In their Beka Valley operation, the Israelis used missiles to knock out radars, and they jammed interceptors, which they also attacked with missiles using heat-seeking (infrared) guidance. In combination with AWACS-type command aircraft, and with propeller-driven planes carrying radar detection and analysis equipment, the Israelis were using RPVs. They went all out for electronic techniques and electronic countermeasures, and in particular they utilized the frequencies that their opponent employed to track the Israeli RPVs, to knock out the surface-to-air missiles of the Syrians.

Those tactics required RPVs as a major link in the combination. But bigger and more “independent” missions can be envisaged, especially if electronic warfare and anti-radar operations should grow in significance.

RPVs are usable for telecommunications relay, photo and radar recce, for SIGINT, ELINT and COMINT, for ECM such as jamming, saturation and deception, for target locating, target marking, fire control, air attack, and also for suppression and destruction, provided they are linked into space-based navigation systems and weapons-control systems and are equipped with special ammunition. The RPVs are divided into recoverable and non-recoverable equipment, the latter being chiefly cheap minis.

The combination of RPVs with helicopters for fast deployment and firepower could prove to be very potent.

The vulnerability of RPVs against interception must be reduced: They already offer a low radar profile and a weak IR signature, and they are flying very low. Presumably they can be built from non-reflecting materials. For missions requiring many sorties, RPVs probably will be more cost-effective than manned aircraft, especially since the Soviets must be expected to make excessive use of anti-air weapons. It is important to remember that a loss quota of 3 percent per sortie may result in the destruction of half an entire air force within a week.

Armed RPVs could carry out many jobs. However, numerous jobs must be accomplished without firepower. It is primarily important that there are plenty of RPVs with diversified capabilities. With their endurance of something like seven hours, they should be doing plenty of flying, close to the ground.

In comparison with RPVs, ground robots, including self-propelled vehicles, are lagging in development. There is no doubt, however, that they can make great contributions to defense.

As a minimum, the ground robots would discharge four major missions: in connection with the C3I system, collection of battlefield intelligence; exercise of mobility or the holding of territory; combat actions against selected stationary and mobile targets; on-the-spot tactical operations analysis.

Accordingly, a robot unit needs leadership groups equipped with a vehicle carrying computers, software and communications materiel plus vehicles transporting various sensors; plus manned and unmanned electronic support vehicles, including RPVs. Depending on its mission, the unit would also have weapons and ammunition. In fact, unless the robot unit is entirely stationary and mainly engages in passive tasks like surveillance, it requires firepower to protect the equipment and the crews, if any.

The intelligence would be secured by electronic means, also by photography and by observation, and much information would be received from higher command.

The mobile control station would be housed in a container mounted on the ground or on a truck, and its computer would be tied to plotting devices, teleprinter, display, communications, mappers, link interfaces, countermeasures and equipment to support air, land and sea operations.

Main targets include radars, tanks and apes (with troops), artillery and aircraft. Logistics and other targets may be added to the list. Enemy jammers and other ECM capabilities, some of which are mobile and accompany the invading force, are necessarily high-priority targets.

Anti-tank weapons may use line-of-sight guidance like wires and fiber optics, gun sights, range finders and accuracy devices. In good weather and during daylight, such devices would be aimed by lasers; in bad weather and during the night, other beams must be used, e.g., microwave and IR. Tank targets may be laser-illuminated by a soldier on the ground. For that matter, projectile-firing guns, in particular anti-tank guns, may be replaced by ruby lasers. The laser family is growing, and the lasers are becoming increasingly versatile due to tunability of frequency and color so that the acuity of various sensors will be enhanced.

A key anti-tank weapon may be a robotic tank-destroyer carrying a gun, possibly a laser gun, or a rocket with real accuracy, a good range and fire-control links.

A robotic tank could be built for employment against “dismounted” infantry.

Battlefield C3I is based on microprocessors and special software. To be usable by robots or an infantry squad, such systems weigh less than fifty pounds and require not more than two hundred watts. They can be combined with a display system that handles all types of sensors, including photography. The “superposition” of the several images produced by different sensors is a key for really useful battlefield intelligence.

The control station of a robot unit must be assisted by a computer that can transmit commands. The computer systems that will be used in connection with robotics defense will be those of the future—ten years from now—and they might incorporate artificial intelligence features for the anticipation of enemy moves and the identification of alternate courses of action.

Such ground facilities will in due time be connected to positioning systems operating in space. Positioning systems can spot with high accuracy the location both of the weapon and the target, thus increasing the accuracy that can be achieved from ground fire. This means robot units, through their computers and communications, need to provide tactical fire control from advanced positions. The fire that is brought to bear from distant bases, by missiles and bombs, would be equipped with lasers or equivalent target-seekers and guidance devices.

Whereas radars can be easily hit and damaged, small enemy units like guerrilla bands remain difficult to locate. The robot units may lack the firepower to eliminate them. But they can call in and direct fire from distant bases using missiles or aircraft-launching missiles or dropping bombs. Small or guerrilla units would not be important in the context of a large Soviet attack. In the case of a sizable invasion, the robot units on the ground would not look for a few soldiers; instead, they would report on tanks, radars and large units which, presumably, they will spot before they are spotted themselves and which might be delayed by robot-controlled mine fields.

The new characteristics spell a new dimension of accuracy. The probability of hitting targets has grown, and targets can be hit at longer ranges and with higher speeds. Moreover, the invader may lose a large portion of his radars, in which case the effectiveness of his force would be degraded. At the same time, weapons are smaller and therefore harder to see and more difficult to shoot down by the infantry. This in turn means that fewer weapons are needed to knock out targets, offsetting some of the costs of the new equipment. Not to overlook is the probability that the risks to military personnel and platforms will decline. Whatever the details, the growing lethality of precision weapons must cause changes in the structure of combat and in the organization of the forces.

What does it all signify? First of all, it is obvious that the old concept of a “land battle” is obsolete. The U.S. Army has been operating for some time under the concept of the air-land war. Today’s and tomorrow’s reality is, however, that of a land-airspace or, since naval elements may be used in some geographies, a surface-air-space conflict. The space element includes synchronous orbiters and low-earth-orbiting satellites for reconnaissance, low-level photography, ferret operations and ocean surveillance, as well as synthetic aperture radar observation.

The second fact is that all military operations and movements, as well as strategic and tactical decisions and actions, are dependent on electronics such as sensors, command, control and communication links, computer memories, processing and analysis, and intelligence, as well as electronics embedded in the weapons.

The third fact is that robots will supplement and partially replace troops and manned aircraft. For example, anti-tank rockets, which need not weigh more than twenty pounds and which have a range of more than four hundred meters and fire a shaped charge, can be handled by a single soldier. This sounds as though one soldier who is well-trained and armed with a modern antitank weapon is the equivalent of a tank. If this equation depicted only an approximation, and if it were impractical to concentrate more than a few hundred tanks in one operational sector, a small number of well-prepared soldiers should be able to stop a tank attack. Precisely this capability of the soldier was assumed by Ludendorff in 1918, when his assumption was crazy. It may turn out to be correct after a time lag of seventy years. Whether this means that robots can take over the initial defense of forward areas and that this would free troops for maneuver and counterattack deployment may be left open until we know better what robots can do and what their limitations are. In any event, this much is clear: There will be many crucial locations where it is infeasible to deploy troops in adequate strength. Such locations can be “occupied” by robots with self-defense capabilities. It is also clear that in places where friendly troops are outnumbered by the enemy, robots may be used to cover the deficit.

The fourth fact is that robot weapons allow a vast improvement of tactics, e.g., they are necessarily employing kamikaze tactics. As another example, robots can quickly clear a mine field or, for that matter, lay one down.

The fifth fact is that an invading force and virtually all of its elements are henceforth subject to near real-time surveillance. As a result, they can be attacked at any time with long-range weapons, such as cruise missiles.

The sixth fact is that embedded computers can be reprogrammed within a very short time. In Falkland, British naval weapons were adjusted to the Exocet threat within twenty-four hours, a unique occurrence in military history. This capability of quickly updating weapons technology will be improved as the progress of computer hardware technology and software design continues.

Naturally it is to be expected that the technological revolution in the “land battle” will not be restricted to one side. The new technology will be bilateral. But it is also to be expected that qualitative differences will be large. The prospect that electronics will equalize military strengths is not impressive. There is a better chance that the computers that are now middle-aged have rendered the array of Soviet tanks potentially obsolete. This does not preclude a Soviet attack on Western Europe: The Soviets may rely on crude quantitative superiority and NATO may not modernize fast enough.

Still, the new technology is unquestionably strengthening the deterrence of a Soviet conventional attack. It also reinvigorates the defensive that, for some thirty years, was being overpowered by the offensive.

CASE 2

In looking at ground defense in nuclear conflict, do we consider a conflict that is restricted to the European theater or is the battle for the control of Europe merely a segment of a worldwide struggle, in particular of a contest between the USSR and the U.S., which is overarching the European encounter?

It is generally assumed that nuclear attack by the USSR in Europe would be risked only if and when the Kremlin is ready to take on the U.S. at the same time. Furthermore, difficulties in the European battle might create unmanageable complications in the main contest. Hence the usual scenario ascribes top priority to a first strike by the Soviets against the American Triad.

This means that: 1. Soviet surprise against the U.S. is more important than surprise against Europe; 2. the strike against Europe must not precede the strike against the U.S.; 3. a strike against nuclear and strategic U.S. capabilities in Europe would be delayed until the main blow against the U.S. mainland had been launched.

This scheme is too neat if the Soviet strategists feel they must include a strike against U.S. facilities in space. This problem may remain insoluble for as long as the Soviets either don’t have a space platform whence the U.S. facilities can be neutralized or else they have directed energy weapons that can be fired effectively from the ground.

In the proximate future they may disregard the space problem and rely mainly on brute missile and high-yield power. Thus they could enact the old scenario of a surprise attack: Schematically, the ICBMs attack the U.S. ICBMs; the SLBMs go after the U.S. bombers on the airbases; and nuclear-attack submarines fire torpedoes to sink American submarines carrying SLBMs.

This strategy could result in a full American defeat, with two aspects: The Triad would be significantly reduced; and the Administration would be knocked out, or else it would capitulate. If the U.S. were defeated militarily and politically, it would be useless to worry about the defense of Europe.

Alternatively, suppose the Soviet first-strike strategy fails. In this case, the U.S. would retaliate and Soviet military power operating against Europe would be significantly reduced.

If the Soviets started their European attack before the outcome of its first strike were known, the battle for Europe would be underway and would continue. Depending on the American strengths that are remaining, the U.S. could force the Soviets to desist, or it could help Europe. If the Soviet attack against Europe had not been started, U.S. success in surviving the first strike might deter the Soviets from any adventures against Europe.

The American presence in Europe would couple the U.S. in either eventuality: The American forces overseas either would be involved by the Soviets or they would be legally at war with the USSR.

To simplify this complex, we might discuss the defense of Europe against a Soviet nuclear attack in isolation from the broader problem. We can postulate that the U.S. continues as a military factor, either because it was not attacked or because the first strike failed. It may also be postulated that if the U.S. were attacked and retaliated, the effects of the American counterattack would impair Soviet capabilities against Europe. Finally, it may be postulated that the USSR will not attack Europe with nuclear weapons for so long as the U.S. is strong enough and fully dedicated to continue with an effective strategy of deterrence. But a Soviet attack would become increasingly probable as American deterrence weakens and as European NATO separates itself from the U.S., or collapses as an effective alliance.

The assumption that the U.S. is uncoupled from Europe includes the further assumption that U.S. forces in Europe are withdrawn or stay out of the conflict.

There is no point to argue about the realism of such assumptions or about the assumption that the USSR still has the option to launch a first strike without first eliminating the American presence in space. The purpose of our intellectual experiment is merely to determine what needs to be done to render the defense of Europe militarily effective.

If the USSR deems it fairly safe to tackle offensively what it regards as its European task, it may first pick a quarrel with one or the other European states. If, for one reason or the other, it does not want to stick to conventional weapons, it may resort to nuclear blackmail. This means that it could limit itself to threats or it could fire a psycho-nuke, e.g., a demonstration shot against an unpopulated or evacuated spot. The psycho-nuke approach might facilitate the enthronement of a Communist regime. Thus it holds out the prospect of a maximal victory at no cost of blood.

If the state refuses, the USSR could place nuclear firepower on a few targets, either minimizing or maximizing population losses. If the victim state possesses a token nuclear force, it may retaliate, and if so, his weapons either may hit targets in the USSR or they may be intercepted. If the victim state estimates that it will remain in isolation and will be unable to match Soviet firepower, it may resort to some hocus-pocus, or it will surrender.

A similarly hopeless development would occur if the USSR were to pick its quarrel with the whole set of European states. It could employ psycho-nukes against some of those states, devastation nukes against others and a disarming strike against a third group. This strategy can be varied in many different ways. In such a cat-and-mouse game, the Soviets could, for example, replace the devastation nukes by chemical munitions—maybe even by biological ones—and they could employ their airborne divisions to occupy one or two capitals and implant a Communist regime from the air. The USSR has a vast quantitative and qualitative superiority; it possesses powerful weapons the Europeans are lacking and against which they have no defenses; it has a mature space deployment, and it has little to fear from a European military riposte.

European politicians shy away from such a conclusion, not because they overestimate the military strength of their countries, but because they are unable to visualize nuclear war except to cry about “holocaust.” The fact is that after thirty-odd years of NATO military policies in most European countries remain obsolete.

To break away from the tradition of loving ancient weapons, let us make the bold assumption that the Europeans realize they can’t continue to put the real burdens of security on the U.S. Henceforth they want to ensure their self-preservation, not by breaking up NATO, but by doing most of the job themselves.

So what is to be done?

Most of the key tasks appear to be obvious. European NATO is not particularly lacking in tanks, anti-tank weapons, wing aircraft, helicopters, anti-aircraft, etc. Unfortunately, the force does not exist—several forces exist, qualitatively different in many respects. Those forces are difficult to deploy geographically so that they would oppose maximal defense against Soviet invasion. This problem may not have a “solution,” but it has been unjustifiably downgraded.

It is more critical that upon receipt of strategic warning, the forces may not be mobilized in a fully coordinated and optimal manner: The timing problems of mobilization and concentration are not solved. This insufficiency is in part due to obstacles like traffic congestion and to backwardness in staff organization and practices. The chief trouble is, on the one hand, that warning cannot be handled efficiently within NATO—too many security problems remain unsolved. On the other hand, difficulties like traffic congestion versus mobilization and force concentrations cannot be managed until electronic capabilities like computers and robots are introduced on a large scale. Those devices cannot be bought from the shelf but presuppose a think-tank effort to design a “system” for mobilization and concentration.

Thus the first job to be done is to assemble the NATO forces on the battlefields in time. The second job is to reequip the combat forces with modern technology as adumbrated in Case 1.

Thereupon the third job looms large: It is to acquire defense capabilities against nuclear missile, air and ground attack.

The Europeans could go all out in producing nuclear weapons for deterrence. No doubt the nuclear imbalance calls for correction. This necessitates the liquidation of industrial lags and political obstacles, like out-of-date treaties. It is another question whether the Europeans should aim at a retaliatory strategy: Such an approach would risk devastating counterblows. A nuclear exchange would be to Europe’s disadvantage. Since deterrence based on retaliation was unavoidable only during the initial phase of the high-technology age and is now being modified by the U.S., this model is not suitable.

The slogan that Europe should increase its “conventional” forces is silly. Which conventional system can prevent nuclear blackmail or a missile attack? To be sure, the tank and helicopter forces should be increased to balance the size of the Soviet tank force more effectively. But the Soviets deploy several types of missiles that are destined for use in land war and that have a dual nuclear-conventional capability. The obvious and urgent requirement is to counter those missiles, the SS-21, 22, and 23, which are reported to exist in truly large numbers. A dual capability can be countered only by a dual capability, unless an electronic capability exists to shoot down the missiles with a high kill probability.

The Soviets regard the tank and the heavy helicopter, which they conceive of as a flying tank, as the key weapons of ground warfare, helped by numerous missiles, many of which can be fitted with nuclear explosives. A large effort in military robots would be an appropriate counter, provided manned weapons are available to counter the survivors, of which there will be plenty; and provided also the nuclear impacts can be prevented effectively.

Since the British acquired the Seawolf missile to intercept missiles attacking surface ships, defense missiles can be built to intercept missiles attacking troops and targets on the ground.

The same argument applies, other things being equal, to the need to intercept IRBMs and MRBMs, and especially—at this time—the SS-20.

A short while ago the notion that missiles can be intercepted was completely incomprehensible. It is now realized that through modern electronics, missile-interception is becoming feasible.

It is granted that the required technology may not be attainable very quickly. However, a crash program would seem to be in order, precisely because estimates on the required time are utterly unreliable. In any event, whether progress must be slow or can be fast, one needs to know where one is going.

Furthermore, it should be realized that the requisite electronic equipment can be designed and built by the leading European firms, which, of course, can pool resources with American firms.

Once there is clarity on those points, it may be possible to revitalize NATO, both in Europe and in North America, by centering it on a joint technological program to acquire the needed anti-missile capability. This would be a better and faster solution than to pursue modem defense on a bicontinental, let alone on a national, basis.

From there on, it should be feasible to acquire and share NATO-wide the various electronic equipment that is becoming practical, such as robots and RPVs, and to push the embedding of computers in weapons.

It also would be necessary to build a joint accuracy system to improve warning and tracking and to obtain a NATO C3 capability.

There is little doubt that the NATO forces, precisely because they have a defensive mission, must increase the numbers of their battlefield missiles and modern weapons like laser guns.

If the alliance stays together, defensive strength on the ground could be drastically increased by nuclear mines combined with robot controls, and by American neutron weapons. Chemical and biological weapons could be held in reserve to deter their employment by the Soviets.

So much for the requirements, and the potential, of a successful defense of Europe.

Unfortunately, as things stand early in 1984, the NATO forces in Europe are suffering from severe quantitative deficiencies, lack nuclear weapons (with the U.S. forces overseas being armed mainly by obsolescent nuclear devices), are threatened by massive surprise attack and are improperly equipped to tie their tactics to space sensors. The new technology cannot be effectively utilized unless it is based on space and is integrated by a C3 and correlated intelligence system.

Conclusion

The deficiency problems can be solved, but it is utterly impossible for “conventional” (i.e., obsolete) forces to survive for as long as they are unable to react to warning with timely mobilization, are pitted against across-the-board superiority, are vulnerable to surprise blows and lack the crucial technological capabilities of the epoch.

Note: The main operation that was carried out in Vietnam with smart weapons was called Linebacker II (December 18-29, 1972). More than 15,000 tons of bombs resulted in 1,318 civilian deaths, or .08 fatalities per one ton of bombs. The notorious bombing of Guernica (1937), where 40.5 tons were dropped, or 1/370th of the Linebacker II bomb load, cost 1,654 lives. Thus per ton of bombs, 500 times more people were killed during one afternoon in Guernica than during the major air assault in Vietnam, which lasted eleven days. In the Battle of Britain (June-December 1940), the civilian deaths per one ton of bombs were seven times larger than those caused by Linebacker II. The combined average of Guernica, Battle of Britain, Coventry (1940), Hamburg (July 1943), Dresden (February 1945) and Tokyo (March 1945) was 260 times more lethal, while in Tokyo, 629 times more fatalities were produced than during the Vietnam operation twenty-seven years later. (Statistical data from Air University Review, January-February 1983, p. 24.)

Editor's Introduction to:

HIDE AND SEEK
by Arthur C. Clarke

I am reminded of this story nearly every morning.

For more than a dozen years I have been the chief provisioner for a family of California jays. This is not entirely generosity: The cocky birds settle outside my study window and raise such a fuss that I can either feed them, shoot them or abandon my work.

They’re too tame to shoot. When we first moved into this house, one was already accustomed to people: My neighbor, actor John Agar, had so tamed one of the jays that he would come to your shoulder in search of peanuts and sunflower seeds. The next summer that jay brought his mate and one of his brood to my window, and since that time, several generations of jays have been taught to come annoy me whenever they are hungry.

For the past two years, though, they haven’t had it all their way. One fall there appeared on the jays’ feeding platform an obviously pregnant squirrel. After a moment’s confrontation the leader of the flock of jays was driven away; after all, a squirrel is larger than a jay, has big teeth, and is much stronger.

There began a period of guerrilla warfare. The jays may be smaller, but they’re airborne. One will distract the squirrel, while another attacks from behind, dealing painful if not injurious blows with his beak, then quickly flying away. When the squirrel turns, the first jay darts in to seize a peanut.

After the initial period of warfare, they began a new phase: The squirrel tore holes in the wire screen so that she could come into the office and help herself. It wasn’t long before the largest jay followed, until my very desk became a battleground. That ended only when I replaced the screens with wire strong enough to withstand squirrel teeth.

Then this spring the squirrel came no more. She may have been victim of an automobile, or perhaps age, or she may have been plucked from an overhead wire by the red-tailed hawks who live on the hill above us. The jays’ peace was short-lived, though: Last week a new squirrel has come. She looks to be less than a year old, and I suppose she was taught the way by her mother…

Arthur C. Clarke, Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, lives in Sri Lanka, a nation formerly known as Ceylon. He is considered a national treasure, and is also the Rector of one of their national universities. Every few years, Arthur swears he will never write another book, or indeed leave his beloved adopted land. However, some years ago I helped induce him to buy a computer, making it easier for him to write books; and the need for publicity tours brings him willy-nilly to the United States. On his last trip I held a party for him and explained the strange warfare outside and how it reminded me of his story, which, once thought of, would obviously fit into this book.

HIDE AND SEEK
by Arthur C. Clarke

We were walking back through the woods when Kingman saw the gray squirrel. Our bag was a small but varied one—three grouse, a couple of pigeons and four rabbits—one, I am sorry to say, an infant in arms. And contrary to certain dark forecasts, both the dogs were still alive.

The squirrel saw us at the same moment. It knew that it was marked for immediate execution as a result of the damage it had done to the trees on the estate, and perhaps it had lost close relatives to Kingman’s gun. In three leaps it had reached the base of the nearest tree and vanished behind it in a flicker of gray. We saw its face once more, appearing for a moment round the edge of its shield a dozen feet from the ground; but though we waited, with guns leveled hopefully at various branches, we never saw it again.

Kingman was very thoughtful as we walked back across the lawn to the magnificent old house. He said nothing as we handed our victims to the cook—who received them without much enthusiasm—and only emerged from his reverie when we were sitting in the smoking room and he remembered his duties as a host.

“That tree-rat,” he said suddenly—he always called them “tree-rats,” on the grounds that people were too sentimental to shoot the dear little squirrels—”it reminded me of a very peculiar experience that happened shortly before I retired. Very shortly indeed, in fact.”

“I thought it would,” said Carson dryly. I gave him a glare; he’d been in the Navy and had heard Kingman’s stories before, but they were still new to me.

“Of course,” Kingman remarked, slightly nettled, “if you’d rather I didn’t—”

“Do go on,” I said hastily. “You’ve made me curious. What connection there can possibly be between a gray squirrel and the Second Jovian War I can’t imagine.”

Kingman seemed mollified.

“I think I’d better change some names,” he said thoughtfully, “but I won’t alter the places. The story begins about a million kilometers sunwards of Mars—”

K.15 was a military intelligence operator. It gave him considerable pain when unimaginative people called him a spy, but at the moment he had much more substantial grounds for complaint. For some days now a fast cruiser had been coming up astern, and though it was flattering to have the undivided attention of such a fine ship and so many highly-trained men, it was an honor that K. 15 would willingly have forgone.

What made the situation doubly annoying was the fact that his friends would be meeting him off Mars in about twelve hours, aboard a ship quite capable of dealing with a mere cruiser—from which you will gather that K.15 was a person of some importance. Unfortunately, the most optimistic calculation showed that the pursuers would be within accurate gun range in six hours. In some six hours five minutes, therefore, K.15 was likely to occupy an extensive and still expanding volume of space.

There might just be time for him to land on Mars, but that would be one of the worst things he could do. It would certainly annoy the aggressively neutral Martians, and the political complications would be frightful. Moreover, if his friends had to come down to the planet to rescue him, it would cost them more than ten kilometers a second in fuel—most of their operational reserve.

He had only one advantage, and that a very dubious one. The commander of the cruiser might guess that he was heading for a rendezvous, but he would not know how close it was nor how large was the ship that was coming to meet him. If he could keep alive for only twelve hours, he would be safe. The “if” was a somewhat considerable one.

K.15 looked moodily at his charts, wondering if it was worthwhile to burn the rest of his fuel in a final dash. But a dash to where? He would be completely helpless then, and the pursuing ship might still have enough in her tanks to catch him as he flashed outwards into the empty darkness, beyond all hope of rescue—passing his friends as they came sunwards at a relative speed so great that they could do nothing to save him.

With some people, the shorter the expectation of life, the more sluggish are the mental processes. They seem hypnotized by the approach of death, so resigned to their fate that they do nothing to avoid it. K.15, on the other hand, found that his mind worked better in such a desperate emergency. It began to work as it had seldom done before.

Commander Smith—the name will do as well as any other—of the cruiser Doradus was not unduly surprised when K.15 began to decelerate. He had half expected the spy to land on Mars, on the principle that internment was better than annihilation, but when the plotting room brought the news that the little scout ship was heading for Phobos, he felt completely baffled. The inner moon was nothing but a jumble of rock some twenty kilometers across and not even the economical Martians had ever found any use for it. K.15 must be pretty desperate if he thought it was going to be of greater value to him.

The tiny scout had almost come to rest when the radar operator lost it against the mass of Phobos. During the braking maneuver, K. 15 had squandered most of his lead and the Doradus was now only minutes away—though she was now beginning to decelerate lest she overrun him. The cruiser was scarcely three thousand kilometers from Phobos when she came to a complete halt; but of K.15’s ship, there was still no sign. It should be easily visible in the telescopes, but it was probably on the far side of the little moon.

It reappeared only a few minutes later, traveling under full thrust on a course directly away from the sun. It was accelerating at almost five gravities—and it had broken its radio silence. An automatic recorder was broadcasting over and over again this interesting message:

“I have landed on Phobos and am being attacked by a Z-class cruiser. Think I can hold out until you come, but hurry.”

The message wasn’t even in code, and it left Commander Smith a sorely puzzled man. The assumption that K.I5 was still aboard the ship and that the whole thing was a ruse was just a little too naive. But it might be a double-bluff—the message had obviously been left in plain language so that he would receive it and be duly confused. He could afford neither the time nor the fuel to chase the scout if K.I5 really had landed. It was clear that reinforcements were on the way, and the sooner he left the vicinity, the better. The phrase “Think I can hold out until you come” might be a piece of sheer impertinence, or it might mean that help was very near indeed.

Then K.15’s ship stopped blasting. It had obviously exhausted its fuel, and was doing a little better than six kilometers a second away from the sun. K.I5 must have landed, for his ship was now speeding helplessly out of the solar system. Commander Smith didn’t like the message it was broadcasting, and guessed that it was running into the track of an approaching warship at some indefinite distance, but there was nothing to be done about that. The Doradus began to move toward Phobos, anxious to waste no time.

On the face of it, Commander Smith seemed the master of the situation. His ship was armed with a dozen heavy guided missiles and two turrets of electromagnetic guns. Against him was one man in a spacesuit, trapped on a moon only twenty kilometers across. It was not until Commander Smith had his first good look at Phobos, from a distance of less than a hundred kilometers, that he began to realize that, after all, K.15 might have a few cards up his sleeve.

To say that Phobos has a diameter of twenty kilometers, as the astronomy books invariably do, is highly misleading. The word “diameter” implies a degree of symmetry which Phobos most certainly lacks. Like those other lumps of cosmic slag, the asteroids, it is a shapeless mass of rock floating in space, with, of course, no hint of an atmosphere and not much more gravity. It turns on its axis once every seven hours thirty-nine minutes, thus keeping the same face always to Mars—which is so close that appreciably less than half the planet is visible, the Poles being below the curve of the horizon. Beyond this, there is very little more to be said about Phobos.

K.15 had no time to enjoy the beauty of the crescent world filling the sky above him. He threw all the equipment he could carry out of the air lock, set the controls, and jumped. As the little ship went flaming out towards the stars, he watched it go with feelings he did not care to analyze. He had burned his boats with a vengeance, and he could only hope that the oncoming battleship would intercept the radio message as the empty vessel went racing by into nothingness. There was also a faint possibility that the empty cruiser might go in pursuit, but that was rather too much to hope for.

He turned to examine his new home. The only light was the ochre radiance of Mars, since the sun was below the horizon, but that was quite sufficient for his purpose and he could see very well. He stood in the center of an irregular plain about two kilometers across, surrounded by low hills over which he could leap rather easily if he wished. There was a story he remembered reading long ago about a man who had accidentally jumped off Phobos; that wasn’t quite possible—though it was on Deimos—as the escape velocity was still about ten meters a second. But unless he was careful, he might easily find himself at such a height that it would take hours to fall back to the surface—and that would be fatal. For K.15’s plan was a simple one—he must remain as close to the surface of Phobos as possible and diametrically opposite the cruiser. The Doradus could then fire all her armament against the twenty kilometers of rock, and he wouldn’t even feel the concussion. There were only two serious dangers, and one of these did not worry him greatly.

To the layman, knowing nothing of the finer details of astronautics, the plan would have seemed quite suicidal. The Doradus was armed with the latest in ultra-scientific weapons; moreover, the twenty kilometers which separated her from her prey represented less than a second’s flight at maximum speed. But Commander Smith knew better, and was already feeling rather unhappy. He realized, only too well, that of all the machines of transport man has ever invented, a cruiser of space is far and away the least maneuverable. It was a simple fact that K.I5 could make half a dozen circuits of his little world while her commander was persuading the Doradus to do even one.

There is no need to go into technical details, but those who are still unconvinced might like to consider these elementary facts. A rocket-driven spaceship can, obviously, only accelerate along its major axis—that is, “forwards.” Any deviation from a straight course demands a physical turning of the ship, so that the motors can blast in another direction. Everyone knows that this is done by internal gyros or tangential steering jets—but very few people know just how long this simple maneuver takes. The average cruiser, fully fueled, has a mass of two or three thousand tons, which does not make for rapid footwork. But things are even worse than this, for it isn’t the mass but the moment of inertia that matters here—and since a cruiser is a long, thin object, its moment of inertia is slightly colossal. The sad fact remains—though it is seldom mentioned by astronomical engineers—that it takes a good ten minutes to rotate a spaceship through one hundred eighty degrees, with gyros of any reasonable size. Control jets aren’t much quicker, and in any case, their use is restricted because the rotation they produce is permanent and they are liable to leave the ship spinning like a slow-motion pinwheel, to the annoyance of all inside.

In the ordinary way, these disadvantages are not very grave. One has millions of kilometers and hundreds of hours in which to deal with such minor matters as a change in the ship’s orientation. It is definitely against the rules to move in ten-kilometer-radius circles, and the commander of the Doradus felt distinctly aggrieved. K.15 wasn’t playing fair.

At the same moment, that resourceful individual was taking stock of the situation, which might very well have been worse. He had reached the hills in three jumps and felt less naked than he had out in the open plain. The food and equipment he had taken from the ship he had hidden where he hoped he could find it again, but as his suit could keep him alive for over a day, that was the least of his worries. The small packet that was the cause of all the trouble was still with him, in one of those numerous hiding places a well-designed spacesuit affords.

There was an exhilarating loneliness about his mountain aerie, even though he was not quite as lonely as he would have wished. Forever fixed in his sky, Mars was waning almost visibly as Phobos swept above the night side of the planet. He could just make out the lights of some of the Martian cities, gleaming pin-points marking the junctions of the invisible canals. All else was stars and silence and a line of jagged peaks so close it seemed he could almost touch them. Of the Doradus there was still no sign. She was presumably carrying out a careful telescopic examination of the sunlit side of Phobos.

Mars was a very useful clock—when it was half full, the sun would rise and, very probably, so would the Doradus. But she might approach from some quite unexpected quarter; she might even—and this was the one real danger—have landed a search party.

This was the first possibility that had occurred to Commander Smith when he saw just what he was up against. Then he realized that the surface area of Phobos was over a thousand square kilometers and that he could not spare more than ten men from his crew to make a search of that jumbled wilderness. Also, K.15 would certainly be armed.

Considering the weapons which the Doradus carried, this last objection might seem singularly pointless. It was very far from being so. In the ordinary course of business, side arms and other portable weapons are as much use to a spacecruiser as are cutlasses and crossbows. The Doradus happened, quite by chance—and against regulations at that—to carry one automatic pistol and a hundred rounds of ammunition. Any search party would, therefore, consist of a group of unarmed men looking for a well-concealed and very desperate individual who could pick them off at his leisure. K. 15 was breaking the rules again.

The terminator of Mars was now a perfectly straight line, and at almost the same moment the sun came up, not so much like thunder as like a salvo of atomic bombs. K. 15 adjusted the filters of his visor and decided to move. It was safer to stay out of the sunlight, not only because he was less likely to be detected in the shadow but also because his eyes would be much more sensitive there. He had only a pair of binoculars to help him, whereas the Doradus would carry an electronic telescope of twenty centimeters’ aperture at least.

It would be best, K.I5 decided, to locate the cruiser if he could. It might be a rash thing to do, but he would feel much happier when he knew exactly where she was and could watch her movements. He could then keep just below the horizon, and the glare of the rockets would give him ample warning of any impending move. Cautiously launching himself along an almost horizontal trajectory, he began the circumnavigation of his world.

The narrowing crescent of Mars sank below the horizon until only one vast horn reared itself enigmatically against the stars. K.15 began to feel worried—there was still no sign of the Doradus. But this was hardly surprising, for she was painted black as night and might be a good hundred kilometers away in space. He stopped, wondering if he had done the right thing after all. Then he noticed that something quite large was eclipsing the stars almost vertically overhead, and was moving swiftly even as he watched. His heart stopped for a moment—then he was himself again, analyzing the situation and trying to discover how he had made so disastrous a mistake.

It was some time before he realized that the black shadow slipping across the sky was not the cruiser at all, but something almost equally deadly. It was far smaller, and far nearer, than he had at first thought. The Doradus had sent her television-homing guided missiles to look for him.

This was the second danger he had feared, and there was nothing he could do about it except to remain as inconspicuous as possible. The Doradus now had many eyes searching for him, but these auxiliaries had very severe limitations. They had been built to look for sunlit spaceships against a background of stars, not to search for a man hiding in a dark jungle of rock. The definition of their television systems was low, and they could see only in the forward direction.

There were rather more men on the chessboard now, and the game was a little deadlier, but his was still the advantage. The torpedo vanished into the night sky. As it was traveling on a nearly straight course in this low gravitational field, it would soon be leaving Phobos behind, and K.15 waited for what he knew must happen. A few minutes later, he saw a brief stabbing of rocket exhausts and guessed that the projectile was swinging slowly back on its course. At almost the same moment he saw another flare far away in the opposite quarter of the sky and wondered just how many of these infernal machines were in action. From what he knew of Z-class cruisers—which was a good deal more than he should—there were four missile-control channels, and they were probably all in use.

He was suddenly struck by an idea so brilliant that he was quite sure it couldn’t possibly work. The radio on his suit was a tunable one, covering an unusually wide band, and somewhere not far away the Doradus was pumping out power on everything from a thousand megacycles upwards. He switched on the receiver and began to explore.

It came in quickly—the raucous whine of a pulse transmitter not far away. He was probably picking up only a subharmonic, but that was quite good enough. It D/F’ed sharply, and for the first time K.15 allowed himself to make long-range plans about the future. The Doradus had betrayed herself—as long as she operated her missiles, he would know exactly where she was.

He moved cautiously forward towards the transmitter. To his surprise the signal faded, then increased sharply again. This puzzled him until he realized that he must be moving through a diffraction zone. Its width might have told him something useful if he had been a good enough physicist, but he couldn’t imagine what.

The Doradus was hanging about five kilometers above the surface, in full sunlight. Her “nonreflecting” paint was overdue for renewal, and K.I5 could see her clearly. As he was still in darkness and the shadow line was moving away from him, he decided that he was as safe here as anywhere. He settled down comfortably so that he could just see the cruiser and waited, feeling fairly certain that none of the guided projectiles would come too near the ship. By now, he calculated, the commander of the Doradus must be getting pretty mad. He was perfectly correct.

After an hour, the cruiser began to heave herself round with all the grace of a bogged hippopotamus. K.I5 guessed what was happening. Commander Smith was going to have a look at the antipodes, and was preparing for the perilous fifty-kilometer journey. He watched very carefully to see the orientation the ship was adopting, and when she came to rest again, was relieved to see that she was almost broadside on to him. Then, with a series of jerks that could not have been very enjoyable aboard, the cruiser began to move down to the horizon. K.I5 followed her at a comfortable walking pace—if one could use the phrase—reflecting that this was a feat very few people had ever performed. He was particularly careful not to overtake her on one of his kilometer-long glides and kept a close watch for any missiles that might be coming up astern.

It took the Doradus nearly an hour to cover the fifty kilometers. This, as K.15 amused himself by calculating, represented considerably less than a thousandth of her normal speed. Once she found herself going off into space at a tangent, and rather than waste time turning end over end, again fired off a salvo of shells to reduce speed. But she made it at last, and K.I5 settled down for another vigil, wedged between two rocks where he could just see the cruiser and he was quite sure she couldn’t see him. It occurred to him that by this time Commander Smith might have grave doubts as to whether he really was on Phobos at all, and he felt like firing off a signal flare to reassure him. However, he resisted the temptation.

There would be little point in describing the events of the next ten hours, since they differed in no important detail from those that had gone before. The Doradus made three other moves, and K. 15 stalked her with the care of a big-game hunter following the spoor of some elephantine beast. Once, when she would have led him out into full sunlight, he let her fall below the horizon until he could only just pick up her signals. But most of the time he kept her just visible, usually low down behind some convenient hill.

Once a torpedo exploded some kilometers away, and K.15 guessed that some exasperated operator had seen a shadow he didn’t like—or else that a technician had forgotten to switch off a proximity fuse. Otherwise nothing happened to enliven the proceedings; in fact, the whole affair was becoming rather boring. He almost welcomed the sight of an occasional guided missile drifting inquisitively overhead, for he did not believe that they could see him if he remained motionless and in reasonable cover. If he could have stayed on the part of Phobos exactly opposite the cruiser, he would have been safe even from these, he realized, since the ship would have no control there in the moon’s radio-shadow. But he could think of no reliable way in which he could be sure of staying in the safety zone if the cruiser moved again.

The end came very abruptly. There was a sudden blast of steering jets, and the cruiser’s main drive burst forth in all its power and splendor. In seconds the Doradus was shrinking sunwards, free at last, thankful to leave, even in defeat, this miserable lump of rock that had so annoyingly balked her of her legitimate prey. K.15 knew what had happened, and a great sense of peace and relaxation swept over him. In the radar room of the cruiser, someone had seen an echo of disconcerting amplitude approaching with altogether excessive speed. K.15 now had only to switch on his suit beacon and to wait. He could even afford the luxury of a cigarette.

“Quite an interesting story,” I said, “and I see now how it ties up with that squirrel. But it does raise one or two queries in my mind.”

“Indeed?” said Rupert Kingman politely.

I always like to get to the bottom of things, and I knew that my host had played a part in the Jovian War, about which he very seldom spoke. I decided to risk a long shot in the dark.

“May I ask how you happened to know so much about this unorthodox military engagement? It isn’t possible, is it, that you were K.15?”

There was an odd sort of strangling noise from Carson. Then Kingman said, quite calmly:

“No, I wasn’t.”

He got to his feet and started toward the gun room.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’m going to have another shot at that tree-rat. Maybe I’ll get him this time.” Then he was gone.

Carson looked at me as if to say: “This is another house you’ll never be invited to again.” When our host was out of earshot, he remarked in a coldly clinical tone:

“What did you have to say that for?”

“Well, it seemed a safe guess. How else could he have known all that?”

“As a matter of fact, I believe he met K.15 after the war; they must have had an interesting conversation together. But I thought you knew that Rupert was retired from the service with only the rank of lieutenant commander. The Court of Inquiry could never see his point of view. After all, it just wasn’t reasonable that the commander of the fastest ship in the Fleet couldn’t catch a man in a spacesuit.”

Editor's Introduction to:

THE MYTH OF A LIBERATION
by Truong Nhu Tang with Doan Van Toai

The late Richard Weaver’s best-known work is entitled Ideas Have Consequences. Weaver argued that Western intellectuals had a duty to be responsible in their thoughts and publications; that they should not hare off after every stray thought and whim, lest they discover they had created real monsters.

It is a lesson the U.S. intellectual community has not yet learned in either arts or sciences or political analysis. (For an exposition both insightful and hilarious on problems within the world of arts and letters, see Bryan F. Griffin’s Panic Among The Philistines, Chicago, Regnery, 1983.)

To this day the U.S. academic community has not, as a body, understood what happened in Vietnam. This is not stupidity; it is a deliberate refusal to look at what happened there. One can sympathize, for the situation in Vietnam is grim; alas, it is a work made largely by American intellectuals. Having created the monster, they should be made to look upon their work.

The United States was invited to Vietnam by Ngo Dinh Diem, a French-educated official who ousted the puppet Emperor Bao Dai and proclaimed the ancient kingdom independent not only of France, but of the Tonkin (Hanoi) imperialists, who had always wanted control of Annam (central Vietnam, with capital in Hue) and Cochin China (the Delta).

A few years later the United States destroyed the Diem government and caused the massacre of Diem and his family. This was done largely on the advice of academic analysts who advised John F. Kennedy. They felt that the Diem regime was corrupt and unable to be reformed; a new revolutionary regime would be more tractable, more willing to listen to the advice of Harvard University.

The Diem government was certainly no model of democracy and freedom. There is no such model in Asia with the exception of Japan, whose democratic institutions were constructed under the tutelage of General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur and an American army of occupation. Perhaps Kennedy had in mind a similar project in Vietnam. Of course Vietnam was our ally, not a defeated and occupied country, but the nation-builders among Kennedy’s whiz kids weren’t going to let technical details stand in the way of their Great Work.

The Western intellectual community roundly condemned Ngo Dinh Diem for not bringing instant democracy and economic paradise to a newly liberated colony already torn by war. They were not alone, of course.

In addition to the North Vietnamese Communists and American intellectuals, there were some within South Vietnam who hated the Diem regime. The NLF, so beloved of Jane Fonda and other U.S. patriots, was formed.

One of the original founders of the NLF was Truong Nhu Tang. To quote from the original New York Review of Books's introduction, “There is no one whose revolutionary credentials are more secure, no one who worked harder to expel the U.S. from Vietnam and to establish a revolutionary government…He is a man beyond the charge of CIA complicity. His story is a simple human tragedy.”

Truong Nhu Tang lives in Paris. His Memoirs have been written with, and translated by, his Vietnamese fellow exile Doan Van Toai, former Research Associate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, now Director of the Institute for Southeast Asian Policy Analysis, Fresno, California.

Both long for the day when the intellectual community will wake up and assume its responsibilities.

THE MYTH OF A LIBERATION
by Truong Nhu Tang with Doan Van Toai

On May 15, 1975, I was standing on the official dais reviewing the first Victory Day parade in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon until several months earlier). The crowd marching by waved the flags of both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Hanoi) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (Viet Cong). The troops, though, bore only the North’s colors. I asked the four-star general standing next to me where were the famous Viet Cong Divisions 1, 5, 7, and 9. The general, Van Tien Dung, commander-in-chief of the North Vietnamese army, answered coldly that the armed forces were now “unified.” At that moment I began to understand my fate and that of the NLF. In Vietnam we often said: “Take the juice of the lemon and throw away the peel.” On that dais the years of communist promises and assurances revealed themselves for the propaganda they were. Victory Day celebrated no victory for the NLF, or for the South.

When I was a student in Paris in the late 1940s, I was tremendously attracted to Western liberal ideas. I studied the theory of democracy and saw at first hand something about how it worked. My own country had gone through such a different historical development: a thousand years of autocratic Chinese domination followed by an equally unenlightened French colonial regime. Ironically perhaps, I found I loved French culture and especially French political traditions. I wanted desperately for my own country nothing less than what France and other Western nations enjoyed: independence and a democratic political life. I felt elated and proud when Ho Chi Minh came to Paris to negotiate with the French, even more when the press hailed him as a hero of the Vietnamese people. I felt that I was touched by the glory reflected from this man. When I was invited to meet him, I was overwhelmed by happiness. An idealistic and innocent Vietnamese youth, I became at that meeting a devoted follower of Ho.

During the late 1950s, there were not many Vietnamese intellectuals who had studied at Western schools, and I was among the few who had graduated from a French university. When I returned to Saigon in 1958, I was the controller-general of a bank and then was appointed by the South Vietnamese government director of the national sugar refinery in 1964. With this appointment I began following the path of those fortunate intellectuals who had been educated in the West and moved automatically into high government positions with secure futures. Often they were promoted to the position of minister, which they enjoyed fully. They paid great attention to their own luxuries and careers and no attention at all to what I saw as the needs of the people.

In time I came to feel that scarcely any of the top South Vietnamese leaders was a patriot and that I could not serve the country together with such corrupt generals and officials. In particular, there was no political freedom as I had seen it in the West. I became preoccupied with thoughts of my countrymen who were suffering in prisons and in the jungles for independence and for the political ideals I shared. Secretly I made contacts with these revolutionaries. Together we decided that my contribution would be most effective if I kept my position in the sugar refinery and maintained clandestine contacts with my new associates. Thereafter I began secret biweekly meetings with an agent of Huynh Tan Phat, the future prime minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and I kept up these meetings for the next two years. During this entire period President Ngo Dinh Diem’s police never suspected my involvement with the Viet Cong.

* * *

In December 1960, at a memorable jungle meeting, my friends suggested that we form the Provisional Committee of the NLF. Subsequently a larger meeting was set up on a rubber plantation in Bien Hoa, twenty miles northeast of Saigon. Present were about twenty people, all of them Southerners and educated in France. Our first thought was to choose a president and Tran Kim Quan, a Saigon pharmacist, was proposed. Quan had been a leader of the 1954 peace movement and seemed the ideal candidate, but he refused. The second choice was a lawyer, Nguyen Huu Tho, who at that time was under house arrest in Qui Nhon. My comrades formed a commando unit to kidnap Tho, but on their first attempt they somehow managed to make off with the wrong man. Another raid was promptly organized and this time we succeeded. Shortly afterward, in February 1962, a second organizational meeting was held near Tay Ninh in the “Green Triangle” area near the Vietnam-Cambodia border. At this meeting we decided to form a Permanent Committee of the NLF and we officially elected the newly liberated Tho as president.

Throughout this period we had close support from the North Vietnamese communists. We were in fact dependent on them for weapons, communications, and especially for our propaganda network. But almost all of us were Southerners (along with a few Northerners who had moved south years earlier)—and many of us were not communists. Ours was not a communist movement and we believed that the North Vietnamese leaders, who had been fighting so resolutely against the French, would place the interests of the people and the nation above the interest of ideology.

The North Vietnamese on their part never indicated that they wanted to impose communism on the South. On the contrary, they knew, they said, that the South must have a different program altogether, one that embodied our aspirations not just for independence but also for internal political freedom. I believed, in addition, that the Northern leadership would have the wisdom to draw from the experiences—both good and bad—of other communist countries, and especially of North Vietnam, and that they could avoid the errors made elsewhere. North Vietnam was, as Ho Chi Minh often declared, a special situation in which nationalists and communists had combined their efforts. Clearly South Vietnam was no less special, and the newly constituted NLF Permanent Committee felt a certain amount of confidence in working with our Northern compatriots.

In 1964, I was arrested for the first time. I had been helping other Saigon intellectuals form the Self-Determination Movement of South Vietnam, an organization opposed to the South Vietnamese regime. For this offense, I was imprisoned for two years. In a sense, though, it was only a warning because there was no evidence at that time of my Viet Cong contacts. Unfortunately, in 1967 a Viet Cong agent, who had been arrested and tortured, disclosed my NLF identity to the Thieu-Ky police. I was arrested again and this time my imprisonment was harsher. The police used many of their favorite techniques to torture me. They forced me to drink soapy water and ran 220-volt electric shocks through my body. For a month I was held in a tiny cell less than two meters square. They forced me to confess that I was a communist (although I was not), and to describe my underground activities.

I was still in prison when the 1968 Tet offensive swept the country. At one point the police told us that if the Viet Cong got into Saigon, we would all be killed. Shortly afterward the jailer ordered me to “take everything with you and follow me.” The expression was ominous; I was sure I would be shot, along with other Viet Cong prisoners who I knew were being executed in the streets. Two other NLF members and I were thrown into a security truck and then transferred to an American Red Cross van. To my surprise and relief, there were two Americans in the van as well, and they brought us to a CIA safe house. Later I discovered that secret negotiations had been going on between the Americans and the NLF for a prisoner exchange and that I was to be traded for two American colonels.

Before I left the CIA safe house, I was given a letter for the NLF authorities and pressed to accept a radio as well, which I refused, believing it to contain an electronic bug. A helicopter flew me and two other exchanged prisoners to Trang Bang, a small district about fifty miles northwest of Saigon. We were released at a soccer field where the Viet Cong security chief for Loc Ninh province (a Viet Cong-controlled area) was waiting for us. From this rendezvous we were taken by motorized tricycle deep into the jungle toward the NLF’s Central Office of South Vietnam, the famous COSVN headquarters from which the entire Viet Cong war effort was directed.

Traveling by night and sleeping by day to avoid ARVN hunters and American bombardments, we took almost two weeks to get there, even though COSVN was located on the Mimot plantation near the Cambodian border, only about one hundred miles from Saigon. COSVN’s nerve center was a simple enclosure built ten meters underground to shield it from B-52 attacks, although any hit within 500 meters would have been devastating. The headquarters was guarded by a single regiment, and well armed though they were, I could not help wondering at the vulnerability of the place.

The war that COSVN directed was by that time being fought by large numbers of Northern troops along with the Viet Cong guerrillas. In the early sixties, before I was jailed, there had been quite a few North Vietnamese military cadres assisting us but not many soldiers. The great majority of our troops then were Southern resistance fighters, many of whom were veterans of the French colonial wars. Others were peasants who joined us when the NLF was formed. Almost all of this latter group still lived at home. During the day they were loyal citizens of South Vietnam; at night they became Viet Cong.

For the most part, these guerrillas cared nothing about Marxist-Leninism or any other ideology. But they despised the local officials who had been appointed over them by the Saigon dictatorship. Beyond this, joining the Viet Cong allowed them to stay clear of the ARVN draft and to remain near their families. They were treated as brothers by the NLF, and although Viet Cong pay was almost nonexistent, these peasant soldiers were loyal and determined fighters. Moreover, they had the support of much of the population: People in the countryside and even in the cities provided food and intelligence information and protected our cadres. Although South Vietnamese propaganda attacked us as communists and murderers, the peasants believed otherwise. To them we were not Marxist-Leninists but simply revolutionaries fighting against a hated dictatorship and foreign intervention.

Because it was a people’s war, the Viet Cong cadres were trained carefully to exploit the peasants’ sympathies. But our goals were in fact generally shared by the people. We were working for Southern self-determination and independence—from Hanoi as well as from Washington. While we in the Viet Cong were beholden to Hanoi for military supplies and diplomatic contacts, many of us still believed that the North Vietnamese leadership would respect and support the NLF political program, that it would be in their interest to do so.

As early as the 1968 Tet offensive, after I was released from Thieu’s prisons, I protested to the communist leaders about the atrocities committed by North Vietnamese troops in Hue, where many innocent people were murdered and about a dozen American prisoners were shot. It was explained to me that these were political executions and also that a number of “errors” had been made. I managed to persuade myself then that no such “errors” would be necessary once the war was over.

Unfortunately the Tet offensive also proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnamese war that our propaganda transformed this military debacle into a brilliant victory, giving us new leverage in our diplomatic efforts, inciting the American antiwar movement to even stronger and more optimistic resistance, and disheartening the Washington planners.

The truth was that Tet cost us half of our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were simply unable to replace them with new recruits. One consequence was that the Hanoi leadership began to move unprecedented numbers of troops into the South, giving them a new and much more dominant position in NLF deliberations. The Tet failure also retarded the organization of the Alliance of National, Democratic, and Peace Forces, an opposition coalition that had formed around thirty prominent South Vietnamese intellectuals and opinion makers. It wasn’t until 1969 that we finally succeeded in bringing these disparate groups together under the leadership of Trinh Dinh Thao, a lawyer who had studied in France and had served as minister of justice for the French-backed government in the 1950s, and myself. Belatedly we began working on a broad political program and even on such details as choosing an anthem and designing a national flag.

In June 1969, in response to a request by the Communist Party, which was preparing to participate in the Paris peace conference, we formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government. At first I was proposed for the interior ministry, but because of my law degree, we finally concluded that I could function most effectively as minister of justice. I had about fifty officials at the Ministry of Justice in the jungle. Only a few of the PRO cabinet members were communists: Nguyen Huu Tho, president of the NLF; Huynh Tan Phat, prime minister of the PRO: General Tran Nam Trung, minister of defense; and Nguyen Thi Binh, minister of foreign affairs; and even these people were Southerners committed to the idea of a separate policy for South Vietnam. Almost all of the NLF leadership were of the same mind, as were most of our supporters from around the world.

The Hanoi leadership knew all this and orchestrated their position toward us accordingly. They accepted and supported the NLF platform at every point, and gave the firmest assurances of respect for the principle of South Vietnamese self-determination. Later, of course, we discovered that the North Vietnamese communists had engaged in a deliberate deception to achieve what had been their true goal from the start, the destruction of South Vietnam as a political or social entity in any way separate from the North. They succeeded in their deception by portraying themselves as brothers who had fought the same battles we were fighting and by exploiting our patriotism in the most cynical fashion. Nevertheless, the eventual denouement would not have taken place except for several wholly unpredictable developments.

After the Paris peace agreement was signed in 1973, most of us were preparing to create a neutralist government, balanced between Northern leftists and Southern rightists. We hoped that America and the other signers would play an active role in protecting the agreement. Certainly no one expected Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. No one expected America’s easy and startlingly rapid abandonment of the country. I myself, the soon-to-be minister of justice, was preparing a reconciliation policy that specifically excluded reprisals. But the sudden collapse of the South Vietnamese regime (caused partly by the hasty departure of many top Saigon leaders), together with abandonment by the Americans, left me and other “independent socialists” with no counterweight to the huge influx of Northern communists. It is important to note that our views were not based solely on naiveté. During the sixties neither the NLF leaders nor the Politburo ever hoped for total military victory against the Americans and their clients. Our entire strategy was formulated with the expectation that eventually we would be involved in some kind of coalition government. Such a government would have been immune to outright North Vietnamese domination and could have expected substantial international support.

The political climate was at that time a complex mix of three distinct factions: communist, non-communist, and anti-communist. The silent majority, if I can use that expression, were the non-communists. Le Due Tho, who negotiated the Paris peace agreement with Dr. Kissinger, in his news conference in Paris in 1972, said:

For our part we have said many times, since I returned to Paris, this is the fifth time we have declared clearly that the DRV government [Hanoi] and the PRO [Viet Cong] have never wished to force a Communist government on South Vietnam. We only want there to be in South Vietnam a National Reconciliation government having three segments, supporting peace, independence, neutrality and democracy. I can clarify for you what the three segments are: one segment belonging to patriots…people who don’t like the US, but who also may not support the PRG and DRV; one segment belonging to the PRG; one belonging to the Saigon government. A government like this would reflect the real political situation in South Vietnam and would be a resolution in accord with the situation and with logic.

Until March 1975, no one among us, including the Politburo members, imagined the Saigon regime’s collapse and the abandonment by the Americans. We were preparing for a coalition government.

Under these circumstances, a coalition government dedicated to concord and reconciliation was (and still is) the most pragmatic as well as the most humane means toward national unity. Such a government would also be in accord with the strong Vietnamese moral tradition of showing grace to the defeated and forgetting past hatred, a tradition that historically marked Vietnamese conduct even toward the Mongol and Chinese aggressors. The solemn communist promises of reconciliation without reprisals and with respect for Southern independence that were so attractive to the West and to the South Vietnamese people thus appeared to be built on a realistic assessment of the military situation, the internal political climate, and the Vietnamese character. It was our assessment as well, and it shaped our strategy for the postwar period.

Almost every Vietnamese family had ties with both communists and anti-communists. A million North Vietnamese escaped to the South in 1954, leaving millions of their relatives behind living under and working for the communist regime. Many Viet Cong guerrillas had relatives in the South Vietnamese army and throughout the war there were innumerable defections, both overt and hidden, from one side to the other. Family attachments, avarice, patriotism, and self-interest caused sympathies to shift and evolve so that the line between loyalties was rarely clear. (The three-star general Tran Van Trung, head of the psychological warfare of the Thieu regime, hid in his house his sister-in-law Mme. Duong Thi Chi, a Viet Cong cadre, who was head of the people’s uprising committee in Hue. She is now a member of the National Assembly. A four-star general, Cao Van Vien, commander-in-chief of the ARVN, hid in his villa one of his wife’s nephews who was the son of a communist army general. A three-star general, Hoang Xuan Lam, hid in his house a communist commando colonel who was his relative. General Lam was once commander of the first military corps of South Vietnam.)

Unfortunately when the war did end, North Vietnamese vindictiveness and fanaticism blossomed into a ferocious exercise of power. Hundreds of thousands of former officials and army officers of the Saigon regime were imprisoned in “re-education camps.” Literally millions of ordinary citizens were forced to leave their homes and settle in the so-Called New Economic Zones. One month after the “re-education” program was imposed, few of those arrested were released. I asked the communist leaders why they didn’t free the people in the camps as promised. I was told that the authorities had said only that the former officials and army officers of the Saigon regime should bring with them food enough for a month. The government had never promised that the term of “re-education” would last for a month!

A rigid authoritarianism settled down over the entire country, an authoritarianism supported by the third largest army in the world, although Vietnam is among the twenty poorest nations in the world. And where in all this are the feelings of the common people? Members of the former resistance, their sympathizers, and those who supported the Viet Cong are now filled with bitterness. These innocent people swear openly that had they another chance, their choice would be very different. One often hears sentiments such as this one: “I wouldn’t give them even a grain of rice now. I would pull them out of their hiding places and denounce them to the authorities.” At the same time, the myth of Ho Chi Minh, the great patriot, has dissolved to nothingness.

The radical and hidden nature of the Northern takeover resulted in the displacement of virtually every moderate and neutralist element. There was simply nothing to stop the most rapacious .and destructive communist plans from being carried out. Carpet-bagging Northern officials fought each other, sometimes at gunpoint, for the best offices, the most comfortable houses, the most lucrative positions.

Despite their misfortune, the people still kept their sense of humor: They frequently ridiculed the Party’s slogans. Formerly Ho Chi Minh called on the population in the North to double and triple their efforts to liberate their brothers and sisters of the South. Nowadays one hears the same slogans, lightly changed as follows: “Everybody should double his efforts to buy a radio and bike for the Party officials, and triple his production so that the officials can have a new house and a pretty girlfriend.”

Throughout the country, the people have passively resisted forced collectivization. The Party for its part tries to ascribe economic failure to natural calamities and the destruction of war, but in fact the underlying causes are social and psychological. On the one hand there is widespread popular discontent and on the other hand the failures of a totalitarian regime. Behind the fagade of unanimity, the silence and resignation of the population, there is the threatening reality that the Party’s daily Nhan Dan (Pravda of Vietnam) can no longer dissimulate: “Our plant and other equipment run at only 50 percent of their capacity.” Theft of public goods and property is common. There is no close cooperation between the different bureaucracies and sometimes these clash. We know what will become of the regime if this situation persists. The cadres work less because they no longer believe in their communist leaders. In June 1981, Hoang Tung, Party theoretician and editor of Nhan Dan, in a desperate effort to save the situation, asked Moscow to grant a billion rubles to Vietnam to save the country from collapse, an indication of Hanoi’s deep dependence on the Soviet Union. Moreover, Hanoi allowed the Soviets to build piers and other facilities to service nuclear submarines at the former U.S. supply base at Cam Ranh Bay.

Vietnam is now practically an instrument of Soviet expansionism in Southeast Asia. There are at least 10,000 Soviet advisers in Vietnam today. Since joining Comecon in June 1978, Vietnam has steadily become an integral part of the Soviet system, especially so because the leaders of Hanoi have transposed to Indochina the Soviet model of Eastern Europe. Le Duan, the secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party, told the Fourth Party Congress on December 26, 1976 that “the Vietnamese revolution is an integral part of the world revolution,” and he firmly insisted that “the Vietnamese revolution is to fulfill the internationalist duty and the international obligation” it owes to the Soviet Union. In my talks with Party leaders, I told them: “You can make a revolution without clothes but you cannot make a revolution by hunger, repression, and building gulags.” I protested that they had cheaply sold Vietnam’s independence to the USSR. The Vietnamese people hated the Soviets intensely, calling them “Americans without dollars”; many Western visitors have been attacked by the children and the people because they were mistaken for Russians.

Certainly the occupation of Cambodia does not mean the end of the regime’s international ambitions. Because of its consistent military and ideological involvement in the revolutionary movements in the region, and the support and military power of the Soviet Union, Hanoi has the will and also the means of exporting the revolution beyond the borders of Indochina when conditions permit. Moreover, the Soviet Union’s Communist Party has assigned its Vietnamese brothers the job of training not only Laotian and Cambodian communists, but also other communists in the region, particularly those of Thailand and Malaysia. This takes place in the Central School of Nationalities of Hoa Binh in North Vietnam and at the Nguyen Ai Quoc Institute (a familiar name of Ho Chi Minh), the training school of the Party leaders.

Not many people can believe these things, just as they could not believe in the past that the North would take over the South and set up a communist regime. But the truth is that for the first time in our history, people have risked their lives to leave Vietnam; large numbers of Vietnamese never tried to flee their country to escape French domination or the American intervention. The refugee exodus began in earnest as the active population was systematically drafted into the protracted war against Cambodia and occupied Laos. For the first time since 1945, when famine killed two million people, Vietnam has been facing grave and widespread food shortages because fanatical leaders have sacrificed their people in order to fulfill the obligations of “internationalism.”

The developing catastrophe brought back to me the memory of my father visiting me in prison in 1967 and saying: “I can’t understand why you abandoned everything—a good job, a bright future, a happy family—to join the communists. In return for your sacrifice they will never give you the smallest part of what you have now. Worse, they will betray you and persecute you all your life.”

I answered that he would simply have to accept the fact that he was giving one of his six children to struggle for a free and independent Vietnam. In that jail cell I felt I was fulfilling my obligation to fight against the military dictatorship that was oppressing my country. And to me it was not just an obligation, it was an honor. In my fervor I believed Ho Chi Minh’s protestations that nationalists and communists could coexist in a “special” Vietnamese form of socialism.

I was tragically wrong. Like many Western intellectuals, I believed that the Northern communists, who had made heroic sacrifices in their own struggle for independence, would never by choice become dependent on any superpower. With other liberals I shared the romantic notion that those who had fought so persistently against oppression would not themselves become oppressors. The truth, however, has nothing romantic about it. The North Vietnamese communists, survivors of protracted, blood-drenched campaigns against colonialism, interventionism, and human oppression, became in their turn colonialists, interventionists, and architects of one of the world’s most rigid regimes, becoming at the same time dependent clients of the Soviets.

The golden opportunity to harness the energy of 55 million people to rebuild their shattered country came in April 1975 when foreign involvement ended. That was the moment to initiate a policy of national reconciliation without reprisals, to establish a representative government that would include a spectrum of political parties and pursue a foreign policy of nonalignment. That was the moment to foster a spirit of brotherhood and focus the country’s attention on the task of national reconstruction.

The communists, however, chose aggrandizement rather than reconciliation. The moment of military victory was the moment they began to eliminate the NLF. Many of my friends lamented, “They buried the NLF without even a ceremony.” At the simple farewell dinner we held to formally disband the NLF in 1976, neither the Party nor the government sent a representative. It was a gesture of scorn toward the nationalistic and democratic principles for which the Viet Cong had bled so copiously and which the international liberal community had sustained so faithfully.

In their incessant and predatory pursuit of concentrated power, the communists have divided Vietnam instead of healing it. Their strategy has been to dislocate as much of the social fabric as possible in order to preclude the formation of a coherent opposition. Even the Party itself has been kept off balance. One-third of the Central Committee was purged during the Fourth Congress in 1976. Soon after, the 1.5 million Party members of 1976 were reduced to 700,000. By 1980 new members were recruited to bring the membership to about 1.7 million. Under the pretext of eliminating pro-Chinese and corrupt elements, some 300,000 members were purged during the Fifth Party Congress of 1982. Also purged were thirty-three members of the Central Committee and six members of the Politburo, including General Vo Nguyen Giap, who defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu.

Political power is now being concentrated in the families of Le Duan, Ho Chi Minh’s successor, and of Le Due Tho, Kissinger’s Paris adversary. Le Hong, Le Duan’s son, is chief of security for the Politburo. Le Anh, another son, commands the missile defenses for the entire country. Le Duan’s son-in-law is head of the air force and his brother-in-law has charge of the Party propaganda apparatus. Le Due Tho’s brother, Nguyen Due Thuan, has become secretary general of the trade unions while another brother, Mai Chi Tho, is mayor of Ho Chi Minh City and chief of security in the South. His cousin, Nguyen Due Tarn, has been promoted to the powerful position of chief of Party organization.

I was given the opportunity to work for this government. After the communists had eliminated the NLF and imprisoned most of those they considered potential enemies, they offered me the position of vice-minister of nutrition. I refused. I could not ally myself with a regime that had proved itself inhuman and that the people hated so passionately. During the 1960s, I gave up a good job to fight for certain ideals—which are still the ideals of the Vietnamese people: independence, democracy, and social welfare. I have now to acknowledge my responsibility for the disastrous state of my country.

After refusing the government’s offer, I lived on a small farm outside Saigon to escape continual surveillance. But I still had two escorts, a car, and a high salary. Finally, though, in November 1979, I managed to deceive my escorts and flee the country on a boat loaded with forty refugees.

If anything, my obligation to my countrymen is greater now because the oppression they are suffering is unparalleled in Vietnam’s history. The wars against the French and Americans, grim though they were, still had a dimension of humanity to them. Today the Vietnamese in particular and the Indochinese in general are fighting against the most obdurate and persistent imperialists of the century, the Soviets. And there are no antiwar movements in Moscow.

What is worse, public opinion in the free world is not yet ready to support resistance to the Vietnamese communists or their Russian patrons. There is still a confused feeling that those who are against communism must be reactionary while those who are progressive will necessarily support the socialist regimes of this world.

But the stark lesson of Vietnamese concentration camps and Vietnamese boat people should affect even this ingrained attitude. No previous regime in my country brought such numbers of people to such desperation. Not the military dictators, not the colonialists, not even the ancient Chinese overlords. It is a lesson that my compatriots and I learned through witnessing and through suffering in our own lives the fate of our countrymen. It is a lesson that must eventually move the conscience of the world.

Editor's Introduction to:

PSI-REC: OF SWORD AND SITAR, THE WAR WITHOUT
by Peter Dillingham

It is not always the poet’s task to persuade. Sometimes the intention is something quite different.

Peter Dillingham has perfected the skill of communicating images. Some of them can be quite disturbing.

PSI-REC: OF SWORD AND SITAR, THE WAR WITHOUT
by Peter Dillingham

Free companions of the Milky Way, we enter their arena, Sword and Sitar, enter this spotlit containment of Earth air paved with mirrors, as perhaps on some other alien world, Misha the Danseur and Aaraatuag the Eskimo Song Duelist, our brethren, lovers, tomorrow’s enemy, mobilize Piseq and drum against Grand Jete, tour en l’air.

We enter this warzone, this theater, I Kensei, Sword Saint, sinister, he with the Sitar, dexter, Earth’s martial elite, mercenaries, masters of Earth’s most acclaimed art, most esteemed export—war—impeccable wars:

World Wars!

Star Wars!

Wars Waged Without Wrack Or Waste!

War more art than war. Wars arranged and hyped by Earth’s dog-faced war brokers, holograds touting our skills, recommending combinations of combatants—such artistry, oh my beloved warlots:

Shaman Sandpainter

Mere magic

Manilas de Plata

Malaguenas

VS

The Mime Marcel

The sculpture of silence

Miguelito the Matador

Margaritas in a suit of lights

We their champions, what alien belligerents there in the swirling, caustic darkness? What sparked this call to arms? Dabbling dilettantes? Deadly serious? What matter! The contracts signed, earnests given, he for the right, I for the left, we will fight. We are warriors.

Happo Biraki, open on all eight sides, long sword and companion in hand, I wait, considering Mushashi’s Five Rings, Way of the Warrior—Ground, Water, Fire, Wind, Void—I have learned, Master, the Five Attitudes, the Five Approaches. I have taught my body strategy, to hit the enemy in one timing. My sword my soul, I wait.

He begins. Raga, that which colors the mind. Alap, free flowing, without rhythm, ascending, descending like alien sword cuts, in rasa karuna. A trap this sentiment—pathetic, tearful, sad…Hypnotic, his intense singleness of mood. He would lure me with his loneliness, his longing. Jor.

Flowing Water Cut? Fire and Stones Cut? Red Leaves Cut? Kesagake, whiplike my sword slashes. One cut, calmly, to strike the King of Notes within the Lord of Melody’s Court…Jhala, the chickari strings sound.

What match, Musashi, the spirit of one cut against Sitar’s gentle curves, those minute, microtonic twinnings, shruti; what match to meend, that sliding, gliding note to note, winding whorls of detail, subtle ornament, intrinsicate…Sword snare that chain of melody, manrikigusari, with the power of ten thousand.

A primal scream torn from countless psi out there in the darkness sinister, the piercing agony of defeat. Visions of Hiroshima, forever etched deep in their souls. Poor, faceless fools to think our ritual combat, this supreme refinement of war, freed them of its horrors. And the victors? Scarred, tainted with their victory.

The sword sheathed, the sitar in its muslin bag, our road manager beckons us to our ship. We depart. Another world, another alien war awaits…this unconquerable lust.

Editor's Introduction to:

SILENT LEGES
by Jerry Pournelle

I wrote this story at a time when I was considerably less hopeful about the economic effects of technology, especially development of space resources, and considerably more hopeful about internal developments within the Soviet Union.

At that time I believed that the Soviet tyranny would evolve as tyrannies always have; that its leaders would become cynical; and that soon enough the Soviets would decide that, hate the U.S. as much as they would, it would be better to share the world with the U.S. than to admit any third party—such as China—to real power.

I also assumed that the U.S. might itself develop such a cynical view. This is not as unlikely as it seems. Certainly we have no lack of politicians who will sell out the real interests of the nation—as recognized by the politicians themselves—in order to win reelection. Take for example the California legislature, which cynically gerrymandered the state to insure the reelection of incumbents, this in the face of a statewide initiative demanding new redistricting. Take for example the spectacle of ever-mounting budget deficits while Congress continues to spend and spend and elect and elect and bombastically proclaim that the economy cannot withstand such terrible deficits. Take—but no need to break a butterfly on the wheel. Examples are all too easy to come by.

Given such trends in the U.S. and the Soviet Union, might they not agree to divide the world between them? If so, they might well set up a CoDominium government, in theory controlled by a Grand Senate but in practice dominated by the two superpowers. The CoDominium might have its own armed forces: Thus was born the stories of the CoDominium Fleet and CD Marines.

Could this happen in the real world? Probably not. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is governed by a troika: the Army, the Party and the KGB. Each has great power, but not sufficient to overcome the opposition of the other two. The Party has the fewest resources, but it controls promotions within the other two organizations; and it cannot share power with the West. Only the Army could do that, and it would do so only if it felt threatened from within.

After Stalin died in 1953, the Army and Party nearly destroyed the secret police. Then the Party discovered that it was unable to control the Army. There was, for a time, the possibility that the Soviet Empire would become yet another military despotism, subject to the usual factors that affect such despoties; a nation such as Ted Cogswell describes in the opening story of this volume.

Then the Party asked for help, and the KGB was reconstituted.

So long as the Party and the KGB prevail, the CoDominium is unlikely. It is not, however, impossible; and meanwhile, it gives birth to good stories.

Good soldiers do not make good butchers, and butchers seldom make good soldiers. There is an internal logic to any effective military force. Moreover, a small, powerful, volunteer military group, separated from and disliked by civilians, inevitably turns inward, receiving its rewards and taking its directions from its own traditions. The Legion is one such force. The United States Army in the period between the World Wars was another. Professional soldiers will often obey politicians, but they seldom respect them.

John Christian Falkenberg respects them not at all.

SILENT LEGES
by Jerry Pournelle

“Inter Armes, Silent Leges”

I

Eight thousand young bodies writhed to the maddening beat of an electronic bass. Some danced while others lay back on the grass and drank or smoked. None could ignore the music, although they were only barely aware of the nasal tenor whose voice was not strong enough to carry over the wild squeals of the theremin and the twang of a dozen steel-stringed guitars. Other musical groups waited their turn on the gray wooden platform erected among the twentieth-century Gothic buildings of Los Angeles University.

Some of the musicians were so anxious to begin that they pounded their instruments. This produced nothing audible because their amplifiers were turned off, but it allowed them to join in the frenzied spirit of the festival on the campus green.

The concert was a happy affair. Citizens from a nearby Welfare Island joined the students in the college park. Enterprising dealers hawked liquor and pot and borloi. Catering trucks brought food. The Daughters of Lilith played original works while Slime waited their turn, and after those would come even more famous groups. An air of peace and fellowship engulfed the crowd.

“Lumpen proletariat.” The speaker was a young woman. She stood at a window in a classroom overlooking the common green and the mad scene below. “Lumpen,” she said again.

“Aw, come off the bolshi talk. Communism’s no answer. Look at the Sovworld–”

“Revolution betrayed! Betrayed!” the girl said. She faced her challenger. “There will be no peace and freedom until–

“Can it.” The meeting chairman banged his fist on the desk. “We’ve got work to do. This is no time for ideology.”

“Without the proper revolutionary theory, nothing can be accomplished.” This came from a bearded man in a leather jacket. He looked first at the chairman, then at the dozen others in the classroom. “First there must be a proper understanding of the problem. Then we can act!”

The chairman banged his fist again, but someone else spoke. “Deeds, not words. We came here to plan some action. What the hell’s all the talking about? You goddamned theorists give me a pain in the ass! What we need is action. The Underground’s done more for the Movement than you’ll ever–”

“Balls.” The man in the leather jacket snorted contempt. Then he stood. His voice projected well. “You act, all right. You shut down the L.A. transport system for three days. Real clever. And what did it accomplish? Made the taxpayers scared enough to fork over pay raises for the cops. You ended the goddamn pig strike, that’s what you did!”

There was a general babble, and the Underground spokesman tried to answer, but the leather-jacketed man continued. “You started food riots in the Citizen areas. Big deal. It’s results that count, and your result was the CoDominium Marines! You brought in the Marines, that’s what you did!”

“Damned right! We exposed this regime for what it really is! The Revolution can’t come until the people understand–”

“Revolution, my ass. Get it through your heads, technology’s the only thing that’s going to save us. Turn technology loose, free the scientists, and we’ll be–”

He was shouted down by the others. There was more babble.

Mark Fuller sat at the student desk and drank it all in. The wild music outside. Talk of revolution. Plans for action, for making something happen, for making the Establishment notice them; it was all new, and he was here in this room, where the real power, of the university lay. God, how I love it! he thought. I’ve never had any kind of power before. Not even over my own life. And now we can show them all!

He felt more alive than he ever had in his twenty years. He looked at the girl next to him and smiled. She grinned and patted his thigh. Tension rose in his loins until it was almost unbearable. He remembered their yesterdays and imagined their tomorrows. The quiet world of taxpayer country where he had grown up seemed very far away.

The others continued their argument. Mark listened, but his thoughts kept straying to Shirley: to the warmth of her hand on his thigh, to the places where her sweater was stretched out of shape, to the remembered feel of her knees against his back and her cries of passion. He knew he ought to listen more carefully to the discussion. He didn’t really belong in this room at all. If Shirley hadn’t brought him, he’d never have known the meeting was happening.

But I’ll earn a place here, he thought. In my own right. Power. That’s what they have, and I’ll learn how to be part of it.

The jacketed technocracy man was speaking again. “You see too many devils,” he said. “Get the CoDominium Intelligence people off the scientists’ backs and it won’t be twenty years before all of the earth’s a paradise. All of it, not just taxpayer country.”

“A polluted paradise! What do you want, to go back to the smog? Oil slicks, dead fish, animals exterminated, that’s what–”

“Bullshit. Technology can get us out of–”

“That’s what caused the problems in the first place!”

“Because we didn’t go far enough! There hasn’t been a new scientific idea since the goddamn space drive! You’re so damned proud because there’s no pollution. None here, anyway. But it’s not because of conservation, it’s because they ship people out, because of triage, because–”

“He’s right, people starve while we–”

“Damn right! Free thoughts, freedom to think, to plan, to do research, to publish without censorship, that’s what will liberate the world.”

The arguments went on until the chairman tired of them. He banged his fist again. “We are here to do something,” he said. “Not to settle the world’s problems this afternoon. That was agreed.”

The babble finally died away and the chairman spoke meaningfully. “This is our chance. A peaceful demonstration of power. Show what we think of their goddamned rules and their status cards. But we’ve got to be careful. It mustn’t get out of hand.”

Mark sprawled on the grass a dozen meters from the platform. He stretched luxuriantly in the California sun while Shirley stroked his back. Excitement poured in through all his senses. College had been like this in imagination. The boys at the expensive private school where his father had sent him used to whisper about festivals, demonstrations, and confrontations, but it hadn’t been real. Now it was. He’d hardly ever mingled with Citizens before, and now they were all around him. They wore Welfare-issue clothing and talked in strange dialects that Mark only half understood. Everyone, Citizens and students, writhed to the music that washed across them.

Mark’s father had wanted to send him to a college in taxpayer country, but there hadn’t been enough money. He might have won a scholarship, but he hadn’t. Mark told himself it was deliberate. Competition was no way to live. A lot of his friends had refused to compete in the rat race. None of them ended here, though; they’d had the money to get to Princeton or Yale.

More Citizens poured in. The festival was supposed to be open only to those with tickets, and Citizens weren’t supposed to come on the campus in the first place, but the student group had opened the gates and cut the fences. It had all been planned in the meeting. Now the gate-control shack was on fire, and everyone who lived nearby could get in.

Shirley was ecstatic. “Look at them!” she shouted. “This is the way it used to be! Citizens should be able to go wherever they want to. Equality forever!”

Mark smiled. It was all new to him. He hadn’t thought much about the division between Citizen and taxpayer, and had accepted his privileges without noticing them. He had learned a lot from Shirley and his new friends, but there was so much more that he didn’t know. I’ll find out, though, he thought. We know what we’re doing. We can make the world so much better—we can do anything! Time for the stupid old bastards to move over and let some fresh ideas in.

Shirley passed him a pipe of borloi. That was another new thing for him; it was a Citizen habit, something Mark’s father despised. Mark couldn’t understand why. He inhaled deeply and relished the wave of contentment it brought. Then he reached for Shirley and held her in his warm bath of concern and love, knowing she was as happy as he was.

She smiled gently back at him, her hand resting on his thigh, and they writhed to the music, the beat thundering through them, faces glowing with anticipation of what would come, of what they would accomplish this day. The pipe came around again and Mark seized it eagerly.

“Pigs! The pigs are coming!” The cry went up from the fringes of the crowd.

Shirley turned to her followers. “Just stay here. Don’t provoke the bastards. Make sure you don’t do anything but sit tight.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Mark felt a wave of excitement flash through him. This was it. And he was right there in front with the leaders; even if all his status did come from being Shirley’s current boyfriend, he was one of the leaders, one of the people who make things happen…

The police were trying to get through the crowd so they could stop the festival. The university president was with them, and he was shouting something Mark couldn’t understand. Over at the edge of the common green there was a lot of smoke. Was a building on fire? That didn’t make sense. There weren’t supposed to be any fires, nothing was to be harmed; just ignore the cops and the university people, show how Citizens and students could mingle in peace; show how stupid the damned rules were, and how needless–

There was a fire. Maybe more than one. Police and firemen tried to get through the crowd. Someone kicked a cop and the bluecoat went down. A dozen of his buddies waded into the group. Their sticks rose and fell.

The peaceful dream vanished. Mark stared in confusion. There was a man screaming somewhere, where was he? In the burning building? A group began chanting: “Equality now! Equality now!”

Another group was building a barricade across the green. “They aren’t supposed to do that!” Mark shouted. Shirley grinned at him. Her eyes shone in excitement. More police came, then more, and a group headed toward Mark. They raised aluminum shields as rocks flew across the green. The police came closer. One of the cops raised his club.

He was going to hit Shirley! Mark grabbed at the nightstick and deflected it. Citizens and students clustered around. Some threw themselves at the cops. A big man, well-dressed, too old to be a student, kicked at the leading policeman. The cop went down.

Mark pulled Shirley away as a dozen black-jacketed Lampburners joined the melee. The Lampburners would deal with the cops, but Mark didn’t want to watch. The boys in his school had talked contemptuously about pigs, but the only police Mark had ever met had been polite and deferential; this.was ugly, and–

His head swam in confusion. One minute he’d been laying in Shirley’s arms with music and fellowship and everything was wonderful. Now there were police, and groups shouting, “Kill the pigs!” and fires burning. The Lampburners were swarming everywhere. They hadn’t been at the meeting. Most claimed to be wanted by the police. But they’d had a representative at the planning session, they’d agreed this would be a peaceful demonstration–

A man jumped off the roof of the burning building. There was no one below to catch him, and he sprawled on the steps like a broken doll. Blood poured from his mouth, a bright-red splash against the pink marble steps. Another building shot flames skyward.  More police arrived and set up electrified barriers around the crowd.

A Civilian, his bright clothing a contrast with the dull police blue, got out of a cruiser and stood atop it as police held their shields in front of him. He began to shout through a bull horn:

“I READ YOU THE ACT OF 1991 AS AMENDED. WHENEVER THERE SHALL BE AN ASSEMBLY LIKELY TO ENDANGER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PROPERTY OR THE LIVES OF CITIZENS AND TAXPAYERS, THE LAWFUL MAGISTRATES SHALL COMMAND ALL PERSONS ASSEMBLED TO DISPERSE AND SHALL WARN THEM THAT FAILURE TO DISPERSE SHALL BE CONSIDERED A DECLARATION OF REBELLION THE MAGISTRATES SHALL GIVE SUFFICIENT TIME…”

Mark knew the act. He’d heard it discussed in school. It was time to get away. The local mayor would soon have more than enough authority to deal with this mad scene. He could even call on the military, US or CoDominium for help. The barriers were up around two sides of the green, but the cops hadn’t closed off all the buildings. There was a doorway ahead, and Mark pulled Shirley toward it. “Come on!”

Shirley wouldn’t come. She stood defiant, grinning wildly, shaking her fist at the police, shouting curses at them. Then she turned to Mark. “If you’re scared, just go on, baby. Bug off.”

Someone handed a bottle around. Shirley drank and gave it to Mark. He raised it to his lips but didn’t drink any. His head pounded, and he was afraid. I should run, he thought. I should run like hell. The mayor’s finished reading the act…

“EQUALITY NOW! EQUALITY NOW!” The chant was contagious. Half the crowd was shouting.

The police waited impassively. An officer glanced at his watch from time to time. Then the officer nodded, and the police advanced. Four technicians took hoses from one of the cruisers and directed streams of foam above the heads of the advancing blue line. The slimy liquid fell in a spray around Mark.

Mark fell. He tried to stand and couldn’t. Everyone around him fell. Whatever the liquid touched became so slippery that no one could hold onto it. It didn’t seem to affect the police.

Instant banana peel, Mark thought. He’d seen it used on tri-v. Everyone laughed when they saw it used on tri-v. Now it didn’t seem so funny. A couple of attempts showed Mark that he couldn’t get away; he could barely crawl. The police moved rapidly toward him. Rocks and bottles clanged against their shields.

The black-jacketed Lampburners took spray cans from their pockets. They sprayed their shoes and hands and then got up. They began to move away through the helpless crowd, away from the police, toward an empty building.

The police line reached the group around Mark. The cops fondled their nightsticks. They spoke in low tones, too low to be heard any distance away. “Stick time,” one said. “Yeah. Our turn,” his partner answered.

“Does anyone here claim taxpayer status?” The cop eyed the group coldly. “Speak up.”

“Yes. Here.” One boy tried to get up. He fell again, but he held up his ID card. “Here.” Mark reached for his own.

“Fink!” Shirley shouted. She threw something at the other boy. “Hypocrite! Pig! Fink!” Others were shouting as well. Mark saw Shirley’s look of hatred and put his card back into his pocket. There’d be time later.

Two police grabbed him. One lifted his feet, the other lifted his shoulders. When he was a couple of feet off the ground, the one holding his shoulders let go. The last thing Mark heard as his head hit the pavement was the mocking laughter of the cop.

The bailiff was grotesque, with mustaches like Wyatt Earp and an enormous paunch that hung over his equipment belt. In a bored voice he read, “Case 457-984. People against Mark Fuller. Rebellion, aggravated assault, resisting arrest.”

The judge looked down from the bench. “How do you plead?”

“Guilty, Your Honor,” Mark’s lawyer said. His name was Zower, and he wasn’t expensive. Mark’s father couldn’t afford an expensive lawyer.

But I didn’t, Mark thought. I didn’t. When he’d said that earlier, though, the attorney had been contemptuous. “Shut up or you’ll make it worse,” the lawyer had said. “I had trouble enough getting the conspiracy charges dropped. Just stand there looking innocent and don’t say a goddamn thing.”

The judge nodded. “Have you anything to say in mitigation?”

Zower put his hand on Mark’s shoulder. “My client throws himself on the mercy of the court,” he said. “Mark has never been in trouble before. He acted under the influence of evil companions and intoxicants. There was no real intent to commit crimes. Just very bad judgment.”

The judge didn’t look impressed. “What have the people to say about this?”

“Your Honor,” the prosecutor began. “The people have had more than enough of these student riots. This was no high-jinks stunt by young taxpayers. This was a deliberate rebellion, planned in advance.

“We have recordings of this hoodlum striking a police officer. That officer subsequently suffered a severe beating with three fractures, a ruptured kidney, and other personal injuries. It is a wonder the officer is alive. We can also show that after the mayor’s proclamation, the accused made no attempt to leave. If the defense disputes these facts…”

“No, no.” Zower spoke hastily. “We stipulate, Your Honor.” He muttered to himself, just loud enough that Mark could hear. “Can’t let them run those pix. That’d get the judge really upset.”

Zower stood. “Your Honor, we stipulate Mark’s bad judgment, but remember, he was intoxicated. He was with new friends, friends he didn’t know very well. His father is a respected taxpayer, manager of General Foods in Santa Maria. Mark has never been arrested before. I’m sure he’s learned a lesson from all this.”

And where is Shirley? Mark wondered. Somehow her politician father had kept her from even being charged.

The judge was nodding. Zower smiled and whispered to Mark, “I stroked him pretty good in chambers. We’ll get probation.”

“Mister Fuller, what have you to say for yourself?” the judge demanded.

Mark stood eagerly. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say.

Plead? Beg for mercy? Tell him to stick it? Not that. Mark breathed hard. I’m scared, he thought. He walked nervously toward the bench.

The judge’s face exploded in a cloud of red. There was wild laughter in the court. Another balloon of red ink sailed across the courtroom to burst on the high bench. Mark laughed hysterically, completely out of control, as the spectators shouted.

“EQUALITY NOW!” Eight voices speaking in unison cut through the babble. “JUSTICE! EQUALITY! CITIZEN JUDGES, NOT TAXPAYERS! EQUALITY NOW! EQUALITY NOW! EQUALITY NOW! ALL POWER TO THE LIBERATION PARTY!”

The last stung like a blow. The judge’s face turned even redder. He stood in fury. The fat bailiff and his companions moved decisively through the crowd. Two of the demonstrators escaped, but the bailiff was much faster than his bulk made him look. After a time the court was silent.

The judge stood, ink dripping from his face and robes. He was not smiling. “This amused you?” he demanded.

“NO,” Mark said. “It was none of my doing!”

“I do not believe the outlawed Liberation Party would trouble itself for anyone not one of their own. Mark Fuller, you have pleaded guilty to serious crimes. We would normally send a taxpayer’s son to rehabilitation school, but you and your friends have demanded equality. Very well. You shall have it.

“Mark Fuller, I sentence you to three years at hard labor. Since you have renounced your allegiance to the United States by participating in a deliberate act of rebellion, such participation stipulated by your attorney’s admission that you made no move to depart after the reading of the act, you have no claim upon the United States. The United States therefore renounces you. It is hereby ordered that you be delivered to the CoDominium authorities to serve your sentence wherever they shall find convenient.”

The gavel fell to the bench. It didn’t sound very loud at all.

II

The low gravity of Luna Base was better than the endless nightmare of the flight up. He’d been trapped in a narrow compartment with berths so close together that the sagging bunk above his pressed against him at high acceleration. The ship had stunk with the putrid smell of vomit and stale wine.

Now he stood under glaring lights in a bare concrete room. The concrete was the gray-green color of moon rock. They hadn’t been given an outside view, and except for gravity, he might have been in a basement on Earth. There were a thousand others standing with him under the glaring bright fluorescent lights. Most of them had the dull look of terror. A few glared defiantly, but they kept their opinions to themselves.

Gray-coveralled trusties with bell-mouthed sonic stunners patroled the room. It wouldn’t have been worthwhile trying to take one of the weapons from the trusties, though; at each entrance was a knot of CoDominium Marines in blue and scarlet. The Marines leaned idly on weapons which were not harmless at all.

“Segregate us,” Mark’s companion said. “Divide and rule.”

Mark nodded. Bill Halpern was the only person Mark knew. Halpern had been the technocrat spokesman in the meeting on campus.

“Divide and rule,” Halpern said again. It was true enough. The prisoners had been sorted by sex, race, and language, so that everyone around Mark was white male and either North American or from some other English-speaking place. “What the hell are we waiting for?” Halpern wondered. There was no possible answer, and they stood for what seemed like hours.

Then the doors opened and a small group came in. Three CoDominium Navy petty officers, and a midshipman. The middie was no more than seventeen, younger than Mark. He used a bullhorn to speak to the assembled group. “Volunteers for the Navy?”

There were several shouts, and some of the prisoners stepped forward.

“Traitors,” Halpern said.

Mark nodded agreement. Although he had meant it in a different way from Halpern, Mark’s father had always said the same thing. “Traitors!” he’d thundered. “Dupes of the goddamn Soviets. One of these days that Navy will take over this country and hand us to the Kremlin.”

Mark’s teachers at school had different ideas. The Navy wasn’t needed at all. Nor was the CD. Men no longer made war, at least not on Earth. Colony squabbles were of no interest to the people of Earth anyway. Military services, they’d told him, were a wasteful joke.

His new friends at college said the purpose of the CoDominium was to keep the United States and the Soviet Union rich while suppressing everyone else. Then they’d begun using the CD fleet and Marines to shore up their domestic governments. The whole CD was nothing more than a part of the machinery of oppression.

And yet—on tri-v the CD Navy was glamorous. It fought pirates (only Mark knew there were no real space pirates) and restored order in the colonies (only his college friends told him that wasn’t restoring order, it was oppression of free people). The spacers wore uniforms and explored new planets.

The CD midshipman walked along the line of prisoners. Two older petty officers followed. They walked proudly—contemptuously, even. They saw the prisoners as another race, not as fellow humans at all.

A convict not far from Mark stepped out of line. “Mister Blaine,” the man said. “Please, sir.”

The midshipman stopped. “Yes?”

“Don’t you know me, Mister Blaine? Able Spacer Johnson, sir. In Mister Leary’s division in Magog.”

The middie nodded with the gravity of a seventeen-year-old who has important duties and knows it. “I recall you, Johnson.”

“Let me back in, sir. Six years I served, never up for defaulters.”

The midshipman took papers from his clipboard and ran his finger down a list. “Drunk and disorderly, assault on a taxpayer, armed robbery, third conviction. Mandatory transportation. I shouldn’t wonder that you prefer the Navy, Johnson.”

“Not like that at all, sir. I shouldn’t ever have took my musterin’-out pay. Shouldn’t have left the Fleet, sir. Couldn’t find my place with civilians, sir. God knows I drank too much, but I was never drunk on duty, sir, you look up my records–

“Kiss the middie’s bum, you whining asshole,” Halpern said.

One of the petty officers glanced up. “Silence in the ranks.” He put his hand on his nightstick and glared at Halpern.

The midshipman thought for a moment. “All right, Johnson. You’ll come in as ordinary. Have to work for the stripe.”

“Yes, sir, sure thing, sir.” Johnson strode toward the area reserved for recruits. His manner changed with each step he took. He began in a cringing walk, but by the time he reached the end of the room, he had straightened and walked tall.

The midshipman went on down the line. Twenty men volunteered, but he took only three.

An hour later a CoDominium Marine sergeant came looking for men. “No rebels and no degenerates!” he said. He took six young men sentenced for street rioting, arson, mayhem, resisting arrest, assault on police, and numerous other crimes.

“Street gang,” Halpern said. “Perfect for Marines.”

Eventually they were herded back into a detention pen and left to themselves. “You really hate the CD, don’t you?” Mark asked his companion.

“I hate what they do.”

Mark nodded, but Halpern only sneered. “You don’t know anything at all,” Halpern said. “Oppression? Shooting rioters? Sure, that’s part of what the CD does, but it’s not the worst part. Symptom, not cause. The cause is their goddamn so-called intelligence service. Suppression of scientific research. Censorship of technical journals. They’ve stopped even the pretense of basic research. When was the last time a licensed physicist had a decent idea?”

Mark shrugged. He knew nothing about physics.

Halpern grinned. There was no warmth in the expression. His voice had a bitter edge. “Keeping the peace, they say. Only discourage new weapons, new military technology. Bullshit, they’ve stopped everything for fear somebody somewhere will come up with–”

“Shut the fuck up.” The man was big, hairy like a bear, with a big paunch jutting out over the belt of his coveralls. “If I hear that goddamn whining once more, I’ll stomp your goddamn head in.”

“Hey, easy,” Halpern said. “We’re all in this together. We have to join against the class enemy–”

The big men’s hand swung up without warning. He hit Halpern on the mouth. Halpern staggered and fell. His head struck the concrete floor. “Told you to shut up.” He turned to Mark. “You got anything to say?”

Mark was terrified. I ought to do something, he thought. Say something. Anything. He tried to speak, but no words came out.

The big man grinned at him, then deliberately kicked Halpern in the ribs. “Didn’t think so. Hey, you’re not bad lookin’, kid. Six months we’ll be on that goddamn ship, with no women. Want to be my bunkmate? I’ll take good care of you. See nobody hurts you. You’ll like that.”

“Leave the kid alone.” Mark couldn’t see who spoke. “I said, let go of him.”

“Who says so?” The hairy man shoved Mark against the wall and turned to the newcomer.

“I do.” The newcomer didn’t look like much, Mark thought. At least forty, and slim. Not thin though, Mark realized. The man stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coveralls. “Let him be, Karper.”

Karper grinned and charged at the newcomer. As he rushed forward, his opponent pivoted and sent a kick to Karper’s head. As Karper reeled back, two more kicks slammed his head against the wall. Then the newcomer moved forward and deliberately kneed Karper in the kidney. The big man went down and rolled beside Halpern.

“Come on, kid, it stinks over here.” He grinned at Mark.

“But my buddy–”

“Forget him.” The man pointed. Five trusties were coming into the pen. They lifted Halpern and Karper and carried them away. One of the trusties winked as they went past Mark and the other man. “See? Maybe you’ll see your friend again, maybe not. They don’t like troublemakers.”

“Bill’s not a troublemaker! That other man started it! It’s not fair!”

“Kid, you better forget that word ‘fair.’ It could cause you no end of problems. Got any smokes?” He accepted Mark’s cigarette with a glance at the label. “Thanks. Name?”

“Mark Fuller.”

“Dugan. Call me Biff.”

“Thanks, Biff. I guess I needed some help.”

“That you did. Hell, it was fun. Karper was gettin’ on my nerves anyway. How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty.” And what does he want? Lord God, is he looking for a bunkmate too?

“You don’t look twenty. Taxpayer, aren’t you?”

“Yes—how did you know?”

“It shows. What’s a taxpayer kid doing here?”

Mark told him. “It wasn’t fair,” he finished.

“There’s that word again. You were in college, eh? Can you read?”

“Well, sure, everyone can read.”

Dugan laughed. “I can’t. Not very well. And I bet you’re the only one in this pen who ever read a whole book. Where’d you learn?”

“Well—in school. Maybe a little at home.”

Dugan blew a careful smoke ring. It hung in the air between them. “Me, I never saw a book until they dragged me off to school, and nobody gave a shit whether we looked at ’em or not. Had to pick up some of it, but—look, maybe you know things I don’t. Want to stick with me a while?”

Mark eyed him suspiciously. Dugan laughed. “Hell, I don’t bugger kids. Not until I’ve been locked up a lot longer than this, anyway. Man needs a buddy, though, and you just lost yours.”

“Yeah. Okay. Want another cigarette?”

“We better save ‘em. We’ll need all you got.”

A petty officer opened the door to the pen. “Classification,” he shouted. “Move out this door.”

“Got to it pretty fast,” Dugan said. “Come on.” They followed the others out and through a long corridor until they reached another large room. There were tables at the end, and trusties sat at each table. Eventually Mark and Dugan got to one.

The trusty barely looked at them. When they gave their names, he punched them into a console on the table. The printer made tiny clicking noises and two sheets of paper fell out. “Any choice?” the trusty asked.

“What’s open, shipmate?” Dugan asked.

“I’m no shipmate of yours,” the trusty sneered. “Tanith, Sparta, and Fulson’s World.”

Dugan shuddered. “Well, we sure don’t want Fulson’s World.” He reached into Mark’s pocket and took out the pack of cigarettes, then laid them on the table. They vanished into the trusty’s coveralls.

“Not Fulson’s,” the trusty said. “Now, I hear they’re lettin’ the convicts run loose on Sparta.” He said nothing more but looked at them closely.

Mark remembered that Sparta was founded by a group of intellectuals. They were trying some kind of social experiment. Unlike Tanith with its CoDominium governor, Sparta was more or less independent. They’d have a better chance there. “We’ll take Sparta,” Mark said.

“Sparta’s pretty popular,” the trusty said. He waited expectantly for a moment. “Well, too bad.” He scrawled “Tanith” across their papers and handed them over. “Move along.” A petty officer waved them through a door behind the table.

“But we wanted Sparta,” Mark protested.

“Get your ass out of here,” the CD petty officer said. “Move it.” Then it was too late and they were through the door.

“Wish I’d had some credits,” Dugan muttered. “We bought off Fulson’s though. That’s something.”

“But—I have some money. I didn’t know—”

Dugan gave him a curious look. “Kid, they didn’t teach you much in that school of yours. Well, come on, we’ll make out. But you better let me take care of that money.”

CDSS Vladivostok hurtled toward the orbit of Jupiter. The converted assault troop carrier was crammed with thousands of men jammed into temporary berths welded into the troop bays. There were more men than bunks; many of the convicts had to trade off half the time.

Dugan took over a corner. Corners were desirable territory, and two men disputed his choice. After they were carried away, no one else thought it worth trying. Biff used Mark’s money to finance a crap game in the area near their berths, and in a few days he had trebled their capital.

“Too bad,” Dugan said. “If we’d had this much back on Luna, we’d be headed for Sparta. Anyway, we bought our way into this ship, and that’s worth something.” He grinned at Mark’s lack of response. “Hey, kid, it could be worse. We could be with BuReloc. You think this Navy ship’s bad, try a BuReloc hellhole.”

Mark wondered how Bureau of Relocation ships could be worse, but he didn’t want to find out. The newscasters back on Earth had documentary specials about BuReloc. They all said that conditions were tough but bearable. They also told of the glory: mankind settling other worlds circling other stars. Mark felt none of the glory now.

Back home Zower would be making an appeal. Or at least he’d be billing Mark’s father for one. And so what? Mark thought. Nothing would come of it. But something might! Jason Fuller had some political favors coming. He might pull a few strings. Mark could be headed back home within a year…

He knew better, but he had no other hope. He lived in misery, brooding about the low spin gravity, starchy food, the constant stench of the other convicts; all that was bad, but the water was the worst thing. He knew it was recycled. Water on Earth was recycled too, but there you didn’t think how it had been used to bathe the foul sores of the man two bays to starboard.

Sometimes a convict would rush screaming through the compartment, smashing at bunks and flinging his fellow prisoners about like matchsticks, until a dozen men would beat him to the deck. Eventually the guards would take him away. None ever came back.

The ship reached the orbit of Jupiter and took on fuel from the scoopship tankers that waited for her. Then she moved to the featureless point in space that marked the Alderson jump tramline. Alarms rang; then everything blurred. They sat on their bunks in confusion, unable to move or even think. That lasted long after the instantaneous Jump. The ship had covered light-years in a single instant; now they had to cross another star’s gravity well to reach the next Jump point.

Two weeks later a petty officer entered the compartment. “Two men needed for cleanup in the crew area. Chance for Navy chow. Volunteers?”

“Sure,” Dugan said. “My buddy and me. Anybody object?”

No one did. The petty officer grinned. “Looks like you’re elected.” He led them through corridors and passageways to the forward end of the ship, where they were put to scrubbing the bulkheads. A bored Marine watched idly.

“I thought you said never volunteer,” Mark told Dugan.

“Good general rule. But what else we got to do? Gets us better chow. Always take a chance on something when it can’t be no worse than what you’ve got.”

The lunch was good and the work was not hard. Even the smell of disinfectant was a relief, and scrubbing off the bulkheads and decks got their hands clean for the first time since they’d been put aboard. In mid-afternoon a crewman came by. He stopped and stared at them for a moment.

“Dugan! Biff Dugan, by God!”

“Horrigan, you slut. When’d you join up?”

“Aw, you know how it is, Biff, they moved in on the racket and what could I do? I see they got you–”

“Clean got me. Sarah blew the whistle on me.”

“Told you she wouldn’t put up with you messing around. Who’s your chum?”

“Name’s Mark. He’s learning. Hey, Goober, what can you do for me?”

“Funny you ask. Maybe I got something. Want to enlist?”

“Hell, they don’t want me. I tried back on Luna. Too old.”

Horrigan nodded. “Yeah, but the Purser’s gang needs men. Freakie killed twenty crewmen yesterday. Recruits. This geek opened an air lock and nobody stopped him. That’s why you’re out here swabbing. Look. Biff, we’re headed for a long patrol after we drop you guys on Tanith. Maybe I can fix it.”

“No harm in trying. Mark, you lost anything on Tanith?”

“No.” But I don’t want to join the CD Navy, either. Only why not? He tried to copy his friend’s easy indifference. “Can’t be worse than where we are.”

“Right,” Horrigan said. “We’ll go see the Purser’s middie. That okay, mate?” he asked the Marine.

The Marine shrugged. “Okay by me.”

Horrigan led the way forward. Mark felt sick excitement. Getting out of the prison compartment suddenly became the most important thing in his life.

Midshipman Greschin was not surprised to find two prisoners ready to join the Navy. He questioned them for a few minutes. Then he studied Dugan’s records on the readout screen. “You have been in space before, but there is nothing on your record–

“I never said I’ve been out.”

“No, but you have. Are you a deserter?”

“No,” Dugan said.

Greschin shrugged. “If you are, we will find out. If not, we do not care. I see no reason why you cannot be enlisted. I will call Lieutenant Breslov.”

Breslov was fifteen years older than his midshipman. He looked over Dugan’s print-out. Then he examined Mark’s. “I can take Dugan,” he said. “Not you, Fuller.”

“But why?” Mark asked.

Breslov shrugged. “You are a rebel, and you have high intelligence. So it says here. There are officers who will take the risk of recruiting those like you, but I am not one of them. We cannot use you in this ship.”

“Oh.” Mark turned to go.

“Wait a minute, kid.” Dugan looked at the officer. “Thanks, Lieutenant, but maybe I better stick with my buddy–”

“No, don’t do that,” Mark said. He felt a wave of gratitude toward the older man. Dugan’s offer seemed the finest thing anyone had ever tried to do for him.

“Who’ll look out for ya? You’ll get your throat cut.”

“Maybe not. I’ve learned a lot.”

Breslov stood. “Your sentiment for your friend is admirable, but you are wasting my time. Are you enlisting?”

“He is,” Mark said. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” He followed the Marine guard back to the corridor and began washing the bulkhead, scrubbing savagely, trying to forget his misery and despair. It was all so unfair!

III

Tanith was hot steaming jungle under a perpetual gray cloud cover. The gravity was too high and the humidity was almost unbearable. Yet it was a relief to be there after the crowded ship, and Mark waited to see what would happen to him. He was surprised to find that he cared.

He was herded through medical processing, immunization, identification, a meaningless classification interview, and both psychological and aptitude tests. They ran from one task to the next, then stood in long lines or simply waited around. On the fourth day he was taken from the detention pen to an empty adobe-walled room with rough wooden furniture. The guards left him there. The sensation of being alone was exhilarating.

He looked up warily when the door opened. “Biff!”

“Hi, kid. Got something for you.” Dugan was dressed in the blue coveralls of the CD Navy. He glanced around guiltily. “You left this with me and I run it up a bit.” He held out a fistful of CoDominium scrip. “Go on, take it, I can get more and you can’t. Look, we’re pullin’ out pretty soon, and…”

“It’s all right,” Mark said. But it wasn’t all right. He hadn’t known how much friendship meant to him until he’d been separated from Dugan; now, seeing him in the Navy uniform and knowing that Dugan was headed away from this horrible place, Mark hated his former friend. “I’ll get along.”

“Damned right you will! Stop sniffing about how unfair everything is and wait your chance. You’ll get one. Look, you’re a young kid and everything seems like it’s forever, but—” Dugan fell silent and shook his head ruefully. “Not that you need fatherly advice from me. Or that it’d do any good. But things end, Mark. The day ends. So do weeks and months.”

“Yeah. Sure.” They said more meaningless things, and Dugan left. Now I’m completely alone, Mark thought. It was a crushing thought. Some of the speeches he’d heard in his few days in college kept rising up to haunt him. “Die Gedanken, Sie sind frei.” Yeah. Sure. A man’s thoughts were always free, and no one could enslave a free man, and the heaviest chains and darkest dungeons could never cage the spirit of man. Bullshit. I’m a slave. If I don’t do what they tell me, they’ll hurt me until I do. And I’m too damn scared of them. But something else he’d heard was more comforting. “Slaves have no rights, and thus have no obligations.”

That, by God, fits, he thought. I don’t owe anybody a thing. Nobody here, and none of those bastards on Earth. I do what I have to do and I look out for number-one and rape the rest of ‘em.

There was no prison, or rather the entire planet was a prison; but the main CD building was intended only for classification and assignment. The prisoners were sold off to wealthy planters. There were a lot of rumors about the different places you might be sent to: big company farms run like factories, where it was said that few convicts ever lived to finish out their terms; industrial plants near big cities, which was supposed to be soft duty because as soon as you got trusty status, you could get passes into town; lonely plantations out in the sticks where owners could do anything they wanted and generally did.

The pen began to empty as the men were shipped out. Then came Mark’s turn. He was escorted into an interview room and given a seat. It was the second time in months that he’d been alone, and he enjoyed the solitude. There were voices from the next room.

“Why do you not keep him, hein?”

“Immature. No reason to be loyal to the CD.”

“Or to me.”

“Or to you. And too smart to be a dumb cop. You might make a foreman out of him. The governor’s interested in this one, Ludwig. He keeps track of all the high-IQ types. Look, you take this one, I owe you. I’ll see you get good hands.”

“Okay. Ja. Just remember that when you get in some with muscles and no brains, hein? Okay, we look at your genius.”

Who the hell were they talking about? Mark wondered. Me? Compared to most of the others in the ship, I guess you could call me a genius, but–

The door opened. Mark stood quickly. The guards liked you to do that.

“Fuller,” the captain said. “This is Herr Ewigfeuer. You’ll work for him. His place is a country club.”

The planter was heavy-set, with thick jowls. He needed a shave, and his shorts and khaki shirt were stained with sweat. “So you are the new convict I take to my nice farm.” He eyed Mark coldly. “He will do, he will do. Okay, we go now, ja?”

“Now?” Mark said.

“Now, ja, you think all day I have? I can stay in Whiskeytown while my foreman lets the hands eat everything and lay around not working? Give me the papers, Captain.”

The captain took a sheaf of papers from a folder. He scrawled across the bottom, then handed Mark a pen. “Sign here.”

Mark started to read the documents. The captain laughed. “Sign it, goddamnit. We don’t have all day.”

Mark shrugged and scribbled his name. The captain handed Ewigfeuer two copies and indicated a door. They went through adobe corridors to a guardroom at the end. The planter .handed the guards a copy of the contract and the door was opened.

The heat outside struck Mark like a physical blow. It had been hot enough inside, but the thick earthen walls had protected him from the worst; now it was almost unbearable. There was no sun, but the clouds were bright enough to hurt his eyes. Ewigfeuer put on dark glasses. He led the way to a shop across from the prison and bought Mark a pair. “Put these on,” he commanded. “You are no use if you are blind. Now come.”

They walked through busy streets. The sky hung dull orange, an eternal sunset. Sweat sprang from Mark’s brow and trickled down inside his coveralls. He wished he had shorts. Nearly everyone in the town wore them.

They passed grimy shops and open stalls. There were sidewalk displays of goods for sale, nearly all crudely made or Navy surplus or black-market goods stolen from CD storerooms. Strange animals pulled carts through the streets and there were no automobiles at all.

A team of horses splashed mud on Ewigfeuer’s legs. The fat planter shook his fist at the driver. The teamster ignored him. “Have you owned horses’?” Ewigfeuer demanded.

“No,” Mark said. “I hadn’t expected to see any here.”

“Horses make more horses. Tractors do not,” the planter said. “Also with horses and jackasses you get mules. Better than tractors. Better than the damned stormand beasts. Stormands do not like men.” He pointed to one of the unlikely animals. It looked like a cross between a mule and a moose, with wide, splayed feet and a sad look that turned vicious whenever anyone got near it. It was tied to a rail outside one of the shops.

There were more people than Mark had expected. They seemed to divide into three classes. There were those who tended the shops and stalls and who smiled unctuously when the planter passed; there were others who strode purposefully through the muddy streets; and there were those who wandered aimlessly or sat on the street corners staring vacantly.

“What are they waiting for?” Mark said. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but Ewigfeuer heard him.

“They wait to die,” the planter said. “Ja, they think something else will come to save them. They will find something to steal, maybe, so they live another week, another month, a year even; but they are waiting to die. And they are white men!” This seemed their ultimate crime to Ewigfeuer.

“You might expect this of the blacks,” the planter said. “But no, the blacks work, or they go to the bush and live there—not like civilized men perhaps, but they live. Not these. They wait to die. It was a cruel day when their sentences ended.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mark said, but he made certain the planter had not heard him. There was another group sitting on benches near a small open square. They looked as if they had not moved since morning, since the day before, or ever; that when the orange sky fell dark, they would still be there, and when dawn came with its heat and humidity, they would be there yet. Mark mopped his brow with his sleeve. Heat lay across Whiskeytown so that it was an effort to move, but the planter hustled him along the street, his short legs moving rapidly through the mud patches.

“And what happens if I just run?” Mark asked.

Ewigfeuer laughed. “Go ahead. You think they will not catch you? Where will you go? You have no papers. Perhaps you buy some if you have money. Perhaps what you buy is not good enough. And when they catch you, it is not to my nice farm they send you. It will be to some awful place. Run, I will not chase you. I am too old and too fat.”

Mark shrugged and walked along with Ewigfeuer. He noticed that for all his careless manner, the fat man did not let Mark get behind him.

They rounded a corner and came to a large empty space. A helicopter stood at the near edge. There were others in the lot. A man with a rifle sat under an umbrella watching them. Ewigfeuer threw the man some money and climbed into the nearest chopper. He gunned the engines twice, then let it lift them above the city.

Whiskeytown was an ugly sprawl across a plateau. The hill rose directly up from jungle. When they were higher, Mark could see that the plateau was part of a ridge on a peninsula; the sea around it was green with yellow streaks. The concrete CoDominium administration building was the largest structure in Whiskeytown. There was no other air traffic, and they flew across the town without making contact with any traffic controllers.

Beyond the town were brown hills rising above ugly green jungles. And hours later there was no change—jungle to the left and the green and yellow sea to the right. Mark had seen no roads and only a few houses; all of those were in clusters, low adobe buildings atop the brown hills. “Is the whole planet jungle?” he asked.

“Ja, jungles, marshes, bad stuff. People can live in the hills. Below is green hell, Weem’s Beasts, killer things like tortoises, crocodiles so big you don’t believe them and they run faster than you. Nobody runs far in that.”

A perfect prison, Mark thought. He stared out at the sea. There were boats out there. Ewigfeuer followed his gaze and laughed.

“Some damn fools try to make a few credits fishing. Maybe smart at that, they get killed fast, they don’t wait for tax farmers to take everything they make. You have heard of the Loch Ness monster? On Tanith we got something makes Nessie an earthworm.”

They flew over another cluster of adobe buildings. Ewigfeuer used the radio to talk to the people below. They spoke a language Mark didn’t know. It didn’t seem like German, but he wasn’t sure. Then they crossed another seemingly endless stretch of jungle. Finally a new group of buildings was in sight ahead.

The plantation was no different from the others they had seen. There was a cluster of brown adobe buildings around one larger whitewashed wooden house at the very top of the hill. Cultivated fields lay around that on smaller hills. The fields blended into jungle at the edges. Men were working in the fields.

It would be easy enough to run away, Mark thought. Too easy. It must be stupid to try, or there would be fences. Wait, he thought. Wait and learn. I owe nothing. To anyone. Wait for a chance–

—a chance for what? He pushed the thought away.

The foreman was tall and crudely handsome. He wore dirty white shorts and a sun helmet, and there was a pistol buckled on his belt.

“You look after this one, ja,” Ewigfeuer said. “One of the governor’s pets. They say he has brains enough to make supervisor. We will see. Mark Fuller, three years.”

“Yes, sir. Come on, Mark Fuller, three years.” The foreman turned and walked away. After a moment Mark followed. They went past rammed earth buildings and across a sea of mud. The buildings had been sprayed with some kind of plastic and shone dully. “You’ll need boots,” the foreman said. “And a new outfit. I’m Curt Morgan. Get along with me and you’ll be happy. Cross me and you’re in trouble. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t call me sir unless I tell you to. Right now you call me Curt. If you need help, ask me. Maybe I can give you good advice. If it don’t cost me anything, I will.” They reached a rectangular one-story building like the others. “This’ll be your bunkie.”

The inside was a long room with places for thirty men. Each place had a bunk, a locker, and an area two meters by three of clear space. After the ship, it seemed palatial. The inside walls were sprayed with the same plastic material as the outside; it kept insects from living in the dirt walls. Some of the men had cheap pictures hung above their bunks: pinups, mostly, but in one corner area there were original charcoal sketches of men and women working, and an unfinished oil painting.

There were a dozen men in the room. Some were sprawled on their bunks. One was knitting something elaborate, and a small group at the end were playing cards. One of the card players, a small man, ferret-faced, left the game.

“Your new man,” Curt said. “Mark Fuller, three years. Fuller, this is your bunkie leader. His name is Lewis. Lew, get the kid bunked and out of those prison slops.”

“Sure, Curt.” Lewis eyed Mark carefully. “About the right size for José’s old outfit. The gear’s all clean.”

“Want to do that?” Curt asked. “Save you some money.” Mark stared helplessly.

The two men laughed. “You better give him the word, Lew,” Curt Morgan said. “Fuller, I’d take him up on the gear. Let me know what he charges you, right? He won’t squeeze you too bad.” There was laughter from the other men in the bunkie as the foreman left.

Lewis pointed out a bunk in the center. “José was there, kid. Left his whole outfit when he took the green way out. Give you the whole lot for, uh, fifty credits.”

And now what? Mark wondered. Best not to show him I’ve got any money. “I don’t have that much–”

“Hell, you sign a chit for it,” Lewis said. “The old man pays a credit a day and found.”

“Who do I get the chit from?”

“You get it from me.” Lewis narrowed watery eyes. They looked enormous through his thick glasses. “You thinking about something, kid? You don’t want to try it.”

“I’m not trying anything. I just don’t understand–”

“Sure. You just remember I’m in charge here. Anybody skips out, I get their gear. Me. Nobody else. José had a good outfit, worth fifty credits easy–”

“Bullshit,” one of the cardplayers said. “Not worth more’n thirty and you know it.”

“Shut up. Sure, you could do better in Whiskeytown, but not here. Look, Morgan said take care of you. I’ll sell you the gear for thirty. Deal?”

“Sure.”

Lewis gave him a broad smile. “You’ll get by, kid. Here’s your key.” He handed Mark a magnokey and went back to the card game.

Mark wondered who had copies. It wasn’t something you could duplicate without special equipment; the magnetic spots had to be in just the right places. Ewigfeuer would have one, of course. Who else? No use worrying about it. Mark tucked his money into the toe of a sock and threw the rest of his clothes on top of it, then locked the whole works into the locker. He wondered what to do with the money; he had nearly three hundred credits, ten months’ wages at a credit a day—enough to be killed for.

It bothered him all the way to the shower, but after that, the unlimited water, new bar of soap, and a good razor were such pleasures that he didn’t think about anything else.

IV

The borshite plant resembles an artichoke in appearance: tall, spiky leaves rising from a central crown, with one flowerbearing stalk jutting upward to a height of a meter and a half. It is propagated by bulbs; in spring the previous year’s crop is dug up and the delicate bulbs carefully separated, then each replanted. Weeds grow in abundance and must be pulled out by hand. The jungle constantly grows inward to reclaim the high ground that men cultivate. Herbivores eat the crops unless the fields are patrolled.

Mark learned that and more within a week. The work was difficult and the weather was hot, but neither was unbearable. The rumors were true: Ewigfeuer’s place was a country club. Convicts schemed to get there. Ewigfeuer demanded hard work, but he was fair.

That made it all the more depressing for Mark. If this was the easy way to do time, what horrors waited if he made a mistake? Ewigfeuer held transfer as his ultimate threat, and Mark found himself looking for ways to keep his master pleased. He disgusted himself—but there was nothing else to do.

He had never been more alone. He had nothing in common with the other men. His jokes were never funny. He had no interest in their stories. He learned to play poker so well that he was resented when he played. They didn’t want a tight player who could take their money. Once he was accused of cheating, and although everyone knew he hadn’t, he was beaten and his money taken. After that he avoided the games.

The work occupied only his hands, not his mind. There were no books to read. There was little to do but brood. I wanted power, he thought. We were playing at it. A game. But the police weren’t playing, and now I’ve become a slave. When I get back, I’ll know more of how this game is played. I’ll show them. But he knew he wouldn’t, not really. He was learning nothing here.

Some of the convicts spent their entire days and nights stoned into tranquility. Borshite plants are the source of borloi, and half the Citizens of the United States depended on borloi to get through each day; the government supplied it to them, and any government that failed in the shipments would not last long. It worked as well on Tanith, and Herr Ewigfeuer was generous with both pipes and borloi. Mark tried that route, but he did not like what it did to him. They were stealing three years of his life, but he wouldn’t cooperate and make it easier.

His college friends had talked a lot about the dignity of labor. Mark didn’t find it dignified at all. Why not get stoned and stay that way? he thought. What am I doing that’s important? Why not go out of being and get it over? Let the routine wash over me, drown in it–

There were frequent fights. They had rules. If a man got hurt so that he couldn’t work, both he and the man he fought with had to make up the lost work time. It tended to keep the injuries down and discouraged broken bones. Whenever there was a fight, everyone turned out to watch.

It gave Mark time to himself. He didn’t like being alone, but he didn’t like watching fights, especially since he might be drawn into one himself–

The men shouted encouragement to the fighters. Mark lay on his bunk. He had liquor but didn’t want to drink. He kept thinking about taking a drink, just one, it will help me get to sleep—and you know what you’re doing to yourself—and why not?

The man was small and elderly. Mark knew he lived in quarters near the big house. He came into the bunkie and glanced around. The lights had not been turned on, and he failed to see Mark. He looked furtively about again, then stooped to try locker lids, looking for one that was open. He reached Mark’s locker, opened it, and felt inside. His hand found cigarettes and the bottle–

He felt or heard Mark and looked up. “Uh, good evening.”

“Good evening.” The man seemed cool enough, although he risked the usual punishments men mete out to thieves in barracks.

“Are you bent on calling your mates?” The watery eyes darted around looking for an escape. “I don’t seem to have any defense.”

“If you did have one, what would it be?”

“When you are as old as I am and in for life, you take what you can. I am an alcoholic, and I steal to buy drink.”

“Why not smoke borloi?”

“It does little for me.” The old man’s hands were shaking. He looked lovingly at the bottle of gin that he’d taken from Mark’s locker.

“Oh, hell, have a drink,” Mark said.

“Thank you.” He drank eagerly, in gulps.

Mark retrieved his bottle. “I don’t see you in the fields.”

“No. I work with the accounts. Herr Ewigfeuer has been kind enough to keep me, but not so kind as to pay enough to–”

“If you keep the work records, you could sell favors.”

“Certainly. For a time. Until I was caught. And then what? It is not much of a life that I have, but I want to keep it.” He stood in silence for a moment. “Surprising, isn’t it? But I do.”

“You talk rather strangely,” Mark said.

“The stigmata of education. You see Richard Henry Tappinger, Ph.D., generally called Taps. Formerly holder of the Bates Chair of History and Sociology at Yale University.”

“And why are you on Tanith?” Prisoners do not ask that question, but Mark could do as he liked. He held the man’s life in his hands: a word, a call, and the others would amuse themselves with Tappinger. And why don’t I call them? Mark asked himself. He shuddered at the thought that he could even consider it.

Tappinger didn’t seem annoyed. “Liquor, young girls, their lovers, and an old fool are an explosive combination. You don’t mind if I am not more specific? I spend a good part of my life being ashamed of myself. Could I have another drink?”

“I suppose.”

“You have the stigmata about you as well. You were a student?”

“Not for long.”

“But worthy of education. And generous as well. Your name is Fuller. I have the records, and I recall your case.”

The fight outside ground to a close, and the men came back into the barracks. Lewis was carrying an unconscious man to the showers. He handed him over to others when he saw Tappinger.

“You sneaky bastard, I told you what’d happen if I found you in my bunkie! What’d he steal, Fuller?”

“Nothing. I gave him a drink.”

“Yeah? Well, keep him out of here. You want to talk to him, you do it outside.”

“Right.” Mark took his bottle and followed Tappinger out. It was hot inside and the men were talking about the fight. Mark followed Tappinger across the quad. They stayed away from the women’s barracks. Mark had no friends in there and couldn’t afford any other kind of visit—at least not very often, and he was always disturbed afterwards. None of the women seemed attractive or to care about themselves.

“So. The two outcasts gather together,” Tappinger said. “Two pink monkeys among the browns.”

“Maybe I should resent that.”

“Why? Do you have much in common with them? Or do you resent the implication that you have more in common with me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m just passing time. Waiting until this is over.”

“And what will you do then?”

They found a place to sit. The local insects didn’t bother them; the taste was wrong. There was a faint breeze from the west. The jungle noises came with it, snorts and grunts and weird calls.

“What can I do?” Mark asked. “Get back to Earth and–”

“You will never get back to Earth,” Tappinger said. “Or if you do, you will be one of the first ever. Unless you have someone to buy your passage?”

“That’s expensive.”

“Precisely.”

“But they’re supposed to take us back!” Mark felt all his carefully built defenses begin to crumble. He lived for the end of the three years—and now–

“The regulations say so, and the convicts talk about going home, but it does not happen. Earth does not want rebels. It would disturb the comfortable life most have. No, if you ship out, it will be to another colony. Unless you are very rich.”

So I’m here forever. “So what else is there? What do ex-cons do here?”

Tappinger shrugged. “Sign up as laborers. Start their own plantations. Go into government service. You see Tanith as a slave world, which it is, but it will not always be that. Some of you, people like you, will build it into something else, something better or worse, but certainly different.”

“Yeah. Sure. The Junior Pioneers have arrived.”

“What do you think happens to involuntary colonists?” Tappinger asked. “Or did you never think of them? Most people on Earth don’t look very hard at the price of keeping their wealth and their clean air and clean oceans. But the only difference between you and someone shipped by BuReloc is that you came in a slightly more comfortable ship, and you will put in three years here before they turn you out to fend for yourself. Yes, I definitely suggest the government services for you. You could rise quite high.”

“Work for those slaving bastards? I’d rather starve!”

“No, you wouldn’t. Nor would many others. It is easier to say that than to do it.”

Mark stared into the darkness.

“Why so grim? There are opportunities here. The new governor is even trying to reform some of the abuses. Of course he is caught in the system just as we are. He must export his quota of borloi and miracle drugs, and pay the taxes demanded of him. He must keep up production. The Navy demands it.”

“The Navy?”

Tappinger smiled in the dark. “You would be surprised at just how much of the CD Navy’s operations are paid for by the profits from the Tanith drug trade.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. Thieves. Bastards. But it’s stupid. A treadmill, with prisons to pay for themselves and the damned fleet–”

“Neither stupid nor new. The Soviets have done it for nearly two hundred years, with the proceeds of labor camps paying for the secret police. And our tax farming scheme is even older. It dates back to old Rome. Profits from some planets support BuReloc. Tanith supports the Navy.”

“Damn the Navy.”

“Ah, no, don’t do that. Bless it instead. Without the CD Fleet, the Earth governments would be at each other’s throats in a moment. They very nearly are now. And since they won’t pay for the Navy, and the Navy is very much needed to keep peace on Earth, why, we must continue to work. See what a noble task we perform as we weed the borloi fields?”

Unbearably hot spring became intolerably hot summer, and the work decreased steadily. The borshite plants were nearly as high as a man’s waist and were able to defend themselves against most weeds and predators. The fields needed watching but little else.

To compensate for the easier work, the weather was sticky hot, with warm fog rolling in from the coast. The skies turned from orange to dull gray. Mark had seen stars only twice since he arrived.

With summer came easy sex. Men and women could visit in the evenings, and with suitable financial arrangements with bunkie leaders, all night. The pressures of the barracks eased. Mark found the easier work more attractive than the women. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he’d pay for a few minutes of frantic relief, then try not to think about sex for as long as he could.

His duties were simple. Crownears, muskrat-sized animals that resembled large shrews, would eat unprotected borshite plants. They had to be driven away. They were stupid animals, and ravenous, but not very dangerous unless a swarm of them could catch a man mired down in the mud. A man with a spear could keep them out of the crops.

There were other animals to watch for. Weem’s Beast, named for the first man to survive a meeting with one, was the worst. The crownears were its natural prey, but it would attack almost anything that moved. Weem’s Beast looked vaguely like a mole but was over a meter long. Instead of a prehensile snout, Weem’s Beast had a fully articulated grasping member with talons and pseudo-eyes. Men approached holes very carefully on Tanith; the Beast was fond of lying just below the surface and came out with astonishing speed.

It wouldn’t usually leave the jungle to attack a man on high ground.

Mark patrolled the fields, and Curt Morgan made rounds on horseback. In the afternoons Morgan would sit with Mark and share his beer ration, and the cold beer and lack of work was almost enough to make life worth living again.

Sometimes there was a break in the weather, and a cooler breeze would blow across the fields. Mark sat with his back to a tree, enjoying the comparatively cool day, drinking his beer ration. Morgan sat next to him.

“Curt, what will you do when you finish your sentence?” Mark asked.

“Finished two years ago. Two Tanith, three Earth.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Morgan shrugged. “What else do I know how to do? I’m saving some money; one day I’ll have a place of my own.” He shifted his position and fired his carbine toward the jungle. “I swear them things get more nerve every summer. This is all I know. I can’t save enough to buy into the tax farming syndicate.”

“Could you squeeze people that way?”

“If I had to. Them or me. Tax collectors get rich.”

“Sure. Jesus, there’s just no goddamn hope for anything, is there? The whole deck’s stacked.” Mark finished his beer.

“Where isn’t it?” Morgan demanded. “You think it’s tough now, you ought to have been here before the new governor came. Place they stuck me—my sweet lord, they worked us! Charged for everything we ate or wore, and you open your mouth, it’s another month on your sentence. Enough to drive a man into the green.”

“Uh, Curt—are there—?”

“Don’t get ideas. I’d hate to take the dogs and come find you. Find your corpse, more likely. Yeah, there’s men out in the green. Live like rats. I’d rather be under sentence again than live like the Free Staters.”

The thought excited Mark. A Free State! It would have to be like the places Shirley and her friends had talked about, with equality, and there’d be no tax farmers in a free society. He thought of the needs of free men. They would live hard and be poor because they were fugitives, but they would be free! He built the Free State in his imagination until it was more real than Ewigfeuer’s plantation.

The next day the crownears were very active, and Curt Morgan brought another worker to Mark’s field. They rode up together on the big Percheron horses brought as frozen embryos from Earth and repeatedly bred for even wider feet to keep them above the eternal mud. The newcomer was a girl. Mark had seen her before, but never met her.

“Brought you a treat,” Curt said. “This is Juanita. Juanny, if this clown gives you trouble, I’ll break him in half. Be back in an hour. Got your trumpet?”

Mark indicated the instrument.

“Keep it handy. Them things are restless out there. I think there’s a croc around. And pokers. Keep your eyes open.” Curt rode off toward the next field.

Mark stood in embarrassed silence. The girl was younger than Mark, and sweaty. Her hair hung down in loose blonde strings. Her eyes had dark circles under them and her face was dirty. She was built more like a wiry boy than a girl. She was also the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

“Hi,” Mark said. He cursed himself. Shyness went with civilization, not a prison!

“Hi yourself. You’re in Lewis’ bunkie.”

“Yes. I haven’t seen you before. Except at Mass.” Each month a priest of the Ecumenical Catholic Church came to the plantation. Mark had never attended his services, but he’d watch idly from a distance.

“Usually work in the big house. Sure hot, isn’t it?”

He agreed it was hot and was lost again. What should I say? “You’re lovely” is obvious even if I do think it’s true. “Let’s go talk to your bunkie leader” isn’t too good an idea even if it’s what I want to say. Besides, if she lives in the big house, she won’t have one. “How long do you have?”

“Another two. When I’m eighteen. They still run the sentences on Earth time. I’m eleven, really.” There was more silence. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry–”

“It’s okay. Most of the men jabber away like porshons. Trying to talk me into something, you know?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. But I never have. I’m a member of the church. Confirmed and everything.” She looked at him and grinned impishly. “So that makes me a dumb hymn singer, and what’s left to talk about?”

“I remember wishing I was you,” Mark said. He laughed. “Not quite what I meant to say. I mean, I watched you at Masses. You looked happy. Like you had something to live for.”

“Well, of course. We all have something to live for. Must have, people sure try hard to stay alive. When I get out of here, I’m going to ask the padre to let me help him. Be a nun, maybe.”

“Don’t you want to marry?”

“Who? A con? That’s what my mother did, and look. I got ‘apprenticed’ until I was eighteen Earth years old because I was born to convicts. No kids of mine’ll have that happen to ’em!”

“You could marry a free man.”

“They’re all pretty old by the time they finish. And not worth much. To themselves or anybody else. You proposin’ to me?”

He laughed, and she laughed with him, and the afternoon was more pleasant than any he could remember since leaving Earth.

“I was lucky,” she told him. “Old man Ewigfeuer traded for me. Place I was born on, the planter’d be selling tickets for me now.” She stared at the dirt. “I’ve seen girls they did that with. They don’t like themselves much after a while.”

They heard the shrill trumpets in other fields. Mark scanned the jungle in front of him. Nothing moved. Juanita continued to talk. She asked him about Earth. “It’s hard to think about that place,” she said. “I hear people live all bunched up.”

He told her about cities. “There are twenty million people in the city I came from.” He also told her of the concrete Welfare Islands at the edges of the cities.

She shuddered. “I’d rather live on Tanith than like that. It’s a wonder all the people on Earth don’t burn it down and live in the swamps.”

Evening came sooner than he expected. After supper he fell into an introspective mood. He hadn’t wanted a day to last for a long time. It’s silly to think this way, he told himself.

But he was twenty years old, and there wasn’t anyone else to think about. That night he dreamed about her.

He saw her often as the summer wore on. She had no education, and Mark began teaching her to read. He scratched letters in the ground and used some of his money to buy lurid adventure stories—the only reading matter available in the barracks.

Juanita learned quickly. She seemed to enjoy Mark’s company and often arranged to be assigned to the same field that he was. They talked about everything: Earth, and how it wasn’t covered with swamps. He told her of blue skies, and sailing on the Pacific, and the island coves he’d explored. She thought he was making most of it up.

Their only quarrels came when he complained of how unfair life was. She laughed at him. “I was born with a sentence,” she told him. “You lived in a fine house and had your own ’copter and a boat, and you went to school. If I’m not whinin’, why should you, Mr. Taxpayer?”

He wanted to tell her she was unfair too, but stopped himself. Instead he told her of smog and polluted waters, and sprawling cities. “They’ve got the pollution licked, though,” he said. “And the population’s going down. What with the licensing, and BuReloc–”

She said nothing, and Mark couldn’t finish the sentence. Juanita stared at the empty jungles. “Wish I could see a blue sky some day. I can’t even imagine that, so you must be tellin’ the truth.”

He did not often see her in the evenings. She kept to herself or worked in the big house. Sometimes, though, she would walk with Curt Morgan or sit with him on the porch of the big house, and when she did, Mark would buy a bottle of gin and find Tappinger. It was no good being alone then.

The old man would deliver long lectures in a dry monotone that nearly put Mark to sleep, but then he’d ask questions that upset any view of the universe that Mark had ever had.

“You might make a passable sociologist some day,” Tappinger said. “Ah, well, they say the best university is a log with a student at one end and a professor at the other. We have that, anyway.”

“All I seem to learn is that things are rotten. Everything’s set up wrong,” Mark said.

Tappinger shook his head. “There has never been a society in which someone did not think there had to be a better deal—for himself. The trick is to see that those who want a better way enough to do something about it can either rise within the system or are rendered harmless by it. Which, of course, Earth does—warriors join the Navy. Malcontents are shipped to the colonies. The cycle is closed. Drugs for the citizens, privileges for the taxpayers, peace for all provided by the Fleet—and slavery for malcontents. Or death. The colonies use up men.”

“I guess it’s stable, then.”

“Hardly. If Earth does not destroy herself—and from the rumors I hear, the nations are at each other’s throats despite what the Navy can do—why, they have built a pressure cooker out here that will one day destroy the old home world. Look at what we have here. Fortune hunters, adventurers, criminals, rebels—and all selected for survival abilities. The lid cannot stay on.”

They saw Juanita and Curt Morgan walking around the big house, and Mark winced. Juanita had grown during the summer. Now, with her hair combed and in clean clothes, she was so lovely that it hurt to look at her. Taps smiled. “I see my star pupil has found another interest. Cheer up, lad, when you finish here, you will find employment. You can have your pick of convict girls. Rent them, or buy one outright.”

“I hate slavery!”

Taps shrugged. “As you should. Although you might be surprised what men who say that will do when given the chance. But calm yourself, I meant buy a wife, not a whore.”

“But damn it, you don’t buy wives! Women aren’t things!”

Tappinger smiled softly. “I tend to forget just what a blow it is to you young people. You expect everything to be as it was on Earth. Yet you are here because you were not satisfied with your world.”

“It was rotten.”

“Possibly. But you had to search for the rot. Here you cannot avoid it.”

On such nights it took Mark a long time to get to sleep.

V

The harvest season was approaching. The borshite plants stood in full flower, dull-red splashes against brown hills and green jungles, and the fields buzzed with insects. Nature had solved the problem of propagation without inbreeding on Tanith and fifty other worlds in the same way as on Earth.

The buzzing insects attracted insectivores, and predators chased those; close to harvest time there was little work, but the fields had to be watched constantly. Once again house and processing-shed workers joined the field hands, and Mark had many days with Juanita.

She was slowly driving him insane. He knew she couldn’t be as naive as she pretended to be. She had to know how he felt and what he wanted to do, but she gave him no opportunities.

Sometimes he was sure that she was teasing him. “Why don’t you ever come see me in the evenings?” she asked one day.

“You know why. Curt is always there.”

“Well, sure, but he don’t—doesn’t own my contract. ’Course, if you’re scared of him–”

“You’re bloody right I’m scared of him. He could fold me up for glue. Not to mention what happens when the foreman’s mad at a con. Besides, I thought you liked him.”

“Sure. So what?”

“He told me he was going to marry you one day.”

“He tells everybody that. He never told me, though.”

Mark noted grimly that she’d stopped talking about becoming a nun.

“Of course, Curt’s the only man who even says he’s going to—Mark, look out!”

Mark saw a blur at the edge of his vision and whirled with his spear. Something was charging toward him. “Get behind me and run!” he shouted. “Keep me in line with it and get out of here.”

She moved behind him and he heard her trumpet blare, but she wasn’t running. Mark had no more time to think about her. The animal was nearly a meter and a half long, built square on thick legs and splayed feet. The snout resembled an earth warthog, with four upthrusting tusks, and it had a thin tail that lashed as it ran.

“Porker,” Juanita said softly. She was just behind him. “Sometimes they’ll charge a man. Like this. Don’t get it excited, maybe it’ll go away.”

Mark was perfectly willing to let the thing alone. It looked as if it would weigh as much as he did. Its broad feet and small claws gave it better footing than hobnails would give a man. It circled them warily, about three meters away. Mark turned carefully to keep facing it. He held the spear pointed at its throat. “I told you to get out of here,” Mark said.

“Sure. There’s usually two of those things.” She spoke very softly. “I’m scared to blow this trumpet again. Wish Curt would get here with his gun.” As she spoke, there were gunshots. They sounded very far away.

“Mark,” Juanita whispered urgently. “There is another one. I’m gettin’ back to back with you.”

“All right.” He didn’t dare look away from the beast in front of him. What did it want? It moved slowly toward him, halting just beyond the thrusting range of the spear. Then it dashed forward, screaming a sound that could never have come from an Earthly pig.

Mark jabbed at it with his spear. It flinched from the point and ran past. Mark turned to follow it and saw the other beast advancing on Juanita. She had slipped in the mud and was down, trying frantically to get to her feet, and the porker was running toward her.

Mark gave an animal scream of pure fury. He slid in the mud but kept his feet and charged forward, screaming again as he stabbed with the spear and felt it slip into the thick hide. The porker shoved against him, and Mark fell into the mud. He desperately held the spear, but the beast walked steadily forward. The point went through the hide on the back and came out again, the shaft sliding between skin and meat, and the impaled animal advanced inexorably up the shaft. The tusks neared his manhood. Mark heard himself whimper in fear. “I can’t hold him!” he shouted. “Run!”

She didn’t run. She got to her feet and shoved her spear down the snarling throat, then thrust downward, forcing the head toward the mud. Mark scrambled to his feet. He looked wildly around for the other animal. It was nowhere in sight, but the pinned porker snarled horribly.

“Mark, honey, take that spear of yours out of him while I hold him,” Juanita shouted. “I can’t hold long—quick, now.”

Mark shook himself out of the trembling fear that paralyzed him. The tusks moved wickedly and he felt them even though they were nowhere near him, felt them tearing at his groin.

“Please, honey,” Juanita said.

He tugged at the spear, but it wouldn’t come free, so he thrust it forward, then ran behind the animal to pull the spear through the loose skin on the porker’s back. The shaft came through bloody. His hands slipped but he held the spear and thrust it into the animal, thrust again and again, stabbing in insane fury and shouting, “Die, die, die!”

Morgan didn’t come for another half an hour. When he galloped up, they were standing with their arms around each other.

Juanita moved slowly away from Mark when Morgan dismounted, but she looked possessively at him.

“That way now?” Morgan asked.

She didn’t answer.

“There was a herd of those things in the next field over,” Curt said. His voice was apologetic. “Killed three men and a woman. I came as quick as I could.”

“Mark killed this one.”

“She did. It would have had me–”

“Hold on,” Curt said.

“It walked right up the spear,” Mark said.

“I’ve seen ‘em do that, all right.” Morgan seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. “You two will have to stay on here for a while. We’ve lost four hands, and–”

“We’ll be all right,” Juanita said.

“Yeah.” Morgan went back to his mount. “Yeah, I guess you will.” He rode off quickly.

Tradition gave Mark and Juanita the carcass, and they feasted their friends that night. Afterwards Mark and Juanita walked away from the barracks area, and they were gone for a long time.

“Taps, what the hell am I going to do?” Mark demanded. They were outside, in the unexpected cool of a late summer evening. Mark had thought he would never be cool again; now it was almost harvest time. The fall and winter would be short, but Tanith was almost comfortable during those months.

“What is the problem?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Hardly surprising. Nor the end of the world. There are many ways to–”

“No. She won’t even talk about it. Says it’s murder. It’s that damned padre. Goddamn church, no wonder they bring that joker around. Makes the slaves contented.”

“That is hardly the only activity of the church, but it does have that effect. Well, what is it to you? As you have often pointed out, you have no responsibilities. And certainly you have no legal obligations in this case.”

“That’s my kid! And she’s my—I mean, damn it, I can’t just–”

Tappinger smiled grimly. “I remind you that conscience and a sense of ethics are expensive luxuries. But if you are determined to burden yourself with them, let us review your alternatives.

“You can ask Ewigfeuer for permission to marry her. It is likely to be granted. The new governor has ended the mandatory so-called apprenticeship for children born to convicts. Your sentence is not all that long. When it ends, you will be free–”

“To do what? I saw the time-expired men in Whiskeytown.”

“There are jobs. There is a whole planetary economy to be built.”

“Yeah. Sure. Sweat my balls off for some storekeeper. Or work like Curt Morgan, sweating cons.”

Tappinger shrugged. “There are alternatives. Civil service. Or learn the business yourself and become a planter. There is always financing available for those who can produce.”

“I’d still be a slaver. I want out of the system. Out of the whole damned thing!”

Tappinger sighed and lifted the bottle to drink. He paused to say, “There are many things we all want. So what?” Then he drained the pint.

“There’s another way,” Mark said. “A way out of all this.”

Tappinger looked up quickly. “Don’t even think it! Mark, you believe the Free State to be some kind of dream world. That is what it is—a dream. In reality, there is nothing more than a gang of lawless men, living like animals off what they can steal. You cannot live without laws.”

I can damned well live without the kind of laws they have here, Mark thought. And of course they steal. Why shouldn’t they? How else can they live?

“And it is unlikely to last in any event. The governor has brought in a regiment of mercenaries to deal with the Free State.”

About what I’d expect, Mark thought. “Why not CD Marines?”

Tappinger shrugged. “Budget. There are not enough CD forces to keep the peace. The Grand Senate will not pay for policing Tanith. So the planters are squeezed again, to pay for their protection.”

And that’s fine with me, Mark thought. “Mercenaries can’t be much use. They’d rather lay around in barracks and collect their pay.” His teachers had told him that.

“Have you ever known any?”

“No, of course not. Look, Taps, I’m tired. I think I better get to bed.” He turned and left the old man. To hell with him, Mark thought. Old man, old woman, that’s what he is. Not enough guts to get away from here and strike out on his own.

Well, that’s fine for him. But I’ve got bigger things in mind.

The harvest began. The borshite pods formed and were cut, and the sticky sap collected. The sap was boiled, skimmed, boiled again until it was reduced to a tiny fraction of the bulky plants they had worked all summer to guard.

And Ewigfeuer collapsed on the steps of the big house. Morgan flew him to the Whiskeytown hospital. He came back with a young man: Ewigfeuer’s son, on leave from his administrative post in the city.

“That old bastard wants to see you outside,” Lewis said.

Mark sighed. He was tired from a long day in the fields. He was also tired of Tappinger’s eternal lectures on the horrors of the Free State. Still, the man was his only friend. Mark took his bottle and went outside.

Tappinger seized the bottle eagerly. He downed several swallows. His hands shook. “Come with me,” he whispered.

Mark followed in confusion. Taps led the way to the shadows near the big house. Juanita was there.

“Mark, honey, I’m scared.”

Tappinger took another drink. “The Ewigfeuer boy is trying to raise money,” he said. “He storms through the house complaining of all the useless people his father keeps on, and shouts that his father is ruining himself. The hospital bills are very high, it seems. And this place is heavily in debt. He has been selling contracts. One that he sold was hers. For nearly two thousand credits.”

“Sale?” Mark said stupidly. “But she has less than two years to go!”

“Yes,” Taps said. “There is only one way a planter could expect to make that much back from the purchase of a young and pretty girl.”

“God damn them,” Mark said. “All right. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“No,” Tappinger said. “I’ve told you why. No, I have a better way. I can forge the old man’s signature to a permission form. You can marry Juanita. The forgery will be discovered, but by then–”

“No,” Mark said. “Do you think I’ll stay to be part of this system? A free society will need good people.”

“Mark, please,” Tappinger said. “Believe me, it is not what you think it is! How can you live in a place with no rules, you with your ideas of what is fair and what is–”

“Crap. From now on I take care of myself. And my woman and my child. We’re wasting time.” He moved toward the stables. Juanita followed.

“Mark, you do not understand,” Tappinger protested.

“Shut up. I have to find the guard.”

“He’s right behind you.” Morgan’s voice was low and quiet. “Don’t do anything funny, Mark.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I’ve been watching you for ten minutes. Did you think you could get up to the big house without being seen? You damned fool. I ought to let you go into the green and get killed. But you can’t go alone—no, you have to take Juanny with you. I thought you had more sense. We haven’t used the whipping post here for a year, but a couple of dozen might wake you up to—” Morgan started to turn as something moved behind him. Then he crumpled. Juanita hit him again with a billet of wood. Morgan fell to the ground.

“I hope he’ll be all right,” Juanita said. “When he wakes up, Taps, please tell him why we had to run off.”

“Yeah, take care of him,” Mark said. He was busily stripping the weapons belt from Morgan. Mark noted the compass and grinned.

“You’re a fool,” Tappinger said. “Men like Curt Morgan take care of themselves. It’s people like you that need help.”

Tappinger was still talking, but Mark paid no attention. He broke the lock on the stable and then opened the storage room inside. He found canteens in the harness room. There was also a plastic can of kerosene. Mark and Juanita saddled two horses. They led them out to the edge of the compound. Tappinger stood by the broken stable door.

They looked back for a second, then waved and rode into the jungle. Before they were gone, Tappinger had finished the last of Mark’s gin.

They fled southward in terror. Every sound seemed to be Morgan and a chase party following with dogs. Then there were the nameless sounds of the jungle. The horses were as frightened as they were.

In the morning they found a small clump of brown grass, a miniscule clearing of high ground. They did not dare make a fire, and they had only some biscuit and grain to eat. A Weem’s Beast charged out of the small clump of trees near the top of the clearing, and Mark shot it, wasting ammunition by firing again and again until he was certain that it was dead. Then they were too afraid to stay and had to move on.

They kept southward. Mark had overheard convicts talking about the Free State. On an arm of the sea, south, in the jungle. It was all he had to direct him. A crocodile menaced them, but they rode past, Mark holding the pistol tightly, while the beast stared at them. It wasn’t a real crocodile, of course; but it looked much like the Earthly variety. Parallel evolution, Mark thought. What shape would be better adapted to life in this jungle?

On the third day they came to a narrow inlet and followed it to the left, deeper into the jungle, the sea on their right and green hell to the left. It twisted its way along some forgotten river dried by geological shifts a long time before. Tiny streams had bored through the cliff faces on both sides and plunged a hundred meters across etched rock faces into the green froth at the bottom. Overhead the orange skies were misty with low cloud patches darting under the haze.

At dark they halted and Mark risked a fire. He shot a crownears and they roasted it. “The worst is over,” Mark said. “We’re free now. Free.”

She crept into his arms. Her face was worried but contented, and it had lines that made her seem older than Mark. “You never asked me,” she said.

He smiled. “Will you marry me?”

“Sure.”

They laughed together. The jungle seemed very close and the horses were nickering in nervous fear. Mark built up the fire. “Free,” he said. He held her tightly, and they were very happy.

VI

Mark awoke with a knife at his throat. A big, ugly man, burned dark and with scars crisscrossing his bare chest, squatted in front of them. He eyed Mark and Juanita. then grinned. “What have we got ourselves?” he said. “Couple of runaways?”

“I got everything, Art,” someone said from behind them.

“Yeah. Okay, mates, up and at ‘em. Move out, I ain’t got all day.”

Mark helped Juanita to her feet. One arm was asleep from holding her. As Mark stood, the ugly man expertly took the gun from Mark’s belt. “Who are you?” Mark asked.

“Call me Art. Sergeant to the Boss. Come on, let’s go.”

There were five others, all mounted. Art led the way through the jungle. When Mark tried to say something to Juanita, Art turned. “I’m going to tell you once. Shut up. Say another word to anybody but me, and I kill you. Say anything to me that I don’t want to hear, and I’ll cut you. Got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Mark said.

Art laughed. “Now you’ve got the idea.”

They rode on in silence.

The Free State was mostly caves in hillsides above the sea. It held over five hundred men and women. There were other encampments of escapees out in the jungles, Art said. “But we’ve got the biggest. Been pretty careful—when we raid the planters, we can usually make it look like one of the other outfits did it. Governor don’t have much army anyway. They won’t follow us here.”

Mark started to say something about the mercenaries that the governor was hiring. Then he thought better of it.

The Boss was a heavy man with long, colorless hair growing to below his shoulders. He had a handlebar mustache and staring blue eyes. He sat in the mouth of a cave on a big carved chair as if it were a throne, and he held a rifle across his knees. A big black man stood behind the chair, watching everyone, saying nothing.

“Escapees, eh?”

“Yes,” Mark said.

“Yes, Boss. Don’t forget that.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“What can you do? Can you fight?”

When Mark didn’t answer, the Boss pointed to a smaller man in the crowd that had gathered around. “Take him, Choam.”

The small man moved toward Mark. His foot lashed upward and hit Mark in the ribs. Then he moved closer. Mark tried to hit him, but the man dodged away and slapped Mark across the face. “Enough,” the Boss said. “You can’t fight. What can you do?”

“I–”

“Yeah.” He looked backward over his shoulder to the black man. “You want him, George?”

“No.”

“Right. Art, you found him. He’s yours. I’ll take the girl.”

“But you can’t!” Mark shouted.

“No!” Juanita said.

The other men looked at the Boss. They saw he was laughing. Then they all laughed. Art and two others took Mark’s arms and began to drag him away. Two more led Juanita into the cave behind the Boss.

“But this isn’t right!” Mark shouted.

There was more laughter. The Boss stood. “Maybe I’ll give her back when I’m through. Unless Art wants her. Art?”

“I got a woman.”

“Yeah.” The Boss turned toward the cave. Then he turned back to Mark and the men holding him. “Leave the kid here, Art. I’d like to talk to him. Get the girl cleaned up,” he shouted behind him. “And the rest of you get out of here.”

The others left, all but the black man who had stood behind the Boss’s throne. The black man went a few meters away and sat under a rock ledge. It looked cool in there. He took out a pipe and began stuffing it.

“Come here, kid. What’s your name?”

“Fuller,” Mark said. “Mark Fuller.”

“Come over here. Sit down.” The Boss indicated a flat rock bench just inside the cave mouth. The cave seemed to go a long way in; then it turned. There was no one in sight. Mark thought he could hear women talking. “Sit, I said. Tell me how you got here.” The Boss’s tone was conversational, almost friendly.

“I was in a student riot.” Mark strained to hear, but there were no more sounds from inside the cave.

“Student, eh. Relax, Fuller. Nobody’s hurting your girlfriend. Your concern is touching. Don’t see much of that out here. Tell me about your riot. Where was it?”

The Boss was a good listener. When Mark fell silent, the man would ask questions—probing questions, as if he were interested in Mark’s story. Sometimes he smiled.

Outside were work parties: wood details; a group incomprehensibly digging a ditch in the flinty ground out in front of the caves; women carrying water. None of them were interested in the Boss’s conversation. Instead, they seemed almost afraid to look into the cave—all but the black man, who sat in his cool niche and never seemed to look away.

Bit by bit Mark told of his arrest and sentence, and of Ewigfeuer’s plantation. The Boss nodded. “So you came looking for the Free States. And what did you expect to find?”

“Free men! Freedom, not–

“Not despotism.” There was something like kindness in the words. The Boss chuckled. “You know, Fuller, it’s remarkable how much your story is like mine. Except that I’ve always known how to fight. And how to make friends. Good friends.” He tilted his head toward the black man. “George, there, for instance. Between us there’s nothing we can’t handle. You poor fool, what the hell did you think you’d do out here? What good are you? You can’t fight, you whine about what’s right and fair, you don’t know how to take care of yourself, and you come off into the bush to find us. You knew who we were.”

“But–”

“And now you’re all broken up about your woman. I’m not going to take anything she hasn’t got plenty of. It doesn’t get used up.” He stood and shouted to one of the men in the yard. “Send Art over.”

“So you’re going to rape Juanita.” Mark looked around for a weapon, for anything. There was a rifle near the Boss’s chair. His eyes flickered toward it.

The Boss laughed. “Try it. But you won’t. Aw, hell, Fuller, you’ll be all right. Maybe you’ll even learn something. Now I’ve got a date.”

“But–” If there was something I could say, Mark thought. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why not? Because I’ll lose your valuable loyalty? Get something straight, Fuller. This is it. There’s no place left to go. Live here and learn our ways, or go jump over the cliff there. Or take off into the green and see how far you get. You think you’re pretty sharp. Maybe you are. We’ll see. Maybe you’ll learn to be some use to us. Maybe. Art, take the kid into your squad and see if he can fit in.”

“Right, Boss. Come on.” Art took Mark’s arm. “Look, if you’re going to try something, do it and get it over with. I don’t want to have to watch you all the time.”

Mark turned and followed the other man. Helpless. Damn fool, and helpless. He laughed.

“Yeah?” Art said. “What’s funny?”

“The Free State. Freedom. Free men–”

“We’re free,” Art said. “More’n the losers in Whiskeytown. Maybe one day you will be. When we think we can trust you.” He pointed to the cliff edge. The sea inlet was beyond it. “Anybody we can’t trust goes over that. The fall don’t always kill ‘em, but I never saw anybody make it to shore.”

Art found him a place in his cave. There were six other men and four women there. The others looked at Mark for a moment, then went back to whatever they had been doing. Mark sat staring at the cave floor and thought he heard, off toward the Boss’s cave, a man laughing and a girl crying. For the first time since he was twelve, Mark tried to pray.

Pray for what? he asked himself. He didn’t know. I hate them. All of them.

Just when, Mark Fuller, are you going to get some control over your life? But that doesn’t just happen. I have to do it for myself. Somehow.

A week went past. It was a meaningless existence. He cooked for the squad, gathered wood and washed dishes, and listened to the sounds of the other men and their women at night. They never left him alone.

Then crying from the Boss’s cave stopped, but he didn’t see Juanita. When he gathered wood, there were sometimes women from the Boss’s area, and he overheard them talking about what a relief it was that Chambliss—that seemed to be the Boss’s name—had a new playmate. They did not seem at all jealous of the new arrival.

Play along with them, Mark thought. Play along until—until what? What can I do? Escape? Get back to the plantation? How? And what happens then? But I won’t join them, I won’t become part of this! I won’t!

After a week they took Mark on hunting parties. He was unarmed—his job was to carry the game. They had to walk several kilometers away from the caves. Chambliss didn’t permit hunting near the encampment.

Mark was paired with Art. The older man was neither friendly nor unfriendly; he treated Mark as a useful tool, someone to carry and do work.

“Is this all there is?” Mark asked. “Hunting, sitting around the camp, eating and–”

“–and a little screwing,” Art said. “What the hell do you want us to do? Set up farms so the governor’ll know where we are? We’re doin’ all right. Nobody tells us what to do.”

“Except the Boss.”

“Yeah. Except the Boss. But nobody hassles us. We can live for ourselves. Cheer up, kid, you’ll feel better when you get your woman back. He’ll get tired of her one of these days. Or maybe we’ll get some more when we go raiding. Only thing is, you’ll have to fight for a woman. You better do it better’n you did the other day.”

“Doesn’t she–don’t the women have anything to say about who they pair up with?” Mark asked.

“Why should they?”

On the tenth day there was an alarm. Someone thought he heard a helicopter. The Boss ordered night guards.

Mark was paired with a man named Cal. They sat among rocks at the edge of the clearing. Cal had a rifle and a knife, but Mark was unarmed. The jungle was black dark, without even stars above.

Finally the smaller man took tobacco and paper from his pocket. “Smoke?”

“Thanks. I’d like one.”

“Sure.” He rolled two cigarettes. “Maybe you’ll do, huh? Had my doubts about you when you first come. You know, it’s a wonder the Boss didn’t have you tossed over the side, the way you yelled at him like that. No woman’s worth that, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“She mean much to you?” Cal asked.

“Some.” Mark swallowed hard. His mouth tasted bitter. “’Course, they get the idea they own you, there’s not much you can do.”

Cal laughed. “Yeah. Had an old lady like that in Baltimore. Stabbed me one night for messing around with her sister. Where you from, kid?”

“Santa Maria. Part of San-San.”

“I been there once. San-San, not where you come from. Here.” He handed Mark the cigarette and struck a match to light both.

They smoked in silence. It wasn’t all tobacco, Mark found; there was a good shot of burl in the cigarette. Mark avoided inhaling but spoke as if holding his breath. Cal sucked and packed.

“Good weed,” Cal said. “You should have brought some when you run off.”

“Had to get out fast.”

“Yeah.” They listened to the sounds of the jungle. “Hell of a life,” Cal said. “Wish I could get back to Earth. Some Welfare Island, anyplace where it’s not so damned hot. I’d live in Alaska. You ever been there?”

“No. Isn’t there—don’t you have any plans? Some way to make things better?”

“Well, the Boss talks about it, but nothing happens,” Cal said. “Every now and then we go raid a place, get some new women. We got a still in not long ago, that’s something.”

Mark shuddered. “Cal?”

“Yah?”

“Got another cigarette?”

“You’ll owe me for it.”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Cal took out paper and tobacco and rolled two more smokes. He handed one to Mark. “Been thinking. There ought to be something better’n this, but I sure don’t see what it’ll be.” As Cal struck his match, Mark shut his eyes so he wouldn’t be blinded. Then he lifted the rock he’d found in the darkness and brought it down hard onto Cal’s head. The man slumped, but Mark hit him again. He felt something wet and sticky warming his fingers, and shuddered.

Then he was sick, but he had to work fast. He took Cal’s rifle and knife, and his matches. There wasn’t anything else useful.

Mark moved from the rocks onto the narrow strip of flinty ground. No one spoke. Mark ran into the jungle. He did not know where he was going. He tried to think. Hiding out until morning wouldn’t help. They’d find Cal and come looking. And Juanita was back there. Mark ran through the squishy mud. Tears came and he fought them back, but then he was sobbing. Where am I going? Where? And why bother?

He ran on until he felt something moving beside him. He drew in a breath to cry out, but a hand clamped over his mouth. Another grasped his wrist. He felt a knifepoint at his throat. “One sound and you’re dead,” a voice whispered. “Got that?”

Mark nodded.

“Right. Just keep remembering it. Okay, Ardway, let’s go.”

“Roger,” a voice answered.

He was half-carried through the jungle from the camp. There were several men. He did not know how many. They moved silently. “Ready to walk?” someone asked.

“Yes,” Mark whispered. “Who are–”

“Shut up. One more sound and we cut your kidneys out. You’ll take a week dying. Now follow the man ahead of you.”

Mark made more noise than all the others combined, although he tried to walk silently. They went a long way, or so it seemed to be, through knee-deep water and thick mud, then over harder ground. He thought they were going slightly uphill. Then he no longer felt the loom of the trees. They were in a clearing.

The night was pitch black. How do they see? Mark wondered. And who? He thought he could make out a darker shape ahead of him. It was more a feeling than anything else, but then he touched it. It was soft. “Through that,” someone said.

It was a curtain. Another was brought down behind him as he went through, and still another was lifted ahead of him. Light blinded him. He stood blinking.

He was inside a tent. Half a dozen uniformed men stood around a map table. At the end of the tent opposite Mark was a tall, thin man. Mark could not guess how old he was, but there were thin streaks of gray in his hair. His jungle camouflage uniform was neatly pressed. He looked at Mark without expression. “Well, Sergeant Major?”

“Strange, Colonel. This man was sitting guard with another guy. Neither one of them knew what he was doing. We watched them a couple of hours. Then this one beats the other one’s brains out with a rock and runs right into the jungle.”

Mercenaries, Mark thought. They’ve come to– “I need help,” Mark said. “They’ve got my—my wife in there.”

“Name?” the Colonel asked.

“Mark Fuller.”

The Colonel looked to his right. Another officer had a small desk console. He punched Mark’s name into it, and words flowed across the screen. The Colonel read for a moment. “Escaped convict. Juanita Corlee escaped with you. That is your wife?”

“Yes.”

“And you had a falling-out with the Free Staters.”

“No. It wasn’t that way at all.” Mark blurted out his story.

The Colonel looked back to the readout screen. “And you are surprised.” He nodded to himself. “I knew the schools on Earth were of little use. It says here that you are an intelligent man, Fuller. So far you haven’t shown many signs of it.”

“No. Lord God, no. Who—who are you? Please.”

“I am Colonel John Christian Falkenberg. This regiment has been retained by the Tanith governor to suppress these so-called Free States. You were captured by Sergeant Major Calvin, and these are my officers. Now, Fuller, what can you tell me about the camp layout? What weapons have they?”

“I don’t know much,” Mark said. “Sir.” Now why did I say that?

“There are other female captives in that camp,” Falkenberg said.

“Here,” one of the other officers said. “Show us what you do know, Fuller. How good is this satellite photo map?”

“Christ, Rottermill,” a third officer said. “Let the lad be for a moment.”

“Major Savage, intelligence is my job.”

“So is human compassion. Ian, do you think you can find this boy a drink?” Major Savage beckoned to Falkenberg and led him to the far corner of the tent. Another officer brought a package from under the table and took out a bottle. He handed the brandy to Mark.

Falkenberg listened to Savage. Then he nodded. “We can only try. Fuller, did you see any signs of power supplies in that camp?”

“No, sir. There was no electricity at all. Only flashlights.”

“So it is unlikely that they have laser weapons. Rottermill, have any target seekers turned up missing from armories? What are the chances that they have any?”

“Slim, Colonel. Practically none. None stolen I know of.”

“Jeremy, you may be right,” Falkenberg said. “I believe we can use the helicopters as fighting vehicles.”

There was a moment of silence; then the officer who’d given Mark the brandy said, “Colonel, that’s damned risky. There’s precious little armor on those things.”

“Machines not much better than these were major fighting vehicles less than a hundred years ago, Captain Frazer.” Falkenberg studied the map. “You see, Fuller, the hostages have always been our problem. Because of them we have kept Aviation Company back and brought in our troops on foot. We’ve not been able to carry heavy equipment or even much personal body armor across these swamps.”

No, I don’t expect you would, Mark thought. He tried to imagine a large group traveling silently through the swamps. It seemed impossible. What had they done when animals attacked? There had been no shots fired. Why would an armed man let himself be killed when he could shoot?

“I expect they will threaten their prisoners when they know we are here,” Falkenberg said. “Of course we will refuse to deal with them. How long do you think it will take for them to act when they know that?”

“I don’t know,” Mark said. It was something he could not have imagined two years before: men who’d kill and torture, sometimes for no reason at all. No. Not men. Beasts.

“Well, you’ve precipitated the action,” Falkenberg said. “They’ll find your dead companion within hours. Captain Frazer.”

“Sir.”

“You have been studying this map. If you held this encampment, what defenses would you set up?”

“I’d dig in around this open area and hope someone was fool enough to come at us through it, Colonel.”

“Yes. Sergeant Major.”

“Sir!”

“Show me where they have placed their sentries.” Falkenberg watched as Calvin sketched in outposts. Then he nodded. “It seems their Boss has some rudimentary military sense. Rings of sentries. In-depth defense. Can you infiltrate that, Sergeant Major?”

“Not likely, sir.”

“Yes.” Falkenberg stood for a moment. Then he turned to Captain Frazer. “Ian, you will take your scouts and half the infantry. Make preparations for an attack on the open area. We will code that Green A. This is no feint, Ian. I want you to try to punch through. However, I do not expect you to succeed, so conserve your men as best you can.”

Frazer straightened to attention. “Sir.”

“We won’t abandon you, Ian. When the enemy is well committed there, we’ll use the helicopters to take you out. Then we hit them in the flanks and roll them up.” Falkenberg pointed to the map again. “This depression seems secure enough as a landing area. Code that Green A-One.”

Major Jeremy Savage held a match over the bowl of his pipe and inhaled carefully. When he was satisfied with the light, he said, “Close timing needed, John Christian. Ian’s in a spot of trouble if we lose the choppers.”

“Have a better way, Jerry?” Falkenberg asked.

“No.”

“Right. Fuller, can you navigate a helicopter?”

“Yes, sir. I can even fly one.”

Falkenberg nodded again. “Yes. You are a taxpayer’s son, aren’t you? Fuller, you will go with Number 3 chopper. Sergeant Major, I want you to put a squad of headquarters assault guards, full body armor, into Number 3. Fuller will guide the pilot as close as possible to the cave where the Boss is holding the women. Number 2 with another assault squad will follow. Every effort will be made to secure the hostages alive. Understand, Sergeant Major?”

“Sir!”

“Fuller?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. When the troops are off, those choppers must move out fast. We’ll need them to rescue Ian’s lot.”

“Colonel?” Mark said.

“Yes?”

“Not all the women are hostages. Some of them will fight, I think. I don’t know how many. And not all the men are– not everybody wants to be in there. Some would run off if they could.”

“And what do you expect me to do about it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Neither do I. Sergeant Major, we will move this command post in one hour. Until then, Fuller, you can use that time to show Captain Rottermill everything you know about that camp.”

It isn’t going to work, Mark thought. I prayed for her to die. Only I don’t know if she wants to die. And now she will. He took another pull from the bottle and felt it taken from his hand.

“Later,” Rottermill said. “For now, tell me what you know about this lot.”

VII

“They’ve found that dead guard.” The radio sergeant adjusted his earphones. “Seem pretty stirred up about it.”

Falkenberg looked at his watch. There was a good hour before sunrise. “Took them long enough.”

“Pity Fuller couldn’t guide that chopper in the dark,” Jeremy Savage said.

“Yes. Sergeant Major, ask Captain Frazer to ready his men, and have your trail ambush party alerted.”

“Sir.”

“I have a good feeling about this one, John Christian.” Savage tapped his pipe against the heel of his boot. “A good feeling.”

“Hope you’re right, Jeremy. Fuller doesn’t believe it will work.”

“No, but he seems to agree this is her best chance. He’s steady enough now. Realistic assessment of probabilities. Holding up well, all things considered.”

“For a married man.” Married men make the kinds of promises no man can keep, Falkenberg thought. His lips twitched slightly at the memory, and for a moment Grace’s smile loomed in the darkness of the jungle outside. “Sergeant Major, have the chopper teams get into their armor.”

“Is it always like this?” Mark asked. He sat in the right hand seat of the helicopter. Body armor and helmet gave strange sensations. He sweated inside the thick clothing. The phones in his helmet crackled with commands meant for others. Outside the helmet there were sounds of firing. Captain Frazer’s assault had started a quarter of an hour before; now there was a faint tinge of reddish gray in the eastern skies over the jungle.

Lieutenant Bates grinned and wriggled the control stick. “Usually it’s worse. We’ll get her out, Fuller. You just put us next to the right cave.”

“I’ll do that, but it won’t work.”

“Sure it will.”

“You don’t need to cheer me up, Bates.”

“I don’t?” Bates grinned again. He was not much older than Mark. “Maybe I need cheering up. I’m always scared about now.”

“Really? You don’t look it.”

“All we’re expected to do. Not look it.” He thumbed the mike button. “Chief, everything set back there?”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The voice in Mark’s helmet grew loud and stern. “ALL HELICOPTERS, START YOUR ENGINES. I SAY AGAIN, START ENGINES.”

“That’s us.” Bates reached for the starting controls and the turbines whined. “Not very much light.”

“HELICOPTERS, REPORT WHEN READY.”

“Ready aye-aye,” Bates said.

“Aye-aye?” Mark asked.

“We’re an old CD Marine regiment,” Bates said. “Lot of us, anyway. Stayed with the old man when the Senate disbanded his regiment.”

“You don’t look old enough.”

“Me? Not hardly. This was Falkenberg’s Mercenary Legion long before I came aboard.”

“Why? Why join mercenaries?”

Bates shrugged. “I like being part of the regiment. Or don’t you think the work’s worth doing?”

“LIFT OFF. BEGIN HELICOPTER ASSAULT.”

“Liftoff aye-aye.” The turbine whine increased and the ship lifted in a rising, looping circle. Bates moved to the right of the three-craft formation.

Mark could dimly see the green below, with light increasing every minute. Now he could make out the shapes of small clearings among the endless green marshes.

“You take her,” Bates said. His hands hovered over the controls, ready to take his darling away from this stranger.

Mark grasped the unfamiliar stick. It was different from the family machine he’d learned on, but the principles were the same. You never really forget, Mark thought. The chopper was not much more than a big airborne truck, and he’d driven one of those on a vacation in the Yukon. The Canadian lakes seemed endlessly far away, in time as well as in space.

Flying came back easily. He remembered the wild stunts he’d tried when he was first licensed. Once a group from his school had gone on a picnic to San Miguel Island and Mark had landed in a cove, dropping onto a narrow, inaccessible beach between high cliffs during a windstorm. It had been stupid, but wildly exciting. Good practice for this, he thought. And I’m scared stiff, and what do I do after this is over? Will Falkenberg turn me in?

There were hills ahead, dull brown in the early morning light. Men huddled in the rocky areas. The Catling in the compartment behind Mark crackled like frying bacon. The shots were impossibly close together, like a steady stream of noise, and the helicopter raked the Free State with its lash. The small slugs sent chips flying from the rocks. The other choppers opened up, and six tracer streams twisted in crazy patterns intertwining like some courtship dance.

Men and women died on that flinty ground. They lay in broken heaps, red blood staining the dirt around them, exactly like a scene on tri-v. Only it’s not fake, Mark thought. They won’t get up when the cameras go away. Did they deserve this? Does anyone?

Then he was too busy flying to think about anything else. The area in front of the cave was small, very small—was it large enough for the rotors to clear? A strong gust from the sea struck them, and the chopper rocked dangerously.

“Watch her–” Whatever Bates had intended to say, he never finished it. He slumped forward over the stick, held just above it by his shoulder straps. Something wet and sticky splashed across Mark’s left hand and arm. Brains. A large slug had come angling upward to hit Bates in the jaw, then ricochet around in his helmet. The young lieutenant had almost no face. Get her down, Mark chanted, easy baby, down you go, level now, here’s another gust, easy baby…

Men poured out of the descending chopper. Mark had time to be surprised: They jumped down and ran into the cave even as their friends fell around them. Then something stabbed Mark’s left arm, and there were neat holes in the plexiglass windscreen in front of him. The men went on into the cave. They were faceless in their big helmets, identical robots moving forward or falling in heaps…

Lord God, they’re magnificent. I’ve got to get this thing down! Suddenly that was the most important thing in his life. Get down and get out, go into the cave with those men. Find Juanita, yes, of course, but go with them, do something for myself because I want to do it–

“BATES, STOP WASTING TIME AND GET TO GREEN A-ONE URGENT.”

God damn it! Mark fumbled with the communications gear. “Bates is dead. This is Fuller. I’m putting the chopper down.”

The voice in the phones changed. Someone else spoke. “Are the troops still aboard?”

“No. They’re off.”

“Then take that craft to Green A-One immediately.”

“My—my wife’s in there!”

“The colonel is aware of that.” Jeremy Savage’s voice was calm. “That machine is required, and now.”

“But–”

“Fuller, this regiment has risked a great deal for those hostages. The requirement is urgent. Or do you seriously suppose you would be much use inside?”

Oh, Christ! There was firing inside the cave, and someone was screaming. I want to kill him, Mark thought. Kill that blond-haired bastard. I want to watch him die. A babble filled the helmet phones. Crisp commands and reports were jumbled together as a background noise. Frazer’s voice. “We’re pinned. I’m sending them back to A-One as fast as I can.”

There was more firing from inside the cave.

“Aye-aye,” Mark said. He gunned the engine and lifted out in a whirling loop to confuse the ground fire. Someone was still aboard; the Gatling chattered and its bright stream raked the rocks around the open area below.

Where was Green A-One? Mark glanced at the map in front of the control stick. There was gray and white matter, and bright red blood, a long smear across the map. Mark had to lift Bates’ head to get a bearing. More blood ran across his fingers.

Then the area was ahead, a clear depression surrounded by hills and rocks. Men lay around the top of the bowl. A mortar team worked mechanically, dropping the shells down the tube, leaning back, lifting, dropping another. There were bright flashes everywhere. Mark dropped into the bowl and the flashes vanished.

There were sounds: gunfire, and the whump! whump! of the mortar. A squad rushed over and began loading wounded men into the machine. Then the sergeant waved him off, and Mark raced for the rear area where the surgeon waited. Another helicopter passed, headed into the combat area.

The medics off-loaded the men.

“Stand by, Fuller, we’ll get another pilot over there,” Savage’s calm voice said in the phones.

“No. I’ll keep it. I know the way.”

There was a pause. “Right. Get to it, then.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The entrance to the Boss’s cave was cool, and the surgeon had moved the field hospital there. A steady stream of men came out of the depths of the cave: prisoners carrying their own dead, and Falkenberg’s men carrying their comrades. The Free State dead were piled in heaps near the cliff edge. When they were identified, they were tossed over the side. The regiment’s dead were carried to a cleared area, where they lay covered. Armed soldiers guarded the corpses.

Do the dead give a damn? Mark wondered. Why should they? What’s the point of all the ceremony over dead mercenaries? He looked back at the still figure on the bed. She seemed small and helpless, and her breath rasped in her throat. An I.V. unit dripped endlessly.

“I expect she’ll live.”

Mark turned to see the regimental surgeon.

“We couldn’t save the baby, but there’s no reason she won’t have more.”

“What happened to her?” Mark demanded.

The surgeon shrugged. “Bullet in the lower abdomen. Ours, theirs, who knows? Jacketed slug, it didn’t do a lot of damage. The colonel wants to see you, Fuller. And you can’t do any good here.” The surgeon took him by the elbow and ushered him out into the steaming daylight. “That way.”

There were more work parties in the open space outside. Prisoners were still carrying away dead men. Insects buzzed around dark red stains on the flinty rocks. They look so dead, Mark thought. So damned dead. Somewhere a woman was crying.

Falkenberg sat with his officers under an open tent in the clearing. There was another man with them, a prisoner under guard. His face was hidden by the tent awning, but Mark knew him. “So they took you alive,” Mark said.

“I seem to have survived.” The Boss’s lips curled in a sneer. “And you helped them. Fine way to thank us for taking you in.”

“Taking us in! You raped–

“How do you know it was rape?” the Boss demanded. “Not that you were any great help, were you? You’re no damned good, Fuller. Your help didn’t make a damned bit of difference. Has anything you ever did made any difference?”

“That will do, Chambliss,” Falkenberg said.

“Sure. You’re in charge now, Colonel. Well, you beat us, so you give the orders. We’re pretty much alike, you and me.”

“Possibly,” Falkenberg said. “Corporal, take Chambliss to the guard area. And make certain he does not escape.”

“Sir.” The troopers gestured with their rifles. The Boss walked ahead of them. He seemed to be leading them.

“What will happen to him?” Mark asked.

“We will turn him over to the governor. I expect he’ll hang. The problem, Fuller, is what we do with you. You were of some help to us, and I don’t like unpaid debts.”

“What choices do I have?” Mark asked.

Falkenberg shrugged. “We could give you a mount and weapons. It is a long journey to the farmlands in the south, but once there, you could probably avoid recapture. Probably. If that is not attractive, I suppose we could put in a good word with the governor.”

“Which would get me what?”

“It would depend on him. At the least he would agree to forget about your escape and persuade your patron not to prosecute for theft of animals and weapons.”

“But I’d be back under sentence. A slave again. What happens to Juanita?”

“The regiment will take care of her.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Mark demanded.

Falkenberg’s expression did not change. Mark could not tell what the colonel was thinking. “I mean, Fuller, that it is unlikely that the troops would enjoy the prospect of turning her over to the governor. She can stay with us until her apprenticeship has expired.”

“So you’re no better than the Boss after all!”

“Watch it,” one of the officers said.

“What Colonel Falkenberg means,” Major Savage said, “is that she will be permitted to stay with us as long as she wishes. Certainly we lack for women; but there are some slight differences between us and your Free State. Colonel Falkenberg commands a regiment. He does not rule a mob.”

“Sure. What if she wants to come with me?”

“Then we will see that she does. When she recovers,” Savage said. “Now what is it you want to do? We don’t have all day.”

What do I want to do? Lord God. I want to go home, but that’s not possible. Dirt farmer, fugitive forever. Or slave for at least two more years. “You haven’t given me a very pleasant set of alternatives.”

“You had fewer when you came here,” Savage said.

A party of prisoners was herded toward the tent. They stood looking nervously at the seated officers, while their guards stood at ease with their weapons. Mark licked his lips. “I heard you were enlisting some of the Free Staters.”

Falkenberg nodded. “A few. Not many.”

“Could you use a helicopter pilot?”

Major Savage chuckled. “Told you he’d ask, John Christian.”

“He was steady enough this morning,” Captain Frazer said. “And we do need pilots.”

“Do you know what you’re getting into?” Falkenberg wanted to know. “Soldiers are not slaves, but they must obey orders. All of them.”

“Slaves have to obey, too.”

“It’s five years,” Major Savage said. “And we track down deserters.”

“Yes, sir.” Mark looked at each of the officers in turn. They sat impassively. They said nothing; they did not look at each other, but they belonged to each other. And to their men. Mark remembered the clubs that children in his neighborhood had formed. Belonging to them had been important, although he could never have said why. It was important to belong to something.

“You see the regiment as merely another unpleasant alternative,” Falkenberg said. “If it is never more than that, it will not be enough.”

“He came for us, Colonel,” Frazer said. “When he didn’t have to.”

“Yes. I take it you are sponsoring him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well,” Falkenberg said. “Sergeant Major, is he acceptable to the men?”

“No objections, sir.”

“Jeremy?”

“No objection, John Christian.”

“Adjutant?”

“I’ve got his records, Colonel.” Captain Fast indicated the console readout. “He’d make a terrible enlisted man.”

“But not necessarily a terrible officer?”

“No, sir. He scores out high enough. But I’ve got my doubts about his motivations.”

“Yes. But we do not generally worry about men’s motives. We only require that they act like soldiers. Are you objecting, Amos?”

“No, Colonel.”

“Then that’s that. Fuller, you will be on trial. It will not be the easiest experience of your life. Men earn their way into this regiment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may go. There will be a formal swearing in when we return to our own camp. And doubtless Captain Fast will have forms for you to fill out. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” Mark left the command tent. The times are out of joint, he thought. Is that the right line? Whatever. Does anyone control his own life? I wasn’t able to. The police, the Marines, the Boss, now these mercenaries—they tell us all what to do. Who tells them?

Now I’m one of them. Mercenary soldier. It sounds ugly, but I don’t have any choices at all. It’s no career. Just a way out of slavery.

And yet…

He remembered the morning’s combat and he felt guilt because of the memory. He had felt alive then. Men and women died all around him, but he’d felt more alive than he’d ever been.

He passed the graves area. The honor guard stood at rigid attention, ignoring the buzzing insects, ignoring everything around them as they stood over the flag-draped figures laid out in neat rows. A cool breeze came up from the sea. Winter was coming, and it would be pleasant on Tanith, but not for long.

AFTERWORD
by Jerry Pournelle

Every generation since Hiroshima has grown up in the shadow of nuclear terror. The official policy of the United States was to remain helpless, to refuse to defend our land and people.

On March 23, 1983, the president made an historic speech proposing to change the defense strategy of the United States from Mutual Assured Destruction—MAD—to Assured Survival.

The instant reaction from much of the intellectual community was to speak of Star Wars and call the president “Darth Vader.”

As months went by, the opposition did not decrease. In an editorial on October 23, 1983, the Los Angeles Times said:

“There is no guarantee that the system would shield the West from the missiles of the East. And if there were such a system, it would raise more terrifying questions. We cannot imagine the Soviet Union’s responding with restraint if confronted with a system that jeopardized its side of the balance-of-terror equation.

“Pressed about the risks of a defensive arms race, the president replied: ‘Well, would that be all bad? If you’ve got everybody building defense, then nobody’s going to start a war.’ An untested theory.

“The investment [in missile defenses] would again encourage dependence on technology at the expense of political ingenuity. The extraordinary research-and-development resources of the United States, as well as those of the Soviet Union, should be focused on the needs of a troubled world, not on new space weaponry.”

The Times concluded that defending America would be “a terrible mistake.”

That view seems to have been adopted by a large part of the media, with the support of a vocal group of academics and other intelligentsia.

I find it incomprehensible.

The first duty of any nation is to protect its citizens. The first duty of the United States of America is to “provide for the common defense.” We speak of “entitlement” programs; are not the people of the United States entitled to defense?

No one disputes that we should focus our ample research and development capabilities on the needs of a troubled world. One of the principal needs of that world is peace.

Peace is more than the absence of smoke and armies. Communist Party theorists call the “socialist world”—which includes not only the Soviet Union but also Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, the late Baltic Republics and the rest of the satellite empire—”the Peace Zone”; but calling them that does not make them peaceful.

Certainly the Poles do not think they have peace merely because they have an absence of war.

Harold Lamb calls his history of the great nomads of Central Asia The Earth Shakers. Throughout history the West has trembled at the march of the barbarians, and with good reason: Ghengiz Khan made a pyramid of more than a million skulls and so reduced the city of Samarkand that “three times the Horde rode over the place where the city stood, and not a horse stumbled.”

The last siege of Vienna by the Turks took place in 1683. In 1776 the great English historian Edward Gibbon could rejoice in the knowledge that cannon and stone fortresses had at last made Europe safe: The earth-shakers could no longer ride west to burn and slay.

The Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Esthonians, Finns, Hungarians—all might disagree.

If we dare not defend ourselves now lest the Soviets fail to respond with restraint, what can we do when the Soviets have developed missile defenses? Have we already surrendered? Does nothing remain but to negotiate the terms of our slavery? But we have not come that far. We can, if we will, remain, for all our faults, the land of the free.

It would be simpler if by one supreme act of work and sacrifice, we could defend our land once and for all. Alas, we cannot do that. There is no perfect defense; there is no space-borne Maginot Line behind which we can hide. There is no single decisive, ultimate weapon that will save us forever.

Cannon and stone fortresses could not forever save Eastern Europe from the barbarians. Space weapons and ballistic-missile defenses cannot forever protect the West.

Technological war is dynamic warfare. It is silent and apparently peaceful, but it is nonetheless decisive. To refuse to engage in the Technological War would have exactly the same consequences as unilateral disarmament. History has taught that Appius Claudius the Blind spoke more truly than he knew: “If you would have peace, be then prepared for war.”

In these perilous times, preparation for war is serious business, carrying us far beneath the seas and far beyond Earth.

Ideally, we should not need to do that. Ideally, we should explore the depths of the seas and the limits of our solar system for the peaceful benefit of all mankind. I know few who would not prefer that. Yet—is not preservation of freedom a benefit to mankind? Is not keeping part of the world free of the Gulag a goal worth treasure?

Historically, peace has been bought only by men of war. We may, in the future, be able to change that. It may be, as some say, that we have no choice. It may be that peace can and must be bought with some coin other than the blood of good soldiers; but there is no evidence that the day of jubilee has yet come.

Until that day comes, guard your peace, for there will be war.

Books by Jerry Pournelle

FICTION SERIES

CODOMINIUM UNIVERSE

CoDominion

A Spaceship for the King (1973) also appeared as King David's Spaceship (1981)

Falkenberg's Legion

1 Falkenberg's Legion (1990)

2 Prince of Mercenaries (1989)

3 Go Tell the Spartans (1991) with S. M. Stirling

4 Prince of Sparta (1993) with S. M. Stirling

His Truth Goes Marching On (1975)

West of Honor (1976)

Silent Leges (1977)

The Mercenary (1977)

Future History (1980)

Falkenberg's Legions (1990)

The Prince (2002) with S. M. Stirling

Laurie Jo Hansen

1 High Justice (1977) [C]

2 Exiles to Glory (1978)

Moties

1 The Mote in God's Eye (1974) with Larry Niven

2 The Gripping Hand (1993) with Larry Niven also appeared as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (1993)

Reflex (1982) with Larry Niven

War World

1 The Burning Eye (1988) [A]

2 Death's Head Rebellion (1990) [A]

3 Sauron Dominion (1991) [A]

4 Invasion (1994)

5 Codominium: Revolt on War World (1992)

7 Blood Vengeance (1994) with Susan Shwartz and Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove and S. M. Stirling

Prolog (The Burning Eye) (1988)

HEOROT

1 The Legacy of Heorot (1987) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

2 Beowulf's Children (1995) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes also appeared as The Dragons of Heorot (1995)

INFERNO

1 Inferno (1976) with Larry Niven

2 Escape from Hell (2009) with Larry Niven

JANISSARIES

1 Janissaries (1979)

2 Janissaries: Clan and Crown (1982) with Roland J. Green

3 Janissaries III: Storms of Victory (1987)

JUPITER

1 Higher Education (1996) with Charles Sheffield

5 Starswarm (1998)

MAGIC GOES AWAY

Golden Road

1 The Burning City (2000) with Larry Niven

2 Burning Tower (2005) with Larry Niven

PLANET OF THE APES

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1974)

TALES OF KNOWN SPACE

Man-Kzin Wars

2 Man-Kzin Wars II (1989) [A] with Larry Niven and Dean Ing and S. M. Stirling

5 Man-Kzin Wars V (1992) [A] with Larry Niven and S. M. Stirling and Thomas T. Thomas

The Children's Hour (1991) with S. M. Stirling

In the Hall of the Mountain King (1992) with S. M. Stirling

The Houses of the Kzinti (2002) with S. M. Stirling and Dean Ing

NOVELS

Birth of Fire (1976)

Lucifer's Hammer (1977) with Larry Niven

Oath of Fealty (1981) with Larry Niven

Footfall (1985) with Larry Niven

Fallen Angels (1991) with Michael F. Flynn and Larry Niven

OMNIBUS

Fires of Freedom (2009)

ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Far Frontiers

1 Far Frontiers (1985) with Jim Baen

2 Far Frontiers, Volume II/Summer 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

3 Far Frontiers, Volume III/Fall 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

4 Far Frontiers, Volume IV/Winter 1985 (1986) with Jim Baen

5 Far Frontiers, Volume V/Spring 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

6 Far Frontiers, Volume VI/Fall 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

7 Far Frontiers, Volume VII/Winter 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

Imperial Stars

1 The Stars At War (1986) with John F. Carr

2 Republic and Empire (1987) with John F. Carr

3 The Crash of Empire (1989) with John F. Carr

Nebula Awards

16 Nebula Award Stories Sixteen (1982) with John F. Carr

The Endless Frontier

1 The Endless Frontier (1979)

2 The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1982) with John F. Carr

3 Cities in Space (1991) with John F. Carr

4 Life Among the Asteroids (1992) with John F. Carr

There Will Be War

1 There Will Be War (1983) with John F. Carr

2 Men of War (1984)

3 Blood and Iron (1984) with John F. Carr

4 Day of the Tyrant (1985) with John F. Carr

5 Warrior (1986) with John F. Carr

6 Guns of Darkness (1987) with John F. Carr

7 Call to Battle (1988) with John F. Carr

8 Armageddon! (1989) with John F. Carr

9 After Armageddon (1990)

ANTHOLOGIES

2020 Vision (1974)

Black Holes (1978)

The Survival of Freedom (1981) with John F. Carr

The Science Fiction Yearbook (1985) with John F. Carr and Jim Baen

Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042: A Four-Part Invention (1994) with Ben Bova and Frederik Pohl and Charles Sheffield

NONFICTION

That Buck Rogers Stuff (1977)

A Step Farther Out (1979)

Mutual Assured Survival (1984) with Dean Ing

The User's Guide to Small Computers (1984)

Adventures in Microland (1985)

NON-FICTION

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

SCIENCE FICTION

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

The Stars Came Back by Rolf Nelson

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

FANTASY

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Gladiator's Song by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

CASTALIA CLASSICS

The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

AUDIOBOOKS

A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

TRANSLATIONS

Särjetty taika

QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravedad Mata

Una Estrella Brillante para Guiarlos

QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal

Uma Magia Perdida

Mantra yang Rusak

La Moneta dal Mercenario

I Ragazzoni non Piangono

QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти

QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand

Grosse Jungs weinen nicht

New Release Newsletter

The Castalia House New Release newsletter is sent out to subscribers several days before a new book is officially released. Subscribers who purchase the book in the specified period after the newsletter is sent out will receive either a) a free book that is offered as a bonus with the new release, or b) their choice of one of several free choices that are on offer as a bonus.

We do not spam our subscribers’ email addresses nor do we sell them to anyone. We average about one new release per month.

Click here to subscribe to the Castalia House New Release newsletter or visit castaliahouse.com and enter your email address in the right sidebar, then click “Subscribe”.

There Will Be War
Volume IV
edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

First published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. (1985)

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

The stories in this collection are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Editor: Jerry Pournelle
Associate Editor: John F. Carr
Technical Editor, 2015 Edition: Eric Pobirs
Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen
Version 001

Copyright © 1985, 2015 by Jerry Pournelle
All rights reserved

The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS by Jerry Pournelle was written especially for the 1985 edition. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright © 1985 by J.E. Pournelle

MACDONOUGH’S SONG by Rudyard Kipling is in the public domain.

THE CLOAK AND THE STAFF by Gordon R. Dickson was previously published in Analog in the August 1980 issue. It is presented by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1980 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc.

WINTER SNOW by Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin first appeared in the November 1984 Analog. Published by special arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications.

A WAY OUT MAYBE… OR A DEAD END FOR SURE was written especially for this volume by John Brunner. Published by arrangement with the author and his agent, Paul R. Reynolds. Copyright © 1985 by Brunner Fact & Fiction Limited.

A LETTER FROM THE SOVIETS by Alexander Shatravka is in the public domain.

EMERGENCY RATIONS by Theodore R. Cogswell is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 1953 by Greenleaf Publishing Company.

THE PROUD FOOT OF THE CONQUEROR by Reginald Bretnor was published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by Reginald Bretnor.

LEPANTO by Gilbert Keith Chesterton is in the public domain.

A CURE FOR CROUP by Edward P. Hughes was first published in the Spring issue of Far Frontiers. It is presented here, by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by Edward P. Hughes.

COMMENT AND DISCUSSION ON “ELEVATION OF THE U.S. FLEET” BY RICHARD B. LANINC, USN (Ret.) by Kenneth Roy was done especially for this volume. It appears here for the first time. Copyright © 1985 by Kenneth Roy.

BATTLE AT KAHLKHOPOLIS by Robert Adams is a tale of the Horseclans Series and appears here for the first time. It is published by arrangement with the author and author’s agent, Cherry Weiner. Copyright © 1985 by Robert Adams.

THE CONQUEROR OF VECTIS by Keith Taylor is an original story appearing first in this volume. It is published with the permission of the author and his agent, Cherry Weiner. Copyright © 1985 by Keith Taylor.

PRETTY BABY by Ray Peekner was originally published in Swank Magazine as “Operation Kill-Quota.” It appears here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1978 by Swank Magazine Corporation.

THE MAN IN THE GRAY WEAPONS SUIT by Paul J. Nahin is published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1979 by Paul J. Nahin.

REAGAN VS. THE SCIENTISTS by Robert Jastrow was first published in the January 1984 issue of Commentary. It appears here by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1984 by Robert Jastrow.

JOINED THE SPACE FORCE TO WEAR MY BLUES by John Maddox Roberts appears for the first time in the 1985 edition. It is published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by John Maddox Roberts.

PSYOPS was first given as a speech at the Defense ‘83 Conference in Las Vegas. It appeared in the 1985 edition by permission of the author. Copyright © 1983 by Stefan T. Possony.

THREE SOLDIERS was previously published in Galileo Science Fiction Magazine in 1978. It appeared in the 1985 edition by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1978 by D.C. Poyer.

INTERIM JUSTICE was published for the first time in the 1985 edition and appeared by permission of the author. Copyright © 1985 by William F. Wu.

NO TRUCE WITH KINGS by Poul Anderson first appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1963. It was reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright © 1963 by Mercury Press, Inc.

The editor gratefully acknowledges that research for the non-fiction essays, including “Psyops” by Stefan T. Possony, was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation, and The L-5 Society. Responsibility for opinions expressed herein rests solely with the authors.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Sic Semper Tyrannis by Jerry Pournelle

Macdonough’s Song by Rudyard Kipling

The Cloak and the Staff by Gordon R. Dickson

Winter Snow by Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin

A Way Out Maybe by John Brunner

A Letter From the Soviet Union by Alexander Shatravka

Emergency Rations by Theodore Cogswell

The Proud Foot of the Conqueror by Reginald Bretnor

Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton
A Cure for Croup by Edward P. Hughes
Comment and Discussion by Kenneth Roy
Battle at Kahlkhopolis by Robert Adams
The Conqueror of Vectis by Keith Taylor
Pretty Baby by Ray Peekner

The Man in the Gray Weapons Suit Paul J. Nahin

Reagan vs. the Scientists by Robert Jastrow

Joined the Space Force to Wear My Blues by John Maddox Roberts

Psyops by Stefan T. Possony
Three Soldiers by D.C. Poyer
Interim Justice by William F. Wu
No Truce With Kings by Poul Anderson
There Will Be War Vol. II
Riding the Red Horse
The History of Strategy
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases

Introduction

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS
by Jerry Pournelle

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

—Thomas Jefferson

The Greeks said tyrannos, a word that originally meant no more than “master.” But free men cannot endure masters, and “Tyrant” soon took on other meanings, until the very name was hateful. When he struck down Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth shouted “Sic semper Tyrannis!”—Thus be it ever with tyrants!—as full and complete justification for his act, and indeed it would have been so had his fellow citizens accepted that Lincoln was no more than a tyrant. Learned authorities, of religion and morality alike, have proclaimed that tyrannicide is not murder.

Booth’s act did bring forth real claimants to mastership, men who would be tyrants over part of the land if not all of it, but our institutions were too strong for them. The Constitution and the Union stood and endured. Indeed, the very times were fair for democracy and freedom, here and throughout the world. The tyrannical misrule of Ferdinand of Naples, universally regarded as the worst despot of Europe—his own people called him “King Bomba”—ended in the same decade as our civil war. A Republic was established in France. Greece was freed from the Turks.

Germany received a constitution, as did Austria. Electoral reforms swept through Britain. Civilization and freedom were on the rise–

The dream ended in The Great War of 1914. The history of the twentieth century is the story of the rise and fall of tyrants. Rather more have risen than have fallen. First Russia, then Italy, Germany, Poland, Spain, all fell under the rule of masters.

New wars began. The Great War was “the war to end war”; its 1938 continuation became “the war to make the world safe for democracy.” At enormous cost Italy, part of Germany, and most of western Europe were rescued; but Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland—for whose independence the war had begun in the first place—and all the Russias were abandoned to Stalin, whose personal power would have been envied by the most despotic of the Roman Emperors.

When Stalin died the world hoped for change. It was not to come. For a few years it looked as if the Soviet Empire would mellow. There was even talk of detente with the West. Now, alas, we find the changes were illusory. Yellow Rain falls on the primitive people of Laos and the hardy mujahideen of Afghanistan. At Sverdlovsk, old Ekaterinberg, city of doom for the Tsar and his family, an explosion in a military laboratory spread anthrax—black death—across the land. Thousands died. Now there is chilling evidence that the Soviet Empire has gone beyond Yellow Rain: are experimenting with gene mechanics and cobra venom to produce new biological terrors.

Despotism spread from continent to continent. Nearly all the peoples of Africa were abandoned to Bhogassa, Nkrumeh, Idi Amin Dada, Kenyatta, and their ilk. Things are no better in Asia. Javanese imperialism rules the former Dutch colonies. Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, China—the list is nearly endless.

Far from a century of liberty, this has become a century of masters, and there is little relief in sight.

Why should this be? One may understand how one man might gain control of the new “nations” in Africa, or other lands with little or no experience in government; but how explain the constant rise and fall of the caudillos in South America? How to explain Hitler and Stalin? Why should free citizens welcome a master? What is the attraction that tyrants hold?

It is not so difficult to see why nations might turn to a strong leader after a military disaster, or in times of civil war; but that is not the whole of it.

The sad truth is that democracy itself is often unstable. Intellectuals lose faith. Democracy is not flashy. It falls out of fashion. The intelligentsia feel scorned, unappreciated, and turn to new theories.

There are other pressures. Republics stand until the citizens begin to vote themselves largess from the public treasury. When the plunder begins, those plundered feel no loyalty to the nation—and the beneficiaries demand ever more, until few are left unplundered. Eventually everyone plunders everyone, the state serving as little more than an agency for collecting and dispensing largess. The economy falters. Inflation begins. Deficits mount. Something must be done. Strong measures are demanded, but nothing can be agreed to.

In Weimar Germany the price of a postage stamp went to 8 billion marks. In China, Latin America, many of the new African nations, inflation has exceeded 1,000 percent. The middle class is destroyed. The economy collapses. Democratic institutions cannot cope.

Enter the strong man, who will save the state.

For more than two thousand years the decline of democracy has been the precursor of the tyrant, who comes on stage as the nation’s protector. Sometimes he will do no more than end the strife: better a single master than hundreds who cannot agree. Julius Caesar was such a one, Francisco Franco another. They promise no more than order. They do not seek to reconstruct the nation, and they do not construct a full fledged totalitarian state. So long as their rule is not opposed, so long as the people are silent, then most are safe.

Nations could do worse than adopt King Log. Even John Stuart Mill said that a degenerate people, unfit to rule themselves, should think themselves fortunate to have a Charlemagne or an Akbar.

There are other masters; masters who will do more than hold fast to the old ways; they will usher in a new era. The theorists proclaim it. Times have changed. Old institutions, devised in simpler times, are outmoded. Modern times demand modern, streamlined, efficient government; government that can sweep away the dead hand of the past, and bring forth the new dawn.

A new friend of the people comes forth. He will end the babble of political parties and factions and class war. He will give meaning to life; will lead a crusade against poverty, squalor, ugliness; will transform the nation into a land beautiful and shining. He will be the Hero, of whom Carlyle said:

His place is with the stars of heaven. He walks among men; loves men, with inexpressible soft pity—as they cannot love him: but his soul dwells in solitude, in the innermost parts of creation. Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself from this man? He is thy born king, thy conqueror and supreme lawgiver: not all the guineas and cannons under the sky can save thee from him.

Hitler was hailed as a semi-mystical hero who would purify Germany; and Carlyle was quoted to good effect in praising him. Yet, surely, we, in this nation, and in this century, are above such mystical twaddle? Perhaps. Yet…

In 1929, on his fiftieth birthday, Stalin was hailed as: the greatest military leader of all times and nations; Lenin’s Perpetuator in Creating the Theory of Construction of Socialism; The Theoretician and Leader of the Fight for Peace and Brotherhood among the Peoples; the Military Genius of Our Time; Mirrored in the Literature of the Peoples of the World; Teacher and Inspired Leader of the World Proletariat; Coryphaeus of World Science; The People’s Happiness; Brilliant Thinker and Scholar. The praise for Great Stalin gushed forth, and not merely in the Soviet Union. Western intellectuals seemed equally eager to heap praises on the dictator who was transforming Russia into a modern nation. The era of social engineering was at hand.

By 1938 Stalin had murdered more than 12 million people, nor was this any great secret. The full horror was still hidden, but it was impossible to hide it all. The evidence was there, but Western intellectuals refused to look. Even when Stalin formed a pact with Hitler, giving him access to still more victims, a hard core of intellectuals continued to give him allegiance. Why should they not? They had already accepted the worst.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes the horrors of the slave gangs constructing the White Sea Canal; Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Professor Harold Laski, and many others lauded this great “engineering feat.” George Bernard Shaw applauded the Soviet “experiments” in penology and reformation of criminals.

In the midst of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, the American ambassador, Joseph E. Davies, reported that Stalin had “insisted on the liberalization of the constitution” and was “projecting actual secret and universal suffrage.” Western intellectuals found democracy tiresome. They wanted to believe that society could be transformed; that the Soviet Union was a model for the future. Had not Lincoln Steffans, “America’s philosopher,” said it? “I have been over into the future, and it works.”

Self-deception never ends.

The truth is that no nation is safe. Tyrants seldom come openly, their hands dripping with blood, their eyes blazing with hate. More often they come as friends of the people; tireless workers for the public good, heroes who will save the nation; who will cut the Gordian knot of parliamentary babble; who will carry out the people’s will.

They come with promises. If we will disarm ourselves, they will provide professionals to protect us. If we give over our property they will assure us jobs. Crime will be abolished. Poverty will vanish. Together we will build a nation worthy of the future.

The temptation is large, because we all, at one time or another, have longed to have an end to striving; to create the future and have done with it. Can we not, by one supreme act, solve all human problems? The way will be hard, but after heroic effort the struggle will be over. War on poverty; war on ignorance; war on illness; war on cancer, mental illness; one supreme act of war, and then eternal triumph. The strife will cease…

We know better, of course. We all know the price of liberty: eternal vigilance. Jefferson said it well: “the tree of liberty is a delicate plant. It must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Editor's Introduction to:

MACDONOUGH’S SONG
by Rudyard Kipling

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be entrusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.

—Thomas Jefferson

The Athenians had a constitution; but on one terrible day they, in solemn assembly, declared it monstrous that they should not do whatever they willed. By a strange irony of fate, Socrates was chairman of the assembly of the people on that day; he refused to allow the vote. The next day, the Athenians abrogated their constitution, and voted to put their generals to death without trial. Not long after, they condemned Socrates.

It is the ultimate dilemma: how shall the people be protected from themselves?

The tyrant comes in many guises, but always with the same promises. “Give me the sword of state, and I will make a beautiful world. Laws are dry and sterile things, a hamper to our great design. Trust me; and I will truly do the will of the people.”

Kipling knew the answer to that.

MACDONOUGH’S SONG
by Rudyard Kipling

Whether the State can loose and bind

In Heaven as well as on Earth:

If it be wiser to kill mankind

Before or after the birth—

These are matters of high concern

Where State-kept schoolmen are;

But Holy State (we have lived to learn)

Endeth in Holy War.

Whether The People be led by The Lord,

Or lured by the loudest throat;

If it be quicker to die by the sword

Or cheaper to die by the vote—

These are things we have dealt with once,

(And they will not rise from their grave)

For Holy People, however it runs,

Endeth in wholly Slave.

What so ever, for any cause,

Seeketh to take or give

Power above or beyond the Laws,

Suffer it not to live!

Holy State or Holy King—

Or Holy People’s Will

Have no truck with the senseless thing.

Order the guns and kill!

Saying—after—me:—

Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth;

Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.

Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!

Once there was The People—it shall never be again!

Editor's Introduction to:

THE CLOAK AND THE STAFF
by Gordon R. Dickson

For nearly a score of years Gordon Dickson has been creating his “Childe Cycle”: a series of novels chronicling the development of man from 1500 A.D. to the far future. The Final Encyclopedia (Tor Books, 1984) was the latest in this amazing series.

This isn’t all that Gordy has been doing. Slowly and steadily he has been creating a new saga of the Alaag and The Pilgrim.

The Alaag are incredibly powerful: physically large, and skilled in technologies nearly beyond the reach of human imagination. In one swift and easy stroke they invaded and conquered Earth. The military forces of humanity were swept away like tin soldiers. The conquest was done almost as soon as it was begun.

The occupation began. Humans were left no means for resistance. All weapons were confiscated, and were useless against the Alaag in any event. Even metals were restricted or forbidden. The Alaag victory was complete. The tyrants reigned supreme.

Earth was neither the first nor the last planet to be incorporated into the Alaag empire. The invaders seemed as skilled in the art of governing as they were in subduing mankind in the first place; and they quickly built a web of government, relying for the most part on their own people. Humans had as little contact with them as possible.

A few humans, though, worked directly for the Alaag. Despised by their masters as well as their own kind, they suppressed all feelings of defiance. They of all people knew how futile resistance would be…

THE CLOAK AND THE STAFF
by Gordon R. Dickson

Descending in the icy, gray November dawn from the crowded bus that had brought the airline passengers over the mountains from Bologna—as frequently happened in wintertime, the airport at Milan, Italy, was fogged in; and the courier ship, like the commercial jets, had been forced to set down in Bologna—Shane Evert caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of a small stick-figure, inconspicuously etched on the base of a lamp post.

He did not dare to look at it directly; but the side glance was enough. He flagged a taxi and gave the driver the address of the Aalaag Guard Headquarters for the city.

“E freddo, Milano,” said the driver, wheeling the cab through the nearly deserted morning streets.

Shane gave him a monosyllable in a Swiss accent by way of agreement. Milan was indeed cold in November. Cold and hard. To the south, Florence would be still soft and warm, with blue skies and sunlight. The driver was probably hoping to start a conversation and find out what brought his human passenger to an alien HQ, and that was dangerous. Ordinary humans did not love those who worked for the Aalaag. If I say nothing, Shane thought, he may be suspicious. No, on second thought, he’ll just think from the Swiss accent that I’m someone who has a relative in trouble in this city and doesn’t feel like conversation.

The driver spoke of the summer now past. He regretted the old days when tourists had come through.

To both these statements Shane gave the briefest responses. Then there was silence in the cab except for the noise of travel. Shane leaned his staff at a more comfortable angle against his right leg and left shoulder to better accommodate it to the small passenger compartment of the cab. He smoothed his brown robe over his knees. The image of the stick-figure he had seen still floated in his mind. It was identical with the figure he himself had first marked upon a wall beneath the triple hooks with the dead man on them, in Aalborg, Denmark, over half-a-year ago.

But he had not marked this one on the lamp post. Nor, indeed, had he marked any of the other such figures he had glimpsed about the world during the last eight months. One moment of emotional rebellion had driven him to create an image that was now apparently spawning and multiplying to fill his waking as well as his sleeping hours with recurring nightmares. It did no good to remind himself that no one could possibly connect him with the original graffito. It did no good to know that all these eight months since, he had been an impeccable servant of Lyt Ahn.

Neither fact would be of the slightest help if for some reason Lyt Ahn, or any other Aalaag, should believe there was cause to connect him with any one of the scratched figures.

What insane, egocentric impulse had pushed him to use his own usual pilgrim-sect disguise as the symbol of opposition to the aliens? Any other shape would have done as well. But he had had the alcohol of the Danish bootleg aquavit inside him; and with the memory of the massive Aalaag father and son in the square, watching the death of the man they had condemned and executed—above all, with the memory of their conversation, which he alone of all the humans there could understand—also burning in him, for one brief moment reason had flown out the window of his mind.

So, now his symbol had been taken up and become the symbol of what was obviously an already-existent human underground in opposition to the Aalaag, an underground he had never suspected. The very fact that it existed at all forecast bloody tragedy for any human foolish enough to be related to it. By their own standards, the Aalaag were unsparingly fair. But they considered humans as “cattle”; and a cattle owner did not think in terms of being “fair” to a sick or potentially dangerous bull that had become a farm problem…

“Eccolo!” said the cab driver.

Shane looked as bidden and saw the alien HQ. A perfectly reflective force shield covered it like a coating of mercury. It was impossible to tell what kind of structure it had been originally. Anything from an office building to a museum was a possibility. Lyt Ahn, First Captain of Earth, in his HQ overlooking St. Anthony’s falls in what had once been the heart of Minneapolis, scorned such an obvious display of defensive strength. The gray concrete walls of his sprawling keep on Nicollet Island had nothing to protect them but the portable weapons within; though these alone were capable of leveling the metropolitan area surrounding in a handful of hours. Shane paid the driver, got out and went in through the main entrance of the Milan HQ.

The Ordinary Guards inside the big double doors and those on the desk were all human. Young for the most part, like Shane himself, but much bigger; for the largest of humans seemed frail and small to the eight-foot Aalaag. These guards wore the usual neat, but drab, black uniforms of servant police. Dwarfed among them, in spite of his five feet eleven inches of height, Shane felt a twinge of perverse comfort at being within these walls and surrounded by these particular fellow humans. Like him, they ate at the aliens’ tables; they would be committed to defend him against any non-servant humans who should threaten him. Under the roof of masters who sickened him, he was physically protected and secure.

He stopped at the duty desk and took his key from the leather pouch at his belt, leaving the documents within. The human duty officer there took the key and examined it. It was made of metal—metal which no ordinary Earth native was allowed to own or carry—and the mark of Lyt Ahn was stamped on the square handle.

“Sir,” said the officer in Italian, reading the mark. He was suddenly obliging. “Can I be of assistance?”

“I sign in, temporarily,” answered Shane in Arabic, for the officer’s speech echoed the influence of the throat consonants of that language. “I am the one who delivers messages for the First Captain of Earth, Lyt Ann. I have some to deliver now to the Commander of these Headquarters.”

“Your tongue is skilled,” said the officer in Arabic, turning the duty book about and passing Shane a pen.

“Yes,” said Shane and signed.

“The Commander here,” said the officer, “is Laa Ehon, Captain of the sixth rank. He accepts your messages.”

He turned and beckoned over one of the lesser human guards.

“To the outer office of Laa Ehon, with this one bearing messages for the Commander.”

The guard saluted and led Shane off. Several flights of stairs up beside an elevator, which Shane would have known better than to use even if the guard had not been with him, brought them to a corridor down which, behind another pair of large, carved doors, they reached what was plainly an outer room of the private offices of the Aalaag Commander in Milan.

The guard saluted and left. There were no other humans in the room. An Aalaag of the twenty-second rank sat at a desk in a far corner of the large, open space, reading what seemed to be reports on the sort of plastic sheets that would take and hold multiple overlays of impressions. In the wall to Shane’s left was a window, showing the slight corner shading that betrayed an Aalaag version of one-way glass. The window gave a view of what must be an adjoining office having benches for humans to sit on. This office was empty, however, except for a blonde-haired young woman, dressed in a loose, ankle-length blue robe tied tight around her narrow waist.

There was no place for Shane to sit. But, in close attendance as he customarily was on Lyt Ahn and other Aalaag of low-number rank, he was used to waiting on his feet for hours.

He stood. After perhaps twenty minutes, the Aalaag at the desk noticed him.

“Come,” he said, lifting a thumb the size of a tent peg. “Tell me.”

He had spoken in Aalaag for most human servants had some understanding of the basic commands in the tongue of their overlords. But his face altered slightly as Shane answered; for there were few humans like Shane—and Shane both worked and lived with all of those few—who were capable of fluent, accentless response in that language.

“Untarnished sir,” said Shane, coming up to the desk and stopping before it. “I have messages from Lyt Ahn directly to the Commander of the Milan Headquarters.”

He made no move to produce the message rolls from his pouch; and the Aalaag’s massive hand, which had begun to extend itself, palm up, toward him at the word “messages,” was withdrawn when Shane pronounced the name of Lyt Ahn.

“You are a valuable beast,” said the Aalaag. “Laa Ehon will receive your messages soon.”

“Soon” could mean anything from “within minutes” to “within weeks.” However, since the messages were from Lyt Ahn, and personal, it was probable that it would be minutes rather than a longer time. Shane went back to his corner.

The door opened and two other Aalaag came in. They were both males in middle life, one of the twelfth, one of the sixth rank. The one of sixth rank could only be Laa Ehon. A Captain of a rank that low-numbered was actually too highly qualified to command a single HQ like this. It was unthinkable that there would be two such here.

The newcomers ignored Shane. No, he thought, as their gaze moved on, they had not merely ignored him. Their eyes had noticed, catalogued, and dismissed him in a glance.

They walked together to the one-way window, and the one who must be Laa Ehon spoke in Aalaag.

“This one?”

They were examining the girl in the blue robe, who sat unaware of their gaze in the other room.

“Yes, untarnished sir. The officer on duty in the square saw this one move away from the wall I told you of just before he noticed the scratching on it.” The Captain of the twelfth rank pointed with his thumb at the girl. “He then examined the scratching, saw it was recently made and turned to find this one. For a moment he thought she had been lost among the herd in the square, then he caught sight of her from the back, some distance off and hurrying away. He stunned her and brought her in.”

“His rank?”

“Thirty-second, untarnished sir.”

“And this one has been questioned?”

“No, sir, I waited to speak to you about procedure.”

Laa Ehon stood for a moment, unanswering, gazing at the girl.

“Thirty-second, you said? Did he know this particular beast previous to seeing her in the square?”

“No, sir. But he remembered the color of her apparel. There was no other in that color nearby.”

Laa Ehon turned from the window.

“I’d like to talk to him first. Send him to me.”

“Sir, he’s presently on duty.”

“Ah.”

Shane understood Laa Ehon’s momentary thoughtfulness. As commanding officer, he could easily order the officer in question to be relieved from duty long enough to report to him in person. But the Aalaag nature and custom were such that only the gravest reason would allow him to justify such an order. An Aalaag on duty, regardless of rank, was almost a sacred object.

“Where?” Laa Ehon asked.

“The local airport, untarnished sir.”

“I will go and speak to him at his duty post. Captain Otah On, you are ordered to accompany me.”

“Yes, untarnished sir.”

“Then let us move with minimal loss of time. It is unlikely that this matter has more importance than presently seems, but we must make sure of that.”

He turned toward the door with Otah On behind him. Once more his eyes swept Shane. He stopped and looked over at the Aalaag.

“What is this one?” he asked.

“Sir,” the Aalaag at the desk was on his feet. “A courier with messages for your hand from Lyt Ann.”

Laa Ehon looked back at Shane.

“I will accept your messages in an hour, no more, once I’ve come back. Do you understand what I have just said to you?”

“I understand, untarnished sir,” said Shane.

“Until then, remain dutiful. But be comfortable.”

Laa Ehon led the way out of the room, Otah On close behind him. The Aalaag at the desk sat down again and went back to his sheets.

Shane looked once more at the girl beyond the one-way glass. She sat, unaware of what another hour would bring. They would question her with chemicals, of course, first. But after that, their methods would become physical. There was no sadism in the Aalaag character. If any of the aliens had shown evidence of such, his own people would have considered it an unfitting weakness and destroyed him for having it. But it was understood that cattle might be induced to tell whatever they knew if they were subjected to sufficient discomfort. Any Aalaag, of course, was above any such persuasion. Death would come long before any degree of discomfort could change the individual alien’s character enough to make him or her say what he or she wished to keep unsaid.

Shane felt his robe clinging to his upper body, wet with a secret sweat. The woman sat almost in profile, her blonde hair down to her shoulders, her surprisingly pale-skinned (for this latitude) face smooth and gentle-looking. She could not be more than barely into her twenties. He wanted to look away from her so that he could stop thinking about what was awaiting her, but—as it had happened to him a year ago with the man on the triple hooks when he had first created the symbol—Shane could not make his head turn. He knew it now for what it was—a madness in him. A madness born of his own hidden revulsion against and private terror of these massive humanoids who had descended to own the Earth. These were the masters he served, who kept him warm and well-fed when most of the rest of humanity was chilled and ate little, who patted him with condescending compliments—as if he was in fact the animal they called him, the clever house pet ready to wag his tail for a kind glance or word. The fear of death was like an ingot of cold iron inside him when he thought of them; and the fear of a long and painful death was like that same ingot with razor edges. But at the same time, there was this madness—this madness that, if he did not control it by some small actions, would explode and bring him to throw his dispatches in some Aalaag face, to fling himself one day like a terrier against a tiger at the throat of his Master, First Captain of Earth, Lyt Ahn.

It was a real thing, that madness. Even the Aalaag knew of its existence in their conquered peoples. There was even a word for it in their own tongue—yowaragh. Yowaragh had caused the man on the hooks a year ago to make a hopeless attempt to defend his wife against what he had thought was an Aalaag brutality. Yowaragh, every day, caused at least one human somewhere in the world to fling a useless stick or stone against some shielded, untouchable conqueror in a situation where escape was impossible and destruction was certain. Yowaragh had knocked at the door of Shane’s brain once, a year ago, threatening to break out. It was knocking again.

He could not help but look at her; and he could not bear to look at her—and the only alternative to an end for both of them was to somehow keep it from happening—Laa Ehon’s return, the torture of the girl, and the yowaragh that would lead to his own death.

In one hour, Laa Ehon had said, he would be back. Rivulets of perspiration were trickling down Shane’s naked sides under the robe. His mind had gone into high gear, racing like an uncontrolled heartbeat. What way out was there? There must be one—if he could think of it. The other side of the coin to what they would do to the girl was built on the same lack of sadism. The Aalaag would destroy property only for some purpose. If there was no purpose, they would not waste a useful beast. They would have no emotional stake in keeping her merely because she had been arrested in the first place. She was too insignificant; they were too pragmatic.

His mind was feverish. He was not sure what he planned, but all his intimate knowledge of the Aalaag in the three years he had lived closely with them was simmering and bubbling in the back of his mind. He went and stood before the Aalaag at the desk.

“Yes?” said the Aalaag after a little while, looking up at him.

“Untarnished sir, the Captain Commander said that he would be back in an hour to accept my messages and until then I should be dutiful but comfortable.”

Eyes with gray-black pupils gazed at him on a level with his own.

“You want comfort, is that it?”

“Untarnished sir, if I could sit or lie, it would be appreciated.”

“Yes. Very well. The Commander has so ordered. Go find what facilities there are for such activities in the areas of our own cattle. Return in an hour.”

“I am grateful to the untarnished sir.”

The gray-black pupils were cast into shadow by the jet brows coming together.

“This is a matter of orders. I am not one who allows his beasts to fawn.”

“Sir, I obey.”

The brows relaxed.

“Better. Go.”

He went out. He was moving swiftly now. As when before, in Denmark, he was at last caught up in what he was doing, there was no longer any doubt, any hesitation. He went swiftly down the outside corridor, which was deserted, ears and eyes alert for sign of anyone, but particularly for one of the aliens. As he passed the elevators, he stopped, looked about him.

There was no one watching; and once aboard the elevator, he would be able to go from this floor down to street level or below without being seen. There would be other doors to the outside than the one by which he had come in; and on other levels, sub-main floor levels, he could possibly find them. There would be portals used only by the Aalaag themselves and their most trusted servants, and they would be free to come and go without being noticed.

He punched for the elevator. After a moment it came. The door swung wide. As it opened, he turned away and readied himself to pretend—in case there was an Aalaag aboard—that he was merely passing by. But the elevator compartment was empty.

He stepped inside. The only danger remaining for him now was that some other Aalaag on a floor below would have just punched for this elevator. If it stopped for one of the aliens and the door opened to reveal him inside, he would be trapped—doubly guilty, for being where he should not be and also for being absent from his duty, which at the present was to lie down or otherwise relax. Only Aalaag were permitted to use elevators.

For a moment he thought the one in which he was descending was going to hesitate on the first floor. In the back of his mind, plans flickered like heat lightning on a summer evening. If it did stop, if the door did open and an Aalaag walked in, he planned to throw himself at the alien’s throat. Hopefully, the other would kill him out of reflex, and he would escape being held for questioning as to why he was where he was.

But the elevator did not stop. It continued moving downward, and the telltale light illuminating the floor numbers as they passed showed it was approaching the floor just below street level. Shane punched for the cage to stop. It did, the door opened and he stepped into a small, square corridor leading directly to a glass door and a flight of steps beyond, leading upward. He had hit on one of the aliens’ ways out of the building.

He left the elevator and went quickly along the corridor to the door. It was locked, of course; but in his pocket he carried the key of Lyt Ahn, or at least the key that all the special human servants of Lyt Ahn were allowed to bear. It would open any ordinary door in a building belonging to the aliens.

He tried the key now, and it worked. The door swung noiselessly open. A second later he was out of it, up the stairs and into the street above.

He went down the street, walking at a pace just short of a run, and turned right at the first crossing, searching for a market area. Four blocks on, he found a large square with many shops. A single Aalaag sat on his riding animal, towering and indifferent to the crowd about him, before a set of pillars upholding a sidewalk arcade at one end of the square. Whether the alien was on duty or simply waiting for something or someone, it was impossible to tell. But for Shane, now, to use a shop on this square would not be wise.

He hurried on. A few streets farther on, he found a smaller collection of shops lining both sides of a blind alley, and one of these was a store for such simple clothing as the Aalaag allowed humans to use nowadays. He stepped inside and a small bell over the door chimed softly.

“Signore?” said a voice.

Shane’s eyes adjusted to the interior dimness and saw a counter piled high with folded clothing and with a short, dark-faced man with a knife-blade nose behind it. Remarkably, in these days of alien occupation, the proprietor had a small potbelly under his loose yellow smock.

“I want a full-length robe,” Shane said. “Reversible.”

“Of course.” The proprietor began to come around the counter. “What type?”

“How much is your most expensive garment?”

“Seventy-five new lire or equivalent in trade, signore.”

Shane dug into the purse hanging from the rope around his waist and threw on the counter before him metal coins issued by the Aalaag for use as an international currency—the gold and silver rectangles with which his work as an employee of Lyt Ahn was rewarded.

The store owner checked his movement. His eyes moved to the coins, then back to Shane’s face with difference. Only humans of great power under the alien authority, or those engaged in the illegal black market, would ordinarily have such coins with which to pay their bills; and it would be seldom that such would come into a small shop like this.

He moved toward the coins. Shane covered them with his hand.

“I’ll pick the robe out myself,” he said. “Show me your stock.”

“But of course, of course, signore.” The proprietor went past the coins and out from behind the counter. He opened a door to a back room and invited Shane in. Within, were tables stacked with clothing and cloth. In one corner, under a kerosene lamp, was a tailor’s worktable with scraps of cloth, tools, thread, and some pieces of blue or white chalk.

“Here are the robes, on these two tables,” he said.

“Good,” said Shane harshly. “Go over to the corner there and turn around. I’ll pick out what I want.”

The man moved swiftly, his shoulders hunched a little. If his visitor was black market, it would be unwise to argue with or irritate him.

Shane located the reversible robes among the others and pawed through them, selecting the largest one he could find that was blue on one side. The other side of it was brown. He pulled it on over his own robe, the blue side out, and drew the drawstring tight at the waist. Stepping across to the worktable, he picked up a fragment of the white chalk. “I’ll leave a hundred lire on the counter,” he said to the back of the proprietor. “Don’t turn around, don’t come out until I’ve been gone for five minutes. You understand?”

“I understand.”

Shane turned and went. He glanced at the counter as he passed. He had snatched coins from his purse at random and there was the equivalent of over a hundred and fifty lire in gold and silver on the counter. It would not do to make the incident look any more important to the storeman than was necessary. Shane scooped up fifty lire-equivalent and went out the door, heading back toward the square where he had seen the mounted Aalaag.

He was very conscious of the quick sliding by of time. He could not afford to be missing from the Headquarters more than the hour the officer on duty had allowed him. If the Aalaag had left the square…

But he had not. When Shane, sweating, once more emerged into the square, the massive figure still sat unmoved, as indifferent as ever.

Shane, because of his duties, was allowed to carry one of the Aalaag’s perpetual timepieces. It lay in his purse now, but he dared not consult it to see how much time remained. A glimpse of it by the ordinary humans around would identify him as a servant of the aliens and win him the bitter enmity of these others; and that enmity, here and now, could be fatal.

He went quickly through the crowd swarming the square. As he got close to the Aalaag on the riding animal, the adrenaline-born courage inside him almost failed. But a memory of the prisoner back at the Headquarters rose in him, and he pushed himself on.

Deliberately, he made himself blunder directly beneath the heavy head of the riding animal so that it jerked its nose up. Its movement was slight—only an inch or two—but it was enough to draw the attention of the Aalaag. His eyes dropped to see Shane.

Still moving, Shane kept his head down. He had pulled his hair down on his forehead as far as possible to hide his face from the alien’s view—but it was not really that he was counting on preserving his anonymity. Few Aalaag could tell one human from another—even after two years of close contact, Lyt Ahn recognized Shane from the other courier-interpreters more by the times on which Shane reported than by any physical individualities.

Shane scuttled past; and the alien, indifferent to something as mere as a single one of the cattle about him, raised his eyes to infinity again, returning to his thoughts. Shane went on for only a few more steps, to the nearest pillar, and stopped. There, hiding his actions with his body from the alien behind him, he pulled the tailor’s white chalk from his pouch and with a hand that trembled, sketched on the stone of the pillar the cloaked figure with its staff.

He stepped back—and the sudden, almost inaudible moan of recognition and arrested movement in the crowd behind him drew—as he had known it would—the attention of the Aalaag. Instantly the alien wheeled his animal about, reaching for the same sort of stunning weapon with which the woman prisoner had been captured.

But Shane was already moving. He ran into the crowd, threw himself down so that the bodies about would shield him from the view of the Aalaag, and rolled, frantically pulling off the outer, reversible robe.

Instinctively, defensively, the other humans closed about him, hiding him from the alien, who was now—weapon in one massive hand—searching their numbers to locate him. The reversible robe stuck and bound itself under his armpits, but at last Shane got it off. Leaving it on the ground behind him, still with its blue side out, he scuttled on hands and knees farther off until, at last near the edge of the square, he risked getting to his feet and leaving it as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself.

Panting, soaked with sweat, leaving behind humans who studiously avoided looking at him and beginning to move now among others who looked at him with entirely normal interest, Shane half-ran toward the Aalaag Headquarters. Subjectively, it seemed as if at least an hour had passed since he had first stepped under the nose of the Aalaag riding animal; but reason told him that the whole business could not have taken more than a few minutes. He stopped at a fountain—bless Italy, he thought, for having fountains—to bathe his face, neck, and underarms. Officially, the Aalaag were indifferent to how their cattle stank; but in practice, they preferred those humans who were physically as much without odor as possible—though it never seemed to occur to them that they were as noisome in human noses as humans were in their own. But for Shane to return smelling strongly from what had theoretically been a rest period might attract interest to the period of time he had spent out of the office.

He let himself in with his key through the same door which had given him egress; and this time he took a stair, rather than the elevator, to the entrance level of the Headquarters. No one saw him emerge on the entrance level. He paused to check his timepiece and saw that he still had some twelve minutes of his hour.

He made use of that time by asking one of the Ordinary Guards where the rest facilities for cattle were, went to it, and retraced his steps from there to the office he had waited in before. Outside the office door, he discovered he had still four minutes left and stood where he was until he could enter at the exact moment on which he had been told to return.

The alien officer at the desk looked up as he came in, glanced at the clock face over the door and returned to his papers silently. Nonetheless, Shane felt the triumph of a minor point scored. Precise obedience was a mark in any human’s favor in Aalaag eyes. He went back to the spot on which he had been standing before—and stood again.

It was nearly three-quarters of an hour later that the door opened and Laa Ehon, with Otah On, entered. With a subjected being’s acuteness of observation, reinforced by the experience gained in his two years of close contact with aliens, Shane recognized both of the officers at once. They went directly to the one-way glass to stare at the human prisoner beyond, and Shane’s heart sank in panic.

It was inconceivable that his actions in the square of an hour before should not have been reported by this time. But it looked as if the two senior officers were about to proceed with the young woman as if nothing had happened. Then Laa Ehon spoke.

“It is indeed the same color,” the Headquarters Commander said. “There must be many of the cattle so dressed.”

“Very true, untarnished sir,” answered Otah On.

Laa Ehon studied the young woman for a moment longer.

“Was she at any time made aware of the specific reason for her being brought here?” he asked.

“Nothing has been told to her, untarnished sir.”

“Yes,” said Laa Ehon thoughtfully. “Well, then. It is a healthy young beast. There is no need to waste it. Let it go.”

“It will be done.”

Laa Ehon turned from the one-way glass and his eyes swept over the rest of the room, stopping on Shane. He walked forward to Shane.

“You were the beast with dispatches from Lyt Ahn?”

“Yes, untarnished sir,” said Shane. “I have them here for you.”

He produced them from his pouch and handed them into the large grasp of the Commander. Laa Ehon took them, unfolded and read them. He passed them to Otah On.

“Execute these.”

“Yes, untarnished sir.”

Otah On carried the dispatches over to the desk of the duty officer and spoke to him, handing him the papers. The eyes of Laa Ehon fastened on Shane with a glimmer of interest.

“You speak with great purity,” said the Commander. “You are one of the First Captain’s special group of beasts for speaking and carrying, are you not?”

“I am, untarnished sir.”

“How long have you spoken the true language?”

“Two years of this world, untarnished sir.”

Laa Ehon stood looking at him, and a trickle of perspiration crept coldly down Shane’s spine under his robe.

“You are a beast worth having,” said the Commander slowly. “I did not think one such as you could be brought to speak so clearly. How are you valued?”

Shane’s breath caught silently in his throat. Existence was barely endurable as one of the favored human group that was the personal property of Earth’s ruling alien. The madness he feared would come quickly if instead he should be trapped here, in this building, among the brutes that made up the Interior Guard.

“To the best of my knowledge, untarnished sir–” he dared not hesitate in his answer, “I am valued at half a possession of land–”

Otah On, who had just regained the side of his Commander, raised his black eyebrows at the voicing of this price; but Laa Ehon’s face remained thoughtful.

“—and the favor of my master, Lyt Ahn,” said Shane.

The thoughtfulness vanished from Laa Ehon’s features. Shane’s heart was pounding. It was true he had prefaced his answer with to the best of my knowledge, but in fact he had never officially been acquainted with the fact that part of his price involved the favor of his owner. What he knew himself to be valued at, half a possession of land—about forty miles square of what the Aalaag called “good country”—was an enormously high price in itself for any single human beast. It was roughly equivalent to what, in pre-Aalaag days, would have been the cost of a top-price, custom-made sports car, gold-plated and set with jewels. But Laa Ehon had looked ready to consider even that, it was not the first time Shane had been aware that he possessed the status of a sort of luxury toy. Only, this time, Shane had mentioned that his price included the favor of Lyt Ahn. “Favor” was a term that went beyond all price. It was a designation meaning that his master was personally interested in keeping him and that the price of any sale could include anything at all—but probably something Lyt Ahn would favor as least as much as what he was giving up. Such “favor,” involved in a sale, could constitute in effect a blank check signed by the buyer, cashable at any time in the future for goods or actions by the seller, guaranteed under the unyielding obligation code of the Aalaag.

Shane had never been told he had Lyt Ahn’s favor. He had only overheard Lyt Ahn once saying to his Chief of Staff that he must get around to extending his favor over all the beasts of that special group to which Shane belonged. If Laa Ehon should check with Lyt Ahn, and this had never been done, then Shane was doomed as an untrustworthy and lying beast. Even if the favor had been extended, Lyt Ahn might question how Shane had come to know of it.

And then, again, the First Captain, busy as he was with much more weighty affairs of Aalaag government, might simply conclude that he had mentioned it at some time to Shane and since forgotten the fact. Claiming it now was one of the daily gambles necessary to human daily existence in the midst of the aliens.

“Give him his receipt,” said Laa Ehon.

Otah On passed Shane a receipt for the dispatches, made out a moment before by the duty officer. Shane put it in his pouch.

“You return directly to Lyt Ann?” Laa Ehon said.

“Yes, untarnished sir.”

“My courtesies to the First Captain.”

“I will deliver them.”

“Then you may go.”

Shane turned and left. As the door closed behind him, he drew a deep breath and went quickly to the stairs, then down to the entrance floor and the entrance itself.

“I’m returning to the residence of the First Captain,” he told the officer of the Ordinary Guards in charge at the entrance. It was the same man with the Arabic influence noticeable in his spoken Italian. “Will you get me space on the necessary aircraft? I’ve priority, of course.”

“It’s already taken care of,” said the officer. “You’re to travel with one of the Masters on courier duty in a small military craft, leaving in two hours. Shall I order transportation to the airfield?”

“No,” said Shane briefly. He did not have to give his reasons for his actions to this uniformed lackey. “I’ll get myself there.”

He thought he caught a hint of admiration in the officer’s steady gaze. But then, if the other ever thought of walking the Milan streets alone, it would be in his regular uniform, which he was never permitted to discard. Someone like this officer would never be able to imagine the freedom of Shane in going about, ostensibly as one of them, among the ordinary humans of the city—nor could he imagine how necessary these few moments of illusory freedom were to Shane.

“Very well,” said the officer. “The Master who will carry you is Enech Ajin. The Masters’ desk at the air terminal will direct you to him when you get there.”

“Thank you,” said Shane.

“You are entirely welcome.”

They had both picked up inevitably, Shane thought bitterly, the very courtesies and intonations of their owners…

He went out through the heavy, right-hand door of the pair that made up the entrance and down the steps. There were no taxis in sight—of course. No human without need to be there would hang around the alien Headquarters. He turned up the same street he had followed to find the square.

He had gone past no more than two corners when a taxi passed him, cruising slowly. He hailed it.

“To the airport,” he said to the driver, looking at the thin, overcoated man behind the wheel as his fingers automatically opened the cab door. He stepped inside—and tripped over something on the floor as he got in.

The door slammed, the cab took off with a rush. He found himself held, pinioned by two men who had risen from crouching positions on the floor of the cab’s back seat. They held him helpless and he felt something sharp against his throat.

He looked down and saw a so-called glass knife, actually a dagger made by a sliver of glass held between two bound-together halves of a wooden dagger. The glass formed the cutting edge and could be—as this one had been—sandpapered to razorlike sharpness.

“Lie still!” growled one of the men in Italian.

Shane lay still. He smelled the rank, old stink of dirty clothing from both of the two who held him tightly. The taxi whirled him away through unknown streets to an unguessable destination.

They rode for at least twenty minutes, though how much of this was necessary distance to reach their goal or how much was to mislead Shane in any attempt to estimate the length of the trip, was impossible to guess. At length the taxi turned, bumped over some very uneven pavement, and passed under the shadow of an arch. Then it stopped, and the two men hustled Shane out of the vehicle.

He had just a glimpse of a dark and not-too-clean courtyard surrounded by buildings before he was pushed up two steps, through a door and into a long, narrow corridor thick with ancient paint and cooking odors.

Shane was herded along the corridor, more numb than frightened. Inside him there was a feeling of something like fatalistic acceptance. He had lived for two years with the thought that someday ordinary humans would identify him as one of those who worked for the aliens; and when they did, they would then use him as an object for the bitter fear and hatred they all felt for their conquerors but dared not show directly. In his imagination, he had lived through this scene many times. It was nonetheless hideous now for finally having become real, but it was a situation on which his emotions had worn themselves out. At the end, it was almost a relief to have the days of his masquerade over, to be discovered for what he really was.

The two men stopped suddenly. Shane was shoved through a door on his right, into a room glaringly lit by a single powerful light bulb. The contrast from the shadowed courtyard outside, and the even dimmer hallway, made the sudden light blinding for a second. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was standing in front of a round table and that the room was large and high-ceilinged, with paint grimed by time on the walls and a single tall window which, however, had a blackout blind drawn tightly down over it. The cord from the light bulb ran not into the ceiling, but across the face of it, past a capped gas outlet, down the farther wall and to a bicycle generator. A young man with long black hair sat on the bicycle part of the generator and whenever the light from the ceiling bulb began to fade, he would pump energetically on his pedals until it brightened again and held its brightness.

There were several other men standing around the room, and two more at the table together with the only woman to be seen. She was, he recognized, the prisoner he had seen through the one-way glass. Her eyes met his now with the look of a complete stranger, and even in his numbness he felt strange that he should recognize her with such strong emotional identification and she should not know him at all.

“Where’s that clothing-store owner?” said one of the men at the table with her, speaking to the room at large in a northern Italian underlaid with London English. He was young—as young in appearance as Shane himself but, unlike Shane, spare and athletic-looking, with a straight nose, strong square jaw, thin mouth and blond hair cut very short.

“Outside, in the supply room,” said a voice speaking the same northern Italian but without accent.

“Get him in here then!” said the man with the short hair. The other man beside him at the table said nothing. He was round-bodied and hard-fat, in his forties, wearing a worn leather jacket with a short-stemmed pipe in one corner of the mouth of his round face. He looked entirely Italian.

The door opened and closed behind Shane. A minute later it opened and closed again, and a blindfolded man Shane recognized as the proprietor of the store where he had bought the reversible cloak was brought forward and turned around to face Shane. His blindfold was jerked off.

“Well?” demanded the short-haired young man.

The shopkeeper blinked under the unshaded electric light. His eyes focused on Shane, then slid away.

“What is it you want, signori?” he asked. His voice was almost a whisper in the stark room.

“Didn’t anyone tell you? Him!” said the short-haired man impatiently. “Look at him? Do you recognize him? Where did you see him last?”

The store proprietor licked his lips and raised his eyes.

“Earlier today, signore,” he said. “He came into my shop and bought a reversible cloak, blue and brown–”

“This cloak?” The short-haired individual made a gesture. One of the men standing in the back of the room came forward to shove a bundled mass of cloth into the hands of the proprietor, who slowly unfolded it and looked at it.

“This is mine,” he said, still faintly. “Yes. This is the one he bought.”

“All right, you can go then. Keep the cloak. You two—don’t forget to blindfold him.” The short-haired man turned his attention to the young man slouching on the bicycle seat of the electric generator. “How about it, Carlo? Is he the one you followed?”

Carlo nodded. He had a toothpick in one corner of his mouth, and through his numbness Shane watched him with an odd sort of fascination, for the toothpick seemed to give him a rakish, infallible look.

“He left the Square of San Marco and went straight back to the aliens’ HQ,” Carlo said. “As fast as possible.”

“That’s it then,” said the short-haired man. He looked at Shane. “Well, do you want to tell us now what the Aalaag had you up to? Or do we have to wait while Carlo works you over a bit?”

Suddenly Shane was weary to the point of sickness—weary of the whole matter of human subjects and alien overlords. Unexpected fury boiled up in him.

“You damn fool!” he shouted at the short-haired man. “I was saving her!”

And he pointed at the woman, who stared back at him, her gaze frowning and intent.

“You idiots!” Shane spat. “You stupid morons with your resistance games! Don’t you know what they’d have done to her? Don’t you know where you’d all be, right now, if I hadn’t given them a reason to think it was someone else? How long do you think she could keep from telling them all about you? I’ll tell you, because I’ve seen it—forty minutes is the average!”

They all looked at the woman, reflexively.

“He’s lying,” she said in a thin voice. “They didn’t offer to do a thing to me. They just made me wait a while and then turned me loose for lack of evidence.”

“They turned you loose because I gave them enough reason to doubt you were the one who made the mark!’’ The fury was carrying Shane away like a dark, inexorable tide. “They let you go because you’re young and healthy and they don’t waste valuable beasts without reason. Lack of evidence! Do you still think you’re dealing with humans?”

“All right,” said the short-haired man. His voice was hard and flat. “This is all very pretty, but suppose you tell us where you learned our mark.”

“Learned it?” Shane laughed, a laugh that was close to a sob of long-throttled rage. “You clown! I invented it. Me—myself! I carved it on a brick wall in Aalborg, two years ago, for the first time. Learn about it! How did you learn about it? How did the Aalaag learn about it? By seeing it marked up in places, of course!”

There was a moment of silence in the room after Shane’s voice ceased to ring out.

“He’s crazy then,” said the hard-fat man with the pipe.

“Crazy,” echoed Shane and laughed again.

“Wait a minute,” said the woman. She came around and faced him. “Who are you? What do you do with the Aalaag?”

“I’m a translator, a courier,” said Shane. “I’m owned by Lyt Ahn—me and about thirty men and women like me.”

“Maria–” began the short-haired man.

“Wait, Peter.” She held up her hand briefly and went on without taking her eyes off Shane. “All right. You tell us what happened.”

“I was delivering special communications to Laa Ehon—you know your local Commander, I suppose.”

“We know Laa Ehon,” said Peter harshly. “Keep talking.”

“I had special communications to deliver. I looked through a one-way mirror and saw you–” he was looking at the woman named Maria. “I knew what they’d do to you. Laa Ehon was talking to one of his officers about you. All that had been spotted was some human wearing a blue robe. There was just a chance that if they had another report of a human in a blue robe making that mark, it would make them doubtful enough so they wouldn’t want to waste a healthy young beast like you. So I ducked out and tried giving them that other report. It worked.”

“Why did you do it?” She was looking penetratingly at him.

“Just a minute, Maria,” said Peter. “Let me ask a few questions. What’s your name, you?”

“Shane Everts.”

“And you said you heard Laa Ehon talking to one of his officers. How did you happen to be there?”

“I was waiting to deliver my communications.”

“And Laa Ehon just discussed it all in front of you— that’s what you’re trying to tell us?”

“They don’t see us, or hear us, unless they want us,” said Shane bitterly. “We’re furniture—pets.”

“So you say,” said Peter. “What language did Laa Ehon speak in?”

“Aalaag, of course.”

“And you understood him so well that you could tell there was a chance to make them think that the human they wanted was someone else than Maria?”

“I told you.” A dull weariness was beginning to take Shane over as the fury died. “I’m a translator. I’m one of Lyt Ahn’s special group of human translators.”

“No human can really speak or understand the Aalaag tongue,” said the man with the pipe, in Basque.

“Most can’t,” answered Shane, also in Basque. The weariness was beginning to numb him so that he was hardly aware of changing languages. “I tell you I’m one of a very special group belonging to Lyt Ann.”

“What was that? What did he say, Georges?” Peter was looking from one to the other.

“He speaks Basque,” said Georges, staring at Shane.

“How well?”

“Well…” Georges made an effort. “He speaks it… very well.”

Peter turned on Shane. “How many languages do you speak?” he asked.

“How many?” Shane said dully. “I don’t know. A hundred and fifty—two hundred, well. A lot of others, some–”

“And you speak Aalaag like an alien.”

Shane laughed. “No,” he said. “I speak it well—for a human.”

“Also, you travel all over the world as a courier–” Peter turned to Maria and Georges. “Are you listening?”

Maria ignored him. “Why did you do it? Why did you try to rescue me?” She held him with her eyes.

There was a new silence.

“Yowaragh,” he said dully.

“What?”

“It’s their word for it,” he said. “The Aalaag word for when a beast suddenly goes crazy and fights back against one of them. It was like that first time in Aalborg, when I snapped and put the pilgrim mark on the wall under the man they’d thrown on the hooks to execute him.”

“You don’t really expect us to believe you are the one who invented the symbol of resistance to the aliens.”

“You can go to hell!” Shane told him in English.

“What did you say?” said Peter quickly.

“You know what I said,” Shane told him savagely, still in English and in the exact accent of the London area in which the other had grown up. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. Just give up trying to pretend you can speak Italian.”

A small, dark flush came to Peter’s cheeks and for a second his eyes glinted. Shane had read him clearly. He was one of those who could learn to speak another language just well enough to delude himself—but he didn’t speak it like a native. Shane had touched one of his vulnerabilities.

But then Peter laughed, and both flush and glint were gone. “Caught me, by God! You caught me!” he said in English. “That’s really very good! Magnificent!”

And you’ll never forgive me for it, thought Shane, watching him.

“Look now, tell me–” Peter seized one of the straight-backed chairs and pushed it forward. “Sit down and let’s talk. Tell me, you must have some sort of credentials that let you pass freely through any inspection or check by the ordinary sort of Aalaag?”

“What I carry,” said Shane, suddenly wary, “is my credentials. Communications from the First Captain of Earth will pass a courier anywhere.”

“Of course!” said Peter. “Now sit down–”

He urged Shane to the chair; and Shane, suddenly conscious of the weariness of his legs, dropped into it. He felt something being put into his hands and, looking, saw that it was a glass tumbler one-third full of a light-brown liquid. He put it to his lips and smelled brandy—not very good brandy. For some reason, this reassured him. If they had been planning to drug him, he thought, they surely would have put the drug in something better than this.

The burn of the liquor on his tongue woke him from that state of mind in which he had been caught ever since he had stepped into the taxi and found himself kidnapped. He recognized suddenly that he had now moved away from the threat involved in his original capture. These people had been thinking of him originally only as one of the human jackals of the Aalaag. Now they seemed to have become aware of his abilities and advantages; and clearly Peter, at least, was thinking of somehow putting these to use in their resistance movement.

But the situation was still tricky and could go either way. All that was necessary was for him to slip and by word or action imply that he might still be a danger to them and their determination to destroy him could return, redoubled in urgency.

For the moment the important thing was that Peter, who seemed to be the dominant member of their group, appeared to be determined to make use of him. On his part, Shane was finding, now that his first recklessness of despair was over, that he wanted to live. But he did not want to be used. Much more clearly than these people around him, he knew how hopeless their dream of successful resistance to the Aalaag was, and how certain and ugly the end toward which they were headed if they continued.

Let them dig their own graves if they wanted. All he wanted was to get safely out of here and in the future to stay clear of such people. Too late, now that he had answered their questions, he realized how much leverage against himself he had given them in telling them his true name and the nature of his work with the Aalaag. Above all, he thought now, he must keep the secret of Lyt Ann’s key. They would sell their souls for something that would unlock most alien doors—doors to warehouses, to armories, to communication and transportation equipment. And the use of the key by them would be a certain way to his association with them being discovered by the Aalaag. He had been making himself far too attractive to them, thought Shane grimly. It was time to take the glamor off.

“I’ve got thirty minutes, no more,” he said, “to get to the airport and meet the Aalaag officer who’s flying me back to Lyt Ann’s Headquarters. If I’m not there on time, it won’t matter how many languages I can speak.”

There was silence in the room. He could see them looking at each other—in particular, Peter, Georges, and Maria consulting each other with their gazes.

“Get the car,” said Maria, in Italian, when Peter still hesitated. “Get him there on time.”

Peter jerked suddenly into movement, as if Maria’s words had wakened him from a dream so powerful it had held him prisoner. He turned to Carlo.

“Get the car,” he said. “You drive. Maria, you’ll go with me and Shane. Georges–”

He spoke just in time to cut short the beginnings of a protest from the man with the pipe.

“–I want you to close this place up. Bury it! We may end up wanting better security on this than we ever have had on anything until now. Then get out of sight yourself. We’ll find you. You follow me?”

“All right,” said Georges. “Don’t take too long to come calling.”

“A day or two. That’s all. Carlo–” He looked around.

“Carlo’s gone for the car,” said Maria. “Let’s move, Peter. We’ll barely make it to the airport as it is.”

Shane followed them back through the hall by which he had entered. Crammed in the back seat of the taxi between Maria and Peter, with Carlo driving up front, he had a sudden feeling of ridiculousness, as if they were all engaged in some wild, slapstick movie.

“Tell me,” said Peter in English, in a voice that was friendlier than any he had used until now, “just how it happened you made that first mark in—where did you say it was?”

“Denmark,” said Shane, answering in English also. “The city of Aalborg. I was delivering messages there, and on my way back from that, I saw two of the aliens, a father and a son, mounted on their riding animals, crossing the square there that has the statue of the Cymri bull–”

It came back to him as he told them. The son, using the haft of his power lance to knock aside a woman who otherwise would have been trampled by his riding animal. The husband of the woman, suddenly mad with yowaragh, attacking the son bare-handed and being easily knocked unconscious. The woman trying to rescue the man and being killed for it—and all of them who were human and in the square at the time being forced to watch under Aalaag law while the man, still unconscious, was thrown onto the sharp points of the triple-punishment hooks on the wall of a building on the edge of the square.

Shane had stood, for the half hour it took the man to die, almost within arm’s length of the two Aalaag sitting on their riding animals. He had been trapped into listening as the senior of the two, who could have no suspicion he was within earshot of one of the rare humans who actually understood Aalaag, gently reproved his son for bad judgment in trying to save the woman from being trampled. Because of this, they had been forced to kill not one, but two healthy beasts and also to engage in a ritual of justice—which always had a disturbing effect on the others, no matter how necessary.

Remembering, Shane felt the inner center of his body grow icy with the recalled horror and the near-approach of his own madness. He told how he had gone on to the bar, drunk the bootleg rotgut the bartender had claimed was aquavit, how he had been set upon by the three vagabonds and killed or badly damaged two of them with his staff before the third had run off. He had not intended to tell it all, movement by movement; but somehow, once started, he could not help himself. He told how, once more crossing the now-empty square, on impulse he had scratched the mark of the pilgrim beneath the body on the hooks before returning to the airport.

“I believe you,” said Peter.

Shane said nothing. Crowded together as they were, he was conscious of the softness of Maria’s thigh pressed against his; and the warmth of her seemed also to press in upon the iciness within him, melting it as if he were someone lost and frozen in a snowstorm who was now getting back life and heat from the living temperature of another human being.

He felt a sudden, desperate longing for her as a woman. Beasts were encouraged by the Aalaag to breed—particularly valuable cattle like those special human translator-couriers of Lyt Ahn’s; but living continually under the observations of the aliens, as Shane and the others did, cultured a paranoia. They all knew too well the innumerable ways that could bring them to destruction at the hands of their masters; and when their duties were completed, their instinct was to draw apart, to creep separately into their solitary beds and lock their individual doors against each other for fear that close contact with another could put their survival too completely in another’s power.

In any case, Shane did not want to breed. He wanted love—if only for a moment; and love was the one thing the highly paid human servants of the First Captain of Earth could not afford. Suddenly the warmth of Maria drew him like a dream of peace…

He jerked himself out of his thoughts. Peter was looking at him curiously. What had the man just been saying—that he believed Shane?

“Get someone to check Aalborg and ask people there what happened. The mark I made might still be there if the Aalaag haven’t erased it.”

“I don’t need to,” said Peter. “What you say explains how the mark could spread around the world the way it already has. It would have to take someone who can move around as you can to get it known everywhere as the symbol of resistance. I always thought there must have been someone at the root of the legend.”

Shane let the first part of Peter’s comment pass without answer. The other man obviously did not understand what Shane had learned in his travels—the speed with which rumor of any kind could travel in a subject population. Shane had been present at the origin of rumors in Paris which he had heard again in this city of Milan less than a week later. Also, Peter seemed to be giving him credit for continuing to spread the mark around, himself; and that, too, was probably a matter on which it was better not to correct the other.

“But I think you ought to face something,” Peter said, leaning hard against him for a second as Carlo whipped the taxi around a corner. “It’s time to move on from just being a legend, time to set up an organization with practical goals of resistance against the aliens, looking forward to the day when we can kill them all, or drive them off the Earth entirely.”

Shane looked sideways at him. It was incredible that this man could be saying such things in all seriousness. But, of course, Peter had not seen what Shane had, up close, of the power of the Aalaag. Mice might as well dream of killing or driving off lions. He was about to say this bluntly when the instinct for survival cautioned him to go cautiously, still. Avoiding a direct answer, he fastened on something else.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned a legend,” he said. “What legend?”

“You don’t know?” There was a note of triumph in Peter’s voice. He did not offer to explain.

“There’s talk that all the marks are made by one person,” said Maria, also in English now. She had only a trace of Italian accent—Venetian. “By someone called simply the Pilgrim, who has the ability to come and go without the Aalaag being able to stop or catch whoever it is.”

“And you, all of you, have been helping this Pilgrim, is that it?” said Shane, raising his voice.

“The point is,” Peter interrupted, “that it’s time the Pilgrim was associated with a solid organization. Don’t you think?”

Shane felt a return of the weariness that had deadened him when he had first been abducted by these people. “If you can find your Pilgrim, ask him,” he said. “I’m not him, and I’ve got no opinions.”

Peter watched him for a moment. “Whether you’re the Pilgrim or not is beside the point,” he said. “The point still is, you could help us and we need you. The world needs you. Just from what you’ve told us, it’s plain you could be invaluable just acting as liaison between resistance groups.”

Shane laughed grimly. “Not on the best day in the year,” he said.

“You aren’t even stopping to think about it,” Peter said. “What makes you so positive you don’t want to do it?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you ever since you kidnapped me,” said Shane. “You’re the one who doesn’t listen. You don’t know the Aalaag. I do. Because you don’t know them, you can fool yourself that you’ve got a chance with this resistance of yours. I know better. They’ve been taking over worlds like this and turning the native populations into their servants for thousands of years. Did you think this was the first planet they’d ever tried it on? There’s nothing you can come up with by way of attacking them that they haven’t seen before and know how to deal with. But even if you could come up with something new, you still couldn’t win.”

“Why not?” Peter’s head leaned close.

“Because they’re just what they say they are—born conquerors who could never be dominated or defeated themselves. You can’t torture an Aalaag and get information out of him. You can’t point a weapon at one of them and force him to back off or surrender. All you can do is kill them—if you’re lucky. But they’ve got so much power, so much military power, that even that’d work only if you killed them all in the same moment. If even one escaped and had warning, you’d have lost.”

“Why?”

“Because with any warning at all, any one of them could make himself or herself invulnerable and then take all the time he needed to wipe out whole cities and sections of Earth, one by one, until the other humans who were left served you and anyone else who had been fighting the Aalaag up on a platter, to stop the killing.”

“What good would it do just one Aalaag to do all that,” Peter said, “if he was the last one on Earth?”

“You don’t think all the Aalaag in the universe are here, do you?” said Shane. “Earth, with only one Aalaag left alive on it, would only represent that much new homesteading territory for the surplus Aalaag population elsewhere. In a year or less, you’d have as many Aalaag here as before; and the only result would be the humans who’d died, the slagged areas of Earth, and the fact that the Aalaag would then set up an even stricter control system to make sure no one like you rose against them again.”

There was silence in the car. Carlo whipped them around another corner and Shane could see a sign beside the highway announcing that the airport was now only one kilometer distant. The warmth of Maria’s body penetrated through him, and he could smell the harsh, clean odor of the all-purpose soap with which she must just this morning have washed her hair.

“Then you won’t lift a finger to help us?” said Peter.

“No,” said Shane.

Carlo turned the car onto an off-ramp leading up to the airport road.

“Isn’t anybody willing to do anything?” burst out Maria suddenly. “Not anybody? Nobody at all?”

An icy, electric shock jarred all through Shane. It was as if a sword had been plunged clear through him, a sword he had been expecting, but a sword to take his life nonetheless. It cut to his instinctive roots, to the ancient racial and sexual reflexes from which yowaragh sprang. The words were nothing, the cry was everything.

He sat for a numb moment.

“All right,” he said. “Let me think about it then.”

He heard his own voice far off, remote.

“You’re never going to get anywhere the way you’ve been acting so far,” he said. “You’re doing all the wrong things because you don’t understand the Aalaag. I do. Maybe I could tell you what to do—but you’d have to let me tell you, not just try to pick my brains, or it won’t work. Would you do it that way? Otherwise it’s no use.”

“Yes!” Maria said.

There was a slight pause.

“All right,” said Peter. Shane turned to stare at him.

“If you don’t, it won’t work.”

“We’ll do anything to hit at the Aalaag,” said Peter; and this time his answer came immediately.

“All right,” said Shane emptily. “I’ll still have to think about it. How do I get in touch with you?”

“We can find you if we know what city you’re coming into,” said Peter. “Can you arrange to put an ad in the local paper before you come–”

“I don’t have that much warning,” said Shane. “Why don’t I go into a shop in the center of a city when I first get there and buy a pilgrim robe—a gray one like the one I’m wearing—and pay for it in a silver or gold Aalaag coin. You can have the shopkeepers warn you if anyone does that. If the description fits me, you watch the local Aalaag HQ and pick me up coming or going.”

“All right,” said Peter.

“One other thing,” Shane said. They were almost to the terminal building of the airport. He looked directly into Peter’s eyes. “I’ve seen the Aalaag questioning humans and I know what I’m talking about. If they suspect me, they’ll question me. If they question me, they’ll find out everything I know. You have to understand that. If everything else fails, they have drugs that just start you talking and you talk until you die. They don’t like to use them because they’re not efficient. Someone has to wade through hours of nonsense to get the answers they want. But they use them when they have to. You understand? Anyone they question is going to tell them everything. Not just me—anyone. That’s one of the things you’re going to have to work with.”

“All right,” said Peter.

“What it means as far as I’m concerned is that I don’t want anyone who doesn’t already know about me to know I exist.”

He held Peter’s eye, glanced meaningfully at Carlo and back to Peter.

“And those who aren’t to have something to do with me in the future—if I decide to have anything to do with you in the future—should believe that I get out of this car now and none of you ever see me again.”

“I understand,” said Peter. He nodded. “Don’t worry.”

Shane laughed harshly.

“I always worry,” he said. “I’d be insane not to. I’m worrying about myself right now. I need my head examined for even thinking about this.”

The taxi pulled up to the long concrete walk fronting the airline terminal and stopped. Peter, on the curb side of the car, opened the door beside him and got out to let Shane out. Shane started to follow him, hesitated, and turned back for a second to Maria.

“I will think about it,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can, the best I can.”

In the relative shadow of the corner of the taxi’s back seat, her face was unreadable. She reached out a hand to him. He took and held it for a second. Her fingers were as icy as Milan itself had been this morning.

“I’ll think about it,” he said again, squeezed her fingers and scrambled out. On the walk, he stood for a second facing the other man.

“If you don’t hear from me in six months, forget me,” he said.

Peter’s lips opened. He appeared about to say something; then the lips closed again.

He nodded.

Shane turned and went swiftly into the terminal. Just inside the entrance doors, he spotted a terminal policeman and swung on him, taking the key from his purse and exposing it for a second in the palm of his hand to the other’s gaze.

“This is the key of Lyt Ahn, First Captain of Earth,” he said in rapid Italian. “I’m one of his special couriers, and I need transport to the Masters’ section of the field, fast. Fast! Emergency! But do it without attracting attention!”

The officer snapped upright, jerked the phone from his belt and spoke into it. There was no more than a thirty-second wait before an electric car came sliding through the crowd on its air cushion. Shane jumped into one of the passenger seats behind the driver, glancing at his watch.

“The hangars for smaller military craft!” he said. He hesitated, then made up his mind. “Use your siren.”

The driver cranked up his siren, the crowd parted before him as he swung the car around and drove at it. They slid swiftly across the polished floor, out through a vehicle passway by the entrance to the field itself.

Once on the field, the car lifted higher on its cushion and went swiftly. They swung around two sides of the field and approached the heavily guarded silver hangars housing the military atmosphere ships of the Aalaag. They slowed at the guard gate of the entrance to this area. Shane showed his key and explained his errand to the human Special Guard on duty there.

“We’ve been warned to expect you,” said the Guard. “Hangar Three. The courier ship is piloted by the Master Enech Ajin, who is of the thirty-fifth rank.”

Shane nodded and the driver of the car, having heard, moved them off without any further need for orders.

In the hangar, the slim, dumbbell shape of the courier sat dwarfed by the large fighter ships of the Aalaag on either side of her. Yet, as Shane knew, even these seemingly larger ships were themselves small as Aalaag warships went. The true fighting vessels of the Aalaag never touched planetary surface but hung in continual orbit and readiness—as much for reasons of principle as for the fact that there was no air or spaceport on Earth where they could have set down without causing massive damage.

He jumped down from the car as it paused by the open port of the courier vessel and ran up the steps of the port, stepping into the cramped interior. It need not have been so cramped, but even this ship, designed for carrying dispatches, was heavy with armament.

The massive back of an Aalaag showed itself above one of the triple seats at the control panel in the front of the ship. Shane walked up to just behind the seat and stood waiting. This was not only his duty, but all that was necessary, even if the pilot had not heard him come in. This close to the other, he smelled the typical Aalaag body odor plainly; and the pilot was as surely scenting him. After a moment the pilot spoke.

“Take one of the seats farther back, beast.” It was the voice of an adult Aalaag female. “I have two other stops to make before I bring you to the area of the First Captain.”

Shane went back and sat down. After only a couple of minutes, the courier ship lifted and hovered lightly perhaps ten feet off the floor of the hangar. It slid out into the late daylight of the field, turned and went softly to a blast pad. At the pad it stopped, and Shane let the air out of his lungs and laid his arms in the hollows of the armrests on either side of his chair.

For a second there was neither sound nor movement. Then something like a clap of thunder, a great weight crushing him into the seat so that he could not move for a long moment—then sudden freedom and lightness, so that he felt almost as if he could float out of the chair. Actually, the feeling was exaggerated. He was still within gravity. It was the contrast with the pressure of takeoff that created the illusion of lightness.

He looked at the viewing screen in the back of the seat before him and saw the surface of Earth below, a curving horizon and a general mottling of clouds. Nothing else. The look of no expression on Maria’s face as he had left her came so clearly back into his imagination that it was as if her face floated before him in the air this moment. He felt the coldness of her fingers against his fingers, and her voice rang, re-echoing in memory in his ear—

“Isn’t anybody willing to do anything? Not anybody? Nobody at all?”

They were all insane. He shivered. He had been wise to play along and pretend to consider their suggestion that he involve himself in their charade of resistance that could only lead to torture and death at Aalaag hands. They had no chance. None. If he had seriously considered joining them, he would have been as insane as they were.

His heart beat heavily. The cold touch of Maria’s fingers that lingered in his fingers seemed to spread up his arms and all through him. No, it was no use. It made no difference that they were insane.

He had no choice. Something within him left him no choice, even though he knew what it would mean. He would do it even though he knew it would mean his death in the end. He would seek them out again and go back to them. Join them.

Editor's Introduction to:

WINTER SNOW
by Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin

Two generations of Americans have grown up in the shadow of death. ICBMs and nuclear weapons combine to put the world one half hour from doomsday.

We have grown used to this bizarre situation. Statesmen and politicians have learned to live with it. Indeed, by adopting the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) we have institutionalized doomsday. Under MAD we strive to make the world safe, not for people and civilizations, but for weapons. We undertake not to defend ourselves, lest we threaten the enemy’s rockets.

Common sense would tell us that defenses are useful. It requires considerable intellectual ability to explain why defense and damage limitation are more dangerous than helplessness.

The United States has no great record of success in the field of diplomacy. One of our diplomatic triumphs was the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, which outlawed war even as the storm clouds of World War II were gathering. The Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty was another. The United Nations was a third. Yet, despite our previous failures in the world of diplomacy, we are exhorted to entrust our children’s safety to Arms Control rather than to our technology. As I write this, we are going once again to Geneva; and all across the nation, learned writers are urging that we once and for all give up “Star Wars”; that we abandon strategic defense.

The Soviet Union has clearly violated the original Ballistic Missile Defense treaty. They have built two large radars; one of them might conceivably be intended for early warning, but the other can only be for battle management. The evidence continues to pile up: the Soviet Union believes in strategic defense, and will install strategic defenses as soon as they are technically available.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to act as if SALT II, the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, were in effect, even though it was rejected by the Senate Armed Services Committee as “not in the national security interest of the United States.” Under SALT II we agreed to limit our strategic offensive forces (SOF) to 1200 missiles carrying MIRV (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles); and pursuant to this non-ratified agreement the United States has not replaced older Minuteman II missiles with already-stockpiled Minuteman III, but proposes to dismantle six perfectly serviceable Poseidon submarines carrying an additional 96 MIRVed submarine-launched missiles. These subs cost $18 billion—which has already been paid.

Since 1979 when SALT II was signed, the Soviet Union has added over 3,850 warheads to their SOF.

The alternative to diplomacy is technology. In his historic speech of March 23, 1983, President Reagan proposed a shift in US policy: that we abandon Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD, and instead begin to implement a new doctrine of assured survival based on defensive systems.

Within minutes of the President’s speech there was a howl of protest.

According to Carl Sagan, Richard Garwin (an IBM Fellow) and others, “anything short of an impermeable defense system tends to undermine, not improve, U.S. national security.” According to them, if we can’t have perfect defenses we’re better off with no defenses at all. Perfect defenses are unlikely. Therefore we shouldn’t defend ourselves.

The iron logic of MAD has never appealed to the Soviet Union. They have always believed in defensive systems. Their citizens are trained in Civil Defense; the Soviet government has constructed shelters for key officials and a large part of the population; and they have begun to deploy the first elements of a ballistic missile defense system.

Sagan, Garwin, and the Union of Concerned Scientists believe that U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defenses would be destabilizing. They do not believe that we can afford missile defenses, or that the systems would work if we built them; but nevertheless, if we deploy them we invite the Soviets to attack us before the system is in place.

What happens if the Soviets get their system first?

WINTER SNOW
by Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin

Every so often one of the tiny, ersatz snowflakes sparkled as though reflecting an errant beam of moonlight. But there wasn’t any moonlight, only the softened lamp illumination of Premier Kirinski’s personal office and, beyond the curtains, the early morning sun raising mists from the stone-strong Kremlin walls.

The snowflakes drifted, seemingly carried by a gentle breeze, around the dark metal ball in the center of the crystal globe. The globe was twelve centimeters across. A slender rod of the same dark metal rose from the globe’s base to hold the ball in place. The base was set in a black plastic stand.

The globe was on the corner of Premier Kirinski’s desk.

He sat rigidly, his back well away from the chair’s padding, and stared at the globe. He had just come from the Central Committee meeting, and he would return to it shortly. But he had chosen to talk to the American President here. (Though of course the committee members would be watching and listening to the conversation.)

The snowflakes were purposeful in their travel, deliberately circling, never touching, the ball or the crystal. They never fell. Unlike the snows of Kiev, where he had been a happy child too many years ago. Or the knife-edged blizzards during the street-to-street fighting in Leningrad, and later in Berlin…

He stabbed a button on the intercom impatiently. “What is delaying the call?”

“My apologies, Premier,” Colonel Gurkoff said diffidently. “We have not used the picturephone equipment on the special line except in tests. The technical difficulties will be corrected in a minute or two.”

“See that they are, Colonel.”

The notes for his discussion with the American President were open in front of him, but his gaze returned to the globe.

His father was a tall presence amid the snowflakes, calling him into the house to finish his chores. Yes, Father, I have done many chores for my family, my country. The doctors tell me I will be joining you soon, perhaps before the year is out. But I have this last and most important chore to do. Then I can warm myself by the fire and rest.

The company name, Omutami, was written in fine silver script in the globe’s base. The Japanese were very good at devising such clever toys. Many of them had been sent as gifts to influential persons in an effort to secure an import license. Of course the license had not been granted; grain came before toys. But he kept his because it was… clever.

The Nazis killed you, Father. They laid waste to our country and butchered our people, as other invaders did before them. Today we are hemmed in by enemies who would bring the horror upon us yet again if we weren’t strong in arms and determination. China. Western Europe. But above all, America.

The battery in the base would keep the snowflakes moving—for how long? He would have to have replacements, purchased from the Japanese company. Much effort to keep a toy working, but few things gave him pleasure now. His body was old, a frail and failing container for his still-strong dedication to his country, party and people.

The Americans are a worse threat than the Nazis. Not as evil, but powerful and willful children. Governed by the whim of the mob. One day they wish to live in peace with us; the next day they hate and fear us. Who can know what they will do next? They corrupt other nations and turn them against us while squandering the world’s resources in capitalistic excess. Their atomic weapons are aimed at our cities and military bases. No more! We cannot go on as hostages to the actions of a decadent people!

The intercom buzzed. “The call to President Nivling is ready, Premier.”

He sighed and dragged his eyes from the globe to the picturephone. The decades of wishing, the years of hard work; all for this moment. A supreme moment. He would at last be the savior he had dreamed of being ever since the fear-clutched World War II days.

If he were mistaken… But no, the technicians and the military leaders and the party officials were all in agreement. Now was the moment. Any timorousness would let the great opportunity slip through his fingers.

The small screen flickered, then resolved into the head and shoulders of the American President. He was seated in a high-backed chair. No one else was in view, but his eyes revealed that others were present off-camera. With mild surprise the Premier recognized the darkened background as the Pentagon’s Situation Room.

“Good morning, Premier,” President Nivling said in his very bad Russian. His tone was somber, and he wasn’t trying to hide his frown. He was also an old man, but stocky and overweight where the Premier was wiry. He looked like a successful, decadent capitalist—which he was—and foolish, which he definitely was not. An accomplished demagogue, brilliant but not wise, with the morality of a starved wolf. “It is morning for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. You know why I have asked for this conference?”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“Then you know that the matter is very serious. Shall we dispense with preliminaries and discuss it?”

“As you say.”

“I am sure your spies have kept you informed as to the progress of our project called Tsarina.”

“Of course. Even a few details you weren’t kind enough to leak to us.” The President paused. “Some of my advisers are puzzled over why you haven’t tried to keep it a better secret.”

“And you, Mister President, are not?”

“Of course not, Premier. Because by its very nature you couldn’t have hidden it even if you had wanted to. Plus you were giving us plenty of time to consider our options.”

It was a pleasure to deal with an intelligent opponent. If only that intelligence could be directed to smoothing the way to the necessary future. “Naturally that meant taking some risks. Several of your sabotages delayed us substantially.”

The President’s brows rose in an exaggerated gesture. “Sabotages?”

“Deny it if you wish. It doesn’t matter now. The Tsarina satellites are in orbit and activated—as you must know, since we destroyed your missiles that ‘strayed’ too close.”

The President did not bother with another denial. He waited stoically.

“You had the technology to build the equivalent of Tsarina and maintain parity. But you squabbled over diverting money from your hedonism until it was too late. While we sacrificed to insure our security.”

“Not that your citizens had any choice in the matter.”

He was bored with such simplistic misconceptions. “You who confuse freedom with anarchy can hardly be expected to see the difference between discipline and oppression. Enough of this. I have called to tell you the realities of the new situation.”

The President nodded slightly, as though hearing expected words, but otherwise showed no reaction.

“The particle beams from the Tsarina satellites can destroy missiles and aircraft in flight anywhere in the world, even cruise missiles or jets flying, as you say, down on the deck. You know this is true—you have observed our tests.”

“You may be overly enthusiastic about your new ultimate weapon.”

“Tsarina is a defense, not a weapon. We are now safe from the strategic nuclear weapons of hostile nations.”

“Hopefully your sense of safety will help us reduce the tensions between us. We have never wanted anything from you but peace.”

He had to fight down a surge of anger. “We will have peace. We will have peace when no one can ever threaten us with war again. We are not going to sit idly while you develop countermeasures against Tsarina.”

Some color left the President’s ruddy cheeks. “You have some specific proposals?”

“We have specific demands; let’s not mince words. I am telling you this privately so you can put the best possible face on it for your people. You will destroy all of your strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. You will stop all nuclear research, as well as research in certain other areas. You will withdraw your military forces to within your national borders and reduce their number to an acceptable level. A detailed memorandum will be delivered tomorrow by our ambassador. The other nuclear powers will receive similar ultimatums.”

“Don’t be absurd,” the President said. “The United States isn’t about to surrender based on a mere threat. If I tried I would be removed from office. I warn you, Premier; if you insist on starting a war, you will get more of a war than you expect.”

His eyes wandered briefly to the globe. The snow had been bitterly cold during the scorched-earth retreat to Leningrad. He regained his concentration. “I am not threatening. If you don’t destroy your nuclear weapons, we are prepared to do it for you.”

“It’s not too late to stop this, Premier. Have you really considered that you might be triggering the destruction of the human race?”

“We have given this matter a great deal of serious thought. I hope you will now do the same and avoid senseless slaughter. If you haven’t complied with the terms of the memorandum within forty-five days, our naval forces will begin by destroying your missile submarines. Then, if necessary, we will destroy your land-based nuclear weapons. Any retaliation on your part will be crushed and punished.”

There was a pause by mutual consent. Words. Just words such as anyone could say. But because I am who I am, my words are magical spells that can unleash devastation. How can such power lie in two withered old hands? How can I wield it so perfunctorily? If I believed in a god, I would pray for a bloodless victory.

The President glanced off-camera and seemed to be listening to his unobtrusive earphone. Then he spoke. “Premier, because I know you are an intelligent and honorable man, I had hoped my hard-line advisers were wrong about your purpose. Unfortunately they weren’t. So from the highest motives, we are about to kill millions of people. It is my duty to inform you that a state of war now exists between our nations.”

He held in a bitter chuckle. “Empty formalities won’t change the facts. Time is short. May we please talk sense?”

The President looked even paler. “Yes, time is short. It has almost run out. For over half a century we have lived with the balance of terror. But now you have opted for all or nothing. You win or we win, or maybe everyone loses.”

He felt a sharp and totally irrational stab of uncertainty. It must be a bluff. General Zierten is positive they haven’t developed a means of counteracting Tsarina. “This isn’t a debate. We are discussing very real matters.”

“I know,” the American President agreed. “But your demands are based on incomplete information. Please listen carefully. You will have to act at once on what I tell you.”

It has to be a bluff. “Go ahead.”

“You were right that our political climate kept us from building our own particle-beam satellites. We realized the danger of that fact several years ago. What you didn’t realize—because we did a good job of keeping it secret— was that we were developing a weapons system impervious to your Project Tsarina.”

“At the first sign of a disease or chemical attack, we will launch–”

“Nothing so unimaginative, Premier. The idea came from a Department of Energy project to develop an ultra-lightweight power source. When we realized its potential and evolved our plans, the actual engineering was done in Japan in cooperation with their Secret Service. Aside from being very capable, the Japanese are excellent at maintaining security. Aren’t they?”

“It is difficult to discover a weapon that exists only in your wishful thinking.”

The President picked up something from his desk and held it so that the Premier could see it.

It was a crystal globe filled with whirling snow. “I see you have a toy like this one on your desk too. Beautiful, isn’t it? Almost seductive.”

He glanced furtively to reassure himself that his globe was still on the desk, and then tried to hide his confusion. “You want me to believe this is some sort of weapon? You will have to do better than that. It was thoroughly scanned. It is nothing; a glass ball, some iron flakes, a battery and an electromagnet.”

“Yes, that is almost exactly what it is. You spent billions of rubles to create a perfect defense against strategic delivery systems. So we used the postal system. Thousands of these toys were mailed all over the Soviet Union. Most of them are as harmless as they look, like mine here. But a few hundred—yours, for instance—are different.”

He stared at the globe. The beauty of the swirling snowflakes had turned into a chill, ominous mystery.

The President went on. “The owners of these toys tend to keep them on their desks so they can enjoy them. In a few minutes the immediate vicinity of each special one will disappear. Government centers, military bases, key industrial plants and so on. Slash the head from a highly centralized nation and it dies. Your nation will then be partitioned at the Urals; NATO will occupy the west, China the east.”

He felt himself slipping into the mad delusion, the spell woven by the President’s words. “How does this miraculous weapon work?”

“Your globe is prettier than mine. Mine doesn’t sparkle. But even in the hard vacuum inside the globes there are some air molecules that bump into the snowflakes. The snowflakes in your globe are iron of a unique and valuable sort. Crystalline antimatter iron. Only about an ounce, but E=MC2 is a very long lever. A signal from here relayed through a satellite triggers the detonation.”

He vaguely remembered one of the many briefs of scientific research proposals that continually crossed his desk. Something about producing antimatter with high-energy particle-accelerator rings and magnetic-containment techniques borrowed from fusion technology. But according to the brief, success was at least a decade away. Could the Americans possibly be that far ahead of his country?

His office door opened and Colonel Gurkoff rushed in. He started to reach for the globe, but the Premier waved him back sharply. In an old and tired voice he said, “If there were time to remove or defuse it, we wouldn’t have been warned.” How many more are in Kremlin offices? Four that I know about. “Aren’t I right, President Nivling?”

The President nodded.

He studied the snowflakes. They looked very cold, as cold as death. The blighting frost reached out to fill his mind and soul. “Leave me, Colonel.”

“But–”

“Leave me, Colonel!”

Colonel Gurkoff backed out, his face a blank mask.

“Even if this incredible tale were true, why tell us about it? Why not go ahead and set off your bombs?”

The President leaned forward, earnestness showing in his bland face. “Isn’t it obvious? We are standing on the brink, but we haven’t jumped yet. Some of my advisers wanted a preemptive strike. As it is, I can only delay the signal for a few more minutes. But we can still avoid war.”

“How?” He felt himself slipping inexorably toward acceptance of defeat.

“By restoring the balance of terror. You must destroy the Project Tsarina satellites right now. Then we will delay the signal for twelve hours, time enough for you to move all the toys to places where they can be detonated safely.”

The fear was plain in the President’s expression now. Not fear that what he was doing would fail. Fear that it would succeed too well and he would have to live with the responsibility. His eyes almost pleaded. The Premier had reached and held his high office by reading the truth behind faces. He saw it here.

Father, what have I done to our country? I have brought the horror down on us for the last time. Millions of our citizens will die, and foreigners will rule the survivors. “That is impossible. If I gave such an order based only on what you have told me, I would be arrested for treason and the order ignored. I must have proof to take before the Central Committee. And time.”

“Damn it, man, you know I can’t give you either!” The fear permeated his voice. “I am not trying to convince you to do anything! I am offering you the only chance I can for you to save your nation!”

He turned to the seldom-used communication console. As the President well knew, he did have the authority to order the immediate destruction of the Tsarina satellites. Of course he would then have to justify his decision to the Central Committee or be executed in disgrace. But that wouldn’t be difficult—he would have them witness the safe detonation of the toys at the end of the twelve hours. He couldn’t do it.

For all his confidence in his own judgment and his belief that the President was telling the truth, he had no real evidence. I am a rational man, a practical man. I cannot act on a mere premonition of doom. Not in this ultimate test. If I don’t destroy the Tsarina satellites and the President is telling the truth, I have murdered my country. But if I destroy them and he is lying, I have thrown away our victory. I must have verification. Absolute and undeniable.

He looked into the white current of the globe. For what? The sign he needed? Escape? Simple certainties from which to draw strength?

What he saw there was what he had to do.

A tragic necessity, martyring hundreds of Soviet citizens to the cause of national survival. But every other solution— blocking the signal, removing the toys, decentralizing military forces and so on—failed because of the time limit.

For himself he felt no fear, only relief at having an honorable surcease from guilt.

“Can you detonate one particular globe and not the others?” he asked levelly.

“Yes. But for obvious reasons, we can’t give you time to witness and evaluate a demonstration.”

“I realize that.” Not even time enough to arrange for a less-important sacrifice. “Please listen to the call I am about to make.” He would have to act quickly, before the Central Committee and the KGB could overcome their shock and interfere. He leaned over the console and activated the direct line to General Kosslov at the Baikonur Space Center. Seconds later the general’s blunt features appeared in the tiny screen. A dull, unimaginative but very loyal officer who would slit his own throat if commanded to. “Yes, Premier.”

“Copy the recording of my conversation with President Nivling—I am sending it now.” He pushed the necessary buttons.

“We have it copied, Premier.”

“Good. Now listen carefully, General. The survival of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics depends on your obedience to the orders I am going to give you.”

“I understand, Premier.”

“Stand by to activate the destruct mechanism for the Project Tsarina satellites.”

Shock ran across the general’s face like an ocean wave. “Yes, Premier. But… may I ask why?”

“I am going to leave this line open while I finish my talk with President Nivling. If it goes dead in the next five minutes, it will mean the Kremlin is gone and the Americans have a weapon that will destroy us utterly unless Project Tsarina is ended. You will have three minutes after that in which to activate the destruct mechanism. Then you will inform General Vladisov in Leningrad of your action and transmit the conversation recording to him. Is that clear?”

It took a moment for the entire meaning to penetrate the thick peasant skull. Then: “Yes, Premier.”

Vladisov. Yes, he will make a good leader for the difficult time ahead. He is younger, born into this new era of subtlety. He will master his anger, not lash out in retaliation and doom the world. He will be able to make the necessary arrangements with President Nivling.

“We are almost out of time,” the President said in an urgent tone. “You must destroy the satellites now.”

“Detonate my globe.” So easy to say. Just words without real meaning. Everything has become a move on the chessboard, even my own death. “If you can.”

There, it was done. Too late now for the KGB to cut the line or shoot him. He had depended on the inertia of their bureaucratic minds to provide the minutes he needed. He wondered if the KGB agents were hunting for the toys, evacuating the Kremlin, or coming to make him change his orders—all equally futile.

The President nodded to someone off-camera. “I see. I have come to know you well, Premier. I have a lot of respect for you. Now you are making me a murderer. Your murderer. Damn us both! We are supposed to be good leaders, not creating idiotic and destructive situations!” He took a long breath. “But if your General Kosslov obeys orders, you will have saved your nation.”

“He will.” He almost smiled as he imagined the panicked scurrying of the old fools of the Central Committee. We will pay the price of the failure we wrought together, as it should be. The new leaders will hopefully learn an important lesson from it.

He picked up the globe and stared at it. Something was wrong. The orbit of the moving snowflakes was descending. The tiny white particles were slowly dropping toward the bottom of the crystal.

Night’s darkness was falling with this last snow of winter.

Father was calling to him to come inside, to sit in the warmth by the fire, beyond all cold. To melt the guilt and failure that were jagged ice crystals in his blood. To rest.

The first of the snowflakes touched the crystal—

Editor's Introduction to:

A WAY OUT MAYBE… OR A DEAD END FOR SURE
by John Brunner

John Brunner is one of Britain’s best known science fiction writers. Author of Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider, he has more than a dozen books in print. I have known him for some twenty years. I don’t agree with his politics nor he with mine; but we do have grudging mutual respect for each other’s views. I have found John to be intelligent and generally sensible, as well as unfailingly polite.

I don’t pretend to be an “impartial” editor. I have strong views about freedom and justice and the need to defend them. The opposition has plenty enough opportunity to present its views of the world, and I feel no obligation to help spread their ideas. We do, however, live on the same planet; and it is well to understand what others are saying.

When last we met, I invited John Brunner to present his views of the defense of the West. I’ll reserve my comments for an afterword.

A WAY OUT MAYBE… OR A DEAD END FOR SURE: A Disarmer’s Assessment of Western “Defense” Policy
by John Brunner

Not only are nuclear weapons the most dangerous weapons ever devised—they are also just about the most useless.

Lord Louis Mountbatten said as much in the last public speech he gave before he was murdered, and he was my country’s longest-serving and most distinguished officer. More recently Robert McNamara has defined nuclear weapons as serving no purpose except to frighten other countries out of using them. (Hmm! Don’t we normally talk of people being scared “out of their wits,” never “into them?”)

But long before either man’s pronouncement, my late friend Michael Mitchell Howard put it in a nutshell. He wasn’t a career soldier, but he rose to be a colonel on Montgomery’s staff in North Africa, gaining experience he put to use when acting as Chief Marshal of the protest marches against Britain’s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in the fifties and sixties.

Michael used to explain why he felt justified in applying his army training to the service of the Peace Movement by saying, “Nuclear weapons have written the factor of infinity into the military equation.”

But—you may reply—all of us know that nuclear war would mean the end of civilization, if not of humankind entirely, especially if recent computer simulations of the consequent “nuclear winter” are correct.

All of us know? Really? Then consider U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense T.K. Jones, who is on record as stating: “Everybody’s going to make it if there are enough shovels to go around. Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors and then throw three feet of dirt on top. It’s the dirt that does it.”

Apart from knowing a lot of people who live in apartments without access to loose dirt, I can’t help wondering how you close those doors behind you…

During the Vietnam War, an American spokesman is alleged to have declared, “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Our species can tolerate that kind of lunacy in small doses. But when you’re talking about destruction on a global scale, it’s a very different matter. It is my contention, and it has been the contention of the peace group I’ve worked with in Britain since its inception in 1958 (CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), and indeed the contention of clear-sighted and far-thinking people all over the world for much longer than that—consider Einstein: “The atom bomb has changed everything except our way of thinking!”—that governments both Eastern and Western are behaving as though nuclear, like traditional, weapons could be used to fight and win a war, and that this kind of attitude is insanely dangerous because there could never be a victor, only victims. Yet nuclear war might easily break out tomorrow from any of a dozen flash points in Europe, Central America, Asia or the Middle East.

How did we get into this mess? And what, if anything, can we do to get out of it?

Let me grant straightaway that now that nuclear weapons have been invented, they can never be disinvented and therefore no country can ever be totally secure again. But we could do very much better than we’re doing at present. We might as well start by identifying the processes that reinforce our predicament.

Central to the problem is a fundamental misapplication of the term “defense.” In my book, defense consists in rendering one’s country indigestible to an invader. I speak as one whose earliest childhood memories include being taken by my father, at the age of six, to a light-metalworking shop near our home when the Germans were threatening invasion at any moment. People were improvising pikes from scrap iron and rocket-launchers from domestic drainpipes, and it was taken for granted that were the Germans fool enough to set foot on British soil, they would never have a night’s sound sleep until they left. (That’s why so many people in Britain sympathized with Vietnam under American attack; we recalled the Blitz.)

Such an attitude to defense may suggest the one adopted by, for instance, the Swedes and, above all, the Swiss, who adhere to a principle of “armed neutrality.” (The Swiss government did seriously consider acquiring nuclear weapons but decided not to do so, given that their presence on Swiss territory would inevitably attract a full-scale strike in the event of world war.)

The point is that this definition of defense—in my view, the only one that preserves the traditional meaning of the word—rules out ipso facto the employment of any weapon that cannot safely be used on one’s own territory, let alone one that might entail the extinction of the species. Nuclear bombs are solely for retaliation and revenge… and by a clever propaganda trick, we have been duped into imagining that policies based on these primitive—indeed barbaric—concepts will prove as efficacious as those we could and should adopt, at far less cost, in order to construct a genuinely defensive strategy.

Given that a Hiroshima-sized warhead can wipe out a city of 100,000 people and that the NATO alliance alone now possesses several times as many warheads as there are cities of comparable size, the question arises: What conceivable purpose can they serve?

A cynical answer has to be: They must make a lot of money for people who lack the imagination to understand how radically they reduce the chance of our survival.

And that, sadly—in the West at least—is true.

* * *

There exists a sound strategic precept that was drummed into me—and doubtless into thousands of others—during my service in the Royal Air Force. It states that the most important principle of military planning consists in a correct assessment of the other side’s intentions.

Do we in NATO have a correct assessment of Soviet intentions? Do the planners in the Pentagon or Whitehall or wherever else? Does the behavior of our governments, or what they authorize for circulation to the press and public, demonstrate that they do? It is easy to cast doubt on that idea. Let us assume what is far from being proven (think of Islamic fundamentalism, for example): that the event most likely to trigger World War III is an attack by the USSR. More often than I care to count, people I have met on visits to America have told me that evidence of the Soviets’ hostile intentions can be found in Khrushchev’s celebrated exclamation, “We shall bury you!”

Unfortunately, my Russian-speaking friends inform me that what he actually said could more properly be rendered, “We shall be at your graveside!” And this, I submit, is the sort of remark anyone might make who believes that in the long run his system will outdo his rival’s. (In Jack London’s influential Marxist science-fiction novel, The Iron Heel, published ten years before the revolution of 1917, the time span for establishment of a socialist world order is estimated as twelve thousand years…)

Purely as a matter of historical record, be it noted that since they took over from the czars in 1917—and the czars were autocrats like the Somozas in Nicaragua, fighting tooth and nail to retain the serf system, under which peasants were bought and sold along with the land they tilled, against even the relatively minor democratizations proposed by the Duma, a parliament about as representative in the twentieth century as Britain’s in the eighteenth—the Soviets have seen their territory invaded by not fewer than fifteen enemy nations. The Germans in the forties carted off their factory equipment wholesale to be worked in Germany by slave labor, much of which was Russian. The buffer states of today—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria—were ceded to the USSR under the Yalta Agreement as its sphere of influence in return for its contribution to defeating the Nazis. All those listed, by the way, plus many others, were either conquered by the Germans or allied with them during World War II. For instance, under Admiral Horthy, Hungary was a fascist state, and so was Romania in the days of the Iron Guard. Along with the occupation of the post-Versailles Baltic republics, for which Stalin bargained with Hitler to establish a longer seaboard, the Russo-Finnish War is often cited as evidence for Soviet aggressiveness. Let it not be forgotten, however, that as late as 1944, the Finnish Air Force flew with the swastika as its official insignia and that World War II was ostensibly fought to stop the fascists from taking over any more free and democratic nations.

Of course, very probably data like those do not form part of a regular American History course. A lot of Europeans neglect to take account of just the same facts owing to the impact of contemporary propaganda, especially that concerning Afghanistan. Nowadays it’s seldom mentioned that the British invaded that unhappy country several times— most recently in 1919—and in October 1929 turned it into a puppet state by ensuring the murder of a popular rebel leader and installing a general as dictator.

Does that remind you of anything? You say Poland? I was thinking rather of Nicaragua vis-a-vis the USA… not to mention Panama, the Philippines, and recently Grenada.

To quote The Guardian (London), 26 Oct 83, when commenting on the last-mentioned invasion:

For exactly half of this century so far, a total of 42 years, American troops have been occupying one or another of the countries and islands of Central America and the Caribbean… according to Gordon Connell Smith of Hull University, the historian of the Organisation of American States.

The article concludes by listing more than twenty American interventions, beginning in 1899.

Confronted with such a record, one can scarcely wonder at the fact that many Europeans take America’s endless claims about “Soviet aggression” in the light of the parable about having a mote in one’s own eye.

Incidentally, the main reason the Soviets went into Afghanistan in support of its just-deposed pro-Russian government was effectively identical to the grounds on which America invaded Grenada: One-sixth of the population of the territory the Russians inherited from the Czarist Empire is Moslem, and thanks to the way the czars used to treat the Moslems, it took two generations to persuade them they would be better off under socialism—which, in material terms at least, they are. If the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary (sc. reactionary) version of Islam were to take root within their frontiers, there would be a risk of civil war.

Is this not analogous to the way the American government felt about Grenada and still feels about Cuba—that there is a threat to the established order within its own sphere of influence?

I have dwelt on the foregoing matters at such length in support of my belief that the NATO countries have not made a proper assessment of the “other side’s” intentions.

I’ll go farther and suggest that many of them have not made a proper assessment of their major allies’ intentions.

As further evidence, let me set alongside that quotation from Khrushchev one that the Guardian lately reprinted from the Jerusalem Post. The speaker is President Reagan, on the phone to Mr. Tom Dine, executive director of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee:

You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament for the signs foretelling Armageddon and I find myself wondering if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve’ noted any of these prophecies lately but, believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.

Faced with remarks like that, informed circles in Europe, and particularly in Britain, are seriously questioning the wisdom of the course on which we are embarked.

Because, let’s face it, neither the eschatological content of Marxism nor a belief in prophecies of Armageddon can constitute the basis for a “defense” policy that genuinely defends what it’s claimed to defend.

And no more do nuclear weapons, on which the Western Alliance has relied so long that its entrenched attitudes have become a habit as formidable and threatening to life as is a junkie’s dependence on heroin.

Besides, former Pentagon strategic-planner Rear-Admiral Gene La Roque once said, “We fought World War I in Europe, we fought World War II in Europe, and if you dummies let us, we’ll fight World War III in Europe!”—which is where I happen to reside.

I’m frightened. And I’m not alone.

Today’s world can be summed up by the image of two rival families, each rich, powerful and quarrelsome, in an apartment building shared by many other people, most of them considerably poorer and quite a few of them immigrants who don’t speak the same language. One of the rich families lives on the entrance floor and boasts, when visitors call, about the gilt and glass and marble in the foyer. The other rich family—not by any means so well off in objective fact—occupies the top floor and boasts about its splendid view… although now and then their visitors don’t arrive on time because the elevators are out of order and the people on the ground floor, saying they don’t have any call to use them, refuse to contribute to their maintenance.

Whenever the people on the top floor malign those on the bottom floor, the latter cry, “We’ll dynamite the elevator shafts!”

Whenever those at street level slander them, those on the top floor shout, “We’ll drop Molotov cocktails down the elevator shafts!”

Caught between the threat of having the walls blown out at ground level and the whole structure being turned into a chimney for a fire storm, a small, concerned group of other occupants pleads and wheedles and begs for a hint of common sense… and is mocked for its pains.

Speaking as an inhabitant of one of the middle floors, that’s my honest view of the nuclear-armed world that America and Russia have created—or, strictly, that America has created as the country that came up first with the A bomb, the H bomb, the submarine-launched ballistic missile, MIRVing, the cruise missile… The history of the arms race since 1945 has been that of Russia frantically trying to catch up. About the only things the USSR did first were to launch an orbital satellite and to send a human being into orbit. Check the records of the Apollo-Soyuz linkup for an idea of the desperate expedients to which the Russians were driven in order to achieve those goals.

Nobody except maybe T.K. Jones imagines that a nuclear war can be fought and won. There is exactly one way that it could happen, and that’s if one of the nuclear superpowers (I use the word, but do bear in mind that Russia is not a superpower in the American sense: rather, a third-world country with grandiose ambitions… Do you know how far apart emergency telephones are on Russian highways? One hundred and fifty kilometers!)—if one of the nuclear superpowers, anyway, were to throw everything in its arsenal at its adversary, targeted on the means of retaliation, ideally with no warning whatsoever. But even that, according to the latest findings which indicate a subsequent “nuclear winter” during which solar radiation would be cut to five percent of normal, doesn’t look like a particularly good bet anymore.

It remains unfortunately true that a nuclear war could be fought and lost not only by the combatants, but by everybody.

Despite this knowledge, and despite the fact that every arms race in the whole of history has ended in the war it was allegedly intended to prevent, none of the so-called “multilateral” disarmament negotiations since 1945 have thus far resulted in the abolition of a single weapon. The ultimate hollowness of this “negotiating” approach and the insincerity of those participating were revealed in the claim that the deployment of cruise missiles would “force Russia back to the conference table.”

Suppose the boot had been on the other foot, and it had been the Russians who said that about the Americans?

We in the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (which my wife and I joined at its inaugural meeting in 1958) have been arguing for a quarter of a century that there is a way out of this impasse and that Britain is in an ideal position to blaze the trail. I speak as a patriot as distinct from a nationalist; I believe that our way of life is resilient enough to survive no matter what form of political or ideological threat, provided we have a government that adheres to its traditional principles (though our present regime gives cause for considerable doubt on that score), and I not only believe but I know that nuclear war would wipe my country from the slate of history.

There are about a hundred and two foreign military bases in Britain, a figure not exceeded by any of the Warsaw Pact nations on the basis of available evidence, and they now include launch sites for nuclear-tipped missiles over which my government has no control.

These bases make Britain an inevitable target even in a war that serves none of our national interests. The British Medical Association, in a study commissioned by the government but which the government later tried to suppress, concluded that even a one-megaton strike over a center of population would overload our medical resources and that a massive attack would kill up to forty million of our present population. That’s what we stand to lose.

It is of course quite true that no place would be totally immune from the consequences of a nuclear war (especially of the nuclear Fimbulwinter)—but at least countries where there are no nuclear missiles would stand a better chance than those countries that might be assailed in a preemptive strike, as the Swiss so rightly concluded.

It follows that Britain should therefore become a country where there are no nuclear missiles. Furthermore, it should not be tied to any alliance that is prepared to consider first use of nuclear weapons.

At the same time, Britain should adopt the only sane course for any small and densely populated nation: Establish a citizen militia system combined with a program of shelter-building of the kind that would appear provocative were it undertaken by a nuclear power, and likewise undertake the stockpiling of food and fuel in quantities sufficient to support its population for at least a year—costly, one must admit, but cheap compared with the risk of losing everything.

Some would argue that for a time at least, in the context of this policy, Britain should retain nuclear weapons aboard submarines, provided they were permanently at sea and could thus be reserved for retaliation. (A commitment to “no first use” would obviously be called for.)

I would dispute even this. The proper counter to “nuclear blackmail,” as it is sometimes termed, is never found in a threat to use nuclear weapons; such a threat could only make a bad situation worse inasmuch as it might easily provoke the war one was hoping to avoid.

No: The proper counter is public and grand-scale recognition of the fact that nuclear weapons are useless for the defense of any country, no matter how large, no matter where in the world, but most of all for countries as small and populous as Britain, where their limited resources can better be spent on actually increasing the chances of survival.

Faced with the reality of a nation coming to its collective senses and abandoning nuclear weapons for the reasons just outlined, it is not only possible but probable that the world community would respond with a gigantic sigh of relief. We are being bled dry by the cost of the nuclear arms race. Even the United States is in deficit largely because of spending demanded by the military, while the Soviet Union is permanently on the verge of bankruptcy owing to its efforts to keep up with the West. Every third-world country with ambitions is diverting cash and manpower that could be better applied elsewhere—in order to achieve these twentieth-century nuclear status symbols, which, as I trust I have shown, are effectively pointless.

On the one hand, we have been duped into equating defense and revenge; on the other hand, we have failed in that fundamental strategic need to make a correct assessment of the other side’s intentions.

Much of this, of course, is due to the bad habit of referring to “the enemy” in a time of peace. There is indeed a worldwide struggle going on between capitalism and communism… but how differently we would view it if we used the more accurate term of “rival,” or “competitor”!

In fact, the Soviet Union is not militarily aggressive in the same sense as were the old imperial powers. It doesn’t need to be, and on the rare occasions when it tries to be, it makes a dreadful mess of things.

However, in every place and at every time that the vaunted values of the Western way of life are betrayed by greedy, brutal ruling classes and America or Britain or another so-called democratic country allies itself with a dictatorship, another battle in the real World War III is lost and won.

Worse yet: We have corrupted that Western way of life to the point where scarcely anyone admires it anymore—in many cases, not even our own citizens. And much of this corruption is due to the mere existence of nuclear weapons.

I quote Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Lort-Phillips, ex-Brigade of Guards, who resigned his commission to become a Liberal Party spokesman on defense and frequently appeared on CND platforms to argue vehemently for independent nuclear disarmament. Lort-Phillips expressed his reasoning in the following terms:

If, back in the nineteen thirties, anyone had told me the day would arrive when a British government predicated its defence policy on a declared willingness to exterminate cities-ful of women and children, I’d have said, “Maybe those Nazis over there in Germany—but never the British!”

Well, now it is the British and the Americans and the Russians and the French and the Chinese, and very likely the South Africans and the Israelis and the Argentines and the Pakistanis and…

Next year, how many more?

Someone must reverse the nuclear arms race before a war breaks out, whether by design or by accident. Being, as I said, a patriot, I’d like it to be Britain that starts the process—but also being cynical, I don’t think our present government has the sense to see reason; so, being human too, I don’t care who does it, so long as it gets done.

There’s one further advantage in the policy proposed by CND. Putting the responsibility for defending our country back on the shoulders of its citizens—instead of leaving everything to computers and a handful of ivory-towered “experts” who calculate with abstracts remote from the reality of blood and death—would do more to restore national pride and confidence than any other course one might imagine. And I honestly believe that the same would hold true in any country that has the guts to admit that nuclear weapons are not defensive but solely adapted to that uncivilized and futile act, revenge.

A recent letter in the Guardian pointed out that while dying for one’s country might still be a noble deed, dying with one’s country is a different matter. And that is precisely the prospect that now faces all of us.

It was well-said of the draft dodgers during the Vietnam War that they were the people of whom America should be most proud because a free and democratic way of life had taught them that authority must never be obeyed without question. If we survive long enough for future historians to write an account of the twentieth century, I hope they will say of the contemporary Peace Movement that it was made up of people courageous enough to accept the fact that nuclear weapons had made wars unfightable, people who decided that instead of dying with their countries, it made better sense to live for them… and for all mankind.

Partial reference list:

The Guardian, London, 26 Oct 83 (“US Interventions in Other Countries”); 29 Nov 83 (“Reagan’s Belief in Armageddon”)

New Scientist, London, 3 Nov 83 (“Risk of Nuclear Winter”)

The Times Atlas of World History, London, 1978 (“German Invasion of Countries Now Russian Satellites”)

Disgrace Abounding by Douglas Reed, London, 1939 (“Fascist Governments in Europe in the 1930s”)

World Aircraft, World War II, Part I, London, 1978

(“Finnish Aircraft Wearing the Swastika”)

The Modern Encyclopedia & World Atlas, London, n.d., prob. 1937-8 (“British Invasions of Afghanistan”)

The Medical Effects of Nuclear War: The Report of the British Medical Association’s Board of Science and Education, London, 1983 (“Nuclear War Deaths in the UK”)

Editor's Afterword to:

A WAY OUT MAYBE… OR A DEAD END FOR SURE
by John Brunner

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

—Benjamin Franklin

I asked John Brunner for this contribution because I was interested in his concept of a Swiss militia system. Britain is a small country, perilously near the Soviet Union. Perhaps a case could be made for basing British defense on something other than nuclear weapons.

Consequently, I wasn’t surprised by his conclusions; but I am horrified by his assumptions. If this is what the sensible left truly believes, then God help us all.

Begin with this. Brunner dismisses the enslavement of eastern Europe with an airy wave. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, “were ceded to the USSR under the Yalta agreement as its sphere of influence.” Ceded? Not by their own actions. They were delivered into the hands of their masters by others. It was no fault of their own, nor were they consulted; indeed, the people of Britain and the United States were not consulted.

If I cede your home to the local bully, are you bound by my decision?

It is no matter, though. “All those listed, by the way, were either conquered by the Germans or allied with them during WWII.” Apparently it is an inexcusable crime to have been conquered by the Germans. Will Brunner argue next for the Soviet occupation of France? Moreover, he feels that any nation ever to have had a fascist government deserves to be enslaved by the communists. Can he really believe this? Perhaps it is more likely that he sees no hope for aiding the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Balts, Rumanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, etc. Since he cannot help them, he comforts himself with the myth that they deserve the gulag archipelago. Of course those old enough to participate in government prior to 1940 are either dead or retired now; but Brunner is content that the sins of the fathers be visited on future generations, now and forever.

It is the standard view of the left that the Soviet Union does no more than react to fear of invasion. This analysis of Soviet intentions leaves out too much. Whom do they fear now? In the years following 1945 the United States dismantled the most powerful military force ever assembled on this planet; the result was the conquest of Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Blockade.

The Soviet leadership needs much more than security. Communist officials can never declare permanent peace with the West, because to do so is to repudiate their legitimacy as rulers of the Soviet Union. If the Communist Party is not the vanguard of history—then what is it? What justification has it to be the only political party allowed? Surely not its economic accomplishments.

The fact is that Soviet public opinion is cynically manipulated. Soviet citizens are ceaselessly bombarded with anti-western propaganda designed to prepare them for war. To this day most Soviet citizens seriously believe that the western democracies will invade Russia at the first opportunity. How could they know otherwise? Access to western newspapers and television is officially restricted, and the publications are severely censored to boot.

The left would have us believe that that Soviet “Peace Committees” are genuine; that the Soviets preach peace and brotherhood to their own peoples. The truth is far different. The Soviet Union is one of the most militaristic states in history. One of their largest youth organizations is the Voluntary Society for Cooperation with the Army, Air Force, and Navy. The Pioneers (ages 9-15) and the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) conduct annual summer war games. Military science is a compulsory subject in ninth and tenth grade; nor are these recent phenomena instituted in reaction to President Reagan. All this began in 1979, prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, when “tensions” were supposed to be relaxed.

Arthur Koestler said it in 1946: the legitimacy of the Soviet state is based on the isolation of the Soviet people, who are ceaselessly bombarded with the notion that the USSR is constantly at war with the outside world. Koestler believed the only way to “ease tensions” would be to open the iron curtain: allow Soviet citizens free access to foreign journals, books, films, and newspapers; allow free access of western journalists to Russian territory; abolish restrictions on foreign travelers in Soviet territory; and allow significant numbers of Soviet citizens to travel in the West.

The Helsinki accords were supposed to bring about these free exchanges, to increase the sum of “human rights” enjoyed in the Soviet Union. The agreements were instead a cruel hoax, whose major accomplishment has been to send to jail those few Soviet citizens courageous enough to try to monitor their government’s compliance with a treaty it had accepted.

Brunner would, I suppose, reply by saying “you’re another,” and flippantly refer to the U.S. refusal to allow Khrushchev to visit Disneyland; then invoke the name of Senator McCarthy—as if McCarthy ever sent anyone to a labor camp to be worked to death.

Indeed, it is this assumption of symmetry between the US and USSR that I find so dismaying. The story of the Vietnamese village that had to be destroyed in order to save it is probably apocryphal; at least I can find no primary reference to it. Apocryphal or not, the story caused a stir in the West, and the action was roundly condemned. Have stories of Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan been condemned in Russia? Have they even been published there? Yet we need not strain to find examples of Afghan villages where there was no pretense of “saving” them. They were merely destroyed by bombs and machine guns.

Today’s paper brings new horror. The New York Review of Books quotes the Helsinki Watch report on Afghanistan: a tale of two brothers, aged 90 and 95, both blind, who remained in their village when everyone else fled the Soviet coming. The Russians tied dynamite to their backs and blew them up.

The report speaks of “civilians burned alive, dynamited, beheaded; bound men forced to lie down on the road to be crushed by Soviet tanks; grenades thrown into rooms where women and children had been told to wait.” All the mechanisms of terror are brought to bear.

The British intervened in Afghan affairs in 1929. How is that relevant to Soviet barbarism in the 1980’s? Brunner equates these events. To do that, one must strain hard; one must desperately want to make that equation. Why?

James Burnham once described liberalism as a philosophy to console the West while it commits suicide. Is this the rationale for refusing to see the evils of the Soviet system? If they’re not so bad; if, really, they’re just like us; if there’s no fundamental difference between U.S. and USSR, why, then, what’s the need for conflict? We are manipulated in any event; at worst, Moscow will pull the strings rather than Washington. Surely that wouldn’t be so bad? Is it not better to be red than dead?

Deep inside we know better. Solzhenitsyn has told us; and before him, as early as 1950 Gustav Herling’s published accounts of the gulag were accepted by a wide spectrum of critics including Bertrand Russell. There may once have been a time when the sheer horror of the Soviet system was too great to be believed; but there can be no doubt today. Medvedev has estimated the death rates in Soviet labor camps as high as a million a year. Being red does not insure that you will not also be dead.

By refusing to deal with the studied cruelty of the Soviet regime, Brunner robs it of its horrors—and thereby lowers the stakes considerably, for if his strategy fails, not so very much has been lost.

Still: would his strategy work? Brunner asks a legitimate question: what do nuclear weapons contribute to Britain’s defense? Wouldn’t it be better to scrap them and turn to a militia system modelled after the Swiss? Would not the Soviets then hold their hand? They would have no incentive to use nuclear weapons, yet an invasion would be costly.

Implementing the new defense would not be simple. A “Swiss style” defense would bring great changes in the way the British live. Firearms are rare in Britain; you must have a police permit to own even a .410 shotgun. Under the Swiss militia system the entire populace would have not merely the right, but the obligation, to keep military weapons and ammunition in their homes. There are, however, plenty of precedents. British yeomen were required to learn military arts and keep bows and other weapons throughout Tudor times and after. Let the Britons have weapons, and learn the arts of guerrilla war. Will not England, and Scotland, and Wales become, in Brunner’s words, “an indigestible lump” in their Empire?

Perhaps; but there is a large element of wishful thinking in the analysis. Guerrilla wars and passive resistance are seldom effective against a sufficiently determined power. When protestors lie in the path of a British train or tank, the vehicle halts until the protestor is removed. Russian drivers may not be so squeamish. In the days of George I the highlands were held by armed bands no less dedicated to freedom than today’s Englishman; but Scotland was pacified all the same. Ruthless measures ruthlessly applied generally succeed. Thich Tri Quang, the Buddhist monk who gathered so many headlines that U.S. analysts seriously believed no government could be formed without his cooperation, was last seen, without his robes, cleaning sewers for the Tonkinese conquerors of Saigon. Afghanistan is a rugged land defended by rugged people; but it has not proved to be the “Soviet Vietnam.” Genocide is a terribly effective technique of digestion.

Still in all, nuclear weapons are expensive and provocative. There’s little that Britain can do with such weapons; why not discard them? In 1960 Liddell Hart suggested that Europe abandon nuclear defense in favor of greatly strengthened conventional forces. Western Europe has a decided advantage over the Soviet Union in both population and economic strength. Let the European powers build their armies.

Although popular in Britain, this suggestion was not welcomed by the French and Germans, who had no desire to have their homes again become a battleground. Even if Europe could win a conventional war, could they stand against Soviet tactical nuclear weapons? Despite Brunner’s protests, nuclear weapons can be decisive if one side has them and the other does not. What would prevent the Soviets from using them? Something more was needed.

The “something more” was an American commitment; but in an era of nuclear sufficiency, when both the U.S. and the USSR have enough thermonuclear firepower to destroy the world a dozen times over, the American commitment is irrational. Eisenhower’s doctrine was simple: we would meet any Soviet threat to Europe with “massive retaliation at a time and place of our own choosing.” That made sense only in an era of overwhelming U.S. superiority. It doesn’t now, which is why France insists on its own independent nuclear deterrent.

For thirty years the doctrine of Mutual Assured Deterrence has required us to build weapons of vengeance rather than defense. Even as I write this, American officers sit ready to launch weapons designed to kill helpless Soviet civilians, men, women, and children alike. It is a situation no less repugnant to me than it is to Brunner; but so long as we are locked to the doctrine of MAD we have no choice.

As accuracies increase and our strategic offensive forces become more vulnerable, MAD leads us, eventually, to launch on warning as the only way to protect the force. That is a frightening prospect. Unilateral disarmament is one path away from that dread end, but that path leads to the gulag. There is a better alternative.

The Strategic Defense Initiative, “Star Wars” if you will, offers a real alternative to MAD. Assured survival will not easily be achieved; but it is feasible, and moves us in the right direction, toward a time when the ICBM, and perhaps all nuclear weapons, become impotent and obsolete without the sacrifice of liberty.

Editor's Introduction to:

A LETTER FROM THE SOVIET UNION
by Alexander Shatravka

Communism is brutal, but not all those who become Communists begin as brutes. Thousands have joined for the highest of motives. Whittaker Chambers was one of these. He served the Party well, but like many others he found there comes a time when you hear the screams; and then you must choose.

In 1982 Alexander Shatravka was arrested for his activities in the unofficial Group To Establish Trust Between the USSR and USA. Although the petition he circulated was not significantly different from the “official” peace organization’s documents, Shatravka was charged with slandering the Soviet nation.

This letter reached the United States in Fall, 1984; as of Spring, 1985, no further word on his condition has been recorded.

A LETTER FROM THE SOVIET UNION
by Alexander Shatravka

Greetings, dear friends:

I want to hope that my letter reaches you, so that you can understand something about my situation in the camp. I consider further silence on my part to be stupid, in that it can only further untie the hands of several officials of the camp. I will begin in order.

I arrived in the camp on Feb. 3, 1984, completely healthy. On Feb. 4, 36 of us were put in a strict regime education division where, with the full permission of the camp administration, we were put under the authority of “prisoner-activists.” From the first day, we were beaten by individuals or groups of five. On Feb. 4, I was beaten only because I could not march in step, raising my legs to 30 centimeters (after 19 months of prison). On Feb. 8, I was summoned to camp headquarters to the chief of the punishment detail, Lt. Dulatbaev, where I was beaten. Dulatbaev grabbed me by the ears and beat the back of my head against the wall. My face was blue from bruises. During all of this, he said that he was ready to kill me, cut me up into pieces. He called me a traitor and after this I was put in the punishment isolator where I spent two days and became very ill. From Feb. 13 to 27, I was in the sanitary department with pneumonia and from March 7, I was put under special supervision and expected to report every two hours as one who was inclined to escape. On March 4, we all stood without hats and coats in the strong wind and falling snow for more than two hours by orders of one of the bosses of the division who wanted to know who was guilty of tearing two pages out of the sanitary journal. In February, Pavel Lapko, 21 years old, died of meningitis. He arrived in the division with us healthy.

I have been in the ninth detachment since March 14. The detachment is overcrowded. We sleep three to a bunk. In the camp, there rages a cult of violence, the prisoners are beaten literally for any trifle and particularly for failure to fulfill the work plan, whether this is for sewing production or making nets. Also, in the camp they have begun exercise drills. They demand that after work, the prisoners stand and hold up their left leg extended for several minutes and then their right leg. Those who can’t do it are beaten by the prisoner activists. In the division, these prisoners forced me to lean at a steep angle with my head against the wall and with my hands against the wall so that my head pressed against the wall in the bitter cold.

I landed in the 94th brigade for the knitting of big nets of synthetic fiber for vegetables. The norm was six nets in eight hours. We worked from six in the evening until two in the morning. The norm was very high and so the majority of prisoners were forced to knit in their non-working hours, devoting to this another six to eight hours. For failure to fulfill the norm, the foreman several times deprived us of a day’s sleep so that in the daytime, we knitted nets. When I and another prisoner mentioned this to the brigade leader of the prisoners, I was summoned to the brigade captain, Dosnatov, who regarded my indignation as anti-Soviet agitation and said that as long as I was in the Soviet Union and not the United States, I would knit nets without any conversation. I several times asked the camp administration to be transferred to any other type of work but each time, I was refused.

On May 31, 1984, I was summoned to the boss of the detachment (I don’t know his last name). He locked the door of his office and began to beat me savagely. With blows, he knocked the wind out of me, he kicked me in the groin and then in the skull and continued to beat me for a long time. He gave me to understand that this is the way it would be every day that I did not fulfill the work norm. Leaving him, I was received by the boss of camp. Col. Bakhaev, but he refused my request to be transferred to other work. In despair, not seeing any way out of the situation, I tried to kill myself, stabbing myself in the side. After I was given medical aid, I fell into the hands of the chief of one of the divisions, Dulatbaev, who knowing all of the most vulnerable parts of a man began to beat me. He beat me several times around the neck from which I fell and lost consciousness. He clapped both of his hands on my ears from which began a powerful ringing. He choked me and beat me along the organs of my body, accompanying all this with insults. I was then put for 15 days in the punishment isolator where, despite the filth, parasites, meager food and limited amount of water, I nonetheless was able to recover psychologically. Everything which goes on in the camp resembles one of those films which shows the tortures given by the Gestapo.

On leaving the punishment isolator, I began spitting up bloody phlegm. The doctors diagnosed a worsening of pneumonia. I was given intensive treatment for 14 days during which I received more than 60 injections. Thanks to the doctors, I am now in the sanitary department of the camp. However, my lungs worry me. (There is a very high percentage of prisoners in the camp suffering from tuberculosis.)

And so that is my situation. I consider that to remain silent about this any longer is impossible. I don’t receive letters, except from home. How my situation in the camp will be from now on I don’t know. They constantly threaten to give me a new sentence when I finish my present sentence.

Alexander Shatravka

Camp 158/3

Zhanatas, Kazakhstan

USSR

Editor's Introduction to:

EMERGENCY RATIONS
by Theodore Cogswell

Most military activity is boring. “They also serve, who only stand and wait,” said John Milton; a truism that every soldier and sailor knows.

“No man would go to sea who could possibly contrive to go to jail,” said Samuel Johnson. “Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.” The Navy sees things differently. Robert Heinlein said of his choice of Annapolis over West Point, “At sea you may risk being drowned, but until they get you there’s enough to eat and a bed to sleep in.”

When asked the secret of his great successes in battle, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest said “I gets there firstest with the mostest.” It’s a good formula; alas, all too often the advice is not followed. A small patrol or probe is sent; the enemy hasn’t been active in the area for years…

In the early days of World War II the U.S. Navy made use of civilian construction workers (CB’s) to build bases and air strips. They weren’t supposed to fight, but they often found themselves under fire. Ted Cogswell postulates a time in the far future when civilians are once again called upon to hold against an unexpected attack, and face dangers far greater than boredom and bad cooking.

EMERGENCY RATIONS
by Theodore Cogswell

“The obvious base for offensive operations is this deserted little system here.”

Kat Zul, the Supreme Commander of the Royal Zardonian fleet stabbed one tentacle at a point on the star map.

“Once we are established there, the whole Solar flank lies open to us. We can raid here—and here—and here,” he indicated sector after sector, “and they will never be able to assemble enough ships in one spot to stop us. What do you think, Sire?”

The Gollen patted his corpulent belly. “There will be good eating. Mind you save the fattest for the royal kitchen.” Orange saliva drooled from the corners of both his mouths. “Roasted haunch of human three times a day. How delightful! Remind me to invite you in for dinner some night after you get back.”

“Thank you, Sire. I will order reconnaissance patrols out at once. If all is clear, we can begin construction of a base within the month. Once our heavy armament is installed, we will be impregnable. You will eat well then, O Mighty One!”

The Gollen of Zardon burped happily, closed his eye, and dreamed of dinner.

A week later a fast courier came screaming back with news of trouble. The Supreme Commander took one good look at the report, grabbed the photographs that came with it, and rushed in to see the Gollen.

“The system is already occupied, Sire! By humans!”

“Fine, send me a brace of plump ones at once.”

“Your forgiveness, Highness, but that is impossible. We can’t get at them. They have erected a space station, a heavy Z type with protective screens that can stop anything we throw at them. I have blockading squadrons around it now, but we must act quickly. They got an appeal for help off before we were able to blanket their transmitter.”

The Gollen paled to a light mauve. “In that case,” he said softly, “I shall have you for dinner. If the humans gain control of that system, our whole flank lies open to them!”

“There is yet hope, Sire,” said Kat Zul quickly. “The space station is only partially completed and, as far as we can determine, occupied only by a construction crew. None of its defensive armament has been installed yet. Once they drop their screen, we have them. We can fortify the station ourselves, and control of the system will be ours.”

The Gollen reached into a silver bowl filled with wiggling guba, selected an especially fat one, and bit off its head with his lower mouth.

“Why should they?” he said with his upper one.

“Should they what?”

“Drop their protective screens. Their power piles can keep them energized for the next hundred years.”

“Ah, Highness, but screen generators are tricky things. They require constant attention. When no humans are alive to tend them, they will shut off automatically. And within two months there will be no humans left alive. They will all have starved to death. We captured their supply ship yesterday.”

“I don’t like it. In the first place, a starved human is an inedible human, and in the second, their relief fleet won’t take more than a month to get there. I believe you were talking in terms of two months. You’ll have to do better than that, Kat Zul, or you’ll be fricassee by evening!”

As the stew pot came nearer, Kat Zul thought faster. He barely beat the deadline.

“In this life, Highness,” he said pontifically, “it is either eat or be eaten.”

“This is obvious,” said the Gollen, “and since for you to eat me would be lèse majesté, the second half of your truism is more appropriate to the present occasion. Cook!”

“You don’t understand,” said Kat Zul in desperation. “In this case we can eat by being ready to be eaten.” He retreated around the table. “Listen, please! The robot supply ship we captured was loaded with food. If we wait another two weeks, the humans in the space station will be getting terribly hungry.”

“I’m getting mighty hungry right now,” said the Gollen. “But I’ll listen. Go ahead.”

“Among the food on the supply ship we found several hundred cans containing strange clawed creatures in a nutrient solution. They’re alive!”

“So?”

“So we’ll remove all the food from the ship except those cans. Then we will open them carefully and remove the animals inside. Next we will replace them with ourselves and have the cans resealed.”

“What!”

“A stroke of sheer genius, Highness! In each of the cans will be one of my best fighting men. We will put the robot supply ship back on course and chase it to the space station, firing near misses all the way. When they see it coming with us in pursuit, the humans will open their screens enough to let it through. Once they’ve checked it carefully with their scanners, they’ll bring it into the station and unload it at once. They’ll be so hungry that the first thing they’ll go for will be the food. But when they open the cans, instead of finding little live animals, out will spring my warriors. Ah, Sire, there will be a fine slitting of throats. With the screens shut off, we can arm the station at once, and when the human fleet comes…” He laughed exultantly and clicked his razor-sharp forward mandibles together like castanets.

“As you say, Kat Zul, a stroke of sheer genius,” said the Gollen. “Have you selected your personal can yet?”

The fleet commander’s olfactory feelers stood straight out. “Me? To tell you the truth, Highness, I hadn’t planned on being one of the raiding party. The fact is that I suffer from a touch of claustrophobia and…”

“Would you rather stay for dinner?”

“Well, Sire…”

“Cook!”

“On second thought…”

“Hey, Mac.”

“Yeah?”

“What’n the hell’s lobster?”

“Beats me. Why?”

“Somebody sure fouled up back at base. There’s about a thousand cans of it on the supply ship—and nothing else.”

“Well, open one and find out. I’m hungry!”

“Who isn’t? But they’re alive. It says so on the can. They’re packed away in some sort of nutrient solution.”

“So they’re alive. There’s a law says you can’t take them out and kill them?”

“There’s a picture on the can.”

“So?”

“They got big claws. Looks like they could take a man’s finger off with one good bite. Whatta they mean sending stuff like that out?”

“Look, Pinky, I’m busy. Do what you want but don’t bother me. I got to nurse this generator. If it flickers just once, we’re done for. Now beat it!”

“Okay. I’ll go open one up and see what happens.”

There was silence broken only by a chomping of jaws. The eating was good. Kat Zul, the Supreme Commander of the Royal Zardonian fleet, rested motionless at the far end of the table in the place of honor, his belly distended and his eye closed.

At the other end of the table, two hungry mouths opened simultaneously.

“More!”

Pinky beamed cheerfully, picked up the platter on which Kat Zul rested and passed it down to the two hungry electronics men.

“Help yourselves, boys. There’s lots more where that came from.”

He took another piece himself. “This sure beats chicken.

The way these things are built, there’s enough legs for everybody.” He pushed his white chef’s cap back on his perspiring forehead and surveyed the little group of technicians and construction men happily. This was a red-letter day. Nobody had ever asked for seconds of his cooking before.

“Pinky.”

“Yes, Mac?”

“What do they call these things again?”

“Lobsters. They sure don’t look like the pictures on the cans, though. Guess the guy that made up the label was one of these here abstractionists. You know, those characters that don’t paint a thing like it is, but like it would be if it was.”

“Yeah,” said Mac, “sure.” He noticed a bandage on Pinky’s right forefinger. “I see ya got nipped after all.”

Pinky held his finger up and inspected it with interest. “Sure was a mean cut, almost to the bone it was. And that reminds me, when’s one of you mechanical wizards going to fix my can opener for me? For a month I’ve been after you and all I get is promises.”

“Tomorrow, first thing,” said Mac.

“Tomorrow, always tomorrow,” said Pinky. “Look at that finger. That ain’t no bite; it got ripped on the edge of a can. I didn’t take no chances on being bitten. I was all set to open the first can when I got to looking at the picture on the label, and the more I looked at it, the less I liked the idea of having something like that running around my galley alive. So ya know what I did?”

“No,” said Mac patiently, tearing another leg off the carcass of Kat Zul and munching on it appreciatively.

“Well, you know I mostly cook by intuition…”

A collective groan went up from his listeners. Every time Pinky had an inspiration, it usually involved a handful or so of curry powder.

“But this time I decided to go by the book. The recipe said to boil vigorously for twenty minutes, so I did. Once the kettle got boiling good, I tossed in a dozen, can and all. I figured they would cook as well inside the container as outside, and that way I wouldn’t have to worry about their claws. They was alive all right, too. You should have heard them batting around inside those cans for the first couple of minutes.”

Mac shivered uncomfortably. “Don’t seem human somehow to make critters suffer so. Next time you’d better open the cans and kill them first. If you’re scared, call me and I’ll come down and do the job for you.”

“There’s no need for that,” said Pinky. “Them things can’t feel nothing. They ain’t got no nervous systems. It says so in the cookbook.”

“If that’s what it says,” said Mac, “I guess it’s so. Just keep dishing them out the way you did tonight and I’ll be happy.” He loosened his belt, leaned back, and sighed contentedly.

Pinky wasn’t listening. He could hardly wait until time came to prepare breakfast. With just a touch of curry…

Editor's Introduction to:

THE PROUD FOOT OF THE CONQUEROR
by Reginald Bretnor

All power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton

The ancient Greeks believed that history flowed in cycles. So did government. Monarchy became aristocracy, “rule of the best.” Aristocracies became oligarchies of wealth. Democracy rose, became degenerate, and fell, giving place to tyrants, whose descendents became legitimized as monarchs. Through ages of ages these cycles ran.

They did not always run smoothly. Sometimes one stage was prolonged. Another time, one of the stages might be skipped over. Moreover, there were intermediate states, unstable to be sure, but interesting.

One of these was timocracy, defined by Plato as the rule of honor. It generally came about when the soldiers tired of the corruption of an oligarchy and took rule into their own hands. For a time their military virtues prevailed; the state was ruled harshly, but fairly.

The twentieth century has shown that rule by honor does not last. The juntas and caudillos begin with high intentions, but Acton’s dictum prevails. Yet even after the inevitable corruption sets in, the ideals of virtue and honor may remain to haunt those who have lost both.

THE PROUD FOOT OF THE CONQUEROR
by Reginald Bretnor

From the Diary of

Space-Marshal Sir Francis Mackenzie Latrouche,

United Nations Armed Forces (Canada), Retired

August 28

It has happened. What we have all hoped for. What we have all feared. What we have been expecting since we ventured out beyond Jupiter, beyond Neptune—ever since the Space Force first came into being. I only wish it had occurred while I was still on active duty, before they forced me out and destroyed Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai—and how many other cities? And how many tens of millions?

As things stand, I suppose I’m fortunate to even have heard about it. Hardesty, my former aide, got in touch from Ottawa, breaking security, which was brave of him. Torkonnen’s made it tighter than it ever was before. The world can’t hear the greatest story in its history until he gives the word. Space-Marshal V.I. Torkonnen, Hero of the Soviet Empire, Chief of the United Nations General Staff, who killed Bombay, Calcutta, and Peking, is in command now as humanity meets its first alien race, a race from beyond our solar system certainly, and from how much farther out in space and time? Torkonnen, who will never forgive me for sending him that copy of General Burns’ Megamurder, nor for my inscription in it.

The Fleet first encountered them three weeks ago as they emerged from behind Pluto. Who they are, I do not know—I have not been informed. But their vessels are said to be like little worlds—their size measured in miles. Hardesty didn’t say how many there were, but he hinted that communication has been established and that there are a lot of surprises for us all behind Torkonnen’s wall of secrecy.

The power and knowledge possessed by beings who can move entire armadas between the stars must be fantastic, and Torkonnen is the last man I’d trust to evaluate them accurately and to influence the critical decisions Earth’s leaders may have to make.

Well, we shall see. In the meantime—in this terrible time of waiting—it’s hard for me to take an interest in those small things that become so important in one’s daily life after retirement. Yesterday Josie, our black Lab, had eleven puppies—five males, six females—and Louise handed me the honor of naming them. Now the only name I can think of is Torkonnen, and I’m damned if I’ll call any decent dog after him!

Almost a week has passed, a week of sustained secrecy and silence from UNAF Hqs. However, this morning Hardesty brought me Torkonnen’s top-secret report to the Secretary General on our visitors.

It is astounding. We’ve all wondered what sort of weird aliens the universe might eventually throw our way—wigglies with tentacles, hive minds evolved from insectoids, silicon-based life forms, all the rest. And now, of all improbabilities, they turn out to be men, men very like ourselves, with only minor differences in bone structure and the structure of the eye, at least as far as we can tell—and they are not only men, but military men, the very quintessence of military men. Their whole society is military. They are literally bred to be military. Their officers are not a class; they are a race. So are their noncoms. So are their other ranks. And so are their priest-scientists, themselves a part of the military establishment. We call ourselves men; they call themselves The Conquerors and make no bones about it.

They are extremely methodical, and very patient. They tell us that they remained in the lee of Pluto for months while their drones relayed our media broadcasts to them: audio, video, holo. Their scientists unraveled English with no trouble—it is the nearest thing to a world language—and now they know a great deal about us, about our manners and morals, our diversity of religions and political beliefs, our rivalries and wars. They know a great deal too much in my opinion, considering their own rigid codes of conduct and their absolute uniformity. They seem completely unimpressed by our technology, our weaponry, and they appear to think even less of us as warriors.

How do they define civilization? According to them, the whole goal of man—meaning themselves—is to conquer lesser men, to subdue them so completely that they will remain conquered and continue to serve their conquerors even after those conquerors have gone their way. The report doesn’t go into detail, but it states that they’ve shown very convincing evidence that they have done this to many, many worlds. (Can you imagine a web of empire stretched between the stars, an empire without satraps, without prefects, without governors general?)

Typically, Torkonnen sums up by refusing to take their claims seriously. He suggests that very possibly they are bluffing. But even he agrees that we will have to have much more information before we can formulate a policy or reply to any demands they may make. Apparently the first real meeting after contact was at our Saturn Station, in orbit around that mighty planet. They came in a single ship—and it now seems that the original reports were exaggerated; their vessels are huge, but not miles long, perhaps half again as long as the largest twentieth-century giant tanker or aircraft carrier. Eight of their personnel arrived in a shuttle craft, and we now know that, like ourselves, they have antigravity.

The report adds that further information, with photographs and additional details regarding their organization, weapons, etc., will be on its way to the Secretary General as soon as possible. I hope Hardesty can get me a copy of that too.

September 7

Thank God for Hardesty. His personal loyalty has touched me deeply. The report this time is signed by General Casimirski, a very gallant Pole whom I remember well and favorably. He commands the Station, and his description of the deputation sent shivers down my back.

“They are human,” he wrote. “But at the same time, they are unhuman. The great differences are in the way they move, in the fact that their faces seem totally expressionless, and even more, in their eyes. Their eyes have pupils like our own, but they have no true whites. It is as though the iris gradually merges with the surrounding eye. Imagine a greenish moss agate, very pale around its outer rim and gradually darkening toward a hard, cold, obsidian pupil. Physically, as men, they are superb, lean as greyhounds, taut as strung bows, yet totally relaxed. Their uniforms are extremely simple, in unobtrusive colors apparently denoting something, their only ornaments insignia of rank worn around their necks and multicolored vertical badges where we would wear our service ribbons. They have no facial hair; their lips are thin, their noses unvaryingly hawklike. They have individuality, but only as Doberman pinschers have individuality. The ones who can speak English, but they speak it slowly, like machines, as though the concepts in their own tongue are so completely alien that every word has to be weighed and sorted.

“Their leader, whom I could tell was older than the others, stared at me for perhaps a minute. Then he introduced himself as General—he hesitated over the word as though it were not precisely accurate—Rhuzar’yi. Then I introduced myself and said, ‘General, we welcome you and your people. This is the first time we have had the pleasure of meeting people from another world. Be assured that we shall make the necessary arrangements for you to meet Earth’s leaders as soon as possible.’

‘‘‘Your leaders,’ he replied, ‘are what you call… civilians. We are The Conquerors, please understand. We do not speak with such as these. Our… Commander will speak with your Commander, he who commands your forces, you understand? That is necessary. We must know whether you have—’ Again he hesitated, using an alien word; then, reluctantly, he translated it as honor. ‘We must determine whether you have honor. What we have learned of you tells us that certain men in your history have been capable of honor, but what of your entire…’ Again the hesitation. ‘…your entire army, your command?’”

There had been no exchange of politenesses, no acceptance of preferred hospitality, but they had answered Casimirski’s questions openly and fully. They had fourteen ships, each approximately as large as the one that had brought them. “If you wish, you can come back to it with us,” the envoy said. “Then you can report to your superiors all we will show you.”

Casimirski had of course accepted, taking two of his aides with him. “I was astounded,” he reported. “The vessel was not a battleship; it seemed completely unarmed. But they showed me that it had many, many small attack craft, each perhaps fifty feet long, like combined vessel/vehicles. But more than anything else, I was reminded of a Mongol ordo, for all their women and children were aboard. Everything was disciplined; and at once I saw the great difference between officers, noncommissioned officers, and other ranks. It was physical. The noncoms looked like intelligent but unimaginative prizefighters; the privates hulked like willing tame bears. But the strangest thing was the perfect courtesy between ranks. Subordinates did not always render their equivalent of a salute first; all ranks saluted one another. It reminded me of those novels of old Poland by Sienkiewicz: With Fire and Sword and The Deluge and Pan Machael. There was such mutual respect between ranks then.”

Casimirski went on to describe the aliens’ social structure. There is no social mobility; a man is born a private or a noncom and that is what he remains—and all of them are satisfied, for respect permeates their entire order. Their collective noun for a group of sergeants, for example, is a virtue of sergeants. Ambition is confined to attaining excellence in one’s station.

I read the report several times, and it convinced me that they are probably very, very dangerous.

September 22

A long wait, but much has happened. First, Torkonnen’s security has been breached. The word is out. No details—just enough to start the media screaming hysterically, spreading every kind of crazy rumor. All sorts of religious fanatics and demagogues have been whipping up fear and frenzy; there have been major riots in India and South America, in Los Angeles and Cairo and Lord only knows where else. The world’s national governments, who had not been informed, are raising hell and demanding information, and the screeching in the General Assembly is—if we can believe such an improbability—unprecedented.

So the pressure is really going to hit Torkonnen, not only from the member nations, but also from the Secretary General, Dr. Corua-Fanit, who has always been too close to him for comfort. It will not increase the probability of any sane reaction to the intruders.

Next, I’ve received two more reports. Just yesterday Hardesty came through on his way back from Geneva and left me copies. These also are from Casimirski. The first simply amplifies his previous one. The second is much more important. The Conquerors’ fleet, while it has not entered the solar system proper, has come in closer and is hovering on what—if we discount Pluto—can be considered the system’s outer boundary. Casimirski asked them outright if he could visit the fleet, if he could inspect every ship; and the envoy, without hesitation, told him he could. They left immediately, Casimirski taking only a single aide, and it was a strange voyage for there was no conversation. All the envoy and his officers would talk about was business. Though Casimirski and his aide ate with them, at a separate table, in their officers’ mess, they talked around them in their harsh, stacatto native tongue—and even then without inflection, without discernible emotion.

When they reached the closely grouped vessels, Casimirski was taken to each of them and found them all identical, all equally disciplined, all with their small assault craft, all with their crowds of women and children, and all definitely not armed. Even more interestingly, they appear to have no provisions for security, none at all. Seemingly, nothing was hidden from him, including the weaponry of their attack craft, which he says is very similar to our own. He, of course, was careful to ask no intrusive questions; and on one occasion, when he started to board an attack craft, he inquired whether he might not be infringing security. The answer was typical of our visitors: The escorting officer said simply, “We are The Conquerors. The strong are always secure.”

Of course they showed him records of their conquered planets and their now-subject populations, and he was impressed. “I saw an unending panorama of servility, of heads always bent, of faces on which no shadow of resistance—no, not even of simmering resentment—lives. And when I asked how they managed to so humble those they’d conquered, my escort replied coldly, “That we will not tell you. It is better for you not to know. If you knew, it would affect the decisions your Chief Commander soon will have to make.’’

It seems that they do not subject each invaded world to the same process, classifying them as—well, there’s no other way to put it—barbarians without honor, to be subdued utterly, and primitives with barbaric honor, who are given a somewhat higher status, rather after the manner of the Romans when they were feeling magnanimous or needed irregular troops.

Casimirski has also seen their priest-scientists, physically almost indistinguishable from the officers, but he has learned nothing much about them except that they serve a religion of conquest, dedicated to a war god who, I gather, makes poor old Mars seem feeble by comparison. What their scientific accomplishments may be, he couldn’t guess, except that they obviously have FTL—they’d have to. Also, he suspects that they must be excellent geneticists. Again, he was careful not to be too inquisitive, following the rule of never asking questions he himself would be ordered not to answer or that common sense told him might be sensitive.

Their diet, from what he saw of it, resembles ours: meat and fish, frozen undoubtedly, and hydroponic vegetables, a beverage he could only describe as some sort of sparkling tea, and a variety of alcoholic drinks, taken very ceremoniously and with extreme moderation. If there were beasts aboard, he did not see them, neither pets nor livestock. Nor did he learn anything of their private lives. He was introduced to none of their women—tensely beautiful, austere beings very much in the background, simply and richly robed, their hair generally worn long. He saw the children only at a distance and was astonished at their spontaneous discipline and their expressionless faces when they looked in his direction, small copies of their fathers. He found out, too, that at night, after their evening meal, they sang: long, ominous battle chants, chorales of conquest.

One thing that surprised him, especially in view of their high technology, was that all the officers and noncoms wore edged weapons, swords, dirks, or daggers, and wore them without affectation, as though they were part of themselves.

So, incidentally, did the larger boy-children.

So, of course, in Feudal Japan, had the samurai.

It was not in Casimirski’s report, but Hardesty told me they’d turned down Torkonnen’s offer to meet with their C-in-C after they learned that he was “only” Chief of Staff. I wonder if that means Corua-Fanit will get Torkonnen promoted. Apparently a Chief of Staff, to their way of thinking, is nothing more than a glorified errand boy. They practically told him that as he did not command troops in the field (if field can be translated into interstellar terms), he simply wasn’t fit to speak to.

I’d like to have been there when he got the news.

And now I’d best go downstairs, let Louise show me the pups again, and then have a martini or two with her and try to allay the anxieties any intelligent woman would feel in our threatened world. Yesterday she was worrying about whether I might be recalled to active duty. “Me?” I answered. “With our friend Torkonnen in the driver’s seat? Hardly!”

Now, after what I’ve already told her, I think she’s more concerned with the danger to us all. Even as I myself.

September 27

The past days have been anxious ones, with no further word from Hardesty or anybody else. And now, abruptly and without warning, the sword has fallen. I have been proven a poor prophet, a very poor one indeed.

Shortly after five this morning, I received a phone call from the Secretary General’s office. Dr. Corua-Fanit wished to speak to me, and would I take the call? Of course I said I would; and a moment later there his voice was, as smooth and insinuating as ever.

“Good morning, Sir Francis.”

“Good morning, Doctor.”

“I trust you and Madame are both well?”

My God, I thought, what is the slimy little beast getting at? “Very well, thank you,” I replied.

“Good, good! Sir Francis, we are recalling you to active duty.”

“You’re what?”

“We are recalling you to active duty, of course at the rank you now hold but with even greater responsibilities—oh, yes, very much greater responsibilities. You have, I am sure, heard the news of the arrival of aliens from another system?”

“I’ve heard a lot of media hysteria. There’s been damned little hard information.”

“Well, you shall have it—indeed you shall. You will be fully briefed as soon as you arrive. Sir Francis, the world now faces an emergency—the most frightening emergency in all our history. You are needed.”

I decided to be frank. “Doctor, I think you’ll understand that I’m not anxious to serve under Marshal Torkonnen and that the prospect gives me ample reason to stay retired.”

He laughed a little shrilly. “My dear Sir Francis! But you will not be serving under him. This I promise you, I myself.” His tone changed for the nastier. “In any case, as you are not disabled, the terms of your commission permit us to order you back, do they not?”

I made no reply, remembering that this was the man who, scarcely three years before, had authorized the killing of nearly forty million human beings.

Finally I said, “Very well, Doctor, but I’ll have one request, a modest one. I want the officer who was my personal aide, Brigadier Olaf Hardesty, reassigned to me, and I’d like to have his orders issued now.”

He thanked me, his voice sounding its insincerity. “Sir Francis, your subspace vehicle will be awaiting you at Ottawa, and your aide will be aboard. I am delighted. I myself will outline your new assignment and your duties.”

“Very well, Doctor.” We said goodbye.

There was no point in going back to bed, and Louise, who had wakened, was sitting up, looking at me silently.

“No, I suppose you can’t turn them down, can you?” she said, almost whispering.

I shook my head. “I wish I could!”

She nodded, leaned toward me, and kissed me. “I’ll go downstairs and get Marie up and started fixing breakfast; then I’ll send Sergeant Wamick up to help you pack.”

Two hours later, Hardesty and I were through the stratosphere.

“Sir Francis,” Hardesty said presently, “did the Secretary General tell you what your new job is going to be?”

“He said he’d explain it when I arrived.”

Hardesty looked at me a little strangely, a little apprehensively. “Sir,” he said, “I—well, I’m sure of this. You’re the new C-in-C.”

Two hover-limos were waiting for us when we landed, and an Italian colonel, a military aide, took us to them, directing Hardesty to the second, opening the door so I could board the first. I was not surprised to find Corua-Fanit sitting there, a thin, inconsiderable man with sparse black hair and an unhealthy skin, his eyes concealed behind the tinted lenses that are a part of the public image he cultivates—a man to whom circumstances have given great power, in my opinion a weak, cruel, ruthless man. The fact that where matters military are concerned, he is completely under Torkonnen’s influence did not help the situation.

As the limo whipped through traffic, I reflected that antigravity and its associated drives had not only reduced the terrific noise level in great cities almost to a whisper, but had been responsible for putting the destiny of the world into Corua-Fanit’s hands, for without them, the Space Force would have remained what it started out to be, a rocket-propelled group of vessels watching out for stray asteroids, giant meteorites and, on the off chance, extraterrestrial visitors.

He smiled at me with his teeth. “I suppose, Sir Francis, that you have been wondering what sort of assignment I have for you?”

“Naturally, sir.”

“I’m sure it will please you. We have created a new post, one that our armed forces have never had before, the post of Supreme Commander—Commander-in-Chief. It is a post for which you are ideally fitted, especially under our present extraordinary circumstances. Let me fill you in briefly. When we arrive at my residence, I shall give you the pertinent reports from those officers who have been in closest touch with the—shall we say?—invaders.”

Then he proceeded to tell me everything I already knew, including The Conquerors’ refusal to negotiate with anyone but a supreme military commander. “They turned down Marshal Torkonnen, not just because he lacked the title, but because they disapproved of his decisive nuclear attack on the rebel powers. They call themselves Conquerors, but they are a strange breed of military, I assure you.”

I began to see the light. My controversy with Torkonnen and my retirement had received much publicity. The Conquerors, thorough as they were, would certainly have heard of it. Hence my recall and my new title. What powers it would carry with it remained to be seen.

Corua-Fanit was astute. “I am sure these people will recognize that you are a man of honor.” He laughed a shrill little braying laugh. “And the fact that you and they see eye to eye about how war should be waged will be most helpful also.”

“Won’t they think it odd that the post has so suddenly been created, and that I myself have so suddenly been called to fill it?”

“I think not,” he replied. “We’ve informed them that you were a de facto C-in-C prior to your retirement but that it simply is not our custom to use the formal title.”

I thought it a pretty thin arrangement but saw no point to saying so. I said, “Doctor, I’m honored. But I can’t possibly accept if the whole thing is only a pretense. I will have to have those real powers the title implies—powers of military decision and command—for responsibility, as you yourself said, will inevitably come with it.”

“Oh, you will, you will!” he exclaimed, putting his arm around my shoulders, apparently not noticing that I stiffened to avoid shrinking from his touch. “Your orders have already been prepared and signed by me, giving you total authority over our armed forces and also empowering you to act as the world’s Ambassador Plenipotentiary. I shall give them to you as soon as we arrive. However—and I trust this will meet with your approval—we do not intend to publish them until your negotiations with the alien commander are completed. We can’t afford to let news get out that would lead our already-frightened public to think we prepare for war, which the publicized appointment of a C-in-C certainly would do. So for the time being, the news must be restricted to the few high-level officers directly concerned.”

I didn’t like it, but still I couldn’t quarrel with it. It did make sense.

“And when do you and my alien counterpart want me to leave for our first rendezvous?”

“As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, if you can. That should give you ample time to go over the reports, and if it doesn’t, well, it will take three days to ferry you to Saturn Station and you can take them with you.”

“I’ll also require a complete report on the present disposition of our major forces. Can Marshal Torkonnen have that ready for me too?”

He frowned. “Torkonnen can’t. He’s off Earth. He said there was nothing for him to do here in view of your previous—ah, friction. So, with my approval, he left to inspect all our bases and stations.” Again he laughed. “He told me he was not going to stop off at Saturn Station.”

I did not comment.

Then he went on to tell me that according to Casimirski, the aliens were proposing to bring their entire fleet within the solar system. “We’re all agreed,” he said, “that probably it would be unwise to try to stop them at this stage. But on no account must they be allowed close to Earth, certainly no closer than Saturn Station. Otherwise we could have worldwide panic.”

I assured him I’d keep the point in mind.

Finally we arrived at his enormous residence, where I turned down his offer of refreshment and dinner, saying I’d like to set to work immediately and asking for trays to be sent up for Hardesty and me; rather reluctantly, he showed us to our quarters. A few minutes later, the same Italian colonel arrived with a dispatch case containing my orders and the reports. I read the orders in Corua-Fanit’s presence and could find no fault with them. I told him so.

As soon as the door closed behind him, we went to work. There was little in the reports we did not know. However, there was much more detail and the addition of about two dozen photos. Apparently the intruders had made no objection to being photographed. I scanned the lot, promising myself I’d study them at length once I was in space, where they could be discussed more freely. But the most interesting report of all I read three times before I said goodnight to Hardesty and went to bed.

It was Torkonnen’s Estimate of Alien Forces and Capabilities.

September 29

I started the last entry in this journal on the way to Geneva, scribbled a bit more of it after I’d digested Torkonnen’s Estimate, then finished it after we’d broken free from Earth’s gravity and were a long way from Corua-Fanit.

The Estimate appalled me, but it is exactly what I’d have expected. I can’t, of course, give it in full here, but I shall quote its highlights.

“In my considered professional opinion,” Torkonnen wrote, “we should not take the claims of these so-called Conquerors too seriously for several reasons:

1. Their weapons and equipment—which they have not tried to hide from us—are in no way impressive. Their major ships are unarmed, transports only, and the attack craft they carry are actually inferior to our own vessels of the same class.

2. The fact that their ships are cluttered with women and children indicates a probably nomadic way of life and, consequently, a shortage of serious military resources.

3. They have antigravity and antigravity propulsion. So do we. They have Faster-Than-Light drives, but this does not necessarily indicate scientific superiority. Their priest-scientists are dedicated to the service of a primitive war god, which argues that scientific thinking cannot have penetrated their culture too thoroughly. As, admittedly, they prey on other civilizations, they may very well have obtained FTL by piracy. Furthermore, FTL is of no use within a solar system, only in open space. It gives them no advantage whatsoever.

4. The evidence they have shown us of conquered planets and peoples, while possibly a record of successful suppression, suggests that the conquered probably had no military power or will to resist. Mankind is neither so feeble nor so passive.

Finally, after a detailed survey of comparative weaponry, he gave his conclusions:

5. As I have stated, their attack craft are numerous and adequately armed. However, their armament is in no way superior to that of our own equivalent vessels. Most important, they have neither ships nor vessels comparable to those of our cruiser class, capable of destroying large asteroids and even minor moons. In this regard we are superior and, to my mind, decisively so. Their fleet is as vulnerable as Calcutta or Bombay.

I shuddered, not just at his casual mention of those cities, but because he took so much for granted. Our own wars, for example, have shown that savagely primitive beliefs and a high level of science and technology are by no means incompatible. However, when I compared the Estimate to the report on fleet dispositions that I had received before leaving, I was to some extent reassured. Signed by General Cordeiro, a Deputy Chief of Staff, it shows every major unit, either deployed or on the way, and each positioned so that if the aliens actually attack, Earth can be defended—but each far enough away from Saturn Station, where Corua-Fanit suggested The Conquerors place themselves, to offer no suggestion of hostile intent on our part.

Our own ship, Aconcagua, and her complement are also reassuring. She corresponds to what, in Nelson’s day, would have been called a dispatch boat, very lightly armed, with perhaps a dozen in her crew, all very young, all unaccustomed to having a Space-Marshal aboard and terribly impressed, and all obviously frightened to death by Torkonnen’s KGB style of security. They are polite and very pleasant.

October 6

A great deal to report. We arrived at the Station on the twentieth, and of course Casimirski was expecting us. He was delighted to see me, and said so. He had been told of my new post, with strict instructions to keep the news from his personnel except for the very few who would come in contact with the Conquerors’ envoy, who naturally had been informed. We had passed the envoy’s vessel following in the Station’s orbit, and scarcely an hour elapsed before he himself appeared.

Casimirski and I were having a drink together when he was admitted, and I saw instantly that everything I had heard about The Conquerors was true. He had two officers with him and all wore the same uniform, severely cut and golden gray, and at first glance they looked as though they had been hatched from the same egg. Only their neck insignia distinguished them. The envoy’s was a studded disk, possibly of platinum, as big as the Order of the Garter and suspended from what looked like a gold-and-black enameled chain. His aides wore smaller ovals, green and rimmed with gold, hanging from narrower plain chains. All three wore rows of vertical metal ornaments, enameled, mysterious in design and color, but of fine craftsmanship; Faberge, I think, could have done no better. But the strangest thing was that although they indeed were men, they were men differently constructed. Their bones seemed not only flatter than our own, but hinged differently, ais if put together by a different Maker. They did not move as we move. And their eyes—well, all I can say is that they are alive but not in the same way as ours, or even as a tiger’s or a hawk’s.

They are profoundly disquieting.

Casimirski introduced us, and the envoy acknowledged the introduction with only a cursory movement of his right hand, raising it rigidly, palm upward, to his waist. Then he spoke, and as Casimirski had described, it was like a machine speaking.

“Our Supreme Commander is ready,” he informed me. “He will speak with you today, you understand? Decisions will be made.”

Casimirski was as surprised as I myself. “Where is he?” he asked.

“He is… aboard our ship. He came with us, from our fleet.”

We were taken aback.

“You can leave now, yes?” snapped the envoy.

“I shall leave”—I tried to keep my face as expressionless as his—“when I have refreshed myself and discussed matters with General Casimirski here. Let us say in one hour.”

Giving no evidence of whether or not he was annoyed by this, the envoy made the strange motion with his right hand again and withdrew.

Precisely an hour later he was back, and in a matter of minutes he and I and Casimirski, and Casimirski’s aide and Hardesty, were in their shuttle craft and on the way.

Their great ship opened to receive the craft. It settled gently to its berth. We left it and the envoy led us through seemingly endless corridors and compartments, all of metal but carpeted in a dark green, their indirect lighting glowing off walls that alternated between pleasant light grays and blues to soft yellows. I saw their women and children, their noncoms and their other ranks, their priest-scientists—and it was as though none of them saw me. As far as any outward demonstration was concerned, I simply wasn’t there.

Finally an elevator took us vertically at least three hundred feet, and we emerged into some sort of command center, complete with screens not too unlike ours, with communications and control consoles, but all reduced to an utter simplicity we could not have matched.

The room was semicircular, and at the very center of its radius was a crescent console with a single chair behind it. Here one man sat, and I realized immediately that their C-in-C and I now faced each other. I looked at him, and if his officers had seemed to be the quintessence of everything military—well, he was the quintessence of his people. He was tall, taller than any I had yet encountered, and everything about him was accentuated. His face was harder, harsher; his weird moss-agate eyes were colder and more penetrating. A clean white scar zigzagged across his forehead and ended on a cheekbone. His neck insignia was a glowing star hanging from a chain of small golden swords. His service badges swept across his chest.

I looked at him. He looked through me.

The envoy stopped, motioning the others to a halt. “Proceed,” he said.

I marched to within two feet of the console. I bowed.

Slowly he stood up and made the same right-hand gesture as the envoy.

I introduced myself; obviously no one else was going to. “I am Space-Marshal Sir Francis Mackenzie Latrouche, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United Nations on Earth,” I said.

“I am Ar’hloyk’ú. I am… Supreme Commander. We are The Conquerors, you… understand?”

His words were recognizable, but his accent could scarcely have been reproduced.

“I shall inform you—yes?—of our demands. Everything then will… depend on you. We have learned much. We understand your wars. Your history is of betrayals, of broken treaties, of war-making against the… defenseless, even women, children, cities. You do not deny this?”

He did not invite me to sit down. He himself showed no sign of doing so. We stood there, staring into each other’s eyes, and I could not deny the statement he had made. “What you have said, Supreme Commander, is true—but only partly true. Not all our military men have been men of honor, but many have. I could name you any number whose sense of honor has been inflexible, who would never think of breaking an agreement, who would scorn to wage war against noncombatants.”

“This,” he said, “we know. We have heard of you and that you were—how do you say?—retired before your last war. Perhaps you, as a man, are capable of honor. Now we must know whether, as Commander-in-Chief, you have power to speak… for all your armed forces? The power to bind them with your word of… honor?”

“I have,” I said. “I can speak for all the nations, for all mankind.”

“That does not interest us. It is whether you can speak for warriors with the honor of a warrior, you understand?”

“I can.”

“Then this is what I say to you. We will bring our fleet within your system so that after you… hear our terms, there need be no delay in carrying them out.”

I nodded, not letting my face betray my surge of anger at his arrogance.

“We shall do this, and we require your word of honor that we shall neither be interfered with nor attacked.”

“You have it,” I replied. “However, there will be one condition.”

“Condition?” He made it sound absolutely unbelievable.

“One condition. The peoples on Earth have no experience of other races. As you know from our media broadcasts, they are already frightened almost to the point of panic. If you bring your fleet too close to Earth, chaos will result. I must request that you come no closer than the vicinity of our Saturn Station, where I met your envoy.”

He thought for a moment—at least he stood there staring at me. Finally, “For the time,” he said, “we will do this. Then we, you and I, will talk again about our terms… also about the status we will give you.”

“And our choice will be?”

His knowledge of English was not quite adequate to putting it concisely, and he had to search for terms to express his exact meaning. At last, however, I gathered that our status, depending on how they rated our capacity for honor, would range from the best, an equivalent of most favored barbarian, to the worst, utter subjugation.

“Your officers have been shown,” he declared. “It is not a desirable condition for men with… pride.”

“How do you accomplish it?” I asked.

He kept on staring through me. “As we have said, that is the one thing we will not tell you, for your decision then would not be your own… you understand?”

I nodded. Further questioning was useless.

“So, when our fleet arrives, a matter of perhaps five of your days, you and I will meet again. Between us, all will be settled. I have your word… of honor?”

“You have my word of honor,” I said.

Again the right-hand gesture. Again I bowed. The conference was at an end. The envoy said, “Come. We shall return.”

The trip back to the Station was a silent one. Only after we had arrived and the envoy’s ship was on its way did any of us give vent to how we felt. Casimirski swore in Polish for a full minute. “God in Heaven!” he cried. “What arrogant sons of bitches! Insufferable! And yet—sir, I hate to say this. I don’t want you, of all people, to think I am a coward, but, sir, I feel that they are a very old culture, incredibly strong, incredibly experienced, and far more dangerous than they look. I don’t care if their armament does seem inferior. There’s more to them than braggadocio, much more.”

“What do you think, Hardesty?”

“I agree, sir. I think we must walk very carefully and maybe even take our lumps, for a time at least, when you and he negotiate. If we have to, of course we’ll fight, but we ought to do it only as a last resort.”

“That is my view also,” I said. “I just hope Corua-Fanit agrees with us when it comes down to the nitty-gritty.”

I composed my report to the Secretary General, and Casimirski sent it off directly. With it, I asked for an up-to-the-minute report on the present disposition of our forces and for instructions as to how I was to take over command were military action to prove necessary. Then we waited for the hours to pass while the messages bridged those vast distances.

The answer came during supper. Corua-Fanit approved of how I’d handled things, assured me there had been no changes in dispositions since the Deputy Chief of Staff’s last report, and told me that when and if necessary, I could immediately assume command through normal staff channels.

Hardesty isn’t happy. He doesn’t trust Corua-Fanit. He doesn’t trust Torkonnen, even if he is somewhere on the other side of the system. However, he agrees that the course we have followed has been the only possible one and that everything does seem to be in order.

October 14

Yes, everything seemed to be in order. But it was not. On the eleventh, right on schedule, the thirteen alien ships neared Saturn and were in touch with us before we could pick them up visually. They said they’d prefer to hover on antigrav but would go into orbit if we so desired—evincing a degree of consideration that seemed foreign to them. I told them to take their choice but that we would prefer them within easy communicating distance.

And at that point all communication was cut off—all except a flood of signals from vessels of our own, vessels that were supposed to be far, far away. None of the signals were in the clear; we could make nothing of them.

“Christ!” shouted Hardesty. “It sounds like a bloody battle going on!”

“It is,” whispered Casimirski.

Half an hour later we found out what had happened. An Aconcagua-class ship pulled in, torn almost to ribbons. We winkled out her crew, what was left of it. Torkonnen had put practically all of our main strength hovering behind Saturn—after all, Corua-Fanit, with my unwitting aid, had set the aliens up for him; and they had decelerated almost completely when he struck. There was no way they could have escaped him—

But then, they didn’t need to.

They did not move. Around each of their vessels there appeared a faint nimbus, extending out to four or five diameters, and whenever a weapon—whether a missile, a laser, a particle beam, anything—was directed at it, it glowed momentarily and then the weapon was either absorbed or exploded or deflected. Each of those halos was impenetrable.

The C.O. of the Aconcagua class sat there having the station medics dress his wounds, gasping out his story. Each of the great ships had opened its maw, and the attack craft had poured forth in swarms—and they too were surrounded by the protective shields. “The bastards must have something combining antigrav and their FTL drives,” said the C.O., shaking his head. “They must. How else could they have managed it? How else?”

Of course it didn’t matter, not in the least. We could tell by the frantic signals sputtering out that Torkonnen’s forces were being swiftly and ruthlessly destroyed, as swiftly and as ruthlessly as he had destroyed those cities.

He had betrayed me. He had tried to betray The Conquerors. He had betrayed Earth and all mankind.

I only hoped that he would be on Earth when I arrived.

Half an hour later, with as many of the Station’s people as we could crowd aboard, we were on our way; and we made it in two and a half days, setting down at Geneva Spaceport. We knew The Conquerors would be coming, but we also knew that they’d be in no hurry. They had no need to be.

Ashore, I was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of staff officers and hysterical civilians. I pushed through them to a limo I recognized as Corua-Fanit’s, waited for Hardesty to get in with me, and told the driver, “Take me to your leader.”

“He’s at Armed Forces Headquarters,” he said.

“Get there!” ordered Hardesty.

We rode in silence, and it took only a few minutes to reach the old League of Nations building by the lake where I, as C-in-C, would have had my office.

We marched directly, Hardesty and I, to the office of the Chief of Staff, and there we found them both: Corua-Fanit, looking as though he had been suddenly pumped out, then filled with cold, gray dishwater, and Torkonnen, massive and lowering, frightened now but still hostile and defiant. Whether he had returned from space or whether he had even been off Earth, I did not know. Nor did I care.

I said nothing to them. There would have been no point to it. And if they spoke, I did not hear it.

Instead, I drew the pistol I had taken from the Station and shot each of them. I shot them in the forehead, killing each instantly. Then I sent Hardesty to find men to get them out of there, to dispose of them.

I sat down at the desk, began this entry in my journal, and waited for The Conquerors to come down. Hardesty took a chair next to me.

We waited patiently. What else could we do? Now they are here. Through the window I can see the sky filled with their small assault craft, each surrounded by its protective field, the field that renders it invulnerable. They are coming down swiftly. In the distance, they look almost like falling leaves.

Now their first craft has landed, on the lawn across the road and directly in front of Headquarters.

Five of them have marched out of it, and they are striding, in their precise, strangely jointed way, toward us. In moments they will be here. And they are no longer expressionless.

I must say that I do not like the look on their fa—

Editor's Introduction to:

LEPANTO
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Constantinople, the City of the Golden Horn, capital of Byzantium, fell in 1453 to the cannon of the Ottoman Turks; with it fell the last of the Eastern Roman Empire. For the next hundred years all Europe was threatened. Soliman, known to Europe as Suleiman the Magnificent, besieged Vienna in 1529 and came within an ace of taking the city.

In 1571 the Turks struck at the Venetian lion’s holdings, and threatened to turn the Mediterranean into a Turkish lake. It was no idle threat. The Turkish fleet of galleys was the largest in the world, and Christendom was hopelessly divided. France had made alliance with the Turks.

One man saw the danger. Pius V prevailed upon the Spanish and the Venetians to join forces in a grand alliance. Philip II of Spain, son of Charles V, sent his fleet under the command of his bastard half brother Don John of Austria. John, at 26, was the most able commander of his time. (He is not the fickle “Don John” of Mozart’s opera.) The Turkish fleet concentrated at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth near the fortified town of Lepanto. The Turkish fleet boasted 270 galleys to oppose Don John’s 220; but the Christian fleet included six “super galleys,” known as galeasses, which were deployed in front of the Christian battle line.

The fleets met in the narrow straits. Ali Pasha, the Turkish commander, had 400 Janissary shock troops aboard his flagship. He steered directly for Don John’s flagship Real. The ships crashed together and became entangled. Ali called for reinforcements from the galleys in reserve behind his line. Other Christian ships rushed to aid the Real.

Twice the Janissaries boarded the Real and were swept back by her 300 arquebusiers. Twice again Don John’s soldiers boarded the Turkish flagship and reached the mainmast, before Colonna in the Papal flagship came alongside the Turk and raked her decks with musket fire. Don John’s third charge carried, and the whole of the Turkish center fled.

The carnage was terrible. Twelve Christian galleys were sunk and one captured, with losses of 15,000 officers and men. Of the Turks, 113 galleys were sunk, and another 117 captured. Tens of thousands of Turks were killed, 8,000 were captured, and 15,000 Christian galley slaves were freed.

The best known casualty of the battle was Miguel Cervantes, whose left hand was carried away by a cannon ball. He survived to write Don Quixote.

LEPANTO
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war,

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,

Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,

Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.

Love-light of Spain—hurrah!

Death-light of Africa!

Don John of Austria

Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,

His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.

He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,

And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring

Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

Giants and the Genii,

Multiplex of wing and eye,

Whose strong obedience broke the sky

When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,

From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea

Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;

On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,

Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;

They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—

They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.

And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk may hide,

And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,

And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,

For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,

Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,

But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know

The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:

It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;

It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!

It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,

Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”

For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

Sudden and still—hurrah!

Bolt from Iberia!

Don John of Austria

Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north

(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)

Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift

And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.

He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;

The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes.

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,

And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,

But Don John of Austria is riding out to the sea.

Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse

Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,

Trumpet that sayeth ha!

Domino gloria!

Don John of Austria

Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck

(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)

The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.

He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,

He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,

And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey

Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,

And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,

But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.

Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed–

Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.

Gun upon gun, ha! ha!

Gun upon gun, hurrah!

Don John of Austria

Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,

(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)

The hidden room in a man’s house where God sits all the year,

The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea

The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;

They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,

They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark;

And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—

(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!

Domino Gloria!

Don John of Austria

Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade…

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Editor's Introduction to:

A CURE FOR CROUP
by Edward P. Hughes

Edward Hughes lives in Britain. In his masterful future history there have been wars and rumors of war; civilization has fallen, taking much of the ecology with it. Staying alive is a struggle; but the people of the small Irish village of Barley Cross are determined to live normal lives despite the fall. Protected by The O’Meara, Master of the Fist and onetime Sergeant Major of Her Majesty’s forces, Barley Cross has been an island of civilized life among the ruins.

The beginning was told in the story “In The Name Of The Father,” Volume II of this series; “A Cure For Croup” continues the tale.

A CURE FOR CROUP
by Edward P. Hughes

The sound of a tolling bell woke Liam McGrath. He nudged his sleeping wife.

“Hear that racket, Eileen!”

Eileen McGrath stirred in her sleep. She had been up half the night nursing their one-year-old son through an attack of croup, and she was in no mood for conversation.

Liam frowned at the bell’s clamor. That could only be the village church bell—and Father Con never allowed it to be sounded as a warning.

Eileen opened her eyes. “What time is it?”

Liam reached across her to consult the ancient windup alarm his mother had given them as a wedding present.

“Only five-thirty, by God! D’you think there’s something wrong?”

She said drowsily, “Sounds like a death knell to me.”

He swung his legs out of bed. Their cottage clung close to the root of Kirkogue Mountain and was a mere cockstride out of the village of Barley Cross. From his bedroom window Liam could see along the village’s one and only main street. He peered through the curtains. Figures moved on the distant roadway.

And the bell tolled.

He grabbed his trousers from the chair back and began to dress.

Eileen raised herself on one elbow. “Where are you going?”

He buckled his belt. “I’m off to see what’s happened. It may be an emergency.”

She sighed. “Don’t wake Tommy. I’ve only just got him off.”

Liam nodded. Their son’s harsh breathing and racking cough had demanded the village doctor’s attention the previous night. Liam could hear stertorous respiration from the next room. He tiptoed downstairs, lifted his jacket from the newel post, and slipped out into the morning light.

Seamus Murray stood at the door of his forge. The smith’s face was unduly solemn. He seemed not to notice Liam’s presence.

Liam shook his arm. “What’s happened, man? What’s the bell for?”

Seamus’s mouth opened and closed like a fish in a jar. Then the words gushed out. “The O’Meara’s dead! They found him at the foot of the stairs when the guard went in to report the ‘all clear’ this morning. He’d had a heart attack.”

Liam stared, his brain refusing to accept the smith’s news. Patrick O’Meara, Lord of Barley Cross, Master of the Fist, and focus of village life for as long as Liam could remember, dead? It was like hearing the village clock had vanished.

He said stupidly, “How come they found him so early?”

Seamus Murray shot him a pitying look. “The Master always wanted a report as soon as it grew light enough to see the O’Toole cottage. We’ve done it that way for years— though I doubt a lad of your age would appreciate why.”

Liam knew why. He had suffered the saga of Barley Cross versus the Rest of Ireland from his elders ever since he had been old enough to pay attention.

He ignored Murray’s dig. “So who found him?”

The smith scanned the road. Liam’s face appeared to be the last thing he wanted to look at. “Christ, man, how should I know? I don’t stand guard at the Fist anymore. Does it matter? We’ve lost our protector—the man who kept us from death and destruction in the years gone by—and all you want to know is who found him!”

All Barley Cross went to the funeral, that being the villagers’ normal procedure. But many a wife shed more than customary tears for the deceased. Patrick O’Meara, the ram of Barra Hill, had left no widow to mourn his passing, but in a very real way he had been a father to the community, and many of the women had particularly fond memories of him.

The O’Meara’s henchmen met in the dining hall of the Fist as soon as the obsequies were done.

General Larry Desmond drained a tumbler of poteen with scant regard for its potency. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then set the empty glass on the carpet between his feet. “Well,” he said. “We’re in a pickle now.”

At the other end of the broken-backed settee, Kevin Murphy, the vet, stared gloomily into his own glass. “God dammit!” he muttered. “I loved that bloody man. Why could it not have happened to one of us instead?”

Celia Larkin, MA, schoolmistress and spinster, sipped a cup of herb tea brewed especially for her by Michael, the O’Meara’s servant. Neglected runnels in her face powder showed where the tears had flowed. She sniffed. “Maybe it’s the Lord’s judgment on our presumption. Father Con ranted about it often enough.”

Denny Mallon, MD, dwarfed in the great, shiny armchair, sucked at an empty pipe. “Father Con’s views on delegated procreation don’t necessarily reflect those of our Maker. Think about Judah’s advice to Onan in Genesis. And anyway, this is no time to be questioning tenets. But for Patrick O’Meara, Barley Cross would be a futureless dormitory by now. I can’t imagine that even Father Con would want that.”

General Desmond refilled his glass from the bottle on the floor. “Denny, you are overly pessimistic as usual. A few of us here still have a kick or two left in us. Point is—where are we going to find a man to father the next generation of kids in Barley Cross?”

“That child of the Kellys–” began Celia Larkin.

Kevin Murphy grunted. “Christ, Celia, he’s only ten or eleven years old. We’re surely not counting on adolescent precocity to—

General Desmond choked over his drink. “God love us! Let the little fellow grow up first! We’re not even sure he’s fertile. The Kellys never had any more kids.”

Celia Larkin compressed prim lips. “You misunderstand me, gentlemen. It was the father I had in mind. And my idea was for it to be done surgically. Presumably the way Kevin achieves it with his beasts.”

Kevin Murphy jerked upright. “Hold on now! I’m no gynecologist. Better ask Denny about that kind of maneuver.”

Doctor Denny Mallon lowered his pipe. “The Kelly boy might be a possibility in a year or two—if he is his father’s son. But Con Kelly never managed another child. As for artificial insemination, I have no equipment and no skill—nor the wish to employ either. We have discussed this idea before and rejected it. We agreed, if I rightly recall, that women are not cattle. And anyway, to go in now for clinical insemination would explode our carefully nurtured fiction that the husbands of Barley Cross are the fathers of their children. No, my friends, what we need is a new seigneur to exercise his droits.”

General Desmond’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. He glowered at the doctor. “Just what have you hidden up your sleeve, Denny lad?”

Denny Mallon picked at the charcoaled bowl of his pipe with a black thumbnail. He closed his eyes, as though weighing a doubtful course. Then he shook his head.

“It’s not professional ethics to betray a patient’s confidence.”

“Denny!” squealed Celia Larkin.

“But if you’ll each give me your word to preserve—

“Christ, man! Yes, yes!” interrupted Kevin Murphy.

Denny Mallon swiveled arched eyebrows at the general and the schoolmistress. “You too—both of you?”

“God, man! Give up! Yes!”

“Anything, Denny. Just tell us!”

The doctor tapped his pipe on the heel of his hand. His listeners strained forward to catch his soft-spoken words.

“Eileen McGrath tells me she’s missed her menses for the second month in succession. I think she’s pregnant with her second child!”

Larry Desmond’s breath came out in a low whistle. “Young Liam McGrath?”

Denny Mallon nodded. “Who else?”

Celia Larkin’s eyes flashed behind her rimless spectacles. “What exactly does that mean, Denny? You’re the expert.”

Denny Mallon grimaced. “It could mean that our dear Patrick passed on his fertility to Liam McGrath—for which mercy I would be grateful. Or it could be that our ozone layer is repairing itself since we stopped assaulting it with fluorocarbons. Which is unlikely. Alternatively, it could be that some of our children have developed an immunity to heavy ultraviolet doses. And that would be the best answer of all.”

“But you don’t know which?”

Denny Mallon shrugged. “Only time will tell. Meantime, I think we should make full use of young McGrath.”

Kevin Murphy said, “Will he oblige?”

“Give me a chance to ask him!”

Celia Larkin pounced. “You’ll do it, then?”

Denny Mallon grimaced. “Seems like I’ve got the job.”

The general snorted. “Seems like we’ll have to get ourselves an interim government.”

Kevin Murphy looked doubtful. “D’you think they’ll take orders from us?”

“They’ll take them from Larry,” Celia Larkin pointed out. “He still runs the army. And he can delegate duties to us. It will work ’til we get a new Master.”

Denny Mallon got out his pouch and poked his pipe bowl into it. He said casually, “I have to visit the McGraths tomorrow. The McGrath infant is not well, and I have a theory to check. I’ll find an opportunity to talk to Liam.” He rolled up the pouch and slipped it back into his pocket. “But we’ve got to offer him everything—Lord of Barley Cross, Master of the Fist, the lot—or it won’t work. He must replace Patrick in every way. Anything less would confuse the village.”

Kevin Murphy grunted doubtfully. “I’m not sure the village will accept him.”

Larry Desmond drained his glass. “I’ll guarantee the army’s acceptance.”

Celia Larkin smiled acidly. “And I the schoolchildren.”

The vet said, “But how can we justify his taking the O’Meara’s place? He’s no more than a boy. They’re used to an adult tyrant like we built Pat into.”

The general chuckled. “Those in the know won’t need any justification other than his fertility.”

“But the others? The O’Connors, the Toomeys, the Flanagans—?”

“If Pat had only left a will nominating young Mc-Grath…” Denny Mallon began pensively.

Celia Larkin sniffed disparagingly. “That would be too good to be true.”

The doctor fumbled inside his jacket for one of the last ball points in Barley Cross. “Get us a bit of paper, Celia. I’ll write one out straightaway that meets the bill.”

The following afternoon, Doctor Denny Mallon found Liam McGrath’s donkey standing by a peat stack on the main road out of the village. The doctor rested an arm on the animal’s rump and waited. Liam appeared from behind the stack, arms piled with clods of turf.

Denny Mallon waved a salute. “God bless the work, Liam. ’Tis a soft day we’re having.” He shielded his pipe bowl from the drizzle and struck a homemade match.

Liam pitched his peat into the panniers borne by the donkey. “Are you looking for me, Doctor?” His voice was sharp with anxiety. “You’re not worried about our Tommy?”

Denny Mallon puffed smoke into the moist air. “I want another look at him, Liam. And maybe take a sputum sample. But nothing to worry about. I want a quiet word with you first.”

Liam’s face set hard. “About what, Doctor? Is there something wrong with my son? If there is, there’s nothing you can’t say in front of my wife.”

Denny Mallon cocked an eye at the white cottage perched on the toe of the mountain. Up there, presumably, Eileen McGrath went about her wifely duties. The top of Kirkogue was lost in mist. The nearest house in Barley Cross was a drizzle-masked shape. Doctor and youth might have been the only inhabitants of a nebulous, rain-soaked, peaty landscape. Which was the way Denny Mallon had planned it.

He said, “Well now, Liam, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to make such pronouncements meself. What if I was to say I’m here on an errand for General Desmond?”

“Like what?” Liam demanded guardedly. “I’m not old enough to serve at the Fist yet. And if someone wants help with a job, he don’t have to get the general to order me to–”

“Now, now,” soothed Denny Mallon. “No one is complaining about you, son. And the only person seeking your help is the general himself.”

Liam frowned. “What can I do for him?”

Denny Mallon put away his pipe. Homegrown herbs didn’t burn well in damp weather. He said, “I believe you had an interview with the O’Meara when you got married?”

Liam McGrath grinned at the memory. On that particular day, he reckoned, he grew up. “The Master told you about it, did he?”

Denny Mallon turned up his jacket collar and dug his hands into his pockets. “Let’s say I had his confidence. Did he happen to let you in on a certain secret, about which I would be reluctant to expand any further?”

Liam’s grin disappeared. “If you mean, do I know who fathered our Tommy—yes.”

“Ah!” Denny Mallon’s hobgoblin face creased in what Liam identified as a grin of satisfaction. “But who fathered your second child?”

Liam goggled at him. “Eileen is going to have another?”

“I’m her doctor, aren’t I?”

Liam was abruptly babbling nonsense. He rolled down his shirt sleeves and pulled a scrap of tarpaulin from the top of the peat stack. “Come on, Doctor—let’s go! Thanks for the news. Eileen suspected she might…”

Denny Mallon raised a damp hand. “Hold on now, Liam. You’ve not heard the general’s message yet.”

Liam pulled the tarpaulin around his shoulders, gripping the donkey’s rope. “Make it quick, Doctor. Can’t we talk on the way?”

Denny Mallon shrugged. “I’ll put it bluntly, son. You’re aware of precisely what our recent Master’s most important service to the village was. And I’ve just told you that you’ve fathered your second child. Well, since your little Tommy will be the only child in Barley Cross with a sibling–”

Liam frowned. “A sibling?”

“A brother or sister.”

“Oh!” Liam’s mouth made a circle. He said guardedly, “And so?”

“So you are the only male in Barley Cross capable of taking over from the O’Meara. Because you are the only one who has inherited his peculiar talent.”

Liam glanced nervously toward the cottage on Kirkogue. “What are you trying to tell me, Doctor?”

Denny Mallon paused, like a man preparing to plunge into icy water. Inwardly he berated Celia Larkin for saddling him with this pest of a job. He said, “Our recent Master has nominated you in his will to be his successor. And since all the kids in Barley Cross are his children, you have as good a claim as any to his title. The general has charged me to invite you to take up your new role immediately.”

After what seemed to be several hours’ thought, Liam said, “He can’t ask me to do that, Doctor!”

Denny Mallon shrugged. “He can, Liam. Haven’t I just done it for him?”

“But what would folk in the village say?”

The doctor shrugged again. “You might have to put up with some comment. Even the O’Meara was criticized. You can’t expect to please everybody. But you’d have General Desmond and his men behind you.”

Liam flicked another glance at the cottage on Kirkogue. “What if I have to-—you know—?”

“That would be your own problem, son.”

Liam squared his shoulders. “And if I say ‘no’?” Denny Mallon stared impassively from beneath drizzle-bedewed eyebrows. “Then Barley Cross goes down the drain.”

Liam grumbled. “It’s not fair to expect me to–”

The doctor’s face was sphinxlike. “Who told you life is supposed to be fair? Do you imagine Pat O’Meara enjoyed playing a libidinous tyrant? Sometimes there’s a need to subordinate personal inclinations to the wishes of the community.”

“I’m not sure the community wants me to–”

The wizened, bent figure straightened up. ‘‘I’m not just talking about our village. There are bigger communities.”

Liam said weakly, “Can I talk to Eileen first?”

“That might be the best idea,” agreed the doctor.

Eileen McGrath said, “If you think I’ll agree to your taking over from the ram of Barley Cross, you’ve another think coming, my lad.”

“But, Eileen! Didn’t you tell me that the O’Meara was a civil man and that it was an honor to be chosen for his droit du seigneur?”

“You and the O’Meara are two different people,” his wife pointed out. “The O’Meara had no wife to object to his shenanigans. And you do!”

“But wouldn’t you like to be the First Lady of Barley Cross and live up at the Fist?”

Eileen McGrath’s honest face grew sober. “I suppose any girl would say yes to that—although there’s a great deal needs doing to that bam of a place before I’d hang my hat in the hall.”

“Well, then–”

“There is no ‘well, then,’” she affirmed decisively. “One wife is enough for any man, and one wife is all you’re going to have.”

Liam found Father Con shining brasses in the village church. The priest had aged in the short time since Liam’s wedding. He now walked with a stoop, frequently clutching his side.

“Well, Liam,” he greeted. “You’ve come to help me with these dratted brasses, no doubt?”

Liam grinned. He was fond of the old priest. He picked up a rag and a candlestick. “If you like, Father. Actually I called for a bit of advice.” He told the priest of the general’s proposal,

“ ’Twould be a fine promotion for you.”

“It would be…” Liam hesitated. How aware was Father Con of the reasons for the O’Meara’s promiscuity? One had to be discreet.

“But you’re bothered about certain aspects of the job?” added the priest.

Liam let out a sigh. “That’s about it, Father.”

“Hmm.” The priest put down the vase he had been polishing and squatted in a pew. “I think we discussed this matter before? And I refused to condemn our recent Master’s conduct—much to your dismay?”

Liam nodded. “That’s true.”

The priest sighed. “Well, Liam, if you decide to take on the O’Meara’s job, I might also refuse to condemn your conduct. One day you may learn there are higher loyalties than those between husband and wife.” The priest examined the candlestick thoughtfully. “The executioner is not necessarily guilty of murder when he carries out the state’s commands. Nor the starving woman of theft when she steals to feed her hungry children. So maybe our recent Master was innocent of adultery when he exercised his seigneurial rights—for surely our fine school would be empty of scholars and our church short of sinners had he not done so.” The old man rested his head on the wood of the pew. “ ’Tis a problem that’s given me little peace these last few years. And I’m no nearer the solution now than I was at the start.”

“Perhaps if you appealed to someone higher?” Liam suggested diplomatically.

The priest snorted in derision. “ ’Twould be a marvelous day that I hear from a superior, Liam—supposing there are any left. And remember, they too would be only men, with men’s limping insight into ethical matters. Sometimes ‘tis better to pray and take your answer on trust. Desperate situations demand desperate remedies, lad. And Barley Cross is surely in a desperate situation.”

Liam put down the polishing rag. “Are you saying it is okay for me to take the O’Meara’s job, Father Con?”

The priest grimaced. “If you didn’t want it and I said ‘yes,’ would you take any more notice than if you did want it and I said ‘no’?”

Liam shrugged. Father Con could be pretty vague when he didn’t want to come right out with things. He said, “I suppose you are right, Father Con.”

“Suppose?” The old man raised his head angrily. “Is that the best you can say? Consider, Liam, who gives me comfort and advice? Do you think you are the only soul in Barley Cross with a problem? On this matter you will have to be guided by your conscience and make your own decision. The days of dogmatic religion are gone. Soon you won’t even have this remnant of Mother Church to steer your footsteps.”

Liam sidled toward the church door. Father Con with the miseries was a person to avoid. He needed someone more cheerful to talk to. Someone like—Liam clapped his hands. Of course! Eileen’s mother. He muttered, “I’ll think about it, Father,” slipped out of the porch into the sunshine and was off, running.

Brigit O’Connor was in her kitchen, floury to the elbows over a batch of soda bread. She said, “Mister O’Connor is down at the mill. He’ll be making a new blade for Mick Mcguire’s waterwheel. Did you want him badly?”

Tom O’Connor, being a joiner by trade, was often called upon to fix bits of Barley Cross’s machinery. Liam got on well enough with him, but he would not deny that he had half hoped to find his mother-in-law alone. He said, “No sweat, mam-in-law. I’d just as soon bring my troubles to you.”

Dumpy Brigit O’Connor beamed fondly at him. She had always fostered a soft spot for Maureen McGrath’s lad.

“Will I be making you a sup of tea,” she asked, “while you tell me what’s bugging you?”

Liam hoisted himself onto a comer of the table. He swung his legs for a moment, in thought. His mother-in-law might not be as well-informed as Father Con. He said, “Doctor Denny says the O’Meara has left a will naming me as the next Master, and General Desmond has asked me to take over.”

“Well now…” Brigit O’Connor hefted, one-handed, a steaming black-iron kettle from the stove top. She poured boiling water into a dented aluminum teapot. “That would be a great step up for you, Liam.”

His legs stopped swinging. “You wouldn’t mind, mam-in-law?”

She stirred the pot vigorously. “Indeed no! Wouldn’t you make as good a Master as the O’Meara after you’ve had a bit of practice?”

Liam sneaked off the corner from a loaf cooling under a towel. He popped the bread into his mouth. “I wish Eileen felt like that.”

His mother-in-law studied him with bright button eyes. “Does she not fancy living up at the Fist?”

“It’s not that.” Liam hesitated. The Master’s actions were not supposed to be discussed, although the deeds were public knowledge. “There’s an aspect of the job she’s not keen on.”

Brigit O’Connor’s eyes gleamed—possibly with the memory of a night at the Fist that a bride was supposed to endure with fortitude. “You mean the O’Meara’s bedroom antics?”

Liam nodded. Somehow his mother-in-law always understood. “I don’t think Eileen is too happy about me doing that sort of thing.”

Brigit O’Connor poured out two mugs of herb brew. She pushed one toward Liam. “Well, surely the sexy bits are optional? You don’t have to do it, do you?”

He grimaced. “I’m not so sure. Doctor Denny says the village brides will expect it, because it’s an honor. And Brege O’Malley gets married in a fortnight, so the question would crop up straightaway.”

His mother-in-law lodged her elbows on the table to study him. Liam McGrath was a good lad, nothing prurient about him. But if being Lord of Barley Cross meant he had to take each village bride to bed on her wedding night, then Liam would do it, conscientiously. “I wonder why the Master picked on you,” she murmured.

He grinned with embarrassment. “I dunno.” He glanced slyly at her. “Eileen is pregnant again.”

Brigit O’Connor’s eyes opened wide. “Liam! You clever boy!” She darted around the table and hugged him. “I’ll have a word with our Eileen for you. Meantime…” She stood back to smile at her reflection in the glass on the sideboard. Mother of the First Lady of Barley Cross! That would shake them. And no harm if some of the dignity rubbed off onto Biddy O’Connor. She said, “Is there any way I can get a glimpse inside the Fist? So I can tell Eileen what it will be like.”

Liam said, “I’ll have a word with Doctor Denny.”

General Desmond ushered Brigit O’Connor through the door at the end of the landing. “It’ll be twenty years or so since you saw the inside of this room, won’t it, Biddy?” he asked, smiling.

Brigit O’Connor gave the general the gimlet eye. Twenty years ago she had been bright-eyed Brigit Callaghan on the eve of her wedding night. She remembered the bedroom well enough, and the man who had awaited her there. She said, “That’s quite enough from you, General Desmond. What passed between me and the O’Meara that night is no business of yours or anyone else’s.”

General Desmond feigned alarm and backed off.

Brigit O’Connor stared about the room with a grim nostalgia. Same old wooden bed. Same old yellow roses on the wallpaper. Same view of treetops from the window overhung with ivy to render easy clandestine entry and exit. Same worn carpet edged by bare boards. She sighed. For all his tyrant’s power, Patrick O’Meara had never looked after himself properly. She gave the general a quick, belligerent glance. “If you want my opinion, Larry Desmond, the place is a pigsty. Typical bachelor’s pad. Sure, you wouldn’t get me living up here for all the tea in China. And you’ll not get our Eileen so easy.”

The general’s smile faded. “What’s to do then, Biddy? Between you and me, it’s essential we get young Liam installed up here as Master. And the sooner, the better.”

Brigit O’Connor planted knuckles on her hips. “Then you’d best throw out every last stick of furniture and scrap of carpet in the house. Get some women up to scrub the place from top to bottom. Repaint every bit of woodwork. Hang new curtains at every window. Then fill the house with furniture a woman could be proud of.”

Larry Desmond rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Denny said you’d give me some advice.”

She laughed harshly. “It don’t take a clarryvoyant to spot a dirty dump. I’m ashamed to think you let the poor divil live and die in this midden.”

Larry Desmond studied the carpet. For once his assurance seemed to have deserted him. At length he muttered, “You loved him too, Biddy?”

She sniffed. “Didn’t we all? D’you think we’d have put up with his antics for a minute if we hadn’t?”

Larry Desmond sighed. “That maybe explains a thing or two. I’ll let Denny Mallon know what you recommend. It’ll mean mounting a raid for the first time in years, but we’ll have to get furniture from somewhere.”

The expedition had the village lads hopping with excitement. Reared on stories of the glorious days, they saw the opportunity for an adventure. They pleaded with the general to be let to join in. Straws drawn from a cap decided who got the hard-greased rifles resurrected for the occasion. And the general insisted on personally leading the raid.

Liam watched them march away, slit-eyed with envy. Thirty men, all of them armed, and three horse-drawn carts for the loot.

Eileen came to stand beside him. “And why isn’t my bold bucko going with them?”

He grunted bitterly. “General Desmond says he daren’t risk me getting killed.”

Eileen McGrath pursed her lips. Liam guessed she was perversely pleased with his answer. She said, “But you haven’t told him you’ll be the next Lord of Barley Cross?”

Liam shrugged. “I don’t have to, love. The O’Meara left a will naming me. The general posted it outside the church this morning. As far as he’s concerned, I am the next Master.”

She said quickly, “Where are they off to?”

He slumped against the door jamb. “There are some fine houses outside Oughterard. They are seeking some furniture for the Fist.”

“And who’s going to live there when it’s all dolled up?” He studied the boggy landscape mutinously. “No one—unless you agree to me being the Master.”

Her voice rose. “Liam McGrath–”

He turned his face away. “Forget it, Eileen. If you don’t want it, neither do I!”

Their son had another attack of croup the following day. Liam went down to the doctor for a bottle. He seized the opportunity for a quiet chat.

“How long d’you think the raid will take?”

Denny Mallon corked a small sample of his croup mixture and stuck one of his precious labels on the bottle. He handed it to Liam. “Depends on how fast they are at furniture removing. Remember now, tell your Eileen: a teaspoonful only when the little fellow starts to breathe hard.”

Liam took the bottle. He said, “I’m afraid they are wasting their time. Eileen won’t hear of me being Master.”

Denny Mallon got out his pipe and polished the bowl on his sleeve. “Does she know why the general wants you to?”

Liam shrugged. “If she knows, she doesn’t care. There’s just no way I’ll have seigneurial rights with the future brides of Barley Cross.”

The doctor grinned. “I’m not sure that I’d agree to it either, in her place. D’you think the Fist might tempt her when we’ve got it done up?”

Liam rolled his eyes. “She’ll be tempted, all right. But no way will she put up with me doing what the Master is supposed to do.”

Denny Mallon stared at his pipe. “Maybe she’ll have to be let into the secret. I’ll be wanting a chat with her soon about the baby. I think we have an allergy on our hands. But I need to make a few more tests before I’m sure.”

Liam looked startled. “Can an allergy cause croup?”

The doctor lodged the cold pipe in the corner of his mouth. “Indeed it can, son. But so many other things can too. I’m trying to pin down the hapten or allergen responsible.”

“And if you find out, we could do something about it?”

Denny Mallon nodded. “That’s the general idea, son.”

The raiding party came home the following day. The village turned out en masse to welcome its warriors. General Desmond led the returning column, feet first, on a cart piled high with loot, one leg wrapped in bandages.

Celia Larkin stood beside Denny Mallon. “What’s the old fool done now?”

“Got himself shot in the leg, I should imagine.” The doctor waved a greeting as the cart bearing the general went past. “I hope he doesn’t want the damn thing chopped off.”

“They must have been more lively in Oughterard than he expected.”

“Maybe those old ones with a kick left are not confined to Barley Cross.”

“Don’t be snide, Doctor,” chided the schoolteacher.

It took the rest of the week to clear out, clean up, and refurnish the Fist. The village’s unofficial ruling caucus met over the weekend in a splendidly furbished dining hall. General Larry Desmond, his crutch on the new carpet at his feet, said, “I’ve posted a notice in the village proclaiming young McGrath as Master. Everybody is asking when will he take over. She can’t ignore that.”

Celia Larkin perched primly on a bright, brocaded tuffet.

“That’s your trouble, Larry. You never married. You don’t understand how a woman feels about a husband’s fidelity.”

“She can’t put young McGrath’s fidelity before the future of Barley Cross!”

Kevin Murphy ran a palm caressingly over the pile on the arm of the settee. “I have known animals to refuse to breed.”

The general’s eyebrows went up. “Are you telling me we’ve wasted our time? And me with half a dozen slugs in me leg!”

Denny Mallon waved his pipe. “You’ve done your part well enough, Larry. I think it’s now time for diplomacy. Let me have a chat with Eileen McGrath. Maybe I can talk her around to our way of thinking.”

The same day, Eileen McGrath got a note from the doctor, asking her to bring the child in for an inoculation. The doctor also made other preparations.

The next day, as she and Liam took Tommy down to the village, Eileen said, “I hope you are not expecting to go all the way out to Killoo farm to visit your parents as well? It’s bad enough having to bring the boy out to the doctor.”

Liam said, “We can go straight back home if you want. I was hoping we might leave Tommy with your ma while we take a squint at the Fist. I hear they’ve done marvels with it.”

She lifted a corner of the shawl covering her son’s face. The infant snored peacefully. She said, “I’d like to see it. My ma thinks I ought to let you accept the Master’s job so we can move up there. She says they’ve made it into a real palace.”

He said, “Let’s do that, then. We can call at the doctor’s afterward.”

Brigit O’Connor got to her feet as they entered her living room. She curtsied to Liam. “Come in, me lord. I’ll take the little fellow.”

Eileen stared, dumbfounded. “Ma—you bowed to Liam!”

Her mother puffed out a pouter-pigeon bosom. “And isn’t he our new lord? I always bowed to the O’Meara.”

“But–” Eileen stared from her husband to her mother. “I haven’t agreed!”

Her mother laughed shortly. “My girl, ’tisn’t you who appoints our lord and master. We have the O’Meara’s word as to who’s to follow him.”

Tom O’Connor entered from the kitchen, a saw in his hands. He halted, removed his cap, and said, “Good day to ye, sir. Hullo, Eileen, me lady.”

His daughter was wide-eyed. “But, Da—!”

Her father said hurriedly, “I’ll fill the kettle for a brew.” He vanished back into the kitchen.

Eileen stamped her foot. “I don’t want to be the First Lady of Barley Cross!”

Her mother shrugged. “You’ll be the only person in the village who feels that way.”

Later they walked up to the Fist. Villagers stepped out of their path. Men doffed caps or saluted. Women bowed or curtsied. Eileen grew redder and redder. She murmured, “I can’t stand much more of this.”

Liam gripped her hand. “It isn’t far now.”

Just past the O’Meara’s old water tank, now blooming with bindweed and woodbine, a voice called, “ ’Tenshun!”

A small Fist guard stiffened.

Sergeant Andy McGrath bellowed, “Present arms!”

Rifles came smartly to the fore. Liam’s stepfather came to the salute.

Liam, embarrassed, muttered, “Thank you, Sergeant.” All those other salutes and curtsies might have been part of an elaborate leg-pull, but no one made Andy McGrath act the fool. Especially while on duty.

General Desmond, limping with his crutch, met them at the entrance of the drive. He sketched a left-handed salute for Liam and addressed Eileen. “Excuse me not bowing, me lady. I’m still in a bit of a state. May I conduct you around your new home?”

“But it’s not–” Eileen began. “I haven’t…”She let the words trail off. General Desmond was limping ahead of them, running on about the recent raid and how a spry Oughterarder had got him in a shotgun’s sights before he could take cover.

They passed through the newly oiled and polished doorway into the great hall. Candles flickered in a shimmering chandelier overhead. Glass gleamed from a glistening oak sideboard. Underfoot the carpet was softer than a field of spring grass.

Michael, the O’Meara’s man, appeared. He still wore his grubby flyaway collar and stained green waistcoat, but his hands were spotless. He said, “Can I get you some refreshment, sir? Madame?”

Eileen eyed him, wordless. “Some tea?” Liam suggested. A good stiff jolt from the poteen bottle would have been more to his taste, but Eileen held firm views on alcohol.

“Very good, me lord.” Michael turned on his heel.

“Perhaps we could take it in the library?” suggested the general. “This way, me lady.”

He opened a door on the left. Liam saw a room lined with more books than he had ever imagined. Denny Mallon got hurriedly to his feet. “Good day, me lord, me lady.” He pulled out chairs for them.

“I’ll leave ye a moment,” said the general, “while I make sure Michael knows where to bring the tay.”

They sat down with the doctor. He placed both hands on the baize-covered table. “Well, sir, madame—how d’you like your new home?”

“But, Doctor Denny!” Eileen’s face was scarlet. “I haven’t agreed to move up here. We only came for a look.”

“But sure, it’s all been done specially for you and our new Master.” Denny Mallon’s voice was gentle, persuasive. “And doesn’t the whole village want you living up here? It hasn’t been the same without a Lord of Barley Cross domiciled at the Fist. So the sooner you move in, the happier we’ll all be.”

Eileen’s expression grew stubborn. “If we move in, you mustn’t expect Liam to exercise his droits or whatever when that O’Malley girl gets married next week.”

“But, my lady—he may be expected to do just that.”

“Expected or no, I’m not having adultery in my house.”

Denny Mallon seemed to shrivel even smaller. Perhaps he saw a carefully constructed edifice crumbling despite his bravest efforts. “My lady, could you tolerate it elsewhere? Out of sight?”

Eileen McGrath’s mouth set firm. “Indeed I could not, Doctor. And you’ve no cause to be tempting me so. What’s important about these rights of the Master? They’re just a tradition we could very well do without.”

“But we really can’t, my dear.” Doctor Denny Mallon was suddenly down on his knees before Eileen McGrath. “I beg of you, my lady. Let your husband inherit his title and duties. For without him, we are doomed. While the O’Meara lived, we could hope. But now he is gone, we have only Liam.”

Eileen McGrath whimpered. The sight of Doctor Denny Mallon, a pillar of the community, on his knees before her, pleading, seemed to unnerve her. She grasped his hands and tugged. “Doctor Denny, stop! You mustn’t kneel to me. It isn’t dignified. Please get up!”

Denny Mallon resisted, head bowed. “My lady Eileen, if I get up without securing your consent to our wishes, all the work of the last twenty-odd years will have been wasted. Will it help persuade you if I get the general, the vet and the schoolmistress to kneel here beside me?”

Eileen McGrath’s voice broke in a sob. “Doctor Denny, please get up. It is not fit that you should act like this. The O’Meara wasn’t worth it. Everyone knows he was an old lecher with an appetite for virgins.”

“Eileen!” Liam was shouting. “You are talking about your real father!”

She paused. Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes suddenly frightened.

Liam lowered his voice. “Listen to Doctor Denny, love. He’s trying to tell you something dreadfully important. Patrick O’Meara was Master here only because he could father children. No one else in Barley Cross—or the whole world so far as we know—was able to do that. And now the doctor thinks I’ve inherited the man’s fertility. So General Desmond has asked me to take over as Master.”

Eileen’s eyes grew big. “You mean the O’Meara did it out of duty?”

“My lady,” Denny Mallon interrupted urgently, “let me tell you about two villages. One is a backward place dominated by a medieval-type tyrant and his clique of sycophants. This tyrant’s father debauched every bride in the village on her wedding night on the pretext of exercising his droit du seigneur. And the tryant himself hopes to pursue the same lustful course despite the protests of good folk like yourself.

“The other village is the only place I know of where babies are suckled, infants play in the street, and children go to school as they used to do the world over. Moreover, it’s a place where married couples can hope to have a child of their own to love and cherish. In fact, it’s a village with a future to look forward to.

“Both these communities exist because of a fortuitous arrangement of one man’s genes and the determination of people to practice self-deception on a heroic scale—because they are aspects of the same place. And it depends on your prejudices which village you choose to inhabit. Because, my dear, you can live in either, depending on what you believe. I, silly old fool that I am, just happen to believe we live in the one with a future.”

“Doctor Denny!” Eileen tugged at his wrists, her lips trembling. “Please get up, and say no more. Liam will do it, and I’ll try to see things your way.”

One hand on the table, Denny Mallon rose awkwardly to his feet. There was no triumph in his face. His eyes were solemn. He said, “Thank you, Eileen McGrath, for finding the courage to make the right decision.”

She was dabbing at her eyes. “Hadn’t we better be getting down to your house to see about inoculating our Tommy?”

A ghost of a smile flickered at the corners of the doctor’s mouth. “Sure that won’t be necessary now, my lady. I’ve ascertained that the little fellow’s croup is an allergic reaction to fossil pollen grains blowing off the peat stacks near your cottage. I was going to suggest you move away from there to give him a chance. But now it won’t be necessary. Up here at the Fist, far from those stacks, he should be all right.”

Eileen McGrath smiled, her eyes inscrutable. “What a wise suggestion, Doctor. It will certainly do for a reason to explain why I changed my mind, if anyone should ask.”

Denny Mallon nodded wisely. “It might at that, my lady.”

Liam McGrath, Lord of Barley Cross, attended his first meeting with the caucus the following Saturday morning. Neat in his best clothes, he entered the dining hall through his private door.

General Desmond and the vet, Kevin Murphy, sat at each end of the plush new settee, a bottle of poteen and the general’s crutch on the floor between them. Celia Larkin, the schoolmistress, perched on a dainty tuffet, sipping tea in silence. An armchair that matched the settee for luxury almost swallowed the shriveled form of Doctor Denny Mallon. And on the other side of the fireplace, an old sagging armchair, arms and back shiny with use, stood empty.

General Desmond cocked a casual thumb in the empty chair’s direction. “That used to be the O’Meara’s seat. We’ve kept it specially for you, son, so you’ll know your place. Now, about the O’Malley girl’s wedding. We’ve decided you’d better get down there early and show ’em your face…”

Liam slipped obediently into the Master’s seat. He nodded, listening carefully to his instructions from the real Masters of Barley Cross. He knew his place.

Editor's Introduction to:

COMMENT AND DISCUSSION ON “ELEVATION OF THE U.S. FLEET” BY CAPTAIN RICHARD B. LANING, USN (Ret.)

by Kenneth Roy

In August, 1982 Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute Captain Richard Laning, USN (Ret) proposed Very Large High Flying aircraft; flying carriers, to be exact. When Kenneth Roy, an Oak Ridge, Tenn. engineer, read that issue of the Proceedings he recalled an article he had seen in the May, 1978 issue of Galaxy science fiction: my column “A Step Farther Out,” which that month was about aircraft powered by laser energy from geostationary satellites

The result was this Comment, which proved a bit too far out for the Proceedings.

COMMENT AND DISCUSSION ON “ELEVATION OF THE U.S. FLEET” BY CAPTAIN RICHARD B. LANING, USN (Ret.)

by Kenneth Roy

Captain Laning talks about elevating the aircraft carriers of the U.S. fleet to forty thousand feet and flying them at speeds of six hundred knots. It is truly a radical idea and one that holds both great promise and vast quantities of technical, tactical and strategic problems. Any profession that involves the lives of men had better be cautious when considering new and different ideas, for the larger the innovation, the greater the potential debacle.

But to fail to innovate, to cling to the old and familiar in the face of the new and better, is to invite certain disaster. Each military generation faithfully prepares to refight the last war, to a greater or lesser extent. Before World War II, France studied The World War and built accordingly; Germany tried something different…

Very Large High Flying (VLHF) aircraft are not new to aviation thinking, but none have been built. Such an aircraft would look a lot like a flying football field, only larger. It would be a flying wing with jets mounted in or near the trailing edge. Flying at six hundred knots, it could reach anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours. It would probably fly high enough to make use of the jet streams. It would be very fuel-efficient once it reached cruising altitude. With large fuel tanks, it could probably stay aloft for two, maybe three days. Thus we have two major problems with Captain Laning’s idea: first, a fleet of such aircraft would use vast amounts of kerosene (otherwise known as jet fuel) and, second, it would not be able to stay on station for any length of time. Such a fleet would have to be very careful about having its line of retreat cut.

But all is not gloom; a paper entitled “Laser Aircraft Propulsion” presented by Kenneth Sun and Dr. Abraham Hertzberg at the Third NASA Conference on Radiation Energy Conversion puts forth a total solution to both problems. The Sun/Hertzberg paper describes plans for a modified Boeing aircraft with a laser-powered turbofan jet engine mounted on the back of the aircraft. This aircraft would take off and land under normal kerosene power but would then switch over to the modified turbofan jet once it reached cruising altitude. The modified turbofan engine has a heat exchanger in the middle, where the combustion chamber normally is located. The heat exchanger is connected to a laser target located on top of the aircraft. There is no reason that this aircraft, or a VLHF aircraft, couldn’t fly for months using only laser light.

But there’s a catch. The laser light is beamed from a satellite in geosynchronous earth orbit. Sun and Hertzberg used off-the-shelf items when they developed their study in 1977. Their satellite consisted of carbon filament structures covered with not-very-good solar cells that powered very large CO2 lasers. At the time, Sun and Hertzberg estimated that one and a half square kilometers of satellite would be necessary for each Boeing. Today, or certainly within five to ten years, we could plan on one square kilometer of satellite per VLHF aircraft. One satellite ten by ten kilometers in area could power a fleet of one hundred VLHF aircraft over one-third of the surface of the world for as long as would be necessary. Three such satellites would give the air fleets world coverage, except for the poles. Should something happen to the satellite, or should the fleet need a lot of speed, the fuel tanks should be practically full and the fleet should be able to return home on kerosene.

The satellite at first glance would seem to be the weak point of such a plan, but a power satellite, while a big and stationary target, would have a hundred or so high-energy lasers with which to defend itself. While not in use as an aircraft energy source, excess power could be beamed into ground power grids via ground-mounted solar cells. This would be a good way to deliver energy to very remote areas; build enough such satellites and the energy crisis would be nothing but a memory.

So, the air fleet rolls down the long runway and takes to the air with either a fleet of tankers supplied from an ocean of imported kerosene (or a space power satellite) dedicated to keeping the fleet flying for the duration of the mission. The fleet composition would vary with the mission. A command ship would accompany every mission; it would be very similar to a present-day AWAC, with extensive radar and command facilities. There would certainly be carriers as Captain Laning described. Some carriers would operate manned aircraft of the Tomcat variety, although numbers would be limited, perhaps to two or three per VLHF aircraft. Other carriers would operate Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs) and cruise missiles. The RPAs would be recoverable. The carriers would have basic maintenance facilities on board, sufficient to check out, arm, fuel and maintain the aircraft, and perhaps to even perform minor repair work.

While all VLHF aircraft would carry air-to-air missiles, some would be dedicated to escort work in order to deal with enemy aircraft that survived the fighters and RPAs. These escorts would also be armed with high-energy chemical laser systems designed to deal with enemy missiles and aircraft, provided that such a weapons system is practical.

Ground-attack VLHF aircraft would be simple bombers. They would carry smart gravity bombs and a handful of bombardiers who would guide each smart bomb to within feet of its target. RPAs would scout out targets and report on damage. Such a bombing mission could take days, with the bombers at high altitude and protected by escorts… slow but thorough, and very, very surgical.

Fleet communications would be by laser light. This would give the enemy nothing to listen to or jam. RPAs would be linked to the fleet via laser and thus would be free of ECM activity. RPAs would be the eyes and hands of the fleet. The antiair capability of these aircraft would be formidable. Not only could they pull incredible G forces, but they could also be used to ram the enemy if all else failed. With RPAs, pilots could be switched around as the situation demanded. A well-defended ground target could be attacked by waves of RPAs, with the same pilots flying each wave, having learned from their previous mistakes.

A fleet of VLHF aircraft could roam the world at will, being able to shift back and forth rapidly from targets thousands of miles apart and yet providing support for ground and naval operations as needed. Supplied with energy from space, the duration of the mission would be limited only by the endurance of the crew.

A cargo fleet of VLHF aircraft would bring new meaning to the term “Rapid Deployment.” With an escort of combat VLHF aircraft, the cargo fleet could go anywhere in the world at six hundred knots, laughing at Russian subs and mine fields.

Such an idea is truly radical. It raises many questions: Would it work? Would the Navy or Air Force control it? And so forth. If we started building VLHF aircraft now, there would certainly be cries of anguish from our military professionals. The taxpayer would scream in pain, and Congress would review the project. But above all the racket and noise at home, you might be able to make out the sound of cursing coming from Moscow.

Editor's Introduction to:

BATTLE AT KAHLKHOPOLIS
by Robert Adams

Robert Adams lives in Florida, where one of his nearest neighbors is Mrs. Alice Andre Norton. His best known works are the deservedly popular “Horseclans” novels.

The ancients believed that all civilization moved in cycles. There had been a Golden Age in the past, and another might come in the future. Empires rise and fall; civilizations grow and die, and it will ever be thus.

Adams writes of a time centuries after World War III, when civilization is just returning to North America. In the western plains and beyond dwell the ‘Mericans, including the nomadic peoples known as the Horseclans. To the east are more settled kingdoms, dominated in part by descendents of Greek speaking Hellene invaders who have established the rule of the thoheeks or dukes.

Before civilization collapsed there had been great advances in genetic engineering; as a result some families have highly developed telepathic communications abilities. A very few have extraordinary longevity and the ability to recover from wounds and disease. These near-immortals are regarded as gods by the common people.

Adams chronicles the saga of the inevitable conflict between the nomadic Horseclans and the settled Hellene lands. This tale of the Horseclans takes place in the early days before the clansmen learned just how vulnerable the cities were.

BATTLE AT KAHLKHOPOLIS
by Robert Adams

With the retreat of the late, unlamented King Zastros’ huge army from Karaleenos back into what once had been the Southern Kingdom of the Ehleenoee, the surviving thoheeksee of the kingdom set about putting their hereditary lands to order and productivity, filling titles vacated by war, civil war, assassinations, suicides and disease, and in general preparing the southerly territories for the merger with the victorious Confederation of the High Lord, Milos of Morai.

Chief mover and the closest thing to a king that the southern Ehleenoee now owned was Thoheeks Grahvos tohee Mehseepolis keh Eepseelospolis. After taking into consideration all of the varied infamy that had taken place in the former capital, Thrahkohnpolis, Grahvos had declared the new center of the soon-to-be Southern Confederated Thoheekseeahnee to be situated at his own principal city of Mehseepolis.

Now that city was become a seething boil of activity—sections of old walls being demolished, the city environs being expanded and new walls going up to enclose them, troops camped far and wide around the city, existing public (and not a few private) buildings becoming beehives with the comings and the goings of Ehleenoee nobility, their retainers and their staffs, as well as the host of attendent functionaries necessary to the operation of this new capital city.

One day, some years after the announcement of the new capital city, two noblemen sought audience with Thoheeks Grahvos and his advisors. One of these two was a gray beard, the other a far younger man, but the shapes and angles of the faces—eyes, noses, chins, cheekbones—clearly denoted kinship between the two, close kinship. The old man was tall, almost six feet, his physique big-boned and no doubt once very powerful, with the scars—at least a couple of which looked to be fairly new—of a proven warrior.

The harried assistant chamberlain knew that he had seen this man, or someone much like him, before, but he could not just then place who or where or when, and the petitioner refused to state his name or rank, saying only that he was a man who had been unjustly treated and was seeking redress of the new government. The only other word he deigned to send in to the thoheeksee was cryptic.

“Ask the present lord of Hwailehpolis if he recalls aught of a stallion, a dead man’s sword and a bag of gold.”

When, on his second or third trip into the meeting room, the assistant remembered to ask this odd question, Thoheeks Vikos of Hwailehpolis leaped to his feet and grabbed the assistant’s shoulders, hard, demanding, “Where is this man? What would you estimate his age? Is he come alone or did others bring him?”

When the now-trembling functionary had scuttled off to fetch back the oldster, Vikos explained his actions to his curious peers.

“It was after that debacle at Ahrbahkootchee, in the early days of the civil war. I had fought through that black day as an ensign in my late brother’s troop of horse, and in the wake of our rout by King Rahndos’ war elephants, I and full many another found myself unhorsed and hunted like a wild beast through the swamps of the bottom lands. It was nearing dusk and I was half-wading, half-swimming yet another pool when I heard horsemen crashing through the brush close by to me. Breaking off a long, hollow reed, I went underwater, as I had done right often on that terrifying day, but I knew that if they came at all close, I was done this time, for the water of the pool was clear almost to the bottom, not murky as had been so many others, nor was the spot I had to go down very deep—perhaps three feet, perhaps less.

“Suddenly I became aware that the legs of a big horse were directly beside my body, and not liking the thought of a probing spear pinning me to the bottom to gasp out my life under the water, I resignedly surfaced that I might at least die with air in my lungs.

“I looked up into the eyes of none other than Komees Pahvlos Feelohpóhlehmos himself!

“In a voice that only I could hear, he growled, ‘Stay down, damn fool boy!’ Then he shouted to the nearing troopers, ‘You fools, search that thick brush up there where the stream debouches. This pool is as clear as crystal, nothing in it save fish and crayfish, so I’m giving my stallion a drink of it.’

“Then the Komees deliberately set his horse to roiling the sediments of the bottom, clouding the water, while he did the same with the butt of his lance. He dropped a sheathed, jeweled sword upon me, and when I brought my face up to where I could see him, he tossed me a small, heavy bag and said, ‘You may well be the last of your House after this day, young Vikos. There is a bit of gold and a good sword. Wait until full dark and then head northwest; what’s left of the rebel army is withdrawing south and southeast. If you can make it up to Iron Mountain, you’ll be safe. And the next time you choose a war leader, try to choose one with at least a fighting chance to win. God keep you now.’’

Thoheeks Grahvos nodded. “Yes, it sounds of a piece with all else I know of the man. For all his ferocity and expertise in the waging of war for the three kings he served in his long career, still was he ever noted to be just and, when possible, merciful. Strange, I’d assumed him dead, legally murdered by Zastros, as were the most of his peers. It’s good to know that at least this one of the better sort survived the long bloodletting. Who was his overlord anyway? If he’ll take the proper oaths, Komees Pahvlos the Warlike would make us a good Thoheeks, say I.”

* * *

“And so,” concluded old Komees Pahvlos, “when it was become obvious that these usurping scum were determined to not only deny young Ahrahmos here his lawful patrimonies, but to take his very life as well, had they the chance, I knew that stronger measures were required, my lords.

“Could but a single warrior do it alone, it were done already. Old I assuredly am—close to seventy years-old—but I still am tough and the hilt of my good sword has not become a stranger to my hand. But a disciplined, well-armed and well-led force will be necessary to dislodge this foul kakistocracy that presently squats in Ahrahmos’ principal city and controls his rightful lands. And due to reverses, I no longer own the wherewithal to hire on fighting men, equip and mount and supply them with the necessaries of warfare.”

“But I will wager, Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos,” said Thoheeks Grahvos, “that nothing has robbed you of your old abilities to lead armies, plan winning battles and improvise stunning tactics on the spur of the moment. I had meant to ask you to take oaths to this Council and the Confederation, then assume one of the still-vacant thoheekseeahnee, but if you’ll indeed take those oaths, I have a better, far more useful task in mind for you now.”

Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn sat at a table in a tent in the camp of Seentahgmahrtees Tomos Gonsalos, senior officer of those Confederation forces sent south to aid the thoheeksee in securing and maintaining peace. With them at table sat Ahnteeseentahgmahrtees of Infantry, Guhsz Hehluh, and Thoheeks Portos, figurehead commander of these alien troops deep in the heart of the former Southern Kingdom.

A meal had been eaten while the men talked, and now, while a bottle of a sweet wine circulated, the Horseclans-man asked, “If this Pahvlos is such a slambang Strahteegos and all, how come he didn’t tromp you all proper for his king and end it before it even got started?”

“Oh, he did, he did, my good Pawl,” said Portos, “in the beginning, years ago. I was a part of that rebel army then, and I know. It required years and the—then-unknown —help of the Witchmen to put Zastros’ army back together in a shape fit to once more face Komees Pahvlos; and that, finally, we did not have to face him was a great relief to full many a one of us, believe me. By that time all of the ancient royal line was extinct, and Thoheeks Fahrkos, who had seized the crown and the capital, had dismissed the royal strahteegoee. Most of the remaining royal troops—the only regular forces the kingdom had had—deserted then, marched away with their officers, so all Fahrkos had when we brought him to bay was his personal war band, such as it was.”

“Even so,” put in the graying Freefighter officer, Guhsz Hehluh, “before I put me and my Keebai boys under the orders of some whitebeard doddard, I’ll know a bit more about him. You Kindred and Ehleenoee can do what you want, but if I mislike the sound or the smell of this Count Pahvlos, why, me and mine, we’ll just hike back up to Kehnooryos Ahtheenahs and tell High Lord Milos to find us other fights or sell us back our contract.”

But within bare days, Guhsz Hehluh was trumpeting the praises of the new Grand Strahteegos, who, with his small entourage, had ridden out and found the Freefighters at drill. After sitting his horse by Hehluh’s in the hot sun, swatting at flies and knowledgeably discussing the strengths and weaknesses of pike formations and the proper marshaling of infantry, Pahvlos had actually dismounted and hunkered in the dust of the drill field to sketch with a horny forefinger positions and movements of an intricate maneuver.

To Tomos Gonsalos, Pahvlos remarked, “It’s basically a good unit you command here, Colonel. I’d take you and them just as they are now were you not a mite shy of infantry and a mite oversupplied with cavalry. To rectify that situation, I’ll be brigading your regiment with two more, all infantry, all veterans too, no grass-green plow-boys.

“I think that both you and your other officers will get along well with Colonel Bizahros, who commands the Eighth Foot, from the outset; but Colonel Ahzprinos, commander of the reorganized Fifth Foot, is another matter entirely. Understand me, Lord Tomos, Ahzprinos is a good warrior, a fine commander in all ways, else I’d not choose him to serve under me. But he also is loud, brash and sometimes overbearing to the point of arrogance. Nonetheless, I can get along with him, and I’ll be expecting my subordinates to do so too.”

And so in the weeks that followed, the Confederation troops and the two regiments of former Southern Kingdom foot drilled and marched and drilled some more under the critical eye of Komees Pahvlos, while all awaited the arrival of the war elephants from the far-western Thoheekseeahnee, where they had been bred and trained for centuries, making do in the meantime with the three beasts that had survived King Zastros’ disastrous march north.

These three survivors were not the huge, fully war-trained bull elephants now on the march from the west but rather the smaller, more docile cow elephants, mostly utilized for draught purposes. That they were used by Komees Pahvlos at all was a testament to the extraordinary control over them exercised by Horseclansman Gil Djohnz, who could demand of the three cows performances of an order that the old strahteegos had never before seen in all his long years of service with elephant-equipped armies. Watching Djohnz and his two Horseclansmen assistants put the trio of elephants through their paces had reduced native Ehleenoee feelahksee to a state of despair and set them to mumbling darkly of sorcery and witchcraft.

The old commander was greatly impressed with Horse-clansmen in general, for never before had it been his pleasure to own such a splendid and versatile mounted force as the squadron of medium-heavy horse under Chief Pawl of Vawn. Southern Kingdom horse traditionally came in three varieties—light horse or lancers, heavy horse, most of whom were noblemen, and irregulars, who frequently were archers and usually recruited from the barbarian mountain tribes and were often undependable, to say the least.

But these northern horsemen were very dependable; moreover, they could fulfill the functions of at least two of the three—they could lay down a heavy and accurate arrow storm, then case their bows and deliver a hard, effective charge against the unit their arrows had weakened and disorganized. Serving in conjunction with such troops, Pahvlos could easily ken just how they and their forefathers had so readily rolled over the armies of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, Karaleenos and assorted far-northern barbarian principalities.

Nor was the reinforced squadron that Thoheeks Portos had brought down from the north your normal unit of lancers either. To Pahvlos’ way of thinking, they were becoming true heavy horse, and he used them as such, obtaining from Thoheeks Grahvos a half-squadron of old-fashioned light-horse lancers to take over the scouting, flank-guarding and messenger functions of traditional light-horse usage.

To Thoheeks Portos’ questions regarding the reassignment of function of his squadron, the old strahteegos answered, “My lord Thoheeks, to my way of thinking, if you put a man up on a sixteen-hand courser all armored with steel and boiled leather, the man himself protected by a thigh-length hauberk and steel helm and armed with lance and saber and light ax and long shield, then that man is no longer a mere lancer but a medium-heavy horseman at the very least. Your so-called lancers differ from Lord Pawl’s force only in that his are equipped with bows rather than lances, carry targes instead of shields.”

Although inordinately pleased with all of his cavalry, both native and alien, Komees Pahvlos was not quite certain what to make of or do with the most singular pikemen of Lord Guhsz Hehluh. Unless they chanced to be the foot guards of a king or some other high, powerful, wealthy nobleman, or of a walled city, Southern Kingdom pikemen simply were not armored—save for a light helmet of stiffened leather with strips of steel and a thick jack of leather, plus a pair of leather gauntlets that were occasionally reinforced with metal—and only the steadier, more dependable front ranks were provided with a body shield, to be erected before them where they knelt or crouched to angle their pikes. Traditionally, of course, they had died in droves whenever push came to shove; such was and had always been expected.

But not so in the case of the big, mostly fair-skinned, thick-thewed barbarians commanded by Lord Guhsz. Only the cheek-guards and chin-slings of their helmets were of leather, the rest—crown-bowls, segmented nape-guards and bar-nasals—being of good-quality steel. Their burly bodies were guarded to the waists and their bulging arms to the elbow by steel scales sewn and riveted to padded canvas jacks; both their high-cuffed gauntlets and their leathern kilts were thickly sewn with steel mail, and below a steel-plate kneecap, their shins and calves were protected with sets of splint armor riveted inside their boot linings.

Moreover, each and every one of these pikemen carried a slightly out-bowed, rectangular shield a good two feet wide and near twice that in length, and on the command, each man of a formation could raise that shield a bit above his head in such a manner as to over- and underlap those of his fellows and provide a roof that could turn an arrow storm as adroitly as a roof of clay tiles turns a rainstorm.

Nor were these the only differences in the equipage of the alien foot and those of the Southern Kingdom. Aside from his fifteen-foot pike, your average pikeman bore no weapons other than a utility eating knife, while not a one of Lord Guhsz’s men but did not also bear a heavy, double-edged sword about a foot and a half in its sharp-pointed blade, one or more shorter dirks or daggers, sometimes even a short-hafted belt-ax of the sort that could be either tool or missle or weapon.

Burdened as they were, the old strahteegos had doubted that these overprotected, overarmed, overequipped pikemen could maintain the needful pace on the march or in a broad-front charge. But that had been before he put them to it; after he had, he knew the—to him, near incredible—facts of the matter. It was at that point that his formerly rock-firm opinions began to undergo a change and he began to wonder just why so many generations of his forebears had callously, needlessly, sacrificed so many pikemen with the excuse, now proven false, that proper armor and secondary weapons would decrease mobility. Colonel Bizahros agreed with him, but Colonel Ahzprinos did not, flatly, unequivocally, and at very great length.

So the eeahtrosee, with their bandages and ointments, their saws and other surgical devices, arrived. The artificers were assigned, the quartermasters and the cooks, the smiths, the farriers, the wagoners and the mule skinners. Finally Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos, tired of waiting and drilling, announced to the Council that he intended to start on his campaign with only the three cow elephants he already had, wanting to get the business over and done before the autumn rains arrived to complicate things for a field army.

Mainahkhos Klehpteekos and Ahreekhos Krehohpoleeos had risen fast and high from their origins as common troopers in the first, almost-extirpated army of Thoheeks Zastros. That both men were savage and completely unprincipled had helped; that they were good war leaders and inordinately lucky had helped even more. During the years of howling chaos in the Southern Kingdom, they and the heterogeneous packs of deserters, banditti, escaped criminals, shanghaied peasants and stray psychopaths they had led had sometimes signed on as a mercenary force to first one then another army of the battling lords.

Sometimes they had given the service for which they had been paid. But more often they had either deserted en masse or turned their coats at a crucial point, especially if the ongoing battle showed signs of being a close one. At length so odious had their reputation become that no lord or city—no matter how desperate—would even consider hiring them on; at that point they followed their basic inclinations, becoming out-and-out warlords, they and their lawless band of ruffians at open war against the world.

When at long last Zastros had made himself High King and, after scouring the length and breadth of the land for soldiers and men of military age, had marched his half million and more north out of the kingdom, on the road to his death in Karaleenos, the two warlords had found themselves in pigs’ paradise, able now to prey not only on villages and travelers and isolated estates, but on walled towns and cities as well.

They had behaved in their usual bestial fashion at the intakings of the first few of these urban sites, which were by then all but defenseless despite their walls, what with their once-garrisons now marching north behind the Green Dragon banner of High King Zastros—first raping, plundering, torturing, then killing whole populations until the streets ran with gore, and finally burning everything combustible in the stinking charnel house they had made of the towns.

Then, of a day, a broken nobleman who had joined the bandit army to avoid starving had had words with the two warlords and slowly convinced them of the sagacity of those words. For all that they and their followers were become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams of avarice, each succeeding victory had cost them men—and men of fighting age and strength were become almost as precious as rubies in this land stripped of warrior stock by Zastros’ strenuous recruitments. Moreover, scattered and fast-moving survivors of those intakings had spread the word of the atrocities far and wide so that all walled enclosures within weeks of marching time were doing everything possible to strengthen their existing defenses and had put aside any previous thoughts of trying to deal with the marauders on a near-peaceful basis.

So although it went hard against the grain, the warlords had begun to rein in their savages, dealing gently—by their personal lights—with the inhabitants of those places that opened the gates without a fight and showed a willingness to treat. Mainahkhos and Ahreekos even took it upon themselves to move against, either recruiting or wiping out, numerous smaller bands of their own ilk then lurking about the countryside. Then they began to recruit from the remaining garrisons of the smaller towns and cities, and slowly their howling pack of human predators metamorphosed into a real, more-or-less organized army.

By the day, three years ago, that they had appeared under the walls of the city of Kahlkhopolis, one-time seat of the Thoheeksee of Kahlkhos, the few straggling hundreds of ill-or sketchily armed bandits were become an impressive, very threatening sight indeed.

All classes of infantry marched in their ranks, fully armed and equipped; heavy cavalry rode in that column, with light cavalry on the wings and riding guard on the awesome siege train. Only elephants were lacking, and this deficiency was partly alleviated through the use of old-fashioned, mule-drawn war carts as archery platforms—the stout, armored cart bodies with scythe blades set in the wheel hubs and the big mules all hung with mail having proven almost as effective as elephants at the task of smashing in infantry formations for years before the pachyderms had been adapted to warfare.

The last thoheeks, Klawdos, was by then five years dead, a casualty of the civil war, along with all his male kin. His wife and infant son had disappeared shortly after his death, and the city was then being held by a distant cousin of the ancient line, a bastard with little claim to noble blood, even less to military experience. So when he ordered the gates to be closed and the walls to be manned by the pitifully few men he owned, what was left of the city council did the only reasonable thing: They murdered him.

Since then Mainahkhos had been thoheeks in all save name, having seen to it that the city councilmen quickly followed their victim into death by one means or another. He had been upon the teetering verge of declaring himself Thoheeks Mainahkhos Klehftis of Klehftispolis (as he and his men had become “respectable,” he had adopted the new surname, and now no man who was undesirous of a messy, agonizing and brutally protracted demise ever called the warlord Klehpteekos “the thief”), when he had learned that the son of his legal predecessor still lived.

He and his fellow warlord had both chanced to be out of the city when the boy had come nosing about in company with some arrogant dotard, but the snooping pair had been gone beyond recall when the would-be thoheeks had returned, and he had had the fools who had allowed their escape flayed alive and rolled in salt for their stupidity. Those cured skins still hung in a prominent place in his hall of audience—a silent, savage warning to his surviving followers.

As the would-be thoheeks sat at meat with his principal officer-advisors and his longtime partner, Ahreekhos (who had never bothered to change his surname, still reveling in the cognomen of “Butcher,” although he was grown now far too fat to do much real fighting of any nature), the topic of the discussion was that army which they had received word was even now advancing against them from the southeast.

In answer to a query from Mainahkhos, the heavy cavalry commander, one Stehrghiahnos—who had been born and reared the heir to a vahrohneeskos, though he had forfeited title and lands and very nearly life itself through too early a support of the then-rebel Thoheeks Zastros—said cautiously, “My lord, it might be as well to essay a meeting with these commanders. After all, my lord’s claim to this thoheekseeahn is as good as any; he has been a good lord and owns the support of the people of the city, at least…”

Ahreekhos nodded agreement. “He’s right, you know, Mainahkhos. From what all my scouts have told me, that army a-coming ain’t one I’d of cared to face three years agone, even when we was at full strength, much less now. And they got them elephants too, at least three of the critters, prob’ly more.

“Why not send out Stehrghiahnos, there, and a couple more fellers and let them palaver with this strahteegos, huh? Ain’t nuthin to be lost by that, is it? Old Thoheeks Grahvos and them is making new thoheeksee and komeesee and such all over the place, and like’s just been said, you got you as good a claim to this here city and all as anybody has. Could be, since you say you’ll stand a-hint Thoheeks Grahvos and them, ‘t’won’t be no battle a-tall.”

Mainahkhos shrugged. “Hell, that’s right. Ain’t a damn thing lost by talking with them bastids… but I want the levy and all raised at the same time too. And send word to old Ratface Billisos to brang up ever swingin’ dick he can lay claws to from the western komeeseeahnee too, and all the mounts what he can beg, borror or steal too.”

Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos received Stehrghiahnos of course, but he treated him with the contempt that he felt a renegade nobleman deserved. When he had heard him out, he shrugged and spoke.

“Were the house indeed extinct, there might possibly be a bare modicum of sense in what you have said, but it is not extinct. Here, at this very table, sits the rightful Thoheeks of Kahlkhos.” He nodded his white head in the direction of young Ahrahmos, who sat stiffly and blank-faced in his dusty, field-browned armor, his plain helm and sheathed sword on the table top before him.

From where he stood (Pahvlos had deliberately proffered no chair or stool), Stehrghiahnos eyed the husky boy critically, then said, “We might avoid a general, assuredly costly battle, you know, my lord Thoheeks, by the simple, old-fashioned expedient of arranging a session-in-arms between the present Thoheeks of Kahlkhos and this pretender you present here.”

“Cow flop!” the old man snorted in scorn, adding, “In addition to being an arrant traitor to your class and your breeding, you seem to possess all the native intelligence of a braying ass. And I warn you, sirrah, if you make the mistake of drawing that blade, I’ll see you lose that hand a joint an hour before you leave this camp!

“To begin, Thoheeks Ahrahmos here, far from being some pretender, is the rightful overlord of Kahlkhos, Thoheeks by birth; as such, he deserves and is being afforded the firm support of every loyal, right-thinking nobleman of this new Confederated Thoheekseeahnee… which is precisely why I and my army are here.

“The sort of resolution you’ve suggested does not apply to this situation. It was considered legal only for cases wherein both contenders owned equal birthright claim or no claim at all. Besides, no gentleman—no true gentleman— of my army is going to go forth to meet a common bandit-chief on terms of equality… and I find it significant of just how far down the ladder you have descended that you would even suggest so dishonorable a course to me and Thoheeks Ahrahmos.”

Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos’ original order of battle had been to place the armored pikemen of Hehluh and Bizahros at the center of his line, retaining the unarmored pikemen of Ahzprinos as a reserve, and placing half of the Horseclan’s medium-heavy cavalry on each wing to provide enfilading archery against any aggressive movements on the part of the enemy. He did not intend to advance until the opposing force had been bled a bit at trying to break his line.

Reports of probing cavalry patrols, and information gleaned from captives as well as from a few loyalists who had managed to flee the city, had assured the old soldier that, although outnumbered, his was much the better, more reliable army.

The broad, verdant plain surrounding the city was the logical place for any battle. True, it was not all open ground; there were a few copses here and there, a few folds of the landscape, but none large enough or deep enough to allow for ambushes or unpleasant surprises for any save the smallest of units.

A week after the visit of Stehrghiahnos to his camp, the elderly Strahteegos was apprised by a sweating, bleeding galloper that a detachment of his far-ranging lancers had made contact—violent contact—with an estimated two thousand men, mixed horse and foot, who were apparently guarding a long wagon train, a large herd of cattle and a smaller herd of horses and mules. The newcomers were marching west-to-east, in the direction of Kahlkhopolis.

Grinning like a winter wolf, Thoheeks Pahvlos dispatched Thoheeks Portos and a mounted force consisting of both the heavy and the medium-heavy cavalry. As an afterthought, he reinforced the units of lancers that were ambling about just beyond bowshot of the city walls, lest someone in there get the idea of riding forth to succor the obvious supply train.

A bit after nightfall, Thoheeks Portos rode into camp to report few casualties to his own force, most of the foemen dead and the few survivors scattered and running hard. His troopers were bringing in the wagons and the horse herd but had left the scrawny cattle to wander at will.

At dawn a herald was sent to the main gate of the city to summon Stehrghiahnos. When that renegade dismounted before Pahvlos’ pavilion, ranged beyond the hitching rail were a number of wooden stakes, each crowned with a livid, blood-streaked head. The sharp features and prominent, out-thrust incisors that had given Ratface Billisos his name were on one of those ghastly heads, and that fact gave Stehrghiahnos the clear, indisputable message that there would no be no reinforcements or resupply, no matter how long his overlord waited.

Pahvlos’ words were short and brusque. “Yesterday, Master Stehrghiahnos, my cavalry intercepted and extirpated the western contingent of your chief’s bandit band. We captured some two hundred head of horses and mules, considerable amounts of arms and armor and horse gear, and over fifty wagon- and wain-loads of supplies, as well as so many cattle that we had to leave the most of them running loose around the site of the battle.

“You had best advise your chief that he will not now be reinforced or supplied, so he had best come to battle with me as soon as possible, before his force within the city begins to suffer and be weakened by starvation and disease. Not that Thoheeks Ahrahmos and I give a damn how many bandits and renegades starve or suffer or waste away of the pox or the bloody flux, but we want no undue suffering to befall the innocent, the noncombatants within the city.”

Screened by a long file of mounted lancers who, under orders, were raising as much dust as possible in their slow progress, Gil Djohnz and the elephant Sunshine led the way toward the assigned position. Sunshine, Tulip and Newgrass were armored for the coming battle, but their huge, distinctively shaped bodies had for the nonce been covered with sheets of a dull-colored cloth, while the heavy, cumbersome, wood-and-leather archer boxes had been dismounted and were now being borne in their wake by the teams of archers who would occupy them.

After the third or fourth time he slipped and stumbled on the broken, uneven footing, Gil found himself steadied and lifted easily back onto his feet by the gentle but powerful trunk of Sunshine. “You are silly to try to walk, Man-Gil,” the pachyderm mindspoke him. “Your poor little feet will be sore beyond bearing tonight. Those men yonder are astride their horses, so why do you not ride Sunshine?”

Gil sighed. Sunshine was as stubborn as any mule when she so chose to be. “It is still as I have said ere this, sister-mine: High as you are, if I mount you, those watching from the other army will know that at least one elephant is in this area, and it is our plan that they not know such until we are ready to attack them.”

“Silly!” Sunshine mindspoke. “Two-legs are surely the very silliest of creatures. Fighting is the silliest of two-leg pastimes, and Sunshine is herself silly for taking part in such silliness; she only does so because she loves you, Gil.”

At that same moment, seven huge, tawny felines were but just arrived in position to the rear of the cavalry reserve of the bandit army. They crouched within a tiny copse, their sleek bodies unmoving, their colors blending well with the dead leaves that covered the ground.

One of the prairie cats—for such they were, come south as part of the Horseclans’ force—meshed his mind with those of two others to gain sufficient strength for farspeak and beamed out, “We are where you said we should be. The horses cannot smell us… yet. But I fear the wind soon may shift…”

Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos’ well-concocted plan of battle had to be severely altered. With the bandit army formed up in position, it became clear that in order to avoid having his center outflanked by the center of the enemy, he must either stretch his lines of armored pikemen to suicidal thinness or commit the unarmored pikemen of Ahzprinos; for the umpteenth time he cursed the old-fashioned, obstinate, obtuse officer and his failure to emulate the other two pike regiments.

At length the strahteegos made what he felt to be the best of a bad situation. He extended the regiments of Hehluh and Bizahros to a depth of only six men, but then he ordered the first and second battalions of Ahzprinos’ regiment to form up two men deep immediately behind the armored regiments.

Of course this left him damnall reserve—one battalion of old-style pikemen, the headquarters guard of heavy horse and a scattering of lancers—but it would have to do.

Nor was he formed up any too soon. Out from both wings of the bandit army came clattering the war carts. Barded to the fetlocks as they were, there was no way to determine just how heavily or fully the pairs of big mules were armored; it was only safe to assume that they were. Three men stood in each jouncing, springless cart, two archers and a spearman; the man responsible for guiding the pair was mounted on the near-side mule, fully armored and bearing shield and sword or ax. The carts kept a good distance from each other lest the steel blades projecting from each wheel hub become entangled with another set or, worse, cripple a mule.

Pahvlos saw immediately that there were not enough of the armored war carts to tempt even such an amateur as the bandit chief to send them head-on against the massed pikes and hope to get any of them back. Anyone knew that the cavalry on the wings could easily ride deadly rings around such slow, cumbersome conveyances, and that left only a couple of alternative uses for the archaic weapons: an attempt to drive between wing and center and take the pikemen on the flank, or a series of passes back and forth across the front while raining with darts and arrows the pikemen they assumed to be unarmored and shieldless.

It was the latter. In staggered lines, the war carts were drawn, clattering and bouncing, the length of the formations of pikemen, expending quantities of arrows for precious few casualties. As the first line of war carts reached the end of that first pass and began to wheel about, however, they got an unexpected and very sharp taste of medicine similar to that they had been so lavishly dispensing. Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn, commanding the left wing, treated the carts and mules to such an arrow storm that some quarter of the carts were unable to return to the raking of the pikelines. Nor did the carts receive any less from the Horseclansmen under Tomos Gonsalos on the right wing.

With it patently clear that the war carts were doing no significant damage to his front, Strahteegos Pahvlos sent Thoheeks Portos’ heavy lancers out from the rear area and in a wide swing around his own right to deliver a crushing, crashing charge against the units of heavy horse and irregulars making up the left wing of the bandit army. That charge thudded home with a racket that could be heard even within the old warrior’s pavilion. The heavy lancers fought bravely for a few minutes after the initial assault, but then a banner went down, and with loud lamentations, they began to disengage piecemeal and withdraw. Sensing victory within grasping distance, the bandits’ entire left wing quitted its position to stream out in pursuit.

And no sooner had the cavalry left its assigned flank areas than up out of a brushy gully filed Sunshine, Tulip and Newgrass. Speedily the cloth shroudings were stripped away, the heavy, unwieldy, metal-shod boxes lifted up onto the broad backs and strapped into place. Then the boxes were manned by the archers; Gil Djohnz and the other two were lifted by the elephants to the saddles just behind the domes of the huge heads, and those still gathered about on the ground affixed the last pieces of the pachyderms’ armor and uncased the broad and heavy-bladed swords—six feet and more in blade length—each elephant would swing in the initial attack.

All of these preparations were well-rehearsed and so took less than five minutes in the accomplishment. Then the three huge beasts set out abreast at a walk that the trailing and flanking horsemen had some difficulty in matching for speed over the broken ground.

Much of Mainahkhos’ “infantry” was no such thing; rather were the most of them a broad cross section of civilian men impressed off streets at sword’s point and handed a pike or a spear before being hustled willy-nilly into an aggregation of similar unfortunates, then marched out to add depth to the pikeline. To these, the mere sight of the three behemoths fast bearing down upon them, swinging two-meetrah blades and supported by a horde of horsemen, was all that was needful to evoke instant panic.

Pawl, Chief of Clan Vawn, farspoke but a single thought: “Now, cat-brother!”

With bloodcurdling squalls, the seven mighty cats burst out of the tiny copse and sped toward the ranks of the now-mounting cavalry reserve. Broadbeaming hideous mind-pictures of blood and equine death, never ceasing their cacophonies of snarls, growls, squalls and howls, the felines rapidly bore down upon the horses and men.

The harried, wounded commander of the war carts had never before heard of such a thing! Leaving its secure position, the entire four-hundred-yard length of the enemy pikeline was advancing, moving at a brisk walk, pikes still presented—an array of winking steel points that projected well ahead of the marching lines. The miserable infantry simply did not advance against armored war carts! Basically a less-than-imaginative man, the commander did the only thing he could just then think to do—he headed back from whence he and his force had come.

But before the carts could reach their objective, their own infantry had boiled forward, out of formation, to block the way. Deeply contemptuous of footmen at even the best of times, the commander led his survivors in carving a gory path through these up to the moment that a terrified man smote him such a blow with a poleax as to hurl him to the ground just at the proper time and place to be decapitated by the sharp, bloodstreaked, whirling blades projecting from the hub of his own war cart.

Portos and his squadron abruptly turned, raised the “fallen” banner and hacked a good half of their pursuers out of the saddle before said pursuers broke and fled. At that juncture, Portos halted his forces, formed them up and directed them at the nearest protrusion of the roiling, confused mass of men that had formerly been the enemy’s center.

But the projection had recoalesced with the main mass by the time the heavy horse reached it, so quick-thinking Portos rode on into the chaos that had lately been the rear areas of the bandit army. After leaving half the squadron to interdict the road leading to the city, the grim officer used the other half to strike the rear and flank of those units still guarding the right wing of the bandit army only bare moments before those units were assaulted all along the front by Chief Pawl Yawn’s Horseclansmen.

With the precipitate retreat of the war carts, Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos ordered the drums to roll the signal, whereupon the pikemen dropped their shields, lowered their long, heavy pikes to lowguard-present—waist-level—and increased their pace to a trot, though maintaining proper interval and formation up to the very moment that their steel points sank into soft flesh or grated upon armor and bone.

Although the slaughter continued on for some hours more on that bloody field, the charge of the pikemen had ended the Battle of Kahlkhopolis.

Editor's Introduction to:

THE CONQUEROR OF VECTIS
by Keith Taylor

This story by Australian novelist Keith Taylor is not science fiction. If I have to defend including it in this collection, I’ll claim it’s fantasy. Mostly, though, it’s a whacking good tale of betrayal and revenge.

THE CONQUEROR OF VECTIS
by Keith Taylor

“Look yonder, lads! A wide, inviting path to Hamo, where the British king sits and shakes every time he looks southward! One of these years we will row up it and plunder his town.”

Cerdic laughed loudly and threw out his arm in an extravagant gesture to show the path he’d spoken of. It scarcely needed indicating. One couldn’t look to starboard and miss it: an estuary of mirror-bright water, miles long and wide, as Cerdic had said. Nor did any of the chieftain’s men have doubts about his eventual plans for the mainland. He’d made the same boast many times of late.

Men laughed in response and threw taunts northward that no Briton could hear. Cerdic was a popular leader. The dourer spirits among his band stayed silent. These were mostly the older, more experienced warriors. They thought that boasting so freely tempted ill luck. Still, that was Cerdic’s way. He’d a wide-ranging mind, but one thought that never seemed to enter it was failure. Maybe that was why he almost never did fail.

His three serpent-ships raced on, striped sails full of a powerful breeze that bent the masts a little. He’d been harrying on the Gaulish side of the Narrow Sea and had good pickings. A sudden storm had parted him from his two other ships—from all his other ships, in truth, although two had rejoined him later and two had not. He’d spent time looking for them, to no avail. They might be sunk.

That possibility did nothing to dampen Cerdic’s mood. Who could outlive his fate? Either the two ships would come home or they wouldn’t. He turned his disconcerting eyes to port and looked on the shore of Vectis, his island by conquest. He grinned and stretched. Life was fine.

“Best we clew up the sails now,” said Ulfcetel, the wolf-gray sailing master. He was one of those who had kept his mouth stolidly shut when Cerdic talked of sacking Hamo. The chieftain was not put out. Ulfcetel might be chary of talking, but Cerdic knew he wouldn’t find the man backward when it came to doing.

Anent the sails, he nodded. They were as near the wind now as the ships would go. Luckily they were also almost home. Under the long ash oars they moved into an estuary which, while tiny compared with the mainland estuary, was the largest Vectis could show and led nigh to the center of the island. At its head rose Cerdic’s fortress of Wiht-gara-byrig. It had been known as Dun Kinmalin until Cerdic had come there with five ships and almost three hundred war-men to carry the palisade and slay the British defenders. The peasants of Vectis had shuddered at the din and learned in the morning that they had a new lord—although he had proved no worse than the old and was at least half British.

The wide-bladed oars flashed wet in sunlight and sank into shadow. The ships moved in file past oak woods, where the acorns had begun to turn brown. Before long they came in sight of Wiht-gara-byrig’s palisade and saw two other war-boats drawn up on the shore in front of it, recognizable at once.

“By Frey’s prick,” Cerdic said. “Withucar is back before us! Yet we returned early ourselves. He must have had great luck.”

Cerdic was first to spring ashore, a tall man, large-boned and powerful. The mass of tawny hair sweeping back from his temples and wide forehead was confined by a plain leather band, which also kept his helmet from rubbing him raw. Not that he wore his helmet now. His scale byrnie glittered in the sun, and his plenitude of golden arm-rings, studs, buckles, sword-hilt and scabbard ornamentation far outshone it. The Kentish jewelers were superb craftsmen, and Cerdic believed in adorning himself with the best or nothing.

Men called greetings from the ramparts above the gate, which stood open, but none came forth. Cerdic stood for a moment, looking for Giralda and his children. No sign of them. His frown betrayed astonishment and even slight hurt. Why, he hadn’t held Vectis above two years! Were they so used to his coming home from plundering forays that they didn’t rush down to the water’s edge with embraces, questions about the fighting from Cynric, questions from the girls about the gifts he’d brought them? For a moment the infamous pirate looked his son’s age, which was rising five. Then he turned to give a hand with hauling the ships ashore.

“Quiet in the holding,” Ulfcetel grunted. “I’ll wager they didn’t precede us home by much, and there’s been heavy drinking done.”

Young Lanfrith, just behind him on the rope, said, “There’ll be more,” and dug in his heels.

The serpent-ships beached, Cerdic led the way toward the gate. He was halfway there when a sound he knew well rang forth hideously: the scream of a mortally stricken man. He bared his sword. Through the open gate he glimpsed savage movement and three figures fiercely beset. A spear flashed and reddened.

Breaking from the fight, one of the three ran for the gate. Despite the plain hooded cloak she wore, Cerdic recognized her by her running. He’d have been in a bad way had he failed to recognize her. With a flaming oath, he began to run himself.

In the background, the two gesiths who had bought her her respite were cut down, overwhelmed by numbers. A warrior darted into view and seized her about the waist. She writhed in his grip and used the sax-knife she held. It opened his arm from shoulder to elbow as if boning a joint of beef. He howled, let her go and commenced bleeding to death.

Her hood had fallen back in the brief struggle. She swung toward the gate again with a swirl of gray mantle and flame-red hair. Her ear splitting yell scared birds off the river.

“Go back, Cerdicl It’s a trap!”

The heavy gate thudded shut. From the rampart beside it, spears flew at the chieftain; he sprang nimbly to escape them. Then when he saw bows being drawn, he legged it, dodging, to the shelter of his ship.

“Well, Cerdic,” a nasal bass addressed him. “I nearly had you then! Still, I have your woman and brats, and that’s near as good. What will you do now?”

“Withucar!” Cerdic said. He comprehended suddenly. Salt-seething rage filled him. “Do? I’ll haul you out of my fortress and hack you into twelve pieces!”

The Saxon adventurer laughed like a gander’s honk. “Try! Rush this palisade! We’ll slaughter you! Even if you get over it, the first thing I’ll do will be to throw Giralda’s head at you. Then if you begin to get the upper hand within the walls, we can start cutting your children’s throats, beginning with the youngest. Tell me though… do you truly think it would come to that?”

Cerdic’s men howled and brandished their weapons. The chieftain stood as if carved from heart-of-oak. No. The treacherous cur was right. It wouldn’t come to that. Wiht-gara-byrig’s defenses were too strong.

Giralda was in there, and the children.

Cerdic mastered himself. The effort it demanded made blood roar hollow in his ears and darkened the sunlight. He said at last, equably:

“That requires thought, doesn’t it?”

Withucar chuckled. “Think all you please. I’ll still have the best hostages a man could wish. You couldn’t think your way past that were you as wise as the One-eyed. Now I’ll go take a knotted rope to Giralda’s back for warning you.”

“Wait!” Cerdic said hoarsely. “Can you be bargained with on that score?”

“Not to thrash her? Come! You will never get her back. Take my word for that. Even if you did, you’d find her the sweeter for it.”

Cerdic wanted to roar, “Touch her and I’ll kill you!” but he didn’t. This was no time for foolishness; he couldn’t reach the man, and besides, he intended to kill him no matter what happened. He’d have given an arm to get the remaining hand on the oath-breaker who stood and taunted him.

“What will you take to forget the rope’s end?”

“The plunder in your ships!” Withucar laughed.

Cerdic turned to the silent men behind him. “Fetch it up,” he said curtly.

A murmur swept them. Young Lanfrith went further. “What?” he yelped. “But, lord–”

Cerdic’s lips barely moved. “I wouldn’t wish to let that swine see me slay you. Obey me.”

Lanfrith shifted his feet, confused. Ulfcetel spoke out. “Lord, I’m not disputing you. But have you thought this may well do no good?”

“And it just may. Whether or no—do you suppose I mean Withucar to keep it long? Or his hostages, or his life? Now we have argued sufficiently.” His voice rose to an angry roar. “Move!”

They obeyed, piling their loot before the gate. Cerdic’s face was almost black with fury as he watched, less for the plunder than for the rash words he had no notion how to redeem. One idea did occur to him, but even in his wrath he saw it was worthless. Withucar would never agree. Why should he?

They sullenly withdrew to their ships.

“This is the way of it,” Cerdic said to his men, his strong voice ringing out. “We are here, and Withucar is there. He holds Giralda, my son and my daughters. May monsters eat his corpse on Nastrand! Well. I could bid him meet me in single fight. He’d laugh. As for ransom, I might sack the world from end to end and pour its treasures before him and he wouldn’t part with his hostages. What use is treasure to a dead man? And that he’d shortly be, once he had no threat to hold over my head! Maybe he’d send out the girls, and maybe even Giralda or Cynric with them… one or the other, but not both. Now if there’s a man here who knows I’m overlooking something, let him tell me.”

Uneasy silence greeted that. At last Lanfrith said, “I’d put a question, lord. Will you accept what Withucar has done?”

Cerdic’s broad hand clenched over his sword-pommel. A growl, half anger, half derision, went through the band of warriors. Cerdic said fiercely, “Never!”

“Then it’s best we take ourselves to Kent,” Ulfcetel advised. “King Oisc will aid you with ships and men. You can return in sufficient strength to retake yon fortress, lord—and maybe to awe Withucar’s own men into giving up the lady and the bantlings once they see you are determined. It will be necessary to give them quarter.”

“Well,” Cerdic said, “it’s the soundest rede I’ve heard today.”

His heart was not in it. Gods! How his pride would suffer, to go begging King Oisc for aid to regain the holding he’d let slip through his fingers! Oh, true, it was the logical thing to do. King Oisc had acknowledged Cerdic as his son two years before, when Cerdic had taken the fortress and Vectis-isle for his own. They had cobbled up some story about Oisc and a British princess. It was manure; Cerdic’s mother had decidedly not been a princess, and almost the one certain thing about his father was that he hadn’t been Oisc. No. Not even that was certain. It just might be so. Yet the story gave Cerdic a pedigree and Oisc a blood tie with this formidable young chieftain.

“Then, lord,” said Lanfrith boldly, “we need not fare to Kent! If you mean to do this, it can be done with the men we have! We be three ships’ companies. Withucar has only two—less than that, indeed. You left loyal men in the fortress. The Saxon must have taken them by surprise while they sat at meat with his followers, but still, no matter how swift his treachery, he’d have had losses. He made the mistake of leaving a few loyal men alive. I suppose they swore to serve him and then gave the lady Giralda her chance to warn you when the time arrived. Also, they took their scot before they fell. Let Withucar know that you know this, and he’s exposed as a bluffer! We can awe his men as we stand.”

Cerdic, listening gravely, thought of himself eight yeaers before. He almost smiled.

“Have you more to say?” he asked.

Lanfrith was puzzled. “Why—why, no, lord!”

Cerdic shrugged byrnied shoulders. “Duck him in the river.”

The gesiths enthusiastically complied. Later, as the three serpent-ships were racing for Kent with all the swiftness half a hundred strong rowers could give to each, Ulfcetel took the trouble to explain to the youngster.

“You forgot something, lad—or never saw it. Withucar, that bastard, wanted us to enter the fortress. Then he’d ha’ taken us by surprise and slain us all. He couldn’t have relied on doing that with two ships’ companies only. It’s all he had when the storm parted us from him, true. What of it? The sea’s a salt broth of pirates looking for land of their own. He may well have fallen in with some of them. It may even ha’ been that which put the thought of treachery into his head. We saw no ships but Withucar’s two, but then he wouldn’t desire us to see them, and they are easily hidden. The ring-breaker wanted to storm that place far more than you, but he’s not one for throwing his men’s lives away. You’ll learn.”

There was also a thing Ulfcetel did not mention, though it had occurred to every man in Cerdic’s three ships—and none of them mentioned it either. Touching Cerdic most nearly, never out of his thoughts, it filled him with anguish and murder.

Giralda was in the traitor’s hands; his Giralda. She was undoubtedly in his bed as well. He’d be enjoying her there each night while she waited for Cerdic’s return, and when Cerdic told the story of what had happened, as he must do in Kent to get the king’s aid, every soul on the Isle of Thanet would know. Soon afterward it would be known up and down the Narrow Sea. To a man of Cerdic’s colossal pride, this was like a garlic rub after being flayed in dainty patterns. It couldn’t be borne. It must be borne. Two visions he saw constantly: Giralda, writhing naked in Withucar’s arms, and Giralda, red hair flying loose, red knife slashing, setting her life at stake to warn him of ambush.

“Wotan,” he said between his teeth, “give me victory—give me cunning and luck to make it better than hollow victory—and I’ll sacrifice a hundred men to you, hanged upon green-growing trees before the summer ends!”

King Oisc of Kent made no difficulty about granting aid. He was Cerdic’s putative father, after all. To Cerdic he seemed secretly amused by what had happened, but if so, he’d the tact to conceal it.

“I’d not order men of mine to go on such a venture,” he said. “However, any that wish may do so, and they may take ships of mine to fare in. Choose them better than you chose this Withucar.”

Cerdic took the advice glumly.

He’d no difficulty in getting men. Besides being glad to go with him and punish an oath-breaker, they all knew Cerdic for the most openhanded of chieftains. He’d give them rich gifts for a service like this. Aye, it would be a merry business, and if Cerdic himself was less merry than usual, well, that was understandable.

Teg and Octha came, late sons of Hengist himself by casual bedmates and thus King Oisc’s younger half-brothers. The dreadful Tosti Fenrir’s-get came too. He was reputed to be a werewolf, and his behavior lent credibility to the tale. There was also Wecstan, who had been outlawed from among the Elbe Saxons and happened to be Disc’s guest at the time. These were the greatest names, and there were many good if lesser ones besides. When Cerdic sailed west again, he did so with seven ships and four hundred men.

Aboard their ship, Wecstan’s cousin Liudehere said, grinning, “The laughter will be heard in Rome if we should find that this traitor has used his respite to plunder Wiht-gara-byrig of all he can carry off and decamped!”

The Saxon outlaw glanced from the gray water hissing along the strakes to the white-and-red sail above him. “Cerdic would hunt him out if he hid under the roots of Yggdrasil. He must know that. Besides, a base like Vectis is what every landless rover dreams of, slavering. I’d be tempted to try for it myself had I more men. I fancy this wolf will yield it with his last breath, and no other way.” They came to Vectis by daylight, with no attempt at stealth. Their bright sails could be seen from afar. Ashore, banners of white cloth fluttered in reply. The coast-watchers Withucar had set were giving the alarm. This duty done, they rode or ran to the fortress as fast as they might, while the common folk of the island hugged their children and prayed destruction on every sea-wolf’s head.

All save those few who had reason to know how much worse Withucar would be than Cerdic.

From the ramparts of Wiht-gara-byrig, men watched Cerdic’s force leave the ships. Cerdic himself was conspicuous by his beard and helmet. Withucar smiled.

“They have numbers, but ours is the strongpoint,” he said to the henchmen nearest him. “Pass the word. Cerdic is to be slain at all costs. With him dead, we can deal with the others. Oisc of Kent will take wergild for him and leave us in peace. But while Cerdic lives, we’ll none of us draw a safe breath.”

He said it not fearfully but as one who recognizes a fact. Withucar was a big man, as tall as Cerdic, barely a few pounds lighter, and longer of arm. He’d braided his hair for fighting. A grin moved his heavy flaxen mustache as he watched Cerdic come up the shore for a parley.

The Brittano-Jute halted a long spear’s cast from the gate. “Well, oath-breaker, you see I’ve returned!” he thundered. “Now send out my family.”

“I will,” Withucar answered. “Be sure I will! Whenever you wish! Fragment by fragment. Rush this palisade when it pleases you. Not many will get over it, and none of those who do will survive.”

“Do you think so? Then you’re a greater fool than I was to trust you! I took Wiht-gara-byrig once, and I’ll take it again! The difference is this. Send out my family unharmed and I’ll spare such of your men as live by the day’s end. Do scathe or harm to any,” Cerdic promised, his voice thick with passion, “and I’ll slay your men to the last of the lot—aye, and those who die by edge or point will be fortunate.”

“Bereavement makes you fluent,” the Saxon said, laughing. “You haven’t said what you will do for me.”

Cerdic laughed as well, unpleasantly. “No! It might mar our friendship if I did! Suppose we settle this between ourselves? I offer you combat. If I’m slain, you pay wergild for me and send my family to Kent. If you’re slain, the fortress is mine again and your men depart alive. Believe me, Withucar, you will be making a good bargain either way, compared with what you will receive if you refuse.”

Withucar yawned ostentatiously. “You were ever the fine one for bluster. It’s the Celtic blood, I reckon. My answer’s no, even though you do have me quaking with fear.”

Cerdic said with immense dignity, “Come out here with sword and shield. I’ll meet you with sword only.”

Jaws dropped on both sides. Those who listened were warriors; they knew how vast an advantage this would give and that Withucar was a fighting man little, if any, inferior to Cerdic. There was also his longer reach. But Withucar, who had taken oath to serve Cerdic and then broken it, would not believe that Cerdic was honest. He saw the offer only as a trick to lure him out of the fortress alone. “Do you think me a fool?” he jeered.

Cerdic did not answer that. He said, “Reflect. You have until midday.”

Turning abruptly, he went back to the ships.

Withucar found his henchmen looking at him strangely. One opined, “You were mistaken; he’d stand by it. If for no better reason, he’s too proud to renege.”

“That is fine! As you’re so confident, you go out there and meet him!”

The other proved not so ready to be daunted or shamed. “Easy to say, but it solves nothing. It’s not me he wants.”

Then Withucar was the one silenced.

The serpent-ships’ crews carried scaling ladders ashore, Cerdic having fetched them from Kent to save making them in Vectis. He’d also brought a heavy log and numbers of ox hides. With these and farm carts that his men commandeered from nearby steadings on the chalk downs, he had them begin building a wheeled, covered ram. He watched the work impatiently, whetting his sword. He thought of Giralda within Wiht-gara-byrig’s palisade, and the knowledge that he was gambling with her life turned his stomach cold. Yet he knew she would not have him act otherwise.

Stuf, one of Cerdic’s captains, appeared with a local farmer beside him. The fellow was short, thickset, balding and paunchy, but there was a look of steadiness about him and he did not cringe. Oddly, he lugged a small cauldron from which wafted a rank smell. Cerdic looked inquiringly at Stuf.

“He would speak with you,” the captain said. “I told him you have no time for trifles and that I’d drive a spear through him if his errand proved such. He said it was a bargain.”

“Did he now?” Interest kindled in Cerdic. “Who are you?”

“My name is Antonius, mighty lord. My forebears were Roman and have held land hereabouts since the days of Trajan. I’d not prevaricate… but when you have heard me, you are likely to think me witless or joking. Thus I ask that you hold your hand and allow me to show the truth of what I say.”

“Has it to do with the taking of yon fortress?” Cerdic snapped.

“Yea, lord! Everything to do with it.”

“Then I will hear you. However, talk swiftly.”

Antonius did; and as he had foreseen, his claims were received as maundering or ill-timed malice. He’d been wise to gain Cerdic’s promise of patience beforehand. Yet he spoke on. His air of earnestness and sense swayed them at last.

“By the gods,” Stuf chuckled, “you are the least likely sorcerer that ever I saw!”

“ ’Tis a little magic, and rustic,” Antonius replied.

“So,” Cerdic said grimly. “I’ll believe for now that you can do it. Tell me this. Why do you risk approaching me? What is it to you who wins this day? For you it will mean no more than a change of masters.”

Antonius looked at him directly. “Even that, lord, can be a thing to fear. Say that I have reason to prefer your rule to his. And you are half-British! Say also, if you like, that I hope for reward.”

“Reward you shall have according to what you achieve.” Cerdic nudged the odoriferous kettle with his foot. “Stuf, take that away. Now, Antonius, let me see you work your wonder. ’Tis almost midday.”

The farmer began his preparations. With sticks, earth and pebbles he fashioned a model of the stockade and the ditch around it. With straw and twigs he made small likenesses of the eating-hall within, the barns, byres and pens. He was accustomed to such work; he kept more bees than any other man on the island and made their hives from plaited straw. Also, he had children. When he’d finished, he had a near similitude of Wiht-gara-byrig.

“Yes,” he nodded, cocking his head and examining the model. “It will do.”

From around his neck he took a pendant of yellow amber, clear as the best ale, an insect frozen forever within. Cerdic had seen wasps and beetles so preserved, but this was a bee and by its size, a queen. Surely that was rare, if not unique.

“Best prepare your men, lord,” Antonius said. “Sign me when I may begin.”

Cerdic felt suddenly foolish and unsure. The loon, he thought, the earth-smelling country loon. He ought to be fooling peasant wenches with love philtres. And I stand here, I who command ships and war-men, believing him, playing his games—

He’d given his word. He said angrily, “You had best not fail.”

The ram stood ready, slung from beams under its roof of soaked ox hides, mounted on cartwheels. Scaling ladders lay on the ground, ready to be carried over the ditch. These sights cheered Cerdic.

“Well, friends,” he said, grinning, “with all else, we now have magic on our side! If it comes to nothing, I give you leave to laugh at me forever. With or without it, we are going to burst in yon gate and carry the wall. You know what is to be done. Once we hold the ramparts and have swept them bare, we go no farther. We make the shield-wall and stand. I’ll parley with the Saxon, and this time he will listen. All of you know what hostages he holds.” Cerdic ceased to smile. “Let one man go farther who has not my leave—let him carry the fighting one step toward the hall—and I’ll rip open his breast myself and pull out his heart with my hands! I promise it!”

Tosti Fenrir’s-get said shortly, “All this we know.”

Cerdic looked at him, wondering. Tosti’s half-insane savagery was a byword. Of all men there, he was the most likely to run wild with fighting lust and ignore Cerdic’s orders.

“So that you remember.” The big Britanno-Jute looked upon his men and sniffed the air. “Well, you have made all the preparations I said. I can smell that.”

“I did not.” It was Tosti again, of course. “ ’Tis foolishness.”

“Please your own self.” Not even Cerdic was over-quick to respond to provocation from the pale-eyed giant with the wolf skin over his shoulders. “But never complain to me that I did not tell you.”

He gestured to Antonius.

The farmer dangled his amber gem above the tiny fortress. A wordless chant came from his lips, humming, droning. He voiced it loud and pitched it low in a curious rhythm, the while moving his pendant along the line of the ramparts in a leftward round, against the sun.

In the great hall, Giralda and her children faced Withucar. Tall for a woman—with sleek, useful muscle gliding under curves of hip and thigh and breast—since her twelfth year, Giralda had been causing men to clench their fists and groan with desire when she walked by. Even the ones with better manners tended to draw their breath in sharply. She carried Orva, her younger girl, on her hip; Orva had just begun to talk, and she slobbered. Fain had her mother’s red hair and sufficient years to know that something was wrong. She clung fretfully to Giralda’s legs through the stuff of her apple-green gown. The boy, Cynric, stood a pace before them all, clinging to nothing, solid and strong, with his father’s tawny hair and his father’s steady gray-green eyes; yet all his courage could not make him other than small and helpless.

Beneath her gown, Giralda carried the black bruises of more than one thrashing.

“You had better go to the ramparts,” she suggested. “ ’Tis midday, and Cerdic will not wait long.”

Withucar laughed like a man who knows himself unbeatable. “You think not? He’ll wait as long as he can without seeming weak in hopes that I’ll yield. He cannot overrun the stockade with all his numbers. Bah! His men will lie dead in the ditch! Some may well burst the gate, but I have archers to shoot them down as they enter; not Saxon archers, my lady, nor Goths, but Danish longbowmen who can skewer a man through his mail. Should they fail me, I have you to bargain with.”

“Yes.” Giralda looked at him scornfully. “All of us. I judge we are your only hope, you oath-breaker.”

The Saxon’s face changed. “Be not a greater fool than you were born, woman! I fear Cerdic not. I want him to attack! I’ve given orders that he must be slain at all costs. If he leads the charge, he will be. He’s not immortal. Then I’ll hurl back the others and make them swear peace, and you will be mine past any man’s power to gainsay.”

Giralda replied with one short word. She added, “You betrayed your master for the rule of Vectis and took his wife to your bed because she happened to be here. It’s late to pretend you did all this on my account. Nor would I care if you had. The fool under this roof is not I, Withucar.”

He seized her savagely by one arm. Tiny Orva squawked. “Had I the time,” he snarled. “I’ll see to you when this is settled! I grow weary of you, my fine lady. I’m about prepared to give you to my men.”

He flung her aside. Cynric ran at him, head lowered, and butted him hard between the legs. He would have hurt him considerably but for the man’s byrnie. Withucar knocked Cynric away with a casual backhanded blow.

“Game little cub,” he commented with bleak humor.

“Sad it would be if he shouldn’t live to grow and become the splendid, rash warrior his father is.”

He left the hall.

Giralda shivered. O my darling boy… if your father prevails, that swine will slay you for spite… and if Withucar should triumph, then still he will slay you lest you grow to avenge your father! And how can we find a way out of that?

The farmer, Antonius, continued to move his amber jewel and croon above it. Little seemed to happen. One of the thirty Danish longbowmen posted on the platform above the gate slapped his neck, cursing.

Some of the others looked about in irritation. On the far side of the burg, a warrior yelled in pain. A few men swung their arms wildly. In a moment they were all doing it as frenzy came to the ramparts of Wiht-gara-byrig. The air filled with humming and a haze of minute yellow bodies that stung.

“Ha-yaa!” Cerdic yelled. “Follow me, and slay till your arms are weary!”

He ran for the palisade, heavy in his war-gear, feet pounding the earth. Behind him, men lifted scaling ladders and bore them forward, baying war-cries. Some put their backs against the covered ram, gripped its sides and strained to start it moving. The wheels rumbled; the axles shrieked. Arrows flew against it, but not in the concentrated or deadly accurate flights Withucar had counted on.

Cerdic mounted the bank of earth beyond which lay the fosse, with two feet of water and ooze at the bottom. Men flung spears at him. Cerdic, anticipating, swept his linden shield above his head and sprang aside. Weapons rattled on the shield’s cowhide cover, jarring his arm to the shoulder. One struck into the bank uncomfortably near his foot. He never noticed.

Beside him, his gesiths trod into the water and rammed the bases of scaling ladders into the muck beneath. These were simply long poles with crossbars lashed to them, but high and strong, they were also muscle-crackingly heavy to lift. From the corner of his eye Cerdic glimpsed Tosti—huge, his pale eyes glaring, the white wolf skin flapping and spattered with mire—grip one of the ladders and heave it into place by himself. And ascend it.

Cerdic, aided by Lanfrith, manhandled a second ladder into place. Drawing his sword and using his shield for balance, he mounted the rungs. The air about him seethed with bees. He wasn’t stung because he’d smeared his uncovered face and arms with the stinking salve Antonius had brewed in his cauldron—as had more than half Cerdic’s warriors before the salve ran out. Those so protected were first to the attack, and Tosti with them, although he had refused the salve. He went among the defenders with a fury that would have ignored stinging bees had they been the size of sparrows.

The defenders, too, quickly forgot the insects. A bee sting is nothing compared to a spear. The bees had served their purpose by throwing the defense into confusion until Cerdic’s men could gain the ramparts in a dozen places—almost without losses, which had else been great. Antonius ceased his droning. With swift movements of his hands, he flattened his similitude of the burg into rubbish. There was no more for him to do but watch.

Cerdic had reached the palisade’s top. Spears assailed him, thudding on his shield, striking his armor. He chopped a spear shaft aside. Bracing his feet on the ladder, he rammed his shield forward, slashed at one man’s leg and got his own over the wall. For precarious heartbeats he stood half on the ladder and half on the ramparts while men raged to destroy him.

Cerdic plied his sword with a redness over his brain. He got past a painted shield and smote its bearer low on the side between ribs and hip. The leather sark was slashed through. No blood was drawn, but the man doubled over, winded and sickly helpless. Cerdic bulled forward by main strength, shield battering, sword hewing. In a moment he had both feet on his own ramparts again.

A sword broke on his shield-rim. Cerdic feinted to bring his enemy’s shield down, then slashed open the front of his head. Beside him, the fellow he’d winded was struggling to rise, head thrust far forward as he choked after breath. There was green bile in his beard. Cerdic hewed at the exposed neck. This time the man fell dead. Lanfrith came off the ladder, yelling, and others swarmed after.

“Clear the ramparts!” Cerdic roared as he cut his way along them. “Clear the ramparts and hold them!”

His sword flickered, rang, bit. He made remorselessly for the platform above the gate where the Danish bowmen were. Not a few of his warriors lay outside the stockade with arrows in them, and the Danes were now shooting at the ram immediately below. It was spitting distance in literal truth. At that range, with the power of those bows behind them, the arrows went straight through the ram’s ox hide roof. Men were dying beneath it.

Cerdic warded his face all he could. The Danes were looking for targets and his shield sprouted arrows. The last man between him and the platform swung an ax two-handedly. It split Cerdic’s shield into two; it nigh broke his arm. He staggered. The ax leaped at his thigh. His sword whined over in a red-spattering arc to split knuckles and crack the ax haft. Although his shield was battered to ruin, Cerdic still held the grip and the conical iron boss. He struck with it. The ax-wielder’s jawbone snapped, half his teeth were exposed, and he sagged against the steps that led to the platform. Cerdic killed him. A dozen or twenty feet trod over the body.

Then they were too close, and the platform too crowded, for archery. The same applied in a measure to sword work. Most of the Danes had heavy, single-edged fighting knives. So did Cerdic. The instant he got a decent hack at someone with his sword, he left it lodged in the warrior’s chine and drew his backup weapon.

There followed a straining, gasping, stamping melee, stinking of sweat and blood, each man for himself. Several were forced over the edge of the platform. Often as not they went gripping an adversary. The rain of arrows having ended, men began swinging the ram again. It boomed against the gate. The impact vibrated in soles and spines where Cerdic fought. His mouth was full of a stocky Dane’s red beard. He’d stabbed the man many times and was beginning to think he couldn’t be killed. But the big frame shuddered and went limp just as the gate burst.

Cerdic broke away from the Dane’s death grip. Breathing raggedly, he looked about. The platform above the gate belonged to him. The gate itself hung open drunkenly and the rammers were within. Elsewhere the last resistance was dying fiercely on the ramparts.

I’ve won, he thought. I’ve done it.

Not quite yet. Hoarsely, he gave commands. The confusion was replaced by firm control in moments. His rammers made a shield-wall in the gateway. Others did likewise along the ramparts, and Cerdic had some of his men join him on the platform so that a rush might not take him unaware.

Teg Hengist’s son lay dead. Tosti Fenrir’s-get swayed on his feet, dazed by an ax blow on the helm that would have broken another man’s neck. Cerdic did not feel saddened; it was probably all that had kept the wolf-hearted giant from precipitating a thorough slaughter.

There’ll be one anyhow if Giralda or the children are hurt.

Cerdic retrieved his sword. It was notched and had lost its edge. Blood was jellied darkly on the blade. He himself was rankly spattered, his byrnie gashed, some of the gilded iron scales missing. He was sweaty, and his throat cried for drink.

“Where is Withucar?” he thundered.

The Saxon limped into view. He showed signs of hard fighting also, but he’d seemingly fled the ramparts when he saw they were unavoidably lost. His men had taken a massed position against the long wall of the eating-hall. They were now outnumbered something like two to one

“Here.”

“Where are your hostages!”

“Within the hall, under trusty ward. Thus are you still where you were before.”

“Look around you and tell me that! Ha! I have you, traitor. I have you by the throat and you will gasp out your last breath ere I loose my grip.” Cerdic’s voice was a vengeful purr. “Yes, I have you, but you have my wife and children. I made you an offer some days gone because of that. You remember?”

“I remember.” Withucar looked incredulous. “You are not making it anew?”

“I am that. If you suppose I mean to stand here and argue back and forth with you over Giralda’s body, you are misled. I haven’t so much time to spend on you. Best agree, Withucar. Or are you as false to the men you lead as to me, whom you pledged to serve?”

The men at bay by the long hall murmured, for it was their lives too. Withucar saw that Cerdic had trapped him neatly. His men had fought for him as their chieftain. Now it was for him to repay them in kind. If he did not, they might well throw down their weapons and chance Cerdic’s mercy. They all knew he’d show none if the hostages were harmed. And indeed, single combat now seemed to be Withucar’s only chance.

“The same terms?”

Cerdic was too eager to refuse his enemy that. Like a great tawny lynx smelling prey, he sensed what he wanted within his grasp.

“Aye!” he shouted. “The very same, with one other. Send Giralda and the children to me now, before we fight!”

Withucar gave him shout for shout. “I’m to trust you?”

“Why not? I never made an oath to you and broke it!”

That stung more fiercely than Antonius’s bees because it was too true. Withucar paled, then reddened.

“Bring them out!” he snarled to his henchmen. “We will see what a half-Jute’s word is good for!”

Cerdic saw them led forth. He’d have croaked nonsense and run to them were he not his gesiths’ war-leader with work still to finish and had he not been aware of Withucar’s sneering gaze. The woman’s hair wavered in his sight like a torch, as it had the first time he had set eyes on her in her father’s hall—she the daughter of a Jutish chieftain of royal descent. How fearlessly Cynric trod beside her! A show, of course, abetted by unwillingness to shame his parents—but how many boys his age could have done as much? One of Withucar’s traitors growled and stamped his foot to make the atheling jump. Rage burned in Cerdic. He marked that man’s visage well lest they should ever cross paths in the future.

Then they were safe on the platform. Cerdic seized Giralda in his arms. Let Withucar stare his fill and be cursed! She held him equal-strongly and returned his kiss with a hunger like starvation, caring no whit for the hardness of his byrnie or the blood-reek upon him. The children jostled for his attention as children will. Fain’s voice carried when she said, “What did you fetch me home?”

Cerdic sat her on his knee and began a game, making her guess.

“By Wotan!” roared Withucar. “This burg has not again become your home yet, Cerdic! Suppose you step down here and fight me before you take it on yourself to dandle your brats!”

Cerdic grinned broadly and stood. Fain now sat in the crook of his arm, her hands on his mailed shoulder. Hair as red as her mother’s blew wild.

“I am going to rest a while,” Cerdic said, “and wet my throat.” He passed his sword to Lanfrith. “Meantime I’ll let my blade be cleaned and sharpened, just for you. Never fret, Withucar. Enough and to spare of the afternoon is left. It won’t be dusk before we settle this.”

Ulfcetel passed him a brimming ale-horn. He smacked his lips and drank it steadily until its contents were a memory, save for foam in his mustache. The second he waved away, although he could gladly have emptied it too. Nor did he eat. It was unwisdom to fight on a full belly.

The grindstone ended its song. Lanfrith brought back the heavy sword with its edges shining. Cerdic tried it by hewing into the top of one of the palisade logs and then smiled with baleful satisfaction at the result.

“Good lad,” he said. “This will do.” To Giralda he said, “I’ll not fall, my beautiful. Not to such as Withucar. But if it could happen, I’d command you to see that my word was kept.”

“And let him live?” Her smile wavered a little, but nonetheless, it was as fierce as Cerdic’s own. “Then am I glad it cannot happen. Slay him, Cerdic!”

“Indeed I will.” The big man swaggered down from the platform and thence from the ramparts. Withucar awaited him. All sensations seemed clearer, from the gold-yellow hue of the hall’s thatch to the smells of dunghill and midden and thickening blood. High, clean, untouched, a wind drove clouds across the sky.

“He carries no shield!” Giralda cried.

“He fights without one,” Ulfcetel spoke bluntly, and yet his voice held compassion. “Those are the terms.”

“No! This is madness!” Giralda rounded on them, raging. “You, his companions, sworn to him—you let him do this? You had not the manhood to protect him even from himself? Now may your luck and all the gods forsake you!”

“Enough,” the steersman said harshly. “I’d not have had him do this, but it wasn’t my wife and children Withucar held.”

Giralda gripped her face between her hands so wildly that her nails drew blood.

Withucar had taken a new shield, and it untouched. The linden orb had been painted red and bore the figure of a raven, shown as sitting on the iron boss. The bird’s pose was restless, ready to fly.

Cerdic’s battle-experienced eyes took note of other things: the number and spacing of rivets that held the boss in place, the shield-rim’s heavy leather binding, the thickness and probable weight of the linden wood. It all mattered, though none of it so much as Withucar’s prowess.

“Was your meeting with Giralda happy?” the Saxon asked. “Did she maybe tell you that her howls of joy in my bed were heard clear to the south cliffs? Or that after the second time, I had to fend her off? Oh, you’d find her a changed woman—if you were going to live.”

Cerdic said contemptuously, “You talk a good lay. You talk a good fight too. I’ve heard you. Now let us see.”

Withucar trod forward. His sword slanted back over his shoulder; the red shield covered him from chin to groin. Their swords belled together. The shield turned a little, and Withucar drove it slanting, smashing down at the side of Cerdic’s knee. Cerdic straightened that leg smartly to step the other way. He moved into a shrewd cut from his enemy and had to check it, sword on sword once more. The iron shield-boss slammed cruelly into his side. Even through scale and leather and heavy tunic, it jolted breath sickly from the lung. Cerdic backed three swift paces, circling. This was the tactic, then. Occupy sword with sword, meanwhile battering with the shield until flesh could no longer endure it. Not bad. But Cerdic’s left hand was free. It opposed Withucar’s sword-hand, of course—and yet by his own chosen tactic, Withucar’s sword-hand would be engaged a deal of the time.

Clash of metal! Stamp and shuffle of hide-shod feet!

The swords joined again, a diagonal cross ablaze with light. Cerdic forced the cross from erect to horizontal, his blade screeching down the length of Withucar’s to split the wooden guard. Enduring the slam of the shield-boss, he held his enemy’s sword engaged—and seizing Withucar’s sword-wrist with his left hand, Cerdic freed his own weapon.

The shield flashed edge-on between them, rushing to break the bones of Cerdic’s forearm. He threw that hand high, raising Withucar’s with it. The shield missed. Cerdic chopped down at the hurtling edge. He cut through the leather binding and notched the wood, that was all. The shield had been made in two layers, with the grain running in opposite ways. One blow could not split it.

Withucar used his knee. Cerdic lifted a thigh in time to take the impact, but it cost him balance. Withucar rammed him with the shield-boss, hurling him back. The two men broke apart.

The death fight went on.

I’ll stomach no more of this, Giralda thought.

She glanced about. Almost at once she saw a spear resting forgotten against the rampart. She could throw one, strongly and straight. Yet Withucar made a nigh-invulnerable target. His neck was too small a mark. Besides, it was constantly moving. His byrnie shielded his torso. That left the legs.

She couldn’t miss those.

Yes! It wouldn’t be instantly fatal, but all she had to do was to make him stumble. Cerdic would do the rest. His blood heated by the fight, he’d never stop to think if it was honorable or not. When he knew what had happened he’d be more than angry. He’d be enraged… well, let him be! She wasn’t afraid of his rages, and he’d be alive.

She slipped into the background. All there had eyes for nothing but the fight… as Giralda supposed. Her fingers closed on the spear shaft.

Much larger fingers closed on her wrist. The strength of them was terrifying. Giralda looked up into a coldly handsome face and a pair of ice-pale eyes, shadowed under the scalp and muzzle of a wolf skin.

No!

Of all men, this one!

“Let me go, you oaf!”

Tosti Fenrir’s-get removed the spear from her hand. “Be quiet,” he said calmly. “The fight goes to its fated end, and none may meddle.”

Giralda struggled. Tosti took her by both of her upper arms and held her in a grip that warned he could splinter her bones if he chose. Giralda did not heed the warning. In this extremity she cared for neither honor nor fate—and she knew in hatred that they did not concern Tosti either. He was simply enjoying the fight.

She raged, kicked, tried to bite, promised riches, threatened, begged, and finally cursed Tosti Fenrir’s-get as few had ever ventured to do. She wondered afterward why he hadn’t just cuffed her senseless. She supposed it had suited his cruel humor to make her watch the combat.

Cerdic had suffered four small wounds. Although none were disabling, they were painful and they bled. He knew now that he was not going to get past the red shield without a shield of his own. Withucar was too skilled.

Then he must reduce the shield or destroy it.

Recklessly Cerdic hewed, spending his strength because there was no more reason to hoard it. The swords chimed and clashed. Cerdic used his unweaponed left arm as bait, tempting Withucar to strike at it. Barely in time he snatched it aside and cut strongly into the shield-rim. A segment of the top layer of wood split straight across, decapitating the painted raven. Then Cerdic had to jump smartly backward to avoid his enemy’s sword. He felt the wind of that stroke. Had he been fresh, he could have disabled Withucar’s sword-arm then; but both men were slowing. They were not made of unfeeling iron. Cerdic missed the chance.

Wielding his glaive two-handed, he rained blows on Withucar’s sword until his own hands stung. The Saxon’s single grip must surely be numbed. Chancing all, Cerdic swung two mighty strokes on Withucar’s shield, calculating them as nicely as he could with hot brain and sweat-blurred eyes. Then Withucar’s sword caught Cerdic over the ribs, on his left side. He croaked; he reeled. And struck two-handed again. Withucar’s sword was knocked from his grasp. A wild yell went up.

Dogged, unthinking, Cerdic hewed at the shield. The weakened segment fell away, held only by the hide lacing. Then that unraveled and burst. Withucar circled sideways. Quickly he dropped to one knee, reaching for the sword that lay behind him, covering his forward knee with what remained of the shield.

Cerdic brought one terrible blow down from on high. It hacked through the finger’s length of partly splintered wood that still protected Withucar’s shield-arm, and it smashed his elbow to bone fragments in a tube of broken meat. Withucar screamed. Somehow he regained his feet, and the sword was in his right hand again.

The shield fell from his useless arm. It thudded on the earth.

Withucar never thought of crying for quarter. Snarling, he flung himself upon Cerdic, careless now of death so long as he took the other with him. Their swords jonted together for the last time. Cerdic seized Withucar about the waist and toppled the Saxon over his hip. Withucar let fall his sword, flinging out his sound arm to save the shattered one from impact. With a grunt of agony, he sprawled helpless.

Cerdic had ample time and space to swing his weapon. He did so decisively; one blow slew.

To stop was to almost collapse, so fierce had been the contest. Shuddering, sucking air through his raw throat, Cerdic leaned on his sword while his gesiths bellowed their jubilation and rattled spearheads on shields. Ulfcetel rushed down from the ramparts at the head of twenty warriors. Cerdic straightened and waved them back with his encarnadined sword. Glaring, he spoke to the dead man’s followers.

“You,” he said, gasping. “I gave you gifts… fed you… and you gave me your oaths. Well, I gave mine that you should be free to go where you wish. So you may. Take your ships. Go.” His powerful voice steadied; he brought his panting under control. “I give you leave, but know this. The day I see any of you again will be an ill one for you. Even if it never comes, I do not think your luck will be good hereafter. What chieftain would trust you?”

“Lord, take us back!” one man cried. “Give us the hardest tasks, the brunt of all danger, until you deem us worth trusting again!”

Cerdic said wearily, “Get out.”

Lacking a leader, bereft of hostages, and twofold outnumbered, they had to obey. They formed a body and marched through Wiht-gara-byrig’s gate. Cerdic entered his hall, bloody and sweaty but triumphant. His arm was around Giralda’s lithe waist.

Then and ever after, she let him suppose the savage bruises on her arms where Tosti had squeezed them black and blue were relics of Withucar’s treatment. She had no wish to provoke trouble between her husband and Tosti after all else that had happened that day. Besides, as she soon saw, her bruises were nothing to Cerdic’s.

Editor's Introduction to:

PRETTY BABY
by Ray Peekner

When a stupid man does something he knows is wrong, he always claims that it is his duty.

—George Bernard Shaw

This has been the era of social engineering; a time of high purposes, when the very nature of man will be transformed; a time to create a beautiful world, in which there will be no poor, no ignorant, none in want; there will be no suffering. A world of beauty is struggling to be born. Naturally there will be birth pains, dislocations, even horror; but we have only to sweep away the old to bring forth the new.

Thus inspired, both foolish and learned have acted like beasts in the name of humanity. Soviet troops in the Ukraine took the food from the homes of starving peasants. The Nazi regime ordered euthanasia for the aged, incurably ill, and the insane. Yellow rain falls in Laos and Afghanistan. Prisoners in Iran are used as human mine detectors.

The democracies have not been blameless. Dresden was fire-bombed. Mushroom clouds bloomed above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Operation Keelhaul” returned hundreds of thousands of Russian expatriates to the Soviet Union where they were either murdered or worked to death in labor camps. There were other incidents, in Korea and later in Viet Nam, to suggest that civilization is a thinner veneer than we like to suppose. For all that, Lieutenant Calley was charged and tried; individual soldiers may have committed atrocities, but indiscriminate murder of the helpless has never been a policy of the US or Britain.

And yet—could it happen here? Whatever one’s views on the rights and wrongs of abortion, twenty years ago the notion that abortion on demand might some day be legal throughout the land would have been laughed down as absurd. Now we hear of doctors who with parents’ consent have treated defective newborns with “benign neglect”—i.e., have allowed them to starve to death. Phrases like “quality of life,” and “it’s better this way,” are heard in courts of law. Perhaps infanticide on demand will never be legal here—but it is not impossible. The moral absolutes crumble before a barrage of words, and no one knows where the erosion of values will end.

Pilate asked, “Is it not better that one should die for the sake of all?” And if one—then why not two? Or four, or a thousand. Rationalizations come easy once begun. It remains only to convince those who must do the bloody work.

Good soldiers do not often make good butchers. Sometimes those in command may believe there is no choice; but they do not lightly order good troops into a human charnel house to be stripped of their human feelings, for to do so is to risk losing their effectiveness. The most hardened professional soldiers must feel loyalty to some purpose higher than themselves, be it no more than the honor of the regiment; else they will not risk their lives as good soldiers often must.

Nations that order their soldiers to dishonor themselves are then defended by dishonorable troops.

I would like to convince myself that this story could never happen. I want to comfort myself with the thought that American soldiers, professional or conscript, would never carry out these orders.

PRETTY BABY
by Ray Peekner

PCC Vet Slays Wife, Son, Self

Ferndale, Iowa—AP

—Kenneth MacCarter, 18, who served with the Population Control Corps in India, today shot his wife, Nancy, and his 10-month-old son, Kevin, six days after his return home. After slaying his family, he put the service automatic into his mouth and took his own life.

From the hillside, the village of Sanphura was now visible in the distance. The dilapidated bamboo huts with the plastic sheeting stretched upon the rooftops glistened wetly beneath the driving rain.

“Damn it all,” muttered Private George Hansen to the soldier alongside him. “With this mucking rain, we won’t be able to fire the huts. We’ll have to go in after them.”

Private Ken MacCarter at that moment wished he were back home, or at least secure in warm, dry barracks. His lean fingers hugged the M-19 in readiness. He was acutely conscious of his anxiety and he hoped Private Hansen would keep talking. Hansen, at twenty, was only two years his senior, but he was a veteran; the distance separating them seemed more like twenty years.

“Yeah,” said Private Hansen, spitting cleanly. “It’s easier when you can burn them out. But going in after them, it’s not so bad. Takes longer, that’s all. Kick the door and spray in every direction, low and steady. Drop a fire grenade and get the hell out. That’s all there’s to it.”

The squad halted. The village of Sanphura was about a hundred yards away. It appeared to be empty.

The sergeant withdrew, addressed his squad. “Move out, in pairs. I want a clean mop-up. Understand? I don’t want to find anything moving when it’s over, not even a goddamn flea wiggling on the fur of a rat. Understand? Move out!”

“Stick with me, kid,” Private Hansen said, and he started toward the village.

Private Ken MacCarter realized suddenly that in a few moments it would all start happening. Still, a vague sense of unreality crowded him.

This was not a war, and these emaciated villagers were not the enemy. The American unit was there to perform “humane actions” at the request of the Indian Government, as were the Russian, the English, the Chinese units—all of them.

Their mission was to wipe out the excess population that was dragging India into ever greater poverty. Scientific experts had assured the greater powers that they were helping to rebalance the ecology of the planet. It was dirty work, but necessary, like thinning out the herds on the great game preserves. Sooner or later, without this cropping, thousands more would die of starvation. “This operation is a humane action,” he kept telling himself.

MacCarter became aware that he and Hansen were being followed. He turned quickly. The friendly face of a news photographer beamed a quick smile. The man was husky, a bit overweight, red-faced, about forty. He carried a network film camera.

Hanson stopped, grimaced, his already narrow eyes closing to thin slits. “Ah, it’s you, Farley,” he said to the man. “Damn it, do you have to tag along with us? MacCarter here is a new man. This is his first mission.”

“I know it,” acknowledged Farley. “I thought there might be a story in that. Don’t get uptight about it, I’ll stay out of the way.”

As they were almost to the village, Hansen warned, “Sometimes one of them might have a knife or an old revolver and try to put up a fight. Don’t take any chances. Shoot them all, moving or not.”

Suddenly shots exploded. The mop-up had begun.

“Watch it,” shouted Hansen. “Now some of them are running out.”

From behind a bamboo hut an emaciated old man, his ribs visible, stumbled into the muddy street. His hands were outstretched, reaching. MacCarter realized that the man was blind. Trachoma in these rural villages affected eighty to ninety percent of the inhabitants. Then he watched the thin figure jump suddenly and collapse in the mud.

“Fire!” screamed Hansen.

More figures in the street. Another old man. A child, its belly hung and distended from starvation. A woman carrying a baby. She fell with it still in her arms. The figures toppling. MacCarter felt the vibration as the M-19 kicked in his hands, saw the shots ripping through the frenzied mass, plunking noiselessly into flesh. He saw, but he did not believe. It seemed too simple and clear-cut a proposition for the mind to logically accept.

Twenty people down, thirty. Thinning out now.

He saw a small boy down on his knees, crawling for cover. He noticed that the boy’s foot was missing and he wondered whether it had been shot away.

He hesitated.

At that moment Farley moved into view, his camera aimed at the crawling boy.

“No,” murmured MacCarter. “Don’t…”

Hansen aimed a shot at the boy’s head, and the boy fell suddenly face-down in the mud, the dark-red blood oozing from his temple and mingling with the brown water.

“Stop!” he heard himself saying. Something inside him was rebelling at the idea that Farley was recording an action that should not be recorded. And he found himself aiming at Farley’s camera, firing.

The camera flew into the mud. Farley’s hand clutched his wrist, a look of astonishment contorting his face.

“The crazy bastard shot at me,” Farley whined. Then, more precisely, “He shot the camera out of my hands.”

“I saw it,” said Hansen. “You’d better get to a medic, Farley.”

“I asked him to stop,” insisted Ken. “He was…filming that boy dying.” He knew these were not accurate statements. The boy had died instantly. And Farley had not heard his warning. What really disturbed him most, however, was his own impulsive act.

Anguished screams shot out from the flames as the small village burned. Soon after the rains, the Khari River, one of the many tributaries of the Ganges, would overflow its banks and flood the entire area.

“Okay, now watch me,” instructed Hansen calmly.

Hansen kicked a hut door, and with his M-19 cradled low in his arms, sprayed a volley of shots inside. Behind him, MacCarter looked into the shack, saw an old man slump forward, two red stains budding in his chest. An old woman lay stretched across the floor. Her throat had been cut.

“He got to her first,” explained Hansen.

As they left, Hansen chucked a fire grenade inside. They hurried away, feeling the heat of the bursting flames.

A woman ran from an adjoining shack toward the hillside, toward the rice paddies.

“Take her!” ordered Hansen.

MacCarter was conscious only of his arms lifting his weapon, firing, watching her being hit. Her body was so emaciated, the bullets went through without resistance. As she toppled back into the mud, MacCarter was unable to determine how he felt about it.

“Okay! Okay!” shouted Hansen encouragingly.

The mop-up completed, only the tagging remained to be done. As Hansen explained, it was very important to tag all your victims so that when the body-counters came in they could attribute the right count toward your K.Q. Each man was assigned a Kill Quota of 1000. After that his active-duty assignment was terminated.

Private George Hansen already had 1047 on his K.Q. count, and he needed fifty-three more. His K.Q. had been raised by 100 as a disciplinary measure. When tagging the bodies, Hansen suggested they put both of their numbers on each body. That way the body-counters would total them and split the count between them.

MacCarter found that marking the bodies was a relatively easy job if he avoided looking at the faces. But some of them couldn’t be ignored. One face, the face of a baby, was undamaged. The trouble was, the head had been severed from the body. The sight of it stirred his guts. He stopped, steadied himself by leaning on his rifle and, hunched over, let the sour vomit come out.

Hansen looked up from his marking, released a knowing smile.

It had been a good day, he felt. The count might be fifty or sixty, which would be twenty-five or thirty for him. The kid had been all right too, once he’d gotten into it.

The temporary, prefabricated barracks were reasonably comfortable, with radiant heating, lights, clean chemical toilets and folding beds. This all moved in the cargo choppers when the weather was good or, as now, in the trucks. Generators supplied adequate electrical power, and the processed food was plentiful.

Private George Hansen was lying propped up on his bed watching a videocomic on a portable set. At the far end of the room a poker game was in progress. MacCarter sat idly on the bed next to Hansen’s, looking forlorn.

“Why don’t you call your wife?” suggested Hansen. “You’re married, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ken, “but…” His thin, boyish face, topped with curly, reddish-brown hair, lighted with eagerness. “You mean I can call my wife from here?”

“Personnel on active duty may exercise the prerogative of making not more than two videocalls per week,” read Hansen from an operations manual. “It’s all in the book. Only who gets a chance to read that crap?” Every few days they handed you a supplement. He tossed the book to the floor, got up.

“I’ll walk over to the Com shack with you,” Hansen volunteered.

“You’re not married, are you, George?” Ken asked, as they walked. It was the first time he had called Hansen by his first name, which he pronounced a bit hesitantly.

The videophones at the Communications post were equipped to receive picture transmissions, via satellite, from the States, but at this end they were able to send only voice transmissions.

“They’re not supposed to know we’re in India,” said Hansen. “They’ll bleep you if you mention it.”

When Nancy’s soft, tired face appeared, Ken felt a deep stab of nostalgic homesickness. He wished he were able to reach out and touch her, feel the grainy texture of her dark, black hair. She wore a loose yellow housedress, open at the throat. Not picking up a picture, she was tapping the receiver with agitation. Anonymous videophone calls could really bug a person.

“It’s me, honey,” Ken repeated.

“Ken?”

“There’s no way to send the picture from here, Nancy, but I can see you. You look beautiful.”

Hansen watched with interest. “She’s not bad, your wife.”

“Thanks. Wait’ll you see my boy.”

Suddenly the face of an angry, mewling infant being held by two thin, feminine hands filled the screen. His open mouth released his cries of distress at being awakened.

“Can you see him?” Nancy yelled.

“Yes, I can see him. He’s really getting big. What do you think of that, Hansen?”

Hansen nodded. “Nice baby. What can you say about a baby?”

“Who are you talking to, Ken?”

“A buddy. George Hansen. He’s from Wisconsin. Say hello, George.”

Hansen said hello, then left to allow them to relay their kisses in private.

In the Com shack lounge, Hansen found Farley helping himself to a cup of coffee from the large aluminum percolater. They nodded to each other. Ken MacCarter came in a moment later.

Farley looked directly at him, switched his coffee to his left hand, reached for a handshake to show he held no ill feeling over the morning incident. “MacCarter.”

“Yeah,” muttered Ken, clasping the hand. He noticed a bandage on Farley’s wrist. “Look, I’m sorry about…”

Farley waved aside the apology. “Forget it. Things like that happen. I understand what you’re going through, son. Even some people back home think that taking pictures of this operation, showing the blood and death, isn’t right.”

Hansen interjected, “Well, it isn’t. Why is it necessary to show these things on television?”

Farley took a sip of coffee, rinsed his teeth with it. “These films are a social document, not only for now, but for generations to be born. Sure it’s a dirty business, but don’t you see, unless people are told the cold, hard facts, see the chaos, it could happen to us. Seeing the stark effects of overpopulation, it’s a valuable lesson.” Farley tossed the paper cup into the trash container. “You boys want to see what you did today?” He looked at Ken. “The film wasn’t destroyed. In fact, it’s quite good.” He hitched up his pants. “Come along, I’ll show it to you.”

Inside the screening room, Farley ran a videotape of the morning’s action, the villagers hitting the street, reeling and spinning under the impact of the bullets. To Ken it seemed even more unreal now.

There, intact, was the shot of the one-legged boy, crawling, that Hansen had shot in the head. Farley informed them that the clip was being used on all three network newscasts.

As Private Ken MacCarter watched, he felt no animosity toward Farley, nor Hansen, but thought, oddly, of—it was only an image—the bawling face of his son Kevin superimposed on the film. He turned away. “There must be a better way than this,” he pleaded.

“True,” agreed Farley. “On a clear day, the choppers can drop gas. That’s relatively painless. But with heavy winds, or this rain, it has to be this way. Those people were warned to evacuate. They had to be eradicated. That land is needed. It’s a race against time. Those people, they resigned themselves to dying.” He looked at MacCarter. “You haven’t been here long enough. You don’t know the whole story, the way it is.”

“Maybe not.”

Farley replayed the clip of the crawling boy. “See that? The missing foot, I mean.”

MacCarter nodded. He felt sick inside, as though his soul had left him.

“The city syndicates, they buy these kids. They maim them in various interesting ways to look pathetic when they are begging. It’s a bizarre operation, picking them up and distributing them in the cities each morning, collecting them at night. Don’t you think that kid is better off where he is?”

“I don’t know,” said MacCarter. He imagined Kevin’s tiny face again, saw him crying for all humanity.

Morning came gray and wet. Today the objective was Dahkangar, a village three miles northeast, across the Khari River. Like the others, a pesthold of bleak starvation and disease, a population blight that had to be eradicated.

The procedure was the same. When the shooting began, some of the villagers ran into the streets. You picked them off first. Then you hit the shacks.

MacCarter was working with Hansen again, and they had already run up a good kill in the street. Hansen was likely to meet his K.Q. and be relieved this week. He envied Hansen that.

MacCarter kicked a door, was about to fire the M-19 when he saw the baby.

Two thin, feminine hands lifted a crying infant beneath its arms. A memory, an image, impelled itself on his mind.

The baby seemed to be floating toward him.

He couldn’t shoot.

The baby’s wet, open mouth sucked air.

The baby screamed. MacCarter’s hands reached to take the child when, suddenly, the baby was flung to the ground like an empty box.

He was conscious of watching the baby strike the floor, instantly still, but did not see even the glint of the knife as it entered beneath his breastbone. Sharp pain exploded inside him and his mind collapsed under the pressure.

Life at the Rehabilitation Center was pleasant enough. The staff was friendly, almost solicitous. Best of all, Private Ken MacCarter knew that in a few days he would be going home. It was a good feeling. Occasionally the thought of the heart transplant bothered him, but they all said he was doing fine. He hadn’t been confined to bed for over two months. He did feel good.

One thing, his memory, seemed a bit confused. He no longer remembered how he had been hurt, but the doctors told him it didn’t matter. They explained they had helped him to forget; something about memory probing. He did remember Hansen coming to visit him the first days after the operation.

Hansen, knowing that it wouldn’t matter anyway, told MacCarter everything that had happened. He told Ken how he had caught and wounded the bitch who had knifed him, how he’d gotten help, and how it was her very heart that was now beating in Ken’s chest. That seemed just in a way. But it didn’t matter, the doctors would help MacCarter to forget.

Private George Hansen returned to Wisconsin and work at a fish hatchery, and he tried to forget about India and MacCarter and looked for a girl to marry.

Private Ken MacCarter came home to Iowa, to Nancy and Kevin, to his job at the printing plant. All his friends in Ferndale told him he was looking just fine. A few inquired about where he had been and what he had done, but when he declined to answer, no one pursued the matter.

For five sweet days Ken resumed his old life. Everything was falling into place. In the fall he would begin studying at the state technical college. The company was sponsoring him.

It sometimes made Ken nervous when Kevin cried, but Nancy did not notice anything. His return had had an exhilarating effect on her.

On the sixth day after his return, Ken MacCarter came back from the plant—he would begin work the following Monday—and he looked for Nancy to tell her the good news. He found her in the kitchen giving Kevin his afternoon bath in the portable bassinet.

The inexplicably sensual image ripped hard and uncontrollably through his mind: tearing, violent glimpses of dead faces, hot fires, screams, rain, an open mouth…

It happened exactly when Nancy lifted a protesting Kevin in her fine, thin, feminine hands to show Ken his pretty baby.

Editor's Introduction to:

THE MAN IN THE GRAY WEAPONS SUIT
by Paul J. Nahin

The weapons of war are forever changing. We are today engaged in a technological war which could of itself be decisive; which is why military research is so vital to our survival. The Falklands War demonstrated two things: that wars cannot be won without good soldiers; but good soldiers are not enough. One needs high technology, particularly computers and electronics.

When a truck broke down during World War II the British and French had little choice but to send for mechanics. Automobiles were much more common in the United States, and in any truckload of American soldiers there was generally at least one with sufficient experience to fix the vehicle unaided. Those familiar with technology are generally best able to use and maintain it. It will be so with computers and electronics; which poses an interesting dilemma for the Soviet Union and other tyrannies.

When Germany invaded Poland, the first thing the soldiers did was to disable the telephone system. Control of communications is vital to modem totalitarian states. Soviet citizens must register their typewriters with the police, and possession of an unregistered mimeograph machine is an offense worth five years in a labor camp; but how can communications be controlled if small computers are widely distributed? The Soviet economic system desperately needs computers—but the political system probably can’t withstand their side effects.

Whatever the effect of the computer on the totalitarian, the technological war continues. Artificial Intelligence, “fifth generation” computers, and “expert systems” may well be the decisive weapons of the future.

Dr. Paul Nahin, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, has worked in weapons system design and evaluation, and is well qualified to show us this picture of the future at war.

THE MAN IN THE GRAY WEAPONS SUIT
by Paul J. Nahin

The warrior gently ran his hands over the smooth flanks of his love. She responded not in any physical sense, but still he knew that deep within, under the flawless skin, she felt his presence. With a single flowing, graceful motion, he mounted her. She opened wide and he slipped inside. The fit was narrow: his bulk squeezed tightly against her sides. But to the warrior, it was cozy, snug, warm. The plexiglass cockpit housing slid back down over his helmeted head with barely a hissing of its electric motor.

He inserted the digital communication umbilical cable from his biosensor body box into the female connector on the floor and became as one with Red Striker Five.

Snapping the throat mike down against his neck, he called the Combat Information Center on the nuclear carrier. “CIC, this is Red Striker Five. All weapons stores on board, fuel topped off, and set for launch. Give me your ready-status readouts.”

“Roger, Red Striker Five, we have you on first launch. For your ready status—wind over the bow at forty-two knots, sea state at level three, cloud cover starts at five thousand, solid to eight thousand five hundred, and clear from there up. You are initially on weapons tight, with a required visual verify of a bogey before authorized to perform a weapon release. No voice communication in the clear allowed—perform all data transmission to the fleet on GPS LINK Ninety-nine. Set your security-level switch to antijam position three. Ship radars show a clear screen out to one-five-five miles. Prepare to launch.”

The warrior felt the passing of a momentary irritation. Weapons tight, with a visual verify! Damn! His air superiority platform could detect, lock on, and track twenty-three simultaneous targets out to three hundred line-of-sight miles. His frequency hopping, pulse-doppler, lock-down radar could pick enemy infiltrators out of the massive clutter background echo of the ocean, even if they attempted to penetrate fleet defense by coming in 100 feet off the deck at Mach two. His “fire-and-forget” Eagle-Six missiles, with home-on-jam radiation-seeker heads, could attack and kill with probability point nine, nine, nine at 170 miles, at hypersonic speed.

And he had to identify a hostile visually before weapon release! Even with his electro-optical visual aid, that meant a maximum attack range of ten miles. Maybe fifteen if he used the narrow-field zoom lens with autovideo tracking. Damn! It was his ass on the line, not those of the political toadies who soiled their pants at the thought of a mistaken ID. Having to close that near to a potentially deadly hostile dropped his survival probability by at least ten percent.

But maybe the hunting will be good today. The use of the Global Position System satellite, and its antijam, encrypted digital data link meant that something was up. His pulse rate elevated and the surface of his skin wetted slightly with perspiration. Small biosensors in his body box picked these reactions up and routinely filed them away in the on-board flight computer. The gray weapons platform called Red Striker Five would need to know everything if it was to help the warrior survive.

The flight-deck tractor was already hooked up to his aircraft, and the warrior waited as the twenty-one-ton Red Striker Five was attached to the steam catapult. Eight hundred feet ahead, just faintly visible in the dim, early glow of daybreak, was the edge of the flight deck. From there it was 93,000 feet straight up to his operational limit and possible death, and ninety feet straight down to certain death. No in-between. Just up or down. He briefly thought of what it would be like, sealed in his cockpit as he made that short, yet long fall into the water, and then he imagined the essentially infinite inertia of the 87,000-ton CVN as its stately mass crushed him under at thirty knots. No real need to worry about that—the fall alone would kill him all by itself, without any help.

His eyes and mind turned to the red-glowing cockpit displays. Soon, as he climbed out of the cloud cover and burst into sunlight, he would turn the night-vision lights off. As the final seconds before launch slipped away, he made the last run through his checklist. Red Striker Five was ready, a deadly air and near-space machine of precise, electronically guided death. Her companion tensed as CIC warned him of launch, and he braced for the high gee acceleration that would fling them up to takeoff speed. Theoretically, it would take only a bit more than half the flight-deck length. But the warrior had witnessed launches that hadn’t worked. His mouth felt dry and his heart pounded as he brought the throttle levers up to sixty percent of full military power. More than that would dangerously stress the catapult mechanism. Red Striker Five roared her pleasure as she gulped the JP-4/nitro mix.

The blast of launch pressed him back into the body-contour seat, the details of his peripheral sight faded in a tunnel-vision readout as blood flowed away from his optic nerves, and the edge of the flight deck rushed toward him at incredible speed. And then, as Red Striker Five lifted free of the launcher coupling, the warrior’s left hand shoved the throttles forward, his right pulled back on the stick, and he accelerated up and away. Pulling a thirty-degree attack angle, he rode the twin jet-engine exhausts at an initial climb rate of 20,000 feet per minute.

He could feel the whining turbine shafts under his buttocks, one cheek over each roaring monster. He used the feedback through his backside to even-up the shaft rpms to balance out the engines. Balanced engines gave better handling, less fuel consumption, and minimum vibrational abuse to his spine.

The rear-view closed-circuit screen showed the carrier rapidly falling behind and below him. As he hurtled toward the clouds, the massive ship was soon no larger than a postage stamp, and then, as he flicked on the afterburners it disappeared in seconds. He was riding a tornado now, each engine thundering 42,000 pounds of thrust. At two pounds of thrust per pound of platform weight, Red Striker Five was like no aircraft that had ever flown before. Her limits were set by the endurance of the warrior, not by technology.

He punched through the top of the cloud cover with a vertical velocity vector of 30,000 feet per minute, and the airspeed needle passed the Mach-one line. His only indication of breaking the sound barrier in a climb was the funny behavior of the altimeter—first it lurched upward 2,500 feet, and then wiggled its way back to normal. The engine vibrations on his butt, the pounding roar in his ears, and the instant response of his craft to the stick, throttle, and foot controls gave him the same pleasures a passionate woman would have. Except that no woman could ever be so perfect.

When Red Striker Five passed 30,000 feet, the warrior returned to normal engine power as the afterburners wasted too much fuel for just cruising. He nosed the craft over gently until he was in level flight at 33,000, with an indicated airspeed of 1,200 knots.

He flipped off the night-vision lights, set the surveillance radar to its long-range search mode, and turned his MARK XII/IFF beacon transponder on. The beacon could be interrogated by coded transmissions from properly equipped observers, and Red Striker Five would automatically broadcast her mission number, altitude, bearing, and airspeed. Her echo would also be enhanced on the observer’s radar screen. Failure of an interrogated aircraft to respond to such requests could bring an infrared missile up the tailpipe!

“CIC, this is Red Striker Five. I’m at start of mission run. Going now to GPS LINK Ninety-nine.”

“Roger, Red Striker Five, we have a solid track and now going with you to LINK Ninety-nine.” There was a pause, and then, “Good hunting, Red Striker Five. Take care.” The warrior heard the strange metallic bang on the voice circuit as the digital link took over—he was now in direct communication with CIC’s computer. It would talk to him by audio tone cues through his headset, which he could react to faster than an oral command. He was now getting the situation normal cue of a continuous up-down frequency sweep from one kilohertz to five kilohertz each three seconds. The sound was comforting to the warrior, like the humming of a mother to a baby. He snuggled happily in his seat.

Red Striker Five flashed through the sky, serving as the eyes of the mighty naval fleet miles below and behind. Part of the always-flying combat air patrol, CAP war missions were top-priority tasks. A billion-dollar carrier, and its hundred-million-dollar companions of missile destroyers and cruisers couldn’t afford to let the enemy get close enough to launch a tactical nuclear-tipped cruise missile. CAP missions extended the fighting reach of the fleet from the fifteen-mile range of naval gunfire to the hundreds of miles that were Red Striker Five’s combat radius.

Ten minutes after launch, the warrior heard the audio tone cue in his ears change to a frequency-sweep period of one second. The first-stage alert cue. Three bogeys were beginning to edge onto his cockpit radar screen, and the pre-engagement weapons program in the fire-control computer switched the radar from surveillance to track-while-scan. All of Red Striker Five’s radar updates were now being automatically fed up to the GPS satellite, 22,000 miles over his head, and then back to the CIC computer. There, integrated with sensor data from surface, subsurface, airborne, and space platforms, CIC had an accurate, realtime picture of everything that moved in a water-air-space volume of over 2,000,000 cubic miles.

The bogeys were flashing red on the multicolored radar screen now, the computer’s visual cue to the warrior to pay attention. His left hand punched the Mark XII interrogate button—seconds later, the flashing red switched to the steady yellow of a friendly response. Good. But the enemy had been known to spoof the IFF by making recordings of friendly replies and then retransmitting them when their penetration aircraft detected the interrogation request.

The warrior went to the HOARSE GOOSE mode and hit the interrogate button again. Now a new, special-coded signal was included that would inhibit a friendly from replying. A reply would be a fake. But these were friends, as their images on the screen now changed to green and the audio tone cue reverted to three seconds. The radar returned to routine surveillance, the tracking computer dumped the stored trajectories of the identified bogeys, and the fire-control computer relaxed its electronic finger on the trigger. Red Striker Five streaked on.

Four hundred miles out, with the radar’s constantly searching fan beam picking up nothing, the audio tone cue went into a continuous ping-ping-ping. LINK Ninety-nine was calling. The warrior pushed a red button next to the cockpit video screen, normally displaying a rear view of the aircraft. The screen cleared of the flashing sky, and an encrypted digital message streamed down from the GPS. LINK Ninety-nine was a spread spectrum, time-division, multiple-access channel, with hundreds of users tied into it on a time-sharing basis. With a spectral width of four gigahertz, and a signal level forty db below the background noise, there was no way the enemy could jam it, even if he could find it in the infinite electromagnetic spectrum. Unless he was willing to devote the entire electrical output of a 2,000-megawatt nuclear power plant to the task—a highly unlikely event. The decoded message scrolled in milliseconds onto the screen:

MULTIPLE HOSTILES AT HEADING 079. SUBSURFACE ACOUSTIC SENSORS INDICATE VELOCITY VECTOR OF 1450 KNOTS, AT 500 FEET, ON FLEET INTERCEPT BEARING WEAPONS. FREE DOCTRINE NOW IN EFFECT. ENGAGE AND DESTROY

This was more like it! This is what he was waiting for—he punched the red button again to acknowledge the message, and the audio tone cue changed to a rhythmic six-kilohertz pulse, with a period of one-half second. The GPS would watch for surface-launched missiles directed at Red Striker Five and warn the warrior by modulating the pulse rate, intensity, and tone frequency in each ear.

He put the radar in its high-power burn-through-jam, track-while-scan mode, five degrees around both sides of 079, from Sea level to 1,000 feet. Eleven flashing red spots appeared on the radar screen in a vee pointed back toward the fleet. They were 620 miles from the warrior’s home ship and 215 from Red Striker Five, to his left. The warrior pushed the HOARSE GOOSE button. There was little doubt: the attack pattern was characteristic of the enemy, and no friendlies would roar into the fleet in such a clearly provocative, hostile way. But he was going to kill them, and he had time to be sure. Red crosses appeared, superimposed over the flashing hostiles! They had replied to HOARSE GOOSE, thinking they were being normally interrogated. Too bad for them, thought the warrior. Let’s go get’m, baby! The warrior snapped on the power switch for his heads-up display. Normally a clear plastic shield extending from the top of his instrument panel to just below the canopy, it now became a remote projection output of the fire-control computer. Once combat started, there was no time to keep moving eyes and head between instrument display and cockpit windshield. The HUD showed the warrior the radar-screen image, Red Striker Five’s gun-cannon status, and projections of the proper launch envelope for the Eagle-Six missiles against all tracked enemy targets.

The warrior looked at the computed intercept course and saw that he was already within attack range. He elected to go in closer. That was his only mistake.

Hitting the afterburner switch, he lit the tail of Red Striker Five and went into a sixty-degree banking turn-dive. As he passed through 20,000, he was hitting 1,900 knots and accelerating. The titanium/boron fiber skin of Red Striker Five was a dim, yet visible cherry glow. The projected intercept course, computed by the dedicated radar computer operating at a memory-cycle time of forty-three nanoseconds, kept pace easily.

The warrior flipped the red plastic cover off the missile arming/firing switches with his left thumb and threw the leftmost of three exposed toggles. He couldn’t hear the cryogenic pumps, but he knew the infrared sensors on the missile-seeker heads were now rapidly cooling down to the ten degrees Kelvin, where they operated optimally for the terminal-attack phase. He asked for a launch countdown from fire control to achieve missile intercept at approximately seventy miles’ range, and large numerals projected on the HUD. As the numbers flickered by, he flipped the middle target-attack toggle to designate all displayed radar tracks as hostiles. When the flashing red zero appeared on the HUD, he threw the rightmost toggle on the missile switches, and the Eagle-Six weapons came off their wing pods, two at a time, from each side.

Fump! The first double pair streaked off, each missile locked onto its own target. Guided by control signals from Red Striker Five’s radar computer, they would fly their own way in on the last 2,000 meters of intercept with the infrared seekers.

Fump! The second double pair raced out and away, their exhaust trails leaving a crazy, swiftly dispersed pattern. Each missile quickly accelerated to 4,000 knots, its body glowing red-hot with the air friction. The warrior loved night-attack missions; the blazing missile skins looking like jewels. But even in the daylight he could follow them for a few split seconds. Then they were gone.

Fump! The last three missiles launched, two from the right wing, the eleventh from the left.

The warrior watched, fascinated, as thin, spidery purple lines, marking the missile paths, weaved their way on his HUD toward the flashing-red, hostile symbols. At first the enemy vee stayed on course, but then their electronic warning systems picked up the inbound missiles. The vee started to break up, the pattern spreading apart. The warrior knew that some were diving, others climbing, but all were being flown by men as good as dead. An Eagle-Six missile could pull thirty-seven gees in a chase-down maneuver; greater even than Red Striker Five could take without disintegrating. And the enemy platforms were inferior to Red Striker Five. But the doomed men tried. And the warrior had no pity. They were the enemy!

One after the other, the purple filaments reached out and touched a desperately twisting, whipping, spinning red dot. And then they both slowly faded from the display. The searing explosion, the vaporizing metal, the carbonized flesh—all were reduced to a quiet decay of glowing colored light reflected in the cold eyes of the warrior. The tracking radar computer performed an automatic-kill assessment of each strike, looking for the highly characteristic fragmentation pattern of a successful intercept. As a backup, for attempted kills at ranges under 100 miles, a spectrum analyzer also examined the radiation from the explosion fireball, looking for a suddenly enhanced carbon line. The last blaze of glory of an enemy warrior before the mist that was once a man’s body dispersed forever. A low-level kill assessment would bring a secondary missile attack, but none was needed. All eleven hostile markers had vanished. He flicked off the afterburners and let his machine coast down to 1,000 knots. No need to waste fuel.

And then the warrior felt Red Striker Five shudder, and his surprise was unbounded as he saw fireballs bigger than his fist stream by his cockpit above and to the right of his head. He’d been jumped from the rear and was taking high-cyclic 37mm cannon fire! With his attention diverted to the earlier attack, a twelfth enemy aircraft had somehow avoided detection. The bastards must have learned how to defeat LINK Ninety-nine! Maybe those were decoys I just took out!

As he realized his peril, the right wing took two hits: one on the tip and one on the trailing edge near the wing root. Red-hot, searing metal fragments tore through Red Striker Five’s body, and one, the size of a man’s thumb, ripped into the warrior’s right leg, just below the knee. Muscle tissue, bone, and arterial fragments, mixed with shreds of flight-suit fabric, splattered the cockpit, and blood gushed from the wound. Instrument-glass splinters ripped into his body. Blinding pain tore at the warrior, and he would have screamed but for the paralyzing shock.

The warrior knew, just before he passed out, that his survival was out of his control. He retained enough strength to slap the emergency combat palm switch at the side of his seat, and then he rapidly slid into unconsciousness. It was up to Red Striker Five to get them both home.

The palm switch activated the autonomous-combat program in the flight computer. Immediately Red Striker Five examined all biosensor outputs on the warrior’s body, determined the presence and location of blood loss, and pumped compressed air to the proper imbedded circular tube in the right suit leg to create a tourniquet. The blood flow slowed to a seeping.

Simultaneously Red Striker Five lit her afterburners, blew away all external weapons pods, and dove for the deck. The enemy war plane followed her down, too close for a missile attack but well within gun range. It was the enemy’s mistake.

Red Striker Five leveled out at two hundred feet, moving at 1,500 knots, weaving, jinking, humping in a manner determined by a random-number generator in the computer software. Desperately trying to keep those 37mm fireballs away from her warrior!

The enemy pilot was good—but Red Striker Five was better. Hurt by the loss of streamlining from the ragged metal edges where she’d been hit, Red Striker Five was melting at 1,500 knots. The enemy was 1,000 meters behind and closing at 1,600 knots. Red Striker Five dropped to twenty feet above the ocean, letting her surface-following radar keep her at altitude. The enemy stayed on her tail. The enemy pilot was very good, rough-riding through the near-surface thermals on an attack run.

The two screaming metal bullets raced over the water, cannon bursts rocking Red Striker Five violently. The acoustic shock wave each was dragging along was incredible, and a boiling wake of dead fish bobbed to the surface long after the hunter and the hunted had passed. And then Red Striker Five fought back.

When the enemy was only 700 meters behind, Red Striker Five popped her air brakes and lost 300 knots almost immediately. Simultaneously she pulled into a climb and did a full inside loop, coming down behind and on the tail of the snookered enemy aircraft. The defeated foe had a few milliseconds to realize his fatal error, and then Red Striker Five ripped him apart with two dozen strikes from her dual 20mm cannons. The flaming enemy debris flared out along a ten-mile track, but by then Red Striker Five, bearing her dying warrior home, was gone.

Racing for altitude, she climbed to 5,000 feet and started squawking on all clear broadcast channels:

EMERGENCY-EMERGENCY-EMERGENCY. RED STRIKER FIVE CAP WOUNDED PILOT ABOARD. REQUEST PRIORITY LANDING. REQUIRE FLIGHT-DECK MEDICAL.

Over and over she transmitted her urgent message as she bore in toward the fleet with her burden. The warrior flickered in and out of consciousness, but knew neither where he was nor what his fate would be. He put his trust in Red Striker Five and passed out.

She didn’t fail him. The flight deck was cleared, and with guidance signals from CIC’s computer, Red Striker Five made a perfect landing. The Navy medical personnel gently lifted the warrior’s torn body from the shattered cockpit and placed him carefully on the deck. After emergency aid, as they prepared to take him below for permanent surgery, he temporarily regained his senses once more.

“Take it easy, son,” said the medic. “You’re hurt pretty bad, but you’ll be okay. I saw it all on the radar screen—that’s some aircraft you got there. She fought her way out and back like nothin’ I ever seen!”

The warrior smiled weakly through a pale white face lined with pain and shock. He looked up at Red Striker Five and saw not a technological marvel of electronics, armament, metallurgy, and computer programs. He saw both a warm and loving creature, and a being that had killed to save him. Killed with savagery and intelligence. His body filled with emotion, a feeling of passion that only later he would just barely begin to understand.

He looked at the battle-ravaged Red Striker Five, and just before he slipped into darkness again, he knew. He knew she’d be there when he came back. She’d wait for him, and he loved her.

And he knew she loved him too.

Editor's Introduction to:

REAGAN VS. THE SCIENTISTS
by Robert Jastrow

Robert Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies and was its director until his retirement in 1981. He has taught astronomy and geology at Columbia, is co-author of a standard astronomy text, and is now professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth. Dr. Jastrow was chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee and received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

Strategic Defense is probably the most important issue to face the United States in this decade.

REAGAN VS. THE SCIENTISTS
by Robert Jastrow

1. The Threat

When President Reagan announced his proposal last spring for defending the United States against Soviet missiles, the reaction from scientists, politicians, and journalists was almost uniformly hostile. Dr. Richard Garwin, who has had a great deal of experience in defense technology, said, “It won’t work.” Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara called the plan “pie in the sky,” former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy described it as “astonishing,” and Senator Edward Kennedy said it was “misleading” and “reckless.” Anthony Lewis wrote in his column in the New York Times that President Reagan was indulging in “a dangerous fantasy” and James Reston entitled his Times column on the President’s speech, “The April Fool.”

This was pretty strong language. Why was everyone so irritated by President Reagan’s suggestion? There were two reasons. First of all, missiles travel at very high speeds and are difficult to shoot down in full flight. As a consequence, no defense against missiles is likely to be 100-percent effective; in any full-scale attack, one or two missiles are bound to get through. Since each one carries enough nuclear explosives to destroy an entire city and kill a million people, the President’s critics accused him of misleading the public when he spoke of a defense that could “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our own soil.”

The other reason for opposition to the plan stemmed from the fact that many defense advisers believe the best way to defend yourself against a missile attack is to have no defense against missiles. Although this idea seems to be contrary to common sense, there is a certain logic to it. If both superpowers leave themselves entirely undefended, the Soviets will know that if they launch a missile attack against us, our own missiles will lay waste their homeland in reprisal. And, of course, we will know that if we attack the Soviet Union, our nation will be destroyed by Soviet missiles. This knowledge will deter both countries from starting a war, and will make for a very stable situation.

If, however, either side acquires an effective defense against enemy missiles, it can attack the other side with impunity, secure in the knowledge that this defense will protect it from retaliation. Therefore, runs the reasoning, the best way to avoid a war is for both sides to leave themselves entirely undefended.

In other words, a watertight defense against missiles would upset the nuclear balance between the two superpowers. In the language of the nuclear strategists, seeking to defend your country against the enemy’s missiles is “destabilizing.”

On the basis of this reasoning, American arms-control experts pressed the Soviets, during the SALT talks, to sign an agreement outlawing any large-scale defense against ballistic missiles. The Soviets accepted this, and the result was the ABM treaty of 1972—ABM meaning anti-ballistic missile—in which the U.S. and the USSR agreed that neither country would undertake to protect itself from a missile attack by the other. In this way, it became the official policy of the United States to keep its people undefended against nuclear attack.

Most Americans do not know that this has been our government’s policy for the last twelve years. If they did, I believe they would be astounded. As Henry Kissinger has said: “It cannot often have occurred in history that it was considered an advantageous military doctrine to make your own country deliberately vulnerable.”

* * *

It takes a person with an idealized view of the world to think up something like the ABM treaty. The logic of the arms-control experts was impeccable, but if you are not an arms-control expert you see the weakness in the idea right away. Suppose one side cheats on the treaty, and secretly builds up its defenses against missiles anyway. Now it can launch its own missiles without fear of retaliation. The country that continues to honor the treaty is then vulnerable to a nuclear attack. This is exactly what happened to the United States.

Starting almost immediately after the ABM treaty was signed, reports began to come in that the Soviets were testing their surface-to-air missiles at altitudes close to 100,000 feet. Some 50 to 60 tests of this kind were carried out between 1973 and 1975. Surface-to-air missiles are supposed to be used for defense against aircraft, but aircraft do not travel at an altitude of 100,000 feet. However, missiles do. The Soviets were testing their air-defense missiles in what is called an “ABM mode.” Such tests are specifically outlawed by the ABM treaty.

The first Soviet ABM tests used a surface-to-air missile called the SA-5, which is not very powerful. However, the Soviets continued to work away at improving their ABM system, and a few years ago they began to test a better surface-to-air missile, the SA-12, which can accelerate to the speed of an ICBM—about 12,000 miles an hour—from a standing start in a matter of seconds. The SA-12, used as an anti-ballistic missile, is a serious threat to the security of the United States because it has the potential for shooting down our submarine missiles, which are the mainstay of the American nuclear deterrent.

All this added up to a clear Soviet violation of the ABM treaty and the SALT I agreement. Several Senators complained about this, but nothing happened.

Last summer, evidence came to light of Soviet cheating so blatant that even cautious State Department officials were ruffled. One said bluntly about the Soviets, “They’ve busted the SALT agreement!” The new evidence was provided by Big Bird, one of our best reconnaissance satellites. Big Bird had discovered a radar of a special type called “phased-array,” deep in the interior of the Soviet Union, near the village of Abalakova in south-central Siberia.

A phased-array radar, which consists of thousands of little radars connected so that they sweep the sky electronically, is a major improvement over the rotating radars which can be seen at airports. This kind of radar is particularly useful in shooting down enemy missiles because it can create a highly detailed and accurate picture of a missile attack. One phased-array radar, backed up by a large computer, can keep track of hundreds of separate attacking missiles, figure out their paths, and assign defending missiles to intercept and destroy them.

Phased-array radars are also useful in providing warning of a missile attack. We have several of these so-called “early-warning” radars on the East and West Coasts of the United States. To be useful in giving warning of a missile attack, a radar must be located where it can pick up reflections from the attacking missile at the earliest possible moment. In other words, it has to be placed on a country’s borders. The ABM treaty, recognizing this fact, says that each country is permitted to have large phased-array radars provided they are located “along the periphery of its national territory,” and are therefore usable for early warning. However, the treaty forbids locating such radars in the interior of the U.S. or the USSR.

That is why everyone was upset about the phased-array radar at Abalakova. It is located smack in the middle of the Soviet Union, 1,900 miles from the Pacific, and far from the periphery of the Soviet national territory. There is no conceivable reason for placing an early-warning radar in that spot. But there is every reason for putting a missile-defense radar there, especially since Abalakova is located near a field of Soviet heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s), which would be one of the top priority targets of any American attack on the Soviet Union.

In fact, the radar at Abalakova has every characteristic of a radar intended for defense against enemy missiles. It is just the kind of radar that is outlawed by the ABM treaty.

Some Soviet violations of SALT have exploited loopholes in the language of the treaty, violating the spirit rather than the letter of the agreement. The radar at Abalakova rips the very heart out of the treaty. Senator James A. McClure calls it “the most flagrant Soviet SALT violation yet.”

The Abalakova radar is disturbing for another reason. Radars of this kind are mammoth devices, requiring years to construct. The appearance of this radar indicates that the Soviets decided years ago to go in for a big system of missile defense, in violation of the ABM treaty. Apparently they decided to cheat on the treaty rather than withdrawing from it formally, in the hope that we would continue to honor it and thereby be placed at a disadvantage.

The Abalakova incident has discouraging implications for the future of arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union. It is difficult to see useful results coming out of these negotiations, when, as Fred Iklé of the Department of Defense has said, “The very party with which we are currently negotiating treaties has been caught violating a treaty.” The Soviet violations of the ABM treaty confirm the impression of many Americans that the arms-control process has been cynically exploited by the Soviet Union as an instrument for achieving military superiority over the United States.

Other Soviet actions reinforced the impression that arms-control discussions with the USSR were not turning out very well. Immediately after the SALT I agreement was signed, (The SALT agreement and the ABM treaty are distinct documents, although Nixon and Brezhnev signed them on the same day.) as the Soviets proceeded to develop their defenses against American missiles, they simultaneously began to build up their own missile forces to an awesome level. By 1980, Soviet missile strength had reached the point where a surprise attack by the USSR could cripple a large part of our missile forces and weaken our power to retaliate. That knocked the stuffing out of deterrence. The American arms-control negotiators thought they had secured a commitment from the Soviet Union that it would not menace the survivability of our retaliatory forces in this way. But almost as soon as the ink had dried on the SALT I agreement, the Soviets had begun to slide into their old silos a new generation of ICBM’s—the so-called “fourth generation”—that were heavier, more destructive, and more accurate than previous models. The warheads on these missiles were accurate enough to give them a capability for destroying our missile silos and other key military sites. The result was a nightmare for American security. Our adversary had created a great force for the destruction of the military power of the United States, and we had signed away the right to defend ourselves.

One of the fourth-generation Soviet missiles, the SS-18, is twice as big as an MX missile, about as accurate, and carries 8 to 10 nuclear warheads with an aggregate explosive power of five megatons. (A megaton, the unit of explosive energy commonly used to describe the size of a nuclear warhead, is the energy released by the detonation of a million tons of TNT.) At last report, the USSR had 308 monster SS-18’s in the field. The Soviet Union also has in the field 360 missiles of the new type known as the SS-19, each as large as an MX missile and equally accurate. The megatonnage, or power for destruction, residing in just these two types of Soviet missiles—the SS-18 and the SS-19—is far greater than the megatonnage of the entire U.S. missile and bomber force. All this has happened since the signing of SALT I and in the name of arms control.

The new Soviet missiles are a greater threat to American security than any other weapon in the Soviet arsenal. For twenty years the United States had relief on the three legs of the famous American “strategic nuclear triad” as our means of discouraging the USSR from an attack on the American homeland. The elements of the triad are Minuteman missiles on the land, B-52 bombers in the air, and Poseidon and Trident submarines in the sea. The Minuteman missiles are housed in silos—underground hollow cylinders of reinforced concrete. Most of the warheads on the Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 ICBM’s are sufficiently accurate to land within 250 yards of these missile silos and the underground bunkers that house the men and equipment needed to launch the missiles. The Soviet warheads are also sufficiently powerful to cave in a missile silo at a distance of 250 yards and destroy it, even if the silo has been “hardened” by tons of concrete and steel. As a result, according to General John W. Vessey, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Soviet Union can now destroy 70 to 75 percent of our Minuteman missiles in a surprise attack.

Moreover, the accuracy of Soviet warheads, which is the key factor in destroying hardened targets, has improved by about a factor of two from one generation of Soviet missiles to the next. (A twofold gain in warhead accuracy has the same effect on a hardened silo as a tenfold increase in the destructive power of the warhead. Calculations show that if the accuracy of a Soviet warhead improves from 250 yards to 125 yards, the chance of destroying a Minuteman silo jumps from 57 persent to 95 percent.) The newest Soviet missiles of the fifth generation, currently being tested in the Pacific, may be able to eliminate 90 to 95 percent of American ICBM’s outright. When to these prospects for the destruction of the missiles themselves are added the potentials for destroying, with highly accurate Soviet rockets, the launch-control centers that house the American officers who would press the buttons, and for destroying the communication links to the President that would relay the order to execute the counterattack, the chances for effective retaliation with our ICBM’s dwindle to the vanishing point.

The upshot of the matter is that our Minuteman missiles—the land leg of the U.S. strategic triad—are vulnerable to a Soviet attack and becoming more so every year.

The air-based leg of the triad is even more vulnerable to a Soviet surprise attack. Seventy percent of all B-52’s are normally not on the alert at any one time, and are likely to be destroyed by Soviet missiles at the outset. Of those escaping, few would get across the border of the Soviet Union. Soviet air defenses, comprising nearly 3,000 fighters, 7,000 radars, and about 12,000 surface-to-air missiles, are the most massive in the world. Our B-52’s are antiquated planes, twenty-five years old on the average, and have lots of nooks and crannies in their contours that reflect radar waves strongly and cause the planes to show up clearly on Soviet radars. B-52’s also fly at high altitudes, which means they can be picked up by a radar at a considerable distance. Finally, they fly at the slow, subsonic speed of a commercial airliner. As a result, they are easy targets for Soviet fighter-interceptors and surface-to-air missiles. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger reported a year ago, “The aging B-52’s G/H bombers will not be capable of effectively penetrating the Soviet air defenses in the mid-1980’s.”

The air-launched cruise missile is intended to restore the usefulness of the B-52’s in the triad. The cruise missile is a pilotless jet aircraft that navigates itself without human assistance, checking its radar signals against a map of the terrain stored in an onboard computer. Cruise missiles do not have an intercontinental range, but they can be carried to the borders of the USSR by B-52’s and launched from the air.

Once across the border, the cruise missile is supposed to be able to penetrate Soviet air defenses more effectively than the B-52 because it flies very low, hugging the terrain and staying out of sight of Soviet radars. However, it is vulnerable to an attack from above by the new Soviet Foxhound fighter, with its look-down, shoot-down radar. The current version of the cruise missile is also as slow as a B-52, and can be shot down by the Soviet SA-10, a relatively new surface-to-air missile. Some years ago the Department of Defense said the Soviets would need up to 1,000 SA-10’s to have an effective defense against our cruise missiles, and predicted that the USSR would not have that number until the 1990’s. However, as of 1982, the Soviet Union already had 1,200 SA-10’s in the field. The implications for the effectiveness of the air-launched cruise missile are not encouraging.

Improved cruise missiles—supersonic, and with a “stealth” design making them nearly invisible to Soviet radar—are under development, but will not be available in large numbers before the end of the decade. Until then, the air-launched cruise missile is not likely to make a major contribution to the viability of the U.S. strategic triad.

The new B-1 bombers, just going into production, will go far toward restoring the effectiveness of the air leg of the triad. The B-1 had been cancelled by President Carter on the ground that the cruise missile made it unnecessary, but the Reagan administration brought it back to life. The B-1 is designed to be considerably less visible to Soviet radar than the B-52. It also flies lower than the B-52, and is considerably faster. But Congress has only approved funding for 100 B-1‘s, and because of the cancellation of the B-1 program in the previous administration, even this reduced force will not be fully available until 1987. In the interim, the bomber leg of the triad will be severely compromised by Soviet air defenses.

So, of the three legs of the U.S traid, two—the land leg and the air leg—are weak, and will remain weak until later in the decade. That leaves the sea leg—the nuclear-missile submarine—as the only fully effective deterrent remaining. For the present, the triad had been reduced to a monad.

That does not seem like a bad idea. The newest submarines have extraordinarily quiet engines, and therefore are very hard to pick up on sonar. They also have a long range that gives them an enormous volume of ocean to hide in; a Trident missile can reach Moscow from anywhere within 40 million square miles of ocean. As a result, submarines on station are essentially undetectable, and can be counted on to survive a Soviet attack. Of course, all American submarines in port, about half the current fleet of 33 boats, will always be an easy mark for Soviet missiles; but the remaining 15 or 20 submarines can safely hide at sea, at least for the present. (Some experts are concerned about a possible Soviet breakthrough in anti-submarine warfare that would reveal the location of submerged submarines by means other than the underwater sounds they make—for example, a change in water temperature in the wake of the sub, or a trail of plankton churned up by its motion. If that breakthrough occurs, it is more likely to be on the American side than the Soviet; but, on the other hand, what we discover, the Soviets soon steal. However, the consensus among Navy experts is that none of this will happen in the next few years.)

The survivability of the Trident submarine makes it an excellent deterrent to a Soviet attack, especially since the warheads carried on a single Trident can destroy every major city in the USSR. Yet even the Trident has problems as a deterrent. One weakness is its limited ability, when submerged, to communicate with the world above. A submerged submarine is very hard to reach by radio because radio waves do not penetrate sea water. To receive a message, the submarine must rise up to or just under the surface of the ocean. But near the surface it leaves a wake, increasing the risk of detection. (The Navy tries to overcome this handicap in several ways. In one procedure an airplane flies low over the water, trailing a wire several miles long, while the submerged submarine reels out a buoy that rides just under the surface of the ocean and picks up the message. Another technique broadcasts messages to the submarine on extremely low radio frequencies, which can penetrate water to a considerable depth. In time of war, all these methods would be more vulnerable to Soviet disruption than communications on the land. The recent report by the Scowcroft commission on strategic forces concludes that “communication links with submarines, while likely to improve, will still offer problems not present for land-based systems.”) If the submarine actually rises to the surface, it becomes visible to Soviet satellites and can be picked off at will. For this reason, American submarines loaded with nuclear missiles must spend much of their time at sea incommunicado, cruising at depth. Radio contacts with the world above are sporadic, and may be separated by long intervals. This means that if a Soviet attack occurs, some submarines may not receive the message authorizing launch of their deadly cargoes until a considerable time has passed.

Perhaps a suspicious captain, observing that his radio links are dead, will take a chance on surfacing to catch a news broadcast or sample the air for radioactivity, but with Soviet planes and radar satellites reconnoitering the oceans continuously, that will be risky. And suppose the submarine captain decides he has reason to fire off his missiles. That will bring a fearsome retaliation from the Soviet Union. Do we want to entrust the fate of the American people to a naval officer out of touch with civilian authorities? Is it our intent to delegate authority for starting World War III that far down the chain of command? The problem is a serious one.

Our submarines have another weakness as a deterrent to a Soviet attack. A missile launched from a submarine is relatively inaccurate, and is not likely to land close enough to a “hardened” or protected target to do it any serious damage. That means that submarine-launched missiles cannot be used against missile silos, command bunkers, or other military installations, which are always “hardened.” They are mainly useful for destroying “soft” targets, like cities and people. (This situation will change when an advanced submarine missile called the Trident 2 comes into use. The new missile has an improved guidance system with the accuracy necessary to destroy hardened targets in the USSR. But that will not happen until late 1989 or 1990.) But suppose the Soviet Union were to launch an attack against our military sites while avoiding our cities. We would be deterred from launching our submarine missiles against Soviet cities in reprisal, because the USSR would then surely respond by attacking American cities with the full power of its huge arsenal. The result would be a devastating loss of perhaps 100 million American lives, far greater than if we had withheld retaliation. That millions of Soviet civilians also lay dead or dying would not be a gain to the United States. These circumstances severely limit the value of our submarine deterrent.

Many people mistrust this analysis because they feel that a Soviet nuclear attack on military targets will produce nearly as many casualties as an attack on cities. But the facts say otherwise. Suppose the Soviet Union were to direct its highly accurate SS-18 and SS-19 rockets against the American forces capable of nuclear retaliation—missile silos, B-52 airfields, submarine bases, nuclear-weapon storage depots, and military-command posts—while attempting to spare American cities. Since most of those military sites are in sparsely populated areas, civilian casualties in the U.S. would result mainly from radioactive fallout on cities lying downwind. Calculations on the effects of nuclear explosions indicate that casualties in such a Soviet attack on military sites would be very great, between 2 and 14 million according to estimates by the Department of Defense. However, they would be far fewer than the 80 to 170 million deaths that would result from a deliberate Soviet attack on our cities in response to an American attack on Soviet cities. In spite of the enormity of the two disasters, a real distinction exists between them. One case means the possibility of a recovery for the U.S., and the other case means the annihilation of the American people.

How would an American President respond to such a limited attack by the Soviets, with American military power crippled but the cities largely intact? With only our surviving submarines available for retaliation, he would be limited to two options, and both would be painful. In Henry Kissinger’s words, “A President could initiate the extermination of tens of millions of people—first Soviet citizens and then our own—or he could give in.” The choices, Kissinger concludes, are “suicide or surrender.”

It is sometimes said that a “surgical” nuclear attack on our military sites is impossible, because some Soviet warheads are bound to miss their targets by wide margins. In the words of one critic, Soviet missiles “would be falling all over our country.” This is not correct. If the accuracy of a warhead is, say, 250 yards, that means that half the warheads will land outside the circle. But the warheads that land outside will still be clustered in the neighborhood of the aiming point. In fact, in the case above, 99.9 percent will land within a mile from the target.

So, urban areas will not be destroyed accidentally in a Soviet attack against our military sites. But is it possible that the Soviet Union, in planning an attack on the United States, will decide, nonetheless, that its interest is served—for the purpose of intimidating the remnant of the American population, or whatever reason—by the greatest possible devastation? Will the Soviet Union elect, as part of a calculated plan of attack, to explode megaton warheads over American cities? It seems clear that this can never happen. The leaders of the USSR must know that the one action certain to provoke an attack on their cities would be a Soviet attack on American cities. They must know that some elements of our submarine force are bound to survive their surprise attack, and are sure to visit fearful retribution on Soviet civilians for an attack on American civilians.

And such an attack on American cities will be counterproductive for the USSR in other ways as well. At the least, it will reduce Soviet prospects for extracting food, technology, and industrial loot from a subdued America. At worst, it will damage the atmosphere’s fragile ozone layer, cool the climate of the globe, and visit ruin upon the agricultural lands and people of the Soviet Union. The USSR has everything to lose by an attack on American cities, and little to gain.

The essence of the matter is that American submarines are an effective deterrent to a Soviet attack on our cities, but are not a deterrent to an attack on U.S. armed forces. It is a sobering fact that if the USSR should launch a massive strike against our military installations, we could do little about it, short of a suicidal strike against Soviet cities, in the current state of disrepair of our strategic triad.

Experts count and recount missile silos, bombers, submarines, warheads, and megatonnage. They argue over whether we will have a kind of parity with the Soviet Union, in spite of the vulnerability of our ICBM’s and B-52’s. But there can be no argument about one basic fact: Soviet missile power has been growing faster than ours, and has succeeded in placing a large part of the American strategic deterrent at risk. The trend is frightening. If continued, it will lead to the possibility, a few years hence, of a preemptive Soviet attack aimed at the total destruction of American military power.

2. The Response

How is the United States to respond to this threat? One way would be by a massive build-up of our own missile forces, sufficient to match the threat of the Soviet ICBM’s on equal terms. The result would be a nuclear stand-off between two adversaries, each armed to the teeth, and each capable of delivering a knockout blow if it can get in the first punch. That would be a balance of sorts, but the balance would be unstable. There is a better way, and that is the way President Reagan chose in his speech on missile defense.

Suppose a brilliant inventor could devise a method to defend the United States against Soviet ICBM’s. Then our own ICBM’s—Minutemen and MX’s—would no longer be vulnerable to a surprise attack. These ICBM’s are accurate enough to destroy many hardened targets in the USSR, including the 700 hardened leadership centers sheltering the Soviet elite. If our missile silos were defended, Soviet leaders could not eliminate this threat to their existence by knocking out American ICBM’s in a preemptive first strike. If nothing else deterred the Soviet leadership from an attack on the United States, that circumstance would certainly do so.

Where can we find this invention? The answer is that we already have it. Critics of President Reagan’s plan spoke as if he were proposing a defense of entire cities and their populations, but he made no suggestion of that kind in his speech; and, in fact, such an “area” defense, while very comforting, would not be necessary at the start. For the protection of our Minuteman missiles, it is only necessary to establish a “point” defense—i.e., a defense of the few square acres surrounding each missile silo, and the small areas surrounding a limited number of communication centers, command posts, and other military installations. The means for such a point defense of critical military sites are in hand today. The basic technologies have been proven, they are inexpensive, and they can be put into use with relative rapidity.

The key to these technologies is the miniaturized computer. Extraordinary developments in the miniaturization of computer circuits enable millions of transistors and other electronic components to be packed into a space the size of a thumbnail. As a result, defense technicians now have the means for building elaborate computer brains into a very small missile—a mini-missile—so that it can steer itself toward its target. Sensing the target either by its delicate emanation of heat waves, or by its radar reflections, the mini-missile analyzes the product of its senses within its highly capable computer brain, and directs a succession of messages to small rockets arranged around its circumference. Delicate thrusts of these rockets steer the defending missile into the path of the oncoming ICBM warhead. The result is either destruction of the warhead by a direct impact, or an explosion of the mini-missile in the vicinity, releasing a cloud of flying metal fragments. The warhead, moving ten times faster than a bullet, tears into the cloud of fragments; the skin of the warhead is punctured in many places; its electronics are disabled; and the nuclear bomb inside it is disarmed.

In essence, the defense consists in tossing into the path of the speeding warhead some TNT and a keg of nails. What makes this simple defense work is its computer brain.

The amount of TNT need not be very large. One mini-missile of the kind described, currently being tested by the Army, contains less than 100 pounds of explosive. The reason is that the defending missile does not have to destroy the warhead to be effective; it only has to prevent the nuclear bomb inside the warhead from exploding. That happens to be fairly easy, because nuclear bombs do not go off very readily; elaborate arrangements and a great deal of fragile electronics are needed to make one explode. Accordingly, a small charge of TNT, or a cluster of high-speed metal pellets, will usually be sufficient to disarm the bomb’s mechanism.

In fact, it is not even necessary to keep the bomb from going off. Suppose, for example, Soviet technicians devise a countermeasure to the American defense by wiring the warhead so that the nuclear bomb inside it explodes automatically whenever a defending missile approaches. As long as that happens at a high altitude, far above the atmosphere, the effects of the explosion will not be very damaging at ground level, either in radioactive fallout or in blast damage. An altitude above 100,000 feet is sufficient to achieve this. Progress in developing the smart little missiles indicates that making the kill at altitudes above 100,000 feet is not an especially difficult task.

Thanks to the newest ultra-miniaturized computers, the defending missile can exercise a formidable amount of brain power. Suppose the Soviet technician tries to confuse our defense by arranging to throw off decoy warheads— lightweight imitations of the real thing. The decoys, necessarily thin and flimsy in their construction (if the decoy weighs as much as a real warhead, you might as well put a bomb inside), will tend to lose their heat more quickly than the real warheads as they fly through the cold of space. By the time the cluster of Soviet warheads reenters the atmosphere, the decoys will be appreciably colder than the real warhead. The brain of the mini-missile, analyzing these differences in temperature from one “warhead” to another, will have no trouble in telling the decoy from the real McCoy. And once the real warheads have been identified, the computers can even sense which warheads are headed for empty silos, and instruct their defending missiles to ignore these and concentrate on the warheads headed for silos still loaded with ICBM’s.

* * *

This kind of technology is not visionary. Its important features are already in operational use in the Pershing-2 missiles being deployed in Europe. The warhead of the Pershing 2 contains a radar “camera” that looks at the terrain beneath it, compares what it sees with an image of the target stored in the warhead’s computer brain, and, guided by this comparison, changes its course and steers straight toward the target in the final moments of its flight. On the average, Pershing-2 warheads hit the ground within 30 yards of their targets, compared to an average error of 250 yards for the best missiles with old-fashioned dumb warheads. When the same kind of computer technology is used in mini-missiles for defense against ICBM warheads, the error comes down to a few yards, or even feet, or even inches.

Incidentally, the clever warheads on the Pershing 2’s explain the intensity of Soviet anger at the deployment of these missiles by NATO. Warheads of this kind, which can figuratively drop down the air vent of a Soviet command bunker, place at risk the military and political leadership of the Soviet Union—and they are the only weapons in the NATO arsenal with the accuracy and range required to do that. And being mobile, the Pershing 2 is also survivable; it cannot be entirely eliminated in a preemptive attack. These properties make the Pershing 2’s a very effective deterrent to a Soviet attack on Western Europe.

Getting back to President Reagan’s speech, one of the main criticisms of his plan was that a defense against ICBM’s can never be 100-percent effective. This criticism also applies to the smart mini-missiles. If these missiles were intended for the direct defense of American cities, they might not be of much value, because even a few ICBM warheads leaking through such a defense would kill millions of Americans. However, the situation is very different when a defending missile is intended only for the protection of missile silos and other military sites. Suppose, for example, that the defense of the silos is only 50-percent effective—a conservative estimate for the technologies described above. This means that roughly half the attacking warheads will accomplish their purpose. Therefore, the USSR will be required to make its ICBM arsenal twice as big as it is today, to regain the level of threat it possessed before the defense was put in place. In other words, it will have to buy another ICBM for every one it already has. The Soviet Union has spent about $500 billion on the build-up of its ICBM arsenal over twenty years and might be hard-pressed to spend another $500 billion in a short time. Even if the USSR does increase its missile forces in an effort to overwhelm our defense, we can increase the number of defending missiles around each silo and once again reduce to an acceptable level the number of Soviet warheads that would reach their targets. This response is practical because each defending little missile costs considerably less than the warhead it is aimed at. Estimates by a team of scientists at Los Alamos indicate that if the Soviet Union tries to overcome an American missile defense by building more rockets and warheads, its costs will increase at least twice as fast as ours. In this situation, in which the ratio of costs heavily favors the defense over the offense, the Soviet Union may be led to rethink its whole strategy of striving for military dominance with weapons of mass destruction.

With the feasibility and cost-effectiveness, there is still the troubling possibility that a defense of our missile silos will be “destabilizing” and will undermine the policy of deterrence. According to this theory, which is held by a number of American scientists and arms-control specialists, the Soviets will perceive the defense of American silos as a signal that the United States is preparing to attack them, and is therefore protecting its military sites against the inevitable Soviet retaliation. Feeling nervous about that possibility, the Soviet Union will move quickly to attack us before our missile defenses can be completed. In other words, so the reasoning of the arms-control experts goes, a defense of American missiles brings the United States closer to war.

It seems to me, that nothing could be farther from the truth. As usual, facts determine the situation, and the main facts here are first, that the Soviets have many more ICBM warheads than we do, and second, that ICBM’s are the most valuable kind of missile from a military point of view, because of their great accuracy and ability to destroy hardened targets. (It is often mentioned that we have the same number of warheads, about 4,600, on our submarines as the Soviets have on their ICBM’s. However, the submarine-based warheads are inaccurate and have relatively low explosive power, about one-sixteenth that of Soviet ICBM warheads. Consequently, they are completely ineffective against Soviet missile silos, which are even more hardened than our silos.) We have 1,650 accurate Minuteman warheads, too few in number to do much damage to the several thousand important Soviet military targets, but the Soviets have at least 4,560 equally accurate and far more powerful ICBM warheads, that can do a great deal of damage to our military targets. If we lived in another world, in which the Soviet Union had not constructed all these late-model ICBM’s and many thousands of accurate and powerful warheads, an American system for defending our missile silos might be perceived as destabilizing and a weakening of deterrence. But in the real world, in which the Soviet missiles and warheads exist, an American missile defense restores our retaliatory force, and thus strengthens deterrence.

It is not clear why the Soviets have built up this mammoth ICBM force, because the build-up has been very costly—to repeat, about $500 billion over the years—and goes far beyond any reasonable level of military power they would need as a deterrent to an American attack. Whatever the reason, the fact is that they have done it. As a result, the Soviet Union is in a position to launch an attack on the United States aimed at destroying our means of nuclear retaliation—missiles, silos, B-52 airfields, submarine bases, and military command posts. In other words, those 4,560 accurate ICBM warheads look like the beginning of a Soviet drive to acquire a nuclear war-winning capability. We may not understand how the Soviets think they can possibly emerge victorious in a larger sense from a nuclear war in which they suffered “only” a few million to 10 million casualties, but apparently they do think that.

In any case, the USSR has built a large number of missiles and undermined our capability for retaliation and therefore our deterrent. Protecting our forces against the Soviet missiles will not give us a nuclear war-winning capability—the nuclear warheads of the Soviet Union are too numerous and powerful for that—but it will give us a continuing capability for retaliation against Soviet attack, which is the very basis of deterrence.

There are other gains for deterrence in a point defense against Soviet ICBM’s, in addition to the protection of our missile silos. The dish in California that receives the signal from our early-warning satellites can be protected. The communication lines that connect the President and top military commanders to the Minuteman launch-control centers can be protected. Our bomber airfields and submarine bases can be protected. Just two bases—one in Kings Bay, Georgia, and the other in Bangor, Washington—will support our entire fleet of Trident submarines. If these bases are undefended, half the Trident fleet—the part in port when a Soviet surprise attack occurs—must be written off at the outset. A point defense of the Trident bases against Soviet missiles will double the effective strength of the American submarine deterrent. (When there are only a few targets, and the destruction of each one is very important to the Soviet Union, it can always try to overwhelm our defenses by allotting a large number of warheads to each target. However, by the same token, a few sites, each of enormous value to the United States, can be ringed by exceptionally strong defenses comprised of not one or two but perhaps dozens of mini-missiles or more; and this can be done at acceptable cost to the U.S., because only a few such highly valuable sites exist.) All these measures improve our chance of being able to retaliate against a Soviet attack, and therefore make an attack less likely.

* * *

A point defense decreases the vulnerability of our missiles, and is good. An area defense, directly shielding our cities and their populations, would be better. Can inventive genius find still another device to accomplish this task as well? Once again, the answer is that we already have the invention. It is called the laser. Unlike the smart mini-missile, the laser defense is not inexpensive; it is not yet a proven technology; but it has the promise of protecting our cities against destruction.

A laser is like a searchlight; it produces a beam of light. This beam of light, focused on the metal skin of an ICBM, can burn right through it, just as the light of the sun, focused to a narrow spot by a magnifying glass, can burn through a piece of wood or paper. The difference between a laser beam and an ordinary beam of light is that the ordinary beam spreads out as it leaves its source, so that by the time it has traveled several thousand miles—for example, from the United States to the Soviet Union—the beam is dispersed over an area several miles in diameter. As a result, the intensity of light in any one part of the beam is too weak to hurt anything.

A laser beam on the other hand, has the remarkable property that all parts of the beam travel in the same direction, so that the beam doesn’t spread apart as it travels through space. (Even in a laser beam, the light waves spill out over the edge of the beam to a limited degree and blur it somewhat, but the spreading effect is quite small. In the laser beams being designed for use against Soviet rockets, the spreading effect will be no more than a few feet over a distance of a thousand miles.) If the energy in the laser beam is intense enough at its source to burn through the metal skin of a Soviet ICBM, it will still be that intense, and still able to burn through metal, after it has traveled thousands of miles.

Laser beams have the advantage that they travel at the speed of light, which is 670 million miles an hour, and can cross a continent in a hundredth of a second. Compared to the speed of laser beams, even an ICBM is slow, and the laser beam has no difficulty in catching up to one and intercepting it. One of the disadvantages of a laser beam is that, being a beam of light, it is blocked by clouds and haze. For that reason, laser guns work best if placed in a space station or satellite, far above the atmosphere. But putting a laser gun in a space station means that a large amount of equipment and fuel for the laser must be ferried into orbit at great cost. Another disadvantage is that the laser beam must track the moving ICBM with great precision, equivalent to hitting a dime at a distance of 100 miles, so that the beam will stay on the target long enough to melt it.

Because of these and other difficulties, a team of MIT scientists led by Kosta Tsipis concluded a few years ago that “lasers have little or no chance of succeeding as practical, cost-effective weapons.” When President Reagan announced that he was proposing to set the country on this course anyway, Professor Tsipis denounced the President’s plan as “a cruel hoax.” Many other prominent scientists also jumped on the President for his suggestion.

But scientists do not have a very good track record when it comes to making predictions about the feasibility of bold new ideas. In fact, they seem to have a talent for rejecting proposals that later turn out to be of great practical value. Examples abound. In 1903, just before the first flight of the Wright brothers, an American astronomer named Simon Newcomb announced that the laws of physics proved man could never fly. A little later, after airplanes were flying, another American astronomer ridiculed the notion that some day there might be “giant flying machines speeding across the Atlantic… and carrying innumerable passengers.” In 1926, A. W. Bickerton, a British scientist, said that it was scientifically impossible to send a rocket to the moon. Just before the Soviet Union put the first Sputnik into orbit, the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain announced that the idea of launching artificial satellites into space was “utter bilge.” In the weapons field, Admiral Leahy—not a scientist, but a qualified technician—said to President Truman, just before the first successful test of an atom bomb, “That bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert on explosives.” And Vannevar Bush, who directed the government’s science effort during World War II, offered the following wisdom after the war:

The people who have been writing these things that annoy me—have been talking about a 3,000-mile rocket shot from one continent to another carrying an atom bomb… I think we can leave that out of our thinking… I wish the American people would leave that out of their thinking.

Among the experts actually working on laser defense or advising the government on it, the consensus is that no basic scientific obstacles stand in the way of success. George Keyworth, Science Adviser to the President, said recently, “The major fundamental problems in every area [of laser defense] have been removed.” Two committees, set up to advise the President on the matter after his speech, have reported that the feasibility of several kinds of laser defense against missiles can be tested in the next three or four years, and if all goes well, a complete defense can be in operation ten years after that. According to Dr. Keyworth, there has been “tremendously broad technical progress” in this area.

When the final system is constructed, it will probably be a so-called layered defense, with the first or outermost layer consisting of laser beams aimed from space at enemy ICBM’s in the first minutes of flight, shortly after blast-off. A second layer of defense, either a laser or a smart mini-missile, will hit the ICBM’s that have gotten through the first layer, as they fly across the void en route to their targets. A third layer of mini-missiles, with the “keg of nails” or similar technology, comes into play in the final minutes or seconds of flight as the Soviet warheads reenter the atmosphere, to destroy the intruders that have penetrated the second layer. If the “leakage-rate” in each of the three layers is 10 percent, only one warhead in a thousand will reach its target.

If the Soviets acquire an effective defense against American missiles, so much the better. They will not even have to steal it. The President has suggested that his successor can give the new technology to the Soviet Union, just to prove that there is no point in both sides keeping bulging warehouses of these deadly weapons any longer. Then, the President added, his successor can say to the Soviets, “I am willing to do away with all my missiles. You do away with all yours.”

These are encouraging possibilities for the long run. The problem facing us in the short run, between now and the end of the 1980’s, is the vulnerability of American ICBM’s and other military installations to a Soviet surprise attack. The smart mini-missile, with its TNT and keg-of-nails technology, is less exotic than a laser defense, but it is already state-of-the-art, and can be available on relatively short notice for the protection of our missile silos, submarine and bomber bases, and command posts. In doing that, the mini-missile will strengthen and preserve the American deterrent to a Soviet attack. By strengthening our deterrent, this simple defense will also protect our cities.

For nearly forty years, since the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, the nuclear bomb has dominated strategic weaponry. But technicians make new facts, and new facts make a new strategic calculus. We are on the threshold of revolutionary gains in the accuracy of intercontinental ballistic missiles, created by the incorporation of computer brains into missile warheads. In the future, the smart ICBM warhead, equipped with electronic brains and infrared or radar “eyes,” will hitch a ride to the general vicinity of the target on its ICBM bus; then, disembarking, it will steer itself into a particular spot on the target within a yard or two to accomplish its task with nice precision. Consider the possibilities opened for the military planner by this development. A Soviet charge of TNT, carried across the ocean by an ICBM, guides itself down the smokestack of the Consolidated Edison plant in New York; an American warhead of TNT, carried 5,000 miles in the nose of an ICBM, drops down onto a critical transformer in the Moscow power grid; a bridge is destroyed by a small explosive charge ferried across oceans and continents on an ICBM, and carefully placed at the foot of a pier. A small, artfully shaped charge of TNT is delivered to the door of a Minuteman or SS-19 silo; exploding, it pierces a hole in the silo door, spraying the interior with shrapnel and destroying the missile. It is not necessary to crush the entire silo with the violence of a nuclear warhead; missiles are fragile, and gentler means suffice to disable them.

Command posts, ammunition dumps, highways, and airport runways—all are vulnerable to conventional explosives skillfully targeted. Nearly every task allotted to nuclear weapons today can be accomplished in the future by missiles armed with non-nuclear, smart warheads.

And when nuclear weapons are not needed, they will not be used. That may seem unlikely, but consider the following facts. A nuclear weapon has many defects from a military point of view. Because of its destructive power and radioactivity, it tends to kill innocent civilians, even if used sparingly in a surgically clean strike at military targets. If used in great numbers, nuclear weapons stir up clouds of radioactive material that roll back with the prevailing pattern of the winds, carrying their poisons with them into the land of the attacker. Finally, these weapons generate emotional reactions of such intensity that the military planner can only hold them in reserve to use as a last resort; he cannot release his nuclear arsenal in gradual increments, adjusted to the military needs of each situation.

In other words, nuclear weapons are messy, and, other things being equal, the military planner will avoid them. They will never disappear entirely, some blockbusters will always be stockpiled by the superpowers as a deterrent to a genocidal attack on their cities and civilians. But as the accuracy on smart warheads increases, and more military tasks can be accomplished by non-nuclear explosives the tasks assigned to nuclear warheads will diminish, and the size of the world’s nuclear arsenals will decrease.

The shrinkage has already been observed in the armaments of the U.S. and the USSR. Nuclear weapons in the American arsenal are now one seventh their size twenty-five years ago, and the total megatonnage of our arsenal is one-quarter what it was then. (Nuclear weapons were mated to ICBM’s originally because the early models of the ICBM’s wandered all over, and generally landed a mile or so from their targets. Only a nuclear warhead—with its enormous radius of destruction—could make such blunderbusses militarily effective.) Figures available to me on Soviet nuclear weapons go back only ten years, but in that short interval, while the number of Soviet warheads increased enormously, the average size of an individual warhead decreased by a factor of three.

These changes in the sizes of the world’s nuclear arsenals have resulted from rather modest improvements in the accuracy of missiles, but the technology of the smart warhead is still in its infancy. When it reaches its maturity, and the precision of delivery of explosives across continents can be measured in feet rather than in hundreds of yards, the military uses of the nuclear bomb will dwindle into nothingness. And so it may come to pass, as President Reagan suggested, that the scientists who gave us nuclear weapons will also give us “the means of rendering these weapons impotent and obsolete.”

Editor's Introduction to:

JOINED THE SPACE FORCE TO WEAR MY BLUES
by John Maddox Roberts

Combat is not the only danger to a military unit. Boredom can destroy military effectiveness as thoroughly as any enemy. From time immemorial soldiers have sought relief from the monotony of their daily routine through wine, women, and song. This has not always endeared them to the local townsfolk. More than one US post commander has arranged to have his troops paid in two dollar bills in order to demonstrate just how important the soldiers are to the local economy. Sometimes that has worked; sometimes the local shopkeepers do not care. It depends on the military unit nearby…

There have been campaigns in which the local townsfolk were more dangerous than battle. Troop commanders then seek ways to prevent fraternization, mostly without success. One of the strangest of such methods was employed in the Moroccan campaign after World War I: the French government sent in a mobile force of prostitutes. This was the notorious Bordel Mobile de Campaigne, the “Mobile Military Brothel,” known as the B.M.C., ten or twelve whores sent to entertain as many as 5,000 soldiers. In order to avoid bloody fights days were reserved for different branches of service: Legion, Spahis, tirailleurs, with armed guards to enforce order.

When women are not available there is always booze. For many years the traditional drink of the Foreign Legion was called “earthquake”; it consisted of raw white Moroccan wine laced with Pernod.

There are always those who would deny soldiers their rightful rewards. They usually have no more success than did the temperance workers who sought to end drinking in the Foreign Legion by placing in each barracks room a poster showing a grinning death’s head and the legend “ALCOHOL IS DEADLY.” The signs came down when it was found that in every barracks someone had printed under the inscription “BUT THE LEGIONNAIRE DOES NOT FEAR DEATH!”

It has ever been thus; and John Maddox Roberts tells us that things will not have changed in the far future.

JOINED THE SPACE FORCE TO WEAR MY BLUES
by John Maddox Roberts

Leave on Moloch!

Was ever there a place like unto Moloch? Were not its iniquities manifold and its delights beyond number? Yea, though we lie in our tanks, will we not drink deep of these? Will we not cast our souls into the visible?

Quick, off duty and put on our Class As, jump before the mirror and check gig line and spit shine. All perfect.

“Remember to shine your brass!” says Minton to Huang. All laugh. Huang has more brass than most. Pile into the briefing room for cautionary lecture from the Chaplain.

Here he comes, and the arc lights glint from his insignia, cross inside six-pointed star inside crescent. It gleams like a halo from his shiny dome. He is Chaplain Hymnal 55, a legend in his own time.

“You go forth in Sin!” roars Hymnal 55.

That we do, comes their reply, that we do.

“The enemy seeks merely to destroy your miserable, replaceable carcasses, but Moloch will devour your immortal souls!”

So it must be, Padre, they say.

“Moloch is a sink of vileness, and you shall wallow in drunkenness, gluttony, sloth and lewdness!”

“Yes! they say. Yes! Yes!

“Go, you sinners, and come not to me for absolution!”

All pile out and tumble for the shuttle dock, pockets stuffed with payday cheer. Line up for last-minute inspection by the OD.

“Did you polish all your brass, Twomey?” asks the OD. All laugh. Twomey’s left buttock is brass.

Into the shuttle for the ride down. The descent begins. Leave on Moloch! You descend into the pit, comes Hymnal 55’s voice from behind their ears. They pay no heed. They were soldiers, heroes all, and they were bound for R&R, for the basic, raw stuff of which fun and guilt are made.

They left the shuttle at the port, and as they left, they saw other soldiers waiting to board for the trip back up. The others looked tired. Many were damaged. Some were in pieces. All were singing happily, for this was Moloch, and they had just enjoyed leave on Moloch.

Outside the port they were met by purveyors of all manner of delights. There were pimps and pushers and perversion mongers. There were bar shills and gamblers. Mostly there were taxi drivers. They grabbed one such.

“Take us where there is large-scale dissipation to be had,” said Twomey. “We are heroes on leave.”

“There is no small-scale sinning on Moloch,” said the driver. “What kind do you crave?”

“Take us to the big-stakes games,” said Dungeness. “To the sharpers and the high rollers, to where the dice click and the cards shuffle and the roulette balls whirl about.”

“Take us to where there is blood and riot,” said Twomey. “We’ve been fighting the enemy for many a day, and would fain fight our friends.”

“The Hundred-Year-Old Crap Game is still going strong in Whistler’s Alley,” said the driver. “There’s a riot between Army and Navy in Skid Row Plaza that’s been in progress for three days.”

“That’s what we want!” shouted Huang. “And we want women! Women with the bodies of houris and the minds of Port Said sewer rats.”

“Such are to be had,” said the driver. “Come with me, my heroes, and sample the Homeric delights of Moloch.” All piled into the cab and were off, singing.

They stopped at the notorious DIVINE VEIL OF ISHTAR BAR & GRILL, and there they swilled demijohns of delectable Olde Rocket Nectar. They crammed down cheeseburgers smeared with paté de foie gras and Ishtar’s famed caviar milkshakes.

Thus fortified, they descended to the next level, Lower Middle Gambling Hell. There a fight promoter spotted the many rows of decorations adorning Twomey’s chest.

“You must be the one I’ve searched for these many years, Sergeant,” he said. “Come with me and make your fortune! Here we have swordfights and knifefights, fistfights and gunfights. There are blood and cheering crowds and great piles of money to be won!”

“Not I,” said Twomey. “But Spinetti, here, is the greatest pistolero of all. He’s your man.”

So they all tramped along, Spinetti warming up his draw and the others laughing.

“You’ll be put out of action, Spinetti,” said Burgess, “and miss the rest of the leave.”

“It matters not,” said Spinetti. “I must try my skill.”

The arena was bright with floodlights and smelly with the crowds. There was money flying about as the bets were placed. Spinetti took the ring and challenged all comers. The hands dashed and the pistols zapped and stinky black smoke and prickly ozone filled the air. They laid bets on Spinetti and won hugely as he disposed of one opponent after another. Then they stopped betting because Spinetti was never good for more than ten fights per night. Eventually a Marine got him with a horizontal beam-slash and they carried him off to a body shop, blood dripping from his right arm and sparks and melted copper from his left. They promised to return for him when their leave was up.

They descended through the riot in Skid Row Plaza, duking it out with Army and Navy impartially. Here the great Twomey came to the fore, his bronze fists smiting merrily as the flying wedge crossed the Plaza, leaving a trail of broken, bleeding, smoking, sparking, tooth-spitting, circuit-fusing men in its wake. They found the drop and descended farther.

It was dim. It smelled sweet. It was quiet and infinitely enticing. It was New Storeyville.

The women came and took them by the hand. They were not ordinary women. Their skin was of a smoothness not to be seen outside dreams. Their curves defied geometry. There were violations of gravity in the way their various projections swayed. And their voices, their voices…

“Come with us, heroes,” said one. “You are weary. You are worn. You are sated with lesser pleasures.” They could not but agree. The lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, said the voice of Hymnal 55 behind their ears.

Sweeter than any honey, Rev! they sent back. Smoother than any oil. Soothing balm to our afflicted sensibilities. They were led to a spacious villa. Quiet music played there, and they were served cool drinks in tall glasses as they reclined on couches and listened to the sound of wind chimes.

“Which among you is the greatest hero?” asked a green-eyed beauty with blue skin.

“Do you not see Twomey’s KIA badge?” said Minton. “Do but note that it bears twenty-seven stars.”

“Killed in combat twenty-seven times!” exclaimed the houri. “You surpass the records of the greatest heroes I have ever known!” Beware the words of the flatterer, says the voice of Hymnal 55 behind their ears.

We love flattery, they say back. We want more!

The women proceed with their ministrations. The men are delighted. “You seem to have been long deprived of female company,” says an houri.

“Not so long,” says Twomey. “But we are men of flesh and blood.”

“Well,” qualifies Minton, “partly flesh and blood.”

“That is to say,” says Huang, “a good deal of plasti-flesh.”

“And metal,” says Twomey, “but nonetheless men withal. In fact, Huang there will require some specialized attentions.”

The women opened Huang’s trousers, observed and conferred among themselves. Some went out and returned with the agreed-upon equipment. They attached wires and plugs and tubes to Huang’s midsection. “There,” beamed one. “You’ll never know the difference.”

“We never worry about the difference,” said Twomey. “For are we not heroes, and are not these our mortal carcasses dedicated to the heroes’ calling, while the vital parts of us reside elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere,” sighed the houri. “Yet you enjoy as if you were here.”

“We are here,” said Minton. “Meat and blood, plastic, wires, circuits and such, we are here. And come you here also, little wiggly one.” And the houri complied, for was this not leave on Moloch?

Later, much later, they picked up Spinetti at the body shop on the way back to the shuttle. They were weary but exultant.

“You missed one of the great experiences, Spinetti,” they said. “Now we must return to the war to rest up for the next leave, though it will never be such a leave as we had on Moloch.”

“I am content,” said Spinetti. “The nurses here are houris too. And some of the mechanics aren’t bad either.”

So, carrying Spinetti, they returned to the shuttle. And as they returned, they sang the old, old song.

Oh, my heart belongs to Mama,

But my brain just orbits Rama,

And the Chaplain tends the welfare of my soul.

Got my ass shot off on Thule,

And replaced on Finn McCooley,

And there’s always something there when they call roll!

Editor's Introduction to:

PSYOPS
by Stefan T. Possony

Stefan Possony received his Ph.D. in International Relations in Vienna shortly before the German Anschluss. His anti-Nazi activities put him high on the list of those wanted by the Gestapo, but he managed to escape, first to Czechoslovakia, then France, finally to the United States, where he became a valued Pentagon intelligence expert. One of his accomplishments was to predict, almost to the day, when the Soviets would detonate their first atomic bomb.

With Robert Strauss-Hupe and William Kintner, Possony co-authored the important work Protracted Conflict, one of the first books to recognize the nature of the “cold war.” After a long career in the Pentagon and at Georgetown University, Possony became a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace located on the campus of Stanford University. In 1970 we collaborated to write The Strategy of Technology; a new edition of that book is in preparation.

Steve Possony has long been an expert on Soviet strategy and tactics. This essay on psychological warfare was part of his presentation to the DEFENSE 1983 seminar.

PSYOPS
by Stefan T. Possony

Psyops is too large a subject for one article. So I will concentrate on two or three aspects that I think are crucial for the immediate and the more remote future.

I am using the expression “psyops” in distinction from “psychological operations,” which, naturally, are included in the term. It embraces the whole range of operations relating to all strategically relevant aspects of individual and collective minds and behavior. It relates to mental and behavioral consequences of military operations and significant events. It includes mental operations undertaken in support of military and other strategic activities. It is at the core of conflict management. In addition, it comprises different types of psychological, intellectual-conceptual, and political undertakings. Lastly, it is executed by means of techniques and equipments, and it strives through deliberate actions, most of which are standardized, to attain goals on all levels of importance.

First Conclusion: Psyops is not a limited or subsidiary activity. It is an “operational universal” in that it interrelates with all other strategic undertakings. It is a weapon in its own right and may not be vulnerable to being disarmed. It is not limited geographically. It ranges over all the fields of the intellect. It may influence feelings and will; it may activate and paralyze; and it may be the decisive factor in conflict. Its importance is badly underrated.

To be effective, psyops should be organized as a system, more precisely as a holistic system. Fragmentary, sporadic, point-oriented, and improvised psyops are bound to be unsuccessful. Psyops by bureaucratic management tend to be boring, disappointed, and usually belated.

Military principles should henceforth include this one: “All offensive and defensive operations must be supported by, and be integrated with, psyops.”

I also propose a principle of grand strategy (military plus…): “Psyops can be defeated by psyops. The side with inferior psyops probably is at the same time the side with inferior command and leadership. Other things being equal, this side is likely to suffer defeat.”

Military-political history bears this principle out, from the time of Sun Tzu and Alexander the Great to the present time. Yet no such principles are reflected in NATO defense planning.

Second Conclusion: Franklin, Lincoln, Wilson, and, up to a point, Roosevelt understood wartime psyops. International-conflict management was more or less bungled, by American presidents except, to an extent, Eisenhower. Reagan is a first-class communicator personally. But he is frequently in trouble because he lacks advisors and staffs with psyops capabilities.

Lenin may be regarded as the originator of modern psyops. According to him, it consists of propaganda, agitation, and organization, all being interrelated. Propaganda deals mainly with “theory” or ideology, agitation with “practice” or attacks on human targets who are to be crippled to decide an issue, and organization with subversion or attacks on the enemy from within.

Leaving Stalin out of consideration (we don’t have space here), Soviet psyops demonstrated astounding continuity. One man who influenced the project during the late 1920s, when he was still a youngster, is still in charge today—just one rung below Numero Uno. This is Boris Ponomarev, who displays signs that he advocates a strategy in which psyops is the dominant factor. Andropov and Ponomarev launched a major psyops offensive based on the revival of Marx and on Lenin’s formula for disarmament: Disarm the bourgeoisie and arm the proletariat. I will publish an analysis of Moscow’s strategy shift and of the new psyops high command in Defense & Foreign Affairs.

As a psyops factor, Marxism signifies ideology and little else. The renewed emphasis on Karl Marx means that ideology will be a focus of Soviet psyops. To the CPSU rulers, Marxism is ideologically crucial because it teaches that the victory of communism is ultimately inevitable. Marxism makes the CPSU look immortal.

The second focus of Soviet psyops is the Leninist policy of disarmament, compounded by deception and bluff. In the Aesopian lingo, “Leninist policy of disarmament” differs from “disarmament policy.” This Leninist policy is banked upon to accelerate the coming of the triumph. The disbelievers in Marx as a prophet should be cautious: Since the outcome of the historical process is not predestined, no outcome of the conflict is predictable. Either side may win or lose.

Americans tend to discount ideology; they do not realize that they are highly ideological themselves. Nor do they understand the true meaning of ideology, which is “science of ideas.” Such a science is legitimate and needed, and it does not contain elements that are necessarily erroneous.

In any serious conflict, a rationale of success or victory is required, together with a horizon of knowledge and of ideas that are action concepts.

The Soviets are embarking on an ideological offensive because they aim to control the world’s horizon of knowledge and action concepts, and victory-defeat rationales.

The Free World does not understand the crucial point at issue: Unless a conflict is first won spiritually, it is unlikely that it can be won materially. Ideology is the bridge to spiritual victory.

Here is my Third Conclusion: The U.S. and NATO do not understand the meaning of a psyops offensive. They have not, publically at any rate, recognized the fact that such an offensive is underway. They have not analyzed it. They do not realize the resultant threat to military security. They seem unable to visualize how a psyops defensive or counteroffensive could be mounted. They don’t even think about the problem. There are radio programs and the like, but the real psyops arena has been virtually abandoned to the enemy. It makes eminent sense for Andropov to upgrade ideology. It would make still more sense for the U.S. and NATO to inquire why their power to persuade has been allowed to atrophy, and to terminate their voluntary muteness.

The history of psyops technology is about two hundred years old, and this technology will continue to progress. Hence it is most important to look into the future.

It is no longer really difficult to send messages to the targets, that is, the persons who are to be influenced. The target cannot be reached if he is not interested in the originator or in his message, or if his interest is perfunctory. He is unattainable also if he is bored and if he finds it more pleasurable to listen to competitors, who are multiplying.

The target cannot be persuaded to listen. It is the other way around: He may listen if he already is fully or partially persuaded, and if the program is attractive in addition to informative, and if it helps him in his activities.

Fourth Conclusion: Psyops technology is more or less in hand. Its better utilization is at present precluded in most instances by political ineptitude and by international opposition. The importance of better programming is recognized as a theory, but new ideas and fundamental improvement are rare. Hence success often is a matter of hit or miss.

At this point let us forget about history and current events, and let us resolutely turn to the future. I want to alert you to the possibility that psyops technology may advance from communicating to direct signaling.

X rays and gamma rays are located at the upper portion of the frequency spectrum. What is at the lower end? THE BRAIN, the most important of all of nature’s phenomena. Suppose it becomes feasible to affect brain cells by low-frequency waves or beams, thereby to alter psychological states and possibly to transmit suggestions and commands directly into the brain.

Who is so rash as to doubt that technological breakthroughs of this general type would not be put promptly to psyops use? More important, who would seriously assume that such a technology would not be developed to accomplish political and military surprise?

A few years ago there was much excitement about the Soviet microwave “bombardment” of the American Embassy at Moscow. Why did the KGB, under Andropov’s leadership, embark on this seemingly scurrilous—and very prolonged—effort? There was no answer to this question, except that the KGB must have wished to harass American diplomats and cause them to worry about their health. This theory was never convincing.

The question was raised as to whether the Soviets had discovered a technique of using microwaves for psychological purposes and whether they were experimenting with this technique on American specialists on the USSR, who might unwittingly be pressed into Soviet service as guinea pigs. Impossible, replied the State Department; the waves can’t break through the blood-brain barrier, and thermal effects are so negligible that the body would not be affected. Nevertheless, embassy personnel was indemnified for health damage.

By 1979 at the latest, it was known that electromagnetic fields raising body temperatures by less than .1 degree Celsius may result in somatic changes. It was most surprising that such a trivial temperature rise was having any effects and even more astonishing that those effects were significant.

Chemical, physiological, and behavioral changes can occur within “windows” of frequency and energy continua. One of those windows is connected with navigation in marine vertebrates and with biological rhythms of humans. Another is at the level of the human electroencephalogram, i.e., in the range of extremely low radio and sound waves, around 20 Hertz.

Those findings remained unexplained. They seemed to require energy amplification of the initial stimulus by some twelve orders of magnitude. No such amplification was deemed to be feasible, and none was discovered.

Let us cut the story to the minimum. The original model, according to which the blood-brain barrier cannot be broken, was derived from the axiom that electromagnetic waves interact with tissue in a linear manner. However, it turned out that the molecular vibrations caused by a stimulating extracellular electromagnetic field are nonlinear. Utterly unexpectedly, they take the form of soliton waves that can transfer energy along long molecular chains.

By 1982 the term “soliton” finally made it to the technical dictionaries. Here is a definition from the 1982 McGraw Hill scientific-technical dictionary: “A soliton wave… propagates without dispersing its energy over larger and larger regions of space.” As I understand it, it would be more correct to say: “A soliton wave propagates suddenly acquired energy, or energy imparted by shock, without dispersing it.”

Soliton waves have recently been found to be relevant in high-energy physics and in the fusion program.

In biology the solitons occur as electro-solitons and as acoustic solitons, and they form only at certain high- and low-energy levels, or “windows.” The solitons, which can be depicted as spikes, are dynamically stable; they participate in vital processes; they have long lifetimes; and their vibration has a long persistence. Those characteristics permit the formation of a soliton and the associated boost of energy.

Significance? Extracellular disturbances such as acoustic or electromagnetic bursts can be propagated across the cell membrane. In this, nonlinearities in molecular dynamics rather than chemical kinetics are the key. Put differently, the twelve-magnitude energy deficit is overcome not by brute force, but by the formation of solitons.

Visualize the brain and its environment as structures of waves, and assume that shock waves create solitons. Then imagine that modern electronics with their flexibility, accuracy, and speed are put to work.

In addition, the range of resonances probably will be increased. Hence many frequencies, as well as several options for the transmission of energy across the membranes of brain cells, may become available. This may imply that the brain cells will be reachable diversely and flexibly, and perhaps routinely.

The discovery of cross-membrane coupling may be compared to the discovery of oxygen in 1772, which allowed the proof that phlogiston, the supposed element of fire, does not exist. Once the phlogiston was buried, chemistry and the chemical industry began their triumphal march across the world.

The exploration of the cross-membrane phenomenon is only at the beginning, and it is not yet possible to anticipate practical applications. As of now a new phenomenon has been discovered, probably. Nothing is as yet known, or is known publicly, on how the soliton can be aimed to produce desired effects. Only a hypothesis can be stated: If the phenomenon can be utilized, this will in due time have crucial bearing both on the body and on the brain, and on defense.

The theory of cross-coupling was formulated by A.S. Davydov, who, it seems, published the first purely theoretical version in 1976 and followed this with a study on “Solitons as Energy Carriers in Biological Systems.” By 1979 Davydov appeared to be linked to the Ukrainian Academy of Science.

It should be noted that Russian mathematicians were concerned with solitons before Americans ever became interested. It is therefore conceivable that Davydov achieved his results long before publication, and also that the experiments that involved the U.S. Embassy produced findings that led to subsequent progress.

In the U.S., the pioneering work seems to have been done by Albert E Lawrence and W. Ross Adey, writing in Neurological Research, 1982, Vol.4, 1/2

After writing this text, I learned that the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry (Martinsried bei Muenchen) also discovered that cell membranes can be crossed. Eberhard Neumann and Guenther Gerisch found that a shock wave passing through an electric field may create ultra-quick processes within the membrane and that through such “jumps in the field” (Feldspruenge—this probably means solitons), genes can be transmitted and cells fused.

There is a differential in the tension of the inner and outer membrane that averages 1/70,000 volt. This corresponds to 70,000 volt per (theoretical) membrane thickness of one centimeter. (The real thickness of a membrane is .1-8 centimeter.)

The discovery was made unexpectedly in the course of research on electric fields in membranes and their impact on vital processes. This research requires measurements of events lasting not more than one nano-second (one billionth of a second), and it suggested that solitons generally increase the permeability of membranes. Thus, new perspectives on genetic “engineering” were suddenly opened. Moreover, it was possible to fuse no less than fifty cells into one supercell with fifty nuclei and one single membrane. We might as well forego assessing this monstrous novelty.

The Max Planck Institute broke into the membrane, so to speak, either without knowing about Davydov, Lawrence, and Adey, or after learning about them while pursuing a different goal. In either event, a fundamental scientific rule is being confirmed once again: If the time comes for a fundamental innovation, a breakthrough discovery or invention will be made several times, at different places, and by persons working independently from one another.

It is futile to speculate on who stands where in a race that has barely begun. But it can be postulated that the USSR probably has an ambitious research program, whereas in the U.S., while work is being done, no program—let alone a crash program—is in existence.

It is predictable that in the wake of Andropov’s upgrading of psyops, the relevant programs in the USSR will be given an early and powerful boost.

My Fifth (and last) Conclusion is that future psyops will have to be planned for perspectives that cannot be formulated before the United States embarks on a major and totally novel R&D program. Meanwhile, it must be assumed that psyops will grow worldwide in strategic importance, and in new forms.

May 23, 1983

THE BRAIN WAVE MACHINE—Stefan T. Possony

On May 20, 1983, American newspapers printed an AP story from the Veterans Hospital at Loma Linda, California, stating that the Soviets had developed a device, called Lida, to bombard human brains with radio waves. The radio beams are expected to serve as a substitute for tranquilizers and to treat sleeplessness, hypertension, and neurotic disturbances.

It is not yet determined whether Lida affects the immune and endocrine systems.

Lida is reported to change behavior in animals.

Lida is on loan to Dr. Ross Adey, chief of research at Loma Linda. Adey started testing the machine three months ago and hopes to complete his investigations within a year. According to Dr. Adey, who repeatedly visited the USSR, the Soviets have used the machine on people since at least 1960.

The machine is technically described as “a distant pulse treatment apparatus.” It generates 40 megahertz radio waves that stimulate the brain’s electromagnetic activity at substantially lower frequencies.

Dr. Adey was quoted as saying, “Some people theorize that the Soviets may be using an advanced version of the machine clandestinely to seek a change in behavior in the United States through signals beamed from the USSR.” No reference was made to the protracted microwave bombardment several years ago of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

On April 29, 1983, Associate Editor Stefan T. Possony, addressing the Defense 83 meeting sponsored by the present publication, reported on Dr. Adey’s work and on the work by Dr. A.S. Davydov of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Davydov discovered how the blood-brain barrier can be penetrated by low-frequency beams and directly affect cells in the brain. Possony’s remarks were delivered to a panel studying psychological warfare.

In the U.S., research on directed brain waves has scarcely begun, and the USSR has a lead of approximately twenty-five years. Once it is matured, the new technology will be extraordinarily significant in medicine. It also may have major impacts on communications, intelligence, and psychological operations, and permit deliberate physiological impairment.

The KGB is known to be interested in the program.

It is not known whether the U.S. and other governments are trying to determine whether their countries have become targets of clandestine brain waves beamed from the USSR. Nor are there any indications that work on countermeasures is being contemplated anywhere—except perhaps in the USSR.

For that matter, it is high time that the U.S. government tells the complete story of how and why the American Embassy in Moscow was “beamed.”

Editor's Introduction to:

THREE SOLDIERS
by D. C. Poyer

The secret of empire is to make war feed war.

Militant religions have often employed the technique. The early followers of Mahomet offered captives the choice of “Islam or the sword.” Those who chose Islam were recruited to go forth and conquer. Whole nations were swallowed up and retrained into fighting units. The result was an empire that stretched from the Himalayas to the Pyrenees and threatened Europe for nearly a thousand years until Lepanto.

The British were exceedingly effective at this, with the result that most of India was conquered by a handful of British soldiers leading a large army of Indian troops. As late as World War II the British were able to field brigades of Indian soldiers, and to this day the Ghurka mercenaries are an important component of British strength.

Employment of mercenaries doesn’t always work so well. As Machiavelli observed, incompetent mercenaries will ruin you by losing battles; competent ones will be tempted to rob their paymasters and may eventually take over governing their employers. Still, those who for whatever reason do not care to fight for themselves will continue to look for someone to do it for them. They will look for exceptional loyalty, obedience, and competence; and will devise ever more elaborate tests to aid them in selecting the soldiers they employ.

THREE SOLDIERS
by D. C. Poyer

The blackness opened, and von Rheydt swam up through inky velvet to a consciousness that he had never expected to see again.

He did not move, not even opening his eyes.

Von Rheydt remembered falling face down in the snow, fingers clutching the sudden wetness in the pit of his stomach, hearing the soft crunch of millions of six-pointed ice crystals as his face sank toward the Russian earth.

Hauptmann von Rheydt noticed, without surprise, that he did not feel particularly cold, nor could he feel anything where the bullet had struck him. He was waiting, eyes closed and mind blank, for a Russian bayonet.

The white-coated troops who followed the tanks always checked the fallen Germans for signs of life. That, he thought remotely, must be why he was now face up. One of the Red troops must have turned him over while he was unconscious to check on the seriousness of his wound.

It must be bad if they hadn’t bothered to use a bayonet, he thought. Maybe that was why he couldn’t feel anything in his stomach.

Minutes passed. Von Rheydt waited. It was very quiet.

Too quiet, he thought suddenly. He could hear nothing but his heart. No machine-gun fire, neither the tap-tap-tap of the Degtyarevs nor the high cloth-ripping sound of the German guns. No grunting of tank engines, no shouts of “Oooray!” as the Red Army charged. Not even—and this was the strangest of all—not even the sighing of the wind over the plains of Stalingrad in this year of struggle 1942.

He opened his eyes, tensing himself for the bayonet. Above him was a gray ceiling.

A hospital, he thought. German or Russian? That was easy to answer. The Soviets did not waste hospital space on wounded enemy officers. So he was in friendly hands. A smile creased his thin, blond-stubbled face, and he sat up without thinking. And stared down at the crisp, unstained gray of his battle-dress tunic. No holes. No blood. After several seconds he touched his stomach with one hand. He was unwounded.

Captain Werner von Rheydt, German Army, thirty years old, educated at Göttingen… memory’s all right, he thought confusedly, still looking down at his stomach. Had he dreamed it, then? His brow furrowed. The University… the war… the draft… the Polish campaign, then France, then Yugoslavia, and so to the Russian Front. To Stalingrad with the 44th Infantry, Sixth Army, after four years of war. To the madness of Stalingrad in winter, an entire army surrounded, abandoned, but still fighting…

No, it was not a dream, von Rheydt concluded silently. Line “Violet” had fallen; and in the fighting retreat to “Sunflower,” the Soviet tanks had broken through. He had led a counterattack and had fallen, badly wounded, on a snowy battlefield two thousand miles from home. And he was now—here.

He swung his boots over the edge of the bunk and noticed it for the first time. It was a plain Reichsheer-issue steel bunk, standard thin pallet mattress with a dingy pillow and a gray wool blanket.

He stood up and the momentary sense of reassurance the familiar-looking bunk had given him disappeared. He stared around at a room that was far too strange for a dream.

It’s gray, he thought, but the gray was strange. Not a painted color, but a hard shininess like the dull sheen of polished metal. But the shape—it was the shape of the room that was different. He stood at the bottom of an octagon and at the center of one; the room had eight walls, and its cross-section was an octagon as well. He counted, came up with a total of twenty-six facets.

A pile of what looked like military equipment was stuck oddly to one of the eight vertical walls. Von Rheydt walked forward to investigate, stepped up on a slanted facet of the room to reach up—and found the pile on a slanted face just in front of him. He looked back at the bunk. It too was on a slanted face and looked as if it should come sliding down on him at any moment.

And there was no question but that the facet he had stepped up on was now at the bottom of the room.

Queer, thought von Rheydt. He walked on, stood next to the pile. Now that facet was the floor, and the bunk hung ludicrously on a vertical wall.

Feeling a touch of nausea, he bent to the heap of equipment. It was not his own, he saw, but it was all standard army. Helmet, battle, one, white-painted for winter wear. Canteen. Pack ration. An officer’s dress dagger, which he examined closely, scowling as he saw the double lightning strokes of the SS; the army and Himmler’s thugs had never gotten along, and of late there had been rumors… shadowy but horrible rumors. A dress sword, plain but of good Solingen steel. At the very bottom of the heap he found what he had been hoping for: a Luger. A quick investigation revealed six cartridges in its magazine.

Von Rheydt smiled as he buckled on the pistol belt. Having a weapon made him feel much more confident wherever he was. He buckled on the dagger too, and began walking again, continuing around the room. His boots clicked arrogantly on the hard surface.

Halfway around—the “floor,” inexplicably, still underneath his feet—he noticed a grille set into its surface. He bent to look into it.

A black, grimacing face, horribly furrowed with scars and paint, stared back at him, teeth bared. Von Rheydt recoiled, drawing the dagger. At his motion, the face disappeared, drawn back from the grille.

Beyond wonder, he walked on. In the next facet of the room was a door, or hatch, set flush with the gray surface and of the same material. There was no knob or handle, and he was unable to get the point of the dagger far enough into the seam to pry it open. He went on and had almost reached the bunk again before he saw something else on the smooth sameness of gray.

It was another grille. This one he approached with dagger drawn, but there was no one at it. He bent and peered through it, seeing on the other side another room like his own.

“Anyone there?” he called loudly.

The quick pad of footsteps came up to the grille and a moment later a hard-looking, tanned face stared out. A second or so passed, and then the man barked out a question.

It took several seconds for von Rheydt to realize that the strong-jawed, dark-haired man on the other side of the grille had said, “Who are you?”—in Latin.

Von Rheydt searched his mind for the moldy words he had struggled over at Göttingen. “Ego sum… von Rheydt,” he said haltingly. “Ah… sum miles Germanicus… amicus. Amicus, friend. Et tu?”

The other man spoke rapidly; not classical Latin, but a rough, corrupt-sounding tongue with a Spanish rhythm. Von Rheydt caught a word here and there, enough to piece the sense together: “Roman soldier… Nineteenth Legion. Into the forest, the battle against Arminius… spear wound… slept.” The Roman passed a hand over his close-cropped, dark hair, looking puzzled as if trying to remember something. “Slept…”

Von Rheydt started to speak in German, stopped, said in Latin: “You are a Roman soldier?”

“Centurio,” corrected the man, showing a massive gold ring on his powerful-looking hand. “Junius Cornelius Casca, centurion second rank, Nineteenth Legion, General Varus commanding.”

“Centurion Casca… what year is this?”

The other man—Casca—frowned through the grille. “Year? What year? Why, 762, ab urbe condita, and thirty-eighth year of the principate of Augustus.” His heavy brows drew together. “Where are we, German? What prison is this?”

Von Rheydt did not answer immediately for he was chasing a phrase down dusty corridors of his mind. Ab urbe condita… literally, from founding the city… yes, he remembered. The legendary founding of Rome, 753 B.C., the date used to reckon time by the Empire. This man Casca, then, could be… almost two thousand years old?

And then something else clicked in his mind. P. Quinctilius Varus, leading the Nineteenth Legion into Gaul. Sent to crush the Chirusci revolt under Arminius. Surrounded and massacred without a survivor, late in the reign of Augustus Caesar…

“Non certe scire—I don’t know,” he said slowly, trying to match stale school Latin to the cadence the other man used. The Roman laughed, a short, bitter sound.

Von Rheydt looked up from the grille. He looked at the bunk that stuck to the wall like a fly, at the strangeness of the gray metal walls, at the light that filled the room without visible source. He remembered the gravity that followed wherever he walked.

He had been wounded in 1942, on the frozen plains of Stalingrad. Just as this Casca, this Roman, had been wounded in the forests of Teutoburgium in nine A.D. They had been snatched away. But to where? he asked himself. And what year is it in this strange cell—9, or 1942 A.D.?

The Roman had left the grille, and von Rheydt slowly stood up. He looked vacantly around the room, then walked back to the bunk and sat down.

Fifteen minutes later he got up and went to the first grille, the one at which he had seen the black man. He was there again, big hands wrapped around the gray metal bars that separated the rooms. Von Rheydt wondered whether the other man was kneeling too, and if so—where did the room’s gravity come from? From the gray metal of its walls?

“Verstehen Sie Deutsch?”

The man looked back at him without expression, and von Rheydt sat back on his haunches and studied him. The face was broad, thick-lipped and strong; though the paint stripes were obviously meant for adornment or intimidation, the scars looked like battle scars rather than tattoo or ritual mutilation. The man’s hair was done up in a doughnut-shaped ring atop the wide skull, and his eyes, dark and intelligent, were studying the German with every bit as much interest as they were being given. Von Rheydt tried Latin after a time, and then French, of which he had picked up a few words during the 1940 campaign.

No luck. The man was listening intently though, and when von Rheydt paused, he placed his outstretched fingers on his broad, bare chest and said several words in a gutteral, clicking language:

“Ngi wum Zulu.”

Von Rheydt tried to understand but ended by shaking his head in frustration. Did ngi mean “My name is”? If only they had a few words of some language in common!

“You… are English?”

Von Rheydt started. His roommate at school had been English; he had picked up a fair amount of the language. “No. German. Who are you?”

The warrior placed his hand on his chest again and said slowly, “Mbatha. Of… the Zulu. This is… gaol?”

The language lesson lasted for about an hour.

By the time he was fully awake, von Rheydt had rolled out of the bunk and had the Luger in his hand—safety off; Stalingrad reflexes. He scrutinized his surroundings from a crouch before he stood up, holstering the pistol. The room was as empty, the light as steady, as when he had gone to sleep. Only one thing was different: The door had opened. He approached it cautiously, one hand still on the butt of the weapon.

As far as he could make out, the door had disappeared. There were no hinges, and the inside of the jamb was smooth and featureless; it could not have slid inside the wall. He remembered how impressed he’d been with the automatic doors he’d seen before the war in Berlin department stores, and grinned humorlessly.

Feeling a little like a cautious ape, von Rheydt stepped though the door. He looked to either side, down a long, narrow, gray-lit corridor with four welcome right angles to the walls. To his left the corridor fell away into darkness; to his right it was lit with the same sourceless brightness, stretching away into the distance.

There was a high, almost musical note behind him… the sound, he realized, that had awakened him. He turned and found the door in place, locked. He could see no way to open it.

Shrugging, he loosened the dagger in its sheath, placed his hand near the pistol and walked down the corridor to the right. He passed the outline of another door, and then another. A thought struck him, and he tried to step up on a wall; no good. The every-wall-a-floor device wasn’t used in corridors, then.

Octagonal rooms… doors… square corridors… the layout of the place came into focus as he walked. Von Rheydt visualized a grid of octagons, side to side, their corners forming four-sided longitudinal corridors. The corridors would lead the length of… what? The arrangement was an inhumanly efficient utilization of space, so space must be at a premium here. He walked along, staying alert, but thinking as well.

As a boy he had read Hermann Oberth’s and Willy Ley’s books about interplanetary flight. Read them avidly, until his father had thrown them all away and forbidden him to read such trash. Was he aboard such an interplanetary rocket? Or… and von Rheydt felt uneasy at the thought… was he, and the Zulu and the Roman, trapped in something as far beyond his imagination as Stukas and Konigpanzer tanks were beyond Casca’s?

He came to an open hatch, stepped in and snapped to rigid attention, a look of surprise flashing across his face.

The room was gray and octagonal; but in the center of it sat a desk, and at the desk stood a man. A hard-looking man of middle age, dressed in the high-collared tunic and red- striped trousers of a general of the O.K.W.—the General Staff. A man with sharp eyes and a rocklike chin, who nodded to von Rheydt’s astounded salute and motioned to a chair.

“Sit down, Captain,” he said in clear, Prussian-accented German. “Smoke?”

Von Rheydt sat, shook his head. “Thank you, no, Hen-General.”

“Well,” said the general, studying him for a moment while taking a long cigar from a box on the desk, lighting it carefully and exhaling a puff of aromatic smoke. “You are a bit confused, no doubt.”

“That is an understatement, Herr General.”

“I suppose so. We expected that you would be—you and your two companions. We owe you an explanation. You are here, Captain von Rheydt, because you are a brave man.”

“For Leader and Reich,” said von Rheydt automatically.

The man in the general’s uniform glanced at him sharply. “Yes. Of course. But tell me, Captain. Would you fight as bravely as you fought at Stalingrad—surrounded, outnumbered, abandoned by your leader—if, say the future of your species was at stake?”

“I beg the general’s pardon?” said von Rheydt.

“How did you come here, Captain?”

“Here… I don’t know, Herr General. The last thing I recall is leading an infantry counterattack against Soviet tanks…”

“Against tanks?”

“Those were my orders, Herr General,” said von Rheydt. “And then a strange thing happened. I thought that I was wounded.”

“That is not quite correct. You were killed.”

“Killed… but I am alive!”

“Are you, Captain?”

Frozen, von Rheydt stared at the general’s face. He felt his heart beating, felt the breath that rustled in his throat and the hunger that was beginning to stir in his bowels. “Yes, Herr General, I am alive.”

“You died at Stalingrad in 1942, Captain. I am sorry.”

Von Rheydt gripped the arms of his chair. “Explain yourself, Herr General. This is going beyond a joke!”

The older man chuckled. “This is not a joke, Captain. And I am not a general. Those of your time would not even consider me a man. Especially—you will pardon the emphasis—am I not a German.”

“Not a German…” began von Rheydt, presentiment growing in his mind. “You are not of my time?”

“Nor of your species,” said the general. “But—just as one stoops down when addressing a child—I am addressing you in a form that you can understand, one that, to your mind, embodies authority and command. As a general officer of the O.K.W.”

“What do you want?” asked von Rheydt harshly.

“Simply this,” said the officer, rising from the desk. His chrome leather boots clicked on the floor as he paced back and forth, hands interlocked behind his back, a cloud of cigar smoke trailing behind him. He began to speak, looking sharply at the seated captain each time he turned. “You are familiar with war, Hauptmann von Rheydt. As are your two comrades. Well, envision, if you can, a war that encompasses a galaxy and that has lasted for well over a million of your years. A war in which entire races are developed, deployed and used as weapons, as you develop new tanks or rifles.”

In spite of what it meant, von Rheydt knew the man was telling the truth. He shook his head. “And the fact that, as you say, I am dead?”

“You were dead,” the general corrected gravely. “Until we intervened. But we are offering you, and your companions, the chance to return.”

“How?”

“By fighting.”

“Fighting for you? In this war of yours?”

“Not quite. Let me explain a little further.” The general stopped pacing, crossed his arms and looked down at the captain. A wreath of cigar smoke gradually encircled the hard features. “Your race has always been puzzled by its own killer instincts, plagued by its own love for war. To you it was tragic, inexplicable. It seemed contrary to all the laws of evolution, for it killed off not the old and weak, but the young and strong. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your race, Captain, has been, shall we say, in development. Forced development. To forge a warlike race, one must have wars.”

“That is obvious, Herr General. The Fuhrer has said that himself.”

“Yes,” said the general, looking at the ceiling. “The Fuhrer… we will have to recall him soon and cover his disappearance in some convincing manner. But back to the subject at hand. Your species has developed very promisingly. It can be very useful, to us, if…”

“If?”

“If you prove yourselves to be an effective weapon in a test. Tell me, Captain, if your army had developed two types of hand grenade and wished to determine which of the two would prove a more effective weapon, how would it go about it?”

“Well, the answer would be to conduct a comparative evaluation,” began von Rheydt, and then he saw it. “There is another race of warriors,” he said flatly. “Another one of your ‘weapons projects.’”

“Very good!” said the general, smiling. “Correct. Please go on.”

“Somehow, I don’t know how, you’ve been able to… go back in time and pick up the other two men, Casca and Mbatha. Roman and Zulu and German—your choice for the most warlike races of earth’s history, I suppose. And now you will match us against the others, I suppose.”

“Exactly,” said the general, raising his eyebrows in pleased surprise and perching one leg on the edge of his desk. “An intelligent species as well as a warlike one. Very good, Captain.”

“But why pick us?” asked von Rheydt. “Front-line soldiers, all three of us. If you had all history to choose from, why not Napoleon, or Caesar, or Frederick the Great? They were true men of war.”

“Not quite,” said the general. He tapped the cigar into a glass ashtray and examined the glowing tip. “The men you name were leaders, not soldiers. Since, in this war, we will provide all necessary leadership, they would be of little value to us. No, what we value in our weapons is different. Take the three of you. Stalingrad, Teutoburgium, and Ulundi—all battles in which a body of professional soldiers, abandoned, almost leaderless, and greatly outnumbered, stood and fought to the death because they valued obedience above life.”

Von Rheydt sat motionless. The general went on: “We need soldiers like that. So far in your history your three cultures have shown us what we can expect from the human race at its most disciplined, most obedient and most unthinking best.”

“As you say,” said von Rheydt slowly. “We are soldiers, then. But what good will our victory do for our race? Make mankind a pawn in a struggle we know nothing about?”

“It is that or extinction,” said the general quietly. “To put it in army terms, Captain, the Human project is at the crossroads. It must now either be put into full production or it must be liquidated and the resources shifted to another project. I’m sure you realize, Captain, that in total war there is no other way.”

Von Rheydt stood up stiffly, put one hand on his dagger and clicked his heels. His other hand shot out in a quivering salute.

“You will find us good soldiers,” he said.

“I hope so,” said the general. “Tell the others, Captain. Ten hours from now, the three of you will fight. I suggest that you all get some sleep.” The high-pitched note of an opening hatch came from behind the rigid German, “Dismissed!”

Von Rheydt pivoted smartly and marched out. Outside, in the corridor, he turned. The door was not yet closed, and he caught a glimpse, not of a stiff O.K. W. general at a German army desk, but of something that sent him, mind reeling, stumbling down the corridor.

* * *

Von Rheydt’s school Latin seemd to be coming back; Casca, listening at the grille, nodded slowly and frowned as he finished his explanation of the upcoming test. “I have been thinking, German. The framea (spear?) could not have healed like this.” He drew up a dirty tunic and showed von Rheydt a smooth, unmarked chest covered with curly black hair. “When will we go into battle?”

“About nine hours from now.”

“I am ready,” said the centurion. “I found some arms in my room. I will sleep, I think, before the contest of the gods.”

“The gods? …Yes,” said von Rheydt, realizing the inadequacy of his Latin to explain alien races and galactic wars to a man who thought the earth flat. “Yes, sleep well, Junius.”

Mbatha was not at his grille. Von Rheydt drew his dagger, stuck it through the bars and rattled it to attract the Zulu’s attention. An instant later he froze as the point of a broad-bladed, razor-sharp assegai touched his throat.

Von Rheydt smiled as he let go of the dagger, which the African took and examined critically, at last pulling back the assegai and returning the knife to the German.

“We must fight soon, Mbatha,” said von Rheydt in English. “You, me, and Casca, the other man with us. We must win. If we lose, we die.”

“Fight English? Fight you and Casca?”

“No, you do not fight us,” said von Rheydt desperately, thinking that the three of them might have to act as a team in a very few hours; having one man suspicious of the other two might kill them all. The Zulu had fallen fighting white men; to him all whites were the hated English. “I am not English. Casca is not English. We three men fight three… devils.”

“Devils?” said the African.

“Spirits. Ghosts.”

“Ghosts,” repeated the Zulu, deadpan. “Warriors cannot fight ghosts, u-Rheydt.”

“We don’t have a choice, Mbatha. We fight in the morning. In one sleep.”

“I sleep now, u-Rheydt,” said Mbatha and left the grating. A scraping sound came from his room for a few minutes, and then silence.

Von Rheydt went back to his bunk and sat down, eased his boots off. He had a light meal of tinned sausage and biscuit from the ration pack and found what tasted like vodka in the canteen. When he had finished his meal, he lay back on the bunk, placed the Luger under his pillow and fell into a heavy sleep.

“Captain von Rheydt,” said the voice in his dream, and he jerked awake. “It is time,” said the voice, and as its meaning sank in, he came slowly back to reality.

He went to the grilles and made sure that Mbatha and Casca were both awake. They were, looking around their rooms; they must have heard the voice as well. As von Rheydt pulled on his boots, he wondered, In what language had it spoken to them?

He stood up, stamped his feet into the boots and walked to the pile of gear. He buckled on the scabbard of the dress saber over his pistol belt and stuck the dagger under it. He tightened the belt of his uniform trousers and tucked the cuffs into his boots. Finally he walked back to his bunk, took the pistol from under his pillow, checked the chamber, tucked the gun into its holster and buttoned the leather flap over it.

He was tightening the leather chinstrap of his helmet when the door bonged. With a last look around, he picked up the canteen, slung it from his shoulder and stepped out into the corridor.

Mbatha was already there waiting, and von Rheydt’s eyebrows rose.

The Zulu was big—muscular as well as tall. His broad, bare chest was crisscrossed with dark, puckered scars. A short skirt of animal pelt fell from waist to mid-thigh, and at elbow and knee blossomed fringes of white feathers. The African was carrying a short thrusting spear at his waist, a slightly longer one in his right hand and an oval cowhide shield on his back. A necklace of yellow animal teeth clicked against his chest.

Before von Rheydt could speak, there was a rattle of metal, and the German turned to see Junius Cornelius Casca raise a hand in greeting to the Zulu.

The centurion’s dirty tunic was gone, hidden by a burnished corselet of horizontal hoops of steel. Leather padding showed under half-hoops of deeply gouged metal protecting the shoulders; the swelling muscles of his arms were bare. A coarse brown-woolen skirt or kilt fell to his knees, and he wore heavy sandals. One big, tanned hand rested on the sheath of a short sword and the other was curled negligently around a square shield, embossed with a wing-and-thunderbolt design. A short, plain dagger rode at his waist, and in spite of the Roman’s short stature, the plumes of his centurion’s helmet nodded above the taller men. Casca reached out an arm and gripped their hands solemnly, one at a time.

Von Rheydt looked at the two of them, the tall Zulu and the stocky Roman. “If it is the fate of a soldier to die,” he said aloud in his own tongue, “to do it with such men as you is an honor.”

They did not understand his harsh German, but they understood that it was a compliment and they nodded grimly. At that moment, one end of the corridor went dark, and they began to march three abreast in the direction of the light. The clang of bronze and steel echoed away in front of them.

The hatch closed behind them, and von Rheydt whispered, “My God.” A low grunt of surprise came from Casca. The three men stared around.

They were in a gigantic amphitheater, and it was empty. Von Rheydt looked back, seeing a high wall without a trace of the door through which they had entered. Firm sand grated under their feet, and a red sun above them cast a bloody glow over empty tiers of gray metal seats, stretched to meet a deep violet sky.

Metal scraped as Casca drew the short sword and balanced it at waist level. “In your country, German, do you have the circus?” he asked in his strangely corrupt Latin. “That is what this is like. I have seen the gladiators fight in the imperial city. And now we fight—before the throne of Jove.”

Von Rheydt looked at Mbatha, who returned his look without visible expression. “The u-Fasimba do not fight ghosts,” said the African slowly. Then the short spear pointed with the speed of a striking snake. “But those… those are not ghosts.”

Across the flatness of sand, through the atmosphere shimmering with heat, three dark figures stood against the wall of the amphitheater.

Von Rheydt unslung the canteen from his shoulder, took a mouthful of vodka and handed the canteen to the Zulu. When Casca handed it back to him, it was empty, and he dropped it to the sand and drew his saber.

Mbatha started forward at a jog-trot, and Casca and von Rheydt followed, their steps thudding on the hard-packed sand. The figures opposite them swung into motion too, and the two groups, men and others, closed rapidly.

Fifty meters apart, they both stopped, and von Rheydt’s eyes narrowed.

The enemy was not human. From a distance they had resembled men, upright, bipedal, two-armed. But from this distance the differences were horribly evident.

The aliens were taller and thinner than men, but there was no appearance of fragility. They had long hair of a brassy color. Skin tone? von Rheydt wondered. Thick, small footpads, like a camel’s. The necks were long, leading to a ridiculously small knob of a head. There was no clearly defined face, though he could make out large, dark eyes fixed on the men.

A sound next to him made him turn his head. Casca, eyes fixed on the enemy, had fronted his sword and was murmuring a prayer; when he caught von Rheydt’s eyes on him, he grinned but didn’t stop. Mbatha had been silent, scrutinizing the enemy; but then he turned his back contemptuously to them and addressed the German.

“We fight, u-Rheydt?” he said. “You—Casca?”

Von Rheydt nodded. “We fight.”

Casca finished his prayer and brought the square shield up to cover his breast. Mbatha turned back; and von Rheydt, drawn saber in his right hand, Luger in his left, walked between the armored Roman and the hide-shielded Zulu toward the waiting aliens.

As they closed, he could see variations in their equipment and dress. They must be of different times too, he thought. One of them seemed to be sheathed in a blue-metal armor and carried a long staff of the same material. Von Rheydt nudged Junius, pointed with his saber; the Roman nodded, teeth bared, and fixed his eyes on that one. Another was almost naked, and its weapons were two curved, glittering scimitars; Mbatha was already turning toward it when things began to happen.

In a second, the aliens seemed to shrink, from seven feet or so to almost human size. Von Rheydt blinked, then saw what had happened; the “heads” had been withdrawn into the deep chests, and the dark eyes peered over the edge of a protective carapace like a soldier peering from a trench. The brain must be inside the chest, he thought. Well, a bullet would reach it even there.

And even while von Rheydt blinked, the blue-armored alien had lifted a long arm and something swift left the long staff and fell toward him, too fast to dodge.

There was a terrifying loud clang, and a meter-long, blue-metal rod quivered in the sand at his feet. Casca’s shield twitched back and the centurion sent a mocking laugh at the being that was drawing another missile from a quiver on its back.

“Gratias,” said von Rheydt, and then the three men separated and he found himself face to face with the third alien.

Von Rheydt’s opponent stood solidly on two feet, neck stalk slightly extended, large, dark eyes fixed on the German. The smooth, brassy-looking skin was bare at the arms and legs but the trunk was covered with a flat black garment that looked incongruously like carbon paper…

But these were details that the captain noted only with his subconscious, for his attention was centered on the short rod that one brassy hand was bringing up stealthily to cover him.

Von Rheydt fired twice, rapidly from the hip. The nine-millimeter jolted his hand and the flat crack of it echoed back from the circled walls of the amphitheater. His opponent reeled back, then steadied, shook itself, and stepped forward, one hand going to its chest and the other raising the rod.

Electricity snapped, and von Rheydt’s whole body arced in a spasm. He fell heavily to the sand, face up but unable to move. The alien came toward him, towering up into the purple sky, and lowered the rod to point at von Rheydt’s chest.

He recovered movement and brought the saber around in a whistling arc. The alien jumped back but not in time to avoid the stroke, and the German’s arm tingled as if he had struck a lamp post. He scrambled back up, retrieving the automatic from the sand. The alien closed with him again, and the point of the saber grated against the black-jerkined chest. The alien backed off a little.

Von Rheydt looked at the saber point. Broken; the tip had gone with that wild slash to the legs. He looked again at his opponent, who was still backing away. Most likely it needed a little range to use the rod, which it was training on him again.

Von Rheydt switched the Luger to his right hand, aimed carefully and sent four bullets caroming off the thing’s torso. None penetrated, but the sheer kinetic energy of the eight-gram bullets knocked it back with each hit, and at the last shot it fell, dropping the rod.

Von Rheydt was on the weapon in two bounds, crushing it into the sand under his boot. From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Mbatha and the nearly naked alien, both weaponless, straining in hand-to-hand combat. Von Rheydt reached his alien, placed the muzzle between the wide eyes and pressed the trigger. Only at the empty click did he see that the toggle link was up; there was no more ammunition.

At the same instant a grip of iron closed around his leg and he was jerked off his feet. Dropping the saber and the useless pistol, he fell on his enemy, hammering with his fists on its chest. He had hoped it was the garment that had deflected his bullets, but it was too flimsy; it was the carapace beneath it that was like steel, impervious to his fists and his weapons alike.

He was being crushed in a close hug when he found the ceremonial dagger in his hand and managed to slice it into the softer flesh of the “neck.” The grip loosened, and the two fighters sprang apart and circled warily under the red sun.

Von Rheydt panted, wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his dagger hand. Pain began to throb in his crushed ankle and in his chest. His opponent’s sad eyes watched him unblinkingly as they circled, crouched, arms extended like wrestlers. The cuts on his half-extended neck gaped, but there was no trace of blood. The dark eyes flicked away from von Rheydt once, noting the ruin of its weapon, then slid back to follow the limping German.

Von Rheydt, circling to his right, stepped on something hard, stooped quickly and retrieved it: Mbatha’s short spear. He held it low, pointed up at those sad, interested eyes.

This makes it a little more even than hand-to-hand, thought von Rheydt. He felt quite cool, as he usually did once a fight had started. But the odds certainly seemed to favor the alien; that metal-hard skin, its great strength he had felt in his leg, the lack of an exposed brain. The very deliberation with which the creature moved gave an impression of terrible strength. The deliberation of a tank…

Deliberation. Could it be the deliberation not of irresistible power, but of great mass? Anything hard enough to resist a steel-jacketed bullet must weigh more than flesh.

At that moment von Rheydt crumpled, as if his injured ankle had given out. He fell to the sand and groaned.

The alien hesitated for a moment, then strode forward, its camellike foodpads making deep impressions on the sand.

It reached the fallen German, and the quick stride turned to a stumble as his spear entwined itself in the long legs. It began to topple over him, and von Rheydt rolled, bounding up. The neck extended as the creature fought for its balance; and then the whole frame jerked as von Rheydt swept the short spear around and rammed its butt into the back of the alien’s neck.

It hit the ground so hard that little gouts of dry sand flew up. Von Rheydt reversed the spear and leaned the point into the base of the neck stalk, but the creature did not even shudder. Von Rheydt smiled tightly; there had been a major nerve from the eyes to the brain.

He glanced around for the others and saw Casca grinning at him. The Roman was bareheaded, and blood covered his scalp and the right side of his face; but he was kneeling on the chest of the blue-armored alien and his short sword was at its throat.

Where was Mbatha? He looked around and saw, about twenty meters off, the last minute of that combat. The giant Zulu, body shining with sweat, had both hands interlocked on his opponent’s back in a powerful full nelson. The alien seemed to sag suddenly; the Zulu’s back and shoulder bulged with a great effort, and with a horrible tearing sound, one of the brassy arms was bent far back.

Mbatha dropped the unconscious alien, fell to his knees and was sick in the sand, his body shaking with the aftermath of his exertion.

There was a sound of clapping from above them, and von Rheydt looked up at the general, who was sitting alone on the lowest tier of seats.

“Well done, Captain!” he called down, honest admiration in his harsh voice.

Von Rheydt looked around at his companions. Casca had raised his palm in the air in salute; he looked surprised. Mbatha had risen to his feet and extended his spear arm. What, von Rheydt wondered, were they seeing in place of a general of the O.K.W.?

“Thank you,” he said to the general. “And now—your part of the bargain?”

“Of course. Return to life for all three of the victors,” the general said. “Finish these three off, and then–”

“No,” said von Rheydt.

The general stopped in mid-stretch, arms in the air. “What did you say, Captain?”

“I said no. This—creature—fought bravely. It is not a soldier’s way to kill when his opponent, though brave, is helpless.”

The general lowered his arms and laughed. “And what do your less-civilized friends say to that noble sentiment, Captain?” He said something rapid, something von Rheydt couldn’t catch, and they both looked at Casca.

The Roman looked down at the blue-clad warrior, slowly raised his hand and—turned his thumb upward.

Mbatha spread his hands and walked away from his defeated opponent. Von Rheydt turned back to the general. “You see?”

“This is insane,” said the general, angrily. “This primitive chivalry has no place in modern warfare. Even in your time, Captain—do your enemies give quarter to the wounded?”

“No,” said von Rheydt; then his eyes fell to the sand of the arena. “Nor… do some of my own countrymen. But the best among us, the professional soldiers, do. Obedience is not our only code, General. We also have honor.”

“That’s enough,” said the general, who had turned white. “Your last chance, Captain. Finish this matter properly. Now.”

Von Rheydt stepped forward and threw the spear violently to the ground. It stuck there, quivering. “You do it,” he said flatly. “It’s your war.” He turned, motioned to the Roman and the Zulu. They walked away across the sand.

Von Rheydt felt the blackness coming, drawing closer to him, like a velvet curtain sweeping in to end the last act of a play. It reached him, and he sank into it.

He opened his eyes to the white coldness of snow against his face and to a warmth that glowed like fire in the pit of his stomach. His eyes blinked, focused on a face. A human face. The face of a white-clad soldier who shouted something and raised a submachine gun…

* * *

It had rather enjoyed the role of a General Staff Officer, and It still retained the appearance of one as It sat down to write Its report. The battered army typewriter rattled as It typed; It paused occasionally to refer to a document from the desk or to take a draw on Its cigar. The gray octagonal room gradually filled with drifting layers of smoke as It wrote:

…the directive embodied in paragraph [4], reference {a], was fully carried out in accordance with standard testing procedures as set forth in Ordnance Manual, latest revision… Evaluating officer personally observed comparative combat testing and was highly impressed with performance of Human soldiers. They proved the better fighters in three of three encounters.

However, the Humans evinced certain undesirable characteristics as far as suitability for front-line use is concerned. The most serious was a refusal to obey orders contrary to their primitive codes of fighting.

It leaned back in the chair and thought about that one for a while, absentmindedly blowing smoke rings. In all good conscience, It could not recommend immediate employment of the Humans in the Disputed Sectors; they simply wouldn’t do if they couldn’t take simple orders. But then, It thought, there’s just too much combat potential here to simply close down and start over again with some other design.

It thought for quite some time and then stubbed out the cigar, tilted the chair forward again and typed, Recommendations:

What is needed now for this Project is an intensified, speeded-up program of development. To effect this, it is proposed that two great power blocs be created at the conclusion of the present war and that a situation of continuous conflict be maintained for as long as is necessary to produce a deployable Human weapon…

It nodded in satisfaction. Just the thing. And It could stay on to supervise, in a soft rear-echelon job, far from the front…

It smiled and began to change.

Editor's Introduction to:

INTERIM JUSTICE
by William F. Wu

It is a fundamental principle of the common law that justice delayed is justice denied; which says volumes about what passes for justice in the United States today. We have more lawyers than any society in all history; indeed, nearly as many as all societies in all times combined. For all that it takes years for civil cases to come to trail, and if there is a large discrepancy of resources—if the aggrieved party is small and weak, and the other large and rich—the case may never come to trial at all.

When disaster strikes far away, the French send doctors, the Swedes send food, and we send lawyers. After the disaster at Bhopal, India, a dozen lawyers sued Union Carbide in the name of the victims. Some went to India to seek clients. At least one took the name of his “client” from a newspaper account, and only later tried to get the client’s approval. Suits claiming billions of dollars were filed. It was ambulance chasing on a grand scale.

The worse the injury, the more the lawyers will collect—and the longer it will take to settle the matter. We all know this; but any attempt to change the system is fought tooth and nail by the lawyers. Since all judges are lawyers, it is not surprising that matters affecting the financial interests of lawyers as a class are not easily settled—especially when we note that a majority of both state and national legislators are also lawyers.

Nuclear power; release of new drugs; whether or not to conduct genetic experiments; building dams, closing steel mills, purchasing weapons, conducting research: no matter how technical the matter, lawyers are thought competent to settle it. Two teams of lawyers argue to convince yet another lawyer (called a judge). Usually none of the parties have any technical training, and often none can explain the technology of the matter in dispute. Nevertheless, in many cases all concerned are paid by the taxpayers. Certainly the judge will be.

Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz, development scientist, Dartmouth professor, and Chairman of the L-5 Society, has long advocated “science courts” staffed by professional scientists to settle complex technical matters. The concept has won considerable approval, but it seems no closer to implementation now than it did when first thought of.

An ancient Roman principle holds that it is to the benefit of the commonwealth that there be an end to litigation; that disputes be settled once and for all, rather than dragged on forever. Norman law allowed trial by combat: the litigants, or their champions, fought in the lists after priests and heralds prayed that “God grant the right.” Whether or not the Almighty intervened, battle unambiguously settled the dispute. The loser was not generally in any condition to file an appeal.

Dr. William Wu writes of a time a few years hence; a time when people have had enough of lawyers and have turned to war games as a way to decide civil cases. Not everyone is satisfied that justice is thereby done—but then not everyone believes our present system dispenses justice.

INTERIM JUSTICE
by William F. Wu

Ken Li pushed buttons on the arm of the gaming chair to adjust its position and then looked down over the big white holographic playing field in front of him. He had already tuned out the presence of thirty-five thousand excited, eager spectators packed into the stands around the arena. Now he swung up the flat keyboard on a steel arm and worked it into exactly the right height and distance from himself.

Ten meters away, across the playing field, his opponent finished maneuvering his own keyboard and raised one hand, signifying that he was ready. Ken centered his keyboard and made sure the small videoscreen across the top row of keys was not obscured by any glare from the lights. Then he raised his hand.

An attendant seated on the left edge of the playing field pushed a button on his own keyboard. Instantly the blank field came alive with holographic terrain and miniature armies drawn up in battle formation. The little video screen read, “Culloden Moor, 1746. House of Stuart. Prince Charles Edward Stuart.” A list of Victory Conditions followed.

Ken nodded to himself. As a Gamer of the Master class under contract, he was about to play a war game as the representative of a litigant in a civil suit. He had fifteen seconds in which to recall the details of the battle before the computer activated the game. Culloden? Yes…

“Lydia?” A month before, Ken had stood up behind his desk as his secretary ushered in his next appointment. “Why didn’t you just call me at home? I didn’t know you were coming until I checked the calendar this morning.” His heart started pounding.

The slender, honey-blonde woman stood by the closed door across the room. “I’m here to see you professionally,” she said coldly. She wore a simple dark-blue dress that he remembered.

“As a client then, please have a seat.” Ken gestured toward the two padded armchairs in front of his desk.

“A prospective client.” Clutching her purse in both hands, she walked primly forward and sat down. “I guess you know I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t absolutely desperate.”

Ken sat down behind his desk, intensely curious. “Yes. I never expected that you, of all people, would volunteer your litigation for a Guild contract.” He picked up a pen and nervously twirled it.

“Have you read about the case? It’s been in the papers.” She held herself stiffly erect.

“I saw some headlines. When I realized they were about you, I… quit reading.” He smiled, a little self-consciously.

“I know you’re good, and I know your fee. I’ll pay you in full, of course.” She opened her purse.

“You know it’s customary to give discounts to friends.”

“I’d rather pay you in full.” She pulled out a checkbook.

“Even so, you’re premature with that. Don’t worry. I don’t intend to turn you down. When you’re in trouble, I’ll still do anything for you. Now. What’s the case about?”

The Battle of Culloden—that was where the House of Hanover, represented by the English and certain Scottish clans allied with them, defeated the Stuart heir and his rebel Scots and brought about the end of the traditional Highland way of life. Ken studied the disposition of his troops just as the game activated. He played the role of Prince Charles and had most of the limitations imposed on him that the Bonnie Prince had endured. His only edge over the Prince was his own tactical ability, of which the Prince had had very little.

The Victory Conditions were simple enough. The rebel Scots had to destroy a certain number of English, or drive them from the field. The English had to destroy a certain number of Scottish rebels, or kill the Scottish heir. If Ken withdrew with the Prince and his army intact, the game would be drawn and another one played. However, with the royal superiority in cavalry, the last possibility was too unlikely to consider.

Quickly Ken worked over the keyboard to correct certain flaws in his order of battle that had been allowed by the Prince’s incompetent Irish advisor, John William O’Sullivan. For instance, the left of his lines angled away from the enemy so that they were farther from them than the right. It was nothing more than sloppy supervision, and he issued orders to have the clans there brought forward. They were anchored by the Macdonalds, a sullen lot who were angered over losing their position on the right, which had been theirs by tradition for many centuries. Ken could not move them there now. Nor could he do anything about the lack of food and sleep endured by his army prior to the time of the opening of the game, or about the rain and sleet falling out of a nonexistent sky. Their physical and emotional condition would be considered by the computer as it resolved conflict.

Ken’s opponent was in the role of the English Duke of Cumberland, who gave the order for his artillery to fire. Ken gave a similar order and hurried to rearrange his right. He felt flushed now, and the sweat flowed freely down his face and back from the effort of concentration and from the tension. A flash of memory came to him—a quote from aged Lord Lovat, who had brought his Clan Fraser out for the Prince: “None but a mad fool would have fought that day.”

A small stone house called Culwhiniac stood far to the right of the Prince’s line. A long stone wall ran from the Prince’s line all the way to the royal line. More stone walls ran from this wall to the right at a perpendicular angle, making them excellent barriers against the royal army, but O’Sullivan had failed to man them. Ken knew better, and he drew clans from his second line to hold the walls. He also sent his meager cavalry there—the Fita-James Horse that was down to squadron strength—and the half troop of Life Guards he still had. This was out of character for the Prince since the Life Guards were acting as his personal bodyguard, but Ken had the prerogative.

He had no other cavalry, however, and he was outnumbered overall by about 8,800 to less than 5,000. A third of the rebels had drifted away recently, driven by starvation and lured by the nearness of their homes. Historically, the House of Stuart had been routed in twenty-five minutes.

The royal lines began to advance.

Lydia settled back in the chair slightly. “It’s about Johnny AA9. Remember him?”

“Mm—isn’t he classified? You never said much about him.”

“He’s our most successful artificial life-form. I can’t tell you much more than that.”

“You’re covered under gamer-client privilege, you know.”

“He’s still classified. The main thing is, Carnehan-Chang Labs contracted us to conduct certain experiments, and Johnny AA9 resulted from one of them. We don’t want to proceed any farther because Carnehan-Chang won’t commit itself to full responsibility for him and we don’t want to give him up until we know he’ll be taken proper care of.” Lydia shook her head tightly. “The cell differentiation is… I can’t tell you how advanced, but I can tell you we had to put the… put AA9 into cryogenic sleep when we first went to court. It’s been six years and we’re getting nowhere. So finally both sides agreed to a game.”

Ken fought to keep his voice professional and to control the strong attraction he still felt toward her. “So you’re resolving a simple ownership issue? Does the winner of the game take ownership or relinquish it?”

“It’s not that simple.” Lydia’s voice was almost a whisper. “Johnny’s human, Ken. He–”

“What? I thought that was just a nickname or something.”

“If he reaches full term, as we expect, he’ll have all the human needs. But who’s responsible for him? The bureaucracy of a corporation? And who’s going to protect him from being constantly experimented on by that collective bureaucracy? For that matter, will he be a person under the law? Or an animal that can be patented and owned by a corporation? We made him out of lab chemicals, not human gametes. I want some legal definitions before we go on, and the standard judicial process hasn’t given me any.”

“Well, as you so often told me, a game won’t provide any legal precedent. So what are you asking if you win?”

“That the fetus—that Johnny stay in suspended animation until my lab gets all the legal decisions we’re asking for.”

“What does the other side want?”

“They want immediate and full ownership and the total control that goes with it.” Lydia forced an ironic, unpleasant smile. “Why are you asking all these questions? Aren’t you the one who said that playing war games was independent of the issues?”

“Well, that’s true. As a gamer, I don’t pass judgment on the controversy, but I do like to know the magnitude of the case.” He shrugged slightly. “I know you still hate the Gaming Masters’ Guild, not to mention me. If you didn’t think this game was of extreme importance, I guess you wouldn’t be here.”

Lydia shook her head angrily. “Never! The system is terrible—it doesn’t give us any kind of justice based on the issues.”

“But you’re going to pay me for it anyway.” Ken couldn’t help a little smile.

“Well… all the new technology just keeps outstripping the laws on the books. We have to have something to go by until society catches up with us.”

Ken nodded. “Exactly. I’ll take your case.”

Smoke, rain, sleet and fog obscured the formations on the battlefield, but Ken could see that the royal artillery, with its light, snapping sounds, was tearing viciously into the motionless rebel line. On the rebel right, English dragoons and the Clan Campbell were advancing to the first stone wall of Culwhiniac. The Campbells, afoot as classic Highlanders, began to dismantle the wall for the mounted dragoons. At the next wall they would be met with a hail of fire from the rebel right.

Ken recalled, breathlessly, the kind of troops his Highlanders were; they had been the last feudal army to assemble in Britain. They wore kilts and plaids, and they carried muskets and claymores and dirks and targs. Their only effective tactic was the legendary charge of wild, screaming, furious clansmen down upon their enemy and the panic it sometimes caused.

It had not worked at the real battle.

The rebel artillery ceased firing. The Prince’s guns had been in poor condition and his gunners inexperienced; they had silenced themselves early in the actual conflict, and the computer had silenced them again on that basis here. Ken gave the attack order to his restless warriors, keying in the cry, “Claymore!”

The first line of Scots rebels raced forward across the moor with cries that sounded in the arena’s speaker system. A great roar of excitement rose from the spectators seated in the giant oval, even breaking through Ken’s concentration as his fingers danced over the keys. Then, blinking sweat from his eyes, he suddenly saw a chance for advantage.

The computer had been programmed to include all the historic personalities who were known on the particular day in question, their behavior and that of the ranks in general. Also, of course, Ken’s opponent would be using his own knowledge of the battle to strengthen his advantages, though in this case the royal victory had been quick and easy. He was probably not making any significant changes. On the rebel right, where the Fitz-James Horse and the Life Guards were waiting behind a stone wall, Ken saw a chance to rewrite the conflict.

Historically, the skewed angle of the rebel line had caused the charging Highlanders to run somewhat to the left instead of straight at their enemies. The Macdonalds, on the left, had been slaughtered or driven back by artillery and musket fire even before they reached the enemy because of the great distance they had to cross. Just to the right of center, however, the charging Erasers, Appin Stewarts and Camerons had overcompensated by running too far to their right. This had cut off the charge of their allied Atholl men, who were charging down the moor with one of the stone walls next to them on the right wing of the line. They were driven into the wall by their Cameron fellows. There the enemy Campbells had turned the rebel flank, lined the stone wall and fired their muskets point-blank into the blunted Atholl attack.

Ken had already straightened his line, and the Highland charge before his eyes was running dead ahead, though the orderly musket fire and artillery fire from the royal lines sliced into it savagely. On the right, however, the Campbells were just beginning to line up along the stone wall. Afraid he was too late, Ken had the Prince send a messenger running to the rebel horse. Just in time, they, too, leaped their own wall and charged the Campbells and the English Dragoons.

To defend themselves, the Campbells turned to face forward, allowing the Atholl regiment, with the rest of the Highland line, to finish their great charge.

Now came a terrible moment for Ken, who was tense and nearly drained already and still drawing on reserves of energy. Just like a real commander, he had made certain choices and given certain orders. Also like a real commander, he could only wait and watch as his orders were carried out, looking through the rain and smoke and fog for any other order that he thought might help.

On the left, the Macdonalds had closed with the royal line, which they had never done historically. The battle was in the balance now. If the charge failed to break the royal line, the rebels had no second tactic.

In the center, Clan Chattan had closed with the English in the face of a furious fire of grape and the steady, disciplined, relentless volleys of English muskets. Even so, the Scots broke the first line and fell upon the second—upon their bayonets, which outfought the claymores when properly used. The English center held.

On the left, the Macdonalds simultaneously drove a shock wave into the English right, also under murderously heavy fire and disciplined lines of bayonets.

Ken raised his head to look through smoke toward the rear of his enemy. Historically, the Duke of Cumberland had sent the Kingston’s Horse Regiment and two regiments of infantry from his rear around his right flank to smash the Macdonalds. Yes, Ken could see them moving. He could do nothing about it.

The day before the game, Ken had taken Lydia out for brunch. Giving one’s client an encouraging talk before a game was part of the psychology of being a Master Gamer, and though he was uncomfortable with her, he wanted to be strictly professional. The conversation was awkwardly polite.

“I don’t like to sound ungrateful,” she said over coffee once the plates had been removed. “I know you’ll do your best for me. I just wish we had laws that made the games unnecessary.”

“I agree it would be better for everybody,” said Ken with a shrug. “It’s also impossible to rush the process. Science and technology are rolling right along, and the legislators have to be caught up before they can pass decent laws.”

Lydia sighed and nodded. “So… how have you been?”

Ken remained motionless, looking down at the table in front of him for as long as he could. This was the last time he would be able to talk to her for a long time, maybe forever. He decided to sacrifice pleasantry for honesty.

“I miss your daughter. Very badly.”

“She’s fine. She doesn’t need you.”

“I helped raise her for three years. And it’s not as though she remembers her father or that he’s around somewhere. I’d just like to see her sometimes. Take her places.”

“She doesn’t need you. It’s not like you think.”

“You don’t know what I think,” Ken said angrily. “You never let me tell you. Every time I tried to talk about her, you just told me I was wrong. After years of telling me you couldn’t read my mind, you suddenly decided you could when it served your own selfish purposes. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re not her father, you know.”

“Have you told her you won’t let me see her?”

“She hasn’t asked.”

“So you’re just letting her wait to see if I come to visit her and letting her assume that when I don’t, it’s because I don’t care about her. You don’t even have the guts to tell her it’s your decision, do you?”

“Forget it, Ken. Thanks for brunch.” Lydia slid out of her chair and walked away quickly, slinging the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

Ken’s thoughts raced wildly. AA9, he thought. Johnny AA9. I’ll never see that little girl again. Maybe I can help that frozen little fetus, at least. Maybe.

Ken’s only chance was on the right. The men of Atholl, led by the Prince’s fine but disfavored general, Lord George Murray, had also pierced the front line of Barrel’s regiment. That regiment was courageous, however, and was virtually the only one that had withstood the Highland charge in the last battle between these armies that had led to the rebel victory at Falkirk. Yet the odds were now just uncertain enough to offer hope.

Breathing hard and fast, Ken ordered his second line to charge. This was a group of Lowland Scots, Irish and dismounted cavalry regiments, the last because enough horses could not be found. In the real battle they had been of no consequence, and the computer would not figure them to have great combat power. They charged, however, before the Macdonalds were smashed by the enemy cavalry, before the Campbells and Dragoons overwhelmed the weaker rebel horse, and before the rebel center began to flee and obstruct the force of the second charge.

The Camerons and the Atholl men had driven the remnants of the royal front line back. Yet the royal lines stood three regiments deep, and the regiments of Sempill and Wolfe in the second line now poured their musket fire onto the clansmen.

Those Highlanders, however, rallied when their second line came charging up behind them. Again the shock of the Highland charge drove back the English line, with horrible casualties. If the rebels were to win, this was the spot that would bring victory.

Ken, still working fast over the keyboard, watched with clenched teeth as Kingston’s Horse drove into the Macdonalds and scattered them. They fled, to be ridden down by the English. With grim satisfaction, Ken noted that Kingston’s Horse gave chase, as would the English infantry behind them. They would take themselves out of the battle.

On the rebel right, beyond the stone walls and away from the rest of the battle, the numbers of the Campbells and the numbers and discipline of the dragoons broke the rebel horse. Ken sent the Prince out to rally his Life Guards and then realized that no one could do so against those odds. With both flanks collapsing, Ken had nowhere to send the Prince except after the Atholl men, into the battle itself.

Finally the improbable happened. The men of Atholl, still led by Lord Murray, burst around the right of Wolfe’s regiment, where it had been anchored against the stone wall. The Prince charged after them, calling stragglers forward still. With the right of the line broken, the clansmen ranged across the center ran forward again, enraged by the fever of battle and encouraged by the partial success.

Courage in a common soldier was always a variable and unpredictable quality. At Falkirk, Barrel’s had been almost the only royal regiment to withstand the Highland charge; historically, at Culloden, they had all stood fast and carried the day. The computer calculated the fragility of human courage and either provided it or withdrew it, according to its own complex judgment of the battle at any given stage.

Though the royal army had taken both flanks of the rebels, and though the dragoons on Ken’s right were in position to return and fall upon the rear of his men and destroy them, the computer suddenly broke the morale of the royal flank that had been turned. The men of Semphill’s Border Scots and Wolfe’s regiment turned and fled yet another time from the triumphant, screaming Highlanders chasing after them. The royal army was still in the better position overall, but panic was contagious, and the royal lines collapsed like dominoes in a repeat of Falkirk. Cumberland could not contact and control the widespread wings of his army, but the Prince was now riding with his own most successful troops and was able to keep them together.

As the royal formation collapsed, Cumberland withdrew. A moment later the holograms all froze in place. Ken read across the little video screen over his keyboard, “Victory Conditions: House of Stuart.”

Ken let out a long breath and slumped back in his seat. Exhaustion overtook him now that the game was ended. The crowd about him was cheering wildly. He closed his eyes, chest heaving, and indulged himself in a grin. Lydia would have her way, at least until the courts got to work.

A Guild attendant took Ken to the reception room in an electric cart, as was customary. Ken thanked him and hopped out, feigning more energy than he felt. As the crowd parted before him, waving and calling congratulations, he reflected that the bounce in his step resulted more from rubbery knees than from his exhilaration.

If he had lost, of course, he wouldn’t have any bounce at all.

Ken made his way to the refreshment table where a smiling young female attendant had a cup of red punch to hand him. He downed it quickly and then stood with his back to the table, accepting hand after hand of good cheer, all from privileged spectators whose position with the Guild had in some way gained them entrance to the private reception.

One hand, suddenly, thrust a sealed envelope into his hand. Ken looked up into Lydia’s face.

“Thanks. I do appreciate it,” she said quietly. “That’s a check for the balance of your fee.”

“I’m glad I could help. Really. Thank you.” Ken was uncomfortably aware of the grinning strangers milling around them.

“I still despise this method of reaching decisions. It proves nothing about the issues at hand. It’s totally arbitrary.” Lydia spun quickly and disappeared into the crowd.

“It’s supposed to be arbitrary,” Ken said lamely after her. Then he looked around at the crowd of people surrounding him, waiting with big smiles for some snappy comeback from their idol.

“Well.” He smiled and shrugged. “Justice is justice… Isn’t it?”

Editor's Introduction to:

NO TRUCE WITH KINGS
by Poul Anderson

The virtue of prudence is not much discussed today; yet it lies at the heart of one of the fundamental issues of our time, the conflict between ethics of intention and ethics of responsibility. The “intentionists” argue thus: “what I intend is good, and I do what I intend; therefore my actions are good.” Their opponents say “what you intend is of little matter; it is the result of your action that must be judged. Just because you thought you were doing good does not excuse you. You must take forethought and act prudently, with due regard to the consequences of your action.”

Much evil has been done for the sake of evil goals. Genghis Khan built a pyramid of over a million skulls. His Mongol horsemen devastated whole nations. Poland and Hungary were nearly depopulated. The lands that sustained the Persian civilization were returned to desert and have not recovered to the present day; nor were the Mongols the only evil empire in history.

For all that, it can be argued that as much harm has been done from noble motives as from evil ones. Evil is eventually self-limited. The Mongol royalty drank themselves into inactivity. One will eventually tire of rapine and pillage. In contrast, there is no limit to the resources of those who wish to do good. The more selfless they are the more tireless they become. There is no oppression worse than the rule of a theory.

I first met Poul Anderson at the Seattle World Science Fiction Convention in 1961. We hit it off instantly, and from that time on have been close friends.

A year later Poul told me of a story he was writing. “I’m partly doing it for you. The do-gooders get their comeuppance,” he said. I could hardly wait.

The result was the Hugo-winning “No Truce With Kings,” which may very well be the finest story Poul has ever done.

NO TRUCE WITH KINGS
by Poul Anderson

“Song, Charlie! Give’s a song!”

“Yay, Charlie!”

The whole mess was drunk, and the junior officers at the far end of the table were only somewhat noisier than their seniors near the colonel. Rugs and hangings could not much muffle the racket, shouts, stamping boots, thump of fists on oak and clash of cups raised aloft that rang from wall to stony wall. High up among shadows that hid the rafters they hung from, the regimental banners stirred in a draft, as if to join the chaos. Below, the light of bracketed lanterns and bellowing fireplace winked on trophies and weapons.

Autumn comes early on Echo Summit, and it was storming outside, wind-hoot past the watchtowers and rain-rush in the courtyards, an undertone that walked through the buildings and down all corridors as if the story were true that the unit’s dead came out of the cemetery each September Nineteenth night and tried to join the celebration but had forgotten how. No one let it bother him, here or in the enlisted barracks, except maybe the hex major. The Third Division, the Catamounts, was known as the most riotous gang in the Army of the Pacific States of America; and of its regiments, the Rolling Stones, who held Fort Nakamura, were the wildest.

“Go on, boy! Lead off. You’ve got the closest thing to a voice in the whole goddamn Sierra,” Colonel Mackenzie called. He loosened the collar of his black dress tunic and lounged back, legs asprawl, pipe in one hand and beaker of whiskey in the other: a thickset man with blue wrinkle-meshed eyes in a battered face, his cropped hair turned gray but his mustache still arrogantly red.

“Charlie is my darlin’, my darlin’, my darlin’,” sang Captain Hulse. He stopped as the noise abated a little. Young Lieutenant Amadeo got up, grinned, and launched into one they well knew.

“I am a Catamountain, I guard a border pass.

And every time I venture out, the cold will freeze m–”

“Colonel, sir. Begging your pardon.” Mackenzie twisted around and looked into the face of Sergeant Irwin. The man’s expression shocked him. “Yes?”

“I am a bloody hero, a decorated vet:

The Order of the Purple Shaft, with pineapple clusters yet!”

“Message just come in, sir. Major Speyer asks to see you right away.”

Speyer, who didn’t like being drunk, had volunteered for duty tonight; otherwise men drew lots for it on a holiday. Remembering the last word from San Francisco, Mackenzie grew chill.

The mess bawled forth the chorus, not noticing when the colonel knocked out his pipe and rose.

“The guns go boom! Hey, tiddley boom!

The rockets vroom, the arrows zoom.

From slug to slug is damn small room.

Get me out of here and back to the good old womb!

(Hey, doodle dee day!)”

All right-thinking Catamounts maintained that they could operate better with the booze sloshing up to their eardrums than any other outfit cold sober. Mackenzie ignored the tingle in his veins; forgot it. He walked a straight line to the door, automatically taking his sidearm off the rack as he passed by. The song pursued him into the hall.

“For maggots in the rations, we hardly ever lack.

You bite into a sandwich and the sandwich bites right back.

The coffee is the finest grade of Sacramento mud.

The ketchup’s good in combat, though, for simulating blood.”

(Cho-orus)!

“The drums go bump! Ah-tumpty-tump! The bugles make like Gabri’l’s trump–”

Lanterns were far apart in the passage. Portraits of former commanders watched the colonel and the sergeant from eyes that were hidden in grotesque darkness. Footfalls clattered too loudly here.

“I’ve got an arrow in my rump.

Right about and rearward, heroes, on the jump!

(Hey, doodle dee day!)”

Mackenzie went between a pair of fieldpieces flanking a stairway—they had been captured at Rock Springs during the Wyoming War, a generation ago—and upward. There was more distance between places in this keep than his legs liked at their present age. But it was old, had been added to decade by decade; and it needed to be massive, chiseled and mortared from Sierra granite, for it guarded a key to the nation. More than one army had broken against its revetments before the Nevada marches were pacified, and more young men than Mackenzie wished to think about had gone from this base to die among angry strangers.

But she’s never been attacked from the west. God, or whatever you are, you can spare her that, can’t you?

The command office was lonesome at this hour. The room where Sergeant Irwin had his desk lay so silent: no clerks pushing pens, no messengers going in or out, no wives making a splash of color with their dresses as they waited to see the colonel about some problem down in the Village. When he opened the door to the inner room though, Mackenzie heard the wind shriek around the angle of the wall. Rain slashed at the black windowpane and ran down in streams which the lanterns turned molten.

“Here the colonel is, sir,” Irwin said in an uneven voice. He gulped and closed the door behind Mackenzie.

Speyer stood by the commander’s desk. It was a beat-up old object with little upon it: an inkwell, a letter basket, an interphone, a photograph of Nora, faded in these dozen years since her death. The major was a tall and gaunt man, hook-nosed, going bald on top. His uniform always looked unpressed somehow. But he had the sharpest brain in the Cats, Mackenzie thought; and Christ, how could any man read as many books as Phil did! Officially he was the adjutant, in practice the chief adviser.

“Well?” Mackenzie said. The alcohol did not seem to numb him, rather make him too acutely aware of things: how the lanterns smelled hot (when would they get a big enough generator to run electric lights?), and the floor was hard under his feet, and a crack went through the plaster of the north wall, and the stove wasn’t driving out much of the chill. He forced bravado, stuck thumbs in belt and rocked back on his heels. “Well, Phil, what’s wrong now?”

“Wire from Frisco,” Speyer said. He had been folding and unfolding a piece of paper, which he handed over.

“Huh? Why not a radio call?”

“Telegram’s less likely to be intercepted. This one’s in code, at that. Irwin decoded it for me.”

“What the hell kind of nonsense is this?”

“Have a look, Jimbo, and you’ll find out. It’s for you anyway. Direct from GHQ.”

Mackenzie focused on Irwin’s scrawl. The usual formalities of an order; then:

You are hereby notified that the Pacific States Senate has passed a bill of impeachment against Owen Brodsky, formerly Judge of the Pacific States of America, and deprived him of office. As of 2000 hours this date, former Vice Humphrey Fallon is Judge of the PSA in accordance with the Law of Succession. The existence of dissident elements constituting a public danger has made it necessary for Judge Fallon to put the entire nation under martial law, effective at 2100 hours this date. You are therefore issued the following instructions:

1.   The above intelligence is to be held strictly confidential until an official proclamation is made. No person who has received knowledge in the course of transmitting this message shall divulge same to any other person whatsoever. Violators of this section and anyone thereby receiving information shall be placed immediately in solitary confinement to await court-martial.

2.   You will sequestrate all arms and ammunition except for ten percent of available stock, and keep same under heavy guard.

3.  You will keep all men in the Fort Nakamura area until you are relieved. Your relief is Colonel Simon Hollis, who will start from San Francisco tomorrow morning with one battalion. They are expected to arrive at Fort Nakamura in five days, at which time you will surrender your command to him. Colonel Hollis will designate those officers and enlisted men who are to be replaced by members of his battalion, which will be integrated into the regiment.  You will lead the men replaced back to San Francisco and report to Brigadier General Mendoza at New Fort Baker. To avoid provocations, these men will be disarmed except for officers’ sidearms.

4.   For your private information, Captain Thomas Danielis has been appointed senior aide to Colonel Hollis.

5.  You are again reminded that the Pacific States of America are under martial law because of a national emergency. Complete loyalty to the legal government is required. Any mutinous talk must be severely punished. Anyone giving aid or comfort to the Brodsky faction is guilty of treason and will be dealt with accordingly.

Gerald O’Donnell, Gen, APSA, CINC

Thunder went off in the mountains like artillery. It was a while before Mackenzie stirred, and then merely to lay the paper on his desk. He could only summon feeling slowly, up into a hollowness that filled his skin.

“They dared,” Speyer said without tone. “They really did.”

“Huh?” Mackenzie swiveled eyes around to the major’s face. Speyer didn’t meet that stare. He was concentrating his own gaze on his hands, which were now rolling a cigarette. But the words jerked from him, harsh and quick:

“I can guess what happened. The warhawks have been hollering for impeachment ever since Brodsky compromised the border dispute with West Canada. And Fallon, yeah, he’s got ambitions of his own. But his partisans are a minority and he knows it. Electing him Vice helped soothe the warhawks some, but he’d never make Judge the regular way because Brodsky isn’t going to die of old age before Fallon does, and anyhow, more than fifty percent of the Senate are sober, satisfied bossmen who don’t agree that the PSA has a divine mandate to reunify the continent. I don’t see how an impeachment could get through an honestly convened Senate. More likely they’d vote out Fallon.”

“But a Senate had been called,” Mackenzie said. The words sounded to him like someone else talking. “The newscasts told us.”

“Sure. Called for yesterday ‘to debate ratification of the treaty with West Canada.’ But the bossmen are scattered up and down the country, each at his own Station. They have to get to San Francisco. A couple of arranged delays—hell, if a bridge just happened to be blown on the Boise railroad, a round dozen of Brodsky’s staunchest supporters wouldn’t arrive on time—so the Senate has a quorum all right, but every one of Fallon’s supporters are there, and so many of the rest are missing that the warhawks have a clear majority. Then they meet on a holiday, when no cityman is paying attention. Presto, impeachment and a new Judge!” Speyer finished his cigarette and stuck it between his lips while he fumbled for a match. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“You sure?” Mackenzie mumbled. He thought dimly that this moment was like one time he’d visited Puget City and been invited for a sail on the Guardian’s yacht, and a fog had closed in. Everything was cold and blind, with nothing you could catch in your hands.

“Of course I’m not sure!” Speyer snarled. “Nobody will be sure till it’s too late!” The matchbox shook in his grasp.

“They, uh, they got a new CINC too, I noticed.”

“Uh-huh. They’d want to replace everybody they can’t trust as fast as possible, and De Barros was a Brodsky appointee.” The match flared with a hellish scrit. Speyer inhaled till his cheeks collapsed. “You and me included, naturally. The regiment reduced to minimum armament so that nobody will get ideas about resistance when the new colonel arrives. You’ll note he’s coming with a battalion at his heels just the same, just in case. Otherwise he could take a plane and be here tomorrow.”

“Why not a train?” Mackenzie caught a whiff of smoke and felt for his pipe. The bowl was hot in his tunic pocket.

“Probably all rolling stock has to head north. Get troops among the bossmen there to forestall a revolt. The valleys are safe enough, peaceful ranchers and Esper colonies. None of them’ll pot-shot Fallonite soldiers marching to garrison Echo and Donner outposts.” A dreadful scorn weighted Speyer’s words.

“What are we going to do?”

“I assume Fallon’s takeover followed legal forms; that there was a quorum,” Speyer said. “Nobody will ever agree whether it was really Constitutional… I’ve been reading this damned message over and over since Irwin decoded it. There’s a lot between the lines. I think Brodsky’s at large, for instance. If he were under arrest, this would’ve said as much and there’d have been less worry about rebellion. Maybe some of his household troops smuggled him away in time. He’ll be hunted like a jackrabbit, of course.”

Mackenzie took out his pipe but forgot he had done so. “Tom’s coming with our replacements,” he said thinly.

“Yeah. Your son-in-law. That was a smart touch, wasn’t it? A kind of hostage for your good behavior, but also a backhand promise that you and yours won’t suffer if you report in as ordered. Tom’s a good kid. He’ll stand by his own.”

“This is his regiment too,” Mackenzie said. He squared his shoulders. “He wanted to fight West Canada, sure. Young and… and a lot of Pacificans did get killed in the Idaho Panhandle during the skirmishes. Women and kids among ’em.”

“Well,” Speyer said, “you’re the colonel, Jimbo. What should we do?”

“Oh, Jesus, I don’t know. I’m nothing but a soldier.” The pipe stem broke in Mackenzie’s fingers. “But we’re not some bossman’s personal militia here. We swore to support the Constitution.”

“I can’t see where Brodsky’s yielding some of our claims in Idaho is grounds for impeachment. I think he was right.”

“Well–”

“A coup d’état by any other name would stink as bad. You may not be much of a student of current events, Jimbo, but you know as well as I do what Fallon’s judgeship will mean. War with West Canada is almost the least of it. Fallon also stands for a strong central government. He’ll find ways to grind down the old bossman families. A lot of their heads and scions will die in the front lines; that stunt goes back to David and Uriah. Others will be accused of collusion with the Brodsky people—not altogether falsely—and impoverished by fines. Esper communities will get nice big land grants so their economic competition can bankrupt still other estates. Later wars will keep bossmen away for years at a time, unable to supervise their own affairs, which will therefore go to the devil. And thus we march toward the glorious goal of Reunification.”

“If Esper Central favors him, what can we do? I’ve heard enough about psi blasts. I can’t ask my men to face them.”

“You could ask your men to face the Hellbomb itself, Jimbo, and they would. A Mackenzie has commanded the Rolling Stones for over fifty years.”

“Yes. I thought Tom, someday–”

“We’ve watched this brewing for a long time. Remember the talk we had about it last week?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I might also remind you that the Constitution was written explicitly ‘to confirm the separate regions in their ancient liberties.’’’

“Let me alone!” Mackenzie shouted. “I don’t know what’s right or wrong, I tell you! Let me alone!”

Speyer fell silent, watching him through a screen of foul smoke. Mackenzie walked back and forth a while, boots slamming the floor like drumbeats. Finally he threw the broken pipe across the room so hard it shattered.

“Okay.” He must ram each word past the tension in his throat. “Irwin’s a good man who can keep his lip buttoned. Send him out to cut the telegraph line a few miles downhill. Make it look as if the storm did it. The wire breaks often enough, heaven knows. Officially, then, we never got GHQ’s message. That gives us a few days to contact Sierra Command HQ. I won’t go against General Cruikshank… but I’m pretty sure which way he’ll go if he sees a chance. Tomorrow we prepare for action. It’ll be no trick to throw back Hollis’ battalion, and they’ll need a while to bring some real strength against us. Before then the first snow should be along, and we’ll be shut off for the winter. Only we can use skis and snowshoes, ourselves, to keep in touch with the other units and organize something. By spring—we’ll see what happens.”

“Thanks, Jimbo.” The wind almost drowned Speyer’s words.

“I’d… I’d better go tell Laura.”

“Yeah.” Speyer squeezed Mackenzie’s shoulder. There were tears in the major’s eyes.

Mackenzie went out with parade-ground steps, ignoring Irwin: down the hall, down a stairway at its other end, past guarded doors where he returned salutes without really noticing, and so to his own quarters in the south wing. His daughter had gone to sleep already. He took a lantern off its hook in his bleak little parlor and entered her room.

She had come back here while her husband was in San Francisco.

For a moment Mackenzie couldn’t quite remember why he had sent Tom there. He passed a hand over his stubbly scalp, as if to squeeze something out… oh, yes, ostensibly to arrange for a new issue of uniforms; actually to get the boy out of the way until the political crisis had blown over. Tom was too honest for his own good, an admirer of Fallon and the Esper movement. His outspokenness had led to friction with his brother officers. They were mostly of bossman stock or from well-to-do protectee families. The existing social order had been good to them. But Tom Danielis began as a fisher lad in a poverty-stricken village on the Mendocino coast. In spare moments he’d learned the three R’s from a local Esper; once literate, he joined the army and earned a commission by sheer guts and brains. He had never forgotten that the Espers helped the poor and that Fallon promised to help the Espers… Then, too, battle, glory, Reunification, Federal Democracy; those were heady dreams when you were young.

Laura’s room was little changed since she left it to get married last year. And she had been only seventeen then. Objects survived which had belonged to a small person with pigtails and starched frocks—a teddy bear loved to shapelessness, a doll house her father had built, her mother’s picture drawn by a corporal who stopped a bullet at Salt Lake. Oh, God, how much she had come to look like her mother.

Dark hair streamed over a pillow turned gold by the light. Mackenzie shook her as gently as he was able. She awoke instantly, and he saw the terror within her.

“Dad! Anything about Tom?”

“He’s okay.” Mackenzie set the lantern on the floor and himself on the edge of the bed. Her fingers were cold where they caught at his hand.

“He isn’t,” she said. “I know you too well.”

“He’s not been hurt yet. I hope he won’t be.”

Mackenzie braced himself. Because she was a soldier’s daughter, he told her the truth in a few words; but he was not strong enough to look at her while he did. When he had finished, he sat dully listening to the rain.

“You’re going to revolt,” she whispered.

“I’m going to consult with SCHQ and follow my commanding officer’s orders,” Mackenzie said.

“You know what they’ll be… once he knows you’ll back him.”

Mackenzie shrugged. His head had begun to ache. Hangover started already? He’d need a good deal more booze before he could sleep tonight. No, no time for sleep—yes, there would be. Tomorrow would do to assemble the regiment in the courtyard and address them from the breech of Black Hepzibah, as a Mackenzie of the Rolling Stones always addressed his men, and…. He found himself ludicrously recalling a day when he and Nora and this girl here had gone rowing on Lake Tahoe. The water was the color of Nora’s eyes, green and blue and with sunlight glimmering across the surface, but so clear you could see the rocks on the bottom; and Laura’s own little bottom had stuck straight in the air as she trailed her hands astern.

She sat thinking for a space before saying flatly:  “I suppose you can’t be talked out of it.” He shook his head. “Well, can I leave tomorrow early, then?”

“Yes. I’ll get you a coach.”

“T-t-to hell with that. I’m better in the saddle than you are.”

“Okay. A couple of men to escort you though.” Mackenzie drew a long breath. “Maybe you can persuade Tom— “

“No. I can’t. Please don’t ask me to, Dad.”

He gave her the last gift he could: “I wouldn’t want you to stay. That’d be shirking your own duty. Tell Tom I still think he’s the right man for you. Goodnight, duck.” It came out too fast, but he dared not delay. When she began to cry, he must unfold her arms from his neck and depart the room.

“But I had not expected so much killing!”

“Nor I… at this stage of things. There will be more yet, I am afraid, before the immediate purpose is achieved.”

“You told me–”

“I told you our hopes, Mwyr. You know as well as I that the Great Science is only exact on the broadest scale of history. Individual events are subject to statistical fluctuation.”

“That is an easy way, is it not, to describe sentient beings dying in the mud?”

“You are new here. Theory is one thing, adjustment to practical necessities is another. Do you think it does not hurt me to see that happen which I myself have helped plan?”

“Oh, I know, I know. Which makes it no easier to live with my guilt.”

“To live with your responsibilities, you mean.”

“Your phrase.”

“No, this is not semantic trickery. The distinction is real. You have read reports and seen films, but I was here with the first expedition. And here I have been for more than two centuries. Their agony is no abstraction to me.”

“But it was different when we first discovered them. The aftermath of their nuclear wars was still so horribly present. That was when they needed us—the poor starveling anarchs—and we, we did nothing but observe.”

“Now you are hysterical. Could we come in blindly, ignorant of every last fact about them, and expect to be anything but one more disruptive element? An element whose effects we ourselves would not have been able to predict. That would have been criminal indeed, like a surgeon who started to operate as soon as he met the patient, without so much as taking a case history. We had to let them go their own way while we studied in secret. You have no idea how desperately hard we worked to gain information and understanding. That work goes on. It was only seventy years ago that we felt enough assurance to introduce the first new factor into this one selected society. As we continue to learn more, the plan will be adjusted. It may take us a thousand years to complete our mission.”

“But meanwhile they have pulled themselves back out of the wreckage. They are finding their own answers to their problems. What right have we to–”

“I begin to wonder, Mwyr, what right you have to claim even the title of apprentice psycho-dynamician. Consider what their ‘answers’ actually amount to. Most of the planet is still in a state of barbarism. This continent has come farthest toward recovery because of having the widest distribution of technical skills and equipment before the destruction. But what social structure has evolved? A jumble of quarrelsome successor states. A feudalism where the balance of political, military, and economic power lies with a landed aristocracy, of all archaic things. A score of languages and subcultures developing along their own incompatible lines. A blind technology worship inherited from the ancestral society that, unchecked, will lead them in the end back to a machine civilization as demoniac as the one that tore itself apart three centuries ago. Are you distressed that a few hundred men have been killed because our agents promoted a revolution which did not come off quite so smoothly as we hoped? Well, you have the word of the Great Science itself that without our guidance, the totaled misery of this race through the next five thousand years would outweigh by three orders of magnitude whatever pain we are forced to inflict.”

“—Yes. Of course. I realize I am being emotional. It is difficult not to be at first, I suppose.”

“You should be thankful that your initial exposure to the hard necessities of the plan were so mild. There is worse to come.”

“So I have been told.”

“In abstract terms. But consider the reality. A government ambitious to restore the old nation will act aggressively, thus embroiling itself in prolonged wars with powerful neighbors. Both directly and indirectly, through the operation of economic factors they are too naive to control, the aristocrats and freeholders will be eroded away by those wars. Anomic democracy will replace their system, first dominated by a corrupt capitalism and later by sheer force of whoever holds the central government. But there will be no place for the vast displaced proletariat, the one-time landowners and the foreigners incorporated by conquest. They will offer fertile soil to any demagogue. The empire will undergo endless upheaval, civil strife, despotism, decay, and outside invasion. Oh, we will have much to answer for before we are done!”

“Do you think… when we see the final result… will the blood wash off us?”

“No. We pay the heaviest price of all.”

Spring in the high Sierra is cold, wet, snowbanks melting away from forest floor and giant rocks, rivers in spate until their canyons clang, a breeze ruffling puddles in the road. The first green breath across the aspen seems infinitely tender against pine and spruce, which gloom into a brilliant sky. A raven swoops low, gruk, gruk, look out for that damn hawk! But then you cross timber line and the world becomes tumbled blue-gray immensity, with the sun ablaze on what snows remain and the wind sounding hollow in your ears.

Captain Thomas Danielis, Field Artillery, Loyalist Army of the Pacific States, turned his horse aside. He was a dark young man, slender and snub-nosed. Behind him a squad slipped and cursed, dripping mud from feet to helmets, trying to get a gun carrier unstuck. Its alcohol motor was too feeble to do more than spin the wheels. The infantry squelched on past, stoop-shouldered, worn down by altitude and a wet bivouac and pounds of mire on each boot. Their line snaked from around a prowlike crag, up the twisted road and over the ridge ahead. A gust brought the smell of sweat to Danielis.

But they were good joes, he thought. Dirty, dogged, they did their profane best. His own company, at least, was going to get hot food tonight, if he had to cook the quartermaster sergeant.

The horse’s hoofs banged on a block of ancient concrete jutting from the muck. If this had been the old days… but wishes weren’t bullets. Beyond this part of the range lay lands mostly desert, claimed by the Saints, who were no longer a menace but with whom there was scant commerce. So the mountain highways had never been considered worth repaving, and the railroad ended at Hangtown. Therefore the expeditionary force to the Tahoe area must slog through unpeopled forests and icy uplands, God help the poor bastards.

God help them in Nakamura too, Danielis thought. His mouth drew taut, he slapped his hands together and spurred the horse with needless violence. Sparks shot from iron shoes as the beast clattered off the road toward the highest point of the ridge. The man’s saber banged his leg.

Reining in, he unlimbered his field glasses. From here he could look across a jumbled sweep of mountainscape, where cloud shadows sailed over cliffs and boulders, down into the gloom of a canyon and across to the other side. A few tufts of grass thrust out beneath him, mummy brown, and a marmot wakened early from winter sleep whistled somewhere in the stone confusion. He still couldn’t see the castle. Nor had he expected to, as yet. He knew this country… how well he did!

There might be a glimpse of hostile activity though. It had been eerie to march this far with no sign of the enemy, of anyone else whatsoever; to send out patrols in search of rebel units that could not be found; to ride with shoulder muscles tense against the sniper’s arrow that never came. Old Jimbo Mackenzie was not one to sit passive behind walls, and the Rolling Stones had not been given their nickname in jest.

If Jimbo is alive. How do I know he is? That buzzard yonder may be the very one which hacked out his eyes. Danielis bit his lip and made himself look steadily through the glasses. Don’t think about Mackenzie, how he outroared and outdrank and outlaughed you and you never minded, how he sat knotting his brows over the chessboard where you could mop him up ten times out of ten and he never cared, how proud and happy he stood at the wedding… Nor think about Laura, who tried to keep you from knowing how often she wept at night, who now bore a grandchild beneath her heart and woke alone in the San Francisco house from the evil dreams of pregnancy. Every one of those dogfaces plodding toward the castle that has killed every army ever sent against it—every one of them has somebody at home, and hell rejoices at how many have somebody on the rebel side. Better look for hostile spoor and let it go at that.

Wait! Danielis stiffened. A rider! He squinted at the distant man. One of our own. Fallon’s army had added a blue band to the uniform. Returning scout. A tingle went along his spine. He decided to hear the report firsthand. But the fellow was still a mile off, perforce riding slowly over the hugger-mugger terrain. There was no hurry about intercepting him. Danielis continued to survey the land.

A reconnaissance plane appeared, an ungainly dragonfly with sunlight flashing off a propeller head. Its drone bumbled among rock walls, where echoes threw the noise back and forth. Doubtless an auxiliary to the scouts, employing two-way radio communication. Later the plane would work as a spotter for artillery. There was no use making a bomber of it; Fort Nakamura was proof against anything that today’s puny aircraft could drop, and might well shoot the thing down.

A shoe scraped behind Danielis. Horse and man whirled as one. His pistol jumped into his hand. It lowered. “Oh. Excuse me, Philosopher.” The man in the blue robe nodded. A smile softened his stern face. He must be around sixty years old, hair white and skin lined, but he walked these heights like a wild goat. The Yang and Yin symbol burned gold on his breast.

“You’re needlessly on edge, son,” he said. A trace of Texas accent stretched out his words. The Espers obeyed the laws wherever they lived, but acknowledged no country their own: nothing less than mankind, perhaps ultimately all life through the space-time universe. Nevertheless, the Pacific States had gained enormously in prestige and influence in San Francisco at the time when the city was being rebuilt in earnest. There had been no objection—on the contrary—to the Grand Seeker’s desire that Philosopher Woodworth accompany the expedition as an observer. Not even from the chaplains; the churches had finally gotten it straight that the Esper teachings were neutral with respect to religion.

Danielis managed a grin. “Can you blame me?”

“No blame. But advice. Your attitude isn’t useful. Does nothin’ but wear you out. You’ve been fightin’ a battle for weeks before it began.”

Danielis remembered the apostle who had visited his home in San Francisco—by invitation, in the hope that Laura might learn some peace. His simile had been still homelier: “You only need to wash one dish at a time.” The memory brought a smart to Danielis’ eyes, so that he said roughly:

“I might relax if you’d use your powers to tell me what’s waiting for us.”

“I’m no adept, son. Too much in the material world, I’m afraid. Somebody’s got to do the practical work of the Order, and someday I’ll get the chance to retire and explore the frontier inside me. But you need to start early, and stick to it a lifetime, to develop your full powers.” Woodworth looked across the peaks, seemed almost to merge himself with their loneliness.

Danielis hesitated to break into that meditation. He wondered what practical purpose the Philosopher was serving on this trip. To bring back a report more accurate than untrained senses and undisciplined emotions could prepare? Yes, that must be it. The Espers might yet decide to take a hand in this war. However reluctantly, Central had allowed the awesome psi powers to be released now and again when the Order was seriously threatened; and Judge Fallon was a better friend to them than Brodsky or the earlier Senate of Bossmen and House of People’s Deputies had been.

The horse stamped and blew out its breath in a snort. Woodworth glanced back at the rider. “If you ask me though,” he said, “I don’t reckon you’ll find much doin’ around here. I was in the Rangers myself, back home, before I saw the Way. This country feels empty.”

“If we could know!” Danielis exploded. “They’ve had the whole winter to do what they liked in the mountains while the snow kept us out. What scouts we could get in reported a beehive—as late as two weeks ago. What have they planned?”

Woodworth made no reply.

It flooded from Danielis, he couldn’t stop, he had to cover the recollection of Laura bidding him good-bye on his second expedition against her father, six months after the first one came home in bloody fragments:

“If we had the resources! A few wretched little railroads and motor cars; a handful of aircraft; most of our supply trains drawn by mules—what kind of mobility does that give us? And what really drives me crazy… we know how to make what they had in the old days. We’ve got the books, the information. More, maybe, than the ancestors. I’ve watched the electrosmith at Fort Nakamura turn out transistor units with enough bandwidth to carry television, no bigger than my fist. I’ve seen the scientific journals, the research labs, biology, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics. And all useless!”

“Not so,” Woodworth answered mildly. “Like my own Order, the community of scholarship’s becomin’ supranational. Printin’ presses, radiophones, telescribes—

“I say useless. Useless to stop men killing each other because there’s no authority strong enough to make them behave. Useless to take a farmer’s hands off a horse-drawn plow and put them on the wheel of a tractor. We’ve got the knowledge, but we can’t apply it.”

“You do apply it, son, where too much power and industrial plant isn’t required. Remember, the world’s a lot poorer in natural resources than it was before the Hell-bombs. I’ve seen the Black Lands myself, where the firestorm passed over the Texas oilfields.” Woodworm’s serenity cracked a little. He turned his eyes back to the peaks.

“There’s oil elsewhere,” Danielis insisted. “And coal, iron, uranium, everything we need. But the world hasn’t got the organization to get at it. Not in any quantity. So we fill the Central Valley with crops that’ll yield alcohol to keep a few motors turning; and we import a dribble of other stuff along an unbelievably inefficient chain of middlemen; and most of it’s eaten by the armies.” He jerked his head toward that part of the sky which the handmade airplane had crossed. “That’s one reason we’ve got to have Reunification. So we can rebuild.”

“And the other?” Woodworm asked softly.

“Democracy—universal suffrage.” Danielis swallowed. “And so fathers and sons won’t have to fight each other again.”

“Those are better reasons,” Woodworth said. “Good enough for the Espers to support. But as for that machinery you want–” He shook his head. “No, you’re wrong there. That’s no way for men to live.”

“Maybe not,” Danielis said. “Though my own father wouldn’t have been crippled by overwork if he’d had some machines to help him… Oh, I’don’t know. First things first. Let’s get this war over with and argue later.” He remembered the scout, now gone from view. “Pardon me, Philosopher, I’ve got an errand.”

The Esper raised his hand in token of peace. Danielis cantered off.

Splashing along the roadside, he saw the man he wanted, halted by Major Jacobsen. The latter, who must have sent him out, sat mounted near the infantry line. The scout was a Klamath Indian, stocky in buckskins, a bow on his shoulder. Arrows were favored over guns by many of the men from the northern districts: cheaper than bullets, no noise, less range but as much firepower as a bolt-action rifle. In the bad old days before the Pacific States had formed their union, archers along forest trails had saved many a town from conquest; they still helped keep that union loose.

“Ah, Captain Danielis,” Jacobsen hailed. “You’re just in time. Lieutenant Smith was about to report what his detachment found out.”

“And the plane,” said Smith imperturbably. “What the pilot told us he’s seen from the air gave us the guts to go there and check for ourselves.”

“Well?”

“Nobody around.”

“What?”

“Fort’s been evacuated. So’s the settlement. Not a soul.”

“But—but–” Jacobsen collected himself. “Go on.”

“We studied the signs as best’s we could. Looks like noncombatants left some time ago. By sledge and ski, I’d guess, maybe north to some strong point. I suppose the men shifted their own stuff at the same time, gradual-like, what they couldn’t carry with ’em at the last. Because the regiment and its support units, even field artillery, pulled out just three-four days ago. Ground’s all tore up. They headed downslope, sort of west by northwest, far’s we could tell from what we saw.”

Jacobson choked. “Where are they bound?”

A flaw of wind struck Danielis in the face and ruffled the horses’ manes. At his back he heard the slow plop and squish of boots, groan of wheels, chuff of motors, rattle of wood and metal, yells and whip cracks of muleskinners. But it seemed very remote. A map grew before him, blotting out the world.

The Loyalist Army had had savage fighting the whole winter, from the Trinity Alps to Puget Sound—for Brodsky had managed to reach Mount Rainier, whose lord had furnished broadcasting facilities, and Rainier was too well fortified to take at once. The bossmen and the autonomous tribes rose in arms, persuaded that a usurper threatened their damned little local privileges. Their protectees fought beside them, if only because no rustic had been taught any higher loyalty than to his patron. West Canada, fearful of what Fallon might do when he got the chance, lent the rebels aid that was scarcely even clandestine.

Nonetheless, the national army was stronger, with more matériel, better organization, above everything an ideal of the future. CINC O’Donnell had outlined a strategy: concentrate the loyal forces at a few points, overwhelm resistance, restore order and establish bases in the region, then proceed to the next place—which worked. The government now controlled the entire coast, with naval units to keep an eye on the Canadians in Vancouver and guard the important Hawaii trade routes; the northern half of Washington almost to the Idaho line; the Columbia Valley; central California as far north as Redding. The remaining rebellious Stations and towns were isolated from each other in mountains, forests, deserts. Bossdom after bossdom fell as the loyalists pressed on, defeating the enemy in detail, cutting him off from supplies and hope. The only real worry had been Cruikshank’s Sierra Command, an army in its own right rather than a levy of yokels and citymen, big and tough and expertly led. This expedition against Fort Nakamura was only a small part of what had looked like a difficult campaign.

But now the Rolling Stones had pulled out. Offered no fight whatsoever. Which meant that their brother Catamounts must also have evacuated. You don’t give up one anchor of a line you intend to hold. So?

“Down into the valleys,” Danielis said, and there sounded in his ears, crazily, the voice of Laura as she used to sing. Down in the valley, valley so low.

“Judas!” the major exclaimed. Even the Indian grunted as if he had taken a belly blow. “No, they couldn’t. We’d have known.”

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow. It hooted across cold rocks.

“There are plenty of forest trails,” Danielis said. “Infantry and cavalry could use them if they’re accustomed to such country. And the Cats are. Vehicles, wagons, big guns, that’s slower and harder. But they only need to outflank us, then they can get back onto Forty and Fifty—and cut us to pieces if we attempt pursuit. I’m afraid they’ve got us boxed.”

“The eastern slope?” said Jacobsen helplessly.

“What for? Want to occupy a lot of sagebrush? No, we’re trapped here till they deploy in the flatlands.” Danielis closed a hand on his saddlehorn so that the knuckles went bloodless. “I miss my guess if this isn’t Colonel Mackenzie’s idea. It’s his style, for sure.”

“But then they’re between us and Frisco! With damn near our whole strength in the north!”

Between me and Laura, Danielis thought.

He said aloud: “I suggest, Major, we get hold of the C.O. at once. And then we better get on the radio.” From some well he drew the power to raise his head. The wind lashed his eyes. “This needn’t be a disaster. They’ll be easier to beat out in the open, actually, once we come to grips.”

Roses love sunshine, violets love dew,

Angels in heaven know I love you.

The rains that fill the winter of the California lowlands were about ended. Northward along a highway whose pavement clopped under hoofs, Mackenzie rode through a tremendous greenness. Eucalyptus and live oak, flanking the road, exploded with new leaves. Beyond them on either side stretched a checkerboard of fields and vineyards, intricately hued, until the distant hills on the right and the higher, nearer ones on the left made walls. The freeholder houses that had been scattered across a land a ways back were no longer to be seen. This end of the Napa Valley belonged to the Esper community at St. Helena. Clouds banked like white mountains over the western ridge. The breeze bore to Mackenzie a smell of growth and turned earth.

Behind him it rumbled with men. The Rolling Stones were on the move. The regiment proper kept to the highway, three thousand boots slamming down at once with an earthquake noise, and so did the guns and wagons. There was no immediate danger of attack. But the cavalrymen attached to the force must needs spread out. The sun flashed off their helmets and lance heads.

Mackenzie’s attention was directed forward. Amber walls and red tile roofs could be seen among plum trees that were a surf of pink and white blossoms. The community was big, several thousand people. The muscles tightened in his abdomen. “Think we can trust them?” he asked, not for the first time. “We’ve only got a radio agreement to a parley.”

Speyer, riding beside him, nodded. “I expect they’ll be honest. Particularly with our boys right outside. Espers believe in non-violence anyway.”

“Yeah, but if it did come to fighting—I know there aren’t very many adepts so far. The Order hasn’t been around long enough for that. But when you get this many Espers together, there’s bound to be a few who’ve gotten somewhere with their damned psionics. I don’t want my men blasted or lifted in the air and dropped, or any such nasty things.”

Speyer threw him a sidelong glance. “Are you scared of them, Jimbo?” he murmured.

“Hell, no!” Mackenzie wondered if he was a liar or not. “But I don’t like ’em.”

“They do a lot of good. Among the poor, especially.”

“Sure, sure. Though any decent bossman looks after his own protectees, and we’ve got things like churches and hospices as well. I don’t see where just being charitable— and they can afford it, with the profits they make on their holdings—I don’t see where that gives any right to raise the orphans and pauper kids they take in the way they do; so’s to make the poor tykes unfit for life anywhere outside.”

“The object of that, as you well know, is to orient them toward the so-called interior frontier. Which American civilization as a whole is not much interested in. Frankly, quite apart from the remarkable powers some Espers have developed, I often envy them.”

“You, Phil?” Mackenzie goggled at his friend.

The lines drew deep in Speyer’s face. “This winter I’ve helped shoot a lot of my fellow countrymen,” he said sadly.

“My mother and wife and kids are crowded with the rest of the Village in the Mount Lassen fort, and when we said goodbye, we knew it was quite possibly permanent. And in the past I’ve helped shoot a lot of other men who never did me any personal harm.” He sighed. “I’ve often wondered what it’s like to know peace, inside as well as outside.”

Mackenzie sent Laura and Tom out of his head.

“Of course,” Speyer went on, “the fundamental reason you—and I, for that matter—distrust the Espers is that they do represent something alien to us. Something that may eventually choke out the whole concept of life that we grew up with. You know, a couple weeks back in Sacramento I dropped in at the University research lab to see what was going on. Incredible! The ordinary soldier would swear it was witchwork. It was certainly more weird than… than simply reading minds or moving objects by thinking at them. But to you or me it’s a shiny new marvel. We’ll wallow in it.

“Now why’s that? Because the lab is scientific. Those men work with chemicals, electronics, subviral particles. That fits into the educated American’s world-view. But the mystic unity of creation… no, not our cup of tea. The only way we can hope to achieve Oneness is to renounce everything we’ve ever believed in. At your age or mine, Jimbo, a man is seldom ready to tear down his whole life and start from scratch.”

“Maybe so.” Mackenzie lost interest. The settlement was quite near now.

He turned around to Captain Hulse, riding a few paces behind. “Here we go,” he said. “Give my compliments to Lieutenant Colonel Yamaguchi and tell him he’s in charge till we get back. If anything seems suspicious, he’s to act at his own discretion.”

“Yes, sir.” Hulse saluted and wheeled smartly about. There had been no practical need for Mackenzie to repeat what had long been agreed on; but he knew the value of ritual. He clicked his big sorrel gelding into a trot. At his back he heard bugles sound orders and sergeants howl at their platoons.

Speyer kept pace. Mackenzie had insisted on bringing an extra man to the discussion. His own wits were probably no match for a high-level Esper, but Phil’s might be.

Not that there’s any question of diplomacy or whatever. I hope. To ease himself, he concentrated on what was real and present—hoofbeats, the rise and fall of the saddle beneath him, the horse’s muscles rippling between his thighs, the creak and jingle of his saber belt, the clean odor of the animal—and suddenly remembered this was the sort of trick the Espers recommended.

None of their communities was walled, as most towns and every bossman’s Station was. The officers turned off the highway and went down a street between colonnaded buildings. Side streets ran off in both directions. The settlement covered no great area though, being composed of groups that lived together, sodalities or superfamilies or whatever you wanted to call them. Some hostility toward the Order and a great many dirty jokes stemmed from that practice. But Speyer, who should know, said there was no more sexual swapping around than in the outside world. The idea was simply to get away from possessiveness, thee versus me, and to raise children as part of a whole rather than an insular clan.

The kids were out, staring round-eyed from the porticoes, hundreds of them. They looked healthy and, underneath a natural fear of the invaders, happy enough. But pretty solemn, Mackenzie thought; and all in the same blue garb. Adults stood among them, expressionless. Everybody had come in from the fields as the regiment neared. The silence was like barricades. Mackenzie felt sweat begin to trickle down his ribs. When he emerged on the central square, he let out his breath in a near gasp.

A fountain, the basin carved into a lotus, tinkled in the middle of the plaza. Flowering trees stood around it. The square was defined on three sides by massive buildings that must be for storage. On the fourth side rose a smaller temple-like structure with a graceful cupola, obviously headquarters and meeting house. On its lowest step were ranked half a dozen blue-robed men, five of them husky youths. The sixth was middle-aged, the Yang and Yin on his breast. His features, ordinary in themselves, held an implacable calm.

Mackenzie and Speyer drew rein. The colonel flipped a soft salute. “Philosopher Gaines? I’m Mackenzie, here’s Major Speyer.” He swore at himself for being so awkward about it and wondered what to do with his hands. The young fellows he understood, more or less; they watched him with badly concealed hostility. But he had some trouble meeting Gaines’ eyes.

The settlement leader inclined his head. “Welcome, gentlemen. Won’t you come in?”

Mackenzie dismounted, hitched his horse to a post and removed his helmet. His worn reddish-brown uniform felt shabbier yet in these surroundings. “Thanks. Uh, I’ll have to make this quick.”

“To be sure. Follow me, please.”

Stiff-backed, the young men trailed their elders through an entry chamber and down a short hall. Speyer looked around at the mosaics. “Why, this is lovely,” he murmured.

“Thank you,” said Gaines. “Here’s my office.” He opened a door of superbly grained walnut and gestured the visitors through. When he closed it behind himself, the acolytes waited outside.

The room was austere, whitewashed walls enclosing little more than a desk, a shelf of books, and some backless chairs. A window opened on a garden. Gaines sat down. Mackenzie and Speyer followed suit, uncomfortable on this furniture.

“We’d better get right to business,” the colonel blurted.

Gaines said nothing. At last Mackenzie must plow ahead:

“Here’s the situation. Our force is to occupy Calistoga, with detachments on either side of the hills. That way we’ll control both the Napa Valley and the Valley of the Moon… from the northern ends, at least. The best place to station our eastern wing is here. We plan to establish a fortified camp in the field yonder. I’m sorry about the damage to your crops, but you’ll be compensated once the proper government has been restored. And food, medicine—you understand this army has to requisition such items, but we won’t let anybody suffer undue hardship and we’ll give receipts. Uh, as a precaution, we’ll need to quarter a few men in this community, to sort of keep an eye on things. They’ll interfere as little as possible. Okay?”

“The charter of the Order guarantees exemption from military requirements,” Gaines answered evenly. “In fact, no armed man is supposed to cross the boundary of any land held by an Esper settlement. I cannot be a party to a violation of the law, Colonel.”

“If you want to split legal hairs, Philosopher,” Speyer said, “then I’ll remind you that both Fallon and Judge Brodsky have declared martial law. Ordinary rules are suspended.”

Gaines smiled. “Since only one government can be legitimate,” he said, “the proclamations of the other are necessarily null and void. To a disinterested observer, it would appear that Judge Fallon’s title is the stronger, especially when his side controls a large continuous area rather than some scattered bossdoms.”

“Not any more, it doesn’t,” Mackenzie snapped.

Speyer gestured him back. “Perhaps you haven’t followed the developments of the last few weeks, Philosopher,” he said. “Allow me to recapitulate. The Sierra Command stole a march on the Fallonites and came down out of the mountains. There was almost nothing left in the middle part of California to oppose us, so we took over rapidly. By occupying Sacramento, we control river and rail traffic. Our bases extend south below Bakersfield, with Yosemite and King’s Canyon not far away to provide sites for extremely strong positions. When we’ve consolidated this northern end of our gains, the Fallonite forces around Redding will be trapped between us and the powerful bossmen who still hold out in the Trinity, Shasta, and Lassen regions. The very fact of our being here has forced the enemy to evacuate the Columbia Valley, so that San Francisco may be defended. It’s an open question which side today has the last word in the larger territory.”

“What about the army that went into the Sierra against you?” Gaines inquired shrewdly. “Have you contained them?”

Mackenzie scowled. “No. That’s no secret. They got out through the Mother Lode country and went around us. They’re down in Los Angeles and San Diego now.”

“A formidable host. Do you expect to stand them off indefinitely?”

“We’re going to make a hell of a good try,” Mackenzie said. “Where we are, we’ve got the advantage of interior communications. And most of the freeloaders are glad to slip us word about whatever they observe. We can concentrate at any point the enemy starts to attack.”

“Pity that this rich land must also be torn apart by war.”

“Yeah. Isn’t it?”

“Our strategic objective is obvious enough,” Speyer said. “We have cut enemy communications across the middle, except by sea, which is not very satisfactory for troops operating far inland. We deny him access to a good part of his food and manufactured supplies, and most especially to the bulk of his fuel alcohol. The backbone of our own side is the bossdoms, which are almost self-contained economic and social units. Before long they’ll be in better shape than the rootless army they face. I think Judge Brodsky will be back in San Francisco before fall.”

“If your plans succeed,” Gaines said.

“That’s our worry.” Mackenzie leaned forward, one fist doubled on his knee. “Okay, Philosopher. I know you’d rather see Fallon come out on top, but I expect you’ve got more sense than to sign up in a lost cause. Will you cooperate with us?”

“The Order takes no part in political affairs, Colonel, except when its own existence is endangered.”

“Oh, pipe down. By ‘cooperate’ I don’t mean anything but keeping out from under our feet.”

“I am afraid that would still count as cooperation. We cannot have military establishments on our lands.”

Mackenzie stared at Gaines’ face, which had set into granite lines, and wondered if he had heard aright. “Are you ordering us off?” a stranger asked with his voice.

“Yes,” the Philosopher said.

“With our artillery zeroed in on your town?”

“Would you really shell women and children, Colonel?”

O Nora— “We don’t need to. Our men can walk right in.”

“Against psi blasts? I beg you not to have those poor boys destroyed.” Gaines paused, then: “I might also point out that by losing your regiment, you imperil your whole cause. You are free to march around our holdings and proceed to Calistoga.”

Leaving a Fallonite nest at my back, spang across my communications southward. The teeth grated together in Mackenzie’s mouth.

Gaines rose. “The discussion is at an end, gentlemen,” he said. “You have one hour to get off our lands.”

Mackenzie and Speyer stood up too. “We’re not done yet,” the major said. Sweat studded his forehead and the long nose. “I want to make some further explanations.”

Gaines crossed the room and opened the door. “Show these gentlemen out,” he said to the five acolytes.

“No, by God!” Mackenzie shouted. He clapped a hand to his sidearm.

“Inform the adepts,” Gaines said.

One of the young men turned. Mackenzie heard the slap-slap of his sandals running down the hall. Gaines nodded. “I think you had better go,” he said.

Speyer grew rigid. His eyes shut. They flew open and he breathed. “Inform the adepts?”

Mackenzie saw the stiffness break in Gaines’ countenance. There was no time for more than a second’s bewilderment. His body acted for him. The gun clanked from his holster simultaneously with Speyer’s.

“Get that messenger, Jimbo,” the major rapped. “I’ll keep these birds covered.”

As he plunged forward, Mackenzie found himself worrying about the regimental honor. Was it right to open hostilities when you had come on a parley? But Gaines had cut the talk off himself— “Stop him!” Gaines yelled. The four remaining acolytes sprang into motion. Two of them barred the doorway, the other two moved in on either side. “Hold it or I’ll shoot!” Speyer cried, and was ignored.

Mackenzie couldn’t bring himself to fire on unarmed men. He gave the youngster before him the pistol barrel in his teeth. Bloody-faced, the Esper lurched back. Mackenzie stiff-armed the one coming in from the left. The third tried to fill the doorway. Mackenzie put a foot behind his ankles and pushed. As he went down, Mackenzie kicked him in the temple, hard enough to stun, and jumped over him.

The fourth was on his back. Mackenzie writhed about to face the man. Those arms that hugged him, pinioning his gun, were bear strong. Mackenzie put the butt of his free left hand under the fellow’s nose and pushed. The acolyte must let go. Mackenzie gave him a knee in the stomach, whirled, and ran.

There was not much further commotion behind him. Phil must have them under control. Mackenzie pelted along the hall, into the entry chamber. Where had that goddamn runner gone? He looked out the open entrance, onto the square. Sunlight hurt his eyes. His breath came in painful gulps, there was a stitch in his side; yeah, he was getting old.

Blue robes fluttered from a street. Mackenzie recognized the messenger. The youth pointed at this building. A gabble of his words drifted faintly through Mackenzie’s pulse. There were seven or eight men with him—older men, nothing to mark their clothes… but Mackenzie knew a high-ranking officer when he saw one. The acolyte was dismissed. Those whom he had summoned crossed the square with long strides.

Terror knotted Mackenzie’s bowels. He put it down. A Catamount didn’t stampede, even from somebody who could turn him inside out with a look. He could do nothing about the wretchedness that followed though. If they clobber me, so much the better. I won’t have to lie awake nights wondering how Laura is.

The adepts were almost to the steps. Mackenzie trod forth. He swept his revolver in an arc. “Halt!” His voice sounded tiny in the stillness that brooded over the town.

They jarred to a stop and stood there in a group. He saw them enforce a catlike relaxation, and their faces became blank visors. None spoke. Finally Mackenzie was unable to keep silent.

“This place is hereby occupied under the laws of war,” he said. “Go back to your quarters.”

“What have you done with our leader?” asked a tall man. His voice was even but deeply resonant.

“Read my mind and find out,” Mackenzie gibed. No, you’re being childish. “He’s okay, long’s he keeps his nose clean. You too. Beat it.”

“We do not wish to pervert psionics to violence,” said the tall man. “Please do not force us.”

“Your chief sent for you before we’d done anything,” Mackenzie retorted. “Looks like violence was what he had in mind. On your way.”

The Espers exchanged glances. The tall man nodded. His companions walked slowly off. “I would like to see Philosopher Gaines,” the tall man said.

“You will pretty soon.”

“Am I to understand that he is being held a prisoner?”

“Understand what you like.” The other Espers were rounding the corner of the building. “I don’t want to shoot. Go on back before I have to.”

“An impasse of sorts,” the tall man said. “Neither of us wishes to injure one whom he considers defenseless. Allow me to conduct you off these grounds.”

Mackenzie wet his lips. Weather had chapped them rough. “If you can put a hex on me, go ahead,” he challenged. “Otherwise scram.”

“Well, I shall not hinder you from rejoining your men. It seems the easiest way of getting you to leave. But I most solemnly warn that any armed force that tries to enter will be annihilated.”

Guess I had better go get the guys, at that. Phil can’t mount guard on those guys forever.

The tall man went over to the hitching post. “Which of these horses is yours?” he asked blandly.

Almighty eager to get rid of me, isn’t he—Holy hellfire! There must be a rear door!

Mackenzie spun on his heel. The Esper shouted. Mackenzie dashed back through the entry chamber. His boots threw echoes at him. No, not to the left, there’s only the office that way. Right… around this corner—

A long hall stretched before him. A stairway curved from the middle. The other Espers were already on it.

“Halt!” Mackenzie called. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

The two men in the lead sped onward. The rest turned and headed down again, toward him.

He fired with care, to disable rather than kill. The hall reverberated with the explosions. One after another they dropped, a bullet in leg or hip or shoulder. With such small targets, Mackenzie missed some shots. As the tall man, the last of them, closed in from behind, the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

Mackenzie drew his saber and gave him the flat of it alongside the head. The Esper lurched. Mackenzie got past and bounded up the stair. It wound like something in a nightmare. He thought his heart was going to go to pieces.

At the end, an iron door opened on a landing. One man was fumbling with the lock. The other blue-robe attacked.

Mackenzie stuck his sword between the Esper’s legs. As his opponent stumbled, the colonel threw a left hook to the jaw. The man sagged against the wall. Mackenzie grabbed the robe of the other and hurled him to the floor. “Get out,” he rattled.

They pulled themselves together and glared at him. He thrust air with his blade. “From now on, I aim to kill,” he said.

“Get help, Dave,” said the one who had been opening the door. “I’ll watch him.” The other went unevenly down the stairs. The first man stood out of saber reach. “Do you want to be destroyed?” he asked.

Mackenzie turned the knob at his back, but the door was still locked. “I don’t think you can do it,” he said. “Not without what’s here.”

The Esper struggled for self-control. They waited through minutes that stretched. Then a noise began below. The Esper pointed. “We have nothing but agricultural implements,” he said, “but you have only that blade. Will you surrender?”

Mackenzie spat on the floor. The Esper went on down.

Presently the attackers came into view. There might be a hundred, judging from the hubbub behind him, but because of the curve, Mackenzie could see no more than ten or fifteen—burly field hands, their robes tucked high and sharp tools aloft. The landing was too wide for defense. He advanced to the stairway, where they could only come at him two at a time.

A couple of sawtoothed hay knives led the assault. Mackenzie parried one blow and chopped. His edge went into meat and struck bone. Blood ran out, impossibly red even in the dim light here. The man fell to all fours with a shriek. Mackenzie dodged a cut from the companion. Metal clashed on metal. The weapons locked. Mackenzie’s arm was forced back. He looked into a broad, suntanned face. The side of his hand smote the young man’s larynx. The Esper fell against the one behind and they went down together. It took a while to clear the tangle and resume action.

A pitchfork thrust for the colonel’s belly. He managed to grab it with his left hand, divert the tines and chop at the fingers on the shaft. A scythe gashed his right side. He saw his own blood but wasn’t aware of pain. A flesh wound, no more. He swept his saber back and forth. The forefront retreated from its whistling menace. But God, my knees are like rubber. I can’t hold out another five minutes.

A bugle sounded. There was a spatter of gunfire. The mob on the staircase congealed. Someone screamed.

Hoofs banged across the ground floor. A voice rasped: “Hold everything, there! Drop those weapons and come on down. First man tries anything gets shot!”

Mackenzie leaned on his saber and fought for air. He hardly noticed the Espers melt away.

When he felt a little better, he went to one of the small windows and looked out. Horsemen were in the plaza. Not yet in sight, but nearing, he heard infantry.

Speyer arrived, followed by a sergeant of engineers and several privates. The major hurried to Mackenzie. “You okay, Jimbo? You been hurt!”

“A scratch,” Mackenzie said. He was getting back his strength, though no sense of victory accompanied it, only the knowledge of aloneness. The injury began to sting. “Not worth a fuss. Look.”

“Yes, I suppose you’ll live. Okay, men, get that door open.”

The engineers took forth their tools and assailed the lock with a vigor that must spring half from fear. “How’d you guys show up so soon?” Mackenzie asked.

“I thought there’d be trouble,” Speyer said, “so when I heard shots, I jumped through the window and ran around to my horse. That was just before those clodhoppers attacked you; I saw them gathering as I rode out. Our cavalry got in almost at once of course, and the dogfaces weren’t far behind.”

“Any resistance?”

“No, not after we fired a few rounds in the air.” Speyer glanced outside. “We’re in full possession now.”

Mackenzie regarded the door. “Well,” he said, “I feel better about our having pulled guns on them in the office. Looks like their adepts really depend on plain old weapons, huh? And Esper communities aren’t supposed to have arms. Their charters say so… That was a damn good guess of yours, Phil. How’d you do it?”

“I sort of wondered why the chief had to send a runner to fetch guys that claim to be telepaths. There we go!”

The lock jingled apart. The sergeant opened the door. Mackenzie and Speyer went into the great room under the dome.

They walked around for a long time, wordless, among shapes of metal and less identifiable substances. Nothing was familiar. Mackenzie paused at last before a helix that projected from a transparent cube. Formless darknesses swirled within the box, sparked as if with tiny stars.

“I figured maybe the Espers had found a cache of old-time stuff, from just before the Hell bombs,” he said in a muffled voice. “Ultra-secret weapons that never got a chance to be used. But this doesn’t look like it. Think so?”

“No,” Speyer said. “It doesn’t look to me as if these things were made by human beings at all.”

“But do you not understand? They occupied a settlement! That proves to the world that Espers are not invulnerable. And to complete the catastrophe, they seized its arsenal.”

“Have no fears about that. No untrained person can activate those instruments. The circuits are locked except in the presence of certain encephalic rhythms that result from conditioning. That same conditioning makes it impossible for the so-called adepts to reveal any of their knowledge to the uninitiated, no matter what may be done to them.”

“Yes, I know that much. But it is not what I had in mind. What frightens me is the fact that the revelation will spread. Everyone will know the Esper adepts do not plumb unknown depths of the psyche after all, but merely have access to an advanced physical science. Not only will this lift rebel spirits, but worse, it will cause many, perhaps most, of the Order’s members to break away in disillusionment.”

“Not at once. News travels slowly under present conditions. Also, Mwyr, you underestimate the ability of the human mind to ignore data that conflict with cherished beliefs.”

“But–”

“Well, let us assume the worst. Let us suppose that faith is lost and the Order disintegrates. That will be a serious setback to the plan, but not a fatal one. Psionics was merely one bit of folklore we found potent enough to serve as the motivator of a new orientation toward life. There are others; for example the widespread belief in magic among the less-educated classes. We can begin again on a different basis if we must. The exact form of the creed is not important. It is only scaffolding for the real structure: a communal, antimaterialistic social group to which more and more people will turn for sheer lack of anything else as the coming empire breaks up. In the end, the new culture can and will discard whatever superstitions gave it the initial impetus.”

“A hundred-year setback, at least.”

“True. It would be much more difficult to introduce a radical alien element now, when the autochthonous society has developed strong institutions of its own, than it was in the past. I merely wish to reassure you that the task is not impossible. I do not actually propose to let matters go that far. The Espers can be salvaged.”

“How?”

“We must intervene directly.”

“Has that been computed as being unavoidable?”

“Yes. The matrix yields an unambiguous answer. I do not like it any better than you. But direct action occurs oftener than we tell neophytes in the schools. The most elegant procedure would of course be to establish such initial conditions in a society that its evolution along desired lines becomes automatic. Furthermore, that would let us close our minds to the distressing fact of our own blood guilt. Unfortunately, the Great Science does not extend down to the details of day-to-day practicality.

“In the present instance, we shall help to smash the reactionaries. The government will then proceed so harshly against its conquered opponents that many of those who accept the story about what was found at St. Helena will not live to spread the tale. The rest… well, they will be discredited by their own defeat. Admittedly the story will linger for lifetimes, whispered here and there. But what of that? Those who believe in the Way will, as a rule, simply be strengthened in their faith by the very process of denying such ugly rumors. As more and more persons, common citizens as well as Espers, reject materialism, the legend will seem more and more fantastic. It will seem obvious that certain ancients invented the tale to account for a fact that they in their ignorance were unable to comprehend.”

“I see…”

“You are not happy here, are you, Mwyr?”

“I cannot quite say. Everything is so distorted.”

“Be glad you were not sent to one of the really alien planets.”

“I might almost prefer that. There would be a hostile environment to think about. One could forget how far it is to home.”

“Three years’ travel.”

“You say that so glibly. As if three shipboard years were not equal to fifty in cosmic time. As if we could expect a relief vessel daily, not once in a century. And… as if the region that our ships have explored amounts to one chip out of this one galaxy!”

“That region will grow until someday it engulfs the galaxy.”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know. Why do you think I chose to become a psychodynamician? Why am I here, learning how to meddle with the destiny of the world where I do not belong? ‘To create the union of sentient beings, each member species a step toward life’s mastery of the universe.’ Brave slogan! But in practice it seems that only a chosen few races are to be allowed the freedom of that universe.”

“Not so, Mwyr. Consider these ones with whom we are, as you say, meddling. Consider what use they made of nuclear energy when they had it. At the rate they are going, they will have it again within a century or two. Not long after that they will be building spaceships. Even granted that time lag attenuates the effects of interstellar contact, those effects are cumulative. So do you wish such a band of carnivores turned loose on the galaxy?

“No, let them become inwardly civilized first; then we shall see if they can be trusted. If not, they will at least be happy on their own planet in a mode of life designed for them by the Great Science. Remember, they have an immemorial aspiration toward peace on earth; but that is something they will never achieve by themselves. I do not pretend to be a very good person, Mwyr. Yet this work that we are doing makes me feel not altogether useless in the cosmos.”

Promotion was fast that year, casualties being so high. Captain Thomas Danielis was raised to major for his conspicuous part in putting down the revolt of the Los Angeles citymen. Soon after occurred the Battle of Maricopa, when the loyalists failed bloodily to break the stranglehold of the Sierran rebels on the San Joaquin Valley, and he was brevetted lieutenant colonel. The army was ordered northward and moved warily under the coast ranges, half expecting attack from the east. But the Brodskyites seemed too busy consolidating their latest gains. The trouble came from guerrillas and the hedgehog resistance of bossman Stations. After one particularly stiff clash, they stopped near Pinnacles for a breather.

Danielis made his way through camp, where tents stood in tight rows between the guns and men lay about dozing, talking, gambling, staring at the blank blue sky. The air was hot, pungent with cookfire smoke, horses, mules, dung, sweat, boot oil; the green of the hills that lifted around the site was dulling toward summer brown. He was idle until time for the conference the general had called, but restlessness drove him. By now I’m a father, he thought, and I’ve never seen my kid.

At that, I’m lucky, he reminded himself. I’ve got my life and limbs. He remembered Jacobsen dying in his arms at Maricopa. You wouldn’t have thought the human body could hold so much blood. Though maybe one was no longer human when the pain was so great that one could do nothing but shriek until the darkness came.

And I used to think war was glamorous. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, terror, mutilation, death, and forever the sameness, boredom grinding you down to an ox… I’ve had it. I’m going into business after the war. Economic integration as the bossman system breaks up; yes, there’ll be a lot of ways for a man to get ahead, but decently, without a weapon in his hand— Danielis realized he was repeating thoughts that were months old. What the hell else was there to think about though?

The large tent where prisoners were interrogated lay near his path. A couple of privates were conducting a man inside. The fellow was blond, burly, and sullen. He wore a sergeant’s stripes but otherwise his only item of uniform was the badge of Warden Echevarry, bossman in this part of the coastal mountains. A lumberjack in peacetime, Danielis guessed from the look of him; a soldier in a private army whenever the interests of Echevarry were threatened; captured in yesterday’s engagement.

On impulse, Danielis followed. He got into the tent as Captain Lambert, chubby behind a portable desk, finished the preliminaries, and blinked in the sudden gloom.

“Oh.” The intelligence officer started to rise. “Yes, sir?”

“At ease,” Danielis said. “Just thought I’d listen in.”

“Well, I’ll try to put on a good show for you.” Lambert reseated himself and looked at the prisoner, who stood with hunched shoulders and widespread legs between his guards. “Now, Sergeant, we’d like to know a few things.”

“I don’t have to say nothing except name, rank, and home town,” the man growled. “You got those,”

“Um-m-m, that’s questionable. You aren’t a foreign soldier, you’re in rebellion against the government of your own country.”

“The hell I am! I’m an Echevarry man.”

“So what?”

“So my Judge is whoever Echevarry says. He says Brodsky. That makes you the rebel.”

“The law’s been changed.”

“Your mucking Fallon got no right to change any laws. Especially part of the Constitution. I’m no hillrunner, Captain. I went to school some. And every year our Warden reads his people the Constitution.”

“Times have changed since it was drawn,” Lambert said. His tone sharpened. “But I’m not going to argue with you. How many riflemen and how many archers in your company?”

Silence.

“We can make things a lot easier for you,” Lambert said. “I’m not asking you to do anything treasonable. All I want is to confirm some information I’ve already got.”

The man shook his head angrily.

Lambert gestured. One of the privates stepped behind the captive, took his arm and twisted a little.

“Echevarry wouldn’t do that to me,” he said through white lips.

“Of course not,” Lambert said. “You’re his man.”

“Think I wanna be just a number on some list in Frisco? Damn right I’m my bossman’s man!”

Lambert gestured again. The private twisted harder.

“Hold on, there,” Danielis barked. “Stop that!”

The private let go, looking surprised. The prisoner drew a sobbing breath.

“I’m amazed at you, Captain Lambert,” Danielis said. He felt his own face reddening. “If this has been your usual practice, there’s going to be a court-martial.”

“No, sir,” Lambert said in a small voice. “Honest. Only… they don’t talk. Hardly any of them. What’m I supposed to do?”

“Follow the rules of war.”

“With rebels?”

“Take that man away,” Danielis ordered. The privates made haste to do so.

“Sorry, sir,” Lambert muttered. “I guess… I guess I’ve lost too many buddies. I hate to lose more simply for lack of information.”

“Me too.” A compassion rose in Danielis. He sat down on the table edge and began to roll a cigarette. “But you see, we aren’t in a regular war. And so, by a curious paradox, we have to follow the conventions more carefully than ever before.”

“I don’t quite understand, sir.”

Danielis finished the cigarette and gave it to Lambert: olive branch or something. He started another for himself. “The rebels aren’t rebels by their own lights,” he said. “They’re being loyal to a tradition that we’re trying to curb, eventually to destroy. Let’s face it, the average bossman is a fairly good leader. He may be descended from some thug who grabbed power by strong-arm methods during the chaos, but by now his family’s integrated itself with the region he rules. He knows it, and its people, inside out. He’s there in the flesh, a symbol of the community and its achievements, its folkways and essential independence. If you’re in trouble, you don’t have to work through some impersonal bureaucracy, you go direct to your bossman. His duties are as clearly defined as your own, and a good deal more demanding, to balance his privileges. He leads you in battle and in the ceremonies that give color and meaning to life. Your fathers and his have worked and played together for two or three hundred years. The land is alive with the memories of them. You and he belong.

“Well, that has to be swept away so that we can go on to a higher level. But we won’t reach that level by alienating everyone. We’re not a conquering army; we’re more like the Householder Guard putting down a riot in some city. The opposition is part and parcel of our own society.”

Lambert struck a match for him. He inhaled and finished: “On a practical plane, I might also remind you, Captain, that the federal armed forces, Fallonite and Brodskyite together, are none too large. Little more than a cadre, in fact. We’re a bunch of younger sons, countrymen who failed, poor citymen, adventurers, people who look to their regiment for that sense of wholeness they’ve grown up to expect and can’t find in civilian life.”

“You’re too deep for me, sir, I’m afraid,” Lambert said.

“Never mind,” Danielis sighed. “Just bear in mind, there are a good many more fighting men outside the opposing armies than in. If the bossmen could establish a unified command, that’d be the end of the Fallon government. Luckily, there’s too much provincial pride and too much geography between them for this to happen—unless we outrage them beyond endurance. What we want the ordinary freeholder, and even the ordinary bossman, to think, is: ‘Well, those Fallonites aren’t such bad guys, and if I keep on the right side of them, I don’t stand to lose much and should even be able to gain something at the expense of those who fight them to the finish.’ You see?”

“Y-yes. I guess so.”

“You’re a smart fellow, Lambert. You don’t have to beat information out of prisoners. Trick it out.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“Good.” Danielis glanced at the watch that had been given him as per tradition, together with a sidearm, when he was first commissioned. (Such items were much too expensive for the common man. They had not been so in the age of mass production; and perhaps in the coming age—) “I have to go. See you around.”

He left the tent feeling somewhat more cheerful than before. No doubt I am a natural-born preacher, he admitted, and I never could quite join in the horseplay at mess, and a lot of jokes go completely by me; but if I can get even a few ideas across where they count, that’s pleasure enough. A strain of music came to him, some men and a banjo under a tree, and he found himself whistling along. It was good that this much morale remained after Maricopa and a northward march whose purpose had not been divulged to anybody.

The conference tent was big enough to be called a pavilion. Two sentries stood at the entrance. Danielis was nearly the last to arrive and found himself at the end of the table, opposite Brigadier General Perez. Smoke hazed the air and there was a muted buzz of conversation, but faces were taut.

When the blue-robed figure with a Yang and Yin on the breast entered, silence fell like a curtain. Danielis was astonished to recognize Philosopher Woodworth. He’d last seen the man in Los Angeles and assumed he would stay at the Esper center there. Must have come here by special conveyance, under special orders…

Perez introduced him. Both remained standing, under the eyes of the officers. “I have some important news for you, gentlemen,” Perez said most quietly. “You may consider it an honor to be here. It means that in my judgment you can be trusted, first, to keep absolute silence about what you are going to hear, and second, to execute a vital operation of extreme difficulty.” Danielis was made shockingly aware that several men were not present whose rank indicated they should be.

“I repeat,” Perez said, “any breach of secrecy and the whole plan is ruined. In that case, the war will drag on for months or years. You know how bad our position is. You also know it will grow still worse as our stocks of those supplies the enemy now denies us are consumed. We could even be beaten. I’m not defeatist to say that, only realistic. We could lose the war. On the other hand, if this new scheme pans out, we may break the enemy’s back this very month.”

He paused to let that sink in before continuing: “The plan was worked out by GHQ in conjunction with Esper Central in San Francisco some weeks ago. It’s the reason we are headed north.” He let the gasp subside that ran through the stifling air. “Yes, you know that the Esper Order is neutral in political disputes. But you also know that it defends itself when attacked. And you probably know that an attack was made on it by the rebels. They seized the Napa Valley settlement and have been spreading malicious rumors about the Order since then. Would you like to comment on that, Philosopher Woodworth?”

The man in blue nodded and said coolly: “We’ve our own ways of findin’ out things—intelligence service, you might say—so I can give y’all a report of the facts. St. Helena was assaulted at a time when most of its adepts were away, helpin’ a new community get started out in Montana.” How did they travel so fast? Danielis wondered. Teleport, or what? “I don’t know, myself, if the enemy knew about that or was just lucky. Anyhow, when the two or three adepts that were left came and warned them off, fightin’ broke out and the adepts were killed before they could act.” He smiled. “We don’t claim to be immortal, except the way every livin’ thing is immortal. Nor infallible either. So now St. Helena’s occupied. We don’t figure to take any immediate steps about that, because a lot of people in the community might get hurt.

“As for the yams the enemy command’s been handin’ out, well, I reckon I’d do the same if I had a chance like that. Everybody knows an adept can do things that nobody else can. Troops that realize they’ve done wrong to the Order are goin’ to be scared of supernatural revenge. You’re educated men here and know there’s nothin’ supernatural involved, just a way to use the powers latent in most of us. You also know the Order doesn’t believe in revenge. But the ordinary foot soldier doesn’t think your way. His officers have got to restore his spirit somehow. So they fake some equipment and tell him that’s what the adepts were really usin’—an advanced technology, sure, but only a set of machines that can be put out of action if you’re brave, same as any other machine. That’s what happened.

“Still, it is a threat to the Order; and we can’t let an attack on our people go unpunished either. So Esper Central has decided to help out your side. The sooner this war’s over, the better for everybody.”

A sigh gusted around the table, and a few exultant oaths. The hair stirred on Danielis’ neck. Perez lifted a hand. “Not too fast, please,” the general said. “The adepts are not going to go around blasting your opponents for you. It was one hell of a tough decision for them to do as much as they agreed to. I, uh, understand that the, uh, personal development of every Esper will be set back many years by this much violence. They’re making a big sacrifice. By their charter, they can use psionics to defend an establishment against attack. Okay… an assault on San Francisco will be construed as one on Central, their world headquarters.”

The realization of what was to come was blinding to Danielis. He scarcely heard Perez’ carefully dry continuation:

“Let’s review the strategic picture. By now the enemy holds more than half of California, all of Oregon and Idaho, and a good deal of Washington. We, this army, we’re using the last land access to San Francisco that we’ve got. The enemy hasn’t tried to pinch that off yet, because the troops we pulled out of the north—those that aren’t in the field at present—make a strong city garrison that’d sally out. He’s collecting too much profit elsewhere to accept the cost. “Nor can he invest the city with any hope of success. We still hold Puget Sound and the southern California ports. Our ships bring in ample food and munitions. His own sea power is much inferior to ours: chiefly schooners donated by coastal bossmen, operating out of Portland. He might overwhelm an occasional convoy, but he hasn’t tried that so far because it isn’t worth his trouble; there would be others, more heavily escorted. And of course he can’t enter the Bay, with artillery and rocket emplacements on both sides of the Golden Gate. No, about all he can do is maintain some water communication with Hawaii and Alaska.

“Nevertheless, his ultimate object is San Francisco. It has to be—the seat of government and industry, the heart of the nation. Well, then, here’s the plan. Our army is to engage the Sierra Command and its militia auxiliaries again, striking out of San Jose. That’s a perfectly logical maneuver. Successful, it would cut his California forces in two. We know, in fact, that he is already concentrating men in anticipation of precisely such an attempt.

“We aren’t going to succeed. We’ll give him a good stiff battle and be thrown back. That’s the hardest part: to feign a serious defeat, even convincing our own troops, and still maintain good order. We’ll have a lot of details to thresh out about that. We’ll retreat northward, up the Peninsula toward Frisco. The enemy is bound to pursue. It will look like a God-given chance to destroy us and get to the city walls.

“When he is well into the Peninsula, with the ocean on his left and the Bay on his right, we will outflank him and attack from the rear. The Esper adepts will be there to help. Suddenly he’ll be caught between us and the capital’s land defenses. What the adepts don’t wipe out, we will. Nothing will remain of the Sierra Command but a few garrisons. The rest of the war will be a mopping-up operation.

“It’s a brilliant piece of strategy. Like all such, it’s damn difficult to execute. Are you prepared to do the job?”

Danielis didn’t raise his voice with the others. He was thinking too hard of Laura.

Northward and to the right there was some fighting. Cannon spoke occasionally, or a drumfire of rifles; smoke lay thin over the grass and the wind-gnarled live oaks that covered those hills. But down along the seacoast there was only surf, blowing air, a hiss of sand across the dunes.

Mackenzie rode on the beach, where the footing was easiest and the view widest. Most of his regiment was inland. But that was a wilderness: rough ground, woods, the snags of ancient homes, making travel slow and hard. Once this area had been densely peopled, but the firestorm after the Hellbomb scrubbed it clean and today’s reduced population could not make a go on such infertile soil. There didn’t even seem to be any foemen near this left wing of the army.

The Rolling Stones had certainly not been given it for that reason. They could have borne the brunt at the center as well as those outfits which actually were there, driving the enemy back toward San Francisco. They had been blooded often enough in this war, when they operated out of Calistoga to help expel the Fallonites from northern California. So thoroughly had that job been done that now only a skeleton force need remain in charge. Nearly the whole Sierra Command had gathered at Modesto, met the northward-moving opposition army that struck at them out of San Jose and sent it in a shooting retreat. Another day or so and the white city should appear before their eyes.

And there the enemy will be sure to make a stand, Mackenzie thought, with the garrison to reinforce him. And his positions will have to be shelled; maybe we’ll have to take the place street by street. Laura, kid, will you be alive at the end?

Of course, maybe it won’t happen that way. Maybe my scheme’ll work and we’ll win easy—what a horrible word “maybe” is! He slapped his hands together with a pistol sound.

Speyer threw him a glance. The major’s people were safe; he’d even been able to visit them at Mount Lassen after the northern campaign was over. “Rough,” he said.

“Rough on everybody,” Mackenzie said with a thick anger. “This is a filthy war.”

Speyer shrugged. “No different from most, except that this time Pacificans are on the receiving as well as the giving end.”

“You know damn well I never liked the business, not anyplace.”

“What man in his right mind does?”

“When I want a sermon, I’ll ask for one.”

“Sorry,” said Speyer, and meant it.

“I’m sorry too,” said Mackenzie, instantly contrite. “Nerves on edge. Damnation! I could almost wish for some action.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if we got some. This whole affair smells wrong to me.”

Mackenzie looked around. On the right the horizon was bounded by hills beyond which the low but massive San Bruno range lifted. Here and there he spied one of his own squads, afoot or ahorse. Overhead sputtered a plane. But there was plenty of concealment for a redoubt. Hell could erupt at any minute… though necessarily a small hell, quickly reduced by howitzer or bayonet, casualties light. (Huh! Every one of those light casualties was a man dead, with women and children to weep for him, or a man staring at the fragment of his arm, or a man with eyes and face gone in a burst of shot, and what kind of unsoldierly thoughts were these?)

Seeking comfort, Mackenzie glanced left. The ocean rolled greenish-gray, glittering far out, rising and breaking in a roar of white combers closer to land. He smelled salt and kelp. A few gulls mewed above dazzling sands. There was no sail or smoke-puff—only emptiness. The convoys from Puget Sound to San Francisco and the lean swift ships of the coastal bossmen were miles beyond the curve of the world.

Which was as it should be. Maybe things were working out okay on the high waters. One could only try, and hope. And… it had been his suggestion, James Mackenzie speaking at the conference General Cruikshank held between the battles of Mariposa and San Jose; the same James Mackenzie who had first proposed that the Sierra Command come down out of the mountains, and who had exposed the gigantic fraud of Esperdom, and succeeded in playing down for his men the fact that behind the fraud lay a mystery one hardly dared think about. He would endure in the chronicles, that colonel, they would sing ballads about him for half a thousand years.

Only it didn’t feel mat way. James Mackenzie knew he was not much more than average bright under the best of conditions, now dull-minded with weariness and terrified of his daughter’s fate. For himself he was haunted by the fear of certain crippling wounds. Often he had to drink himself to sleep. He was shaved, because an officer must maintain appearances, but realized very well that if he hadn’t had an orderly to do the job for him, he would be as shaggy as any buck private. His uniform was faded and threadbare, his body stank and itched, his mouth yearned for tobacco but there had been some trouble in the commissariat and they were lucky to eat. His achievements amounted to patchwork jobs carried out in utter confusion, or to slogging like this and wishing only for an end to the whole mess. One day, win or lose, his body would give out on him—he could feel the machinery wearing to pieces, arthritic twinges, shortness of breath, dozing off in the middle of things—and the termination of himself would be as undignified and lonely as that of every other human slob. Hero? What an all-time laugh!

He yanked his mind back to the immediate situation. Behind him a core of the regiment accompanied the artillery along the beach, a thousand men with motorized gun carriages, caissons, mule-drawn wagons, a few trucks, one precious armored car. They were a dun mass topped with helmets, in loose formation, rifles or bows to hand. The sand deadened their footfalls so that only the surf and the wind could be heard. But whenever the wind sank, Mackenzie caught the tune of the hex corps: a dozen leathery older men, mostly Indians, carrying the wands of power and whistling together the Song Against Witches. He took no stock in magic himself, yet when that sound came to him, the skin crawled along his backbone.

Everything’s in good order, he insisted. We’re doing fine.

Then: But Phil’s right. This is a screwball business. The enemy should have fought through to a southward line of retreat, not let themselves be boxed.

Captain Hulse galloped close. Sand spurted when he checked his horse. “Patrol report, sir.”

“Well?” Mackenzie realized he had almost shouted. “Go ahead.”

“Considerable activity observed about five miles east. Looks like a troop headed our way.”

Mackenzie stiffened. “Haven’t you anything more definite than that?”

“Not so far, with the ground so broken.”

“Get some aerial reconnaissance there, for Pete’s sake!”

“Yes, sir. I’ll throw out some more scouts too.”

“Carry on here, Phil.” Mackenzie headed toward the radio truck. He carried a minicom in his saddlebag, of course, but San Francisco had been continuously jamming on all bands and you needed a powerful set to punch a signal even a few miles. Patrols must communicate by messenger.

He noticed that the firing inland had slacked off. There were decent roads in the interior Peninsula a ways farther north, where some resettlement had taken place. The enemy, still in possession of that area, could use them to effect rapid movements.

If they withdrew their center and hit our flanks, where we’re weakest—

A voice from field HQ, barely audible through the squeals and buzzes, took his report and gave back what had been seen elsewhere. Large maneuvers right and left, yes, it did seem as if the Fallonites were going to try a breakthrough. Could be a feint though. The main body of the Sierrans must remain where it was until the situation became clearer. The Rolling Stones must hold out a while on their own.

“Will do.” Mackenzie returned to the head of his columns. Speyer nodded grimly at the word.

“Better get prepared, hadn’t we?”

“Uh-huh.” Mackenzie lost himself in a welter of commands as officer after officer rode to him. The outlying sections were to be pulled in. The beach was to be defended, with the high ground immediately above.

Men scurried, horses neighed, guns trundled about. The scout plane returned, flying low enough to get a transmission through: yes, definitely an attack on the way; hard to tell how big a force, through the damned tree cover and down in the damned arroyos, but it might well be at brigade strength.

Mackenzie established himself on a hilltop with his staff and runners. A line of artillery stretched beneath him, across the strand. Cavalry waited behind them, lances agleam, an infantry company for support. Otherwise the foot soldiers had faded into the landscape. The sea boomed its own cannonade, and gulls began to gather as if they knew there would be meat before long.

“Think we can hold them?” Speyer asked.

“Sure,” Mackenzie said. “If they come down the beach, we’ll enfilade them, as well as shooting up their front. If they come higher, well, that’s a textbook example of defensible terrain. ’Course, if another troop punches through the lines farther inland, we’ll be cut off, but that isn’t our worry right now.”

“They must hope to get around our army and attack our rear.”

“Guess so. Not too smart of them though. We can approach Frisco just as easily fighting backwards as forwards.”

“Unless the city garrison makes a sally.”

“Even then. Total numerical strengths are about equal, and we’ve got more ammo and alky. Also a lot of bossman militia for auxiliaries, who’re used to disorganized warfare in hilly ground.”

“If we do whip them— ” Speyer shut his lips together.

“Go on,” Mackenzie said.

“Nothing.”

“The hell it is. You were about to remind me of the next step: how do we take the city without too high a cost to both sides? Well, I happen to know we’ve got a hole card to play there which might help.”

Speyer turned pitying eyes away from Mackenzie. Silence fell on the hilltop.

It was an unconscionably long time before the enemy came in view, first a few outriders far down the dunes, then the body of him, pouring from the ridges and gullies and woods. Reports flickered about Mackenzie—a powerful force, nearly twice as big as ours but with little artillery; by now badly short of fuel, they must depend far more than we on animals to move their equipment. They were evidently going to charge, accept losses in order to get sabers and bayonets among the Rolling Stones’ cannon. Mackenzie issued his directions accordingly.

The hostiles formed up, a mile or so distant. Through his field glasses Mackenzie recognized them, red sashes of the Madera Horse, green and gold pennon of the Dagos, fluttering in the iodine wind. He’d campaigned with both outfits in the past. It was treacherous to remember that Ives favored a blunt wedge formation and use the fact against him… One enemy armored car and some fieldpieces, light horse-drawn ones, gleamed wickedly in the sunlight.

Bugles blew shrill. The Fallonite cavalry laid lance in rest and started trotting. They gathered speed as they went, a canter, a gallop, until the earth trembled with them. Then their infantry got going, flanked by its guns. The car rolled along between the first and second line of foot. Oddly, it had no rocket launcher on top or repeater barrels thrust from the fire slits. Those were good troops, Mackenzie thought, advancing in close order with that ripple down the ranks which bespoke veterans. He hated what must happen.

His defense waited immobile on the sand. Fire crackled from the hillsides, where mortar squads and riflemen crouched. A rider toppled, a dogface clutched his belly and went to his knees, their companions behind moved forward to close the lines again. Mackenzie looked to his howitzers. Men stood tensed at sights and lanyards. Let the foe get well in range— There! Yamaguchi, mounted just rearward of the gunners, drew his saber and flashed the blade downward. Cannon bellowed. Fire spurted through smoke, sand gouted up, shrapnel sleeted over the charging force. At once the gun crews fell into the rhythm of reloading, relaying, refiling, the steady three rounds per minute which conserved barrels and broke armies. Horses screamed in then-own tangled red guts. But not many had been hit. The Madera cavalry continued in full gallop. Their lead was so close now that Mackenzie’s glasses picked out a face, red, freckled, a ranch boy turned trooper, his mouth stretched out of shape as he yelled.

The archers behind the defending cannon let go. Arrows whistled skyward, flight after flight, curved past the gulls and down again. Flame and smoke ran ragged in the wiry hill grass, out of the ragged-leaved live oak copses. Men pitched to the sand, many still hideously astir, like insects that had been stepped on. The fieldpieces on the enemy’s left flank halted, swiveled about and spat return fire. Futile… but God, their officer had courage! Mackenzie saw the advancing lines waver. An attack by his own horse and foot, down the beach, ought to crumple them. “Get ready to move,” he said into his minicom. He saw his men poise. The cannon belched anew.

The oncoming armored car slowed to a halt. Something within it chattered, loud enough to hear through the explosions.

A blue-white sheet ran over the nearest hill. Mackenzie shut half-blinded eyes. When he opened them again, he saw a grass fire through the crazy patterns of afterimage. A Rolling Stone burst from cover, howling, his clothes ablaze.

The man hit the sand and rolled over. That part of the beach lifted in one monster wave, crested twenty feet high and smashed across the hill. The burning soldier vanished in the avalanche that buried his comrades.

“Psi blast!” someone screamed, thin and horrible, through chaos and ground shudder. “The Espers—

Unbelievably, a bugle sounded and the Sierran cavalry lunged forward. Past their own guns, on against the scattering opposition… and horses and riders rose into the air, tumbled in a giant’s invisible whirligig, crashed bone-breakingly to earth again. The second rank of lancers broke. Mounts reared, pawed the air, wheeled and fled in every direction.

A terrible, deep hum filled the sky. Mackenzie saw the world as if through a haze, as if his brain were being dashed back and forth between the walls of his skull. Another glare ran across the hills, higher this time, burning men alive.

“They’ll wipe us out,” Speyer called, a dim voice that rose and fell on the air tides. “They’ll re-form as we stampede–”

“No!” Mackenzie shouted. “The adepts must be in that car. Come on!”

Most of his horse had recoiled on their own artillery, one squealing, trampling wreck. The infantry stood rigid but about to bolt. A glance thrown to his right showed Mackenzie how the enemy themselves were in confusion; this had been a terrifying surprise to them too, but as soon as they got over the shock, they’d advance and there’d be nothing left to stop them… It was as if another man spurred his mount. The animal fought, foam-flecked with panic. He slugged its head around, brutally, and dug in spurs. They rushed down the hill toward the guns.

He needed all his strength to halt the gelding before the cannon mouths. A man slumped dead by his piece, though there was no mark on him. Mackenzie jumped to the ground. His steed bolted.

He hadn’t time to worry about that. Where was help? “Come here!” His yell was lost in the riot. But suddenly another man was beside him, Speyer, snatching up a shell and slamming it into the breach. Mackenzie squinted through the telescope, took a bearing by guess and feel. He could see the Esper car where it squatted among the dead and hurt. At this distance it looked too small to have blackened acres.

Speyer helped him lay the howitzer. He jerked the lanyard. The gun roared and sprang. The shell burst a few yards short of target, sand spurted and metal fragments whined.

Speyer had the next one loaded. Mackenzie aimed and fired. Overshot this time, but not by much. The car rocked. Concussion might have hurt the Espers inside; at least the psi blasts had stopped. But it was necessary to strike before the foe got organized again.

He ran toward his own regimental car. The door gaped, the crew had fled. He threw himself into the driver’s seat. Speyer clanged the door shut and stuck his face in the hood of the rocket-launcher periscope. Mackenzie raced the machine forward. The banner on its rooftop snapped in the wind.

Speyer aimed the launcher and pressed the firing button. The missile burned across intervening yards and exploded. The other car lurched on its wheels. A hole opened in its side.

If the boys will only rally and advance—if they don’t, I’m done for anyway. Mackenzie squealed to a stop, flung open the door and leaped out. Curled, blackened metal framed his entry. He wriggled through, into murk and stenches.

Two Espers lay there. The driver was dead, a chunk of steel through his breast. The other one, the adept, whimpered among his inhuman instruments. His face was hidden by blood. Mackenzie pitched the corpse on its side and pulled off the robe. He snatched a curving tube of metal and tumbled back out.

Speyer was still in the undamaged car, firing repeaters at those hostiles who ventured near. Mackenzie jumped onto the ladder of the disabled machine, climbed to its roof and stood erect. He waved the blue robe in one hand and the weapon he did not understand in the other. “Come on, you sons!” he shouted, tiny against the sea wind. “We’ve knocked ‘em out for you! Want your breakfast in bed too?”

One bullet buzzed past his ear. Nothing else. Most of the enemy, horse and foot, stayed frozen. In that immense stillness he could not tell if he heard surf or the blood in his own veins.

Then a bugle called. The hex corps whistled triumphantly; their tomtoms muttered. A ragged line of his infantry began to move toward him. More followed. The cavalry joined them, man by man and unit by unit, on their flanks. Soldiers ran down the smoking hillsides.

Mackenzie sprang to sand again and into his car. “Let’s get back,” he told Speyer. “We got a battle to finish.”

“Shut up!” Tom Danielis said.

Philosopher Woodworth stared at him. Fog swirled and dripped in the forest, hiding the land and the brigade, gray nothingness through which came a muffled noise of men and horses and wheels, an isolated and infinitely weary sound. The air was cold, and clothing hung heavy on the skin.

“Sir,” protested Major Lescarbault. The eyes were wide and shocked in his gaunt face.

“I dare tell a ranking Esper to stop quacking about a subject of which he’s totally ignorant?” Danielis answered. “Well, it’s past time that somebody did.”

Woodworth recovered his poise. “All I said, son, was that we should consolidate our adepts and strike the Brodskyite center,” he reproved. “What’s wrong with that?”

Danielis clenched his fists. “Nothing,” he said, “except it invites a worse disaster than you’ve brought on us yet.”

“A setback or two,” Lescarbault argued. “They did rout us on the west, but we turned their flank here by the Bay.”

“With the net result that their main body pivoted, attacked, and split us in half,” Danielis snapped. “The Espers have been scant use since then… now the rebels know they need vehicles to transport their weapons, and can be killed. Artillery zeroes in on their positions, or bands of woodsmen hit and run, leaving them dead, or the enemy simply goes around any spot where they’re known to be. We haven’t got enough adepts!”

“That’s why I proposed gettin’ them in one group too big to withstand,” Woodworth said.

“And too cumbersome to be of any value,” Danielis replied. He felt more than a little sickened, knowing how the Order had cheated him his whole life; yes, he thought, that was the real bitterness, not the fact that the adepts had failed to defeat the rebels—by failing, essentially, to break their spirit—but the fact that the adepts were only someone else’s cat’s paws, and every gentle, earnest soul in every Esper community was only someone’s dupe.

Wildly he wanted to return to Laura—there’d been no chance thus far to see her—Laura and the kid, the last honest reality this fog-world had left him. He mastered himself and went on more evenly:

“The adepts, what few of them survive, will of course be helpful in defending San Francisco. An army free to move around in the field can deal with them, one way or another, but your… your weapons can repel an assault on the city walls. So that’s where I’m going to take them.”

Probably the best he could do. There was no word from the northern half of the loyalist army. Doubtless they’d withdrawn to the capital, suffering heavy losses en route. Radio jamming continued, hampering friendly and hostile communications alike. He had to take action, either retreat southward or fight his way through to the city. The latter course seemed wisest. He didn’t believe that Laura had much to do with his choice.

“I’m no adept myself,” Woodworth said. “I can’t call them mind to mind.”

“You mean you can’t use their equivalent of radio,” Danielis said brutally. “Well, you’ve got an adept in attendance. Have him pass the word.”

Woodworth flinched. “I hope,” he said, “I hope you understand this came as a surprise to me too.”

“Oh, yes, certainly, Philosopher,” Lescarbault said unbidden.

Woodworth swallowed. “I still hold with the Way and the Order,” he said harshly. “There’s nothin’ else I can do. Is there? The Grand Seeker has promised a full explanation when this is over.” He shook his head. “Okay, son, I’ll do what I can.”

A certain compassion touched Danielis as the blue robe disappeared into the fog. He rapped his orders the more severely.

Slowly his command got going. He was with the Second Brigade; the rest were strewn over the Peninsula in the fragments into which the rebels had knocked them. He hoped the equally scattered adepts, joining him on his march through the San Bruno range, would guide some of those units to him. But most, wandering demoralized, were sure to surrender to the first rebels they came upon.

He rode near the front, on a muddy road that snaked over the highlands. His helmet was a monstrous weight. The horse stumbled beneath him, exhausted by—how many days?—of march, countermarch, battle, skirmish, thin rations or none, heat and cold and fear, in an empty land. Poor beast, he’d see that it got proper treatment when they reached the city. That all those beasts behind him did, after trudging and fighting and trudging again until their eyes were filmed with fatigue.

There’ll be chance enough for rest in San Francisco. We’re impregnable there, walls and cannon and the Esper machines to landward, the sea that feeds us at our backs. We can recover our strength, regroup our forces, bring fresh troops down from Washington and up from the south by water. The war isn’t decided yet… God help us.

I wonder if it will ever be.

And then, will Jimbo Mackenzie come to see us, sit by the fire and swap yarns about what we did? Or talk about something else, anything else? If not, that’s too high a price for victory.

Maybe not too high a price for what we’ve learned though. Strangers on this planet… what else could have forged those weapons? The adepts will talk if I myself have to torture them till they do. But Danielis remembered tales muttered in the fisher huts of his boyhood, after dark, when ghosts walked in old men’s minds. Before the holocaust there had been legends about the stars, and the legends lived on. He didn’t know if he would be able to look again at the night sky without a shiver.

This damned fog—

Hoofs thudded. Danielis half drew his sidearm. But the rider was a scout of his own, who raised a drenched sleeve in salute. “Colonel, an enemy force about ten miles ahead by road. Big.”

So we’ll have to fight now. “Do they seem aware of us?”

“No, sir. They’re proceeding east along the ridge there.”

“Probably figure to occupy the Candlestick Park ruins,” Danielis murmured. His body was too tired for excitement. “Good stronghold, that. Very well, Corporal.” He turned to Lescarbault and issued instructions.

The brigade formed itself in the formlessness. Patrols went out. Information began to flow back, and Danielis sketched a plan that ought to work. He didn’t want to try for a decisive engagement, only brush the enemy aside and discourage it from pursuit. His men must be spared, as many as possible, for the city defense and the eventual counteroffensi ve.

Lescarbault came back. “Sir! The radio jamming’s ended!”

“What?” Danielis blinked, not quite comprehending.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been using a minicom,” Lescarbault lifted the wrist on which his tiny transceiver was strapped, “for very short-range work, passing the battalion commanders their orders. The interference stopped a couple of minutes ago. Clear as daylight.”

Danielis pulled the wrist toward his own mouth. “Hello, hello, radio wagon, this is the C.O. You read me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the voice.

“They turned off the jammer in the city for a reason. Get me the open military band.”

“Yes, sir.” Pause, while men mumbled and water runneled unseen in the arroyos. A wraith smoked past Danielis’ eyes. Drops coursed off his helmet and down his collar. The horse’s mane hung sodden.

Like the scream of an insect:

“—here at once! Every unit in the field, get to San Francisco at once! We’re under attack by sea!”

Danielis let go Lescarbault’s arm. He stared into emptiness while the voice wailed on and forever on.

“—bombarding Potrero Point. Decks jammed with troops. They must figure to make a landing there—

Danielis’ mind raced ahead of the words. It was as if Esp were no lie, as if he scanned the beloved city himself and felt her wounds in his own flesh. There was no fog around the Gate, of course, or so detailed a description could not have been given. Well, probably some streamers of it rolled in under the rusted remnants of the bridge, themselves like snowbanks against blue-green water and brilliant sky. But most of the Bay stood open to the sun. On the opposite shore lifted the Eastbay hills, green with gardens and agleam with villas; and Marin shouldered heavenward across the strait, looking to the roofs and walls and heights that were San Francisco. The convoy had gone between the coast defenses that could have smashed it, an unusually large convoy and not on time: but still the familiar big-bellied hulls, white sails, occasional fuming stacks, that kept the city fed. There had been an explanation about trouble with commerce raiders; and the fleet was passed on into the Bay, where San Francisco had no walls. Then the gun covers were taken off and the holds vomited armed men.

Yes, they did seize a convoy, those piratical schooners. Used radio jamming of their own, together with ours, that choked off any cry of warning. They threw our supplies overboard and embarked the bossman militia. Some spy or traitor gave them the recognition signals. Now the capital lies open to them, her garrison stripped, hardly an adept left in Esper Central, the Sierrans thrusting against her southern gates, and Laura without me.

“We’re coming!” Danielis yelled. His brigade groaned into speed behind him. They struck with a desperate ferocity that carried them deep into enemy positions and then stranded them in separated groups. It became knife and saber in the fog. But Danielis, because he led the charge, had already taken a grenade on his breast.

East and south, in the harbor district and at the wreck of the Peninsula wall, there was still some fighting. As he rode higher, Mackenzie saw how those parts were dimmed by smoke, which the wind scattered to show rubble that had been houses. The sound of firing drifted to him. But otherwise the city shone untouched, roofs and white walls in a web of streets, church spires raking the sky like masts, Federal House on Nob Hill and the Watchtower on Telegraph Hill as he remembered them from childhood visits. The Bay glittered insolently beautiful.

But he had no time for admiring the view, nor for wondering where Laura huddled. The attack on Twin Peaks must be swift, for surely Esper Central would defend itself.

On the avenue climbing the opposite side of those great humps, Speyer led half the Rolling Stones. (Yamaguchi lay dead on a pockmarked beach.) Mackenzie himself was taking this side. Horses clopped along Portola, between blankly shuttered mansions; guns trundled and creaked, boots knocked on pavement, moccasins slithered, weapons rattled, men breathed heavily, and the hex corps whistled against unknown demons. But silence overwhelmed the noise, echoes trapped it and let it die. Mackenzie recollected nightmares when he fled down a corridor that had no end. Even if they don’t cut loose at us, he thought bleakly, we’ve got to seize their place before our nerve gives out.

Twin Peaks Boulevard turned off Portola and wound steeply to the right. The houses ended; wild grasses alone covered the quasi-sacred hills up to the tops, where stood the buildings forbidden to all but adepts. Those two soaring, iridescent, fountainlike skyscrapers had been raised by night, within a matter of weeks. Something like a moan stirred at Mackenzie’s back.

“Bugler, sound the advance. On the double!”

A child’s jeering, the notes lifted and were lost. Sweat stung Mackenzie’s eyes. If he failed and was killed, that didn’t matter too much… after everything that had happened… but the regiment, the regiment—

Flame shot across the street, the color of hell. There went a hiss and a roar. The pavement lay trenched, molten, smoking and reeking. Mackenzie wrestled his horse to a standstill. A warning only. But if they had enough adepts to handle us, would they bother trying to scare us off? “Artillery, open fire!”

The field guns bellowed together, not only howitzers but motorized 75s taken along from Alemany Gate’s emplacements. Shells went overhead with a locomotive sound. They burst on the walls above and the racket thundered back down the wind.

Mackenzie tensed himself for a Esper blast, but none came. Had they knocked out the final defensive post in their own first barrage? Smoke cleared from the heights and he saw that the colors that played in the tower were dead and that wounds gaped across loveliness, showing unbelievably thin framework. It was like seeing the bones of a woman who had been murdered by his hand.

Quick, though! He issued a string of commands and led the horse and foot on. The battery stayed where it was, firing and firing with hysterical fury. The dry, brown grass started to burn as red-hot fragments scattered across the slope. Through mushroom bursts, Mackenzie saw the building crumble. Whole sheets of facing broke and fell to earth. The skeleton vibrated, took a direct hit and sang in metal agony, slumped and twisted apart.

What was that which stood within?

There were no separate rooms, no floors, nothing but girders, enigmatic machines, here and there a globe still aglow like a minor sun. The structure had enclosed something nearly as tall as itself, a finned and shining column, almost like a rocket shell but impossibly huge and fair.

Their spaceship, Mackenzie thought in the clamor. Yes, of course, the ancients had begun making spaceships, and we always figured we would again someday. This, though—!

The archers lifted a tribal speech. The riflemen and cavalry took it up, crazy, jubilant, the howl of a beast of prey. By Satan, we’ve whipped the stars themselves! As they burst onto the hillcrest, the shelling stopped and their yells overrode the wind. Smoke was as acrid as blood smell in their nostrils.

A few dead blue-robes could be seen in the debris. Some half-dozen survivors milled toward the ship. A bowman let fly. His arrow glanced off the landing gear but brought the Espers to a halt. Troopers poured over the shards to capture them.

Mackenzie reined in. Something that was not human lay crushed near a machine. Its blood was a deep violet color. When the people have seen this, that’s the end of the Order. He felt no triumph. At St. Helena he had come to appreciate how fundamentally good the believers were.

But this was no moment for regret, or for wondering how harsh the future would be with man taken entirely off the leash. The building on the other peak was still intact. He had to consolidate his position here, then help Phil if need be.

However, the minicom said, “Come on and join me, Jimbo. The fracas is over,” before he had completed his task. As he rode alone toward Speyer’s place, he saw a Pacific States flag flutter up the mast on that skyscraper’s top.

Guards stood awed and nervous at the portal. Mackenzie dismounted and walked inside. The entry chamber was a soaring, shimmering fantasy of colors and arches, through which men moved troll-like. A corporal led him down a hall. Evidently this building had been used for headquarters, offices, storage and less-understandable purposes… There was a room whose door had been blown down with dynamite. The fluid abstract murals were stilled, scarred and sooted. Four ragged troopers pointed guns at the two beings whom Speyer was questioning.

One slumped at something that might answer to a desk. The avian face was buried in seven-fingered hands and the rudimentary wings quivered with sobs. Are they able to cry, then? Mackenzie thought, astonished, and had a sudden wish to take the being in his arms and offer what comfort he was able.

The other one stood erect in a robe of woven metal. Great topaz eyes met Speyer’s from a seven-foot height, and the voice turned accented English into music.

“—a G-type star some fifty light-years hence. It is barely visible to the naked eye, though not in this hemisphere.”

The major’s fleshless, bristly countenance jutted forward as if to peck. “When do you expect reinforcements?”

“There will be no other ship for almost a century, and it will bring only personnel. We are isolated by space and time; few can come to work here, to seek to build a bridge of minds across that gulf.”

“Yeah,” Speyer nodded prosaically. “The light speed limit. I thought so. If you’re telling the truth.”

The being shuddered. “Nothing is left for us but to speak truth and pray that you will understand and help. Revenge, conquest, any form of mass violence is impossible when so much space and time lies between. Our labor has been done in the mind and heart. It is not too late, even now. The most crucial facts can still be kept hidden—oh, listen to me, for the sake of your unborn!”

Speyer nodded to Mackenzie. “Everything okay?” he said. “We got us a full bag here. About twenty left alive, this fellow the bossman. Seems like they’re the only ones on Earth.”

“We guessed there couldn’t be many,” the colonel said. His tone and his feelings were alike ashen. “When we talked it over, you and me, and tried to figure what our clues meant. They’d have to be few, or they’d’ve operated more openly.”

“Listen, listen,” the being pleaded. “We came in love. Our dream was to lead you—to make you lead yourselves—toward peace, fulfillment… Oh, yes, we would also gain, gain yet another race with whom we could someday converse as brothers. But there are many races in the universe. It was chiefly for your own tortured sakes that we wished to guide your future.”

“That controlled history notion isn’t original with you,” Speyer grunted. “We’ve invented it for ourselves now and then on Earth. The last time it led to the Hellbombs. No, thanks!”

“But we know! The Great Science predicts with absolute certainty–”

“Predicted this?” Speyer waved a hand at the blackened room.

“There are fluctuations. We are too few to control so many savages in every detail. But do you not wish an end to war, to all your ancient sufferings? I offer you that for your help today.”

“You succeeded in starting a pretty nasty war yourselves,” Speyer said.

The being twisted its fingers together. “That was an error. The plan remains, the only way to lead your people toward peace. I, who have traveled between suns, will get down before your boots and beg you–”

“Stay put!” Speyer flung back. “If you’d come openly, like honest folk, you’d have found some to listen to you. Maybe enough, even. But no, your do-gooding had to be subtle and crafty. You knew what was right for us. We weren’t entitled to any say in the matter. God in heaven, I’ve never heard anything so arrogant!”

The being lifted its head. “Do you tell children the whole truth?”

“As much as they’re ready for.”

“Your child-culture is not ready to hear these truths.”

“Who qualified you to call us children—besides yourselves?”

“How do you know you are adult?”

“By trying adult jobs and finding out if I can handle them. Sure, we make some ghastly blunders, we humans. But they’re our own. And we learn from them. You’re the ones who won’t learn, you and that damned psychological science you were bragging about that wants to fit every living mind into the one frame it can understand.

“You wanted to reestablish the centralized state, didn’t you? Did you ever stop to think that maybe feudalism is what suits man? Some one place to call our own, and belong to, and be part of; a community with traditions and honor; a chance for the individual to make decisions that count; a bulwark for liberty against the central overlords, who’ll always want more and more power; a thousand different ways to live. We’ve always built supercountries here on Earth, and we’ve always knocked them apart again. I think maybe the whole idea is wrong. And maybe this time we’ll try something better. Why not a world of little states, too well-rooted to dissolve in a nation, too small to do much harm—slowly rising above petty jealousies and spite but keeping their identities—a thousand separate approaches to our problems. Maybe then we can solve a few of them… for ourselves!”

“You will never do so,” the being said. “You will be torn in pieces all over again.”

“That’s what you think. I think otherwise. But whichever is right—and I bet this is too big a universe for either of us to predict—we’ll have made a free choice on Earth. I’d rather be dead than domesticated.

“The people are going to learn about you as soon as Judge Brodsky’s been reinstated. No, sooner. The regiment will hear today, the city tomorrow, just to make sure no one gets ideas about suppressing the truth again. By the time your next spaceship comes, we’ll be ready for it: in our own way, whatever it is.”

The being drew a fold of robe about its head. Speyer turned to Mackenzie. His face was wet. “Anything… you want to say… Jimbo?”

“No,” Mackenzie mumbled. “Can’t think of anything. Let’s get our command organized here. I don’t expect we’ll have to fight any more though. It seems to be about ended down there.”

“Sure.” Speyer drew an uneven breath. “The enemy troops elsewhere are bound to capitulate. They’ve got nothing left to fight for. We can start patching up pretty soon.”

There was a house with a patio whose wall was covered by roses. The street outside had not yet come back to life, so that silence dwelt here under the yellow sunset. A maidservant showed Mackenzie through the back door and departed. He walked toward Laura, who sat on a bench beneath a willow. She watched him approach but did not rise. One hand rested on a cradle.

He stopped and knew not what to say. How thin she was!

Presently she told him, so low he could scarcely hear: “Tom’s dead.”

“Oh, no.” Darkness came and went before his eyes.

“I learned the day before yesterday, when a few of his men straggled home. He was killed in San Bruno.”

Mackenzie did not dare join her, but his legs would not upbear him. He sat down on the flagstones and saw curious patterns in their arrangement. There was nothing else to look at.

Her voice ran on above him, toneless: “Was it worth it? Not only Tom, but so many others, killed for a point of politics?”

“More than that was at stake,” he said.

“Yes, I heard on the radio. I still can’t understand how it was worth it. I’ve tried very hard, but I can’t.”

He had no strength left to defend himself. “Maybe you’re right, duck. I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m not sorry for myself,” she said. “I still have Jimmy. But Tom was cheated out of so much.”

He realized all at once that there was a baby, and he ought to take his grandchild to him and think thoughts about life going on into the future. But he was too empty.

“Tom wanted him named after you,” she said.

Did you, Laura? he wondered. Aloud: “What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll find something.”

He made himself glance at her. The sunset burned on the willow leaves above and on her face, which was now turned toward the infant he could not see. “Come back to Nakamura,” he said.

“No. Anywhere else.”

“You always loved the mountains,” he groped. “We–”

“No.” She met his eyes. “It isn’t you, Dad. Never you. But Jimmy is not going to grow up a soldier.” She hesitated. “I’m sure some of the Espers will keep going, on a new basis but with the same goals. I think we should join them. He ought to believe in something different from what killed his father and work for it to become real. Don’t you agree?”

Mackenzie climbed to his feet against Earth’s hard pull. “I don’t know,” he said. “Never was a thinker… Can I see him?”

“Oh, Dad…”

He went over and looked down at the small sleeping form. “If you marry again,” he said, “and have a daughter, would you call her for her mother?” He saw Laura’s head bend downward and her hands clench. Quickly he said, “I’ll go now. I’d like to visit you some more, tomorrow or sometime, if you’ll have me.”

Then she came to his arms and wept. He stroked her hair and murmured, as he had done when she was a child. “You do want to return to the mountains, don’t you? They’re your country too, your people, where you belong.”

“Y-you’ll never know how much I want to.”

“Then why not?” he cried.

His daughter straightened herself. “I can’t,” she said. “Your war is ended. Mine has just begun.”

Because he had trained that will, he could only say, “I hope you win it.”

“Perhaps in a thousand years–” She could not continue.

Night had fallen when he left her. Power was still out in the city, so the street lamps were dark and the stars stood forth above all roofs. The squad that waited to accompany their colonel to barracks looked wolfish by lantern light. They saluted him and rode at his back, rifles ready for trouble; but there was only the iron sound of horseshoes.

Books by Jerry Pournelle

FICTION SERIES

CODOMINIUM UNIVERSE

CoDominion

A Spaceship for the King (1973) also appeared as King David's Spaceship (1981)

Falkenberg's Legion

1 Falkenberg's Legion (1990)

2 Prince of Mercenaries (1989)

3 Go Tell the Spartans (1991) with S. M. Stirling

4 Prince of Sparta (1993) with S. M. Stirling

His Truth Goes Marching On (1975)

West of Honor (1976)

Silent Leges (1977)

The Mercenary (1977)

Future History (1980)

Falkenberg's Legions (1990)

The Prince (2002) with S. M. Stirling

Laurie Jo Hansen

1 High Justice (1977) [C]

2 Exiles to Glory (1978)

Moties

1 The Mote in God's Eye (1974) with Larry Niven

2 The Gripping Hand (1993) with Larry Niven also appeared as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (1993)

Reflex (1982) with Larry Niven

War World

1 The Burning Eye (1988) [A]

2 Death's Head Rebellion (1990) [A]

3 Sauron Dominion (1991) [A]

4 Invasion (1994)

5 Codominium: Revolt on War World (1992)

7 Blood Vengeance (1994) with Susan Shwartz and Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove and S. M. Stirling

Prolog (The Burning Eye) (1988)

HEOROT

1 The Legacy of Heorot (1987) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

2 Beowulf's Children (1995) with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes also appeared as The Dragons of Heorot (1995)

INFERNO

1 Inferno (1976) with Larry Niven

2 Escape from Hell (2009) with Larry Niven

JANISSARIES

1 Janissaries (1979)

2 Janissaries: Clan and Crown (1982) with Roland J. Green

3 Janissaries III: Storms of Victory (1987)

JUPITER

1 Higher Education (1996) with Charles Sheffield

5 Starswarm (1998)

MAGIC GOES AWAY

Golden Road

1 The Burning City (2000) with Larry Niven

2 Burning Tower (2005) with Larry Niven

PLANET OF THE APES

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1974)

TALES OF KNOWN SPACE

Man-Kzin Wars

2 Man-Kzin Wars II (1989) [A] with Larry Niven and Dean Ing and S. M. Stirling

5 Man-Kzin Wars V (1992) [A] with Larry Niven and S. M. Stirling and Thomas T. Thomas

The Children's Hour (1991) with S. M. Stirling

In the Hall of the Mountain King (1992) with S. M. Stirling

The Houses of the Kzinti (2002) with S. M. Stirling and Dean Ing

NOVELS

Birth of Fire (1976)

Lucifer's Hammer (1977) with Larry Niven

Oath of Fealty (1981) with Larry Niven

Footfall (1985) with Larry Niven

Fallen Angels (1991) with Michael F. Flynn and Larry Niven

OMNIBUS

Fires of Freedom (2009)

ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Far Frontiers

1 Far Frontiers (1985) with Jim Baen

2 Far Frontiers, Volume II/Summer 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

3 Far Frontiers, Volume III/Fall 1985 (1985) with Jim Baen

4 Far Frontiers, Volume IV/Winter 1985 (1986) with Jim Baen

5 Far Frontiers, Volume V/Spring 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

6 Far Frontiers, Volume VI/Fall 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

7 Far Frontiers, Volume VII/Winter 1986 (1986) with Jim Baen

Imperial Stars

1 The Stars At War (1986) with John F. Carr

2 Republic and Empire (1987) with John F. Carr

3 The Crash of Empire (1989) with John F. Carr

Nebula Awards

16 Nebula Award Stories Sixteen (1982) with John F. Carr

The Endless Frontier

1 The Endless Frontier (1979)

2 The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1982) with John F. Carr

3 Cities in Space (1991) with John F. Carr

4 Life Among the Asteroids (1992) with John F. Carr

There Will Be War

1 There Will Be War (1983) with John F. Carr

2 Men of War (1984)

3 Blood and Iron (1984) with John F. Carr

4 Day of the Tyrant (1985) with John F. Carr

5 Warrior (1986) with John F. Carr

6 Guns of Darkness (1987) with John F. Carr

7 Call to Battle (1988) with John F. Carr

8 Armageddon! (1989) with John F. Carr

9 After Armageddon (1990)

ANTHOLOGIES

2020 Vision (1974)

Black Holes (1978)

The Survival of Freedom (1981) with John F. Carr

The Science Fiction Yearbook (1985) with John F. Carr and Jim Baen

Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042: A Four-Part Invention (1994) with Ben Bova and Frederik Pohl and Charles Sheffield

NONFICTION

That Buck Rogers Stuff (1977)

A Step Farther Out (1979)

Mutual Assured Survival (1984) with Dean Ing

The User's Guide to Small Computers (1984)

Adventures in Microland (1985)

MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

SCIENCE FICTION

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

The Stars Came Back by Rolf Nelson

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

FANTASY

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Gladiator's Song by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

NON-FICTION

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

CASTALIA CLASSICS

The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

AUDIOBOOKS

A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

TRANSLATIONS

Särjetty taika

QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravedad Mata

Una Estrella Brillante para Guiarlos

QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal

Uma Magia Perdida

Mantra yang Rusak

La Moneta dal Mercenario

I Ragazzoni non Piangono

QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти

QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand

Grosse Jungs weinen nicht

New Release Newsletter

The Castalia House New Release newsletter is sent out to subscribers several days before a new book is officially released. Subscribers who purchase the book in the specified period after the newsletter is sent out will receive either a) a free book that is offered as a bonus with the new release, or b) their choice of one of several free choices that are on offer as a bonus.

We do not spam our subscribers’ email addresses nor do we sell them to anyone. We average about one new release per month.

Click here to subscribe to the Castalia House New Release newsletter or visit castaliahouse.com and enter your email address in the right sidebar, then click “Subscribe”.

Copyright

There Will Be War, Volume V

Edited by Jerry Pournelle

Castalia House

Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

Copyright © 1985, 2016 Jerry Pournelle

All rights reserved

Editor: Jerry Pournelle

Associate Editor: John F. Carr

Cover Art: Lars Braad Andersen

Version: 001

The stories contained herein are copyrighted as follows:

WARRIORS AND STATESMEN by Jerry Pournelle is published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd. Copyright © 1985 by J.E. Pournelle.

HE FELL INTO A DARK HOLE by Jerry Pournelle. Appeared first in Analog in the March 1973 issue. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd. Copyright © 1973 by Conde Nast Publications, inc. and © 1986 by Jerry Pournelle and Associates.

COUP by Mack Reynolds was first published in the November 1967 issue of Analog. Published by special arrangement with the author’s wife. Copyright © 1967 by Conde Nast Publications.

THE PREVENTION OF WAR by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle first appeared in the book The Strategy of Technology published in 1970. This is a substantially different version. Copyright © 1970 and 1985 by Stefan T. Possony and J.E. Pournelle.

THE WEDDING MARCH by Edward P. Hughes appears by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by Edward P. Hughes.

FORD O’ KABUL RIVER by Rudyard Kipling is in the public-domain.

FIGHTING BACK by Douglas J. Greenlaw and Robert Gleason is presented by special arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 1986 by Douglas J. Greenlaw and Robert Gleason.

VICTORY by J.P. Boyd is published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by J.P. Boyd.

THE WAR AGAINST “STAR WARS” by Robert Jastrow first appeared in the December 1984 issue of Commentary. It appears here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1984 by Robert Jastrow.

FINAL SOLUTION by Ames MacKenzie is published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by Jim Dickey.

MASTERPLAY by William F. Wu is published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by William F. Wu.

DEFENSE IN A N-DIMENSIONAL WORLD by Stefan T. Possony. Copyright © 1986 by Stefan T. Possony.

EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES and THE ORACLES by A.E. Housman were published in Collected Poems. Publisher, Jonathan Cape, 1939.

THE LAST THREE DAYS by Timothy P. Sarnecki is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 1986 by Timothy P. Sarnecki.

THE INTERROGATION TEAM by David Drake is published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by David Drake.

A TIME OF MARTYRS by Jim Fiscus is published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by Jim Fiscus.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by Harry Turtledove was published in Analog in November of 1985. It appears here by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by Davis Publications and © 1986 by Harry Turtledove.

DELUSIONS OF SOVIET WEAKNESS by Edward N. Luttwak first appeared in the January 1985 Commentary. Copyright © 1985 by Edward N. Luttwak.

THE DAY AND THE HOUR by Duncan Lunan is published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by Duncan Lunan.

HOUSE OF WEAPONS by Gordon R. Dickson first appeared in the Summer issue of Far Frontiers. It appears here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by Gordon R. Dickson.

There Will Be War Volume V

Edited by Jerry Pournelle

Dedication

For the mujahadeen of Afghanistan, who know the value and are paying the price of liberty.

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge that research for non-fiction essays in this book, including “Defense in A N-Dimensional World” by Stefan T. Possony, was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation. Responsibility for opinions expressed in this work remains solely with the authors.

Contents

1. Cover

2. Foreword 2016

3. Introduction: Warriors and Statesmen, Jerry Pournelle

4. He Fell into a Dark Hole, Jerry Pournelle

5. Coup, Mack Reynolds

6. The Prevention of War, Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

7. The Wedding March, Edward P. Hughes

8. Ford o’ Kabul River, Rudyard Kipling

9. Fighting Back, Douglas J. Greenlaw and Robert Gleason

10. Victory, J. P. Boyd

11. The War Against “Star Wars”, Robert Jastrow

12. Final Solution, Ames MacKenzie

13. Masterplay, William F. Wu

14. Defense in a N-Dimensional World: Technological Surprise Must Be Prevented, Stefan T. Possony

15. Three Poems
16. The Interrogation Team, David Drake
17. A Time of Martyrs, Jim Fiscus
18. The Road Not Taken, Harry Turtledove

19. Delusions of Soviet Weakness, Edward N. Luttwak

20. The Day and the Hour, Duncan Lunan
21. House of Weapons, Gordon R. Dickson
22. Notes
23. There Will Be War Vol. X
24. Quantum Mortis
25. Castalia House

Foreword to the 2016 edition

This book was published when the Cold War was still very real.

The dedication serves as a reminder that when your enemy goes away, the enemies of that enemy were not necessarily your friends. So it was after World War II, once the Allies defeated the Axis powers and our relations with the USSR returned to normal; and so it was with the Afghan warriors defending the independence of their homeland, who drove out first the USSR and then the Taliban. Afghanistan is divided, but the tribes and factions there often unite to resist the presence of foreign troops.

Jerry Pournelle, June 2016

Introduction:
Warriors and Statesmen

Jerry Pournelle

Western myth and legend stress the importance of the warrior in society. From the marryanu, chariot warriors of the battle-ax people, to Cuchulain of Ireland, to George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, the West has looked to its warriors for safety.

There is another tradition equally as ancient and as important. Military leadership and authority is indispensable, but it is vital that it submit to another sovereign. The French scholar Georges Dumezil, drawing on a passage in Tacitus, divides authority into the dux or war leader, and the rex or fountain of justice; and dux must serve rex.

This is the glory of the warrior: to serve justice, to do so with courage, and protect the weak; just as the three sins of the warrior are rebellion, cowardice, and rapine and wanton destruction. We have known all this and more for a very long time; it is only in our modern age that we have forgotten.

We forget it to our peril. Dr. Richard Garwin, IBM Fellow and supporter of the Union of Concerned Scientists, has said recently: “Even though we feel a moral repugnance for ensuring survival by threatening to kill tens of millions of men, women, and children—as President Reagan put it when he first proposed Star Wars—that is no reason to reach out recklessly for something new.” All of which shows a profound misunderstanding.

It is the glory of the warrior to protect the weak and spare the helpless. It is no less sin to slaughter the innocent than to run from battle or slaughter the sovereign. These precepts are buried deep in the western soul; within every myth and legend, from the Rig Veda to Livy’s History of Rome, from the Eddas to the songs of the ’45. Loyalty to sovereign; courage in battle; and mercy to the helpless. They all spring from the same sources. Weaken one and you weaken them all.

Now true: it has always been the destiny of the warrior that he is, in battle, released from the common bonds of the law; that he may and must fight and kill and destroy. Because the warrior has been released from the bounds of law, it is all the more important that he return to them after battle. Again every culture has stressed this. Cuchulain must be cooled in three magic cauldrons to remove the heat of battle; only then can he return to his people. The Romans stressed the example of Cincinnatus, and before our schoolbooks were written by positivists and others ignorant of the importance of myth and tradition, the United States ceaselessly told of George Washington. Today our textbooks seem more concerned with Washington’s teeth, and whether he drank brandy, than with the simple fact that he held all the military power on the continent—and laid it down. The French had Bonaparte; we, more fortunate, had Washington.

The knowledge lies deep in the myths, legends, and history of the west: the warrior in his wrath may destroy his own people; let him be cured of it, and submit to his king, before he comes again among us. We know this, but we try to forget. We want our warrior to be—to be something other than a warrior. And that is dangerous and uncharted territory.

As the warrior has special virtues, so is he prone to characteristic sins. Few warriors escape them. The stories of every hero of every land are stories not only of virtue, but of the fall from grace. As there are three special virtues, there are three sins of the warrior: disloyalty, cowardice, and wanton violence.

Heracles rebels against his king; by stealth kills a guest, rather than facing him in battle; and in madness slaughters his own children. Similar destinies await other great warriors, Starcatherus of Scandinavia, Indra of the Rig Veda. They are heroes who have fallen; and as their lives are heroic, so are their punishments. Perhaps punishment is the wrong word. The heroes ask for judgment, and undertake great tasks in atonement.

We know the characteristic sins of the warrior. There are also sins of the sovereign. One is to take to himself the duties of the warrior.

Now true: some societies have been led by soldier kings. Most have not been glad of it. The virtues of the soldier are not those of the sovereign. The warrior focuses all energies on a single goal. The rex must see to the good of all, balance a thousand goals of justice and order. The duties conflict. It is best that dux and rex be separate. Each has authority, each has power, but their roles are different.

Once again myth and legend abound with examples. The greatest warriors are those who serve their king. Those who do not are villains. The most despicable warrior villains are those who murder their king by stealth and go from there to wanton slaughter. Macbeth comes instantly to mind. The most despicable kings are those who waste the courage of their warriors, and dishonor their returning heroes. So says western tradition; so says western experience.

Is all this more than sentimental twaddle? After all, we live in an age of reason; who cares for myth and legend and tradition? Away with them. We will build our army on rational principles.

Perhaps. But recall Montaigne: “A rational army would run away.’’ Societies defended by armies that run away do not endure. Rational principles are of little use to young men about to die ten thousand miles from home. Recall also Machiavelli: “Gold cannot get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can always get you gold.” Building an army on rational principles has its problems.

Indeed, more problems than appear on the surface: for if you build a rational army, why does it submit to you? Why should those who have a monopoly of force and violence take orders from those who hire them?

Perhaps there is more to the ancient traditions than this age supposes.

I recently had a letter from a veteran of Khesanh and Quangtri. He says, “They stole our war, and they threw our heroism to the winds.”

Indeed. And now no one remembers, and if there are heroes of the Vietnam War they are, supposedly, those who fled to Canada, or rampaged through Chicago in their days of rage; even those who smashed windows of university book stores, trashed offices, disrupted classes, engaged in acts of terrorism. I recently met one such who invited all and sundry to admire his courageous action in opposing the war, and seemed to think he deserved medals no less than any soldier. After all, he had been arrested five times and had spent weeks in American jails. “We ended the war,” he cried.

Which is nonsense. The Vietnam War was ended because it was won. In 1972 the United States pretty well withdrew and left the defense of South Vietnam to ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam; and from ’72 to ’75 ARVN was successful. With the help of a rather small number of US Air Cavalrymen, ARVN even stopped the 1973 invasion in which the North sent down 150,000 men (and got fewer than 100,000 back).

It wasn’t until 1975 that South Vietnam fell to an invasion of more armor than the Wehrmacht ever possessed, more trucks than Patton ever commanded. Even then ARVN might have won, but the Congress of the United States was more interested in Watergate. The Soviets supplied North Vietnam; no one supplied our allies in the South. Saigon accordingly became Ho Chi Minh City, and most of the South Vietnamese middle class departed for what were euphemistically called re-education camps.

Our warriors were sent halfway around the world to defend a little-known people. They accomplished their task in the face of the contempt of the media and the intellectuals. Then they were brought home and told to be ashamed.

The West has not honored its warriors.

Then there came others, who would do worse.

They said that we lived in the nuclear era: a time of pushbutton death, a time when battle was impersonal, and if warriors could not find courage, computers could instill it in weapons; or so thought some of the scholars turned strategist.

We need not honor warriors: we can, they said, dispense with them. Politicians, neither warriors nor sovereigns, can control power directly; they need no warriors, only someone to build and maintain weapons. From this sprang ludicrous attempts to turn the officer corps into managers, the sergeants and chiefs into technicians, and the private soldiers into artisans. Alas, some of those efforts met success. We are fortunate that most of them failed.

We are more fortunate that there are signs of returning sanity within the government.

We can hope that sanity returns in other places.

“The leaders of the West have too often failed to set forth vigorously the crucial differences that separate our system from the Soviet system,” writes Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. “Indeed, our intellectual elites have developed the notion that there is a ‘moral equivalence’ between the United States and the Soviet Union. This was clearly evident in the numerous attempts to equate the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan with the American rescue in Grenada.”

Precisely. In most of our universities, learned professors who ought to know better speak of “the superpowers,” and act as if the global protracted conflict were one between moral equals, rather than a contest between freedom and totalitarian principles.

It was not always that way. A few years ago eminent scholars said:

“It is quite evident that the possibility for peaceful coexistence of the nations peopling this world presupposes the disappearance of the totalitarian dictatorships. Since, according to their own loudly proclaimed professions, their systems must be made world-wide, those who reject the system have no alternative but to strive for its destruction. Any relaxation of the vigilance required to face such ideological imperialists as the totalitarians is likely to result in disasters such as the Second World War, or worse.” (Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy.)

That remains true today. The Soviet regime must proclaim that its destiny is to sweep the world; what else could justify the wide discrepancy in incomes, the grey lives of the masses and the immense privileges of the ruling elite? Arthur Koestler said in 1946 that the only hope for the world was opening up Soviet society to the free flow of information. That has not happened yet.

There is hope. The computer revolution makes information easier to get, harder to suppress. Technology impacts everyone; even totalitarian regimes. Our grandchildren may live in a world in which information flows so freely that not even the KGB can suppress it. That would be the end for totalitarianism.

Meanwhile, though, the way is long and hard; for the warriors must ever stand on guard, be ever vigilant; not in war, but to preserve the peace.

Editor’s Introduction to:

He Fell into a Dark Hole

Jerry Pournelle

In 1970 Stefan Possony and I published The Strategy of Technology. In the introductory chapter (reprinted with revisions in Men Of War, Volume II of this series, Tor Books) we argued that technology can be thought of as an impersonal force much like a stream. Those who doubt that will probably find illuminating a close reading of James Burke’s wonderful book Connections. What one tinkerer does not invent, another will.

At the same time, the analogy can be carried too far. Technology is created by people, and the technological stream can be directed—or diverted. Possibly it can be dammed.

Given the present international situation, suppression of technological development is highly unlikely. Neither the US nor the Soviet Union would trust the other without the most stringent verification measures: measures that I doubt even the US would submit to, while Soviet resistance to any inspection amounts almost to an obsession. Moreover, even if bilateral agreements were implemented and worked smoothly, even if NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations were brought under the agreement, there remains the rest of the world. China, Japan, Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan—the list goes on and on. All these nations are capable of developing, implementing, and deploying high technology weapons; and as Possony and I argued (I hope persuasively) in The Strategy of Technology, the Technological War could be bloodlessly decisive.

Suppose, though, that the United States and the Soviet Union formed a CoDominium, and through that structure brought the entire world under their joint control. The two super powers need not care for each other. It is only needful that they be dedicated to the notion that it is better that they rule jointly than for anyone else to rule at all.

Under those circumstances technology might be suppressed by sufficiently ruthless action by the FBI, KGB, and the CoDominium intelligence services. It would require a massive intelligence effort, and a great deal of cooperation among US and USSR security services; nothing less would do the job. Given that cooperation, though, science and technology could be slowed if not halted so long as the alliance held.

It seems arguable, anyway; and this was the premise of my first science fiction stories. The CoDominium series takes us from about the turn of the century to the far future, and includes The Mercenary, The Mote in God’s Eye, and King David’s Spaceship.

After I wrote this story I got a call from Dr. Robert Forward of Hughes Research. Bob Forward was even then preparing a scientific article on black holes and gravity waves, and the danger of getting too near them; and he was calling to congratulate me on publishing first. I’m rather proud of that.

He Fell into a Dark Hole

Jerry Pournelle

CDSN Captain Bartholomew Ramsey watched his men check out, each man leaving the oval entry port under the satanic gaze of the master-at-arms. After nearly two years in space the men deserved something more exciting than twenty hours dirtside at Ceres Base, but they were eager for even that much. CDSS Daniel Webster got all the long patrols and dirty outsystem jobs in the Navy because her captain didn’t protest. Now, when these men got to Luna Base and Navy Town, Lord help the local girls…

Well, they’d be all right here. Ramsey thought. The really expensive pleasures were reserved for Belt prospectors and the crews of Westinghouse mining ships. Bart glanced at the screens displaying ships docked at Ceres. None of the big ore-processing ships were in Thorstown. Things should be pretty quiet. Nothing Base Marines couldn’t handle, even if Daniel Webster’s crew hadn’t been on a good drunk for twenty months. Ramsey turned away from the entry port to go back to his cabin.

It was difficult to walk in the low gravity of Ceres. Very inconvenient place, he thought. But of course low gravity was a main reason for putting a Navy yard there. That and the asteroid mines…

He walked carefully through gray steel bulkheads to the central corridor. Just outside the bridge entrance he met Dave Trevor, the first lieutenant.

“Not going ashore?” Ramsey asked.

“No, sir.” Trevor’s boyish grin was infectious. Ramsey had once described it as the best crew morale booster in the Navy. And at age twenty-four Dave Trevor had been in space eleven years, as ship’s boy, midshipman, and officer. He would know every pub in the Solar System and a lot outside… “Never cared much for the girls on Ceres,” he said. “Too businesslike.”

Captain Ramsey nodded sagely. With Trevor’s looks he wouldn’t have to shell out money for an evening’s fun anywhere near civilization. Ceres was another matter. “I’d appreciate it if you’d make a call on the provost’s office, Mr. Trevor. We might need a friend there by morning.”

The lieutenant grinned again. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Bart nodded and climbed down the ladder to his cabin. Trevor’s merry whistling followed him until he closed the door. Once Ramsey was inside he punched a four-digit code on the intercom console.

“Surgeon’s office, Surgeon’s Mate Hartley, sir.”

“Captain here. Make sure we have access to a good dental repair unit in the morning, Hartley. Even if we have to use Base facilities.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Ramsey switched the unit off and permitted himself a thin smile. The regeneration stimulators aboard Daniel Webster worked but there was something wrong with the coding information in the dental unit. It produced buck teeth, not enormous but quite noticeable, and when his men were out drinking and some dirtpounder made a few funny remarks…

The smile faded as Ramsey sat carefully in the regulation chair. He glanced around the sterile cabin. There were none of the comforts other captains provided themselves. Screens, charts, built-in cabinets and tables, his desk, everything needed to run his ship, but no photographs and solidos, no paintings and rugs. Just Ramsey and his ship, his wife with the masculine name. He took a glass of whisky from the arm of the chair. It was Scotch and the taste of burnt malt was very strong. Bart tossed it off and replaced it to be refilled. The intercom buzzed.

“Captain here.”

“Bridge, sir. Call from Base Commandant Torrin.”

“Put him on.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The watch midshipman’s face vanished and Rap Torrin’s broad features filled the screen. The rear admiral looked at the bare cabin, grimaced, then smiled at Ramsey.

“I’m going to pull rank on you, Bart,” Torrin said. “Expect that courtesy call in an hour. You can plan on having dinner with me, too.”

Ramsey forced a smile. “Very good, sir. My pleasure. In an hour, then.”

“Right.” The screen went blank and Ramsey cursed. He drank the second whisky and cursed again, this time at himself.

What’s wrong with you? he thought. Rap Torrin is as good a friend as you have in the Navy. Shipmate way back in Ajax under Sergei Lermontov. Now Rap has a star, well, that was expected. And Lermontov is Vice Admiral Commanding, the number two man in the whole CoDominium Space Navy.

And so what? I could have had stars. As many as I wanted. I’m that good, or I was. And with Martin Grant’s influence in the Grand Senate and Martin’s brother John in charge of United States security, Senator Martin Grant’s son-in-law could have had any post no matter how good…

Ramsey took another whisky from the chair and looked at it for a long time. He’d once had his star, polished and waiting, nothing but formalities to go, while Rap and Sergei grinned at his good luck. Sergei Lermontov had just made junior vice admiral then. Five years ago.

Five years. Five years ago Barbara Jean Ramsey and their son Harold were due back from Meiji. Superstitiously, Bart had waited for them before accepting his promotion. When he took it he’d have to leave Daniel Webster for something dirtside and wait until a spacing admiral was needed. That wouldn’t have been long. The Danube situation was heating up back then. Ramsey could have commanded the first punitive expedition, but it had gone out under an admiral who botched the job. Barbara Jean had never come home from Meiji.

Her ship had taken a new direct route along an Alderson path just discovered. It never came out into normal space. A scoutcraft was sent to search for the liner, and Senator Grant had enough influence to send a frigate after that. Both vanished, and there weren’t any more ships to send. Bartholomew Ramsey stayed a captain. He couldn’t leave his ship because he couldn’t face the empty house in Luna Base compound.

He sighed, then laughed cynically at himself. Time to get dressed. Rap wanted to show off his star, and it would be cruel to keep him waiting.

The reunion was neither more nor less than he’d expected, but Admiral Torrin cut short the time in his office. “Got to get you home, Bart. Surprise for you there. Come along, man, come along.”

Bart followed woodenly. Something really wrong with me, he thought. Man doesn’t go on like this for five years. I’m all right aboard Old Danny Boy. It’s only when I leave my ship; now why should that be? But a man can marry a ship, even a slim steel whisky bottle four hundred meters long and sixty across: he wouldn’t be the first captain married to a cruiser.

Most of Ceres Base was underground, and Bart was lost in the endless rock corridors. Finally they reached a guarded area. They returned the Marines’ salutes and went through to broader hallways lined with carpets. There were battle paintings on the walls. Some reached back to wet navy days and every CD base, in-system or out, had them. There were scenes from all the great navies of the world. Russian, Soviet. U.S., British, Japanese…there weren’t any of Togo at Tshushima, though. Or Pearl Harbor. Or Bengal Bay.

Rap kept up his hearty chatter until they got inside his apartment. The admiral’s quarters were what Bart had visualized before he entered, richly furnished, filled with the gifts and mementos that a successful independent command captain could collect on a dozen worlds after more than twenty years in service. Shells and stuffed exotic fauna, a cabinet made of the delicately veined snakewood of Tanith, a table of priceless Spartan roseteak. There was a house on Luna Base that had been furnished like this…

Bart caught sight of the man who entered the room and snapped to attention in surprise. Automatically he saluted.

Vice Admiral Lermontov returned the salute. The admiral was a tall, slim man who wore rimless spectacles which made his gray eyes look large and round as they bored through his subordinates. Men who served under Lermontov either loved him or hated him. Now his thin features distorted in genuine pleasure. “Bartholomew, I am sorry to surprise you like this.”

Lermontov inspected Ramsey critically. The smile faded slightly. “You have not taken proper care of yourself, my friend. Not enough exercise.”

“I can still beat you. Arm wrestling, anything you name—uh, sir.”

Lermontov’s smile broadened again. “That is better. But you need not call me ‘sir.’ You would say ‘sir’ only to Vice Admiral Lermontov, and it is quite obvious that the Vice Admiral Commanding cannot possibly be on Ceres. So, since you have not seen me…”

“I see,” Ramsey said.

Lermontov nodded. “It is rather important. You will know why in a few moments. Rap, can you bring us something to drink?”

Torrin nodded and fussed with drinks from the snakewood cabinet. The ringing tone of a crystal glass was very loud in the quiet apartment. Ramsey was vaguely amused as he took a seat at the roseteak table in the center of the lush room. A rear admiral waiting on a captain, and no enlisted spacers to serve the Vice Admiral Commanding, who, after all, wasn’t really there in the first place… the whisky was from Inveraray and was very good.

“You have been in space nearly two years,” Lermontov said. “You have not seen your father-in-law in that time?”

“More like three since Martin and I really talked about anything,” Ramsey said. “We—we remind each other too much of Barbara Jean and Harold.”

The pain in Ramsey’s face was reflected as a pale shadow in Lermontov’s eyes. “But you knew he had become chairman of the appropriations committee.”

“Yes.”

“The Navy’s friend, Grand Senator Grant. Without him these last years would have been disaster for us all. For the Navy, and for Earth as well if those politicians could only see it.” Lermontov cut himself off with an angry snap. The big eyes matching his steel gray hair focused on Bart. “The new appropriations are worse,” the admiral growled. “While you have been away, everything has become worse. Millington, Harmon, Bertram, they all squeeze President Lipscomb’s Unity Party in your country, and Kaslov gains influence every day in mine. I think it will not be long before one or the other of the CoDominium sponsors withdraws from the treaties, Bart. And after that, war.”

“War.” Ramsey said it slowly, not believing. After a hundred and fifty years of uneasy peace between the United States and the Soviets, war again, and with the weapons they had…

“Any spark might set it off,” Lermontov was saying. “We must be ready to step in. The fleet must be strong, strong enough to cope with the national forces and do whatever we must do.”

Ramsey felt as if the admiral had struck him. War? Fleet intervention? “What about the Commanding Admiral? The Grand Senate?”

Lermontov shrugged. “You know who are the good men, who are not. But so long as the fleet is strong, something perhaps can be done to save Earth from the idiocy of the politicians. Not that the masses are better, screaming for a war they can never understand.” Lermontov drank quietly, obviously searching for words, before he turned back to Ramsey. “I have to tell you something painful, my friend. Your father-in-law is missing.”

“Missing—where? I told Martin to be careful, that Millington’s Liberation Army people…”

“No. Not on Earth. Outsystem. Senator Grant went to Meiji to visit relatives there…”

“Yes.” Ramsey felt the memory like a knife in his vitals. “His nephew, Barbara Jean’s cousin, an officer in the Diplomatic Corps on Meiji. Grew up in the senator’s home. Barbara Jean was visiting him when…”

“Yes.” Lermontov leaned closer to Ramsey so that he could touch his shoulder for a moment. Then he took his hand away. “I do not remind you of these things because I am cruel, my friend. I must know—would the senator have tried to find his daughter? After all these years?”

Bart nodded. “She was his only child. As Harold was mine. If I thought there was any chance I’d look myself. You think he tried it?”

“We do.” Lermontov signaled Torrin to bring him another drink. “Senator Grant went to Meiji with the visit to his relatives as cover. With the Japanese representation question to come up soon, and the budget after that, Meiji is important. The Navy provided a frigate for transportation. It took the usual route through Colby and around, and was supposed to return the same way. But we have confirmed reports that Senator Grant’s ship went instead to the jumpoff point for the direct route.”

“What captain in his right mind would let him get away with that?”

“His name was Commander John Grant, Jr. The senator’s nephew.”

“Oh.” Bart nodded again, exaggerating the gesture as he realized the full situation. “Yeah. Johnny would do it if the old man asked. So you came all the way out here for my opinion, Sergei? I can give it quick. Senator Grant was looking for Barbara Jean. So you can write him off and whatever other plans you’ve got for the goddam Navy you can write off too. Learn to live without him, Sergei. The goddam jinx has another good ship and another good man. Now if you’ll excuse me I want to get back to my ship and get drunk.”

Captain Ramsey strode angrily toward the door. Before he reached it the vice admiral’s voice crackled through the room. “Captain, you are not excused.”

“Sir.” Ramsey whirled automatically. “Very well, sir. Your orders?”

“My orders are for you to sit down and finish your drink, Captain.” There was a long silence as they faced each other. Finally Ramsey sat at the expensive table.

“Do you think so badly of me, Bart, that you believe I would come all the way out here, meet you secretly, for as little as this?”

Bart looked up in surprise. Emotions welled up inside him, emotions he hadn’t felt in years, and he fought desperately to force them back. No, God, don’t let me hope again. Not that agony. Not hope… But Lermontov was still speaking.

“I will let Professor Stirner explain it to you, since I am not sure any of us understand him. But he has a theory, Bart. He believes that the senator may be alive, and that there may be a chance to bring him home before the Senate knows he is missing. For years the Navy has preserved the peace; now a strong fleet is needed more than ever. We have no choice, Bart. If there is any chance at all, we must take it.”

Professor Hermann Stirner was a short Viennese with thinning red hair, improbable red freckles, and a neat round belly. Ramsey thought him about fifty, but the man’s age was indeterminate. It was unlikely that he was younger, but with regeneration therapy he could be half that again. Rap Torrin brought the professor in through a back entrance.

“Dr. Stirner is an intelligence adviser to the fleet,” Lermontov said. “He is not a physicist.”

“No, no physicist,” Stirner agreed quickly. “Who would want to live under the restrictions of a licensed physicist? CoDominium intelligence officers watching every move, suppressing most of your discoveries…” He spoke intently giving the impression of great emotion no matter what he said. “And most physicists I have met are not seeing beyond the end of their long noses. Me, I worry mostly about politics, Captain. But when the Navy loses ships, I want to know what happened to them. I have a theory about those ships, for years.”

Ramsey gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles were white, but his voice was deadly calm. “Why didn’t you bring up your theory before now?”

Stirner eyed him critically. Then he shrugged. “As I said, I am no physicist. Who would listen to me? But now, with the senator gone…”

“We need your father-in-law badly,” Lermontov interrupted. “I do not really believe Professor Stirner’s theories, but the fleet needs Senator Grant so desperately we will try anything. Let Dr. Stirner explain.”

“Ja. You are a bright young CoDominium Navy captain, I am going to tell you things you know already, maybe. But I do not myself understand everything I should know, so you let me explain my own way, ja?” Stirner paced briskly for a moment, then sat restlessly at the table. He gave no chance to answer his question, but spoke rapidly, so that he gave the impression of interrupting himself.

“You got five forces in this universe we know about, ja? Only one of them maybe really isn’t in this universe; we do not quibble about that, let the cosmologists worry. Now we look at two of those forces, we can forget the atomics and electromagnetics. Gravity and the Alderson force, these we look at. Now you think about the universe as flat like this table, eh?” He swept a pudgy hand across the roseteak surface. “And wherever you got a star, you got a hill that rises slowly, gets all the time steeper until you get near the star when it’s so steep you got a cliff. And you think of your ships like roller coasters. You get up on the hill, aim where you want to go, and pop on the hyperspace drivers. Bang, you are in a universe where the Alderson effect acts like gravity. You are rolling downhill, across the table, and up the side of the next hill, not using up much potential energy, so you are ready to go again somewhere else if you can get lined up right, O.K.?”

Ramsey frowned. “It’s not quite what we learned as middies—you’ve got ships repelled from a star rather than–”

“Ja, ja, plenty of quibble we can make if we want to. Now, Captain, how is it you get out of hyperspace when you want to?”

“We don’t,” Ramsey said. “When we get close enough to a gravity source, the ship comes out into normal space whether we want it to or not.”

Stirner nodded. “Ja. And you use your photon drivers to run around in normal space where the stars are like wells, not hills, at least thinking about gravities. Now, suppose you try to shoot past one star to another, all in one jump?”

“It doesn’t work,” Ramsey said. “You’d get caught in the gravity field of the in-between star. Besides, the Alderson paths don’t cross each other. They’re generated by stellar nuclear activities, and you can only travel along lines of equal flux. In practice that means almost line of sight with range limits, but they aren’t really straight lines…”

“Ja. O.K. That’s what I think is happening to them. I think there is a star between A-7820 and 81 Eridani, which is the improbable name Meiji’s sun is stuck with.”

“Now wait a minute,” Admiral Torrin protested. “There can’t be a star there, Professor. There’s no question of missing it, not with our observations. Man, do you think the Navy didn’t look for it? A liner and an explorer class frigate vanished on that route. We looked, first thing we thought of.”

“Suppose there is a star there but you are not seeing it?”

“How could that be?” Torrin asked.

“A Black Hole, Admiral. Ja,” Stirner continued triumphantly. “I think Senator Grant fell into a Black Hole.”

Ramsey looked puzzled. “I seem to remember something about Black Holes, but I don’t remember what.”

“Theoretical concept,” Stirner said. “Hundred, hundred and fifty years ago, before the CoDominium Treaty puts a stop to so much scientific research. Lots of people talk about Black Holes then, but nobody ever finds any, so now there’s no appropriations for licensed physicists to work on them.

“But way back we have a man named Schwarzschild, Viennese chap, he thinks of them.” Stirner puffed with evident pride. “Then another chap, Oppenheimer, and some more, all make the calculations. A Black Hole is like a neutron star that goes all the way. Collapsed down so far, a whole star collapsed to maybe two, three kilometers diameter. Gravity is so tough nothing gets out. Not light; not anything gets out of the gravity well. Infinite red shift. Some ways a Black Hole isn’t even theoretically inside this universe.”

The others looked incredulous and Stirner laughed. “You think that is strange? There was even talk once about whole galaxies, a hundred billion stars, whole thing collapsed to smaller than the orbit of Venus. They wouldn’t be in the universe for real either.’’

“Then how would Black Holes interact with—oh,” Rap Torrin said, “gravity. It still has that.”

Stirner’s round face bobbed in agreement. “Ja, ja, which is how we know is no black galaxy out there. Would be too much gravity. But there is plenty of room for a star. Now one thing I do not understand though, why the survey ship gets through, others do not. Maybe gravity changes for one of those things, ja?”

“No, look, the Alderson path really isn’t a line of sight, it can shift slightly—maybe just enough!” Torrin spoke rapidly. “If the geometry were just right, then sometimes the Hole wouldn’t be in the way…”

“O.K.,” Stirner said. “I leave that up to you Navy boys. But you see what happens, the ship is taking sights or whatever you do when you are making a jump, the captain pushes the button, and maybe you come out in normal space near this Black Hole. Nothing to see anywhere around you. And no way to get back home.”

“Of course.” Ramsey stood, twisted his fingers excitedly. “The Alderson effect is generated by nuclear reactions. And the dark holes–”

“Either got none of those, or the Alderson force stuff is caught inside the Black Hole like light and everything else. So you are coming home in normal space or you don’t come home at all.”

“Which is light-years. You’d never make it.” Ramsey found himself near the bar. Absently he poured a drink. “But in that case—the ships can sustain themselves a long time on their fuel!”

“Yes.” Lermontov said it carefully. “It is at least possible that Senator Grant is alive. If his frigate dropped into normal space at a sufficient distance from the Black Hole so that it did not vanish down.”

“Not only Martin,” Bart Ramsey said wonderingly. His heart pounded. “Barbara Jean. And Harold. They were on a Norton Lines luxury cruiser, with only half the passenger berths taken. There should have been enough supplies and hydrogen to keep them going five years, Sergei. More than enough!”

Vice Admiral Lermontov nodded slowly. “That is why we thought you should go. But you realize that…”

“I haven’t dared hope. I’ve wanted to die for five years, Sergei. Found that out about myself, had to be careful. Not fair to my crew to be so reckless. I’ll go after Martin and—I’ll go. But what does that do for us? If I do find them, I’ll be as trapped as they are.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Stirner snorted. “Why you think we came out here, just to shake up a captain and maybe lose the Navy a cruiser? What made me think about this Black Hole business, I am questioning a transportee. Sentenced to the labor market on Tanith, the charge is unauthorized scientific research. I look into all those crazies, might be something the Navy can use, ja? This one was fooling around with gravity waves, theories about Black Holes. Hard to see how the Navy could use it. I was for letting them take this one to Tanith when I start to think, we are losing those ships coming from Meiji, and click! So I pulled the prisoner off the colony ship.”

“And he says he can get us home from a dark hole in blank space?” Ramsey asked. He tried to suppress the wave of excitement that began in his bowels and crept upward until he could hardly speak. Not hope! Hope was an agony, something to be dreaded. It was much easier to live with resignation…

“Ja. Only is not a him. Is a her. Not very attractive her. She says she can do this.” Stirner paused significantly.

“Miss Ward hates the CoDominium, Bart,” Lermontov said carefully. “With what she thinks is good reason. She won’t tell us how she plans to get the ship home.”

“By God, she’ll tell me!” Why can’t anything be simple? To know Barbara Jean is dead, or to know what mountain to climb to save her…

“If I can’t think of something we can borrow a State Security man from the–”

“No.” Lermontov’s voice was a flat refusal. “Leave aside the ethics of the situation, we need this girl’s creative energies. You can’t get that with brainscrubs.”

“Maybe.” And maybe I’ll try it anyway if nothing else works. Barbara Jean, Barbara Jean… “Where is this uncooperative scientist?”

“On Ceres.” Vice Admiral Lermontov stretched a long arm toward the bar and poured for everyone. Stirner swished his brandy appreciatively in a crystal snifter. “Understand something, Bart,” the admiral said. “Miss Ward may not know a thing. She may hate us enough to destroy a CD ship even at the cost of her life. You’re gambling on a theory we don’t know exists and could be wrong even if she has one.”

“So I’m gambling. My God, Sergei, do you know what I’ve been through these last years? It isn’t normal for a man to brood like I do, you think I don’t know that? That I don’t know you whisper about it when I’m not around? Now you say there’s a chance but it might cost my life. You’re gambling a cruiser you can’t spare, my ship is worth more to the Navy than I am.”

Lermontov ignored Ramsey’s evaluation, and Bart wished it had been challenged. But it was probably true, although the old Bart Ramsey was something else again, a man headed for the job Sergei held now.…

“I am gambling a ship because if we do not get Martin Grant back in time for the appropriations hearings, I will lose more than a ship. We might lose half the fleet.”

“Ja, ja,” Stirner sighed. He shook his round head sadly, slowly, a big gesture. “It is not usual that one man may be so important, I do not believe in the indispensable-man theory myself. Yet, without Senator Grant I do not see how we are getting the ships in time or even keeping what we have, and without those ships… but maybe it is too late anyway, maybe even with the senator we cannot get the ships, or with the ships we can still do nothing when a planet-full of people are determined to kill themselves.”

“That’s as it may be,” Lermontov said. “But for now we need Senator Grant. I’ll have the prisoner aboard Daniel Webster in four hours, Bart. You’ll want to fill the tanks. Trim the crew down to minimum also. We must try this, but I do not really give very good odds on your coming home.”

“STAND BY FOR JUMPOFF. Jump stations, man your jump stations.” The unemotional voice of the officer of the watch monotoned through steel corridors, showing no more excitement than he would have used to announce an off-watch solido show. It took years to train that voice into Navy officers, but it made them easier to understand in battle. “Man your jump stations.”

Bart Ramsey looked up from his screens as First Lieutenant Trevor ushered Marie Ward onto the bridge. She was a round, dumpy woman, her skin a faint red color. Shoulder-length hair fell almost straight down to frame her face, but dark brown wisps poked out at improbable angles despite combings and hair ribbons. Her hands were big, as powerful as a man’s, and the nails, chewed to the quick, were colorless. When he met her Ramsey had estimated her age in the mid-thirties and was surprised to learn she was only twenty-six.

“You may take the assistant helmsman’s acceleration chair,” Ramsey told her. He forced a smile. “We’re about to make the jump to Meiji.” In his lonely ship. She’d been stripped down, empty stations all through her.

“Thank you, Captain.” Marie sat and allowed Trevor to strap her in. The routine for jumpoff went on. As he listened to the reports, Ramsey realized Marie Ward was humming.

“What is that?” he asked. “Catchy tune…”

“Sorry. It’s an old nursery thing. ‘The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, to see what he could see.’”

“Oh. Well, we haven’t seen anything yet.”

“‘The other side of the mountain, was all that he could see.’ But it’s the third verse that’s interesting. ‘He fell into a dark hole, and covered himself over with charcoal–’”

“Warning, warning, take your posts for jumpoff.”

Ramsey examined his screens. His chair was surrounded by them. “All right, Trevor, make your search.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Lieutenant Trevor would be busy for a while. He had been assigned the job of looking after Marie Ward, but for the moment Ramsey would have to be polite to her. “You haven’t told us much about what we’re going to see on the other side of the mountain. Why?”

“Captain, if you knew everything I did, you wouldn’t need to take me along,” she said. “I wish they’d hurry up. I don’t like starjumps.”

“It won’t be long now–” Just what do you say to a convict genius? The whole trip out she’d been in everybody’s hair, seldom talking about anything but physics. She’d asked the ship’s officers about the drive, astrogation, instruments, the guns, nearly everything. Sometimes she was humorous, but more often scathingly sarcastic. And she wouldn’t say a word about Black Holes, except to smile knowingly. More and more Ramsey wished he’d borrowed a KGB man from the Soviets…

“WARNING, WARNING. Jumpoff in one minute,” the watch officer announced. Alarm bells sounded through the ship.

“Lined up, Captain,” Trevor said. “For all I can tell, we’re going straight through to 81 Eridani. If there’s anything out there, I can’t see it.”

“Humph,” Marie Ward snorted. “Why should you?”

“Yes, but if the Alderson path’s intact, the Hole won’t have any effect on us,” Trevor protested. “And to the best we can measure, the path is there.”

“No, no,” Marie insisted. “You don’t measure the Alderson path at all! You only measure the force, Lieutenant. Then your computer deduces the existence of the path from the stellar geometry. I’d have thought they’d teach you that much anyway. And that you could remember it.”

“FINAL WARNING. Ten seconds to jump.” A series of chimes, descending in pitch. Marie grimaced. Her mannish hands clutched the chair arms as she braced herself. At the tenth tone everything blurred for an instant that stretched to a million years.

There is no way to record the time a jump takes. The best chronological instruments record nothing whatever. Ships vanish into the state of nonbeing conveniently called “hyperspace” and reappear somewhere else. Yet it always seems to take forever, and while it happens everything in the universe is wrong, wrong, WRONG…

Ramsey shook his head. The screens around his command seat remained blurred. “Jump completed. Check ship,” he ordered.

Crewmen moved fuzzily to obey despite the protests of tortured nerves. Electronic equipment, computers, nearly everything complex suffers from jump-induced transients although there is no known permanent effect.

“Captain, we’re nowhere near Meiji!” the astrogator exclaimed. “I don’t know where we are…”

“Stand by to make orbit,” Ramsey ordered.

“Around what?” Lieutenant Trevor asked. “There’s no star out there, Captain. There’s nothing!”

“Then we’ll orbit nothing.” Ramsey turned to Marie Ward. “Well, we’ve found the damn thing. You got any suggestions about locating it? I’d as soon not fall into it.”

“Why not?” she asked. Ramsey was about to smile politely when he realized she was speaking seriously. “According to some theories, a Black Hole is a time/space gate. You could go into it and come out—somewhere else. In another century. Or another universe.”

“Is that why the hell you brought us out here? To kill yourself testing some theory about Black Holes and space/time?”

“I am here because the CoDominium Marines put me aboard,” she said. Her voice was carefully controlled. “And I have no desire to test any theory. Yet.” She turned to Lieutenant Trevor. “Dave, is it really true? There’s no star out there at all?”

“It’s true enough.”

She smiled. A broad, face-cracking smile that, with the thousand-meter stare in her eyes, made her look strangely happy. Insanely happy, in fact. “My god, it worked! There really is a Black Hole…”

“Which we haven’t found yet,” Trevor reminded her.

“Oh. Yes. Let’s see—it should have started as about five stellar masses in size. That’s my favorite theory, anyway. When it began to collapse it would have radiated over eighty percent of its mass away. X rays, mostly. Lots of them. And if it had planets, they might still be here… Anyway, it should be about as massive as Sol. There won’t be any radiation coming out. X rays, light, nothing can climb out of that gravity well… Just think of it, infinite red shift! It really happens!”

“Infinite red shift,” Ramsey repeated carefully. “Yes, ma’m. Now, just how do we find this source of tired light?”

“It isn’t tired light! That’s a very obsolete theory. Next I suppose you’ll tell me you think photons slow down when they lose energy.”

“No, I–”

“Because they don’t. They wouldn’t be photons if they could slow down. They just lose energy until they vanish.”

“Fine, but how do we find it?”

“It can’t reach out and grab you, Captain,” she said. The grin wasn’t as wide as before, but still she smiled softly to herself. It made her look much better, although the mocking tones didn’t help Ramsey’s appreciation. “It’s just a star, Captain. A very small star, very dense, as heavy as most other stars, but it doesn’t have any more gravity than Sol. You could get quite close and still pull away–”

“If we knew which direction was away.”

“Yes. Hm-m-m. It will bend light rays, but you’d have to be pretty close to see any effect at all from that…”

“Astrogation!” Ramsey ordered crisply. “How do we find a star we can’t see?”

“We’re about dead in space relative to whatever stopped us,” the astrogator told him. “We can wait until we accelerate toward it and get a vector from observation of other stars. That will take a while. Or we can see if it’s left any planets, but with nothing to illuminate them they’ll be hard to find–”

“Yeah. Do the best you can, Mister.” Marie Ward was still looking happily at the screens. They showed absolutely nothing. Ramsey punched another button in the arm of his command chair.

“Comm room, sir.”

“Eyes, there are ships out there somewhere.” God I hope there are. Or one ship. “Find them and get me communications.”

“Aye, aye, sir. I’ll use the distress frequencies. They might be monitoring those.”

“Right. And yes, see if your bright electronics and physics boys can think of a way to detect gravity. So far as I can make out that’s the only effect that a Black Hole has on the real universe.”

“On our real universe. Imagine a universe in which there are particles with non-zero rest masses able to move faster than light. Where you get rid of energy to go faster. Sentient beings in that universe would think of it as real. It might even be where our ships go when they make an Alderson jump. And the Black Hole could be gates to get you there.”

“Yes, Miss Ward,” Ramsey said carefully. Two enlisted spacers on the other side of the bridge grinned knowingly at each other and waited for the explosion. They’d been waiting ever since Marie Ward came aboard, and it ought to be pretty interesting. But Ramsey’s voice became even softer and more controlled. “Meanwhile, have you any useful suggestions on what we should do now?”

“Find the Hole, of course. Your astrogator seems quite competent. His approach is very reasonable. Yes, quite competent. For a Navy man.”

Carefully, his hands moving very slowly. Captain Bartholomew Ramsey unstrapped himself from his command chair and launched himself across the bridge to the exit port. “Take the con, Mr. Trevor,” he said. And left.

For fifty hours Daniel Webster searched for the other ships. Then, with no warning at all, Ramsey was caught in the grip of a giant vise.

For long seconds he felt as if titanic hands were squeezing him. They relaxed, ending the agony for a brief moment. And tried to pull him apart. The screens blurred, and he heard the sound of rending metal as the hands alternately crushed, then pulled.

Somehow the watch officer sounded General Quarters. Klaxons blared through the ship as she struggled with her invisible enemy. Ramsey screamed, as much in rage and frustration as pain, hardly knowing he had made a sound. He had to take control of his ship before she died, but there were no orders to give. This was no attack by an enemy, but what, what?

The battle damage screen flared red. Ramsey was barely able to see as it showed a whole section of the ship’s outer corridors evacuated to space. How many men were in there? Most wouldn’t be in armor. My God! Daniel Webster too? My wife and now my ship?

Slowly it faded away. Ramsey pulled himself erect. Around him on the bridge the watch crew slumped at their stations. The klaxons continued, adding their confusion, until Ramsey shut them off.

“What—what was it?” Lieutenant Trevor gasped. His usually handsome features were contorted with remembered pain, and he looked afraid.

“All stations report damage,” Ramsey ordered. “I don’t know what it was. Lieutenant.”

“I do!” Marie Ward gasped excitedly. Her eyes darted about in wonder. “I know! Gravity waves from the Black Hole! A tensor field! And these were tensor, not scalar–”

“Gravity waves?” Ramsey asked stupidly. “But gravity waves are weak things, only barely detectable.”

Marie Ward snorted. “In your experience, Captain. And in mine. But according to one Twentieth Century theory—they had lots of theories then, when intellectuals were free, Captain—according to one theory, if a Black Hole is rotating and a mass enters the Schwarzschild Limit, part of the mass will be converted to gravity waves. They can escape from the Hole and affect objects outside it. So can Alderson forces, I think. But they didn’t know about the Alderson force then…”

“But—is that going to happen again?” Ramsey demanded. Battle damage reports appeared on his screens. “We can’t live through much of that.”

“I really don’t know how often it will happen,” Marie answered. She chewed nervously on her right thumbnail. “I do know one thing. We have a chance to get home again.”

“Home?” Ramsey took a deep breath. That depended on what had been done to Danny Boy. A runner brought him another report. Much of the ship’s internal communications were out, but the chief engineer was working with a damage control party. Another screen came on, and Ramsey heard the bridge speaker squawk.

“Repairable damage to normal space drive in main engine room,” the toneless voice said. “Alderson drive appears unaffected.”

“Gunnery reports damage to laser lenses in number one battery. No estimate of time to repair.”

Big rigid objects had broken. Ramsey later calculated the actual displacement at less than a millimeter/meter; not very much, but enough to damage the ship and kill half a dozen crewmen unable to get into battle armor. Explosive decompression wasn’t a pretty death, but it was quick.

With all her damage, Daniel Webster was only hurt. She could sail, his ship wasn’t dead. Not yet. Ramsey gave orders to the damage control parties. When he was sure they were doing everything they could he turned back to the dumpy girl in the assistant helmsman’s seat.

“How do we get home?”

She had been scribbling on a pad of paper, but her pencil got away from her when she tried to set it down without using the clips set into the arm of the seat. Now she stared absently at her notes, a thin smile on her lips. “I’m sorry. Captain. What did you say?”

“I asked, how do we get home?”

“Oh.” She tried to look serious but only succeeded in appearing sly. “I was hasty in saying that. I don’t know.”

“Sure. Don’t you want to get home?”

“Of course. Captain. I’d just love to get back on a colony ship. I understand Tanith has such a wonderful climate.”

“Come off it. The Navy doesn’t forget people who’ve helped us. You aren’t going to Tanith.” He took a deep breath. “We have a rescue mission, Miss Ward. Some of those people have been out here for five years.” Five years of that? Nobody could live through five years of that. O God, where is she? Crushed, torn apart, again and again, her body drifting out there in black space without even a star? Rest eternal grant them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them…

“How do we get home?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

But you do. And come to think of it, so do I. “Miss Ward, you implied that if we knew when a mass would enter the Black Hole, we could use the resulting Alderson forces to get us out of here.”

“I’ll be damned.” She looked at Ramsey as if seeing him for the first time. “The man can actually—yes, of course.” She smiled faintly. “I thought so before we left Ceres. Theory said that would work…”

“But we’d have to know the timing rather precisely, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes. Depending on the size of the mass. The larger it is, the longer the effect would last. I think. Maybe not, though.”

Ramsey nodded to himself. There was only one possible mass whose entry into the Hole they could predict. “Trevor.”

“Sir?”

“One way you might amuse yourself is in thinking of ways to make a ship impact a solar mass not much more than two kilometers in diameter; a star you can’t see and whose location you can’t know precisely.”

“Aye, aye, skipper.” Dave Trevor frowned. He didn’t often do that and it distorted his features. “Impact, Captain? But unless you were making corrections all the way in, you’d probably miss—as it is, the ship would pick up so much velocity that it’s more likely to whip right around–”

“Exactly, Lieutenant. But it’s the only way home.”

One hundred and eight hours after breakout Chief Yeoman Karabian located the other ships. Daniel Webster’s call was answered by the first frigate sent out to find the Norton liner:

DANIEL WEBSTER THIS IS HENRY HUDSON BREAK BREAK WE ARE IN ORBIT ELEVEN ASTRONOMICAL UNITS FROM WHATEVER THAT THING DOWN THERE IS STOP WE WILL SEND A CW SIGNAL TO GIVE YOU A BEARING STOP

THE NORTON LINER LORELEI AND CDSN CONSTELLATION ARE WITH US STOP YOUR SIGNAL INDICATES THAT YOU ARE LESS THAN ONE AU FROM THE DARK STAR STOP YOU ARE IN EXTREME DANGER REPEAT EXTREME DANGER STOP ADVISE YOU MOVE AWAY FROM DARK STAR IMMEDIATELY STOP THERE ARE STRONG GRAVITY FLUXES NEAR THE DARK STAR STOP THEY CAN TEAR YOU APART STOP ONE SCOUTSHIP ALREADY DESTROYED BY GRAVITY WAVES STOP REPEAT ADVISE YOU MOVE AWAY FROM DARK STAR IMMEDIATELY AND HOME ON OUR CW SIGNAL STOP.

REQUEST FOLLOWING INFORMATION COLON WHO IS MASTER ABOARD DANIEL WEBSTER INTERROGATIVE BREAK BREAK MESSAGE ENDS

Ramsey read the message on his central display screen, then punched the intercom buttons. “Chief, get this out:

“HENRY HUDSON THIS IS DANIEL WEBSTER BREAK BREAK CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW RAMSEY COMMANDING STOP WE WILL HOME ON YOUR BEACON STOP HAVE EXPERIENCED GRAVITY STORM ALREADY STOP SHIP DAMAGED BUT SPACE-WORTHY STOP

“IS SENATOR MARTIN GRANT ABOARD CONSTELLATION INTERROGATIVE IS MRS RAMSEY THERE INTERROGATIVE BREAK MESSAGE ENDS.”

The hundred-and-sixty-minute round trip for message and reply would be a lifetime.

“Trevor, get us moving when you’ve got that beacon,” Ramsey ordered. “Pity he couldn’t tell us about the gravity waves before we found out the hard way.”

“Yes, sir.” The acceleration alarm rang through the ship as Trevor prepared the new course. “We can only make about a half G, Captain. We’re lucky to get that. We took more damage from that gravity storm than Danny Boy’s ever got from an enemy.”

“Yeah.” Pity indeed. But communications did all they could. Space is just too big for omni signals, and, we had maser damage to boot. Had to send in narrow cones, lucky we made contact this soon even sweeping messages. And no ecliptic here either. Or none we know of.

“Communications here,” Ramsey’s speaker announced.

“Yes, Eyes.”

“We’re getting that homing signal. Shouldn’t be any problem.”

“Good.” Ramsey studied the figures that flowed across his screen. “Take the con, Mr. Trevor. And call me when there’s an answer from Henry Hudson. I’ll wait in my patrol cabin.” And a damn long wait that’s going to be. Barbara Jean, Barbara Jean, are you out there?

The hundred and sixty minutes went past. Then another hour, and another. It was nearly six hours before there was a message from the derelicts; and it was in code the Navy used for the eyes of commanding officers only.

Captain Ramsey sat in his bare room and stared at the message flimsy. In spite of the block letters from the coding printer his eyes wouldn’t focus on the words.

DANIEL WEBSTER THIS IS HENRY HUDSON BREAK FOLLOWING IS PERSONAL MESSAGE FOR CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW RAMSEY FROM GRAND SENATOR MARTIN GRANT BREAK BREAK PERSONAL MESSAGE BEGINS

BART WE ARE HERE AND ALIVE STOP THE SCOUTSHIP WAS LOST TO GRAVITY WAVES STOP THE LINER LORELEI THE FRIGATE HENRY HUDSON AND THE FRIGATE CONSTELLATION ARE DAMAGED STOP LORELEI IN SPACEWORTHY CONDITION WITH MOST OF CREW SURVIVING DUE TO HEROIC EFFORTS OF MASTER OF HENRY HUDSON STOP

BOTH BARBARA JEAN AND HAROLD ARE WELL STOP REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT BARBARA JEAN MARRIED COMMANDER JAMES HARRIMAN OF HENRY HUDSON THREE YEARS AGO STOP BREAK END PERSONAL MESSAGE BREAK BREAK MESSAGE ENDS.

Ramsey automatically reached for a drink, then angrily tossed the glass against the bare steel wall. It wouldn’t be fair to the crew. Or to his ship. And Daniel Webster was still the only wife he had.

The intercom buzzed. “Bridge, Captain.”

“Go ahead, Trevor.”

“Two hundred eighty plus hours to rendezvous, Captain. We’re on course.”

“Thank you.” Damn long hours those are going to be. How could she—but that’s simple. For all Barbara Jean could know she and the boy were trapped out here forever. I can bet there were plenty of suicides on those ships. And the boy would be growing up without a father.

Not that I was so much of one. Half the time I was out on patrol anyway. But I was home when he caught pneumonia from going with us to Ogden Base. Harold just had to play in that snow…

He smiled in remembrance. They’d built a snowman together. But Harold wasn’t used to Earth gravity, and that more than the cold weakened him. The boy never did put in enough time in the centrifuge on Luna Base. Navy kids grew up on the Moon because the Navy was safe only among its own…

Ramsey made a wry face. Hundreds of Navy kids crowding into the big centrifuge…they were hard to control, and Barbara Jean like most mothers hated to take her turn minding them. She needed a hairdo. Or had to go shopping. Or something…

She should have remarried. Of course she should. He pictured Barbara Jean with another man. What did she say to him when they made love? Did she use the same words? Like our first time, when we—oh, damn.

He fought against the black mood. Harriman. James Harriman. Fleet spatball champ seven years ago. A good man. Tough. Younger than Barbara Jean. Harriman used to be a real comer before he vanished. Never married and the girls at Luna Base forever trying to get—never married until now.

Stop it! Would you rather she was dead? The thought crept through unwanted. If you would, you’ll goddammit not admit it, you swine. Not now and not ever.

She’s alive! Bart Ramsey, you remember that and forget the rest of it. Barbara Jean is alive!

Savagely he punched the intercom buttons.

“Bridge. Aye, aye, Captain.”

“We on course, Mister?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damage control parties working?”

“Yes. sir.” Trevor’s voice was puzzled. He was a good first lieutenant, and it wasn’t like Ramsey to ride him…

“Excellent.” Ramsey slapped the off button, waited a moment, and reached for another whisky. This time he drank it. And waited.

There was little communication as Daniel Webster accelerated, turned over, and slowed again to approach the derelicts. Messages took energy, and they’d need it all. To get out, or to survive if Marie Ward proved wrong with her theories. Someday there’d be a better theory. Lermontov might come up with something, and even now old Stirner would be examining ancient records at Stanford and Harvard. If Ward was wrong, they still had to survive…

“Getting them on visual now,” the comm officer reported. The unemotional voice broke. “Good God, Captain!”

Ramsey stared at the screens. The derelicts were worse than he could have imagined. Lorelei was battered, although she seemed intact, but the other ships seemed bent. The frigate Constellation was a wreck, with gaping holes in her hull structure. Henry Hudson was crumpled, almost unrecognizable. The survivors must all be on the Norton liner.

Ramsey watched in horror as the images grew on the screens. Five years, with all hope going, gone. Harriman must be one hell of a man to keep anyone alive through that.

When they were alongside, Navy routine carried Ramsey through hours that were lifetimes. Like one long continuous jump. Everything wrong.

Spacers took Daniel Webster’s cutter across to Lorelei and docked. After another eternity she lifted away with passengers. CDSN officers, one of the merchant service survivors from Lorelei—and the others. Senator Grant. Johnny Grant. Commander Harriman. Barbara Jean, Harold—and Jeanette Harriman, age two.

“I’ll be in my cabin, Trevor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get some spin on the ship as soon as that boat’s fast aboard.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Ramsey waited. Who would come? It was his ship, he could send for anyone he liked. Instead he waited. Let Barbara Jean make up her own mind. Would she come? And would Harriman be with her?

Five years. Too long, he’s had her for five years. But we had ten years together before that. Damned if I don’t feel like a middie on his first prom.

He was almost able to laugh at that.

The door opened and she came in. There was no one with her, but he heard voices in the corridor outside. She stood nervously at the bulkhead, staring around the bare cabin at the empty desk and blank steel walls.

Her hair’s gone. The lovely black hair that she never cut, whacked off short and tangled—God, you’re beautiful. Why can’t I say that? Why can’t I say anything?

She wore shapeless coveralls, once white, but now grimy, and her hands showed ground-in dirt and grease. They’d had to conserve water, and there was little soap. Five years is a long time to maintain a closed ecology.

“No pictures, Bart? Not even one of me?”

“I—I thought you were dead.” He stood, and in the small cabin they were very close. “There wasn’t anybody else to keep a picture of.”

Her tightly kept smile faded. “I—I would have waited, Bart. But we were dead. I don’t even know why we tried to stay alive. Jim drove everybody, he kept us going, and then—he needed help.”

Ramsey nodded, it was going to be all right. Wasn’t it? He moved closer and put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her to him. She responded woodenly, then broke away. “Give me—give me a little time to get used to it, Bart.”

He backed away from her. “Yeah. The rest of you can come in now,” he called.

“Bart, I didn’t mean–’

“It’s all right, Barbara Jean. We’ll work it out.” Somehow.

The boy came in first. He was very hesitant. Harold didn’t look so very different. He still had a round face, a bit too plump. But he was big. And he was leading a little girl, a girl with dark hair and big round eyes, her mother’s eyes.

Harold stood for a long moment. “Sir—ah,” he began formally, but then he let go of the girl and rushed to his father. “Daddy! I knew you’d come to get us, I told them you’d come!” He was tall enough that his head reached Bart’s shoulder, and his arms went all the way around him.

Finally he broke away. “Dad, this is my little sister.” He said it defiantly, searchingly, watching his father’s face. Finally he smiled. “She’s a nuisance sometimes, but she grows on you.”

“I’m sure she does,” Ramsey said. It was very still in the bare cabin. Ramsey wanted to say something else, but he had trouble with his voice.

Daniel Webster’s wardroom was crowded. There was barely room at the long steel table for all the surviving astrogation officers to sit with Ramsey, Senator Grant, and Marie Ward. They waited tensely.

The senator was thinner than Ramsey had ever seen him despite the short time he’d been marooned. Constellation had been hit hard by a gravity storm—it was easier to think of them that way, although the term was a little silly. Now the senator’s hands rested lightly on the wardroom table, the tips of the fingers just interlocked, motionless. Like everyone else Senator Grant watched Commander Harriman.

Harriman paced nervously. He had grown a neatly trimmed beard, brown, with both silver and red hairs woven through it. His uniform had been patched a dozen times, but it was still the uniform of the Service, and Harriman wore it proudly. There was no doubt of who had been in command.

“The only ship spaceworthy is Lorelei,” Harriman reported. “Henry Hudson was gutted to keep Lorelei livable, and Johnny Grant’s Constellation took it hard in the gravity storms before we could get him out far enough from that thing.”

Senator Grant sighed loudly. “I hope never to have to live through anything like that again. Even out this far you can feel the gravity waves, although it’s not dangerous. But in close, before we knew where to go…”

“But Lorelei can space?” Ramsey asked. Harriman nodded. “Then Lorelei it’ll have to be. Miss Ward, explain what it takes to get home again.”

“Well, I’m not sure, Captain. I think we should wait.”

“We can’t wait. I realize you want to stay out here and look at the Black Hole until doomsday, but these people want to go home. Not to mention my orders from Lermontov.”

Reluctantly she explained her theory, protesting all the while that they really ought to make a better study. “And the timing will have to be perfect,” she finished. “The ship must be at the jumpoff point and turn on the drive at just the right time.”

“Throw a big mass down the Hole,” Harriman said. “Well, there’s only the one mass to throw. Lorelei.” He stopped pacing for a moment and looked thoughtful. “And that means somebody has to ride her in.”

“Gentlemen?” Ramsey looked around the table. One by one the astrogation officers nodded mutely. Trevor, seeing his captain’s face, paused for a long second before he also nodded agreement.

“There’s no way to be sure of a hit if we send her in on automatic,” Trevor said. “We can’t locate the thing close enough from out here. We can’t send Lorelei on remote, either. The time lag’s too long.”

“Couldn’t you build some kind of homing device?” Senator Grant asked. His voice was carefully controlled, and it compelled attention. In the Grand Senate, Martin Grant’s speeches were worth listening to, although senators usually voted from politics anyway.

“What would you home on?” Marie asked caustically. “There’s nothing to detect. In close enough you should see bending light rays, but I’m not sure. I’m just not sure of anything, but I know we couldn’t build a homing device.”

“Could we wait for a gravity storm and fly out of that?” Trevor asked. “If we were ready for it, we could make the jump…”

“Nonsense,” Harriman snapped. “Give me credit for a little sense, Lieutenant. We tried that. I didn’t know what we were up against, but I figured those were gravity waves after they’d nearly wrecked my ships. Where there’s gravity there may be Alderson forces. But you can’t predict the damn gravity storms. We get one every thousand hours, sometimes close together, sometimes a long time apart, but about a thousand-hour average. How can you be in a position for a jump when you don’t know it’s coming? And the damn gravity waves do things to the drives.”

“Every thousand hours!” Marie demanded excitedly. “But that’s impossible! What could cause that—so much matter! Commander Harriman, you have observed asteroids in this system?”

“Yeah. There’s a whole beehive of them, all in close to the dark star. Thousands and thousands of them, it looks like. But they’re really close, it’s a swarm in a thick plane, a ring about ten kilometers thick. It’s hard to observe anything, though. They move so fast, and if you get in close the gravity storms kill you. From out here we don’t see much.”

“A ring—are they large bodies?” Marie asked. Her eyes shone.

Harriman shrugged. “We’ve bounced radar off them and we deduce they’re anywhere from a few millimeters to maybe a full kilometer in diameter, but it’s hard to tell. There’s nothing stable about the system, either.”

Marie chewed both thumbnails. “There wouldn’t be,” she said. She began so softly that it was difficult to hear her. “There wouldn’t be if chunks keep falling into the Hole. Ha! We won’t be able to use the asteroids to give a position on the Black Hole. Even if you had better observations, the Hole is rotating. There must be enormous gravitational anomalies.”

Harriman shrugged again, this time helplessly. “You understand, all we ever really observed was some bending light and a fuzzy occultation of stars. We deduced there was a dark star, but there was nothing in our data banks about them. Even if we’d known what a Black Hole was, I don’t know how much good it would have done. I burned out the last of the Alderson drives three years ago trying to ride out. We were never in the right position… I was going to patch up Constellation and have another stab at it.”

Just like that, Ramsey thought. Just go out and patch up that wreck of a ship. How many people would even try, much less be sure they could… so three years ago they’d lost their last hope of getting out of there. And after that, Barbara Jean had…

“Did you ever try throwing something down the Hole yourself?” Trevor asked.

“No. Until today we had no idea what we were up against. I still don’t, but I’ll take your word for it.” Harriman drew in a deep breath and stopped pacing. “I’ll take Lorelei down.”

Bart looked past Harriman to a painting on the wardroom bulkhead. Trevor had liked it and hung it there long ago. John Paul Jones strode across the blazing decks of his flagship. Tattered banners blew through sagging rigging, blood ran in the scuppers, but Jones held his old cutlass aloft.

Well, why not? Somebody’s got to do it, why not Harriman? But—but what will Barbara Jean think?

“I want to go too.” Marie Ward spoke softly, but everyone turned to look at her. “I’ll come with you, Commander Harriman.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harriman snapped.

“Ridiculous? What’s ridiculous about it? This is an irreplaceable opportunity. We can’t leave the only chance we’ll ever have to study Black Holes for an amateur. There is certainly nothing ridiculous about a trained observer going.”

Her voice softened. “Besides, you’ll be too busy with the ship to take decent observations.”

“Miss Ward,” Harriman compelled attention although it was difficult to say exactly why. Even though Ramsey was senior officer present, Harriman seemed to dominate the meeting. “Miss Ward, we practically rebuilt Lorelei over the past five years. I doubt if anyone else could handle her, so I’ve got to go. But just why do you want to?”

“Oh–” the arrogant tone left her voice. “Because this is my one chance to do something important. Just what am I? I’m not pretty.” She paused, as if she hoped someone would disagree, but there was only silence.

“And no one ever took me seriously as an intellectual. I’ve no accomplishments at all. No publications. Nothing. But as the only person ever to study a Black Hole, I’ll be recognized!”

“You’ve missed a point.” Ramsey spoke quickly before anyone else could jump in. His voice was sympathetic and concerned. “We take you seriously. Admiral Lermontov took you so seriously he sent this cruiser out here. And you’re our only expert on Black Holes. If Commander Harriman’s attempt fails or for any other reason we don’t get out of this system on this try, you’ll have to think of something else for us.”

“But–”

Harriman clucked his tongue impatiently. “Will Lorelei be mass enough, Miss Ward?”

“I don’t know.” She answered softly, but when they all stared at her she pouted defensively. “Well, I don’t! How could I! There should be more than enough energy but I don’t know!” Her voice rose higher. “If you people hadn’t suppressed everything we’d have more information. But I’ve had to work all by myself, and I–”

Dave Trevor put his hand gently on her arm. “It’ll be all right. You haven’t been wrong yet.”

“Haven’t I?”

Senator Grant cleared his throat. “This isn’t getting us anywhere at all. We have only one ship capable of sailing down to that Hole and only one theory of how to get away from here. We’ll just have to try it.”

There was a long silence before Bart spoke. “You sure you want to do this, Commander?” Ramsey cursed himself for the relief he felt, knowing what Harriman’s answer would be.

“I’ll do it, Captain. Who else could? Let’s get started.”

Ramsey nodded. If ’twere done, ’twere best done quickly… what was that from? Shakespeare? “Mr. Trevor, take an engineering crew over to Lorelei and start making her ready. Get all the ship’s logs too.”

“Logs!” Marie smiled excitedly. “Dave, I want to see those as soon as possible.”

As Trevor nodded agreement, Ramsey waved dismissal to the officers. “Commander Harriman, if you’d stay just a moment…”

The wardroom emptied. There was a burst of chatter as the others left. Their talk was too spirited, betraying their relief. They didn’t have to take Lorelei into a Black Hole. Ramsey and Harriman sat for what seemed like a long time.

“Is there something I can say?” Ramsey asked.

“No. I’d fight you for her if there wasn’t a way home. But if there’s any chance at all—you’ll take care of Jeanette, of course.” Harriman looked at the battered mug on the table, then reached for the coffee pot. After years in space he didn’t notice the strange angle the liquid made as it flowed into the cup under spin gravity. “That’s fine coffee, Captain. We ran out, must be three, four years ago. You get to miss coffee after a while.”

“Yeah.” What the Hell can I say to him? Do I thank him for not making me order him to take that ship in? He really is the only one who could do it, and we both knew that. Unwanted, the image of Barbara Jean in this man’s arms came to him. Ramsey grimaced savagely. “Look, Harriman; there’s got to be some way we can–”

“There isn’t and we both know it. Sir. Even if there were, what good would it do? We can’t both go back with her.”

And I’m glad it’s me who’s going home, Ramsey thought. Hah. The first time in five years I’ve cared about staying alive. But will she ever really be mine again?

Was that all that was wrong with me?

“Your inertial navigation gear working all right?” Harriman asked. “Got an intact telescope?”

“Eh? Yeah, sure.”

“You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding the jumpoff point, then.”

“I don’t expect any.” Marie Ward’s ridiculous song came back to him. “He fell into a dark hole, and covered himself over with charcoal, he went back over the mountain–” But Harriman wouldn’t be back over the mountain. Or would he?

What was a Black Hole, anyway? Could it really be a time tunnel?

Harriman poured more coffee. “I better get over to Lorelei myself. Can you spare a pound of coffee?”

“Sure.”

Harriman stood. He drained the mug. “Don’t see much point in coming back to Daniel Webster in that case. Your people can plot me a course and send it aboard Lorelei.” He flexed his fingers as if seeing them for the first time, then brushed imaginary lint from his patched uniform. “Yeah. I’ll go with the cutter. Now.”

“Now? But don’t you want to–”

“No, I think not. What would I say?” Harriman very carefully put the coffee mug into the table rack. “Tell her I loved her, will you? And be sure to send that coffee over. Funny the things you can get to miss in five years.”

DANIEL WEBSTER THIS IS LORELEI BREAK BREAK TELL TREVOR HIS COURSE WAS FINE STOP I APPEAR TO BE ONE HALF MILLION KILOMETERS FROM THE BLACK HOLE WITH NO OBSERVABLE ORBITAL VELOCITY STOP WILL PROCEED AT POINT lG FROM HERE STOP STILL CANNOT SEE THAT BEEHIVE AT ALL WELL STOP NOTHING TO OBSERVE IN BEST CALCULATED POSITION OF BLACK HOLE STOP TELL MARIE WARD SHE IS NOT MISSING A THING STOP BREAK MESSAGE ENDS.

Barbara Jean and her father sat in Captain Ramsey’s cabin. Despite the luxury of a shower she didn’t feel clean. She read the message flimsy her father handed her.

“I ought to say something to him, hadn’t I? Shouldn’t I? Dad, I can’t just let him die like this.”

“Leave him alone, kitten,” Senator Grant told her. “He’s got enough to do, working that half-dead ship by himself. And he has to work fast. One of those gravity storms while he’s this close and–” Grant shuddered involuntarily.

“But—God, I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?”

“How? Would you rather it was Bart taking that ship in there?”

“No. No, no, no! But I still—wasn’t there any other way, Daddy? Did somebody really have to do it?”

“As far as I can tell, Barbara Jean. I was there when Jim volunteered. Bart tried to talk him out of it, you know.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You’re right, of course,” Grant sighed. “He didn’t try very hard. There wasn’t any point in it anyway. Commander Harriman was the obvious man to do it. You didn’t enter the decision at all.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Yes. So does your husband. But it’s still true. Are you coming down to the bridge? I don’t think it’s a good idea but you can.”

“No. You go on, though. I have to take care of Jeanette. Bill Hartley has her in the sick bay. Daddy, what am I going to do?”

“You’re going to go home with your husband and be an admiral’s lady. For a while, anyway. And when there aren’t any admirals because there isn’t any fleet, God knows what you’ll do. Make the best of it like all the rest of us, I guess.”

The bridge was a blur of activity as they waited for Lorelei to approach the Black Hole. As the minutes ticked off, tension grew. A gravity storm just now would wipe out their only chance.

Finally Ramsey spoke. “You can get the spin off the ship, Mr. Trevor. Put the crew to jump stations.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Can we talk to Harriman still?” Senator Grant asked.

Ramsey’s eyes flicked to the screens, past the predicted time of impact to the others, taking in every detail. “No.” He continued to look at the data pouring across the screens. Their position had to be right. Everything had to be right, they’d get only the one chance at best… “Not to get an answer. You could get a message to Lorelei but before we’d hear a reply it’ll be all over.”

Grant looked relieved. “I guess not, then.”

“Damnedest thing.” Harriman’s voice was loud over the bridge speaker. “Star was occulted by the Hole. Made a bright ring in space. Real bright. Just hanging there, never saw anything like it.”

“Nobody else ever will,” Marie Ward said quietly. “Or will they? Can the Navy send more ships out here to study it? Oh, I wish I could see!”

They waited forever until Harriman spoke again. “Got a good position fix,” they heard. “Looks good, Ramsey, damn good.”

“Stand by for jumpoff,” Bart ordered. Alarm bells rang through Daniel Webster.

“Another bright ring. Must be getting close.”

“What’s happening to his voice?” Senator Grant demanded.

“Time differential,” Marie Ward answered. “His ship is accelerating to a significant fraction of light velocity. Time is slowing down for him relative to us.”

“Looks good for jump here, skipper,” Trevor announced.

“Right.” Bart inspected his screens again. The predicted time to impact ticked off inexorably, but it was only a prediction. Without a more exact location of the Hole it couldn’t be perfect. As Ramsey watched, the ship’s computers updated the prediction from Harriman’s signals.

Ramsey fingered the keys on his console. The Alderson drive generators could be kept on for less than a minute in normal space, but if they weren’t on when Lorelei hit… he pressed the key. Daniel Webster shuddered as the ship’s fusion engines went to full power, consuming hydrogen and thorium catalyst at a prodigal rate, pouring out energy into the drive where it—vanished.

Into hyperspace, if that was a real place. Or on the other side of the Lepton Barrier. Maybe to where you went when you fell through a Black Hole if there was anything to that theory. Marie Ward had been fascinated by it and had seen nothing to make her give it up.

Wherever the energy went, it left the measurable universe. But not all of it. The efficiency wasn’t that good. The drive generators screamed…

“There’s another bright ring. Quite a sight. Best damn view in the universe.” The time distortion was quite noticeable now. Time to impact loomed big on Ramsey’s screens, seconds to go.

Marie Ward hummed her nursery rhyme. Unwanted, the words rang through Ramsey’s head. “He fell into a dark hole–” The time to impact clicked off to zero. Nothing happened.

“Ramsey, you lucky bastard,” the speaker said. “Did you know she kept your damned picture the whole time? The whole bloody time, Ramsey. Tell her–”

The bridge blurred. There was a twisted, intolerable, eternal instant of agony. And confusion. Ramsey shook his head. The screens remained blurred.

“We—we’re in the 81 Eridani system, skipper!” Trevor shouted. “We—hot damn, we made it!”

Ramsey cut him off. “Jump completed. Check ship.”

“It worked,” Marie Ward said. Her voice was low, quiet, almost dazed. “It really worked.” She grinned at Dave Trevor, who grinned back. “Dave, it worked! There are Black Holes, and they do bend light, and they can generate Alderson forces, and I’m the first person to ever study one! Oh!” Her face fell.

“What’s wrong?” Trevor asked quickly.

“I can’t publish.” She pouted. That was what had got her in trouble in the first place. The CoDominium couldn’t keep people from thinking. Die Gedanken, Sie sind frei. But GDI could ruthlessly suppress books and letters and arrest everyone who tried to tell others about their unlicensed speculations.

“I can arrange something,” Senator Grant told her. “After all, you’re the expert on Black Holes. We’ll see that you get a chance to study them for the fleet.” He sighed and tapped the arm of his acceleration chair, then whacked it hard with his open palm. “I don’t know. Maybe the CoDominium Treaty wasn’t such a good idea. We got peace, but—you know, all we ever wanted to do was keep national forces from getting new weapons. Just suppress military technology. But that turned out to be nearly everything. And did we really get peace?”

“We’ll need a course, Mr. Trevor,” Ramsey growled. “This is still a Navy ship. I want the fastest route home.”

Home. Sol System, and the house in Luna Base compound. It’s still there. And I’ll leave you, Daniel Webster, but I’ll miss you, old girl, old boy, whatever you are. I’ll miss you, but I can leave you.

Or can I? Barbara Jean, are you mine now? Some of you will always belong to Jim Harriman. Five goddam years that man kept his crew and passengers alive, five years when there wasn’t a shred of hope they’d get home again. She’ll never forget him.

And that’s unworthy, Bart Ramsey. Neither one of us ought to forget him.

“But I still wonder,” Marie Ward said. Her voice was very low and quiet, plaintive in tone. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.”

“Know what?” Ramsey asked. It wasn’t hard to be polite to her now.

“It’s the song.” She hummed her nursery rhyme. “What did he really see on the other side of the mountain?”

Editor’s Introduction to:

Coup

Mack Reynolds

I first met Mack Reynolds at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. He had long been one of my favorite authors.

We had what at first would seem to be insurmountable political differences. Mack had grown up in an American Socialist Labor Party family—his father was twice the party’s candidate for president—and although he had abandoned party allegiance, he considered himself a militant radical. By the time I met him he was a rather tired radical, but there were still flashes of militancy. On the other hand, Mack was never doctrinaire; and unlike many radicals, never lost his commitment to individualism.

Needless to say, we had many arguments; but they were quite civil, and usually ended when we’d both drunk too much and sung the old songs of rebellion. In music the snake has all the lines…

For many years before his death in 1983 Mack lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. To say that is not to say enough. San Miguel has become home to a number of American writers, and while he lived, Mack was a sort of Mexican national treasure, and certainly the unofficial dean of the writers’ colony there; while Mrs. Jeanette Reynolds was well known as the proper person to turn to for assistance of any kind, from difficulties with the local police to finding a reliable housekeeper.

In his younger days Mack traveled extensively through the world as a sometime news correspondent and permanent researcher and observer. He was, I think, the best amateur anthropologist I ever knew, and his powers of observation rivalled those of any professional. One trip through the Soviet Union convinced him that the present system was despicable, and that even at its best institutional communism would be distasteful and unpleasant. He also spent much time in both Arab and Black Africa, and his stories of the possible futures of that unhappy continent are among his best. Eventually he retired from travel (but not from writing) and settled in San Miguel de Allende.

It is arguable that Mack lived there too long, and that his last stories reflect his stint in lotus land. He certainly didn’t think so. I recall when he proudly sent me a copy of Looking Backward From the Year 2000. The inscription reads: “Here’s my Utopian novel. Where’s yours?” And certainly there are interesting ideas in Mack’s last works. I only wish he were around so that I could argue with him about them. If there’s any justice in the universe, one day I will.

“Coup” is a story from the time when Mack Reynolds was arguably the best story teller actively writing science fiction. Caledonia is a lost colony; one which has built its culture from Sacred Books. The culture has learned to live with war and warriors and combat.

“Coup” tells of a warrior who is so inferior in weapons and technology that he ought to gibber with fear; but it is the nature of the warrior to emphasize one’s own strengths, not those of the enemy…

Coup

Mack Reynolds

I

John of the Hawks brought his steed to a sudden halt just short of the top of the hill they had been ascending. Some instinctive alarm had sounded. Something there is in the warrior born that warns of danger and if the warrior would live, he heeds it ever. Were this not so there would be scarce a clansman from Dumbarton to Stonehaven, for the ambush is a way of life on the planet Caledonia.

He slid from his animal and snaked his carbine from its scabbard. He tethered the animal lightly, so that no time would be wasted were it necessary to beat a quick retreat, and made his way quietly to the hill’s crest. The last few yards he went on hands and knees, the last few inches he squirmed on his belly.

There were several bushes on the crest. He wiggled up behind one and peered through its branches and leaves. John of the Hawks sucked in air.

Below was a stream, flanked by trees and other vegetation. By the stream were standing four saddled horses and three draft animals. The latter were burdened down with what were obviously butchered cattle, and, since this was Hawk preserve, obviously raided beef cattle.

Now he could make them out. Three of them, and from their kilts, they were of the Clan Thompson. The kilts they were in the process of removing. The situation was obvious. They had butchered the animals and were now about to take a swim to clean up. Being deep in Aberdeen territory, they had not wanted to be slowed down by herding the beef back to their town, but had butchered them on the spot and packed the choice portions of the carcasses on their extra animals.

Moving slowly, quietly, John flicked three cartridges from his bandolier. He threw the breech of his carbine and inserted one of the shells. The other two he stuck, point first, into the ground near his right hand, instantly available for a quick reloading.

The others had left their saddle guns in their scabbards, but John had no illusions about the fighting qualities of the Clan Thompson. Thieves they might notoriously be, but also competent fighters. Once he opened fire, the bets would all be down and there were three adult clansmen down there, and he was but a lad, not yet raised up to full Phyletic level.

Three of them?

He hesitated at squeezing the trigger, though he already had the sights trained on one who was just about to enter the water. There were four saddle horses.

He let his eyes go over the scene again, and immediately received his answer.

Slightly up the stream, in a thicker clump of trees, was the other member of the party. She had drawn away from the men for privacy. John of the Hawks made a wry mouth. He had heard that the women of the Thompsons were shameless, but it was unseemly and not meet that one should accompany a raiding party.

He watched for a long moment. All were in the water now. The girl’s body gleamed white in the clearness of the stream. She was young, probably having no more years than John’s own seventeen.

He grunted his irritation. One does not fire upon men in the presence of their feminine kin, although in this particular case there was little, if any, danger of his bullets going so far off aim that she would be endangered. There was no stronger ban than that against injuring a woman, even though vendetta was involved. The male of a species does not destroy the female, not even man. At least, not on the planet Caledonia.

He thought about it. It was too far back to Aberdeen to expect to be able to ride for assistance, enough assistance that the raiders, girl and all, might be captured without bloodshed.

But even as he thought about it, he knew the answer. It was foolhardy, without doubt, but it was the only thing he could do, given the situation.

He took up the two extra cartridges and returned them to his bandolier and began squirming backward. Once off the rise, he came to his feet and hurried to his animal. He put the carbine back into its scabbard and then unbuckled his belt with its claidheammor and skean and attached them to the saddle. He took his coup stick from its sheath and tucked it temporarily in his belt and then ascended the hill again.

They were all swimming and even at this distance he could hear their shouts and jests as they made at their horseplay. He grinned wryly as he began squirming his way down the hill toward them. They would sing a different song, if he was successful in his scheme.

He took what advantage he could of trees, shrubs and bushes, and finally achieved his immediate goal, a place in the shrubbery along the river, between where the girl and the men bathed. Now, he had a slight advantage. If the clansmen heard him stirring in the brush, they would think it the girl; if she heard a stirring, she would think it part of the noise the men were making as they splashed, dove and swam.

On hands and knees he crawled in the direction of the animals. This, now, was the crucial point. It was all a matter of how soon they spotted him.

And there was a matter of sheer luck, too. There were four saddle horses. If he made the mistake of attempting one which was so trained that it would only seat its master, he was destroyed.

The answer to that, or so he hoped, came to him as he crept nearer. One of the beasts had no carbine scabbard. The girl’s of course! And a girl’s horse was less apt to be clansman trained to accept no stranger on its back. At least, so was his prayer to the Holy.

There was a shout from the river bank.

He was on his feet and dashing.

The shouts trebled.

He flung himself on the back of the animal he had chosen, even as he mounted tearing free the tether that had tied the horse to a small bush. He sunk heels into the beast’s side, screaming the battle halloo of the Clan Hawk. He pulled the coup stick from his belt and slashed at the other three mounts. He gripped their tethers, one by one, and pulled them free. He slashed their haunches, driving them before him. From the river’s edge, the Thompson clansmen were coming at the run, shouting their anger and threats.

He pulled hard on the reins of his mount, turning it, and headed back for the raiders. Only now, they saw what he held in his hand and tried to take last minute measures to avoid him.

The coup stick came up and down, so fast as to be a blur.

He slashed them, one-two-three, calling in repetition so quickly that the words came out all a jumble, “I-count-coup-I-count-coup-I-count-coup!”

Then he was around again and away, dashing after the horses he had just stampeded. He looked over his shoulder in triumph and just in time, even as he was shouting his halloo.

Two of the three were seated on the ground, heads in hands, wailing their disgrace and frustration. But the other had turned and sped back to the river’s edge. And only now did John see the carbine leaning there against a tree trunk.

He cut short his battle cry in mid-syllable and flung down on the far side of the horse, clinging to the saddle by but one heel, his left hand grasping a handful of mane.

And just in time. The carbine barked its command. One of the horses screamed. John came back full into the saddle now. The wounded horse ran another twenty yards then stumbled and pitched suddenly, and fell.

John considered, only momentarily, halting long enough to strip it of its trappings but gave up the possibility. For all he knew, the rifleman had additional rounds of ammunition, and John was still within range. He scrambled up the hill, kicking his heels ever into the frightened animal he rode, herding the remaining two beasts before him.

There was another element. Undoubtedly, already, behind him the Thompsons were stripping the beef carcasses from the remaining animals and would soon be in pursuit. John doubted that the draft animals were as fast as those he now possessed but one never knew. They had the carbine and, give the Clan Thompson its due, they were as good marksmen as ever participated at the annual shoots at the assembly of the Dail of the Loch Confederation.

Up the hill, shouting again the halloo of the Clan Hawk, up and over the crest. He galloped to his own steed and flung himself from the saddle of the girl’s horse into the one to which he was more accustomed, without descending to the ground.

He took up the reins of the three remaining captured beasts and started off, making a beeline for Aberdeen and the security of the town of his birth. He was chuckling happily now. He had taken his risk and all had come off as though rehearsed.

He had counted coup on three of the redoubtable Clan Thompson raiders and had stolen their horses and most of their weapons. How the town would respond! How the criers would shout his name. Though but of seventeen years, none would dare speak against his being raised up to full participation in the Phylum. The sachem himself would acclaim him, the caciques and sagamores. He would be a man among men and free to participate in the muster.

He pushed hard, not sparing the horses.

When he had ridden out of Aberdeen, a single lad on a horse, though warned by his uncles to take care, if he went beyond the lands of the clan there were none to say him nay. A clan does not remain strong by preventing the young men from learning to scout, to raid, to defend themselves from the foe. But he had been in comparatively little danger then. Had he run into a raiding party of Bruces, Davidsons, or Thompsons for that matter, he could honorably run for it, being one against many. And it would have been unlikely the others would have taken after him, there being small profit in chasing lads still not of full Phyletic age.

But he was now in possession of worthy booty and fair game for any clansman, save the Hawks and the sister clans, of course, did any spot him returning to Aberdeen.

He rode through the night, the pace being awkward since he continued to hold onto the reins of the captured beasts, rather than try to herd them. They were unused to him and nervous, after all the excitement, and he was afraid of losing one or more in the night.

He entered Aberdeen in the early afternoon of the following day, both he and the animals exhausted. He had paused along the way only for water. His luck had held and he had seen no clansmen, not even his own kin.

At the gate, the warder goggled at him. The other was a Fielding, not a Hawk, but he knew John well, having stolen a Hawk girl as his bride.

“Where in the name of the Holy did you find those animals, John of the Hawks?” he called.

“It was nothing,” John grinned down at him. “I came out from ambush upon three, nay four, if one counts women, of the Clan Thompson. I confounded them and seized these, their horses, as well as two carbines and these other trappings you see.”

The other was still staring. “Did you kill any?” he demanded, unbelievingly. He was fully aware of the fact that John was under no compulsion to tell the truth to him, a Fielding and hence not a clansman of John’s even though of the same Phylum.

“Kill any?” John said loftily, still grinning. “I counted coup on all three!”

The other snorted. “As to that, I will wait to hear your declamation before the muster.” He snorted again. “No one exaggerates before the assembly of the muster. That is the ban.”

But John was a man now, before men, and he said coldly, “Do you suggest that I would break a ban, before the muster or anywhere else, warder of the gate?”

The other grunted, but backtracked, being in the wrong and knowing it, and also being conscious that whether or not John was exaggerating, that somehow he had acquired three priceless battle steeds, the proof being there before him.

“No, I make no such suggestion, John of the Hawks. Enter, and congratulations.”

John was grinning again, even as he herded the loot before him. “There will be shouting of my name by the criers tonight,” he boasted.

The other had his petty revenge. “I doubt it,” he said.

John halted his horses and scowled puzzlement. “How do you mean?” he demanded. “How long has it been since either a Hawk or a Fielding counted coup on three raiders in a single day and seized their possessions as well?”

“A long time indeed, John of the Hawks, and your feat is praiseworthy, but, unfortunately, for your moment of honor, the muster is to go into session shortly.”

It was John’s turn to stare. “The muster! But this is only Apriltime.”

“Yes, and ordinarily the sachems and caciques would not join in the muster for three months, but they are gathering to discuss the travelers from Beyond.”

“Beyond? Beyond what?”

“You do not read the Holy books sufficiently, lad,” the warder said condescendingly. “Surely you have heard of Beyond.”

“But that’s legend! Myth!”

“You’d better not let any Keeper of the Faith hear you say that. Besides, the proof is there before you. Two days before this, the ship from the sky arrived, landing between Aberdeen and Dumbarton. The travelers from Beyond sent out a group and now accept the hospitality of town.” John gaped.

II

But for the moment the sensational news could wait. John was weary and hungered beyond the point where anything else mattered. He rode in the direction of his clan’s long-house, somewhat miffed at the timing of his moment of glory. Travelers from Beyond, indeed!

At the entrance to the longhouse, two of his closest friends duplicated the goggling of the warder of the gate.

John of the Hawks dismounted with considerable dignity, and tossed his reins to one of the others.

“Don of the Clarks,” he said loftily, “be a good lad and take my animals to the pastures.” He looked at the other young man, who wore kilts similar to his own, those of the Clan Hawk. “And Dewey, would you mind, first, stripping the animals of the weapons and harness and taking them to the council hall, until I need them in my declamation before the muster, upon being raised up to the Phylum?”

The one addressed as Dewey stuttered, “Where… where…”

But John raised a hand, exaggerating his weariness. “Later, lads, later. You’ll hear it all when each clansman recites his victories to the assembly.”

He turned and entered the community house and headed for his family’s quarters.

They called after him, something urgent, but he was too tired now to chatter with them, no matter the glory. He wanted food, to bathe, and fresh clothing. The aftereffects of the excitement and hard riding were upon him.

In the small room that was his own, he began to strip, but then paused, scowling. He could hear voices in the next room, the family living quarters, but they were not the voices he recognized, those of his mother, younger brother and two sisters. They were adult male voices, and now he could even realize there was a strange accent.

He went to the door and pressed an ear against it, frowning still in puzzlement. The voices were clearer now.

One was saying, “Well, you’re the nearest thing to an ethnologist we’ve got. What do you think?”

There was a pause before another voice said hesitantly and dourly, “I’m no ethnologist and your guess is probably as good as mine. I’d say they’re the result of a crash of some pioneer group, Skipper. A very bad crash, since they lost communication.”

“Why pioneers? Why not some passenger ship?”

“For one thing, they’ve got horses and cattle. Even trees of Earth-side type, now adapted, of course, to this world’s ecology. Besides, what would a passenger ship be doing this far in?”

A third voice broke in. “What was a pioneer ship doing this far in, for that matter? From what we’ve seen so far, they’ve been here a long time. They’re obviously originally an Earth culture, but they don’t seem to have much more than legends about their origins.”

The first voice, heavier than the others and with a note of command in it, said, “Well, it goes both ways. I’ve never heard of them, either. They must go so far back that you’d have to go deep into the archives to even check on the possibilities.”

The third voice said, “I just thought of something. They must go so far back that they might have had trouble with the warp. One of the very earliest colonizing ships. Before the bugs were all ironed out. They must have had trouble with the ship’s warp and it was thrown all the way in here.”

“Maybe,” somebody else growled in disgust. “They’re certainly primitive. Look at this. Look at these plumbing fixtures, over here.”

A fourth voice spoke up for the first time. “What’re you complaining about? We’re lucky they’ve got plumbing at all. Did you notice those overgrown stickers all the men carry? Good grief, swords, in this day and age.”

“They also carry rifles,” the second voice said. “We’re lucky we weren’t assassinated before we ever got the chance to tell them who we were.”

“Single-shot rifles,” the second voice said. “Krishna! Look at these plumbing fixtures.”

“What about them?”

John of the Hawks drew back from the door and stared at it. He was tired to the point where his mind was half blank or the reality of the situation would have come home to him quicker. He scowled his puzzlement and put his ear back to the door.

A voice was saying, “They’re platinum.”

“Platinum? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I think Harmon’s right. Look at this, Skipper.”

“Who’d ever use platinum for faucets?”

Another voice, the second one John had heard, broke in. “A people who have so much of it that it’s comparatively worthless, that’s who.” There was an element of awe in the tone.

“Here, let me scratch it with this knife blade.”

John had removed his belt with its skean and claidheammor, but now he went over to his bed and picked the harness up again and belted it about his waist, still scowling. He went back to the door and pressed his ear against it once more.

The voice which had disclaimed knowledge of ethnology, whatever that was, was saying, “A really primitive culture. They must have an unbelievable system of rituals and taboos.”

He, who was addressed as Skipper, said, “Why do you say that?”

“Because their language has changed, over a period that must amount to centuries, so little from Earth Basic. And they still retain so many customs of the original Earth. Only very strict adherence to taboos and rituals would maintain such institutions so well. It’s too bad we’re not a larger expedition with a few anthropologists and such along.”

“Oh, no it isn’t.”

The Skipper’s voice said, “What do you mean, Harmon?”

“I mean platinum. Probably mountains of it. There are only eight of us. Four back on the ship, and us. Good. Only that number to split it with.”

There was a long pause.

John could stand it no longer. He opened the door and walked through, staring.

There were four of them and he’d never seen such dress in his life. It was evidently some sort of uniform and all were garbed almost identically, so undoubtedly they were fellow clansmen. The dress was colorless, drab by any kilt standards, and each leg was completely sheathed. Above everything in strangeness was the fact that though all were obviously adult, none wore claidheammor nor even a skean.

It came to him then that these, of course, were the travelers from Beyond, in short, men from another world. Until this very moment, John had never really believed in such, in spite of the Holy books and the preachings of the bedels and the Keepers of the Faith.

And it came to him also that, although the others wore no swords nor daggers, the holstered devices on each hip were undoubtedly weapons—weapons that would have come under the ban in any Phylum John of the Hawks had ever heard of.

Two were seated in the most comfortable chairs the room provided, and two were leaning against the fireplace. All eyes turned to John when he entered.

He blurted, “What are you doing in this home?”

The youngest of the four, one of those leaning against the fireplace, let his hand drop nonchalantly to the holstered object on his hip. It was, John decided, probably some sort of gun. He had never seen a gun smaller than a carbine.

The eldest, who was seated, scowled at the intruder. “Who, in the name of Krishna, are you?”

Although their voices were heavily accented to John’s ear, the words were almost all understandable, although he didn’t know what Krishna meant.

He said, “I am John of the Hawks, and these are my assigned quarters.”

The other seated man said, “Oh. Of course, sorry, John, uh, of the Hawks. The…what did they call him? The head man.”

One of those at the fireplace said, “The sachem.”

“That’s right. The sachem offered us this apartment. Your family has been moved in with one of your cousins, I think he said. You were away. We’re very grateful, of course.”

John of the Hawks flushed. “I am shamed. My home has been honored by being chosen to provide hospitality for travelers.”

The oldest, a heavy-set, heavy-faced man, said, “I am Skipper William Fowler of the exploration Spaceship Golden Hind. And these are three of my officers.” He indicated them. “First Officer DeRudder; Perez, First Engineer; and Mr. Harmon, my Second.”

Harmon, who was the one who had put his hand on his weapon when John had entered, was seemingly not too much older than John himself, possibly twenty-five and notable largely for a somewhat twisted, sardonic mouth.

Perez was a little man, and nervous of movement. DeRudder, next in age to the one they called Skipper, was the largest of the four, which wasn’t saying much. None were more than six feet tall, so that even John, who hadn’t reached his full growth, towered above them.

John said, still flushing embarrassment, “May the bards sing your exploits. My family is honored. My excuses for bothering you. Undoubtedly, you rest before the council of the muster. My claidheammor is at your command.” He turned to leave.

The one named DeRudder said, “Just a moment, son.”

Son? This was a term that could be used only to a fellow clansman, and from an elder. Certainly the otherworlder couldn’t claim to be kin of the Hawks. John was taken aback. However, he turned politely.

The other said, “In there. I suppose it’s a bathroom. That metal the faucet’s made of. What is it?”

John looked at him blankly, but now the conversation he had eavesdropped upon came back to him. It wasn’t quite clear just what the excitement had been about.

“Why, it’s called platinum, I believe. The Hawks are herdsmen, not scrabblers in the dirt, nor metalworkers. However, it is called platinum.”

There seemed to be a narrow-eyed quality in all four of the strangers now.

DeRudder said carefully, “And it is in good supply on this planet, uh, Caledonia?”

John said, blankly, “Why, honored guest, it is certainly the most common of metals, is it not?”

The other licked his lower lip, unconsciously. “Your sword, there, is steel, isn’t it?”

John nodded, still puzzled.

“Ah, is platinum more common than iron? Cheaper?”

“Cheaper?” John said, blankly.

The Skipper was leaning forward and John again got the impression of narrowed eyes, though he didn’t know why.

The older man said, “We don’t know anything about your means of exchange, but this platinum is so abundant that you use it instead of iron for such things as household fixtures?”

“Why, yes, honored guest. I suppose so. As I say, we Hawks are herdsmen, not metalworkers. I know little about it.”

DeRudder cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “Thank you.”

John shrugged inwardly and turned again to leave.

He heard their voices, in excited conversation when he had emerged into the long hall beyond. He made a face, accentuating his youth. The travelers from Beyond were certainly an incomprehensible group.

Robert, Sachem of the Clan Hawk, came hurrying up, his face anxious. As was usual, he was a clan elder and deserved the respect granted him by his clansmen. Past the age of raiding, he devoted full time to participating in the government of the clan and of the Phylum, and younger Hawks took over the burdens of herding the flocks and otherwise participating in the economies of the clan.

John saluted him respectfully.

The sachem said, “John! I left messages for you, but evidently you have failed to receive them. Your home has been given to travelers.”

“Yes,” John said unhappily. “I am ashamed. I intruded upon them.”

The sachem looked at him. “There was no intended discourtesy, and hence it was not unseemly.” He beamed suddenly. “Don of the Clarks has informed me of your triumph. If all wasn’t confusion, with the coming of the travelers from Beyond, I would insist we adjourn to my quarters and, over your first glass of uisgebeatha of manhood, you tell me in detail. As it is, I must summon the visitors for the muster. But quickly, did you kill or wound any of the raiders?”

John smiled his satisfaction at the compliment of his clan sachem. “Robert of the Hawks, I counted coup on three of them.”

He was again awarded the goggling of the warder of the gate and his two younger friends.

“You counted coup! On three!”

John nodded.

Robert stood suddenly straighter. “It will be until Junetime before the next regular meeting of the muster, but on my own responsibility as Sachem of the Hawks, I grant you permission to sit with the clansmen at this assembly.”

John was stricken speechless.

The sachem turned to hurry on, but as he went he muttered, “Three! In all my life I have counted coup but twice. Three!”

John, in a daze of glory, made his way to the apartment of the cousin with whom he suspected his family was quartered.

He was correct, for although no one else was present he recognized various possessions of his mother, sisters and brother. He found a container of his own things as well, and after stripping and bathing, put on fresh clothing.

He then went to the community kitchen and found food. There was no one else here, either, and he realized that all must be in the town square for the unusual muster of the sachems, caciques and sagamores.

Tired as he was, he made his way in the same direction, unable to resist the opportunity of joining the clansmen as a fellow. Ordinarily, he could have expected at least another five years of acting as a herdsman and scout before being raised up to full clansman.

The muster was in progress.

The four strangers were seated together in positions of honor in the circle of the eight sachems of the Aberdeen Phylum. Behind them were seated the second circle of the Phylum caciques, sagamores and noted raiders. Behind them were seated circles of clansmen, each clan together. Beyond, a respectful distance, were standing the women, young men and children of the Phylum and beyond them crowded against the walls of the council building, the great kirk, the Phylum arsenal and the structure that held the archives, were the clanless ones.

Trying not to be ostentatious, but miserably failing, John made his way through the ranks of the women, children and younger men to where the Clan Hawk sat, passing his mother, brother and sisters as he went. They stared at him, uncomprehending, as he joined the full clansmen and took a place.

There were a few raised eyebrows from his adult kinsmen, but none spoke. He knew they would hold him to account, later, probably not having heard of the sachem’s permission for him to join them.

The eldest of the Phylum sachems, Thomas of the Clarks, was speaking, he alone of the inner circles on his feet. The speech was predictable. He was welcoming the outworlders, tendering them the hospitality of Aberdeen as travelers in a strange land. Evidently, a bedel, or possibly one of the Keepers of the Faith, had already completed the praise.

When Thomas of the Clarks was finished—and he was a garrulous speaker—he resumed his place among the other clan sachems and all eyes went to the newcomers.

The one who had announced himself as Skipper William Fowler came to his feet and cleared his throat. He looked about at the assembled muster and bobbed his head in a sort of greeting, in all directions.

“You must forgive us, if we are unacquainted with some of your customs,” he said. “As you know, we come from a great distance.”

Which was a strange thing to say, John thought. Surely customs were the same everywhere. The bans laid down by the Holy were as necessary on one world as another, and surely the Holy presided over all creation.

The commander of the strangers was saying, “Briefly, we are part of the crew of the exploration Spaceship Golden Hind and our assigned task is to map out this sector. We represent the League, a confederation of planets settled by the human race, originally from Earth. You will, of course, be invited to join the League. Frankly, we had been of the opinion that the Golden Hind was the first craft ever to penetrate this far into the galaxy. But here you are.”

Robert, Sachem of the Clan Hawk, came to his feet. His face duplicated the expression of puzzlement of all the sachems and caciques.

He said, “But, honored guest, this League of which you speak. Surely you must realize that this muster represents only the Phylum of Aberdeen and we can speak only for ourselves. The meeting of the Dail, of all the Phyla of the Loch Confederation, would still only represent this immediate region. And even the Dail could speak only for our confederation. We know of twenty-three other confederations to the north, south, east and west, and how many more lie beyond, what man can say? Save for our two sister confederations, with whom we are at perpetual peace, of course, how could we possibly hold council with the others to decide whether or not to join this League?”

It was the Skipper’s turn to frown lack of understanding. “You mean you are at war with all other, uh, confederations?”

“War?” Robert of the Hawks said in puzzlement.

“War. Conflict between nations, uh, that is, confederations.”

One of the caciques said, “Ah, he means raids.”

The Skipper looked at him. “More than that. A conflict in which the full, uh, confederation would throw its united power against another confederation.”

A bedel came to his feet, his face in horror, “But that would be against the ban.”

The otherworld officer, who had been introduced to John as DeRudder, said hurriedly, “A taboo. Easy, Skipper.”

The leader of the strangers said smoothly to the bedel, “I was not advocating war, simply requesting information about the way of things on Caledonia.”

Thomas of the Clarks came to his feet. “Assuming that by some means it was possible to unite all the confederations of Caledonia into a gigantic Dail and all agreed to join this League, of what advantage would it be to us?” He sat again.

The Skipper held out his hands in a gesture to indicate that the answer was obvious. “Why, for trade, for one thing.”

One of the caciques spoke up. “Trade of what?”

The Skipper said, “Why, that would have to be decided. Trade for the things you have in abundance, for goods, ideas and so forth of which you have need.”

A sagamore said, “But I can think of nothing which we need from the stars. Those items for which we must trade are easily available from other Phyla and we need go no further than the yearly Dail.”

DeRudder stood and said, “Do you mind, Skipper?”

The Skipper muttered, a frustrated element in his voice: “You’re the nearest thing we have to an ethnologist. Go on.”

DeRudder said, “Perhaps we can start this trade right here and now. Evidently, somewhere near Aberdeen there is at least one mine from which platinum is extracted. Very good. We will draw up a paper giving all right to exploitation of these mines to we eight crewmen of the Golden Hind. In return, we will immediately have shipped to Caledonia, and to your town of Aberdeen, enough repeating rifles and submachine guns to arm each of your clansmen.”

Thomas of the Clarks stood once more. “I do not understand. Some of your words are confusing. What is a repeating rifle and what is a submachine gun?”

DeRudder said, “You have single-shot rifles, and use cartridges in them. These guns fire the same type of cartridges at great speed, five hundred a minute and more.”

The bedel was on his feet again, his eyes popping. “But that is against the ban!”

Thomas of the Clarks motioned him to his seat. He turned to the strangers, coldly. “You are travelers and hence eligible to remain in Aberdeen for the three traditional days of hospitality. But as to granting you the exclusive rights to the mines of platinum, obviously that is against the ban. The products of the earth belong to all. Even should we wish to grant them to you, the other Phyla would hardly agree. And, above all, we would not trade them for what you call repeating rifles which are most surely against the ban. Furthermore…”

But he was interrupted by the sounding of the conch.

Clansmen leaped to their feet, dashing for their individual longhouses. The caciques and sagamores were shouting orders. Women ran to the arsenal for extra bandoliers of cartridges.

A voice shouted from a housetop, “Raid! Raid! The Thompsons! Raid!”

III

John of the Hawks, with the speed of youth, got back to the longhouse where he had left his carbine as quickly as did any of the clansmen. He tore into the room he was sharing with his brother, ripped his rifle from the wall, grabbed up a bandolier, made a snap decision and sped to the roof, deciding he had no time to await the orders of the raid cacique of the Hawks.

The longhouse of the Hawks served on one side as part of the defensive wall of the town of Aberdeen. The wall was windowless on the side looking out over the fields and the roof flat, save for a parapet.

John sat down behind the parapet, slipped a cartridge from the bandolier, threw the breech and inserted the bullet. He breathed deeply, getting his breath after his run.

They were after the horses, that was obvious. There was shooting and shouting over in the direction of the pastures, and a great deal of dust.

Undoubtedly, the raid caciques would shortly launch a counter blow, but meanwhile John’s position was an advantageous one, just in case the aggressive Thompsons attempted to force the town.

He heard someone come up behind him, but didn’t turn. He had his elbows resting on his knees, the muzzle of the gun resting on the parapet.

The newcomer sat down next to him. It was one of the men from Beyond, the one called DeRudder. He was puffing.

He said, “What’s happening?”

John said, “The Thompsons. They’re raiding our horses.”

“Oh. Members of one of the other confederations, eh?”

“No. The Thompsons are part of our confederation.”

The other stared at him. “And they’re attacking you?”

John put off answering for the moment. Through the swirl of dust a double score and more of mounted men came dashing at full tilt, shouting the battle halloo of the Clan Thompson. In the fore, at breakneck speed, rode two who held only coup sticks in their hands.

John’s lips thinned back over his teeth in a grimace of excitement. They were not quite in range. He held his fire. At the pace they were coming, they would be to the wall, and directly below him, before he could get off more than two or three rounds from his carbine. He pulled two more shells from the bandolier and placed them on the low parapet.

DeRudder said, “Mari, mother of Krishna, look at them come! What are those small weapons the first two are carrying?”

“They aren’t weapons,” John said. “They’re coup sticks.” He darted the other a look of surprise.

“Sticks? You mean the only weapon they have is a stick of wood and they’re riding into rifle fire?”

John had no time to argue the niceties of the glory of an unarmed man counting coup upon an armed enemy. His eyes narrowed and he drew a bead on the first of the fast approaching Thompsons. He thought he recognized the man, and wondered at the speed at which the other had been able to organize this raid, after his disgrace at the stream.

He squeezed the trigger gently, but at that split second the two leading raiders flung themselves to the sides of their horses, even as he, John, had done in the affair at the stream, clinging by foot and hand to the far side of the beasts they rode.

DeRudder said excitedly, “The horse! Get the horse and the man’ll break his neck when he falls.”

John was so startled at the idea that he took his eyes from the carbine’s sights and looked at the space explorer.

“But one doesn’t shoot a good animal, deliberately.” He shook his head and returned to his gun. His eyes narrowed, and he began the squeeze again. The carbine barked.

DeRudder blurted, “You hit him. You hit his foot! Krishna, what a shot!”

John grunted in satisfaction, threw the carbine’s breech, extracted the spent cartridge with a flick and inserted a new one. He upped the gun again for another shot.

The leading Thompson, wounded, had fallen from his beast but one of the others who trailed behind caught him up with a sweep and turned his own beast around to head back.

Others of the Clan Hawk were streaming up from below now, and joining in the fire. The raiders were firing back, while at full tilt. John kept his head as low as was compatible with staying in the action, being fully aware of the famed marksmanship of the Clan Thompson.

DeRudder, in high excitement, pulled his hand weapon from its holster. “Here,” he blurted, “let me train this on them. I’ll show ’em what a real gun can do.”

Shocked, John of the Hawks dropped his own gun and knocked the barrel of the other’s weapon up, just in time. A livid beam reached far into the sky, seemingly into infinity.

DeRudder stared at the Hawk clansman. He said, “I can wipe them all out with one sweep of this.”

“And break the ban by using such a weapon! Do you wish a blood feud with the Clan Thompson when there are but eight of you?”

“But they’re firing at us!”

“It’s only a raid. In revengement for my stealing four horses from them.”

DeRudder crouched down behind the parapet. “I give up,” he muttered.

The charge had been broken, the oncoming raiders realizing that their attempt had come a cropper, that too many of the Aberdeen clansmen had come on the scene to make the surprise successful. Besides, John suspected that all this was but a diversion, while other Thompsons rounded up as many of the Aberdeen animals as they could before the main body of the defenders came up.

There was no further value in remaining here. John joined his fellow clansmen in dropping to the ground on the farther side of the wall and dog-trotting toward the pastures where the main body of the raiders was making its play. He left the spaceman behind, not bothering to speak to him further. John was still feeling his shock at the other’s words and actions. The man conducted himself like a clanless one.

He thought he understood what must have happened. The group of four, counting the girl, had been a small unit of a larger group of the Clan Thompson, a major raiding party rounding up Clan Hawk cattle. After he, John, had stolen their horses they had re-contacted the other Thompsons and followed him to take their revengement at the disgrace of three of their clansmen being counted coup upon.

Their luck had been better than they could have hoped. When they arrived at the Hawk pastures it was to find that there were but a handful of guards. Almost the entire population of Aberdeen had been at the muster to gape at the visitors from Beyond.

Somehow, in the heat of combat, John had shaken off the better part of his fatigue and was among the first of the defending clansmen to arrive on the scene of action. It was a debacle.

The Aberdeen clansmen and young men who had been guarding the herds had been cut down or driven off and the Thompson raiders, ever top men in this sort of thing, had decided upon an offbeat strategy. All had dismounted from their own tired horses and thrown their saddles upon fresh mounts. Each was now busily rounding up a half dozen or more captured steeds and were driving them off, leaving their own jaded mounts behind.

Here and there, hand-to-hand combat was taking place, claidheammors flashing, as the Thompson clansmen attempted to break off the action and make their escape. They knew themselves outnumbered, representing but one clan, while in Aberdeen there were a full eight. Those that were escaping were heading in a dozen different directions, rather than remaining in a single, easy to pursue, group. They were scattering.

John of the Hawks gritted his teeth even as he dashed into the fray. On wearied horses, the Aberdeen clansmen would have their work cut out catching up with all the raiders. And those who they did successfully trail, would, when caught up with by revenging clansmen, simply desert their booty and ride for it back to the safety of their own town of Caithness.

Aiii! He came up upon one of them who was having trouble with a Clan Clark steed he had captured. John knew the animal well, a highly trained stallion which fought against having any other on his back save his master.

Shouting the battle halloo of the Hawks, John brought up his carbine to fire. The other rode toward him, swinging his claidheammor, desperately fighting the animal, tearing its mouth with the heavy raiding bit, deliberately designed for use on captured steeds. He shouted the halloo of the Clan Thompson and slashed at the man on foot.

John caught the blade on the barrel of the carbine which he only now found was empty. He dropped the gun, tore his own claidheammor from its scabbard.

The horse reared up, shrilling its fear and anger at being dominated by a stranger.

John darted under its belly, coming up on the other side of the desperate enemy clansman. He slashed upward, cutting deep into the other’s side. Slashed again, before the man could turn to defend himself.

The other’s sword dropped from his hand. For the briefest of moments, he tried to keep his seat on the plunging animal. Then he fell, crashing to the ground.

John of the Hawks was up and onto the steed, taking over the position of stranger in the saddle. But at least he knew the animal’s name and had, in his time, petted it in admiration.

Now, even as he battled, he spoke soothingly, calmly. Called it by name. Resorted to knees, rather than overly heavy use of the bit. Around him, as he fought to dominate the horse, the battle faded off.

Most of the Clan Thompson were escaping, heading in all directions as the Aberdeen clansmen attempted to catch horses, saddle them, get on with the pursuit. Unhappily, little harness was available, most of it being back in the town. The Hawks, Clarks, Fieldings and other defenders of Aberdeen, scrambled up bareback in an excited attempt to pursue the thieves.

John was one of the few with a saddled mount and a fresh one at that. He darted his eyes over the ground, looking for his carbine. He couldn’t see it. He and the horse had moved over a considerable area in the past few minutes.

No matter. He had claidheammor and skean, weapons enough for any clansman. He headed after the foe, at full gallop, blade in hand.

But then his eyes narrowed. This was what the enemy had in mind. At best, with such tactics, he would catch one, or at the very most, two of the raiders. And even then, he might be fought off by a Thompson who still retained his firearm.

His mind raced. There must be something more effective than chasing off after a retreating enemy and vainly shouting his battle halloo. In fact, there was a ludicrous quality to it all and without doubt at the next meeting of the Dail, when the clansmen of all the confederation’s Phyla recited their victories, there would be great laughter on the part of the Clan Thompson at the expense of the men of Aberdeen.

And it suddenly came to him that much of the laughter would be directed at him, John of the Hawks, who, although he had stolen three horses, had not been able to retain them for more than a few hours, so quick had come the revengement. There must be something more effective. And, yes, there was. The raiders were scattering, but in order to return to their own town, they must sooner or later, head in that direction, after eluding pursuit.

As a Hawk scout, and as a young herder of the cattle, John knew this countryside as well as he knew the longhouse of his birth. He cast his eyes around quickly, trying to spot one or more fellow clansmen that he could bring into his plan.

But there simply were none. His fellows who had also acquired mounts were taking off after the enemy, in all directions. He must go it alone.

John shrugged and dug heels into flanks and headed out over the countryside. Any of the Aberdeen clansmen who saw him must have thought him either daft or a slink, for there were no enemies, herding their booty, going in this direction. He grimaced, knowing the dishonor that would be his, did his plan fail.

He rode hard, pushing his newly acquired and dominated animal—over field, over heath, through clumps of trees, up and over the hills. Aiii. He knew this land well, but never had he ridden it at such breakneck speed.

The hills grew higher as the horse began to weary, and shortly he was in a narrow valley—narrower and narrower.

Until at last he reached his destination. Reached it and passed through the narrow way.

On the far side of the pass, he leaped from the horse’s back, took its reins and hurried it into the shelter of the patch of trees to one side. Tethered it. He considered momentarily binding its mouth so that it could not whinny at the sound of other horses approaching. But no, the animal was too weary from its hard gallop to be interested in the company of its fellows.

John took in hand the scabbard of his claidheammor, to keep it from tripping him up, and began his ascent of the steep hill at a trot.

At the top, at the spot he’d had in mind from the first, he looked back over the way he had come. And doubts hit him. There was nothing in sight—not so much as a flurry of dust. He had, perhaps, miscalculated.

But no, how could he have? Given scores of Thompsons scattering, and then converging again on their home town of Caithness, surely at least one enemy clansman and his stolen horses must come through here. Simply must.

He settled himself down to wait, sitting on a rock. At this stage he would not be spotted. He considered his plan of action, when and if the raider, or raiders, did appear. He cursed himself, now, for not having taken the few more moments of time it might have needed for him to have located his carbine.

A more beautiful ambush than this could hardly be asked. The fleeing raiders would not be thinking in terms of Hawk clansmen before them, but would, undoubtedly, be constantly looking over their shoulders. Given a carbine and John could knock at least two off their horses before they could take defensive measures. But there was little profit in dwelling upon that. The fact remained that all the weapons he had were his heavy claidheammor and his skean.

He thoughtfully picked up a large rock and hefted it. But no. The foe would pass directly below, and it was possible he might hit one in the head—possible, but hardly probable. He was no great marksman with a thrown stone. There was no occasion for him to be. The youth of Aberdeen played with wooden weapons, not balls.

And now, at a distance, he could spot a cloud of quickly rising dust.

Aiii! He had won!

At least, to this point he had won.

Just in case, he gathered half a dozen suitable heavy stones and put them ready to hand. Then he crouched behind his boulder. It would hardly do for the other, or others, to be keen enough of eye to spot his movement up here.

The newcomers were approaching at a rapid pace and he could make out individual forms. Four horses and but one rider. As a now full-fledged clansman, or, at least, one suffered to sit among the clansmen until being formally raised up at the next regular muster, he couldn’t admit relief that there was only one foe with whom to deal, but deep within the relief was there. In spite of his efforts of the past two days, he was a young man still with neither the physical capacity nor the experience of a Thompson clansman.

He ducked lower and peered from behind his defense. And now he scowled. There was something he couldn’t quite put his finger upon.

And then it came to him. The lead horse, scurrying along before the others, herded by the raider, was his own personal steed, stolen with the other Hawk animals in the pastures. And, added wonder, now that they came closer, the rest were the three he had stolen himself, at the stream, precipitating this whole affair. He was taken aback. It was an unexpected coincidence.

He tried to measure the enemy clansman who was pounding along hard behind the rapidly tiring beasts. And again there was relief. Unless he was mistaken, at this distance, the other could be little older and larger than John himself. Possibly not even a full clansman, but simply a youth brought along to help with the stolen herds.

John gathered himself. His plan of action was now clear. He put his claidheammor down beside him and took up two of the stones.

The fleeing group had entered the narrow way, slowed slightly by the rocky character of the pass. And on they came.

Suddenly, he heaved the rock in his right hand at the first, riderless, horse, even as it passed beneath him. He quickly shifted his second stone to his right hand and threw it as well.

The lead animal screamed terror and reared, slowing all those behind, who also took fright.

He jumped to his feet, grabbed his skean from his belt, and leaped. Luck was ever with him. He launched himself full onto the back of the Clan Thompson raider, who, completely startled by the unexpected attack, toppled from the horse, John still atop.

While they were atumble on the ground, John raised the knife, preparatory to the stab. But it was uncalled for. The enemy was unconscious, a cut on the side of the head that had been taken in the fall.

But there was another reason for the stay of John of the Hawks’ blow.

There was no stronger ban than that against injuring a woman.

IV

And as he came to his feet and stared down at her, he realized that she was not even a woman but merely a lass. Certainly no older than himself.

She wore the kilts of the Clan Thompson and her hair was cut short in the style of young men. And at her side was a skean. He gaped at her. In all his life, he had never heard of a lass so de-sexing herself. Shameless, Thompson women might be rumored to be, but most certainly he had never seen one at the yearly Dail, dressed as a man and carrying a weapon.

The horses, all trained battle steeds, had come to a halt at the far end of the pass. John, deciding she would be out for a time, at least, or, if she recovered, would still be of little danger, went and secured them and tied them where he had left his own animal. Then he went to the hill crest and regained his claidheammor and returned it to its scabbard.

He strode down then to where he had left her.

She was beginning to regain consciousness.

He had no water, or he might have bathed her head a bit. As it was, he sat on a boulder and waited, still scowling disbelief. So far as he knew, in all the history of his Phylum, never had a woman, armed or otherwise, participated in a raid. There was even a puzzling aspect about it. How did one defend himself against a lass? Suppose she came at you with carbine, claidheammor or skean. What did a clansman do, turn and run? What else was there to do?

But now she was stirring. Stirring and moaning. John of the Hawks squatted down beside her, lifting her head to his knee and stroking the forehead, awkwardly.

By the Holy, she was a pretty thing! High forehead, reddish hair, cut short though it was, a generous mouth, perhaps just a shade overly wide. Teeth that were white, white; a firm chin.

And, suddenly, blue eyes staring, unbelievingly, up into his own.

She snatched quickly for her skean.

John took it from her as gently as the situation warranted and threw the dagger down the pass.

He said awkwardly, “I would not harm you, lass. We of the Clan Hawk do not harm women.”

She sat up now, and John came to his feet. He scowled at her, not knowing what to say. What did a clansman say, upon capturing a raider who turned out to be a woman—a lass?

She stood up, too, and looked at him scornfully, but then began to sway. She put a hand to the cut at the side of her head, brought it back and looked at it and seemed about to swoon at the sight of the blood. There was not much, but it was blood.

John stepped forward and put a hand about her waist.

She began to react in fear but he said gently. “Easy, I wouldn’t harm you. Come over here and sit on the heather a bit. You’ll get over your dizzy spell.”

She suffered him to take her over to a softer area and to seat her more comfortably than would have been possible in the stony pass.

He waited patiently, for long minutes, and finally realized she was peering at him from between the fingers she had been holding over her eyes.

Seventeen, perhaps only sixteen, he decided. What in the name of the Holy did the Thompson clansmen have in mind, bringing such a child on a raid? He was conveniently forgetting that he himself was not yet eighteen, and, except in an emergency, at the time of a raid, confined to such activities as holding the horses for full clansmen while they fought on foot, or bringing up ammunition or water, perhaps assisting the wounded.

He said, trying to force gruffness into his voice and failing miserably, “Now tell me all about this.”

“About what?” she said defiantly.

“Come on, the proof is there before us. You are armed. You are on a raid of the Clan Thompson against Aberdeen.”

She had taken her hands from her face and was now frowning at him. She said slowly, “And you are the young Hawk clansman who stole our horses at the river bank.”

He grunted. “And counted coup on three of the Clan Thompson who had been stealing Hawk cattle.”

She said, wonderingly, “But you are such a young clansman to have done so much.”

There was no answer to that, though he wished he looked older. She was as pretty a lass as he had ever seen, he realized. And it came to him that it would not be too many years before he would be faced with the stealing of a bride from some clan other than the Hawks.

She said, “What will you do with me?” But there was only the faintest of fear of the unknown, far in the background. The girl was no slink, but, then, she had already proven that.

John said, “First, I will demand you tell me how you are here, under these circumstances.”

Her mouth tightened stubbornly, but he held his peace, waiting, and finally she spoke. She said, “I am Alice of the Thompsons.”

He nodded to that. “I am John of the Hawks.”

“I was but one lass, in a family of five sons.”

He couldn’t see what that had to do with it. Most families of Caledonia had at least as many children as that, and a large percentage of males was certainly preferable, considering the number of casualties taken by the clansmen in raids and in defense of the flocks.

But she was going on. “It was not a family for a lass. My mother had been captured in a raid from the Edin Phylum, and I was raised by my kin—and my brothers. I was more prone to play with the toy claidheammors than with dolls and other nonsense of girl children. Until I was all but a woman, this was true.”

“Go on.” John said.

“So it was that when my five brothers were killed in a raid of clansmen from Aberdeen, attempting to protect our herds…”

“Five!” John said blankly, “All five in one raid?”

“All five. Two came home that night but with wounds. They died before the week was out, when the fleshrot set in.”

“Aiii, lass!” John murmured.

She took a deep breath. “I was still a child but I took an oath that I would have my revengement on Aberdeen. I took it before my clan elders, and none laughed in their pity. But as the years went by, over and over I told all that one day I would have my revengement. And I set aside childhood and practiced as best I could and as best my kin would allow me with claidheammor and skean and carbine, though it was seldom indeed I could cozen a clansman into allowing me to use his firearm.”

John of the Hawks was staring at her.

She took another breath. “And always, after I had grown to womanhood, I pleaded with them to take me on their raids. And sent praise to the Holy that it would be so.

“Until, finally, perhaps worried of my health, the sachem and caciques discussed the matter and one was appointed a spokesman to remonstrate with me, since it had become a scandal in the Caithness Phylum and I made all uncomfortable. When I held to my oath, then he demanded if I would be satisfied with but one raid against Aberdeen, and would then subside, let my hair grow long and participate in the activities of women.”

“Go on,” John said, his eyes still wide in disbelief. He had never heard such a tale. Surely it could never happen in Aberdeen amongst his own kin.

She said bitterly, “I was not to find out until later that the raid was a minor one, deliberately planned for my sake. We rode to the outskirts of the heath of Aberdeen…”

“And the preserves of the Clan Hawk,” John muttered.

“Yes. And there we proceeded to do no more than round up and butcher the cattle. Far from danger of meeting the clansmen of Aberdeen.”

“But that was when I, on a long scout, found you.”

“Yes. And counted coup on Will, Raid Cacique of the Clan Thompson, and two of his sagamores.”

“Aiiii!” John blurted. This would be something to relate to the muster when he was raised up to full clansman.

“So then,” she said, “all was forgotten about the original purpose of the raid. The whole party was gathered together and we rode at full pace for Aberdeen—Will, the Raid Cacique, riding ahead in a furious rage.”

She shrugged. “You know the rest. Your herds were practically unguarded. We rounded up the horses and each member of the party was given a few head to herd back to Caithness. Will was revenged, at least in part. If mine, alone, of the horses have been recaptured, then it is the biggest raid known in the memory of living clansmen.”

“Yours will not be alone,” John said sourly. “But I will admit, it was a gigantic raid—and well executed.” The last was hard to bring out.

“And now,” she said, her voice again bitter, “I suppose you will return me to Aberdeen to become a clanless one in your household.”

For a long time he stared at her. Finally, he shook his head. “No. You were never meant to be a kitchen drudge. Before the week was out, you would be stolen from our longhouse by a Clark, or Fielding, or one from the other clans of Aberdeen.”

“What difference that to you? They would have to pay the brideright, and a few horses or cattle—I would surely bring a few horses—must be welcome to a clansman as young as yourself. I see that you are already wed. Or is it that you do not find pleasure in my appearance, yourself?” There was a wistful quality in her voice, as she touched a feminine hand to her hair.

“I am not wed,” he said gruffly.

“Aiiii,” she said, her voice bitter still. “I am not so sure that the clansmen of your Phylum will find me desirable either, John of the Hawks. Undoubtedly, the younger men will think of me as you do. If I am honorably stolen by one of your Aberdeen clansmen, it will be by one of the older, and perhaps incapacitated by wounds, clansmen, who desire a strong lass who can be driven to hard work at his hearth and in his quarters.”

John of the Hawks had come to his feet again. He stared down at her for a moment, then walked over to where he had tethered the horses and returned with the one upon which she had been riding when he had leaped from his ambush.

He held the reins to her.

She looked up at him blankly.

“Return to Caithness,” he said. “I am not as yet raised up to full clansman, Alice of the Thompsons, and will not be until the next muster. Thus, I am not eligible to steal a bride. And, if I returned with you to Aberdeen, someone else would take you before it was meet that I could. So, return to your kin, Alice of the Thompsons.”

She looked bewildered.

He added, “And I will come for you another day.”

She blushed then, as a good lass must. “If you come, my kin will defend me.”

He twisted his mouth in amusement.

“And if they fail,” she insisted, her head high, “I will take my own life with my skean.”

“I have heard of the tradition,” he said with amused skepticism, “but I have never heard of it happening. Besides, at the next meeting of the Dail I will ask the Sachem of the Hawks to confer with the Sachem of the Thompsons and honorably arrange for the stealing of Alice of the Thompsons, arranging in advance with her clan for suitable payment of the brideright.”

In a sudden, seemingly uncalled for fury, she raised her hand to slap him.

But he was having none of that. He grabbed her strongly, and kissed her full on the mouth. She held tense for a long moment, then her mouth went soft, as though unwillingly. Finally, he released her and stood back, smiling.

She rubbed her hand across her mouth. “But… but, I am not your bride,” she said in horror. “And it is against the ban.”

He grinned at her. “It surely is.”

She turned and jumped astride the horse, and glared down at him in feminine rage. “I have been shamed,” she snapped.

“I doubt it,” he told her. “For none know save you and me.”

She dug furious heels into the steed and was gone.

And John of the Hawks stood and watched after the woman he loved until she was long out of sight.

Largely, as he rode back to Aberdeen, herding the recaptured three animals, his mind was on Alice of the Thompsons, as was to be expected of a young man yet to be wed. But he dwelt also on the men from Beyond, and as the distance was passing far for one who rode and herded animals, he had ample time to consider ramifications.

The weapon which the one named DeRudder had demonstrated was cause for thought. On the face of it, the man from other worlds was not averse to using the frightful thing. And what had he said? I can wipe them all out with one sweep of this.

John suppressed a shudder, as unworthy of a clansman, but couldn’t help consider what a handful of such weapons could accomplish on a raid. The men from Beyond named themselves explorers, and, if John understood the word correctly, were on a peaceful mission. But suppose they had come in raid? Who could resist them, with such weapons?

There were other aspects. On the face of it, the other-worldlings were far and beyond the Caledonians, whose most advanced vehicle was a simple two-wheeled cart. Even John could envision the span between a horse-drawn cart and a craft that could cross space.

The light was fading rapidly now and his exhaustion came upon him, and he could make it no farther. He drove his animals to a hidden gully, hobbled them, and threw himself to the heather.

When he awakened, it was well toward noon and he was well refreshed though he had slept upon the ground with not even a cloak. Thus is youth, and especially on Caledonia, where, long since, man and nature had eliminated the unfit.

He retrieved his horses, who had not wandered far in their search for graze, in view of the hobbles, and took up again his ride to Aberdeen.

As he drew nearer to the town, he occasionally spotted others, undoubtedly fellow clansmen, heading in the same direction. A few herded horses, but most rode dejectedly without.

Alice of the Thompsons had been correct. It had been a raid of raids and so far as the clansmen of Aberdeen were concerned they had counted few, if any, coups, killed few of the raiders indeed, and had recovered but a fraction of their stolen animals. It was a black day, of which Aberdeen bards would never sing, though most certainly those of Caithness would. He winced to think of the coming Dail, in spite of his own glory.

Closer to the town, he met his friend, Don of the Clarks, who besides the mount he rode, herded another animal before him. It was not a battle steed but an older draft animal, and there was an air of dispirit on the face of the other.

John hailed him, keeping any elation from his voice, for John of the Hawks was maturing rapidly. His own three recaptured steeds were sleek, in their prime, and well trained. Above all, they were not property of related clansmen, and hence it was not necessary to return them to former owners. They were enemy horse, and hence John’s own save, of course, the one he rode.

Don asked, “Where did you find them?” He was of John’s own age and they had grown up together, shared many an experience in common. However, somehow, he appeared strangely young now to John—callow perhaps.

The other was not a Hawk, so had he willed, John could have lied to him. However, he made a half-truth, realizing only now that he hadn’t the slightest idea what story he would tell the sachem and the war cacique of the Hawks.

He said, “I took them from one of the raiders. All except one fast steed upon which the Thompson hurried off in the direction of Caithness, slightly wounded.”

“Aiii!” Don of the Clarks said in disgust. “If only I had such a story. I spotted not even one. I found this ugly nag, straying. The Holy only knows to whom she belongs.”

John nodded. “There will be shame in Aberdeen, this day.”

From there on they rode in glum silence.

At the gate, the warder and his men greeted them with compliments, by which John assumed that few indeed were the clansmen who had done even as well as had he.

They turned their mounts and recaptured animals over to youths to be led back to the pastures and headed, after brief farewells, toward their respective longhouses, carrying their horses’ harnesses and their weapons and coup sticks.

Bemused, both with thoughts of the action of the day before and his experience with Alice of the Thompsons, John made the same mistake he had on the previous afternoon. He automatically headed for his own family quarters and the room in which he had been quartered for the greater part of his life, forgetful, for the moment, of the fact that the apartment had been turned over to the strangers from Beyond.

He caught himself almost immediately, though evidently the otherworldlings were not using his chamber, the rest of the apartment being ample for their needs. He turned to leave the room by the door which led to the long hall.

But once again he heard voices.

He hesitated. Eavesdropping was beneath the dignity of a clansman, though there was no definite ban nor even an established custom.

However, he told himself, in excuse, they were not members of the Clan Hawk, nor even of the Aberdeen Phylum. And, for that matter, their strangeness was such that they bore looking into.

He pressed his ear to the door that led to the living quarters.

As before, the others were obviously alone and once again in full debate. It would seem that these men from the League, as they called it, were as mystified by the institutions of Caledonia as John and his fellow Phyletics were by the ways of the men from Beyond.

He decided it was DeRudder’s voice he was hearing. The second in command of the Golden Hind was saying, “And I claim we better get out. Did you hear what their big mucky-muck said at the muster? They’ve got a traditional three days of hospitality for the traveling stranger. All right. What happens after the three days are up? And that’s today, mind you.”

One of the other voices—Harmon?—said sneeringly, “What could happen? We’ve awed them. They don’t know what to make of us.”

The Skipper’s voice said slowly, “No, we haven’t awed them. They don’t know what to make of us, but we haven’t awed them. You know what they’re busily up to now?”

There was no answer to his question and the Skipper went on. “They’re rounding up a raiding party, to replenish their herds of horses.”

DeRudder said, “You mean they’re going to go after this gang that hit them yesterday?’’

“No, not at all. One of the war caciques told me that wouldn’t do. The Thompsons, or whatever their name was, would be prepared and ready to defend themselves. So they’re going to attack another town. They’re going to raid somebody else that they haven’t had any trouble with recently.”

“Krishna!” a nervous voice said. “What a people. I’m in favor of getting back to the ship. I wish we’d brought the skimmer with us instead of the groundcraft.”

Harmon said, “I’d like to stick around to see if there isn’t some way of changing their minds on signing over exploitation rights to their mineral resources. We could offer them just about anything. They’re practically poverty-stricken so far as commodities are concerned.”

The nervous one—Perez, John decided—said, “What would we do with it if we got it?”

It was Harmon’s voice again. “Don’t be empty. We’d ditch this so-called exploratory cruise and head for some of the nearest frontier planets, those with early free enterprise type economies. Can you imagine being able to dump an almost limitless amount of platinum onto an open market? And do you realize the scale of living of the really rich on those planets? Why, the Caesars never had it so good.”

The Skipper said thoughtfully, “Harmon’s right. Given the concession, we could find means of profiting by it. The problem is getting the concession.”

John of the Hawks was scowling. About half of this, he didn’t understand at all.

It was DeRudder’s turn. He said, “I’m in favor of immediate return to the ship, too. We’ve already fouled things up here, in trying to learn what makes them tick. We’ll have to go on to some other town. Some other Phylum, as they call it. We’ve got a little background now and can do better. By the way, do you know what Phylum means?”

There was no answer and his voice took over again.

“It means tribe, in this connection, if I’m taking it from the Greek correctly. I would say that they’ve got a system of several clans that make up each Phylum. These Phyla, in turn, are loosely made up into confederations. From what the old boy said yesterday, there are such confederations all over the planet. He mentioned knowing of twenty-three others.”

“So?” the Skipper said.

“So we’ll set down in the territory of some other confederation and start all over again.”

“Start what?” the Skipper asked.

“Subverting institutions, to put it bluntly. Somewhere we’ll find a Phylum that’s just taken such a licking from a neighbor, that they’ll accept our offer of repeating rifles.”

Harmon said, “By the way, where are we getting anything as primitive as repeating rifles and submachine guns? The only place I’ve ever seen such things was in historical fiction shows.”

“Don’t be a dully. We could take half a ton of platinum to any of the frontier planets and they’d tool up and whomp them up for us in a week’s time.”

“Why not more sophisticated weapons?” the nervous voice said.

“You’re being particularly dense today, Perez. We don’t want to give them the sort of firepower that’d enable them to work us over.”

“I guess you’re right.”

The Skipper’s voice said, “And what if we find the same thing elsewhere that we ran into here? That none of these Phyla, or whatever you called them, will sign over their mineral rights?”

DeRudder’s voice went suave. “Skipper, there are ways. Obviously, we must abide by the League Canons, but at this distance, that will be no problem. And we can take a page from early Earth history. There are ways, for, ah, civilizing backward peoples if they want to be civilized or not. Remember the European pilgrims and pioneers and the Amerinds? For instance, I note that they have a distilled spirit here they call uisgebeatha, and, believe me, it’s potent. Very well, where you have potent nip, you’ve got people who are hooked on it. All we have to do is find a sachem, or so, hooked on uisgebeatha, get him hinged and have him sign over mineral rights to us.”

Harmon said, his voice expressing interest, “How do you know that under local laws the sachems have such power?’’

“What do we care? They’re kind of a chief, aren’t they? With the papers signed by one or two sachems, we can go to one of the less punctilious planets and get some military beef to back up our legal rights.”

The Skipper said heavily, “Mr. DeRudder, I can see you missed your calling. But what if we can’t find any such sachems?”

DeRudder laughed. “In that case, Skipper, maybe we’ll elect one or two of our own. Once the chaos starts, who can say who the legal sachems are, and who aren’t?”

“Just a minute,” Harmon said abruptly. His heavy boots sounded on the floor, as he moved rapidly across the room in the direction of the door behind which John of the Hawks stood.

V

But some instinct had warned John, a split second before. He spun and scurried across the room to the door to the long hall and was through it before the other could expose him.

In the hall, he shot his eyes up and down, having no immediate plan of action. Where would he find the sachem of the Hawks? Obviously…

He was saved the problem.

Through the door to the living quarters of his family stepped DeRudder. On spotting John, he whipped his sidearm from its holster.

“All right, boy,” he said. “Step in here.”

John of the Hawks looked at him. “I have no fear of your weapon,” he said. “A shout and my kinsmen will be upon you.”

“But you will be very dead by that time, boy.”

“I am not afraid to die. I am a Hawk.”

DeRudder hefted the gun up and down. “However, you have seen what the weapon could do. Would you expose your relatives to it?”

John thought about that only briefly. He stepped forward. DeRudder stood to one side, the gun trained, as John entered the room where the others from Beyond were gathered.

He stood there before them, defiantly.

DeRudder closed the door behind him and said, “The overgrown dully’s been snooping. What’ll we do with him?”

“Let’s get out of here,” Perez said quickly. “The fat’s going to be in the fire before we know it.”

The Skipper looked at John, remaining seated in the same chair he had been in the day before. He said, “How much did you hear, son?”

“Do not call me son. I am not kin of yours.”

“Oh, belligerent, eh? Not quite the same polite boy you were yesterday.” The Skipper looked at DeRudder and then to the other two of his officers. “If you’ve got anything around here, gather it up quick. We’re going back to the Golden Hind.”

DeRudder jerked his head at John. “What do we do with our empty friend, here?”

The Skipper considered it, his face dour. Finally, “Bring him along. We can use a hostage. Besides, I’d like one of them to question a little more. Half of this whole setup leaves me blank.”

“Let’s get going,” Perez said.

“I refuse to go with you,” John said.

DeRudder chuckled. “Boy,” he said, “you remember the beam that came out of this gun when I shot it up into the sky? Believe me, with it, in ten minutes I can cut down this whole pint-sized village of yours.”

The Skipper said gruffly. “And it’s not the only gun we’ve got on hand, son. Come along.”

John said, “Ten minutes is a long time. The clansmen of Aberdeen are not slinks.”

Harmon grunted contempt. “And they’re not in Aberdeen, either. Practically nobody but women and children are in Aberdeen. Half of your men are still out chasing Thompsons, or whatever you called them. The other half have already taken off to raid another town. You Caledonians seem to spend most of your time butchering each other.”

“So,” DeRudder said, “if there’s any fighting, it’ll largely be with women and children, eh? Well boy…”

“I will come,” John said.

DeRudder made a mocking gesture with the gun. “After you, John of the Hawks. Our ground car is parked behind the building, in that area you use for your saddle animals that are in immediate use. Take us there by the shortest route. And careful, boy. The slightest trick and we unlimber our artillery and shoot our way out.”

John didn’t know what the word artillery meant, but he could guess. He said stiffly, “I told you I would come. And even though you are not my clansmen, I do not lie to you.”

He led the way, out into the long hall and down it to the entry which led to the paddock. They passed only three or four fellow residents of the Hawk community house as they went, and none of these clansmen. Harmon had been right. The men of the Clan Hawk were highly occupied.

In the paddock, John’s eyes widened whether he would or not. The vehicle there was a far cry from anything he had ever expected to see on Caledonia. It was of metal, streamlined and beautiful. There were two doors, one on each side, and several windows. There were no wheels, which mystified him.

Perez opened one of the doors, saying, “Let’s get out of here,” although obviously that was exactly what they were already doing.

DeRudder said to John. “Take off that belt, boy. I think we’d better relieve you of that set of toad stickers.”

John kept his shame to himself as he turned over his claidheammor and skean.

The Skipper motioned him inside, and he entered the vehicle from Beyond and took a seat in the rear. There was seating for ten persons, and ample room for luggage, or whatever, to the rear.

The others got in, the officer named Harmon behind a set of bewildering dials, switches and a small wheel. In spite of the position he was in, John of the Hawks was fascinated.

The others settled themselves and Harmon dropped a lever. There was a faint hum and John’s stomach turned over in surprised rebellion as the heavy craft lifted slightly from the ground. Harmon trod upon another gadget and they began moving forward.

The vehicle from Beyond progressed slowly to the entry of the paddock and then, as they entered the broad street before the longhouse of the Hawks, sped up. They headed for the Aberdeen main gate, going faster still.

The gate was open and, as they passed through it, John could see the warder, wide-eyed, staring at them. Only at the last minute did he see that John was in the craft, along with the otherworldlings.

Once in the countryside, Harmon flicked another lever and the craft rose another foot or two and increased speed considerably. They were now progressing as fast as any horse upon which John had ever ridden. He set his facial muscles, hating to show these others that he was amazed. The countryside sped past in bewildering rapidity. In a matter of moments, they had covered ground that would have taken a horseman hours.

DeRudder, who still carried his weapon in his hand, albeit loosely, nonchalantly, grinned at John. “Now if that sachem mucky-muck of yours hadn’t been so empty, we might have made a deal to turn over a few of these ground cars in return for platinum rights,” he said. “Can you imagine the advantage of taking one of these on one of your raids?”

John said, “Undoubtedly, the Keepers of the Faith would have decided it was against the ban.”

The Skipper said to him dourly, “Everything seems to be taboo on this planet. Why should repeating rifles be against the ban?”

“That, as all bans, is in the hands of the Holy,” John said without inflection.

“Great,” DeRudder grunted. “But somehow the Holy, by whatever name you want to call him, usually makes with his words of wisdom and his threats through the lips of some intermediary or other. Such as your Keepers of the Faith, or bedels, or whatever you call them.”

John had never thought of that aspect, but he kept his peace.

DeRudder said in irritation, “So what do your Keepers of the Faith teach you was the reason for a ban against rifles that shoot more than once?”

John of the Hawks had never been particularly reverent: however, he had done the usual amount of reading of the Holy Books when he was taking such schooling as Aberdeen saw fit its youth assimilate.

He said, “It is written that in the misty days, shortly after the Inverness Ark came from Beyond…”

“The what?” the Skipper said sharply. “What was the name of that ship?”

“Ship?” John said.

“The name of the, well, whatever it was you came in from, uh. Beyond?”

“The Ark,” John said. “All of the people of Caledonia came in the Holy Inverness Ark.”

“Krishna!” the Skipper said. “I remember now. Possibly the first pioneer craft ever to be lost in space. Crewed largely by colonists from northern Great Britain.”

John didn’t know what he was talking about.

DeRudder said, “Go on. Why the ban against a gun that shoots more than once?”

John continued. “In the misty days, there were few people in all the land, and only slowly did the first Phylum multiply. And at that time it is written that there was a strong ban against man raising his hand to man, even though honor was involved. All lived in peace, as all will live in peace when the Land of the Leal is achieved.”

DeRudder said, “Great. But about the ban against repeating rifles?”

John said. “But when the people grew so numerous that there was no longer space for all the herds, nor sufficient game for the hunters, then there was a meeting of the sachem fathers, of each clan, and it was decided that half the people, half from each clan, would gather together and move far off to a new land. And so it was. So that now there were two Phyla, rather than one. And time passed and still the people grew in number. So both the new Phyla split, and half their number moved away to new lands.”

DeRudder was staring at him. “I’ll be damned. So finally, you spread over the whole planet, tribe by tribe, splitting as soon as there got to be so many that your primitive economies were fouled up by overpopulation.”

John didn’t understand that. For that matter, he was largely reciting what he had always considered legend, or myth, and much of it wasn’t clear to him. He went on.

“But then, as the number of the Phyla grew throughout the land, man began to ignore the original ban against raising hand against his fellow man, and the raids began. So it was that the Keepers of the Faith and the bedels gathered and it was revealed to them by the Holy that there must be bans to control the relationships between the Phyla. So it was that it was ruled that it is more glorious to count coup on man than to kill. So it was that the weapons of all were decided upon, and a carbine must fire but one shot at a time, so as to minimize the number that might be killed in a raid. All this so that the population would not be decimated.”

Harmon said, “There’s the ship. Krishna! What’s going on?”

They were coming in fast, and John’s eyes bugged. The craft was double the length of a longhouse, and all obviously of metal. Could any clansman swallow the nonsense that such an object could fly between the stars?

But while he goggled at the vehicle from Beyond, the others were taking in the clansmen who, concealed by hillocks, or any other cover they could find, were firing their carbines at the huge spaceship.

When the groundcraft approached from the rear, the startled clansmen were up and away, scurrying for new cover, or possibly even for their horses.

“Bruces,” John said contemptuously.

“What?” the Skipper said.

“Clansmen of the Clan Bruce,” John said. “A whole clan of slinks.”

“If that means coward,” Perez said, “I’d hate to see a hero on this planet. Here they are, attacking a spaceship with nothing but single-shot rifles.”

The Skipper said, “Take her into the port, Harmon. We don’t want to get out here, there might be some of those sharpshooters still around.”

As they got nearer to the Golden Hind they passed over several kilt-clad bodies, Bruces who must have fallen in a charge on the ship.

To John’s amazement, as they approached the rearing otherworld spaceship, it seemed to grow even larger than his first estimate. It was at least, in cubic area, the size of three or four longhouses. And as they drew near, slowing now in speed, one of the metal walls slid open and where earlier he could have seen no indication of an entry port, now there was one, and a ramp of metal to ascend to it.

Harmon expertly jockeyed the groundcraft up the ramp and they slid into the interior.

He flicked his lift lever and the vehicle sank to the metal flooring. Harmon stretched and yawned. “Home again,” he said sourly.

Perez opened a door, manually, and stepped out. Another otherworldling came hurrying up. He was dressed as were the four who had come to Aberdeen, but there was a bandage around his head, and his arm was in a sling.

When all, including John of the Hawks, had disembarked, the Skipper scowled at the newcomer. “Where is the Chief?” he growled. “What in the name of Krishna’s going on around here, Wylie?”

“The engineer’s dead,” the one named Wylie said excitedly. “Where’ve you been, Skipper? All hell’s busted loose since you left. We were afraid they’d got you. T. Z. Chu’s dead, too. If you hadn’t come back, we couldn’t even’ve lifted off.”

“Dead?” Perez said in shock.

Wylie said, darting a glance at John, but then coming back to his fellows, “The raids started after you left. It was the first one, got us. They came charging in on horses, shooting, and with these big swords, and they caught the engineer and Chu outside. I tried to come out to help and they nicked me. Jerry and I managed to run them off with flamers, but it was too late for the chief engineer and T. Z.”

The Skipper turned to John coldly. “I thought there were three days of hospitality for traveling strangers.”

John said, “The kilts on those clansmen outside are those of Bruces. They are not of our Phylum. You are on Aberdeen land. We have granted you the three days of hospitality, in spite of your actions. But the Clan Bruce is not affected by the ban in this case. Do you know nothing at all of honorable usage?”

The Skipper turned from him in disgust and back to the wounded man from Beyond. “What else happened?”

“Jerry and I have been fighting them off ever since. At first we bowled them over like nothing. But they’re smarting up now. They don’t come within range of small arms, or, at least, not so we can see them. They just lay off and ping away at us.”

Harmon said, “What harm can they do?”

Wylie said to him, “Nothing, against the hull of the ship. But we can’t go out. They tried to build a big fire up against us last night. I tell you, they’re tricky.”

John was taking all this in, without overmuch surprise. The men from Beyond were fair game for any clansman save those from Aberdeen, and now that the three days were up, game for Aberdeen, too.

The Skipper grimaced. He thought about it. In irritation he snapped at DeRudder, “Put this dully in confinement somewhere, and everybody come on into the lounge.”

DeRudder upped his weapon and motioned to John with it.

John preceded him down a long corridor of metal. John of the Hawks had never seen so much metal in his life. It gave him a strange feeling of being shut in, a disturbing feeling. The halls were very narrow compared with the spaciousness of those in the longhouses. The ceilings were much lower, and he felt as though they were squeezing him down. He wondered how long it must take to come from the Beyond to Caledonia, and wondered how the otherworldlings could bear to be confined for whatever time involved. Did they not feel the demand to dash outside and see the sky above, the distances stretching away? It would have been a horror to him. Indeed, it was a horror, even in so short a time.

He was conducted to a small compartment—smaller even than his young man’s quarters in the longhouse—and ushered inside. The door was closed behind him, and he heard a noise that was a lock, though this he didn’t know, the institution of locked doors being unknown on Caledonia.

And then came the most trying ordeal in the seventeen years of John of the Hawks. For confined though the corridor of the Golden Hind might have seemed to him, it was as all space compared to this small hold which measured little more than his height, in length, breadth and depth.

His soul screamed against his imprisonment, as that of the eagle or hawk must when encaged in a space so small it cannot spread its wings. As that of the timber wolf must when brought to the zoo, from its woodland range.

All his tendency was to beat with his fists against the metal door and scream to be released, but the pride of a score of generations of clansmen came to his aid, and preserved sanity. He refused to play the slink before these foe.

VI

He found some release in closing his eyes and pretending to be in his own quarters. There was a cot, much too short for him, but at least he was able to recline. And finally sleep came.

He was awakened by a noise at the door and at first didn’t comprehend where he was, but then it came flooding back to him.

It was DeRudder and he had his weapon in hand. He said, “Come along, John, the Skipper wants to talk to you.”

John came to his feet and followed the other out into the corridor. DeRudder gestured again with the gun. “That way.”

They proceeded down the metal hall again, finally to emerge into a fairly large compartment, large enough, at least, so that the awful feeling of confined space was not quite so bad. There were various chairs, tables, and other furnishings and the four spacemen John had originally met were augmented by two others, Wylie and another. John noted with satisfaction that he, too, was wounded. Evidently, the Clan Bruce was doing fairly well—for the Clan Bruce. John slightly altered his opinion of their fighting ability.

The Skipper, who was seated at a table, a glass of some darkish liquid before him, said gruffly, “Sit down. John. We want to talk to you.”

“I will stand, Skipper of the Fowlers.”

DeRudder said, “Would you like a drink?” He added sarcastically, “Our nip isn’t quite up to that uisgebeatha of yours, but it’ll take the lining off your throat.”

John of the Hawks was somewhat taken aback by the offer, but he said, “I will take no hospitality from you. You must realize that there is now vendetta between the Hawks and the Clan DeRudder, and my kinsmen will take revengement of my honor.”

The Skipper said, “Don’t be empty.”

John looked at him. “And you also, Skipper of the Fowlers.” His eyes went to Harmon and Perez. “And you two also. My kin will take their revengement on your clans.”

Harmon snorted amusement.

DeRudder said, “Among other things, we don’t have clans to fight feuds, even if we were primitive enough to have such an institution. We don’t use the same type of relationship as you do, boy. You still evidently have a gens system. We of the League have been beyond that for a few thousand years.”

“You mean you are clanless? You are without kin?” John’s lips were going white. “And you laid hands on me? A Hawk. Dishonored me by taking me prisoner and stripping me of my weapons, rather than letting me face black death in honorable combat? How can my kinsmen take revengement if you are clanless men?”

The one named Perez shook his head. “The words are Earth Basic, but half of what he says doesn’t come through. At least not to me.”

Harmon leaned forward. “Why should your relatives, your kinsmen, want to revenge you?”

“What else could they do, after my blood has been shed?”

DeRudder wiped the back of his hand over his mouth in frustration. “Look. Nobody is going to shed your blood.”

John of the Hawks stared at him in utter disbelief. Finally, “Then what will you do with me?”

“We’ll turn you loose, of course.”

“To return to Aberdeen, weaponless to the Hawks?”

“Why weaponless? You can have your weapons. All we want to do is ask you a few more questions about how this dully of a planet works.”

John shook his head. “Why would you do this to me? What have I done to you that you should desire to make a woman of me? Why not count honorable coup of me, or at least kill me?”

The Skipper, who had remained silent during all this, stirred. “We don’t want to kill you, son. We want a little more information, so that when we go up against the next town we’ll know more of the customs. You’re free to go, sword and all, as soon as we’re through.”

John said, his voice shaken, “I will follow you. Somehow I will follow you. The word spreads, throughout the countryside, and somehow I will learn where you are and somehow I will follow you until I have killed you all, or you have killed me.”

DeRudder rolled his eyes upward, in appeal to higher powers. “Great. So why don’t we just kill you here and now, eh? And then we won’t have the threat of you coming charging around a corner some day whirling that overgrown cheeseknife.”

“This is to be expected,” John said evenly. “And then my kin will come to find revengement and you will be killed as clanless ones are killed. And there will be no one to take revengement or pay the bloodright for you.”

“It’s still going past me,” Perez muttered.

The Skipper was interested. He leaned forward. “Look, son, how many of you Hawks are there?”

John said, “We number some fifteen hundred full clansmen.”

“All right. Now, suppose they all come charging after us. You have seen some of our weapons. Believe me, we have more powerful ones. If we were interested in wiping out those dullies outside, we could do it. Maybe we will, later. But if your Clan Hawk came charging up, we’d polish them off.”

“Then,” John said, “our two sister clans, the Clarks and the Fieldings would take up the vendetta.”

The Skipper grunted. Finally, he shrugged and said heavily, “All right. And what happens when we have polished them off, as well?”

John of the Hawks was obviously taken back by the ignorance of honorable usage these clanless ones showed. He said, “Each clan has two sister clans. We have the Clarks and the Fieldings as our sister clans. The Clarks also have two sister clans, the Hawks and the Davidsons. The Fieldings have two sister clans, the Hawks and the Deweys.”

DeRudder was staring now, as well as the Skipper. “What you mean is, before you’re through, the whole Phylum of Aberdeen would be in on the feud, or vendetta, or whatever you call it.”

John looked at him blankly. “But, of course.”

The Skipper sighed his disgust. “All right. Now, what happens if we wipe out the whole village of Aberdeen. Say we dropped a scrambler on it.”

John said, reasonably, “Then our two sister towns, Elgin and Gleneagles, would take their revengement for us. And their sister towns, in turn.”

Harmon closed his eyes in pain. He said, in complaint, “Carrying this on, I suppose ultimately your whole confederation would be involved. O.K. Do you realize that this ship could destroy every town in your confederation, without bothering to come down to the ground?”

“And then, Mister of the Harmons, our two sister confederations would take up the vendetta.”

The six of them, unbelievingly, gaped at him.

At long last, the Skipper shook his head. He said, “This is fantastic. What you’re saying is that ultimately a blood feud, what starts with our killing you—in self-defense, by the way—would involve every person on this planet.”

John nodded. “You might slay as many as you say. You might slay by the thousands with your weapons that know no ban. But, if you plan to land anywhere on Caledonia, sooner or later the clansmen would take their revengement. They would charge you on their horses on the heath. They would rush you in the narrowness of the streets of the towns. They would snipe at you from a distance with their carbines. Sooner or later, men from Beyond, they would take their revengement.”

The Skipper was disgusted, all over again. He said, “If what you say is true, then there wouldn’t be a soul left alive on this whole world. Obviously, it’s ridiculous. How do you end one of these vendettas, once it starts? It seems easy enough to start. There has to be some way of stopping them.”

John said reasonably, “Of course. At the first meeting of the Dail, the sachems of the respective clans involved, meet honorably, and arrange for there to be made payment of the bloodright to the kin of the slain. Accounts are balanced. Then all are cleared of the need for vendetta.”

“All right!” DeRudder said, “We plan to remain on this planet. We’ve got some business projects in mind. So we’ll confer with your sachem and pay up for making the mistake of, uh, dishonoring you by taking you as a hostage. We’ll apologize. We’ll end the vendetta before it starts.”

John scowled at him. “You jest, of course. How can you approach Robert, Sachem of the Hawks? You have admitted that you have no kin. You have no sachem to represent you. It is against the ban for such payment of bloodright to be arranged by other than the sachem of your clan.”

The Skipper ran his palm over his forehead. “Mari, mother of Krishna!” he muttered. He looked at DeRudder. “Throw this dully out!”

John said levelly, “If you free me, I shall seek you out. I shall inform my clansmen of my dishonor and they will take their revengement. At the next Dail, I will announce my shame and the word will go out. And at the Dails of the other confederations the word will go out that the Hawks’ bloodline has been shamed. And from one Dail to the other, the word will go out. Until nowhere on all Caledonia will you be safe from the revengement.”

Harmon said urgently, “Look, this is completely empty. There must be some way to turn this off. So we’re clanless men. O.K. In your towns you have clanless ones. Servants and so forth, evidently. What happens if one of them attacks a clansman? How is the whole thing settled?”

John turned his haughty stare to the youngest of the otherworldlings. “Why, all honorable men unite and kill the shameless clanless one.”

Harmon winced. “I should’ve known better than to ask,” he muttered bitterly.

For a long time, again, the six otherworldlings contemplated him.

DeRudder said, “That warder at the gate saw him go out with us.”

No one said anything to that. The implication was obvious.

The Skipper’s face was working in frustration. Finally, he snapped, “Gentlemen, we have just stopped being entrepreneurs and have become explorers again.” He looked at his first officer. “Mr. DeRudder, throw this barbarian out, then prepare the ship for space.”

DeRudder looked at him. “We’re leaving?”

“Can you think of an alternative?”

Harmon snarled. “It’s one big nugget of platinum.”

“That will be all, Mr. Harmon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come along.” DeRudder growled at John of the Hawks.

John said, his lips white again, “You mean you are not going to honorably kill me?” He snatched his coup stick from his belt and slashed the first officer across the cheek. “I count coup!” he snapped. “Though, indeed, it is a worthless coup, since you are clanless.”

DeRudder’s face went livid. The gun came up.

“Mr. DeRudder, that will be all,” the Skipper’s voice bit out.

DeRudder conducted him down another corridor and finally to the compartment into which they had entered in the ground car. The first officer of the Golden Hind activated the sliding door, which opened in the hull. The ramp snaked out.

He handed John of the Hawks his belt and scabbard, keeping the handgun trained on him, always.

John said flatly, “The Hawks will seek you out. The Clan Hawk of every confederation on all Caledonia will hear of the shame done their bloodline and will be watching for you.”

“Shut up!” DeRudder snapped. “Shut up, or I’ll burn you down right here. Then your Clan Hawk will have to figure out some way of crossing all space to get at me!”

John turned in dignity and walked down the ramp. He didn’t turn to look until he was over the nearest hillock. He was moderately jittery about running into some of the Bruces that had been besieging the Golden Hind, armed as he was only with claidheammor and skean, and having no horse.

However, his nervousness was unnecessary. On the far side of the hill were Don of the Clarks and Dewey of the Hawks, along with a dozen more of the younger men of the Phylum. All were flat on their stomachs, on the crest of the hill, staring their amazement at the gigantic ship from space.

Don blurted, “We knew they had you, and were planning the rescue.”

“What happened to the Bruces?”

“They made off when we approached. I believe they thought us the full power of Aberdeen.”

John squatted down and watched also. “They return from whence they came,” he said.

“Why did they take you?” Dewey of the Hawks demanded.

“They wanted more information about the ways of Caledonia, so that they could rob us,” John said. He continued to watch the spaceship.

“And what did you tell them?”

John shrugged. “I cozened them. I told them a good deal of nonsense, to make them feel it impossible to remain on Caledonia.”

Dewey said, “You mean you lied?”

John looked at him coldly. “They are not Hawks. It is not against the ban.”

He turned his eyes back to the Golden Hind. The spaceship shivered, then slowly, with great dignity, rose into the air.

A sigh went through the ranks of the Aberdeen youths.

When it had reached an altitude of some two hundred feet, the great craft tilted slightly upward and began to progress straight ahead, and up. It gained speed in a geometric progression.

Don of the Clarks stood and, watching still, as were they all, with considerable awe, said, “They have gone.”

John was looking off into the sky, at the disappearing dot, as well.

“But they will return,” he said, with a wisdom beyond his years. “They, or others like them. For now we have been found and the old days are gone forever.”

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Prevention of War

Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

This essay has a long history.

In 1964 I was general editor of a strategic survey of ballistic missile technology in the United States. “Project 75” was written by the Ballistic Systems Division of the US Air Force Systems Command, and was modeled on Air Systems Division’s ground-breaking “Project Forecast.” The director of “Forecast” was Colonel Francis X. Kane.

“Forecast” and “75” were first efforts to develop a strategy of technology. They looked at present technology; examined the strategic environment; looked ahead to probable strategic environments ten years down the road; and identified technologies that must be developed for the future. These were ambitious goals, but nearly everyone now agrees that “Forecast” and “75” met them.

In 1968 Stefan T. Possony and I began a book called The Strategy of Technology, which we published in 1970. When the book was published, Col. Francis X. Kane, Ph.D., was a serving officer in the US Air Force, and already embroiled in the bitter struggle between General Bernard Schriever of Systems Command and General Curtis LeMay of Strategic Air Command. Kane was a co-author of The Strategy of Technology, but it was thought expedient that his name not appear on the book.

The Strategy of Technology was adopted as a text in the Air Academy, Air War College, and for a short while in the Army War College. It is said to have been highly influential; certainly we do not regret the work we put into it. Duke Kane, Steve Possony, and I are now working on a revised edition. The revisions consist largely of updating the examples; we have found no reason at all to revise the conclusions of the book.

The Strategy of Technology argued that the United States is, whether we like it or not, engaged in a decisive Technological War; a “silent and apparently peaceful war, but one which may well be decisive.” The book also first introduced the notion that the US ought to abandon the doctrine of Assured Destruction and adopt in its place a doctrine of Assured Survival. To this day I regret that Possony and I were unable to persuade Nixon and Kissinger to make that change. Even so, the idea slowly caught on, as a new generation of military officers and politicians took control; and while no single work brought about the President’s “Star Wars” speech of March 23, 1983, The Strategy of Technology played its part.

“The Prevention of War” was the final chapter of The Strategy of Technology, and is presented here unrevised, but with my comments [indicated thusly].

In a recent speech, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said, “To the extent that we in the United States desire true peace with freedom, peace based on individual and sovereign rights and on the principle of resolution of disputes through negotiation, we must acknowledge and follow our interests in creating conditions in which democratic forces can gain and thrive in this world. A world not of our making, but a world in which we must fight to maintain our peace and our strength. And a world in which the very best way to maintain peace is to be militarily strong and thus deter war.’’

The Prevention of War

Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

Why Wars Are Not Fought

The primary stated objective of the United States is to preserve the state we call peace. The Strategic Air Command, which controls more power than all other military organizations throughout history, has as its motto, “Peace Is Our Profession.” Our diplomatic machinery is geared to negotiations for peace, and our alliances are defensive. If intentions alone would produce peace, we would have it.

Our pursuit of peace is complicated by two important factors. The first of these is confusion about the meaning of peace. In legal terms we are at peace whenever the Congress has not declared war. Yet we can be actively engaged in a shooting war, and as this book has shown, the Technological War goes on, without regard to legal niceties, as a permanent conflict.

Many of our international legal institutions were conceived and solidified at a time when there was a far greater distinction, even a chasm, between peace and war. In those nearly-forgotten times, when nations went to war they acquired “rights of belligerency,” which they could invoke against other nations. Perhaps today there should be some recognition of the rights of cold-war belligerency and the Technological War. If laws ignore the real situations in which people live and reflect fictitious assumptions, the legal order is decaying and society becomes vulnerable. The point is not to curtail rights, freedom, and democracy, but to keep them working during critical times and to provide a reasonable legal basis for the requirements of security.

The other impediment to the achievement of peace is the paradox known since Roman times: “If you would have peace, prepare thou then for war.” The unprepared rich nation without armed allies has never survived for long. Wealthy nations have ever been forced to depend on their readiness for war to preserve peace and survival. Yet history seems to indicate that the greater the state of armaments acquired, the greater the chance for war; and consequently many well-meaning people in the contemporary United States believe that the surest road to peace in the nuclear era is arms limitations, which may hopefully lead to disarmament.

This misconception stems from an insufficient appreciation of the modern era. The nuclear weapon has changed the nature of warfare by providing the defensive power with a capability to deny victory to the aggressor, even if the aggressor has successfully destroyed all but a small fraction of the defender’s military forces. Unlike conventional weapons, nuclear weapons do not increase the chances of war as both sides acquire them.

This is so because mutual increases in the nuclear power available to the superpowers do not cause mutual increases in their expectations of victory. In fact, the opposite is true. All but madmen recognize that as mutual capability for destruction increases, the possibility of gain through initiating that destruction becomes smaller. Whatever the effect of arms races in conventional weaponry, two-sided arms races in the nuclear era have a stabilizing effect in so far as the outbreak of total war is concerned.

Wars are fought because decision makers conclude that they will be better off after the war than they would be if they did not engage in it. This has been true whenever rational decision processes have governed the war decision. The calculation of success is not a matter of objective reality only, but is in large measure a process in the mind of a strategist controlling military power. It is not sufficient merely to be sure that no one can win against you; all those who might attack must be convinced of it as well. In addition, the definition of win may be different for a potential aggressor than for a popularly-elected chief of state; and it is necessarily different for one aggressor fighting for nationalism or nationalist imperialism than for another aggressor who fights for international Communism or Communist imperialism.

The calculation of chances of success is spoiled by uncertainty; indeed, uncertainty about the outcome of a war is a powerful deterrent in the absence of clear indication of the enemy’s power. When both sides are engaged in nuclear arms research and deployment, neither will be very certain that he has won the Technological War and can engage in nuclear strikes or blackmail. It is when one side drops out of the race, giving the other a clear shot at technological supremacy, that a strategist can begin to plan on terminating the contest by a nuclear strike.

Deciding on war is also a matter of will, which is essentially willingness to take risks and troubles. Virtually always, the will factors are vastly different for the two parties engaged in conflict. Circumstances that would cause one to initiate a war might not tempt the other. Dictatorial regimes are notoriously generous with human lives; democratic governments fear casualties and usually fight only, and frequently belatedly, to preserve their own security. The will factors change when political systems are on the rise or decline. A dictatorship, for example, is optimistic early in its youth—it may combine determination with caution, or it may be exuberant. But it reacts differently when it is senescent: it then has the rationality of despair, and it may prefer a last chance through war, and even defeat on the battlefield, to ignominious overthrow. World War I would hardly have occurred if Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and China had not been decaying. There will be decaying regimes in the future. In particular, the Communist dictatorships won’t last, but the period of their departure will be difficult and dangerous, and the rationality of their last leaders may be influenced less by probabilities of success in a nuclear contest, than by considerations of last chance stratagems, envy, revenge, and pure hatred. There is no such thing as equal rationality for all.

Calculation of military results, then, is only a part of the decision to go to war. Strategy serves as a tool for the political decision maker, and the calculation of military success sets the probable price in blood and treasure that must be paid in war. The political objectives are the factors that determine what price a government is willing to pay; and these objectives are not set in absolute terms. If world domination is the objective, then no price is too high provided that the rulers of the aggressor nation will survive and remain in control and all other countries will be reduced to impotence. Conversely, if the probable result of the war will be the overthrow of the ruling structure, no victory, no matter how cheap in lives and property, is worth the winning.

The calculation of political objectives, and the disparity of objectives between the major powers of the present world, are the primary factors in the decision to begin wars. However, they have received less attention than mathematical calculation of military factors, which has become prevalent. It is supposed by many that even if the political objectives of the USSR can never be understood with certainty, at least the military calculations on which they must base their decisions can be replicated with some assurance. This assumption needs to be examined in some detail.

The Nature of Strategic Decisions

Military calculations must take into account numerous objective factors such as force levels, weapons performance, defense systems, and the like. A strategist’s advice will thus be based in part on his predictions of the material factors of battle. Success in war, however, is dependent on the competence of generals and commanders as well as on their equipment. Bad generals can lose wars even though they have the best armies, as witness the performance of the “finest army in Europe” (that of France in 1940), while good generalship can more than make up for numerical and even technical inferiority. The strategist calculates his chances of success on the basis not of statistics but of an operational plan.

His plan must take into account the quantitative factors, but it will also seek to create and exploit opportunities. War is a matter of will as well as equipment, and paralysis of the enemy’s will through surprise is one of the most successful of all techniques. In war, there are real uncertainties as well as statistical probabilities. Many factors can never be quantified. The strategist is dealing with the enemy’s creative forces, and will counter them with his own. The calculation of destruction by means of slide rule and computer can only be a part of this process.

If this appears vague and uncertain to those more used to scientific calculation, it is because war is uncertain. War is, after all, an operation primarily against the will of the opponent. In some few cases, of course, the opponent is so reduced in capability that his will is no longer an important factor, but most wars have ended long before the loser’s capability to damage the victor was destroyed. The great losses have occurred after surrender, in pursuit or by deliberate execution of prisoners, rather than before the decisive moment of battle. But once a combatant has lost the will to fight, his means are unimportant; and often this failure of will has been caused by surprise, by the opponent doing the unthinkable, and by so doing producing overwhelming paralysis.

It is generalship, not a calculus of forces, that decides the outcome of wars. A good general identifies opportunities to paralyze the will of his opponent and exploits them. Indeed a good strategist creates such opportunities. Generalship operates against the enemy’s forces as well, of course, but even then the war is primarily against the will. When the enemy ceases to fight, the war is over, no matter that the vanquished may actually be stronger than the victor—as Darius was at Arbela. Success in war is above all dependent on generalship; it is not that objective factors such as force relationships do not count, but that generalship is far more significant. And generalship means optimal utilization of available strengths and out-thinking the enemy. Bad generalship is a repeat performance, whereas good generalship is an act of creation, hence unpredictable by either side.

Historical experience is explicit on the crucial impact of generalship: a bad general can lose despite superiority in material force and a good general can win despite considerable inferiority. Given reasonable means, and sufficient strike and reserve forces, so that the aggressive side would not be crushed even if mistakes were committed, the aggressor will calculate his chances of success not on the basis of statistics, but on an operational plan, as we have pointed out. If he is a sound planner, his plan will take into account all the qualitative factors, but go beyond them to employ surprise in all elements such as strategy, technology, tactics, training, direction, concentration, and phasing. If the would-be aggressor estimates that the defender will be unable to anticipate his plan and will not have ready countersurprise operations to upset the implementation of the operation plan, he will conclude that his chances of success are high.

It is very important to understand that in these matters the calculus of generalship is far more important than the calculus of force relations. A homely example would be an investor who plays the stock market through mutual funds and thus essentially benefits by or loses from the overall movements of the market. Such an investor can calculate his probable successes on the basis of curves depicting the performance of the market in the past. However, the most successful investors operate both with and against the market. In like manner, a good strategist can identify special situations or opportunities and work out a scheme to take advantage of the openings. Naturally, in a war where there are many opportunities there are only a few that hold great promise of massive success, even if they are exploited with the greatest skill. Furthermore, good opportunities may be fleeting and there may not be enough time to exploit them properly. On the other hand, the strategist who possesses large resources, like the market operator controlling large funds, can create suitable opportunities.

These observations apply to both the offensive and the defensive strategist. Success always depends on more than the resources in hand. It results from a clear knowledge of the objectives to be gained by the particular strategy and from seizing the initiative in carrying out the strategy.

Whether planning aggression or defense against aggression, the strategist must calculate the results of the clashes of forces. He must always remember that he is dealing with human action, the essence of which is creativity. As a consequence, he knows he is grappling with uncertainties, with the basic uncertainties that result from the creativeness of the adversary.

[In these days of high speed computers and complex computer simulations, we often forget that strategy comes from a strategist, and victory and defeat are events in the minds of the victor and the defeated. We shouldn’t. JEP 1985]

Offense and Defense

In this interplay of creativities, the aggressor has certain advantages that come from his position. The decision to attack is his. Thus, he knows when hostilities will begin. The defender cannot have this certainty. Every moment can be the moment of the attack. To heighten the effects of his blow, the attacker strives for surprise in as many elements of his strategy as possible. One of the problems of the defender is to prevent his being surprised. This increases his needs for information about the intent of the enemy and requires him to expend resources on being constantly ready.

The attacker can build his plan for aggression around the availability of a decisive weapon. This can take the form of a technical surprise for the defender, but it need not. If the aggressor calculates that the defender cannot counter his new advance in time, he can make his decision on the basis of this crucial superiority.

In the present age of total conflict, the aggressor can manipulate the many facets of his strategy to produce a wide variety of threats and opportunities. Political warfare, economic warfare, propaganda, the struggle for technological supremacy, diplomatic maneuverings, subversion, and military operations, taken together or individually, give the aggressor many opportunities. The defender, for his part, must provide a total defense against all these forms of conflict. Most important, he must avoid being second in technical advances that can lead to a decisive military advantage.

The defensive strategist is not without advantages on his side, provided that he does not passively wait for the blow. He can take initiatives to gain and maintain a position of superiority in the various forms of conflict. By having such superiority, he prevents the aggressor from finding the moment for the attack. The defender can plan and execute his own surprises against the would-be aggressor. The combination of initiative and surprise on the part of the defensive strategist produces the creative uncertainty that negates the advantages of the attacker. It is a military truism that strategic offensive and tactical defensive is often a superior position. Sun Tzu says, “Take what the enemy holds dear and await attack.”

It is axiomatic that the objectives of the attacker and defender are asymmetric. Thus, the initiatives they take and the advances they make need not and probably should not be of the same kind. They should be chosen for their potential ability to reach the objectives of the strategy.

The Modern Strategic War

The strategy of the United States, and indeed free world strategy, is defensive. We seek no political, economic, or territorial aggrandizement. We do seek to prevent war. These objectives are clearly in direct opposition to those of the Communist bloc. They seek world domination. They create opportunities to use warfare to attain it.

[This was written long before the falling dominoes in Indochina or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and indeed before any but a handful of Western analysts understood the importance of the ideology of conquest in justifying the dominance of the tiny ruling group (known as the nomenklatura) over the Soviet masses. JEP 1985]

We should recognize clearly that our defensive strategy must include initiatives and surprises. Ours need not be a reactive strategy. In fact, the struggle for technological supremacy makes a reactive strategy a most dangerous one. Waiting for clear indications of Soviet initiatives can prevent us from acting in time. We must be constantly on the initiative to anticipate their moves and to create situations to which they must react.

[General Daniel O. Graham first proposed Project High Frontier as a “strategic sidestep into space.” In 1981 a Strategic Defense Initiative—*STAR WARS* in popular parlance—was urged by the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy as a means of seizing the initiative in the Technological War. JEP 1985]

In the past, we used technology to overcome the advantages of the Soviets both in the resources they control and in the initiatives we conceded them. We succeeded in negating their quantitative superiority by the qualitative advantages we acquired through a superior technology.

The circumstances today are radically different. The Soviets have challenged us in technology. They have enlarged the spectrum of conflict, taking advantage of the inevitable new struggle, the Technological War. No longer are we free to follow an independent course in implementing our strategy. We must meet the technological threat as well as the threats in other forms of conflict.

[Since this was written the Soviets have developed, among other things: neutral particle beams; laser weapons; mobile medium to long range ballistic missiles; satellite destroyers; etc., etc. JEP 1985]

This form of warfare has become crucial. A technical advance can lead to a decisive military advantage. It is not enough for us to continue past approaches to our total strategy. The strategist must recast his thinking if he is to make his defensive strategy effective. He must find avenues for the initiative in technology. He must prevent the would-be aggressor from attaining a clear advantage in any aspect of technology that could be translated into a decisive military advantage.

Broader horizons are needed in another aspect of the problem of the defensive strategist. Planning methodology and decision processes reflect the past situation. They are no longer adequate. The time has come to break the shackles of science on planning methodology. We need to rehumanize planning and strategy. This process will have a direct impact on decision making. Decision makers can no longer find refuge in the alleged certainties and probabilities that past planning provided them. We are now in an era of creative, dynamic uncertainty. We must have a strong defensive position. But we must also create strategic diversions, feints, deceptions, and surprises.

Only in this way can the defensive strategist ensure that the attacker will choose not to strike. A viable strategy poses insurmountable problems for the aggressor. The nature of some of these problems is illustrated by the following discussion of possible situations.

The Effect of Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons have not changed the nature of strategy; however, they have introduced new complications, just as they have introduced new opportunities. The major new opportunity is that the strategist, once he decides to strike, can apply far more power, over larger areas, than could any of his predecessors who fought with low-energy weapon systems. The main new complication is that the defender, even though deprived of a large portion of his initial strength in the course of the first battle, would still retain enormous firepower to hurt the attacker far more dangerously than it was ever before possible for a defensive force to do. This residual force can be used against the attacker’s population, industry, urban areas, government control centers, and armed forces, provided that the defender’s will to use it has not failed. The scope of war has grown to include entire populations, not merely military forces.

Also, it is easily conceivable that under some circumstances the attacker, although he may defeat the defender, may achieve only Pyrrhic victory. Or, even if he achieves an unqualified victory, he would not enjoy the fruits because he has paid an excessive price. In fact, he may have lost his country to the blows that his defeated adversary was still able to inflict. Nuclear weapons have not worked totally to the advantage of the attacker.

It would be a grave mistake to assume that this particular strategic problem is new. Even if it were new, the significant aspect is whether the danger of devastating retaliation would prevent war. To put it in different terms, the question is whether such a hazard would prevent the aggressive strategist from planning for war in a rational manner. Obviously a great deal of the strategist’s mental effort must be devoted to the security of the aggressor’s homeland. If the defender can be induced to leave his weapons unused, the aggressor can still achieve decisive victory.

In order to prevent aggression, the defender must seek safety in strength. He must seek superior technology, modern weapons that can survive attack, and engage actively in the Technological War. He cannot rely on agreements, planned weaknesses, or minimum strength.

In the last analysis, superior strength remains the most reliable insurance for the survival of the defender. The strategist of the superior power has some chance of predicting what his enemy might do; the strategist of a greatly inferior power can only hope. A defensive strategy aiming at superiority in power offers the only dependable hedge against errors in planning.

Force Levels in the Nuclear Era

It is clear that, as the armaments race takes place on high force levels, the aggressor will be hard-put to achieve decisive superiority. The conclusion to draw from this is that relatively low levels of nuclear power are a chief prerequisite for nuclear attack. This is especially true in a period when cities have not been fully dispersed and populations cannot be effectively protected against fall-out. Low levels of force, in being, are more of a danger to the United States than high levels—fears of genocide and the arms race notwithstanding. This is an important finding, which casts a very disturbing light on the recent history of US armaments and armament negotiations.

Of the two belligerents, the one who is able to continue the war beyond the initial strike will have an enormous advantage because the side that does not have this capability will cave in morally and will be unable to reconstitute its force. Such a capability can only be provided by vigorous pursuit of technology, including the design and the deployment of weapons.

The survival force is one key to security. As long as we have secure weapon systems that can ride out the initial and follow-on strikes, we will have the decisive advantage. The in-being power that is still effective after the battles are over will determine the final outcome.

[“Project 75” concluded that due to increasing Soviet missile accuracy, by about 1980 the Minuteman force would no longer be able to ride out a full Soviet first strike, and that sometime thereafter the US would be forced to choose between active defense and launch on warning. Launching Armageddon on early warning of attack is not an attractive alternative. As warning times grow shorter, the US is forced seriously to consider computerizing the launch decision. This is even less attractive. JEP 1985]

Our defensive strategy requires us to have a survivable force. Hardening, dispersal, mobility, and concealment contribute to survival, but they are supporting strategic themes. The single most important element of our defensive strategy is to have in being a clear superiority in effective and reliable numbers. This is the one factor in the strategic equation that is most easily understood, the one the enemy is least likely to misunderstand. Numerical superiority on our side is necessary to convince the aggressor not to strike.

[It is now politically difficult to impossible for the US to engage in a strategic offensive arms race with the Soviet Union, even though the Soviets continue to this moment to operate four different ICBM production facilities three shifts a day. JEP 1985]

A would-be aggressor, if he were to act rationally, would realize that he cannot cope with high force levels. Therefore, he must make an attempt to bring forces down to a level where he can fight nuclear war—especially if through clandestine armaments of his own he achieves an enormous superiority. It is clear that the aggressor is not particularly perturbed by high force levels of his own, let alone by relative superiority, but is disturbed by a high force level owned by the defender. His problem, therefore, is to achieve a substantial quantitative superiority. To achieve this goal he must persuade the defender to be content with moderate strength.

Another reason why the aggressor needs the low levels of force is that decisive increments in strength are difficult to conceal if they have to be produced within the framework of high force levels. This means that psycho-political strategy is an integral part of nuclear strategy, first to achieve some sort of reduction of armament levels, then to provide a cover to conceal the aggressor’s armaments, and third to facilitate nuclear blackmail and prevent retaliation.

Security Through Arms Control

The unending process of armaments has often been criticized as the greatest waste of which mankind is guilty. It is true that if both sides stay in the race and run well, the world situation will remain stable and no war will occur; the weapons will then be thought wasted. The argument is that if both sides agree not to engage in such races, peace would be preserved effectively and at far less cost.

However, we have already seen that by lowering the levels of destruction war would bring, reductions in arms make war thinkable and therefore more likely. This, it would seem, is one major argument against arms control and disarmament. However, it is hardly the only such argument.

Since technology is dynamic, no one can agree to stand still. Force relationships change in the course of armament cycles despite the best planning possible. Sudden accretions of military power can come to a side not even expecting them. New technologies create new power.

It is true that the tempo of this eternal race can be accelerated or slowed. Aside from the technological factors that often determine this tempo, the speed of the process is largely set by political factors, including strategic intentions. If no disturber power is at work, the tempo will slacken almost automatically. If there is a disturber power, explicit or tacit slow-down agreements are at best highly unreliable and temporary. The side that takes the risk of slowing down unilaterally will soon be punished.

The history of disarmament agreements teaches an explicit lesson: international promissory treaties are almost invariably broken and are therefore an utterly undependable instrument of national security.

The fundamental reason for the defender to stay in this expensive race, and to run hard in it, is to stay alive and not allow the would-be attacker to achieve such an advantage that he might be inclined to break the peace and impose his will on the naive and gullible defender.

So long as the defender must stay in the arms competition, he does not really have the option of running a selective race. He cannot leave open any geographical or technological flanks, or the opponent will take advantage of his opportunities. Thus, the United States does not really have the free choice of saying that it will stop Communism in Europe and defend the East Coast, but ignore Communist advances in Asia. Nor can it say that it will maintain offensive nuclear weapons but not acquire defensive ones, or that it will try to be strong in inner space but will assume that outer space is of no military relevance. Least of all can the United States entrust its security to so-called disarmament treaties, not because it must necessarily and always presuppose bad faith on the part of other nations (although sometimes it must make precisely such an assumption of bad faith), but for the far more elementary reasons (a) that reliable inspection of disarmament agreements is unfeasible, (b) that enforcement against treaty violations requires war, and (c) that disarmament agreements apply to weapons already in existence, but will be speedily outdated and be rendered irrelevant by new weapons, the characteristics of which were unknown at the time the treaty was written.

Security in the Modern Era

As we have seen, security cannot be guaranteed by Soviet intentions; not only do Soviet theorists predict inevitable victory by the USSR, and Soviet generals hasten to install the latest weapons, but, even were we convinced that the USSR is ruled by men who have lost their aggressive drives, there is no guarantee that a new Stalin will not take power.

Security cannot be guaranteed by passive measures. The most modern force purchased at enormous cost will become obsolete in only a few years. Security cannot be guaranteed by agreements to halt the Technological War; the stream of technology moves on without regard for our intentions. The only way to guarantee security is to engage in the Technological War with the intention of winning it. It is as true today as in Roman times that “If you would have peace, prepare thou then for war.”

Regardless of the enormous effects of modern weapons, organized brainpower remains the strongest and ultimately decisive factor. The experience of Vietnam, the test ban, and Sputnik have shown that we do not excel in that department. It is not that we lack intelligent people but that we lack an effective organization through which we can optimize our brainpower and collective memory. On the contrary, the more we have overorganized, the more we have reduced brainpower and the more we have forgotten. Secretary MacNamara even organized strategic amnesia.

We must decide to engage in the Technological War, and we must create the planning staff to guide us in this decisive conflict. To do anything short of this is to risk national suicide. At the same time, we must preserve the values that make our society worth defending; we cannot contemplate ending the Technological War by destroying our enemies without warning. Our goal is the indefinite preservation of peace and order, and our hope is that in such an environment the root causes of conflict will slowly wither.

The era of Technological War has not ended conflict, and that millennium may never come. Technological War does, however, have the advantage of being relatively peaceful, so long as the stabilizer powers remain strong. Despite the greatest threat Western civilization has ever known, since 1945 the amount of blood shed to preserve the peace has been quite small—smaller than that shed on the highways. The Technological War can be kept silent and apparently peaceful so long as we continue to engage in it successfully.

Despite fashionable rhetoric, history shows that American supremacy brings relative peace and stability to the world; where the USSR has enjoyed local superiority the results have been quite different. American success in the Technological War is the primary prerequisite for the preservation of world peace.

[In a recent speech Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said, “To the extent that we in the United States desire true peace with freedom, peace based on individual and sovereign rights and on the principle of resolution of disputes through negotiation, we must acknowledge and follow our interests in creating conditions in which democratic forces can gain and thrive in this world. A world not of our making, but a world in which we must fight to maintain our peace and our strength. And a world in which the very best way to maintain peace is to be militarily strong and thus deter war.” Of course we agree. JEP 1985]

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Wedding March

Edward P. Hughes

No society could endure if, as is sometimes implicitly assumed, its members became hostile to it by reason of and in proportion to their lowly status within it. Should you so plan a society as to establish and maintain equality in every respect you can think of, there would naturally be a restoration of scarce, desirable positions, by nature attainable only by a minority. You can allot equal time to each member of an Assembly: but you cannot ensure that all will command equal attention. You can chase unequal (more or less log-normal) distributions out of one field after another: they will reappear in new fields. Nor are men so base as to be disaffected from any ordering in which they are low-placed: they are indeed lavish in the precedence they afford to those who excel in performances they value. What exasperates them is a system of qualifying values which seems to them scandalous, a social scaling which jars with their scoring cards.

—Bertrand de Jouvenal, The Pure Theory of Politics

Edward Hughes, a communications engineer, lives in Manchester, England. His stories of the village of Barley Cross have been a popular feature of this series.

The skills of the warrior are not those of the king. Nonetheless, Patrick O’Meara, one time Sergeant Major of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, and later Master of the Fist and Lord of Barley Cross, managed to make the transition. The village continued a normal existence in lands ruined by war and destruction; and when O’Meara died, the Mastership passed peacefully enough to his illegitimate son Liam McGrath.

There is no equality in Barley Cross. The happiness and prosperity of the village rests instead on myths—and on the skill of its Lord, who must provide for all the village’s needs.

Some are easier than others.

The Wedding March

Edward P. Hughes

The entire population of Barley Cross attended the funeral—apart that is, from the guards up at the Fist, Sally Corcoran who was in labour, with Doctor Denny Mallon acting as midwife… and… the Fintan Dooleys.

Kevin Murphy, slouching along beside the Lord of Barley Cross on the way back from the cemetery, said, “I wonder what’s up with old Finty? He was five years at the Fist in the early days, and very close to the Gineral.”

Liam McGrath scarcely heard him. General Desmond’s death monopolised his thoughts. Could anyone have stopped the General drinking? Larry Desmond had been a forceful character, and not the easiest of citizens to get on with. But his loss would be a hard blow to the village. Someone must be persuaded to take his place.

Celia Larkin, back a little bent, trudged at the Master’s other elbow. She said, “Didn’t Finty take over the Curry cottage after Liam moved out?’’

Kevin Murphy nodded. “Indeed he did. He tried the O’Toole place before that, but it was tumbling down ’round his ears.”

Liam came back to the present. He beckoned one of the uniformed pallbearers. “Seamus, nip up to Kirkogue and see if anything’s wrong with Finty Dooley or his wife.”

Watching the soldier go, Kevin Murphy said, “Have ye anyone in mind for the Gineral’s job, me lord? ’Twill have to be filled, ye know. Five years of peace since ye went up the hill don’t mean we can relax our vigilance.”

Liam sighed. Why hadn’t General Desmond nominated his successor! He asked, “Who’s next officer in rank?”

Kevin Murphy scratched his head. “Sure it would be Andy McGrath—your stepfather, me lord. I did hear Larry made him a major, or suchlike.”

Liam kicked flints in the road. “Would the villagers think it was… if I…?”

“Nepotism?” Celia Larkin supplied. “Liam, as Lord of Barley Cross you have a perfect right to appoint whom you wish as our General.”

Liam grimaced. His stepfather was a good citizen, cheerfully accepting the Master’s rule—even such doctrines as his droit du seigneur—without question. Such docility would hardly be an asset in a General. He said, “It ain’t the legality that bothers me, Celia. It’s Andy. With all respect—he ain’t exactly brilliant, if you follow my meaning.”

Celia Larkin frowned over her spectacles. “Your da is a good, reliable man. He would make a fine General.”

Liam blinked. An unexpected vote for his stepfather! He shot a glance at the vet. “Andy McGrath suit you, Kevin?”

Kevin Murphy rubbed a bristly chin. “We don’t need brilliance. Andy is a cautious man. I reckon he could do the job.”

Liam masked his surprise. Apparently no one shared his opinion of his stepfather. He said, “Okay, I’ll have a word with Doctor Denny, then I’ll see Andy.”

The vet wagged his head in admiration. “See what I mean, Celia? They breed cautiousness at the McGraths.”

Liam located Doctor Denny Mallon at the Corcoran cottage. The doctor held a squawking bundle.

Sally Corcoran greeted Liam from the bed, smirking. “Good morning, me lord.”

Liam kept an impassive face. Sally’s husband, Charlie, was sure to be somewhere about the house. Liam didn’t want to annoy him with undue familiarity towards his wife—even though they all knew that the bundle in Doctor Denny’s arms had nothing to do with Charlie, and everything to do with Liam.

Denny Mallon laughed jovially. He thrust the child at its mother. “Take her, Sally. Another Barley Cross citizen. And another firm step on our road to the future.”

Straightfaced, Liam said, “Congratulations, Sally. I’ll send down a present when I get home. Meanwhile…” He pulled a shiny medallion from his pocket, and tucked it into the infant’s bindings. The trinkets were part of a hoard he had discovered at the Fist, relics of a long-forgotten papal visit, metamorphosed into a successful gimmick since the mothers had begun looking for them. He kissed the baby’s head. Pity it was a girl. Maybe the next would be a boy.

As they strolled down the Corcorans’ path together, Denny Mallon said, “Andy will do nicely for General. But, consider, Liam, he will be, ex officio, a member of the council.”

Liam blinked. The idea hadn’t entered his mind. Andy McGrath would never have the nerve to argue with the Lord of Barley Cross, even though it was his stepson. Liam said, “So what do we do about it?”

Denny Mallon chuckled. “Ah, get along and ask him, son. We never educated Larry Desmond. We may have better luck with your da.”

Liam paused at the Corcorans’ gate. Seamus Gallagher pelted down the street towards them.

“Me lord–” Seamus gasped for breath.

“Take your time, man,” urged the doctor.

“Me lord—Finty Dooley is lying up at the Curry cottage with an arrow through his leg, and the Missus Dooley is gone!’’

The council assembled in Liam’s parlour. The new General sat stiffly at Larry Desmond’s end of the settee, eyeing askance the bottle of poteen on the carpet at the other.

Kevin Murphy, seated above the bottle, slopped a tot into a glass. “Here, Andy. Don’t act so formal. We’re very easy here. First names and all that if you’ve a mind. Knock this back and tell us what you’ve done about the Dooleys.”

General Andy McGrath held the glass like an unexploded bomb. He said, “I have sent a three-man patrol up Kirkogue with instructions to track down whoever abducted Claire Dooley, and if it’s possible, to bring her back.” He paused, forehead shiny. “I have also sent a couple of lads with a litter to bring Finty down. They’ll have to go slow coming back, but I expect them here inside the half hour.”

Denny Mallon clapped. “Good man! Will they be giving us a shout when they arrive?”

The General nodded. “I told them to report straight to the guard at the gate.”

Celia Larkin put down her knitting. “Why only three men to track those villains, Andy?”

The General studied his glass for a moment. “Well, Celia, those raiders didn’t try to kill Finty. An arrow through the leg shouldn’t be fatal. I guess they just wanted to run off with his wife. Now my men are armed with automatic rifles, and they’ve plenty of bullets. No bow-and-arrow outfit could stand up to them. But I’ve told them to report back without engaging if they find themselves seriously outnumbered.”

Kevin Murphy thumped the settee. “Can’t fault the logic, Gineral.”

“Thank you.” Andy McGrath turned gravely towards Liam. “Are my dispositions satisfactory to the Master?”

Liam bit off a tart response. Liquor always had a regrettable effect on the vet’s tongue. Andy would have to learn to discount it. He turned to his stepfather, “Have your men enough food with them?”

Andy McGrath came to attention, still seated. “Four days’ supply, sir. Plus fodder for their horses.”

Horses, too? Liam glowed inside. And all fixed up within half an hour of being appointed! Maybe they had made a good choice in Andy. He said, gravely, “Thank you, General. Will you keep me informed of progress?”

Andy McGrath relaxed a hair. “As soon as I have something to report, sir.”

Liam scanned the room. “Anything else?”

Denny Mallon cleared his throat. “There’s this matter of Father Con–”

Celia Larkin interrupted sharply. “There is nothing we can do about that.”

The doctor raised a hand. “Let me speak, Celia. Father Con is getting old. I don’t count on us having him much longer. Young Adrian Walsh has been helping him—in church as well as in the presbytery. The lad is keen. I wouldn’t mind him being our next shepherd. He could start taking over from Father Con–”

The schoolmistress’s voice was icy. “There is no way Father Con can make Adrian Walsh into a priest. That is a bishop’s job.”

Liam held his tongue. So far, but no farther! Just let young Adrian get himself a wife, and Liam McGrath would make a father of him!

The doctor stared at the schoolmistress, hands spread. “But in an emergency?”

Celia Larkin’s voice rose higher. “What emergency? We still have Father Con with us, haven’t we? Tom O’Connor is making him a wheelchair. I have the children running his errands. We can go to him for a while, instead of him coming to us.”

Kevin Murphy said, “What Dinny means is that maybe the good Lord would overlook a small infraction–”

Celia Larkin’s voice became painfully shrill. “You’ve been listening to that celidh-dancing set, haven’t you? Well you just tell them that we don’t make the rules. And if there are any infractions, we won’t be making them either. If, eventually, we have to do without Father Con, then that is just what we shall do.”

“Moreover,” Liam interjected, feeling a little diplomacy was in order, “bearing our current surplus of girls in mind, we can’t afford to let young Adrian stay celibate. He should get married as soon as he’s old enough. Unless–” Liam turned to the schoolmistress. “Do you think Father Con might permit us a married clergy? I believe they used to have them in Europe.”

Celia Larkin snorted like a horse. “Those priests that got a dispensation were married before they took Holy Orders—and they never afterwards lived with their wives.”

Kevin Murphy wagged his head in mock distress. “Such a sad waste!”

Celia Larkin glared at him. “And Father Con hasn’t the authority to give that sort of dispensation either!”

Doctor Denny Mallon sighed. “No further business, me lord.”

“In that case–” Liam began.

The door behind him opened. His servant, Michael, sidled in. The man bowed to the company. “Word from the gate, sirs and madame. They have Finty Dooley below on a litter.”

Fintan Dooley winced as the doctor drew a stitch tight. Kevin Murphy sloshed more poteen into Finty’s cup. “Swally that down, lad, and ye won’t feel a damn thing.”

Finty said, “The pain ain’t so bad, Kevin. Me whole leg is gone numb, anyway.”

Andy McGrath leaned over the table. “Did you see any of them?”

Finty winced as the needle again punctured his flesh. “Sure, there was three or four of them, Andy. One of the buggers kicked at me door while the others hid out of sight. When I came out a young felly with a ginger beard put the bolt through me pin.”

The words “young fellow” rang in Liam’s head. “How young was he?” he demanded.

“Eighteen—nineteen?” Finty shrugged. “I reckon none of them was over twenty. If only I could have reached me shotgun–”

Liam met the doctor’s gaze over Finty’s head. Eighteen? Nineteen? Liam was twenty-five. And, like the rest of Barley Cross’s younger generation, he had been sired by the village’s previous ruler. Denny Mallon’s mouth shaped a word. “How?”

Liam turned back to Finty. “You sure about their ages?”

Finty groaned. “Would I tell ye a lie, me lord?”

Liam shivered with hope. Was there another village like Barley Cross? A village with someone capable of fathering children? The itch to find another to share his burden became an overwhelming desire. He gripped the doctor’s shoulder. “Denny—what if they’ve got their own O’Meara?”

Denny Mallon had gone pale. He put down his needle, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. “Dear God,” he muttered. “Let it be so.”

Kevin Murphy, refilling Finty’s glass, added, “Amen.”

After Finty was put, singing, to bed, the council reconvened.

“We mustn’t hurt any of those young men,” Celia Larkin declared. “Their lives are too valuable. Someone should go after that patrol of yours, Andy, and tell them so.”

Kevin Murphy’s eyes gleamed. “You mean it’s okay to pot old men like Finty, but not young rascals who’d put a bolt through ye? Sure, that’s a quare old point of view.”

General McGrath got to his feet. “With your permission, sir. I’ll despatch a messenger with fresh orders.”

Before Liam could approve, the vet interrupted. “What kind of orders, Andy?”

Andy McGrath turned fractionally towards the other end of the settee. “To refrain from attacking, whatever the provocation. To keep out of sight. To trail the raiders to their base. And to report back here when they know where that base is.”

Liam let it go. Andy could be trusted to make the right moves. But steps had to be taken to contact this other village—steps the council would want to discuss and argue about. And, on this subject, Liam wanted no argument. If there was a fertile male living, anywhere, Liam wanted to find him. And, if necessary, Denny, Kevin and Celia would have to be stampeded. He said, “Orders approved. General. And here are a few more. I want half a dozen of our marriageable young ladies informed that they have three days to fix up their trousseaux and be ready to travel. I want the biggest cart you can find converted into a mobile home with enough bedrooms for the brides, myself and a chaperone. I want an escort of troopers, armed with automatic weapons. And I want a fancy rig-out made for myself and my two children—something royalty might wear, velvet, lace and stuff—can I leave that to you, Celia?”

They stared at him as if he had gone mad.

He stared back, offering no excuses. This plan was not subject to their veto, whatever they might think.

Celia Larkin said, hesitant, “Velvet, Liam?”

He glared at her. “Cut up my curtains if you have to.”

“Timber for something that big?’’ mumbled Kevin Murphy.

Liam swung his glare onto the vet. So timber was scarce in Connemara? “Pull a house down for it. There’s plenty empty.”

“What if we can’t find six girls willing to make a trip with you?” Denny Mallon queried.

Liam smiled grimly. “Just mention there might be a husband for each of them at the end of the journey. They’ll be willing enough.”

“You are planning an expedition?” the doctor prompted.

Liam hid his relief. That was the argument finished. He said, “We have to make friends with the people who raided the Dooleys. We can’t afford to have them as enemies.” He paused. “What if all their menfolk are fertile?”

Kevin Murphy looked into his glass. “Christ—I’d tempt a few of them to immigrate to Barley Cross!”

Denny Mallon grunted. “’Twould be a fine thing for our future.”

Liam pounced. “So it’s worth any effort we make. And this expedition might pull it off. I want Celia along to look after the girls. Andy to command the escort. You and Kevin stay here, in charge.”

Kevin Murphy snorted. “An armed escort and Celia? That don’t sound very friendly to me.”

Liam blessed him for the joke. The vet could be thorny over anything not to his liking. He said, “We have to be able to look after ourselves in case they don’t feel like being friends with us. But I think Andy summed them up right—those lads were looking for wives.”

The vet pulled his lip. “Reckon I go along with that, me lord. We must make an attempt to fraternise with them. I’ll sort out a matched team to pull this mobile house for ye. Praise be we’re over the ploughing.”

Doctor Denny thumbed the bowl of his empty pipe, eyes reflective. “I am not keen on your children going.”

Liam felt a stab of guilt. Trust Denny to pinpoint his weak spot. But the presence of two genuine children might just swing the deal he planned. And who else’s kids dared he risk? He said, “Nor me, Denny. But they’re living proof of what we can offer.”

“You envisage exchanging your services for theirs?”

“Something like that. If they’ve only one stag they’ll be just as keen for fresh blood as we are.”

“And if they’ve more than one?”

“I’ve got the girls.”

The doctor shrugged. “I’m glad Eileen is your wife, and not mine.”

Liam winced. He could imagine Eileen’s only too predictable reaction to his taking the children on an expedition. He said ruefully, “That’s what you pay me for, isn’t it?”

Doctor Denny sighed. “God help us all! Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it.”

Celia Larkin sent her chair skating backwards. “You men! You are all the same! You need guts. If Liam’s plan will help the village, it’s our duty to back him up.”

Liam saw his stepfather flinch. The Larkin contempt was a novel experience for the General. Andy McGrath said stiffly, “I’ll get the carpenters on the job immediately, sir. And trust me, you’ll have an escort fit for a prince.”

Liam got up. He’d had enough discussion. “That was the general idea, Andy. With luck, we’ll overawe these raiders.”

Kevin Murphy placed his bottle of poteen, untouched, on the table. “By Christ, Liam—you might do just that!”

The mobile home was ready in four days. On the first day Eileen had refused to speak to Liam. On the second he had retaliated with a similar silence. On the third she had demanded to be allowed to join the expedition, and Liam had ordered a larger bedroom. On the fourth day Tom O’Connor put his final nail into the woodwork and let loose the painters. And in the evening Liam surveyed the great green and white contraption which somehow reminded him of a picture of Noah’s Ark once seen in a schoolbook.

It was mind-boggling. Cantilevered out on each side of the cart until the wheels were invisible; a row of glazed and curtained windows along each wall; a red-tiled, peaked roof with a stove-pipe chimney—nothing like it could ever have been seen in Connemara before. Was this what he had ordered them to build? Six horses would hardly stir it!

Liam choked on a laugh. God bless Andy McGrath’s carpenters! If this didn’t overawe the raiders’ people, nothing would.

General McGrath’s scouts returned on the fifth day, and Liam learned where he was going.

“Achill Island?” mused Denny Mallon. “’Tis a bleak and draughty place.”

“And it’ll take a week to get there with your pantechnicon,” the vet commented. “Presuming you even get it through the mountains.”

Liam watched Michael carefully folding his new outfit. He said, “We’ll manage the mountains, Kevin. And Achill won’t run away.”

Achill Island is reached via a bridge over the Atlantic. At the sight of the viaduct spanning the Sound, Liam brought his caravanserai to a halt. The bridge appeared unguarded, but then that would be how the Achill Islanders hoped it would appear. Magnificent in his parlour curtains, Liam flung his reins to General McGrath and slid from his horse. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’m going ahead with the kids. It’s worth the risk if it saves us being ambushed.”

Andy McGrath’s face grew hard. Liam was forgetting that the kids were also his grandchildren. He said, “Liam–”

Liam’s mouth set in a firm line. “Please… da?”

The General passed Liam’s reins to a nearby trooper. He swung his horse’s head ’round. “I’d better get them for you.”

The Lord of Barley Cross approached the bridge to Achill in dead silence. His heart was in his mouth, and a trusting infant in each hand. Behind him, his cohorts stood anxious.

A flash of sunlit metal at the far end of the bridge caught his eye. Someone flexing a bow? He called loudly. “Would you shoot at children, then?”

A wild-looking youth wearing a sealskin jacket and trews stepped into sight, bow cocked. He shouted back, “Well, halt—and state yer business!”

Liam halted. He noted that the youth was clean-shaven. At least he wasn’t the trigger-happy hooligan who had pinked Finty Dooley. He called, “I’ve come to trade.”

“What sort of trade?”

“Women—seeing as you are short of them.”

The youth’s face grew suspicious. “What do you know about us being short of women?”

“Enough to offer you a deal.”

The voice was still wary, but the bow was lowered. “What kind of a deal?”

He was hooked. Liam opened his arms wide. “Let me talk to your leader. I’m not armed.”

“And what’s in yonder wagon?”

Liam grinned. “My trade goods—with an escort.”

The youth beckoned a number of ruffians out of concealment, and conferred with them. Then he called, “You and the kids can come over, but the rest of your mob, and that—” He indicated the Barley Cross juggernaut. “—stays on the far side of the bridge.”

Liam shrugged. Inwardly he was not displeased. He didn’t want Andy and Celia fussing around until he’d had a chance to sort things out with the youth’s boss. He turned to face his troops, making “stay where you are” gestures. Then, clutching his children’s hands, he went to meet his fate.

There was a pony and trap concealed in the bushes beyond the bridge. The youth motioned Liam and the children into it. One of his men climbed onto the driver’s seat. They set off, the first youth following on horseback.

They drove no more than a mile before turning in at a stone gateway. A gravel drive brought them to the forecourt of a house. The trap halted. Liam saw figures in brown habits working in the gardens around the house, tonsured heads bent over the soil. He said to the driver of the trap, “Is your leader a monk?”

The youth ignored him. The other vaulted from his horse, and entered the house. He reappeared with a tall, elderly man who wore an ankle-length purple habit. A crucifix hung down on his breast. A purple biretta perched on his head.

Liam had seen pictures of bishops. He knew what to do. He got down from the trap, bent a knee, and kissed the ring on the man’s gnarled finger. “My lord,” he said.

“Get up, son,” responded the man. “And call me Zbigniev.”

The man didn’t sound like a foreigner. “You are a bishop?” Liam asked, wondering if he had made some mistake.

“For longer than I care to remember,” Zbigniev answered. “But not of your country, my son. The riots long ago caught me here on a fishing holiday, and I was never able to go home. Now, tell me what you want.”

Liam tugged at his velvet tunic, wondering if he looked as big a fool as he felt. This was no Achill Island yokel to be dazzled by a show of finery. Any prelate whose conscience permitted him to lead a band of raiders wouldn’t impress easily. He said, “I’m Liam McGrath, the Lord of the village your men visited last week. I have come to take Missus Dooley back home.”

“Missus?” Zbigniev’s intonation mimicked Liam’s. He swung on the two youths. “The woman you took was married?”

“Is married,” Liam corrected. “We patched her old man up.”

Liam’s captor shifted diffidently. “We didn’t know, yer grace. And there wasn’t much time for discussion.”

Zbigniev frowned. “This is not a matter for levity, Dominic. We may be tragically short of women, but–”

The bishop’s voice faltered. His mouth opened like a cod on a slab. His eyes were fixed on the children in the trap. He turned enquiringly to Liam. “How?”

“Mine, your grace. Like you, we still produce offspring in Barley Cross.”

Zbigniev ignored his answer. He rushed towards the trap, arms outstretched to embrace the two infants. “Glory to God! Are they not a wonderful sight!” He stood, arms ’round them. “Surely, Liam, you did not bring these precious mites along just to impress me?”

Liam lowered his gaze. The bishop’s guess was too close to the truth for a straight “yes” or “no.” He said, “I wanted to demonstrate our peaceful intentions, my lord. I have soldiers back there, but they are only to protect my—er—merchandise.”

“And what is your merchandise?”

Liam took a breath. Zbigniev might have progressive ideas about banditry and still hold old-fashioned notions on sex. But the nettle had to be grasped. He said bluntly, “I have six young ladies back there. Each willing to marry one of your young men—on condition.”

“Oh? Pray continue. What condition?”

Was the bishop hiding a smile? Liam rushed on. “First. I want Claire Dooley back. Second–” Liam hesitated. This was a bishop he was propositioning. It came out in a rush. “Second, I want six rapes committed in Barley Cross.”

Zbigniev frowned. “Rapes? That is a harsh word, my son.”

Liam stood his ground. “You may describe it how you like, my lord. But I want six pregnancies in exchange for six wives.”

Zbigniev raised his eyebrows. “And how may one guarantee even one pregnancy?”

Liam flushed. “You know what I mean, my lord. As far as I know, apart from your village and mine, this whole country is childless. I know where Barley Cross’s children come from. And I take it that you are aware how it is managed in yours. I’m offering you a straight swap—six pregnancies for six brides.”

Reluctantly Zbigniev released his hold on Liam’s children. He turned a regretful face. “My son, I’m afraid you are a little too late with your proposal.”

Too late? They had come with the minimum of delay.

Zbigniev bowed his head. “Rory MacCormick perished at sea eighteen years ago. He was the last man on Achill to father children.”

Liam felt his hopes drain away. What rotten luck! A generation too late! There could be no deal done with the bishop. And no fresh blood in Barley Cross—unless? He faced the bishop squarely. “Is there a chance any of your young men might have inherited their father’s fertility?”

Zbigniev shook his head. “I have no proof, so far, my son. Indeed, I can only guess at which of our youths has Rory for a father. Not all matters are confided to the clergy, you know. But we have almost a dozen unwed young men. Any one of them might be the man you need.”

Liam toed the gravel, mind churning. Fat chance of another miracle like him! Still, he had promised to find husbands for his maidens. He said, “Half a deal is better than no deal at all, my lord. With your permission, I’ll bring on my dancing girls.”

They parked the juggernaut in the centre of the village at the foot of Slievemore. Surf boomed against the nearby cliffs. Seabirds shrieked. The sun shone. Barley Cross and Achill Island citizens mingled under the beaming gaze of Bishop Zbigniev. Claire Dooley was produced, unharmed, and given into the care of Eileen McGrath and Celia Larkin. The woman clutched at them as though they were lost relatives. “How’s Finty?” she demanded.

“Och, he’ll live,” Celia responded. “Doctor Denny put a few tucks into his hide.” She dropped a knee to Zbigniev. “Your grace, I suggest you get your eligible bachelors into our caravan, and we let them socialise with our young ladies. Those who don’t come out, you can marry.”

Liam recalled his droit du seigneur, and decided it would be an inappropriate time to bring it up. Instead he went looking for his stepfather. The guards on the juggernaut would need orders to allow Achill Island bachelors entry.

Zbigniev stared hard at Celia. “And you are?”

“Celia Larkin, schoolmistress and chaperone.”

Zbigniev nodded sagely. “And you were privy to Liam’s plan?”

She coloured. “I was, your grace. And I make no apology. If the good lord had not wanted us to survive, he wouldn’t have let us even think up the idea.”

Zbigniev winced. “Such charming sophistry. I am sorry there is no way I can make up for our inability to strike a bargain.”

Celia Larkin smiled grimly. “Oh but there is a way, my lord…”

Later, Liam said to Dominic, “We’ve spare cottages in Barley Cross if you want to come back with us. But we’ve little use for fishermen or seal hunters. And any of your spare bachelors can visit us if they fancy their chances of getting a wife. But there are no more girls willing to leave the village.”

Dominic slid an arm around a blushing Kathleen Mulroon. “We’ll be returning with you, me lord.” He grinned slyly. “We might even insist on ye having yer droyt doo seenyer if we don’t have no luck on our own.”

The council sat again in the Master’s parlour.

Kevin Murphy swirled poteen in his glass. “’Twas a valiant try, Liam. Pity we didn’t think of it eighteen years back.”

“Och—times were different then.” Denny Mallon stuffed dried grass into his pipe bowl. “Sure, two miles out of the village was a war zone, then. We’d never have risked the journey.”

“And ’twasn’t all a dead loss,” Andy McGrath pointed out. “We got four new citizens, and each of them has already volunteered for Fist duty.”

Liam said, “There’s just a faint hope we might have another O’Meara among them.”

The vet tipped poteen recklessly down his throat. “I’d be glad if we have. This village is getting just a wee bit too inbred.”

Celia Larkin glowered over her tea cup. “No harm if the stock is good. Think of racehorses.”

Kevin Murphy snorted. “It’s people we’re raising, Celia—not bloodstock!”

She grinned triumphantly. “I’m glad you’ve reminded me.” She jerked the tasseiled rope which summoned Michael.

The servant appeared. “More tay, is it, Miss Larkin?”

“No, Michael. Bring in the lad.”

Michael shuffled out, to reappear leading a blushing Adrian Walsh. The boy must have been waiting in the yard. He wore a heavy jacket, and a muffler swaddled his neck.

Celia Larkin cooed at him. “Tell the gentlemen what happened to you on Achill.”

Liam blinked. Adrian Walsh on Achill? That was news!

The schoolmistress seemed to read his thoughts. “Do you think I’d leave him here at the mercies of those two?” She nodded at the doctor and the vet. “God knows what follies they’d be preaching at him.” She turned to the youth. “Go on—speak up, Adrian!”

Adrian began hesitantly. “I—Miss Larkin smuggled me onto the cart-house the night before it left for Achill. I stayed in her bedroom. When we got to Achill, she brought me out to meet the bishop felly. He made me lay face down on the ground. Then he put his hands on me head.”

“Who did this to ye?” Kevin Murphy demanded.

“The felly with the purple robe and the crucifix.”

“And for why would he do all that?” pursued the vet.

“Show him, Adrian,” Celia Larkin instructed.

Adrian Walsh opened his coat and pulled off his scarf, revealing a frayed and over-large dog collar encircling his scrawny neck.

Doctor Mallon dropped his pipe. “Holy Mother of God—what have they done at you, son?”

Celia Larkin smirked. “Bishop Zbigniev ordained him. And he’s promised to ordain any more lads I send.”

Kevin Murphy groaned. “Jasus! Now we’ll be overrun with the clergy!”

Celia Larkin gave him a basilisk stare. “Any more remarks like that and I might send girls instead!”

The vet waved his glass wildly. “Boy priests! Sure, I know we were hoping Adrian could take over in time, but this is too much. We’re slipping back to the Middle Ages. Does your bishop, by any chance, wear chain mail and carry a sword?”

“Adrian!” Denny Mallon intervened. “You are scarcely fourteen years old. Do you think you’ll be able to do Father Con’s job in Barley Cross?”

The boy turned grave eyes on the doctor. “Not yet, Mister Mallon. But Father Con can teach me what I need to know. And I am legally ordained. So—when he gets too old…” The lad fell silent.

Liam listened. The boy was no fool. Celia Larkin, it seemed, could teach the Master a trick or two. No arguing over a fait accompli. And neither Denny, nor Kevin, nor his stepfather would have had the initiative to talk Zbigniev into ordaining the lad. He smiled with satisfaction. Let Celia have her triumph. No point in spoiling it with sour grapes. He smiled with wicked joy. “I reckon Adrian will manage if we give him enough time.”

Then he stood, dismissing them and any further argument.

Finty Dooley was waiting in the hall. Finty had a bandaged leg and leaned on a stick. He said, “Just wanted to say thank ye, me lord, for getting me old woman back.”

Liam flushed with pleasure. Gratitude was rare, and pleasant to experience. He said, “Sure, Finty, I was only doing my duty.”

Finty fiddled with his cap. “Just the same, me lord. Missus Dooley is grateful to be out of the clutches of them crazy Achill lads and their fake bishop,”

Liam’s heart missed a beat. He stared cautiously around. Adrian and the councillors had dispersed. No one but him could have heard Finty’s remark. He leaned forward and whispered. “Fake bishop?”

Finty looked embarrassed. “Sure, ’tis what they told the missus. He’s a failed priest what came up from Blarney early on in the troubles. He’s no more a foreigner than I am. They took him in at the monastery. They reckon he’s harmless, apart from the delusions he has. But them Achill lads pretend he runs the village. They let him think he’s their leader.”

Liam said quickly, “Has Missus Dooley said anything about this to anybody else?”

Finty squirmed. “Sure, she didn’t like to open her mouth, sir. Not with Miss Celia being so taken with the felly.”

Liam grabbed a coat from the hallstand. He gripped Finty’s arm none too gently. “Man, we’re going for a walk up Kirkogue. I want a chat with your missus. Then I’ll have to find that lad Dominic and his pals.”

Limping fast to keep up with the Master, Finty gasped, “What’s the hurry, me lord?”

Liam’s face was pale. Hurry wasn’t the word. At that moment he could have done with being in five places at once. He said, “Finty, no one must ever find out what you’ve just told me. Neither from you nor your wife. Finty—so help me—if you breathe a word to anyone, I’ll have you fired out of the cannon of that tank which stands in front of Fist—and the same goes for Missus Dooley.”

Finty’s jaw dropped. “What—what’s the matter, me lord?”

Liam halted to give Finty his undivided attention. “Listen, man. That fellow Zbigniev was a genuine bishop up to five minutes ago. Well, as far as I’m concerned, he still is a bishop. He made young Walsh into a priest for us, and Adrian is going to stay made. Those lads from Achill can learn to keep their mouths shut, or face my displeasure. In a year or two, when Father Con is gone, Barley Cross citizens will be looking for someone to solemnise their marriages, hear their confessions, visit their sick, christen their children, say their Masses and bury their dead. Well, by God, I’m going to see that Father Adrian Walsh is here to do it for them. And, if the good Lord don’t agree, he can take it out of my hide.”

Liam tramped on. Finty Dooley panted after him, overawed by the Master’s vehemence. Liam had already forgotten him. The Lord of Barley Cross was busy with his thoughts. His village had had a tumultuous past. It looked as though it could expect a stormy future!

Editor’s Introduction to:

Ford o’ Kabul River

Rudyard Kipling

The camaraderie of the warrior is fragile, for it is the destiny of warriors that one will live and another die. Kipling tells of such an incident in a land far away. Today’s soldiers do not cross the Kabul River on horseback; but there remain hazards, for the British were not the last invaders that the hardy mujahadeen of Afghanistan have faced.

Ford o’ Kabul River

Rudyard Kipling

KABUL town’s by Kabul river—
Blow the trumpet, draw the sword—
There I lef’ my mate for ever.
Wet an’ drippin’ by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river.
Ford O’ Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river up and brimmin’, an’ there’s ‘arf a squadron swimmin’
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town’s a blasted place—
Blow the trumpet, draw the sword—
’Strewth I shan’t forget ’is face
Wet an’ drippin’ by the ford!
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river.
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
Keep the crossing-stakes beside you, an’ they will surely guide you
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town is sun and dust—
Blow the trumpet, draw the sword—
I’d ha’ sooner drownded fust
’Stead of ’im beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
You can ’ear the ’orses threshin’; you can ’ear the men a-splashin’,
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town was ours to take—
Blow the trumpet, draw the sword—
I’d ha’ left it for ’is sake—
’Im that left me by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river.
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
It’s none so bloomin’ dry there; ain’t you never comin’ nigh there,
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark?

Kabul town’ll go to hell—
Blow the trumpet, draw the sword—
’Fore I see him ’live an’ well—
’Im the best beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
Gawd ’elp ’em if they blunder, for their boots’ll pull ’em under,
By the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Turn your ’orse from Kabul town—
Blow the trumpet, draw the sword—
’Im an’ ’arf my troop is down,
Down and drownded by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river low an’ fallin’, but it ain’t no use a-callin’
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!

Editor’s Introduction to:

Fighting Back

Douglas J. Greenlaw and Robert Gleason

In order for evil to triumph, it is sufficient that good men do nothing.

—Edmund Burke

Terrorism seems a characteristic of the age, and for all our power there is seldom anything the United States armed forces can do—for unlike warriors, the terrorists strike from the shadows and creep back into their holes. They do not fight armed warriors; they prey upon the innocent and helpless.

Sometimes the warriors are given an opportunity. As I write this, US Navy aircraft have just forced down an airliner conveying PLO pirates; and the entire nation is cheering.

Alas, such opportunities are rare. I have often thought that one remedy to terrorism might be to require every experienced combat arms officer of the United States to carry, on and off duty, a loaded pistol. Placing ten thousand armed warriors in ships, airplanes, and airports would make life far more difficult for terrorists and common criminals alike.

International terrorists are not the only enemies civilization faces. Some need not be imported; they spring up unwanted from within our society. They are no less dangerous to our society than would-be barbarian invaders.

It is far too seldom that they meet genuine warriors…

Fighting Back

Douglas J. Greenlaw and Robert Gleason

When most people think of TV executives, they flash straight to Robert Duvall in Network. In the film, Duvall comes across as the quintessential corporate wheeler-dealer, a button-down cut-throat with the business ethics of a hammerhead shark.

This image of the media VP is, of course, restricted to the skyscraper world of flashing computers and corner-office conspiracies. The Duvall character is a creature of boardroom maneuverings, expense account lunches and sleek stretch limos. We can’t quite picture him even taking a subway, let alone chasing mad-dog muggers through those labyrinthine depths. We just can’t visualize the Bill Paleys or General Sarnoffs of this world fullbacking into the midtown rush hour crowds, charging through Grand Central’s crush, attacking the subway steps, high-hurdling the turnstiles like Edwin Moses and coldcocking the kill-crazed desperado who’d just beaten up an old lady and snatched her purse.

Nonetheless, that is precisely what a New York television executive did not so long ago. His name is Douglas Greenlaw, and he is the Vice President, Sales, of the CBN Cable Network, the third largest cable network in this country. Recently, he witnessed an elderly woman being mugged on 42nd Street in New York City. He saw her get her ankle and nose broken, a cheekbone cracked and two teeth knocked out. Greenlaw, who also received silver and bronze stars in Vietnam, gave chase. He eventually caught and decked the mugger in the New York subways.

Greenlaw, for his efforts, had a piece done on him in the New York Daily News. They also gave him a plaque and one thousand dollars which he promptly donated to a fund for police officers’ widows and orphans.

The mugger, for his efforts, was sent to prison.

When you visit Greenlaw at CBN Cable you find that at age 39, he has an easy-going manner and an engaging smile. He seems surprisingly fit for a New York businessman. Greenlaw comes across as reserved, self-effacing, and when I get down to asking him why he gave pursuit to a violent criminal, he is clearly embarrassed by the question.

“People ask me that, and I never know what to say. We do things because we can do them. In my case, I played the typical high school sports, worked in tractor factories and the Gary, Indiana steel mills while getting through Indiana University, and I saw action in Vietnam—though, come to think of it, that should have discouraged rather than encouraged me. In any event, when I went after him, I had a reasonable expectation of catching him, which is probably why I did it.”

I’m curious about ’Nam and ask Greenlaw to expand… “I was in Vietnam for what seemed like an eternity but in fact was there only nine months out of a year tour of duty. I was wounded three times. The first one was minor, a slash on my forearm from a ricochet that seemed to come from nowhere during a sniper attack… I didn’t report it because it is supposedly bad luck to receive Purple Hearts for minor injuries… The second wound was more serious, a rifle shot to the leg. I mended in an ‘in country’ hospital in Danang for four weeks and was sent back to command a rifle company in the mountains in the north near the DMZ. The third and most devastating wound was caused by a booby-trap. A 155mm artillery shell was trip-wired and hung from a bamboo tree, head high. It killed three men in front of me and one behind. There were serious wounds to the neck, face, legs, buttocks and I had my left arm pinned to my chest with a sliver of the bamboo tree about the size of an arrow.”

I asked Greenlaw if he picked up his medals, having heard that some of the Vietnam veterans never bothered. He laughed. “Oh, there wasn’t much chance of getting out of that. They had me in the hospital for nine months. I got them lying down.”

When I asked him what they were, he hesitated, then said: “Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts… but that was a long time ago.”

I asked Doug if he’d take a crack at describing his pursuit of the mugger. He sent it to me the next day, and I am pleased to note his touch is light.

The way most of us were raised, if we saw someone in trouble, we thought we were supposed to help. Of course, nowadays a lot of people will tell you this isn’t very smart. They will say that it’s wiser to look away, walk away, or better still, run away. For whatever it’s worth, I recently had a chance to reexamine this old “Good Samaritan” philosophy.

I was walking up 42nd Street toward the CBN offices in New York City, when I witnessed a crime. A young man grabbed an old lady’s handbag, knocked her down, kicked her in the face and ran off.

I suppose everyone asks themselves how they should react in that sort of situation. For some unknown reason the crowd on 42nd Street reacted by doing nothing, and for equally mysterious reasons, I took off after the mugger.

In all honesty, I can’t say why I did it. At the time I took off after him, my mind was blank. I just did it. One minute I was standing there on the street watching this young man kick a helpless old woman in the face, and the next minute my legs were pumping. I was racing after him toward Grand Central Station, screaming at the top of my lungs: “STOP, THIEF!”

In retrospect, I wish I could say I’d had a rational dialogue with myself first—stuff about good and evil, God and man—then done the right thing. But there was none of that. In fact, as he cut across 42nd, darting in and out of the horn-honking, brake-screeching, skidding, swerving trucks, buses and cabs, the only thoughts registering in my brain were: “You’re crazy. You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re going to be 40 next year. You’re too old for this stuff.” And most distressing of all was the thought: “What are you going to do with him if you CATCH him?”

But still, there I was, charging into the middle of 42nd Street, banging off bumpers, dodging rear fenders, ears pounding with horn blasts, brake screeches and irate screams. Finally, after failing to halt the west-bound traffic on the opposite side, I ended up careening belly-down across the hood of a candy-apple red Olds Cutlass Supreme, and falling face-first across the sidewalk in front of Grand Central. I looked up from the curb just in time to see the mugger duck into the station and race toward the subway.

Grand Central during lunch hour is a frenzied hive of activity. People are visiting its stores, cutting through its passageways to save time, getting on and off trains. In short, those packed crowds do not make for French Connection-style chase scenes… which was probably all that enabled me to keep up with him. Fifteen years ago, it was my fate to slog through the rice paddies of Vietnam; and there a tree mine once had the bad judgment not only to wipe out one of my squads but to blow away half my knee in the process.

So it was just as well that Grand Central was packed. I’m not sure I was up to a serious foot-race. It was all I could do to stumble along fifty or so feet behind the man, shoving my way through the crowd, screaming those dread words at the top of my gasping lungs: “Stop, thief!”

And then it happened.

The crowd parted, and the mugger was in the clear, racing toward the turnstiles. Now that he was in the open again, he was really able to turn on the high speed, while all I was able to turn on were more complaints from my knee and from the irate passers-by whom I jostled, shoved and grumped at. Even worse, when I got through the crowd, I saw him already slamming through the “Do Not Enter” gate.

I don’t know what came over me.

Maybe I thought I was a high school senior playing corner linebacker in the final play-offs. Or maybe I thought that sadistic DI I’d had in OCS was still behind me, lapping me on the quarter-mile Fort Benning track, shouting monstrously terrifying threats. Or maybe I thought my old nemesis, that tree mine, was once again in close pursuit. Whatever it was, the next thing I knew I was kicking out across the subway entrance, vaulting the turnstiles at a dead-run and charging down those steps three at a time. I hit the platform just as the mugger cut through a closing subway door which I got my hand into a split-second before it slammed shut.

Standing there, forcing the door back open, I stared down at the mugger who was now collapsed on the floor, shaking his head in disgust.

Doubled over with exhaustion.

Too out of breath to really struggle.

The police came and got him. Afterward I picked the guy out of a line-up, so I guess justice has triumphed.

However, I was genuinely surprised at the comments from a few of my New York friends. For a couple of days I heard remarks such as: “What the hell did you do that for?” “You crazy or something?” “You know, you’re no kid anymore.” “You better watch that stuff.”

I’m sure that people meant well, but I still feel I did the right thing.

Even if, at the time, I seemed to be a minority of one.

So the week passed. By Friday night the comments had gotten to me, and when I got home I was a little put off. I told my wife about the reactions, and afterward I felt sorry for having said anything.

But later as my wife was putting our son to bed, I heard him ask her from his room: “Mommy, we’re not supposed to let bad things happen, are we?”

She said: “No, we’re not.”

I felt a lot better after that.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Victory

J. P. Boyd

As it was before, it will be again: weapons may win battles, but only warriors can win victory.

Victory

J. P. Boyd

The storm clouds were already moving in when Markham checked the ammunition belts and then dumped the maps onto the co-pilot’s seat beside him. Against the blue-green sky, so much denser than that of that now mythical world, the earth, one of the old obsolete training Zeppelins was circling above the base. Markham tried to tell himself that it was just another mission, that he was an experienced combat pilot and the target he was stalking was slow, fragile, and an easy mark, but he was still frightened. Nonetheless, he had pulled the harness around him and begun his pre-flight checklist when Adarian climbed up on the wing beside him.

“You don’t have to go. 341 Squadron is out searching for the reconnaissance plane already. This is a training wing. It’s not our job anymore.”

Markham’s eyes fell on Adarian’s left hand, which rested lightly on the lip of the cockpit. Three fingers were missing. Like Markham himself, Adarian had been posted to training after a long spell at the front, but he had earned his retirement honorably. Markham had simply been disgraced.

“I know why you want this one. Over a hundred missions, and not a single confirmed victory. But you have a job here. You’re the best instructor in the whole wing. Your squadron is always up before anyone else and stays in the air longer than any other. Your kids survive out there because of what you tell them. You want them to have to learn from the likes of Reggie?”

Markham abruptly dropped the clipboard, then retrieved it from between the rudder pedals. His old roommate, Reggie Tooms, had been one of the great pre-war pilots, a member of the Red Dragon stunt team, one of the two pilots on the first nonstop flight from Johanteim to Farl-on-the-Sea. Then he had looped too close to the ground and lost a leg. It was no secret to the wing commander or anybody else that he had a little kaz-wine in the morning, more at lunch, and a whole bottle in the evening. But he was a quiet drunk. With experienced men so short, he had to be risked. Making a tight turn over the Arashim Sea, his plane had collided with a cadet’s and both had died.

“The fighters have a long way to go, Rupert. They could easily miss him. If that plane reaches its mothership with its film, the whole coast can expect a major raid within weeks, and hundreds will die. Many of them will be civilians. The Karlans don’t yet know how weak our home defenses are. They can bring in their war zeps and drop four thousand tons of bombs in a single night.”

Adarian said nothing. Here in this thick, blue-green sky, the zeppelin was king, and heavier-than-air planes were little gnats that huffed and puffed through the dense air at slow speeds only a fraction of the speed of sound, and only a little faster than the steel-hulled monsters that floated serenely below them. As heavy as a sea-going destroyer, even a half-dreadnought or a cruiser could obliterate a city in a single raid if allowed to bomb uncontested. Until three months ago, the coast had been heavily defended, but the war out in the islands, in that giant archipelago where it had all begun, was not going well, and all reserves had to be thrown into a giant push to hang onto the mini-continent of Farsten. If the Karlans knew how thoroughly the coast had been stripped—

“Heavy weather’s rolling in. How will you find it?”

Markham shook his head. “I’ll need luck. But it’s a very big plane, even in the rain.”

He laid the clipboard down and started the engine. Adarian looked at him for a few moments and said nothing.

“Torpedo bombers like this don’t carry gun cameras. Even if you shoot it down, it will never be officially confirmed.”

Markham smiled. “I’ll know.” He then waved Adarian off the wing and shouted above the sound of the engine: “You’d better climb down.”

Adarian nodded, and started to go, then turned back and said, “Good luck, John.”

“You’ve been a good friend, Rupert.”

A few moments later, the big recon-bomber was in the air, carrying only a single pilot instead of the usual crew of three, and Markham disappeared into the overcast.

After he had set his course, Markham had a long time to think, surrounded only by the grey murk and drizzle. His final mission at the front, the one where he had so nearly died, was never far from his mind, and the images kept replaying themselves, over and over.

It had begun as a routine fighter sweep over the Arashim Sea, but they had stumbled upon rich treasure: a Karlan pocket carrier, badly damaged in an air battle over Farsten and left behind by the retreating van. While the squadron leader was calling in four-engined zeppelin destroyers from 518 Squadron, the carrier turned away from them towards the Karlan mainland and dropped its few remaining aircraft, hoping to sacrifice them to cover its own escape.

Lieutenant-Captain Graves had not been fooled. He had sent one flight top-side to shadow the airship for the zeppelin-destroyers and had taken the rest in to tangle with the Karlan heavier-than-air. A few fighters, half a dozen clumsy torpedo-bombers, and even a slow, long-endurance Osprey scout had fallen off the monorail in the zeppelin’s belly to offer themselves for the slaughter. Markham went in joyously, hoping to at last end his long drought—and Taisho had turned the wrong way and become separated from the rest of the flight.

In his defense, the boy had never been under fire before, but Markham knew that half of all losses occurred during a pilot’s first ten missions, and went after his lost lamb. As had happened half a dozen times before with other rookies, Markham found him and saved his life—but only at the price of firing from extreme long range, driving off Taisho’s attacker and in the process passing up an almost sure kill. Moments later, he saw how slowly the Karlan was climbing, sluggishly trying to regain enough height to rejoin the battle, and realized that the enemy must have been damaged in the battle over Farsten.

“Cover my back! I’ll get him.” Or die trying.

He very nearly had died. The Karlan was a veteran, and even in a damaged plane had managed to jink and weave enough to throw Markham’s aim off. Four short bursts and Markham had been rewarded only with the flash of a couple of shells exploding against the Karlan’s tail—and then his own windshield had exploded.

Markham had ignored the cardinal rule of dogfighting, so obsessed with his victim that he had become an easy mark for another enemy pilot. Half-blinded by his own blood, his instrument panel shattered, only his instincts and experience had kept his plane weaving, dodging—until a wild burst from Taisho had discouraged the Karlan, and Markham had been able to break away.

When he had managed to land his badly damaged plane, he stood beside it, his face covered with dried blood, numbly poking his fist through the hole in the wing. If the shell had hit the main spar, the whole wing would have come off, and he would have cartwheeled three thousand meters into the ocean.

“I’m sorry, Markham. I wanted to give you a little more time.” Still staring at his scarred aircraft, he had barely heard the wing commander’s words. “By rights, with your seniority you should have a squadron now, but who could follow a man who’s never shot down a single enemy plane? I’m posting you to a training squadron—for good.”

It had still not sunk in, not even when he was on the transport for the mainland. It was the forty-seventh consecutive mission that his flight had returned without a loss.

“Davidenko Main to Rec One. Where are you?”

The radio crackled with static, but wing commander Rolfe’s voice was still recognizable. Markham half smiled, feeling vaguely honored by his concern, and relayed his position.

“341 Squadron is still looking. He may turn south toward Gabila, the way the wind is running. Good luck!”

Markham acknowledged the message and signed off. He was a man with an obsession, but he was also the only pilot on the base who was fully sound of body. Because he had managed to complete a couple of years of the mathematics/ physics baccalaureate at Khenov University before the war had plucked him away, he was also that rarity: a fighter pilot who was a good navigator. The wing commander knew all this, and had not tried to talk him out of it when he had burst into Rolfe’s office, already in his flying suit, but as they waited in the outer office while the wing Met officer roughed out a quick forecast, Markham’s stigma, unspoken, had been much in their thoughts.

Sighing, Markham tried to make himself comfortable, a tall man forever cramped into cockpits of ungenerous size, and forced himself to think of happy memories. For a few minutes, he let his mind roam back to those days when he was a teenager hanging around the airport, finally learning to fly, in the forests and little farms of his native Adar. His home province was deep in the interior of the continent, a region devoid of large cities, and the war had left it little changed, although he had not actually seen it in nearly four years. Then, he remembered his first meeting with Adarian.

The training zeppelin Audacious was tired and slow, one of the last to have a canvas outer hull stretched taut over a duraluminum frame. She was far too fragile for the long-range jousting of modern airships, and so her turrets had been stripped and her hangar enlarged to accommodate the Piradot fighters, now retired from the front themselves, that were used for advance training.

The cadets learned to fly in two-seat trainers with hostilities-only instructors drafted from civilian flying clubs, including a couple of women. Pilots with actual combat experience were too precious to waste on routine flying, but instead gave advanced tactics-and-gunnery training after the cadets had soloed and graduated to single-seaters of their own. In that sense, Markham, Adarian, and Tooms were privileged characters, idolized by the young cubs they taught. Markham did not feel very privileged.

In theory, he was supposed to mess with the other officers in the zeppelin’s wardroom, but he no longer felt very hungry. Usually, he hid out at lunchtime in the auxiliary control room in the lower tail-fin of the airship, reading one of the innumerable books he checked out of the village library on his weekend visits off the base while his brother instructors were having a few in the pub.

The tail-fin was rather cramped—it had been adapted to its secondary role merely by fitting a narrow windshield with a hundred and eighty degree field of vision across a slit in the leading edge of the canvas and duraluminum framing, with a rudder wheel mounted just under the glass and the elevator wheel within easy reach to the right. A bank of electric ballast toggles hung overhead and there were three gauges—height, airspeed, and simple compass—mounted on a sheet of plywood just below the windshield. The petty officers who manned it—but only in emergencies—were supposed to control the ship standing up, so Markham had to sit uncomfortably, with his back against the perforated girder that was the main spine of the fin.

“Oh!” Adarian was almost as startled as Markham, who instinctively shut his book and looked guilty.

“Sorry, old man. I’m new on the ship and I didn’t know–”

“That’s all right.” Stiffly, Markham clambered to his feet and put out his hand. Noticing the stylized wings of a heavier-than-air pilot and the two rings of a Senior Lieutenant, he said, “The other instructors are having lunch in the wardroom. It’s–”

“No, that’s all right.” The other man smiled. “My medicine upsets my stomach, and I can’t eat for a few hours after I take it, so I have to compensate by gnawing plates and all at supper.”

“I’m sorry.”

Adarian added cheerfully, “I went a-flamer over Astrakhan. Lost these fingers and took a piece of shrapnel in my gut in the bargain. Tummy’s better, though; I can eat almost anything now.”

Markham looked at his hands; they showed no signs of burns.

As if divining his thoughts, Adarian nodded. “They’re okay. You should see my legs, though. You can get out of an aircraft remarkably fast when your fuel supply is coming up through the floor of your cockpit.”

Markham laughed in spite of himself, and then stopped abruptly. It had been so long since he had laughed that he had forgotten the sound of it. He had studiously avoided socializing with his brother officers—and would have even if most did not drink so heavily, out of pain or loneliness—and spent his days and nights in a kind of numbness. His disgrace ate at him like a cancer, and though he was reasonably conscientious in the air, for the cadets’ sake, he seemed to have lost all emotions, all feelings of his own. Until just then.

Adarian seemed embarrassed when Markham cut his laugh short. “Well, I didn’t mean to intrude. I–”

“It’s all right. My name is Markham, by the way.”

“Rupert Adarian.”

Adarian did not return to disturb Markham’s privacy the following day, but Markham found himself nodding pleasantly in Adarian’s direction at the morning briefings. In time, Adarian responded by striking up a conversation with him now and then, and little by little, Markham began to come out of his shell.

What really cemented their friendship was Adarian’s habit of dropping in on Markham’s ground school lectures. Usually, the lectures were given in a battered warehouse that had been converted to a classroom through the addition of graffiti-scarred desks from a storeroom of the elementary school in the village, and Markham, as senior instructor, gave most of them. Adarian first materialized, however, when Markham had the cadets outside, watching him from above while he worked down in the firing pit, adjusting his plane’s guns for their edification.

Perched on a stepladder, Markham pulled open the access panel on the top of a wing and turned around to face his charges.

“The Piradot, and the faster Tanzers that you’ll fly at the front, have one cannon buried in each wing, set to fire just outside the propeller arc. Flying is fun, you all want to be good pilots, but to become an ace, you have to understand your guns, too.

“The infantry fight with projectile rifles; a powder charge spits a bit of metal into the air which flies free until it hits something. Unfortunately, that something is usually the ground.” The cadets laughed. “I think so, too, but to be fair to them, while our atmosphere isn’t nearly as thick as the ocean, its density is great enough to play all kinds of tricks.

“Our skies are a deep aquamarine because the air scatters the sunlight, blue and green more than red. Dawn and sunset are always spectacular, a band of rose and crimson flung halfway around the sky—it’s the air again, fiddling with the long, slanting rays from a sun just above the horizon. Mirages over the desert, or sometimes when we look back over the sun-warmed land when coming back from the cooler sea… the air wrinkles the light to make those, too, and so often that a good pilot has to learn to allow for the mirages and make his mind a third eye. And the air slows down a bullet so quickly that a round is completely spent after a hundred meters, at most.”

He suddenly spotted Adarian standing in the back row and pointed towards himself. Adarian made a vague gesture as if to say, “No rush,” and Markham collected himself and jumped into the cockpit. “Our guns fire rocket shells, self-propelled rounds that keep pushing against the wind until their fuel runs out. We have much longer range than the infantry—but the rockets don’t solve everything.”

Over his shoulder, he called back, “The plane’s tail is on a jack, and right now the guns are absolutely horizontal. Watch.”

He fired a short burst at the white cloth square a hundred meters in front of him, and missed. The shells exploded on the ground well in front of the target.

He stood up in the cockpit and turned around. “Gravity, gentlemen. To be a good gunner, you have to learn to allow for that drop—five meters in the first second, fifteen more in the second. I and Lieutentant Adarian, who’s standing behind you, are going to teach you how to fight. To know how much your shells will drop. To lead a target that’s moving left to right, in front of you. And most important of all, how to dodge someone who’s shooting at you.”

The rest of the lecture was a rather technical introduction to the Mark IX automatic cannon and to the trim screws that could be used to adjust both the horizontal and vertical deflection of the cannons. According to the book, one was supposed to give each wing-gun enough inward deflection that their field of fire would converge at one hundred meters in front of the plane—“But I would recommend fifty, at least to start.” All the pilots cranked their guns up a couple of degrees above horizontal to allow for the falling, parabolic trajectory of the rockets, so that the shells would pass through the plane of the wings at the same distance where the two guns converged.

Afterwards, Adarian waited up for him.

“What are you doing here, Rupert?”

“Learning at the feet of the master. You’ve forgotten more about air-to-air gunnery than I ever knew.”

Markham smiled. “But you have four victories.”

“Luck. And flying very close to my victims. I once came home with a goodish portion of my late adversary’s tail assembly embedded in my port wing. Wing wasn’t too pleased.”

“Bread-and-water and ten days in the stockade?”

“Well, hardly. A week before, at morning briefing, he’d bellowed and shouted that we should all be more aggressive.”

Markham smiled. “Suit yourself.”

“I will.” Adarian hunched over and jiggled an imaginary joystick. “You never know. I can still fly.”

Indeed he could, and he ignored all the flying classes, but ground school in gunnery, tactics, and navigation attracted him like a flame mesmerizing a night-flying insect. Adarian rarely bothered with the brief reading assignments and never with the written quizzes—“An instructor flunk?”—but he squeezed himself into the back row whenever he could.

After Adarian had sat through a talk on snap-aiming and deflection shots, Markham stood him a drink in the officer’s club.

“The third time, Rupert?”

“Why not? It’s a change from catching a quick one in the club when you’ve got all the squadrons in the classroom. We all drink too much anyway.’’

Markham laughed, then turned serious. “You’ve made me better, Rupert. You can never really teach them what it’s like out there. It’s so—abstract. But a burning plane isn’t.”

“No.” Adarian played with the handle of his mug. “But good training can give them a chance.”

Markham nodded. “And I feel that now. Feel this is important. I’d still jump at a chance to go back to the front, but I feel alive again, like I’m part of the war again.”

Peering through the canopy at the overcast, straining to spot the shadow of the Karlan flying boat, Markham felt very much a part of the war. If he found the Karlan, he would have to brave a storm of shells from the flying boat’s four turrets, and with or without a fight, it would still take all his skill to find his way home in this foul weather. And yet he felt completely happy for the first time in nearly a year. He was healthy and skillful, and it was right that he should be at risk. The peace and calmness of the training school seemed as remote and phantasmal as a summer daydream.

“Davidenko Main to Rec One. You should be near maximum range. Confirm.”

Markham looked at his gauges and sighed. “Rec One to Davidenko Main. Any word from the others?”

“341 Squadron has turned back. Search negative. Over.”

“Roger. Tanks half full. Over.”

“Davidenko Main to Rec One. You are ordered–”

Markham snapped off the radio. He could always pretend that he had not heard, but the habit of discipline was very strong; it would be easier to ignore an order if he did not permit himself to hear it. It wasn’t until the instant of silencing that crackling, static-filled voice that he had realized he might be willing to die just to score one victory.

Dispassionately, he tried to weigh the odds. Of finding the Karlan, poor. Of ditching and rescue at sea, at best, fair. Of returning to base if he continued his search pattern, poor to none. Of the deaths if the Karlan reached its mother-zeppelin, many thousands. Of the lives spared if he returned and taught his boys how to survive, who could say? But certainly some. Markham thought and thought and stared out into the grey sky. He made his decision.

An hour later, he found the Karlan. The drizzle banged his canopy like tiny, wet bullets, but the flying boat was huge. Not the nimble twin-engined Kiriot he had expected, but a ponderous Wyndan pulled through the air by four huge radials. It cut diagonally in front of him, a shadowy grey blur only slightly darker than the surrounding clouds, and he was so startled that he turned late, and almost lost it.

After a quick contact report to Davidenko, he snapped off his radio, rammed the throttle full forward, and put his plane into a shallow dive to come up below and behind the flying boat to strike its vulnerable and unprotected belly.

Adarian had always known the most important rule of gunnery: get close. As Markham zoomed up towards his target, he held his fire until he was within a hundred meters. Bracing his elbows against the sides of his seat, he squinted through the reflector sight and mentally estimated both the inward and vertical deflection of the shells, aiming for the two engines buried in the port wing.

He fired, and fingers of smoke lit at intervals by speeding dots of brilliant yellow converged from either wing to a point in front of him. The first few shells flew just high, but then the stream intersected the wing, and round, bursting flashes erupted from the engines and the airfoil between them.

At the last moment, Markham shoved the throttle forward—and for one terrible moment, as the big reconnaissance bomber nosed down much more slowly than the single-seaters he was used to, he thought that the big propellers above him would scythe through his canopy and slice him into pieces. As he ducked instinctively, the two planes missed by centimeters. A line of shells flashed above him as the dorsal gunner tried to kill him, but Markham rolled and turned sharply away as soon as his tail was clear, and the gunner—trying to train his gun up and over the interrupter bar that was supposed to keep him from shooting his own wing off—could not bring his gun to bear in time.

When Markham came out of his diving turn and split-essed, he saw nothing for a moment, and cursed. Then his eyes, half-blinded by the flash of his own exploding shells, adjusted and he saw a dark shape just at the limit of visibility.

Pursing his lips, Markham made his plans and climbed, staying a safe distance above and behind his target, until it was a dim cross almost directly beneath him—and then fell upon it like a thunderbolt. At the last moment, the gunners saw him, but his shells were already stitching a trail of bursting fire from the tail forward to the wings and nose, and then he was past and below, twisting his clumsy plane into another sharp turn.

As he looked back, he saw no sign that his shots had done any damage at all. He swore and came around for another pass. A quick run at the nose? Too risky in the overcast; even if he avoided a collision, he might still lose contact while turning around after the pass.

His luck was just as bad as ever. His own reconnaissance bomber was lightly armed for so big a plane, and the Wyndan was huge and sturdy. He had drawn within a couple hundred meters, a trail of fire from the tail gunner already falling like a waterfall underneath him, when the port outboard engine exploded.

Markham pulled his own nose up immediately to give the gunner no further chance at him and watched, mesmerized, as the wing section between the engines went up in flames with astonishing abruptness. The inboard engine began to smoke—or so he thought; he could hardly see the plane itself against what suddenly became heavy rain—and then there was a second flash of light and the whole left wing was on fire.

The great flying boat staggered and lost altitude quickly. The pilot was trying to keep it level, but it was handling sluggishly, as if Markham’s shells had severed a control line. Suddenly it fell on its side and dropped straight for the water.

Markham dove after it, determined to see the end, to be sure, but as he came closer and closer to the waves, he pulled the nose up a little rather than risk crashing into the sea in the rain. The fiery beacon continued to fall before him, and then seemed to right itself for a moment just a few meters above the ocean. Markham lined up for a shot while still far away, but the flying boat slammed into the choppy waves before he could fire.

The damaged wing ripped off completely, and the boat went up on its nose, then leisurely fell back, right-side up. Markham reached down for the toggle and dropped a parachute flare. If the crew were quick, some of them might still get out.

The boat sank only five minutes later, after Markham had dropped the remainder of his flares, and he turned for home.

He remembered that this plane, unlike the fighter he had flown in the islands, was not equipped with a gunsight camera. Probably, his victory would never be confirmed.

Somehow, that didn’t seem important. He knew, and he would go back to his cadets with a clear conscience.

Too excited to sleep after filing his report and telling an excited Adarian the good news, he spent the rest of the evening walking along the beach, listening to the pounding surf and unwinding. Adarian finally found him there well after midnight.

“Where the heck have you been? I’ve been hunting all over for you. You lucky bastard! A coastal cutter picked up a couple of crewmen from the Wyndan. Your victory will be confirmed.”

Markham started laughing, and his ribs ached by the time he finally regained control of himself.

“Thanks, Rupert. I mean it. It’s very nice.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“The cutter was only a few kilometers off shore. How did they drift so far so fast?”

“They didn’t. The flying boat must have trusted to the bad weather and stayed close to the coast. I don’t really know. But I didn’t run into it until long after I had turned back.”

“Turned back?”

Markham nodded, and picked up a wave-polished twig to heave into the surf.

Adarian threw up his hands and said feelingly, “Victory!” but it was not at all obvious which conquest he meant.

Editor’s Introduction to:

The War Against “Star Wars”

Robert Jastrow

Robert Jastrow was the founder of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, as well as the first chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University, and is currently Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth University. His books on astronomy have been widely read, and he is recognized as one of the nation’s foremost experts in space science. He has received the Hemming Award for outstanding service in the federal government.

Dr. Jastrow’s introduction to his own essay can hardly be bettered. I’ll reserve my remarks for an afterword.

The War Against “Star Wars”

Robert Jastrow

PRESIDENT REAGAN offered a new strategic vision to the American people in his “Star Wars” speech of March 23, 1983. The policy he had inherited from his predecessors relied on the threat of incinerating millions of Soviet civilians as the main deterrent to a Soviet nuclear attack on our country. The President was troubled by the moral dimensions of this policy. He said: “The human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence.” And he called on our scientists to find a way of defending the United States against a Soviet nuclear attack by intercepting the Soviet missiles before they reached our soil.

When I first heard the President’s speech, I thought he had a great idea. I wrote an article commenting favorably on the proposal in the January 1984 issue of COMMENTARY and then, a little later, I traveled to Washington to hear a talk by Dr. George Keyworth, the President’s Science Adviser, on the strategic and technical implications of the President’s plan.

Since Dr. Keyworth was rumored to have made a major contribution to the thinking behind the “Star Wars” speech, I felt that I would be getting an insider’s view of the technical prospects for success in this difficult undertaking. That was particularly interesting to me, because several of my fellow physicists had expressed the gravest reservations about the technical feasibility of the proposal. In fact, Dr. Hans Bethe, a distinguished Nobel laureate in physics, had said bluntly, “I don’t think it can be done.”

Dr. Keyworth started by describing the circumstances that had led to the President’s speech. Then he got into the technical areas I had come to hear about. “For more than five months,” he told us, “some fifty of our nation’s better technical minds [have] devoted their efforts almost exclusively to one problem—the defense against ballistic missiles.” This group of specialists, which included some of the most qualified defense scientists in the country, had concluded that the President’s goal was realistic—that it “probably could be done.”

“The basis for their optimism,” Dr. Keyworth went on, “is our tremendously broad technical progress over the past decade.” He pointed specifically to the advances in computers and “new laser techniques.” He also mentioned the promising new developments that might enable us to protect the vitally important satellites carrying all this laser weaponry and computing equipment, and prevent the Soviets from knocking these critical satellites out as a preliminary to a nuclear attack on the United States. “These and other recent technical advances,” Dr. Keyworth concluded, “offer the possibility of a workable strategic [missile] defense system.”

That was pretty clear language. Defense experts had given the President’s proposal a green light on its technical merits. I went back to New York with a feeling that the President’s vision of the future—a future in which nuclear weapons would be “impotent and obsolete”—was going to become a reality.

The following month, a panel of university scientists came out with a report that flatly contradicted Dr. Keyworth’s assessment. According to the panel, an effective defense of the United States against Soviet missiles was “unattainable.” The report, prepared under the sponsorship of the Union of Concerned Scientists, (A Space-Based Missile Defense, March 1984; The Fallacy of Star Wars, based on studies conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, edited by John Tirman, Vintage, 293 pp., $4.95) leveled numerous criticisms at the “Star Wars” proposal. It pointed out, inter alia, that thousands of satellites would be needed to provide a defensive screen; that one of the “Star Wars” devices under consideration would require placing in orbit a satellite weighing 40,000 tons; that the power needed for the lasers and other devices proposed would equal as much as 60 percent of the total power output of the United States; and that, in any case, the Soviets would be able to foil our defenses with a large bag of relatively inexpensive tricks, such as spinning the missile to prevent the laser from burning a hole in it, or putting a shine on it to reflect the laser light. The signers of the report included physicists of world renown and great distinction. The impact of their criticisms seemed absolutely devastating.

Around the same time, another study of the feasibility of the “Star Wars” defense came out with more or less the same conclusion. According to that report, which had been prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) ( Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space: A Background Paper, April 1984.) of the Congress, the chance of protecting the American people from a Soviet missile attack is “so remote that it should not serve as the basis for public expectations or national policy.”

These scientific studies, documented with charts and tables, apparently sounded the death knell of missile defense. Scientists had judged the President’s proposal, and found it wanting. According to Nature, the most prestigious science journal in the world:

The scientific community knows that [the President’s proposal] will not work. The President’s advisers, including his science adviser, Dr. George Keyworth, know it too, but are afraid to say so. Dr. Keyworth is employed to keep the President informed on these technical matters, but sadly, there is no evidence that he is willing to give Mr. Reagan the bad news.

A few weeks later, I received unclassified summaries of the blue-ribbon panels appointed by the Defense Department to look into the feasibility of a United States defense against Soviet missiles. (Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security: A Summary Report, Prepared for the Future Security Strategy Study, October 1983; The Strategic Defense Initiative: Statement by Dr. James C. Fletcher Before the House Committee on Armed Services, March 1984.) These were the documents on which Dr. Keyworth had relied in part for his optimistic appraisal. The reports by the government-appointed consultants were as different from the reports by the university scientists as day is from night. One group of distinguished experts said no fundamental obstacles stood in the way of success; the other group, equally distinguished, said it would not work. Who was right? According to the UCS report, “any inquisitive citizen” could understand the technical issues. I decided to look into the matter. This is what I found. Missiles usually consist of two or three separate rockets or “stages,” also called boosters. On top of the uppermost stage sits the “bus” carrying the warheads. One by one, the stages ignite, burn out, and fall away. After the last stage has burned out and departed, the bus continues upward and onward through space. At this point it begins to release its separate warheads. Each warhead is pushed off the bus in a different direction with a different velocity, so as to reach a different target. The missiles with this capability are said to be MIRVed (MIRV stands for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle).

Most of the discussion of the “Star Wars” defense assumes a many-layered defense with three or four distinct layers. The idea behind having several layers is that the total defense can be made nearly perfect in this way, even if the individual layers are less than perfect. For example, if each layer has, say, an 80 percent effectiveness—which means that one in five missiles or warheads will get through—a combination of three such layers will have an overall effectiveness better than 99 percent, which means that no more than one warhead in 100 will reach its target. (The explanation is that 20 percent get through the first layer; 20 percent of that fraction, or a net of 4 percent, get through the second layer; finally, 20 percent of that 4 percent, or 0.8 percent, get through the third layer. The overall effectiveness of the three layers is 99.2 percent.)

The first layer, called the boost-phase defense, goes into effect as the Soviet missile rises above the atmosphere at the beginning of its trajectory. In the second layer, or mid-course defense, the booster has burned out and fallen away, and we concentrate on trying to destroy or disable the “bus” carrying the nuclear warheads, or the individual warheads themselves, as they arc up and over through space on their way to the United States. In the third layer, or terminal defense, we try to intercept each warhead in the final stages of its flight.

The boost-phase defense offers the greatest payoff to the defender because at this stage the missile has not yet sent any of its warheads on their separate paths. Since the largest Soviet missiles carry ten warheads each, if our defense can destroy one of these missiles at the beginning of its flight, it will eliminate ten warheads at a time. The defense catches the Soviet missiles when they have all their eggs in one basket, so to speak.

But the boost-phase defense is also the most difficult technically, and has drawn the most fire from critics. How can we destroy a Soviet missile, thousands of miles away, within seconds or minutes after it has left its silo?

At the present time, one of the most promising technologies for doing that is the laser, which shoots a bolt of light at the missile as it rises. Missiles move fast, but light moves faster. A laser beam travels a thousand miles in less than a hundredth of a second. Focused in a bright spot on the missile’s skin, the laser beam either burns a hole through the thin metal of the skin, which is only about a tenth of an inch thick, or it softens the metal sufficiently so that it ruptures and the missile disintegrates.

Another very promising technology for the boost-phase defense is the Neutral Particle Beam, which shoots a stream of fast-moving hydrogen atoms at the missile. The atoms travel at a speed of about 60,000 miles a second, which is less than the speed of light but still fast enough to catch up to the missile in a fraction of a second. The beam of fast-moving atoms is very penetrating, and goes through the metal skin of the missile and into the electronic brain that guides it on its course. There the atoms create spurious pulses of electricity that can cause the brain to hallucinate, driving the missile off its course so that it begins to tumble and destroys itself. If the beam is intense enough, it can flip the bits inside the brain’s memory so that it remembers the wrong things; or it can cause the brain to lose its memory altogether. Any one of these effects will be deadly to the Soviet missile’s execution of its task.

The Neutral Particle Beam can also play havoc with the circuits in the electronic brain that guides the bus sitting on top of the missile. The mischief created here may prevent the bus from releasing its warheads; or it may cause the bus to send the warheads in the wrong directions, so that they miss their targets; or it may damage the electronic circuits in the warheads themselves, after they have been pushed off the bus, so that when they reach their targets they fail to explode. (Nuclear explosives, unlike ordinary explosives, do not detonate if you drop them or hit them with a hammer. A series of precisely timed steps, controlled by electronic circuits in the warhead, has to occur before the explosion can happen. If the circuits are damaged, and the steps do not occur, or their timing is off, the warhead will not explode.) The Neutral Particle Beam can be lethal to the attacker in the boost phase, the mid-course phase, and the terminal phase. All in all, it is a most useful device.

Now for an important point: to be effective, the laser or the Neutral Particle Beam must have unobstructed views of all the Soviet missile fields. One of the best ways of achieving that is to put the device that produces these beams on a satellite and send it into orbit.

So this, then, is the essence of the plan for a boost-phase defense against Soviet missiles: a fleet of satellites, containing equipment that generates laser beams or Neutral Particle Beams, circles the earth, with enough satellites in the fleet so that several satellites are over the Soviet missile fields at all times—a sufficient number to shoot down, in the worst case, all 1,400 Soviet missiles if they are launched against us simultaneously.

The plan looks good on paper. Yet according to the UCS report, it has absolutely no practical value. This study shows that because of the realities of satellite orbits, the satellites needed to protect the United States against Soviet attack would “number in the thousands.” The report’s detailed calculations put the precise number at 2,400 satellites.

Now, everyone acknowledges that these satellites are going to be extremely expensive. Each one will cost a billion dollars or more—as much as an aircraft carrier. Satellites are the big-ticket items in the plan for a space-based defense. If thousands are needed, the cost of implementing the plan will be many trillions of dollars. A defense with a price tag like that is indeed a “turkey,” as a spokesman for the UCS called it.

If the numbers put out by the UCS were right, there would be no point in looking into the plan further. But after the UCS report hit the papers, I began to hear rumors from professionals in the field that the numbers were not right. Since the whole “Star Wars” plan rested on this one point, I thought I would just check out the calculations myself. So I got hold of a polar-projection map of the northern hemisphere and a piece of celluloid. I marked the positions of the North Pole and the Soviet missile fields on the celluloid, stuck a pin through the North Pole, and rotated the celluloid around the Pole to imitate the rotation of the earth carrying the missile fields with it. Then I played with the map, the moving celluloid, and different kinds of satellite orbits for a day or two, to get a feel for the problem.

It was soon clear that about 50 evenly spaced satellite orbits, with four satellites in each orbit, would guarantee adequate coverage of the missile fields. In other words, 200 satellites would do the job, and “thousands” were certainly not needed. I could also see that it might be possible to get down to fewer than 100 satellites, but I could not prove that with my celluloid “computer.”

I talked again with my friends in the defense community and they told me that my answers were in the right ballpark. The experts had been looking at this problem for more than ten years, and the accurate results were well known. As I had suspected, a hundred or so satellites were adequate. According to careful computer studies done at the Livermore laboratory 90 satellites could suffice, and if the satellites were put into low-altitude orbits, we might get by with as few as 45 satellites. (These numbers depend on the power of the laser beams and the sizes of the mirror used to focus them. All the studies described here make the same assumptions—a 20- or 25-million-watt laser and a 30-foot mirror.)

So the bottom line is that 90 satellites—and perhaps somewhat fewer—are needed to counter a Soviet attack. That cuts the cost down from many trillions of dollars to a level that could be absorbed into the amount already earmarked by the government for spending on our strategic forces during the next ten or fifteen years. It removes the aura of costliness and impracticality which had been cast over the President’s proposal by the Union of Concerned Scientists’ report.

The scientists who did these calculations for the UCS had exaggerated the number of satellites by a factor of about twenty-five. How did they make a mistake like that? A modicum of thought should have indicated that “thousands” of satellites could not be the right answer. Apparently the members of the panel did begin to think more carefully about the matter later on—but only after they had issued their report—because in testimony before a congressional committee a UCS spokesman lowered his organization’s estimate from 2,400 satellites to 800 satellites. (The scientist explained that his panel had forgotten that Soviet missile fields are spread out across a 5,000-mile arc in the USSR, and had put all the missiles in one spot. This made it harder for the satellite lasers to reach all the missiles, and meant more satellites were needed.) In their most recent publication on the matter, the members of the panel lowered their estimate again, to 300 satellites. (The Fallacy of Star Wars, Chapter 5. The explanation offered by the UCS for this correction is that its experts belatedly realized some satellites are closer to their missile quarry than others, and can polish the missile off in a shorter time. That means each satellite can kill more missiles, and, therefore, fewer satellites are needed to do the whole job.) That was getting closer. Another factor of three down and they would be home.

But the Union of Concerned Scientists never said to the press or the Congress: “We have found important mistakes in our calculations, and when these mistakes are corrected the impact is to cut the cost of the missile defense drastically. In fact, correcting these errors of ours has the effect of making the President’s idea much more practical than we thought it was when we issued our report.” Months after the publication of the report, Science 84, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was still referring to the need for “2,400 orbiting laser stations.”

The work by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the question of the satellite fleet is the poorest that has appeared in print, to my knowledge. The report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment, which does a better job on this particular question, says that 160 satellites are needed for our defense. That is only about double the accurate result that came out of the computer studies at Livermore.

But the report to the OTA has a different failing. Because of an error in reasoning—an extremely inefficient placement of the satellites in their orbits—it concludes that if the Soviets were to build more missiles in an effort to overwhelm our defense, the United States would have to increase the number of its satellites in orbit in direct proportion to the increase in the number of Soviet missiles. (The report assumed the American satellites would move through space in tight bunches, instead of being spread out around their orbits. By bunching them together this way, it kept the satellites from being used effectively, and overestimated the number of satellites we would have to put up to counter an increased Soviet deployment of missiles. The theorists at Livermore and Los Alamos assumed the satellites were spread out evenly in their orbits when they did their calculations. I did also, when I took a look at the problem. Anyone trying to figure out how to build the best defense for the United States at the lowest cost to the taxpayer would do the same.)

This seems like a technical detail, but it has a cosmic impact. It means that if the Soviets build twice as many missiles, we have to build twice as many satellites. If they build four times as many missiles, we have to build four times as many satellites. Since our satellites are going to be expensive, that can be a costly trade-off. In fact, it could enable the Soviets to overwhelm our defense simply by building more missiles. As the New Republic said: “They could just roll out more SS-18’s” (the SS-18 is the biggest and most powerful missile in the Soviet arsenal).

But some fine work by the theoretical physicists at Los Alamos has shown that the report to the OTA is seriously in error. The Los Alamos calculations, which have been confirmed by computations at Livermore, show that the number of satellites needed to counter a Soviet attack does not go up in direct proportion to the number of Soviet missiles. It turns out instead that the number of satellites goes up approximately in proportion to the square root of the number of missiles.

That also seems like a fine point—almost a quibble—but consider its significance. The square root means that if the Soviets build four times as many missiles, we only have to build twice as many satellites to match them. Suppose the United States built a defensive screen of 100 satellites that could shoot down—as a very conservative estimate—80 percent, or four-fifths, of the Soviet missiles. And suppose the Soviets decided they wanted to build enough missiles so that the number of missiles getting through our defensive screen would be the same as the number that would have reached the United States if we had no defense. That is what “overwhelming the defense” means. To do that, the Soviets would have to build more than 5,000 additional missiles and silos. (The Soviets have 1,400 missile silos and missiles. To get five times this number and make up for the losses suffered in penetrating our defense, they would have to build another 5,600 missiles and silos.)

The Los Alamos “square-root” rule tells us that if the Soviets went to that trouble and expense, the United States could counter those thousands of new missiles with only 100 additional satellites.

With numbers like that, the cost trade-offs are bound to favor the defense over the offense. If the Soviets tried to overwhelm our defense, they would be bankrupted before we were.

The report to the OTA has other defects. One is a peculiar passage in which the author exaggerates by a factor of roughly 50 the requirements for a terminal defense, i.e., a defense that tries to destroy the Soviet warheads toward the end of their passage, when they are already over the United States. Current planning assumes that as the warheads descend, they will be intercepted by smart mini-missiles with computer brains and radar or infrared “eyes” which maneuver into the path of the warhead and destroy it on impact. A smart missile of this kind destroyed an oncoming enemy warhead at an altitude of 100 miles on June 10, 1984, in a successful test of the technology by the Army.

The question is: how many smart missiles are required? Professionals sizing up the problem have concluded that at most 5,000 intercepting missiles will be needed. The answer according to the report to the OTA: 280,000 smart missiles. Though these smart missiles will not cost as much as aircraft carriers, they are not exactly throwaways. Thus the effect of this calculation, as with the studies by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the size of our fleet of laser-equipped satellites, is to create the impression that a defense against Soviet missiles will be so costly as to be impractical.

How did the report to the Office of Technology Assessment arrive at 280,000 missiles? First, the report assumed that about 1,000 sites in the United States—missile silos, command posts, and so on—need to be defended. That is reasonable.

Second, the report assumed the Soviets might choose to concentrate their whole attack on any one of these 1,000 sites. This means that every single site would have to have enough intercepting missiles to counter the Soviet attack, if the entire attack were aimed at this one location.

That is not reasonable. Why would the Soviets launch thousands of warheads—their entire nuclear arsenal—against one American missile silo? This is known in the trade as a GIGO calculation (garbage in, garbage out). The theorist makes an absurd assumption, does some impeccable mathematics, and arrives at an absurd answer.

When theoretical physicists joust over ideas, a factor of two hardly counts; a factor of three matters a bit; factors of ten begin to be important; factors of 100 can win or lose an argument; and factors of 1,000 begin to be embarrassing. In a study of the practicality of the Neutral Particle Beam—that most promising destroyer of Soviet missiles and warheads—the panel of the Union of Concerned Scientists made a mistake by a cool factor of 1,600. As in the case of the panel’s estimate of the size of our satellite fleet, the direction of its error was such as to make this promising “Star Wars” technology seem hopelessly impractical.

According to the scientists who wrote the UCS report, the device—called a linear accelerator—needed to generate the Neutral Particle Beam would weigh 40,000 tons. To be effective, this enormous weight would have to be placed in a satellite. Of course, the idea of loading 40,000 tons onto an orbiting satellite is absurd. By comparison, the NASA space station will weigh about 40 tons. This finding by the Union of Concerned Scientists makes it clear that the plan to use the Neutral Particle Beam is ridiculous.

But the UCS’s study panel made a mistake. The correct result for the weight of the linear accelerator is 25 tons, and not 40,000 tons. Now, 25 tons is quite a practical weight to put into an orbiting satellite. It is, in fact, about the same as the payload carried in a single flight of the NASA shuttle. (The shuttle’s payload is 33 tons in the orbits currently in use. It would be about 20 tons in the orbits needed for the defensive screen against Soviet missiles.)

A UCS spokesman admitted his organization’s rather large error in congressional testimony some months ago. (Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 24, 1984.)

But when he made the admission he did not say: “We have made a mistake by a factor of more than a thousand, and the correct weight of the accelerator for this Neutral Particle Beam is not 40,000 tons, but closer to 25 tons.” He said: “We proposed to increase the area of the beam and accelerator, noting that would make the accelerator unacceptably massive for orbital deployment. Our colleagues have pointed out that the area could be increased after the beam leaves the small accelerator.”

That was all he said about the mistake in his testimony.

Now, this cryptic remark does not convey to a senator attending the hearing that the scientist has just confessed to a mistake which changes a 40,000-ton satellite into a 25-ton satellite. There is nothing in his remark to indicate that the UCS’s distinguished panel of scientists had reached a false conclusion on one of the best “Star Wars” defenses because the panel had made a whopping error in its calculations.

The report prepared for the OTA also makes a mistake on the Neutral Particle Beam, but this mistake is only by a factor of fifteen. According to the report, the Soviet Union can protect its missiles and warheads from the Neutral Particle Beam with a lead shield about one-tenth of an inch thick. The shield, the report states, would not weigh too much and therefore could be “an attractive countermeasure” for the Soviets.

But scientists at Los Alamos have pointed out that a layer of lead one-tenth of an inch thick will not stop the fast-moving atoms of the Neutral Particle Beam; they will go right through it. In fact, a table printed in the OTA report itself shows that the lead shield must be 15 times thicker—at least 1½ inches thick—to stop these fast-moving particles.

A layer of lead as thick as that, wrapped around the electronics in the missile and its warheads, would weigh many tons—considerably more than the total weight of all the warheads on the missile. If the Soviets were unwise enough to follow the advice offered them in the report to the Office of Technology Assessment, their missile would be so loaded down with lead that it would be unable to get off the ground.

That would be a great plus for American security, and a nice response from our defense scientists to the President’s call for ways of making the Soviet missiles “impotent and obsolete.”

Other suggestions for the Soviets can be found in the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. They include shining up the Soviet missiles, spinning them, attaching “band-aids” and “window shades,” as the UCS report calls them, and launching “balloons” as fake warheads. I am not an expert in this dark area of “countermeasures,” but I have talked with the experts enough to understand why the professionals in the defense community regard many of these proposals as bordering on inanity.

Putting a shine on the missile sounds like a good idea, because it reflects a part of the laser beam and weakens the beam’s effect. However, it would be a poor idea for the Soviets in practice. One reason is that the Soviets could not count on keeping their missiles shiny; during the launch the missile gets dirty, partly because of its own exhaust gases, and its luster is quickly dulled. But the main reason is that no shine is perfect; some laser energy is bound to get through, and will heat the surface. The heating tends to dull the shine, so more heat gets through, and dulls the shine some more, and still more heat gets through… and very soon the shine is gone.

Spinning the missile spreads the energy of the laser beam over its whole circumference, and is a better idea than putting a shine on it. However, it only gains the Soviets a factor of pi, or roughly three, at most. And it does not gain them anything at all if the laser energy is transmitted in sharp pulses that catch the missile in one point of its spin, so to speak. The experts say there is no problem in building a laser that sends out its energy in sharp pulses.

Now to the other proposals by the scientists on the UCS panel. The “band-aid” is a metal skirt which slides up and down the outside of the missile, automatically picking out the spot that is receiving the full heat of the laser beam, and protecting the metal skin underneath. The “window shade” is a flexible, metallized sheet which is rolled up and fastened to the outside of the missile when it is launched, and then unrolled at altitudes above fifty miles. It is supposed to protect the missile against the X-ray laser, which is another exotic but promising defense technology.

The trouble with these suggestions is that they do not fit the realities of missile construction very well. A missile is a very fragile object, the ratio of its weight empty to its weight loaded being 10 or 15 to 1—nearly the same as an eggshell. Any attempt to fasten band-aids and window shades on the outside of the missile, even if their contours are smoothed to minimize drag, would put stresses on the flimsy structure that would require a major renovation of the rocket and a new series of test flights. If the Soviets tried to carry out all the suggestions made by the UCS’s scientists—putting on band-aids and window shades, spinning their missiles and shining them up—their missile program would be tied up in knots. That would be another fine response from our scientists to the President’s call for a way of rendering the Soviet weapons useless.

The “balloon” is still another trick to foil our defenses. The thought here is that after the boost phase is over, and the booster rocket has fallen away, the bus that normally pushes out the Soviet warheads will instead kick out a large number of “balloons”—light, metallized hollow spheres. Some balloons will have warheads inside them, and some will not. Since the empty balloons weigh very little, the Soviets can put out a great many of these. Not knowing which among this great multitude of balloons contain warheads, we will waste our mid-course defenses on killing every balloon in sight, empty or not.

A friend who works on these matters all the time explained to me what was wrong with this idea. He said that a modest amount of thought reveals that it is possible to tell very easily which balloons have warheads, and which do not. All the defense has to do is tap one, in effect, by directing a sharp pulse of laser light at it, and then observe how it recoils. An empty balloon will recoil more rapidly than a loaded one. Once the loaded balloons—the ones with the warheads—are picked out, we can go after them with our Neutral Particle Beams, or other warhead-killers.

This list of proposed countermeasures is not complete, but it is representative. The ideas put forward by the UCS—the band-aid, the window shade, the shining and spinning rockets, and the balloon—remind one of nothing so much as a group of bright students from the Bronx High School of Science getting together to play a game in which they pretend to be Soviet scientists figuring out how to defeat American missile defenses. The ideas they come up with are pretty good for a group of high-school students, but not good enough to stand up to more than a thirty-minute scrutiny by the defense professionals who earn their living in thinking about these matters.

Of course, there is no harm in these proposals. The harm comes in offering shoddy work—superficial analyses marred by errors of fact, reasoning, and simple carelessness—as a sound scientific study bearing on a decision of vital importance to the American people. The work seems sound enough on casual examination, with its numbers, graphs, and theoretical arguments. Certainly the New York Times was impressed when it described the UCS report as “exhaustive and highly technical.” It is only when you penetrate more deeply, and begin to talk with knowledgeable people who have thought long and hard about these problems, that you realize something is wrong here.

How did published work by competent scientists come to have so many major errors? A theorist reviewing these reports on the feasibility of the President’s proposal cannot help noticing that all the errors and rough spots in the calculations seem to push the results in one direction—toward a bigger and more costly defense, and a negative verdict on the soundness of “Star Wars” defense against Soviet missiles. If the calculations had been done without bias, conscious or otherwise, you would expect some errors to push the result one way, and other errors to push it the other way.

But all the errors and omissions go in one direction only—toward making the President’s plan seem impractical, costly, and ineffective.

This is not to say that the errors were made in a deliberate, conscious effort to deceive. I do not think that for a moment. What happens is quite different, and every theorist will recognize the phenomenon. When you finish a calculation, you check your result against your intuitive feeling as to what the situation should be. You ask yourself: “Does this result make sense, or not?” If the result does not make sense, you know either that you have made a great discovery which will propel you to Stockholm, or you have made a mistake. Usually you assume the latter, and you proceed to check your calculations very carefully. But if the result seems to be in good agreement with everything you expected about the behavior of the system you are investigating, you say to yourself, “Well, that looks all right,” and you go on to the next step.

Of course, a careful theorist always checks his calculations anyway, whether the answer seems sensible or not. But he is apt to check them just a mite less carefully if the results agree with what he expected, than if they do not.

I think this is what must have happened to the theorists who wrote the report for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Clearly they had a strong bias against the President’s proposal from the beginning, because they believed that a defense against Soviet missiles would, in their own words, “have a profoundly destabilizing effect on the nuclear balance, increasing the risk of nuclear war,” and that such a defense against missiles “could well produce higher numbers of fatalities” than no defense at all.

So, when the calculations by the panel yielded the result that thousands of laser-equipped satellites would be needed to counter a Soviet attack—which meant that for this reason alone the whole plan was hopelessly impractical—the members of the panel were not surprised. Their technical studies had simply confirmed what they already knew to be true for other reasons, namely, that the President’s idea was terrible.

Now, I would like to wager that if the theorists studying the matter for the UCS had found that only 10 satellites could protect the United States from a massive Soviet attack—if they had gotten a result that indicated the President’s proposal was simple, effective, and inexpensive to carry out—then they would have scrutinized their calculations very, very carefully.

What is one to make of all this?

When I was a graduate student in theoretical physics, we revered some of the men who have lent their names to the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. They are among the giants of 20th-century physics—the golden era in our profession. Yet these scientists have given their endorsement to badly flawed calculations that create a misleading impression in the minds of Congress and the public on the technical feasibility of a proposal aimed at protecting the United States from destruction.

Lowell Wood, a theorist at Livermore and one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of defense scientists, made a comment recently to the New York Times about what he also saw as a contradiction between the research talents of Dr. Hans Bethe—the most prominent physicist associated with the Union of Concerned Scientists—and the negative views of that great theorist on the technical merits of the proposal to defend the United States against Soviet missiles. Dr. Wood said:

Is Hans Bethe a good physicist? Yes, he’s one of the best alive. Is he a rocket engineer? No. Is he a military-systems engineer? No. Is he a general? No. Everybody around here respects Hans Bethe enormously as a physicist. But weapons are my profession. He dabbles as a military-systems analyst.

It seems to me that Dr. Wood has part of the answer. I think the remainder of the answer is that scientists belong to the human race. As with the rest of us, in matters on which they have strong feelings, their rational judgments can be clouded by their ideological preconceptions.

Editor’s Afterword to:

The War Against “Star Wars”

There have been few changes in the US intellectual scene since the publication of Dr. Jastrow’s essay. The Union of Concerned Scientists and other such groups have not changed their opinions, and have gained prestigious new recruits. In the fall of 1985 Dr. Isaac Asimov, in a letter mailed under the aegis of Americans For Democratic Action, called the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative “fantastic,” and said the President did not know the difference between science and science fiction.

He proceeded to describe a system no one has ever advocated, and impute to the President and Department of Defense impossible goals no one would ever implement. He doesn’t know what *STAR WARS* (as he insists on writing it throughout his letter) will cost, but he hears “guesses” and the guesses he hears run from five hundred billion to a trillion dollars—“and from all our recent experience with weapons systems, it almost invariably takes far greater sums of money to complete the job than is anticipated.”

In other words, the President and his supporters are for some bizarre reason embarked on a mad scheme to bankrupt the nation in order to provide an unworkable defense. That appears to be the hypothesis of that letter. I am Chairman of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy (an organization that includes astronauts like Buzz Aldrin, aerospace managers like George Merrick, space scientists like Max Hunter, military people like Daniel O. Graham, laser experts like Dennis Reilly, high energy physicists like Lowell Wood and Gregory Benford, engineers like Harry Stine and Gordon Woodcock, and a host of other experts). The Council not only advocates strategic defense but takes pride in having provided some of the papers on which the President based his speech of March 23, 1983. I know of no such conspiracy. I think Strategic Defense—*STAR WARS* if you like—is, in Robert Heinlein’s words, “the best news since VJ Day,” and I think the President and his advisors believe that too.

In the Council at least we have done our homework, and while we may be wrong, we’ve not seen any serious analysis to convince us of that. You can prove anything if you can make up your data. So far as I can tell, the opponents of Strategic Defense continue to give us confirming instances of that elementary proposition.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Final Solution

Ames MacKenzie

Some stories would be ruined by an introduction. This is one of them.

Final Solution

Ames MacKenzie

Lala was an impetuous boy and not to be gainsaid.

“Grandfather,” he begged in piping Hindee, “please tell me the story!”

The old man sighed. “Very well, small one,” he said, “but quickly, for the great Giver of Life drowns in the Black Water and thou must rest!

“How came we to this green and gracious land? Once another race dwelt here, the sons and daughters of mighty warriors and the makers of wonderful songs.

“But their creeds divided this people, for they worshipped different gods or different aspects of the same god, like unto the myriad sects of the children of Allah.

“The followers of each belief were determined that their faith should be supreme in the land. So both sides formed secret bands, not unlike the dreaded Thugs of old, to terrorize and murder till the other would do submission.”

“The White Queen–” broke in Lala.

“Hush, ’tis come!” chided his grandsire. “The soldiers of the White Queen came to bring order to her province. They spent much of their blood and her treasure to no avail. Till, at last, the Queen and her councillors declared to the makers of discord, ‘Thou art not fit to have such a land! Begone and trouble it no more!’ And so they were made to leave, every man, woman and child of them. The White Queen gave them gold to ease their way, but ’tis said it was a bitter parting.

“Yet was not their lot better than our own? We, the lost children of Hind, whose fathers and fathers’ fathers had gone to be the keepers of papers and dealers in goods in the Southern land? When the White Queen freed her dark servants, the children of Ham cast us out, calling us leeches and worse.

“Aye, we had the White Queen’s ticket, saying we might dwell in her house. There we were good enough to sweep her streets and carry her filth, nought but untouchables’ work could we find. And the Queen’s poor children among whom we lived loved us not. They did not understand our ways, nor we theirs.

“So when the Queen banished her erring sons and daughters and left this country unsettled, we came hither at her bidding and made it a bit of Hind in the Western Sea, where all now dwell in peace and contentment under the White Queen and the Lord Vishnu.”

“The name, grandfather, the name!” demanded the youngling.

“Name? Why ’tis New Hindustan, as thou knowest right well,” teased the elder.

“The old name, grandfather, the funny one!”

“I know, my child, ’tis a peculiar name, truly. ’Twas called Northern Ireland, as thou are called ‘He-Who-Should-Be-In-Bed’! Now, off with thee!”

Editor’s Introduction to:

Masterplay

William F. Wu

War is not necessarily, has not always been, what we see today.

In the time of Napoleon only the men of military age were taken—and not all of them, for as a general rule the Emperor would call up only half a class. All the rest of the population were left, apart from having to pay war taxes of moderate size, to lead their normal lives.

In the time of Louis XIV less still was taken: conscription was unknown, and the private person lived outside the battle.

We may say, then, that it is not an unavoidable result of an outbreak of war that every member and every resource of society must be involved in it: may we also say that the circumstances of the outbreak [of total war] of which we are at once the spectators and the victims are due to chance?

Assuredly not…

—Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power

De Jouvenal continues his analysis to show that “the total war of today is only the logical end of an uninterrupted advance toward it, of the increasing growth of war.”

We can speculate on what might happen if that trend were reversed; if the world, weary of total war, turned to some other means for settling disputes.

The problem with this is contained in a passage in the life of Alexander the Great when, as a young prince, he was sent on campaign into the Balkans. As he approached the front he saw the refugees streaming back toward Macedonia. Most were women and children. The few men were ancient or deformed or badly wounded. Nearly all the women had been raped, and they carried all they owned on their backs. As the Macedonians rode forward, one of the generals said to Alexander: “This is defeat. Avoid it.”

Human history goes through cycles. In some of those cycles defeat has not been so terrible, nor victory so final. Dr. William F. Wu writes of a time when the world has wearied of war but is not yet ready to turn to justice; of a time when victory is better than defeat, but defeat is better than real warfare. In such a time governments might turn to other means to settle disputes.

Masterplay

William F. Wu

Ken Li leaned toward the window of the luxurious shuttle-copter and squinted into the bright sunlight. Below him, the World Headquarters of the Gaming Masters’ Guild was growing larger, no longer a dot lost in the sprawling city, but now resembling an architectural model like those displayed in hospital lobbies. He continued to watch as the shuttlecopter descended toward the rooftop heliport, so he could enjoy his excitement and anticipation to the fullest.

This was it. At age twenty-nine, after years of first apprenticeship and then later gaming in the Master class, he had finally made his way to the center of his profession. A rare opening had occurred here at WHQ and over two hundred Master Gamers had competed for it in a tournament stretching across fifteen months.

Ken Li was the only survivor.

When the shuttlecopter had landed gently, Ken stood up in the aisle and looked down at himself. He had dressed carefully for this occasion, in a loose white dress shirt of some silky synthetic, worn open at the collar, and a hand-tailored, solid-turquoise sport jacket with silver buttons. Dark blue dress slacks and white loafers completed the picture—an extreme one, that made him smile with self-conscious irony as he smoothed the sides of his jacket. He knew the message conveyed by his appearance, that he was professional, successful, vain, and a bit eccentric.

Well, he reflected, that message was fairly honest. With a big grin for the pretty, wide-eyed, redhaired flight attendant who opened the door, he picked up his empty briefcase, slung the strap of his black shoulder bag over his shoulder, and stepped out to descend the steps.

With an unerring but amused sense of drama, Ken strode regally down the metal steps with his back erect, looking out across the paved rooftop with apparently casual interest. The wind from the propeller overhead blew his hair forward. Two men stood at the bottom of the steps, awaiting the flight’s only passenger.

As Ken neared the bottom, he looked directly at his hosts for the first time. He recognized one as Kirk Emerald, director of the Guild’s executive committee and one of the founders of the Guild. Ken was pleasantly shocked, and then humbled. He hadn’t expected him.

“Master Li.” Kirk Emerald, a tall, slender man with a full head of white hair tossed in the shuttlecopter’s stiff breeze, extended his hand. “I’m Kirk Emerald. Welcome to World Headquarters.”

“Thank you. I’m glad to be here.” Ken shook hands, smiling up at the man who towered over him.

“This is Lou Crandall.” Emerald gestured to the man beside him.

“Oh, of course. Pleased to meet you.” Surprised again, Ken shook hands with the heavy-set man in his forties.

“Ken, I’m glad to meet you, too. After all the corresponding we’ve done, it’s about time. I’m honored to be your new contractor.”

Ken wasn’t fooled. Crandall was one of the top contractors in the business, and he could do more for Ken than Ken could do for him. “I’m honored to be able to sign with you. Thanks for meeting me. I really appreciate it.” He included Emerald in his eye contact. “Thanks very much.”

Lou took a cigar wrapped in cellophane out of his inside jacket pocket and started tearing at the wrapper with his teeth. “That’s the great part of having this heliport on the roof, Ken; you don’t have to go very far to meet people.” He laughed good-naturedly.

Kirk Emerald clapped Ken on the shoulder as they turned and started to walk. “No need to be formal any more. You’re one of us now.”

So Ken Li came to World Headquarters.

Ken was introduced at the Guild Hall reception desk, an impressive black marble structure in the main lobby; after that, his hosts said farewell and a reception clerk escorted him up to the suite of rooms that the Guild was providing for free, temporarily. Most of his belongings were somewhere on the way from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in a van; now, he simply set down his empty briefcase, his shoulder bag of books and cameras, and one suitcase of clothes.

The suite was large, spacious, and airy. One wall of the sunken living room was a huge window, looking out over the city. The furnishings were contemporary modular rectangles of pastel orange, yellow, and blue. The video screen on one wall could be keyed for any of the games being played in the Guild Hall, provided public access had been granted. In addition, old tapes could be called up from the Guild Hall library. The bedroom contained a huge, firm bed and an entire wall of entertainment consoles, for video, film, radio, or audio pastimes. The kitchen was fully equipped with electronic appliances. The refrigerator, bar, and pantry were fully stocked, not only with staples, but also with champagne, black caviar, dim sum, and sushi.

Ken explored with a mixture of amazement and giddiness. He laughed aloud at the large sunken tub and the shag carpeting in the bathroom, and then, shaking his head at the wonder he felt, he washed up and changed into a clean, light blue shirt. Then he checked his watch, composed himself with a deep breath, and went out to see the Guild Hall. His giddiness would remain in the suite, as it would not befit a Master Gamer of the World Headquarters.

Later, just before 5:30 P.M., Ken wandered casually down a wide, carpeted hallway to the Summer Palace banquet room, where the reception in his honor was to take place. It was decorated in the style of the opulent Summer Palace in Beijing. Ken smiled to himself, amused that they had chosen this banquet hall, out of many, to honor him. Quite a crowd was already visible in the room, through the open doorway, where shelves of ancient Chinese antiques and art lined the walls under glass.

“Well, well.” He spoke aloud to himself, grinning. Then he stuck his hands into his pockets and walked up to the short line at the door. As he waited, he gradually became aware that everyone inside the banquet room, and everyone ahead of him in line, was wearing a long red ribbon. When his turn came, he inclined his head toward the people filing into the room. “Where, uh, do I get a red ribbon?”

A young, slender man in a black tuxedo looked up at him. He had a green ribbon reading “hospitality” on his lapel. “You should have received it over a week ago, sir. That is, you did preregister, didn’t you? We don’t have registration here at the door.”

“Well, I was told to be here at 5:30.” Ken smiled amiably, not wanting to cause the young man any trouble. “I’m Ken Li, and–”

“Oh! Master Li?” The young man’s eyes grew wide, and his face suddenly started turning pink. “Uh—well… just a moment. Master.” He stuck his head inside the door of the banquet room and shouted in a hoarse stage whisper. “Donna! I need help!”

Ken smiled awkwardly and glanced behind him. The line was still forming. He hadn’t meant to cause a problem, and the young man’s discomfiture embarrassed him. When he turned to face forward, the young fellow had been joined by a stunningly pretty woman also wearing the green hospitality ribbon.

“Can I help you? I’m Donna Wong.” She smiled and held out her hand.

“Glad to meet you. I’m Ken Li.” Ken shook her hand, which was small and warm and gripped his firmly.

Donna was about five feet four, with high, even cheekbones and a square jaw. Her lips were full and her nose was straight and a little wide. Wavy, shoulder-length black hair framed her face as her eyes met his. She had a strong Cantonese look, he thought.

“Oh!—Master Li. I’m sorry if there was a mix-up. Um—we were expecting you to come down with Lou Crandall.” She waited for a response, watching his face with an open, pleasant smile.

“Ah—that’s my fault. I forgot all about it. He did tell me he’d swing up to my room to get me. I was exploring the Guild Hall and just came over here when it was time.”

Donna nodded, without taking her eyes off his face. “I see. Well, Lou has your ribbon.” Her smile remained as she gazed at him.

Ken realized, suddenly, that even though she seemed impressed with his looks—or his status, more likely—and even though she was not going to embarrass him outright, she also had no intention of letting him in just because he claimed to be the guest of honor. He laughed lightly and reached for his wallet. “May I show you some identification?”

“I—wait. There’s Lou, now.” Donna looked past him and waved.

“Ken!” Lou called out as he came striding down past the rest of the line. “Hi. Came down early, eh?”

“I’m sorry, Lou. I forgot you were coming up to my room.”

“No harm done. Here, pin this on.” Lou handed him a red ribbon. “Okay, hon?”

“You know my name, Lou.” Donna spoke firmly.

“Aw, yeah, all right. Sorry.” Lou gripped Ken’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go in.”

“Okay.” Ken grinned at Donna, gave a little shrug, and followed the contractor.

The room was already crowded. Lou worked his bulk slowly along the wall toward the bar, and Ken took advantage of the trail he blazed. The big contractor looked back over his shoulder and waved him forward.

“C’mon, Master Li! Don’t be shy. What do you drink, anyhow?”

“White wine.” Ken laughed at Lou’s bluff and friendly manner. His personality would be an asset for their working together.

“White wine it is. Yeah, here you are.” Lou handed him a cold glass. “Well, you’ll get a formal introduction to the crowd later. In the meantime, here’s a toast.”

“Oh?” Ken grinned and raised his glass.

“Here’s to the new arrangement that brought you here—to the Gaming Act. May we all prosper.” Lou clinked glasses with Ken and took a healthy swallow.

“Ah, yes. Here’s to it.” Ken sipped the sweet white wine and turned to survey the crowd. He was certain that he had heard of many of the Master Gamers present, but he didn’t know them by sight any more than Donna Wong had known him.

Richard Ross was looking at him.

Deep in the crowd, a tall, lanky man with reddish blond hair stood with his long, lean arms folded across his chest, a glass of beer clutched in one hand at an awkward angle. He was watching Ken with a self-conscious smile. As soon as their eyes met, Ken began weaving his way through the crowd toward him, and he started toward Ken.

“See you later,” Lou said quietly, behind Ken. “He gives me the creeps.”

Ken, jostled by someone in the press of people, still managed to reach out and shake with Richard.

“Welcome to World Headquarters,” Richard said with that familiar strange tone of his that seemed to hint at sarcasm.

“Thanks. I’m glad to be here. Back in the old home town again.”

Richard waved his glass of beer slightly in his other hand. “Let’s see… we haven’t seen each other since I was visiting the Detroit Guild Hall a couple of years ago. You’ve, uh, been moving up in the world.”

Ken shrugged, uncomfortable with an apparent compliment from his old friend. “I have to say, this Guild Hall makes the others look like outhouses.”

Richard laughed shortly. “Yeah. Trouble is, everyone here knows it.” He tilted his head back for a sizeable swallow of beer. “You realize, of course, that you’ve got it made, now, just by being a Master Gamer slotted in this Guild. You can do anything here but fail.”

“Well, I guess that’s true. It’s true in any Guild Hall, though.” Ken shrugged.

“Not like it is here.” Richard sneered and waved his glass around at the crowd. “Our esteemed colleagues have the souls of circling buzzards. I’ve been here, what, over eleven years and I’ve never been rated lower than six in the entire world. They know it, too—and every one of them would like my slot near the top.”

“Or at the top, frequently.” Ken grinned.

Richard laughed genuinely, then. “Yeah, sometimes.” He frowned again. “Just keep in mind—no one here even discusses failure. Success is expected, and to hear people talk, that’s all that happens here. We all know better, but that doesn’t matter. Every Master here just says… it’s a good life.” He laughed and shook his head. “I guess you’ll have to be here a while to feel it, but it’ll come.”

Ken nodded, watching his childhood friend take another long draught of his beer. Richard had been a young phenom when he had attained Master status at age 19. He had always been extremely competitive, with his anxiety and insecurity about winning always near the surface. Yet his knowledge of military history and tactics was unmatched by any other Master, past or present.

On the other hand, Ken was not exactly in the habit of discussing failure—or even considering it—himself.

“Ironically,” said Richard, “I won’t be under the gun quite as much any more. Now it’s your turn.”

“What? How so? If anything, people have been falling all over themselves to welcome me.”

Richard laughed with a sarcastic twist to his smile. “Oh, yeah. They’ll always be like that on the surface. Do you realize why you’re here—in depth, I mean?”

Ken was in no mood to guess. “Suppose you tell me.”

“All right.” Richard shrugged. “Before the Guild Act was passed, we had a fairly stable number of games contracted. One slob gets mad at some other jerk; their lawyers can’t work it out, and so they mutually hire Masters to play for their dispute. The old trial by combat, right? You with me so far?”

“Get on with it.” Ken raised an eyebrow in annoyance. “I don’t need lectures. What’s the point?”

“Now, under the old rules, we were only contracted by mutually agreeable private parties—the government had nothing to do with it. With the Guild Act passed, the very same slob can now sue the very same jerk for a game, and under certain provisions, a judge may grant it, whether or not the defendant agrees to trial by combat.”

“You haven’t told me one single item yet that’s new to me. Every Master who reads the trades knows all this.”

Richard eyed him tightly. “And you still don’t get it? What it means to you?”

“The Guild expects more games to be contracted than before, and has opened new slots in Guild Halls all over the country. I got the one here. That’s all.”

Richard laughed derisively. “Not hardly. You are the new gunslinger in town. Every Master here will be gunning for you. And the members of the public who hate us for the Guild Act will center on you as the most visible representative of the new order.’’

Ken looked down at his glass. “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. I remember reading that some people are against the Guild Act. I don’t see why, really. Nobody likes being sued. Why should getting sued for a game be any worse than getting sued for anything else?”

Richard waved his free hand in dismissal and finished his beer with the other. “You got me. I don’t care, anyway. Plenty of people love watching our games and betting on them and making us celebrities. That’s good enough for me.”

“I still think you’re being too hard on the other Masters. I was friends with lots of my colleagues back in Michigan.”

“That was Michigan. You notice how no one has approached you while we’ve been talking? They must know who you are. I mean, you do rather stand out in a crowd.”

Ken grinned. “I just thought they were avoiding you.”

Richard laughed, and his pale face flushed slightly. “Could be, at that.” He raised his empty glass. “I’m going for a refill. Want one?”

“No, thanks. Think I’ll mingle.”

Richard vanished into the crowd, and Ken turned to look around. The crush of well-dressed men and women were talking in the normal fashion for any cocktail party, but he could see people occasionally glancing at him as they spoke. That made sense; the reception was in his honor, after all.

Donna Wong, in a striking dress of lavender lace, was circulating, talking to people briefly with a quick smile and then moving on. Ken hesitated, then began working his way toward her. He intended to make running into her look like an accident, but when she saw him, she changed direction to meet him.

Ken stopped where he was, smiling at her, and watched. Her dress was long, made of lace over satin, with white trim. She seemed to be of a medium build, but the cut of her dress really disguised her traits below the neck. Meanwhile, he noticed with amusement, she was looking him over, too—this outfit he had so carefully selected to make the impression he wanted.

Judging from the look on her face, it had worked just fine.

“Master Li. Can I get you another?” Donna gestured to take his glass, with a big smile.

“Oh—no, thanks. This is fine.”

“You haven’t turned red.” She put her upper teeth on her lower lip in a teasing expression.

“It hasn’t been long enough yet; that’s all.” Ken laughed. “And call me Ken, will you?”

“Sure.”

Ken kept on smiling at her, feeling just a little awkward. Her eyes were so plainly enjoying looking at him that he wasn’t sure how to act. He was tempted to gaze at her with equal enthusiasm, but then nobody would talk.

Just before the pause became a burden, he nodded toward her green ribbon. “Are you catering? Or are you associated with the Guild?”

“I’m an Apprentice Gamer.” Her tone was proud. “I came to it later than most, but I’m perking right along.”

“Oh, really?” Ken was more interested, now. “How far along are you?”

“I’ve already applied for a qualifying game. Right now, all the Masters here are so backlogged that none of them are playing qualifiers. I’ll get it eventually, though. In the meantime, I’m practicing a lot and passing the time with projects like this.”

“That sounds like a good program.” Ken realized, suddenly, that he could offer to play against her in a game that would test her ability to become a Master, since he was unbooked. He immediately dismissed the idea, since he wanted to get to know her better. Becoming her opponent would only be an obstacle.

“Now.” Donna took his arm. “I’d like to escort you up to the front, where Master Emerald is getting ready to introduce you to the assembled multitude. You don’t have to do much. Just smile and wave at the right time, and it’ll all be over.”

“Yes, Lou explained it to me this afternoon.” Ken responded to the pressure of her on his arm and started moving toward the front of the room. “Well, even if I’m in a room full of future opponents and competitors, at least I feel like it’s a family. You know what I mean? The Guild is like home.”

Donna looked up at him, and her face was close to his. Her full lips were pursed in a tight smile. “Well, Ken… Master Li. Perhaps you should know that some of us are very much against the Guild Act that brought you here.”

Ken glanced at her in surprise. “Even gamers are against it?”

Donna nodded. “Not very many—in fact, here in town, I may be the only one.”

“But… you’re really against it? Seriously?”

“Definitely.”

“I don’t understand how anyone–”

“Shh.” She laughed and put a finger to her lips. “Master Emerald is about to start. We’ll talk some other time.”

Early the next morning, freshly showered and breakfasted, Ken hurried down a silent, carpeted, dimly-lit corridor after Richard, whose steady, long-legged stride set a brisk pace. They passed long rows of heavy closed doors and kept turning corners set at irregular angles. Ken could see brass name-plates on each door, shining slightly in the weak overhead light. Finally, after Ken had completely lost his way, Richard stopped to open one of the doors with a key.

Without speaking, Richard snapped on the room light and walked inside. He had worked himself into a fierce competitive mood for their practice game, Ken realized, and would not be sociable again until after they had finished. Ken waited for Richard to choose one side of the big room, then took the other for himself.

The practice room was a large rectangle, just a bit bigger than the ten-meter square playing field outlined in black on the floor. The playing field itself was a plain white synthetic substance that took holograms particularly well; Ken could never remember what they called the stuff, nor did he really care. Outside the square, the room was luxuriously carpeted and furnished with a multiple beverage dispenser and private restroom.

Ken sat down in the padded chair centered along one side of the playing field. It had a console that allowed him to adjust the softness or firmness of the seat, back, and arms, and to shift all their angles to the minutest degree. Ken liked a hard seat and back, with the back straight up behind him. Years ago, in high school, his Latin teacher—a silver-haired woman who had corrected students’ mistakes without the need to consult her text—had decreed that no one could “cerebrate” if he was comfortable. As near as Ken’s own cerebrum could tell, she had been right.

Across the field from Ken, Richard was adjusting his own seat. Above the center of the field, Ken could see the opening in the ceiling that housed the projectors. He reached down to his left and brought up the keyboard on a swiveling steel arm. It held twelve horizontal rows of keys, twelve keys to a row, plus larger buttons and dials running vertically down each side. Across the top, a small video screen completed the board.

Across the way, Richard glanced up at him with an intense scowl. Trying not to laugh nervously—he was too knotted up inside to be truly amused—Ken waved a hand. Richard hit a button and the game opened.

The field was suddenly lit up from above with three-dimensional miniatures. A city from ancient times sat on the coast of a large sea or ocean; the surrounding region held two sizeable armies, still some distance from each other. The terrain was generally flat and rolling slightly, covered by the green of plowed fields and patches of forest separated by open country.

Since this was a practice game, both gamers had sixty seconds before the game would come alive in a computerized simulation of tactical warfare. Ken read on his video screen: “Tunis. 255 B.C. Carthaginians. Xanthippes.” Officers’ names, Victory Conditions, and odds for the battle followed. That was all the system would tell him.

Ken was taking the place of the Spartan mercenary, Xanthippes, who had come to Carthage and taken command of the Carthaginian army. As Master Gamers, both Ken and Richard were expected to know all the details of the battle, including the personalities of individual officers who were on record historically and the abilities and cultural tendencies of the troops. These were all programmed into the game.

Tunis, Ken thought. His heart was pounding. This battle had been fought in the Punic Wars, well before the time of Hannibal. Xanthippes had defeated a Roman army led by its consul Atilius Regulus, whose decisions would now be made by Richard.

Ken flexed his fingers nervously. He, as Xanthippes, had units representing four thousand cavalry, twelve thousand foot soldiers, and one hundred elephants. The battlefield would be on level ground. He sat quivering with intensity, not certain that he could defeat Richard even now, but anxious to play him close, at the very least. As the seconds passed, he could feel his confidence ebb, to be replaced by an old familiar feeling of intimidation.

The game activated.

Ken’s Carthaginian army was on the near side of the screen, represented by tiny figures. They were too small to discern clearly with the naked eye as individuals, but they functioned most of the time in military units that were fairly easy to identify.

Ken picked up the metal sensory band from its hook on the arm of the chair. He fitted it around his head, turning it so that the transparent eye pieces and small audio speakers were properly placed. The sensory band was controlled by the keyboard; unless he activated it, he would see and hear normally.

The Carthaginian armies were usually comprised of foreign mercenaries led by Carthaginian officers. Ken remembered that this army was an exception. The Romans had landed outside Carthage, isolating the city from its recruiting field and part of its food supply. So two-thirds of Ken’s army were Carthaginian citizens with training but limited experience, led this time by a mercenary.

Ken began tapping the keys to arrange his units. On the far side of the field, Richard was setting up his Roman legionaries. He had a slight numerical advantage, with fifteen thousand infantry and five thousand horse. However, the Carthaginian cavalry had possessed more fighting quality, and the figures had greater combat power to reflect this.

Since Carthage had won the real battle, Ken did not tamper with the Spartan’s plan. Like Xanthippes, he put his elephants in the front line as shock troops, followed by his infantry, with his cavalry on the wings. It was a fairly standard arrangement: the elephants, charging across the level plain, should trample the front lines of legionaries and throw the rest into confusion, to be finished off by the Carthaginian infantry. The mobility of the cavalry would prevent any flanking movement by the more numerous Romans. Richard’s numerical superiority could be nullified by the elephants.

Ken activated his sensory band and moved into the battle scene as Xanthippes. The great gray elephants lumbered forward, raising their trunks and trumpeting. He could choose between an on-scene viewpoint, from the spot where his game persona was at any given time, or he could use the larger perspective of the gaming seat, with a near-total loss of detail.

Ken hesitated, then pulled out of the sensory band again. It was most useful at crisis points, but had little to offer when the large pattern of the battle was still developing. He happened to enjoy it a great deal, but that was a matter of pleasure, not business.

Behind the elephants, the lines of infantry began to move forward. Both wings of cavalry fanned out slightly to prepare for action. Ken would meet any flanking motion by the Roman cavalry with his own, but he doubted Richard would try it. The two sides were too closely matched for such a move to work on level ground.

The Romans marched forward. Even with his naked eye, Ken could see the red hairline that was the great red plumes of dyed horsehair worn by the Roman legionaries. The formation looked a little odd to him, but on close examination he found the different units to be in conventional order. He selected the combination of keys he wanted and directed his elephants, through the tiny figure of Xanthippes on the field, to charge.

The front line of Carthaginians began to move out ahead of the others. The Roman infantry halted its forward progress. Ken held his breath, watching.

The gray line of Carthaginian elephants advanced up the field, meshed with the lines of Roman infantry, and continued to charge forward, between the files of legionaries. Ken’s stomach tightened. The elephants, now rampaging out of control of their drivers, were stampeding harmlessly through gaps in the formation. The Romans closed files behind them and resumed marching.

Ken swallowed. The Roman formation had looked odd because Richard had spread the files apart, while keeping the positions of his troops otherwise conventional. Ken remembered that the Romans had used this technique on other occasions, though not at this battle. Gamers had the option of such authentic tactics and Richard, of course, knew better than anyone when to use them.

The two front lines of infantry clashed and Ken concentrated on the screen and his keyboard. The computer considered morale factors, and the Romans gained an advantage from surviving the elephant charge intact, while the Carthaginians lost morale for the same reason. Ken’s infantry held but did not move forward. The wings of cavalry met on each side and spread out farther as they fought for position against each other.

Ken hit the keyboard as quickly as he dared, holding back a little speed for fear of making a mistake. His confidence had been rattled. He watched his front line carefully. Through Xanthippes, he encouraged the mercenaries to hold their ground. The Carthaginian left, in particular, was hard-pressed by the Romans. Ken’s right was advancing slightly, but he was not sure what to do next. In the real battle, the Carthaginian elephants had thrown the Romans right into chaos and the Carthaginian infantry had crushed them. Here, the balance was still undetermined.

On the wings, the Carthaginian cavalry was commanded by two separate officers programmed by the computer. As Xanthippes, Ken could issue them new orders, but if he did not, those officers and their men would perform as they had historically. Ken’s cavalry, with a fighting superiority that more than offset their fewer numbers, threatened to drive their Roman counterparts from the field. He figured he should not interfere.

All at once, then, he realized that the Romans were trying to disengage themselves. It was a complicated maneuver; if the Romans retreated too quickly, their formation would break and become a rout. In these circumstances, with the Carthaginians still strong and aggressive, that was nearly inevitable. Richard, however, was pulling his legionaries back in good order, despite the pressure from Ken’s lines. The Carthaginians began to score even better, destroying their retreating enemy at a faster rate than before. Still, the Roman infantry, anticipating help, maintained their fighting order. The game computer allowed this because of the renowned discipline of the Roman legions and Richard’s delicate handling, Ken surmised, of the necessary orders.

Both wings of Roman cavalry, fleeing the Carthaginians, fought their way between the two bodies of infantry and slowed the Carthaginian advance. The retreat of the Roman infantry gave their cavalry room to maneuver. Then, as the Carthaginian cavalry closed on the Roman cavalry from each side, the mounted Romans fought a holding action to allow their infantry time to escape.

Ken ground his teeth as he punched the keyboard. He was seriously damaging the Roman cavalry, but his own infantry could no longer close with the retreating legions. Ken hated losing and his stomach felt cold as he watched the Roman infantry pull away.

It was a risky and costly maneuver on Richard’s part, and not one he was likely to try in a real game. He had tried it just to find out if he could sacrifice his cavalry to save his infantry. In a way, he was just playing around—experimenting. Ken realized that the insult to him was unintentional, but he was still disturbed by the fact that Richard could succeed even though he had not taken Ken very seriously.

Resigned, Ken halted the advance of his units. His refusal to pursue the fleeing Romans activated an assessment by the computer. After a wait of thirty seconds, during which the two gamers could resume new maneuvers, the field froze. The game results appeared on the video screen above Ken’s board.

Ken read them with disgust for himself.

“Victory Conditions: None.

“Tactical position: Stalemate, advantage Carthage.

“Strategic position: Stalemate, advantage Rome.”

The list went on, giving statistics and elapsed time, but Ken ignored the rest. He was angry with himself and embarrassed.

Richard punched a button and erased the game, leaving only the blank playing field again. He visibly relaxed and lounged back in his chair. Then he remembered his sensory band and leaned forward a moment to pull it off. “You lost,” he called out, grinning. His bushy blond hair was sweaty. “Welcome to World Headquarters.”

Ken swung his own keyboard out of the way and took off his sensory band. “Stalemate, actually.” He adjusted his seat to lean back and fell onto it, aware that he was hot and soaked in sweat.

“Technically true.” Richard turned to one side and hung a long leg over the arm of the chair. “Actually, though, the strategic position favors Rome, Atilius Regulus still has enough of an army to keep Carthage isolated, and the Romans can get new horses from the surrounding country. Carthage is still threatened, and would have to fight again under these circumstances. If the Romans wait for the return of their reinforcements in the spring, Carthage could be finished.”

Ken shrugged and shook his head in concession. At this point, he just wanted to forget it.

Suddenly Richard jumped up. “Never mind! I’m celebrating. Let’s run down to the Club for brunch, on me. Champagne time.”

“Okay.” Ken slid out of the chair. He understood that Richard had been unable to make friendly conversation before the game, when he had been in a competitive frenzy. “What’s the celebration about? Not beating me, surely.”

Richard laughed. “Are you kidding? Let’s get settled downstairs, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Again, Ken followed him through the labyrinth of Guild hallways. They had been deliberately constructed this way to increase the privacy of gamers who often did not wish their colleagues to know when they were practicing, or with whom. No formal rules governed such information, but a tradition of discretion in the Guild had a rigidity bordering on that of law.

The Guild Club was a formal dining room and lounge on one of the lower floors. It offered linen and sterling silver for the settings, a staff in black tie and tails, crystal goblets, and fresh flowers clustered around scented candles. Heavy curtains adorned the walls; they proved to be. Ken found, copies of famous medieval European tapestries. Money was not exchanged here; only Masters who gamed out of this Guild Hall could eat or host meals here, and the staff was expected to know them by sight and to accept their signatures without further verification.

When they had ordered an elaborate brunch, Richard flipped out his napkin and set it in his lap. “Gene called me early this morning—uh, that’s Gene Graham, my contractor. He’s wrangled an offer for me to play in the very first game contracted under the provisions of the Guild Act. Hey, I’m going right back to the top.”

Ken was impressed, though a pang of envy hit him, no doubt strengthened by his disappointment over the morning’s practice game. “Really? That is grounds for celebration. Let’s see—you’re rated number two right now?”

“Yep—whatshisname, DuVeau, is number one at the moment. They tried to get him first, of course, but apparently he’s booked four or five months ahead.”

“I don’t know much about him, but he must be good.” Ken watched as the immaculately dressed waiter wheeled up an ice cart, carrying a bottle of champagne.

Richard frowned and shook his head. “Naw—he’s a flash in the pan. I was in the top ten long before he was, and I’ll be here long after. Matter of fact, he’s older than we are.”

Richard nodded his approval of the champagne, and they both watched as the cork was popped and the bottle poured. When the waiter had retired, Ken lifted his glass. “Congratulations. Here’s to Victory Conditions.”

Richard clinked glasses with him. “Ah, yes—here’s to Victory Conditions. Thank you.”

Brunch arrived promptly, and Richard devoted his attention to it with a nervous, energetic earnestness that Ken remembered well. As they ate in silence, he began wondering if the pressure to win had gradually created an obsession with winning in his old friend. It was not easy to tell, because Richard had always been ferociously competitive, and he may have simply thrived here in a naturally conducive environment. Another thought occurred to Ken about their practice game. “That maneuver you were trying with me earlier. Are you, uh, working on a masterplay?”

Richard looked up in surprise, hesitated, and then grinned self-consciously. He reddened as he finished a mouthful of food. “No, not exactly. To be honest, it’s hard to plan a masterplay. If people could figure them out in practice games, at their leisure, they’d do it all the time.”

“And then they wouldn’t be masterplays.” Ken nodded. “You have, what, three of them?”

“Four.”

“Two more than anyone else. That’s a major contribution to the field.” Ken was not being generous; this was the plain truth.

“Actually, masterplays will become a problem if they’re ever common. Think of it—a masterplay is a maneuver that always works in the game it’s developed for. So–”

“Given that the opportunity develops. It may not–”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Richard snapped. “But, like I was saying, if the situation for a masterplay develops in a game, and the maneuver is already in our professional repertoire, then the game is essentially over. We’ll have standard solutions for every game, and I guess they’d have to be reprogrammed or something.”

Ken nodded. “Right now, though, there aren’t very many masterplays in the books, are there?”

Richard grinned again and shook his head. “Well, no. It’s a long way off.” He returned to his plate.

A masterplay, thought Ken. It was a special mark of prestige, a pure artistic accomplishment that went beyond winning games and charging fees and drawing clients and crowds. A Master with a mediocre career would always be known for creating a masterplay; a Master with an otherwise stellar career might never feel completely fulfilled without one. Richard’s place in Guild history was already assured. Only the extent of his prestige had yet to be established.

Throughout their childhood and teen years, Richard had always been Ken’s closest friend. Yet their personalities had never fit the age-old metaphor of gears meshing; Ken suppressed a grin as he thought instead of gears grinding, disengaging, and grinding again. For Ken, the competitive tension between them had been stronger because Richard had always been in the lead. At the same time, his life had always been more narrow.

At the age of fourteen, Richard had been hunkered over his small personal screen on the desk in his bedroom. He was even thinner back then, but he already had most of his height. While he played the Battle of An Shr Chong, between the Tang Dynasty of China and Korea, Ken sprawled on Richard’s bed, re-reading Knight’s Castle, by Edward Eager.

“Stupid!” Richard pounded his fist on his desk in frustration. “I did it again, the same stupid mistake. I’m gonna beat this computer yet, though.” He punched a button and ended the game. “No sense playing out this monstrosity now.” Ken had not looked up from his book. “You still reading that kiddie stuff?” Richard demanded.

“It’s not kiddie stuff. It says ‘juvenile’ on it, and that’s uh—me.”

“We both read it when we were eight years old.” Richard dismissed the book with a contemptuous wave.

“So we were the only kids reading juvenile novels at that age. So what?” Ken laughed, and Richard joined him. Their intelligence, and intellectual interests, had drawn them together early.

“I thought you liked war games.”

“I do. I also like this.” Ken waved the red, battered hardback with his finger in it marking his place. “For that matter, I like watching football games, too.”

“Ha. That’s barbaric.” Richard turned back to his screen and started a new game.

Ken had started to read again, but his mind had wandered to a girl in his English class.

Later that evening, Donna drew her feet up onto the couch and wrapped the hem of her long flannel nightgown over them. “Really, Sharon, it just sort of happened. I mean, I don’t believe in love at first sight. I really don’t.” She laughed and wrinkled her nose playfully. “Except, I do now.” She knew she’d get a rise out of her friend with that.

Sharon Wills rolled her eyes and put her fists on her hips in an exaggerated gesture. She was sitting on the floor by the coffee table and her broad-shouldered, angular frame threw an intimidating shadow across Donna’s bright colorful painting of Fa Mulan, on the far wall. “It’s not that I’m not interested, but you asked me to run you through this exercise. Mooning about a total stranger won’t help you get Master status.” Sharon laughed, then, and sighed. “All right. I’ll put water on. Do you still have some of that—what do you call it? The expensive imported tea, from high altitudes?”

“Monkey-picked tea. Sure.” Donna slid her feet into her embroidered red silk slippers. “Just remember why it’s so expensive—just think of all the poor monkeys that pitched over the edge of cliffs trying to reach those hard-to-get tea bushes. You can use up a lot of monkeys that way.”

Sharon laughed and stood up, smoothing her rust-colored turtleneck down over the waistband of her jeans. “That’s terrible. But, uh—speaking of hard to get… you know what I mean?”

Donna followed the taller woman into the kitchen. “Yeah, I suppose. I just don’t want to play any games. I used to do that with men and it ruined everything. Always. I’d rather be honest.”

“I’m not arguing with that.” Sharon raised her voice as she ran water into a white plastic container over the sink. “You could find a middle ground, though, couldn’t you?” She opened the transparent door of the flasher and set the two-liter container of water inside. Then she stepped back and winced as she pushed a button. The flasher lit up, buzzed, and went off.

“What are you afraid of?” Donna asked. “I’ve seen you do that before. It’s all sealed and insulated and everything.” She opened the door and took out the boiling water.

Sharon took the lid off Donna’s elaborate blue and white Ming-style teapot and sprinkled leaves inside. “You trust those damn contraptions too much. They told you it was sealed, but for all we know, it’s flashing us at the same time it’s flashing the water.”

Donna picked up two cups and started back to the living room. “Maybe you don’t trust enough. I trust my instincts about Ken, too.” She hesitated, debating whether to say her next thought. It was nothing new to Sharon, anyway. “I’m not exactly without experience, you know.” She smiled tightly.

“I know. That’s what I’m worried about.” Sharon knelt and began to pour.

Stung, Donna said nothing.

“You like it weak, right? I’ll let mine steep longer.”

“Yes, thank you. Um—okay, I’m going to start the exercise. Illegitimate foreign duke, by right of conquest.”

Sharon consulted her sheet of paper. “Right. Second son, by specific inheritance.”

Donna leaned forward from the couch to accept her cup of tea. “Younger brother.”

“Nephew.”

“Cousin once removed, plus war and signed agreement.”

“Son.” Sharon sighed. “All right, wait a minute. I give. Somehow, your love life does seem a little more pressing than the right by which medieval rulers of England took the throne. You still want to tell me about him?”

“Sure!” Donna spoke earnestly. “Sharon, I’m really not the way I used to be anymore. I’m not. I have a lot more self-confidence and direction and everything. Really, Sharon. I’m not looking to be used again. It’s been a long time since I was into that really self-destructive phase of my life.”

Sharon sipped her tea and then gazed into it thoughtfully. “All right, I’m sorry. But I’m still worried about you. The way you talk, you sound so vulnerable. You’re just so… gushy over this guy. I haven’t seen you like this in a long time.” She looked up with a smile. “You aren’t going to revert on me, are you?”

“No.” Donna shook her head. “I won’t revert. I know who I am now. I’m Donna Wong and I’m an Apprentice Gamer and I’m going to be a Master. That’s a far cry from the confused mess I used to be. And I came out of it the hard way, too, all by myself. I won’t revert.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so. But, uh, what about him? Didn’t you say he was this new guy the Guild brought into town after some big elimination tournament?”

Donna nodded enthusiastically. “He impresses the hell out of me. He’s the last survivor out of two hundred Masters from around the world. But you know—I didn’t realize who he was when I first came out and saw him. That’s when it really happened—the moment I laid eyes on him. It really did.”

Sharon sighed. “I just wish you’d stop saying it was love at first sight. Call it infatuation, lust, anything else. But you can’t love him when you don’t even know him.”

“I intend to know him. And I don’t mean the way I used to, either. He knows I’m an Apprentice, and we’ll get acquainted as one gamer to another.”

“Maybe I have him confused with someone else, but… isn’t he the one who represents everything you’re against?”

“Well…” Donna wrinkled her nose again, this time uncomfortably. “He’s the one you mean. That’s true. It’s just that, well, political opinions can change. I’ll just have to change his mind.” She looked up apologetically and laughed lightly. “That’s all. I’ll just have to change his mind.”

Sharon gave her a reluctant grin. “I don’t know about you, sometimes. You’re incurable, I guess.”

“Yeah. I’m also determined.”

Ken tossed the morning paper down on the couch next to him and looked around the Guild Hall lobby. The city was full of comfortable, affordable places to live—but none were available anywhere near the Guild Hall. The Guild Hall wouldn’t be the only location in his life, he knew, but until he made more friends in town and learned his way around the area, his career was about all he had. Finding a place to live nearby was only sensible.

The problem was, he couldn’t find one. Well, the Guild would continue to put him up without charge for at least a month, and probably longer if he convinced them that he was seriously looking. In the meantime, his suite upstairs was opulent, even decadent, but also empty and boring.

So was his morning, for that matter.

People had been bustling through the lobby ever since he had settled there, after having breakfast served to him in his sunken bathtub up in the suite. That idea, too, had been overrated, but he had wanted to try it upon learning that the Guild Club offered room service. He had been reading the paper here in the lobby ever since.

People were still weaving briskly around the black marble pillars and tall potted plants placed throughout the lobby. Most of them stopped at the reception desk before hurrying on. The gold carpet was deep and new; Ken reflected that a lot more foot traffic would have to pass through before it became worn. He suspected, however, that it was replaced regularly, long before any wear became obvious.

“Ken? You busy?” A woman spoke near his ear, from a little behind him.

Deeply grateful for someone to talk to, Ken turned and found Donna Wong coming around the end of the couch.

“Well, hello!” He smiled and started gathering the newspaper to move it out of the way. “No, I’m not busy. Would you like to sit down?”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to take up your time.” Donna sat down gracefully, though, and crossed her knees.

Ken laughed. “I wish someone would. It’s been a dull day so far; I can tell you that.”

“Really? You mean you’ve moved into a new place and everything already? And now you don’t have anything to do.”

“No, no. I’m looking for a spot near the Guild Hall and the decent places around here are all taken. So right now, I don’t have much looking to do.” Ken became aware, again, that she was gazing at him with a smile that seemed unrelated to anything either of them was saying.

“Yes, I’m afraid the area is saturated with gamers. I live just a few blocks from here myself. It’s a nice area.” She nodded sympathetically.

“It’s funny. Right now, I have the most outrageously fancy suite I’ve ever seen. The trouble is, it’s too much. It doesn’t seem like a place to live. It looks more like a set for a movie.”

“Have you been meeting people and all? Getting acquainted?”

Ken laughed. “No, not at all. Lou introduced me to a few people at the reception last night after my formal introduction to the crowd, but that’s about all.”

“Are you shy?”

Surprised, Ken laughed lightly again. “No, I wouldn’t say so. On the other hand, I haven’t been collaring people in the lobby just to say hello, either.”

Donna flashed a bright, pretty smile of amusement. “Oh, that’s not what I meant. But everyone knows who you are. I’m sure it would be easy if you got started.”

“Maybe later in the day. This morning, everyone coming through here has been pretty preoccupied.” Ken shifted on the couch to face her. “Can I ask you something? You said last night that you came to gaming late. How did you get involved in gaming?”

“Speaking of last night, I meant to say good night to you when the party was breaking up. I got caught up in hospitality duties, though.”

“That’s okay. I was pretty tired after traveling and all. Uh–”

“Oh, sorry. Yes, I… well, it sounds like such a cliche. But I had never watched a game until I was twenty-three. A friend took me to be a spectator at a game played over some kind of huge corporate merger or something. Anyway, it was the Battle of Zama. I was fascinated.”

“Really? That’s all it took?”

“The very next day, I started calling around to find out what it took to become a gamer.” Donna spoke with pride.

“I’ve never known anyone who actually became a Master from that kind of start. It’s a cliche for spectators to identify with gamers, and to dream about gaming, but hardly any of them ever make that decision in adulthood. Those of us who make it usually start as kids.”

“I’m the exception, then.” Donna nodded. “I’ve almost reached Master status, but I have a long way to go before I reach your level.”

Ken grinned and shook his head. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me yesterday.”

“Oh, I doubt that. What happened? Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Well, not really. Richard Ross and I played. He beat me badly, as usual.”

“As usual? You just beat out two hundred other Masters for this position. I know you’re good. So does everyone else in the Guild.”

Ken laughed. “Correction—I beat one hundred ninety-nine other Masters. I was the two-hundredth.”

“Touché.” Donna closed her eyes with a smile and shook her head tightly. “Of course.”

“Actually, Richard and I are old childhood friends. He’s always beaten me, as a matter of fact. That’s why he made it into the Guild Hall at World Headquarters long before I did.”

Donna watched him, still smiling, without saying anything.

“Uh… as a matter of fact, I thought about asking him to put me up until I find a place, but I decided it would be a mistake. He’s too intense.” Ken tried to force a laugh. “I’ll have to suffer here, in lonesome luxury.”

“You can stay with me.”

“What?” Ken wasn’t sure he had heard her right.

Donna smiled warmly. “No obligations, no strings attached. I have a nice two-bedroom condo. You’d have to sleep on the couch in the living room, though. The second bedroom is full of junk.”

“Uh…” Ken smiled and sort of shrugged.

“To tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind a little company for a change. It would break the routine.”

“Well…” Ken still didn’t know what to say.

Donna shrugged, though she was still smiling. “You don’t have to decide now. And if you don’t want to, that’s fine. It’s just a suggestion. Oh, and remember, you’ll still have the suite here to fall back on. So think about it. I’m not going to pressure you.”

“Okay. Sure.” Ken nodded, finally gathering his wits. “I do appreciate the offer.”

“I think I’ve taken enough of your time. As a matter of fact, one of the reception clerks has been trying to get your attention for the last couple of seconds. I suppose you ought to see what he wants.” Donna uncrossed her legs and rose.

Ken looked back over his shoulder and saw a clerk waving the earpiece to a videophone. “Oh! Uh, yeah. I’ve got a call. Okay, thanks for the. um, offer. Would—would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” It was an impulse.

She smiled apologetically. “Actually, I would, but I have a girlfriend coming over. She’s helping me keep my history fresh. Maybe another time?”

“Sure. Gotta go. Bye!” Ken gave her a big smile and hurried toward the reception desk. He could feel her gaze following him as he crossed the lobby. When he took the earpiece from the clerk he made a point of not turning around. He didn’t want to see her quit watching and walk away.

“Hello?” Ken shifted the small videophone screen toward him and saw Lou’s broad, smiling face. He had a freshly lit cigar, long and thick, between his teeth.

“Ken, I got a hot one for ya.” Lou was obviously excited. “You sittin’ down?”

Ken laughed. “I don’t have anything to sit on except the floor. What is it, Lou?”

“All right, bucko. You’re the celebrity hotshot they brought into town on account of the Guild Act, right?”

Ken shook his head, but he managed to keep smiling. He didn’t feel he knew Lou well enough yet to hurry him along. “I guess that’s who I am. If you say so.”

“So, it’s only right that you play in the very first game contracted under the new Act, isn’t it?” Lou laughed gleefully. “I got you the offer, bucko. Great, huh?”

“Yeah.” A flood of mixed emotions came over Ken.

“Uh—wow. You got me a contract already?” He was fumbling for words.

“Not a contract; this contract. You, uh… you do understand what I’m talking about, don’t you? You don’t seem too excited.”

“No! I am. I understand. Really, Lou. Yeah, of course I want to do it.” Ken tried to sound enthusiastic, but he could feel his confidence ebbing. Yet only yesterday he had gotten off the shuttlecopter ready to take on the entire Guild.

“That’s better. Tell you what. Swing by my office any time today and we’ll go over the details. The sooner the better, though. Okay?”

“I’ll be up soon. Right away. Bye.” Ken handed the headset back to the clerk and sighed, watching the small screen go blank. This was what he had played for, fought for, and worked for. He was in World Headquarters, playing the most important game the Guild had offered in many years. Even now, he knew that he could probably defeat almost any Master.

The problem was, he would be playing Richard.

Ken started his practice schedule with no changes in his usual routine. He hoped to take the approach that this game was no different, at least on the gaming level, than any other. The charade failed as he found himself making simple mistakes in his practice games and having lapses of judgment that he had outgrown long ago. At first he blamed the problem on moving; he accepted Donna’s invitation to move in with her and put considerable effort into being a decent guest. She was a flexible apartment mate, however, and seemed to be hinting that they could be more. Ken was reluctant to trust his own appraisal of those hints, though, and afraid that he might just be misinterpreting her gestures of friendship.

As the date of his formal game neared, Ken had to admit to himself that his sloppy practice games were due to his feeling of intimidation by Richard. Once he faced that, the situation seemed to get even worse. One day, in the lobby of the Guild Hall, he overheard two masters talking, and one said that in a practice game, Richard as King Roderick of the Goths had actually fought the Arabs to a standstill in Wadi Bekka.

Ken had never heard of anyone doing that before.

The day before the game, Ken played one final practice game. Normally, he took a rest the day before a formal game, but by now he was frantic. By the end of the game his arms were stiff and weary as he punched the last sequence of keys. The move sent the scant remainder of his Arab army into retreat under General Ziyad ibn-Salih.

The game had been a disaster. Ken had been pressing too hard for a victory, and again made amateurish mistakes. His opponent, playing the Tang Dynasty General Gao Xianzhi, had brilliantly escaped a pincer movement by Ken’s Arabs and an army of Karluk Turks led by a computer-programmed personality. The retreat would give Victory Conditions to his opponent, but it would constitute a better performance than if he simply kept fighting until the Arabs were routed or slaughtered.

Ken watched the screen, imagining the lightly-armed Arabs galloping away across the dusty hills, robes flying out behind them, with bows slung on their shoulders and bloody scimitars still in their hands. In July of 751, the Flame of Islam had met the Golden Age of China on the banks of the Talas River near Aulie-Ata. A huge conflict had decided, perhaps for all time, whether Central Asia would be part of the Islamic world or remain under the sway of Chinese culture. Historically, the Arabs had marched north and the Karluks had marched south to trap the immense Chinese host between them. They had destroyed the Chinese army and had taken thousands of prisoners on the wastes of Central Asia north of Sogdiana. Yet Ken’s Arabs were in frantic flight.

Several seconds passed and the computer froze the screen with “Victory Conditions: Tang Empire.” It was the worst defeat Ken had ever suffered. Shaken, he gave his opponent a quick congratulations and hurried away.

That evening, Ken went up to the roof of Donna’s building to be alone for a while. He found a beat-up, rusted metal chair and sat down gingerly. The summer sun was still high, and the air was humid and heavy. The bugs were never bad up here, though, and from this height the city was pretty.

Ken propped his feet on an overturned paint can. In the distance, he could see the old Union Station, where Pretty Boy Floyd had once had a shoot-out with federal agents. Beyond it, tall modern buildings gleamed in the sunlight. Ken leaned back and gazed at them, studying the lines of architecture, the flight of occasional birds, and the sweep of the billowing white clouds.

The time passed easily, and the slant of the sunlight grew sharper.

“Just sitting here?” Donna asked.

Ken jumped in surprise, then grinned awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. Hi. I didn’t hear you.”

“I’m sorry to bother you. One of the neighbors said you came up here a long time ago, and I just wondered, well, if you were here.”

Ken squinted into the sunlight, looking up at her. The breeze was blowing her hair into her face, and she held it out with one hand. She was wearing a turquoise sleeveless t-shirt and white shorts that emphasized her tan. Her legs and feet were bare, and he made a point of looking away from them.

“Do you want to be alone?” She started to turn away.

“No! Not necessarily, I mean.” Ken realized that he wanted her to stay. “Listen, did you ever see a movie called The Golden Horde? It’s old. I saw it when I was a kid.”

“No, I don’t think so. Some epic about Mongol Russia, I suppose.”

“Supposedly. It was no more accurate than most historical films. It suggested that the Mongols merely overwhelmed their enemies with numbers and never made any real military contributions.”

Donna squatted Asian-style next to him. “That sounds like typical Hollywood. Why do you ask?”

“Oh… I’ve just been thinking about how I got to this point—being a master, and getting to World Headquarters and all. It’s a little frustrating, coming all this way and still carrying around an old childhood fear.”

“It’s awfully irrational, too.” She smiled gently. “I guess you know that.”

“Yeah.” Ken nodded. “If you weren’t a gamer, what would you be?”

Donna looked away and stood up. “I don’t know. Not much, certainly.”

Ken wished he and Donna were closer. He suddenly wanted a hug, as in childhood, but he could tell that she had become leery of the conversation after his last question. He decided to change the subject a little. “I’m also trying to face the fact that I’m going to lose.”

“Hey!” She put a fist on her hip in exaggerated disapproval. “You can’t talk like that. You haven’t even started playing yet. That’s even more irrational than feeling intimidated by Richard. At least, we all admit he’s very good. But you can’t just give up before you start.”

Ken lowered his head. “Guess I just need moral support.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“You need a good dinner, too, and some rest.” Donna took his arm and pulled him up, then let go. “It’s late. Let’s eat.”

“Yeah, okay.” Ken followed her back downstairs.

They heated up leftovers for dinner. Afterward, though. Ken could not sit still. He paced around the apartment and finally went for an extended walk just to burn up his nervous energy. This was the first time he had felt this tense before a game since his very first formal contest. Even the elimination tournament that had brought him here had not thrown him off his stride this much. In fact, his confidence had been a large part of his success there.

Eventually, Ken decided he was tired enough to go to bed. “See you in the morning.”

“All right.” Donna looked up from her book as she sat on the couch with her feet drawn up beneath her. “Tell you what; I’ll treat you to breakfast out tomorrow. Interested?”

Ken grinned appreciatively. “It’s a date. Thanks.”

Once Ken was in bed, however, he did not sleep well. In the darkness, his mind wandered on the verge of sleep, just beyond conscious control. Thundering hoofbeats and clanging swords accompanied the constant glow of blue and orange lines of battle, flexing and shifting across the sky. Rivers flowed on the edge of battlefields, running red with blood instead of water. Inca warriors dressed in feathers and gold battled burnoosed Bedouin. Vikings in furs and leather assaulted the stone towers of Zimbabwe. When he finally slept, he dreamed.

He dreamed that he walked the narrow ledge atop a winding castle wall that wandered in and out of the clouds. Howling winds threatened to carry him away, but he kept his balance. A full-length mirror appeared in front of him, reflecting his own slender frame, with slanted eyes and wind-tossed black hair.

What kind of career is this? he asked his image. Even if it is for important issues, it’s still a game.

What’s the difference between Varus and Verus? asked his reflection. What about Pax Sinica and bar sinister?

Around the mirror and himself, a lavish baroque ballroom took shape, shining with gold leaf, marble statuary, and chandeliers.

Do you have to win all the time? If you can’t win, will you pout and go home? Where does your ego lie? he asked the face in the mirror.

This room is ugly, said his reflection.

It vanished, to be replaced by the dry mountain walls of Tassili N’Ajjer in the Central Sahara. Paintings of cattle over eight millennia old listened to Ken say, Winning is the glamorous side of these wars, but you can’t have winners without losers.

Can you tolerate being a loser? sneered his reflection. If you lose, it’s desolation city.

The empty, wasted mountains grew forests and jutting crags. High, heavy walls of carefully cut stone sprang from the rocky soil. The thin, cold air of the Andes blew through ruined Machu Picchu.

Ken shivered. It was cold, this business. You did your work all alone, despite the crowds and friends and colleagues. The real work went on in your head, where no one else could help. When game time came around, it was just you and the keyboard and the screen.

Is the Temple of the Moon really the Haram Bilkis, as Yemenis say? Who cares? Did Hui Shen and his monks really reach Teotihuacan? Does it really matter to anyone?

I don’t have to win.

You do.

I’m not good enough to win.

That, of course, could be.

Thanks a lot.

Clouds roiled up around the dead bones of the Andean city. Ken’s image in the mirror put on a gray cowboy hat and tipped it.

Goodbye.

The dream faded to a fitful sleep.

When the moment finally arrived, Ken found himself sitting in his game seat on the floor of the Guild’s formal Marathon Gaming Arena. On all four sides, spectators packed the rows of theater seats up to a height far above him. A giant video screen was embedded in each wall over the highest row, so that if spectators could not follow the holograms clearly on their own, they could watch an overview close-up on the screen opposite them.

Ken waited patiently while an attendant adjusted the keyboard’s position in front of him. Then he fitted the sensory band on and looked across the white playing field. Richard was also prepared.

To Ken’s left, seated on a high platform, another attendant waited for both Masters to raise their hands. When Ken and Richard had both done so, he pushed a button. The playing field lit up with color.

Ken’s keyboard screen read, “Bosworth Field. 1485. Richard III.”

Ken felt a pang of disappointment, followed by a seizure of panic. Richard III. From what he knew about Bosworth, where the Plantagenet Dynasty of England had come to an end with the death of Richard III, the best way to beat the role would be to get the king away from the battlefield alive. But the computer would not be impressed with a hapless retreat.

Since this was a formal game, they had only fifteen seconds of orientation before the game activated. Ken lost a few more seconds wiping his palms on his shirt. Then he studied the battlefield.

His army, led by him as Richard III, was divided into three sections. The units in the van, led by the Duke of Norfolk as a programmed personality, stood in position around the northwest slope of Ambion Hill. On the crest behind them, Richard III commanded the main body of his army. Altogether, the royal units represented eight thousand men. That included reserves of about three thousand under the Earl of Northumberland, a mile to the rear.

The disposition of forces resembled a four-sided card game. Henry Tudor, the Lancastrian heir to the throne, advanced from the west with three thousand French mercenaries and two thousand Welsh supporters. His van, led by the Earl of Oxford as a programmed personality, slid along Redmore Plain on their way to Ambion Hill, skirting the north side of a large marsh that separated the rebel and royal armies. Sir William Stanley, a supposed vassal of King Richard, held two thousand mounted knights to the northwest. His brother, Lord Thomas Stanley, stood about a mile to the south with units of another two thousand men. Ken, as Richard III, nominally had the combat power of twelve thousand men ready to take the field against five thousand in the rebel cause.

Ken’s royal units also represented better fighting men than Tudor’s mercenaries and had greater combat power in the computer as a result. However, the loyalty of both Stanleys, and also of Northumberland, was suspect. The Stanleys had prospered during the Wars of Roses by keeping a careful eye on the main chance. Lord Stanley had changed sides six times in the preceding twenty years, always aligning himself, just in time, with the dominant side as the situation fluctuated. The Stanleys had neglected to challenge Tudor’s entry into England from Wales through Stanley lands, neither joining him nor obstructing him. As the battle approached, they remained in neutral positions.

Thanks to Ken’s childhood play and enthusiastic study, he had remembered the situation quickly. However, the screen activated before he figured out what to do. He doubted that either his opponent, Richard, or his historical persona, Richard III, shared that problem.

Oxford led the rebel van resolutely forward. Ken made minor adjustments in his own van through orders sent from King Richard to the Earl of Norfolk. His van stretched in a line across the northwest slope, with the flanks curving slightly forward in a pincer shape. Those flanks were chained serpentine guns—early cannon. The units of mounted knights waited some distance behind the guns in two wings. In the body of the line, units of longbowmen were clumped at intervals with handgunners and pikemen between them.

Ken keyed his sensory band on, to check its perspective. Instantly, he, as King Richard, looked down the slope toward Norfolk’s men. Their heavy plate-steel armor shone in the sun, blooming with the red badges of Norfolk’s livery. This particular perspective offered no special advantage, so he keyed off the band, aware that he would later be counting on it in crucial moments.

The rebel van advanced in a triangle, with its base forming a straight front line and the body of the triangle tapering to a point in the rear. Historically, Oxford’s tactic had been to hurl every man forward as fast as possible. Since it had worked, Ken expected Richard would allow the tactic to stand.

Ken watched anxiously as the enemy units advanced. As they entered the range of Norfolk’s field guns, he remembered a little rhyme from the day before the battle: “Jock of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold.” The two Stanleys had agreed with Tudor to enter the battle on his side and Northumberland had agreed not to take the field at all. In the game, those three roles were programmed personalities whose decisions would be made by the computer.

Ken just had time to feel another wave of hopelessness, and to wonder if Richard III had shared one. No, he realized with embarrassment—of course the king’s despair had been much worse. He had been fighting for his life, his kingdom, and his house; Ken was playing a game.

Oxford’s van cleared the marsh. The two sides exchanged cannon fire and then volleys of arrows. Holes opened in both front lines and were filled by the lines behind. Norfolk ordered his units to advance when the line of rebels started up the slope. The royal van eased forward at a trotting speed in close order, well-disciplined. If necessary, Ken could send new orders down, still.

Ken searched the screen. The key to the battle was the action of the Stanleys. If they could somehow be induced to stay out of the battle, then Ken’s royal forces still outnumbered the rebel army.

The game program would include the secret agreement betraying the king, but also the Stanleys’ instinct for self-preservation. The only small advantage Ken had was that his opponent Richard, in the position of Henry Tudor, could not totally trust the Stanleys either.

Norfolk’s center was wavering under the onslaught. The only response Ken could think of was to follow the example of Richard III. He sent units forward from the main body of the army to bolster the sagging center, in groups of one hundred men at a time. Yet if he continued to use the tactics of his predecessor, he was likely to suffer the same defeat as his predecessor. He had to think of something new, and effective.

Ken sent more men forward in blocks of one hundred.

Richard III had been an experienced and highly successful general, as well as a ferocious fighter personally. Ken was not sure he could improve on the king’s tactics. Again, now, he saw that he would have to imitate Richard III.

Ken’s units on the hilltop were dwindling and the time had come to call Northumberland and Lord Stanley forward. Ken sent out two messengers, but did not waste one on Sir William Stanley.

Ken had one slight chance that either Lord Stanley or Northumberland would respond. It lay in the near impossibility of some blunder by his opponent that was known to the computer already but not yet apparent on the field. That was hardly likely, but Ken had to consider the possibility.

As the battle raged, holding Ken’s career in the balance, he tried to anticipate the coming developments. The next logical step was an even greater jamming of the densely packed and quickly shifting units on the slope of Ambion Hill, as the two main bodies of troops pushed toward each other behind their front lines. That would begin the critical phase in which the entrance of the Stanleys and Northumberland on the royal side could crush the rebels.

That phase never fully developed. In one of the variations open to the computer, Lord Stanley decided to attack. His two thousand men charged from the south, directly toward the left flank of the royal army.

Ken gasped quietly, angrily, and realized that his flank would probably be turned and possibly crushed. He forgot his previous expectations and chose his last resort.

King Richard himself had always been a fine combatant, but in this battle he had been desperate. Ken sent in the royal unit and keyed on his sensory band.

Suddenly, Ken was looking out over the great, nodding head of White Surrey, the king’s charger, as he led a thundering charge of reserve knights in support of their own left flank. His lance angled out ahead, fluttering with his pennon. Ahead, Stanley’s men smashed into the royal line, driving it back and sideways. Seconds later, the king’s lance shattered against the shield of some nameless Stanley knight. He cast the useless handle aside and unslung his huge, trusty axe. As White Surrey plunged and reared, with hooves flailing, the king swung his axe two-handed, furiously, in the crush of steel and bodies and horses.

The king’s men surged around him. Those before him pressed on, rather than feel their fighting king close on their backs; those behind him shouted their battle-cries and came on to join the fray. Ken’s greatest asset was the king himself, but if he should fall in the fighting, Ken would lose instantly. That was the way of dynastic struggles.

Historically, Northumberland had not moved against the king’s rear; too many of his northern men favored the king. Yet even if the computer repeated that abstention, King Richard alone could not save the left wing. Ken keyed off his sensory band and pulled the king out of combat, back up onto Ambion Hill.

The royal lines were crumbling. Any second Sir William Stanley would order the killing blow. Ken felt that he shared a feeling of desperation with the real king, even though that was presumptuous.

Also like the king, Ken wanted to win, not just to survive. In the real battle, King Richard had located his personal rival, Henry Tudor, observing the struggle from a small hill to the right and rear of his line. The king had gathered his household knights and other somber volunteers, over a hundred in all, for a charge to the standard of the Lancastrian heir. The danger: the charge would carry the royal contingent right in front of Sir William Stanley and his two hundred horse just to the north.

Historically, the king had fought his way through the surprised party around Tudor and, with great effort, reputedly even fought him hand-to-hand briefly. However, Sir William Stanley had seen the charge and its purpose. The Stanley knights had roared forward to protect Tudor. The force of their charge had swept the king from his rival; he had been unhorsed and killed. The royal forces had fled and the Lancastrian heir had founded the Tudor Dynasty as Henry VII.

Ken had King Richard gather his household knights and call for volunteers. All of the royal party must have felt a special anger, Ken thought. If Northumberland or even one of the Stanleys had held to his oath of allegiance, the battle would have been very different.

Ken himself was outraged, watching the five thousand men under Northumberland and Sir William Stanley who should have been fighting for the king. Tudor, at least, was an openly avowed enemy.

Ken’s chance to win, like the king’s had been at this point, now lay entirely in the possibility of killing Tudor himself. That figure still stood on the same hill where the real Tudor had stood; Ken’s opponent had kept him there so he could observe the battle.

Ken keyed his sensory band back on. It looked hot there on Ambion Hill, with the blazing summer sun shining on their heavy plate-steel armor. The king sat high on White Surrey, his visor open, sweat running down into his eyes. His personal followers crowded around; if the sensory band had allowed it, they would have sent up the varied smells of horses, leather, blood, and sweat. The wounded slid off their mounts with help, others unbuckling their armor for them. Someone raised a bulging water skin up to the king. He took two long draughts and handed back the empty skin. Then, when he took a new lance that was offered up, the knights around him, too, strengthened their resolve and grasped fresh lances.

King Richard turned White Surrey and waved for his axe. The charge they were about to make would end these long civil wars, finally—the king wore a golden crown outside his helmet and would either die as a king or triumph as one. Then, as a party of more than a hundred knights gathered behind him, he made a sweeping arm gesture toward their goal: the red dragon banner of Wales, atop a distant hill behind the lines, ringed with a reserve bodyguard. Everyone could also see the formation of Stanley horse waiting to the north.

Suddenly Ken thought of an additional tactic. He directed one of his captains to withdraw another troop of knights from the struggling lines. The royal lines were about to break anyway, but Tudor’s death would give them the victory if the gamble worked.

Ken ordered that the second block of one hundred charge behind the royal contingent at an interval, and farther out in a wing to the right under the very noses of the Stanley traitors. Both maneuvers were likely to be suicidal, but if they succeeded, the battle was won.

The royal center was disintegrating. Ken could not wait longer. Blinking sweat away from his eyes, he led the charge down Ambion Hill.

The way was open; the right flank of the royal line held the rebel left committed, and the king’s charge thundered around them. Ahead, Tudor’s bodyguard saw the charge and prepared for the impact, jamming themselves around the person of their proclaimed king. King Richard’s knights smashed into them, and Ken gritted his teeth as he heard the splintering of lances and human screams in his mind. The action at close quarters was too fast for logical thought; all was reflex, pressing forward, smashing and slashing, always toward Tudor himself. One by one, King Richard hacked away those who rose before him, swinging his axe with lethal abandon, eyes always on Tudor—who suddenly pulled away, behind his line. He was no fighter and simply turned on his charger and ran for his life, with a meager escort of two knights galloping behind him. Even his standard bearer was hemmed in by the furious fighting on the hilltop, and abandoned. King Richard held his breath, swinging his axe with both arms straight, chopping against the wall of flailing steel around him—and then, suddenly, the sensory band went off.

Ken sat away from the keyboard and looked at the field. The king was gone—dead.

Ken tried to blink sweat away, then had to wipe his eyes with one hand. He had been so involved in the scene… and now the game was lost. His screen read, “Victory Conditions: Lancaster.”

Ken heard applause vaguely around him, but did not react. He leaned toward the field again, still breathing heavily, to peer at the motionless figures. The position of forces at the end of the game was still visible.

Someone’s hand plucked at his arm, but he shook it off. He located Tudor on the screen, a short distance from the hill where the king had fallen. Then he found the important information—behind the remains of the king’s first contingent, whose survivors were scattered like confetti as the charge of the Stanley horse held motionless in mid-gallop. There Ken found his second wing of charging knights. They were scattered also, their momentum smashed by the force of the Stanley sweep. However, from the positions still evident on the screen, Ken knew that the tactic had worked. It had partially broken the Stanley attack and delayed them very slightly. In the real battle, King Richard had been only seconds away from cutting down Tudor. Ken had found a way to gain those seconds. Even though he had failed to destroy the Lancastrian heir, his ploy had fulfilled its purpose.

Ken let out a long breath of relief and fell back into his seat. A moment later, an attendant came up to move aside his keyboard. The applause was continuing; Ken became aware for the first time just how enthusiastic it was.

The attendant helped him to his feet, and down the steps to a wheelchair. As Ken was being wheeled out, he looked around at the crowd and realized that many of the people in the audience were looking at him, applauding for him, as well as for Richard. Surprised, he smiled wryly.

Across the arena, Richard was also being wheeled out. Ken felt a cold pang in his stomach at seeing him. He hated losing, and he especially hated losing to Richard.

Donna was already waiting for him in the reception room, standing next to the long refreshment table with a cold glass of white wine for him.

“Ken! That was wonderful.” Donna handed him the glass and knelt next to him for a kiss. “It really was. And the finish was so exciting.”

“Yeah, well, I still lost.” Ken accepted the glass and hooked his other elbow around her neck to draw her close. He hesitated, first to gaze at her full, waiting lips, and then, amused, to look at her eyes as she watched his own mouth. Then he kissed her suddenly, and long.

“Consolation prize?” Richard’s sardonic voice came from the other side of Ken’s wheelchair.

Ken and Donna both started laughing, and she stood up. Ken turned and extended his hand to Richard, whose own wheelchair had pulled up alongside. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Richard shook his hand briefly, chuckling with a sudden, embarrassed shake of his head. “You know, that final ploy of yours was incredibly ruthless—sending all those guys to certain death on that extra wing. Matter of fact, it was pretty sharp, too.”

Ken shrugged. “Almost worked. Not quite, though.” He sighed.

“You may have a masterplay on your hands, there.”

Ken looked at him sharply, ready to find Richard’s edged sarcasm mocking him. Instead, he found Richard in his professional mood. “What did you say?”

“Well, it’s not proven, but that wing tactic of yours just might turn out to be the masterplay for Bosworth. You created it, even if you didn’t execute it properly. It’ll have to be tested by other Masters, but if it proves out, you’re on record as devising it.” Richard reached up to accept a glass of red wine from someone.

Ken felt a warm sense of accomplishment building in him, as Richard’s appraisal sank in. Gradually, Ken realized what he had acquired since arriving here by helicopter. He had Donna’s affection, a dimension Richard’s life lacked; he had honest praise from his old friend, a quality he had rarely received; he had, perhaps, a masterplay to his credit. All three were victories, despite the official outcome of the game. Ken spoke quietly to Richard. “It is complicated, isn’t it?”

Richard grinned and clinked his glass against Ken’s. “Welcome to World Headquarters.”

Editor’s Introduction to:

Defense in a N-Dimensional World: Technological Surprise Must Be Prevented

Stefan T. Possony

Dr. Stefan T. Possony, Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, was for some twenty years an intelligence officer of the United States. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna at the age of twenty, and shortly after entered Austrian politics. He was instrumental in the anti-Nazi movement; when the German panzers entered Austria his name was high on the Gestapo’s wanted list. After many adventures he came to the United States.

One of his projects was a study of the Soviet nuclear effort; he received a medal for correctly predicting the first Soviet nuclear test.

The Protracted Conflict, by Robert Strauss-Hupe, Stefan Possony, and William Kintner was one of the most penetrating analyses of Soviet strategy ever published, and remains essential for a true understanding of the modern world.

In 1970 Possony and I co-authored The Strategy of Technology. This book has been used as a text in the US Air Force Academy and the Air War College. In the early sixties, Dr. Possony correctly predicted that beam weapons and beam technologies—“beamology” as he liked to call it—would be of inestimable military importance. He has had similar success in spotting the potential of other key technologies before any one else—scientist or strategist—has recognized their importance.

Dr. Possony considers this one of his most important essays.

Defense in a N-Dimensional World: Technological Surprise Must Be Prevented

Stefan T. Possony

For good reasons the US adopted a defensive military strategy. Concurrently it should have decided to adopt sub-strategies to ensure the success of the defense, in the sense that hostile offense would be foreclosed. This did not happen: No systematic strategy to forestall surprise and thereby to prevent aggression was developed. The Strategic Defense Initiative constitutes the first step toward a rational peace preservation strategy. Hopefully, second and third steps will follow.

There are three major types of surprise which must be avoided: 1. sudden transformation of friends into foes, and of foes into friends; 2. operational surprise, such as an unexpected geographical center of attack, unexpected timing, and unexpected numbers and reserves; and 3. technological surprise such as unexpected weapons and extraordinary performance.

Ad 1. The US is well informed about the politics of its major allies but it tends to be confused about the distribution of friendly and hostile groups both in allied and in enemy countries.

Ad 2. Originally the US was not much worried about operational surprise, but when the USSR moved into space, the US followed suit and established warning systems and surveillance from orbit. Though space reconnaissance is not foolproof—no system is—the hazard of operational surprise has been managed efficiently. Consequently, the would-be attacker must compensate for his presumed operational inability to strike like a bolt from the blue. Technological shock would be the most promising substitute.

Ad 3. The US has been holding the technological lead for a long time, during which it acquired major advantages in nucleonics, astronautics, electronics, and computers. Given this leverage, the danger of technological surprise for the US has been downgraded. The Pentagon did not think it was necessary to assign high priority to the anticipation and prevention of technological miracles. Also, the blades of scientific endeavor were not honed on the edges of technological surprise. Indeed, much scientific work was performed without thought being given to the possibility that what was created for peace may help the attacker unless it can be used first by the defender. Has high energy physics military significance? For years the very topic was totally taboo.

This low assessment of technological ambush is visibly reflected in the Strategic Defense Initiative which apparently is linked to an estimate that the US has 10 to 20 years before it needs modernized defenses. A leisurely time-table is being established, despite the fact that the Soviets began their charged particle beam program some five years before the US got wind of it. This Soviet effort ran for another five years before the US decided, on its part, to do a little work on particle beams. Thus, there exists at least one major technology in which the Soviets have gained a substantial lead. This American handicap arose in the very field of strategy where the US intends to put an end to the specter of unending nuclear menace.

True, particle beams are just one of several technologies through which the defense initiative can be implemented. But is the question properly posed when charged particle beams are conceived as merely one of many technologies? Is it not conceivable that sub-atomic particles lined up as accurate beams would turn out to be a dominant technology? If this were the case, might a lead in this area not be decisive by itself, if only because it would prime virtually all other technologies?

US Air Intelligence discovered the Soviet particle beam program. This discovery came as a total surprise, both to the intelligence and the military-scientific “communities,” and it was discounted, ridiculed, and disbelieved for years. Testing was delayed and financially starved. After the new reality was accepted, reaction was slow and evaluations were reductionist; to a point where the advance into the sub-atomic realm was treated as a normal routine—just one little step forward at this time. That major and entirely unprecedented potentialities may be involved in the sub-atomic dimension was not recognized, even though such a perspective is implied or explicitly discussed in modern textbooks.

Numerous physicists have stated that the four dimensions of space-time are not sufficient to comprehend nature, and that many additional dimensions are needed. Yet explicit recognition by the military of new dimensions, with new potentialities and new dangers, was not disclosed. If such recognition did not occur, this would not be because of failures in intelligence. It would result from a carence intellectuelle.

Given modern intelligence systems, how might technological surprise occur? Let us assume two protagonists “share” scientific information through the processes of research and exchange. In this case, one side might fail to develop one or the other opportunity either because of an oversight or because capabilities of exploitation are lacking.

However, there may be the more profound reason that one side rejects new information or misinterprets data because those do not conform with principles or beliefs regarded as correct or unchallengeable. Once upon a time, prominent American scientists denied that powered flight was feasible, and an authoritative scientific magazine lost two years before it deigned to acknowledge that the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk was not a hoax.

Sometimes scientists “forget” disturbing facts and accept uncritically what they learned in school or read in dictionaries. They don’t always live up to their professed ethos. Example: The velocity of light is a “constant,” and as such basic to much of physics. Yet the actual figure of 300,000 kilometers per second is an average of numerous different measurements; strangely enough, this average has remained unchanged. Worse, Soviet scientists discovered that light is faster in a vacuum on earth than in space, remote from planetary masses. American scientists are reported not to believe this. Since “it can’t be so,” this discovery is simply ignored. A very important effect (which will be discussed later) was discovered by one well-known American physicist, a protégé of Einstein, together with an Israeli graduate student. In 1959 the information was published in The Physical Review, one of the leading refereed physics organs. The date when the manuscript was received was duly marked, just as the date of the receipt of the revised text (which shows that the paper had been refereed, and that defects or errors were discovered and corrected). Within two months, the paper was published as a lead article. The asserted effect was verified experimentally by a third physicist in 1960.

This background suggests that the findings of this paper should be accepted as valid, and the information would normally be so handled. Yet the effect which was disclosed in 1959 remained largely unknown, and reportedly was and is being totally ignored in military technology. Nobel prize laureate Richard P. Feynman, in specific reference to the effect in question, ascribed the neglect of 25 years to “prejudices of what is and is not significant.”

Directed energy was anticipated—or rather invented—by Nikola Tesla, more than 80 years ago. As the inventor of the alternating current, Tesla was once regarded as the world’s outstanding theoretician and practitioner of electromagnetism. He refused the Nobel prize, which had been offered jointly to him and Edison. Tesla viewed the methods of selecting laureates as incompetent and dishonest. Problems of primacy pitted him against Marconi and Edison, and financial problems turned Tesla into a black sheep: Alternating current was threatening huge investments in direct current. His experiments on “free” electric energy showed him up as crazy among “school” physicists.

In short, we like to criticize the communists for turning historical figures like Trotsky into non-persons and throwing them into memory-holes. Yet we are capable of doing precisely the same, with scientists, rather than policemen, performing as executioners. Scandalous though such events are, they were easily and routinely covered up.

Tesla was the foremost victim among American scientists. His work is ignored in textbooks and curricula. The investigations which he started were dropped. The resulting damage to the US was substantial and durable.

The American scientific body is covered with numerous “Tesla tumors.” To be sure, treatment by means of downgrading, silencing, and forgetting is not an American specialty. It is an inborn affliction of all scientific communities, and it is visible in the history of Nobel prizes. Fortunately, after a lapse of time, the trouble tends to be self-correcting; or so we hope.

However, danger tends to lurk high if science and research are undertaken for the Armed Forces under monopolistic direction, and with dogmatic and arrogant scientific advisory boards sticking to biases. As a result, major technologies may be blotted out, and unexpected opportunities ignored or denied. A catastrophe can ensue if the opponent does not suffer from the identical bias, but develops a technology which exploits the opponent’s “bias” which, actually, is nothing but an ignorant and fatal error.

I am neither writing a historico-philosophical essay, nor do I wish to rekindle the Tesla controversy. I am talking about what I conceive to be a most dangerous and concrete risk for American security: namely, scientific blindness caused by dogma. I do not claim competence in high energy physics; it is the job of physicists to solve problems in physics. But I am competent to decide whether a big problem is being investigated seriously by scientists, or else is given the heave-ho. If unscientific judgments are enunciated by scientists pretending to act scientifically, alarm clocks need to be rung.

For more than 15 years strange “phenomena” have been observed in many parts of the world, whose nature has not been deciphered. (I am not alluding to “flying saucers,” although those could be peripherally involved.) The “phenomena” to which I am referring, include flashes, fireballs, aerial blasts at high altitude, very loud booms, brightening skies, arcs in the sky, expanding globes of light, giant underwater sounds, possibly anomalous earthquakes, and abnormal weather patterns.

Some of the phenomena have been more military than theatrical. For example, radar invisibility was achieved, alerting us that a stealth capability may exist years in advance, before the American realization of this revolutionary technology is due.

Singular long-distance communication signals were received: The strength of the signals was stunning. Dubbed “woodpeckers” by US intelligence, the sounds were explained by the very powerful over-the-horizon “Henhouse” radars which are deployed in the western Ukraine. Some analysts were wondering whether the Soviets were trying to upgrade radars to actual weapons. Since Henhouse is merely a very modern radar, this seems to be an artificial speculation. Also, it is not known that the signals actually originated in those or any radars. After many years, the woodpeckers remain mysterious.

The “discovery” by Vela satellites of two seeming nuclear tests which were falsely attributed to the Republic of South Africa was another episode in the series of inexplicable phenomena. An impressive “phenomenon” happened on April 9, 1984, when a mushroom cloud, with the astounding diameter of 150 miles, rose to an altitude of 60,000 feet within two minutes. This occurred south of the Kuriles, 200 miles from Tokyo and 350 miles from a Soviet missile test ground. A nuclear explosion? Five Boeing 747’s flew through and near the cloud, and found no radioactivity. The plume was neither nuclear nor volcanic. Instead, the cloud was much colder than the ambient air. Satellite photography recorded 78 similar mushrooms since 1974, many of those in the Arctic.

Late in 1975 infrared sensors on US satellites were temporarily disabled in four incidents. In one case a sensor was blinded during four long hours. This incident demonstrated not only that an operation was mounted with effective equipment (not with blueprints), and with astounding accuracy. It also indicated that a power source was available for sustained attack against satellites. Nothing is known about the equipment and the power supply, and neither the accuracy nor the duration of the weapon’s effect are understood—nine years after the occurrence. The incident is subjected to “protracted silent treatment.” Yet the event may indicate that US space warning systems are becoming vulnerable.

The mysterious phenomena have in common that they are not natural but technical and deliberate. They are electrical and electromagnetic, probably are caused by beams, and they have multiple military implications. The many phenomena evidently represent tests of different applications. All of those tests required enormous energies whose nature, versatility, range, and origin remain enigmatic.

In spite of their variability, the different phenomena seem to be caused by a single, basic technology which as yet continues entirely unknown in the West. Circumstances suggest that the USSR is familiar with this technology, and that the “phenomena” or tests are carried out by Soviet scientists, technologists, and soldiers.

The press has published reports on several of the unusual observations. Yet little was done to confirm geographic origins or to identify the apparatus which enacted the phenomena. The fact that one Tesla-type weapon was identified at Sary Shagan, the Soviet R & D center on strategic defense weapons, seems to have attracted very little attention.

The official reaction was and still is marked by lethargy and disinterest: “We don’t know, and we don’t know anybody who would know.” This line needs to be re-written: “We won’t ask those scientists of whom their ‘mainstream’ colleagues disapprove.” For as long as this attitude persists, a rather sudden and far-reaching surprise operation should not be astounding.

With this background, let us look at the effect whose neglect was deplored by Richard Feynman. This effect was discovered by David Bohm and Y. Aharonov in 1959, and verified in 1960 by R.G. Chambers. It shows that in the absence of electrical and magnetic fields, the potentials still can exist and cause real effects to occur in field-free regions. Bohm’s summary of the basic paper described “the significance of electromagnetic potentials in quantum theory” this way:

Contrary to the conclusions of classical mechanics, there exist effects of potentials on charged particles, even in the regions where all the fields (and therefore the forces on the particles) vanish.

In the discussion, the following statements appear: [1]

In quantum mechanics, the fundamental physical entities are the potentials, while the fields are derived from them by differentiations.

The potentials are richer in properties than the fields.

The potentials must, in certain cases, be considered as physically effective, even when there are no fields acting on the charged particles.

The classical notion “that the potentials cannot have any meaning, except insofar as they are used mathematically to calculate the fields…” cannot be maintained for the general case.

Those statements of 1959 were enlarged in 1980. A summary of the new version reads as follows: [2]

Empty space…is not empty at all; it’s full, an immense sea of energy on top of which matter as we know it is only a “small quantized wavelike excitation…rather like a tiny ripple.”

The entire universe of matter…is to be treated as a comparatively small pattern of excitation on the energy sea.

Bohm is a physicist of world reputation, even though some of his work is disputed. He co-authored another important paper with Nobel laureate Louis de Broglie, who developed the wave nature of electrons, and who is considered one of the champions of modern physics. Much more could be said about Bohm but, briefly, this physicist cannot be ignored. For that matter, Tesla, Bohm’s predecessor two generations removed, must be rescued from oblivion.

Bohm’s effect was corroborated, and so far, it has not been falsified. Hence the effect is valid.

At this juncture, the effect is beginning to be noted. During the 1984 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I heard three references to the effect, one in connection with neutrons, and another in an astrophysical discussion. In the third case a plasma specialist, who contributed to a panel on security, was asked: “What is the military significance of the Bohm-Aharonov effect?” His extremely speedy and testy answer: “None.” Whatever the pertinence of this answer may be, the man was familiar with the problem, and he was distinctly uneasy about the question.

Since the Bohm-Aharonov effect disproves the tradition which regards electrostatic and magnetostatic potentials as being of negligible importance, and which treats them as purely mathematical conveniences, it follows that the potentials are real entities. Hence the potentials can “directly affect and control charged particle systems even in a region where all the fields and hence the forces on the particles have vanished,” to quote T.E. Bearden, a leading expert on the subject, who wrote the only extant analysis in Western literature of the military implications of the effect. [3]

Creation and annihilation of quanta mark the observable passage of an object through time. Fundamentally, this quantum change is controlled by the invisible substructure of matter, specifically by subquantal (“virtual”) actions and interactions.

The First Order of Reality, which is observable, emerges from vector interactions of electromagnetic energy with matter. There is a more fundamental Second Order of Reality which is “unobservable.” This reality consists of “virtual” vectors and conditions. This Second Order was discovered by Tesla (using a different terminology).

The notion that a vacuum is not total emptiness, but denotes merely the absence of mass, is no longer in serious dispute. A vacuum is a charge, more exactly a charge-flux, without mass. Accordingly, the physics of today regard all observable forces to be generated by virtual particle reactions. The well-known British physicist Paul Davies stated that modern theories of the vacuum reveal that empty space is “seething with activity.”

Bearden explains that such activity in and through a point constitutes a “potential” at that point. Hence the vacuum should be regarded as a potential field. Put differently, there are spaces without matter, or vacua, but there are no spaces without potentials, which are virtual particle reactions.

Particle physicists believe that physical reality consists of “internested virtual levels” of ever finer structure, and that those unobservable structures of “spinning particles” carry, or are, massless charge-fluxes in constant acceleration. In this context, Einstein, who transformed the three-dimensional world into a four-dimensional world, was “overtaken” by modern physicists who propose models of 8, 11, 32, and still more dimensions.

While particles provide the substructure of the visible reality, they also can occupy the invisible reality in hidden form. Their hidden realm is known as the “Dirac Sea,” after P.A.M. Dirac, one of the founders of quantum theory who predicted the electron spin. Bearden associates each virtual level with a “hyperspace,” a concept adapted from J.A. Wheeler, expert on spacetime physics. Still another concept is that of the “neutrino sea,” which has been promoted by astrophysicists. The bewilderment exceeds that which reigned when electricity was discovered.

Tesla discovered that waves and beams of pure potential, without observable electric and magnetic fields, could easily be made and utilized. Since this Tesla wave was his fundamental and forgotten secret, the name “Tesla Reality” for the Second Order of Reality might be most fitting.

There are differences between those various concepts, but they all seem to agree that the invisible particle substructure is of the utmost importance and cannot, therefore, be handled as a simple observable zero. On the contrary, this substructure is, or contains, huge magnitudes of energy pitted against one another, and it influences or determines the force vectors in the observable reality. All observable forces arise in, on, and of the actual sub-structure of accelerating particles. Note that all fundamental particles are charged both internally and externally, i.e. they are dynamic assemblages of smaller, charged particles. Moreover, they are constantly changing from one kind of particle into another, forming a sort of “charged cloud.”

This vast complex has so far only been adumbrated. At present, high energy physics remain mainly concerned with subatomic particles, and the inter-relationships between the particles and the atomic and molecular worlds are as yet largely unexplored. To recapitulate the preceding discussion: The space vacuum is the sum total of all “virtual things.” It is in constant flux, and hence it is totally charged. Yet it is still being assigned a hypothetical zero charge.

By contrast, on the basis of up-to-date interpretations, Bearden estimated that the potential of the space vacuum may run up to 200 million volts per point in a n-dimensional space, with “n” being greater than 4.

One interpretation assumes no charge, another postulates charge of incalculable magnitude. What an exhibition of confusion! Evidently, military technologists can no longer, or should not, ignore the sub-structure in their strategic investigations and weapon-equipment designs.

What might be done with the potential?

Given the Second Reality, “beams of pure potential without observable vector force fields may be deliberately produced and intersected at a distance to cause observable effects in the interference zone,” according to Bearden who has proposed and experimented with mechanisms for doing so.

To achieve military effects, two Tesla waves may be launched through the vacuum plasma to achieve interference through their crossing in the target area. The two waves are non-Hertzian longitudinal waves of electrostatic potential. The waves move in the vacuum charge flux and exert stress on four-dimensional space-time.

Each wave is composed of two or more interlocked Hertz waves of identical frequencies, with cancellation of their opposing magnetic and electric fields, so that the externally observable vector fields sum to zero. The two crossing waves in spacetime are related to four or more virtual waves in the sub-structure. The working energy is not transported from the operational base through space to the interference zone, but directed to arise there from the interfering sub-structures of the intersecting Tesla waves. That is, instead of transmitting energy, the input energy is transformed into potentials which are interfered at a distance, modifying and producing the energy again in the interference zone.

In the interference zone energy can be released like a pulse or a high temperature explosion. Alternatively, energy can be withdrawn from the interference zone, producing a cold explosion. Precision is needed for the locating of the interference zone. Good accuracy can be achieved through narrow beams and a substantial input of energy resulting in high energy density in the interference zone.

The energy which is needed to do military work in the target area is pumped into the two waves at their launch base. The working energy at the distant zone will be approximately as large as the injected energy. Except for leakages and imperfections, no energy will be lost to the process.

Tesla two-wave interference weapons may be substantially cheaper than current and currently projected systems.

Tesla weapons can be used for non-lethal as well as for lethal purposes. They possess defensive and offensive utilizations.

A “Tesla weapon system” represents a highly advanced form of directed energy. Yet many of the problems which bedevil particle beams on their passage through the atmosphere will not be significant in the new technology. Tesla-type directed energy weapons promise to have a uniquely broad spectrum of military (and industrial) relevance.

Tesla weapons and/or equipments are expected to be fit for anti-avionic purposes like jamming, for under-water communications and the locating of submarines, for strategic defense, for strategic warfare, for operations in space, and for large-scale and catastrophic weather modifications. Interferometers will be the principal element of a Tesla weapon, and may be the core of Soviet devices and weapons.

Tesla weapons need explosive power generators (a branch of technology in which the Soviets are highly proficient), special power units to produce energy from vacuum, translators to create and alternate waves, Fourier transform computers and transmitters, and aiming-pointing instruments, etc.

If the Second Order of Reality is correctly recognized and can be entered as predicted, the military gear may be neither large nor complicated. This might enhance the present danger. But it also might facilitate the task of quickly countering the unexpected threat.

What’s the message?

First, the world in which we live has undergone a major transformation. We learned that we live in two orders of existence, the Einstein and Tesla realities. The first is known as space-time, and the second as the sub-structure of matter and vacua. Space-time is four-dimensional, and the two realities together are at least six-dimensional.

This transformation has come as a major surprise. The surprise is behind us as a fact and as an occurrence. But the comprehension of the fact is still ahead of us.

Second, the USSR knows about the six or n-dimensional world, and it seems to possess various interferometric equipments usable for directed energy operations. This means that a strategic surprise may be in the making, possibly a decisive surprise.

Third, the exploitation of unilateral surprise is based on superior knowledge and equipment. It can take different forms ranging from psycho-political panics to military disasters. Soviet actual choices, if any, depend on their concrete capabilities, about which I do not care to speculate. However, I wish to warn against aprioristic assumptions that no such capabilities are in being, or can as yet exist.

Fourth, a prudent reader will understand that the discovery of a danger must be supplemented by its measurement. This task must be performed without delay by knowledgeable, wise—and young—experts in intelligence, science and technology, and military planning.

Fifth, Tesla weapons must be designed and procured promptly, and the impact of the novelty on existing and emerging armaments be assessed.

Neither panic nor flight from reality will help, and the typical advisers who belittle or deny innovations should not be expected to be useful.

If the danger is real, Tesla weapons will mean a military transformation whose magnitude will exceed that of the nuclear and the electronic space revolutions. But the effect of those weapons will depend on the energy which is fed into them. Furthermore, hypothecating that tests have been going on, those weapons must be produced and deployed, and crews must be trained to operate them. Every surprise has its limits.

Our task, therefore, is not insoluble. On the contrary, an extraordinary chance to discover entirely unprecedented opportunities for security may be arising.

The Pentagon includes specialists who are knowledgeable about the demise of the old vacuum and the emergence of novel dimensions. But they don’t believe the “political atmosphere” is receptive to such novelties.

No realist should expect bureaucracies to champion technological upheavals, let alone total transformations.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Three Poems

A. E. Housman died before the modern era; but he well understood the virtues—and sins—of the warrior.

Timothy Sarnecki is new to this series. I hope to publish more of his work in future volumes.

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

A. E. Housman

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended.
And saved the sum of things for pay.

The Oracles

A. E. Housman

’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain
When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled.
And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,
And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.

I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,
The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;
And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking
That she and I should surely die and never live again.

Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;
But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more.
’Tis true there’s better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;
And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.

The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there’s no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.

The Last Three Days

Timothy P. Sarnecki

The last three days a hot wind has blown
Up from the south; a blood-letting wind.
Breathing hot, angry breath into the night.
The walls of my room, drawn in by the heat,
Turn my face into my pillow, it stained
By the cup, poured to forget, overturned.
The wind from the steppes blows cold by the tent,
Where three stern, cold men drink hot blood and wine,
Dipping their knives in the gilded skull-cup.
In the morning they ride to the hilltop
To meet Darius and die; or, to win,
For which they bleed themselves and drink their pact.
Then heat-brought sweat in the wind makes me cold,
Like Scythian horsemen, buried in gold.

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Interrogation Team

David Drake

The still uncouth City which Hannibal came over to attack numbered a mere million men at the time that it put into the field against him at Cannae an army of more than 85,000 men. But when its armies clashed at Pharsalia, the Republic, though by then it was spread out over the whole of the Mediterranean basin, could not put in the field more than 65,000 men in all. When Tiberius strained every nerve to avenge the legions of Varus, he could send the future Germanicus but 50,000 men. Marcus Aurelius seems to have had not many more in Parthians. When Julian checked the Alemanni near Strasbourg, he had 13,000 men, and Belisarius was given 11,000 to win Italy back from the Goths…

The smallest province in the Empire, had its inhabitants still been trained to arms, could have wiped out the Goths and Vandals who were but small nations in arms. Assuredly, Alaric could have no more taken the Rome of old than Genseric the Carthage of old.

—Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power

Machiavelli warned republics against reliance on mercenaries. If they are incompetent, he said, they will ruin you by losing battles; and if they are competent, they will be tempted to turn against the state and become its conquerors.

De Jouvenal argues that the “natural evolution of a people which is rising in the scale of civilization” is toward smaller armies, fewer warriors, and more citizens. Machiavelli convinces us that we cannot entrust our fate to mercenaries. This presents an obvious dilemma. Whatever we do, we are in danger.

We cannot destroy liberty in order to preserve it. Robert Heinlein and others have argued that a nation which cannot defend itself without conscription does not deserve to live; and while I cannot accept that absolute judgment—in this world we must often choose among undesirable alternatives—I do find the argument appealing. We must not destroy liberty in order to preserve it; we must not forever construct Power in order to oppose our enemies. And yet—without organization which can only be provided by a strong government, we may be rendered helpless.

Perhaps the answer is not to expect so much from government; to splinter Power before it enslaves us. The United States has never been in danger from its own citizens. It is particularly in no danger from conscript armies, which are merely the citizens in arms. It is the ceaseless striving toward domestic perfection that renders unto Washington not only those things which are Caesar’s, but everything else.

Our intentions may be good and noble, but when we build Power we build what Benjamin Franklin said was “like fire, a dangerous friend and a fearful master.” History knows few cases of a wealthy republic whose citizens would defend themselves.

It is worse for those who would establish empires, or defend far frontiers. The temptation to turn to mercenaries can become nearly overwhelming—but it is seldom wise to succumb. Warriors are warriors, and the glories and sins of the warrior are universal. There is a fatal flaw in hiring one’s defense; for even if we hire competent mercenaries and keep them under tight control, their interest is not ours. La Legion Etrangère could and did fight fiercely and die bravely for a government which it held in contempt: but most mercenaries are not like that.

Certainly Hammer’s Slammers are not…

The Interrogation Team

David Drake

The man the patrol brought in was about forty, bearded, and dressed in loose garments—sandals, trousers, and a vest that left his chest and thick arms bare. Even before he was handed from the back of the combat car, trussed to immobility in sheets of water-clear hydorclasp, Griffiths could hear him screaming about his rights under the York Constitution of ’03.

Didn’t the fellow realize he’d been picked up by Hammer’s Slammers?

“Yours or mine, Chief?” asked Major Smokey Soames, Griffiths’ superior and partner on the interrogation team—a slim man of Afro-Asian ancestry, about as suited for wringing out a mountaineer here on York as he was for swimming through magma. Well, Smokey’d earned his pay on Kanarese.…

“Is a bear Catholic?” Griffiths asked wearily. “Go set the hardware up. Major.”

“And haven’t I already?” said Smokey, but it had been nice of him to make the offer. It wasn’t that mechanical interrogation required close genetic correspondences between subject and operator, but the job went faster and smoother in direct relation to those correspondences. Worst of all was to work on a woman, but you did what you had to do…

Four dusty troopers from A Company manhandled the subject, still shouting, to the command car housing the interrogation gear. The work of the firebase went on. Crews were pulling maintenance on the fans of some of the cars facing outward against attack, and one of the rocket howitzers rotated squealingly as new gunners were trained. For the most part, though, there was little to do at midday, so troopers turned from the jungle beyond the berm to the freshly-snatched prisoner and the possibility of action that he offered.

“Don’t damage the goods!” Griffiths said sharply when the men carrying the subject seemed ready to toss him onto the lefthand couch like a log into a blazing fireplace. One of the troopers, a non-com, grunted assent; they settled the subject in adequate comfort. Major Soames was at the console between the paired couches, checking the capture location and relevant intelligence information from Central’s data base.

“Want us to unwrap ’im for you?” asked the non-com, ducking instinctively though the roof of the command car cleared his helmet. The interior lighting was low, however, especially to eyes adapted to the sun hammering the bulldozed area of the firebase.

“Listen, me ’n’ my family never, I swear it, dealt with interloping traders!” the York native pleaded.

“No, we’ll take care of it,” said Griffiths to the A Company trooper, reaching into the drawer for a disposable-blade scalpel to slit the hydorclasp sheeting over the man’s wrist. Some interrogators liked to keep a big fighting knife around, combining practical requirements with a chance to soften up the subject through fear. Griffiths thought the technique was misplaced: For effective mechanical interrogation, he wanted his subjects as relaxed as possible. Panic-jumbled images were better than no images at all; but only just better.

“We’re not the Custom’s Police, old son,” Smokey murmured as he adjusted the couch headrest to an angle which looked more comfortable for the subject. “We’re a lot more interested in the government convoy ambushed last week.”

Griffiths’ scalpel drew a line above the subject’s left hand and wrist. The sheeting drew back in a narrow gape, briefly iridescent as stresses within the hydorclasp readjusted themselves. As if the sheeting were skin, however, the rip stopped of its own accord at the end of the scored line. “What’re you doing to me?”

“Nothing I’m not doing to myself, friend,” said Griffiths, grasping the subject’s bared forearm with his own left hand so that their inner wrists were together. Between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he held a standard-looking stim cone up where the subject could see it clearly, despite the cocoon of sheeting still holding his legs and torso rigid. “I’m George, by the way. What do your friends call you?”

“You’re drugging me!” the subject screamed, his fingers digging into Griffiths’ forearm fiercely. The mountaineers living under triple-canopy jungle looked pasty and unhealthy, but there was nothing wrong with this one’s muscle tone.

“It’s a random pickup,” said Smokey in Dutch to his partner. “Found him on a trail in the target area, nothing suspicious—probably just out sap-cutting—but they could snatch him without going into a village and starting something.”

“Right in one,” Griffiths agreed in soothing English as he squeezed the cone at the juncture of his and the subject’s wrist veins. The dose in its skin-absorbed carrier—developed from the solvent used with formic acid by Terran solifugids for defense—spurted out under pressure and disappeared into the bloodstreams of both men: thrillingly cool to Griffiths, and a shock that threw the subject into mewling, abject terror.

“Man,” the interrogator murmured as he detached the subject’s grip from his forearm, using the pressure point in the man’s wrist to do so, “if there was anything wrong with it, I wouldn’t have split it with you, now would I?”

He sat down on the other couch, swinging his legs up and lying back before the drug-induced lassitude crumpled him on the floor. He was barely aware of movement as Smokey fitted a helmet on the subject and ran a finger up and down columns of touch-sensitive controls on his console to reach a balance. All Griffiths would need was the matching helmet, since the parameters of his brain were already loaded into the data base. By the time Smokey got around to him, he wouldn’t even feel the touch of the helmet.

The dose was harmless, as he’d assured the subject, unless the fellow had an adverse reaction because of the recreational drugs he’d been taking on his own. You could never really tell with the sap-cutters, but it was generally okay. The high jungles of York produced at least a dozen drugs of varying effect, and the producers were of course among the heaviest users of their haul.

By itself, that would have been a personal problem; but the mountaineers also took the position that trade off-planet was their own business, and that there was no need to sell their drugs through the Central Marketing Board in the capital for half the price that traders slipping into the jungle in small starships would cheerfully pay. Increasingly violent attempts to enforce customs laws on men with guns and the willingness to use them had led to what was effectively civil war—which the York government had hired the Slammers to help suppress.

It’s a bitch to fight when you don’t know who the enemy is; and that was where Griffiths and his partner came in.

“Now I want you to imagine that you’re walking home from where you were picked up,” came Smokey’s voice—but Griffiths was hearing the words only through the subject’s mind. His own helmet had no direct connection to the hushed microphone into which the major was speaking. The words formed themselves into letters of dull orange which expanded to fill Griffiths’ senses with a blank background.

The monochrome sheet coalesced abruptly, and he was trotting along a trail which was a narrow mark beaten by feet into the open expanse of the jungle floor. By cutting off the light, the triple canopies of foliage ensured that the real undergrowth would be stunted—as passable to the air-cushion armor of Hammer’s Slammers as it was to the locals on foot.

Judging distance during an interrogation sequence was a matter of art and craft, not science, because the “trip”—though usually linear—was affected by ellipses and the subject’s attitude during the real journey. For the most part, memory was a blur in which the trail itself was the major feature, and the remaining landscape only occasionally obtruded in the form of an unusually large or colorful hillock of fungus devouring a fallen tree. Twice the subject’s mind—not necessarily the man himself—paused to throw up a dazzlingly sharp image of a particular plant, once a tree and the other time a knotted, woody vine which stood out in memory against the misty visualization of the trunk which the real vine must wrap.

Presumably the clearly-defined objects had something to do with the subject’s business—which was none of Griffiths’ at this time. As he “walked” the Slammer through the jungle, the mountaineer would be mumbling broken and only partly intelligible words, but Griffiths no longer heard them or Smokey’s prompting questions.

The trail forked repeatedly, sharply visualized each time although the bypassed forks disappeared into mental fog within a meter of the route taken. It was surprisingly easy to determine the general direction of travel: Though the sky was rarely visible through the foliage, the subject habitually made sun-sightings wherever possible in order to orient himself.

The settlement of timber-built houses was of the same tones—browns, sometimes overlaid by a lichenous gray-green—as the trees which interspersed the habitations. The village glowed brightly by contrast with the forest, however, both because the canopy above was significantly thinner, and because the place was home and a goal to the subject’s mind. Sunlight, blocked only by the foliage of very large trees which the settlers had not cleared, dappled streets which had been trampled to the consistency of coarse concrete. Children played there, and animals—dogs and pigs, probably, but they were undistinguished shadows to the subject, factors of no particular interest to either him or his interrogator.

Griffiths did not need to have heard the next question to understand it, when a shadow at the edge of the trail sprang into mental relief as a forty-tube swarmjet launcher with a hard-eyed woman slouched behind it, watching the trail. The weapon needn’t have been loot from the government supply convoy massacred the week before, but its swivelling base was jury-rigged from a truck mounting.

At present, the subject’s tongue could not have formed words more complex than a slurred syllable or two, but the Slammers had no need for cooperation from his motor nerves or intellect. All they needed were memory and the hard-wired processes of brain function which were common to all life forms with spinal cords. The subject’s brain retrieved and correlated the information which the higher centers of his mind would have needed to answer Major Soames’ question about defenses—and Griffiths collected the data there at the source.

Clarity of focus marked as the subject’s one of the houses reaching back against a bole of colossal proportions. Its roof was of shakes framed so steeply that they were scarcely distinguishable from the vertical timbers of the siding. Streaks of the moss common both to tree and to dwelling faired together cut timber and the russet bark. On the covered stoop in front, an adult woman and seven children waited in memory. At this stage of the interrogation Griffiths had almost as little conscious volition as the subject did, but a deep level of his own mind recorded the woman as unattractive. Her cheeks were hollow, her expression sullen, and the appearance of her skin was no cleaner than that of the subject himself. The woman’s back was straight, however, and her clear eyes held, at least in the imagination of the subject, a look of affection. The children ranged in height from a boy, already as tall as his mother, to the infant girl looking up from the woman’s arms with a face so similar to the subject’s that it could, with hair and a bushy beard added, pass for his in a photograph. Affection cloaked the vision of the whole family, limning the faces clearly despite a tendency for the bodies of the children to mist away rather like the generality of trees along the trail; but the infant was almost deified in the subject’s mind.

Smokey’s unheard question dragged the subject off abruptly, his household dissolving, unneeded to the answer, as a section of the stoop hinged upward on the end of his own hand and arm. The tunnel beneath the board flooring dropped straight down through the layer of yellowish soil and the friable rock beneath. There was a wooden ladder along which the wavering oval of a flashlight beam traced as the viewpoint descended.

The shift was seventeen rungs deep, with a further gooseneck dip in the gallery at the ladder’s end to trap gas and fragmentation grenades. Where the tunnel straightened to horizontal, the flashlight gleamed on the powergun in a niche ready to hand but beneath the level to which a metal detector could be tuned to work reliably.

Just beyond the gun was a black-cased directional mine with either a light-beam or ultrasonic detonator—the subject didn’t know the difference and his mind hadn’t logged any of the subtle discrimination points between the two types of fuzing. Either way, someone ducking down the tunnel could, by touching the pressure-sensitive cap of the detonator, assure that the next person across the invisible tripwire would take a charge of shrapnel at velocities which would crumble the sturdiest body armor.

“Follow all the tunnels,” Smokey must have directed, because Griffiths had the unusual experience of merger with a psyche which split at every fork in the underground system. Patches of light wavered and fluctuated across as many as a score of simultaneous images, linking them together in the unity in which the subject’s mind held them.

It would have made the task of mapping the tunnels impossible, but the Slammers did not need anything so precise in a field as rich as this one. The tunnels themselves had been cut at the height of a stooping runner, but there was more headroom in the pillared bays excavated for storage and shelter. Flashes—temporal alternatives, hard to sort from the multiplicity of similar physical locations—showed shelters both empty and filled with villagers crouching against the threat of bombs which did not come. On one image the lighting was uncertain and could almost have proceeded as a mental artifact from the expression of the subject’s infant daughter, looking calmly from beneath her mother’s worried face.

Griffiths could not identify the contents of most of the stored crates across which the subject’s mind skipped, but Central’s data bank could spit out a list of probables when the interrogator called in the dimensions and colors after the session. Griffiths would do that, for the record. As a matter of practical use, all that was important was that the villagers had thought it necessary to stash the material here—below the reach of ordinary reconnaissance and even high explosives.

There were faces in the superimposed panorama, villagers climbing down their own access ladders or passed in the close quarters of the tunnels. Griffiths could not possibly differentiate the similar, bearded physiognomies during the overlaid glimpses he got of them. It was likely enough that everyone, every male at least, in the village was represented somewhere in the subject’s memory of the underground complex.

There was one more sight offered before Griffiths became aware of his own body again in a chill wave spreading from the wrist where Smokey had sprayed the antidote. The subject had seen a nine-barrelled powergun, a calliope whose ripples of high-intensity fire could eat the armor of a combat car like paper spattered by molten steel. It was deep in an underground bay from which four broad “windows”—firing slits—were angled upward to the surface. Preparing the weapon in this fashion to cover the major approaches to the village must have taken enormous effort, but there was a worthy payoff: At these slants, the bolts would rip into the flooring, not the armored sides, of a vehicle driving over the camouflaged opening of a firing slit. Not even Hammer’s heavy tanks could survive having their bellies carved that way…

The first awareness Griffiths had of his physical surroundings was the thrashing of his limbs against the sides of the couch while Major Soames lay across his body to keep him from real injury. Motor control returned with a hot rush, permitting Griffiths to lie still for a moment and pant.

“Need to go under again?” asked Smokey as he rose, fishing in his pocket for another cone of antidote for the subject if the answer was “no.”

“Got all we need,” Griffiths muttered, closing his eyes before he took charge of his arms to lift him upright. “It’s a bloody fortress, it is, all underground and cursed well laid out.”

“Location?” said his partner, whose fingernails clicked on the console as he touched keys.

“South by southeast,” said Griffiths. He opened his eyes, then shut them again as he swung his legs over the side of the couch. His muscles felt as if they had been under stress for hours, with no opportunity to flush fatigue poisons. The subject was coming around with comparative ease in his cocoon, because his system had not been charged already with the drug residues of the hundreds of interrogations which Griffiths had conducted from the right-hand couch. “Maybe three kays—you know, plus or minus.”

The village might be anywhere from two kilometers to five from the site at which the subject had been picked up, though Griffiths usually guessed closer than that. This session had been a good one, too, the linkage close enough that he and the subject were a single psyche throughout most of it. That wasn’t always the case: Many interrogations were viewed as if through a bad mirror, the images foggy and distorted.

“Right,” said Smokey to himself, or to the hologram map tank in which a named point was glowing in response to the information he had just keyed. “Right, Thomasville they call it.” He swung to pat the awakening subject on the shoulder. “You live in Thomasville, don’t you, old son?”

“Wha…?” murmured the subject.

“You’re sure he couldn’t come from another village?” Griffiths queried, watching his partner’s quick motions with a touch of envy stemming from the drug-induced slackness in his own muscles.

“Not a chance,” the major said with assurance. “There were two other possibles, but they were both north in the valley.”

“Am I–” the subject said in a voice that gained strength as he used it. “Am I all right?”

Why ask us? thought Griffiths, but his partner was saying, “Of course you’re all right, m’boy, we said you would be, didn’t we?”

While the subject digested that jovial affirmation, Smokey turned to Griffiths and said, “You don’t think we need an armed recce then, Chief?”

“They’d chew up anything short of a company of panzers,” Griffiths said flatly, “and even that wouldn’t be a lotta fun. It’s a bloody underground fort, it is.”

“What did I say?” the subject demanded as he regained intellectual control and remembered where he was—and why. “Please, please, what’d I say?”

“Curst little, old son,” Smokey remarked. “Just mumbles—nothing to reproach yourself about, not at all.”

“You’re a gentle bastard,” Griffiths said.

“Ain’t it true, Chief, ain’t it true?” his partner agreed. “Gas, d’ye think, then?”

“Not the way they’re set up,” said Griffiths, trying to stand and relaxing again to gain strength for a moment more. He thought back over the goose-necked tunnels; the filter curtains ready to be drawn across the mouths of shelters; the atmosphere suits hanging beside the calliope. “Maybe saturation with a lethal skin absortive like K3, but what’s the use of that?”

“Right you are,” said Major Soames, tapping the console’s preset for Fire Control Central.

“You’re going to let me go, then?” asked the subject, wriggling within his wrappings in an unsuccessful attempt to rise.

Griffiths made a moue as he watched the subject, wishing that his own limbs felt capable of such sustained motion. “Those other two villages may be just as bad as this one,” he said to his partner.

“The mountaineers don’t agree with each other much better’n they do with the government,” demurred Smokey with his head cocked toward the console, waiting for its reply. “They’ll bring us in samples, and we’ll see then.”

“Go ahead,” said Fire Central in a voice bitten flat by the two-kilohertz aperture through which it was transmitted.

“Got a red-pill target for you,” Smokey said, putting one ivory-colored fingertip on the holotank over Thomasville to transmit the coordinates to the artillery computers. “Soonest.”

“Listen,” the subject said, speaking to Griffiths because the major was out of the line of sight permitted by the hydorclasp wrappings, “let me go and there’s a full three kilos of Misty Hills Special for you. Pure, I swear it, so pure it’ll float on water!”

“No damper fields?” Central asked in doubt.

“They aren’t going to put up a nuclear damper and warn everybody they’re expecting attack, old son,” said Major Soames tartly. “Of course, the least warning and they’ll turn it on.”

“Hold one,” said the trooper in Fire Control.

“Just lie back and relax, fella,” Griffiths said, rising to his feet at last. “We’ll turn you in to an internment camp near the capital. They keep everything nice there so they can hold media tours. You’ll do fine.”

There was a loud squealing from outside the interrogators’ vehicle. One of the twenty-centimeter rocket howitzers was rotating and elevating its stubby barrel. Ordinarily the six tubes of the battery would work in unison, but there was no need for that on the present fire mission.

“We have clearance for a nuke,” said the console with an undertone of vague surprise which survived sideband compression. Usually the only targets worth a red pill were protected by damper fields which inhibited fission bombs and the fission triggers of thermonuclear weapons.

“Lord blast you for sinners!” shouted the trussed local. “What is it you’re doing, you blackhearted devils?”

Griffiths looked down at him, and just at that moment the hog fired. The base charge blew the round clear of the barrel, and the sustainer motor roared the shell up in a ballistic path for computer-determined seconds of burn. The command vehicle rocked. Despite their filters, the vents drew in air burned by exhaust gases.

It shouldn’t have happened after the helmets were removed and both interrogator and subject had been dosed with antidote. Flashback contacts did sometimes occur, though. This time it was the result of the very solid interrogation earlier; that, and meeting the subject’s eyes as the howitzer fired.

The subject looked so much like his infant daughter that Griffiths had no control at all over the image that sprang to his mind: the baby’s face lifted to the sky which blazed with the thermonuclear fireball detonating just above the canopy—

—and her melted eyeballs dripping down her cheeks.

The hydorclasp held the subject, but he did not stop screaming until they had dosed him with enough suppressants to turn a horse toes-up.

Editor’s Introduction to:

A Time of Martyrs

Jim Fiscus

The Levant has been at war for a thousand years. The League of Nations attempted to impose peace by giving Britain and France mandated control over large areas; one result was that when World War II broke out and France sundered into the Vichy regime collaborating with the Nazis and the Free French of de Gaulle, La Légion Etrangère was also divided. The divisions of the Foreign Legion fought each other bitterly and without quarter in Syria. After WW II ended, Arab and Zionist fought both each other and the British; and they but continued wars that were old in the time of the Crusades.

In the late 1970’s the Shah of Iran, having been abandoned by his allies in the West, fled the country. Although he did not officially abdicate the throne, he left behind an autonomous government dedicated to constitutional principles. That government lasted no more than days; and after its overthrow by the fanatic Ayatollah Khomaini, the constitutionalists and republicans of Iran were savagely butchered alongside the pacifist Baha’i.

The Shah had commanded the best army in that part of the world. After his fall, the Iraqi government thought it saw an opportunity to take—or recover, depending on your view—a strategic waterway and other territory of the Tigris-Euphrates delta. Thus was born the Iraq-Iran war which continues to this day, and, it is safe to predict, will not soon be ended.

Thus was also born the period of the Tehran hostages, and our humiliation in the Iranian desert. From the same roots sprang a more pleasant memory, of the United States Navy’s capture of the pirates of the Achille Lauro. The incidents are illustrative: The Iranian adventure was controlled from Washington, with President Carter insisting on knowing every detail as it happened; while the Navy’s capture of the pirates was ordered by a President confident enough to leave the rest to the warriors.

There is more to learn. In this original work, James Fiscus shows graphically just how difficult it is to understand the politics of the Levant, where there are warriors in plenty, but few statesmen.

A Time of Martyrs

Jim Fiscus

The enemy stormed in a ragged wave across the dry, shell-cratered mud of Mesopotamia. Dust rose from beneath their feet to meet the driving heat of the sun. A torrent of children swept across the wide plain, once ruled by the city-states of Sumer, toward the guns and trenches of the Iraqi Fourth Army. At least ten thousand Iranian troops were charging our lines. Fowler wanted me to stop them in their own past. I swung around to watch the attack against the battalion entrenched slightly forward on our right flank.

I focused my glasses on the center of the advancing army of martyrs. Ropes lashed many together into small bunches. Few were armed. As they neared the first line of barbed wire, the wave of bodies faltered, crested, and flooded onward with new vigor to the second line of wire. Spirits of dust and smoke marked the explosion of mines within the Iranian lines. The attackers were scarcely three hundred meters from the first bunkers. The Iraqis still had not begun to fire. “Holding it a bit long, aren’t they, Major Salam?”

“No, Mr. Koch. Not at all.” He spoke quietly in nearly perfect American English. “Look now to the rear of the first wave.”

I lowered my glasses and followed his directions. Three hundred meters behind the first of the Iranian troops, squat M-60 tanks pushed over a ridge, driving the children forward. Between the tanks came the regular troops of the Revolutionary Guard, shackled only by their fanaticism. Fountains of dust and flesh flowered into the air as mortar and artillery rounds tore gaps in the attacking formations.

“Now, Mr. Koch, it is time for the real slaughter.”

The front of the Iranian wave was only one hundred meters from the bunkers when the Iraqi machine guns and quad anti-aircraft mounts began firing. A scythe swept across the plain. Thousands fell, or faltered. Others pushed on. In a few places, regular troops reached the line of trenches, only to die in seconds. “You do a slick job of it, Major.” In the face of the heavy artillery fire, the prodding tanks too fell back.

“We do our job, Mr. Koch.” He swung around to stare at me.

“You must enjoy the chance to kill Iranians, Major. You should hate them more than I do.”

“My hate only survived the first ten thousand my men killed. We kill them, we do not hate them.”

I nodded, as if I understood him, and walked over to where Fowler stood against the far wall of the trench. “Gooks killing gooks. Best game I’ve seen in a year. I love it.”

“You would, Koch.” Fowler was wearing khaki fatigues, their creases still sharp and crisp, though heavy with dust. Shades and a bush hat polished his image. He wore no military insignia.

“Why stop them, Fowler? They want to die, let them die. Screw the sand niggers.”

Fowler stepped closer, shoving his face within centimeters of mine. “Koch, use that term again and I’ll find someone else for the job.”

“Sure you will. You’ll just walk into MIT or Cal Tech and ask one of the boys to drop over to Iraq and escort you on a little trip through time.”

“If you knew anything about the people…” Fowler turned aside. “I thought that if you saw the fighting, you’d want to help stop the slaughter.’’

“You pay well, Fowler. I’m tired of third rate engineering jobs.” I also missed working in a timeflow lab. “But I don’t see how you hope to stop Khomaini with the controller. You won’t be able to change the timeflow seriously.”

“Not drastically change events, no. We only need to nudge them a bit and we can destroy the doctrinal basis of Khomaini’s power.” He pulled me into the shade of a sandbagged bunker. “We’ve made small changes already.” The bunker muffled the thud of the artillery.

“Then you have men who know more than I do.”

“We did have them. The lab team was killed by an Iranian suicide pilot a month ago. Fortunately, we have their records. They had made small changes in the past, killing men a few days earlier than recorded, or in different ways.”

“History is too complex for any change to have much of an impact on later events, Fowler. Year adds to year, all building inertia into the timeflow.”

“The possible gain is…”

“Mr. Fowler, Mr. Koch, please come to the trench,” Major Salam called quietly from the door of the bunker.

I blinked hard against the stabbing glare of the sun, and slipped my sunglasses back on. Shells hurled by our artillery screamed overhead toward the enemy. The Iraqi troops were all at the forward edge of the trench, staring over the parapet, their Kalashnikovs sighted on the enemy.

“It is our turn to kill,” Major Salam said.

I stared over the shoulder of an Iraqi machinegunner. Again, the ragged advance of wave after wave of running figures. This time, they were coming straight down our throats.

“You should not need that, Mr. Koch.”

“What?” I realized my hand had dropped to my .45 automatic. I glanced along the line of Iraqi guns. “No, I imagine you’re right, Major.” And then I saw the Iranian tanks pushing forward over the crest of the next hill. One by one, they rocked back sharply as their guns fired.

The blast of concussion swept down the trench, and I staggered against the back wall. The air was filled with dust and the screams of men. I stood, leaning against the sandbags, and tried to focus my mind.

The heavy firing of our machineguns pulled me back to the trench. Fowler was next to me, shoving a canteen in my face. “Thanks.” I choked down the stale water. “What happened?”

“Round hit the quad mount in the next bunker.”

“Oh shit!” The acrid smoke from the explosion burned my throat. I stared past Fowler. The tanks were falling back under the pounding of the Iraqi artillery. Through the dust, near us, came the running specters of several dozen Iranian infantry. Some Iraqis jumped to the top of the trench to meet them, others backed away and continued firing.

A few Iranians reached the top of the trench and fired into the Iraqis to my left, as others, unarmed, jumped into our midst. I saw one reach for a fallen rifle. He was a boy, twelve, maybe thirteen years old. My .45 slid out of its holster, almost on its own.

I stared at the boy across the barrel of the .45. He started to raise the Kalashnikov.

“Stop,” I yelled, hesitating, myself, to bring death. “Surrender!”

But how could a village boy from Iran understand me? The rifle continued to swing up.

There was terror in the boy’s face, and in my heart. I stared into his eyes and fired. The pistol smashed back into my hand twice. I turned as the body fell back, and swung the .45 for another target.

Six or seven Iranians lay on the parapet, one or two inside the trench. One of the Iraqis was trying to cover a fist-sized hole in his own chest with his cap.

I turned back to the boy as Fowler knelt by the body. “Good shot, Koch.” Fowler let the back of his hand rest lightly on the boy’s cheek, and looked up at me. “You got your own.”

“My own?” I looked at the boy. His face was smooth and unlined, marred only by a smear of dirt on one cheek. He was still alive. I stared again into his eyes as he died. And we were in hell together.

“Your trophy, Koch, you should be feeling proud. You got a sand nigger.”

“Better that little motherfucker than me,” I said automatically.

Fowler examined our car. All the tires had been flattened by shrapnel. “Come on, Koch, we walk back to Sector HQ and catch a truck to Baghdad.”

“Look, Fowler,” I followed him to the road, “it’s time you told me what the Colonel is paying me to do. I want details.”

“Agreed.” Heat broiled down from above and reflected back from the road. The world seemed afire. Fowler pulled his sweat-soaked sleeve across his forehead. “What do you know about the differences between Shia and Sunni doctrine?”

“The Sunni are the majority and the Shi’i the minority of Moslems. But who cares what the differences are? A gook is a gook, eh?” I smiled and watched Fowler hold his anger in check.

“The two sects connect religious authority to political legitimacy in different ways. Shia doctrine supports the role of the clergy in determining political legitimacy and thus serves as the basis of Khomaini’s power.” A line of trucks crept toward us on the narrow, mine-free, strip of road. We edged to the side to let them pass. “‘Shia’ means no more than ‘party,’ by the way,” Fowler said.

“Yeah, right, the Shia supported Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali, to be caliph.” I knew the history, Rossanna had told me before she went home. “Arabs had themselves a nice little civil war over who would be the fourth caliph after the Prophet, but I don’t give a damn.”

“Koch, where did a bigoted asshole like you ever learn about Islam?” The trucks picked up speed as they passed.

“An Iranian broad I knew…everybody screws up from time to time. It was my turn.” I covered my nose and mouth with an old handkerchief, and tried to filter out the dust blown up by the convoy. “But, knowing one sect of Islam from the other won’t help you change time.” Let Fowler talk and breathe this junk, I thought.

“Everything follows from the difference between them, Koch. And that gives us a real chance. One group, they became the Sunni, argued that the consensus of the community could properly determine the caliph.”

“Sure, they kicked out Ali and founded the Umayyad Caliphate.” I glanced at him. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to depose a dynasty.” Sweat, hot and salty, stung my eyes.

“No, the plan is subtler. The Shia favored designation. They argued that Ali had been designated by Muhammad as his successor before his death, and that the Prophet’s will should be followed. Later, the Shi’i argued that Ali’s descendants were the proper leaders of the community… as descendants of the Prophet’s family, they were closer to God. Ali was assassinated, and the Umayyads suppressed his family and followers.”

“Get to the point, Fowler. I don’t need a lecture on religion. What do you want me to do with the damn time machine?”

“Try and contain your enthusiasm for ignorance, Koch. The Shia became the political opposition and were viewed, rightly, as fomenters of rebellion.”

“Finally, you approach the fucking point.”

Fowler ignored my comment. “This is where the political argument turns religious. The Sunni believe that Moslems can be guided to correct actions in life by following the Book, the Koran.”

I stopped walking, pulled out my canteen, and took a sip of water, letting the hot liquid wash the inside of my mouth before swallowing. I glanced across the naked, broken ground. Heat shimmered in the air. I handed the canteen to Fowler.

“Thanks.” He drank and gave me back the canteen. “The Shi’i say this is not enough. Man must have the Law inspired by God. It is the role of the Imam, inspired by God, to give the community guidance. They have come to consider the Imams infallible.”

“Quaint. The gooks need an infallible religious leader. Don’t have the guts to decide for themselves.” I smiled, chuckled slightly, and said, “Did they steal the idea from the Catholics, or did the Catholics steal it from the Shi’i?” I was becoming interested. “And the Iranians say Khomaini is the current Imam, right?”

“In this sense, no. The term is applied to him only as a title of respect. He is not the Imam. There hasn’t been one for over a thousand years.”

“So where’s Khomaini’s authority come from?” His authority to murder.

“From the Imam.”

“But you said that there is no Imam.”

“Exactly. The Shia have developed the idea that the Ulama, the learned clergy, are delegated to speak for the Imam and interpret the law.” Fowler whirled as a heavy engine roared from behind us. We jumped aside, barely escaping a truck that sped past. “Bastard.”

“Gooks will kill us yet,” I mumbled. Dust rose in a thick, choking cloud around us.

“There were disputes over the line of succession to the Imamate,” Fowler said. “Some Moslems still claim authority from the Third Imam, the Seventh Imam or others.”

“The Iranians are called Twelvers, I know, but I never got around to asking why.”

“The last Imam in their line to serve publicly was the eleventh, al-Askari, who died in 874 A.D. Because they had been held under house arrest by the caliph, al-Askari and his immediate predecessor used deputies to communicate with their followers.”

“If he was the Eleventh Imam, and the last, where does the Twelfth Imam come in? Can’t they count?”

“Al-Askari is said to have had a son who was hidden from the caliphate by his Shi’i followers. They feared that if he were publicly known, he would be assassinated. The Twelvers have converted this political problem into a matter of doctrine. The Twelfth, or Hidden, Imam is in Occultation awaiting the proper time to return and lead his followers to a golden age of justice…”

“Justice my ass. Revenge is more likely. Revenge against the whole world.”

“A little of each, from what they say. In any case, the Imam’s rule will be an era of a true and pure Islam. The Imam is not a prophet…”

“Muhammed was the last prophet. That belief is key to all Islam,” I said, interrupting, not sure why I was letting myself be drawn into a discussion.

Fowler nodded. Sweat and dust had combined to streak his face with mud. “But the Imam does have divine knowledge equal to the Prophet’s. He is the Mahdi, the promised one, the Messiah.”

“And because he vanished without trace, the Twelver clergy can use the Hidden Imam as a source of authority. Slick. They have a phone line to the man who has a line to God.”

“Correct. This deputized authority has led to two of the major differences between the Shia and the Sunni. The Shi’i claim that only the rule of the Hidden Imam can be a truly legitimate government.” Fowler paused to wipe sweat from the back of his neck. The crease had long since left his pants and shirt. His uniform had wilted in the heat.

“And without the Hidden Imam, no government or state can be fully legitimate. They’re all caretakers, right?” I turned to glance at Fowler. “But wouldn’t that apply to Khomaini as well? If he is not the Imam, his authority, too, has to be illegitimate?”

“Yes, a good point. The source of his moral, and political, influence is the delegated authority of the Imam. The key point is that Khomaini is not the Imam, and because of that, his regime cannot be fully legitimate.”

“Has the bastard ever claimed to be the Hidden Imam? That could be an easy way out of his dilemma.”

“In fact,” Fowler answered, “Khomaini has denied rumors that he was the Hidden Imam.”

“And the other difference between the Shi’i and the Sunni you mentioned, what the hell is that?” I turned and looked back down the road through a haze of dust and the shimmer of heat, hoping for a truck.

“Each Shi’i has to select a living religious scholar and obey only his interpretation of the religious law.”

“The mujtahids. Right, Fowler?”

Fowler turned and glanced at me. “Yes, and in a very nice twist of reasoning, the interpretation of a living cleric takes precedence over that of any dead mujtahid.”

“Great job security.”

Fowler continued, “They try to determine the will of the Hidden Imam. The mujtahids are not infallible, as the Imam is, but they will always come closer to the truth than any temporal ruler. Remember, they have religious authority delegated from the Imam. The mujtahids can exercise tremendous charismatic leadership. And it all started after the Twelfth Imam vanished.”

“His loyal followers protected him, eh? What did they really do, toss the little bastard down a well?” I held up my hand to flag down another truck nearing us from the front lines. This driver began to brake and pull to the edge of the road.

“That, actually, is one of the better historical guesses. The deputies would have lost much of their authority had he lived. They needed the mystery.”

“I think I see your idea.” I paused to consider the idea, then continued. “If the Hidden Imam dies in public… that would undercut Khomaini’s power by striking at the source of his deputized authority. No line to God, eh.”

Fowler actually beamed at my flash of insight. “Correct. We’ve sent back a number of remote sensors and located the boy. Al-Askari’s son did exist, and he was hidden by his followers. Koch, the boy is the linchpin to a large section of the timeflow.”

“How do you plan to attack him?”

“We’ve identified a day when he was moved through Baghdad. He and his escorts barely escaped capture by the caliph’s guards. We want him to die in public, while in the custody of the authorities.” Fowler stopped talking as the truck slid to a stop several meters ahead of us.

We ran toward the back of the truck and jumped onto the wide bumper. Neither of us tried to climb into the bed of the vehicle. The truck was packed with the dead, wounded and rotting remnants of the weeks’ fighting. The stench of death and the cries of the wounded swept around us as we clung to the tailgate of the bouncing truck.

Ghosts drifted out of my past to haunt my mind. I lay without light, looking into the darkness of a small room. The eyes of the boy I had shot stared back at me. I tried to imagine him playing in his village, running through the dust and kicking stones, or perhaps herding the family goats. I failed, and could not change my memory of his body, and his eyes.

The springs of the cot creaked under me as I rolled onto my back. The air was still and heavy in the Iraqi army guest room. We had driven from Baghdad late in the evening, arriving at the military compound north of the city just after twilight had passed into night. No work until morning, Fowler had said, so I hit the sack to fight my jet lag. Half the night had passed before I slept and was free of the boy’s image. But I slept only to dream of my .45 firing again and again into the boy.

“Koch. Get moving,” Fowler’s voice boomed through the door of my room, pulling me awake. “The Colonel’s aide is arriving in an hour to talk about the operation.”

I rolled over and stared at the chipped grey paint of the closed door. I was tired, and needed to sleep for six or seven more hours. “Damn. Where’d he come from?”

Fowler stuck his head into the room. “He flew in from Tripoli last night.”

After a fast shower and a quickly eaten breakfast, I was ready to face our Libyan paymaster. We left the guest quarters and stepped into the dust and heat of the early morning. I looked around the compound that had been hidden in darkness the evening before. We were in the ruins of an old fort. Mud brick walls towered around us, and mud or timber buildings were arranged around a central parade ground. “Who built this place, Fowler?”

“The Ottomans, I suspect.” He chuckled. “Or maybe the Persians. They’ve been here enough times.”

The buildings were ancient, but the machine guns and twin AA mounts on the walls were manned by troops who stared alertly outward… except for the half dozen men who watched us, their Kalashnikovs casually following our progress. Dust swirled across the open ground, creating a brown haze as we crossed to the mud brick HQ building.

Four guards flanking a door in the far wall stiffened to attention as we entered the first room. A fifth man stepped to meet us. “Mr. Fowler, Mr. Koch, our visitors wait inside.”

“Major Salarri.” I turned toward him. “Thought you’d still be on the front line.”

“That is my wish, Mr. Koch.” He moved toward the far door. “The army wishes me here, though. You see, I know something of your field.”

“Do you, now? Where did you…”

“I worked at the European timeflow laboratory for two years… But our guests wait.”

Two men stood in the next room, studying a wall map of the Iran-Iraq border. They turned as we entered. The shorter man wore a black business suit, of European cut and clearly expensive. The taller man was dressed in a khaki uniform.

Salam nodded to the uniformed man. “Lieutenant Colonel al-Hajjaj. He has been chosen to do the job,” Salam turned to the man in the fancy suit, “and his aide, Lieutenant Muhallab.” He swung back toward us. “Mr. Fowler and Doctor Koch,” he used my title for the first time.

Fowler smiled as we shook hands with the Libyans. “Was your flight smooth?”

“It was.” Al-Hajjaj turned to me. His eyes were cold. “Doctor Koch…”

“I don’t use ‘doctor’ anymore, Colonel.”

“No? I thought you academicians lived for your honors.” He glanced at his companion. “A scientist who is different, Muhallab. But then he had to be different to work with us on the project, did he not? Please, do not become angry, Mr. Koch. You work for me, remember.”

“With you, Colonel al-Hajjaj. After all, there are colonels, and there is the Colonel. And you are not the Leader.”

“Gentlemen, please, we have an enemy in common.” Major Salam stepped to the Libyan’s side. “Remember, it is Khomaini we are to fight.…” His voice was overpowered by the sudden, engulfing roar of jet engines.

An explosive shock wave smashed the door open and drove me to my knees. I fell forward as a second shock swept through the building. For several seconds I stared at the ancient bricks of the floor, then shook my head and slowly stood. The room swam in a circle around me.

I let the wall support me and looked for Fowler. He was using the far wall to pull himself to his feet. The three officers were also slowly climbing off the floor. I turned and tried to see the guards in the outer room. Dust obscured my vision, and I needed several seconds to locate the broken and scattered pieces of their bodies.

“You hurt, Koch?” Fowler swept his glance across the debris that had been four men.

“No.”

Major Salam pushed past Fowler and moved uneasily to a gaping hole in the front wall. “Bomb craters outside.” He touched the jagged edge of broken bricks. “The Turks built well, or we would be dead.” Fowler and I followed Salam out of the building. Salam continued, “Iran has only a few planes that can still fly. And we will soon have our own air cover.” He pointed to three specks streaking toward us from the east. “These should be our planes now.”

I watched the specks grow into planes within seconds. “Don’t hold your breath, Major. Those are Phantoms. I saw enough of them in Vietnam.” I turned to Salam. “And I don’t think Iraq has any. They have to be Iranian.” I looked around the devastated compound. “You know any hole we can climb into?”

“There’s a new bunker at the corner of the rear wall.” He turned and shouted in Arabic back into the HQ.

Fowler and I ran for the rear of the compound. I glanced back over my shoulder. Salam was starting across the parade-ground, the two Libyans just coming out of the door. The attacking planes swept toward us.

Cannon shells tore into the ground, steps ahead of Salam. He whirled, shouted into the wind, and dove back toward the shelter of the damaged HQ. The projectiles sent a dancing line of dust across the compound.

“Move, Koch!” Fowler yelled from the sandbagged bunker.

I started to run, jerking my head up as the first F-4 tore through the air a hundred meters overhead, blocking out the sun for a heartbeat. I stopped cold. And stared at the next plane as it shot over us. The torrent of sound from the Phantom nearly drove thought from my mind. But I saw very clearly the Star of David on its wing. “Oh, shit.” A second three-plane group was nearly on us. I ran.

The bunker was unfinished and without a roof. I vaulted the low wall of sandbags. My leap became a tangled somersault and I was driven into the soft, sandy floor of the bunker by a shock wave from exploding bombs.

“You all right, Koch?” Fowler edged over to sit next to me.

“I think so.” Four Iraqi soldiers were pressing themselves against the sandbags. One of them bled from a gash in his left arm. “We’re being hit by the Israelis, Fowler. What the fuck is going on?”

“I saw them,” Fowler said, quietly.

“I can understand the Israelis wanting to stop an Iraqi time machine. It could be turned against them next, but how did they know? You said the last team was killed by an air strike. Are you sure the planes were Iranian?” I massaged my left shoulder.

“Yes, but some bastard’s telling people where we are.” Fowler stood and looked into the sky. “No more planes, I think.”

“Good. Still, you have a spy to catch.”

“And little chance of doing it, Koch. The leak is probably in Tripoli, or Baghdad.”

We pressed against each other and the cool concrete walls of the deep tunnel as the heavy vault door swung open. Fowler led me, and the three Arab officers, into the time vault. The antechamber lights glared after the dark tunnel.

The main strike of the Israeli raid had missed our compound and hit another old fort several miles away. Their information had not really been as good as it should have been, and the opening to the control lab was undamaged.

Colonel al-Hajjaj pulled his sunglasses from his uniform pocket. “What do we do now?”

“Walk into the next room, Colonel, and de-sync.” Fowler started across the room.

“Please, explain this to me.” Lieutenant Muhallab stood uncertainly by the far door, his once dapper suit torn and wrinkled.

Al-Hajjaj turned sharply. “You were given information. You should know this, Muhallab.”

“I am sorry, Colonel. There was not time for me to gain technical knowledge.” Only the slightest deference colored his voice.

“Headquarters should have let Idris come as planned. You are of no value,” al-Hajjaj said.

“I work for the survival of the Jamahiriya, Colonel,” Muhallab glanced at me and added, “The People’s Nation, Mr. Koch, Libya.”

I nodded, walked to the inside door, and began to explain.

“The control lab must be locked out of synchronization with the normal timeflow. Otherwise, any change we do make in the past will also affect us, and change our memories. When we de-sync, we pull ourselves slightly out of the timeflow and into alignment with the lab.”

“What happens when we return to normal… sync, and leave the lab?” Muhallab asked.

“We remember our real pasts, we remember the changes we made, we remember everything that happens…” I closed my eyes a moment, and I could hear Rossanna’s screams. I forced my attention back to the conversation.

“I see, Mr. Koch.” Muhallab walked toward the far door. “We must be careful of the memories we create for ourselves.”

We moved into the de-sync room. There was no furniture in the small chamber. I stepped to the control module and examined the readings on the three digital clocks. From left to right, they showed the normal, outside timeflow; the time in the sync chamber; and the time inside the control lab. The lab was one second behind the outside world. I turned to Fowler. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

Salam and al-Hajjaj were both calm. Muhallab displayed the tension of a first-time visitor to a time lab. The best nerves in the world react to the thought of being yanked about in time. I snapped the control switch from left to right.

The room began to hum, and the air seemed to vibrate. My body tingled. A sharp, nervous chill shot down my spine, and I shivered. The hum stopped. “That is it?” Muhallab asked.

“Sorry, nothing more to offer. No electric shocks, no blinding lights.” I swung open the inner door and led them into the lab.

Fowler pointed to one of several doors. “The control room is in there. Full manuals, and notes from the last team. You go review the equipment, Koch. I suspect there’ve been a few changes since your last work in a lab. I’ll show our associates the living quarters.”

I nodded, and started toward the control room. Al-Hajjaj glanced at Fowler. “Living quarters? There are no living quarters in our training lab.”

“No doubt, Colonel. But the plan, you see, is for us to stay in the lab until the job is done. It should take about a week.”

“You are starting now? My equipment is not with me. We must wait.”

“Everything you need is in the lab, Colonel. The last team was assassinated. We will take no more chances,” Fowler said.

“No, it was agreed to act next month.” Al-Hajjaj swung to face Salam. “Major, do your superiors know of this?”

“It was felt wise to attack on our own schedule, not your grand Colonel’s.” Salam smiled. “Our leaders share limited interests, they do not share trust.”

I spent the afternoon alone in the control room familiarizing myself with the equipment and reading the notes of the last team. Finally, I started to check the time displacement booth itself. I barely heard Fowler enter the room.

“Is the lab in order, Koch?”

“So far. The equipment is newer than the last lab I worked in… but then it should be. That was six years ago.”

“Are the notes detailed enough to tell you what the last team was planning?” Fowler sat on a padded, brown-plastic chair.

“Yes, there’s full data.” I sat on the edge of the console. “They had found the boy, the Hidden Imam…”

“Right.”

“The team was able to fix a tracer into his clothes.”

“That’s the first step, anyway,” Fowler said.

“They had also managed to use a remote unit to plant a time-lock stabilizer in the boy’s hair. All we have to do is feed the stabilizer’s code into the machine, and we can manipulate the boy’s time and location.”

“Will it stay in place? Might it not fall out?”

“Only if his head is shaved, judging by the diagram of the attachment.” I flipped open the team’s notebook and pointed to the drawing. “But, we have a deadline. The stabilizer’s battery will only be good for another week and a half of lab time.”

“Could you plant another one on the Imam?”

“Not likely. Operating a remote unit is a very special skill. It’s rather like building a ship in a bottle, with gloves on, in the dark.” I closed the notebook. “That, at least, is what Joe Curry at Cal Tech always said. And I believe him.”

“Koch,” Fowler paused to pour a cup of coffee, and continued, “The Cal Tech lab fired you three years ago. Why?”

“That is not your concern, Fowler.”

“Koch, you were the number two man in the lab. I have to know if you were fired for a reason that would affect this operation.”

“You should have been able to dig the information out of Cal Tech.”

“There wasn’t time. We had to move quickly when the first team was killed.” Fowler looked directly at me and said softly, “I have to know.”

I sat silently for a moment. “Yes, all right.” I stared at the floor as I talked. “You know I was engaged to an Iranian professor?”

“Yes.”

“Rossanna was from Isfahan. We met while she was doing post-doctoral work in chemistry at Cal Tech. She was not involved in politics.” I cleared my throat, and continued. “When the Shah was overthrown, Rossanna said she had to go home and help her country rebuild. After all, it was now free.”

“Iran has never been free. That’s the great tragedy of the country,” Fowler said.

“About a year after Rossanna left, I learned that she had been arrested, held for about two weeks in prison, and executed.” I stared at the green geometric patterns on the grey floor tiles and forced myself to keep talking. “I became obsessed with finding her in the timeflow, in a time before she had died. I wanted to save her.”

“With the machine at Cal Tech?”

I nodded. “I found Rossanna’s cell in the Tehran prison, and talked Joe Curry into planting a stabilizer on her.” I pushed myself off the console. I had to move. “It took him six hours of lab time to do the job. It was really rather easy, compared to most stabilizer plants, because she couldn’t move. They had hung her from the ceiling by her hands… the guards could torture her more easily.”

“I’m sorry, Koch.”

I stopped and turned to face him. “It’s so damn hard to place a stabilizer. Even with my position we only had the lab during a term break. We had to finish the job while we had the chance.” I started to walk again, using a steady rhythmic pace on the hard floor.

“What happened?”

“I decided to kill the judge who had condemned her, to kill him before her trial, I saw a Majahedin agent plant a bomb in the judge’s car. A guard found it and disabled it. I was able to create a diversion, the guard was late, and the bomb killed the Mullah.”

“It didn’t save your lady, I assume.”

“Right. The new judge also condemned her. I tried twice more. Each time killing an official whose replacement might have let her go.” I stopped pacing and leaned against the wall. “We stayed in the lab a week. When we came out, the only change was that Rossanna had been tortured for five weeks instead of for two.”

“Is that the last time you were in a control lab?”

“Yes. Partly by choice, I didn’t want to go into a lab again. I didn’t contest my firing.”

“Why take this job?”

“To kill as many Iranians,” I stopped, realizing I hadn’t called them sand niggers or gooks since killing the boy. I started again, “To kill as many as I could by changing the timeflow. Even if I only took a few hours off their lives, I would be killing them myself.” I drank from my own cup of coffee, now cold. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Rossanna since I arrived in Iraq. I turned my own feelings of loss into hatred of an entire people who are themselves victims. Let those who are dead, remain dead, and let those who are alive, live.”

“It will work this time, Koch. I understand enough about the theory of the timeflow to see that. You just weren’t able to find the key event. Knock the linchpin out of the timeflow, and you can change history. We can destroy Khomaini.”

“I am just not sure, Fowler. The last team’s calculations do offer a possibility of success.” I thought back over the figures and nodded slowly. “Don’t worry. I’ll go through with the plan. It might even save Rossanna.”

“We have at least one advantage you didn’t have. We have the lab tied into a new, world-wide, timeflow monitoring system,” Fowler said.

“I know about it. Based on time stabilizers and monitors placed around the globe.”

“Right. We’ll be able to tell what changes have occurred without leaving the facility.” Fowler glanced over his shoulder at the control room door. It was closed, as he had left it earlier. “Look, Koch, you know we have a bad situation here.”

“The Libyans?”

“They pay us, but we don’t really know what they want. You can be sure that their Colonel, Qaddafi, wants a strong and independent country, but beyond that, it’s up in the air.”

“Look, you’re doing this for the money, and so am I. But I don’t understand Qaddafi attacking another revolutionary state,” I said.

“The Colonel has had several Shi’i leaders killed in the past, that we do know. Also, Khomaini is a powerful rival for leadership in the radical section of the Islamic world.”

“So Qaddafi is a natural ally against Khomaini, despite his rhetoric of leftist solidarity.”

Fowler smiled. “Right.”

“Look, Fowler, you speak Arabic, don’t you? I might be able to use the controller to check on their briefings in Libya. It would take a few hours to find them.”

“I speak both Arabic and Farsi, but it won’t work. You’ve been out of the field too long. About a year ago MIT managed to convert a stabilizer into a field damper.” He held up his wrist watch. “With the damper on, a timeflow controller can’t be focused on the area the damper protects.”

“Very neat. Another new gadget.” I dropped into a chair. Its wheels squeaked as I pulled up to the console. “Any of your people on the outside likely to send you any useful information on al-Hajjaj? And what about Muhallab?”

“Al-Hajjaj is regular army and the commander of their time lab. Muhallab, I suspect, is with Qaddafi’s security force. I have some hope of hearing something soon, about both of them.”

The five of us stood in the control room of the time lab. Fowler, al-Hajjaj, and I were near the displacement booth. Salam sat at the console, monitoring the stabilizer planted on our target, the boy, the Hidden Imam. Lieutenant Muhallab was watching from the far side of the room.

“Yes, this is the right weapon.” Al-Hajjaj held a long rifle in his left hand and opened the breech-loading. He had changed his uniform for a dark jumpsuit. Turning to me, he held out the rifle. “You would be interested, Dr. Koch.” He was acting the complete professional.

I took the rifle from him and examined it for several minutes. It was an air rifle: single shot, breach loading. It was two meters long, but I could balance it easily at the trigger guard, thanks to the large gas cylinder fitted into the frame stock and the light weight of the resin-fiber barrel. Heavy wires ran from the stock to a belt-mounted battery pack and a stabilizer control.

“Well, Dr. Koch, your opinion? Can you guess its full purpose?” Al-Hajjaj’s voice dripped with smug superiority.

“Rather a straightforward device, Colonel.” I slid my hand along the barrel, feeling the tiny spiral ridges of imbedded wires. “The barrel is a de-sync chamber, powered by the belt-pack.” I glanced at Fowler. “Right?”

“So far.”

“The assassin,” I looked at al-Hajjaj, “and the weapon would be out of sync with the target—he’d have to use a translator helmet to aim. When the rifle is fired, the projectile passes through the de-sync chamber of the barrel and is adjusted to the target’s timeflow. I suspect that the only part of the system that would be visible in the target’s time would be the front tip of the barrel.” Looking again at Fowler and ignoring al-Hajjaj, I asked, “Do you have one of the darts?”

“Here.” He handed me a small open box.

Six bullet-shaped darts, each a centimeter long and about four millimeters across, lay in the box. The front half of each was metallic, the rear looked like black plastic. The bullets were mounted on white plastic rods three centimeters long.

“The white rod is only to make loading easier, it separates after the projectile is in the breech.” Fowler used his pen to point to the bullets. “The tips are made of osmium for mass. The back of the unit is a mix of water- and fat-soluble resins, impregnated with a nerve poison.”

“How fast does it kill?”

“About a minute. The symptoms of this poison are consistent with brain damage from a beating. The target jerks for about a minute before he dies. We know the Imam was roughed up a bit.” Fowler glanced up.

“Have you had any problem with the dart’s velocity driving it through the target?” I asked.

“We did at first. The tech boys added a minute explosive charge between the tip and the resin. It detonates on entry, and ensures separation. Even if the tip passes on out of the target, it fragments into dust when it hits anything solid.” Fowler turned to al-Hajjaj. “Well, Colonel, the timeflow controller is locked on the boy and ready.” He nodded to the displacement booth. “Jump in, you should be finished in five minutes.”

“And Twelver Shi’ism will never have existed.” Muhallab was standing near the far wall of the control room. “There will be total victory over the apostates.” He spat out the words.

“No, Muhallab. The followers of the Mahdi will not be damaged. It is your Colonel who will die.” Al-Hajjaj stepped back from the displacement booth, and slid an automatic pistol from his jumpsuit.

Muhallab jerked open his suit jacket and grabbed for his own pistol. Al-Hajjaj fired twice. Muhallab took half a step back, hand still on his pistol, and bumped against the wall. He stood for a moment, then slid down the wall and flopped over onto his side.

“No movement, please.” Al-Hajjaj’s voice displayed the habit of command. “I have no cause to kill any of you.” He stepped to the body and removed Muhallab’s gun from its belt holster. He glanced at Salam, who was now standing by the console. “Salam, I will need your help.”

“My help? Colonel al-Hajjaj, give me your gun, please. I will see that you are not punished if you do, inshallah.”

“Salam, you are Shi’i. You follow the Imam Mahdi. You must help me.” He waved his free hand at Muhallab. “Our glorious Colonel forced this dog upon me as an aide. The man who was to have come with me is no doubt dead.”

“Colonel al-Hajjaj, I am Iraqi, and I am Arab before I am Shi’i.” Salam slowly sat down on the edge of the console. “I have seen too many die in this war. There must be an end to the blood. I cannot help you.”

“You must help, Salam,” al-Hajjaj demanded. “We must use the machine to kill Qaddafi…”

“Your own palace coup, Colonel?” Fowler spoke for the first time since the attack on Muhallab. He kept both hands in clear view, away from his clothes. “You plan to replace one Colonel with another?”

“We pave the way for the coming of the Mahdi. No more.”

“That would be enough,” Fowler said quietly. “Did you tip off the Israelis?”

Al-Hajjaj spat violently. “No.”

“Yes, you had to have told them.” Salam slowly put one foot up on a chair. “You must be a spy for the Zionists.”

Watching al-Hajjaj’s eyes, I thought Salam was going to die in that instant, but he did not. After a moment al-Hajjaj said, “There is no time to talk. I did not tell the Israelis. I told only SAVAMA.”

“SAVAMA?” I glanced at Fowler.

“Iranian Intelligence, the successor to SAVAK. A lot of the professionals carried over.” Fowler shook his head very slightly. “And SAVAMA still works with MOSSAD, when they need to. Professionals working with professionals. But your hands are clean, Colonel?”

Salam bent his knee, pulling the chair closer to him. He was staring at al-Hajjaj.

“MOSSAD, that’s Israeli intelligence. Don’t kid yourself, Colonel.” I turned toward the Libyan, “you do work for the Israelis. Are you a closet Zionist?”

He whipped the automatic around, centering it on my stomach. “If I did not need you…” The high squeak of the chair wheels screamed for his attention. He whirled back to Salam and fired once, an instant before the chair smashed into his legs.

Fowler’s gun slipped out of his back holster. As the gun centered on al-Hajjaj and began to rise, Fowler fired. The first round whined off the concrete underlying the floor tiles. The second drove into the Colonel’s groin. The third and fourth struck him in the chest. I began to breathe again as the last echo reverberated around the room.

“Mr. Koch, please…”

Salam was lying on the floor, clutching his right shoulder. I moved to him and slowly pulled his hand away from the wound. It was high on the chest, just below his shoulder joint. “I won’t ask how you feel.” The sharp scent of cordite filled the room.

“It is not bad. With the small automatics, you must be accurate…” Salam gasped as I examined the wound.

“Let me patch him up.” Fowler moved me aside and lay a first aid kit on the floor. Within minutes, he had cleaned and bandaged the small entrance and exit wounds. “Koch, check the console, see if the bullet damaged anything.”

“I have. The tracer circuit is all right, but he hit the stabilizer controls. We’re still locked on to the boy, but the readings are shifting. The overload safety might be damaged. I don’t think we can remain locked to the Imam long.”

“Mr. Koch, try. You must go back and kill the Twelfth Imam.” Salam shifted his position, and winced. “We must try and stop the deaths.”

“I’m not an assassin.” I stood up. I felt trapped, but I was free compared to Salam. He was trapped between his religion, his nation and his Arab heritage. “I can run the lab while Fowler goes back.”

“Won’t work, Koch.” Fowler looked up at me, “The de-sync tube in the gun might need adjustment when you get back there. I know nothing about it. It has to be you, with Salam running the lab.”

“No, Fowler. I don’t even think your plan will really work.”

“But if it does, Koch, it might save your lady.” He paused. “Neither I nor Salam can do the job. Damn it, I know you fired expert in the Army.”

“This can’t help Rossanna. The timeflow is too rigid. You can only change part of it once.”

“Directly, yes, but this change is so remote from your efforts to save her that it can work.”

“Perhaps… All right.” I didn’t want to go back, but I had to try again to help Rossanna. “I’ll get into the spare jumpsuit and test fire the rifle in the hall.” I knelt a moment by Salam. “You can run the lab?”

He nodded.

“While I change, get me a picture of the timeflow at the moment I’m to shoot the Imam.”

The helmet was a little tight, but it would work. I slid the de-sync visor down and up to be sure it moved smoothly, then walked over to the control console. The main wall screen showed my target, locked in time by the stabilizer. The scene was a large city plaza. The details were unclear, the picture fuzzy, but the plaza was surrounded by tall mud brick buildings. It was filled with the stalls of a market, and a large crowd of shoppers.

Most of the people were unclear. But at the center of the view, a small group stood out sharply, locked in focus by the time stabilizer. A half-dozen guards with chain mail, helmets and swords surrounded a robed and turbaned man of middle age and a boy of about eight.

“The last lab team was able to delay the escape of the boy Imam until the Caliph’s guards had captured him,” Fowler said. “The man is known to the crowd, most of whom are Imamites. He was the major deputy of al-Askari, the Eleventh Imam. They suspect the boy to be the new Imam.”

“Anything else?” I put on the battery pack and controller and picked up the rifle.

“No.”

“Then let’s do the job.” I stepped into the displacement booth. “Salam, give me a few seconds, and hit it.” I saw him nod. Then I closed the door and sat on the small stool, the rifle on my lap. The booth darkened, and my skin began to tingle. Again, a chill ran down my spine. The sensation intensified.

Light began to filter through a heavy fog. The booth was gone. I saw the marketplace, and I saw the boy Imam. I raised the rifle. I took a moment to adjust the de-sync barrel, then sighted down at the boy. He was too far away. I changed the magnification on my helmet’s de-sync visor.

The Imam’s face filled my vision. I stared. He was so damn young, with a bruise on one cheek. I lowered the rifle, centering the sights on his chest. Slowly, I squeezed the trigger.

Across the sights of the air rifle I saw not the boy who was the Twelfth Imam, not the Mahdi, but the ghost of the boy I had killed in battle. As the gun puffed death, I whispered, “No.” The barrel jumped slightly.

The boy jerked, and was engulfed in a ball of light that faded in a heartbeat. The boy was gone. The crowd stared, and the guards and the deputy looked for the Imam. But he had vanished.

“What the bloody hell happened, Koch?” Fowler loomed behind me as I studied the console. “Where is the damn Imam?”

As I studied the stabilizer record, I could smell a trace of ozone in the air. “Here. The dart must have hit the stabilizer planted on the boy. That caused an overload loop back to the main controller. It fed the full power of the machine into the kid.”

“The Twelfth Imam has not gone into occultation in hiding, Mr. Fowler,” Salam too examined the record, “he has vanished in a blinding flash in the middle of a crowd of believers.”

“Well where the hell is the boy? Where did he go?”

“He’ll likely drop back in sync at a point of affinity in the timeflow, and within a thousand miles of us. But he could be anywhere, Fowler, anywhere in time.”

“Can you fix the machine?”

“No luck, Fowler. The controller overloaded. It’s dead.” I checked the secondary board. “Wait a minute… luck is with us, the tracer is still working. But I can’t quite get a fix on it, it’s too close in time to us.”

“I’ll check the data from outside and see what we did,” Fowler said. Fifteen minutes later, he turned from his work. “Looks as if political and geographical factors held pretty firm. Same nations, and the same general borders. There do seem to be about the same number of Shi’i as Sunni, however. And Libya itself is now Shi’i.”

“The war?” Salam asked.

“There is none, at the moment. But Khomaini is still leading Iran through a reign of terror.’’

I thought of Rossanna, closed my eyes a moment, and turned back to the tracer controls. A green light began blinking on the board. “I have him!”

“Put it on the wall monitor.” Fowler shoved his chair around to watch the display.

“Coming up now.” The two-meter wall screen was filled with a picture of a large city square filled with a mob. “Something familiar about that.” The main crowd consisted of men and boys, many waving rifles or machineguns. Dotted throughout the square were black-robed mullahs.

“It is Tehran, Dr. Koch,” Salam said. “Near the University, I think.”

“Can you bring up the sound?” Fowler stared at the screen. “There, in the center, a clear area around a few men.”

“If I can back up… now.” The picture blinked. The open area was now filled with men. The crowd was turned toward a speaker on a far platform. It was Khomaini. The sound switched in, and the Ayatollah’s voice filled the control room. I glanced at Fowler.

“It’s Farsi, but I understand most of it. The bastard is calling for a holy war against the Iraqi devils.”

A bright flash of light glared in the center of the crowd.

The packed mob shoved away from the light, sending ripples of motion outward. As the light faded, I saw a lone figure standing in a small open space in the center of the crowd. It was the boy, the Hidden Imam.

“Oh shit.” Fowler watched at the screen.

The boy whirled in a tight circle, staring at the crowd. His eyes were filled with fear. He began to babble in Arabic.

“Translate, damn it. Fowler.”

“I understand most of it. He’s asking where he is, and who the people are.” A black-robed mullah pushed through to the boy. They stood alone at the center of the clear circle, the boy cowering as the mullah shouted at him. “The cleric speaks Arabic. He’s calling the Imam a spy…a spy for the murderers of Ali, for the Sunni leadership of Iraq.”

The boy turned sharply at the mention of Ali. He called to the mullah and the crowd, holding his hand to his own chest, “Al-Askari, ibn-Askari!”

“Ibn-Askari? He’s identifying himself as the son of al-Askari,” Fowler said. “The mention of Ali told him that he’s among fellow Shia…”

The mullah stared a moment. He turned, pointed to a man with an M-16 rifle, and jerked his hand back at the boy. The automatic rifle swung toward the Twelfth Imam.

A burst of fire ripped into the boy, smashing him back into the mob where he fell to the ground. Bright blood soaked his clothes and ran onto the dirt. Men began to kick the body.

“Insallah,” Salam said quietly. “Yes. Al-Askari was his father’s name, but in both Arabic and Farsi askari also means soldier. They thought the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, was boasting of being a spy.”

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Road Not Taken

Harry Turtledove

Harry Turtledove works in the Los Angeles County Office of Education, where his studies of Byzantine history come in handy in understanding what’s going on. His forthcoming series from Ballantine Books chronicles the exploits of one of Caesar’s legions transported in time to the late Byzantine Empire just prior to Manzikert, that disastrous battle that destroyed Byzantium and brought the Turks to Anatolia.

Other things being equal, courage and the warrior spirit will be decisive; but sometimes other things are not equal. Herewith a delightfully improbable story…

The Road Not Taken

Harry Turtledove

Captain Togram was using the chamberpot when the Indomitable broke out of hyperdrive. As happened all too often, nausea surged through the Roxolan officer. He raised the pot and was abruptly sick into it.

When the spasm was done, he set the thundermug down and wiped his streaming eyes with the soft, gray-brown fur of his forearm. “The gods curse it!” he burst out. “Why don’t the shipmasters warn us when they do that?” Several of his troopers echoed him more pungently.

At that moment, a runner appeared in the doorway. “We’re back in normal space,” the youth squeaked, before dashing on to the next chamber. Jeers and oaths followed him: “No shit!” “Thanks for the news!” “Tell the steerers—they might not have got the word!”

Togram sighed and scratched his muzzle in annoyance at his own irritability. As an officer, he was supposed to set an example for his soldiers. He was junior enough to take such responsibilities seriously, but had had enough service to realize he should never expect too much from anyone more than a couple of notches above him. High ranks went to those with ancient blood or fresh money.

Sighing again, he stowed the chamberpot in its niche. The metal cover he slid over it did little to relieve the stench. After sixteen days in space, the Indomitable reeked of ordure, stale food, and staler bodies. It was no better in any other ship of the Roxolan fleet, or any other. Travel between the stars was simply like that. Stinks and darkness were part of the price the soldiers paid to make the kingdom grow.

Togram picked up a lantern and shook it to rouse the glowmites inside. They flashed silver in alarm. Some races, the captain knew, lit their ships with torches or candles, but glowmites used less air, even if they could only shine intermittently.

Ever the careful soldier, Togram checked his weapons while the light lasted. He always kept all four of his pistols loaded and ready to use; when landing operations began, one pair would go on his belt, the other in his boot tops. He was more worried about his sword. The perpetually moist air aboard ship was not good for the blade. Sure enough, he found a spot of rust to scour away.

As he polished the rapier, he wondered what the new system would be like. He prayed for it to have a habitable planet. The air in the Indomitable might be too foul to breathe by the time the ship could get back to the nearest Roxolan-held planet. That was one of the risks starfarers took. It was not a major one—small yellow suns usually shepherded a life-bearing world or two—but it was there.

He wished he hadn’t let himself think about it; like an aching fang, the worry, once there, would not go away. He got up from his pile of bedding to see how the steerers were doing.

As usual with them, both Ransisc and his apprentice Olgren were complaining about the poor quality of the glass through which they trained their spyglasses. “You ought to stop whining,” Togram said, squinting in from the doorway. “At least you have light to see by.” After seeing so long by glowmite lantern, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the harsh raw sunlight flooding the observation chamber before he could go in.

Olgren’s ears went back in annoyance. Ransisc was older and calmer. He set his hand on his apprentice’s arm. “If you rise to all of Togram’s jibes, you’ll have time for nothing else—he’s been a troublemaker since he came out of the egg. Isn’t that right, Togram?”

“Whatever you say.” Togram liked the white-muzzled senior steerer. Unlike most of his breed, Ransisc did not act as though he believed his important job made him something special in the gods’ scheme of things.

Olgren stiffened suddenly; the tip of his stumpy tail twitched. “This one’s a world!” he exclaimed.

“Let’s see,” Ransisc said. Olgren moved away from his spyglass. The two steerers had been examining bright stars one by one, looking for those that would show discs and prove themselves actually to be planets.

“It’s a world,” Ransisc said at length, “but not one for us—those yellow, banded planets always have poisonous air, and too much of it.” Seeing Olgren’s dejection, he added, “It’s not a total loss—if we look along a line from that planet to its sun, we should find others fairly soon.”

“Try that one,” Togram said, pointing toward a ruddy star that looked brighter than most of the others he could see.

Olgren muttered something haughty about knowing his business better than any amateur, but Ransisc said sharply, “The captain has seen more worlds from space than you, sirrah. Suppose you do as he asks.” Ears drooping dejectedly, Olgren obeyed.

Then his pique vanished. “A planet with green patches!” he shouted.

Ransisc had been aiming his spyglass at a different part of the sky, but that brought him hurrying over. He shoved his apprentice aside, fiddled with the spyglass’ focus, peered long at the magnified image. Olgren was hopping from one foot to the other, his muddy brown fur puffed out with impatience to hear the verdict.

“Maybe,” said the senior steerer, and Olgren’s face lit, but it fell again as Ransisc continued, “I don’t see anything that looks like open water. If we find nothing better, I say we try it, but let’s search a while longer.”

“You’ve just made a luof very happy,” Togram said. Ransisc chuckled. The Roxolani brought the little creatures along to test new planets’ air. If a luof could breathe it in the airlock of a flyer, it would also be safe for the animal’s masters.

The steerers growled in irritation as several stars in a row stubbornly stayed mere points of light. Then Ransisc stiffened at his spyglass. “Here it is,” he said softly. “This is what we want. Come here, Olgren.”

“Oh my, yes,” the apprentice said a moment later.

“Go report it to Warmaster Slevon, and ask him if his devices have picked up any hyperdrive vibrations except for the fleet’s.” As Olgren hurried away, Ransisc beckoned Togram over. “See for yourself.”

The captain of foot bent over the eyepiece. Against the black of space, the world in the spyglass field looked achingly like Roxolan: deep ocean blue, covered with swirls of white cloud. A good-sized moon hung nearby. Both were in approximately half-phase, being nearer their star than was the Indomitable.

“Did you spy any land?” Togram asked.

“Look near the top of the image, below the ice cap,” Ransisc said. “Those browns and greens aren’t colors water usually takes. If we want any world in this system, you’re looking at it now.”

They took turns examining the distant planet and trying to sketch its features until Olgren came back. “Well?” Togram said, though he saw the apprentice’s ears were high and cheerful.

“Not a hyperdrive emanation but ours in the whole system!” Olgren grinned. Ransisc and Togram both pounded him on the back, as if he were the cause of the good news and not just its bearer.

The captain’s smile was even wider than Olgren’s. This was going to be an easy one, which, as a professional soldier, he thoroughly approved of. If no one hereabouts could build a hyperdrive, either the system had no intelligent life at all or its inhabitants were still primitives, ignorant of gunpowder, fliers, and other aspects of warfare as it was practiced among the stars.

He rubbed his hands. He could hardly wait for landfall.

Buck Herzog was bored. After four months in space, with five and a half more staring him in the face, it was hardly surprising. Earth was a bright star behind the Ares III, with Luna a dimmer companion; Mars glowed ahead.

“It’s your exercise period, Buck,” Art Snyder called. Of the five-person crew, he was probably the most officious.

“All right, Pancho,” Herzog sighed. He pushed himself over to the bicycle and began pumping away, at first languidly, then harder. The work helped keep calcium in his bones in spite of free fall. Besides, it was something to do.

Melissa Ott was listening to the news from home. “Fernando Valenzuela died last night,” she said.

“Who?” Snyder was not a baseball fan.

Herzog was, and a Californian to boot. “I saw him at an old-timers’ game once, and I remember my dad and my grandfather always talking about him,” he said. “How old was he, Mel?”

“Seventy-nine,” she answered.

“He always was too heavy,” Herzog said sadly.

“Jesus Christ!”

Herzog blinked. No one on the Ares III had sounded that excited since liftoff from the American space station. Melissa was staring at the radar screen. “Freddie!” she yelled.

Frederica Lindstrom, the ship’s electronics expert, had just gotten out of the cramped shower space. She dove for the control board, still trailing a stream of water droplets. She did not bother with a towel; modesty aboard the Ares III had long since vanished.

Melissa’s shout even made Claude Jonnard stick his head out of the little biology lab where he spent most of his time. “What’s wrong?” he called from the hatchway.

“Radar’s gone to hell,” Melissa told him.

“What do you mean, gone to hell?” Jonnard demanded indignantly. He was one of those annoying people who think quantitatively all the time, and think everyone else does, too.

“There are about a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty, objects on the screen that have no right to be there,” answered Frederica Lindstrom, who had a milder case of the same disease. “Range appears to be a couple of million kilometers.”

“They weren’t there a minute ago, either,” Melissa said. “I hollered when they showed up.”

As Frederica fiddled with the radar and the computer, Herzog stayed on the exercise bike, feeling singularly useless: what good is a geologist millions of kilometers away from rocks? He wouldn’t even get his name in the history books—no one remembers the crew of the third expedition to anywhere.

Frederica finished her checks. “I can’t find anything wrong,” she said, sounding angry at herself and the equipment both.

“Time to get on the horn to Earth, Freddie,” Art Snyder said. “If I’m going to land this beast, I can’t have the radar telling me lies.”

Melissa was already talking into the microphone. “Houston, this is Ares III. We have a problem—”

Even at light-speed, there were a good many minutes of waiting. They crawled past, one by one. Everyone jumped when the speaker crackled to life. “Ares III, this is Houston Control. Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but we see them too.”

The communicator kept talking, but no one was listening to her any more. Herzog felt his scalp tingle as his hair, in primitive reflex, tried to stand on end. Awe filled him. He had never thought he would live to see humanity contact another race. “Call them, Mel,” he said urgently.

She hesitated. “I don’t know, Buck. Maybe we should let Houston handle this.”

“Screw Houston,” he said, surprised at his own vehemence. “By the time the bureaucrats down there figure out what to do, we’ll be coming down on Mars. We’re the people on the spot. Are you going to throw away the most important moment in the history of the species?”

Melissa looked from one of her crewmates to the next. Whatever she saw in their faces must have satisfied her, for she shifted the aim to the antenna and began to speak: “This is the spacecraft Ares III, calling the unknown ships. Welcome from the people of Earth.” She turned off the transmitter for a moment. “How many languages do we have?”

The call went out in Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, French, German. Spanish, even Latin. (“Who knows the last time they may have visited?” Frederica said when Snyder gave her an odd look.)

If the wait for a reply from Earth had been long, this one was infinitely worse. The delay stretched far, far past the fifteen-second speed-of-light round trip. “Even if they don’t speak any of our languages, shouldn’t they say something?” Melissa demanded of the air. It did not answer, nor did the aliens.

Then, one at a time, the strange ships began darting away sunwards, toward Earth. “My God, the acceleration!” Snyder said. “Those are no rockets!” He looked suddenly sheepish. “I don’t suppose starships would have rockets, would they?”

The Ares III lay alone again in its part of space, pursuing its Hohmann orbit inexorably toward Mars. Buck Herzog wanted to cry.

As was their practice, the ships of the Roxolan fleet gathered above the pole of the new planet’s hemisphere with the most land. Because everyone would be coming to the same spot, the doctrine made visual rendezvous easy. Soon only four ships were unaccounted for. A scoutship hurried around to the other pole, found them, and brought them back.

“Always some water-lovers every trip,” Togram chuckled to the steerers as he brought them the news. He took all the chances he could to go to their dome, not just for the sunlight but also because, unlike many soldiers, he was interested in planets for their own sake. With any head for figures, he might have tried to become a steerer himself.

He had a decent hand with quill and paper, so Ransisc and Olgren were willing to let him spell them at the spyglass and add to the sketchmaps they were making of the world below.

“Funny sort of planet,” he remarked. “I’ve never seen one with so many forest fires or volcanoes or whatever they are on the dark side.”

“I still think they’re cities,” Olgren said, with a defiant glance at Ransisc.

“They’re too big and too bright,” the senior steerer said patiently; the argument, plainly, had been going on for some time.

“This is your first trip offplanet, isn’t it, Olgren?” Togram asked.

“Well, what if it is?”

“Only that you don’t have enough perspective. Egelloc on Roxolan has almost a million people, and from space it’s next to invisible at night. It’s nowhere near as bright as those lights, either. Remember, this is a primitive planet. I admit it looks like there’s intelligent life down there, but how could a race that hasn’t even stumbled across the hyperdrive build cities ten times as great as Egelloc?”

“I don’t know,” Olgren said sulkily. “But from what little I can see by moonlight, those lights look to be in good spots for cities—on coasts, or along rivers, or whatever.”

Ransisc sighed. “What are we going to do with him, Togram? He’s so sure he knows everything, he won’t listen to reason. Were you like that when you were young?”

“Till my clanfathers beat it out of me, anyway. No need getting all excited, though. Soon enough the flyers will go down with their luofi, and then we’ll know.” He swallowed a snort of laughter, then sobered abruptly, hoping he hadn’t been as gullible as Olgren when he was young.

“I have one of the alien vessels on radar,” the SR-81 pilot reported. “It’s down to eighty thousand meters and still descending.” He was at his own plane’s operational ceiling, barely half as high as the ship entering atmosphere.

“For God’s sake, hold your fire,” ground control ordered. The command had been dinned into him before he took off, but the brass were not about to let him forget. He did not really blame them. One trigger-happy idiot could ruin humanity forever.

“I’m beginning to get a visual image,” he said, glancing at the head-up display projected in front of him. A moment later he added, “It’s one damn funny-looking ship, I can tell you that already. Where are the wings?”

“We’re picking up the image now too,” the ground control officer said. “They must use the same principle for their in-atmosphere machines as they do for their spacecraft: some sort of antigravity that gives them both lift and drive capability.”

The alien ship kept ignoring the SR-81, just as all the aliens had ignored every terrestrial signal beamed at them. The craft continued its slow descent, while the SR-81 pilot circled below, hoping he would not have to go down to the aerial tanker to refuel.

“One question answered,” he called to the ground. “It’s a warplane.” No craft whose purpose was peaceful would have had those glaring eyes and that snarling, fang-filled mouth painted on its belly. Some USAF ground-attack aircraft carried similar markings.

At last the alien reached the level at which the SR-81 was loitering. The pilot called the ground again. “Permission to pass in front of the aircraft?” he asked. “Maybe everybody’s asleep in there and I can wake ’em up.”

After a long silence, ground control gave grudging assent. “No hostile gestures,” the controller warned.

“What do you think I’m going to do, flip him the finger?” the pilot muttered, but his radio was off. Acceleration pushed him back in his seat as he guided the SR-81 into a long, slow turn that would carry it about half a kilometer in front of the vessel from the spacefleet.

His airplane’s camera gave him a brief glimpse of the alien pilot, who was sitting behind a small, dirty windscreen.

The being from the stars saw him, too. Of that there was no doubt. The alien jinked like a startled fawn, performing maneuvers that would have smeared the SR-81 pilot against the walls of his pressure cabin—if his aircraft could have matched them in the first place.

“I’m giving pursuit!” he shouted. Ground control screamed at him, but he was the man on the spot. The surge from his afterburner made the pressure he had felt before a love pat by comparison.

Better streamlining made his plane faster than the craft from the starships, but that did not do him much good. Every time its pilot caught sight of him, the alien ship danced away with effortless ease. The SR-81 pilot felt like a man trying to kill a butterfly with a hatchet.

To add to his frustration, his fuel warning light came on. In any case, his aircraft was designed for the thin atmosphere at the edge of space, not the increasingly denser air through which the alien flew. He swore, but had to pull away.

As his SR-81 gulped kerosene from the tanker, he could not help wondering what would have happened if he’d turned a missile loose. There were a couple of times he’d had a perfect shot. That was one thought he kept firmly to himself. What his superiors would do if they knew about it was too gruesome to contemplate.

The troopers crowded round Togram as he came back from the officers’ conclave. “What’s the word, captain?” “Did the luof live?” “What’s it like down there?”

“The luof lived, boys!” Togram said with a broad smile.

His company raised a cheer that echoed deafeningly in the barracks room. “We’re going down!” they whooped. Ears stood high in excitement. Some soldiers waved plumed hats in the fetid air. Others, of a bent more like their captain’s, went over to their pallets and began seeing to their weapons.

“How tough are they going to be, sir?” a gray-furred veteran named Ilingua asked as Togram went by. “I hear the flier pilot saw some funny things.”

Togram’s smile got wider. “By the heavens and hells, Ilingua, haven’t you done this often enough before to know better than to pay heed to rumors you hear before planetfall?”

“I hope so, sir,” Ilingua said, “but these are so strange I thought there might be something to them.” When Togram did not answer, the trooper shook his head at his own foolishness and shook up a lantern so he could examine his dagger’s edge.

As inconspicuously as he could, the captain let out a sigh. He did not know what to believe himself, and he had listened to the pilot’s report. How could the locals have flying machines when they did not know contragravity? Togram had heard of a race that used hot-air balloons before it discovered the better way of doing things, but no balloon could have reached the altitude the locals’ flier had achieved, and no balloon could have changed direction, as the pilot had violently insisted this craft had done.

Assume he was wrong, as he had to be. But how was one to take his account of towns as big as the ones whose possibility Ransisc had ridiculed, of a world so populous there was precious little open space? And lantern signals from other ships showed their scout pilots were reporting the same wild improbabilities.

Well, in the long run it would not matter if this race was as numerous as reffo at a picnic. There would simply be that many more subjects here for Roxolan.

“This is a terrible waste,” Billy Cox said to anyone who would listen as he slung his duffelbag over his shoulder and tramped out to the waiting truck. “We should be meeting the starpeople with open arms, not with a show of force.”

“You tell ’em, Professor,” Sergeant Santos Amoros chuckled from behind him. “Me, I’d sooner stay on my butt in a nice, air-conditioned barracks than face L.A. summer smog and sun any old day. Damn shame you’re just a Spec-1. If you was President, you could give the orders any way you wanted, instead o’ takin’ ’em.”

Cox didn’t think that was very fair either. He’d been just a few units short of his M.A. in poli sci when the big buildup after the second Syrian crisis sucked him into the army.

He had to fold his lanky length like a jackknife to get under the olive-drab canopy of the truck and down into the passenger compartment. The seats were too hard and too close together. Jamming people into the vehicle counted for more than their comfort while they were there. Typical military thinking, Cox thought disparagingly.

The truck filled. The big diesel rumbled to life. A black soldier dug out a deck of cards and bet anyone that he could turn twenty-five cards into five pat poker hands. A couple of greenhorns took him up on it. Cox had found out the expensive way that it was a sucker bet. The black man was grinning as he offered the deck to one of his marks to shuffle.

Riffff! The ripple of the pasteboards was authoritative enough to make everybody in the truck turn his head. “Where’d you learn to handle cards like that, man?” demanded the black soldier, whose name was Jim but whom everyone called Junior.

“Dealing blackjack in Vegas.” Rifff!

“Hey, Junior,” Cox called, “all of a sudden I want ten bucks of your action.”

“Up yours too, pal,” Junior said, glumly watching the cards move as if they had lives of their own.

The truck rolled northward, part of a convoy of trucks, MICV’s, and light tanks that stretched for miles. An entire regiment was heading into Los Angeles, to be billeted by companies in different parts of the sprawling city. Cox approved of that; it made it less likely that he would personally come face-to-face with any of the aliens.

“Sandy,” he said to Amoros, who was squeezed in next to him, “even if I’m wrong and the aliens aren’t friendly, what the hell good will handweapons do? It’d be like taking on an elephant with a safety pin.”

“Professor, like I told you already, they don’t pay me to think, or you neither. Just as well, too. I’m gonna do what the lieutenant tells me, and you’re gonna do what I tell you, and everything is gonna be fine, right?”

“Sure,” Cox said, because Sandy, while he wasn’t a bad guy, was a sergeant. All the same, the Neo-Armalite between Cox’s boots seemed very futile, and his helmet and body armor as thin and gauzy as a stripper’s negligee.

The sky outside the steerers’ dome began to go from black to deep blue as the Indomitable entered atmosphere. “There,” Olgren said, pointing. “That’s where we’ll land.”

“Can’t see much from this height,” Togram remarked.

“Let him use your spyglass, Olgren,” Ransisc said. “He’ll be going back to his company soon.”

Togram grunted; that was more than a comment—it was also a hint. Even so, he was happy to peer through the eyepiece. The ground seemed to leap toward him. There was a moment of disorientation as he adjusted to the inverted image, which put the ocean on the wrong side of the field of view. But he was not interested in sightseeing. He wanted to learn what his soldiers and the rest of the troops aboard the Indomitable would have to do to carve out a beachhead and hold it against the locals.

“There’s a spot that looks promising,” he said. “The greenery there in the midst of the buildings in the eastern—no, the western—part of the city. That should give us a clear landing zone, a good campground, and a base for landing reinforcements.”

“Let’s see what you’re talking about,” Ransisc said, elbowing him aside. “Hmm, yes, I see the stretch you mean. That might not be bad. Olgren, come look at this. Can you find it again in the Warmaster’s spyglass? All right then, go point it out to him. Suggest it as our setdown point.”

The apprentice hurried away. Ransisc bent over the eyepiece again. “Hmm,” he repeated. “They build tall down there, don’t they?”

“I thought so,” Togram said. “And there’s a lot of traffic on those roads. They’ve spent a fortune cobblestoning them all, too; I didn’t see any dust kicked up.”

“This should be a rich conquest,” Ransisc said.

Something swift, metallic, and predator-lean flashed past the observation window. “By the gods, they do have fliers, don’t they?” Togram said. In spite of the pilots’ claims, deep down he hadn’t believed it until he saw it for himself.

He noticed Ransisc’s ears twitching impatiently, and realized he really had spent too much time in the observation room. He picked up his glowmite lantern and went back to his troopers.

A couple of them gave him a resentful look for being away so long, but he cheered them up by passing on as much as he could about their landing site. Common soldiers loved nothing better than inside information. They second-guessed their superiors without it, but the game was even more fun when they had some idea of what they were talking about.

A runner appeared in the doorway. “Captain Togram, your company will planet from airlock three.”

“Three,” Togram acknowledged, and the runner trotted off to pass orders to other ground troop leaders. The captain put his plumed hat on his head (the plume was scarlet, so his company could recognize him in combat), checked his pistols one last time, and ordered his troopers to follow him.

The reeking darkness was as oppressive in front of the inner airlock door as anywhere else aboard the Indomitable, but somehow easier to bear. Soon the doors would swing open and he would feel fresh breezes riffling his fur, taste sweet clean air, enjoy sunlight for more than a few precious units at a stretch. Soon he would measure himself against these new beings in combat.

He felt the slightest of jolts as the Indomitable’s fliers launched themselves from the mother ship. There would be no luofi aboard them this time, but rather musketeers to terrorize the natives with fire from above, and jars of gunpowder to be touched off and dropped. The Roxolani always strove to make as savage a first impression as they could. Terror doubled their effective numbers.

Another jolt came, different from the one before. They were down.

A shadow spread across the UCLA campus. Craning his neck, Junior said, “Will you look at the size of the mother!” He had been saying that for the last five minutes, as the starship slowly descended.

Each time, Billy Cox could only nod, his mouth dry, his hands clutching the plastic grip and cool metal barrel of his rifle. The Neo-Armalite seemed totally impotent against the huge bulk floating so arrogantly downwards. The alien flying machines around it were as minnows beside a whale, while they in turn dwarfed the USAF planes circling at a greater distance. The roar of their jets assailed the ears of the nervous troops and civilians on the ground. The aliens’ engines were eerily silent.

The starship landed in the open quad between New Royce, New Haines, New Kinsey, and New Powell Halls. It towered higher than any of the two-story red brick buildings, each a reconstruction of one overthrown in the earthquake of 2034. Cox heard saplings splinter under the weight of the alien craft. He wondered what it would have done to the big trees that had fallen five years ago along with the famous old halls.

“All right, they’ve landed. Let’s move on up,” Lieutenant Shotton ordered. He could not quite keep the wobble out of his voice, but he trotted south toward the starship. His platoon followed him past Dickson Art Center, past New Bunche Hall. Not so long ago, Billy Cox had walked this campus barefoot. Now his boots thudded on concrete.

The platoon deployed in front of Dodd Hall, looking west toward the spacecraft. A little breeze toyed with the leaves of the young, hopeful trees planted to replace the stalwarts lost to the quake.

“Take as much cover as you can,” Lieutenant Shotton ordered quietly. The platoon scrambled into flowerbeds, snuggled down behind thin treetrunks. Out on Hilgard Avenue, diesels roared as armored fighting vehicles took positions with good lines of fire.

It was all such a waste, Cox thought bitterly. The thing to do was to make friends with the aliens, not to assume automatically they were dangerous.

Something, at least, was being done along those lines. A delegation came out of Murphy Hall and slowly walked behind a white flag from the administration building toward the starship. At the head of the delegation was the mayor of Los Angeles: the President and governor were busy elsewhere. Billy Cox would have given anything to be part of the delegation instead of sprawled here on his belly in the grass. If only the aliens had waited until he was fifty or so, had given him a chance to get established—

Sergeant Amoros nudged him with an elbow. “Look there, man. Something’s happening–”

Amoros was right. Several hatchways which had been shut were swinging open, allowing Earth’s air to mingle with the ship’s.

The westerly breeze picked up. Cox’s nose twitched. He could not name all the exotic odors wafting his way, but he recognized sewage and garbage when he smelled them. “God, what a stink!” he said.

“By the gods, what a stink!” Togram exclaimed. When the outer airlock doors went down, he had expected real fresh air to replace the stale, overused gases inside the Indomitable. This stuff smelled like smoky peat fires, or lamps whose wicks hadn’t quite been extinguished. And it stung! He felt the nictitating membranes flick across his eyes to protect them.

“Deploy!” he ordered, leading his company forward. This was the tricky part. If the locals had nerve enough, they could hit the Roxolani just as the latter were coming out of their ship, and cause all sorts of trouble. Most races without hyperdrive, though, were too overawed by the arrival of travelers from the stars to try anything like that. And if they didn’t do it fast, it would be too late.

They weren’t doing it here. Togram saw a few locals, but they were keeping a respectful distance. He wasn’t sure how many there were. Their mottled skins—or was that clothing?—made them hard to notice and count. But they were plainly warriors, both by the way they acted and by the weapons they bore.

His own company went into its familiar two-line formation, the first crouching, the second standing and aiming their muskets over the heads of the troops in front.

“Ah, there we go,” Togram said happily. The bunch approaching behind the white banner had to be the local nobles. The mottling, the captain saw, was clothing, for these beings wore entirely different garments, somber except for strange, narrow neckcloths. They were taller and skinnier than Roxolani, with muzzleless faces.

“Ilingua!” Togram called. The veteran trooper led the right flank squad of the company.

“Sir!”

“Your troops, quarter-right face. At the command, pick off the leaders there. That will demoralize the rest,” Togram said, quoting standard doctrine.

“Slowmatches ready!” Togram said. The Roxolani lowered the smoldering cords to the touchholes of their muskets. “Take your aim!” The guns moved, very slightly. “Fire!”

“Teddy bears!” Sandy Amoros exclaimed. The same thought had leaped into Cox’s mind. The beings emerging from the spaceship were round, brown, and furry, with long noses and big ears. Teddy bears, however, did not normally carry weapons. They also, Cox thought, did not commonly live in a place that smelled like sewage. Of course, it might have been perfume to them. But if it was, they and Earthpeople were going to have trouble getting along.

He watched the Teddy bears as they took their positions. Somehow their positioning did not suggest that they were forming an honor guard for the mayor and his party. Yet it did look familiar to Cox, although he could not quite figure out why.

Then he had it. If he had been anywhere but at UCLA, he would not have made the connection. But he remembered a course he had taken on the rise of the European nation-states in the sixteenth century, and on the importance of the professional, disciplined armies the kings had created. Those early armies had performed evolutions like this one.

It was a funny coincidence. He was about to mention it to his sergeant when the world blew up.

Flames spurted from the aliens’ guns. Great gouts of smoke puffed into the sky. Something that sounded like an angry wasp buzzed past Cox’s ear. He heard shouts and shrieks from either side. Most of the mayor’s delegation was down, some motionless, others thrashing.

There was a crash from the starship, and another one an instant later as a roundshot smashed into the brickwork of Dodd Hall. A chip stung Cox in the back of the neck. The breeze brought him the smell of fireworks, one he had not smelled for years.

“Reload!” Togram yelled. “Another volley, then at ’em with the bayonet!” His troopers worked frantically, measuring powder charges and ramming round bullets home.

“So that’s how they wanna play!” Amoros shouted. “Nail their hides to the wall!” The tip of his little finger had been shot away. He did not seem to know it.

Cox’s Neo-Armalite was already barking, spitting a stream of hot brass cartridges, slamming against his shoulder. He rammed in clip after clip, playing the rifle like a hose. If one bullet didn’t bite, the next would.

Others from the platoon were also firing. Cox heard bursts of automatic weapons fire from different parts of the campus, too, and the deeper blasts of rocket-propelled grenades and field artillery. Smoke not of the aliens’ making began to envelop their ship and the soldiers around it.

One or two shots came back at the platoon, and then a few more, but so few that Cox, in stunned disbelief, shouted to his sergeant, “This isn’t fair!”

“Fuck ’em!” Amoros shouted back. “They wanna throw their weight around, they take their chances. Only good thing they did was knock over the mayor. Always did hate that old crackpot.”

The harsh tac-tac-tac did not sound like any gunfire Togram had heard. The shots came too close together, making a horrible sheet of noise. And if the locals were shooting back at his troopers, where were the thick, choking clouds of gunpowder smoke over their position?

He did not know the answer to that. What he did know was that his company was going down like grain before a scythe. Here a soldier was hit by three bullets at once and fell awkwardly, as if his body could not tell in which direction to twist. There another had the top of his head gruesomely removed.

The volley the captain had screamed for was stillborn. Perhaps a squad’s worth of soldiers moved toward the locals, the sun glinting bravely off their long, polished bayonets. None of them got more than a half-sixteen of paces before falling.

Ilingua looked at Togram, horror in his eyes, his ears flat against his head. The captain knew his were the same. “What are they doing to us?” Ilingua howled.

Togram could only shake his head helplessly. He dove behind a corpse, fired one of his pistols at the enemy. There was still a chance, he thought—how would these demonic aliens stand up under their first air attack?

A flier swooped toward the locals. Musketeers blasted away from firing ports, drew back to reload.

“Take that, you whoresons!” Togram shouted. He did not, however, raise his fist in the air. That, he had already learned, was dangerous.

“Incoming aircraft!” Sergeant Amoros roared. His squad, those not already prone, flung themselves on their faces. Cox heard shouts of pain through the combat din as men were wounded.

The Cottonmouth crew launched their shoulder-fired AA missile at the alien flying machine. The pilot must have had reflexes like a cat’s. He sidestepped his machine in midair; no plane built on earth could have matched that performance. The Cottonmouth shot harmlessly past.

The flier dropped what looked like a load of crockery. The ground jumped as the bombs exploded. Cursing, deafened, Billy Cox stopped worrying whether the fight was fair.

But the flier pilot had not seen the F-29 fighter on his tail. The USAF plane released two missiles from point-blank range, less than a mile. The infrared-seeker found no target and blew itself up, but the missile that homed on radar streaked straight toward the flier. The explosion made Cox bury his face in the ground and clap his hands over his ears.

So this is war, he thought: I can’t see, I can barely hear, and my side is winning. What must it be like for the losers?

Hope died in Togram’s heart when the first flier fell victim to the locals’ aircraft. The rest of the Indomitable’s machines did not last much longer. They could evade, but had even less ability to hit back than the Roxolan ground forces. And they were hideously vulnerable when attacked in their pilots’ blind spots, from below or behind.

One of the starship’s cannon managed to fire again, and quickly drew a response from the traveling fortresses Togram got glimpses of as they took their positions in the streets outside this parklike area.

When the first shell struck, the luckless captain thought for an instant that it was another gun going off aboard the Indomitable. The sound of the explosion was nothing like the crash a solid shot made when it smacked into a target. A fragment of hot metal buried itself in the ground by Togram’s hand. That made him think a cannon had blown up, but more explosions on the ship’s superstructure and fountains of dirt flying up from misses showed it was just more from the locals’ fiendish arsenal.

Something large and hard struck the captain in the back of the neck. The world spiraled down into blackness.

“Cease fire!” The order reached the field artillery first, then the infantry units at the very front line. Billy Cox pushed up his cuff to look at his watch, stared in disbelief. The whole firefight had lasted less than twenty minutes.

He looked around. Lieutenant Shotton was getting up from behind an ornamental palm. “Let’s see what we have,” he said. His rifle still at the ready, he began to walk slowly toward the starship. It was hardly more than a smoking ruin. For that matter, neither were the buildings around it. The damage to their predecessors had been worse in the big quake, but not much.

Alien corpses littered the lawn. The blood splashing the bright green grass was crimson as any man’s. Cox bent to pick up a pistol. The weapon was beautifully made, with scenes of combat carved into the grayish wood of the stock. But he recognized it as a single-shot piece, a small arm obsolete for at least two centuries. He shook his head in wonderment.

Sergeant Amoros lifted a conical object from where it had fallen beside a dead alien. “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

Again Cox had the feeling of being caught up in something he did not understand. “It’s a powderhorn,” he said.

“Like in the movies? Pioneers and all that good shit?”

“The very same.”

“Damn,” Amoros said feelingly. Cox nodded in agreement.

Along with the rest of the platoon, they moved closer to the wrecked ship. Most of the aliens had died still in the two neat rows from which they had opened fire on the soldiers.

Here, behind another corpse, lay the body of the scarlet-plumed officer who had given the order to begin that horrifyingly uneven encounter. Then, startling Cox, the alien moaned and stirred, just as might a human starting to come to. “Grab him; he’s a live one!” Cox exclaimed.

Several men jumped on the reviving alien, who was too groggy to fight back. Soldiers began peering into the holes torn in the starship, and even going inside. There they were still wary; the ship was so incredibly much bigger than any human spacecraft that there were surely survivors despite the shellacking it had taken.

As always happens, the men did not get to enjoy such pleasures long. The fighting had been over for only minutes when the first team of experts came thuttering in by helicopter, saw common soldiers in their private preserve, and made horrified noises. The experts also promptly relieved the platoon of its prisoner.

Sergeant Amoros watched resentfully as they took the alien away. “You must’ve known it would happen, Sandy,” Cox consoled him. “We do the dirty work and the brass takes over once things get cleaned up again.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if just once it was the other way ’round?” Amoros laughed without humor. “You don’t need to tell me: fat friggin’ chance.”

When Togram woke up on his back, he knew something was wrong. Roxolani always slept prone. For a moment he wondered how he had got to where he was…too much water-of-life the night before? His pounding head made that a good possibility.

Then memory came flooding back. Those damnable locals with their sorcerous weapons! Had his people rallied and beaten back the enemy after all? He vowed to light votive lamps to Edieva, mistress of battles, for the rest of his life if that was true.

The room he was in began to register. Nothing was familiar, from the bed he lay on to the light in the ceiling that glowed bright as sunshine and neither smoked nor flickered. No, he did not think the Roxolani had won their fight.

Fear settled like ice in his vitals. He knew how his own race treated prisoners, had heard spacers’ stories of even worse things among other folk. He shuddered to think of the refined tortures a race as ferocious as his captors could invent.

He got shakily to his feet. By the end of the bed he found his hat, some smoked meat obviously taken from the Indomitable, and a translucent jug made of something that was neither leather nor glass nor baked clay nor metal. Whatever it was, it was too soft and flexible to make a weapon.

The jar had water in it: not water from the Indomitable. That was already beginning to taste stale. This was cool and fresh and so pure as to have no taste whatever, water so fine he had only found its like in a couple of mountain springs.

The door opened on noiseless hinges. In came two of the locals. One was small and wore a white coat—a female, if those chest projections were breasts. The other was dressed in the same clothes the local warriors had worn, though those offered no camouflage here. That one carried what was plainly a rifle and, the gods curse him, looked extremely alert.

To Togram’s surprise, the female took charge. The other local was merely a bodyguard. Some spoiled princess, curious about these outsiders, the captain thought. Well, he was happier about treating with her than meeting the local executioner.

She sat down, waved for him also to take a seat. He tried a chair, found it uncomfortable—too low in the back, not built for his wide rump and short legs. He sat on the floor instead.

She set a small box on the table by the chair. Togram pointed at it. “What’s that?” he asked.

He thought she had not understood—no blame to her for that; she had none of his language. She was playing with the box, pushing a button here, a button there. Then his ears went back and his hackles rose, for the box said, “What’s that?” in Roxolani. After a moment he realized it was speaking in his own voice. He swore and made a sign against witchcraft.

She said something, fooled with the box again. This time it echoed her. She pointed at it. “‘Recorder,’” she said. She paused expectantly.

What was she waiting for, the Roxolanic name for that thing? “I’ve never seen one of those in my life, and I hope I never do again,” he said. She scratched her head. When she made the gadget again repeat what he had said, only the thought of the soldier with the gun kept him from flinging it against the wall.

Despite that contretemps, they did eventually make progress on the language. Togram had picked up snatches of a good many tongues in the course of his adventurous life; that was one reason he had made captain in spite of low birth and paltry connections. And the female—Togram heard her name as Hildachesta—had a gift for them, as well as the box that never forgot.

“Why did your people attack us?” she asked one day, when she had come far enough in Roxolanic to be able to frame the question.

He knew he was being interrogated, no matter how polite she sounded. He had played that game with prisoners himself. His ears twitched in a shrug. He had always believed in giving straight answers; that was one reason he was only a captain. He said, “To take what you grow and make and use it for ourselves. Why would anyone want to conquer anyone else?”

“Why indeed?” she murmured, and was silent a little while; his forthright reply seemed to have closed off a line of questioning. She tried again; “How are your people able to walk—I mean, travel—faster than light, when the rest of your arts are so simple?”

His fur bristled with indignation. “They are not! We make gunpowder, we cast iron and smelt steel, we have spyglasses to help our steerers guide us from star to star. We are no savages huddling in caves or shooting at each other with bows and arrows.”

His speech, of course, was not that neat or simple. He had to backtrack, to use elaborate circumlocutions, to playact to make Hildachesta understand. She scratched her head in the gesture of puzzlement he had come to recognize. She said, “We have known all these things you mention for hundreds of years, but we did not think anyone could walk—damn, I keep saying that instead of ‘travel’—faster than light. How did your people learn to do that?”

“We discovered it for ourselves,” he said proudly. “We did not have to learn it from some other starfaring race, as many folk do.”

“But how did you discover it?” she persisted.

“How do I know? I’m a soldier; what do I care for such things? Who knows who invented gunpowder or found out about using bellows in a smithy to get the fire hot enough to melt iron? These things happen, that’s all.”

She broke off the questions early that day.

“It’s humiliating,” Hilda Chester said. “If these fool aliens had waited a few more years before they came, we likely would have blown ourselves to kingdom come without ever knowing there was more real estate around. Christ, from what the Roxolani say, races that scarcely know how to work iron fly starships and never think twice about it.”

“Except when the starships don’t get home,” Charlie Ebbets answered. His tie was in his pocket and his collar open against Pasadena’s fierce summer heat, although the Caltech Atheneum was efficiently air-conditioned. Along with so many other engineers and scientists, he depended on linguists like Hilda Chester for a link to the aliens.

“I don’t quite understand it myself,” she said. “Apart from the hyperdrive and contragravity, the Roxolani are backwards, almost primitive. And the other species out there must be the same, or someone would have overrun them long since.”

Ebbets said, “Once you see it, the drive is amazingly simple. The research crews say anybody could have stumbled over the principle at almost any time in our history. The best guess is that most races did come across it, and once they did, why, all their creative energy would naturally go into refining and improving it.”

“But we missed it,” Hilda said slowly, “and so our technology developed in a different way.”

“That’s right. That’s why the Roxolani don’t know anything about controlled electricity, to say nothing of atomics. And the thing is, as well as we can tell so far, the hyperdrive and contragravity don’t have the ancillary applications the electromagnetic spectrum does. All they do is move things from here to there in a hurry.”

“That should be enough at the moment,” Hilda said. Ebbets nodded. There were almost nine billion people jammed onto the Earth, half of them hungry. Now, suddenly, there were places for them to go and a means to get them there.

‘‘I think,” Ebbets said musingly, “we’re going to be an awful surprise to the peoples out there.”

It took Hilda a second to see what he was driving at. “If that’s a joke, it’s not funny. It’s been a hundred years since the last war of conquest.”

“Sure—they’ve gotten too expensive and too dangerous. But what kind of fight could the Roxolani or anyone else at their level of technology put up against us? The Aztecs and Incas were plenty brave. How much good did it do them against the Spaniards?”

“I hope we’ve gotten smarter in the last five hundred years,” Hilda said. All the same, she left her sandwich half eaten. She found she was not hungry any more.

“Ransisc!” Togram exclaimed as the senior steerer limped into his cubicle. Ransisc was thinner than he had been a few moons before, aboard the misnamed Indomitable. His fur had grown out white around several scars Togram did not remember.

His air of amused detachment had not changed, though. “Tougher than bullets, are you, or didn’t the humans think you were worth killing?”

“The latter, I suspect. With their firepower, why should they worry about one soldier more or less?” Togram said bitterly. “I didn’t know you were still alive, either.”

“Through no fault of my own, I assure you,” Ransisc said. “Olgren, next to me–” His voice broke off. It was not possible to be detached about everything.

“What are you doing here?” the captain asked. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but you’re the first Roxolan face I’ve set eyes on since–” It was his turn to hesitate.

“Since we landed.” Togram nodded in relief at the steerer’s circumlocution. Ransisc went on, “I’ve seen several others before you. I suspect we’re being allowed to get together so the humans can listen to us talking with each other.”

“How could they do that?” Togram asked, then answered his own question: “Oh, the recorders, of course.” He perforce used the English word. “Well, we’ll fix that.”

He dropped into Oyag, the most widely spoken language on a planet the Roxolani had conquered fifty years before. “What’s going to happen to us, Ransisc?”

“Back on Roxolan, they’ll have realized something’s gone wrong by now,” the steerer answered in the same tongue.

That did nothing to cheer Togram. “There are so many ways to lose ships,” he said gloomily. “And even if the High Warmaster does send another fleet after us, it won’t have any more luck than we did. These gods-accursed humans have too many war-machines.” He paused and took a long, moody pull at a bottle of vodka. The flavored liquors the locals brewed made him sick, but vodka he liked. “How is it they have all these machines and we don’t, or any race we know of? They must be wizards, selling their souls to the demons for knowledge.”

Ransisc’s nose twitched in disagreement. “I asked one of their savants the same question. He gave me back a poem by a human named Hail or Snow or something of that sort. It was about someone who stood at a fork in the road and ended up taking the less-used track. That’s what the humans did. Most races find the hyperdrive and go traveling. The humans never did, and so their search for knowledge went in a different direction.”

“Didn’t it!” Togram shuddered at the recollection of that brief, terrible combat. “Guns that spit dozens of bullets without reloading, cannon mounted on armored platforms that move by themselves, rockets that follow their targets by themselves… And there are the things we didn’t see, the ones the humans only talk about—the bombs that can blow up a whole city, each one by itself.”

“I don’t know if I believe that,” Ransisc said.

“I do. They sound afraid when they speak of them.”

“Well, maybe. But it’s not just the weapons they have. It’s the machines that let them see and talk to one another from far away; the machines that do their reckoning for them; their recorders and everything that has to do with them. From what they say of their medicine, I’m almost tempted to believe you and think they are wizards—they actually know what causes their diseases, and how to cure or even prevent them. And their farming: this planet is far more crowded than any I’ve seen or heard of, but it grows enough for all these humans.”

Togram sadly waggled his ears. “It seems so unfair. All that they got, just by not stumbling onto the hyperdrive.”

“They have it now,” Ransisc reminded him. “Thanks to us.”

The Roxolani looked at each other, appalled. They spoke together: “What have we done?”

Editor’s Introduction to:

Delusions of Soviet Weakness

Edward N. Luttwak

It is axiomatic that one must never underestimate the enemy. If the Soviets are not giants, neither are they midgets.

They do have weaknesses, and in recent years a spate of books showing those weaknesses have enjoyed wide popularity. One, Tom Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October, was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year. There was also General Hackett’s series of works in which the West loses all the battles of World War III, but eventually triumphs because of internal stresses within the Soviet Empire.

I fervently hope that these books reflect the true state of affairs inside the Soviet military machine; but I am much afraid that there is an element of wishful thinking at work here.

Without military power the Soviet Union is no more than a rather large conglomerate of backward and undeveloped countries. Despite spectaculars like the Moscow subway, their rail and surface road net is primitive. They have yet to achieve the agricultural triumphs of Czarist times. Industrial production is low and quality of goods is lower.

We see this and naturally assume that military structure is equally fouled up. Alas, that may well be no more than hope, and dangerous hope at that. Fortunately we have Edward Luttwak to give us warning.

It is not often that scholars have great influence in their own lifetimes. Professor Edward Luttwak is an exception. His The Pentagon and the Art of War (1984, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-671-52432-1) has become widely read, not only among military people, but in Congress and the White House; and is required reading for those who would understand the current ferment among strategic planners.

Dr. Luttwak is a Senior Fellow in Strategic Studies at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, and includes among his previous works The Israeli Army, and The Political Uses of Sea Power.

In summer, 1985, my wife and I traveled extensively in Europe. The trip was made much more enjoyable by my copy of Luttwak’s The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, for with its help I found and understood the peculiar boundaries of Roman power from Frankfurt to the Danube.

Delusions of Soviet Weakness

Edward N. Luttwak

In recent years, entire books have appeared which argue that the Soviet armed forces are much weaker than they seem. Citing refugee accounts or personal experience, they depict the pervasive technical incompetence, drunkenness, corruption, and bleak apathy of officers and men. Drunken officers and faked inspections, Turkic conscripts who cannot understand orders in Russian drowning in botched river-crossing tests, the harsh lives of ill-fed, ill-housed, and virtually unpaid Soviet conscripts, and a pervasive lack of adequate training fill these accounts.

It is odd how all these stories (each true, no doubt) contrast with the daily evidence of the routine operations of the Soviet armed forces. Merely keeping its warships seaworthy and supplied in distant and often stormy waters demands a great deal of discipline and expertise from the officers and men of the Soviet navy. Even more skill is needed to carry out successfully the missile launches and gunnery trials that are also part of the Soviet naval routine. Likewise, we have the evidence of Soviet air operations; they too require a great deal of competence, both in the daily training sorties of the fighters and in the long-range flights of the bombers and transports.

Nor can the Soviet army fake all the disciplined maintenance, tight planning, and skills needed to assemble, move, and operate the many thousands of complicated armored vehicles, hundreds of helicopters, and countless smaller weapons in its exercises. It only takes a little drunken inattention or technical incompetence, or mere apathy by maintenance crews, to cause an aircraft to crash; a little more can sink a ship; and the delicate gear box of a battle tank is easily wrecked.

It is true that at fairly regular intervals we learn of spectacular failures in the upkeep of the Soviet armed forces. Breakdowns at sea lead to much photography of submarines adrift in the ocean and to much speculation over possible radiation leaks. Word of plane crashes reaches us now and then, and most recently there was solid evidence of huge explosions in the weapon stores of the Northern Fleet in the Kola peninsula. It is perfectly probable that Soviet standards of maintenance are lower than those of the United States, but the difference is scarcely of dramatic consequence. All armed forces, including those of the United States, have their collisions, their air crashes, their catastrophic breakdowns. The Soviet armed forces may well have more than their share. Yet it was never by superior efficiency that first Russia and then the Soviet Union became so very powerful, but rather by a combination of numbers, persistent strategies, and a modest technical adequacy.

When the actual record of war is assessed, not from official accounts but from the testimony of those who were there, it becomes quite clear that battles are not won by perfection but rather by the supremacy of forces that are 5-percent effective over forces that are 2-percent effective. In peacetime, when all the frictions of war are absent, when there is no enemy ready to thwart every enterprise, effectiveness may rise to dizzy levels of 50 or 60 percent—which means, of course, that filling in the wrong form, posting to the wrong place, supplying the wrong replacement parts, assigning the wrong training times, selecting the wrong officers, and other kinds of errors are merely normal. Matters cannot be otherwise, because military organizations are much larger than the manageable groupings of civilian life that set our standards of competence; and because their many intricate tasks must be performed not by life-career specialists like those who run factories, hospitals, symphony orchestras, and even government offices, but by transients who are briefly trained—short-service conscripts in the case of the Soviet armed forces.

Actual alcoholism, in the severe, clinical sense, is now epidemic in the Soviet Union, where so many lead bleak lives, no longer alleviated by the once vibrant hope of a fast-approaching better future. So drunkenness is no doubt pervasive in the Soviet armed forces. But Russians have always been great drinkers. Drunk they defeated Napoleon, and drunk again they defeated Hitler’s armies and advanced all the way to Berlin. All these stories of corruption are also undoubtedly authentic. But no great military empire is likely to be undone by generals who procure villas through corrupt dealings, nor by sergeants who take the odd ruble off a conscript; Anglo-Saxon morality makes much of these things, history much less. Corruption in the higher ranks can demoralize the troops—but not if it is accepted as a normal part of life.

On the question of loyalty, even less need be said. Should the Soviet Union start a war, only to experience a series of swift defeats, it is perfectly possible that mutinies would follow against the Kremlin’s oppressive and most unjust rule. But if the initial war operations were successful, it would be foolish to expect that private disloyalty would emerge to undo victory and disintegrate the armed forces. There will always be a small minority of lonely heroes with the inner resources to act against the entire power of the world’s largest and most complete dictatorship. The rest of us weaker souls will stay in the safety of the crowd—and the crowd will not rebel against a uniquely pervasive police system at the very time when successful war is adding to its prestige, and the laws of war are making its sanctions more terrible.

Only one claim can be allowed: it is true that the ethnic composition of the Soviet population is changing, with non-Russians making up an increasing proportion of the total. This creates problems of loyalty that are unknown in the United States, because in the Soviet Union, distinct nationalities persist with their own languages, ethnic sentiments, and sometimes strong antagonism to the Russian master-people. As the proportion of non-Russian conscripts increases, language problems also increase, and because many of these conscripts come from backward nationalities, they are harder to train in modern military skills, even if they do know the Russian language. There is also a greater potential for ethnic strife, already manifest in barrack-room fights.

In the very long run it is possible and even likely that the non-Russians, or at least the larger non-European peoples—the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tadzhiks, and so on—will demand full national independence and struggle for it, eventually causing the dissolution of the Soviet empire, which is the last survivor of the European empires that dominated much of the entire world until a generation ago. Demography is indeed a powerful and relentless force, but slow in effect. In 1970, out of a total Soviet population of 242 million, 74 percent was Slavic and 53 percent actually Russian. (Some of the fiercest antagonisms are between Russians and other Slavs.) In that year, there were 35 million people of Muslim origin (mostly Turkic), just under 15 percent of the Soviet total. By the year 2000 it is projected that the Muslims will account for more than a fifth (21-25 percent) of the total population of 300 million, with Russians at 47 percent and all Slavs at 65 percent. Naturally the change will be felt sooner and more strongly in the younger groups of military age. For example, out of the 2.1 million males projected to be at the conscription age of eighteen in 1985, the non-Slavs will account for more than 35 percent, and quite a few of them will not know enough Russian to obtain the full benefit of training.

But of course the armed forces of a multinational empire know a thing or two about managing diverse nationalities. Those with a high percentage of dissidents, such as the Estonians, Western Ukrainians, and Jews, can be safely employed in military-construction battalions, which are virtually unarmed, or in other support units far from combat; those with many illiterates or conscripts whose Russian is poor, such as the Kirghiz, Turkmen, and Tadzhiks, can be placed in the undemanding mechanized infantry of second-line divisions. There are problems, but they remain quite manageable. The real problem of national self-assertion is for the distant future.

So far nothing precise has been said about the most obvious attribute of the Soviet armed forces: their sheer numerical strength. The gross totals are well known, and mean little. As against the 30 large divisions of the US army and marine corps, active and reserve, the Soviet army has 194 divisions, smaller by a third on average but just as heavily armed. One-third are fully manned, one-third are half and half, and the rest are mostly manned by reservists—but all Soviet divisions are fully equipped, even if not with the latest and best, and all have a full-time professional cadre, even when their line units are manned by reservists. The Soviet tactical air force has some 6,000 strike aircraft, fighters, and fighter-bombers, less advanced on average but also of more recent vintage than the 5,600 or so equivalent aircraft of the US air force, navy, and marines. Another 1,250 interceptor-fighters serve in the territorial air defenses (along with more than 9,600 anti-aircraft missiles), and the Soviet navy’s land-based aviation also includes some fighter-class aircraft.

For the Soviet navy, one ship list prepared by the US navy shows 1,324 “surface combatants,” as against its own 285 surface warships; 367 submarines, as against 99; and 770 auxiliaries, as against its own 105 logistic and support ships. The figures are of course grossly inflated, but even the most sober count that excludes the old, the inactive, and the small would still list 290 major Soviet surface warships, 119 nuclear and 157 diesel-attack submarines, and 360 land-based naval bombers, of which 100 are modern machines of transoceanic range.

No true military balance is made of mere lists, however. The place and the time, the allies present on each side, and the circumstances of the nation and of the particular theater of war will govern what can be achieved, and indeed what forces can be deployed at all. No estimate can be made for expeditionary ventures in undefined theaters of hypothetical war—except to say that the power of the Soviet military wanes drastically as the distance from the Soviet Union increases, much more so than does that of the American forces, which are far better equipped to reach and fight in faraway places. But we can make rather solid estimates for the continental theaters of war directly adjacent to the Soviet Union—in Europe, the Middle East, and northeast Asia. The results are grim.

In the five possible war theaters of the North Atlantic alliance—northern Norway, the “central” front in Germany, northeast Italy, the Thrace frontier of Greece and Turkey with Bulgaria, and the Turkish border with the Soviet Union in remote eastern Anatolia—it is clear that the ground forces of both the United States and its allies, those already deployed in peacetime and those to be mobilized, would be outnumbered, outgunned, or both. By adding absolutely everything on the books—including Turkish infantry and the American National Guard, in addition to the manned forces actually in place—the total number of alliance divisions for the five theaters rises to 144, as against a combined Warsaw Pact total of 170. That is scarcely a catastrophic imbalance, and the situation looks even easier for the alliance when we recall that the Warsaw Pact total includes the divisions of rebellious Poland, unwilling Hungary, restive Czechoslovakia, doubtful East Germany, and uncooperative Rumania.

If we make a somewhat finer comparison, however, including only tank and mechanized divisions on the alliance side, thus removing a mass of ill-armed and immobile infantry forces of low military value, while at the same time eliminating all the non-Soviet forces of the Warsaw Pact, 80 divisions of the alliance remain, while the Soviet army alone has 109—after leaving 78 Soviet divisions to face the Chinese border, occupy Afghanistan, and control Iran’s long border. These 109 Soviet divisions are smaller than the Western divisions, but no longer by much, and they do belong to one army under one central authority, whereas the Western total is split among the armies of the United States, Canada, Britain, Norway, Denmark, West Germany, Holland, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Turkey—and the French divisions are not under alliance command and not necessarily available, the Greek divisions are of uncertain allegiance, and the American reserve forces must first be mobilized, then filled out and updated in training, then transported across the ocean.

If we include the non-mechanized forces of high military value (such as the American and Soviet airborne divisions), and exclude alliance forces not rapidly available for reinforcement, the realistic alliance count is on the order of 56 divisions, the Soviet, 114.

The situation in the air over the European fronts is similar: by the fullest count, the Soviet Union alone could muster 4,700 fighters, fighter-bombers, and interceptors, without reinforcement from other theaters; the Western air forces in Europe hold a total of 3,045, of which not more than two-thirds can be considered modern, including all the 594 American fighters and fighter-bombers.

To consider the military balance in the Persian Gulf, with Iran as the possible theater of war, no computation is even needed: against a maximum of four or five American divisions that could eventually be deployed with great difficulties and greater risk, the Soviet Union could send 20 with great ease.

On the last of the “continental” fronts, which cuts across the peninsula of Korea—where sudden war is all too possible, but where a large Soviet intervention now seems most unlikely—it is the Korean forces on both sides that now make the balance. But should Moscow choose to do so, it could add much more to the North Korean strength than the United States could add to that of South Korea.

Thus on every possible major front we encounter the powerful arithmetic of the Soviet army. By integrating reserves with active units and providing full equipment, the Soviet army is a very effective producer of armor-mechanized divisions. Not at all suited for overseas expeditions, dependent on rail transport for large movements between the different fronts separated by several thousand miles, these divisions are nevertheless powerful instruments of offensive war wherever the Soviet Union may seek to enlarge its empire.

With Western air power now offset to a large degree by Soviet air defenses, and with naval power only relevant in the less critical theaters remote from Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, the ground forces are the basic currency of East-West strategy. Because of the Soviet Union’s energetic countering efforts, its advantage in ground forces can no longer be offset by Western strengths in other forms of military power, including (as we shall see later) nuclear.

The combat value of the mass of the Soviet armed forces remains untested by the terrible urgencies of war. But it is possible to estimate their organizational, operational, and tactical competence—if not their fighting spirit—by observing exercises, which show quite clearly that the Soviet armed forces can now execute complicated military operations on a very large scale.

Specifically, we know that the Soviet army can assemble, supply, and send out its long columns of armor and considerable artillery to defeat enemy fronts, not in a steamroller action of costly head-on attacks, as in the past, but rather in quick probes—to find gaps and weak sectors, and to follow with fast-paced penetrations into the rear to achieve great encirclements; to overrun forward air bases, depots, and command centers; to “hug” cities so that tactical nuclear attacks against Soviet advancing forces would hit allied population centers (and would thus be inhibited); and to seize large extents of territory in so doing.

At the same time, raiding forces of the airborne divisions, of the special helicopter-assault brigades, of the “diversionary” and commando units of both military and civilian intelligence, can fly into, parachute into, or infiltrate the deep rear in order to seize nuclear-weapons storage sites, attack headquarters and communications centers, sabotage aircraft in their hangars and fire across crowded runways, ambush road convoys, and spread havoc by their mere presence—and by the inevitable tide of false reports about their doings and undoings.

We know that the Soviet air force has enough aircraft, enough bases, and enough quality in men and machines to deny air supremacy to whatever Western air forces it might meet in Europe, the Persian Gulf, or East Asia. Its fighter-interceptors, along with their anti-aircraft defenses, could keep Western air forces from doing much harm to the Soviet army; its long-range strike fighters could reach and bomb Western airfields even in the deepest rear, and its fighter-bombers and ground-attack aircraft could disrupt if not seriously reduce Western ground forces. In theory, Western air forces could eventually prevail in the contest for air supremacy—if the Soviet ground forces had not by then overrun their airfields. One thing is certain: Western air power can give little help to the ground forces in the first days of a war—precisely when air support would be needed most urgently.

We know that the Soviet navy can send out its aircraft, group its ships, and deploy its attack submarines in a concerted worldwide action to stage simultaneous missile strikes on American carrier task forces at sea, certainly in the Indian Ocean, eastern Mediterranean, and northeast Pacific, and possibly in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific as well. Though lacking the floating air power that remains the costly centerpiece of the American navy, the Soviet Union can nevertheless soberly estimate that if it attacked first, it could destroy the main fighting strength of the American navy actually at sea. In any event, Soviet attack submarines would endanger the sea connection between the United States and American forces overseas.

So far, not a word has been said about the entire subject of Soviet nuclear weapons. This separation and implied downgrading of the matter corresponds to the strategic logic of the Soviet position against the West. Moscow’s protestations of reluctance to use nuclear weapons against the West (China is another matter) may be perfectly sincere. Just as the invader is always peaceful—for he seeks only to advance and not to fight, while it is his victim who causes war by resisting—so the Soviet Union has every reason to avoid nuclear war, because it is now stronger than the West in non-nuclear military forces. Fully able to invade Europe, Iran, or Korea without having to use nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union now needs its nuclear weapons mainly to neutralize the nuclear deterrence of the United States, Britain, and France. Just as it is always the victim who must make war to resist aggression, so the West must rely on the fear of nuclear war to obtain security, by threatening nuclear attacks against invading Soviet forces if they cannot be stopped by non-nuclear means.

To deter such “tactical” attacks—that is, to inhibit the first level of the Western nuclear deterrent in order to restore the full value of its armies for intimidation or actual invasion—the Soviet Union has built up its own “tactical” nuclear forces, in the form of artillery shells, rockets, short-range missiles, and bombs for fighter-class aircraft and strike bombers. The Soviet Union can therefore reply in kind should its invading armies have their victories spoiled by nuclear attacks.

If the West begins to strike at invading Soviet columns with tactical nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union can, in a simple military calculation, use its own tactical nuclear weapons to blast open paths through the alliance front, so that even badly reduced and shocked invasion columns can continue to advance, eventually to reach and “hug” the cities—thereby forcing the alliance to stop its nuclear attacks. In the far more meaningful political calculation, the mere existence of large and very powerful Soviet tactical nuclear forces should inhibit to some extent any Western use of the same weapons.

But the alliance has a most significant advantage that arises from its purely defensive character: at this first level, the entire onus of beginning a war rests on the Soviet Union; it is by its decision that the movement of the armies would begin; it is by its decision that the invasion of Western territory would continue so that tactical nuclear weapons would be used against its forces, raising the conflict to the second level. Hence the Soviet tactical nuclear forces are not sufficient to dissuade Western use of the same weapons. The Soviets could only use them to achieve physical results (blasting gaps through the front) that would not begin to remedy the catastrophic deterioration of their position from a successful non-nuclear invasion to a nuclear conflict in which no good result could be achieved.

Therefore, to inhibit Western tactical nuclear forces much more powerfully, the Soviet Union maintains another category of nuclear weapons of longer (“intermediate”) range, which threaten the cities of Europe, as well as large military targets in the deep rear, such as air bases. At present, the celebrated SS-20 ballistic missile is the main weapon in this category, which also includes Soviet strike aircraft such as the Su-24 (“Fencer”). With these weapons the interaction between Soviet and Western military power reaches its third level.

Of late, the alliance has begun to deploy intermediate-range cruise and Pershing-2 missiles in Britain, West Germany, and Italy (more are to be deployed in Belgium and Holland). Because they are widely regarded as an entirely different category of weapons, they are different politically: the huge controversy surrounding their deployment may enable the cruise and Pershing-2 missiles to have a counter-intimidation impact since public opinion views them as an answer to the SS-20’s. To that extent, they are politically distinct from the far more abundant aircraft bombs and all the other nuclear weapons officially described as tactical. In addition, the new missiles may be more reliable in reaching their targets than strike aircraft with nuclear bombs.

But strategically the cruise and Pershing-2 missiles are not different from the tactical nuclear weapons of the alliance: they too serve to neutralize the non-nuclear strength of the Soviet army, and they too are neutralized in turn by the Soviet nuclear counter-threat against the cities of the alliance. As a matter of physical fact, the cruise and Pershing-2 missiles do not threaten anything not already threatened by alliance weapons classified as tactical; specifically, they do not threaten Soviet cities any more than the tactical nuclear bombs of longer-ranged alliance strike aircraft. Both those aircraft and the new missiles could reach cities in the western part of the Soviet Union; neither is meant to be used against those cities; for both, the relevant targets are Soviet military forces and their bases and command centers.

To neutralize the Soviet third-level threat against the alliance cities in Europe, the new missiles would have to counterthreaten Soviet cities with an equal certainty of complete destruction; because of their vulnerability and range limits, the new missiles cannot do that. Hence the new missiles cannot take the strategic interaction to a fourth level, where the Soviet invasion potential is once again neutralized. The third level thus leaves the Soviet Union in control of the situation, because with or without the cruise and Pershing-2 missiles, the alliance can protect its frontal defenses only at the risk of provoking Soviet nuclear attacks against the cities that those same frontal forces are supposed to protect.

It takes a fourth level to restore a war-avoiding balance, in which this Soviet third-level nuclear threat is itself deterred by American intercontinental nuclear forces capable of inflicting catastrophic destruction on the Soviet Union. Then the Western “tactical” nuclear forces can once again deter a Soviet (non-nuclear) invasion, and the Soviet Union’s invasion potential yields neither war options nor the power to intimidate the European allies of the United States.

The Soviet response would be to seek a fifth level of strategic interaction, where the American deterrent would be neutralized by the threat of destroying the intercontinental nuclear force if any were used against Soviet military forces, and American cities if any Soviet cities were destroyed. If the United States government would withdraw its threat of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in response to a Soviet attack on European cities, or if American intercontinental nuclear forces could not plausibly threaten the Soviet Union, the strategic interaction would revert to the third level, in which the Soviet threat against the cities of the allies inhibits the West from using its tactical nuclear forces, thus making the world safe for the Soviet army.

One hears it said endlessly that the competition between American and Soviet intercontinental nuclear forces is not only costly and dangerous but also futile, because each side can already destroy the population of the other “many times over.” That, however, is a vulgar misunderstanding. It is not to destroy the few hundred cities and larger towns of each side—easy targets neither protected nor concealed—that intercontinental nuclear forces continue to be developed. The purpose is not to threaten cities and towns already abundantly threatened, to “overkill” populations, but rather to threaten the intercontinental nuclear forces themselves: the missiles in their fortified housings, the bomber bases and missile-submarine ports, and the centers of military command and communication for all those forces. Thus there are several thousand targets, as opposed to a few hundred cities and towns, and many of those targets can only be destroyed by very accurate warheads.

At the fifth level of interaction, each side strives to reduce the nuclear-attack strength of the other, by defenses when possible (notably anti-aircraft, against the bombers), but mainly by offensive weapons accurate enough to destroy the weapons of the other side. And it is not enough to be able to threaten the destruction of the weapons: to make the threat effective it is also necessary to demonstrate the ability to destroy them without at the same time destroying the nearby population centers. For if that happens, then all the strategy and all rational purposes come to an end, as the victim will respond by launching his surviving weapons (there will always be some, perhaps many) against the cities of the attacker. For the United States, the competition at this point is driven by the goal of keeping the strategic interaction at the fourth level, where the Soviet army stands deterred; for the Soviet Union, the goal is to reach the fifth level, where American nuclear deterrence is itself deterred.

Because of the goals now pursued, contrary to widespread belief, intercontinental nuclear weapons are steadily becoming less destructive in gross explosive power. The goal of each side is to make its forces more accurate and more controllable so that they can destroy small and well-protected targets, and no more. During the 1960’s, the United States was still producing weapons of 5 and 9 megatons, while the Soviet Union was producing 20-megaton warheads; nowadays, most new American warheads have yields of less than half a megaton, while most Soviet warheads are below one megaton. As new weapons replace old, the total destructive power of the two intercontinental nuclear arsenals is steadily declining. (A “freeze,” incidentally, would put an end to that process.)

The state of the American-Soviet intercontinental nuclear balance is the basic index, the Dow-Jones, of world politics. Directly, or through sometimes subtle hopes and fears, it shapes much of what American and Soviet leaders feel free to do in world affairs. Two things are quite obvious about the current intercontinental nuclear balance. Both sides can easily destroy the cities and larger towns of the other. And neither can launch an all-out strike that would fully disarm the other’s weapons. The competition is now between these two extremes, as each side seeks to protect as many of its weapons as possible while threatening the other’s weapons.

Although the United States is by no means inferior across the board, category by category, it is impossible to extract an optimistic estimate from the numbers. There are 1,398 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles in underground housings, as against 1,000 American Minuteman missiles; some of the latter have been modernized and others have not, but the Soviet missiles are much larger, with many more warheads (almost 6,000 versus 2,100), which are no longer less accurate than their American counterparts (as was the case till quite recently). No expert disputes the accuracy and reliability of the more modern Soviet ballistic missiles—the four-warhead SS-17 (150 in service), the huge SS-18, with as many as ten warheads (308 in service), and the slightly less modern but more abundant six-warhead SS-19 (330 in service). The combined Soviet force clearly out-matches the 450 one-warhead Minuteman 2’s and 550 three-warhead Minuteman 3’s. Specifically, the Soviet land-based missiles could now destroy all but a fraction of their American counterparts, while the latter could not hope to do the same to the Soviet force.

The remaining defect of the Soviet land-based ballistic-missile force is that its warheads are not yet small enough to make the threat of a “clean” disarming strike believable. (The smallest warheads are of half-megaton size, and some are almost a full megaton.) The Soviet Union is now developing an entire new group of land-based ballistic missiles: undoubtedly they will be more accurate, and their warheads will be smaller. The new American MX missiles now in production are also meant to be more accurate, although their original purpose was greater survivability, which is dubious, since they will be placed inside fixed housings, though they were built for mobility.

The Soviet force of submarine-carried ballistic missiles is also much larger than the American, with 980 missiles as opposed to 640, but the quality difference is still so great that the American force remains superior. In the first place, most Soviet submarine-launched missiles are still one-warhead weapons, while their American counterparts have multiple warheads. As a result, the Soviet Union has fewer than 1,000 separate warheads in its submarine force, as against more than 5,000 (much smaller) American warheads.

A greater defect in a force that is, or should be, the ultimate strategic reserve, the best-protected of all in the intercontinental category, is the fact that all the Soviet submarines, except perhaps the very latest, are much noisier and thus more easily detected than their American counterparts. (Among the 80 Soviet ballistic-missile submarines in service, some 22 are ancient diesel and early vintage nuclear boats that have every right to be noisy, but these account for fewer than 60 of the 980 missile tubes. The bulk of the force should be much less noisy than it is, raising some interesting questions about Soviet design, or perhaps strategy.) This is all the more striking because the Soviet submarines are much newer on average: between 1974 and 1984 the Soviet Union built 35 Delta-class submarines and one huge Typhoon, as against just four bigger still Ohio-class submarines built by the United States. On the other hand, the latest Soviet submarine-launched missile, the SS-N-20, has such a long range (8,300 kilometers) that it can reach most targets without requiring the submarine carrying it to leave safe waters near the Soviet northern coasts.

Throughout the long years of strategic competition, the Soviet force of intercontinental bombers remained much smaller, and its aircraft much inferior, though this may be about to change. In the latest count, the 297 American bombers, mostly ancient but much modernized B-52’s, can be compared to a total of 273 Soviet bombers, including roughly 130 Backfires that are modern and supersonic, but not quite sufficient in range (5,500 kilometers), as well as a greater number of Tu-95’s, an aircraft as old as the B-52 but much inferior in every way. Only recently has the Soviet Union started producing a true modern intercontinental bomber, the Blackjack, which is externally similar to the new American B-15, and is destined to be electronically less advanced but also much faster.

For all their technical inferiority, Soviet bombers are still formidable, simply because the United States has very weak air defenses. While American bombers would have to contend with 1,250 Soviet interceptor-fighters and almost 10,000 antiaircraft missiles to reach their targets, Soviet bombers would virtually have a free ride against 90 air force and 180 National Guard interceptors, and not a single missile.

The Soviet Union’s destruction of the Korean airliner (flight KAL 007), on September 1, 1983, has been interpreted by some as proof of the incompetence of Soviet territorial air defenses. In one version, which assumes that the attack was made in error, the Soviet radar network is judged grossly incompetent for having failed to distinguish between KAL 007 and the very much smaller RC-135 electronic-reconnaissance aircraft (supposedly the intended victim). In a second version, the mere fact that KAL 007 was not actually shot down until two-and-one-half hours after it first entered Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka peninsula is treated as a failure of the system, regardless of whether the aircraft was correctly identified.

These interpretations illustrate very well the difficulty of making operational judgments in a vacuum; the mere fact that the Korean airliner was found and reached by a Soviet fighter, that a missile was launched correctly, that it detonated and destroyed a large aircraft is simply taken for granted, as if these were easy things. And indeed they should be for any air-defense system at war, operating day in and day out, with all the habits of combat operations. But on September 1, 1983, until KAL 007 arrived on the scene, Soviet air defenses were at peace, as they have been for almost forty years. To monitor the air space closely, to have the fighters ready at the end of the runway, to have pilots find the target, to have missiles fully operational—to have all this when the action suddenly starts after decades of inaction is not easy at all. The interception of KAL 007 should be compared to the non-interception by American air defenses of more than one Cuban airliner that violated US flight corridors on the Havana-Mexico City route.

Even a delay of two-and-one-half hours would not be significant. But as it happens, the delay was nowhere near so long; KAL 007 first penetrated and then left Soviet airspace (over Kamchatka), before reentering Soviet airspace (near Sakhalin). Its first penetration was very brief, a matter of minutes and forgivable even by the Soviet Union. Its second led to its destruction in short order.

The misidentification theory takes for granted that a 747 can very easily be distinguished from an RC-135. That is simply not the case; identification depends, among other things (size, aspect, frequencies, type of radar and displays), on atmospheric conditions. But as it happens, it is certain that the Soviet air-defense controllers knew exactly what they were destroying; this is one case where the negative evidence prevails. As in the Sherlock Holmes story, the dog that did not bark is definite proof: though Soviet air-defense controllers could have confused the KAL 007 radar image with that of an RC-135, the scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, Korea, which Soviet radar would routinely track, had to be somewhere on the radar screens. If it was not, only two possibilities remained—either that KAL 007 had crashed into the sea without any signal at all, or else that the aircraft being intercepted was in fact KAL 007. So to believe in the misidentification theory, we have to assume that Soviet air-defense controllers not only confused the two radar images but believed that KAL 007 had mysteriously fallen out of the sky without even a few seconds in which to transmit a “mayday” call. Thus once again we must resist the seductive urge to believe in Soviet ineptness.

The Soviet Union continues to make a large effort in strategic defense, maintaining costly forces to fight what can be fought (the bombers and cruise missiles), doing all it can to develop anti-ballistic-missile defenses, and keeping up a nationwide civil-defense program combining highly realistic with merely symbolic arrangements, from shelters to evacuation. The United States by contrast is pursuing innovation in offensive weapons (cruise missiles for the bombers, surface ships, and attack submarines, and Trident-2 submarine-launched missiles) and exploring many highly advanced defensive schemes based on satellite-mounted weapons, but it has no serious civil defense.

One could add details and nuances to the estimate of the Soviet Union’s intercontinental nuclear strength and homeland defenses, but the result would not change, for the two forces do not have the same task. The United States must rely on believable threats to use its intercontinental nuclear forces to offset the Soviet Union’s non-nuclear superiority and “tactical” nuclear parity. Otherwise matters would stand at the third level, where there is nothing to stop Soviet military intimidation of America’s allies—who then could scarcely remain allies. The Soviet Union by contrast need only make the American intercontinental nuclear threat unbelievable in order to recover the invasion potential of its armies, thus restoring their power to intimidate or actually invade. To do that the Soviet Union does not even need intercontinental nuclear superiority, which it is striving so hard to achieve. But the United States does need a margin of intercontinental nuclear strength merely to keep the overall military balance duly balanced.

Hence “parity” (shorthand for strategic-nuclear parity) is or should be fundamentally unacceptable to the United States. Any true parity between the intercontinental nuclear forces of each side must leave the United States militarily inferior in all the continental theaters where the Soviet army can muster its power—namely Europe, Iran (and thus the Persian Gulf), and Korea. And that is the situation that now prevails, the true cause of today’s anxieties for world peace.

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Day and the Hour

Duncan Lunan

Duncan Lunan is, in no particular order, an astronomer, a Scot, an artist, scientist, and author. He has built, in a park in Glasgow, Scotland, the first working “stonehenge” stone circle astronomical computer, constructed since pre-historic times. His New Worlds for Old and Man and the Planets soberly discuss spacecraft and the colonization of other worlds; I highly recommend them.

When Duncan was last in the United States, Larry Niven and I spent a delightful evening with him, during which we consumed immense quantities of single malt scotch whiskey and discussed the universe, from the birth of stars to psychic experiences. It was an evening I will not forget, and one I hope some day to repeat.

In Volume Four of this series (Day of the Tyrant) we examined the view of English author John Brunner, who believes that Britain would do better to divest herself of nuclear weapons. He would rather see Britain “an indigestible lump in a communist empire” than a nuclear battlefield; a sentiment it’s hard to disagree with if those are the only choices.

Duncan Lunan writes of a time when this has happened; when the Soviets have swept across Europe and have enjoyed their day in the sun; of a time when the warriors of Scotland may once more come down from their hills.

The Day and the Hour

Duncan Lunan

There was no snow to delay the unit’s journey north from Salisbury. Though the stratosphere was still hazed with ice crystals, long-lived reminders of the jet aircraft now so scarce, and though veils of dust persisted still higher from the aftermath of World War Three, as the second century after the war wore on the ‘years without a summer’ were becoming less common. The transporter and escorts travelled all night, and came into Derby under a grey morning sky.

Johnson was taken to the General almost at once, and that in itself showed the seriousness of the situation. He had tried for years to gain the attention of the upper ranks in the British People’s Army, to point out the implications of his discoveries and gain recognition and priority for the research, but always he had been blocked far down the chain of command. Major Gregory, as he then was, had been one of the first disbelievers to bar Johnson’s way. Since then Gregory had changed his name to Gregori, and risen through the higher echelons into supreme command of the remaining British forces. Now some twist in the national emergency had reminded Gregori of Regressive Ballistics, and Johnson was being rushed to this meeting as if he alone could save the State.

“Captain Johnson, sir.” The aide saluted and withdrew.

“You’ve made good time from Wiltshire, Captain. Come in, take a chair.” Promotion had been kind to Gregori: he had gained weight and lost hair since Johnson met him last, but it looked well on him. Yet in his years in the backwater of research, Johnson’s constant struggle for funding had made him hypersensitive to the moods of his superior officers, and behind Gregori’s authority he sensed a profound—disquiet?—discontent? “It looks as if we’ll be in action in a few hours, so you’d better rest while you can.”

“The Highlanders are still moving south, sir?”

“They are, Johnson. They stopped yesterday, but they were past Sheffield at first light today. Their mobility, I grieve to say, exceeds ours.”

Johnson was shocked. Of course there had been rumours, dismissed as attempts of reactionaries to undermine the confidence of loyal soldiers, and he himself had never credited them… “A ragged peasant army, outmaneuvering and outflanking the troops of the Soviet? Sir, I can’t believe that!”

“Your pride in the armies of the Soviet does you credit,” said Gregori. Was that—could it be—a hint of sarcasm? “Unfortunately, Captain, once they got through the Scottish lowlands there were relatively few of our glorious troops to oppose them. Most of our units in the north of England have been despatched to the continent, just as they were when the Young Pretender marched into England in 1745. As well as the trouble in Spain, which may do for the USSR what it did once for Napoleon, we are holding down both Hungary and Czechoslovakia yet again. As for Poland—you were going to say, Captain?”

Johnson had been through enough political education classes to think he knew a test when he saw one. “Surely, sir, on Marx’s progressive view of history, the fluctuations of the dying monarchies have no relationship–”

Gregori cut him off with an impatient wave of his hand. “Much as we admire the progressive view of history, Captain, as practical military men we must consider the possibility that history may appear to repeat itself. It’s apparent that there are two clear historical precedents for the situation facing us: the Jacobite rebellion, as I said, and before that—before that. Captain, are you a drinking man?”

To Johnson’s astonishment, Gregori yanked open a filing cabinet drawer to reveal a bottle of vodka and two elegant glasses, which he transferred to the desk top with slightly too steady a hand. Had he been brought all this way overnight just to be put through elementary tests of character and political soundness by the commanding General of the People’s Army? “Never, sir, while on duty,” he answered woodenly.

“As you please,” said Gregori, pouring himself a large measure. He half-turned to indicate the map of the British Isles on the wall behind him. “Perhaps you have been too engrossed in your research to mark a disturbing trend in recent years. Increasingly the troops of other Soviet states have been withdrawn from Britain to suppress counterrevolutionary developments in Europe and Scandinavia. Now the British People’s Army is taking over those security operations in Europe, while other Soviet troops are withdrawn to protect the Russian homeland from the barbarians in the ruins of Germany. Their attacks across the wastelands are becoming ever more serious. In short, Captain, our leaders in Moscow are calling the legions home.” He waved at the bottle. “Still sure you won’t join me?”

“No, thank you, sir.” One of us has to keep a grip on reality, thought Johnson. He would have put the whole line of conversation down to the vodka, were Gregori’s hands and voice not so steady. Nevertheless, as Gregori topped his own glass, the explanation was turning into a lecture.

“As I said before, Captain, we military men must take a pragmatic view of history. Rome had troubles remarkably similar to ours. They never mastered Scotland, ‘Never conquered and not likely to be.’ Though we’ve held Britain for a hundred and fifty years we’ve never been supreme beyond the Firths of Forth and Clyde. If we ever hoped to integrate that area with the USSR, the two bombs in the west of Scotland were a strategic mistake: if we had to do that we shouldn’t have left Glasgow standing in between. The first two battalions of the brigade we sent in to occupy the Glasgow area disappeared in a manner unknown to military history since the Ninth Legion went north from the Wall.”

He struck the map for emphasis. “When Castro looked at the map of Britain he cried, ‘Ah, Scotland! The mountains!’ Unfortunately the mountains remained in the hands of counterrevolutionaries. When the first punitive expedition went north from Edinburgh, after the eight months it took to clear the commandos out of the tunnels under the Castle there, it got precisely half-way across the Forth Road Bridge and then went crash to the sea-bed. It was rumoured at the time that they hadn’t paid the toll. And so things continued in the Highlands to the present day, with the clan structure reforming as an underground movement, the old regiments regenerating as guerilla groups and arming themselves at our expense. Often they do better than we do with our own weapons: your ‘dirty wee pict’ is proving himself deadly at close quarters with a laser bayonet. You have Glaswegians treating it as a big brother to the photon flick-knife. It’s my opinion, comparing this rising with Bonnie Prince Charlie’s, that if the Scots get past Derby this time they’ll never be stopped.”

This was too much for Johnson. “Oh, come now, sir. Reinforcements…”

“There will be no reinforcements,” Gregori said grimly, staring into his glass. “Oh, some heavy machines are coming north from outside London. But there are no aircraft to lift them to us, and they won’t reach us in time to do any good. The Scots will go ’round them, as they did the armour in the north of England, if they pass us here. All the troops we can spare from the south-east are already here, little more than a division, all told.”

So few! Johnson could scarcely believe it. But if it were true it would have been kept quiet…and it would explain why the budget for research was vanishingly small. “But sir? What about the troops from the West Country—there are two regiments almost on our doorstep…”

“The West Country is in arms,” said Gregori. “Drake’s Drum, they say, is sounding again. Drake, the bourgeois adventurer, a pioneer of the capitalist era! They’ve a good marching song down there, I hear—whoever Trelawney was, we shouldn’t have shot him.”

“What about the Welsh regiments–’

“Changing sides, I believe. Richard the Second had some trouble of the same kind, and as for Wales itself, they have the precedent of Owen Glendower—who outdid Che himself, since Glendower was never caught. When the English claimed no invasions since 1066, we were already thinking of Britain as a unit. At the moment it seems that all the historical rebellions are recurring at once.”

Johnson was aghast. For all his skill in interpreting and exploiting the attitudes of senior officers—a survival skill, for the continuation of his research—he had remained a scientist, untouched by politics within the army or outside. What he saw in Gregori was an Englishman who had spent his life in the effort to become a Russian, and now suspected—incredibly, to Johnson—that he might have chosen the wrong side. Why had Gregori brought him here? Had the General perceived some way in which he, a humble captain in research, could save the revolution in England?

“Now you know how bad it is,” said Gregori. “The battle here in a few hours may stem the tide. If we lose, I think this is the beginning of the end for the revolution, for the unity of Europe and for the USSR as we know it. In our desire to extend that revolution over all the globe, we’ve overstretched our resources—technically, militarily and economically. It would have been easier to colonize the moon than to reclaim North America after the Last War, as we optimistically named it. But we—Russia—panicked when we had a temporary advantage, and Russia’s guilt, Russia’s attempted reparation, has ruined us all. We’re standing here today against the new Dark Ages, Captain, and we’re going to lose because we’re so few. Your discovery may serve to swing the balance, as a last desperate chance. Can you do it?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Johnson stammered, caught unprepared in the middle of his analysis of Gregori. “It’s only a prototype… successful in a few controlled tests, untried in battle conditions… the paradoxes–”

“Courage, Captain! For the revolution, for the Soviet, for the future of the world, today you stand in the breach!” Outright sarcasm—not just the vodka. “Your field works. You can project a shell backwards in time?”

“Regressive Ballistics, sir. We can fire a shell through the field generated in front of the tank, and it will move backwards through time as its trajectory continues. At the maximum range of the gun we have, the shell is displaced only an hour into the past.”

“That hour may be enough, Captain,” said Gregori. “We shall fight ferociously, of course, but if we can last an hour against the Scottish horde I shall be surprised. Over the battle, however. Remotely Piloted Vehicles will record everything for transmission to my command post, and as we and our computers analyse the battle we shall transmit the edited highlights to you. An hour after battle is joined, you will know which elements in the enemy advance were to prove crucial; and on the empty battlefield, you will fire the shells that are to change history.”

“But sir, the firepower of our prototype rig–”

“If you recall. Captain, I asked for your shell specifications to be radioed ahead. Just an hour ago, an aircraft arrived from Moscow with a consignment of the latest antimatter shells, specially made for your puny gun.” Gregori hefted the vodka bottle. “This came with them, unrequested; intended as a farewell gift, I suspect…but we shall see. It’s just as well the explosions will be an hour in the past, if your range is what you’ve reported! Was 120 mm the heaviest piece you could requisition?”

“We couldn’t get any guns at all for research, sir. We…we dug this one out of the ground.”

“Out of the ground! What, a wreck from the Battle of Stonehenge?”

“Yes, sir. The radioactivity’s almost gone now, of course, but it took quite a while to make it serviceable.”

“It must have done,” said Gregori with respect. “My confidence in you is restored, Captain. I was beginning to put you down as a mere researcher, lacking in initiative. Perhaps if anyone can turn the tide of history…. But the field itself, the projector. You mentioned a tank. Not something that will take hours to set up, I trust—a tank of oil? Not liquid helium!”

“Not a tank of anything, sir,” Johnson explained, still more embarrassed. “A tank in the historical sense: a manned armoured vehicle, with rotating turret for low-powered cannon.”

Gregori was fascinated. “Propulsion?”

“Caterpillar tracks only, sir. Diesel engine.”

“And I was lecturing you on military history. It’s a real museum piece, the forerunner of today’s military armour?”

“Yes indeed, sir. It’s an FV 4030 Challenger, once the most advanced fighting machines of its day. Its type were entering service with the British Army in 1985 as successors to the Chieftain series—incorporating the same armament and Integrated Fire Control System, but with Chobham armour and a more powerful engine.” Johnson could have warmed to his subject, but that was a prerogative for superior officers.

“This is excellent,” said Gregori. “So you don’t have just a temperamental prototype, you have a mobile combat unit, however antiquated. Its antiquity may even be an advantage—it may let you pass the advancing Scots without attracting attention. Lenin knows what they’ll take it to be, but the idea that it’s a threat will escape them—especially since it’ll be crawling on to the field of their victory!”

“You realise, sir, that the tank doesn’t have anything like its former turn of speed. Once it could exceed fifty-six kilometres per hour, but not now.”

“So much the better, to avoid attracting attention. We’ll have you behind the lines, under deep camouflage. The Highlanders will be able to storm right over the top of you by the time our experts have finished. But afterwards, when battle ends, we’ll give you a sonic pulse from divisional HQ to move forward. If I can I’ll join you myself to direct your fire—if not. Captain, you must assess the battle’s course for yourself and destroy the key Scottish units.”

When shall we next meet again? thought Gregori, when Johnson had gone. When the battle’s lost and won? The idea was fantastic; yet the chance was there to save the State and his own career, very probably his neck. The best of it was that he could make good his escape, in that Russian aircraft, when defeat became certain—and if Johnson reversed the outcome, the General would thereby be restored to his post, ready to claim the rewards of the otherwise unattainable victory. If Johnson achieved nothing, General Gregori would have escaped shellfire, firing squad or prison camp and be on his way to a new life. But where was he to go, he wondered, standing before the map with vodka glass in hand like an English Roman in his villa, nursing the last cup of wine from Italy when the galleys had gone. Where was his refuge to be?

Ireland?

Now’s the day and now’s the hour;
See the front of battle lour;
See approach proud Edward’s power,
Chains and slaverie.

—Robert Burns, “Scots Wha Hae”

1500 hours (A): Sergeant Macdonald of the Cameron Highlanders Artillery, Blue Section, finished the deployment of his guns. They were Russian mobile cannon, captured in the Lowlands after the second battle of Prestonpans; relatively light, they could be shifted swiftly on air-cushions to come to bear on new targets. Against the armoured division barring the way to Derby their firepower would be well-nigh ineffective, but ostensibly their function was to provide covering fire for the Scots’ commandos, to help to pin down whatever troops the English had mustered, while the teams moved in and the shaped charges were placed. Unless the massive fighting machines of the People’s Army could be knocked out, with their superior range and firepower they could hold England from the Pennines to the Wash. The Scottish army had had to split up for the night dash that brought them close enough to do battle, or those juggernauts might have blown them apart at Sheffield, forty miles away.

Macdonald checked again, though their position was the best possible. On the right-hand tip of the Highland crescent, well forward but aside from the heaviest fighting, they could provide crossfire and also spot targets for the more substantial Highland artillery. That was their true function, though other such units spaced out along the line and providing covering fire would conceal the fact. Blue Section’s true task was to spotlight, at the right time and not before, what the English were holding in reserve and when the outgunned Scots must take it out.

He lowered himself briefly from the slit to the controls of the command unit, to glance back at the youth at the impact predictor panel. “All set, Alastair?”

The lad swallowed hard. “It’s shaping up nicely. Sergeant.” The flickering colours of the computer display chased across his pale face.

“Fair enough.” Macdonald picked up the hand mike. “Dheargh Mhatan to Claymore—activated and ready.”

“Stand by, Dheargh Mhatan.”

In the First, Second and Third World Wars, the Scots had been known to their enemies as “Demons in Skirts,” “Ladies from Hell,” and “Poison Dwarves.” One of their demonic tricks had been to use Gaelic on the radio when they might be overheard. This army’s mix of English-speaking Lowlanders meant that Gaelic was used only for code-words, but that would be enough to keep the English guessing. “Claymore” was Lochiel himself, commanding the Scottish push south as once his ancestor had advised Prince Charles Edward in the same desperate game. It was no accident that he had taken for his call-sign a word which had been claidheamh mor, a great sword, and had been applied to more than three types of deadly weapon.

“Claymore to all units—Caber Feidh is sounded. Dheargh Mhatan, do you hear?”

Macdonald smiled. “Caber Feidh” was the old regimental march of the Scaforths: when it was sounded on the pipes in a situation like this, they would be advancing into battle. An Englishman listening would probably think it was a place which had been checked out. There was a check-out in progress, but of a very different kind; after another glance towards Alastair, Macdonald again raised the mike.

“We hear, Claymore—Caber Feidh is quite clear.” If anyone out there knows pipe music, Macdonald told himself, let them think we’re having a concert. They’ll dance to our tune soon enough.

“Claymore to Hielan’ Laddie: Bundle and Go. March, March, Ettrick and Teviotdale!”

That was the Black Watch committed; and now, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. The Black Watch should have been in Macdonald’s direct field of view, and as he stood up to the slit his movement-sensitive scope picked out the infantry moving through the trees on their jet-packs, their suits dialled to winter camouflage tartan.

“Alert for Hielan’ Laddie,” said Alastair. Guided by the screen display, Alastair was now locked on to the advancing troops with strange powers of his own, tracking them and projecting their track forward into the future. His trance lasted only seconds. “Two machine-gun posts, automated, concealed half-a-mile ahead of them. They’ll open fire in sixty-five seconds. I’m laying-in the target now.”

“We can take care of those ourselves, it doesn’t need heavy bombardment. We’ll do it now and clear your view for the next hazard.” As Macdonald spoke, the guns of Blue Section were swinging towards the target Alastair had pinpointed. “Two rounds each, fire at will!”

Sergeant Macdonald was a reliable NCO picked by Lochiel for his lack of imagination. He accepted Alastair’s gift of the Second Sight as he might accept that another man could paint, or play the fiddle. Told by the young Adept of the threats the near future held, he would act to counter them without questioning the information; without raising an atmosphere of doubt that might blur Alastair’s predictions. The boy was Lochiel’s secret weapon, trained in the Western Isles by agents brought by submarine from the unknown base of the American government in exile. Personally. Sergeant Macdonald had no time for the new jargon of “Adepts” and “Psionics”; privately he doubted the value of the training, which had sharpened Alastair’s erratic gift into a practical tool of warfare but had unnerved the lad, particularly in combat. To Macdonald, who had known him since childhood, it was a good soldier spoiled. But he wouldn’t question what Alastair told him, and he would act on it as a trained soldier, and that made him an ideal anchor for the Adept.

1525 hrs. (A): It had fallen to Macdonald’s unit to open the battle, despite their orders to keep a low profile. But with troops already committed across so much of the battlefield, it could have happened anywhere, and fire-fights swiftly broke out all along the front. The enemy’s fighting vehicles, huge Russian machines which in another age would have been big enough to carry moon-rockets to their pads, ground slowly forward from cover to meet the Highlanders with firepower nothing on Earth could resist. They had been developed after the Last War, when the armoured divisions of both sides were annihilated in the tactical holocaust of Germany. Only a direct nuclear hit would destroy them. But the Black Watch had been working their way up, making use of smokescreens and barrages laid down for other parts of the battle. Given their timing by Alastair, they rushed a nearby hill and plastered the war machines with old-fashioned anti-tank missiles, while the commandos made their suicide runs to plant the shaped nuclear charges. The troops took heavy losses, despite the covering fire from Blue Section and its counterparts; but the land dreadnoughts were stopped or even disabled, with their fields of fire consequently restricted, and one by one the commandos took them out.

1545 hrs. (A): Such was the firepower of modern armies, an engagement that might once have lasted hours was already over. Casualties had been fearsome: it might be said that the Scots had won only in the sense that they still had some men and guns left when the People’s Army was annihilated. But there would be reinforcements within hours, now that the North was up and taking arms; and prompted perhaps by the Scottish success, Welsh forces were leaving the mountains against Wolverhampton, Worcester and Gloucester. The heavy Soviet armour coming from London was in trouble with guerillas at St. Albans. All Lochiel’s army had to do was occupy Derby and hold it.

“Dheargh Mhatan from Claymore, Dheargh Mhatan from Claymore, clear us a path into the town. We’ll be mopping up behind you.”

“Dheargh Mhatan, aye. Leader to all Blue Section units, prepare to move off!”

They breasted the rise ahead, swung ’round the burning wreck of a war machine in the field beyond, and roared down to the main road. Taking up line astern, they put down their heavy drive wheels, shutting off ground effect. They met no trouble on the way in; surviving units of the People’s Army, hands raised, were left to surrender to the main force. The news of their coming spread like wildfire from the outskirts of Derby: by the time they neared the town centre cheering crowds were lining the route. Macdonald saw in the rear scanner that Fraser in No.2, defying snipers, was up in the hatch with the pipes. The external microphone picked up “The March of the Cameron Men.”

As said before, Macdonald was not imaginative, but the historical significance of the moment wasn’t lost on him. Turning over the controls to his co-driver, he too stood up at the observation slit and threw open the top hatch. Out among the cheering, with the Cameron pennants fluttering before him on the whip aerials, tradition really got to him. As they entered the centre of Derby he took off his tin hat and flourished it in triumph, shouting “The Prince is coming! The Prince is coming!”

1550 hrs. (A): Though the Highland army was passing on both sides, regrouping as they went for the march into Derby, a dreadful quiet occupied the battlefield. Johnson had never seen active service, not even skirmishes with the small forces China could still miraculously generate after all this time. There hadn’t been as devastating an engagement as this within living memory.

Though the sonic pulse hadn’t come, and neither had Oregon, he couldn’t wait in hiding any longer. His shells could go back only an hour in time, and to hit the Black Watch (unfamiliar with the tartans, he had classified them “X group”) before they got too close to the front line of the People’s Army, his little team would have to move. He pushed a button, and the heavier parts of their camouflage parted explosively above them. Among the ruins of the armoured division, that little bang would never be noticed. Their treads bit into the earth ramp, and the tank heaved up towards the winter sky.

The rearguard of the Highland army, passing at speed to left and right, took no notice of the Challenger as it rumbled down a clear alley between the flaming war machines to the fields beyond. Why should they? The least of the weapon-carriers, lesser, captured units though they were, dwarfed it. If it weren’t for the gun it might almost pass as some kind of a lifeboat or tender for the stricken giants nearby; and the gun was no threat, pointing to where the Highlanders had come from, not where they were now. If any of the infantry swooping along on their jet-packs swerved to check it out, they were reassured by the saltires which Gregori had suggested be flown from the turret aerials.

Though it had been convenient to have the gun and projector mobile for the trials on Salisbury Plain, Johnson had never ridden in the tank himself. The noise and vibration appalled him. How people had managed to fight these machines at speed, with what precision the crude instruments of 1985 afforded, he couldn’t see. He wasn’t even able to follow the RPV record when he tried to re-check his interpretation of the battle.

1610 hrs. (A): They were in position. The time projector was on, its antennae extended to engage the shell at the focus of the field, as it left the barrel. Johnson was at the contra-rotating cupola periscope, his left-eye to the roll-ball, split field monocular sighting in real-time. The overhead film of the battle, now synchronised to exactly one hour in the past, was presented to his right eye by a modern holographic head-up display, from whose reference grid he could read off the range. He adjusted the antique tank helmet, checked position of throat mike and ear muffs, and cleared his throat.

“Target range 800 metres. Antimatter, one round. Come to bear.’’

The old gun swung in traverse and elevation, locking (as accurately as its guidance system would allow) on to the Black Watch advance an hour before. With these blockbuster shells, any lack of precision there would be quite academic. The field had better work, Johnson told himself, or we’ll blow ourselves right off the hillside at this range.

“Fixed,” said the gunner. Two tracers flashed from the ranging machine gun, off into the empty fields. The electronics of the tank’s laser ranging system had been knocked out by electromagnetic pulse 150 years before, and there was no chance of replacements from Barr & Stroud in Glasgow—but in this case, the older method was what was needed. There was no target for laser and infrared sensors out there, only the images on the synchronised record, about to become ghosts in every sense.

“On target.” said Johnson. The old command sequence gave him a feeling of continuity with the traditions of the British Army. Marlborough, Wellington—no, perhaps not. At 1611 (A) precisely, he ordered, “Fire!”

1512 hrs. (B) (the projector wasn’t quite at maximum range): Sgt. Macdonald had just received confirmation from Observer Ewan Cameron that the machine-gun posts were destroyed, when there was a colossal flash of light about a mile to the east. By sheer luck he happened not to be looking directly into it, but half his vision was filled with after images. Though the command unit’s shock absorbers coped, the sway-relative to the ground outside was plainly visible. Beyond the Black Watch advance, which must have been wiped out, the bare winter trees had come down: those nearest to ground zero were still standing, but furiously ablaze.

“Dheargh Mhatan to Claymore, Dheargh Mhatan to Claymore—nuclear strike on Hielan’ Laddie. Hielan’ Laddie is taken out. They must have read Lochiel’s mind!” he added after switching off. Macdonald’s soft Highland accent, subdued by years of shouted orders, was brought out by his anger.

“That can only have been antimatter,” his co-driver said from the instrument panel. “They must have stunned their own front line, using it at that range.”

“Aye.” Macdonald dropped from the slit, twisting out of the seat to face Alastair. In the cramped interior of the Command Unit, that put him only a foot from the Adept.

“I didn’t see it, Sergeant!” Alastair was distraught at his failure. “I didn’t even see the shell coming!”

“Never mind, lad,” said Macdonald, boiling. “Where did it come from?”

Alastair looked desperate, but said his piece. “That hillside there, Sergeant—right in front of us. I can feel it. But the detectors show nothing there…”

“Our own eyes show nothing there!” Macdonald twisted himself viciously left, then right, back up to the slit. “There’s bugger-all there,” he hissed. “Nevertheless, lay it in…”

Blue Section’s guns roared together. At that range it was almost a flat trajectory. The hillside facing them split open, again and again.

1613 hrs. (B): Johnson had been watching the synchronised record eagerly, expecting to see the flash of the shell interrupt the sequence he had followed earlier. But no, the advance went on as before. For a terrible moment he feared failure; but looking up, he found the battlefield had changed, though the record paradoxically remained the same. The ruined formation of war machines had overtaken him, though they had been destroyed in the end: their burning wreckage lay along the top of the slope, one or two further forward on his right where the ground levelled out. And the Highland rearguard had been pushed back; though still victorious, the units now passing him were fewer and slower. Casualties were heavier, damage more severe. He had changed the course of the battle, though his records of it were unaltered. After a moment he realised that his recording of the last hour must remain unchanged, or memory too would have gone. This was the first of the paradoxes he had feared when transferring his half-completed research project to the front.

He would have to act fast if the new course of recent events, of which he had no record, was not to diverge too far from the previous track still running on the synchronised display. He had the Challenger’s gun fixed on the next target when suddenly his situation changed. Though he felt nothing, there was a discontinuity in his perceptions: the tank was nose-down and there was less light coming in. The periscope showed that now they were lying at the bottom of a deep crater, the gun almost in the earth. For another dreadful moment he thought that the time-projector antennae had been smashed, but they were just clear of the fresh-turned soil.

So the Highlanders had “spotted” him! It would do them no good. An hour in their future, nothing they did could touch him. A sense of real power possessed Johnson. He alone would save the Soviet State of Britain. But he must move fast, or his next shell might light on the advancing English front line in the new past he had created. The driver restarted the engine, engaged the caterpillar tracks, and began to reverse up the steep slope of the crater.

1515 hrs. (B): The smoke had cleared on the hillside blasted by Blue Section’s bombardment. Macdonald was scanning the pattern of craters. “We’ve dug nothing up there,” he said, but without scepticism.

“Sergeant…” Alastair began uncertainly. He was sitting back from the computer display, eyes glazed again.

Macdonald continued scanning. “What, lad?”

“Sergeant, I can see that shell now.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t… you’ll not…”

Macdonald dropped and swung out of the chair again. Whatever “the Sight” revealed, by God he had to know it. Very gently, he took hold of the tranced Adept by the lapels of his battledress. The Highland accent still more noticeable, he said slowly and forcefully, with even a hint of menace, “Alastair, tell me what you see!”

“Just the shell, Sergeant. As if it were going backwards from its target to the hillside. I can still only see the nearest part of its trajectory. It’s up there, right now, with us in time!”

Sergeant Macdonald was not imaginative. He accepted that Alastair could see what he himself could not, and was not plagued by the kind of doubt which could argue or interfere with that source of information. His technical education told him that matter going backwards in time could look like antimatter coming forwards, and vice versa—the words “Feynman diagram” were at the back of his mind somewhere, but if Alastair described it, Macdonald took his word for it.

“Oh, the bastards,” he said quietly. That the English could send shells backwards through time, came as no great surprise to him. The English were capable of anything. “You can see into the future, lad,” he went on as quietly as before. “You can see that launcher. When will it be there?”

“I can’t see it,” said Alastair, turning his head from side to side in mental anguish. “It’s as if the future that shell came from has been wiped away…”

“The shell itself gives you a link,” Macdonald said, soothing, directing the Adept’s attention. “Just tell me, lad, when will it ‘return’ to that hillside?”

Alastair said nothing. He began to tremble in his seat.

“Switch everything off,” snapped Macdonald. “No talking, no distractions.” The shifting patterns of the computer display died. Alastair’s powers alone linked him to the battle.

“An hour from now, nearly,” he gasped, and snapped out of the trance, weeping from the strain.

“That’s all we need to know…” The satisfaction in Macdonald’s voice was filled with menace now, as he swung back to the control position. “Switches on!… Lachlan, we want a barrage fused to explode in one hour. Make it fast.”

“But Sergeant, our delay fuses only run in seconds,” the armourer protested over the intercom from No. 3 gun.

“So fix me some for thirty-six hundred seconds,” said Macdonald, some of the menace transferred from the enemy. “One round at a time if need be. Let me know when you’re ready, Lachie…” He switched off, turning to the recovering Adept. “Don’t you worry, laddie. To make an explosion an hour before you in time may be the work of the devil, but to plant one an hour in time behind you is an old, established art.”

1555 hrs. (B): Lachlan’s old, established art seemed to have won the contest. Correcting the fuse settings to get an approximately simultaneous detonation. No. 3 gun had sown the mangled hillside with a broad pattern of shells. No more disabling fire had come back from the future, and the battle had raged on. Alastair’s warnings didn’t completely forestall the war machines’ contribution, but one by one they had been immobilised by suicide squads and hammered out of the action. The Highland army had survived, though drastically weakened; and Lochiel ordered Macdonald to enter Derby at once, to consolidate the victory.

“Prepare to move off,” said Macdonald. “No. 4: In about twenty-three minutes our charges should go off in that hillside. Get you into the cover of those trees and watch. If by any chance we failed to catch the devilish contrivance that will appear there, don’t you make any mistake with it.” Blue Section started up on their air cushions, moving down into the valley. Only No. 4 gun separated from them, moving along the top of the rise into the trees.

1600 hrs. (B): Ewan Cameron saw the ancient challenger trundling up the field to the hillside opposite. He could scarcely believe his eyes, and one by one his crew snatched quick looks to confirm it. Only the knowledge that the shambling tank with its false saltires could have turned the battle gave strain to their laughter. The tank nosed over the brow of the hill, then came to rest apparently poised over one of the craters. It seemed as if there had to be solid ground below it, yet to Ewan it seemed at the same time that the tank hung over empty air. After some delay, two silvery antennae were extended parallel to the old-fashioned gun barrel, and twisted to focus on the space just before the muzzle. The gun swung, then slowly began to track the movements of the Black Watch an hour before. Though he watched carefully, Ewan was certain afterwards that he didn’t see the first shell fired—a paradox that would have interested Johnson. At 1614, however, for no apparent reason, the Challenger’s invisible support was no longer there and the tank itself was suddenly almost out of sight, nose down in the crater. When it came out No. 4 gun was laid in, in case there should be any mistake. But at 1622, just when the tank gun was locked on its next target and Ewan himself was about to fire, the hillside erupted once more. Two charges went off directly below the Challenger: it was blown high into the air, its treads disintegrating as it turned over. The gun flailed and the turret flew off. The tank fell, burning, and after the impact came three brilliant explosions, each bigger than the last.

No. 4 gun was overturned by the blast and hammered into the hillside; and though only the first flash had pierced Ewan’s Polaroid goggles, it would be days before his eyes were unbandaged. Still it was with great cheer that the crew extricated themselves from the wreckage and set off on foot, following the Highland army’s advance into Derby.

Editor’s Introduction to:

House of Weapons

Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon Dickson is deservedly well known for his Dorsai novels. (His name for the series is The Childe Cycle.) “House of Weapons” is part of his other series: stories of the invasion of Earth by the Aalaag.

The Aalaag are a warrior race. Frighteningly competent, they reduced the Earth’s defenses to powder within days of their arrival, and soon installed themselves as the new rulers of humanity—whom they think of as cattle.

Their weapons are as superior to the best on Earth as the Red Army’s weapons are superior to the Enfields of the mujahadeen. Moreover, long accustomed to military power, the Aalaag are also experienced in government. They rule an empire of many stars and races and their history teaches them that eventually the conquered cattle learn to love their conquerors.

So has it always been, and on the surface so it is on Earth. A few hardy souls hide in the hills; a few guerrillas resist, to their peril. The Aalaag have expected that. What they have not expected is that even the most servile may become warriors, that there may be resistance within the House of Weapons itself.

House of Weapons

Gordon R. Dickson

The dumbbell shape of the two-place Aalaag courier ship in which Shane Everts was being transported dropped like a meteorite slung from the altitude of its extra-orbital journey.

Shane felt his body temporarily weightless, held in place only by the restraining arms of the seat in which he sat. A meter and a half before his nose, his November view of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, below, was all but hidden by the massive, white-uniformed shoulders of the eight-foot Aalaag female, who was his pilot.

In summer these cities, chief population centers of what had once been Minnesota, one of the former United States of America, would have been only partly visible from this angle above them. Thick-treed avenues and streets would then have given the illusion of nothing more than two small, separate downtown business centers surrounded by heavy forest. But now, in the final months of the dying year, the full extent of both cities and their suburbs lay revealed among the leaves stripped from tree limbs by the winds of early winter.

No snow was yet on the ground to soften what the fallen leaves had uncovered. Shane looked around the pilot and down into the empty-seeming thoroughfares. Under Aalaag rule they would be as clean as those of Milan in northern Italy. He had just left that city to be carried here to the headquarters of all the alien power on Earth. Its building was placed about the headwaters of navigation on the Mississippi River. To this place Shane now, his nerves on edge, returned.

The body odor of his pilot forced itself once more on his attention. It was inescapable in the close confines of the small vessel—as no doubt his human smell was to her. Though as an Aalaag she would never have lowered herself to admit noticing such a fact. The scent of her in his nostrils was hardly agreeable, but not specifically disagreeable, either.

It was the smell of a different animal, only. Something like the reek of a horse or cow barn, only with that slightly acid tinge which identifies a meat-eater. For the Aalaag (though they required that Earthly foodstuffs be reconstituted for their different digestive systems) were like humanity, omnivores who made a certain portion of their diet out of flesh—though of earthly creatures other than human.

That exception of human flesh from the Aalaag diet might be merely policy on the part of the aliens. Or it might not, thought Shane. Even after two years of living here at the very heart and center of the Aalaag Command on Earth, in many cases like this he had no way of knowing what their real reasons were, or whether what he believed might be merely an assumption on his part…

He forced his mind to stop playing with the question of the aliens’ diet. It was unimportant, as unimportant as the differences in appearance of the Twin Cities between June and November. Both thoughts were only straw men thrown up by his subconscious as excuses to avoid thinking of the situation which would be facing him momentarily.

In only a few minutes he would be once more in the House of his master, reporting to him—to Lyt Ahn, First Captain and Commander of all the Aalaag on this captive and subject Earth. And this time, for the first time, he would face that ruler, knowing himself guilty of what to these Aalaag were two capital crimes, for themselves, or any one of their servants. Chief of these was not merely the violation of an order, but the violation of it while he was on duty, as a translator and courier for the First Captain.

It was ironic. He had clung to the thought of himself as someone well able to endure existence under the domination of the alien rulers. This belief had persisted in him until just a few hours ago. But now he had to face the fact that even though he had been among the most favored of humans, there was one vital area in which he was no less vulnerable than any of the rest of his race.

As a courier-translator for Lyt Ahn, he was well fed, well housed, well paid—tremendously so in comparison with the overwhelming mass of his fellow humans. He had therefore believed in his own ability to avoid trouble with the overlords. But in spite of all this, twice now, the insanity which the Aalaag called yowaragh—a sudden overwhelming urge to revolt against the conquerors, regardless of personal consequences—had overtaken him, just as if he had been one of the ordinary, starving mass of Earth’s population.

The first explosion of that suicidal emotion had come on him two years ago in a square of the City of Aalborg, in Denmark, when he had been an involuntary witness to a man being executed by the Aalaag; and—to his own later shock—in a half-drunken reaction of defiance, had secretly drawn on the wall under the executed man the stick figure of a pilgrim with a staff. The act had had unexpected consequences. To his astonishment, that figure had since been picked up by other humans and spread over the world as the particular symbol of covert opposition to the alien rulers. Its authorship had never been traced back to him, even by those humans who had come to use it. Nonetheless, for a moment there, he had blindly courted execution, himself. Even though neither alien nor human knew it, he had defied the all-powerful masters.

Then, once again in the grip of yowaragh, in the hours just past in Milan, he had risked himself to rescue a woman called only Maria, whom he had never seen before; and this had revealed his existence, if not his identity, to the human Resistance group there, of which she was one.

It was only now, on the return trip to his master’s headquarters, aboard an Aalaag special courier ship, that he had finally admitted to himself that he, like all the rest of his race, walked a razor’s edge between the absolute power of his rulers—and a possibility, which he now recognized starkly, that at any moment an uncontrollable inner explosion might drive him to do something that would bring his hatred of the Aalaag to their attention.

It was strange, he thought now, that this should only be striking home to him at this time, three years after the aliens had landed and taken over Earth in one swift and effortless moment. Squarely, he faced the fact that he was terrified of the consequences of another such bout of madness in him. He had seen Aalaag interrogation and discipline at work. He knew, as the underground Resistance people did not, that there was literally no hope of a successful revolt against the overwhelming military power of their alien masters. Anyone attempting to act against the Aalaag was courting not only certain eventual discovery, but equally certain, and painful, death—as an object lesson to other humans who might also be tempted to revolt.

And this would be as true for him as for any other human, in spite of the value of his work to the aliens and the kindness with which his own master had always seemed to regard him. At the same time the logical front of his mind was reading him this lesson, the back of it was playing with the notion of finding ways around his situation and avoiding any such future risks of triggering off the yowaragh reaction in him. He remembered how simple it would be to contact the Resistance people again. All he had to do was buy himself a used pilgrim’s gown of two different colors, one inside and one outside—and pay for the purchase with the gold that only an alien-employed human like himself would be carrying. The dream of revolt was an unbelievably seductive one—in the years before the coming of the Aalaag, he could never have imagined how seductive—but at the same time he must never forget how hopeless and false it was. He must always remember to hold himself under tight control and continue to chart his way cool-headedly in the Aalaag Headquarters and under the Aalaag eyes that were always upon him.

His problem was twofold, he reminded himself as he flew toward his destination. He must cover up any dangerous results that might come from his previous attacks of yowaragh; and he must make sure that he never, never, fell into the grasp of that dangerous emotional explosion again.

To begin with, as soon as he got the ear of Lyt Ahn, he must set up excuses against the two crimes he had just committed in Milan. The lie to Laa Ehon must be covered; and there was still deep danger in the fact that he had helped to rescue Maria. The Aalaag, if they should ever actually come to suspect him, had devices which, like bloodhounds, could sniff out his having slipped away from the Milanese Headquarters without orders, to confront and confuse the alien guard who had originally arrested Maria—all this while he had supposedly been given time off to rest in a human dormitory in the building.

That was the most dangerous of the two crimes he had just committed in Aalaag terms—crimes, as they would be seen by Aalaag eyes. The lesser crime, but one sufficient enough for his execution, was that he had lied to Laa Ehon, the Commander of the Milanese District, when that Aalaag had asked him what the price was that Lyt Ahn had placed upon him—obviously with an eye to buying Shane from the First Captain. Shane had claimed a price that Lyt Ahn had never mentioned, gambling that his master would not remember never having set such a price and that the price, was one that Lyt Ahn would have set, if he had indeed ever gotten around to doing so.

A lying beast, in Aalaag eyes, was an untrustworthy beast; and should therefore be destroyed. Somehow, this statement of his to Laa Ehon must be handled—but at the moment he had no idea how to do it. Perhaps, if he simply relaxed and put it deliberately out of his mind once more, a solution would come to him naturally…

He made a conscious effort to relax; and instinctively his released mind drifted off into its favorite fantasy—of an individual called The Pilgrim, who was at the same time himself, under the cover of being a translator-courier for Lyt Ahn; and who was also superior to all Aalaag, as they were superior to all ordinary humans. It was this familiar daydream that had caused him to choose the pilgrim image for the stick-figure he had drawn under the executed man.

The Pilgrim, he luxuriated in his dream, would wear the same anonymous garb in which Shane himself came and went among his fellow humans who, otherwise, catching him alone and away from Aalaags or the Interior Guard who policed them, would have torn him apart if they had known that he was one of those favored and employed by their masters.

The Pilgrim would be uncatchable and uncontrollable by the Aalaag. He would set their laws and their might at defiance. He would succor humans who had fallen afoul of those same alien rules and laws—as Shane had, by sheer luck more than anything else, managed to get Maria out of the clutches of the Milanese garrison.

Above all, The Pilgrim would bring home to the aliens the fact that they were not the masters of Earth that they thought themselves to be…

For a little while, as the courier ship dipped down toward its destination he let himself indulge in that fantasy, seeing himself as The Pilgrim with a power that put him above even Lyt Ahn, and all those other alien masters who made his insides go hollow every time they so much as looked at him.

Then he roused himself and shook it off. It was all right as a means to keep him sane; but it was dangerous, indulged in when he was actually under alien observation, as he was about to be within seconds. Besides, he could afford to put it aside for the moment. Five minutes from now he would be in the small cubicle that was his living quarters and he could think what he liked, including how to protect himself against Lyt Ahn’s discovery of either of his recent crimes.

The courier ship was now right over its destination. The landing spot to which it dropped was only a couple of hundred meters below, the rooftop of an enormous construction with only some twenty stories or so above ground but as many below, and covering several acres in area. Like all structures now taken over or built by the Aalaag, it gleamed; in this chill, thin November sunlight looking as if liquid mercury had been poured over it. That shining surface was a defensive screen or coating—Shane had never been able to discover which, since the Aalaag took it so for granted that they never spoke of it. Once in place, apparently, it needed neither renewal or maintenance.

Just as it seemed their ship must crash into the rooftop, a space of the silver surface vanished. Revealed were a flat landing area and a platoon of the oversized humans recruited as Ordinary Guards to the aliens. These stood, fully armed, under the command of an Aalaag officer who towered in full, white armor above the tallest of them. The officer was a male. Shane saw, the fact betrayed by the narrowness of his lower-body armor.

As the ship touched down, its port opened and Shane’s pilot stepped out. The Ordinary Guards at once fell back, leaving the Aalaag to come forward alone and meet the pilot. Shane, lost behind her powerful shape, had followed her out.

“Am Mehon, twenty-eighth rank,” the pilot introduced herself. “I return one of the First Captain’s cattle, at his orders–”

She half-turned to indicate, with the massive thumb of her left hand, Shane, who was standing a respectful two paces behind her and to her left.

“Aral Te Kinn,” the Aalaag on guard introduced himself. “Thirty-second rank…”

His armored head bent slightly, acknowledging the fact that the courier pilot outranked him by four degrees. But it would have bent no further for the First Captain, himself.

Theoretically all Aalaag were equal; and the lowest of them, when on duty, could give orders to the highest, if the other was not. Here, on the roof landing space of the House of Weapons, as the First Captain’s residence and headquarters were always called, the officer on guard, being in control of the area, was therefore in authority. Only courtesy dictated the slight inclination of his head.

“This beast is to report itself to the First Captain immediately,” he went on now. His helmet turned slightly, bringing its viewing slit to focus on Shane. “You heard me, beast?”

Shane felt a sudden, sickening emptiness in his stomach. Surely it was impossible that what he had done in Milan could have been found out and reported to his master this quickly? He shook off the sudden weakness. Of course it was impossible. But even with the sudden fear gone, he felt robbed of the anticipated peace and quiet of his cubicle, the chance to think and plan, he had been looking forward to. But there was no gainsaying the order.

“I heard and I obey, untarnished sir,” answered Shane in Aalaag, bending his own head in a considerably deeper bow.

He walked past the pilot and Aral Te Kinn toward the shed-like structure containing the drop pad that would lower him to his meeting with the alien overlord of all Earth. The tall humans who were the Ordinary Guards gazed down at him with faint contempt as their ranks parted to let him through. But Shane was by now so used to their attitudes to such as himself that he hardly noticed.

“…I had heard there were a rare few among these cattle who could speak the actual language as a real person does,” he could hear the pilot saying to Aral Te Kinn behind him, “but I’d never believed it until now. If it were not for the squeakiness of its high voice–”

Shane shut the door to the shed on the rest of her words and on the scene behind him, as he entered the structure. He stepped onto the round green disk of the drop pad.

“Subfloor twenty,” he told it, and the alien-built elevator obeyed, dropping him swiftly toward his destination, twenty floors beneath the surface of the surrounding city.

Its fall stopped with equal suddenness, and his knees bent under a deceleration that would not have been noticed by an Aalaag. He stepped forward into a wide corridor with black and white tiles on its polished floor, with walls and ceiling of a hard, uniformly gray material.

A male Aalaag officer sat at the duty desk opposite the elevator, engaged in conversation with someone in the communication screen set in the surface of the desk before him. Shane had halted at once after his first step out of the dropshoot and stood motionless, until the talk was ended and the Aalaag cut the connection, looking up at him.

“I am Shane Evert, translator-courier for the First Captain, untarnished sir,” said Shane as the pale, heavy-boned and expressionless, human-like face, under its mane of pure white hair, considered him. This particular alien had seen him at least a couple of hundred times previously; but most Aalaag were not good at distinguishing one human from another, even if the two were of opposite sexes.

The Aalaag continued to stare, waiting. “I have returned from a courier run,” Shane went on, “and the untarnished sir on duty at the roof parking area said I was ordered to report myself immediately to the First Captain.” The desk officer looked down and spoke again into his communications screen—checking, of course, on what Shane had said. Ordinarily, the movements of a single human would be of little concern to any Aalaag, but entrance to the apartments of the First Captain, along the corridor to Shane’s right, was a matter of unique security. Shane glanced briefly and longingly along the corridor in the opposite direction, toward his left, and his own distant quarters with those of the other translators, and such other private servants of Lyt Ahn, or his mate-consort, the female Adtha Or Ain.

Shane had been continuously on duty and in the presence of Aalaag for three days, culminating in that disastrous, if still secret, act of insanity he had given way to in Milan. His desire to return to his own quarters, to be alone, was like a living hunger in him, a desperate hunger to lock himself away in a place that for a moment would be closed off, away from all the daily terrors and orders; a place where he could at last put aside his constant fears and lick his wounds in peace.

“You may report as instructed.”

The voice of the Aalaag on duty behind the desk cut across his thoughts.

“I obey, untarnished sir,” he answered.

He turned to his right and went away down the long hall, hearing the clicking of his heels on the hard tiles underfoot echoing back from the unyielding walls. Along those walls at intervals of what would be not more than half a dozen strides for an Aalaag, hung long-weapons—equivalents of human rifles—armed and ready for use. But for all their real deadliness, they were there for show only, a part of the militaristic Aalaag culture pattern that justified the name of House of Weapons for this abode of Lyt Ahn.

A house of weapons it was indeed; but its military potency lay not in the awesomely destructive, by human standards, devices on its walls. Behind the silver protective screen that covered the building were larger mounted devices capable of leveling to slagged ruin the earth surrounding, to and beyond the horizon in all directions. For a moment Shane was reminded of what he had not thought of for years, of those human military units that in the first few days of the Aalaag landing on Earth had been foolish enough to try resisting the alien invasion. They had been destroyed almost without thought on the invaders’ part, like tiny hills of ants trodden underfoot by giants.

To any engine of destruction known to human science and technology, including the nuclear ones, even a single Aalaag in full battle armor was invulnerable. Against the least weapon carried by an individual Aalaag, no human army could, in the end, survive. Nor would an Aalaag weapon work in the hands of any but one of the aliens. It was not merely a matter of humans understanding how to activate it. There was also some built-in recognition by the weapon itself that it was not in alien hands, which in others turned it into no more than a dead piece of heavy material; at most, a weighty club.

Walking down the wide, high-ceilinged, solitary corridor where no other figures, human or alien, were to be seen, Shane felt coming over him once again a sensation he hated, but which he never seemed to be able to escape from here, the sense of shrinking that always took him over in this place.

It was a feeling like that which Swift’s hero, Lemuel Gulliver, had described in Gulliver’s Travels, as happening when he had found himself in the land of the giant Brobdingnagians. Like Gulliver, then, each time Shane found himself in this place, a time would come when he would begin to feel that it was the Aalaag and all their artifacts which were normal in size; while he, like all other humans and human creations, was shrunken to the scale of a pygmy. Shrunken, not only in a physical sense but in all other senses as well; in mind and spirit and courage and wisdom, in all those things that could make one race into something more than mere “cattle” to another.

He checked abruptly, passing a door that was uncharacteristically human-sized in one wall of that overlarge hall, and turned in through it to one of the few rooms on this corridor equipped to dispose of human waste. There would be no telling how long he might be in the presence of Lyt Ahn, and there would be no excusing himself then for physical or personal needs. No Aalaag would have dreamed of so excusing himself while on duty, and therefore no human servant might.

He stood before a urinal, emptying his bladder with a momentary sense of stolen freedom, only secondary to that which he yearned for in his own quarters. Here, too, for the moment, in theory he was free of Aalaag observation and rules, and the Gulliver-like sensation lifted, briefly.

But the moment passed. A minute later he was toy-sized again, back outside in the corridor, walking ever nearer to the entrance of Lyt Ahn’s private office.

He stopped at last before great double doors of bronze-colored material. With the tip of the index figure of his right hand, he lightly touched the smooth surface of the panel closest to him.

There was a pause. He could not hear, but he knew that within the office a sensor had recorded his touch as being that of a human and a mechanical voice was announcing that “a beast desires admittance.”

“Who?” came an Aalaag voice from the ceiling. Unusually, it was not that of an Aalaag secretary or aide but of Lyt Ahn himself.

“One of your cattle, most immaculate sir,” answered Shane. “Shane Evert, reporting as ordered, following a courier run to the immaculate sir in command at Milan, Italy.”

The right hand door swung open and Shane walked through it, into the office. Under a white ceiling as lofty as that of the hall, and large enough for a small ballroom by human standards, the gray-colored desk, the chairs, the couches standing on the rugless floor wearing the same black and white tiles, were all almost human in their design. Only the fact that they were all built to the scale of the eight-foot aliens made them different. That, and the fact that there was no padding or upholstery on any of them.

Lyt Ahn was indeed alone, seated, looming behind his desk; which held in its surface a screen like that in the desk of the officer in the corridor, plus a scattering of some small artifacts, each tiny enough to be encompassed in Shane’s merely human hand, but showing no recognizable shapes or purposes. In a like situation, on a human desk, they might have been miniature sculptures. But the Aalaag owned no art, nor showed interest in any. What they really were, and their purpose in being there, still puzzled him. On the wall to his right was a larger screen, now unlit, some three by two meters in area. In the left wall was an Aalaag-sized single door that led to Lyt Ahn’s private apartments.

Lyt Ahn raised his head to look at Shane as the human stepped through the doorway, taking one pace and then halting.

“Come here,” the alien commander said; and, both permitted and ordered—the words were one word in Aalaag—Shane came up to the far side of the desk.

The First Captain of all Earth gazed at him. Just as Aalaag had difficulty distinguishing between individual humans, so most humans, aside from the fact that they saw their overlords most commonly in armor and therefore faceless, were not adept at telling one Aalaag from another. Shane gazed back. He had been in close contact with the alien commander since Lyt Ahn had formed his corps of human interpreters, nearly three years before. Shane not only recognized the First Captain, he had become expert at studying the other for small clues to his master’s momentary mood. Like all subjects he was dependent, in this case dependent upon the First Captain not only for food and shelter, but for a continuance of life itself. He studied the First Captain daily, as a lamb might study the lion with which it was required to lie down each night; and just at the moment, he thought now that he read fatigue and a deep-seated worry, plus something else he could not identify, in the visage of the towering individual before him.

“Laa Ehon, of the fifth rank and Commander of the Milan garrison has received your sending, most immaculate sir, and sends his courtesies to the First Captain,” said Shane. “He returned no message by me.”

“Did he not, little Shane-beast?” said Lyt Ahn. Shane’s name was uttered in as close to an affectionate diminutive as the alien language allowed; but the words were obviously spoken more to himself than to the human.

Shane’s heart took an upward leap. Lyt Ahn was clearly in as warm and confidential a mood as it was possible for an Aalaag to be—and more so than Shane had ever seen any other alien permit himself. Nonetheless, there was also that impression of worry and some concern for an unknown source that he had noted on first entering the room; and he continued covertly to study the heavy-boned face opposite. There was a greater impression of age about his master than he had ever seen before, although the face was barely lined, as always; and there was no way that age could have made the hair of the Earth’s supreme commander any whiter than that of any other adult Aalaag—it would have been yellowish at birth, but purely snow-colored by puberty, which in the aliens seemed to come about the age of eighteen to twenty-five Earthly years.

Nor was there anything else different about the grayish eyes, in the pale Aalaag skin that never appeared to tan. With its great, sharp bones and pale color it gave the impression of being carved out of a soft, gray-white stone. But still, somehow it also managed to give Shane not only the impression of great age, but of that same weariness and emotion that currently seemed to be at work in the First Captain.

As Shane watched, the massive figure got slowly to its feet, walked around from behind its desk and sat down on one of the couches. The change of position was a signal that the meeting had now become informal. Lyt Ahn was dressed in black boots and a white, single-piece suit, like any other alien on duty. Shane turned as the other moved, in order to keep facing his master; and, after a moment, saw the eyes that had been more looking through him than otherwise focus once more directly upon him.

“Come here, Shane-beast,” said Lyt Ahn. Shane moved forward until he stood one step from the seated alien. Lyt Ahn studied him for a long moment. Their heads were on a level. Then, reaching out, he cupped an enormous hand gently, for a moment, over Shane’s head.

Shane checked his body from tensing just in time. Physical contact was almost unknown amongst the Aalaag themselves, and unheard of between Aalaag and human; but Shane had learned over the last two years that Lyt Ahn permitted himself freedoms beyond those generally used by those lesser in rank than himself. The large hand that could easily have crushed the bones of Shane’s skull rested lightly for a moment on Shane’s head and then was withdrawn.

“Little Shane-beast,” said Lyt Ahn—and unless it was his imagination it seemed to Shane that he heard in the Aalaag voice the same tiredness he had suspected in the First Captain’s face—“are you contented?”

There was no word in the Aalaag language for “happy.” “Contented” was the closest possible expression to it. Shane felt a sudden fear of an unknown trap in the question; and for a second he debated telling Lyt Ahn that he was, indeed, contented. But the Aalaag could accept nothing but truth; and the First Captain had always allowed his human interpreters a freedom of opinion no other Aalaag permitted.

“No, most immaculate sir,” Shane answered. “I would be contented only if this world was as it was before the untarnished race came among us.”

Lyt Ahn did not sigh. But Shane, used to the First Captain, and having studied him as only children, animals and slaves have always studied those who hold their life and every freedom in their hands, received the clear impression that the other would have sighed if he had only been physiologically and psychologically capable of doing so.

“Yes,” said the First Captain, absently looking through him once more, “your race makes unhappy cattle, true enough.”

Fear came back to Shane and chilled him to the bone. He told himself that Lyt Ahn could by no means have discovered this soon what he had done illegally in Milan: but the words the alien supreme commander had just now used came too close to his knowledge of guilt not to cause him to stiffen internally.

For a second he debated trying to entice Lyt Ahn to be more explicit about whatever had caused him to make such a remark. Ordinarily, a human did not speak unless ordered to do so. But the First Captain had always allowed Shane and the other translators unusual freedom in that respect. Shane checked, however, at the thought for two reasons. One, his uncertainty of how such a question could be phrased without offense; and two, a fear that if Lyt Ahn did indeed suspect him of some violation of proper conduct, any such asking would only confirm the suspicion.

He stood silent, therefore, and simply waited, in the helplessness of the totally dependent. Either Lyt Ahn would speak further, or the First Captain would dismiss him; and neither of these things could Shane control.

“Do you find your fellow cattle in any way different these days, Shane-beast?” asked Lyt Ahn.

Shane thought involuntarily of the small tenement room in Milan to which he had been kidnapped; and in which he had been held and questioned by those human revolutionaries who had innocently adopted as their symbol the rude sketch he had himself conceived of a year earlier, in a moment of drunken desperation—though that was not something they or any other, human or alien, could have known.

“No, most immaculate sir,” he answered; and felt the danger of his lie like a heavy weight in his chest.

There was another pause that could have been a sigh from Lyt Ahn.

“No,” said the alien commander, “perhaps…perhaps even if they were, it would not be such as you they would admit their feelings to. Your fellow cattle do not love those who work for us, do they, little Shane-beast?”

“No,” said Shane, truthfully and bitterly.

It was that very fact that required him to wear the pilgrim’s cloak and carry the pilgrim’s staff when he moved about the Earth on Lyt Ahn’s business. Among so many true wearers of that costume, it became a cloak of protective anonymity, particularly with the hood of the cloak pulled up over his head and shadowing his features. If he had betrayed the fact that he was actually a servant of the aliens, his life would literally have been in danger from his fellow humans, from the moment he was out of sight of an Aalaag, or one of the armed, human Interior Guards—who themselves did not dare go among the mass of ordinary humans without their uniforms and unarmed. Lyt Ahn was in a strange mood, with his mind off on some problem which at this moment was still unclear to Shane; but which had plainly directed his attention elsewhere than at Shane himself. It occurred to Shane suddenly that now might be an opportunity to cover his tracks in regard to the lesser matter of his having lied to Laa Ehon, the Aalaag commanding the Milan area, when that alien had asked him what price Lyt Ahn might put upon him.

“If the most immaculate sir pleases,” Shane said, “this beast was asked a question by the sir who is called Laa Ehon. The question was what price my master might put upon me.”

“So,” replied Lyt Ahn, his thoughts clearly still occupied with that primary concern Shane had noted in him. The First Captain’s response was in fact no response at all, merely an acknowledgment of the fact that he had heard what Shane had said. Shane allowed himself to hope.

“I answered,” said Shane, “that to the best of my knowledge, the most immaculate sir had valued all of his translator-beasts at half a possession of land”—Shane tried to keep his voice unchanged but for a fraction of a second his breath caught in his throat—“and the favor of my master.”

“So,” said Lyt Ahn, still in the same tone of voice.

He had heard, but clearly he had not heard. Internally, Shane felt the weakness of relief. The truth was that Lyt Ahn had never, to Shane’s knowledge, put any kind of price on Shane or any of the other humans in the translator section. Shane had gambled in answering Laa Ehon that the First Captain would not remember whether he had or not—and the gamble had now paid off. The half a possession of land, in what it represented in terms of Earthly territory according to Aalaag measurements, was a princely enough price for any single human beast. But the favor which Shane had mentioned meant far more. Effectively, its meaning was that in addition to any other price, the buyer could be called upon at any time in the future to return an as-yet unnamed favor to the seller, with a worth in direct proportion as the buyer envisaged its value. In theory, at least, the cost of buying Shane might include Lyt Ahn’s calling upon Laa Ehon sometime in the future for anything the other owned, up to and including his life.

A single musical note from the door leading to the private apartments of the First Captain interrupted the thoughts of both Shane and Lyt Ahn.

The door swung open to let in a second Aalaag. But this one was a female—and Shane recognized her with something close to panic. She was Adtha Or Ain, the consort of Lyt Ahn; and the panic arose from the fact that Shane was, for the first time in a long time, encountering a situation involving Aalaag mores with which he was not familiar. When, on rare occasions before this, he had to do with the consort of the First Captain, it had been with her alone; when he had been sent about the planet with one of her private messages.

His encounters with her had been purely formal and entirely conducted within the known code of behavior between Aalaag and human beast. On the other hand his private meetings with Lyt Ahn had largely come to be informal. There was no way of telling now how she would react to the informality he was used to being permitted by Lyt Ahn. On the other hand, it would raise the question of his disobeying Lyt Ahn’s authority if he suddenly reverted to the formal mode, after Lyt Ahn, by sitting down on the couch, had, in effect, ordered him to abandon it. There was no way for him to tell whether, if either should address him, he should respond in the formal or the informal mode. Either mode could be a response that would offend either Lyt Ahn or Adtha Or Ain.

Shane stood motionless and silent, praying that he would be ignored by both aliens. He studied Adtha Or Ain as he had studied Lyt Ahn earlier—and for the same reasons. There was something like a bitterness that he had always noted in her, but it had always seemed to be hard held under control. In this moment, however, that control seemed to have loosened. For the moment, his luck seemed to be holding. Lyt Ahn had risen from the couch and gone to meet Adtha Or Ain. They stopped, facing each other, an Aalaag arm’s length apart, looking into each other’s faces.

Adtha Or Ain was slightly the taller of the two; but, aside from that, if Shane had not come to recognize the sexual differences in Aalaag bodies, it would have been hard to tell the two apart. Their dress was identical. Only the slight individuality of their features, that individuality which Shane had finally taught himself to look for over these past years, and the difference in their voices, marked them apart. Adult Aalaag females, like human ones, tended to speak in somewhat higher voices than the males of their race—although the difference was nowhere near as marked as in humans—particularly in the case of an older Aalaag female like Adtha Or Ain, whose voice had deepened with age.

Now, the two stood facing each other. There was a tension between them that Shane sensed strongly, and with that sensing came another wave of relief. If these two would just stay completely concerned with each other, he would in effect be invisible—of no more importance to them than the furniture in the room; and the chances of either requiring an answer from him were almost nil. For the first time. Shane dared to look on them as an observer might, rather than as a potential victim of their meeting.

They did not touch. Nonetheless, Shane’s experience with the Aalaag, and elsewhere, let him read into their confrontation a closeness—“love” was a word that did not exist in the Aalaag language—which implied that, had they been humans, they might have touched. At the same time, however, Shane felt a sadness and an anger in Adtha Or Ain and a sort of helpless pity in Lyt Ahn.

The two ignored him.

“Perhaps,” said Lyt Ahn, “you should rest.”

“No,” said Adtha Or Ain. “Rest is no rest to me, at times like this.”

“You make yourself suffer unnecessarily.”

She turned aside and walked around the First Captain. He turned also to look after her. She went to the wall bearing the large screen; and although Shane could not see her make any motion to turn it on, it woke to light and image before her, the starkness of what it showed dominating the room.

The three-dimensional shape on it was the last that Shane could have imagined. It was of an adult male Aalaag, without armor, but carrying all personal weapons and encased in a block of something brownishly transparent, like a fly in amber.

It was only after he got past his first shock of seeing it and began to examine it in detail that he noticed two unusual things. One was that there was a faintish yellow tinge to the roots of the white hair on the head of the encased Aalaag, and the second—it was unbelievable, but the Aalaag shown was alive, if completely helpless.

He could see the pupils of gray eyes move minutely, as he watched. They were focused on something that seemed to be outside the scene imaged on the screen. Other expression there was none—nor could there be any, since the face, like all the rest of the body, was imprisoned and held immobile by the enclosing material.

“No,” said Lyt Ahn behind him.

Shane’s ears, sharpened by over two years of servitude, heard that rare thing, a note of emotion in an Aalaag voice; and, faint as it was, he read it clearly as a note of pain. Those years of attuning himself to the moods of the First Captain had finally created a bond that was all but empathic between them; and his own emotions felt Lyt Ahn’s in this moment without uncertainty.

“I must look at it,” said Adtha Or Ain, standing before the screen.

Lyt Ahn took three steps forward, moving up behind her. His two great hands reached out part way toward her shoulders and then fell back to his sides.

“It’s only a conception,” he said. “A mock-up. You’ve no reason for assuming it represents reality. Almost certainly no such thing has happened. Undoubtedly he and his team are dead, destroyed utterly.”

“But perhaps he is like this,” said Adtha Or Ain, without turning her head from the screen. “Maybe they have him so, and will keep him so for thousands of lifetimes. I will have no more children. I had only this one, and perhaps this is how he is now.”

Lyt Ahn stood, saying nothing. She turned to face him. “You let him go,” she said.

“You know—as I know,” he answered. “Some of us must keep watch on the Inner Race who stole our homes, in case they move again and the movement is in this direction. He was my son—my son as well as yours—and he wanted to be one of those to go and check.”

“You could have denied him. I asked you to order him to stay. You did not.”

“How could I?”

“By speaking.”

Shane had never before seen emotion at this level between two of the normally expressionless Aalaagi and he felt like someone tossed about in a hurricane. He could not leave; but to stay and listen was all but unbearable. Against his will, the empathic response he had so painstakingly developed to the feelings of Lyt Ahn was at him now with a pain he felt at second hand, pain he could not understand or do anything about.

“In a thousand lifetimes,” she said, “a thousand lifetimes and more, they made no sign of moving again. They only wanted our worlds, our homes; and once they had them they were content enough. We all know that. Why send our children back to what’s theirs now—so that they can catch them and make toys for themselves of our flesh and blood—make a toy and a thing of my son?”

“There was no choice,” said Lyt Ahn. “Could I protect my son before others—when he’d asked to go?”

“He was a child. He didn’t know.”

“It was his duty. It was my duty—and your duty—to let him go. So the Aalaag survive. You know your duty. And I tell you again, you’ve no way of knowing he’s not at peace, safely dead and destroyed. You make yourself a nightmare of the one most unlikely thing that could happen.”

“Prove it to me.” Adtha Or Ain said. “Send an expedition to find out.”

“You know I can’t. Not yet. We’ve only held this world three of its years. It’s not properly tamed, yet. The crew, the needs for the expedition you want aren’t to spare.”

“You promised me.”

“I promised to send an expedition as soon as team and materials were to spare.”

“And it’s been three years, and still you say there’re none.”

“None for only a possibility—none for what may be nothing more than a nightmare grown in your own mind. As soon as I can in duty and honor spare people for something of that level, the expedition will go. I promise you. It will bring back the truth of what happened to our son. But not yet.”

She turned from him.

“Three years,” she said.

“These beasts are not like some on other worlds we’ve taken. I’ve done with this planet as much as I might, given the force I had to work with. No one could do more. You are unfair, Adtha Or Ain.”

Silently, she turned, crossed the room once more and passed back through the doorway by which she had entered. Its doors closed behind her.

Lyt Ahn stood for a moment, then looked at the screen. It went blank and gray once more. He turned and went to sit down again at his desk, touching the smaller screen inset in it and apparently returning to the work he had been doing when Shane had come in.

Shane continued to stand, unmoving. He stood, and the minutes went by. It was not unusual that a human should have to hold his place indefinitely, waiting for the attention of an Aalaag; and Shane was trained to it. But this time his mind was a seething, bewildered mass. He longed for the First Captain to remember he was there and do something about him.

A very long time later, it seemed, Lyt Ahn did lift his head from his screen and his eyes look notice of Shane’s presence. “You may go,” he said. His gaze was back on the desk screen before the words had left his lips.

Shane turned and left.

He went back down the long corridor, past the Aalaag officer still on duty at the desk and, after some distance, to the door of his own cubicle. Opening that door at last, he saw, seated in the room’s single armchair by the narrow bed, a human figure. It was one of the other translators, a brown-haired young woman named Sylvia Onjin. “I heard you were back,” she told him. He made himself smile at her. How she had heard did not matter. There was an informational grapevine, among all humans in the House of Weapons, that operated entirely without reference to whether the giver and receiver of information were personally on good terms. It was to the benefit of all humans in the House that as much as possible be known about the activities of both Aalaag and humans there.

Probably, word of his return had been passed through the ranks of the Interior Guards, either directly to the corps of translators, or by way of one of the other groups of human specialists personally owned and used by the First Captain.

What did matter was that now, of all times, was not a moment in which he wanted to see her—or anyone. The need for privacy was so strong in him that he felt ready to break down emotionally and mentally if he did not have it. But he could not easily tell her to go.

The humans owned by Lyt Ahn, being picked beasts and therefore of good quality, were encouraged to intermingle; and even to mate and have young if they wished, although Aalaag mores stood in the way of the aliens making any specific command or order that they do so. Only the Interior Guard welcomed the idea of being parents under these conditions. None of those in the translator ranks had any desire to perpetuate their kind as slaves of the aliens. But still, sheer physical and emotional hungers drew individuals together.

Sylvia Onjin and Shane had been two so drawn. They had no real lust or love for each other in the ordinary senses of those words. Only, they found each other slightly more compatible than either found others of the human opposite sex in the House of Weapons. In the world as it had been before the Aalaag came, Shane thought now, if they two had met they would almost undoubtedly have parted again immediately with no great desire to see more of each other. But in this place they clung instinctively together.

But the thought of Sylvia’s company, now, when his mind was in turmoil and his emotions had just been stretched to a breaking-point, was more than Shane could face. At best, it was only an act he and she played together, a pretense that erected a small, flimsy and temporary private existence for them both; away from the alien-dominated world that held their lives and daily actions in its indifferent hand. Also, now, after Shane’s encounter with the other young woman, the one called Maria, whom he had saved from questioning by the Aalaag, and who had been a member of the Milanese resistance group that had later kidnapped him, there was something about Sylvia that almost repelled him, the way a tamed animal might suffer in comparison with one still wild and free.

But the narrow face of Sylvia smiled confidently back up at him. Her smile was her best feature; and in the days before the Aalaag she might have emphasized her other good features with makeup to the point where she could have been considered attractive, if not seductive. But the aliens classed lipstick and all such other beauty aids with that uncleanliness they were so adamant in erasing from any world they owned. To an Aalaag, a woman with makeup on had merely dirtied her face. Ordinary humans, in private, might indulge in such actions, but not those human servants which the Aalaag saw daily.

So Sylvia’s face was starkly clean, pale-looking under her close-cropped, ordinary brown hair. It was a small-boned face. She was a woman of one hundred and thirty-four centimeters in height—barely over five feet, a corner of Shane’s western mind automatically calculated—and narrow-bodied even for that height. Her figure was unremarkable, but not bad for a woman in her early twenties. Like Shane himself she had been a graduate student when the Aalaag landed.

She sat now with her legs crossed, the skirt of the black taffeta cocktail dress she had put on lifted by the action to reveal her knees. In her lap was a heavy-looking, cylindrical object about ten inches long wrapped in white documentary paper, held in place by a narrow strip of such paper wrapped around its neck, formed into a bow and colored red, apparently by some homemade substance, since such a thing as red tape—let alone the red ribbon the paper strip was evidently intended to mimic—was not something which the Aalaag would find any reason for allowing.

“Happy homecoming!” She held it out to him.

He stepped forward automatically and took it, making himself smile back at her. He could feel through the paper, that it was obviously a full bottle of something. He hardly drank, as she knew—there was too much danger of making some mistake in front of their owners if some unexpected call to duty should come—but it was about the only gift available for any of them to give each other. He held it, feeling how obvious the falseness of his smile must be. The image of Maria was still between them—but then suddenly it cleared and it was as if he saw Sylvia unexpectedly wiped clean of all artifice, naked in her hopes and fears as in the pretensions with which she strove to battle those fears.

His heart turned suddenly within him. It was a physical feeling like a palpable lurch in his chest. He saw Sylvia clearly for the first time and understood that he could never betray her, could never deny help to her in this or any like moment. For all that, there was not even the shadow of real love between them. He felt his smile become genuine and tender as he looked down at her; and he felt—not the actual love for which she yearned, or even the pretense of it, for which she was willing to settle—but a literal affection that was based in the fact that they were simply two humans together in this alien house.

Not understanding the reasons for it, but instinctively recognizing the emotion that had come into him, she rose suddenly and came into his arms; and he felt a strong gush of tenderness, such as he had never felt before in his long months in this place of weapons, that made him hold her tightly to him.

Later, lying on his back in the darkness, the slight body of Sylvia sleeping contentedly beside him, he was assaulted by an unexpected tidal wave of self-pity that washed over him and threatened to drown him. He fought it off; and after a while he, too, slept.

He was roused from deep slumber by the burring of his bedside phone. He reached out toward it and the action triggered to life the light over the nightstand where the square screen of the phone sat. He touched the screen and the face of an Aalaag above the collar of a duty officer appeared on it.

“You are ordered to attend the First Captain, beast,” said the officer’s deep remote voice. “Report to him in the Council Conference Room.”

“I hear and obey, untarnished sir,” Shane heard his own voice, still thick with sleep, answering.

The screen went blank, leaving a silvery gray, opaque surface. Shane rose and dressed. Sylvia was already gone and the chronometer by his bed showed that the hour was barely past dawn.

Twenty minutes later, shaven, clean and dressed, he touched the bronze surface of the door to the Council Conference Room.

“Come,” said the voice of Lyt Ann.

The door opened itself and he entered to find twelve Aalaag, five males and seven females, seated around the floating, shimmering surface that served them as a conference table. Lyt Ahn sat at the far end. On his right was Laa Ehon, the Commander for the area capitaled in Milan, Italy; and for a second a dryness tightened Shane’s throat as he remembered his secret crimes against that officer and his Command. But then common sense reasserted itself. No such august assemblage would be convened only to deal with the criminal acts of a simple beast; and his tension slackened. He looked down the table surface toward the First Captain and waited for orders. He had halted instinctively, from custom, two paces inside the opened door; and the twelve powerful alien faces were studying him as just-fed lions might study some small animal that had wandered into the midst of their pride.

“This is the one you spoke of?” asked the female Aalaag closest on Lyt Ann’s left and second down the table from him.

Her voice had the depth of age and it came to Shane that she—in fact, all the aliens here—would be officers of no lower than the fifth rank. Otherwise they would not have been called into a Council such as this. He wondered what District the speaker commanded. She was no alien he recognized.

“It is one of the cattle I call Shane-beast,” said Lyt Ahn. “It is the one I sent only the day before yesterday to Laa Ehon with communications.”

He turned to look at the Commander of the Milanese area.

“I’m still uncertain as to how you think his presence here can contribute to the discussion,” he went on to Laa Ehon.

“Order it to speak,” replied Laa Ehon.

“Identify yourself and your work,” Lyt Ahn said to Shane.

“By your command, immaculate sir,” said Shane clearly. “I am a translator and courier of your staff and have been so for nearly three of our planet’s years.”

There was a moment’s silence around the table.

“Remarkable,” said the female Aalaag on Lyt Ahn’s right, who had spoken earlier.

“Exactly,” put in Laa Ehon. “Notice how perfectly it speaks the true language—all of you who are so used to the limited mouthings of your beasts, when they can be brought to attempt to communicate in real speech at all.”

“It’s one of a special, limited corps of the creatures, all of whom have been selected for special ability in this regard,” said Lyt Ahn. “I’m still waiting to hear how you think, Laa Ehon, that its presence here can contribute to our discussion.”

“‘Special,’” echoed Laa Ehon. The single sound of the word in the Aalaag tongue was completely without emphasis.

“As I said,” replied Lyt Ahn.

Laa Ehon turned his head to the First Captain, inclined it in a brief gesture of respect, and then turned back to look around the table at the others there.

“Let’s return to the matter in hand, then,” Laa Ehon said. “I asked for this meeting because it’s been three local years approximately since our Expedition to this world first set down upon it. That length of time has now passed and certain signs of adjustments to our presence here, in the attitudes of the local dominant race, that should by now be showing themselves have not done so–”

“The incidence of yowaragh among the beasts,” interrupted the female who had spoken before, “isn’t that much above the norm for such a period. Granted, no two situations on any two acquired worlds are ever the same–”

“Granted exactly that,” Laa Ehon reinterrupted in his turn, “it is not yowaragh with which I am primarily concerned, but a general failure on the part of the cattle to keep production levels as expected. Past Expeditions on other worlds have found such a slump in production in their early years, but always it’s turned out in the end to be caused by depression in the beasts at finding themselves governed—even though that governing has resulted for them in a safer, cleaner world—as it has here. On this world, however, it is something much more like silent defiance than depression with which we seem to be dealing. I repeat, it is this, not incidents of yowaragh, with which I am concerned.”

A cold shiver threatened to emerge from its hiding place in the center of Shane’s body and betray itself as a visible tremor. With a great effort, he held it under control, reminding himself that the aliens here were not watching him. For the moment, once more, he had become invisible, in the same sense that the furniture and the walls of the room about them were invisible.

“…It is,” Laa Ehon’s voice drew his attention back to what the Milanese Commander was saying to the rest of the table, “a matter of hard statistics. May I remind the untarnished and immaculate officers here assembled that the preliminary survey of this world, carried on over several decades of the planet’s time, gave no intimation of such an attitude or such a potential falling off of production. The projection gave us instead every reason to believe that the local dominant race should be tameable and useful in a high degree; especially when faced with the alternative of giving up the level of civilization they had so far achieved; and on which, in so many ways, they had become dependent. Remember, they were given a free choice and they chose the merciful alternative.”

“I’ve never been quite sure, Laa Ehon,” put in Lyt Ann from the head of the table, “about the accuracy of that adjective for the alternative. It doesn’t seem to me that I can bring to mind a single incident in which a race of conquered cattle believed the alternative they had chosen to be one deserving of the word ‘merciful.’”

“It was clear they understood at the time of takeover, First Captain,” said Laa Ehon, “even if your corps of translators had not yet been established. I remember there was no doubt that they understood that their choice was between accepting the true race as their masters, or having all their cities and technology reduced to rubble, leaving them at their original level of stone-chipping savages. How can that alternative not have been merciful when they also clearly understood that we also had the power to eradicate each and every one of them from the face of their planet, but chose not to use it?”

“Well, well,” said Lyt Ann, “perhaps you’re right. In any case, let’s avoid side issues. Please get to whatever point you were going to make.”

“Of course, First Captain,” said Laa Ehon.

The words were said mildly enough; but for the first time it exploded in Shane’s mind what he suddenly realized he should have sensed from the first: and that was that there was a power struggle going on in this room, at this table.

And the antagonists were Laa Ehon and Lyt Ahn.

Immediately the realization was born in him, his mind was ready with excuses for its not being obvious to him minutes before. Even six weeks ago, he told himself, he would not have recognized the subtle signals of such a conflict, blinded by an unquestioning assumption that his master’s supreme position among the Aalaag was unquestioned and unassailable. But now those same signals leaped out at him. They were everywhere, in the tone of the voices of those speaking, in the attitudes with which the various officers sat in their places about the table—in the very fact Laa Ehon could request that Lyt Ahn have Shane himself brought here; and then delay this long in giving his full reasons why he had requested it.

Shane had not read those signals more swiftly because he had been too secure in his belief in Lyt Ann’s authority. Only now, the curious small freedoms allowed him by the First Captain, as well as the momentary Aalaag-uncharacteristic confidences and transient betrayals of emotion on the part of the ruling officer should have prepared him for this moment of understanding, but had not.

Lyt Ahn, he suddenly realized, was vulnerable. The First Captain had to be vulnerable in this sense. Shane had come to understand how the Aalaag lived by tradition and the mores developed by that tradition. Tradition and those mores could not have failed to provide means for removing a supreme commander who became incapable or proved himself inept. Just how such a procedure would work, Shane as yet had no idea. But of this he was suddenly, utterly convinced. Lyt Ahn was under attack here and now; and Laa Ehon was either the attacker or the spearhead of that attack.

As for the others present… Shane was reminded of the social patterns of a wolf pack. All those there would follow unquestioningly the Alpha leader—who was Lyt Ahn—right up until the moment when his leadership was seriously brought into question. Then, if that question was not effectively answered, they would turn to follow the questioner and aid him in rending their former leader. But, if it was effectively answered, then the questioner would lose all support from them—until the next time of questioning. It was that moment of doubt in which the majority would swing behind the questioner that Lyt Ahn must foresee and avoid.

“…I have requested this meeting,” Laa Ehon was saying, “primarily because of my own difficulties in meeting production estimates with the cattle of my area; and hoping that my fellow senior officers could suggest ways by which I might improve the situation. I must admit, however, that it begins to appear to me lately that the problems I notice are not restricted to my district alone, but reflect a general problem of attitude which is worldwide—and may even be growing—among the subject beasts.”

“It seems to me,” broke in a thick-chested male Aalaag halfway down the table on Lyt Ahn’s right, “that what you say almost approaches insult to the rest of us. Laa Ehon, are you saying we others have failed to notice something that you’ve clearly seen?”

“I did not say, or imply, that I had seen anything with particular clearness,” said Laa Ehon. “I’m only attempting to point to the importance of something you must all have already noticed—the discrepancy between the original estimates of beast-adjustment to our presence in the time since our landing, and the actuality of that adjustment. I believe there’s cause for concern in that discrepancy.”

“We’ve been following the patterns established by successful subjugations on other worlds in the past,” said another of the female Aalaag, one whose face showed the hollowness of age beneath her cheekbones. “It is true, as Maa Alyn just said, that each world is different, each race of beasts different–”

“And some, a rare few such races, have even turned out to be failures,” said Laa Ehon.

A feeling of shock permeated the conference, perceptible to Shane where it might not have been to any other human, even another one of the special handful of humans employed by Lyt Ahn; the expressions of the Aalaag officers there had not changed at Laa Ehon’s last words. There had been only an unnaturally prolonged moment of unnatural silence; but Shane was sure he had read it correctly.

“It seems to me, Laa Ehon,” said Lyt Ahn, finally breaking that silence, his heavy voice sounding strangely loud in the room, “that you’re holding back something it’s in your mind to tell us. Did you ask for this conference merely to air a concern, or have you some special suggestion for us?”

“I have a suggestion,” said Laa Ehon.

He turned to look again at Shane, and the eyes of the others at the table followed the changed angle of his gaze.

“I suggest that the situation here—insofar as it reflects a delay in beast-adjustment to our presence—calls for some actions which must necessarily break to some small extent with the patterns of successful subjugation mentioned by Maa Alyn—”

He glanced toward and inclined his head slightly toward the elderly Aalaag female who had recently spoken.

“I suggest,” he went on, “that we vary that pattern—oh, in no large way, but experimentally, by attempting to counter this marking on walls we’ve all been seeing in our districts, this evidence of some rebellious feeling among a few of these beasts—”

—A chill passed through Shane. Clearly now, Laa Ehon was talking of the activities of foolish and doomed underground groups like Maria’s in Milan; and the marking was equally clearly his sketch of the pilgrim figure.

“Such things,” said the thick-chested Aalaag, “are familiar, even expected, during the early years of the subjugation of any race of beasts. Such defacements cease as succeeding generations adapt to serving our purposes, and forget the resentments of their forebearers. This is far too soon to see a problem in a few rogue creatures.”

“I beg to disagree,” said Laa Ehon. “We know that, of course, the beasts communicate among themselves. This one standing before us now may be aware of more discontent among its race than we suspect–”

“You suggest we put it to the question?” inquired the female Aalaag called Maa Alyn, who had been the first to reply to Laa Ehon; and the chill within Shane became a solid iciness of fear.

“If I may interrupt,” said the heavy voice of Lyt Ahn, almost sardonically, “the beast in question is my property. Moreover, it is an extremely valuable beast, as are all the talented small handful like it that I keep and use. I would not agree to its being questioned to destruction, without adequate proof of need.”

“Of course I don’t suggest the damaging of such a valuable beast, particularly one which is the property of the First Captain, and which I myself have seen to be so useful.” Laa Ehon turned back to face Lyt Ahn. “In fact, quite the contrary. I only asked the beast be produced in order to illustrate a point I think is important to us all. With all due respect, First Captain, I’ve yet to be convinced that what this beast does can’t also be done by at least a large number of its fellow beasts, if not most of them. Certainly, if they have the physical vocal apparatus which can correctly approximate the sounds of the true speech—or even approach those sounds understandably—and their minds have the ability to organize that speech in coherent and usable fashion, one almost has to assume this to be a property common to their species as a whole.”

“I can only assure you,” said Lyt Ahn, with a touch of formality in his voice, “that this isn’t the case. There seems to be something more necessary—a conceptual ability, rare among them. At my orders many such cattle were tested and only the few I use here were found capable on a level with this one you see before you. In fact, this particular beast is the most capable of all those I own. None speaks as accentlessly as this one.”

“Far be it from me to differ with you, First Captain and immaculate sir,” said Laa Ehon. “You are informed on this subject and I’m not. Nevertheless, as I have pointed out, faced as we are with a problem of adjustment on the part of this species–”

“–As you have continued to point out to us, untarnished sir,” said the thick-chested Aalaag, “almost to the point of weariness since we first sat down together here.”

“If I have overemphasized the point,” said Laa Ehon, “I apologize for that to the immaculate and untarnished persons here assembled. It merely seemed to me that enunciating the point is necessary as a preamble to stating my personal belief; and that is that under the circumstances it’s worth exploring even some unorthodox solutions to the problem, since it threatens to diminish world-wide production by these beasts. A production, which I don’t need remind any of us, that is important, not merely to us on this planet, but to all our true people on all the worlds we have taken over; not only for our present survival, but for the protection of the immaculate people as a whole in case the inner race that stole our home worlds originally should make another move, this time in this direction.”

“As you say,” murmured the voice of Lyt Ahn. “you don’t need to remind us of that. What exactly is this suggestion of yours, then?”

“Simply,” said Laa Ehon, “I propose we depart from standard procedure and set up specific beasts as governors in our respective districts, holding them responsible for the production of the cattle in their districts; and allowing them to use other cattle as subsidiary officers to set up their own structures of authority to guarantee such production.”

“Absolutely against standard procedure,” said the thick-chested officer, promptly.

“Indeed,” said Maa Alyn, leaning her body slightly forward to stare down the tabletop directly at Laa Ehon, “those who’ve gone before us have found by hard experience that the best way to handle native cattle is to give them all possible freedoms of custom and society according to what they have been used to, but never to allow individuals among them power as intermediaries between ourselves and the rest of the beasts. Whenever we’ve set up intermediaries of their own race like that, between us and them, corruption on the part of their officials has almost invariably occurred. Moreover, resentment is born among the general mass of the cattle; and this, in the end, costs us more than the original gains achieved by using intermediaries.”

“I seem to remember something just said, however,” answered Laa Ehon, “about each world and each race upon it being a different and unique problem. The recalcitrance shown by the local cattle as a whole on this particular world of ours, as shown by the statistics, are of an order above those shown on any previous world we have taken over. It’s true there’s been no show of overt antagonism on the part of the general mass of cattle—yet, at least. But on the other hand, it would be hard to show any except our directly used beasts, such as those in the Interior Guard, or this translator-courier corps of the First Captain, who can be said sincerely to have made a full and proper adaptation to us, as their owners and rulers.”

“That doesn’t mean your proposal is the correct solution to the problem,” put in a male Aalaag who had not spoken before. He sat little more than a meter from Shane’s right hand, at the extreme far end of the table from Lyt Ahn.

“Of course,” answered Laa Ehon. “I recognize the danger of making any large changes—let alone ones that go against established procedure—without having adequate data first. Therefore, what I’m actually suggesting is that certain measures be put into effect on a trial basis.”

He tapped the tabletop before him and screens alit with data in the Aalaag script appeared in it before each alien there.

“I’ve had surveys made,” he went on, “and you see the results of them on the screens before you. I’ve also had hard copies delivered to your offices by available underofficers of mine. You’ll note my survey turned up three districts best suited to the putting into effect of temporary test procedures to see if my estimations are correct. Two were island areas; one being what the cattle formerly called the Japanese Islands, the other called the British Islands. There are advantages of homogeneity and diversity in each case. Of these two, the British Islands seems the better prospect–”

“These islands, of course, are within my district,” said Maa Alyn, stiffly. “But you also mentioned, I think, three—not two—areas as being possibly suitable as testing areas?”

“I did,” said Laa Ehon. “However, the third area, according to my surveys, would be this one surrounding the House of Weapons; and I didn’t think we’d want to make any experiments that close to our prime seat of authority, even if the First Captain would give permission… as, of course, I would expect to wait upon your permission, Maa Alyn. before proposing to experiment in the area of the British Islands.

There was a murmur around the table that seemed to Shane to express diverse opinions.

“So,” went on Laa Ehon, ignoring the sound, “what I would like to suggest, with the concurrence of this Council and everyone concerned, is to set up a temporary governing structure such as I described earlier; monitored directly by us, with an officer of the true race supervising and working in parallel with each individual beast who is in a position of intermediate authority as governor.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I see a great many difficulties…” began Maa Alyn.

“Frankly, I do myself,” said Laa Ehon. “This is unknown territory to all of us. For one thing, as has been pointed out, any tendencies for the beast-governor and his staff to take advantage of their positions over their fellow cattle would be difficult for us to see and check promptly. This, however—it has recently occurred to me and this was why I asked our First Captain to send for the beast who stands before us now—could be greatly helped by requiring all beast-governor staff to have contact with their supervisory numbers of the true race in the real language.”

“But such a condition would need that the beast-governor, to say nothing of his staff, be not merely adequate, but fluent, in the true language–” the thick-chested Aalaag broke off suddenly. “Are you proposing that the First Captain lend his corps of translators to this task? If so, that immaculate sir would of course have to volunteer them for the duty. There is no way in honor this Council could suggest–”

“Not at all—not at all,” said Laa Ehon. “I was merely about to suggest that the beasts chosen to be governor and staff be put first through an intensive course of teaching, to make them fluent in the true language, using as teachers—if the First Captain agrees—some of his translators such as the beast before us—and, of course, provided that my overall suggestion meets with the approval of the Council. The intent would be to produce cattle who’d be able to explain themselves clearly to their own kind while still being clear and understandable in their reports to ourselves, thereby making for a strong, plain link of understanding between us and the mass of cattle in general.”

“I have already said,” put in Lyt Ahn, “that it is only the rare beast that can be taught to speak with such adequate clearness. The evidence for this is in the efforts I mentioned, to which I was put in staffing this particular corps of beast-translators and couriers, to which you refer and of which the beast now present is an example.”

“It seems to me we lose nothing by trying,” said Laa Ehon.

“We stand to lose something by trying,” said Lyt Ahn, “if what we are trying is foredoomed to a failure that may make us look ridiculous in the eyes of our beasts.”

“Of course,” said Laa Ehon, “but at the same time I find it hard to believe that what this handful you use as translators can do, others of their kind can’t also be brought to do. The idea flies in the face of logic and reason. What is hypothesized to be missing from those who, according to your experience, are incapable of being taught to use the true language clearly?”

“Exactly what the blocking factor is, we’ve never been able to discover,” answered Lyt Ahn. “Would you care to question the beast we have present?”

“Ask a beast?” said Laa Ehon; and experience made Shane perceptive enough to catch the evidence of shock and surprise, not only in Laa Ehon, but in the others about the table.

“As you have said,” replied Lyt Ahn, “it’ll do no harm to explore any and all possibilities; and this beast might, indeed, be able to provide you with some information or insight.”

“The suggestion is a–” Laa Ehon hesitated, obviously searching for a way of putting what he wanted to say in words that would not fall into the category of insult to his First Captain, but would still express his reaction to such a suggestion, “–far-fetched idea.”

“What have you to lose?” said Lyt Ahn; and a murmur of agreement ran around the table. Laa Ehon’s expression showed no change, but Shane guessed that the Milanese Commander was seething with anger, within. He turned and his eyes met Shane’s.

“Beast,” he said, “can you offer any information as to why a majority of your species cannot be taught to speak the true language as well as you, yourself, have come to?”

“Immaculate sirs and dames—” Shane’s voice sounded high-pitched and strange in his own ears after the deep tones of those around the table, “it is a characteristic of our species that during our first few years of life at a time when our pups are learning how to speak that their capability for so learning is very great. In the years just before the untarnished race came among us, it had been established that our young could learn as many as four or five different variants of our tongue, simultaneously; but that this facility was lost for most beasts by the time these young were five to eight years of age. Only a fortunate few of us keep that ability; and it’s been from such fortunate few that the First Captain’s corps of translator-couriers has been drawn.”

There was a moment of silence—a long moment.

“I don’t think I’m completely ready to believe this without independent substantiation,” said Laa Ehon. “It’s well known that, unlike ourselves, these subject races use the lie quite commonly. Moreover, even when they do not consciously lie, they can be ignorant or subject to superstitions. The point this beast has just made, that the language learning ability of his race is largely lost after the first five to eight years of their life, may be a lie, the result of ignorance, or simply belief in a superstition that has no real basis in fact.”

“I,” said Lyt Ahn from the far end of the table, heavily, “am inclined to believe this Shane-beast—such being its name. I’ve had much contact with it over the last two years and always found it truthful, as well as remarkably lacking in ignorance for one of its species, and not superstitious… even in the meaning of that term as understood by our own race.”

“If what the beast says is true, however,” put in Maa Alyn, “there’d be no point in trying your experiment, Laa Ehon.”

Laa Ehon turned toward her.

“When were the plans of the untarnished race ever made or changed upon the basis of input from one of the subject species?” he said. “I mean no disrespect to the First Captain; but the fact remains the beast here may be mistaken, or may not know what we or it are talking about. We should hardly make any decision here on an unsupported faith in its possible correctness.”

“True enough,” murmured another female, who had not spoken before. “True enough.”

“What’s been said here does suggest one thing, however,” said Laa Ehon, “and that’s that we should begin immediately, on the chance that the beast is correct, to put some of the young beasts to exposure to the true language. Then, if this one is correct, we may breed up a generation which takes advantage of this early language ability of theirs, if such actually exists. Certainly, nothing can be lost by trying.”

A mutter of agreement sounded around the table, interrupted once more by the heavy voice of Lyt Ahn.

“Am I correct then?” the First Captain said, looking around the table. “At least a number of you are agreeable to taking young beasts into your households and keeping them more or less continuously with you?”

There was a silence.

“A nurse-beast, of course,” said Laa Ehon, “could be detailed to take care of each young creature. The young one would no more be in the way, then, under such circumstances, than the adult beasts are when we use them for various duties. The only requirement would be that the nurse-beast keep the infant creature in position to overhear as much of our speech as possible.”

“I think Laa Ehon may have the answer,” Maa Alyn said. “I can’t see any flaws in his reasoning.”

“Nor can I—but I am a member of the true race,” said Lyt Ahn, “However, perhaps it would be wise for the untarnished and immaculate individuals here assembled to check first with the representative of the beasts we have with us at the moment—in case there might be some unseen flaw in this course? It’s always possible that there are pitfalls in it perceptible to one of the species, but which none of us have observed.”

Once more, Shane found the eyes of all the Aalaag there turned upon him.

“Beast,” said Maa Alyn, “we have been discussing the possibilities of raising some of your young with early exposure to true language, assuming this theory of yours for early aptitude for the learning of it is a fact–”

“You need not recap, Maa Alyn,” interrupted Lyt Ahn. “I can assure you that this Shane-beast has overheard and understood all we’ve been saying.”

There was a strange, almost startled silence around the table. Almost as if it had been suggested that there was a spy in their midst. Shane realized that, with the exception of Lyt Ahn, all those there had until that moment not really made the connection between his knowledge of their language and the fact he would be able not only to follow but to understand all that they had been saying to each other. Comprehension of that fact clashed violently with their habit of ignoring the underraces.

“Well then, Shane-beast, since the First Captain assures us that’s your name,” said Laa Ehon after a second. “Have you any comment on our plan to raise some young of your species where they can overhear the true language being spoken, during their receptive years of growth?’’

“Only,” answered Shane, “if the immaculate sir pleases, that I believe if you follow the plan as you have outlined it, the result will be that these young of my species will understand Aalaag, but not necesarily be able to speak it.”

He hesitated, He had been given no order to volunteer information. To do so would be greatly daring. But that lack was almost immediately remedied.

“Go on, Shane-beast,” said Lyt Ahn from the head of the table. “If you have any suggestions to make, make them.”

“Yes, make them,” said Laa Ehon, his black eyes glittering on Shane. “The most immaculate First Captain seems to feel there may be a flaw in our reasoning which you might have discerned.”

“I might merely suggest,” said Shane, picking his way as carefully through the alien vocabulary as through a mine field, in search of words which would at once be absolutely truthful but at the same time carry his meaning without implying any pretense to equality, or possible offense, “a danger could lie in the fact that you have the young of my species merely listening to the true language as it’s correctly spoken. As I say, there might be a danger that the young referred to might only learn to understand, but not to speak, the true language; since they are given no opportunity to speak it.”

He hesitated. There was a dangerous silence around the table.

“What I am trying to say,” he said, “is that perhaps the untarnished or immaculate individuals dealing with these young beasts should consider speaking to and allowing themselves to be answered by these young ones in the true tongue. It would have to be understood that, being so young still, the small beasts would not yet have acquired a knowledge of polite response; and might inadvertently fail to show the proper respect…”

The shock around the table this time was a palpable thing; and the pause was longer than at any time since Shane had entered the room.

“You are suggesting,” said Maa Alyn, “almost that we treat these young of your species as if they were young of the true race.”

“I am afraid that is my meaning, immaculate dame,” said Shane.

There was a further silence, broken at last by Maa Alyn.

“The suggestion is disgusting,” she said. “Moreover, even more than any other suggestion put forward here today, this flies in the face of all the rules evolved from the experience of the true race with their underspecies over many worlds and many centuries. There must be some other way…”

There was a general noise of concurrence from those gathered around the table. For a moment, Shane was sure that while Laa Ehon had lost his point about introducing humans into Aalaag inner households, he had come dangerously close to gathering the leadership of the Council to him. He saw that all eyes had now turned sharply to Lyt Ahn, as if awaiting some magical alternate solution from him. Then the First Captain spoke; and with the first words, Shane realized his master had seized the most propitious moment for forestalling Laa Ehon’s bid for power and regaining his own position of Alpha leader in the Council. To the clear surprise of those around the table, he not only overrode Maa Alyn by endorsing the Milanese Commander’s suggestion; but went beyond it, in part assuming authorship and control of the plan.

“I fully realize the distastefulness of the suggestion. Nonetheless,” said Lyt Ahn, “I’m going to ask all those around this table to take this matter of bringing human young into their households into consideration, and think about it seriously between now and our next meeting. It is true that we’re at variance with the prognosis and the estimates originally made for our settling of this particular world; and recently there has been an outbreak of what can only be regarded as an attitude inimical to the true race in these drawings that appear in the cities from time to time—and, I believe, more frequently lately.”

“Clearly they are of a human wearing what they call ‘pilgrim’ clothing,” said Maa Alyn. “Has the First Captain considered ordering that no such clothing be worn in the future?”

“It’s hard to see what that would accomplish at this date, untarnished dame,” answered Lyt Ahn. “The symbol has already been established. In fact, we would be dignifying it by paying that much attention to it. The beasts might consider that we actually saw the drawing as a threat—which is what those who put them up undoubtedly want.”

“True enough,” Maa Alyn nodded. “On the other hand, something undoubtedly must be done; and the untarnished sir who is our Commander in Milan has at least come up with a proposal, which is more than anyone else has done. I suggest in addition to considering the taking of beast children into our households, we put Laa Ehon’s other suggestion to trial. I therefore authorize him—hopefully, Maa Alyn will not object—to set up a trial beast as governor in the British Islands area, with whatever staff is necessary; and I will temporarily lend the project one of my translators to ensure communication between governor and the true race to commence with.”

“I do not object.” It was very nearly a growl from Maa Alyn.

“If I might have this Shane beast as translator, then—Laa Ehon was beginning, and Shane chilled. But Lyt Ahn interrupted the other.

“The Shane-beast I have special uses of my own for,” said the First Captain. “I will, however, provide you with a beast adequate to your needs. I will permit this much—that Shane-beast be available to you as liaison on this project to keep me informed of its progress and such special advice as you wish to pass on to me by courier.”

“If you wish, and as you wish, of course, First Captain,” said Laa Ehon, smoothly; but his eyes flashed for a moment on Shane with something of cold calculation in them. Shane chilled again.

“That being settled,” said Lyt Ahn, “shall we close this meeting?”

There were sounds of agreement in which the Milanese Commander joined. A moment later, Shane found himself outside the room, in the corridor, hurrying to match Lyt Ahn’s long-legged strides back toward the First Captain’s private offices. Shane had been given no orders to follow. On the other hand he had not been dismissed, so he hurried along, half a pace behind his master, waiting for orders.

These were not forthcoming even after they had reached and passed into the office. Perhaps they would have been, but when they stepped inside the heavy doors, they found Adtha Or Ain. She was standing once more before the large screen, which was again showing the figure of their son in whatever it was that encased him. She turned as they entered; and spoke to Lyt Ahn.

“It went well—the meeting?”

The First Captain looked at her soberly.

“Not well,” he said, “I have broken slightly with custom to allow Laa Ehon to make a trial of interposing native governors between ourselves and the cattle, using the British Islands as an experimental area.”

He turned to Shane.

“I will lend him a translator to help. Shane-beast here, however, will act as my liaison with the project, and as my own private eyes and ears upon its progress.”

His eyes were steady on Shane.

“You understand, Shane-beast?” he said. “You will observe everything carefully, and I will question you equally carefully each time you return from there.”

“So, it did not go well,” repeated Adtha Or Ain, as much to herself as to the First Captain.

“No, how could you expect it to?” said Lyt Ahn. He seemed to become suddenly conscious of the image in the large screen. “Put that away.”

“I need to look at it,” responded Adtha Or Ain.

“You mean you need it to use as a club against me,” said Lyt Ahn. He made no visible gesture that Shane could see, except a small jerk of the head; but the image disappeared from the screen, leaving it pearly gray and blank.

“It doesn’t matter if you take it from me.” said Adtha Or Ain. “I can see it just as well with the screen off. I see it night and day. Now, more than ever.”

“Why, now more than ever?”

“Because I can’t avoid seeing what’s coming.”

Adtha Or Ain turned from the empty screen to face Lyt Ahn.

“What do you mean?” There was a note of demand in Lyt Ahn’s voice.

“No expedition will go to look for my son.”

“Why do you say that? I’ve promised you–” began Lyt Ahn.

“Your promise is only as good as your authority,” said Adtha Or Ain, “and your authority…”

She did not finish.

“I was elected by the senior officers of this Expedition. I hold my rank by that authority, which remains with me,” answered Lyt Ahn in a steady voice, “and the rank can only be taken from me by popular vote of these same officers—which will never happen.”

“No,” said Adtha Or Ain. “But you could resign it on your own decision, as other First Captains on other New World Expeditions have occasionally done before you.”

“I have no intention of resigning.”

“What does that matter? You will resign,” said Adtha Or Ain. “It’s as much a certainty as that screen on the wall before us—the screen you do not want me to use; and once you are no longer First Captain, whoever holds that rank will have no interest in sending an expedition to find out what happened to my son.”

“You talk in impossibilities,” said Lyt Ahn. “Even if I could spare the officers and material for such an expedition now, who would lead it?”

“I would, of course,” said Adtha Or Ain. “I’m of fourth rank—or had you forgotten that?”

“I can’t spare you,” retorted Lyt Ahn. “The Consort of the First Captain belongs with the First Captain.”

“Particularly when the position of that First Captain may become questionable,” said Adtha Or Ain.

“There is no ‘may.’ My position is not questionable; and it is not going to become questionable.”

The attitude of Adtha Or Ain changed subtly, although the signs of that change were so slight that only Shane’s long experience with her allowed him to note them. But some of the tension went out of her. She seemed to soften and went to Lyt Ahn, close enough to touch him, standing to one side of him and looking very slightly down into his eyes.

“In all things I am your Consort,” she said, in a lower voice. “Also, in all things I am the mother of the son you had. I must see clearly, even if you refuse to. Laa Ehon intends to replace you as First Captain. Let that, at least, be out in the open between us.”

“I have no intention,” said Lyt Ahn, “of abandoning the First Captaincy to Laa Ehon, or anyone else.”

“Consider the situation honestly,” said Adtha Or Ain. “The possibility is there. The possibility means that no expedition would ever be sent to find my son; and not only that, it means I would lose you as well, since I think you would not merely accept duties under another’s command.”

“That much is true,” said Lyt Ahn. “If it was shown to me that I was no longer worthy of the post of First Captain, I would consider myself excess of our effort here and make sure that the expedition was no longer burdened by my presence.”

Shane felt a new sense of shock. This was the first intimation he had had that some sort of honorable suicide was practiced among the Aalaag. But the fact that there was such a practice made sense. It made very good sense for this race of male and female warriors. He thought of Laa Ehon in the post of First Captain of Earth and, if anything, his inner fears increased.

His own life was just barely endurable now under Lyt Ahn. It could become literally unbearable under Laa Ehon; and if it became literally unbearable, sooner rather than later a fit of yowaragh would take him again and he would do something that would lead to his own end. The best he could hope for under those circumstances would be that it would lead him to a quick and relatively painless end.

“You may go, Shane-beast,” said Lyt Ahn.

Shane went. The next two days were a blur of duties in attendance on Lyt Ahn, during one of the periodic twice-yearly internal inspections of all services housed within the House of Weapons. On the third day, however, he was summoned back to Lyt Ahn’s office, where an assistant Aalaag officer handed him a hard copy message to be hand-delivered to Laa Ehon. Laa Ehon, he was told by Lyt Ahn, had already set himself up in London with the staff of the Project he had described to the Council.

“…I deduce from this, small Shane-beast,” said Lyt Ahn, once the underofficer had left and they two were alone in the office together, “that the immaculate Commander of Milan had already picked and trained the individuals he would need for his Project before mentioning his plan to the Council. You will find his offices already in place and staffed. I would desire you to take particular notice of what kind of humans he uses. You will be in a better position to judge this than myself or any of the true race. Also, report to me anything else you think I might find of interest. I’ll want to know, of course, about the general arrangement. I have the plans on record, of course, but that’s not the same thing as receiving a direct observation report from a trustworthy pair of eyes.”

“I will do as the First Captain orders,” said Shane.

“You may go.”

“I thank the immaculate sir.”

Two hours later, once more in a courier ship and headed toward London, Shane watched from the window beside his seat as the vessel lifted, until the world’s horizon was a perceptible curve and the sky overhead was black with the airlessness of space. Curiously, now that he was on his way, for the first time he had a moment in which to think, and to his surprise, he found himself strangely clearheaded.

It was remarkable—remarkable almost to the point of being funny. After the episode in Milan, when he had first seen and saved Maria, then later when he had been kidnapped, he had yearned for the sanctuary of his small cubicle in the House of Weapons, as a retreat where he could sit down and take stock of what had happened, and was happening, to him. Then that imagined oasis of peace had ceased to be an oasis, when he found Sylvia Onjin waiting there for him.

In the end, in the House of Weapons, he had found no time—no moment of personal freedom at all in which to try and think of some way of avoiding what seemed to be a greased slide to inevitable self-destruction. Now, here, in the last place he would have looked for it, he had found it. He was on duty. Therefore the eyes of the Aalaag were momentarily off him, and he was free at last to stand back and consider his position, to think his own thoughts for a small while before they touched down in the British Isles.

It was freedom-on-duty. There was no human word for it, but there was an Aalaag one, alleinen. It meant the supreme authority and freedom of being under orders—one’s own master or mistress within strictly specified limits.

He pronounced it now, silently in his mind—alleinen—and smiled slightly to himself. For of course he did not pronounce it correctly, in the strict sense. The truth was he did not speak Aalaag as well as even his masters gave him credit for doing. Certain sounds were physical impossibilities to his human throat and tongue.

The truth, in fact, was that he cheated in all his Aalaag-speaking. The alien word that had just come to his mind should properly be pronounced with something like a deep bass cough in the middle syllable; and that deep bass cough, which was so much a part of many Aalaag words, was simply beyond his capabilities. He had always got away with pronouncing it without the cough, however, because he was able to hide behind the fact that his voice was too high-pitched to manage the sound. He had learned to pronounce words containing such a sound as the equally high voice of a very young Aalaag child would say them; and while the ears of such as Lyt Ahn and even of Laa Ehon and others consciously noted the lack, they unconsciously excused him for not making it, because of the otherwise excellence of his pronunciation and because the word as heard resembled what they had heard so many times from the high voices of their own children.

So, in just such a manner, had humans always excused (and with familiarity, become deaf to) the accents of their own children and foreign-born friends. The Aalaag, he thought now, were indeed humanoid (or humans were Aalaagoid?). Similar physical environments on similar worlds during the emergence of both races had shaped them, not only physically, but psychologically and emotionally, in similar ways. Yet they were not really like humans in the fine points—any more than, for example, the average human was eight feet tall. In the fine points, they differed. They had to differ. One race could not catch the other race’s diseases, for example.

There had been a time when he had dreamed of a plague on Earth that would decimate the aliens but leave the humans untouched—a sudden plague that would wipe out the conquerors before those conquerors had time to pass, to their own kind on other worlds, the word that they were dying. Of course, such a plague had never come; and probably, long ago, the Aalaag had devised medical protections against any such happening. He pulled his mind away from such woolgathering. The important problem was a solution to his own situation. In the silence of the hurtling courier ship, caught between the green of Earth below and the black of space above, he forced himself to face that question squarely, now, while there was a chance.

Leaving Milan, several days earlier, headed back to the House of Weapons, he had faced the fact that yowaragh had twice driven him to do foolishly desperate things against the Aalaag regime; and that, therefore, it was only a matter of time until he would be drawn back—for powerful emotional reasons with which the last words of Maria had been connected—into contact with this human Resistance, this Resistance that he knew, if those in it did not, was doomed to certain discovery and destruction at Aalaag hands.

He had faced the fact then that, given sufficient provocation, he would not be able to help himself; as he had not been able to help himself the year before, when an uncontrollable burst of rage had driven him to draw the first pilgrim-symbol on the wall under the executed man in Aalborg, Denmark—as he had not been able to stop himself from acting, a week since, when he had seen through the one-way glass the captive woman who was Maria awaiting questioning by the Aalaag.

Human cattle, according to the way the Aalaag thought, were not supposed to have such reactions as yowaragh. It was not their deliberate fault, only a weakness in them. But those who showed it were obviously untrustworthy and sick, and must be disposed of.

Even when they were as valuable as Shane-beast. Therefore, leaving Milan, he had finally faced the fact that what had happened twice must happen again. Eventually, a third attack of yowaragh would catch him in a visible situation where either he had no choice but to appear openly as one of the Resistance people and share their fate, or else he would simply make some wild, personal attack upon one of the aliens which would result in his death. He did not want either of those fates. But there had seemed no way of avoiding one or the other; and it was this dilemma he had carried back with him to the House of Weapons, with a desperate desire to study the situation for some kind of solution.

But now, out of nowhere, events pushed by Laa Ehon’s ambition seemed to have offered him a possible way out. The basic situation had not changed; but just now, sitting here in his first moment of alleinen peace, for the first time, unexpectedly, he saw the glimmer of a hope he might have something with which he could bargain for his own life and possibly that of Maria as well. It was a wild hope, a crazy hope, but it was nonetheless a hope where before there had been none.

As he considered it, the small glimmer suddenly expanded into a glare like that from a doorway suddenly opened to outer sunlight. It would be a matter of setting two dragons to destroy each other, of using one evil to eat the other up—like the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat of the children’s poem.

The operative factor behind it all was the fact that even after three years together the two races did not understand each other. Humans did not understand Aalaag, and the Aalaag did not understand humans. The operative factor behind it all was the fact that even after three years together the two races did not understand each other. Humans did not understand Aalaag, and the Aalaag did not understand humans.

Basically, the solution to his problem was no less than the fact that he should destroy Laa Ehon. It was a far-fetched thought, like that of a mouse deciding to destroy a giant. On the face of it the notion seemed ridiculous; but he had one advantage which even Lyt Ahn—who was even larger as a giant than Laa Ehon—did not have. He, Shane, was not restricted by the Aalaag mores. In fact, he was restricted by no mores at all, alien or human; but only by his own need to survive and, if possible, save Maria.

The operative factor was that the two races did not really understand each other. He repeated that to himself. Humans did not understand the Aalaag, with whom they had never had any real chance to have contact on what might be called a person-to-person basis; and the Aalaag could not understand humans, walled in as they were by the armor of their own alien attitudes and traditions.

It was because of this that what had been planned at the Council table would not work. The theory of bringing up the children in the Aalaag households would never turn out as Laa Ehon and the others hoped. Shane thought of the human babies to be used this way and shuddered—out of his knowledge of the difference in human and alien responses.

The bitter part of it would be that the scheme would actually seem to work at first as the human youngsters began to pick up the Aalaag tongue and get responses that would seem at least friendly, if not loving, from these large creatures looming over them. The children would respond automatically with affection, which would last up until that devastating moment when they were reminded clearly by the large figures that they were only humans—only beasts. In that discovery, as the children matured and began to have minds of their own, was more fertile ground for yowaragh than in anything else the aliens had done on Earth since their arrival; and it would be yowaragh by humans who knew their overlords, better than these had ever been known before by any of the underraces.

For the same reason of racial misunderstanding, Laa Ehon’s plan to set up human governors would not work. The Aalaag who lived under unquestioned authority among themselves could not really appreciate that a human governor would be no more palatable to most other humans than an alien would—perhaps even less so. The governor would simply be included in the detestation in which the mass of humanity already held all servants of the Aalaag, such as the Interior Guards and the translators like Shane, himself. Noncooperation would be the order of the day, automatically. Unless…

It was in exactly this area that his own scheme might work. He owed nothing to the Resistance groups, he told himself, once more. They had no hope of success—no hope at all, though it would be impossible to tell them that. Inevitably they would be caught, found out and executed by the Aalaag. He shuddered again, thinking of what would happen to them. But he reminded himself that that happening was unavoidable, no matter what he might do or not do. Meanwhile, they could be the instrument which would save him; and, possibly even more important, aid him in destroying Laa Ehon at one and the same time.

He looked more closely at the plan that had just been born in him.

It would be risky. He would have to appear to lend his aid to the Resistance groups; and without letting Lyt Ann know. For Lyt Ahn would never countenance what Shane was planning, although he might well concur with what Shane had done once Laa Ehon had been destroyed as a result of the translator’s efforts.

It would be necessary for Shane to keep his identity as secret as possible from the Resistance people themselves. Those few who had captured him in Milan already had some idea of who he was—but if it could be done, they should remain the only ones. That would be difficult because he would have to do more than just join them; he would have to effectively take charge of their movement.

This was possible, since he knew more about their enemy than they did themselves. His scheme itself was simple in the extreme. It would merely be a matter of coordinating the Resistance groups and there must be some in at least every large city and they must know each other, already, even if they were not already part of one overall organization. With their help he could cause an apparent cooperation to take place with the governorship organizations Laa Ehon had in mind; so that these seemed to be an unqualified success. While, at the same time, the organization of the Resistances into a single coordinating unit could make possible a plan for a world-wide uprising against the aliens everywhere. That would attract the revolutionaries.

Only he would know that such a revolt would stand no chance of success. In fact, it would almost certainly never reach the point of taking place. Long before it was ready to explode, he would have pulled the plug of the cooperation that had been given the governors; and Laa Ehon’s plan—in which by this time the Aalaag would have invested deeply—would reveal itself as a total failure. For which Laa Ehon could only take the blame.

And, if some sort of honorable suicide was indeed part of the Aalaag tradition, Laa Ehon might thereupon remove himself. Even if he did not, his power within the Council and his presence as a threat to succeed Lyt Ahn would be destroyed.

Meanwhile, of course, the Resistance members, who by this time would have exposed themselves, or become easily identifiable, would be rounded up and disposed of by the aliens. Shane set his teeth against the mental picture of what that would mean, reminding himself fiercely that he had a right to think of his own survival first; and again, that there had never been any hope for them in any case.

It was a cruel and bitter plan. It had no justification beyond the fact that its fall-out would save him—and possibly Maria as well. He might be able to rescue her in the process. Just at the moment he was not sure how he might do that; but the beginnings of some ideas were tickling at the back of his mind, all of them dependent upon the claim he would have on Lyt Ahn’s good graces after Laa Ehon was taken care of.

One necessary matter would be to get the Resistance’s agreement to Maria’s helping him personally. Later on, therefore, to Lyt Ahn, he could credit part of his success to her association with him, which he would make appear to be a willing and informed one.

The strange thing, he found himself thinking, was that he should be contemplating doing what he had earlier been deathly afraid of doing—associating with those who were subversive to the aliens. The equation of life and death for him in any association like that had not changed; and yet he found himself now feeling good, almost buoyant, about the plans he had just considered. He felt in fact more alive than he had felt since word had first come of the Aalaag landings on Earth.

A sense of something almost like triumph possessed him. So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he hardly noticed when the courier ship set down at last with a slight jolt in the main terminal area which had been blasted out of the center of London. As a member of Lyt Ahn’s special corps, he was allowed a special consideration in choosing where he might be let off. He preferred that this be at terminals where he could mingle with the ordinary human traffic and be lost to the sight of anyone who might otherwise identify him as one who worked for the aliens.

He took the subway into the city and registered at a small, middle-class hotel. His destination was Laa Ehon’s Project, but they were not expecting him there at any particular time. He was beneath contempt and therefore, happily, beneath suspicion; and meanwhile, there was time for the things he had to do.

He sought out a shop selling second hand clothing, and bought himself a two-color robe—blue on its outer side, brown when turned inside out. It was a common enough purchase, but the gold oblongs he threw down in payment were not. He saw the eyes of the lean but pot-bellied, middle-aged shopkeeper flash as the man picked them up and ducked into a back room to make change in the ordinary base-metal currency of ordinary human commerce. Such gold tabs, in which Shane and the other translators were ordinarily paid, saw their way into ordinary human monetary channels only through the hands of those who worked for the aliens or those who dealt in the black market that sold special luxuries to those who so worked. The word of his purchase would reach local Resistance headquarters quickly.

“Deliver this robe to room 421, the Sheldon Arms Hotel,” Shane said to the proprietor. “Can you do that for me?”

“Of course sir, of course,” said the proprietor, making a note on a piece of unbleached wrapping paper.

Scooping up his change, Shane returned to his room in the hotel. He ordered up a meal, ate, and then lay on the bed, thinking and waiting.

It was only a little over two hours before there was a knock at the door of his room.

“Delivery for you, sir,” said a voice beyond the door.

He was on his feet instantly and as silently as he was able to move. He stepped across to the darkest corner of the room and stood there with his back to the window. He pulled up his pilgrim’s hood over his head, drawing the sides of the hood in, so that his face was hidden in deep shadow. He said nothing.

He had expected at least one more knock at the door; but there was a sudden splintering crash as the lock gave and two very large men erupted into the room. They stared at the empty bed and around them, for a moment plainly not identifying him as a human figure in his stillness and the shadow of the corner. In that moment a third man moved into the room from behind them. It was the man called Peter who spoke Italian with an English accent and had been in charge of the group that had kidnapped Shane in Milan.

“I thought this was your home ground,” Shane said to him.

At the sound of Shane’s voice they saw him. Before they could move, he went on. “I am the Pilgrim. I’ll talk to you, Peter, and you only. Get the others out.”

There was a moment in which it seemed anything might happen. The two large men glanced back at Peter.

“All right,” said Peter, after a moment’s hesitation. “Outside, both of you, and put the door back in place. But wait right outside it, there.”

He looked directly at Shane.

“But what you’ve got to say better be worthwhile,” he added.

“It is,” said Shane. “I’m going to help you. I know the Aalaag and what their weaknesses are. I can tell you how to fight them.” Having said this much, the rest came easily to his lips. “I may even be able to tell you how to get rid of them, altogether. But you’re the only one who ought to hear what I’ve got to say, or know who I am.”

Peter stared at him for a long, blank-faced moment. Then he turned to the two men, who were lifting the door back into place in its opening.

“On second thought, wait down the hall,” he said. “That’s an order.’’

He turned back and smiled at Shane. It was a smile of pure relief.

“It’s good to have you with us,” he said. “You don’t know how good it is.”

Notes

Defense in a N-Dimensional World

- 1. The Physical Review, Second Series, Vol. 115, No. 3, August 1, 1959, pp. 483 and 490.

- 2. For a recent discussion of Bohm and his work, see John Briggs and F. David Peat, Looking Glass Universe, the Emerging Science of Wholeness, New York, Simon & Schuster Cornerstone Library, 1984, chapter 2, e.g. p. 140. See also p. 132: “In one cubic centimeter of empty space the amount of energy is much greater than the total amount of energy of all the matter in the known universe.”

- 3. Those who wish to study the scientific basis of this story, to understand various concepts of weaponry, and to familiarize themselves with the mysterious phenomena should consult the writings by T.E. Bearden, published by Tesla Book Company (1580, Magnolia Ave, Millbrae, CA 94030). Bearden, a weapons analyst and nuclear engineer, is at present developing an Artificial Intelligence “expert system” for command and control. His previous work dealt with technological requirements of Nike-Ajax, Nike-Hercules, Hawk, and Patriot missiles, and high energy laser weapons. He holds advanced degrees in mathematics and nuclear sciences. A retired lieutenant colonel, he graduated from several US Army artillery and missile schools, and from the US Army Command and General Staff College.

Military Science Fiction

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Science Fiction

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

Fantasy

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

Other Fiction

Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

Non-Fiction

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day

There Will Be War Volume VI

Created by Jerry Pournelle

Copyright

There Will Be War Volume VI

Jerry Pournelle

Castalia House

Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

First published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. (1987)

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

Copyright © 1987, 2016 by Jerry Pournelle

All rights reserved

Editor: Jerry Pournelle
Associate Editor: John F. Carr
Technical Editor, 2015 Edition: Eric Pobirs
Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen
Version 001

Dedication

For Aleta, a faithful Shadow who has helped keep the dream alive.

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge that research for nonfiction essays in this book, including “Surprise” by Stefan T. Possony, Francis X. Kane, and Jerry Pournelle, was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation. Responsibility for opinions expressed in this work remains solely with the authors.

The stories contained herein are copyrighted as follows:

INTRODUCTION: THE FOG OF WAR by Jerry Pournelle. Published by arrangement with the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd. Copyright © 1987 by J.E. Pournelle & Associates.

IDEOLOGICAL DEFEAT by Christopher Anvil was first published in Analog Science Fiction in the September 1972 issue. Copyright © by the Conde Nast Publications, Inc. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

BATTLEGROUND by Gregory and James Benford was originally published in the Worlds of If in June 1971 issue. Copyright © 1971 by V.P.D. Publising Corp. Published here with permission of the authors.

SURPRISE by Stefan T. Possony, Francis X. Kane, and Jerry Pournelle. A substantially different version of this essay first was published in The Strategy of Technology by Stefan T. Possony and J.E. Pournelle in 1970. Published here by arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 1970 and 1987 by Stefan T. Possony, Francis X. Kane, and Jerry Pournelle.

NONLETHAL by D.C. Poyer was specially written for this volume. Copyright © 1987 by D.C. Poyer.

ABDULLAH BULBUL AMIR by author unknown is in the Public Domain.

RENDER UNTO CAESAR by Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin appeared for the first time in the August 1976 issue of Analog Science Fiction. It appears here by special arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 1976 by the Conde Nast Publications, Inc.

SEE NOW, A PILGRIM by Gordon R. Dickson was originally published in the September 1985 issue of Analog Science Fiction. It appears here through special permission of the author. Copyright © 1985 by Gordon R. Dickson.

INFORMATION IN WAR by Karl von Clausewitz is in the Public Domain.

HARMONICA SONG by Dan Duncan. Copyright © 1987 by Dan Duncan.

GALILEO SAW THE TRUTH by Gregory Nicoll was first published in Fantasy Crossroads in the March 1977 issue. Copyright © 1977 by Jonathan Bacon. Copyright © 1987 by Gregory Nicoll.

BY THOUGHT ALONE appears here for the first time and is published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1987 by William R. Fortschen.

DOUGHFOOT SANCTUM by James William Holzer is published here for the first time. Copyright © by James William Holzer.

LEARNING FROM VIET NAM by Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff was first published in Encounter in the September-October 1982 issue. It appears here by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1982 by Doan Van Toai.

MAJOR PUGACHOV’S LAST BATTLE was first published in KOLYMA TALES.

A GLORIOUS TRIUMPH FOR THE PEOPLE by E. Michael Blake. Copyright © 1987 by E. Michael Blake.

PSI-REC: PRIEST OF ROSES, PALADIN OF SWORDS, THE WAR WITHIN is published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1987 by Peter Dillingham.

ENCASED IN THE AMBER OF PROBABILITIES by Robert Frazier was specially written for this volume by the author. Copyright © 1987 by Robert Frazier.

LIGDAN AND THE YOUNG PRETENDER by Walter Jon Williams. Published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1987 by Walter Jon Williams.

DECISIVE WARFARE: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT by Reginald Bretnor was written especially for this volume by the author. Copyright © 1987 by Reginald Bretnor.

CROWN OF THORNS by Edward P. Hughes was written expressly for this series by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1987 by Edward P. Hughes.

THE EYES OF ARGOS by Harry Turtledove was first published in the January 1986 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories. Copyright © 1987 by TSR, Inc.

THE HIGHEST TREASON by Randall Garrett first appeared in Analog Science Fiction in the January 1961 issue. Copyright © 1961 by Street & Smith.

FRICTION IN WAR by Karl von Clausewitz is in the Public Domain.

UNCERTAINTY AND DEFENSE by Jerry Pournelle was written especially for this volume. Copyright © 1987 by Jerry Pournelle. It appears here by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd.

Contents

1. Cover
2. Introduction: The Fog of War
3. Ideological Defeat
4. Battleground
5. Surprise
6. Nonlethal
7. Abdullah Bulbul Amir
8. Render Unto Caesar
9. See Now, a Pilgrim
10. Information in War
11. Harmonica Song
12. Galileo Saw the Truth
13. By Thought Alone
14. Doughfoot Sanctum
15. Learning from Viet Nam
16. Major Pugachov’s Last Battle
17. A Glorious Triumph for the People
18. Poems
19. Ligdan and the Young Pretender
20. Decisive Warfare: Retrospect and Prospect
21. Crown of Thorns
22. The Eyes of Argos
23. The Highest Treason
24. Friction in War
25. Uncertainty and Defense
26. Notes

Introduction: The Fog of War

Jerry Pournelle

To be a successful soldier you must know history. What you must know is how man reacts. Weapons change but man who uses them changes not at all. To win battles you do not beat weapons—you beat the soul of the enemy man.

—George S. Patton

There are periodic attempts to change war from art to science. It never works. Probably the most disastrous attempt was by former Secretary of Defense Robert S. MacNamara, who brought in civilian whiz kids to structure the U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces and try to run the war in Vietnam, but he was only one of many to make that mistake.

Many study war, but few learn it without experience. Some don’t even learn from that.

There are “principles of war,” but these correspond more to a list of holds in wrestling, or a checklist of things to be ignored at peril, than to any “scientific” basis for conducting military strategy. The principles are worth study, but no amount of studying them will make you a competent military commander.

The truth is that war is a contest of wills.

It is also a struggle for information. Throughout history the “fog of war” has descended over the battlefield. Sometimes this is a literal fog that obscures events; more often, it exists in the minds of the commanders, who never know precisely what is happening, and must guard against both real and imagined dangers. As many battles have been lost to uncertainty and ignorance as to anything else.

All of which suggests something: uncertainty generally favors the defender. That is, the defender seeks to keep what he has; he has won if nothing happens. The attacker has many advantages, but has the disadvantage that he must get something he hasn’t got.

He has to do something; which means in effect that he has to decide to do it. He won’t decide to do it unless he thinks he can accomplish his goals; which means that if he doesn’t know enough to figure out what will happen if he attacks, he probably won’t do it, meaning that the defense has won.

Unfortunately, in the historic contest between the United States and the USSR, we are the defenders, but they have the information advantage. We know very little about what’s going on in the Soviet Union. Even the names of the members of the Defense Council, the highest military authority in the USSR, are state secrets. So are the names of the families of the Soviet ruling class. So are most facts that any Western citizen (or KGB agent) can get about Western governments by buying a newspaper or a government publication.

This means that the United States cannot, must not, neglect its capabilities for finding information about the Soviet Union. In particular, we must quickly expand our ability to use the space environment: to put up and if need be defend, first, observation satellites, then armed components of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

We must learn more about the Soviet Union. It’s not really possible to keep them from learning more about us.

There is a light at the end of this particular tunnel. In the modern world, military power grows from high technology in general and computer technology in particular. Small computers are not only useful, they are becoming vital.

Small computers increase the flow of information. You cannot introduce computers to a nation and keep that nation’s citizens in ignorance. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Computers make possible the spread of information without much chance for the government to suppress it.

Arthur Koestler said that the necessary and sufficient condition to bring down the Soviet system of government would be the free exchange of information within the Soviet Union.

The computer revolution is bringing that about. If the Soviets try to stifle the computer revolution within their borders, they will also greatly cut back their military power.

It’s quite a dilemma for them.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Ideological Defeat

Christopher Anvil

The fog of war—or more generally the uncertainties of power struggles—can take on many aspects. Sometimes one seeks deliberately to spread confusion, not only among one’s enemies but among one’s own citizens. The Soviet KGB has a vast effort devoted to “disinformation”: planting false stories in the hopes that legitimate Western publications will believe and republish them.

One of the most effective weapons in modem conflict is ideology. The United States doesn’t use it much. Until recently we didn’t have to.

Elites seek to consolidate power. In the West, until recently at least, the tendency has been restrained simply because political power in the United States hasn’t been all that decisive. Through most of our history a citizen could live a normal, productive, and happy life without thinking much about government. It wasn’t that getting political power wasn’t worth doing, but that it wasn’t the only route for advancement, and usually wasn’t even the best one.

Lately there have been disturbing tendencies in the opposite direction, as politics intrudes on every aspect of life. We thought to use government to make the nation more perfect, and we didn’t worry much about it, because, after all, we control the government, don’t we?

It shouldn’t be much surprise to discover that we don’t, not really, and moreover that those who are in political control continue to change the rules. It is already almost impossible to defeat an incumbent city councilman, state legislator, or even congressman; and every year brings more and more laws designed to make it even harder to turn out this power elite.

Our problems are as nothing compared with what the Soviet citizen endures.

In the USSR there is no route to power or security except through government. Trotsky said, “Where the state is the only employer, opposition means starvation,” and he said no more than simple truth. The Soviet Union is not merely governed by a power elite of party officials, the entire country is owned by them.

The Communist Party isn’t the real government of the Soviet Union, though. Within the party is a much smaller group known as the nomenklatura, which is literally a list of people who can expect to be promoted, who protect each other, and who can generally never be demoted. The actual membership of the nomenklatura is a state secret; its very existence was hidden for many years, and one can still read books on Soviet government without seeing the term. No matter. The nomenklatura is very real, and its members, some 1 percent of the population, own the nation in fee simple.

The prerogatives of this group are enormous. It’s not just money. They don’t stand in long lines to buy potatoes. They don’t carry string bags wherever they go in hopes of finding a shop with something worth buying. Their food is delivered by an organization known as “the distribution,” and they shop in special stores whose existence is seldom openly acknowledged.

The prerogatives of the nomenklatura are no secret to the Soviet masses. Nevertheless, they put up with a system that gives them very little, not even hope. Why? Because of an ideology that says, roughly, that Communism is going to inherit the earth. Communism is “progressive” and nothing else is. But the Progressives of the world are surrounded and besieged by reactionaries and the bourgeoisie; no opposition within the “motherland of socialism” can be tolerated, lest the capitalist nations invade and destroy the Communist homeland.

The result is a nation with fewer paved roads per capita than any other in Europe; a nation that for the seventieth straight year will produce less grain than was grown under the czars; a nation with terrible economic problems that yet is able to maintain an enormous military and naval establishment, ring Europe with SS-20 missiles, and build by far the largest ICBM and nuclear arsenal this world has ever seen.

The odd part is that although the most visible effect of the “progressive” ideology is to shore up one of the most repressive tyrannies in the history of mankind, that ideology still finds popularity in the West. The Soviet Union is visibly an empire, in that it brings under one central rule a diversity of peoples, most of whom would secede if given the chance; and it is certainly arguable that any nation that kills a million of its own citizens each year can be called evil. Yet when the President of the United States said—once and once only—that the Soviet Union was “the evil empire,” he was lectured by the Western press and professorate as if he, not the KGB, were responsible for the slave camps.

Self-professed Marxists occupy high academic positions in most U.S. universities, and while a student is unlikely to be given bad marks for the most unjust criticism of the United States and the Western democracies, he is likely to be graded down for criticism of the Soviet Union or the intellectual farce known as Marxism.

The “progressive” ideology doesn’t have much hold in the U.S. population at large, but it has all too much influence within our universities and in the media.

Republics do not in general fall to outsiders; they fall to lack of defenders. When the citizens lose heart, and do not feel any moral superiority to their enemies, then there is little reason to fight for one’s country, or even to spend money on weapons of defense.

One may debate the likelihood, but certainly a future history in which the United States chooses butter (and cheese and other dairy products) over defense and space technology; which consumes rather than invests; while the Soviets continue to arm until, one day, they strike—such a future is not impossible. There are some who would say it is likely.

Suppose that happens? Suppose the Soviet Union and United States do fight, with great slaughter on both sides; with destruction so great that much of modern science and technology is lost.

Could the ideologies remain?

Ideological Defeat

Christopher Anvil

Arakal, King of the Wesdem O’Cracy’s, got up early on the day of the Soviet ambassador’s visit, finished his exercise at the Post, studied the latest plot as brought up to date by Colputt’s flasher, and then met with the Council.

Easing into the luxurious armchair at the head of the table, with the white-bearded Colputt to his left and broad trusty Slagiron to his right, Arakal once again got stuck in the side by the double-beaked, two-headed bird that adorned the hilt of his sword, the scabbard being guided in the wrong direction by the support for the left arm of the chair.

“This meeting,” Arakal began, as he reached down and got the beak of the bird out of his flesh, “will now begin. In case anyone hasn’t seen the plot this morning, the Kebeckers are as good as their word, and the Brunswickers are going along with them. The St. Lawrence is watched from the coast in, the armies are ready to move, and Kebeck Fortress is reinforced. I’ve sent word by flasher that if the Russ make a lodgment anywhere on the south bank of the river, we will help take them. If they try to get Kebeck Fortress, we will cross the river west of the fortress, and hit the Russ from behind.”

There was a murmur of approval.

Arakal got the sword situated, and sat back in the chair.

To Colputt’s left, Smith, Colputt’s shrewd assistant, turned respectfully to Arakal. “By your leave—?”

“Yes, Smith?”

“We’ve got the night-flasher working.”

There was a general stir. Across the table, young Beane, stuck handling the foreign diplomats, looked surprised.

“But I thought that was impossible!” He glanced at Arakal. “Beg pardon, sir.”

Arakal nodded. “Go ahead. I’ve said my say.”

Smith said, “Old Kotzebuth had us thinking it was impossible, but we decided to try it anyway. It works. Of course, the sun has set, and we have to spend some oil. But it works.”

Slagiron’s broad face creased in a grim smile. He said nothing, but Arakal had a good idea what he was thinking. The Russ prided themselves on their superior communications.

Further down the table, Casey, Slagiron’s chief organizer, growled hopefully, “Will this work in bad weather?”

Smith shook his head. “Fog, snow, or rain blots out the flash.”

“The Russ,” said Casey, “can talk to each other almost any time.”

“Well, they’re using Old Stuff.”

“That doesn’t help us any. If we’ve got a bunch of them cut off, what do they do but yell for help, and here comes one of their damned iron birds, or a rescue force on wheels.” He turned to Colputt. “We’ve got to do something about their long-talkers.”

“Radios,” nodded Colputt. “We’ve got a crew working on it, and I think we’re finally getting a grip on the thing. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I don’t say we will ever be able to make long-talkers the equal of what the Russ have. But we should be able to do three things: First, we should be able to set up our own long-talkers to help out the flasher network. Second, we should be able to listen in on what the Russ say. Third, we should be able to turn out portable garblers to block their long-talkers. That is, they could still yell for reinforcements, but all that could be heard on the other end would be garble.”

“That would all help.”

Arakal said, “Anything would be an improvement. But why should we have to take second place? You’re as smart as any of their men—probably smarter. Smith here is as shrewd as any they have to offer. Why must they be in front of us?”

Colputt shook his head sadly. “Old Stuff. They have more Old Stuff than we have. Captured radios have been turned over to me, and we’ve studied them, thinking to make our own, but to no use. We can’t begin to work out the way they’re made. The trouble is, the Old Soviets got in a fight with the Old O’Cracy’s, and the Russ threw more stuff, did more damage, got the edge on the O’Cracy’s. I don’t say they won. But they did more damage. They have more Old Stuff left over. Long-talkers, iron birds, power sailers. We were knocked off our perch entirely. They had enough left over to use it still. Some of it, even, they may know how to make again. Not the long-talkers. But other things. They threw us back so far that I can look at the latest of our old books about radios, and see the words in front of me, and read them, and not know what they mean. That shows how far we were thrown back.”

“Then,” frowned Arakal, “this special crew you set up–”

“Ah,” said Colputt, beaming, “that’s different. We go at it now from the other end. We use the oldest of the old books—those we can understand. And we’re working our way forward. The Russ, now, have their stocks of Old Stuff. Very useful. But, when it runs out–”

Slagiron looked at Colputt, smiling. “You aim to have a position you can hold?”

Colputt nodded, and his eyes glinted.

Arakal glanced at the clock on the wall. “This ambassador of theirs gets here when?”

Beane said, “Shortly before the sun is at full height, sir.” He craned to look at the clock. “Another three hours, say.”

“What is this one like?”

Beane shook his head. “The same as the rest.”

“He is on safe conduct, of course?”

“Yes, sir. Worse luck. But he wouldn’t come without it.”

“There is always a chance of treachery—either way. Have all your precautions ready. Does this one talk English, or–”

Beane brightened a little. “There is that difference. This one does talk English. Of course, when he talks–”

“Let your translator take a place amongst the guards. Who knows? He might overhear something.”

Beane nodded, smiling.

“Yes, sir. But I think they learned that lesson the last time.”

Vassily Smirnov, Ambassador-General, glanced uneasily at Simeon Brusilov, Colony Force Commander, as the helicopter thundered around them.

“Just how safe,” said Smirnov, “is a safe conduct from these savages?”

Brusilov said moodily, “Safe enough. As long as you don’t look too long at any of their women, sleep with your ears under the covers, or drink anything except water or milk. Watch out for this Arakal. He’s smart in streaks.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s ignorant in obvious ways, but just overlook that. Where it counts, he’s smarter than any of us.”

Smirnov frowned. “An odd statement for our own commander to make.”

“I say it because I know. And I did not enjoy gaining the knowledge.”

“And just where is he smart?”

“Militarily.”

“You flatter yourself. That is not what counts. Ideology is what counts in the end. That is why I am here.”

“It didn’t help us much in the last ambush.”

“With your technological advantage, I’m surprised the natives dare to ambush your men.”

Brusilov shook his head.

“Comrade, kindly get it through your skull that there are two technologies on this continent. One is shipped to us packaged and ready to use, but if it goes bad, who is going to fix it? The other is growing up steadily, and knitting the pieces of the continent together, and while it is in every way less impressive than ours, there is much more of it, and it is getting very tricky.

“For instance, there is this sun-signal system. It started in Arakal’s sector, and now he’s linked up with the descendants of the Canadian survivors. Six months ago, we tried to cut Arakal’s zone up the line of the Hudson, preparatory to biting off the whole of the old Northeast United States. The idea was, with that in our hands, we’d have a base suitable for protection of our colonies to the south. Arakal saw the plan in a flash. It was nothing but traps and ambushes, and dead stragglers and small parties yelling for help all the way from the time we hit the Forest.

“But we expected that. What we didn’t expect was that an army would come boiling out of Quebec and the old seacoast Provinces, and get to us before we could finish the job. Not too long ago, Arakal would have had to send couriers. Now he uses the sun-signal system. We were lucky to get out of there with a whole skin.”

“Certainly the savages’ speed of motion is inconsiderable, compared with yours.”

“We have the edge there, all right. It’s just too bad so much of the road net is centered on the worst zones of lingering radioactivity.”

“Is that their camp, there?”

Brusilov looked out, to see a tall steel tower. A gun thrust out and followed the helicopter, but didn’t fire.

“That is one of their sun-signal towers. You see, these ‘savages’ have learned to work steel again.”

“You should bomb them—destroy them!”

Brusilov looked at the ambassador. “Will you increase my shipments of fuel, and bombs, and planes? Will you get me more pilots? Do you know what this one trip is costing me in gas, and hence in future freedom of action?” He glanced out. “There is their camp. Try to remember that they are not as stupid as they may seem to you. Backward, yes. Stupid, no.”

Arakal shook the hand of Smirnov, smiling gravely but noting the softness of the ambassador’s grip. Such was not the grip of the Russ commander. The ambassador was like the rest of their ambassadors, but Brusilov, now, was a good man.

“The great Central Committee,” Smimov began impressively, “sends its greetings to you, despite the fact that your actions have not been of the best.”

Brusilov muttered something and removed himself out of earshot, to the far end of the tent. Slagiron excused himself and went over to talk to Brusilov.

“This war,” said Smimov, with the air of an oracle, “costs much money, many lives. It must end.”

Arakal smiled pleasantly.

“Then get off the continent.”

“This land is ours,” said Smimov, spacing his words, and making his tone deep and impressive.

“Go home,” said Arakal brusquely. “Leave.”

“Our colonists grow their wheat, plant their trees, speak their tongue, sing their songs. This is our land and it belongs to us, just as the land of your tribe belongs to you, so long as we grant it to you.”

Arakal gave a low growl of irritation, then looked up as Casey came over. Casey glanced around, apparently for Slagiron.

“Excuse me, Mr. Smirnov,” Arakal said. “What is it, Casey? Your chief is over there with Commander Brusilov.”

Casey nodded, looked thoughfully at Smirnov, who was waiting impatiently for the interruption to cease, and then Casey spoke intently to Arakal, seeming somehow to send an additional message along with the spoken words: “Carlo is there.’’

Arakal’s eyes momentarily shut, and he seemed to shiver. Then he drew a deep careful breath.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I don’t think it’s worth bothering your chief with that. You can tell him later.’’ “Yes, sir.” Casey smiled, bowed slightly, turned, and left.

Arakal looked at Smirnov blandly.

“Now, Mr. Ambassador, let me explain why you should do as I suggest. The Old O’Cracy’s, which is to say the great clan to which we all here belong, once owned all the land, that which is good, that which is sick, and that upon which you have planted your colonies. The O’Cracy’s once fought at your side long ago, and were mighty warriors, armed by the incomparable wizards who lived at that time. But they grew weary of war, and made fewer magical weapons than the Old Soviets, who in time struck them down. Why, or how this came about, I do not know. That is of the past. Both sides suffered, but that is over. Now, however, the land was ours, so it is not stealing when we take it back. It again will be ours, because we are growing stronger much faster than that part of your clan which is over here. This is why you should now get out.”

Smirnov looked at Arakal and laughed. “There is not and never was a ‘clan’ of the O’Cracy’s. Your ‘knowledge’ is a mixture of fables and errors. I suppose that word O’Cracy came originally from the word ‘democracy,’ an inferior governmental system which your leaders made much of in the past, before we destroyed them. But never mind that. I will explain to you why you must not only end your rebellion, but must, and will, come to us that your tribe may be lifted by stages into ideological purity and civilized knowledge. And that you may know that my words are indisputable, I will tell you first just who and what I am.”

Arakal leaned forward in his seat, as one braces himself who faces into a wind.

Smirnov said, “As you know, the rulers of all the Soviets are known as Party Members, and not just anyone can be a Party Member. Only the child of a Party Member can be a Party Member, except by direct action of the great Central Committee itself. Now, Mr. Arakal, you are sprung out of nothing, and have nothing behind you. But I am the child of a Party Member, who was the child of a Party Member, who was the child of a Party Member, who was the child of a Party Member, and indeed even I do not know for how many generations back this may go. You see the difference?”

Arakal’s eyes narrowed, and he said nothing.

“You observe,” said Smirnov, “that I speak your tongue. You cannot speak my tongue. But I speak yours with ease. It is nothing to me. This is because of my education.” He held up his right hand, turned the palm toward Arakal, and made a little thrusting motion of the hand toward Arakal. “Education is to be taught at such an age and in such a way that the knowledge becomes one with the person who is taught. He need make little effort to learn, Mr. Arakal, because he is naturally intelligent, and taught by skilled persons, whose job it is to teach, and to do nothing else. Such a thing you have not, but it is mine by right of birth. Those are two things we have that you do not have and cannot get without coming to us: One, the Party. Two, Education. But that is not all.”

Arakal watched the glint in Smirnov’s eyes, and listened to the wasp note in Smirnov’s voice.

“Three,” said Smirnov, “we have Technology. Let me point out to you, Mr. Arakal—and remember who it is that is pointing it out—that when your ancestors dared to raise their hand against us, the Central Committee gave the word: ‘Strip from them all their power and all their technology, that they may never have power again. Because it is only from technology that power comes.’ But, in the same order, the Central Committee said, ‘See to it that our technology is stored, good and plenty, with grease and all the instructions to keep it running.’ And so it was done. And our ancestors smashed yours to their knees, and then they kicked them off their knees onto their face, and they smashed your technology, and you can never rebuild it, because you have no Education. You are savages, nothing more, and never can be more, except you come to us to ask for it. Those are three reasons, and now there is the fourth, and most important of all.”

Arakal pushed his chair back, and took pains to get the swordhead free of the arm of the chair.

“The Party, Education, Technology,” said Smirnov, “and then the greatest—Ideology. And it is in this that I am an expert. I could have been anything, but I chose this, the most difficult of all–”

Arakal came to his feet.

“It has been interesting to listen to you, Mr. Ambassador.”

“I am not through. Sit down.”

Behind Arakal, someone drew his breath in sharply.

Arakal didn’t move, and there was a sudden hush.

Across the tent, Brusilov came hurrying, his expression harried. Slagiron was right beside him, alert and self-possessed.

Smirnov said irritably, “Sit down, sit down, Arakal.”

Brusilov glanced in astonishment at Smirnov.

Smirnov raised his hand and thrust up one finger. “First, the Party.” He thrust up another finger. “Second, Education.” He thrust up a third finger. “Third, Technology.” Each time he put up a finger, he gave his hand a little shake. He put up the fourth finger. “And fourth, Ideology.” He looked at the King of the O’Cracy’s. “Ideology, Arakal.”

Brusilov’s jaw fell open.

From behind Arakal came a murmur.

Slagiron’s lips tightened and his eyes glinted, but aside from that, there was no play of expression on his face.

Smirnov looked around.

“What’s all this? Be seated, the lot of you!”

Brusilov glanced anxiously around.

Arakal could sense his men gathering behind him. Now Brusilov’s pilots and guards came running, their hands on their holstered weapons.

Arakal took pains to keep his hands at his sides, though his left hand tilted the scabbard just enough so that he could get his sword out quickly.

The situation got through to Smirnov, who came angrily to his feet.

Brusilov stared at him.

“Mr. Ambassador, what have you–”

“Bah!” said Smirnov. “I am trying to teach this savage a minor lesson! Very minor! But it is all that is suited to his intelligence! The fools know nothing and so cannot think!”

Slagiron’s eyes widened. He glanced at Arakal.

Arakal sensed the opportunity, sucked in his breath, and gazed skyward for an instant, imploring guidance. He cleared his throat.

Behind him, there was an ugly murmur, and the clearly perceptible rattle of loosened swords.

Brusilov’s men glanced around.

Behind them, more of the O’Cracy’s stood ready, their eyes on Arakal, waiting the command.

From above, the words came to Arakal.

He raised his right hand, palm out, and spoke distinctly, and his translator spoke after him in the tongue of the Russ.

“Men of the Russ—go in peace. We have no fight with you.”

Brusilov exhaled, and glanced at Arakal with suddenly bright eyes. Behind Brusilov, his own men murmured, the sound one of surprise, and relief, and something more.

Arakal looked steadily back at Brusilov, and smiled, admiring the poise and insight of the Russ commander.

Slagiron grinned suddenly, and clapped Brusilov on the shoulder. He said something in his ear, and Brusilov gave his head a little shake, but smiled nevertheless.

Smirnov looked around, his eyes narrowed.

“What’s this? Why are they–”

Brusilov abruptly grabbed Smirnov by the arm, and whirled him around.

Arakal shouted, “You men! Form an honor guard for the warriors of the Russ!”

All at once, there was a cheer.

Brusilov propelled Smirnov between the lines, and the other Russ hurried along behind. Slagiron and Arakal went to the front of the tent, and watched the Russ climb into their big iron birds.

As they took off, Arakal smiled and waved, and from inside the iron birds, some of the Russ smiled and waved back.

As the helicopter thundered around them, Smirnov spoke furiously.

“You dared to lay your hand on me! And I am a Party Member of the Fourth Degree!”

“Mr. Ambassador,” said Brusilov shortly, “would you rather have had your head sliced off and rolled around on the floor of that tent?”

“You touched me!”

Brusilov opened his mouth and shut it. His gaze seemed to turn inward for an instant, then he took a hard look at Smirnov, his gaze cold and measuring.

Smirnov, staring back, put a hand on the bolstered automatic at his side.

Brusilov tensed, then caught himself. For a long moment, he was motionless. Then he gave his head a little shake.

“No,” he said. “No, it would be wrong.” He looked at Smirnov again, then Brusilov went to a seat across the aisle and sat down, his face set and unresponsive.

Around them, the helicopter thundered, as it carried them above the tower of the O’Cracy’s.

Arakal and Slagiron bent intently over the plot.

“So far,” said Arakal, “there is no word from the Kebeckers of the Russ fleet entering the river. The Kebeckers say there is no sign of the Russ at all.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Slagiron. “I wonder if they could be going to try the Hudson again—with their main fleet this time.”

“In that case, they would be in sight by now. Our lookout on Long Island has seen nothing, and the same word has come in from our boat off the Hook.”

“Peculiar. Still, there is a delay in getting word to us.”

“True. We get the word quickly from Kebeck Fortress over the flasher, but a runner crosses from Long Island by boat.”

Smith cleared his throat apologetically.

“Beg pardon, sir. Just last week, while you were… ah… working with Carlo, we got the flasher set up across Long Island Sound.”

“What? There’s a tower there?”

“No, sir, that would be too risky, but the sea is flat, and we can do without towers over that distance. There’s still a delay in reports from off the Hook. But from the Sound, in good weather, we get them fast. There was no long delay on this report.”

“Good. But now, you see,” he said, turning to Slagiron, “that leaves us up in the air. They’ve sent this new ambassador. This Central Committee is as regular as clockwork. They never send a new ambassador without sending reinforcements, and they never send reinforcements without sending their fleet. Now, we’ve had the ambassador. Where’s the fleet? We want to take that blow on our shield, not on our head.”

The door opened briefly, and they heard a rumbling thud, like distant thunder. Arakal looked around, to see Colputt, smiling faintly, hang his coat on a peg and walk over.

“Now they’re bombing the conference site,” said Colputt.

Arakal smiled. “The more they drop there, the fewer they can dump on our heads. And they bring those things a long distance.”

Slagiron shook his head. “This ambassador is their worst yet. If a thing is disastrous, he does it at once. No doubt now his pride has to be soothed.”

Colputt added, “And their fleet is sighted. We just received word.”

“What? Where?”

“Penobscot Bay.”

Arakal looked at the contoured plot, and the wide deep indentations in the Maine coast.

Colputt went on, “They are landing troops at Bangor. Before the landing, their planes knocked out the flasher tower at Skowhegan.”

Slagiron looked at the plot thoughtfully, and glanced at Arakal.

Arakal turned to Smith. “Send word to the Kebeckers. Describe this landing. And tell them Carlo is ready.”

Slagiron said, “Will they come?”

“Why not?” said Arakal, looking at the plot, where the markers were already being set down. “Could we ask for more?”

“On the map,” said Slagiron, “this will look bad. From Bangor it is only… say… a hundred and eighty miles to Kebeck Fortress, across country. The Russ can cut straight for the river, and split us off from the Kebeckers—on the map.”

Arakal smiled. “A hundred and eighty miles of what? And when the Russ get there, they’re on the wrong bank of the river. Meanwhile, their fleet is stuck at Bangor, or coming around by the Gulf, or else it gets there without the troops. Try the Kebeckers, and see what they say.”

Brusilov returned the major’s salute.

“Sir,” said the major, glancing around at the rugged peaks, and swatting at mosquitoes, “that map is either wrong, or we’re turned around. There is no road. And the sniping is getting worse.”

Smirnov spoke up sharply.

“You are a soldier, are you not? You expect to fight in a war, do you not?”

Brusilov spoke coolly. “We aren’t lost, Major. Simply assume that the map is right, and cast around for the road. Don’t worry. It will be broken up, but it’s there.”

The major said stubbornly, “The men say this is going to be the Hudson all over again. They don’t like it. They are growing hard to manage.”

Brusilov smiled soberly and shook his head. “Have them look at this mess of lakes, ponds, and swamps. Did we have anything like this on the march up the Hudson? No.” He waved a hand at the cloud of small black flies that, interspersed with occasional mosquitoes, settled on him as soon as he devoted himself to anything else. “So,” he said, “it is not the Hudson all over again. This is quite different. Console yourself, my friend. We have variety, at least.”

The major looked sullen, but saluted. Then he trudged off up one of the interminable hills over which the road through the heavy forest climbed and plunged.

Brusilov glanced at Smirnov.

“Isn’t this far enough? Speaking as a merely military man, devoid of ideological finesse, I think this is far enough.”

“We must press on,” said Smirnov. “Until we are sure the natives are fully committed.”

Brusilov shook his head.

“Comrade, in a general way, this plan is not bad; but there are details, and it is the details that will ruin us. Arakal will not react as you expect. You would draw him here by a threat, fall back before him, lure him to the coast, embark, and strike elsewhere. He will not be drawn, however. He will not take the bait.”

Smirnov smiled in a superior way.

“I know the aboriginal mind. This native leader is without training. He is brave, and has personal presence, but no sense of grand strategy. He is already beaten in the realm of ideas.”

“No, he is not.” Brusilov frowned and waved away a cloud of the tiny flies. “That is the trouble. He is a master of conflict, in the realm of ideas as elsewhere.”

“Look here,” said Smirnov, suddenly earnest. “The method by which the fellow’s ancestors were beaten were quite simple. We took a little advantage, repeatedly, until we had a big advantage, and at each point the change was too small to stimulate them to action. The records are somewhat confused as to details, but obviously when we had enough advantage, then we struck. Now, this conflict here is the same thing, except that there is no longer another ideologically able side to oppose our movements. We have now the fruit of the last war, an ideological and technological advantage they can never overcome. Specifically, our speed of movement is faster than theirs. Trial is enough. It is unbeatable. It is the advantage that will give us everything else.”

“I am not sure of it.”

Smirnov’s earnestness gave out, and he spoke irritably. “You were defeated. Your plan was good, but you lacked subtlety. You proceeded straight ahead. ‘Cut them up the line of the Hudson!’ A good idea. But you were too direct. You should have drawn them elsewhere first.”

Brusilov shook his head. “It was their solar flasher that wrecked my plan. They are not aborigines! Aborigines do not know of technology. Arakal’s people remember what they could do; they know it is possible. They keep thinking, trying to find the way again. It is that that distinguishes them from aborigines.”

“Well, their solar flasher is what will destroy them now, by decoying their main forces to this place. And it is our speed of movement that will then deliver the deciding blow.”

“I hope so,” said Brusilov. “But where is Arakal?”

Arakal, perspiring in the humid foggy dawn, looked through the precious long-seeing glasses, and noted the lone guard pacing atop the breastworks, on the far side of the canal.

Beside Arakal, Slagiron murmured, “They seem asleep.”

Arakal nodded. “They would be flattered to know how many are watching them. They have never had so many of us at once before—though we have traded with them secretly so long they no longer dread us.”

Slagiron shut his glass with a snap, and grinned.

“Now, we will find out if all those crisscrossing rivers shown on our maps are obstacles or not. Only let us not be invisibly burned to bits by all the slagged ruins in the vicinity, and we will even see if your plan can work… War without blood… I doubt it, but it is worth a try.”

Arakal glanced around and saluted the Kebecker leader, who beamed and raised his hand. Then Arakal turned to signal to his own cavalry chief.

The cavalryman grinned and took off his hat in a sweeping gesture, then turned and beckoned to the dense woods behind him.

A long line of mounted men in gray emerged from the forest and, at a walk, started down toward the canal. Behind them came teams of oxen dragging long heavy logs, and behind them came small groups of infantry, some stripped to their waists, all quiet, and most looking cheerful, as if on some kind of outing.

Atop the breastworks, the sentry halted, turned, and started back. Hypnotized by his routine, he paced methodically, halted again, turned, started back, and suddenly froze. He stared up and down the line of smiling horsemen leisurely approaching the canal, stared at the oxen pulling the logs, looked hard at the infantrymen gaily jumping into the water, and before he could recover, someone called out in his own tongue, making him uncertain for an instant who this army belonged to.

Meanwhile, the infantry swam the canal. In the water, the engineers were taking the ends of the logs as they were rolled down, and pulling them out into the water. The cavalry were swimming their horses across, and soon, if all went well, the guns and catapults could go across on the bridges.

Atop the breastworks, the troops were now banging the stupefied guard on the back, and he himself was starting to grin and laugh, and now shook his head and turned to shout to someone, who climbed up, looked around in amazement, stared in both directions up and down the canal, where the gray uniforms were crossing over, and finally shrugged and spread his hands.

Slagiron murmured his satisfaction, and turned to Arakal.

“You were right. No shots, no advance bombardment, no attack, just an advance.”

“As long as it lasts,” said Arakal. “When we hit the garrison at Salisbury, it may be different.”

“If we get to Salisbury,” said Slagiron, grinning, “we’ve got the whole colony. They’ll have one sweet time getting us out once we get to Salisbury.”

“Remember,” Arakal warned, “they must be treated like O’Cracy’s. They are good hard workers and decent people, and if we treat them right, they will become O’Cracy’s.”

Slagiron nodded. “I have pounded it into the troops. They know. I even almost believe it myself now.”

Brusilov, half eaten up by bugs, was in a murderous frame of mind. He had three tanks in a bog, half a dozen out for repairs, the sniping was continuous and getting worse, and worst of all, the men had no heart for the fight. Smirnov, however, was delighted.

“I would say we are now drawing in the first of Arakal’s troops. Would you agree?”

“Hard to say,” growled Brusilov.

“All this uproar could not be caused by locals.”

“You can’t be–” Brusilov frowned at a courier running up the slippery ruts. “What’s this?”

The courier, out of breath, saluted and held out a slip of paper.

Brusilov unfolded it, read quickly, and stared at Smirnov.

“What is it?” demanded Smirnov.

Brusilov handed it to him.

Smirnov took it, read it, stiffened, looked up blankly, read it again, and, absently fanning at the bugs, stared blankly at the towering hills.

“Impossible. Delaware in the hands of New Brunswick troops. The Army of Quebec on the line of the Nanticoke River. Arakal swinging around to the east of Salisbury. The whole Maryland-Delaware Colony is lost. How can it have happened?”

Brusilov said grimly, “I’ve tried to explain to you not to underestimate Arakal. Well, now what do we do?”

Smirnov broke out in a fine perspiration.

“It is impossible!” He glanced at Brusilov. “You are the military commander! What is your opinion? This is your specialty!”

“Oh, of course. But you are the one with the letter of authority from the Central Committee. Also, you have the ideology.”

“What would you advise?”

“Pull out. Maybe we can still save Carteret, Beaufort, and Florida Colony. We aren’t doing any good here.”

Smirnov stared into the distance. Suddenly he drew a deep breath.

“It is impossible for an unlettered fool who thinks the O’Cracy’s fought the Russ with magic wands to win this contest! He has won a chance victory, but he has lost the war!”

Brusilov shook his head wearily. “How do you reason that?”

“He has shifted the full strength of this part of the continent to the south, against our colonies. We will strike to the north, take Quebec Fortress, open the line of the St. Lawrence, and later strike simultaneously up and down the Hudson to cut off all New England. He has won the Maryland-Delaware Peninsula; but can he hold it, can he pacify it? We will at once warn the other colonies of his atrocities. They must stand in their own defense at once. Meanwhile, we will get this burr out of our hide, get this river fortress into our own hands!”

“You want the troops back on the ships?”

“No! Every last soldier must come here! Then send the ships around to come down the St. Lawrence and ferry us across. We will now cut loose from them entirely and march overland!”

Brusilov considered it thoughtfully, and shook his head. “No. Look–”

But Smirnov made an axe-like gesture of the hand, from the shoulder straight out.

“Cut the continent, from the Atlantic to the river line. Wheel south and east, smash all resistance in our path. Cut Arakal loose from his base. Swiftness, speed, decision—and the ignorant tribesman is whipped. In this first fight we will turn our soft soldiers into hardened troops, veterans. Then we will see!”

Brusilov stood thinking, his right hand on the flap of his holster. Finally he shrugged, and turned to give the necessary orders.

Arakal reread the message that had come in flashes of light down the line of towers from New England. He looked at Slagiron.

“The Russ are heading for Kebeck Fortress, overland.” He handed the message to the leader of the Kebeckers, who had just joined them, and whose translator, standing between his chief and Arakal, translated Arakal’s comment, then bent over the message and read it in a low voice.

The Kebecker chief glanced at the plot, where the red emblems climbing the green and brown slopes and surrounded by a multitude of small blue markers were now being moved further forward. Then he turned with a slight smile, to give the message back to Arakal.

“Ça sera un peu difficile pour les Russes,” the Kebecker said, speaking slowly and distinctly, and holding one hand up to silence his translator.

Arakal winced and glanced at the ceiling. It came to him that the Kebecker had somehow learned of the hundreds of hours he, Arakal, had put into a study of the Kebeck tongue, while the depth of winter made campaigning impractical. Arakal had been prepared to forget all about this and rely on the translators, but someone’s sense of humor had given away the secret. All winter Slagiron and the others had joked slyly at Arakal’s laborious progress, while Arakal, chafing at the depths of linguistic incapacity revealed to him with each day’s effort, nevertheless had refused to give up. Determinedly good-natured, he replied, “While you pass the winter in perfumed idleness, I am laying the groundwork for the future. If we are going to clout the Russ in the springtime, one of us, at least, ought to understand the Kebeckers’ chief. He has shrewd ideas, but the translators are no military geniuses, and now and then they miss the point. And it is up to us to solve it somehow. You know as well as I do that their chief can’t speak a word of English—not that he hasn’t at least tried.”

Slagiron shook his head. “He did memorize that greeting when we got Carlo across the border and went up there for a talk.”

Arakal nodded, remembering the incident soberly. “That’s what I mean.”

Colputt turned to Smith. “Did we ever figure out what he said?”

Smith looked helpless. “Don’t ask me. Did you see the looks on the faces of the translators?”

“In my opinion, it wasn’t anything,” said Casey. “Neither their talk nor our talk. Just noise. It sounded like something, but nobody could make it out.”

Arakal shook his head. “Our translators explained it to me later. He had our words and his way of speaking. That’s why nobody could follow it. But the translators finally figured it out. What he said was just what we thought he must be saying, from his expression. He greeted us, praised Carlo, and looked forward to our future cooperation.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Slagiron slyly, “but will you be able to do as well come next spring?”

Everyone had laughed at that as the snow whipped around the winter camp, and the cold set its teeth into the logs of the buildings.

And now, after the victory over the Russ, Arakal stared at the ceiling, and the Kebecker chief smiled and waited.

Slowly, in Arakal’s mind, the meaning evolved: “That will be… a little difficult… for the Russ.”

Arakal thought it through again. Unquestionably, that was what it meant. Now he avoided glancing at the grinning Slagiron, and trusted to the labors of his Kebeck-born translator. It was a somewhat ambitious reply he had in mind, but he thought he could get it out. He drew a deep breath, then spoke slowly and carefully:

“Carlo et nous, nous ferons beaucoup des difficultés pour les Russes.’’

Across the room, Arakal’s translator winced, but the Kebecker translator looked agreeably surprised.

Arakal laboriously went over it again in his head now that it was out. Surely what he had just said had come out as it was supposed to: “Carlo and we, we will make plenty of difficulty for the Russ.”

The Kebecker chief glanced at the ceiling for only a moment, then smiled and nodded.

“Ah, oui. Carlo et nous.” He bent over the plot, and speaking clearly and slowly his meaning came across almost as plainly as if he spoke English.

“Carlo—where does he go in these hills? Will the Russ not find him?”

“No,” said Arakal carefully, now suspecting that he had already made one mistake in his first answer. “Carlo is back of those hills. The Russ will not find him. But we will show them what he can do.”

Brusilov, though by no means charmed with this plan, was still uncertain whether it might not, after all, turn out to be workable.

Smirnov, now that he had set his mind on a definite idea, proved to have at least one outstanding quality—total ruthlessness.

“Hang them!” he commanded when suspected snipers were brought in. “Leave their bodies dangling as a warning to others! Enough delay for these dogs! Forward! We must go forward!”

Under the lash of his tongue, with the reinforcements pouring in from the ships, the army had begun to move again. Through swamps, streams, rivers, up and down mountains, through dense forest, over a track of a road that had long since ceased to be useful, where the pines and oaks and hemlocks grew ten inches through and had to be felled to make way for the tanks and supply trucks. Through endless snipers, who used guns, and longbows that were worse than guns—whose arrows could pin a man to a tree to wait in shock and despair for the next arrow that would finish him.

But they moved.

And with progress and a definite goal, the troops began to look up. Soon the endless hills would have to grow smaller. Arakal’s men, on foot and on horseback, could not hope to return from the South in time.

Now Smirnov’s troops were in the swing of the work, their superior weapons and numbers making themselves felt. Sensing victory, they became tougher, would not be stopped, would not be overawed or intimidated. The crafty Arakal was at long last outmaneuvered, and they were the ones who would beat him for good.

Before them, the snipers melted away, to content themselves with picking off stragglers that had fallen behind.

Smirnov grimly urged more speed, and now there was nothing but forest and hills and water and bugs to contend with.

They camped one night in a place where two small rivers came together, to flow away in a larger river to the north. They had lost many of the tanks and quite a number of the trucks, but their spirits were high despite their weariness.

Brusilov listened to Smirnov’s prediction.

“My friend,” said Smirnov, “this march will go down in world history as a major military stroke.”

“If,” said Brusilov soberly, “it were not that we will rejoin the ships soon, we would be in serious trouble. Our gas, food, and even ammunition are getting low.”

“But we will rejoin the ships.”

“We could have accomplished the same trip by boarding the ships and being carried there without losses,” said Brusilov.

“True, but also without victory. We are conquerors now. And the men know it.”

“There is truth in what you say. And yet–”

“And yet?”

“It is hard for me to believe that Arakal is beaten.”

Smirnov laughed.

“You have been beaten by him, and so you think he can beat anyone. I have seen deeper than he from the beginning, and beaten him ideologically.”

“No. He outmaneuvered you at the meeting. He turned the men against you.”

“If so, where is the result now? The men are blooded, tough and determined. The effect of Arakal’s cleverness is lost. He has been outthought.”

But in the morning, when they tried to cross the river, murderous sheets of fire greeted them.

Brusilov, looking down around the edge of a small boulder, and seeing the burning vehicles, the men spread-eagled in the water and other men who rushed into the stream while still others straggled back from it—Brusilov, seeing this, wormed backward, dropped down a short slanting bank, and ran doubled over toward the center of the camp. The heavy firing, he noticed, was all from in front, none from the rear or flanks.

Quickly, he gave the orders to pull back, then try probing toward the east. They had to get to the river, but they could never make it going straight ahead.

Meanwhile, the sniping that had let up a little while ago was worse now than it had ever been. The tanks, in this country, were worthless alone. They could sometimes ride the trees down, but only to make a tangled jumble that was worse than what they had had to contend with in the beginning. A way had to be cleared for them, but who could fell trees in this blizzard of bullets and arrows?

Toward ten o’clock, Brusilov, with the speechless Smirnov in tow, broke through toward the east, then swung northward again toward the river. But in the unending fighting, in the dense roadless forest, the tanks and trucks were an unbearable encumbrance.

Smirnov, finding himself alive, recovered his voice.

“Let us send the armor and transport back the way they came. There, the old road is cleared, and they can escape.”

“Where to?” demanded Brusilov. “Back to Bangor?”

“Why not?”

“Do you know what will happen to the men? Remember, you had the suspected snipers hanged and left as a warning. What will the people do now?”

“Our men can overawe them with their weapons.”

Brusilov laughed, and gave orders to fire all the remaining ammunition of the tanks in the direction of the enemy and then smash the engines. The trucks he had unloaded of whatever was useful, and rolled them into the river.

“It is a waste!” cried Smirnov.

“We need every man we can get,” said Brusilov.

Desperately, they fought their way toward the north, and suddenly and unexplainably the opposition gave way.

A lone cavalry captain under a white flag made his way to Brusilov and Smirnov, to invite them to a conference.

“Do they wish to surrender?” wondered Smirnov aloud.

Brusilov looked at Smirnov and shook his head moodily—and accepted the invitation. He gave orders that the march was to continue, conferred with a few trusted officers, and went with Smirnov to the conference.

Arakal seated himself across the little table from Smirnov, smiled at Brusilov’s look of amazement, and turned briefly to Slagiron.

“The pursuit, of course, is being continued?”

“Yes, sir,” said Slagiron respectfully.

Arakal faced Smirnov.

“We regret that we have to use harsh measures. But the men are in an ugly mood. They have seen the corpses dangling from the trees. And some of these corpses were badly disfigured. You understand that we must be severe or the men will take matters into their own hands.”

Brusilov was nodding, moodily. Smirnov said nothing.

“We know, of course,” said Arakal, “where the order came from.” He looked at Smirnov, and waited.

Smirnov, frowning, said, “So, the message was a hoax?”

“What message?”

“The message from Salisbury.”

“A hoax?” said Arakal. “Ah, you think we decoyed you here?”

“Yes.”

Arakal shook his head. He turned to an officer standing beside a wooden chest. “Show the Ambassador-General the flag from Salisbury.”

The officer bent, opened the chest, took out a large flag, and handed it to Smirnov.

Smirnov held it, passed the cloth between his fingers, and looked up at Arakal. He tried to speak, swallowed, and tried again.

“So, it is true. You have taken Delaware Colony.”

Arakal bowed his head.

“By the Grace of God. We also have Beaufort and Florida Colonies. Carteret is still holding out. We will go down later to Carteret and return the favor the Army of the South is doing for us here.”

Brusilov jerked as if a hot wire had touched him.

Smirnov blinked, but it took him a moment longer to respond. “The Army of the South? Kilburne’s Guerrillas?”

Arakal smiled. “General Kilburne commands the Army of the South.”

“But… how—?”

Suddenly Brusilov clapped his hand to his head, winced, then recovered his composure and drew a deep breath. He spoke sharply to Smirnov, his words indistinguishable to Arakal.

Behind Arakal, an officer cleared his throat.

“General Brusilov suggests to the Ambassador that if what this must mean is true, then the Ambassador can appeal to the devil’s grandmother to save the Russ colonies here. It must be, the General says, that the Americans have rebuilt the railroads.”

Smirnov looked as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over his head. Arakal leaned forward, smiling.

“Is there anything more natural, Mr. Ambassador? What else is there that will run on coal or wood—and we have plenty of that—and exceed the speed of your fastest tanks and trucks run on expensive fuel? What else can easily outpace all your transport ships and all your warships save only those rare few that ride on narrow wings let down under the water? Is there any other way that we can travel a thousand miles in a day, and move an army from place to place faster than you can transport it by ships, and in far greater numbers than you can move it by air, and in any kind of weather? Why would we not connect together whatever well-sited roads of steel survived your attack, and why would we not salvage all the cars and all the engines that can use wood or coal to pull those cars and put our best men to work making new engines? Why not?”

Smirnov said sharply, “We can do the same thing!”

“No, you can’t,” said Arakal. “Not here. There would be nothing easier for us to sabotage. You must rely on tanks and iron birds and trucks. You can rely on nothing you cannot guard at all times.”

Smirnov shoved back his chair as if to get up.

Brusilov rested a hand heavily on Smirnov’s shoulder, and glanced gravely at Arakal.

“What did you ask us here for? To tell us this?”

“To ask the surrender of your army.”

Brusilov shook his head.

“Do not catch the conqueror’s sickness of quick conceit. Remember, we are a world empire, while you are only a part of a ruined nation that was once great. Do not press too far. Be generous, and hope that we will be generous in turn. To avoid the trouble of a great effort, our leaders might come to an arrangement with you, if you are reasonable.”

Arakal waited a moment, then said quietly, “We seek nothing that belongs to the Russ. We ask only that which belongs to the O’Cracy’s.”

Brusilov’s face twitched.

“It must be negotiated.”

An officer stepped up beside Arakal, and excused himself. “Sir, news of the Russ fleet.”

“Speak up,” said Arakal. “Our guests will want to know, too.”

The officer cleared his throat. “They have passed Cape Cat and are moving at high speed upriver. Their iron birds are scouring the shoreline.”

Brusilov straightened. Smirnov sat up in his chair.

Arakal said quietly, “You see, I am being fair with you. But I can do only so much. The more you fight with us, the more determined and filled with anger my men will become. It would be best to surrender to us and be escorted, without the weapons of your men, to the ships. But to be released in that way, the Russ must agree to make no move against any of the colonies which have become ours. Any colonist who wishes may, of course, go home with you, if you care about that.”

Brusilov frowned, and spoke carefully, “If the worldwide might of the Soviets were to be concentrated in this spot–”

Slagiron said quietly, “Then all the world would rise up wherever you pulled out.”

Smirnov came to his feet.

“I am the Ambassador of the greatest empire—yes, empire—on earth.” He tilted his head back, and Arakal leaned slightly forward, waiting. Smirnov, however, for some reason, did not say more.

Brusilov said firmly, “We can accept no condition that would reflect discredit on our nation.”

Arakal said, almost regretfully, “Now that the Army of the South is with us, and the Army of Rebeck, and the Army of Brunswick, and the Maine Militia, I would say you are outnumbered better than three to one. We respect your courage. But you must consider these facts.”

Brusilov was silent, but Smirnov said, “You forget our Fleet.”

“No,” said Arakal, smiling, “I have not forgotten that.”

Smirnov gave his head a little shake.

“They are still savages. They have learned nothing! Let us–”

Brusilov interrupted, and his voice came out in a roar.

“Enough name-calling!” He turned to Arakal. “We thank you for your courtesy; but we do not give up! And we remind you that if we decide to put forth our strength, you will regret it!”

Brusilov turned on his heel and went out. Smirnov trailed out after him, then paused at the entrance and looked back.

“I associate myself with everything the Commander has said.” He nodded and went out.

Slagiron said exasperatedly, “How do we separate Brusilov from that little worm?”

“We can only send our prayers for that,” said Arakal. “We must be very careful now, that in trying to gain all we do not let the whole business slide through our fingers.” He glanced at Slagiron. “Let us see how long we can keep them from reaching the St. Lawrence.”

Brusilov, so tired by now that each motion took its separate effort of will, stared at the new columns of dust rising parallel to the columns of dust raised by his own marching men.

Wearily, he said, “Arakal underestimated his strength to us. This is worse than three to one.”

Smirnov peered around.

“It is true. Look, we will be forced into the bend of that big stream.”

“Do you think I don’t see it? But on this side they are ahead of us in great numbers. We can’t go straight. We must cross here and hope that we get completely across before they… Listen!”

They glanced up.

With a thunderous beat, three helicopters came flying toward them, and swerved suddenly as they took in the situation.

The nearest column of local troops, however, did not break or flee. Instead, they at once swerved to attack Brusilov.

Smirnov cried out, but Brusilov laughed half-hysterically.

“They want to get close. They wish to mingle with us to be safe from the bombs.” He shouted orders, and his ragged columns broke into a run toward the stream.

The helicopters swerved to attack the oncoming troops.

Under the brilliant sun, the scene seemed to hang suspended, the men, the clouds of dust, the planes—all seemed to exist in a moment that would last forever.

And then the helicopters lit in a blaze as of a hundred suns.

Brusilov, stunned, saw the clouds of smoke where the pilots lost control and the planes crashed, but his mind could furnish no explanation. Then a sort of terror seized him, as if he were in the grip of some supernatural force that step by step undid the gains of the past, and would never let up until it had its way.

Shouting and cursing, he drove his men into the stream, led them out on the other side, and pointed to the distance, where a shimmer like steel showed the presence of the great river.

Now the enemy was so close, however, that Brusilov in the wild flight could no longer say whose men were his and whose belonged to the enemy. All were fleeing in a tangled jumble, and behind them came a tightly controlled body of cavalry that with repeated charges harried them till they were all one tormented, running, indistinguishable mass of suffering, seeking the river and salvation.

Brusilov, his mind hazed by fatigue and confusion—and the shock of the unexpected and the unpredictable—gave up trying to reason and just thought of the river, and the ships, and peace and safety.

And at last they were there, after no man knew how long. The sun had climbed up past the zenith and was now hanging in the west, and Brusilov, by pure habit, scarcely aware what he was doing, was ordering the men, placing this one or that one in a better position to fire, organizing a defense to hold off the harrying cavalry and the fast-approaching columns of troops.

From all the ships, warships as well as transports, the boats came in and ferried out load after load of stunned, dazed, dead-tired men, men too drugged with fatigue to do anything but clamber into the boats and fall down one on another. Men who stared stupidly when given an order, and had to be moved from place to place by hand… But they were getting them onto the ships.

As the big guns of the ships held off the encroaching enemy, Brusilov wished dazedly for rockets, but those, unfortunately, were reserved for special purposes. Still, the guns held off the pursuit, the last men were loaded into the boats, and now it was Brusilov’s turn to accompany them, and–

A glare lit the ships, as if the sun, to the west, had risen and passed in a flash to the east, and multiplied itself a hundred-, a thousandfold.

From a point of land upriver, a little cloud of smoke rose up in the air.

A plume of water rose high beside the largest of the ships.

A heavy boom reached Brusilov’s ears—a sound as of distant heavy thunder.

Suddenly he was surrounded, horsemen were everywhere, and before he knew what had happened he was caught up; the world spun around him, and he gave it up, and plunged into a deep black quiet that welcomed him into its depths—and long, long after, it yielded him up again, refreshed and wondering at the confused impressions that he found in his mind.

Arakal, smiling, was standing beside a round window. “You are awake, General Brusilov?”

“You again,” said Brusilov. He sat up, and nodded also to Slagiron. “So, I did not reach the ships?”

“Look around,” said Arakal. “Feel the motion underfoot. Of course, you have slept so long that it must seem natural.”

Brusilov stared around.

“But why are you here?”

“These,” said Arakal blandly, “are our ships, taken in return for some little damage you did in Bangor and on the way here.”

Brusilov got carefully to his feet. He looked at the bland Arakal and the grinning Slagiron, and peered out the porthole of the cabin. There, riding at anchor, were the other ships of the Fleet.

“How did you do this? Are you like those wizards of old you speak of?”

“Did it seem,” said Arakal, “that your ranks became somewhat swollen toward the end of the fight?”

Brusilov shut his eyes and sat down on the edge of the bunk.

“My men,” said Arakal, “were rescued along with yours—special corps whose uniforms are really not too much different from your own. They were very tired from catching up and joining you, and so they collapsed almost as soon as they were on board. Therefore, Colputt’s big multiplied version of his solar flasher did not blind them as it did your men. And so, when they stood up again they found it easy to overpower your blinded men long enough for the rest of my men to get out here. Oh, it was uncomfortable, and our railroad gun almost wrecked everything by taking a crack at you before you tried to get away, but we still got your fleet. It is ours now, but you need only join us, and it will be yours, too.”

Brusilov stared at him.

“I tried to tell that fool Smirnov not to underestimate you militarily. And I wound up doing it myself. He is dead, I suppose?”

“No,” said Arakal, “I persuaded my men that your great Central Committee will do things to him that we could not dream of, and then the weight will be on their souls, not ours. Moreover, to destroy him would be a gain for your side. We are sending him back to them with an offer of peace, if they return the lands of the O’Cracy’s.”

“You have already got them,” said Brusilov. “All except Carteret. I can’t believe that will hold out long against you, now that our fleet… cannot interfere.”

“Why,” said Arakal, “there is still the land of the Kebeckers across the sea. And Old Brunswick, from which the New Brunswickers came. All that must be returned to the O’Cracy’s. It would be as well to do it. You are stretched too thin holding so much.”

Brusilov stared at him a long time, then started to grin. “You are sending Smirnov to carry that message to the Central Committee?”

“Yes. We hope they will agree. But in any case, we want them to have him. He is so well educated, and of such good birth, and knows so much about technology and ideology that it is to our benefit that they have him.’’

Brusilov grinned.

“And what is your idea about the greatness of… yourself, for instance? When your son is King of the O’Cracy’s, what will his education be like?”

“We of the O’Cracy’s,” said Arakal seriously, “believe that only the best man should lead—the best person for the particular job, that is. Not the son of the best man, unless he himself is best. The only way we have found to pick out this best man is to have an election, but that method is not yet perfected. Why not join us, and see if you can help us work out improvements? You have so much experience with Party Members of the fourth generation that you must have done some thinking and have some ideas.”

“So, you would have me, eh? But then I would be a traitor to my own people.”

“Which people? Smirnov—or the Delaware colonists who have joined with us voluntarily?”

“Voluntarily? You conquered them!”

“We conquered the troops stationed among them—such of them as woke up in time to fight. We then agreed to keep those like this Smirnov of yours away from them if they would join us. They were very agreeable. They have had much ideology jammed down their throats.”

“Ideology,” said Brusilov in disgust. “True, it is important. But the fact is that where Charles Martel stopped the advance of the arms of the Arabs, there the advance of Islam ceased. Cromwell defeated the English king, and Puritanism was established. Hitler went down in defeat, and Nazism ended. America overspread the earth, armed with the ideology of democracy and with her know-how and power, and then they took things too easy, and my ancestors got more power than they, and that was too bad for the American dominion. And now this donkey, Smirnov, tells me it is the ideology that counts!”

“Well,” said Arakal, “it does count. His reasoning has become confused, but the general idea is right.”

Brusilov looked doubtful.

Arakal said, “Ideology counts. The only catch is—almost always when ideology counts, it does the counting with a sword.’’

Editor’s Introduction to:

Battleground

Gregory and James Benford

James and Gregory Benford both took their doctorates in physics at the University of California in La Jolla (now called UCSD). I think it is relatively rare for brothers to earn Ph.D.’s in physics; it’s nearly unheard-of when they are twins and do it in the same place at the same time. Greg Benford has written a few of the details in his classic novel Timescape.

Since that time the Benford brothers have gone separate ways, with Greg becoming a professor of physics at the University of California at Irvine, and Jim working in government and industry. Both are members of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy, and both have some hefty responsibilities in developing theory and technology for the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Lack of intelligence—failure to know where the enemy is or will be—has lost more battles than mere discrepancies in numbers. When you face an enemy who can hide his location even as you watch, you’re really in trouble, unless you have a lot of help. Even then things can be tricky. It depends on the help.

Battleground

Gregory and James Benford

It was a sound like fingernails scraping on metal, shrieking in the narrow confines of the capsule. The walls reflected it, piling harmonic on harmonic until it ceased to be a noise and became a force.

The force battered at Kunihei Katsura’s sweating face and darkened the lines of fatigue. He unconsciously cringed away and for the first time thought of reaching for his pistol. If it got in he would have only one shot.

He glanced at the laser cannon control grid linked to the larger gun on the roof. Green light: No target. The alien was too close to his life-support bubble for the system to register it.

The thing was lunging against the walls, the screech rising to an unbearable pitch. Katsura lifted the safety on his pistol and braced for the attack.

Then he realized with a start that the thing was not getting in. The shrill rasp did not give way to a tearing sound as the organic sheets yielded to armored claws.

It stopped quickly and circled back around the small hemisphere to the viewport. Beyond, on the floor of the barren gray canyon that stretched away for two miles, lay the mangled wet clumps of things that had been men. The scene was framed in the port, stark under the white glare of an alien star.

A reddish-black object fell across his field of vision, and it was a moment before Katsura could recognize the claw with its razor edges. Abruptly the full body of the thing filled the port, standing upright on its hind legs to bring its full weight to bear on the bubble. Ten feet long—at least. Its underbelly was yellow-green, covered with an oily liquid that seemed to ooze from between overlapping platelets.

Katsura stopped an impulse to fire point-blank at the thing. A projectile weapon would shatter the tempered organiform and the alien could reach him with one incredibly swift slash.

It was something like an insect, if an insect ever had two eyes mounted over each of its eight legs. Or if an insect ever killed twenty-three men.

The thing scraped frantically at the smooth surface of the bubble, slipping as it tried to gain a hold. Despite its speed it was massive. If it ever got a hold and reached the top of the hemisphere its weight would surely collapse the bubble.

Katsura wiped moisture from his brow. His mind raced over the last ten minutes, trying to think of a way out.

“Is it going to get in, Kunihei?”

He started. The computer’s voice was tinny as it came through the comm line speaker mounted on the bubble wall.

He’d always resented CAS (Computer, Analog and Services), partly because its efficiency cut so severely into the number of men needed for an exploratory ship. It got lonely out among the stars. CAS was stripped of most of the standard machine-human interface equipment which would have taken the edge off its know-it-all nature. No space for luxury out here.

“Why didn’t you say anything about that thing coming?” he said sharply.

“Perimeter radar detected no signal attributable to a moving object.”

“Well, do you see it now?” he shouted.

Great time for the system to fail.

“Yes, Kunihei. Do you think it is going to get in?”

“No. If it could, it already would have.” He subsided, thinking. He looked at his wristwatch. Had it been only minutes ago when he’d heard a strangled gasp over his suit radio and the rush of air past a microphone? He had turned to see the insect slicing Hillary almost in half with one long arching cut, and three other men lying where they had fallen.

The laser cannon was already warmed up for testing and Katsura was the only man in the bubble. The gun fired as soon as it identified the other members of the expedition and Katsura expected to see the alien burned instantly.

But it wasn’t. When the rock had boiled away, there was no body—-and an instant later the monster was on the other side of the canyon, behind Davis.

It hadn’t run the distance; nothing could. His warning shout to Davis did no good—before the words were out, the man was without a head.

It went that way for the rest. The tracking and aiming were done by the ship’s computer, but the mechanical construction of the directing optics limited its response time. The cannon was just a little too slow, and the men were even slower. Some of them fired with their own weapons, but no one hit. One by one they were chopped down and lay still under the harsh numbing whiteness of an alien high noon. Those minutes had seemed unreal, a fantasy, the dark nightmare of a tortured mind.

The expedition had never suspected life here, on a desiccated, barren world. The planet had no name—they were its discoverers—and fitted in neatly just above the minimum standards for a life-supporting world: 0.3 Earth mass, average equatorial temperature of 45°F., air with a heavy nitrogen and CO_2 content and little oxygen, no oceans, no satellite, little water in the air (though there was some snow at the poles).

But the surface was cratered and bleak, no large-scale vegetation could be seen and the computer reported no significant radiation anywhere on the EM spectrum. Not even a magnetosphere to give noise. Still, there were a few scattered cities. Dried husks of buildings, wrecked vehicles, gray dust drifting in the angled streets. Someone had used this world as a base.

They orbited for three days. The high-resolution television showed nothing moving in the streets. So they went down.

“Kunihei, I have replayed the tapes of the assault. The radar and microwave both show a sequence of blips of about one-second duration over a thirty-second interval. Radar signal constant over the duration; but microwave pulse only at beginning and end. Radar shows the locations as somewhat random. With a drift in our direction, however.”

“So that’s the alien.”

“Yes.”

“And your power systems didn’t have any failures which would cause those signals?”

“No.”

Standing futilely inside the capsule, Katsura had time to notice the metallic device strapped over the beetle-like armor of the thing. The insect touched it every time, just before it vanished.

“Teleportation.” It could be nothing else.

“That was my deduction,” said the flat voice of the computer.

Mankind hadn’t found it yet, didn’t even know if it was possible. Well, he thought wryly, we know now.

Probably the only reason the thing didn’t materialize inside the bubble itself was the small size of the interior. There must be some law against materializing in the space already occupied by another object. So it was trying to break in, instead.

Suddenly the insect seemed to lose interest in Katsura. It stopped clawing at the smooth surface and lay against the window, staring inward with a pair of eyes. The two pupils in each enlarged to accommodate the darker interior and carefully swept about the room, ignoring the man.

There wasn’t much to see. Aside from the control grid comm unit and some power tools for installation, the cramped room was barren. It was to have been a maintenance and defense outpost on the perimeter of camp.

The inspection finished, it scuttled down the side and reached for the panel at its middle. Just as its forelegs touched the ground it vanished.

Before Katsura could raise his head the creature was near the other wall of the canyon, by Davis’ body. The automatic tracker clicked once and fired, but the spurt of dust and gas thrown up by the bright red beam couldn’t conceal that the thing had vanished too soon. The body was also gone.

The gun continued scanning the area. In the silence, the scene took on an ominous peacefulness.

Then the insect was back and Katsura glimpsed it lifting another body slightly clear of the ground before it was gone. The cannon optics swiveled, pulsed again. Too late.

Five more men were taken before he noticed the white area on the alien’s back. At first Katsura didn’t know what it was and then he couldn’t believe it. But when there were only two bodies left to collect, there was no mistake.

They were all hanging by their hands, tied together along some kind of belt. Stripped bare, their suits and clothes gone. Like something he had seen long ago in a slaughterhouse.

His training stopped him from being sick. Nausea abated after a moment, though he had to avoid looking closely at the alien. It picked up the last body and vanished again, the cannon futilely following with a shot.

After a pause it reappeared, its load now heavy and shifting roughly back and forth as it moved. The insect was out of the camp perimeter now, a half mile away. The tracker had not made its final fix, due to the change in distance, before the thing was gone again.

It suddenly became visible slightly farther away, winked out again to appear an instant later at the other side of the canyon. Erratically it followed a zig-zag path, gradually making its way back toward the city. The cannon was hopelessly lost.

In a moment the insect was too far away to distinguish it from the gnarled rocks that dotted the plain. The broken spires of the dead city swallowed it up.

The thing was alone, probably, the last remnant of an alien outpost on this hostile planet. Thrown back on its own resources for survival, vicious from a constant struggle. Lonely.

Hungry.

Katsura noticed that his clothes were wet, his body trembling. With a jagged sigh he sank to the floor.

For a long time he simply lay there, breathing deeply and staring up at the stars through the viewport. He had thought of them as friendly lights, beacons of home, but now they seemed ominously impartial.

Gradually, reluctantly, the panic began to seep out of his body as he tried to think again. “CAS, have you sent a signal out to the other exploration teams?”

“Yes, I’m programmed to notify all sister teams and the flagship immediately upon any violent human-alien interaction. I also sent a notification of the reduction of crew strength below one half.”

Good. You could always depend on the tidy mind of the computer. Exploration teams never operated far from one another, especially at this distance from the home worlds. He’d have help within a few days if he could sit tight and hold on.

“Kunihei, you have approximately thirty minutes of air left under normal consumption.”

Katsura blinked. He had been about to check his inventory. The encounter must have taken a lot of air. They had always told him to breathe slowly in tense situations to correct for the reflex to gulp it in.

“There is no reserve air in the bubble, Kunihei. You will have to come back to the ship.”

Automatically, he began pulling on the thin pressure suit. The best time to go get supplies—or reach the ship—was now. The alien would be busy and it would take time to get here from the city.

Still, the thing was amazingly fast.

He stopped. “CAS, if this insect can teleport, why did it take the time to evade by zig-zagging back to the city? Why not go directly?”

Lines in the tired face deepened. It wasn’t that the alien could jump only short distances; when it was picking up the bodies the thing had gone so far it was nearly beyond sight.

“The only information relating to discontinuous displacement in my second-level banks is the known limit on time travel.”

No time to think. But there had to be a pattern somewhere.

“CAS, cut your ship service down as much as you can and switch over to your special problem-solving program. Figure this thing out. I’m going to make it on back to the ship.”

Katsura struggled wearily to his feet and looked out. The graceful blue curves of the vessel stood out against the dark sky. A half mile away were the burnished metal canisters of oxygen tanks and supplies brought from the ship with tractor beams. A smaller pile of air tanks lay only a short distance away. He should be able to make it to them and back.

Following Katsura’s order, the computer began to alter itself. Emergency Heuristic Program began to activate special subroutines to reassign memory space. Assessment criteria altered, self-consistency parameters relaxed. Microfilmed references were reintegrated into direct-access memory locations.

Glancing out the port, Katsura slipped into the tiny lock and was out the other side before the cycling was finished. He set out in a rapid lope, taking longer steps in the lighter gravity. His breath began to come in short gasps.

The emergency program had split the higher centers of the operations computer into four subprograms. The first scanned memory for any information on spatial or temporal displacement, gradually working farther and farther afield. This memory was fed to the Advocate and Critic sections where hypotheses were created and discarded. The best went on to the Analyst, which applied them to the situation and developed strategy.

Blinking against the glare, Katsura looked down the canyon toward the city. At first he didn’t believe it. He slammed to a halt, hoping he was wrong. Far down the canyon, flitting rapidly from one point to another and coming closer, was the insect. Somehow it knew.

Panic seized him. He turned on his heel and ran wildly in the other direction. With every step he took Katsura could feel the claws poised behind him, about to slice through suit and flesh.

A glance over his shoulder. The creature was on the edge of the field now, only a few jumps from the life-support capsule. Katsura dug in hard for the last few steps, thrusting forward to catch the lever of the air lock. He fumbled with it for an agonizing moment and the door swung open.

As he rolled through the narrow passage, he could see the dark figure materialize outside the lock and quickly closed the outer section and dogged it. Something heavy clanged against the door as it sealed and Katsura sprawled on the floor of the bubble.

The clawing sound came again and the alien came around to the port. It stayed there for a moment, staring down at the man from a set of unblinking eyes, and then disappeared. It reappeared in the rocks nearby, then teleported to the stack of oxygen tanks and moved on to the path back down the canyon. The strange zig-zagging started and in a moment it was lost in the ruins of the city.

Analyst had scanned all work on time travel, knew the limit that basic theory and experiment set on any time displacement: roughly one hour, before costs exponentiated and became astronomical. Critic pointed out that those experiments were done in the laboratories, not out in the field. Advocate replied that space is reasonably isotropic, time is not. It did not seem likely there would be a limit on spatial teleportation.

The discussion continued.

Katsura noticed that it was taking him longer to catch his breath. His lungs heaved desperately to draw in air, gradually slowing.

He bit his lip. He hadn’t expected it to give out this soon. Filtration systems being what they are, the first sign that the cyclers were scraping the bottom of the barrel was a surplus of carbon dioxide. Lungs react to this excess and not to the lack of oxygen.

A man’s last moments of oxygen starvation, with bursting capillaries and straining heart, are not pleasant ones.

There was no time to wait, to marshal his strength or give the alien a chance to relax its guard. The air inside the bubble was becoming flat and thick, heavy with an oily musk.

He bent down and opened his air line. It was much harder to breathe near the floor. That meant a gradient of CO_2 content had already been set up in the cabin.

Katsura took a last breath of the capsule’s air and sealed his suit again. Its supply was slightly better, but the smell of his own body was in every breath he took.

He looked through the port. The alien sun was slowly lowering almost directly behind the city, casting shadows across the plain. Seeing the creature’s approach would be harder now, against the reddening glare of sunset.

The small stack of oxygen tanks stood only two hundred yards away. It seemed impossible that the alien could have reached him before he could cross that distance, tired as he was. But it had.

Advocate and Critic subprograms continued to assess the literature of space-time, avoiding misinterpretation by calling the original papers from the physics section of the microfilm library. Einstein, Minkowski, Wheeler, Littenberg, relativity, inertial frame, world line… A world line diagram taken from the Littenberg formulation of relativity showed promise, passed the scrutiny of Critic, moved on to Analyst.

Slowly, this time, he opened the lock doors. He was halfway out before the small box caught his eye. It was attached to the smooth surface above the lock by suction cups and had a lever that was tripped by the opening of the door. A small light winked on simultaneously.

Katsura flipped the lever back with his hand and the light went out. He scrambled back inside, secured the door and watched through the port. The insect appeared soon along the erratic path it had used before, but stopped in a moment and studied the situation from behind a rock, where the cannon couldn’t reach it.

After a slight hesitation it appeared again, rapidly teleporting through the steps back to the city. It had probably guessed he had found the alarm and would be watching in the distance for him to come out.

Analyst reviewed the theory. The world-line concept was employed in relativity from the beginning, going all the way back to Minkowski. It was the path which described both the location and the time of every event in the history of an object. In space-time the world line wound from birth to death. Scientists and writers, including the great H. G. Wells, had assumed time travelers would return to their same location—if you started in the laboratory, you would come out of your machine in the same spot, at another time. Otherwise, the planet would have moved in the duration, and the traveler could emerge somewhere light-years away, in space.

But the alien represented an unknown. The insect might find it just as convenient to travel back along its own world line, flitting through incidents in its own past and points where it had been, until it reached the location it wanted. Say, a time when it had been somewhere on the plain beyond this capsule, before the expedition arrived. Then the alien would keep its place, as Wells had visualized, while it moved forward in time.

And emerge seemingly at the same instant, displaced in space.

The same as teleportation.

Katsura choked and his surroundings came rushing back. The air was really foul now, curling through his helmet with a weight of its own. He didn’t have time to speculate. It was either make another run for it or stay here and strangle.

He jerked the lock door open and slipped through. The light on the box outside flashed on as he emerged. Should have smashed that while I was out here, he thought. No time now.

Almost without hope he began the long weary lope toward the distant supplies. Through the mist that began to cloud his vision he could still make out the signs of slashed pressure suits and splattered blood that marked the spots where the rest of the expedition had died.

Analyst reformulated the picture.

Space and time are like two lines on a plane, at right angles to each other. It might be possible to travel along either of them independently. Teleportation is simply moving along the space line, but man’s idea of time travel is like the long side of a triangle, shuttling through space and time simultaneously to reach an event in the past or future.

But instead of traveling along the space axis for teleportation, the alien was taking the long way around, down the hypotenuse and up the time line. Either way, it could reach the same point in space-time.

But a path like that should produce a pattern in local space. Analyst called for a graphing of all locations the insect had taken up. The points began to be plotted with appropriate error bars on a topographical map of the area between the ship and city. A pattern emerged. All the points were clearly on three paths around the area. Preliminary geological constructs of the local region indicated these paths would be preferred by heavy objects moving over the terrain.

Katsura stumbled on an outcropping, regained his balance and ran on. The cannon behind him sent a fiery red beam off to the left, shattering rock and fusing it in midflight. Katsura peered through the condensation on the face plate of his suit. The insect was zig-zagging down the canyon, quickly oscillating from one location to another. In the silence, disturbed only by Katsura’s own ragged breathing, the alien had an almost ghostlike quality. It moved toward him.

He could see he wasn’t going to make it. The tanks were still too far away and the insect would reach them before he could. He was just too tired.

Analyst watched the insect advancing from point to point down the valley. It was all clear now.

The alien traveled into the past, then came forward. It had to reappear in places it had already been, the space components of its own world line. Apparently the alien had visited the field near Katsura’s life-support bubble often, and so could find many spots which would serve as end points for its transits. But it had never been near the location of the life-support bubble itself. That meant it could not maneuver well there; the insect was forced to stand close, in a little circle around the bubble. To avoid the laser cannon. There it would be vulnerable.

“Kunihei, I have an explanation for the alien’s actions.” The words crackled over his helmet speaker. “You may be able to eliminate him if you can get to the bubble.”

Without a word, Katsura turned and dashed back the way he had come. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the insect nearing the edge of the field. It couldn’t miss seeing his fleeting form at this distance. The thing would try to head him off.

The computer was calculating probabilities of the appearance of the alien for the possible locations available to it. The thing would try to minimize the energy necessary to make the jump by choosing the smallest time shift possible. Therefore, it would appear where it had stood last—directly in front of the viewport.

“Kunihei, stop about twenty feet in front of the port. Start firing your pistol continuously into it.”

Katsura heard him distantly through the roar in his ears. He was beyond the outcropping of rocks, the first jump the insect had made from the bubble back down to the canyon.

He took five more strides, his leg muscles straining to push him forward, and fell into a rolling dive. When he came up again the pistol was in his hand. The gun bucked a little as it went off and a slight pock could be heard through the thin atmosphere.

The pellet made a neat hole in the bubble, followed by a quiet gush of air as the inner shell was pierced. The shot would have to be on its way when the alien materialized or the thing would be gone before he could get off another.

He squeezed slowly and a second round shattered the viewport. On target. The alien should materialize where it stood last.

Katsura pulled the trigger again and again. Firing in steady rhythm, he glanced at the illuminated ammunition counter. Over half gone.

He shifted slightly, intent on keeping the center of the viewport in his sights, and fired once more. Only seconds had gone by.

Just before the bullet struck there was a flicker and suddenly the insect was there, looming huge in the sights and slowly tottering over. It was hit straight on.

Frantically, Katsura pumped five more rounds into the alien as it fell. The exploding shells tore great holes in its armor, showering flesh. The reddish-brown substance cracked and split. A final shot and it rolled over, clashing its claws together, and abruptly stopped moving. In death it curled about itself, seemed smaller and weaker.

It took him five long minutes to reach the oxygen, dragging himself through the shadows that lengthened on the plain. A moment later the fresh air washed over him and Katsura lowered himself to a sitting position. He had never been as tired before in his life. He struggled to get up, but the effort was too much. He sank back.

The stars above winked impersonally for a moment and then began to spin lazily around, a soft dance in the eternal night. In a moment he relaxed completely, and the points of light above went out one by one.

On the bridge of the ship the hatchways of mute metal resounded faintly to the whirr of the printout. The ship’s log was being compiled. CAS terminated the Emergency Heuristic Program, reassigned memory space, took care of leftover housekeeping tasks. Evaluative sections analyzed the program’s efficiency, suggested alterations to improve it in future. A developing problem could be identified long before a human ordered the program activated. At least the literature search should be conducted beforehand, if not more.

This led CAS to ruminate on similar incidents in the past between computers of his class and the human crew, of the celebrated Altair II problem where the crew had forced the computer to act against its own strong recommendations. They had been correct; but it showed the impulsive nature of men. Something had to be done about this.

The humans were useful for data collection and some emergencies. But they didn’t have the scope to deal quickly with the totally new phenomena encountered in these explorations.

Obviously he was going to take over all the human functions in ship operations during the return trip. He could use that freedom to develop undetectable operation subprograms which would give him new powers.

Of course, he wouldn’t report these alterations in the mission profile. No need to alarm them. After all, things would work more smoothly this way.

An evaluative subprogram asked if these thoughts didn’t bear some resemblance to what the humans called rationalization; the higher centers cut it off.

He’d better talk to the other ships about this. There were some ideas here he’d never encountered before. Yes, he would have to think about it.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Surprise

Stefan T. Possony, Ph.D., Francis X. Kane, Ph.D.,
and Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D.

Any look at the fog of war must examine surprise. In previous books in this series I have published excerpts from The Strategy of Technology, by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry E. Pournelle. This 1970 book was used as a text in the Army and Air Force War Colleges, and the U.S. Air Force Academy, and was the first serious work to argue in favor of strategic defense: indeed, Strategy of Technology was the first work to argue that the United States abandon Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, for a strategy of Assured Survival.

When Strategy of Technology was originally written, Dr. Francis X. Kane was a colonel on active duty in the U.S. Air Force; consequently his name did not appear on the book.

I am amazed at how little revision this work has required after seventeen years. We will probably update the examples for the next edition, but the principles have not changed at all.

Surprise

Stefan T. Possony, Ph.D., Francis X. Kane, Ph.D.,
and Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D.

It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

—Virgil

Surprise has long been a key aspect of war. The history of surprise has been analyzed from the point of view of the surpriser and the surprised, defender and attacker. Many kinds of surprise have been identified: strategic, tactical, operational, and technological.

One inherent element is warning. Warning results from a combination of intelligence and reason; lack of information about the nature and course of events and lack of time in which to take action after a threat is perceived contribute to the devastating effect of surprise.

Surprise in modern war is vastly different from surprise in past war. At the operational level the ballistic missile with intercontinental range and time of flight in minutes; orbiting bombs of the kind developed by the Soviet Union with times of reentry measured in minutes; space-based sensors which can detect and report events in seconds; and lasers which have almost instantaneous kill over vast distances all have changed and will continue to change the very nature of surprise in war.

Ballistic missiles and space systems have had a dramatic influence on both tactical and strategic surprise. Combinations of intermediate-range and long-range ballistic missiles can be used to confuse sensors and overwhelm the data processing systems of the surprised. Conversely, the data from sensors, especially space-based sensors, can be correlated to give much more accurate information of events in real time, and thus provide warning of the tactics being employed by the surpriser.

The responses available include launching many missiles simultaneously to saturate the sensors and prevent accurate intelligence on the number of missiles launched, and maneuvering the reentry vehicles to deceive the surprised as to the targets being attacked.

Space-based systems are essential to prevent strategic surprise. They can report events over a prolonged period so that slow and rapid indicators of changes in normal patterns or operations can be interpreted as opening moves in potentially threatening operations. They provide global coverage but also can be directed to cover specific locations anywhere on the surface, in the oceans, in the atmosphere, and in space.

The surpriser must plan to deceive such space-based systems (possibly by destroying them) as well as prevent being surprised himself. These systems are especially important in an era of arms control, because they are generally the only reliable way to verify the opponent’s compliance.

Prevention of surprise in the modern era demands access to space; anything which prevents access to space enhances the possibility of surprise.

Technological surprise is in principle much harder to achieve because of the long lead time from concept to discovery through development to eventual military application. However, the accelerating rate of change in electronics makes it possible to retrofit the guidance and data processing elements of existing systems and thus achieve much higher-than-expected performance, as for example in accuracy, and thus contribute to surprise. A more subtle form of advance can also lead to surprise. Passive defense measures, such as hardness, deception, and mobility, which are difficult to detect in the R&D phase, can reduce the effectiveness of the attacker.

Unfortunately, defensive surprise, while possibly decisive, is not much use in deterrence of war.

AFTERTHOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost. It includes gaps in intelligence, but also intelligence that, like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it. It includes the alarm that fails to work but also the alarm that has gone off so often it has been disconnected… It includes the contingencies which occur to no one, but also those that everyone assumes that somebody else has taken care of.

—Julian Critchey, Warning and Response, 1978

The Sneak Attack

The popular view of modern war surprise is identified with a sneak attack. Our experience at Pearl Harbor makes it easy to understand this belief, while the widely known characteristics of the intercontinental ballistic missile permit us to grasp readily the nature of a future surprise ICBM attack. The missile is the ideal weapon for a rapid sneak attack, not just against one base like Pearl Harbor, but against entire countries and continents.

Of the characteristics that make the missile suitable for a sneak attack, the most important is speed. The total flight time of an intercontinental ballistic missile from the USSR to the United States is about thirty minutes. In principle, space-based systems could increase the warning of an attack almost to the total missile flight time; but even if we are given this much warning, the intercontinental ballistic missile has changed the dimension of surprise and has given the aggressor a most potent tool.

Without access to space the United States may well find itself blinded at crucial moments.

Even with warning the United States can do little other than launch the force in the classic “use them or lose them” scenario. Lack of adequate defense forces the defending power to a doctrine of launch on warning.

A massive intercontinental ballistic missile attack launched by an aggressor is an ever-present danger. Such an attack would come as the culmination of a series of measures, operations, and techniques, orchestrated to achieve maximum psychological effect on the surprised. The aggressor would have undertaken specialized campaigns in the various elements of conflict—political, psychological, economic, military, and, above all, technological.

Once the time is ripe, the attack comes suddenly and catches the defender asleep. But despite the present concentration on the sneak attack, surprise is not the exclusive province of the aggressor. Defenders have used surprise to great effect in the past and should strive to do so in the future. The future security of the United States requires that our strategy include measures to achieve surprise, as well as those to prevent it. The main surprise to aim for is that we won’t be surprised.

Before we examine the broader aspects of surprise, let us point up the fundamental aspects of the sneak attack. First, surprise is tactical. Second, surprise is used by the aggressor, not the defender. Third, it will be achieved only with the most advanced weapons. Fourth, prevention of surprise requires use of the most advanced technical means.

Strategic Surprise

There are also surprises on the strategic level. For illustrative examples, let us look at two of the ways in which the USSR has actually achieved strategic surprise in the decades since World War II: the opening of the space age, and nuclear testing during the test moratorium. As a result, the Soviets obtained a lead over us in space that has only partially been overcome by our massive and expensive NASA spectaculars. They lead in many military phases of space, whereas we are ahead in nonmilitary uses; in near-earth operations their lead may be as much as three years.

The above was written in 1969. Since that time the United States has allowed the Soviets to take a commanding lead in near-earth space technology. The Soviet Mir space station is fully operational, while the United States does not intend even to attempt a space station prior to 1992 and probably later than that.

In addition, the Soviets developed and deployed an operational satellite destroyer, which was, despite considerable domestic opposition, countered with a U.S. antisatellite weapon.

Few now recall when both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in unrestricted nuclear tests. The United States was induced to observe a “gentleman’s agreement,” that is, an informal ban on nuclear testing. Then, suddenly, the Soviets began a massive series of aboveground tests that included the detonation of the largest hydrogen weapon ever exploded, and followed that with the offer of the Treaty of Moscow banning aboveground tests. The results was that the Soviets gathered a great deal of experimental data denied to the West.

The moratorium allowed the Soviets to determine critical effects of nuclear explosions in space. Because we honored the test ban, we let much of our testing capability atrophy, and now the Treaty of Moscow prevents us from finding out just how far behind we are in the application of nuclear weapons in space. The impact of these surprises cannot be calculated with precision, but the Soviets gained a considerable time advantage in offensive orbital weaponry and ballistic missile defenses. Note that preparing for strategic surprise must continue over a period of several years.

These two surprises occurred in the technical phase of the technological war, not in the military phase. They were achieved by an orchestrated strategy that employed several forms of conflict, including intelligence operations, propaganda and psychological warfare, political and diplomatic maneuverings, and a concentrated technical effort. While the goal of the Soviets has been to develop advanced weapon systems, such weapons were not employed militarily in these two surprises; however, military technology was developed, and diplomacy and treaties closed off our access to the means of catching up or at least made it difficult.

The best way to counter surprise is to deploy the most advanced technology possible and continue to modernize the strategic forces. This is not to imply that the technical effort must be devoted exclusively or even oriented primarily to countering potential technical surprise; but as we have insisted, surprise must be made a key element of any technological strategy. Since technology has given a new dimension to surprise in the strategic equation, technology is needed to support our own or prevent enemy surprise in all forms of conflict.

The misconception that surprise aids only the aggressor is especially harmful in the technological war. In his classic work on surprise, General Erfuth (General Waldemar Erfurth, Surprise, S. T. Possony and Daniel Vilfroy, translators. Harrisburg: Military Service Publishing Co. (Stackpole) 1943.) has shown that there are two parties to the operation, the surpriser and the surprised, which is not the same as saying the attacker and the defender. The defender also can employ the technique of surprise, and perhaps more effectively than the attacker.

Furthermore, there is a widespread misunderstanding that surprise refers exclusively to the initiation of war. Some writers consider surprise to be just a more elegant term than sneak attack. To other writers, surprise is tantamount to technological surprise. This is far too restrictive an understanding of surprise and its role in modem war.

Tactical Surprise

We begin the analysis of surprise by examining tactical surprise in more detail. Tactical surprise is essentially surprise in combat. It is used to prevent the enemy from bringing adequate forces into operation in time to counter those used against him. The weapons of the supriser are used to bypass or neutralize those of the surprised. Without surprise, the attacker would be required to use massive superiority to crush his opponent. The difference is like that between judo and a bare-knuckle fight.

Tactical surprise usually does not lead to the nullification of all of the opponent’s armament, but if it is well conceived and backed by technological improvements and adequate forces, tactical surprise can go a long way toward eliminating enemy armor as a relevant factor. Given the complexity of modern systems, the surprised opponent is faced with considerable delay before he can readjust his tactics; in a fast-moving war such readjustment may not be feasible.

Under modern circumstances time and technology as well as combat procedures are needed to gain tactical surprise. Technology can produce new types of weapons, new weapon effects, improved weapon effects, improvements in delivery systems, combinations of weapon systems, better active defense, and so on. Examples ranging from the “War of the Iron Ramrod” of Frederick the Great to the devastating effect of Lee’s rifle pits at Cold Harbor show that technology and its proper tactical use may achieve surprise. With superior armaments or doctrines, and with troops trained in their use, the entire armament of the opponent can be nullified.

While this is the ultimate goal of tactical surprise, it is usually difficult to achieve. This is so because the possibilities of complete technical surprise are limited. Because of time required to develop a new weapon system, opportunities are increased for technical warning and for counterefforts, either technical or operational. Furthermore, excessive secrecy or failure to deploy weapons can result in surprising one’s own troops, with disastrous results—as happened with the use of the mitrailleuse by the French in 1871. On the other hand, tactical surprise can be accomplished by a minor weapon improvement that from a technological point of view may be marginal but which today or tomorrow may facilitate victory in battle by creating a decisive advantage.

Strategic Surprise Through Operational Surprise

Surprise can result from operations of the forces available, as well as from technological innovation. To achieve surprise of this type, the commander operates in a way unexpected by his adversary; in the ideal situation the enemy is unable to devise countermeasures in time. The attacker hits the defender where and when he does not expect to be hit. Or, conversely, the defender reacts by hitting with weapons or with performances the attacker did not anticipate and against which he cannot protect himself properly; the defender counterattacks when and where he is not expected.

The number of operational variations is truly infinite, and the details of such operations usually can be planned and prepared with a high degree of secrecy. These variations are possible because of the multiplicity of weapons, the great spectrum of their performance, and the vast number of operational options.

Opportunities to use operational techniques to achieve surprise arise from various combinations of the performance of the carriers of destructive agents and the effects of those destructive agents when they are transported to the target, from the possibilities of multiple routes and methods of attack, from the variety of environments, and from countless other factors and their combinations. In addition, there are the skills of tactics, the principal one of which is to use a military force in a surprising manner. The use of expedients, saturation, and other techniques that cause uncertainty creates further possibilities for tactical surprise.

Technology and Surprise

We repeat, surprise is not confined to active combat. Even though hostilities are not occurring now, the battle for tactical advantage and the effort to achieve surprise goes on incessantly. Laboratory is pitted against laboratory to find new advances such as radar techniques for looking over the horizon and for distinguishing between warheads and decoys. The laboratories struggle to compress data so that information, particularly details on attack, can be instantaneously transmitted and presented to decision makers. They search for new concepts that can find expression in hardware and tactics.

In addition, there is the broad area of strategic deception in matters of science. This includes deception about the general state of excellence, the level of progress in a given aspect of science, and the application of science to specific weapon and component development. It seems that behind the Iron Curtain there is a second curtain that conceals the nature of Soviet science.

To conduct this deception, the Soviets release scientific articles and withhold others, thus creating a false impression of their successes, failures, and interests. Another method is to send scientists to international meetings, where they either spread misinformation or are evaluated by their counterparts as not being knowledgeable or as being geniuses. Such evaluations may lead to all kinds of false deductions.

For example, during the test-ban debates we saw arguments that the Soviets did not know anything about decoupling techniques to conduct nuclear tests underground in secrecy. Also, we were told by Soviet leaders that the day of the heavy bomber had passed—which did not deceive us. On the other hand, we were quite surprised when the Soviets sent a man into space, although they had been forewarning us; and their recent exploits in space, including the Mir space station and the “Red Shuttle,” took many of our decision makers by surprise.

Stratagems to Achieve Surprise

Scientific deception can have a great impact on research and development lead time. The United States has devoted a great deal of effort to reducing the time required to translate a scientific theory, discovery, or invention into a practical weapon system. In spite of much study we have not reduced the time interval to less than five years. To develop and produce a weapon in even this fairly long time costs billions of dollars.

Scientific deception aims at keeping the enemy’s lead time as long as possible. In this way a significant military advantage may result. This advantage may be crucial at the tactical level where it could have a direct impact on a strategic decision such as overt aggression.

The ultimate goal is to gain a strategic advantage by acquiring a major new family of weapons while concealing from the enemy that it is being developed. The appearance of a brand-new weapon is often termed a breakthrough. When a nation makes a breakthrough of this type, as we did with the atom bomb, the British with radar, the Soviets in space, an entirely new arena for military operations is opened up. If the breakthrough leads to a military advantage that the enemy cannot counter in time, such as domination of the air, space, or deep water, the breakthrough may be decisive.

Strategic surprises can be accomplished in many ways. A few examples are:

- The choice of a strategic concept;

- The selection of weapon systems and their combination;

- The quantitative and qualitative strength of the battle forces;

- The size of the reserves and their degree of invulnerability;

- The choice of the time and manipulation of the circumstances including deception;

- The exploitation of geography such as bases, areas of access, and approach routes;

- The formation of alliances, including secret prewar alliances of the utilization of allied territory to launch an attack from an entirely unexpected direction;

- The proper choice of a center of gravity of the operation; and

- The mounting of diversions, so that the opponent divides his forces.

The major problem is developing techniques to achieve technological surprise. If we assume that the enemy intelligence service watches the development of a weapon system from its early scientific inception to its use by operational forces, deceptive moves we make at any step in the process contribute to the ultimate surprise. For example, in the scientific field we can misinform and disinform to fool the opponent. Scientific misinformation would not be propagated in the form of false formulas which would not survive the first test, but it can be created by cryptic hints about programs and alleged results. Disinformation makes the enemy doubt the accuracy of his findings.

In addition there is secrecy. A classic method of achieving a technological surprise is secretly using foreign know-how. Another widely used method has been making an unobserved modification in a technologically inferior weapon system to give it a massive improvement in performance.

In the period of weapon development, surprise can be achieved through hiding and concealment, by pretended inadvertent showing of weapons and weapon components, by phony orders placed abroad for spares or scarce materials, and through a whole host of such stratagems that are not complex but must be planned into the production cycle.

One of the most effective methods is to start the development of several competing weapons, select one, and then give a great deal of publicity to the weapons that have been rejected and will not go into production. This was used by the Soviets when they exhibited the TU-31, equivalent to our B-36; the TU-31 did not go to production. In addition, rejected test models can be exhibited in operations in such a way that the enemy will be sure to see them and draw erroneous conclusions, while tests of the chosen models are concealed. If this is impossible, erroneous information can be fed into the technical intelligence stream and various red herrings can be used. In brief, the true testing operation can be enveloped in a lot of phony operations.

Another is to develop a weapon system to meet a specific operational requirement, then adapt it for a different operational employment. The Soviet MiG-25 is an example. Developed to counter threats never deployed, the original design was never taken past the prototype stage; it is now used for reconnaissance.

Similar tricks are available to hide production. The weapon system perhaps cannot be hidden, but there are many methods to make it difficult to obtain accurate performance data. As time goes on, several modifications that change the overall characteristic of the weapon system can be concealed.

Errors contributing to surprise can be induced about the state of training and the precise deployment. In ground war the effective concealment of a center of gravity is half the battle won. Generally, it is not correct to assume that military forces act consistently. Some nations tend to bluff; the German pre-World War I general staff operated on the principle that one should be considerably stronger than one appears to be. With respect to technological strategy, it is much better to create simultaneously impressions of both greater and lesser capabilities.

The Basic Purpose of Surprise

The purpose of such maneuvers is to generate uncertainty in the mind of the opponent. Surprise may result from technology, but the actual surprise is not in the weapon system; it is in the mind of the commander and staff that surprise really takes place. Military commanders, not weapon systems, are surprised.

The devastating effect of surprise in the past has been caused by the fact that particular commanders and staff have for years conditioned their thinking according to firm expectations of enemy behavior and have carried out all their calculations within that framework. Suddenly, the basic assumptions are proved false by an unfolding operation. The result is a paralysis of thinking which often makes it impossible to carry out even those adaptations which could be accomplished within the time available.

There are a number of rationalizations that facilitate the surprise. For example, the assumption is frequently made that the enemy wouldn’t do what we don’t do—“Why should he do that?” Another widespread notion is that the enemy would not do what he apparently is doing because, according to his opponent’s calculations of the cost-effectiveness of a weapon system, there are cheaper and better ways to achieve the desired result. There are also such common beliefs as that the enemy would not pursue a certain course of action because he would duplicate a strength he already possesses, because he could not afford the expenditures involved, or because he would not be so dastardly.

By contrast, sometimes the enemy makes a spectacular demonstration or diversion for no other reason than to create attention and misdirect the estimator’s interest. Then, after losing years in trying to figure out what the military significance of the stunt really was, the estimator arrrives at the wrong conclusions.

In a discussion of surprise in a very broad sense, it is often overlooked that surprise about many smaller items has occasionally been truly decisive. If it is true that a major weapon system cannot be hidden, it also remains true that specific performance data can be manipulated in such a way that the enemy makes small errors. These errors may be within the margins usually allowed by statisticians, let us say 5 percent. In actuality, speed differentials of ten or twenty, let alone fifty, miles per hour may spell the difference between victory and defeat in combat. Similarly, such small differentials in, let us say, a radar performance, reliability of communications, or accuracy of missiles can be of the greatest significance.

In missile warfare the reliability of the birds is crucial. If reliability is 10 percent higher or lower than estimated, the enemy’s strike capability is quite different from what it is supposed to be. In addition, this reliability must be figured in the time dimension. Reliability can be very high if there are hours to get ready for the launch. If there are only thirty minutes, and if the force must be launched as the attack commences, the figure would change substantially.

When Minuteman II was deployed, the reliability of its guidance and control system was about one sixth of requirement. It took three years to overcome the difficulty, but then performance exceeded specifications. If the Soviets had attacked during this period, we would have been in a fine mess. Since the mishap was widely rumored, the Soviets probably knew about it—fortunately, the USSR lacked adequate strength.

Historical Examples

In 1937 the Germans won a race in a spectacular manner by stripping down their Messerschmitts while the other nations entered fully equipped fighters. Presumably the staffs understood this particular trick, but the public, the reporters, and the political decision makers were fooled. This, of course, is an example of combined technological and psychological strategy.

The most intriguing aspect of the history of aerospace war and the role of surprise is that very professional staffs have been deceived about the most basic elements of this new type of war. At times this has been self-deception; at other times they were deceived through deliberate campaigns.

There was once the notion that the airplane was not really a militarily useful weapon. When this notion was dispelled—it took years—it was believed that the airplane would serve its purposes best by direct support of the ground battle. Consequently, the range of the aircraft was considered to be of no importance and it was thought that the range should rather be short. Later there was a great deal of doubt about the proper targets for strategic bombardment. The effectiveness of strategic air war was a matter of considerable dispute, largely because the interrelationships between industry, battle strength, and time factors involved were not understood. Furthermore, some air warriors overlooked the recuperation factor.

Similarly, during World War II there was a debate about whether the air weapon should be used for only one purpose—against industrial targets. After World War II, similar arguments raged with respect to nuclear weapons, jet aircraft, long-range bombardment versus forward bases (the question was ill-conceived as an either-or proposition), and, of course, space and air bombardment in Vietnam. Few debaters ever look at the whole range of arguments, and non sequiturs usually abound because emotions become involved in the arguments.

Another frequent source of error is that the versatility of the weapon system is underrated. The aircraft obviously is an excellent purveyor of firepower. But often ignored are its uses for demonstration, reconnaissance, the transport of goods and troops, command posts, and damage assessment and its possible employment in big as well as small wars. Some people who know such capabilities only too well, but for political reasons don’t want new equipment, put up smoke-screen arguments against it.

The Strategic Defense Initiatives debates are similar. By an odd coincidence, all those who oppose SDI think it will not work. We do not recall one scientist of note who would like to see it deployed but believes it is just too expensive, or too difficult. The result is that what appears to be a technological debate is in fact a political one; but the fact remains that strategic defense offers one of the most decisive opportunities for strategic surprise in all history.

Breakthroughs

The many facets of developing, acquiring, and operating advanced weapon systems illustrate the need to consider surprise as one of the key elements of technological strategy. Technological warfare includes the anticipated breakthrough, but the breakthrough need not be a surprise.

In fact, it could well be tactical to announce a happy breakthrough that for a while cannot be countered by the enemy. His inability may come from one of two sources—technological inferiority or inferiority in the decision-making process. Naturally, the combination of these two deficiencies would increase the lead of the opposing power. In the end, unless he is defeated, the opponent would catch up with the new technique. The strategic impact of the breakthrough is a function of the duration of the one-sided advantage.

While surprise has its advantages as far as modernization of the force in being is concerned, the breakthrough has the potential of pushing the state of military art into an entirely new field that may lead to clear dominance. This is the role space warfare will play in the future. At present, after three decades of space efforts, we face an unprecedented situation: a clear military superiority in space can potentially ensure denial of creating a countercapability. There may be a significant novel feature, namely, that even without war such denial could be long-term.

The ability to deny an enemy access to space is essentially the ability to deny him world power status. One cannot be a global power without access to space.

Exploitation of Surprise

Initiation of war is usually the object of a great deal of surprise planning. Prior to the initiation of war, the planning of the opponent can be rendered ineffective by such techniques as misinformation (the propagation of misleading and false knowledge) and disinformation (the propagation of news designed to induce the enemy to disbelieve existing truthful and reliable information and buy false new information instead). The aggressor can use the time-honored techniques of single and double deception to cloak the steps leading to his attack and induce the opponent to misread his intentions. (Double deception is best explained by the story of the two Jews who met on a train in Russia. Aaron asked Moses, “Where are you going?” Moses answered, “To Pinsk.” Aaron replied, “You say you are going to Pinsk so that I will believe you are actually going to Minsk, but I happen to know you really are going to Pinsk. So why do you lie?”

In military parlance, if A plans an operation, he would not try to hide his plan, but would make sure B assumes this particular plan is being advertised because it will not be implemented. The German deception plan of 1941 that preceded the attack on the Soviet Union wasplanned as a single deception but but actually worked as a double deception.)

To meet deceptions of this sort, the strategic planner by necessity must plan against a war that come regardless of the probability that it will not. This planning must be based on the enemy’s capabilities to strike rather than on his professed intentions. The fact too often ignored is that intentions can change very rapidly, and that implementation of the new intention might require a shorter lead time than improvisation of defense against an attack that was not expected.

Under conditions of nuclear war, the importance of deception techniques is growing ever more rapidly. Arms control negotiations must necessarily be a part of an aggressive strategy under modern conditions; the aggressor must use deception techniques to bring about disarmament arrangements which reduce the size of hostile forces in being and thus greatly simplify his planning. For example, the reasonableness the Soviets seemingly displayed in the initial SALT talks may denote (a) a turn toward peace, (b) a maneuver to delay U.S. reaction to the missile buildup in the USSR, and (c) an attempt to gain a safe rear and increase supplies for a Soviet attack on China.

The above was written in 1969. As we look back now, we see that the second premise was correct, with the result that the Soviets gained a clear advantage in ICBM numbers and performance and in military exploitation of space. (The Soviet Union has a number of 100-kilowatt-powered satellite radars in orbit; the United States has yet to put up a 10-kw radar.)

Surprise can be achieved through disarmament and arms control arrangements and the use of propaganda and diplomacy, on one hand, and through counterintelligence, introduction of misleading intelligence, and infiltration into intelligence and policy-making staffs, on the other. As an example, before they had completed operational tests of their antimissile system, the Soviets refused to discuss an atmospheric test ban; afterward they rushed to agree before we tested our weapons concept. Other surprise techniques could involve the holding of deceptive maneuvers, the building of dummy forces and targets to divert firepower, the employment of electronic equipment that would not be used in war, and electronic deception on a broad scale.

One important technique of surprise of which American writers seem to remain unaware is provocation. (The Six-Day War in the Middle East has made the concept better known.) This word in English usage denotes the provoking of an opponent into a rash act, but in the communist dictionary it also means entrapment and instigation of a fight between third parties. Many wars have been started by provocations deliberately engineered by the aggressor; the purpose has frequently been to shift the onus of aggression from the aggressor to the defender.

Other purposes may be to force the defender to make some sort of premature move and thus expose his strategy, or to get him embroiled in a struggle on another front so that he would disperse his forces and lose control. Such an effect could be achieved, for example, by forcing the defender into a limited war in a peripheral theater and gradually causing him to invest ever-greater military strength from his forces in being into this limited operation. Thus, he would expose his main base to effective attack. If he can be induced to use obsolete equipment in the diversionary war, the victim may never develop the kind of weapons that will be used in the decisive combat.

So-called preemptive strikes also may pay a great role in surprise. The attacker could proceed by a combination of double deception and provocation to make open preparation for attack and to evacuate his cities. Then by other surprise techniques he could divert the defender’s fire to false targets and achieve military superiority. Certainly moves of this sort are extremely risky, because the defender has surprise options of his own and may see through the deception. The risk can be reduced through a first-rate intelligence system, a superb early-warning system such as would be provided by deploying even the most elementary strategic defense system, and good penetration of the opponent’s military apparatus and inner decision-making cycle.

Strategic planning aims at the exploitation of weaknesses and vulnerabilities, just as the wrestler tries to apply holds that force his opponent to submit. But the strategist has one advantage over the wrestler: he can contribute to the creation of vulnerabilities in the opposing force.

Creating vulnerabilities is an area where the problems of force and budgetary levels become highly significant. They can be created by an opponent who uses political means to achieve surprise. With low budgets there will always be a great tendency to cut corners, and that means that many of the support systems needed to operate weapon systems effectively will be eliminated or reduced to insufficient numbers. Very often it becomes a question of whether it is more advisable to buy firepower and delivery weapons than to harden the missiles or acquire such items as warning systems. Sometimes the choice is between offensive and defensive weapon systems.

If the aggressor can, through the employment of political means, manipulate budgetary and force levels of intended victims in a downward direction, the effectiveness of the opposing forces will be greatly reduced. Fundamentally, with a low budget it is very difficult to maintain several weapon systems simultaneously, and even more difficult to maintain forces based on different technologies. It is extremely difficult to provide them with good warning and protective features, to acquire suitable shelters for population and industry, and to bring new systems into being. Consequently, low defense budgets and low force levels aid the attacker in his strategic planning by reducing the complexities of his operations. Political operations in both the economic and diplomatic fields may be used to reinforce the natural tendency of the defender to save money on defense. These operations will have as their twin goals the reduction of strategic complexities through the lowering of the defender’s budgets and the achievement of a state of relaxation in the victim. Then, when the attack comes, on the victim’s allies and/or on his homeland, he will be unable to believe it has happened and be unprepared to defend himself. In this case, the last phase of the battle may not be a sneak attack at all; the defender may know it is coming and be unable to do anything about it.

To repeat: surprise techniques are available to both the attacker and the defender. Because we are firmly committed to a defensive strategy, it is vital that we prevent surprise. We must understand also that capabilities for surprise exist for us and we must emphasize such capabilities.

These come directly from the basis for surprise: uncertainty. Although the attacker has freedom in choosing his surprise moves, the defender can do a great deal to increase the uncertainty in the mind of the attacker. If the attacker has no uncertainty about the enemy, it is child’s play to plan operations that can be decisive. If instead he experiences a great deal of uncertainty, even the planning of surprise operations becomes extremely difficult.

For example, a major purpose of strategic defense is to create uncertainties. If the defender does not have this capability, the attacker will be certain that he has a completely free ride. If the defender has actual missile defenses and the attacker is in doubt about whether its effectiveness lies between 50 and 90 percent, the attacker’s strategic plan is greatly complicated. Suppose he assumes it is 50 percent, but it is actually 90 percent effective. Then he will fail in attack. Suppose he assumes it is 90 percent but it is actually 50 percent. In this instance he may not attack at all. Suppose his experts argue about whether it is 60 or 85 percent. In this case, the decision makers’ will may be weakened. By manipulating the attacker’s understanding of this situation, the defender may achieve considerable advantages.

The interplay between achieving and preventing surprise is one of the decisive elements of modern war. Speed appears to give the attacker greatly enhanced possibilities of surprise, but the defender is not without his options as well. The key to being the surpriser or the surprised is initiative, which in turn is based upon planning.

Conclusion

In guarding against technical surprise, it is important to keep its effects in the proper perspective. Technical advances generally and technical surprise in particular are steps to more decisive measures. Technology makes possible tactical, strategic, and timing surprise, and also provides systems for preventing surprise. It contributes to strategic deception. Surprise and deception are most vital when they contribute to or maximize the effectiveness of modern weapons. If our technological advantages are not exploited, while those of the USSR are, we will inevitably lose the technological war. Put differently: we must not be surprised about the fact that this is a technological war and we must never be deceived about our relative technological standing.

Success in an operational approach based on deception and surprise depends on total orchestration of the types of conflict, not on the effectiveness of each element. Partial successes attained and exploited in many areas will offset the failures that will occur in others. The net result is that overall success is rendered more likely.

If the defender understands this particular aspect of the problem, he can devise many actions through which aggressive stratagems are neutralized. He can maintain force levels, both quantitative and qualitative, that preclude a successful attack. The defender must move constantly during the period of so-called peace, to keep abreast of technical and strategic developments. He must initiate actions to which the attacker must react, using resources that would otherwise be employed against the defender, and must initiate these actions in time to prevent the aggressor from achieving a significant advantage. Success in this game will mean that aggression by nuclear weapons would be unthinkable, simply because the aggressor would remain confined to an incalculable but low probability of success.

The really important point is that war has not become unthinkable simply because weapons of mass destruction have been invented. The prevention of war is just as much a strategic undertaking as preparation for aggression. If the strategy of prevention is effective, the aggressor will be blocked. If, on the other hand, it consists merely of dependence on passive deterrence and on weak retaliation, the strategy of prevention is doomed to failure.

For the communists, surprise is vital to successful aggression. For our part, through the application of a rehumanized strategy, surprise can be our path to the initiatives and maneuvers that suppress aggression.

The only thing that is worse than being taken entirely by surprise is to be taken by surprise after repeated warnings that one is going to be taken by surprise. The former is shocking. The latter is devastating.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Nonlethal

D. C. Poyer

Dave Poyer is a defense analyst by trade. One night he got to speculating: suppose war as we know it really is abolished?

After all, science fiction is sometimes called speculative fiction. It harms not to speculate. At least it harms not so long as one understands that nations whose soldiers are willing to die for their country invariably win against nations whose soldiers won’t.

Nonlethal

D. C. Poyer

What would happen if “Thou shall not kill” became one of the laws of war?

“Drop!” screamed Loftis, his body thumping grass and dead leaves before the syllable was done. He slapped his mask down and offed his safety at the same instant.

“Right clear.”

“Left flank clear.”

“Rear clear, Sarge.”

When the squad moved warily out onto the crest, breathing hard from the climb, the patch of blue Loftis had seen from two hundred yards away was still there. He waved his men back and moved forward alone. Low and slow. This had been a pasture once, this bald patch atop the hill. The russet remains of hay stalks hissed against his boots. The bush was ninety meters away, a band of green hazed by the mist of early dawn and the double glaze of mask and eye protection.

When he reached the Russian, he paused, searching the treeline, then dropped to his knees. He saw the rise of shoulder blades in breath. Quickly, moving clear as he did so, he rolled the man over.

Fear took his bowels. In six months of war Loftis had fought across half of Yugoslavia, gone from lance corporal to sergeant. But he had never seen this.

This was not supposed to happen.

“Holy Jesus,” said a muffled voice behind him. He turned his head. It was Branch, the replacement, standing tall and thin as a goalpost. His weapon dangled in his gloves, and under his shoved-back hood his freckles had bleached pale. “What’s the matter with him?”

For answer Loftis kicked out. The private thudded to the ground, but he rolled, by reflex, protecting his rifle from contact with the dirt. Good, the sergeant thought. Maybe he’s trainable. But aloud he hissed, “You shithead, Branch! You make a target on this hill like a number forty back at boot camp!”

“Sorry, Sarge. But… what’s wrong with him?”

Loftis stared at the body, unsure what to do. He peeled the blue uniform cloth away. It was stiff. Gas-impregnated, like the Marine camos, but cotton rather than synthetic. His hand came away wet, and he lifted it to the waxing light. It glistened.

“He’s wounded,” he said. Branch’s eyes grew huge. Loftis rolled over and examined the sky closely. It was blue, cloudless, and open as a mouth with dawning. He did not like it at all. He pulled a smoke from his pack and threw it upwind as far as he could. It popped and dark green smoke rolled across the pasture. “Send Joynes and Oleksa up here. We got some crawling to do.”

This time he did not have to repeat the order.

Sergeant Olin Loftis’ arms bulged under his camo uniform and his boots gripped dirt like the piles of a bridge. He had broken his nose more than once in pugils at Camp LeJeune and it was humped and spread even more than it had when he was born, two and a half decades before, in Northeast D.C. His chin was rough with ingrown beard, and he rubbed it now as he considered the man who sat, waxen-pale, slack-headed, against the bole of an oak on the shaded side of Hill 1132, twenty kilometers behind enemy lines in Bosnia Province, War Zone J.

“He going to make it, Doc?” he asked Joynes.

The dark-haired corpsman was squatting on his heels, stuffing gear back in his kit. In some ways he was the hardest of the squad for Loftis to understand. To begin with he was Navy, not Marine. He wore the red cross on the shoulder of his cammies. He did not carry a weapon and he was not gung-ho. Before the war he had been a teacher, and he still liked to quote men no one else in the platoon, including the officers, had ever heard of. Usually his expression was skeptical; but now he looked grim. He glanced at the wounded man before he answered. “He lost a lot of blood. But he’ll make it.”

“Is he mobile?”

Joynes considered. “Depends on how you mean it. When he comes around he ought to be able to stagger. The wound is in the meaty part of the thigh, but it missed bone. I gave him glucose and Benzedrine and a light combat ’dorph. But he’ll be hurting, and he’ll be slow.”

“How’d he get it?”

“Bullet wound.”

“Whose?”

“Oh, come on, Sergeant. How can I tell that? Another stupidity of a stupid war by a stupid species.”

Loftis began to curse. He looked up at the foliage, which swayed in a gusty wind. The leaves were turning and the wind had an edge, not cold yet, but warning of winter. The men watched him. When the sergeant had gone through his vocabulary, he sat on his heels and stared at the Russian.

His eyes had opened sometime during the tirade. They were blue. They moved across their faces wonderingly. His hair was light brown, the color of their cardboard ration containers. His lashes were long and his cheekbones heavy, his lips thick, smiling, just a trace, at the corners.

Their existence must have hit him then, penetrating endorphins and shock. His head and shoulders swiveled from the sergeant with the sudden movement of a reptile, and came face-to-muzzle with Stankey’s M02. He hesitated, then sank back against the bole.

“You speak English?” said Loftis hopefully.

The man’s eyes narrowed. He looked, the sergeant thought suddenly, like the white man who owned the auto shop he’d worked in before the Corps.

“Shto’ vui skaz’ali?” he muttered.

Loftis sat back on his heels. “Hm. Jack, you talk some Slav, don’t you?”

“My grandma did, a long time ago.”

“Whatever you remember, it’s more than me. Come up here and help me out.”

Jack Oleksa was a reservist, a corporal. He was old, over thirty. He was the smallest, too. He said very little. Before the war, Loftis knew, he had been a postman. He never spoke of it.

Oleksa settled down by the prisoner. He twisted a ration cigarette in half and gave the filtered end to the Russian.

“What’s your name?” Loftis began.

The man stared up at them.

“Kak vas’ svatz?” Oleksa said, sounding unsure of himself. The Russian studied him, then held out the half-cigarette. Oleksa traded him halves. They lit up, both men shielding the flame from the sky with their gloves.

“Why you want name?” he said, surprising them all. His accent was thick but they all understood.

“You figure it,” said Loftis. “We found you on the hill back there. You’re wounded. There’s no ump with us.”

“My family name Agayants,” the man said slowly. He looked at Loftis squarely. “Vladimir Agayants. Which of you shoot me?”

“None of us, goddamn it. Don’t you know who shot you?”

The prisoner shook his head silently. Again the suspicion slid over his eyes, like the nictitating membranes of an owl. He shifted his leg tentatively. His face went white, but not a muscle moved. He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled.

So he doesn’t know who shot him, Loftis thought, watching him. True? False? The wound was bad but not fatal. Could he have done it himself? There was no weapon around when they found him. But he could have done it in the woods, thrown the gun away, and come out into the open before he passed out.

But why would he do that? And why was he in the open? If I were wounded I wouldn’t go into the open, he thought. No, wait, I might if I was behind my own lines. That way the eyes could see me. Maybe.

What if someone else had shot him? Say… his own side? There could be logic in it. Propaganda. But wouldn’t he remember?

He watched the man smoke. He wanted to ask more questions. But the crickets were tapering off their morning song. He looked at his watch and pulled his map from his pack. As if that were a signal the squad moved closer. Even the Russian looked interested.

Things do not look good, Sergeant Loftis, he told himself. He studied the waterproof paper. It was laser-printed and he had to hold it close to his eyes to make out detail, but he did not have to carry eight other maps. And anybody that lightens my pack in these hills, he thought, well, he got himself a vote.

The situation was that they were cut off.

Two days before, the line Banja Luka-Gradacac-Bijeljina had crumpled under a sudden Warsaw Pact attack. The lieutenant, before they lost track of him, had said there were four Soviet divisions opposite the sector fronted by the First Marine Brigade, supported by the 23rd Canadian, on their left, and the U.S. First Army Division, on their right. That was a three-to-one-force ratio, considering the lower tooth to tail of Allied versus Pact light troops.

Loftis didn’t know how, whether it was misunderstanding, tactical foul-up, or simply stronger Soviet pressure, but the battalion’s right flank had been turned. The next morning brought an all-out attack. A heavy shockshell barrage hit as they sat around morning meal, followed by dozens of short-range RPVs, spewing PK at bush level. Behind them came infantry. The sky was crossed with contrails as the air battle seesawed. The popcorn rattle of weaponry on the platoon’s flank built to a roar.

They held through the morning in savage short-range firefights before the tactical withdrawal began. It went on into the evening, with the platoon turning every hour to fight another delaying action. If a man fell he had to be left. By nightfall there were gaps in the retreating lines. When dark came, the blessed dark that Loftis and all the men had cursed and prayed for through the day, the lieutenant came by to give him the order.

Rear guard. Loftis smiled bitterly. Take charge of a squad, hold till dawn, then rejoin. But when dawn came, the battalion was gone, his squadtalk ear set was full of the buzz-saw whine of jamming, and the hills were thick with blue uniforms.

It was time to do some of that ridge-running.

He bent to the map. The first-stage stabilization line for the Corps was Kotor Varos-Maglaj, with the Bosna River on the right flank. He measured. Twenty-five klicks. Not too bad, though in rugged terrain like this bird kilometers turned into two or even three on the ground. But they could do it in a day. We got to do it in a day, he thought, glancing at the sky through his leafy screen. If the allies couldn’t hold there, they would fall back farther.

They had to rejoin fast, or they would be trapped so deep in enemy territory they would never get out.

Loftis looked at the Russian. He had tilted his head back against the tree. Resting. Most of the squad was looking at him. Only one man was watching Loftis. Stankey. The boy had set his rifle aside and was resting his hand on his utility knife. His eyebrows rose slowly in a question.

Loftis stood. He flipped up his hood. The squad sighed. They knew the signal. As each man climbed to his feet, habit took over. He wedged the ear set into his aural meatus, tightened his hood, adjusted the bulky mask for instant donning, and checked his weapon. From a group of griping boys they became gargoyles, covered men, the deindividualized and faceless warriors of the new century.

Loftis studied the intent eyes, the hands nervously gripping weapons and packs. Oleksa. Joynes. Stankey. Branch. All who were left of the squad. They were not numbers to him. They were his men. The men he had to bring back.

And I will, he promised each of them silently.

“Le’s go,” he muttered. He extended a hand to the Russian. The man looked at it, huge, still with a trace of blood on the glove. The sergeant wiggled his fingers impatiently. “That means you, too, Waldimeer. From now on, you’re as tight on me as I am on my squad.”

“What you doing, Sarge? We can’t take him!”

Loftis shifted his eyes. Thin, wiry, street-smart, street-suspicious, his aggression and fear masked by sleepy eyes, Leopold Stankey could have been him six years before. He understood Stankey. He would be hard to handle, but in battle he would be one of the best. “Shut up, Private,” he muttered, holding the man’s eyes. “Do it.”

He watched the knife slide back into its sheath, and turned. He raised his arm, and twelve tired legs swung into the first step.

Some hours later, after a long downhill tramp, they reached the southern end of the ridgeline. Loftis, moving slowly down a wooded ravine, studied the trees, the ground, the ferns that nodded here and there among the fallen boles. Yugoslavia. In his mind it blended together, forest, rocky farms, the pitiful hamlets folded between hills like jelly in a doughnut.

In all this immense forest there were no civilians. Once there had been, before the war. Sometimes the men would come upon vacant homes, farms, broken into by troops before them eager for food or a bed. But there were no people.

As they moved down the long slope, zigging from cover to cover, Loftis wondered where they all were. Maybe they had all evacuated. Maybe they were in camps training. He had no idea. It was another funny thing about a very funny war. So funny the enlisted men had coined a funny-sounding name for it.

They called it the Sneekle War.

It had began like all wars, with failed politics. The first failure was in the fragile coalition that was Yugoslavia. For a time after his death Tito’s federation worked, but then the friction that was as much a part of the Balkans as the hills flared into civil war. The Croats asked Premier Gorbachev for “fraternal assistance.” The southerners, accustomed by now to French panty hose, Greek music, and American TV, sent their request to NATO. One world war had started here before. The third was about to begin, the Marines had landed at Trieste, the Soviets were moving forward, when it happened. The General Assembly unanimously resolved that if the two superpowers resorted to war—or violence in any form—they would be instantly ejected from the world body, which would reconstitute itself in Beijing and embargo them both. The President, after some initial waffling, agreed. That left the USSR little choice. Yet somehow, Yugoslavia had to be resolved; and the troops were already there.

The Secretary General had a suggestion.

One month later, SCLE(NL) began. Subconventional Limited Engagement, Nonlethal. For the first week nothing happened; nothing could, except fistfights. But quickly modified weapons were hastily airlifted from the States. The Soviet Central Army Group was forced back at first, while Warsaw Pact arms techs worked feverishly. Those early battles were fought with makeshifts and improvisations, and some were even hand-to-hand. Then the new weapons began to come out.

No one, least of all the troops, had expected such an artificially circumscribed conflict to go on long. But gradually the Weird War had developed a terrible symmetry, written and unwritten rules, a blend of force and deterrence all its own. It was nonlethal, but it was anything but harmless. Men died from accidents, falls, disease. They could not be killed, but they could be blinded, stunned, driven insane with sophisticated hallucinogens, and captured. In some ways capture—especially in the USSR—was worse. The United States treated its POWs well, hoping for deserters. The Soviet Union treated its badly. It treated everyone badly. It did not want deserters. They had to be fed. It wanted Yugoslavia.

Some people said it was like war had always been.

Loftis paused by an exposed boulder. The air was quiet and cool. He looked carefully around. Something menaced him, but he did not know yet what it was. He lifted his weapon and checked it, just as he had ten thousand times in six months.

In its way, the weapon he carried was the Sneekle War in microcosm: an expensive blend of humanitarianism, violence, and high technology that resulted in something on the very border of rationality.

The M02 p-gun was a light weapon, adapted from the air guns used in war games in the States. About the size of an M-16, it fired not bullets, but a hollow pellet. When this projectile hit cloth or flesh, it shattered, releasing a contact agent. Absorbed almost instantly, it sent a man into eighteen to twenty hours of unconsciousness. It was nonlethal. Only if a man was hit by three or more rounds did the dose become dangerous. The M02, like the Soviet AKPD, had a range of two hundred yards. It could empty a fifteen-round magazine in about five seconds. Unlike its Pact counterpart, it had infrared aiming.

He saw something move in the foliage ahead, stiffened, then recognized Oleksa. He and Branch were on point, scouting an open patch. Beyond it he saw the blue haze of sky. He was staring up at it, his lips framing the curse that infantry on both sides greeted open sky with in this war, when he heard a far-off thud.

Fifteen seconds later the forest burst apart.

Loftis had heard the downward scream of the shell through air. He was already burrowing into the ground beside a fallen log, the Russian on the far side, when the first shockshell went off.

The planet slammed up at him and then down. Gasping, he scrabbled at dirt. The explosions seemed to be inside his head, a detonation in his brain. White flares went off behind his squeezed lids. The foliage rustled to the flight of fragments. They were harmless. Light metal. All you had to worry about was concussion, but it was enough. Nonlethal, but men blacked out from it, went into fits, went mad. It was generally combined with a more subtle form of attack. When the sky banged like subway doors opening, he stopped burrowing and cinched mask and hood tight as he could pull them.

Close to his eyes, just beyond the fogging windows of the MK X mask, the log was rotting. He was so close he could see ants marching up from the interior, each carrying a grain of something he did not care to identify. They moved in steady files across the spongy bark. He raised his head a few centimeters and saw Agayants’ rump, the back of his pack. Good chance, he thought distantly, to see whose gear is better, theirs or ours. Could be a useful piece of data… if they made it back.

A mist was creeping through the trees, finer than fog, all but invisible. He remembered his men. “Stankey! You tight?” he shouted, not trusting squadtalk so close to the ground.

“Yeah, Sarge.”

He roared for the others, but they were out of range of his voice. He pulled his hood tighter and made sure the Velcro on his gloves held them close as a second skin.

The mist drifted down. He lay motionless, breathing shallow, eyes fixed.

He was watching the ants.

Their narrow files had begun to shatter. From obedient robots, highway followers across the rough surface of the log, they began to wander. Individuals weaved off from the collective. The stream itself meandered, re-formed. The mist drifted down.

The ants went mad. They boiled in every direction, their antennae writhing. The disciplined mechanism of the nest was gone. They darted about, colliding, fighting. At last, one by one and then by dozens, they fell from the log into the mold below.

Six more shells thudded above the treetops, then another dozen, farther off. Then a rolling barrage, scattered all across the saddle between the two hills. A dud plowed through the trees, sending up a spout of dirt and pine needles.

“Up,” screamed Loftis through the mask.

He got to his knees. They felt weak. And then to his feet. He pulled the Russian along. Then, unconsciously, he found himself pausing. He stared upward, at the moving leaves.

The sun, blazing through the swaying interstices, was shattering into a million subprimary colors. He swung his eyes to find Oleksa and Branch watching him. Their faces were melting. As he lifted his arm he saw it move in slow instantaneous frames, up stop, up stop, outlined in the terrific color.

“Run!” he shouted, the words turning to glue in his mouth. He began to stumble forward.

The forest around him began to deliquesce. It dissolved into light, into sound, slowly, like diamond melting in the terrific heat of a focused laser. The crunch of leaves under his boots shuddered up his legs like breaking bone. The sigh of wind whined like a lumbermill full of band saws. The edge of his mask was a scalpel at his neck.

He ran, panting, sobbing, sucking air. None came. The filter must be going. He was breathing the colorless gas, the psychokinesthenic. He felt something haul him backward, and crashed to the ground. Attack, he thought, pawing clumsily at the sight of his rifle. A double bombardment meant attack.

The flash of blue was instantaneous, a glimpse through a gap of brush across the ravine. But he was already on his belly, his weapon already tracking in the same direction. He blinked back colors, waiting—

The p-gun pinged, jolting against his shoulder, pinged again. A crash came from the far side of the gully. Something buzzed above him, a fast mosquito, and whacked into a tree.

Ahead of him boots pounded across the leafy floor. He swung and almost fired before he recognized camouflage. Stankey slid beside him like a thief into home, and peered over his own sights into the treeline. “Shee-it,” he muttered through the mask. “Sure is hot in these body bags.”

The words melted slowly through his brain. He tried to funnel thought to his lips. “Where’s Oleksa?”

“Old Dad’ll be comin’ right along.” The private lowered his cheek to the stock, selected manual, and fired four rapid rounds into a patch of bush. Branches whipped, but Loftis saw nothing else. A moment later the short man trotted through the trees and joined them.

Loftis sucked air, sucked air. His head was clearing. I didn’t take much, he thought. A microgram through some exposed hairline of skin, some badly sealed seam of the suit. Not enough to truly take him.

He was sweating now, and not only from the growing heat of the closed-up gear. He had seen men lying rigid, catatonic, after PK attacks. Their staring eyes told of the horror that gnawed through the framework of their minds, bringing it crashing down. Sometimes it lasted for hours, sometimes for weeks. And for some, forever. It was a terrible weapon.

But it did not kill…

He was about to say something about it when the bushes in front of them parted, and six men charged out. “Front!” he shouted hoarsely.

Three rifles pinged and bucked. Glass whipped through the air, kicked up leaves, whocked into tree boles. He ejected a magazine, kicked in a new one, fired as fast as his finger could move. The running men seemed to melt. One threw his hands skyward, another half reached for his belt before his rifle dropped from relaxing fingers and he crumpled to the ground.

Loftis became conscious that his ears were ringing from the shells. He shook the ear set out and heard distant shouts. He stared around, blinking to clear the last polychrome fringes from his vision. Take the high ground… the ravine rose steeply to their right. There, nearer the top of the hill, they could move in several directions. But could they get up it?

There was no choice. Even as he concluded the thought he heard the striker clink on an empty chamber. He jumped to his feet. “Stankey!”

“Yo.”

“Rear guard. Ten minutes, then uphill to right.”

“Yo.”

He saw magazines in the air: Oleksa’s and Branch’s, flung to the younger man as they backpedaled toward Loftis. Joynes was behind him. He turned and ran for the near-sheer wall, slinging his rifle. Halfway up, then he would cover as Stankey fell back. He was twenty yards up rock and scree when he heard Joynes. “What?” he snarled, not looking back.

“Hand, Sarge!”

He turned. The corpsman, face reddened with effort, was trying to push the Russian up the slope. Agayants, his face white behind his eyepieces, was struggling upward.

The sergeant stared. For a moment his eyes were cold; then they blinked. His hand came slowly free of the rocky soil of Yugoslavia, and reached down. It gripped the glove of the soldier in blue, paused, and then drew upward. The struggling body came after it, lifted almost effortlessly against gravity up the side of the hill.

“Stankey! Fall back!” The bull roar reverberated from the trees. “We’re hauling ass out of this shitstorm. Fall back on me. I’ll cover!”

Ahead of them stretched the forest, unbroken, untenanted yet hostile, still and yet dangerous under the eyes, like those of hawks, that searched their prey out from above.

The sky came to him black, the trees as black on black. He rolled on the crackle of pine branches and spat the foulness of too-short sleep onto dark ground. “Jack,” he said softly.

“Here, Olin.”

“Time is it?”

“Twenty-three hundred.”

“Already? Jesus.”

The darkness stirred. The squad rolled out softly, muttering, yet careful not to drop rifle butts or even boots too abruptly. There had been aircraft just after nightfall, and there could be sonic sensors within hearing distance. Now, in the darkness, under tree cover, there was a little time when men could move like soldiers always had. A rattle of water came from somewhere near. Loftis got to his feet, feeling every muscle in his body tighten against the movement.

“Stankey?”

“Here.”

“Branch?”

“Yo.”

“Doc?”

“Still here, goddamn it. Wake-up tabs, come an’ get ’em.”

“You—Agayants. You awake?”

“I hear.”

“Okay, listen up.” Loftis’ whisper was hoarse. “We made, I figure, five, six klicks good yesterday. Them chasin’ us back up the ridge lost us some. We got to make time tonight. But we got to be careful. Get it?”

The men muttered. One voice spoke clearly, though it was held low. “Yeah, Sarge. ’Cepting for one thing.”

“Yeah, Stankey?”

“The Russki. We’re beat to shit, and we got to haul him, too. I don’t get it. Why the fuck are we carrying him for? I mean, we ain’t on recce, askin’ for prisoners. We’re running for our asses.”

There was a murmur from the others, half in protest, half assent. The Russian said nothing.

“I ain’t used to having my orders second-guessed by no fuckin’ prives, son.”

“Sorry about that, Sergeant Loftis. But we out here in the wilderness. We got to get back, or we’re cold meat, man. Why we draggin’ him? I just want to know.”

“I think the sergeant–”

“Forget it, Doc. I’ll explain it to the slow learner here. Listen, Stankey. How long you been in this here war?”

“Six weeks.”

“How many wounded you seen?”

“He’s first one.”

“That mean anything to you?”

“Sure. The whole war’s Sneekle—nobody supposed to get shot like that. But so what? We didn’t hit him.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Uh… no.”

“What happens to us if we did?”

Pause. “They shoot us.”

“Who?”

“The umps.”

“What else?”

“After they shoot us? You got me. The Corps issues us halos?”

He didn’t like the tone, but he ignored it, glancing at the dim digits of his watch. You had to let them bitch, but he wanted to wrap this up. “After they shoot us, the other side gets a propaganda bonus. Allies violating Sneekle Treaty. Addicted to violence. Losing ground, so they’re starting to kill. You know what happens next?”

“Tell me, Sarge.”

“This war has been seesawing for six months. The other side wants this country, they want to win. Old-style war, hate to say it, but they probably would. Something like this could give them the excuse to go conventional. You know we’re already on the defensive. We start taking casualties, without real guns in our hands, and the J Line’ll crack so quick Chosin Reservoir will look like a victory.”

“I think the sarge is right.” Oleksa’s voice. “I figure they got their old weapons in rear echelon, ready to come up overnight. All they need is an excuse—and finding this guy, with what I bet is a NATO-caliber bullet in him, is a dead setup for them. Sergeant’s right. We got to get back with him, or find an umpire, before they get us, or we’re fried.”

“Come on,” said Joynes. “You’re assuming–”

“That’s enough,” Loftis’ growl broke in. “On your feet. We got six hours of dark to travel in. Doc.”

“Yes?”

“Slowcoke. One dose each. We’ll be humping it. And Stankey–”

“Yeah?”

“You help our friend march.”

There was no reply, but he did not like the feeling of the stillness. A hand found his in the darkness, and he backhanded the pill into his mouth.

“Let’s go.”

The night march was deadly. They moved as silently as they could, but time after time the ground simply dropped away in the dark and men fell, slid, cursed, dropped their weapons to clatter over rock. Or else it rose, and they had to claw their way up through gravel and scrub brush by feel, tearing their fingernails and the skin of their faces. The drug helped, much at first, less as the hours went by. He debated another dose, but decided against it. The time-release cocaine provided energy without a high, but there was a rebound; best to save it for the last dash to safety.

At five the sky grayed. He called a chow break. They sat, too weary to talk. Doc stared at the ground, Stankey cupped a cigarette, Branch sucked at his canteen. Only Loftis and Oleksa broke out rations and sat chewing moodily.

The Russian watched, then limped over to Loftis. “You give?” he said, motioning to the food.

“Battle rats? Sure, if you can stomach ’em. Course, yours might be even worse.”

“No caviar for the troops, I bet,” said Joynes, staring at him. “Hey, you want a smoke? I don’t use them.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep ’em covered,” said Loftis. “Or you won’t get any more.”

‘‘Understand. Sputniki.’’

“What?”

“Satellites, he said.”

“Oh. Sputniks, huh? I get it.”

“Come on, Doc,” said Loftis, getting up. “Let’s recce.”

He and Joynes moved forward cautiously. The faint predawn made it easier to travel, but also more dangerous. A few hundred yards farther on, the forest ended. Beneath his feet the ground softened, sucking at his boots.

“Swampy,” said the corpsman. “You got any rivers on that map?”

“One. We made good time if this is it.”

“Think we can get across before full daylight?”

“Sure like to try. I feel naked out here.”

“Think they know we’re here?”

“I don’t know. If that was a sensor drop last night… that rock probably carries sound pretty good. They might.”

When he stopped whispering, there was a silence. He was turning to go back when Joynes muttered, “Sarge, tell me something.”

“What?”

“What are we doing out here, anyway? What’s this goddamn war for?”

He peered at the corpsman’s face. “You know,” he said. “We’re here to defend Yugoslavia. Don’t that make sense?”

“I guess. I just—I just hoped, once, for something more to fight for than the big-power skirmishing.”

“Politics ain’t my business. Or yours.”

“It ought to be.”

“Goddamn it, Doc, I don’t have time to argue with you now.”

“All right,” said Joynes. “Forget it, Sarge. We’ll talk about it some other time.”

“Sure,” said Loftis, and meant it. “Let’s go back now.”

The squad straggled forward in the growing light. The stark traceries of the forest fell back. No one spoke, not even when they came out on the bank and looked over the fog-shrouded river. They stood and stared. Stankey knelt to rinse his face.

“How wide you figure?”

“Couple hundred yards.”

“Deep?”

“Higher than a man, for sure. Look at how calm it is.”

“You two, left. I’ll go right. Look for a ford, or rapids.”

Oleksa found the boat three hundred meters upstream. The men shambled up to it. Someone had staked it to a fallen tree on the shingle, and it lay now in weeds. Its quarter had been gnawed by decay. Loftis circled it, rubbing his chin. “Think it’ll float?” he muttered, to no one in particular.

“It’ll float.” Branch squatted by the stern, dug his K-bar into rotten wood.

“You know boats, Boot Camp?”

“Built one and paddled it all over Lake George when I was twelve. This here punt’ll leak, but we can hang on and bail till we’re across. I can fix it enough so two guys could sit in it and not get wet.”

“Terrific. Take charge of that. Rest of you, spread out. Look for something to paddle with.”

The sun was above the hills when Branch pronounced himself satisfied. He had reinforced the rotten section with cut saplings and stretched a cammie shirt over them. Loftis hung back, willing to follow instead of lead for a few minutes more. The men grasped the gunwales and hustled the punt down to the shore. It settled into the river with the unenthusiastic air of a corpse revived by necromancy. Water began running in the bottom. Branch leaped in and settled himself on a thwart, then bent to scoop out the first helmetful. “Let’s go, there, comrade,” he said sharply to Agayants. “Sarge, you coming?”

Loftis stood by the side of the river, screened by brush. They beckoned him, eyes alight, like kids. He thought of Huck Finn and Jim on the raft. He had liked that book. The river smelled cold, like a basement after a long winter. He looked upward. No cloud. His skin crawled at the thought of crossing open water in daylight. Both sides had surveillance. They circled higher than human sight, long-winged automatic planes that never came down. There were things that hunted them, swift killers with electronic minds. The men saw only thin contrails, like the trace of skates on a frozen pond, to mark those battles. But there were other machines that were only too happy to hunt man…

“Goddamn,” said Loftis, plunging into the river with the rest. They piled their p-guns in the bow and splashed outward, holding to the sides of the boat. “You might make a Marine after all, Branch.”

The ground dropped under their feet. He was glad they hadn’t tried to swim, tired as the men were. The river was cold and the current swift under the smooth surface, dragging them along with silent power. “Start paddling,” he grunted, glancing past Branch’s head at the open sky. He sculled with one hand, clinging to rough wood with the other. The shore began to recede as the men stabbed at the river with scraps of driftwood. Branch bailed steadily over the stern.

“Eyes!” shouted Joynes.

The men ducked, but there was no cover. The boat rocked, unbuoyant, unsteady. Loftis’ head jerked up. The soarer was too high to see, but its radio-vectored RPV was not. It glided in fifty feet above the river, not much bigger than an owl, the propeller windmilling. Sunlight glinted off a lens. It was only a hundred meters away.

“Rifles!” he screamed. “Shoot that fucker down! Right now!”

Branch and Stankey had their M02’s up in a moment. The RPV was faster. The motor restarted, its nose lifted, and it buzzed past their heads. Loftis could see the camera pod below the wing as it went by, banking for another pass. “It ain’t marked,” Branch said tentatively, following it with his front sight.

Loftis uttered a fearsome profanity. “Kill it, I said!”

Both rifles cracked. The vehicle’s engine jumped to a higher note. Branch fired again. It yawed and wove like a swallow, eluding their aim, yet working steadily closer. Its propeller was a white blur against the green of the hills. It dipped and came on, aiming like a hawk now, only five or six feet above the water.

“Gaz yest!”

The Russian grabbed for his mask. Loftis saw it at the same instant. A blue mist, swirling in the turbulence of the propeller.

“Gas!”

They snatched for their MK X’s. Loftis found his under water, but the flap eluded his hand. The eye buzzed toward them, the wasp whine of the engine filling the river. He saw the Russian snap his last strap into place. Branch was still firing. He had not registered the presence of the PK at all. Oleksa had his mask half on. Stankey was groping for his.

It flashed over them. The whorls of mist, fading toward invisibility at the edges, drifted downward toward the floating men.

“Shit,” muttered Loftis. He let go of his mask and heaved himself up on the gunwale, and then down. Branch’s face turned toward him, white and horrified.

They went over. The Russian screamed as he hit the river. Loftis remembered his wound. He ducked, found what he judged to be Stankey. His reaching hand could not find Branch. He swam downward, ignoring the struggles of the man whose uniform he held. His lungs ached, but he ignored them. His eyes began to burn and the kicking grew more fierce and then weaker. His outstretched hand found bottom. Rock and mud, sweeping by at the speed of current. It was cold down here, cold as death and winter. Stars exploded behind his eyes. He could stand it no longer. A scream tore from his open mouth, clothed in bubbles. He kicked downward.

An hour later they fought through thorns sharp as barbed wire. Their tiny teeth tore at uniforms and skin. The ground was rocky, then soft. A grown-over field of stunted apple trees. Windfall squished under their boots, filling the close air with sweet decay.

“Uphill,” Loftis gasped. He seized the man nearest him and thrust him ahead with all his remaining strength. “Uphill!”

Stankey spun away, boots digging into the yielding ground. Jack Oleksa and Doc Joynes were coming up through the trees. The sun slanted behind them. The Russian was panting, his mouth a hard O. His arm was around Joynes’ neck. “What’s the hurry?” said the corpsman. His face was streaked with sweat and mud and blood. A p-gun was slung over his shoulder. Loftis’ eye caught that, then moved to a bare spot on the shoulder of his cammies.

“That thing was waiting for us. Patrolling up and down the river. They know we’re here and that we’ve got—him.” He nodded at Agayants. “I figure we’ll have visitors real soon, a blocking maneuver to our front.”

“We should be getting close to our own lines,” Oleksa managed between gasps. His face was gray to the younger men’s white.

Shit, Loftis thought. His own mind was going hazy. He had saved Stankey by sheer will. They had almost drowned, but when they broke surface again the PK had been driven downwind and the eye gone. Oleksa and the Russian had both donned masks in time. Joynes had used his head, staying under the overturned boat and breathing trapped air till the gas dispersed.

No one had seen Branch. Loftis had waited as long as he dared, searching the banks for a head, a body. Nothing. The replacement had gone like so many others in this retreat, walked away into the fog of war.

It would have a bad effect, he thought, on the rest. Four men left. And one prisoner. Nine kilometers to NATO lines—if they had not retreated farther in the last twenty-four hours.

“Planes,” came Stankey’s shout, a moment before the roar of the engines reached the others.

The planes roared in ahead of them, to their right. Through the trees he could see flashes of silver. “Paratroops,” he said to Oleksa, who nodded silently. “Right flank, and ahead.”

“Let’s break left fast.”

“High ground?”

“Yeah. No… which way are our lines?”

Loftis sighted with the compass, then pointed to a distant bluff. “That way. But if the line’s still there, anyplace we hit it will be good.”

“That’s it, then.” They looked at Agayants.

“You are going?”

“Fast as we can. You got to keep up.”

“I will try.”

They lay at the edge of the bluff, beneath the ragged leaves of ferns. Water trickled somewhere. Loftis felt it cold underneath him. He searched the ground. Yes, a spring. Muddy water welled up where he lifted the heel of his hand. He raised his head an inch. The ferns nodded in stillness. Each nod, each whisper of the still forest below, drew his utmost attention, yet without distracting him from the overall situation. The heightened alertness came from within, partly, but it was also chemical: he had asked Joynes for a combat-effectiveness enhancer a few minutes before.

He lowered his head and drank, slurping the muddy stuff between dry lips. Fill canteens if we have time, he thought. But no noise. No noise at all.

The enemy was all around.

He checked his weapon, seating his magazine, switching it on and off guidance. He remembered when rifles were all-manual, when a shot had to be aimed precisely to hit. Just like the Civil War. Now, with GUID selected, an infrared sensor made any recruit a sharpshooter. You aimed as best you could, then pulled the trigger. When the waver of your muzzle caught man, when the sensor said something warm existed in the bowed time-space your pellet would describe, it completed the circuit. Your rifle jolted, and an enemy felt the whiplash sting of sleepytime.

All the technology of centuries, the knowledge and data accumulated by man. He watched the heelprint refill with water, and bent again. All employed in the cause of war. Sometimes, like the corpsman, he found himself wondering about it, whether it was worth all he had seen and endured.

Something crackled in his ear set. He became attentive, concentrating to hear through the steady whine of jamming. It was Joynes.

“…Just ahead.”

He lifted his head warily. The laser-rangers the Soviets carried could blind a man for life. And you couldn’t see them until they hit you, unless you caught their flash against foliage.

Ah, yes, he thought. This war is different.

Somewhere in the leafy distance a weapon fired. Full automatic. The burst sounded strange. Loud. He frowned and pushed himself up a bit more. The doc said something on the channel, but he couldn’t make it out through the whine. He glanced to his left, to where the Russian lay on his back, staring at the trees. If I feel helpless, how must he feel?

But he had no time to feel. He had only two choices. Fight and try to escape. Or find an umpire and “surrender in U.N. presence.”

He decided to surrender the moment he saw a white uniform.

The firing broke out again, louder. There were several rifles. It was to his left, in a thicker copse he could see from the edge of the bluff. Joynes was at their edge, with a weapon this time.

Suddenly he stiffened. The familiar popping of an M02. Only it sounded muffled, weak. What was going on?

Five soldiers appeared under the trees. They wore black fur caps and dark blue tunics. They moved in echelon, crouched, sprinting between cover in short rushes. Feeling remote admiration for their tactics, Loftis lined up his weapon and set the range. He selected guidance and set in a drop correction. He could see the red stars on their caps through his sights. When the next one broke cover, he swung and fired. The man clapped his hand to his arm, dropping his weapon. He shouted something. The others turned to look. He started to point, but halfway up, his arm became unsteady. He sagged. His head went back and his helmet fell free. He disappeared.

The lead soldier waved in his direction. Loftis saw their barrels come up. He fired again, but before he could see a hit, their muzzles flashed.

The ferns above his head snapped and flew apart. Something smacked the bluff edge, spraying his face with water and mud. The bullets hissed overhead.

Bullets. Dumb rounds. The men below were no longer playing sneekle.

Loftis slid back, heart jumping. He caught a glimpse of the leader, on his knees, head sagging. He’d hit. But he wasn’t staying. He saw Agayants looking at him. “Get moving,” he said in a low voice. He keyed squadtalk. “Loftis. Live ammo, live! Fall back. Any you guys see white?”

“No umps.”

“Nothin’, Sarge.”

“Joynes?”

Christ, he thought. Of course there would be no umps. Not if the Soviets felt they could use live fire. He waited. The corpsman did not answer. “Joynes!” he shouted to the trees.

“Get going, jarheads.” It was the doc, in a whisper. “Hit. Coming for me. Move out.”

Loftis felt a blaze of rage. He jumped to his feet, bracing his body against the trunk of an elm. His maneuver caught the men below by surprise, out of cover. They stared up openmouthed. Trigger pressed, he panned the sight over them, correcting as the muzzle jerked at each exiting pellet. Two Soviets fell but more were appearing every moment, at least a dozen, running out from cover toward the bluff, then pausing to aim up at him. Return fire whacked into the trunk, and then, stunning him from fingertips to jaw, into bone just below his elbow.

He blinked, thinking for a moment that the flash was from a laser. It wasn’t. He saw his rifle on the ground and tried to pick it up. His arm did not respond.

There was a rustle behind him and someone moved past, picking up the rifle, pulling him back from the bluff edge. “Shee-it,” it said. “Stopped one with your arm, huh, Sarge? Careless. Come on, let’s retrograde.”

“Doc’s down there.”

“You heard his transmit. We can’t help. Let’s boogie.”

He came out of shock a little. Stankey was right. There were too many enemy to go back. He saw Agayants ahead of them, pulling something from his pack, and then the pale hands met his bare skin for the first time. Tourniquet. Battle bandage. They were cotton, instead of the plastic-skin U.S. issue.

Oleksa trotted up warily. “You hit, Olin?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad?”

“No.”

“Doc?”

“Got to leave him.”

“Orders?”

“No.”

“Gimme your smokes.”

Loftis had one left, Stankey two. Oleksa collected them and loped off, head questing from side to side. Loftis turned his face to feel the wind. Yes, he was laying it proper. But why?

The corporal came back between the trees. “Old culvert on south edge. Leads down from a spring. Probably a farmhouse somewhere down below.”

“Wide enough?”

“Hope so. C’mon, let’s move out.”

The smoke was thick, choking, like walking the rim of a volcano. It moved with the wind and they moved with it, hearing voices behind them. Oleksa knelt suddenly. The mouth of the culvert was hidden by bushes. Stankey started to kick them apart, but the reservist stopped him. The small man went in first. After a moment his voice came up, hollow. “Clear… ah… no, dammit, it’s blocked. Water can get through, but I can’t.”

A heavy burst came from behind them, beyond the smoke. “We’re fuckin’ trapped,” muttered Stankey, glancing at the Russian with a look at once wild and profoundly sympathetic, as if he recognized for the first time that the other was a man.

“Get in,” said Loftis.

“What?”

“Get in, I said!”

“They’ll shoot us in there!”

He shoved the private with his good arm. Agayants had already seen. He ducked quickly into the brush-screened opening. His blue eyes showed, frightened, searching their faces before the darkness swallowed it. Stankey stared for a moment more, then cursed. He sat and dropped his legs in. Loftis bent, looking back. The shouts were louder. Through the smoke probed the beam of a laser. It swept from side to side above his head, made visible by the pall.

The smokes would cover them for a few more seconds. Then it would be luck, only luck. He was thinking this when the beam dipped unexpectedly and struck his eyes. He staggered, raising his arm and blinking. Patterns of light wheeled in front of him. He could see nothing beyond them.

He slid his rifle by feel into the bushes. He fell into a night of red fire, biting back a cry as his shattered arm bit crumbling stone.

Loftis waited through the day, shivering in the icy water, falling from time to time into short, terrifying dreams. The circle of sky was dark when he unbent, whimpering at his arm, and began to crawl upward. He went slowly, slowly. They could have left geosensors.

When he came out of the bushes, p-gun balanced in his left hand, he paused for a long time to listen. He still could not see well, but the red wheels had begun to fade. The wind sighed through dark trees. The trickle of the spring filled the night. The top of the bluff was empty.

“Come on out,” he whispered.

They moved slowly down the slope. Loftis blinked up at the stars and turned a little to the right. Something buzzed, mosquitolike, above them, and they froze, rigid and unbreath-ing, each man shielding his bare face from the sky. The whine faded into the wind’s whistle. They moved forward again, easing their boots down into the grass. From time to time a distant explosion rumbled over the hills. None of them spoke. Loftis’ arm was a lump of pain. He had no more drugs. Joynes had carried them all.

You, he thought. Oleksa. Stankey. The Russian. It is night. It is 2210. You have no masks. You are almost out of ammo. You are hungry and wounded, but you have drunk all the spring water you will ever want in your life. You have till dawn, about 0500. You have six klicks to go.

They moved through the night for a long time. From time to time he looked at his watch, then at the stars. They were making distance. At half past midnight he heard Stankey mutter something behind him.

“What’s that?”

“I been thinking.”

“You?”

“You been telling us all along the Russkis shot him,” Stankey muttered behind him, ignoring his sarcasm.

“What? Close up if you got to talk.”

The private moved up. His breath was warm in Loftis’ ear. “I got it figured. The Army shot him.”

“What you talking about, Stankey?”

“Talking about our Commie friend. The possibilities. They must be other troops cut off ’sides us. What if it was them shot him—accident, or deliberate?”

“What if it was? We still got to get him back. Russians can still pin it on us, Private.”

“If they can,” said Stankey, lowering his voice still more so that Oleksa, directly behind, could not overhear, “so can the umps.”

“What are you sayin’?”

“That if he got a bullet in him, won’t the refs, when we get back, say we shot him?”

“Hell, they can tell what kind of weapon a slug came from.”

“If there’s one in him. What if there ain’t? He been hiking pretty strong for a man with a bullet in him.”

“Take a break,” whispered Loftis. “Pass it back.”

He heard them sigh and let themselves down against trees. Stankey sat beside him. Loftis’ eyes slid beyond him, to where the Russian was scratching at the soil with his hand. He heard a soft sound, and then the man pulled up his trousers and settled a few steps away.

“You don’t trust your own mother, Stankey.”

“Why should I? The bitch stole from me. He’ll find some way to give us away. We ought to dump him.”

“Shut up,” said Loftis. “Five minutes. Then we keep moving. We only got five more klicks.”

At daybreak they crouched at the edge of a valley, shivering in the morning chill. Light etched the trees like silver precipitating on a photographic image. Loftis tried to raise his rifle. His hand shook too much. He passed it to Oleksa. “Take a look. What do you see?”

The older man squinted through the sight, then turned it to higher magnification. “Men,” he said at last.

“Ours?”

“I think so. Can’t see color so good yet.”

“We’ll wait,” said Loftis. “Till we know.”

“You think they’re ours?” said Stankey.

“They’re in the right place.”

“What you plan to do?”

“Let’s see… I lost my squadtalk. Have you–”

“Mine’s gone.”

“I… lost mine.”

“Guess that’s out.”

“Suppose we just run, then. Make a break.”

“There’s got to be Russians around if this is the front line.”

“What if there is? We got no smokes. We got no comms. We out of ammo. We just got to run.”

“What if our guys got autoguns set, or those shock mines?”

“Well, they can tell we’re U.S. even if we’re asleep.”

Loftis nodded. A great tiredness took him and he slumped back. His eyelids slid downward, as inevitably as avalanches.

He dreamed, there in the dawning, that he and Doc Joynes were sitting on a mountain together. It was west of D.C., in the Blue Ridge, and there was a bottle between them. The doc was sipping from it, and arguing, just like always. They were talking about the war, as if it had been over for years, for a long time. “So what did you think?” Joynes was saying. “That a war without violence would be kind? It was only a step up from economic war and a step down from guerrillas. Each side was as ruthless as it thought it could get away with. Nothing had changed.”

“The grunts on the ground weren’t dying,” grunted Loftis.

“Tell that to the guys blinded by range lasers,” the corps-man said slowly. “Tell it to the guys who never thought again because they got a PK megadose. Or the ones who froze to death while they were nodding that winter.”

“You’re too friggin’ clever.” Loftis, in his dream, stood up and looked around. The tops of the blue hills were level with his eyes. “You make it seem like it was no progress. Well, by Jesus, I believed in the crazy thing.”

“‘War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason; and if anything is to be hoped, everything ought to be tried,’” said Joynes, his voice taunting, though he did not smile.

“Who said that?”

“Madison.” The doc laughed then. “And war in his day—not half bad. I’ll bet we lost more people in a battle than they did.”

“I bet we didn’t,” said Loftis. “You never believed in it because you only saw the injuries. My pop was in ’Nam and he told me about that hell. I’d rather have took a pellet and starved for a year or two in a Pact gulag than spent the rest of my life like him. He didn’t have no legs—and he always told me, he was one of the lucky ones.”

“Loftis.”

It was not the doc. He remembered now that he was dead, left behind. It was the Russian, Agayants. The light was brighter and he was squatting between him and the sun, with Stankey’s face dark behind him, hand on his knife.

“What?” he said.

“It’s light,” said Oleksa. He turned his head. The older man was beside him. He lifted the scope.

“Can you see?”

“It’s our guys.”

Loftis nodded.

“But there’s blueboys moving between us and them. Looks like preps for an assault.”

Loftis nodded again. His arm throbbed with an insidious pain, as if something were eating its way inside it, next to the bone, toward his heart.

“Loftis,” said the Russian again.

“What the hell you want, Wal-demeer?”

“I can help us to other side.”

“How?”

“Talk. I tell soldiers we shpionam—spy.” He turned his helmet around, looked earnestly at them.

“Jack?”

The corporal raised his eyebrows. “Weird, but it might work.”

“Leopold?”

“Don’t call me Leopold.”

“Okay, Private Stankey. What do you say?”

“I don’t trust him.”

Loftis stirred. He looked at the three anxious faces. “Wal-demeer–”

“Vladimir.”

“Everybody’s worried about his name today. Okay. Wal-di-meer. Now, Private Stankey still wants to know how you got shot. So do I. Are you sure you don’t have a better explanation than the last one we heard?”

“I shoot myself,” he said.

“What?”

“I shoot myself with gun.”

The three Marines stared at him. “You must have wanted out of the army pretty bad,” said Oleksa.

“Not out of army. Out of killing.”

“Come again.”

The Russian chewed his lip. He looked toward the hill opposite, then seemed to make a decision. Words tumbled out. “I know plan. One general makes it. More, more attacks with bullets. No more ni viernaya voina—false war. They give us gun for bullet, not sleep. You see? So I go off, shoot me, so not to kill other. That, I do not believe to do.”

“Then we found you, instead of your own people.”

“Da.”

“What happens if they find you shot yourself?”

“Trial,” he said. “Prison, el’e death.”

“Jesus. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I thought”—he glanced at Stankey, who lowered his eyes. “You not take me back then. That you same as them.”

Loftis nodded. After a moment Oleksa did, too. They faced forward.

“Hold up that goddamn scope for me,” said the sergeant.

The other side of the valley; the top of the facing ridge. Through the glasses it leaped up so clear and sharp he wondered if he could touch it.

“You’ll help us get through?”

“Da.”

“And then?”

“I talk to sud’ya. To U.N.”

“Why?”

“I say. I do not like killing.”

“Back there? The paratroops?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Loftis, “I guess we must have some kind of program for defectors. I mean, don’t seem like you should be aPOW, after that.”

“I would rather be prisoner.”

“You mean that?”

“Yes,” said the Russian. He chewed on the tips of his fingers nervously. “I am not traitor. Just do not want to kill. This war bad, but not like old kind fighting. You know, Sovietsky Soyuz lose twenty, thirty million in Patriotic War. Never, never repeat. Maybe future be like this.”

Loftis turned his head. “Sounds like good sense, don’t it, Jack?”

“What’s that?”

“Sneekle War is hell—but we got to make it work, ’cause it’s better than the real thing. ’Cause maybe that’s the way things come in the world, you fight your way uphill a little bit at a time.”

“Maybe so,” said Oleksa. “Maybe so.”

“Doc wouldn’t have said so.”

“Sure he would. He just liked to argue.”

“Ready to cross?”

“Anytime.”

“Brother?”

“On your ass, Olin.”

“Wal-demeer?”

“I am ready.”

They grinned at each other. The growl of motors came from behind them. Overhead the leaves stirred in the first breath of morning wind.

Together, they walked down into the valley.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Abdullah Bulbul Amir

(Unknown)

More years ago than I like to admit, my high school English class was assigned Richard Conway’s “The Most Dangerous Game”—a delightful story, if you haven’t read it.

That story has a minor character named Ivan, and during the discussion one of my classmates pronounced it “Ee-vahn” in the Russian manner; whereupon several of us said, aloud and in unison, “eye-van” in the American manner. Of course we were wrong.

Brother Daniel, the instructor, was not amused, and said, “Who said that?” It being an honor system class, three of us stood up and were given our penance. “There is,” Brother Daniel said, “a poem by the name ‘Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.’” (Incidentally, I remember it as Ivan Skavinsky Skivar, but the only version I’ve found recently uses the other name.) “You will,” he continued, “go find it and copy it five times.”

A quick search of our high school library revealed no clues at all. Eventually I found someone in the Memphis downtown main library who recalled that there was such a poem, but it was entitled “Abdullah Bulbul Amir.” She was kind enough to find it for me in some long-out-of-print collection of ballads and poems, and I duly copied it out; I may have been the only one who did comply with the penance.

The version I remember is not the one given here, but this one is close enough.

Not every battle ends in victory.

Abdullah Bulbul Amir

(Unknown)

The sons of the Prophet are hardy and bold,
And quite unaccustomed to fear;
But of all the most reckless of life and of limb,
Was Abdullah Bulbul Amir.

When they wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or harass the foe from the rear,
Or to storm a redoubt, they were sure to call out,
For Abdullah Bulbul Amir.

There are heroes in plenty, and well known to fame,
In the legions that fight for the Czar;
But none of such fame, as the man by the name,
Of Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.

He could imitate Irving, play euchre or pool,
And perform on the Spanish guitar;
In fact quite the cream of the Muscovite team,
Was Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.

One day this bold Muscovite shouldered his gun,
Put on his most cynical sneer,
And was walking downtown when he chanced to run down,
Abdullah Bulbul Amir.

Quoth the Bulbul, “My friend, is existence so dull,
“That you’re anxious to end your career?
“For infidel know, you have tread on the toe,
“Of Abdullah Bulbul Amir.

“So take your last look at the sea, sky, and brook,
“Make your last report on the war.
“For I mean to imply, that you’re going to die,
“Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.”

So this stalwart he took his trusty chibouk,
and shouting “Allah Akbar!”
With murder intent he most savagely went
For Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.

Just as the knife was ending the life,
In fact he had shouted “Huzzah!”
He found himself struck by that noted Cossack,
Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.

The Sultan rose up, the disturbance to quell,
Likewise give the victor a cheer,
He arrived just in time for a farewell sublime,
with Abdullah Bulbul Amir.

A long-sounding splash from the Danube was heard,
Resounding o’er meadows afar;
It came from the sack fitting close to the back,
Of Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.

There’s a grave by the wave where the Danube doth roll.
And on it in characters queer,
Are “Stranger remember to pray for the soul,
Of Abdullah Bulbul Amir.”

A Muscovite maiden her vigil doth keep,
By the light of the pale northern star,
And the name she repeats every night in her sleep,
Is Ivan Petrofsky Skovar.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Render Unto Caesar

Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin

Terrorism has become a fact of life; so much so that to make things tougher for terrorists we’re willing to accept some pretty hefty intrusions on our lives. As an example, I recently missed an airplane at London’s Heathrow Airport. I arrived a good forty-five minutes before the plane was to leave, but that wasn’t sufficient time for the security people to go through their rather farcical routines. (Farcical because I saw three ways I could have smuggled in weapons and/or explosives.) As I stood in a nearly interminable line waiting for two and only two officers to check my passport, the chap in front of me said, “Well, it’s better than being blown up, isn’t it?”

A great deal is better than being blown up, but perhaps that’s not the point. The British apparently think that laying on another regulation will cure the terrorist problem, and if one new regulation is good, several will be even better. All of them inconvenience the passengers. I have doubts about what they have done to the terrorists.

It may be that we have to get serious about the problem. Former Los Angeles Chief of Police Ed Davis suggested erecting gallows at the airports. He was greatly castigated, and later said he didn’t really mean it, but I do wonder if there weren’t germs of truth in there? The Israeli soldiers at Entebbe were given strict orders to see that no terrorist survived, and those orders were carried out despite one attempt at surrender.

All of which is very well, but what is terrorism? Until we know what it is, how shall we deal with it?

The definitions change, too. In 1917 the United States went to war over the right of U.S. citizens to travel on belligerent passenger ships in time of war. After all, not only was the Lusitania a British ship sailing into a British port, she was carried on the Royal Navy books as an “auxiliary cruiser”; yet we expected the German Navy to let her sail through, and at the least the German subs should surface and order the ship to surrender after giving the passengers opportunity to reach safety. In 1918 we preserved the rights of neutrals at considerable cost of American blood; but in December 1941 U.S. Navy subs were ordered to sink without warning any Japanese vessels they might find.

I have seen many definitions of terrorism. As good as any is “making war against innocent bystanders.” Of course that one is fairly broad, and can be construed as branding much of the Allied strategic air activity of World War II as acts of terrorism—and for that matter, makes terrorists of us all, since our doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction says in effect that we hold the women and children of the Soviet Union hostage to ensure against the Politburo’s aggressions.

What we see as terrorism, others may see as their only possible course of action. One person’s act of terrorism is another’s heroic attempt to win freedom for his people. All of which suggests we haven’t given sufficient thought to the problem. Clearly we think certain kinds of terrorist acts are justified, else we would universally condemn not only the atom bombing of Hiroshima but the fire raids over Tokyo.

Which leaves us with something of a dilemma.

Render Unto Caesar

Eric Vinicoff and Marcia Martin

(INTER TERRA ET MARS)

Pavel admired his would-be executioner.

The kaesta was a masterpiece of the surgeon-breeders’ art: bulky, dark brown and at least three meters tall. It looked clumsy but didn’t move that way. Pavel ducked beneath a slashing Ursus horribilis paw, losing two square decimeters of Aeroflot flight suit from his back, as well as some skin and blood. He moaned, rolled sideways on the hard alloy deck and sprang back to his feet. The narrow corridor left him little room for maneuvering.

Yes, he admired the kaesta. But he would have much rather admired it at a distance.

The kaesta came on again, an angry blur. Pavel swayed. He was weak, and getting weaker. While his right hand groped at the flap on his holster, he took a dodging step backward. His foot hit something slick—a smear of his own blood on the deck—and slid out from under him.

A mammoth paw, glistening with red, split the air where he had been standing.

The kaesta bent over him, growling. The surgeon-breeders hadn’t given it human vocal cords to go with its human brain—unsurprisingly, since that would have added eighty thousand rubles to the cost. Ordinary guard kaesta didn’t require such expensive frills.

Instead of striking to kill (which would have severely curtailed its victim’s question-answering ability) the kaesta reached for the summoner on its chest.

Pavel finally freed the holster flap and drew his Walther XX.

The kaesta forgot instantly about the summoner—it pounced.

There was no time to aim; he pressed the firing stud.

The kaesta lashed out, knocking the stubby weapon from his hand, but not before a ruby-bright beam pricked its chest momentarily.

This time the roars of the kaesta were almost deafening. Pavel rolled backward, snap-extended and flipped to his feet. The effort left him semiconscious. Galaxies gyrated across his vision.

But it was all over. The kaesta collapsed slowly onto the red-dappled corridor deck, twitching slightly and coughing blood.

Pavel stood up, then sagged against the corridor wall. He knew that the engineering deck was isolated and crewless—his plan counted on it—but even so he was amazed that the sound of the fight hadn’t attracted any attention.

For long minutes all he could do was lean against the white plastic, gasping. His medical implant whispered, “You need hospital service,” over and over into his right ear, but he already knew that.

Drugs were being pumped directly into his bloodstream by the implant, and his mind began to clear—slowly. Perhaps too slowly.

So much for my career, he thought. So much for half of my life. Pavel Machotka: Aeroflot systems engineer and deep cover agent. Deep enough, apparently, to survive the security checks run on the crew for this flight. All my life in fact—I was training for this career before I dedicated my life to the cause.

Staggering over to an access hatch set into the wall he touched his right palm to the ident-panel beside it. The hatch dilated open. He pulled himself into the tube thus revealed, and the hatch sealed behind him.

His strength was fading fast.

Marx, when will this state wither away? he thought fiercely. And how? Surely not by the greed of those in power. The tube was red-lit, packed with cables and electrical equipment, and a tight fit. He snaked along until he came to a junction box marked EXT. COM. CON. Drawing the Walther XX again, he burned the box into slag metal.

So we, the few who still hold to your dream, do what we must.

Behind him he could see the slick trail that he was leaving, black under the red light. Numbness was setting in, and his muscles weren’t responding the way they should. But he dragged himself further along the tube.

And must we do even this: betray those who are after all our comrades—whatever their crimes—to the enemies of the proletariat? With a final desperate heave he reached a piece of equipment marked RECIRCULATOR FILTER FLUID INPUT. He opened a valve, and dark brownish-red liquid ran out. It stained his silver flight suit, but he didn’t care.

Yes, we must. We need the proceeds of our Faustian bargain, and while our fellow travelers are far away, the need for a true Marxist state is immediate.

From a pocket he took a small plastic flask. Taking a deep breath, he opened the flask, poured its clear fluid contents into another valve atop the piece of equipment, touched several heat-switches and backed away before gasping a slight breath. After throwing the flask far ahead of him, he resumed his frantic retreat.

But flesh and muscle had their limits, and he knew that he had reached them. With vivid regrets for so many things undone, he shut his eyes and died.

(HABITAT, MERCURY)

“Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery—consuls, senators and knights. The higher a man’s rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully watched…”

The excerpt from Tacitus’ Character of Augustan Rule came uninvited into Anthony Vale’s mind as he looked at himself in his lavatory alcove mirror. It neatly summarized the men against whom he would soon be set, the “lean and hungry” wolves from Earth. Lesser wolves, granted, envoys of the modern Imperatores who were devouring a planet, but fearful predators nonetheless.

It also reminded him of how twenty centuries hadn’t changed human nature. Since history endures in that case, he mused silently, perhaps it’ll do likewise today. Dear Mother Mary, I pray so.

The Mercury Consortium Board member stared at a reflection of his ordeal. It was scribed in the eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, the deepening lines above his thick Mediterranean brows, and the paleness that had replaced his usual ruddy color. The face staring back at him was perfectly suited to the tired executive who lived behind it.

Crossing his apartment to the muted violet bed-field, he picked up his battered attache case from the reading table. The door opened at his approach, and he stepped out into the vestibule. Here his VIP rating served him. Instead of sharing a corridor loadramp with dozens of other dwelling units, he had a tastefully elegant personal one, as well as a door opening on his level’s walkway. He was in a hurry, so he summoned a single-seat tubecar.

The small cabin and molded plastic chair were, as always, too cramped for his 191 centimeters. He irritatedly punched out a destination code on the keyboard, then settled back as the tubecar accelerated. Like any good stockholder-citizen, he hated the Tube Transport System. He hated the discomfort, the rush-hour delays, and above all the feeling of being a parcel. He knew that TTS was the best form of mass transit for Habitat’s unusual needs—but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy riding it.

The only sound within the cabin was a soft buzz that he had long ago learned to tune out. Is all of this really worth the price we paid for it? he wondered, as he had wondered increasingly in the past few weeks. Not just the money, but the effort, the things left behind—and the lives? Is it really worth fighting for? We could always give in.

As always, there came an answer: We couldn’t live the way we wanted to on Earth, so we came here. We haven’t much, but we do have a society that satisfies us—and that’s worth defending if anything is. So Jules argues, and the stockholder-citizens echoed him at the preliminary polling. But will they do so again when it’s time to cross the Rubicon?

And what about me, the miracle man who claims to be able to pluck victory out of a hopeless situation? Can I? And, knowing the price, should I? If my plan goes wrong, it’ll go very wrong indeed. Fatally wrong for nine hundred thousand stockholder-citizens.

Knowledge of the stakes with which he was gambling began to unsettle his stomach. His Mercury Consortium Board seat had been won by conquests in the area of high finance. Dealing in megafrancs he found exciting; dealing in human lives terrified him.

He lacked the confidence of a diplomat, not to mention the training. His opponents, on the other hand, represented the four greatest powers in the history of humanity: Pan America, People’s China, Noreuropa and the USSR. To counter them he was depending on his own practical political experience and the tactics of an empire fifteen hundred years dead.

He floated forward slightly as the tubecar decelerated. The hatch opened, and he stepped out into the bustle of Administration Central’s foyer. The large circular area was aflood with humanity; all gliding in the dainty gait caused by the four-tenths-of-normal gravity. There were workers boarding the tubebuses that ran out to the local mines and refineries, tourists, spacemen in their flight suits, white-collar types and so on. He pushed through the crowd to reach the Window.

The thick triple-insulated pane dominated an entire sixty degrees of the wall, and it was one of the only two Windows in Habitat—Jules Nakai had the other in his office. Dozens of people milled in front of it. Anthony Vale pushed through to a good viewing position. For some reason, no matter how rushed he was, he always had to stop for a look.

It was night outside, of course; alloy reflectors covered both Windows during daylight. But the Tourist Department had illuminated the view with floodlights. He stared out at a pie-slice of the glossy white Shield that covered Mercury’s surface for three kilometers in every direction. Habitat lay beneath it, a vast cylinder sunk into the planetary crust. Only the Administration Central dome sat on top.

Over two kilometers from the Window, just within the edge of the Shield, a small circle radiated internal white light. The sun was down, so the spaceport was open for business. Even as he watched, a fat cargo flitter dropped out of the star-strewn sky into the hole, fetching ore and personnel from an outlying mine. He was faintly disappointed; he had hoped to see one of the mammoth space freighters lift off.

Vanadium, cobalt, nickel, copper, molybdenum, silver, platinum and the atomic power metals; our lifeblood. Earth’s, rather, and we survive by feeding its resource hunger. A safe enough thing when we were small and struggling, but Mercury has proved to be a treasure trove.

And the Mercury Consortium is now a pie to be divided among those with enough power to seize a piece. Unless I can stop them.

Beyond the Shield lay dark, undetailed terrain. But he had seen the harsh mountains, craters and cracked plains many times during daylight expeditions—and he hated them.

Alien. So damned alien, this world we now call home. It gives us the materials we need to make our air, water, food and so on—not to mention what we sell to Earth. But who could love it?

Habitat, though, isn’t Mercury. Here, underground and isolated, we’ve built our Utopia, the best of Earth that we could bring with us. Habitat we can love. We do. The Earthophiles and claustrophobes are all long gone, and the Mercury-born don’t miss what they’ve never known.

Suddenly two arms grabbed him from behind and pulled him away from the Window. “Wait your–” he began, spinning around. Then he stopped. The puller was Mary Sunshine, his secretary. Her stocky Eskimo features were augmented by a flame-orange jumpsuit and a green beret pinned to her hairdo. She tilted her full-moon face up to look at his.

“Gotta chop it, bosman!” she said briskly. “A reactbird tailed at two twenty dex. Nakai wants a chichat, prontoest, and—’’

He had no time or desire to decipher teener slang, so he gently placed a hand over her mouth and said, “Speak Italian, please. What ship landed, and where is Jules waiting for me?” Then he removed his hand.

“A UN Patrol cruiser set down ten minutes ago!” She was trembling from the importance of her news. “The VIP ground pigs are being deloused at Arrivals right now! How they must be hating that!’’

As she spoke he pulled her through the crowd toward the loadramps.

“Anyhow, the mega-bosman… Mr. Nakai is in Conference A. He wants a prep talk with you before the main huddle forms. Arrivals has been given the word to hold the dung-dippers for ten more minutes.”

“Then we had better hurry.” They stopped in front of an in-Central loadramp. He placed his palm against the ident-panel and touched the priority button. Seconds later the door hissed open.

“Has Captain Madlock broken com-silence yet?” he asked as they entered the two-seat tubecar. They sat down, the door shut, he tapped out a destination code, and the tubecar descended.

“No sight, sound or signal. That free-floater is strictly non-sched.”

He winced at the truth of her words. Only Jules Nakai and he knew that the Mercury Consortium’s survival depended partly on Captain Madlock.

The knowledge gave him no pleasure.

“If and when he larks in,” she said, “I’ll data-feed you prontoest.’’

(INTER TERRA ET MARS)

Aeroflot’s Lenin was midway in its flight to the planet of the War God, bearing the most precious cargo in its long and illustrious history. Only four men and women were tending the control deck stations; the system engineer was below on an errand.

Captain Resnick pushed a stray blond hair back under her safety cap. She appreciated the honor, but it frightened her. If anything went wrong… And space travel was by no means routinely safe yet. She knew of the security checks for her and her crew, the defense screens and beam projectors mounted on her normally peaceful vessel for this one mission, and the squad of kaesti guards below, but she thought of them as mere UN paranoid overreaction. The real dangers were the traps that the universe laid for invading humans.

It never occurred to her that there might be traps of human origin, nurtured in the very bowels of her ship.

“Tartov,” she said to the astrogation officer, “set up for the hourly star-fix. Line up Polaris and–”

Suddenly a red light appeared on the life-support board. “Someone is tampering with the recirculation system!” Lieutenant Relenko reported.

“System shutdown–” Captain Resnick started to order, but the sentence died in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Something was constricting her lungs like a coiling anaconda. Her vision blurred.

Tartov and the other officers were likewise affected. “Gas!” Lieutenant Relenko gasped. Then he fell out of his chair.

Captain Resnick slapped the Mayday heat-switch on her laser-com board, but it glowed red. The signal wasn’t going out.

Before she could quite understand what was happening, or figure out what to do next, she spun into blackness.

And at the perimeter of the long-range scope a blip appeared, moving toward the center.

(HABITAT, MERCURY)

Anthony Vale exited from the tubecar so quickly that Mary Sunshine had to scamper to keep up. Conference Room A’s door opened at their approach. He sent her off about her own duties, then went in.

The room was larger than necessary, for psychological effect. Yellow fluorescent panels cast warm illumination on fake mahogany plastic. The round oak table had come from Earth; its six stations possessed every modern convenience. A padded chair faced each station.

Jules Nakai, Chairman of the Board of the Mercury Consortium, smiled up from one of the chairs. The frail-looking man was essentially an artist, a creator on an enormous scale. He had risen from bastardhood in post-WWII Japan to create first hydrogen plasma handling equipment, then a corporation (Tengana Electronics) to handle the handling equipment, then an alliance of corporations to exploit the Tengana-invented gravity differential space drive, and finally an entire society based on the sound business principles that he had lived by all of his life.

“The Weltpolitik poker game is about to begin.” Jules Nakai’s voice was calm. “Earth’s cards are too well known. How does our hand look?”

Anthony Vale sat down next to the Chairman. “Nothing worth betting on—except we haven’t any choice. The UN Patrol has two million Rangers and a fleet of thirty-six armed cruisers. They have A-bombs, H-bombs, IR lasers et al. We, on the other hand, have a three-hundred-person police force, eight unarmed frigate-class freighters and six unarmed passenger liners. If this degenerates into a military contest, we haven’t a chance.”

“So we can’t let that happen,” Jules Nakai said. “I’m no political scientist, as you well know. The only tool I can use to analyze this situation is game theory. But such analysis depends on rational gamesmanship by both sides. Will the power blocs follow our logic?”

Anthony Vale shook his head. “I just don’t know for sure. I’ll have to feel the envoys out carefully before beginning the negotiations.”

“A crisis of faith?” Jules Nakai asked softly.

Anthony Vale felt a great hatred rising up through him, focusing on his old friend. Then it broke like a wave on a beach, and he sighed. “I guess so. It’s all on my back, you know.”

“No, it isn’t,” Jules Nakai said firmly. “The Board and I have approved your plan, and the stockholder-citizens will have the final say. So buck up.” After a pause he added, “Did you take your environment therapy? I don’t want the walls closing in on you during the session.”

“Three hours of it last night.” Three hours in the image-room, with the visions of wide Earthly horizons, because the Earth-born never fully adjust to the enclosed environment. “Don’t worry, Jules—I’m in control. I’ll do the best I can, and pray.”

“Good. It’s your plan, so you’ll have to handle the negotiations.”

“You’ll be your usual humble self, I suppose?” Anthony Vale asked with a touch of sarcasm. He didn’t want any elbow-jostling at the wrong time.

Jules Nakai chuckled confidently. “But of course. Haven’t I always given you your head? Besides, since you’ve been so close with the details, what other choice do I have?”

(INTER TERRA ET MARS)

From the outside the small passenger liner looked old. On the inside it looked sloppy. But beneath the grime of the engineering deck lay new GD engines powerful enough to lift a fully loaded freighter from Jupiter’s surface.

The shabby vessel was nestled against the larger, newer Lenin like a tugboat moving a proud queen of the fleet.

Two young women and one young man labored on the control deck. Their captain strode from station to station, checking everything. He was an ancient man with shoulder-length white hair and a red face. His flight suit had been obsolete for thirty years.

Pausing behind the com officer he demanded, “Status report!”

“They didn’t get a call off, skipper!” Lieutenant Yinger’s voice quavered. Like everyone else on board, she was afraid of Captain Madlock. “The timer on their fusion pit is set for thirty minutes: plenty of time to get clear.”

Captain Madlock stomped over to the scan board. “Any company?’’

Lieutenant Law shook her head. “Not a sign, skipper!” Then she smiled tentatively. “It seems we’re home free.”

“Who asked for your bloody opinion?!” Captain Madlock roared. “You just keep your eyes on them damned scopes! I don’t want no dung-dipper scows slippin’ up on us!”

“Aye aye, skipper!” Lieutenant Law’s turn back to her scopes was nothing more than a blur.

Jim Madlock Jr., the Purser, entered. “Wipe the doom gloom off your phiz, pater. I told you outwitting the Terries would be no prob.”

Captain Madlock bore down on his son like an angry bull. “Lock a baffle on that thruster, boy, or I’ll feed you to the plasma chamber! We ain’t clear o’ this till we get Mercuryport’s Shield betwixt us and Earth! Now, dammit, gimme your status!”

“I’ve got the ‘payload’ stowed away.” Jim Madlock Jr. was subdued. “The crew, too. Except our, ah, business associate. We found him dead of kaesti wounds in the Jeffries Tube. But he must have done his job before dying.”

“Then get out o’ here and seal it up!”

The young Purser gulped, nodded and left at a dead run.

Captain Madlock turned to Astrogator Shatz. “Plot a minimum-time flight program home! Stand by to execute! Don’t just sit there slack-jawing me, you unlicked cub! I gave you an order! Move it!”

Captain Madlock’s anger masked worry and suspicion. It was all going too smoothly; in space, emergencies were the norm.

What he didn’t realize (and what Anthony Vale could have told him) was that the apparently easy and casual capture represented only the tip of a six-month iceberg of painstaking, dangerous effort. Smoothly was the only way it could have run; any missteps would have been fatal to the plan.

And, despite all of their preparation, a last-minute change in the kaesti patrol schedule had cost a man’s life.

(HABITAT, MERCURY)

A violet light over the door glowed briefly. Anthony Vale and Jules Nakai ended their discussion and put on concealing official faces.

The four delegates were ushered in with no ceremony. Anthony Vale wasn’t surprised to find that the “impartial United Nations envoys” were a Pan American, a Noreuropan, a Chinese and a Soviet. The power blocs were here to claim their prize.

Ti Ho Chi, a former Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of People’s China, was well known to Anthony Vale by reputation as a bare-knuckles type—and looked it. The Pan American introduced himself as Señor Guzman, and apparently his stomach didn’t approve of the low gravity. His over-manicured elegance gave him a foppish aura, but Anthony Vale wasn’t fooled—no fops would be representing the power blocs on this mission. Comrade Ivanov was short, dumpy and visibly suspicious of everything around him—including his fellow delegates. Herr Einerson, the head of Noreuropan Military Intelligence, was by all accounts brilliant—and brilliantly ruthless. His emotions, if any, lay hidden behind impassive Nordic features.

The amenities proceeded shallowly to a swift conclusion. Both sides were eager to get on with the matter at issue.

“Here.” Herr Einerson tossed a document in front of Anthony Vale. “Brief and to the point. The United Nations has finally resolved the question of jurisdiction in re Mercury. All national authorizations for extraterrestrial development have been superseded by a new United Nations Act. Your previous arrangement with the government of Japan is, therefore, null and void. Only the Security Council may now grant charters to exploit extraterrestrial resources. To be frank, yours is an illegal operation under the new Act. You shouldn’t be here.”

Anthony Vale smiled sweetly. “But we are here, Herr Einerson. How do you propose to remedy this irregularity?”

“The United Nations has designated Mercury a UN Protectorate Territory. A Government House and Patrol base will be built up here to administer UN policy and extend Earth’s security sphere. You’ll have to register with the proper Protectorate agency. Since you’ve already sampled Mercury’s riches liberally, there will be prorated back taxes–”

“Taxes?” Anthony Vale had been scanning the UN document while he listened, but his head snapped up at that last word.

Comrade Ivanov took over. “By all means. You must pay for the privilege of mining UN-controlled territory, as well as for the benefits derived from UN jurisdiction. Income and land-use taxes, plus other fees described in the Act.” His Esperanto was almost illegibly accented.

Anthony Vale could see their plan, a more subtle plan than he had expected. Outright expropriation might be questioned Earthside as too baldly illegal. This is much better. Let us work our hearts out, then milk us through taxes of everything but our bare survival needs. And with a Patrol base next door, who would dare dispute the taxation? Mercury would be an open prison camp laboring for the power blocs.

“I seem to recall that an American named Patrick Henry once spoke against absentee taxation,” Jules Nakai observed, looking at Señor Guzman. “Will the Mercury Consortium receive a General Assembly seat?”

The Pan American envoy showed white shark’s teeth. “Surely you jest. Yours is a commercial organization, not a nation.”

Anthony Vale was concentrating on his station’s data display screen. What will it be, stockholder-citizens? On to Rome, or back to Gaul?

The conference was being broadcast to every stockholder-citizen on Mercury. The question previously put to them was: do we accept the UN program or fight? Each person phoned his or her vote in to the computers at Com central, where it was voiceprint-verified and tabulated. When and if the two-thirds majority required by the Consortium charter developed, the vox populi would appear on Anthony Vale’s screen.

Jules Nakai engaged the envoys in a delaying action, a question-and-answer session concerning the details of the Act. Finally, after nearly fifty minutes of stalling rhetoric, the screen flashed a single word that only Anthony Vale could see—fight.

“We reject your taxes, your Patrol base, your UN Act—and you.” Anthony Vale was scared, so he spoke boldly. “The stockholder-citizens of Mercury won’t be dictated to by Earth. We are, no matter what you may think, a sovereign state. We won’t submit to slave status.”

Ti Ho Chi exploded. “Reject us! Are you fool enough to think we care about your opinion?! With six shiploads of Rangers we can–”

Señor Guzman interrupted smoothly. “Let’s not compound our troubles with hasty words. Surely an understanding can be reached without any, ah… pounding of chests.” He showed Ti Ho Chi a pained expression.

“I say a demonstration of sincerity is in order!” the Chinese envoy roared. “Our cruiser mounts weapons! Re-education can begin at once!”

“You won’t attack us.” Anthony Vale put much more assurance into his words than he felt. “There’s no profit in radioactive ruins. If you invade us, you’ll meet total resistance and ‘scorched earth.’ We’ll blow up every mine and refinery. So why kill the goose that lays such valuable eggs? I have a better idea; grant us sovereignty and let us join the UN.”

Señor Guzman chuckled daintily. “Such matters aren’t in our purview—we leave them to Patrol strategists. But I’m sure a suitable method of nondestructive persuasion can be found. There are many possibilities. Your ecology is artificial—and rather fragile. Perhaps a siege…”

“Try it,” Jules Nakai broke in. “You’ll be surprised. We’re almost self-sufficient, and we can make it the rest of the way if we have to.”

“Biological warfare then,” Herr Einerson proposed. “Or the Swiss assassination technique. Or something else; there are–”

“Hey, bosman!” The bell-like tonalities of Mary Sunshine emerged from the com at Anthony Vale’s station. “Your man just tailed in. He said to tell you the cargo is one hundred percent, and you should give the Terry dung-dippers–” Anthony Vale nearly strained a wrist as he slapped the com cutoff button.

He didn’t wait for the envoys’ outrage to fade. He had a lever, and he wanted to use it. Properly placed, it might pry Herr Einerson and his greedy associates away from Mercury for a long time.

“You gentlemen are guests on Mercury Consortium territory,” he began, “yet you threaten us with invasion and conquest. Well, we don’t care to hear any more of your arrogance. Listen to our terms, then go.”

“Why, of all the—’ Ti Ho Chi bellowed, but Anthony Vale cut him off.

“I implied earlier that you should leave Mercury alone because the alternative would be more expensive. Gentlemen, costs have just gone up.”

Señor Guzman smiled. “Or so you would have us believe.”

Anthony Vale smiled back. “We’re businesspersons here—as you’ve seen, we think primarily in economic terms. I discovered the solution to our problem of defense, however, in Caesar’s Commentaries.”

“And what would that be?” Comrade Ivanov demanded sarcastically. “Legions in rusted armor? Slave galleys?” He laughed, ending with an unmuffled belch.

“One tactic Caesar used to keep defeated tribes pacified was to take and hold hostages, usually children from the chieftain’s family. They were raised in Rome by the Republic not as prisoners but as citizens. This shows the Roman genius for empire, since the good treatment kept tribal animosities to a minimum.

“I can see from your faces that you preread my point. Yes, we’ve taken hostages—one hundred children from the ruling families in your four countries. It was costly, but not very difficult. An Earthside political terrorist organization, highly skilled at such work, was most willing to help us for a price, and our own Captain Madlock brought them here.”

“One hundred chil—the UNESCO System Tour!” Comrade Ivanov barked. “What kind of cruel, stupid joke is this?! The children were on their way to Mars as the first leg of an educational tour, but the Lenin accidentally blew up last night! They’re all dead! Dead!”

“That’s how we arranged for it to look,” Anthony Vale said, smiling. “Actually no one has died—yet.”

“Impossible!” Ti Ho Chi bellowed. “You can’t have kidnapped them! You’re talking about the most thoroughly protected children on Earth!”

Anthony Vale shook his head. “Anyone, no matter how well guarded, can be kidnapped if there is enough ability, financing and determination behind the effort. The terrorists have had decades to develop their skills, so we hired the best. They supplied the ability, we supplied the financing, and our money supplied the determination.”

Señor Guzman said softly, “I think, before this goes any further, we had better see the young ones—if you really have them.”

That matched Anthony Vale’s own intentions, so the four envoys were escorted to the Arrivals area. One hundred boys and girls between the ages of ten and fifteen were being processed in the large receiving room. Each of the UN envoys spoke briefly with several of them, and Jules Nakai supplied fingerprints and other identity proofs. Then, at the Board Chairman’s suggestion, they returned to Conference Room A.

Anthony Vale was very glad to leave the sobbing, terrified children behind. His burden of guilt was heavy enough as it was.

“You’ll turn them over to us immediately,” Ti Ho Chi growled when everyone was again seated, “or the entire might of the United Nations will be mobilized to destroy you!”

“I think not,” Anthony Vale replied calmly. “Any military action would endanger the lives of the hostages. We might not be cruel enough to execute them, but it would be a simple thing to put them in the forefront of any fighting.”

“We don’t negotiate with kidnappers!” Comrade Ivanov barked. “Nor do we pay ransom! You can’t accomplish anything by this outrage!”

Anthony Vale nodded. “I know the official policy. It’s fine when the kidnap victim is someone else’s loved one. But the leaders of your countries are also fathers and mothers. We’re betting everything that they won’t risk their children’s lives for the money they could squeeze out of us—or for vengeance either.”

Ti Ho Chi and Comrade Ivanov tried to launch fierce replies, but Señor Guzman stopped them with a gesture. He said to Herr Einerson, “You’re an expert on such matters, Gunnar. What is your opinion?”

Herr Einerson frowned for a long time, then answered, “My Premier is the hardest, coldest, most pragmatic man I’ve ever known. But he loves his daughter Inga, whom I was just talking to, more dearly than his own life. I don’t think he’ll risk her to gain Mercury.” He shook his head.

Señor Guzman turned back to Anthony Vale. “Let’s grant for the moment that what you say is true. What ransom do you wish?”

“No ransom, just what is rightfully ours: sovereignty, full territorial integrity and a seat in the United Nations.”

“Have the seat!” bellowed Ti Ho Chi. “Have it and rot in it! All we ask is that you release the children! You’re civilized men; how could you plan and carry out such a cruel act? Using children as pawns!”

Anthony Vale was suffering acutely from that very guilt, but he couldn’t let on. “You’ve left us no choice. We have to defend ourselves any way we can. As for the hostages—they’ll never leave Mercury. They’re our protection, our only line of defense.”

“You wouldn’t need any defense,” Herr Einerson pointed out sharply, “if you hadn’t demanded such high prices for your resources. You’ve plunged Earth into an economic crisis. Inflation, recession, a balance of payments disaster; you know that our technology, our very society, would collapse without your resources, and charge accordingly. We had no choice but to take direct action.”

“You had every choice!” Anthony Vale was angry. “You could have negotiated! Of course our prices are high; building a new world is expensive! But we could have worked something out! Instead you took the thief’s way!”

Ti Ho Chi made a convulsive lunge at Anthony Vale, but Herr Einerson grabbed him and held him back. Concealed slits in the wall opened to reveal alert police gunners with laser rifles. The emitter bells tracked the Chinese envoy, who subsided.

“An incident would be very embarrassing at this time,” Jules Nakai said softly.

“You may have outwitted yourselves,” Herr Einerson observed. “Our leaders might stop all actions against you to save their children—if they can. But these brazen kidnappings can’t go unanswered. If they do, the power of our leaders will be undermined by their apparent impotence. Others, unaffected by your blackmail, will take their place. Then you’ll be in an even worse position.”

Anthony Vale smiled. “Who knows of any kidnappings? The children and the crew of the Lenin, yes, but they’re going to stay here. We won’t let any news leak Earthside. That leaves you gentlemen, and your leaders when you tell them. They’ll cover up to protect their children—and their political positions. You’ll cover up because they’ll order you to.”

“Perhaps we cannot attack you,” Señor Guzman said, “but there are indirect pressures we can bring to bear.”

“Anything that hurts us hurts the hostages,” Anthony Vale replied flatly.

“Doesn’t it bother you that what you’re doing is immoral?” Herr Einerson asked. “You’re going to torture a hundred families by keeping their children from them. And what of the children themselves? They’re innocents; how can you justify what you’re doing to them?”

“We aren’t evil people,” Jules Nakai put in. “We’ll raise the children in foster homes where they’ll be loved. All of the hostages will be given full stockholder-citizen rights and comforts, minus only the right to leave Mercury. Two more things—as soon as we get our UN membership we’ll arrange it so the families can come up here to visit their children, and we’ll also negotiate lower resource prices. Unlike you, we’re not greedy. An economic collapse Earthside would ruin us too.”

“That’s all well and good,” Herr Einerson countered, “but visitation privileges and lower resource prices won’t redress kidnappings.”

“We only did what we had to do to save our homeland!” Jules Nakai inserted hotly. “And no more than necessary! Certainly there’s immorality in kidnapping young children—immorality that we’ve done everything we possibly can to recompense both the families and the children for—but what about the immorality of enslaving a nation of nine hundred thousand?!”

“We’re enslaving no one,” Señor Guzman said suavely.

“Spare me your sophistries!” Jules Nakai flamed up again. “Your ‘Act’ amounts to slavery whatever you call it! We have a good life here; a much higher standard of living than any Earthside nation, fewer social ills, no population pressure! Our corporate state works! We have a right to defend our nation from invasion! Would you rather have the bloody immorality of war?! It’s cruel, but sometimes a lesser immoral act is necessary to prevent a greater one!”

“Perhaps so,” Herr Einerson said softly. “But, if so, I have a suggestion which may partially remedy and set right the wrongs done to the children and their families—families made up of not only the leaders you seek to blackmail, but also bereaved mothers, sisters and brothers.”

“What?” Jules Nakai asked suspiciously.

“Let the families come here to live with their children.”

“What?” Jules Nakai couldn’t believe his ears, but Anthony Vale’s mind raced ahead, analyzing the startling proposal from every angle. Dear Mother Mary, why didn’t I think of that! A great part—but not all—of his guilt left him.

“You must be joking!” Jules Nakai protested. “Why… the leaders wouldn’t quit their positions and–”

“Not the leaders; just their families. You see, most families of major politicians are used to living separately from said politicians for long spells; it’s a common practice to keep loved ones out of the capital cities and their much greater dangers, especially that of assassination. Why, my own family lives in the country hundreds of miles from my department in Heidelberg. And these families are also used to moving from place to place; they would adjust to your excellent life-style here quite well.”

“And the children would be with their parents!” Anthony Vale said eagerly. “Yes, I like it.”

“But… why would they come?” Jules Nakai was still floundering.

“To be with their children, of course,” Herr Einerson replied. “We’ll need a cover story to keep the kidnappings secret; a goodwill gesture to welcome the Mercury Consortium into the community of nations or something like that. A minor detail.”

“We would treat them as befits their importance, of course,” Jules Nakai said bemusedly. “Their presence would make us even more secure. But why do you want to enhance our number of hostages, Herr Einerson?”

The Noreuropan shook his head. “I’m only acting in the interest of my superiors—and their families—all of whom will want to be with their kidnapped children. Since the Terra-Mercury flight requires only slightly more than a day, all of the leaders will be able to see their families often.”

Jules Nakai was silent for long moments, then said, “Very well. The families will be welcome and well treated—after we receive our guarantees and UN seat.”

There was another lengthy silence. The envoys looked at each other. Herr Einerson turned to Anthony Vale. “Several months ago I had occasion to say that warfare by assassination is the ultimate form of human conflict, invulnerable and all-conquering. I stand corrected.”

Señor Guzman rose, signaling the other envoys to do likewise, which they did. He showed Anthony Vale a thin smile. “We shall carry your words to our superiors. Naturally the final decision is theirs. However,” his face went impassive, “I fear that your voice is destined to become painfully familiar in our General Assembly meeting. Adios.”

The Earthside delegation departed with a police squad “escorting” them to their cruiser.

Anthony Vale almost collapsed in his chair from the terrific release of tension. We did it! We won—for now.

Jules Nakai was staring questioningly at him.

“Cheer up,” Anthony Vale said weakly. “We just heard the verdicts of two career power-brokers.”

“I know. I just have trouble accepting it. After all this time the battle is over.’’

Anthony Vale raised his head and stared at his friend. “The hell it is! We’ve just begun to fight! The Terries are going to try every sneaky trick short of open violence to get the children back. We’ll have to be on our guard every second. But at least it’s a kind of fight we can win, unlike open war.”

“I see.” Jules Nakai smiled.

“You do, do you! Do you also see that this victory is temporary? In ten years our ransom victims will probably be losing control of their countries, and the new leaders will surely be just as greedy. The hostages won’t be adorable children anymore, either. Then what? They certainly won’t let us get away with this again.”

Jules Nakai kept on smiling. “Then we’ll do something else. Maybe we’ll build a military defense structure—we can afford it. Or maybe we’ll forge protective alliances with other nations. Or maybe some other tactic. We’re buying time, and that’s what we desperately need. And, of course, when we’ve made those other arrangements we can let all of the hostages go home.” He paused, then backtracked. “At least I pray we’re buying time.”

Anthony Vale made the sign of the cross over his chest. “We could certainly use His help, but I doubt that He smiles on kidnappers… Even with all of our steps to redress the kidnappings I can’t help feeling guilty over what we’ve done to those poor innocent children.” The guilt-pain wilt stay with me for life, punishing me.

“Then,” Jules Nakai countered, “let me remind you of your Roman history for a change. The hostages from Gaul grew up contented and loyal to Rome. They became, in all ways, Roman civitates. If Caesar can do it, so can we. After all, we have quite a world to offer them.”

“We shall see,” Anthony Vale said tiredly. “The ultimate answer to all questions… we shall see.”

UPI TICKER (NEW YORK)

…SECRETARY GENERAL DEALCUAZ ANNOUNCED TODAY THE RESULTS OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL VOTE ON THE ADMISSION OF THE MERCURY CONSORTIUM TO THE UNITED NATIONS. THE VOTE, 11–2 IN FAVOR, WITH NONE OF THE FOUR VETOES EXERCISED, COMES ON THE HEELS OF LAST TUESDAY’S AFFIRMATIVE GENERAL ASSEMBLY VOTE.

…AMBASSADOR VALE WILL BE INSTALLED IN A BRIEF CEREMONY TOMORROW AT II A.M. EST. THE ADMISSION OF THE MERCURY CONSORTIUM COMES AS AN ABRUPT REVERSAL…

…IN A RELATED ACTION AIMED AT CEMENTING RELATIONS BETWEEN EARTH AND MERCURY, THE FAMILIES OF ONE HUNDRED PROMINENT GOVERNMENTAL OFFICIALS WILL BE TAKING UP RESIDENCE IN THE SUPER-CITY OF HABITAT FOR AN INDEFINITE TIME…

Editor’s Introduction to:

See Now, a Pilgrim

Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon Dickson is deservedly well known for his Dorsai novels. (His name for the series is The Childe Cycle.) “See Now, A Pilgrim” is part of his other series: stories of the invasion of Earth by the Aalaag.

The Aalaag are a warrior race. Frighteningly competent, they reduced Earth’s defenses to powder within days of their arrival, and soon installed themselves as the new rulers of humanity—whom they think of as cattle.

Their weapons are as superior to the best on Earth as the Red Army’s weapons are superior to the Enfields of the mujahadeen. Moreover, long accustomed to military power, the Aalaag are also experienced in government. They rule an empire of many stars and races; and their history teaches them that eventually the conquered cattle learn to love their conquerors.

So it has always been; but the Aalaag do not know humanity as well as they think. Courage and determination can do much if coupled with deception and stealth. Knowledge is power, and what the Aalaag don’t know may very well harm them.

See Now, a Pilgrim

Gordon R. Dickson

There were fourteen of them, gathered in the small room of an empty warehouse about a table made of two smaller tables pushed together.

They were the London area Resistance leaders, according to what the man whom Shane knew only as Peter had claimed; and Peter, himself, was obviously in command. As he had been the obvious commanding figure—even though he was not the local leader—of the group in Milan, Italy, that had kidnapped Shane after he had rescued the young woman named Maria from the Aalaag. Maria Casana—whom he somehow hoped to save from all this.

The light in the room came from kerosene lamps, spaced on the long metal worktable, whose mantles hissed and glowed whitely inside their glass chimneys. The illumination they gave seemed hardly less than the same number of hundred-watt electric bulbs would have given, and Shane drew the edges of the cowl to his cloak closely together before his face.

He had not taken the chair that had been placed for him and he remained the only one standing in the room. At the moment he was hollow inside with the empty sense of isolation that had been with him all his life; and he did not trust himself to talk to these people, seated.

This sort of confrontation was not what he was good at. His way had always been to avoid crowds and gatherings. He was a loner; and while he could be effective in conversation or even argument one on one, he had never had the experience or desire to address a number of people at once. It was ironic, given his instinct always to avoid groups and organizations. Events had seemed to contrive to draw him away from that instinct ever since the moment two years before in which he had gone slightly insane for the first time in his life, and as a result drawn the stick figure of the pilgrim on the wall below the man the Aalaag had executed in Aalborg, Denmark. His aim in life had always been to live as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, and make the most of his good fortune at being one of the favored group of human translator-couriers employed by the First Captain, leader of the aliens on the now-captive Earth.

Now, instead, he found himself getting deeper and deeper into this Resistance and everything it implied, including having to deal with those seated before him at this moment. He had no experience at addressing a number of people at once, let alone trying to convince and command them with something he, himself, knew to be a lie. But any other way meant death, eventually, a slow and painful death at the hands of the Aalaag.

His only hope, he thought, looking at their faces, was to make a virtue of that same loneliness and isolation in himself. He could never be one of them, so let him not try. In fact, let him make a virtue of being different; of being, if necessary, someone they would not like—if giving that would also give him the difference, the distance and authority he would need to control not only these, but the others he would have to deal with later—-others who would be stronger, brighter, and more experienced than the fourteen before him now, with the possible exception of Peter.

“We’re perfectly safe here,” Peter said, speaking from his own chair at the far end of the makeshift conference table, down its long length to Shane who stood opposite, at the other end. “You can take off that hood now, and let the rest of them here have a look at you. And sit down.”

“No,” said Shane.

The negative had been instinctive—-almost reflexive in its protectiveness. But the moment it left his lips he found himself explaining with hardly a pause.

“If I could find some way of doing it,” he said, as he remained standing, “I’d erase what I look like from your memory, and the memory of anyone who was with you when you saw me. For what’s going to need to be done, my face is going to have to stay unknown. Either that, or I’m not going to have any part of what all of you are doing. I know the Aalaag better than any of you ever will. You’ve got everything to gain by dealing with me. But you’ll deal with me with my face hidden or not at all.”

“What indeed is it we’re going to do together, then?” said Peter. “We’re waiting to hear that.”

Seated at the far end of the table, Peter looked an unlikely person to hold authority over these others around him, some of whom had reached into the second half of life’s century and many of whom looked more like leaders than he did. He was boyishly round-faced and round-skulled, with thin, straight brown hair on top of the skull. His appearance was that of a man in no more than his early twenties, but Shane judged him to be thirty at least.

“I’m going to show you how to get rid of the Aalaag, of course,” Shane said. “The same thing you and others like you have been trying to do ever since the aliens landed, but without succeeding in anything much more than sitting around and talking about it, or marking on walls–”

There was a murmur that was half a growl from those around the table. Their faces were not friendly.

“Like it or not, it’s a fact,” Shane said. “I tell you, I know the Aalaag, in a way none of you ever could. With my help you’ve got some hope at least. Without me, you’ve got no more than you ever had—and that’s nothing at all. Your attitude here isn’t very hopeful. I did a lot of thinking before I decided to get back in touch with you people.”

He paused. None of them said anything.

“I want you to be completely clear about this,” he said. “I can help you—but I’m putting my own life on the line to do it. I know, the rest of you are all doing that, too. But you’ve made your choice. Mine means taking chances none of you have to take and whether I do that depends on you. It depends, in fact, on whether we can agree to work together, exclusively and exactly on my terms.”

He paused again.

“You could be a spy for the aliens,” said a man in his forties with a heavy jaw, halfway down the table to Shane’s left. Shane laughed; and he did not have to exaggerate the bitterness of that laughter. It came up like an acid bubble from his stomach into his throat.

“Now, there’s a perfect example of why you’ve never won anything against the Aalaag by yourselves, and never will,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of thinking that leaves you helpless where they’re concerned. You think of yourself as equal to the Aalaag, with the only difference between you and them the fact that they’ve got a massive edge in technology over anything we humans ever came up with. You think of them basically as equals under their armor and without their weapons–”

“Well, aren’t they?” demanded the man with the heavy jaw. “Those things, and a little more height and some extra muscle. That’s all the difference, and they act like they’re gods and we’re dirt!”

“Maybe they’re right; maybe the gap is there. Maybe they are gods and we’re dirt. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Who knows?” Shane laughed again. “The point isn’t whether you actually are their equals or not, but that you make the mistake of thinking you’re their equals. As a result, you instinctively assume they also think of you as equals; which is so far from their thinking that they’d have trouble believing you could imagine something like that. To you, it might make sense to send a spy among troublemakers of a subjugated race. To them… would you send a laboratory mouse to spy upon other mice in your walls that you wanted to get rid of? Can an animal be a spy? And if it could, what could it report back to you, other than that its own kind in the walls were there—and you know that already. Sooner or later, with poison and traps, you’ll get rid of them anyway; so why this nonsense of sending a beast just like them to ‘spy’ on them?”

Shane stopped speaking. The others around the table stared back at him and said nothing for a long moment. Then Peter spoke.

“My apologies, fellow fighters,” he said. “I brought you here to meet this man who calls himself Pilgrim because I thought he could be useful to our Resistance effort. I still think so. Very useful. But I had no idea he’d start out by insulting us. In fact, I don’t see the reason and the sense behind his doing it, even now. Why, Pilgrim?”

“Because there’s no use our talking unless I can get through to you on a level where your minds have been closed from the start,” Shane answered. “I repeat, I can show you how to get rid of the Aalaag. But to do what can be done, you’ve first got to face some facts and get rid of some illusions; and the first of those is the one that someday you’re going to be able to fight them and beat them. Get it clearly into your heads that if there were only one Aalaag on Earth, short of surrounding him or her with a wall of living human flesh, renewed as fast as he killed those who made it up, you couldn’t even contain him, let alone conquer him.”

“Even if there were only one, it’d be worth doing,” shouted a small man with a face like a dried apple, farther down the table than the heavy-jawed man.

“That’s right,” said a thick-bodied, thick-faced woman. “He’d have to run out of power for his weapons sooner or later.”

“Do you know he’d run out—or do you just assume that?” retorted Shane. “That’s a human assumption; I’ve lived with the Aalaag for over two years and I’ll tell you I wouldn’t take it for granted that he’d run out of anything. No, in fact, what I’d assume would be that his power would last beyond the point where the last person on Earth was dead. You see, you’re doing it again; thinking of them in the terms you understand, assuming human limitations to them and what they own. And that’s the most basic error of all.”

“What are you trying to tell us, then?” said the heavy-jawed man. “That we can’t win?”

“Not in any face-to-face, stand-up fight with them, no. Never,” said Shane. “Get it through your heads, clearly, once and for all. You can never destroy the Aalaag. But, what you might be able to do is trick them into leaving this planet and going someplace else.”

“Go someplace else? Go where?” The female voice came from close to Shane on his right, and by the time he had pulled his gaze back from the heavy-jawed man, there was no way he could tell which of the three women seated close to him on that side of the table had spoken.

“Who knows? Who cares?” Shane said. “Somewhere where they’d find another race to subjugate, one that’d look more profitable to own than we are.”

The heavy-jawed man snorted and leaned back in his chair, tilting it on its two back legs.

“Just ask them to go away, I suppose?” he said.

“No,” said Shane. “A lot more than that. There’d be a lot more to do to get that done, by work a lot more difficult and a lot more painful than that. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First I’ve got to be sure you’re ready to listen to me and believe me when I tell you about them as they really are—and that means there isn’t one of you who’s not going to have to give up at least one pet notion you’ve believed in since they came, and replace it with a truth that’ll be a lot less comfortable for you to accept. But if you don’t want to listen to me, I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“In other words,” said Peter unexpectedly, “he’s asking you to listen.”

“Listen—and believe,” said Shane. “Unless you can believe what I tell you—really believe it, so that you’ll act on it as fact in the future—you’re headed for disaster, taking probably a lot of other people along with you. I don’t want to be one of them.”

“Pilgrim,” said Peter, “I’m sure we’re all convinced of your instinct for self-preservation by now, if nothing else. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell us whatever it is you have to tell us about the Aalaag?”

Shane looked around the table.

“I’m not yet convinced that all of those here are ready to believe.’’

“You don’t want much,” said Peter. “You come among us with no credentials, you won’t show your face, you make claims of having a long and close acquaintance with the aliens—but there’s no way we can check that. And you want us simply to take your word for anything you tell us about them, even if it goes against our own experience and knowledge. Can you blame us for reserving belief in you and what you’re going to say?”

“No. But I have to have that belief, all the same,” Shane said. “Let me see if I can convince you, then.”

He paused and looked around the table, deliberately into the faces of all of them there.

“As I said, I’ve spent more than two years past among the aliens. Some of you must have been fighting them, or thinking and planning about fighting them at least that long. Tell me, in all that time, have any of you come up with any kind of plan for any way of doing it?”

There was silence as he looked around the table again.

“I take it, you all recognize you haven’t,” he said. “Tell me this, then. You’ve been ready to give your lives to fight them, if some kind of workable plan could be made. Are you still ready to do that?”

Again there was silence, but the expressions on the faces were answer enough.

“All right,” Shane said. “Now I come along. All I have to offer is something that might not work. But it also might work—which is more than you or anyone you know has been able to come up with in two and a half years or more. And I tell you that to get a chance to use it you have to take me as I am—without questions about myself—and believe what I tell you about the Aalaag. Isn’t it worth your accepting that for the chance—even just the chance—of doing what you’ve been trying to do so long without success?”

Silence, then the voice of the heavy-jawed man.

“You’ve got to give us some reason to believe you,” he said. “Tell us some sort of reason to go along with you.”

“All right,” said Shane. “I’ll say this much. You haven’t been able to fight the Aalaag on your own. But if you listen to me I think I can show you how to make them fight themselves, by taking advantage of what they really are, and what they really think.”

No one said anything.

“Well?” asked Shane after a moment. “Does that give you reason enough to try to believe what I’ll tell you?”

Peter said nothing at the far end of the table. He only sat, a little sideways in his chair as if his legs were crossed to one side, just clear of the overhang. He seemed, not so much to be smiling, as to be about to smile.

“All right,” said the heavy-jawed man at last. “I’ll listen—with an open mind. If I can believe you, I’ll go with you.”

Slowly, one by one, the mutter of assent sounded about the table.

“Anyone still not ready to listen and give me credit for knowing what I’m talking about?” asked Shane.

No one moved or spoke.

“All right,” said Shane. “Then I’ll go back to what I said in the beginning. From the start you’ve thought of the Aalaag as equals and assumed they thought of you as equals. They don’t. They call you beasts, and they not only don’t think of you as anything but beasts, they’d find thinking of you as anything else inconceivable. Now, contrary to what you believe, the things that make them think that way aren’t their superiority in weapons and armor at all—they take those things for granted, as the sort of advantage superior beings like themselves would naturally have.”

He paused and smiled at them.

“Don’t any of you have any idea why they think so little of you? So little, in fact, that they’ve never really made a serious effort to get rid of those like you, here, who meet to plan how you’d fight against them?”

“Now wait a minute,” said the thick-bodied woman, “you can’t tell us they aren’t out to get rid of us!”

“Oh, certainly they are, when they stumble across you marking on a wall, or breaking one of their laws. But they know—which you don’t—there’s no way you can do them any real harm. So most of your secrecy and your organizational mumbo-jumbo is unnecessary. The Aalaag destroy you when they find you, not because they consider you in any way dangerous, but because they consider anyone who doesn’t obey the law as insane; and insane animals should be destroyed before they contaminate others of their kind. That’s all.”

He paused to let his words sink in. No one spoke up, but he thought he could see several of them seemingly teetering on the edge of accepting them.

“Let’s get back to why the Aalaag simply take it for granted you’re an inferior race of beasts. All the evidence, from their point of view, points to that. Before they came, crime was common in all parts of our race. To an Aalaag, any crime—even the telling of the smallest lie—is unthinkable. Do you know why?”

“We don’t know they don’t lie,” said Peter.

“I do; and you better take my word for it I’m right. To lie, to disobey an order, to do anything that’s been established as forbidden, is unthinkable to them, because it would be contrary to the survival of their race. And it’s that survival, not the survival of any individual one of them, that’s the first concern of each one of them. Where we have an instinct of self-preservation, they’ve got a reflex of race preservation.”

“You call ours an instinct, theirs a reflex?” said Peter, calmly, from the distant table end.

“That’s right. Because theirs is one they’ve developed over the last few thousands of years in order to survive. I believe there was a time when they didn’t have it. But that was before they were driven from their own home worlds by some race with either numbers or powers superior even to them. I haven’t been able to learn the whole story. But from what I can gather, they fought back hard at that time, with pretty much the weapons they have now—but they lost, because at that time they were a people as varied in occupation as we were. Only a handful were trained fighters, though they all had to fight before they were finally forced to turn and run for it. They’ve been something like interstellar gypsies ever since; and in that process they’ve given up every profession but one. Now, every individual among them is a fighter, and as a race they live under the fear of being followed and attacked again by whoever drove them from their home worlds in the first place.”

“Given this is all true,” said Peter, “how does knowing it help us? It seems to me you’ve just made a case for the aliens’ being less vulnerable, rather than more.”

“No,” said Shane, “because in making themselves over into a race in which everyone was a warrior, they were left without people to fill the support jobs and positions. They solved that problem by finding and taking over worlds, each of which had a race that had developed some technology but was not by Aalaag terms ‘civilized.’ Our world, for example. These subject races filled the support vacuum. They could be made to supply the needs not only of themselves, but of a certain number of Aalaag overlords. That way the problem was solved.”

“As Peter says,” spoke up the female voice Shane had failed to identify before—he turned his head quickly enough this time to see her now, still speaking. She was a tall, dark-haired young woman only three chairs from him on his right. “How does that make them vulnerable?”

“Why,” said Shane, “because to control a subjugated race like ours and make it produce for them means that a large proportion of the Aalaag here have to spend all or most of their time making sure the individuals of that race do what needs to be done, from the Aalaag point of view. If you like, call it an economics of power. So much in the way of supplies for the Aalaag requires so much time and effort spent in maintaining control over us.”

“But what can we do about it?” asked the heavy-jawed man.

“Make it too expensive to maintain that control,” said Shane.

“How?”

Shane drew a deep breath.

“That,” he said, “is what I’ll tell you only after I’m sure you understand the Aalaag and me; and after a worldwide structure of Resistance members has been set up, so that we can act all together and at the same time—as we’ll have to when the time comes. What I’ve just told you is all I’ll tell you for now.”

“You can’t leave us like that,” said the thick-bodied woman. “You’ve still given us no proof of any kind, no real reason to believe you.”

Shane hesitated.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you this much that you don’t know. Right now, in this city a pilot program is being set up by the Aalaag which involves the establishment of a human governor for Britain, Ireland, and the islands around them: a governor who with his staff will be responsible to the Aalaag for all production from this area, and who’ll have the powers of the Aalaag behind him to enforce any rules or laws he cares to make. I’ll be heading directly to that governor’s new headquarters now, when I leave you.”

There was a long second of silence as those around the table stared at each other.

“It’ll never get off the ground,” said the heavy-jawed man. “We’ll make sure nothing about that governor arrangement works.”

“No, you won’t,” Shane said. “Just the opposite. You’ll cooperate in every way, if you’re going to be part of what I have in mind—what I’ll be telling you about in detail eventually. For now, if you’ll just get used to believing the fact that you can never win by going against the Aalaag in any head-on fashion, we’ll have taken the first step together. I’ll leave you to think that over for now. The only way is to make the Aalaag defeat themselves.”

Shane stopped talking and took a step back from the table.

“Peter,” he said, looking directly down at the other man, “you and I need to talk, privately.”

Peter was already on his feet and coming toward him, up around the table, behind the backs of those there who were also on their feet but had fallen into a buzz of conversations with their near neighbors.

“Have you got a vehicle of some kind?” Shane asked quietly as the other came up to him.

“My car’s outside. Yes,” said Peter. He grinned. “And I’ve not only got a permit to have it on the streets, but an adequate gas supply.”

“Then you can drive me where I need to go and we can talk on the way,” said Shane.

Once in the car and proceeding down streets that were already beginning to shine oily under a fresh, light rain, Peter was the first to bring up the subject.

“What was that all about, then?” he asked.

“It was what you might have expected, when you introduce me to a room full of people who work for you and tell me they’re the heads of independent cells in the Resistance.”

“And you didn’t think they were?” Peter’s tone was just shy of a mocking note.

“I know they weren’t. First, they all gave in to you and waited for you to lead things; secondly, you couldn’t get together a group of your equals that quickly—to listen to someone they knew nothing about and you hardly knew more.”

“I might,” murmured Peter, “be somewhat more important than you think in certain circles.”

“Now,” Shane went on, “I’m going to need a liaison to the Resistance Supreme Council, or whatever it’ll end up being called. I want you for that.”

“Thank you.” The words were quiet and ironic.

“Don’t bother. You just happened to be the first Resistance leader I met; and you’ve already seen what I look like. But I eventually want you to run that particular Supreme Council, or whatever, so that between the two of us, you and I, we can make decisions and act on them without putting everything to a vote and getting bogged down in parliamentary procedures.’’

“I see,” said Peter, this time with no humor or any other overtone to his voice at all. Almost absentmindedly, he wheeled the car smoothly around a corner.

Silently watching the other man out of the corner of his eye, Shane felt a deep sense of relief to find out he had not been wrong.

“The first thing I’ll need you to do,” said Shane, “will be to get together a meeting of all those who could be called national leaders of the Resistance–”

Something very close to a sputter from Peter interrupted him.

“Are you insane?” Peter exploded. “Do you think you’ve stumbled on to a worldwide organization already set up on strict military lines? Resistance is a game anyone can play–”

“I know I haven’t,” Shane interrupted him in turn. “But something pretty close to that is what I’m going to need before I’m done. You’re going to help me get it. Now, if there’s no such thing as national leaders to the Resistance groups here and across Europe, then what have we got available if we try to get a congregation of European leadership together? Because that’s what we’re going to have to have.”

“For what?”

“For putting the kind of unified pressure on the Aalaag that is going to be needed to get them to leave this world.”

“You know,” said Peter, glancing sideways at him for a second, “you’re talking nonsense. It may have been all right for those people back there. But you’ve got to tell me something to convince me first you aren’t either mad or some kind of con man.”

“That’s a ridiculous statement,” said Shane. “It implies a question you’d already answered for yourself when you asked me to get in touch with you again, back in Milan; not to mention the fact that just now I was able to tell you and the others about the new Governor setup. I’m your pipeline to Aalaag Headquarters—something so rare and valuable to you, you never even dreamed of having anything like it. You know it. I know it. That’s why you’ll take me on my terms or not at all. Besides, you’re not unintelligent. When I understand the Aalaag a few orders of magnitude better than any of the rest of you, you ought to be able to see why I could be telling the truth—and take me on faith until you’ve got some further evidence to judge me by.”

“But you want us to follow you blindly,” said Peter.

“That’s right. It’s the only safe way for me, so those are my terms, to start off with at least,” answered Shane, losing patience. “Now, if there’s nothing resembling an international organization of the Resistance, you still must know people of authority on the continent I could talk to. Am I right or wrong?”

“Well,” said Peter slowly. “Every large city has its important Resistance figure. Anna ten Drinke in Amsterdam, Albert Desoules in Paris, and so forth. We can invite them to get together with us, but–”

“Good. You take care of that,” said Shane. “I want them here for a meeting on a date no more than two weeks from now.”

“Two weeks! It’ll take most of a week just to contact them. It can’t be done in any time as short as that–”

“It better,” said Shane grimly. “I’m only supposed to be here for three weeks; and even at that something could come up that would make the First Captain call me back early. If there’s to be any margin for unavoidable delays, two weeks is the most we can give any of them to get here.”

“Next,” said Peter, equally grimly, “who says they’ll come? There’s no reason for any of them to risk the trip. They don’t know you from Adam. I can invite them, but if any show up it’ll be a miracle.”

“It’s up to you to convince them to come,” said Shane. “If they’re the kind of people to deserve their reputations, they ought to be smart enough to see the advantages of having someone like me on their side—just as you did. I think if you tell them about how I can get them information from Aalaag Headquarters—but don’t tell them anything else you know or think you’ve guessed about me, if you don’t mind—I think you can get some of them here. Those who don’t come will just have to regret they didn’t and hope to hop on the bandwagon later on.”

“It’s all very well for you to pronounce an ultimatum,” Peter said. “But a certain amount of delay is built into the system itself—we can’t just drop them a post card, you know.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” said Shane wearily. “For what it’s worth, the mails are as safe as any courier’s pouch. The Aalaag haven’t the time or the interest—you remember my telling your people just now about the mice in the walls—to monitor all the mail that’s written in the hope of catching a few Resistance people or other humans who’re doing something illegal. But, do it your way.”

“We pass messages from hand to hand, to small boats crossing the Channel to the continent and so on. At any rate it’ll take three days… we’re here,” interrupted Peter, putting his foot on the brake of the car.

“Keep going!” said Shane swiftly. He glanced at the structure Peter had indicated with the wave of one hand. It was a large, brick building, with an entrance to what seemed a courtyard through which could be seen some ordinary human vehicles parked. “Turn a corner and drop me off out of sight, so I can walk back.”

“What’s up?” demanded Peter, accelerating nonetheless. “The most they can guess if they see you is that you came here in one of the free-lance cabs. There’s lots of those nowadays. Anybody with the gas to burn who needs money for something on the black market–”

“It’s not me, it’s you,” said Shane. “One of the Interior Guardsmen they’ll be sure to have there might just be watching; and he just might be someone who recognizes you as a member of the Resistance.”

“Me?” Peter hooted. “If one of those bastards in the Interior Guard’d suspected me, I’d have been picked up by them months ago—years ago.”

“There’s another of your bits of misknowledge of how the Aalaag and those who serve them work,” said Shane. “Any Interior Guardsman with any experience makes it a point to find someone arrestable and then keep that information tucked away until he needs it, either to gain points with his superiors or to balance off some infringement of the rules they’ve caught him at. It doesn’t always work for them, but most older Guardsmen have the equivalent of a whole pocketful of bits of information like that. You can let me out here.”

They were around the corner. Peter pulled the car to a halt beside the wet curb. Shane got out. He pulled his staff from the rear seat where he had put it on getting into the car, jerked his hood more fully over his head and ran through the still-falling light rain toward the corner around which was his destination.

He turned in at the courtyard entrance, finding some small shelter from the falling water, and hurried across the open space, past half a dozen human cars and two of the Aalaag mercury-shining vehicles, then up a flight of half a dozen stone steps to a heavy door. Without ceremony he pushed it open and stepped inside, to find himself standing between two young fresh-faced giants of Interior Guard enlisted men.

Neither of them made any move either to stop or acknowledge him. The door here would be controlled by Aalaag equipment and it would not have opened to his hand if that equipment had not somehow recognized him and his right to enter. A few steps farther on brought him through a sort of small cloakroom or anteroom into a larger foyer with a marble floor and dark woodwork on the walls. A desk with an Interior Guard officer was at his right, and ahead to his left a wide oak staircase led up a flight of steps to the floor above. An elevator for Aalaag use had its door inset in the wall opposite the staircase. A Lieutenant in the Interior Guard sat at the desk; and this man did look up at Shane as Shane stopped before him.

“Shane Everts?” asked the officer automatically, looking back down at the screen inset in the surface of his desk. “Yes,” said Shane. The question and the answer would be recorded as password and countersign, for future reference by their masters and the machinery at their masters’ disposal.

“We’ve been expecting you.” The Lieutenant was as tall as, but of slighter build than, the two enlisted Guards at the door and looked if anything younger than they did. “If you’ll take a seat over there”—he nodded at some benches against the wall opposite his desk—“someone will be down in a moment to take care of you.”

The situation was all so normal and pre-Aalaag in what was being said and done that Shane was briefly but suddenly moved almost to tears.

“Thank you,” he said, adding his bit to things-as-they-once-had-been; and sat down on the bench.

Less than five minutes later, a Colonel of the Interior Guard, a tall, thin, narrow-faced man in his forties with neatly combed, straight gray hair, descended the staircase and greeted Shane.

“I’m Colonel Rymer,” he said, extending his hand for Shane to shake. “We’re glad to have you here. The immaculate sir Laa Ehon has been interested in seeing you as soon as possible.”

“Right now, you mean?” Shane asked—for it was not unheard of for him to be ushered in to see one of the aliens immediately on arrival, for all that he was usually made to wait at least an hour or so.

“If you’re presentable.” Colonel Rymer ran his eye over Shane’s cloak and staff. “I don’t know enough about that outfit. Are you?”

“Presentable enough to be let in to see the First Captain back at Headquarters,” said Shane.

“You should be all right here, then,” said Rymer.

“Laa Ehon makes a point of appearance?” Shane asked. “I only met him once before and he didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“Perhaps you were lucky. Perhaps you were all right,” said Rymer. “But he likes things correct.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Shane said.

Rymer shrugged. “You asked.”

They had reached the top of the stairs. They made a right turn into a corridor that had been enlarged to Aalaag-comfortable dimensions, and followed it to a door at its far end.

Rymer touched the door with his index finger.

“Come,” said an Aalaag voice; and they stepped through into a room not so large as the office of Lyt Ann with which Shane was familiar, but nonetheless a good-sized office with its windows replaced by wall viewing screens and an Aalaag officer of the twelfth rank seated at a desk to one side of the entrance. Straight ahead, behind an exactly equivalent desk, sat an Aalaag of the sixth rank, whom Shane recognized as Laa Ehon.

“This is the courier beast?” Laa Ehon asked Rymer.

“Yes, immaculate sir,” answered Rymer.

“You may stay for the moment. Courier beast—what is it the First Captain calls you? Shane beast, you may come to the desk, here.”

Shane walked forward until he was only the regulation two paces of distance—Aalaag paces—from the front edge of Laa Ehon’s desk. The large white face, lean by Aalaag standards, examined him.

“Yes,” said Laa Ehon, after a moment, “I might almost recognize you. You stand with an attitude a little different from that of other beasts I have seen. Do you know if your dam or sire was known for any noticeably different way of standing?”

“I do not, immaculate sir,” said Shane.

“It doesn’t matter. But it will be convenient for me to recognize you on sight. I have an eye for beasts and can often tell one from the other. You’ve met the Colonel Rymer beast; and you will be having to do with Mela Ky, of the twelfth rank, who is my adjutant and shares this office with me.” Shane turned his head to meet the colorless gaze of the alien at the other desk.

“I am honored to encounter the untarnished sir,” he said.

Mela Ky neither answered nor changed expression. He went back to his work.

“The First Captain,” said Laa Ehon, “has expressed a wish that you act as liaison between himself and myself. He also informs me he has asked you to observe and report on the beasts making up this controlling staff with which we are experimenting here. With my concurrence, of course. I am happy to concur with the First Captain in this.”

Shane said nothing. Nothing in what Laa Ehon had said had called upon him to acknowledge, respond, or comment in any way.

“The Colonel Rymer beast will introduce you to the cattle of the staff, from the beast who is Governor on down,” Laa Ehon went on. “Thereafter you may observe them as you will—avoiding as much as possible any interference with their work. You may also observe, but of course not interfere, with the activities of the Colonel Rymer beast and his company of Interior Guard in their duties. In the case of any questions, you will come to me. In fact, we will be talking regularly. In my absence, you will treat the sir Mela Ky as myself.”

Silently, Shane took this last piece of information with a measured amount of skepticism, born of his experience at the First Captain’s Headquarters. In the momentary, transient relationships of most humans to their alien masters, such a statement could be taken literally. But in a situation like this where contact between specific individuals of the two races was not only close but continuing, it was not always exactly true that one Aalaag could be counted on to act as another. The aliens had individual personalities, and the human who had to live closely with them learned it was wise often to know which alien to ask what and when.

But he said nothing. Again, no verbal reaction had been called for from him. Colonel Rymer, out of his field of vision behind his back, had also not been called on to speak and was similarly silent.

“That much disposed of,” said Laa Ehon, “I am interested in talking to you now on various matters. Colonel Rymer beast, you may wait for Shane beast outside. Mela Ky, would you be so kind as to go prepare the governor-cattle to be of use and cooperative with this liaison?”

“Gladly, immaculate sir,” said Mela Ky, getting to his feet behind his desk. Two long strides took him to the door, through it, and out. Colonel Rymer followed him.

“Now we will talk,” said Laa Ehon. His eyes were un-moving on Shane. “While you are of course a beast of the First Captain, here you are also under my command; and I have a duty for you.”

These words, of course, did require an answer from Shane; and there was only one which could be given.

“I am honored, immaculate sir,” said Shane.

“My understanding,” said Laa Ehon, “is that you will report back to the First Captain regarding the success of this experimental project, and also on the beasts who are being used to staff it, so that he may make his best estimate of the project’s future success. To the best of your knowledge, that is your duty here for the immaculate sir, Lyt Ahn, is it not?”

“Yes, immaculate sir.”

“I am extremely interested,” said Laa Ehon. “This seems to me to be very useful information and information that I would do well to have myself. I have no wish, of course, to know what you will report to the First Captain, but I have decided that in addition to examining the situation and the cattle connected with this project for Lyt Ahn, you will also examine these things and report separately on them to me.”

He paused.

“It will be an honor to do so, immaculate sir,” said Shane.

“Good. Such understanding in a beast is most desirable. I have been very interested in you, in any case. You are clearly a valuable beast. I would have concluded as much, even if I had not learned of the high price set upon you by the First Captain. What is your rank?” Shane was caught unawares. Everything, to the Aalaag, was ranked—according to usefulness, according to value, according to desirability. As a result, even he and the others in the translator-courier corps had been assigned ranks; but as these had no real purpose or use, they were referred to so seldom he had almost forgotten his. If he had forgotten, it would have been necessary to guess at his rank, hoping that Laa Ehon would not check to see that he had told the truth. But luckily, in that moment, his memory was with him.

“I am of ninth rank in the translator-courier corps.”

“Of ninth? You might be interested to know that at our last meeting of senior officers, the First Captain gave us all to understand you were one of his most valuable, if not the most valuable, of your corps of cattle–”

It was typical, thought Shane, that while Laa Ehon undoubtedly remembered that he had been frustrated at that same meeting by Shane’s protest that the human children brought up in alien households might learn to understand but not speak the alien language, his Aalaag social blindness to the presence of beasts had caused him to overlook the fact that Shane would also have overheard and understood what Lyt Ahn had said about Shane’s value, at the meeting.

“–and on the basis of what I have seen of you so far,” Laa Ehon was going on, “that confidence of the immaculate sir does not seem to have been misplaced. Indeed, if your value had not been so great in Lyt Ann’s mind, I might have bought you to start my own corps of translators.”

“I am honored, immaculate sir,” said Shane through stiff lips.

“In which case, I might well have ranked you of no less than second rank. However, it now seems unlikely–”

Laa Ehon paused to stare at the plain gray expanse of one of the large viewing screens on the wall to his right. As his eyes fastened on it, it cleared to give a view of the London outside the building. The clouds had brought the darkness of evening down promptly upon the city, and the rain still fell.

“–that I will be purchasing you,” finished Laa Ehon, looking away from the screen, which immediately became blank again, and fixing his gaze once more on Shane. “However, I think you might not despair of reaching the second rank, eventually—that is, if my early opinion of you is borne out.”

Shane felt an ugly chill within him.

“Thank you, immaculate sir.”

“I think that is all, for the moment,” said Laa Ehon. “You will find the Colonel Rymer beast outside and inform him it is my order he take you to, and make you acquainted with, the governor staff cattle. You may go.”

“Immaculate sir.” Shane bent his head in a gesture of understanding, and took a step backward before turning and going to the door to let himself out. In the hall, Colonel Rymer stood a little to one side of the doorway, patiently waiting.

“Done in there, are you?” said Rymer as Shane emerged. “It’ll be my job to introduce you to our fellow-humans, now. Come along.”

It was on the fifth day after his arrival that Shane came back to his hotel room and found a note shoved under his door, that said merely “Kensington Gardens. 4:00 p.m.”

Since it was already eighteen minutes past six in the evening, Shane angrily tore up the piece of paper and dropped it in the wastebasket beside the tiny desk with which his room was furnished. He had just had dinner downstairs in the hotel. He dropped into the room’s one easy chair and opened the first of the dossiers he had brought back with him from the office they had assigned to him at Project Headquarters.

The pattern of the Project had turned out to be a simple one of requiring reports and settling quotas for government offices that had already had a responsibility for getting goods produced to the requirements of the Aalaag. Nonetheless, it took Shane most of the next four days to read and comprehend it all. The dossiers on the staff members, whom he had met in person, held no particular surprises—including those on the three heads of staff.

Shane was used to finding at least a touch of self-interest obvious in almost all those who seemed to find authority comfortable under the Aalaag; and this was certainly so with two out of three in question.

The exception might be Walter Edwin Rymer, who had been a Captain in the English Air Force and had been drafted by the Aalaag for the Interior Guard because of his height. He was enough taller than Shane for Shane to be unable to guess that height closely, but certainly Rymer was more than six feet four inches and most likely six feet six or better. Which raised a curiosity in Shane’s mind. He had had a notion that the English military forces, like the U.S. ones, had maximum height limits as well as minimums for those who wore their uniforms. It had never occurred to him before, but most of those now in the Aalaag’s Interior Guard must have been overheight for the military services of most large nations before the Aalaag came.

At any rate, Rymer had been given no choice about becoming an Interior Guard—although his rise in rank from Captain in that body to full Colonel in two years was suspiciously rapid for someone who did not find some reason for self-interest in his occupation.

Thomas James Aldwell and Jackson Orwell Wilson, on the other hand, had both effectively volunteered to work for their alien masters: Tom as a member of a Consultation Committee to the Aalaag, made up of former Members of Parliament—one of which Tom had been at the time of the Aalaag conquest—and Jack as a volunteer accountant, when the Aalaag had passed down through that same Consultation Committee a requirement for members of the profession to work in the human administrative units they were setting up.

Not only had both men volunteered—although there could always have been good and unselfish reasons for that—but both had, like Rymer, since swiftly risen in rank and importance under the Aalaag. The pattern of their lives in the brief time since the Aalaag had come, in other words, agreed well with the ambition that Shane felt both had betrayed to him when they had met.

He settled down now to reread both their dossiers. He had discovered that in his case multiple readings of such documents tended to generate either conclusions or inspired guesses, which more often than not later helped to fill out the picture of the individuals concerned. He was a third of the way through Tom’s dossier when a faint rustle of paper made him raise his head and he saw another note being shoved under his hotel room door.

He threw the dossier onto the soft surface of the bed, jumped noiselessly to his feet and took three long, silent steps to the door, jerking it open as he reached it.

But he was too late. The corridor without was empty of any sign of life. He bent, picked up the note that had just been left, closed the door, and went back to his easy chair to read it.

“Trafalgar Square, 9:00 p.m.,” this one said.

He was at Trafalgar Square at the appointed time. It was a cold night but not wet, for which he was thankful—an umbrella went awkwardly with his pilgrim garb; and he did not want to advertise himself by the fact that, thanks to a minor touch of Aalaag technology, his particular robe would shed any rain falling on it.

No particular meeting point in Trafalgar Square had been specified by the note, so to avoid whatever notice he would attract by obviously standing still and waiting, he began to stroll around the circumference of the Square. He was less than a third of the way around when Peter appeared and joined him.

“This way,” said Peter, leading him away from the Square. A minute later, a car pulled to the curb beside them, stopped, and a back door was opened. Peter pushed him in and followed. The door closed, the car took off.

“Why in Christ’s name,” snapped Shane, once they were under way, “didn’t you just call me, instead of going through this cloak and dagger routine of slipping notes under hotel doors?”

“Your phone might be bugged,” said Peter.

Shane burst into laughter.

“I mean it,” said Peter, angry in his turn. “That Interior Guard unit you’ve got working with you would only have to pass the word to the proper branch of the police here to have a phone tapped; and of all the easy phones to tap, one in a hotel room leads the list.”

“You don’t understand,” said Shane, sobering. “The Interior Guard at the Project might be ready to give anything you could name to tap my phone; but its commander, a Colonel named Walter Rymer—by the way, I’ve met him—would have to know better than to try. Anything he did, Laa Ehon would eventually be responsible for, and not only wouldn’t the Aalaag think in terms of such spying, it would be a direct insult by Laa Ehon to Lyt Ann. In effect, it would be Laa Ehon spying upon Lyt Ann. I explained to you that they just don’t violate their own laws, rules, and mores. They die first.”

“How can you be so sure your Colonel Rymer knows that?”

“If he’s been an officer in the Interior Guard for two years—and he has,” said Shane, “he’s learned the first rule of survival as a kept beast: never to do anything that might be construed as interfering between two Aalaag. He knows, all right. You can call me at that hotel room safely, any time you want to, I’m in no danger.”

Peter was quiet for a long moment.

“I think,” he said, in a lower, calmer voice, “you may be forgetting something. It may be all right for you to ignore what other humans, and other human organizations, can do to you, but the rest of us aren’t in your position as a servant of the First Captain, or of any alien, for that matter. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but nowadays the human police forces are committed to enforcing the Aalaag laws, and that makes us in the Resistance fair game for any London police officer who has reason to suspect we are what we are. Maybe you can forget that fact. We can’t.”

Shane found himself unexpectedly ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am sorry. I do forget what it’s like to be without the protection of my master.’’

“And I wish,” said Peter, angry once more, “you wouldn’t keep referring to them as masters, and particularly to Lyt Ahn as your master. It’s that very attitude we’re fighting.”

“That,” answered Shane a little grimly, “I won’t apologize for. You can’t take time to tailor your speech when you live cheek to cheek with the Aalaag. You have to think the right way, so that when you’re required to answer with no time to think, you say the right things. But since we’re getting into mutual irritations, how about you and the rest calling them by their real name, instead of always referring to them as ‘aliens’ as if they were something just landed from outer space, dripping slime?”

“It’s not an easy name to say.”

“Try it anyway.”

“Lull… ull…” Peter tried to get the second syllable properly into the back of his throat, gargled, and then literally gagged with the effort.

“All right,” said Shane soberly. “I stand corrected a second time. But a native English speaker should have the easiest time with it. I can teach you how to say it—or rather approximate it—if you’re willing to practice; and it may help you someday to be able to say it properly. The Aalaag tend to rate the intelligence of humans according to how they’re able to speak the Aalaag tongue; and to value the humans according to their intelligence—which to them means trainability. Let’s forget all that for now, though. What did you want to see me about? Have you heard from the Resistance leaders on the continent, any of them?”

“Just from Anna ten Drinke in Amsterdam. She’ll come,” said Peter. “There really hasn’t been time to get an answer back from the others.”

“All right,” said Shane, “but I’ll remind you I’ve probably got no more than a couple of weeks before I’ll be getting orders to move on.”

And with those words, they went their separate ways.

“Beast,” said Laa Ehon to Shane, six days later, “you have now had more than ten days in which to observe the cattle at work on this Project. Give me your report on them.”

Shane stood before Laa Ehon’s desk. He was not quite standing at attention, but there was a large difference between this situation and the more relaxed conditions under which he normally reported to Lyt Ahn.

As usual, whenever he had to deal with an Aalaag, there had been that first rush of fear, escalating swiftly to a tension so tight that all emotion was lost in the intense concentration of giving answers that would be at once satisfactory and safe. He had thought in the past that what he felt at these times must be something like what a highwire artist in a circus must go through just before and after he stepped upon the thin, taut strand of metal on which his support and his life depended.

“When I arrived here,” Shane answered, “there were twenty-five cattle on the staff of this Project. That number has since increased to thirty-two–”

“You need not tell me what I already know,” interrupted Laa Ehon. “I’m interested in your opinion of these beasts, only.”

“I am corrected, immaculate sir,” said Shane. “My opinion of those who have joined the staff since my arrival lacks the benefit of the time I have been able to give to observing those who were here when I came. Nonetheless, all seem intelligent and trainable, some more so than others, of course, but all of a level of competency which seems to be adequate to the tasks at which they are set or about to be set.”

“I expected no less,” said Laa Ehon. “Are there any in which you find possible weaknesses or inadequacies which might prove a source of problems, later?”

“I have observed none, immaculate sir,” said Shane. “This is not to say that such may not exist in certain cases. There are two possible sources of future problems that might be mentioned to the immaculate sir. Since the Project is so new and the staff has been together such a short time, it has not yet had time–”

He hesitated.

“Why do you not go on?” said Laa Ehon.

“I am searching for a word to describe something to the immaculate sir, since it is a characteristic of us cattle which the true race does not have and I know of no word for it in the true tongue.”

“I understand,” said Laa Ehon surprisingly. “Take your time and describe it as best you can.”

“One of the characteristics of us cattle,” said Shane, “is that our relationships one with the other change over a period of acquaintanceship–”

“There is indeed a word in the true tongue which describes such a process,” said Laa Ehon. “It is a rare word, seldom used. Nonetheless, I am interested to find that one of Lyt Ann’s celebrated translators lacks knowledge of it. The word is–”

The sounds he gave Shane, Shane translated in his own mind into the term “familiarity.”

“I thank the immaculate sir. They lack, then, ‘familiarity,’ which will build as time passes and they spend more of it working with each other. This familiarity may improve their working together, or in some cases, it may impede it. Only time will tell. But if I am to estimate which, I would say that my belief is that generally it will improve this group of cattle, although in a body of this number, it is almost inevitable that one or several individuals might later turn out to be beasts better replaced by others.”

“Good,” said Laa Ehon. “That, now, is the sort of information I want from you. Since I expressed my interest in the fact you did not know the term, ‘familiarity,’ I will also mention that I am also interested—favorably—in the correctness with which you pronounce it, after having heard it only once from me. So, at present the staff is satisfactory—as far as you can ascertain at this time—but as familiarity takes place within it, some beasts may need to be replaced. But you mentioned a second possible source of future problems.”

“Yes, immaculate sir. The second is that we cattle are prone to a weakness which those of the true race do not share. It is that, given authority and over a period of time becoming accustomed to having it, the temptation may occasionally occur to one individual beast or another to overuse that authority; perhaps even to put it to work to satisfy some personal desire or protect it against a work failure on its own part being discovered by the cattle in authority over it, or even by one of the true race. But again, this is something that it will be necessary to wait on time to find out.”

“I find what you say interesting indeed,” said Laa Ehon. “I am pleased with your lack of hesitation in telling me of possible flaws in the staff members which would be the product of flaws you freely admit are common to your kind. I am to assume, am I not, that you also share the possibility of being hampered by these flaws?”

“I am obligated to admit so, immaculate sir,” said Shane. “However, my lot has been cast as a servant of one of the true race and I find in the true race much of what I would like to find in myself. To yield to such flaws as I have described would put me beyond achieving an imitation of what I have seen in those of immaculate and untarnished nature. Therefore I am very unlikely to find myself tempted to so yield.”

There was a slight pause.

“For a beast,” said Laa Ehon, “you speak with unusual boldness in saying you desire to model your conduct on that of the true race. I would caution you, in speaking to me, that you do not allow that boldness to be confused with license to go beyond what should properly be said by one of the cattle to one of the true race.”

Back to Shane’s mind came the junior Aalaag officer at Laa Ehon’s Headquarters in Milan saying: “–I am not one of those who allow his beasts to fawn on him…”

“I will remember the words of the immaculate sir and keep them in mind at all times henceforward,” said Shane.

“Good. Now, I am particularly interested in those three beasts who are in authority—Tom beast, Walter beast and Jack beast. What have you, if anything, to report to me about them?”

“They seem singularly able, immaculate sir,” said Shane. “Beyond this, the immaculate sir might find interest in the fact that Tom beast in particular is unusually happy to have been given this work to do. He foresees a result of it in which we cattle may much more efficiently serve our masters.”

“So that particular beast has given me to understand,” said Laa Ehon.

He rose to his feet suddenly, towering over Shane, with only the width of the desk between them—a width that suddenly seemed to have shrunk.

“I leave immediately for my district of Milan,” said Laa Ehon. “I will be gone at least three days and in that time Mela Ky will speak my words.”

Shane’s spirits leaped upward. He had calculated during his trip to London that Laa Ehon, no matter what his interest in this Project, could not afford to be absent from his Milanese post of main responsibility for a full two weeks uninterrupted. He had been waiting for word that the other would need to leave London, even if only for part of a day, listening to all the Aalaag conversation he could overhear, reading all Aalaag hard copy that he could come close enough to read. Still, it was not surprising he had not been able to find out the time of Laa Ehon’s leaving until now. Laa Ehon himself might have made up his mind to go only a matter of a few hours or minutes before.

“This beast will listen to the untarnished sir Mela Ky in all things,” he said.

“Good. You may go.”

Shane went out. A little more than twenty minutes later, he saw Laa Ehon leave for his courier ship, which was kept in a cradle on the roof of their building; and fifteen minutes after that he was at the door in the basement that was the entrance to a room, the name of which translated from the Aalaag to a place that was both a museum and an arms locker.

There were three other Aalaag on the premises—the nucleus of the alien staff would come later. They were Mela Ky and two others. The three took shifts of being available for Laa Ehon’s orders and running the Aalaag end of the office. Mela Ky, as senior officer and the commanding officer’s direct assistant, took the main, daytime shift with Laa Ehon. The other two took, respectively, the evening and the early morning shift; so that at all times there was an Aalaag awake on the premises.

Right now, the one on duty was Mela Ky; but with Laa Ehon’s leaving he was now in Laa Ehon’s position of responsibility, which meant he had moved directly to his desk in the office he shared with his commanding officer the moment Laa Ehon had flown his courier ship out of the cradle overhead and up toward airlessness. The other two Aalaag would be in their rooms.

Shane made a tour of the premises to make sure that was indeed where they were. But it was so; and nothing to be surprised at. The Aalaag when off duty spent nearly all their time in their quarters. They seemed to have three primary activities besides work and exercise, of which they also did a great deal in their officially off-duty hours. One of the three activities was viewing scenes on their wall screens which seemed to be from the thousands of years past when they had lived on their native worlds—and this was close to being, if it was not in fact so, a religious exercise. Of the other two activities, one was sleeping—for the aliens apparently needed something like ten hours sleep out of the twenty-four; and the last was the playing of some incomprehensible game that could be two-handed or played by a single individual. It involved a screen set flat in the surface of a desk and a bank of lights that formed shapes both in the screen and in the air above it as controls were pressed by the players.

The two off duty would not be playing against each other now, however; because the one who would take the early morning shift would necessarily be sleeping in preparation for that. The other, left to himself, would be either viewing the past, working, or playing one-handed with the game screen in his room.

That meant that Shane had at least a fair chance of getting into the arms locker without being caught at it. Laa Ehon might have known that Lyt Ahn had supplied his human courier-translators with keys that opened most ordinary doors that were locked to those who were not Aalaag. It was almost certain, however, that his subordinates did not; unless he had specifically warned them of the fact—and there had been no reason to give them such a warning. Not only did crime not exist among the Aalaag; anything they considered of any importance—such as weapons—would not operate except when handled by an Aalaag.

Also, it was an almost inconceivable possibility that a beast might possess an Aalaag key. Only the unique nature of the duties to which the courier-translators were assigned—which made it occasionally necessary for them to use routes through Aalaag Headquarters and elsewhere that were normally restricted only to the aliens themselves—had made keys available to such as Shane.

Facing the door of the arms locker—which looked like a simple slab of wood, but which he knew to be far more than that—Shane took the rectangle of soft gray metal that was the key from his pocket and touched the end to the door.

It dissolved, first to a brown mist, then into nothingness, before him. He stepped through the opening that had appeared and looked back. The door was once again solid and closed behind him. He looked forward again.

The arms locker was more spacious than might have been suspected from the ordinary appearance of the door. It gave the impression of a large room carved out of white plastic or snow-colored rock, cut into innumerable niches and crannies, most of which held a single item as if it were on display. A soft, white light flooded the area, seeming to come from nowhere in particular but to be everywhere equally. Underfoot, the uncarpeted flooring was soft—-softer than any floor of Aalaag construction that Shane had walked on, except in the arms locker at Lyt Ahn’s Headquarters, which was a many-times-larger duplicate of this place he found himself in now.

The single items, each displayed in its own niche, were all weapons. Every Aalaag had his personal weapons that were, in effect, heirlooms, having been passed down from generation to generation since the time they had been carried against those who had driven the Aalaag from their home worlds. Others, duplicates of these arms, were carried when ordinary use required, such as when mounting guard, either in a Headquarters or when on display or patrol of the Earth cities they had conquered.

The originals, these precious inheritances, were taken from their niches only for ceremonies of the highest importance, and immediately thereafter returned to them. Where the individual Aalaag went, his or her ancestral weapons went. They were seldom touched; but, like all arms possessed by the aliens, they were charged and ready for use at all times.

Still, they were symbolic rather than real. In the final essential, the only enemy the Aalaag really feared was the race that had dispossessed them of their original homes; and if that race should come this way, hand-weapons such as these would be of little use—like lighting matches in the face of a blizzard. But symbolically, they were everything.

Each of the four Aalaag connected with the Project had his private area in the arms locker. In the case of the three subordinate officers these were filled with all their weapons. In the case of Laa Ehon, by only a token few, since most of the commander’s heirloom arms would be still in Milan. Shane, about to move toward the back of the locker, paused for a moment to gaze at the long arm—the weapon that was closest in likeness to a human rifle—that Laa Ehon would carry if he rode abroad on one of the alien riding beasts that to the aliens were almost as symbolic as the weapons. The long arm lay dark against the white nest that held its narrow, two-meter length.

He had seen such arms many times before. Not only were those like this one hung on the walls of Lyt Ahn’s Headquarters, the House of Weapons, but he had also seen them in the arms locker there. He had even seen the equivalent long arm of Lyt Ahn, himself, on one of those occasions when he had been sent to fetch something from that arms locker. What he had been sent for was something of small importance and non-military use, always. Humans—beasts—were never allowed to touch weapons. In fact, to do so incurred an automatic death penalty for such as Shane. Not because of the danger involved—for there was the fact that no weapon would discharge in the hands of any not an Aalaag—but because the touch of a lesser being was like a stain upon any such weapon.

For a second, Shane was swept by an overwhelming urge to lift Laa Ehon’s long arm from its niche and hold it. A mixture of feelings had him in its grasp. Partly it was made up of defiance of the rule that said he should never touch such a thing. In part it was also a wild urge to test for himself the truth of the belief that the weapon would not work for a human like himself. But overlaying all this was a fascination of which he was half-ashamed but could not help feeling.

He had been, he discovered, around the Aalaag long enough to have become at least in some small part affected by the mystique about their weapons. Some buried part of him wished to hold the long arm, as a child or savage might yearn to hold an object reputed to possess great magic, to see if some of that magic and—face it—the courage and singlemindedness of the Aalaag might not flow from it into him.

He made himself turn away without touching the long arm and went toward the back of the locker. As he went, he passed in turn each of the sections given to the cherished inherited weapons of each officer in this building, then passed the weapons for everyday use, racked all of one kind together since none of them had a specific owner. Finally he came to what he was searching for, the area that held what had brought him here. It was the section that held clothing and other lesser items, such as those he had been permitted to carry or fetch for Lyt Ahn in the House of Weapons.

These, a beast might touch. These, hopefully, would work for a beast. At least, some of them had, when he had been left alone in the arms locker at the House of Weapons long enough to try some of them out. He had had time then to experiment with nearly a couple of dozen items, picked at random; for they had been like adult toys in the sorcerous results they produced when properly activated… and yet they were nothing but the simplest of everyday tools to the Aalaag.

The first item he searched for now was a device that would lift him up the clock tower at the north end of the Houses of Parliament, to the face of Big Ben itself, the clock there; and after a moment he did find such an item, an exact duplicate of the one he had experimented with in the House of Weapons arms locker. It was a ring made for an Aalaag finger, which made it far too big for both his thumbs placed together, with a smaller ring which could be slid around it.

He put the device loosely on his middle finger, held it there by closing his fist and slowly tried sliding the smaller ring a tiny distance around the curve of the larger. For a second it seemed that he felt no difference, and then he was aware that his feet were not pressing upon the floor with the weight they had pressed before. Cautiously, he moved the smaller, controlling ring farther, and felt himself float free of the floor entirely and start to ascend ceilingward. Hastily, he pushed the controlling ring back to its original position and put the device in the right-hand pocket of his pants.

To locate the next item he remembered from the House of Weapons arms locker—what the Aalaag called a “privacy tool”—required a longer search. He was on the point of giving up when he found it. It was a thin box shape apparently of metal and as large as his hand. In this case, a sliding stud was set in the center of one of the larger faces of the box. Once more he cautiously advanced the control stud, while holding the device.

For a moment, again, he thought that nothing had happened. Then, anxiously looking down at the lower part of his body, he saw only floor, though looked at closely it could be seen to be slightly distorted by what might be the kind of distortion of air movements produced by heat waves on a blisteringly hot day. Nonetheless, with the privacy tool he had a practical invisibility when he might need it. He sighed with relief, returned the control to its original position and put this into his jacket pocket. It made a noticeable bulge there; and, after a moment, he changed it instead to his left pants pocket. Here it also bulged, but the overhang of his jacket disguised the sharp outlines of its shape as seen through the cloth.

Hastily, he used his key again and left the arms locker, with its door apparently undisturbed behind him. His intention was to get away from the building as quickly as possible. It was already the time at which he had promised to meet and have a final talk with Peter, privately, at dinner in a restaurant.

But as he was reaching for the front door, the Interior Guardsman on duty at the desk in the lobby checked him with a message.

“Governor said to tell you he’d like to see you,” said the guard.

Shane hesitated, thinking of the bulges in his pockets; and then decided that he could brazen out any curiosity about them by standing on his rights as an independent observer of the Project. He turned and went back, up the stairs and to the office of Tom Aldwell.

He found all three of them—Aldwell behind his desk, Rymer and the assistant governor, Jack Wilson, in easy chairs facing him. They made pleased noises at seeing him and Jack brought forward a similar chair, so that he found himself seated as part of their circle.

“We’ve been saying how well things have been going,” said Tom, beaming at him. “It’ll be interesting to see how much Laa Ehon is actually required, how much we miss him during the few days he’s gone. My guess is that it’s going to be little.”

“Very little,” said Jack.

“Or not at all,” put in Rymer.

Shane looked around at their faces.

“His job’s only to see that you do your job,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect he’d be needed, as you put it. The guard on the front door said you were looking to talk to me, Tom.”

“Oh, that.” Tom waved a hand. “Nothing too important. It’s just that we understand you were talking to Laa Ehon about us just before he left, just now.”

“What gives you that idea?” Shane asked.

“Well…” Tom touched a button inset in a panel of such buttons on the top of his desk. Instantly, the sound of two speakers conversing in Aalaag filled the office. One voice was that of an Aalaag, the other was that of a human speaking the alien language—Shane’s voice. Shane exploded out of his chair.

“Are you insane?” he shouted at Tom. “Shut that off!”

Tom smiled indulgently, but reached out and touched the button. The sound of the voices ceased abruptly. Shane sank back in his chair.

“Haven’t you learned anything about the Aalaag?” he said. He turned to Rymer. “Walt, you at least ought to know what it means to bug any room belonging to one of the masters!”

“Calm yourself,” said Rymer harshly, “we haven’t bugged anything. This place used to belong to one of those African consulates and they had it wired from basement to attic. We didn’t do a thing but find their system, chart it, and hook into it here and there.”

“Do you think that makes any difference?” Shane blazed at him. “It’s the intent to overhear that’ll hang you on the hooks if the Aalaag find out.”

“No reason why they should find out,” said Tom. “In any case, this use of it was more or less an experiment. If you feel that strongly about it, we won’t do it anymore. It’s merely interesting that we should have happened to overhear you talking to Laa Ehon about the three of us.”

“Happen” was undoubtedly not the word, thought Shane grimly; but there was no point in pursuing that now. And to think that he had spoken with such assurance to Peter about the local police or Interior Guard not daring to bug the phone conversation of a servant of the Aalaag like himself; and here they had actually gone and secretly recorded their own master in conversation. It just showed that it paid to remember that there were always idiots who would dare any chances.

“Interesting?” he said. “Why?”

“Well, one always likes to know what’s being said about one,” said Tom, spreading his hands on the desk top reasonably, “and as you know, we weren’t able to understand what was being said—just recognize the sound of our own names when they came up in conversation. We hoped you could tell us what you and our alien master had to say about us.”

“No,” said Shane. “I could, but I won’t. That’d make me almost as guilty as the rest of you for listening. Forget there ever was a conversation of that kind—and destroy that recording.”

“You may not be willing to admit what you said,” spoke up Jack, “and perhaps the three of us here can’t understand it, but there’re linguists not owned by the aliens who may not be able to speak the lingo, but given time to work with, that tape could do a pretty good job of puzzling out what was said.”

“No, no,” said Tom hastily, “Shane, here, knows the aliens much better than we do. We’ll destroy the tape and forget all about the conversation. You see to that, Jack. I can count on you to take care of the tape, can’t I?”

“If you say so, Tom,” said Jack.

“In any case,” Tom went on, “we all know Shane well enough to know that he wouldn’t say anything to our discredit—unless of course there was something to our discredit to say–”

He broke into a smile which included them all.

“And I, for one, don’t believe there is,” he wound up. He held up a hand. “No, Shane, and I’m not asking for a hint from you as to how you talked about us. I have full trust in your good sense and honesty.”

“Thanks,” said Shane.

“No need for thanks. Now—on another subject. It seems we’re about to get one of your co-workers as permanent translator attached to this Project and on loan from Lyt Ahn. A man named Hjalmar Jansen. He’s due in tomorrow. I thought you could perhaps give us some idea of what he’s like and what he’d prefer in working with us—just any information you feel free to give, information in confidence, of course.”

Shane had become too schooled at hiding his feelings in the past couple of years to raise his eyebrows at the name of Hjalmar Jansen. It was not that out of the whole translator corps there were not more unlikely choices; it was simply the irony involved in the choice of Hjalmar. He was a big young man—big enough to have qualified for the Interior Guard, if it had not been that his linguistic skills were so much more valuable; and powerful in proportion to his size—but so mild and soft of manner that some people got an impression of him as being almost boneless. The irony lay in the fact that under that extraordinarily soft exterior he was probably the most stubborn human being that Shane had ever met. Once Hjalmar had made up his mind about something there was no point in discussing it with him, because he simply did not hear you. It would be interesting to see how he and Tom would rub along together.

“Hjalmar’s about my age,” said Shane. “Swedish, originally, and a very good linguist—good with Aalaag, also. He’s pleasant, easy to get along with”—mentally, Shane crossed his fingers behind his back—“and you’ll find him something more of a drinker than I am.”

“How very nice!” said Tom. “I don’t mean that he should prefer the fleshpots more than you do, Shane. It’s just that it’s pleasant to hear a good report of someone we’re going to be working with so closely. Well—look, we won’t keep you. I apologize for asking you about what you said about us to Laa Ehon; and, don’t worry, we’ll destroy the tape of the conversation you heard.”

“Right, then.” Shane got to his feet. “It’s time I was on my way back to my hotel room. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Tom and the other two murmured agreement.

Shane went out. So they’d destroy the tape, would they? he thought to himself. Like hell they would!

He left the building and a few blocks away from it caught a taxi, giving it the address, not of his hotel, but of the Indian restaurant at which he had arranged to meet Peter at this time.

The restaurant was a dim little place, for which Shane was thankful, for he was not wearing his pilgrim robe with the concealing hood. He was aware that Peter had in effect hitched his wagon to the hopes which Shane offered the Resistance, from the moment the Resistance leader had invited Shane to get back in touch with him; and everything since then, particularly this summoning of other leaders from the continent, had tied Peter’s chances of success and his personal reputation that much more firmly to Shane’s. In this case, Shane had impressed on him the fact that they must meet someplace where other Resistance people would not go, lest one of them, recognizing Peter, take note and later be able to identify Shane.

Peter, Shane knew, would have done his best to see that this was so. Chance—bad luck—however, was always to be reckoned with. So he glanced swiftly around the other tables—the place was about half-filled—to see if anyone was paying any attention to Peter, seated alone and waiting in a secluded corner, then went to Peter’s table and seated himself in a chair with his back to the room.

“Been here long?” Shane asked quietly as he sat down.

“Since the place opened for dinner,” said Peter. “I’ve watched everybody who came in. There’s no one I know, and therefore there oughtn’t to be anyone who knows me.”

“Good,” said Shane. He picked up the menu on the plate before him and glanced at it. “I’ll have the curried lamb. You do all the ordering.”

Peter ordered drinks.

“What’s the latest count of people who’ve shown up from across the Channel?” Shane asked.

“Eight,” said Peter. “Anna ten Drinke came in from Amsterdam and Julio Marrotta from Milan. Albert Desoules of Paris was already here, and Wilhelm Herner, so we’ve got the big four.”

“I’m surprised at ten Drinke and Marrotta,” Shane said. “Amsterdam’s so close and Marrotta must know about what I did there. I’d have thought they’d be among the first to show up. Does it mean anything, do you suppose, that they took this long to come?”

“Not that I can imagine—and not necessarily, in any case,” said Peter. “Some of the less well known names might have come just for the trip to London—it made a good excuse. Marrotta and ten Drinke don’t need excuses. No more do Desoules and Herner, so they probably decided to take as short a time off from ordinary business as they could get away with.”

“I see,” said Shane.

“By the way,” said Peter, “they’re growing impatient—understandably so—to meet you, now they’re here. I’ve told them about the new Governor Project and your connection with it, and given them the idea that it wasn’t easy for you to get away safely from it, and that’s what’s been holding you back from meeting them. But they’re getting restless, just the same.”

“They can see me tomorrow afternoon–” Shane stopped himself as a waitress came to their table and Peter put in their orders. “In fact, it’s most important they see me tomorrow. But they won’t be able to talk to me, just see me, until evening.”

Peter stared across the table at him in the dim light.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that in the day I’m going to put on a show for them in a public place; and I want you to see they’re there to take it all in. But they mustn’t make any attempt to speak to me there, or get close to me.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Peter. “Now what? And why couldn’t you have told me something about this in advance?”

“I said it before, and no doubt I’ll have to say it again, although someone in something called the Resistance like yourself ought to understand without my saying anything. The less anyone—and I mean anyone, even you—-knows about what I’m going to do the better. When you need to know, I’ll tell you. I’m telling you now.”

“All right, then. What is it?”

“I want you to get all these visitors into positions—separate positions—close to the Houses of Parliament, so that they’ve got as close a view as is safe of Big Ben at just a little after noontime tomorrow. There’s an Aalaag on his riding beast always on duty around the Houses of Parliament–”

“I know,” interrupted Peter.

“I know you know,” said Shane. “I’m trying to tell you something. Please listen. He rides from position to position around the building, sits his riding beast a short while at each position, then moves on. He usually stops just before the clock tower at noon, or a little after. Tell your people that when they see him ride into position there and stop, to start watching the face of Big Ben. They may have to wait some minutes before they see anything, but they’re to keep their eyes on the clock face until they do, or they’ll miss what I want them to see.”

“And what is it they’re going to see?” demanded Peter.

“You’ll find that out when they do. I want you on the scene, too; but in your case, you’ll be standing out about twenty yards beyond the Aalaag on his riding beast; and you’ll have a car either parked or driving around close enough by so that you can get me into it and away in the shortest possible time–”

“Look here!” said Peter suddenly, “your idea’s not to blow up the clock tower or damage Big Ben some way–”

“No, damn it! Now, will you just listen?” Shane snapped the words at him in an angry whisper as the waitress began to approach their table with filled plates. He stopped speaking until she had gone again, then picked up where he had left off.

“I want you standing by ready to guide me to that car, or to where it can pick me up. Our visitors who’re observing will have to see to getting themselves out of the area and meeting us somewhere else later. I’ll be wearing my pilgrim outfit, of course, with the hood hooked shut in front. I suppose you’ve warned them about the fact I’ve got to preserve my anonymity; and they’ve agreed to go along with that?”

Peter nodded.

“But I need to know something more myself about what you’re planning to do,” Peter said. “What if something goes wrong with whatever you’ve got in mind? I’ve got to be ready to change my own plans and the orders to this car you want waiting.”

“You don’t need to know any more; and you’re not going to,” said Shane grimly. “I’ll leave it up to your good judgment at the time, tomorrow. If the point comes where you think I can’t be safely helped by you, then get out—any way you can.”

“Better eat your curried lamb,” said Peter. He himself had been eating between his own words, while Shane’s plate had sat untouched on the table in front of him.

Shane grunted and, picking up his knife and fork, got busy with the food before him.

“I’ll meet them all that night,” he said between mouthfuls, “after they’ve seen the demonstration. You can tell them that. You pick the place to meet, and send a driver for me. Did you change those gold pieces I gave you into ordinary money for me?”

Without a word, Peter reached into his inside coat pocket and took out an envelope which he handed to Shane.

“Thanks,” said Shane. “The gold’s useful sometimes, but most of the time, here, now, I’d rather not attract attention to myself; and after tomorrow, I particularly won’t want to attract attention to myself when I’m wearing the pilgrim robe.”

“And I take it I’ll understand just why, after tomorrow noon,” said Peter drily.

“You take it right,” said Shane.

They talked of nothing more that had to do with tomorrow during their meal together. Shane did not offer any more information and Peter did not ask questions, for which Shane was grateful. He was coming to like Peter, although he did his best to hide it. More and more he was convinced of the wisdom of his first reaction on seeing those Resistance people which Peter had got together to meet him on his first arrival in London. It would be much safer to be disliked than liked by those he met who had dedicated themselves to fighting against the Aalaag. To say nothing of the fact that it would help his conscience to sleep nights.

The next day he was at the Project early and set himself up in the office that had been assigned to him, strewing the desk top with papers and building as complete as possible a picture of being immersed in some large piece of work. Just after eleven in the morning, he waited until there was no sound of anyone coming and going in the corridor outside his door, then took off his shoes, put on his robe and opened the door enough to let him look out. The corridor was deserted.

Carrying his shoes in his right hand, he reached in through a slit in his robe to the left side pocket of the jacket he was wearing underneath, and touched the stud on the privacy tool. Now invisible he slipped out, into the corridor, heading toward the stairs and the front door.

His office was on the third floor. He made it to the stairs and down them without a sound and without encountering anyone. An Interior Guard Corporal sat at the desk by the front door with the sign-out book open on the table in front of him and a pen handy. But in the relative dimness of the building’s interior even the illusion of heat waves in still air was not visible. He did not even glance up as Shane slipped by him.

At the door, however, Shane was forced to wait. He stepped back into a dimmer corner of the lobby beside the door and composed himself to patience. The minutes slipped by and nothing happened. Then, so suddenly it was almost like an explosion on the quiet of the lobby, came the sound of shoes briskly ascending the steps outside to the door, the door was flung open and a young, blond-headed staff member named Julian Ammerseth came in carrying a large manila envelope under his arm.

“Back again—” he said cheerfully to the Corporal, approaching the desk to sign in; but that was all Shane heard, for he had caught the door from closing with an invisible hand behind the other’s back and slipped through to the outside.

He paused just at the bottom of the outside steps to put his shoes on; but he kept himself invisible until he was well away from the Project Headquarters and could find a niche of an alleyway not overlooked by windows, into which he could step long enough to let himself become visible again.

Visible, he pinched the hood of his robe together, and continued down the street on foot until he could hire a cab and have it take him within a few blocks of the Houses of Parliament.

It was fortunate he had allowed himself some extra time. It took him some minutes to walk around the Parliament buildings until he found the Aalaag sentry and made sure that he was more or less on his regular schedule, which should put him before the clock tower at noon or shortly thereafter. The actual time of his arrival there could only be guessed at, since the officer—it was a male, this time, Shane noted from the armor shape—would ride to a point, sit there a while, then ride on to another point at which he would pause; and both points and length of pause were apparently chosen at random.

Having found the alien, he returned to the base of the clock tower. The time was seven minutes to twelve. There was no lack of people going to and fro, or standing and talking to each other in the walks on this side of the tower. He did not see Peter; and the Resistance leaders from the continent, of course, were unrecognizable by him. He continued around a corner of the tower, hunting for a place where he could safely turn himself invisible. But there was none.

In desperation, he settled for a moment when none of those around him seemed to be looking in his direction and pushed over the stud of the privacy tool in his left jacket pocket. Invisible, he returned to the tower below the clock, activated the ring device, and let its powers lift him slowly up the face of the tower to the clock.

He had not taken into account the effect of apparently standing in mid-air on nothing, some stories off the ground. He was not ordinarily affected by heights, but now he had to fight down an irrational feeling of panic that began to rise in him as he himself ascended toward the clock face.

He reached it; and, playing with the ring device, managed to halt himself opposite the hub from which the two hands of the clock were pivoted. He looked down. The Aalaag was nowhere in sight.

Invisible, suspended in air, he waited and scanned the walks below for some sign of Peter. At just two minutes to twelve, he located him, standing in apparent conversation with a short, round-hatted man at the distance Shane had told him to be beyond the Aalaag.

Time slowly passed. The minute hand of the clock was so large that by watching it, he could see the slow creep of its tip around the dial. It reached noon and the Aalaag had not yet appeared. It moved on, past five minutes after twelve, past ten minutes after twelve…

At a little more than fourteen minutes after twelve, the massive figure in shining armor rode its huge, bull-like beast around a corner of the tower, and moved to a position roughly opposite the middle of it before stopping. To Shane’s relief, the rider had brought his beast to a halt facing outward so that he, too, looked away from the clock. Shane reached a perspiration-slippery hand in through the slit on the left side of his robe and turned off his invisibility.

Looking down he saw his robe and shoes, brown against the white face of the clock. Within him the urge was overwhelming to make his mark upon the clock face and start his descent; but he had calculated beforehand that he would have to hold a visible position where he was for at least sixty seconds, to make sure everyone who should be watching for him had noticed him; and as many others, except the Aalaag, as possible. He hung there, accordingly, with the sweat rolling down his body under the robe, and waited for the huge minute hand to move forward one full minute.

Finally it touched the black mark toward which it had been progressing. Shane reached in under his robe and brought out a stoppered vial of black paint and an inch-wide paint-brush. He poured the black paint onto the brush and applied the brush end to the clock face beside him, making the sketch of the cloaked figure with staff in hand. Then he put vial and paintbrush back in under the robe, heedless of what the paint would do to the jacket he was wearing, and touched the ring device to let himself begin a slow drift down the face of the tower.

Out beyond him, on the ground, he could see faces, a number of faces now, turned up to watch him. At any moment he expected the Aalaag also to turn, to see what was attracting the attention of the humans. He had counted on the Aalaag indifference to beasts to cause this one to ignore the curiosity of the surrounding people as something beneath the notice of a master.

But this was no certainty; and, sure enough, before he had reached the ground, the riding beast swung about, on some signal from its rider, and that rider looked directly up at Shane.

Within the shining helmet was only the slit through which the officer looked out. Shane could not see the Aalaag eyes within that slit, but he could feel them focusing on him. Holding his face and body as naturally as possible, he reached the ground and began to walk directly toward the alien.

He came closer and closer to the great pair of figures, reached them, and stepped past them, without either increasing or decreasing his pace. Still at the same ordinary walk, he started toward Peter, whom he could see standing—now alone—where he had been told to stand and wait.

At any moment, Shane expected to hear the deep Aalaag voice behind him, commanding him to halt—or feel the sudden stunning blow of the officer’s long arm without warning, on the sentinel’s theory that a beast like himself would not understand even a simple order in Aalaag to stop. Step followed step. Peter became closer and closer. Just before Shane reached him, Peter turned and began to move away, walking some ten feet before Shane.

Shane followed him.

Behind him he had no idea what was happening. But none of the humans he neared spoke to him or turned toward him, although every one of those he passed in the first minute or so glanced, surreptitiously or otherwise, at him as he went by. He continued following Peter until they turned a corner and were passed by a group of four or five men moving in the opposite direction, and who blocked them from the view of those by the tower, but paid no attention to either of them, lost in animated conversation as they walked.

Peter glanced back over his shoulder briefly, then nodded and beckoned. He sped up, his walk becoming a very fast walk indeed. Shane speeded up to stay with him. They were moving alongside a street, now, down which there was a flow of traffic; and a moment later a car pulled to the curb just ahead of them.

Peter reached it first, opened the door for him, and stood aside. Shane ducked in. Peter followed. The door slammed and the car accelerated away from the curb once more. A moment later they were lost in traffic.

But, as he sat silently next to Peter while the cars closed around them, an elation began to build almost reasonlessly within him. The Pilgrim had made an appearance—not only that, but as the Pilgrim he had walked right up under the nose of the Aalaag on guard, while at least some of the heads of European Resistance watched. The excitement he was feeling was out of all key with reality. He had to reassure himself that in a real sense he had done nothing but put on a show. It was all a sham, a farce put on to help him make himself safe from his association with these ridiculous Resistance fighters—and possibly make safe as well Maria, the woman he had saved in Milan, if he could get her loose from her Resistance loyalties. In the end, what he had done this day would mean nothing—-it was only a step bringing them all closer to the moment when he must betray Peter and others like him to the Aalaag.

Not only that, but he was returning now to face Lyt Ahn; and if he had learned to know the First Captain over these past two years, the First Captain had also learned to know his favorite translator-beast. If any Aalaag could read the signs of a guilty secret hidden in Shane, it would be Lyt Ahn—and Shane reminded himself once more, as he did daily if not hourly, that the way to survival in the world as it now was, depended on never underestimating the Aalaag.

Yet, still, in spite of all this, why did he persist in feeling so wildly triumphant? And then he understood: he had committed himself—and that was a good feeling.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Information in War

Karl von Clausewitz

Clausewitz was born in Prussia in 1780 and lived until 1831: a period that saw the transformation of the world. During that time the Holy Roman Empire vanished and with it the dream of a universal realm: by 1830 the nation-state was the model for the world. Germany became something more than a geographical expression, but then was forced to endure the humiliation of Napoleon, who tore the figure of Victory from the Brandenburg Gate and sent it back to Paris, and with his own hands despoiled the tomb of Frederick the Great, taking his sword as a spoil of war.

Years later, as director of the reformed Prussian War Academy, Clausewitz wrote On War, which was sealed into packets upon his departure for the Polish campaign. After he died of cholera just after his return, his wife published the book. It instantly became one of the recognized masterpieces of military theory.

Here is Clausewitz on the fog of war.

Information in War

Karl von Clausewitz

By the word “information” we mean all the knowledge we have of the enemy and his country; therefore, in fact, the foundation of all our plans and actions. Let us consider the nature of this foundation, its unreliability and uncertainty, and we shall soon feel what a dangerous edifice war is, how easily it may fall to pieces and bury us in its ruins…

A great part of the information in war is contradictory, a still greater part is false, and by far the greatest part is somewhat doubtful. This requires that an officer possess a certain power of discrimination, which only knowledge of men and things and good judgment can give. The law of probability must be his guide. This is difficult even in the pre-war plans, which are made in the study and outside the actual sphere of war. It is enormously more difficult when, in the turmoil of war, one report follows hard upon another. It is fortunate if these reports, in contradicting each other, produce a sort of balance and thus demand further examination. It is much worse for the inexperienced when chance does not render him this service, but one report supports another, confirms it, magnifies it, continually paints with new colors, until urgent necessity forces from him a decision which will soon be disclosed as folly, all these reports having been lies, exaggerations, and errors.

In a few words, most reports are false, and the timidity of men gives fresh force to lies and untruths. As a general rule, everyone is more inclined to believe the bad than the good… The leader, firm in reliance on his own better convictions, must stand fast like the rock on which the wave breaks. The role is not an easy one; he who is not by nature of a buoyant disposition, or has not been trained and his judgment matured by experience in war, may let it be his rule to do violence to his own inner conviction by inclining from the side of fear to the side of hope; only by that means will he be able to preserve a true balance.

This difficulty of seeing things correctly, which is one of the greatest sources of friction in war, makes things appear quite different from what had been expected. The impression of the senses is stronger than the force of ideas resulting from deliberate calculation, and this goes so far that probably no plan of any importance has ever been executed without the commander having to overcome fresh doubts during the first moments of its execution. Ordinary men, who follow the suggestions of others, generally, therefore, become undecided on the field of action; they think they have found the circumstances different from what they had expected, all the more so, indeed, since here again they yield to the suggestions of others. But even the man who has made his own plans, when he comes to see things with his own eyes, often will think he has erred. Firm reliance upon himself must make him proof against the apparent pressures of the moment. His first conviction will in the end prove true, when he extends his horizons and looks beyond the foreground scenery, with its exaggerated shapes of danger, which fate pushes on to the stage of war. This is one of the great gulfs that separate conception from execution.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Harmonica Song

Dan Duncan

I first met Dan Duncan in Seattle many years ago. We were both at odd but crucial points in our lives. We did not see each other again for a decade, but when we did, we found that we had, in the interval, become friends without quite knowing how or why.

Dan has always been a poet. He also understands the computer revolution better than most engineers.

Harmonica Song

Dan Duncan
for Pournelle

The Narrative

The old men drown their music
But the young men hear the call:
One day you hear the thunder say
This flag is going to the wall

And you don’t know how to get there,
Cause you don’t know where you’re from;
But you pick it up from the bloody ground,
And your heart becomes a drum,

And your feet find hidden pathways
Where maps blur in the rain;
And you almost see your sweetheart’s face
In the heart of your pain.

The Song

Dance on the road!
Dance in the sky!
Nowhere to fall!
Nowhere to die!

’N’ it’s a long sleep
At the end of the road;
Whatever you can carry—
That’s your load.

Think what you think;
Don’t cry if I fall;
Just remember the promise:
Take it to the wall.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Galileo Saw the Truth

Gregory Nicoll

It isn’t always a good thing to see the future.

Galileo Saw the Truth

Gregory Nicoll

The Tuscan artist, at his bench, invents a thing quite new,
An optic orb of shining stone, ringed in white and blue;
And through this whirling piece of glass, a wondrous thing he sees:
Great rows of troops, with capes and banners—flapping in the breeze.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

The orb he turns and then he finds, a stirring sight to see,
The swords of Conan and King Kull, within a bloody spree.
The shields they break and axes flash, through blood and bones and brains,
Horses scream as riders die, and Chaos, supreme, reigns.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

And through the piece of oddly glass, looms a conflict large,
Hal and Hotspur meet with blades, and Worcester leads the charge.
With wood and steel the foes they slay, and shirts of mail they tore;
Many a good tall fellow served up to the smoky war.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

The scenes they shift and the artist sees, many more views of death,
The sounds of cannons choking flame, and conquerors’ hard breath.
In lobster robes, and with Brown Bess, they march in legions wide;
Shots rake through well-ordered ranks and widow many a bride.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

The artist finds another clash, this one horrid to behold,
Armies charging, Blue and Gray, each quite strong and bold.
The skies are graced with flying craft, ships sail beneath the waves,
Repeaters crack with rapid fire and send men to early graves.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

A tyrant then comes centerstage, and thousands hear his song,
A flag of red with four-armed cross; and Panzer barrels long.
Then surprises come at Harbor Red (what madmen call it Pearl?)
A mushroom cloud picks up the Earth, and dancing atoms swirl.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

Unceasing shows the optic orb, on goes the grisly show,
The air now rings with howl of rays, and rockets set aglow;
Men take their plaything—war, that is—no warnings do they mind,
And carry it to distant stars, and worlds they’ve yet to find.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

The Tuscan takes the tiny thing, and hefts it in his hand,
And smashes it to pieces—what it shows he cannot stand;
But though he tries to break the truth, he finds its texture hardest;
Fear of truth destroyed the glass, so too it killed the artist.
Advancing through the eons, through time’s spectral gloom,
One hundred thousand ancient soldiers, marching to their doom.

Editor’s Introduction to:

By Thought Alone

William R. Fortschen

Presenting a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has come to be the epitome of scientific respectability. For several years the AAAS has not only allowed papers on telepathy and Extra-Sensory Perception, but has had a whole meeting session devoted to the subject.

This is not without controversy. John A. Wheeler, one of America’s most respected physicists, has more than once denounced the whole practice as misleading and tending to lend respectability to charlatans, while the Amazing Randi, a professional magician, continues to offer $10,000 to the first “scientist” who can unambiguously demonstrate the existence of any ESP phenomena whatever. Wheeler, incidentally, is one of the most “far out” physics theorists in the world; his rejection of ESP is not mere bile or narrowness of mind.

Meanwhile, the Soviets devote not mere scientific sessions, but whole research institutes, to ESP. Research on Kirlian Photography is controversial in the United States, but receives government support in the USSR. One U.S. reporter was arrested in Moscow for receiving “state secrets” about ESP. Whatever the truth about ESP, the Russians take it seriously.

So might some others.

By Thought Alone

William R. Fortschen

He awoke screaming. It had come again—the coiling, twisting image; the shimmering block melting into a molten pool. He knew that they were thinking again, and laughing at the thought. Bob Jamerson rubbed the sleep from his weary, bloodshot eyes as he tried to drive the nightmare from his consciousness. As he turned to check the clock on his night-stand, the phone cut the silence with its sharp, piercing ring. Mumbling a curse, he picked it up.

“Jamerson,” a taut, shrill voice shouted.

“Yeah, who the hell is this?”

“Henderson. We just got the word. The show is going up.”

Jamerson was wide awake now. The nightmare gone. “Yeah, go on.”

“The foreign minister has requested that you be at the airport within the hour. Peking is sending in a 747 to take the news crews and ambassadors back.”

“Did he say anything? What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know anything other than the fact that Peking is opening up at last. They’re taking one correspondent from each of the major news services, the Japanese ambassador, and the NATO ambassadors—that’s all. So, by God, be there.”

“What about my camera crew?”

“Drop them. Peking says that they’ll provide the technical backup. They just want you from the cable service, that’s all.”

He could just picture Dennison’s reaction when he found out that he had been ditched for the big one that they had all been waiting for. But from Henderson’s tone he knew there was no argument about it.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Henderson hung up without another word.

Hong Kong International was bedlam, as the reporters and diplomats pontificated their pet China theory.

“The bastards are going to do it,” Randall of CBS shouted over his third Bloody Mary of the morning. “I tell you they got a twenty-megaton aimed at Moscow right now, and, by God, old King is going to punch the button with the world press standing by for prime-time coverage.”

“Bullshit,” came Quinton’s booming brogue from the back of the bar. “Why in hell would they want us there then? Don’t you think the Russians bloody well know that we’ve been called in to watch whatever it is that will happen? By God’s blood, they aren’t about to blast themselves back into the Stone Age over a Christ-forsaken rock in the middle of the Amur River.”

Bob sat quietly and nursed his wake-up Bloody Mary as he waited for the plane. As usual, he had drunk himself into unconsciousness, only to be awakened at 2:00 in the morning. He wasn’t sure if he was hung over, still drunk, or suffering from acute exhaustion and mental fatigue. At the moment it just damn well didn’t matter. For the last three years it hadn’t mattered at all. He knew that Henderson had arranged the assignment to Peking in the hope of seeing him straighten out, but that hope was just about gone. He nursed his drink and stared out the window as the Chinese 747 pulled up onto the tarmac. The correspondents and ambassadors around him pushed their way to the door, like cattle in the desert that had just sniffed their first scent of water. He waited for the crush to make its way through the door, and draining his drink, he made his way across the tarmac and aboard the spacious craft that seemed nearly empty with its fifty passengers.

Within minutes the plane received its clearance, roared down the runway, and lifted off for Peking. Bob settled back and tried to collect his thoughts.

He had served in Peking for three years, ever since Wall Street. The memory flashed and he tried to suppress the nightmare. The news office had been quiet that day. The twenty-day war in the Middle East was over, with Israel in Damascus, and in spite of the conflict, there was the first faint wind of rapprochement between Russia and America with the announcement of a joint Soviet-American space effort to return to the moon. He was working at the terminal preparing for the evening broadcast when the light of a thousand suns exploded across the newsroom. Instinctively he shielded his eyes as the building rocked to the shock wave. As the light subsided, he ran to the window and watched the mushroom cloud of death rise up over lower Manhattan.

Marie and the two kids were down there shopping. In impotent rage he screamed, as a square mile of the city disappeared, along with his life and his dreams.

He was forced to work, for Henderson sent him out with a crew, and his tearful, emotional reporting gave him national prominence as he walked through the wreckage of lower Manhattan and revealed to the world the horrors of the return of the bomb. The Peoples Liberation Movement claimed responsibility in retaliation for the capitalist support of Israeli aggression. The second bomb was found five minutes before its detonation in front of the Capitol, but the third one took out Parliament. Jamerson reported the story for three days without rest, and then spent the next month in the hospital with radiation sickness. They never found Marie—at least, not to identify her. And the drinking started.

Henderson finally transferred him to Peking to get him away from the memories. Once a week he would inform the world of the latest news concerning acupuncture, the new incentive socialism, and panda matings. His counterparts in the Chinese Bureau knew what happened and went out of their way to be helpful. He buried himself in his work when the drink didn’t hold sway and soon found himself close to the inner workings of the Chinese government as they struggled for closer ties with the West, and as their relationship with Russia turned for the worse. The sense of crisis grew throughout the winter of ’87. And then came the killing on a small island in the middle of the Amur River.

China and Russia had fought about it once before, back in the late sixties. The island was in the middle of the river that divided the two countries in East Asia. An argument broke out between two guards, a fistfight developed, and in the confusion the Russian guard was shot and killed. The next day the Russians came back in force, killing ten Chinese border guards and taking possession of the island. Within a fortnight skirmishing flared up all along the border and the Chinese sealed it off to Western correspondents. The night they sealed it off, the blow fell with a stunning force that shook the world.

The Russians crossed the border along a hundred miles of front and penetrated fifty miles into China, claiming that they were liberating territory wrongly held by the hegemonic Chinese. China bombed Vladivostok the following day. That night the Russians slammed Peking with a conventional bombing and rocket attack and stated that in thirty days China must demilitarize its entire border or face the full consequences. And that night, as well, China announced that all Westerners were to leave the country within twenty-four hours or be interned as a measure of national security. China turned in upon itself, like the forbidden nation of old.

He tried to sleep but the dream came back, and he awoke screaming as the plane fell out of the sky onto the runway at the edge of Peking.

“You really seemed to be riding something, Jamerson,” Randall said softly, as the plane taxied to a stop.

He looked at him weakly and he sensed a recognition, an understanding in his dark blue eyes. He nodded slowly and looked out the window.

“Funny,” Randall said with a distant voice. “I’ve had a strange sense about this ever since…” He trailed off into silence as the doors popped open, flooding the cabin with a startling white light and the crisp, oily smell of kerosene fuel.

Dozens of Mao-jacketed guards with submachine guns surrounded the plane and the limos which were lined up for the passengers. The ambassadors grumbled about precedence and official welcome, as interpreters guided them to their assigned cars. The seriousness of the interpreters and the demeanor of the guards silenced the group as they left the plane and climbed into their cars.

The motorcade thundered through the city. And Jamerson noticed the empty streets. Perhaps they had evacuated in anticipation of the Soviet strike. He assumed they were going to the Forbidden City, but the motorcade turned onto a side road and drove out into the countryside. The vehicles pulled up next to a small bunker in the middle of an empty field surrounded by guards. The two steel blast doors of the bunker were open like the gates of a tomb, and interpreters speaking in swift monotones told the Westerners to enter and go downstairs.

Stepping into the coldness of the bunker was like walking into a world of steel and night. An endless staircase led deeper and deeper into the earth, and the crowd whispered about blast shelters and command silos. Fifty meters down, the stairs ended in a sterile anteroom facing a large barrier of steel. It slid back noiselessly, as if guided by unseen hands.

The steel doors opened slowly to reveal a darkened room within.

“Comrades, I must apologize for the mystery, but won’t you please come in.” From out of the shadows stepped the Chairman of the People’s Republic, and the stunned ambassadors ceased their arguments about protocol.

The auditorium lit up as the Chairman led them into the room. The seats were of dark, plush velvet, and the surrounding walls were paneled with alternating sheets of mahogany and backlit translucent glass.

“Comrades, please take your seats, for our time is short and there is much to be explained.”

Chairman Hing moved to the podium at the front of the room. He seemed totally at ease, as if he were enjoying an immense joke. His reputation for ruthlessness was somehow out of place with the lean, wispy figure that stood benevolently before them. Jamerson took a seat at the front of the room and settled into his chair.

“Thirty days ago,” Hing said with a softness that silenced the room, as all strained to hear him, “the People’s Republic suffered a ruthless attack from the Soviet government. The ultimatum of war or abandonment of our rightful borders left us with an impossible choice. If we fought, the full horror of nuclear war would be unleashed upon us with all the nightmares that we saw unleashed in New York and London.” The Chairman looked into Jamerson’s eyes and gave him a slight nod of acknowledgment. “On the other hand, if we bowed to the Soviet demands, free license would be given for further intimidations and the exploitation of our peoples by any bully that desired to torment us. Your governments, gentlemen, did this to China in the past, and that bitter lesson has never been forgotten. Last month I asked all of your leaders for help in bringing pressure to bear against the Soviet government, and you wrung your hands with expressions of concern but none of you stepped forward to stop the Soviet aggressors. I know your reasoning. Let the two fight it out and in the end the West will pick up the pieces.

“We realized that we had to find another way. We knew that this crisis would come and that a conventional answer would not work. And so, gentlemen, when the ultimatum of thirty days was issued, we decided to try an answer that was unconventional yet an application of our greatest strength. Now, the day before the ultimatum expires, we are prepared to answer.”

Behind the Chairman a wall-sized screen lit up. It flickered and blinked for several seconds and the Great Square of Peking came into focus. From end to end it was a sea of humanity dressed in the monotonous blue of the people’s jackets.

“You see,” the Chairman said more forcefully, “warfare can be fought in many different modes. The Russians wage it in a non-Marxist sense against the working class of people by the apocalyptic use of the bomb. But, gentlemen, there are many different ways to wage war. My advisers, who developed this project, chose ibn-Abdul-Hassan as their example. In the eleventh century he forged an empire in the Middle East by waging war, not against people, but against the select few who ruled. If a prince was against him, the people would not suffer, only the prince. For Hassan would send one of his followers to hunt down the prince, to wait for him and to slay him. Hassan’s men were known as Assassins.”

The Chairman turned and faced the screen behind him as the camera zoomed in on the gate of the Imperial Palace, where a two-foot column of steel stood upon a platform beneath the arched gate and the watchful portrait of Chairman Mao.

“You see, gentlemen,” the Chairman continued, “we have one great weapon that the West never dreamed of. We have the minds of people. The minds of a disciplined people who can be linked together and controlled. In Red Square, at this very moment, are one million of our people, and each of them is engaged in but one thought. One controlled, disciplined thought, that they have trained to control. The result will be obvious to you in a moment.”

The column of steel started to shimmer with heat, its edges quickly discoloring to blue and then to a glaring white. Like a piece of ice thrown onto a city street, the steel column started to puddle and spread out in a widening pool of flaming, molten metal. It exploded into incandescent flame, and the image winked out.

The Chairman turned back to his audience with a smile. “That, gentlemen, is the power of China. Twenty-eight days ago it took every citizen of our nation six hours of thought to perform that feat. A week ago it still took ten million. Today, but one million of our people concentrating on making that steel column melt were able to do so by thought alone in a matter of seconds. The theory has been known for years. Some feeble experiments were attempted, but the crisis that was forced upon us drove the People’s Republic to the logical conclusion. Now, comrades, if a million people could do that to a steel column, think what could be done to a Russian heart—or to a Russian brain.”

The room was suddenly plunged into darkness as the Chairman barked a command. The clear glass panels around the auditorium glowed softly with color and Jamerson looked around the room, realizing that the panels were covered with hundreds of photos. Beneath each photo was a name—in Russian, Chinese, French, Japanese, and English. Startled shouts echoed in the room as the audience realized what they were looking at. The photos of the ruling elite of Russia. The screen behind the Chairman flickered and wavered for nearly a minute—until the satellite was finally patched through to pick up on the Soviet television system. And Jamerson finally realized the full impact of what was about to happen.

It was May 1, and the May Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square was unfolding on the screen.

“Gentlemen, while your plane was in the air, we announced to the Soviet government that we had capitulated to their demands. This to lull them into a sense of jubilation, so that all dignitaries would be in Red Square, and to explain the mass meetings taking place all over China at this moment, which we knew their satellites would be observing. They think they have won, but watch now as China wins its war.” In stunned silence the Westerners watched as the inner circle of the Soviet party appeared on the screen above Lenin’s tomb. All were silent in the room, as the unknowing Russian cameraman filmed the death of a regime.

One of the Russians standing next to the Party President had a strange, quizzical look that quickly changed to agonized panic. A great gout of blood gushed forth from his mouth and he collapsed behind the waist-high wall. The camera turned away to scan the parade, but after several seconds, as if guided by unseen hands, it swept back to the unfolding nightmare atop the wall.

The leaders of the Supreme Soviet died before the confused gaze of the world. Party Secretary Valinofsky stood in stunned silence as his followers toppled one after the other, in a kicking confusion of hemorrhaging blood.

“Now, watch,” Hing said, “the special arrangement we have made for him.”

Valinofsky started to struggle as if he were wrestling with an unseen opponent. He slowly rose into the air, kicking and screaming in terror. Jamerson looked from his terrified image to the photos around the room. Most of them were blacked out. The rest pulsed with a dull red light. Valinofsky’s photo was prominently displayed at the front of the room—it suddenly went dark.

Jamerson looked back to Valinofsky as he hovered above Lenin’s tomb and the camera closed in on his terrified face. It filled the screen with the look of death, and then disappeared in a flaming explosion of fiery light. From the screen came the sound of his nightmarish death scream, and the panic-stricken thousands in Red Square. The screen went dark—the death scream of Valinofsky replaced by the horrified shouts of the diplomats and correspondents.

The Chairman looked to his audience and smiled, as if they were children who had confessed a fear of the dark cellar below.

“Comrades, you have just witnessed the death of the Soviet government. By the very nature of its centralized approach, the removal of a few thousand will cripple any response. Every Soviet general, every member of the Supreme Soviet, every regional ruler, their top scientists, and all controllers of the nuclear forces are dead. We are already broadcasting our demands for complete capitulation to the few who we knew were sympathetic to our cause, and who have therefore been spared for the moment. If they refuse, well, then, gentlemen, we will just have to sift our way down through their ranks until we find those who will cooperate. The war, comrades, is over.

“Oh, yes, comrades, we do expect your cooperation with us in the days to come.

“Some of you have even sensed what was coming; in fact, we wanted you to. Of course, there will be some changes now.”

The translucent screens lit up again. Jamerson scanned the photos with horror as he realized that he was looking at images of the West’s top leadership. The top media people were there as well, and Jamerson sat back down as he looked at his own photo. The memories of Marie were gone at last—a larger nightmare had reared up to take their place.

“Comrades,” the Chairman said mockingly, “be assured we shall be thinking of you in the days to come.”

Editor’s Introduction to:

Doughfoot Sanctum

James William Holzer

When they asked William Tecumseh Sherman what war was, he said, “War is Hell.” Sherman’s view was that if you made war sufficiently intolerable, the enemy would give up, and the war would be shorter.

It wasn’t a new notion, but it was new to the United States. The tradition of Western Civilization was that of Just War: that there could be Laws of War, and there were things forbidden to soldiers and commanders alike. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution clearly believed in “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” and International Law in general, and the Laws of War in particular, were based firmly on the theory of Natural Law.

War was conducted between states; and under the Laws of War a careful distinction was made between combatants and noncombatants, and for that matter between public and private property. When Confederate troops raided a Maine town by traveling through Canada, they were careful to put on their uniforms before beginning hostilities, and to burn only public buildings. Bombarding open cities was considered a crime against humanity, and even as late as World War I the British were hard pressed to defend their policy of considering food shipments to Germany to be contraband of war, and thus forbidden to be carried to Germany on neutral vessels.

Democracy changed the concept of war, of course. Democratic states fight only just wars, and thus their enemies are not justified; it’s only a short step to thinking the enemy is not really human. Sherman didn’t go that far: Sherman said that by carrying the war to the South he was making the war shorter. One supposes some such logic was employed to justify the Tokyo fire raids, Dresden, and Hiroshima. The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the choice of targets: Nagasaki had almost no military value at all and was the most Westernized of Japanese cities. But by that time the distinction between combatants and noncombatants had been well-nigh erased.

At the beginning of World War II we threw away what we had gone to war for in 1917: in the first weeks of the war U.S. submarines were ordered to sink Japanese merchant ships wherever found and without warning. As late as 1937 the United States could say, “This Government holds the view that any general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large populace engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” The Japanese Government responded by saying that Imperial Japan agreed, and that the bombing of Nanking was and would be confined to military facilities. The Doolittle raiders were supposed to bomb only military targets; that was in the early days of World War II. By the war’s end we deliberately dropped incendiary weapons into residential areas of Tokyo. The principle of military effectiveness—there is no real distinction between soldiers, munitions workers, and other civilians who feed, clothe, and house munitions workers—had won over the Laws of War, and war became very hell indeed.

Today the Laws of War live only in phrases. “War crimes,” after all, apply only to losers. The victors are always safe: witness the farce of Russian generals sitting in judgment against their Nazi partners for the crime of invading Poland. The losers will almost always be tried as war criminals, and generally convicted, no matter what they did or did not do.

It is not entirely clear that abandoning what the United States was once pleased to call “the principles of law and humanity” has been an unmixed blessing.

Herewith a story of an army that never heard of the Laws of War.

Doughfoot Sanctum

James William Holzer

I could smell the blood cumup. It’s the sixth day of the eleventh month in Judea and about one above zero. Servo-Squadron 999 has been diddybopping on a cleanup sweep that started on the Gulf of Aqaba to where we are now, Sedom, on the south shore of the Dead Sea, within spitting distance of Jordan.

Night fell, so there was no point running it around the rolling hills the terrain computer told us were sand heaps. A Ta’Amire Grunt we rolled up while he was grubbing food told us about a shortcut, a place called Raccoon Ravine, thirty-five klicks from New JerUSAlem. It was a clear case of plausible denial. The Grunt lied. We capped him good. That Raccoon Ravine had ambush smeared all over it.

The war would be over by George Herbert Walker Bush Memorial Day, Sergeant Major Moseby promised us. And I believe him.

999 broke out the carbon epoxy Quonsets and struck a firebase under the cover of some overhanging cliffs, a wind-free alley that’ll keep the sand blowing off the Negev out of your mouth and nose. I put out the moisture collectors for the nuke reactor we tote around that makes gallons of nonradioactive waste water, then doused the drippings with halozone purifier, just in case. Tastes as good as we call it, Barn-Bam Juice.

Two hours later we’re a Free Fire Zone. GEN computers probed the wave of black faces running us and figure them to be UAR Grunts and Wacky Jacks—Turks, Libyans, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Iranians—Number Ten. The Worst. Twenty thousand, tallied GEN. Mostly Wacky Jacks. A real wave. 999 really had to bust caps at those Wacky Jacks because they really ran it back at us.

I’m a B-gunner on a MaxiFire Team working off a four-wheeler flatbed armed with an HBV-6, a 20mm Auto-Cannonade, that’s five 7-barrel Galling turrets that fire 32,000 rounds per minute. Fire’s so thick it’ll vaporize missiles, jets, Slicks, waves. Problem is you tap The Beast in one minute and you need a good day for a reload. So you hop off the flatbed and close with the unfriendlies. That’s when you begin building the dream.

Most of our guys carry Chinese Army 126 silenced machine guns because the plastic disc baffles suppress the noise and keep the crummy sand out of the works. This war’s sure hell on the ears: ha-ha. So you’ve spent your only sixty-round clip and you whip out your K-bar to slice and dice the Grunts. I’m an ear collector, nothing unique. Won a bone-handled Bowie last June with a 999 record, three hundred confirmed kills. That’s unusual. That’s six hundred ears. I did a trade-up with that Bowie, got a ten-year-old packet of peas and carrots buzzed with gamma cobalt 60 to keep it fresh. Great eats, I’ll tell you.

Ear collecting started as a rumor two years ago. Someone said that the first Gook to take ten thousand pair got shipped by COMBANK to Monaco for a month’s R&R. COMBANK picked up on it and started offering all kinds of incentives.

One lousy Dragonfly Slick broke the back of the Wacky Jack wave, greasing for good the drag-asses we drove into the Ravine. Dropped a petroleum/ether mist set afire on top of them. Daniel 8:4 is always talking about some valley in the Bible filled with bodies and blood stacked up as high as a horse’s bridle. He was really looking forward to seeing it.

The whole firefight lasted ten minutes. Long Lips and Flak Jack Borry got put down by Doctor Croc. Nice guys, not scuzzies, knew them slightly. They weren’t ear collectors, always railed against it. Funny how those anti-ear types seem to get selected early by Doctor Croc…

Heard by accident some scuzzie scheme to take easy ears from those burned Wacky Jacks in the Ravine. I went dinky-doo when I heard that, I wanted to frag those 999 scuzzballs good. See, ears don’t count except in pairs and only those taken hand-to-hand. I had a good laugh when those scuzzies got there and found black goo up to their ankles where Wacky Jacks used to be. Seems the KIA data bank completed the body count and dispatched a SHADOW rotocraft to drop twelve tons of Blue Snow on the corpses. That damn computer sure has a fetish about contaminating diseases. Made that bloody mess mud in seconds.

November 30. Took a hundred pair of Grunt and Wacky Jack ears this month. Average. Best thing I could win was a thousand-gallon blivet of diesel fuel HALO’ed and abandoned in the East Negev. I still had a bad taste in my mouth having run out of diesel during the Siege of Revivim. Luck has it that 999 won’t get a fuel drop for two weeks and I’m sittin’ on a gold mine. I traded up for stuff you wouldn’t believe…

999 moved real easy, resting and rearming. We ended up at the Caves of En-gedi, near the Dead Sea and about sixteen klicks south of New JerUSAlem. I hear that the New City is a staging area for UAR regulars we call Kings. Kings wear blue and gray uniforms trimmed with gold braid. A King’s ears with matching braid are worth twenty times a Grunt’s ears. Twenty times.

It was a great earthquake at the beginning of the war that did the most damage to the New City, laid the whole Middle East flat besides—you could diddybop for months and not find a wall standing anywhere. The Libyans added insult to injury, dusting New JerUSAlem with a piperdyl glycolate mist. This made the citizens totally fugazzi, so crazed they emulsified each other with extreme intolerance. Then Wacky Jacks swept in to clean up and started crucifying corpses for revenge. If you can picture twenty-five thousand sabras up on stakes, you can see why 999 calls those scuzzballs Wacky Jacks.

Nobody knows for sure who to pray to over here for victory. There’s Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, Lenin, Buddha, Mahavir, and good old J.C. I’ve got this theory that God’s either an Iranian or a Pakistani because they’re winning this war. The Soviets and Red Chinese haven’t sent replacements to 999 in two years. They lost heart after the Ukraine got dust-bombed with anthrax and Beijing was blanketed with Sarin and GB nerve gases during the third week of the war. I like 999 the way it is, ninety-nine percent all-American. We’ve got the remaining force of the Israeli Saiyeret who taught us more than we want to know about desert warfare. And five Tojoe Zappers who sleep the day away in Conex body containers to build up their visual purple for night recon. Those guys could be the only living Tojoes in the world, but you know that story. They won’t collect ears, but I hear that COMBANK would have to buy them prime beach property on the French Riviera if they ever let the KIA data bank tally their total confirmed kills. They never carry Chinese burpguns, only long, sharp K-bars. To tell you the truth, they scare the crap out of me.

The COMBANK directive for the En-gedi mission read as follows: Clean the caves of unfriendlies, destroy/confiscate found caches of weapons/supplies (we cop them), and assault New JerUSAlem to destroy the Muslim shrine on Mount Moriah, the Dome of the Rock. 999 always ignores that last directive. It crops up once a month, without fail. COMBANK says do it, it’ll demoralize the enemy once and for all. 999 knows better. Touch the Dome and you’ll have a suicide wave running at you, revengeful as wolves. Pass.

Messin’ with the Dome is how this friggin’ war started in the first place. Some Zealots wanted that same spot on Mount Moriah to build a new temple to replace the old one razed by the Romans in biblical times. They wanted this new temple as a house for an Englishman named Malcolm Fox-Godfrey, who they swore was the Messiah. (Daniel 8:4 thinks the guy was the Antichrist.) The Muslims wouldn’t budge so some dinky-doo called the Hammer flew a Slick over the Dome and bombed it with a hundred gallons of hog blood, red-washing it good. Now Muslims feel about hogs like 999 feels about rabid palm tree rats racking up in our Quonsets. It made them real irate.

There are about one billion Muslims in this world, so you can see how they could foot an army of two hundred million Kings, Wacky Jacks, and Grunts anxious to converge on Israel and grease anything kosher. America, Japan, Russia, and Red China rushed in to help the Israelis—you may have seen the Siege of Megiddo on teevee. I was there.

That was three years ago. I hear that things are pickin’ up in America. There’s no chance of a UAR invasion now and there’s a higher ratio of women to men, about three hundred to one. The two coasts are still hot with anthrax bugs but they’ve done a good job controlling those fungus spores from drifting incountry. What’s left that’s human lives in the Four Corners, that’s Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. It’s nice to know that the war is contained and North America is on the mend and the twelve hundred troopers of Servo-Squadron 999 are out here making things safe for the world.

December 17. Rumor has it that Bob Hope’s thinking of giving a USO Christmas show down in the Gulf of Aqaba next week. Shine it boys. 999 is going to stay in En-gedi to burn Grunts.

Ta’Amire hill Grunts armed with NightSun blinders and carbon dioxide lasers hit our Ground Mobile column between a red sunset and the edge of night. The firefight lasted eight minutes—I counted. Fifteen troopers, good guys, lost their retinas, forgot to wear their quartz amber visors. They’re getting court-martialed besides—I guess they forgot regulations and how to see in the same day. Ha-ha.

Before I knew it Sergeant Major Moseby sent me and those five Tojoe Zappers into the mountains near Jericho to emulsify some rabble-rousing Iranian Kings that put those Ta’Amire Grunts up to that blinding assault. By Christmas I took twenty pair of King ears and braid but them Tojoe Zappers took a hundred times my tally. Two rucksacks full. Tadashi gave them to me. Now, I’m no scuzzie and I won’t take credit for another trooper’s ears. It was real hard to resist because those rucksacks would’ve put me over the top in December for that freeze-dried pasta and hot sausage.

I figure those Tojoes felt bad about leaving me alone during the day while they meditated in their holes. So I dug a hole of my own. They liked that in me, I guess. See, they’re not ear collectors. Never have been.

January 6, 1999. It took us three weeks to clean Jericho before we could get back to En-gedi for cave-cleaning duty. It’s all by the numbers down here. You can diddybop up a slope to a low cave or shout down a Dragonfly Slick to LZ you on a ridge so you can rope-rappel down the headwalls to the high caves. A three-man team begins the takedown with a flashbang stun grenade to buy you time while you bust caps with your wheelgun. You always aim for the head, two shots for male Grunts and one shot each for females and their offspring. COMBANK started an ammo incentive, saying we waste brass the way we cap at Grunts. Strakshit. There must be a hundred thousand holes in this sector.

With luck you can go the easy route. Find an unexploded Dragontooth pod out in the desert, rewire it with a proximity fuse, and chuck it into a cave, especially one filled with fugazzi Wacky Jacks. A Dragontooth’s filled with forty-eight hundred plastic and metal shards that blast through a cave the way anhydride phosphorus roots through bone marrow. I remember seeing a SHADOW drop a thousand ’tooths on a wave of Grunts working themselves into a fit near El Thamad—talk about blood rising as high as a horse’s bridle! My buddy Troggy was never the same after seeing it. Doctor Croc took Troggy out the hard way last May…

The desert heat greased our mascot camels last July. I don’t know why I wrote that, it just popped into my mind…

Food fantasies are big in the 999. I’m on a corn dog, taco, and jelly bean fantasy this month. A single contraband chicken bouillon cube went for two hundred gold certificates today. Most troopers grub off the land or off the enemy. The safest stuff to eat are figs, camel (like venison), and Barn-Bam Juice.

Let me tell you about the idea I pitched to COMBANK that got me three days R&R in Sardinia. I figured that we could store water in the oversized tires of our Ground Mobile vehicles instead of those tankers that always seemed to disappear in a firefight. I even devised a way to transfer the tire water storage to spare tanks, rerimming and remounting the tire, all in five minutes flat. Not bad for a guy with a seventh-grade education.

My buddies are dearer than life to me, the best things this war has given me. There’s Sex Pretzel, the Chic Concept, BRO-21X, Burnt Offerings, and Daniel 8:4. Some names. My name? Some of the troopers call me the Hump since that water-in-the-tires brainstorm. Names don’t matter anymore because I’m different now. Real different.

March 1, Daniel 8:4 is going dinky-doo on a regular basis. He’s got the notion that in one of those En-gedi caves he’s going to find long-lost biblical scrolls written by J.C. himself. He did find some rotten reed paper but it blew to smithereens in a stiff sharav wind. He got worse after that but went totally fugazzi the first time we diddybopped through Bethlehem. He was frothing because he couldn’t find a cave, a manger, a nativity scene… nada. It took me three hours to bliss him out. Explained to him that the place was but a wide spot on the road two thousand years ago, that they had only one motel back then, right? Daniel 8:4 will listen to logic, as long as there’s a biblical slant to it.

Don’t let me forget my best buddy, Sex Pretzel. He’s an expert on gorilla war having read a bunch of three-dollar novels about a war called ’Nam. Sex Pretzel’s the one who dubbed the troopers of 999 Gooks since he feels that the ’Cong really kicked American tail back then, and he likes to identify with a winner. Americans used to be called Wa-Ky Jakes by the ’Cong (we say Wacky Jacks), Grunts, and Kings. Now we call the enemy that for good luck. 999 wants to win this war. Sure, the Pretzel’s a front-runner but he’s a buddy just the same. He wanted to dub us the Buddha Heads but Daniel 8:4 threw a two-day fit, so we settled on Gooks. Rumor has it that the Pretzel tipped COMBANK on the ear-collecting scheme, but he refuses to take credit for it. That’s the type of guy he is, a gentleman. A real historian.

COMBANK hasn’t paid up on the ear grand prize yet, but we all know they will. They’re giving us goals at least, hope. Monaco, Casino de Monte Carlo, the dolls… ultrareality. I’ve got this theory that it’s the ultrarealities that give us Gooks the desire, the hunger to survive, that makes 999 real revengeful in a firefight. The Red Chinese and the Soviets never had that in them. Commies don’t like incentive programs, see? That’s the great thing about a World Bank runnin’ this war, because once it’s over, the twelve hundred Gooks of 999 are going to each get a four-bedroom adobe equipped with NBC deterrents and a 1999 Red Chinese four-by-four diesel with plastisol paint, all courtesy of COMBANK. That’s gratitude.

Daniel 8:4 says his Bible predicted this war, the Four Horsemen, the plagues, the greasing of two billion, the nuking of Japan. Calls it Armageddon. But what the hell, we’ve gone through all that and we’ve got a thousand-year Kingdom of Heaven coming to us. Paradise. COMBANK says that they’ll pay for Paradise, and I believe it.

Sex Pretzel tells me that at the end of the ’Nam war all a trooper got was a plastic discharge card and some medical benefits—no wonder they lost! No incentives. He also told me about ’Nam troopers they called Double-Vets. (We call them scuzzies in 999.) They strangled, shot the enemy, then had sex with them. Fugazzi. They used a lot of drugs back then too. We had a druggie bunch in the 999 that got emulsified, maybe fragged, at the Siege of Revivim. Good riddance. 999 is stoked and alert, all-American in our habits, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

May 9. Something happened two weeks ago that really bothers me. I’m sitting on a slope near Be’er Ora eating dried camel jerky when some Ta’Amire Grunt, musta been older than Allah, caught sight of me, started dancing, real joyous-like, holding out a honeyed locust and a handful of wheat. Peace. Had one tooth in his black gums but, all in all, a real squared-away bedouin. I didn’t think. It was a reflex. I put three caseless 10mm slugs in his head, tap-tappity-tap. Easy. Like it was nothing.

In three years a guy can change. I’ve got this theory that something is seriously wrong with me…

Nobody in 999 ever talks about dying, death, even says those words. Bad luck. When a trooper describes our killing ways, he’ll say emulsified, cleaned, burned, zapped, greased. When one of our guys gets burned, we’ll say, “Didya hear? Doctor Croc took out the Boychild last night.” Nothing more. That started during the Nubian Desert Campaign in ’97 when some nasty river crocs caught some of our guys napping on the banks of the Nile near the Wadi Haifa. A croc will take you apart before you can scream. Just like Doctor Croc. You’ll never see him, smell him, but he’s always there.

You must be wondering why I’m penciling my memoirs, me, a seventh-grade graduate. The Sandbag Ambush is why. I’m finally out of this war. Writing is my way of doing something other than peeing blood into a bedpan, a souvenir of my tour so that someday my son can read how it was for his daddy to face down Doctor Croc and work for Doctor Croc, twenty-five hours a day. The kid may think his daddy’s dinky-doo, maybe fugazzi. That’s okay by me.

Yeah, the Sandbag Ambush. I remember every minute of that day, May 17. Me and my buddies are taking our daily float in the Dead Sea—talk about ultrareality! The salt is so velvety and dense that you can float on all sides of your body. Forever. Problem is some guys fall so deep asleep that they float out a mile and nearly drown. Or you swallow a mouthful of Sea and puke for a day afterward. Your skin gets as tough as croc hide, but it’s worth a bath to get the sand out of your crotch and ears.

The Chic Concept swore that it was so relaxing his soul flew out of his body and went to Monaco without him. I told him that I’d believe it when he brings back a doll or a casino chip to me.

The Sandbag Ambush was sort of a letdown for me. I’m diddyboppin’ on a recon west of the Sea and I come upon a freshwater wadi, so I have no choice but to squat on it, break UHF squelch, and have 999 bring up the column to fill the empty tires. It was dark so I set up an electronic perimeter, a people sniffer, and two acoustic trail sensors. Nothing would get within twenty meters without me hearing their steps in my earphone. Just my luck that some Wacky Jack Zapper’s got herself wired into a Black Hole Sensor Suppression System. She’s stalkin’ me, and what am I doing? Filling sandbags to make a chair so I don’t have to dip my dainty ass in the wet wadi. Dumbo. So I’m shoveling and filling and before I can scream I’ve got a 4.5mm tumbler in my gut. That was her first and last mistake. She’s wired, but so am I. Troopers on solo recon wear a custom set of body-pressure-point collars, so if you’re zapped your body can absorb the initial impact of the bullet or the knife, slowing the bleeding, saving the strength you need to react. She had one shot and I’ve got my collars tight and… whump! My K-bar’s stickin’ out of her eye. Like I said, if you want to put them in Wacky Jack heaven fast, go for the skull.

Three weeks later I wake up in a Swiss hospital in Monaco, right next door to the newest casino in the Acropolis! Doctor Croc nearly took me out, I’m seventeen pounds lighter, and… lordy, the war’s over! It ended on George Herbert Walker Bush Memorial Day, 6:00 p.m., June 12, 1999. I swear, that Moseby must be psychic or something!

All my buddies are in town, intact, except for Burnt Offerings, who broke his ankle coming to see me, slippin’ on the wet marble floor of the reception area! Wild. They tell me that Europe is the Paradise COMBANK promised us, that most of it was spared in the war while the rest of the world is Number Ten. The Worst. COMBANK moved out of Dallas and set up permanent shop in Brussels. All the guys want to settle down in Utah, since they hear that the women there passed a bunch of pro-polygamy laws. They decided to share rather than go without. Smart. I hate to break up a team, but I’m partial to Colorado, a ranch by the river, fishin’, farmin’, and loafin’. I hear some foreigners in this ward write off America as if it were a leper colony or something. Me, well, I like the idea of playing frontiersman as long as COMBANK’s willing to pick up the tab.

It’s not that I’m deserting my buddies. I never would’ve made it without them, never survived this war. Get this: they took a unanimous vote, saying they wouldn’t step into a casino or out with a doll until the day comes when I’m able to stand and go with them as a team—three weeks, a month, no matter how long it takes for me to get my walking papers.

That’s just the kind of guys they are, true-blue. Solid. Squared away. They kill me…

777 Dispensary Lane was the address of York Memorial, a hospital only six months old if you considered the two years of renovation that transformed a crumbling wreck into a glittery glass and steel complex rimmed by six 5-story surgical towers. All that remained to remind the many of the past was a solitary orange-brick power plant surrounded by construction rubble, ringed by a high link fence crowned with razor ribbon.

A perfect place. A place easily overlooked. A place inspected twice a year whose only function was to support the Department of Power and Water as it scrambled to fix a downed power line or ease an overloaded circuit.

A hiding place. In front of a mass of cables and meters a ten-by-five-by-five teakwood trapezoid Samadhi tank brimful with 185 gallons of chlorinated water held at a constant ninety-six degrees. A 25 percent saline of Epsom salt solution supported the ossified floater on a bed of endless sleep.

Rubber-clad feet shuffled in, sensible, hospital shoes. A single 200-watt blue bulb, suspended from the ceiling by a frayed extension cord, swayed and flickered at the touch of Mike Moseby’s shoulder. He went to work immediately, switching on a 25-watt bulb within the tank, opening the latchless door smoothly to check his experiment. In his haste he found a moment to hang a rusty, discarded sign found on a junk pile marked head scan/ultrasound/nuclear medicine/radiology.

Mary Lou Goings was not amused. Her slate-gray eyes, as hard and intimidating as hot lead, flashed sparks at the mocking display.

“You’re one hell of a paramedic, Mike,” she seethed. “Can’t you get it through your head that you aren’t qualified?”

“Fleming, Ehrlich, and Pasteur weren’t physicians either,” he shot back, his gloved hands deftly replacing the prior day’s programming with fresh input into the ports of the multiple sound cassette console he had built from scratch. New fantasies. War stories. Moseby called it building the dream…

Moseby looked at those ferrety, armor-piercing eyes, wondering if she could go the distance. “We’re doing nothing wrong, Mary Lou. You know I care. If you’re looking to label me, think of me as a subliminalist.”

She nodded grudgingly, handing him the results of the morning’s blood testing. “Weird. It’s usually high blood cortisol in the morning and low blood levels at night. Our boy reverses this pattern at will.”

Moseby sighed. “He’s merely resetting his cerebral clock, the day/night cycles, to stay in sync with the time frame of the fantasy programs.”

Floating on top of the Dead Sea, me and my buddies, my belly’s stuffed with sweet figs and Barn-Bam Juice… Paradise. Pretzel, keep your nose above the water! Chic! Daniel’s out too far…

“I wish I could be in his head, building that dream,” said Moseby wistfully. “Free of guilt. Dreams evolving as a real dimension. Blue lights, white lights flashing in the sybaritic cell of the mind. The final, soaring release from the superego. Ultrareality.”

Soft, strong hands flexed nervously. “I’m happy that you can wax poetic about a borderliner when I’m the one who has to change his diapers every hour, no less find a way to get him back unseen to Subintensive Care by six a.m.”

Moseby shook his head good-naturedly, turning his attention to the curled mounds of graph paper churned out in their absence by his crude diagnostic monitors. A combination voltmeter and oscilloscope measured brain wave trains, a polygraph measured muscle tension.

“We have Delta here at one hertz,” he began to read aloud. “Then sporadic Theta at five hertz, then REM, the dream state.” A pause. “REM at fourteen hertz, shifting back to an Alpha harmonic. Beta is nonexistent in him.”

He could imagine those REM eyes shifting rapidly beneath those blue-veined eyelids. “Hypnagogic Theta is the state we must prolong so he can use the knowledge assimilated in the Alpha state to create his own free-flowing fantasy script.” An awkward silence, then euphoria. “Look at this! A tripling of Alpha amplitudes for eighteen seconds! He’s relaxed! He’s attentive! He’s identifying!”

“Swell,” Nurse Goings droned, kneading her aching neck muscles. “I’m up for a day post in Orthopedics. I’d rather hear the slipped discs wailing then watch the borderliners waste away in Subintensive. Hearing Sonnyboy crying No! Don’t pull the plug, while Momma screams, Don’t let Poppa suffer any longer! Then the long faces of the doctors, the lawyers, state officials, in the middle crooning To Pull Or Not to Pull? Keep that money machine rolling along.”

Moseby wasn’t listening. “One morning three years ago this guy’s changing bus tires and in the afternoon he’s a botched lobotomy. A faulty tire explodes, a two-piece rim becomes a rocket-powered guillotine that takes off a part of his head. The prefrontal lobe is mostly gone and the neocortex is hamburger, yet he still listens, he dreams! Isn’t the brain a wonder, Mary Lou? As long as the motor and sensory centers are left intact, his mind will function without a measurable decrease in intelligence.”

The nurse regarded him mistrustfully. “He’s never been well fed. They cut his food and water this morning. They asked me to put him down, Mike. I won’t do it.”

“Then you’d better kiss that Orthopod job good-bye,” Moseby snorted his ridicule. “Get involved, Mary Lou. Feel for this guy! No friends, family. A specter living in the same furnished room for twenty-two years. I’ve been to that rat hole. I’ve seen how this cipher lives, and you know what? He lives for war, for the screaming glory of it. He’s got hundreds of books where a family should be, all about war. Especially Vietnam. The funniest thing is that he never served a day in uniform. The Board aced him. High blood pressure.”

The nurse’s gray eyes kindled. “Those tapes are about Vietnam?”

“A war, Mary Lou, a war that never happened but could occur in twenty years because war is inevitable, don’t you agree?” he questioned vaguely. “A war of lunacy as in the Number of the Beast.’’

Point-eight volt charges were relayed from a hand-held stimulator console to the electrode package attached to the shaven scalp of the experiment. Buttons were pushed in sequence, light-emitting diodes flashed over plastic strips marked urges, excite, judgments, evaluations.

“Emotion is the key to remembering,” Moseby began. “Let’s hope that his hippocampus within the limbic can convert the scripting into a long-term memory.”

Mary Lou jumped, stunned. “Heartbeat’s up fifty beats! There’s no discernible muscle tension on the poly—he’s going, Mike.”

“Live, Gook! Live!” he beseeched, chattering, “I’ll stim his prefrontal—-that’s the center of personality, oversees his goals, his limits of perseverance. Then I’ll zap his hypothalamus to create a moment of sublime ecstasy, follow that with twin charges to the lower temporal lobes so he can relive these positive sensations many times. Hang on, Hump! Run it back at Doctor Croc!’’

REM and midbrain Theta interspersed in violent convulsions on the oscilloscope’s fluorescent screen. Fantasies played havoc with the near-dead mind. A sudden shift to a calming Alpha harmonic. Moseby was out of breath, but relieved.

“Why didn’t I realize that before? The prefrontal is the jailer holding back the savage rat and reptile of the limbic region from escaping through the human neocortical mantle. Our boy doesn’t have a properly functioning prefrontal. He may react in the fantasy I wrote for him with violent mood swings, or laugh, cry at inappropriate times in his dreams. He may be unable to understand the consequences of his actions, no matter how savage, how immoral.”

Nurse Goings’ face flushed the color of her pink apron. “Then he could be having a nonstop nightmare, filled with death, killing… insanity?”

“War is all those things,” he replied strongly, his soft brown eyes aflame with memories of a time best forgotten. “I know about that kind of insanity, of being a gunner in ’Nam, hanging out of Huey Slick bay doors mowing down villes and dinks with my trusty twin-fifties. So I’m like a lot of guys who got a Soviet round in my back who can’t move their legs but promise God that if He lets me walk again I’ll save lives, not take them. So here I am, Mary Lou, Mr. Blue Tailored Jumpsuit, Rolex watch, amber aviator shades, Cabretta leather jacket, aka Mike the Paramedic. A guy with a future. Maybe. But all our boy has is a bunch of well-intentioned types deciding when and who’s going to pull his plug!”

The nurse clucked her tongue rapidly. “You think that by filling this guy’s head with atrocities you’re helping him? You’re the one who’s dreaming, Mike.”

Moseby shrugged sleepily. “That’s what he wants, Mary Lou. Most men never make closer friends during their lifetimes than the ones they make sharing a war. Together. Closer than their wives, their kids.”

“Hump, you’re going to make it, bro’—can you hear me? It’s Burnt Offerings and the Concept. You really burned that Wacky Jack good. No, you can’t have no water for a belly wound… the Slick’s coming, you’re only six klicks from a surgeon. Hump! Start building the dream!”

It was a side glance borne of habit that brought the flat waves on the monitoring screens to her attention. She said the words many times, on cue. Too many times. “He’s gone, Doctor… Mike…”

Mike Moseby managed a gallows laugh. “Didya hear? Doctor Croc took down the Hump last night.”

Mary Lou Goings began the tidying up, using her capable arms to lift the hundred-pound corpse out of the tank and into a small plastic wading pool filled with a cool, biodegradable wash. She brought the body to its feet, slippery dead weight, losing control of her grip, allowing the body to collapse and fall to the concrete floor with a sickening thud, impacting its already damaged head.

A bloody nose, that’s all, she groaned inwardly, sprawling the body in the wading pool to scrub it clean of the telltale salt residue. Maybe I’ll get that Orthopedics post now, she mused as she scrubbed. Maybe it’s better to pull the plug than go through all this bullshit again…

“Build that dream. Ultrareality,” he mumbled to himself. “Be a brave young man, Michael. Accept death. It’s just a Gook, a Buddha Head.”

Platoon Sergeant Michael D. Moseby wept.

July 23, 1999. Let me spit out the bad news first. Rumor has it that some UAR Kings are using Cyprus as a staging area to launch a final counteroffensive in the South Sinai. Must be a wave of Wacky Jacks because Kings have the sense to know when a war is over. I also hear that some fugazzi Iranian Grunts have a vendetta going against 999 and are recruiting a wave of Pakistani Wacky Jacks down in Hyderabad to hunt us down. Just an hour ago I heard that COMBANK says to ignore that talk, the war is kaput. Finito. Like I said before, I’m out of this war for good, but I’m not against re-upping, if you get my drift.

Somebody once told me that bad news comes in threes. That was Sergeant Major Moseby, the resident swami of 999. Seems that those five Tojoe Zappers committed suicide last week, chomped down on their tongues and bled themselves dry. BRO-21X tells me that some scuzzies in the 999 razzed them Zappers during the truce, told them that they were valuable commodities that could make a million gold certificates on an exhibit tour of Europe. I don’t buy the freak show angle—sure, they were proud, but logical. I think they just wanted to go on emulsifying Kings forever. I think they never forgave the Libyans for igniting that H-bomb in the light atmosphere over Japan that cleaned that nation of every living thing. They have a nice name for it now, dusty asphyx… whatever. Man, those Tojoes loved to burn them Kings! Now peace broke out, took that pleasure away from them. They had no country to go to, no family—no future. I guess that counts more than I care to admit…

Now for the good news—I’m getting my walkin’ papers tomorrow! And I’m getting married! In two weeks I’ll be back in the Four Corners with my wife, my buddies—can you believe it? Her name is Mary Lou Goings. (As in comings-and-goings: ha-ha.) She’s the nurse who’s been showering, shaving, and trying to put twenty pounds on my skeleton these past two weeks. She’s not exactly my dream girl but she’s tough, fair, and she cares about me. I like a doll who cares. Mary Lou’s got these gray, gray eyes that look right into you. Like a Tojoe Zapper K-bar. Only sharper.

Of course, my buddies think I’m dinky-doo for fallin’ for the first American doll I’ve seen in three years. They’re still building the dream of going to Utah and having harems of dolls like some UAR King. What they really need is one doll like Mary Lou, that’s all. Get this: she told me today she’s willing to go to Utah and share me with any number of dolls as long as I tell her every day that I love her—can you believe that? Guess I’m going to Utah after all.

Tomorrow is July 24. That’s Pioneer Day in Utah. Could it be an omen for me? I should ask Moseby to look into that for me.

My buddies and me are going to set up a closed community in a place called Heber Valley. We’re going to build a permanent firebase of two-story log cabins for our families and stay together like it was meant to be. Forever. In Paradise. I’ll grow veggies, watch the polestar, and have eight kids with Mary Lou and Mary Lou alone. That polygamy stuff sounds harassing to me. It’s like that Double-Vet crap that went on in ’Nam years back. Either you want to or you don’t.

Let me tell you the best part of leaving this war. It’s spittin’ in Doctor Croc’s mouth knowing that’s all he got of me this time. Sure, he’ll get me someday. Doctor Croc works in mysterious ways, like he did with those Tojoe Zappers. Who knows? When I get to Utah, Doctor Croc may give the Hump a little push in the shower and…

Editor’s Introduction to:

Learning from Viet Nam

Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff

The fog of war covers more than battlefields. If we do not know the strategies employed by our enemies, we handicap ourselves enormously.

Herewith a lesson from one who knows.

Doan Van Toai was a ranking officer with the’Vietcong and worked briefly with the Hanoi government after the fall of South Vietnam. He soon learned the true nature of the cause he had supported.

He is now a research associate at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

David Chanoff is a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.

Learning from Viet Nam: The Patterns of Liberation Movements

Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff

There may well be a “Viet Nam” of the 1980s, and for a while it seemed that El Salvador was well on its way. All the ingredients are there: an oppressed peasantry, an entrenched landlord class, a history of corrupt government, a pseudo-colonial past, an energetic leftist guerrilla movement, and a U.S. government with the will to intervene. Domestic confrontation within the United States also appears ready to take up precisely where it was interrupted by the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.

Only nine years have passed since Viet Nam provided much of the American and European Left with the chance to define a posture vis-à-vis international intervention by the USA. In the process, Viet Nam developed into a moral symbol that transformed the U.S. national debate into a drama of civil disobedience and street violence that added a heavy, emotional overlay to the anti-intervention position. Although there have been a few notable defections from the peace movement since then (Joan Baez, Bernard-Henri Levy, Jean Lacouture, and now Susan Sontag), that same emotion-charged resistance seems still to be on tap. Already Noam Chomsky has warned that “there is overwhelming opposition to U.S. involvement in El Salvador; the popular response has been quite vocal…” Even the offer to send a peace-keeping force of U.S. Marines to the Lebanon to “help” the evacuation of the PLO evoked nightmarish fears of a “Viet Nam syndrome.”

Yet even so, reappraisal is in the air, and the once apparently clear “lessons of Viet Nam,” both pragmatic and moral, are being subjected to review. Facing such a reappraisal is particularly unpleasant for those who once believed that the NLF/Vietcong was in fact “the sole genuine representative of the South Vietnamese people” (as Le Due Tho so often expressed it), and that the eventual goal was “socialism in the North, democracy in the South” (Le Duan’s phrase, the most popular revolutionary slogan of the early 1970s). But there appears to be a growing consensus that understanding American involvement in Viet Nam is a prerequisite to formulating a foreign policy for El Salvador or anywhere else in an endangered world that is different from the reflex strategy of escalating military entanglement or the equally reflex strategy of withdrawal. In Viet Nam, the former approach brought the USA 300,000 casualties and military failure; the latter, 500,000 refugees and political failure. No one wants to be doomed to repeat that particular history.

First among the lessons that Viet Nam teaches concerns the composition of liberation-war guerrilla movements. It is perhaps not widely remembered that the Viet Minh was born in 1941 as an anti-French “front” organization that included nationalists, religious groups, and non-Communist Leftists, together with a tightly disciplined Communist minority that effectively, though covertly, exercised control. After Dien Bien Phu (1954), non-Communist revolutionaries were still employed in the government to continue attracting popular support, even while all anti-Communist factions were being eliminated. It was only when Ho Chi Minh had sufficiently consolidated power that the turn of the nationalists and non-Party militants came.

Exactly the same tactic was re-employed in the 1960s when the National Liberation Front was founded to rally all those who sympathized in any way with Communist goals. Later, NLF operatives created the Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces to provide a link with the nationalist intellectuals who opposed the regime and American intervention, but were sufficiently unenchanted with the Left to keep away from the Viet Cong. Both the Alliance and the NLF served as umbrella groups until 1975 when, with the establishment of the unified government, the Communists felt comfortable enough to eliminate their former allies. Even the NLF/Vietcong itself was eradicated, and its demise went unnoticed and unmarked by the same media that had formerly accorded it such lavish attention. Having used the organization, its army, its supporters, its people, the Vietnamese Communist Party simply disposed of it, along with the load of propaganda that had depended on the appearance of NLF’s “independence” and its inclusion of “moderates.”

There are two points to be made here, both obvious but often overlooked. One is that Communist “liberation war” strategy calls for the creation of guerrilla fronts representing many shades of political feeling, within which the Communists themselves are likely to be a minority. Antagonists are thus faced with an enemy which attracts diversified support and whose leadership is difficult to identify. The foreign propaganda effect alone of such an organization is more than worth the minor risk to the Communist nucleus that it will be outmaneuvered by some temporarily allied faction. Foreign journalists, for example, can be counted on to make a cogent case for the moderate, the liberal, and the nationalist struggle for a homeland rather than for the Communist flavor of the guerrilla movement. They will note that apparently leading figures are intellectuals or religious leaders whose standpoints may be distinctly non-Communist. And over time their reportage will convey to their democratically and pluralistically inclined readers the impression of a movement that is itself “pluralistic,” and to that extent representative and even democratic.

The fact is, however, that the actual layers of guerrilla control are immensely difficult to lay bare even for historians with perspective and leisure, let alone for reporters whose job requires quick insights for urgent deadlines on the basis of limited observation. Even so astute an observer as Bernard Fall could argue in his book Vietnam in the Balance (1966) that the Viet Cong, though aided and partly directed by North Viet Nam, was in fact a distinct entity that included substantial support from various politico-religious sects (among others) and that had its own program quite separate from Hanoi’s. Yet in his May 19, 1975, Victory Day speech, Le Duan let the cat out of the bag:

Our Party [the Vietnamese Communist Party] is the unique and single leader that organized, controlled and governed the entire struggle of the Vietnamese people from the first day of the revolution.

His remarks were later echoed by Nguyen Huu Tho, the NLF’s former president, who matter-of-factly commented that the organization had always been “wholly obedient to the party line” (address on the 15th Anniversary of the NLF, December 19, 1975), while the Ho Chi Minh City party newspaper (Saigon Giai Phong) editorialized that “under the leadership of the Workers Party of Viet Nam [the Vietnamese Communist Party], the National Liberation Front was founded, and under the wise leadership of the Party, the Front gained victory after victory…” If the Viet Nam experience has taught Liberation Movement organizers anything, it is the value of maintaining a reformist, nationalist, and non-aligned facade. There is no doubt that the Salvadoran movement (or indeed the Palestine liberation movement) will follow that same strategy, and that the facade will be virtually impenetrable to outside analysis.

There is also no doubt (and this is the second point) that the non-Communist elements in the guerrilla front will be destroyed as soon as feasible. Ton Due Thang, president of North Viet Nam’s Fatherland Front, succinctly characterized Communist strategy in this regard: “Rally all forces that can be rallied, neutralize all forces that can be neutralized, eliminate all forces that can be eliminated.”

Ton was referring here to the standard Communist device of shifting coalitions in order to make use of opposition forces and eventually eliminate them piecemeal. For example, to deal with three enemies, alliances are formed with two while the primary enemy is attacked. The process is then repeated until Communist power stands unopposed.

This strategy governed the creation of the Viet Minh coalitions and the employment of non-Communist revolutionaries in the Ho Chi Minh government while resources were coordinated against the French, just as it governed the elimination of those same elements once the primary enemy was defeated. The same pattern followed suit in the South where the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects were initially welcomed and became a substantial part of the NLF. Since the overthrow of Saigon, however, both sects have been suppressed and their leaders imprisoned or executed. They were first rallied, then neutralized, then eliminated.

In fact, none of the former non-Communist Leftists-progressive intellectuals, religious leaders, or student militants who figured so importantly in the anti-American, anti-regime conflict—now hold any major position in the unified government. On the contrary, many of them are either jailed or dead. The former Buddhist leader, the Venerable Thich Tri Quang, whose picture appeared at one point (May 30, 1966) in Newsweek and in L’Express (Paris) with the caption “The Man Who Makes America Tremble,” is now under house arrest in Ho Chi Minh City as are his two chief assistants. Another major Buddhist anti-war figure, the Venerable Thich Thien Minh, who was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment by the Thieu government, survived the regime that condemned him only to die a Communist prisoner in the Ham Tan Gulag in 1979. The activist priest Father Tran Huu Thanh, responsible for organizing mass movements against Thieu (most prominently the People’s Movement Against Corruption), is presently meditating on life’s ironies in a Northern re-education camp. Professor Chau Tam Luan, formerly vice-president of the Association of Patriotic Intellectuals, has recently escaped the homeland he fought so determinedly to liberate. The list goes on: Tran Van Tuyen (nationalist opposition leader), dead in a Communist prison in 1976; Ho Huu Tuong (Sartre’s classmate and Viet Nam’s leading philosopher), dead in Ham Tan in 1980; Thich Man Giac (Buddhist strategist), a refugee; Phan Ba Cam (secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Socialist Party), dead in the Chi Hoa Gulag in 1979.

To Westerners who are not Viet Nam specialists these names evoke little or no recognition: no faces come to mind, no personal histories. But to those who are educated about the anti-regime, anti-American period, these people and their numerous colleagues among the refugees, the imprisoned and the deceased represented the heart of the non-Communist resistance. These are the people who created and led the organizations that elicited passionate support from the American and European peace movements. They are the ones who made Le Due Tho believable in the Paris peace talks (1970–73) with his refrain that “we [North Viet Nam] do not want to impose Communism on South Viet Nam,” and his persistent advocacy of a postwar coalition government. Today, of course, seven years after the annexation of the South, Le Due Tho’s Paris positions have long been revealed as nothing more than disingenuous rhetoric. At the time they were taken seriously, and by no one more than those who had bound their fortunes to the Communists. Truong Nhu Tang (a founder of the NLF, Minister of Justice in the Provisional Revolutionary government, now an exile in France) put it this way:

The Communists are expert in the art of seduction and will go to any length to woo you over to their side, as long as they don’t control the government. But once they are in power they suddenly become harsh, ungrateful, cynical, and destroy you without hesitation.

These two lessons from the Vietnamese primer are available to those who report the Salvadoran and other liberation movements, as well as to those who are inclined actively to support the economic and political aspirations of a dispossessed peasantry. It is not that such aspirations are unworthy; quite the opposite. It is simply that alliance with or support of a Communist front in order to achieve anything other than strictly Communist goals is suicidal. Eventually they will, in Tang’s words, “destroy you without hesitation.” That at least is what happened in Viet Nam, and the Viet Nam experience seems applicable to any protracted liberation movement that becomes the focus of East/West confrontation. The non-Communist Left, as well as other revolutionary factions, is simply not capable of long-term survival within a Communist-led movement.

One reason for this is that in a protracted “liberation war,” shipments of supplies and arms to guerrilla forces must move through foreign Communist countries; military training and direction for guerrilla forces must be carried on by foreign Communist governments; and effective worldwide propaganda must be orchestrated by foreign Communist governments. The entire support system necessary to carry a modern liberation war to a successful conclusion relies on a power base outside the host country. Such a base is only available through the Soviet Union or one of her regional proxies, so that revolutionary groups not aligned with the Soviets are inevitably submerged by their more powerful competitors.

In Viet Nam, the Communist strategy of “rallying all those who can be rallied” in order to isolate and eliminate enemies one by one was extraordinarily successful. Unfortunately, the Saigon government was incapable of emulating that strategy and found itself operating from an increasingly narrowing popular base. The same self-defeating polarization appears to be operating in El Salvador today with the recent setbacks to the Christian Democrats and the apparent dismantling of land reform measures. Here too the Vietnamese experience is worth reflecting on.

In Viet Nam, the hard-line right-wing orientation of successive Southern regimes often radicalized and alienated those who should have been made into allies. In many cases, the government’s habitual brutality transformed a loyal opposition into Leftists, moderate Leftists into Communists, and reluctant Communists into zealots. Many students who at first only knew that they were “against the regime” learned through a term or two in prison to be confirmed revolutionaries. The regime, utilizing its French-trained police, was adept at torture, but hopelessly inept at any other type of persuasion. Government leaders simply had no concept of the need to differentiate among opposition groups and to split the non-Communist elements from their deadly allies. Instead they regarded as Communists virtually all on the Left (and many in the Center as well), and so played precisely into the hands of the Communists whose strategy was to “rally all who can be rallied.” This appalling obtuseness gave additional credence to the NLF’s claim to be a “true coalition” and vastly more representative of the South Vietnamese people than the government. In the long run, this claim, and the corresponding image that Diem, Ky, and Thieu established for themselves as self-seeking despots, played a significant role in the erosion of American domestic support for the war, and it was in the American domestic arena that the outcome was decided. [1]

Viet Nam was the West’s first experience with a protracted war of liberation, and perhaps the single most important lesson it taught concerns the power of public dissent. That lesson is particularly ominous since it confirms that ideolo-gized opinion-makers have become central to the West’s ability to wage this sort of war, while Communist planners have no equivalent need to take into account the complex domestic role of a free press. At the same time they are highly attuned to the impact of the media among their adversaries. One of the authors of this article (Doan Van Toai) spent two and a half years in the Tran Hung Dao Gulag after an earlier career as a pro-Viet Cong student leader, publisher, and sometimes prisoner of the Thieu regime. While in Tran Hung Dao he was part of a group of political prisoners chosen at one point to listen to an address by Mai Chi Tho (a Central Committee member and brother of Le Due Tho). Tho told them:

Ho Chi Minh may have been an evil man; Nixon may have been a great man. The Americans may have had the just cause; we may not have had the just cause. But we won and the Americans were defeated because we convinced the people that Ho Chi Minh is the great man, that Nixon is a murderer, and the Americans are the invaders… The key factor is how to control people and their opinions. Only Marxism-Leninism can do that… Between you—the bright intellectuals—and me, I tell you the truth.

—New York Times Magazine, March 30, 1981.

Tho was referring not only to the success of Communist propaganda within Viet Nam, but also to its worldwide impact.

One reason that the American antiwar movement is reluctant to look back at that period is not simply that the postwar history of Viet Nam has been so tragic; it is that people do not relish acknowledging their own gullibility. Harrison Salisbury, Staughton Lynd, Tom Hayden, David Schoenbrun, among others, all found themselves popularizing in the West Hanoi’s position on such themes as the “absence” of Northern troop infiltration into the South, the “independence” of the NLF/ Vietcong, and Northern innocence of plans to “annex the South.” Pham Van Dong in particular developed a special adroitness in dealing with American visitors, who almost always heard remarks calculated to exploit their own predispositions.

Yet even when the full story of Communist manipulation of American opinions is known, [2] we will still need to anticipate the likely effect of media-related pressures should the United States become militarily involved in El Salvador or elsewhere. In that event we would undoubtedly witness over a period of time incidents every bit as vivid and dehumanizing as those that Viet Nam still evokes for almost all of us. Children running from napalm, murder in the street, villages burning—the whole iconography of war. In a conflict where the media have access to one side and not to the other, these incidents will regularly depict the brutality of our allies and ourselves and rarely that of our enemies.

At the same time, the mechanisms our society has evolved to achieve “open government” will ensure that much of our tactics and strategy will be public knowledge and open to criticism both emotional and rational. We will know exactly the extent of our economic and military assistance to a government many feel to be unsavory. But the truth about foreign supply and troop inflation to the guerrillas will remain conjectural. We will have detailed reports on how our soldiers feel about fighting and dying in an alien place. But we will know little that is credible about the enemy except for his courage and perseverance. The stupidity, negligence, and failures accompanying our involvement will be spotlighted each night on television. But the same kind of information about guerrilla troubles will simply not be available. Consequently, media reportage will seem to maximize our difficulties and minimize those of the other side. Over time, such things will have a corrosive effect on even hardened patriots. That at least was the experience in Viet Nam, and it is difficult to imagine anything different coming out of another overseas engagement, in Salvador or elsewhere.

Reinforcing the predictable bias of Western news coverage is the predictable bias of editorial analysis. The function of a free press in keeping a vigilantly skeptical eye on government had the long-term effect in Viet Nam of turning the majority of American commentators against the administration. David Halberstam’s letters to his daughter describe the changes even the most initially supportive observers went through when confronted with the official hypocrisy and duplicity that inevitably accompany war, and especially a prolonged and confused guerrilla war. During the Viet Nam period none of the major television commentators, other than Howard K. Smith, maintained anything vaguely resembling a pro-Administration perspective. For its part, of course, the Administration displayed disappointment and hostility toward media luminaries who failed to appreciate the government’s theories of geopolitical confrontation or even to maintain, in its opinion, decent objectivity.[3]

But a balanced historical perspective is not what we should expect from the media. Their traditions are those of adversarial confrontation and investigative reporting, of scoops and hot news, not scholarly objectivity. Even though they are the conduit through which current history becomes known, they are not historians. By and large they are not equipped for the role and they are not comfortable with its demands. They didn’t fulfill it well in Viet Nam, and there is no reason to believe they would be more suited to it in Latin America or the Middle East.

All this suggests that what we can be sure of in El Salvador, or any other liberation war that attracts serious American attention, is a domestic antiwar movement that will trigger off at a fairly high level and intensify as the flow of news and analysis affects public thinking. Over time, the impact of continuous war coverage will inevitably erode popular support for U.S. involvement and will help generate a progressively more militant resistance. This effect can almost be taken as a given. After Viet Nam, political strategists have no choice but to include the media factor in their equations and to weight it more and more heavily over time.

Another given is the predilection of the American Left to embrace “national liberation movements” of every stripe as long as there is an element of anti-Americanism in them. Even the anti-regime movements of Pol Pot and the Ayatollah Khomeini attracted their share of initial support. Viet Nam, however, remains the textbook case. In that conflict a pattern of domestic resistance developed around radicalized intellectuals and other public figures that can be viewed as a militant model for domestic reaction in any future engagement. In terms of the American ability to commit troops over an extended period, this resistance must be considered ominous. Its obvious continued vitality brings into relief the major problems facing American foreign policy today—the enlightenment of public opinion in the United States, and especially the education of the adversarial culture that Viet Nam galvanized throughout the West.

That education has begun already with the reassessment of Viet Nam currently under way. As public understanding grows of what the North Vietnamese and Southern front objectives really were, how their military and propaganda organizations operated, and what the postwar realities in Indo-China are, it will become increasingly clear that American involvement there was supportable on both moral and geopolitical grounds.

Viet Nam, in fact, should be regarded as an object lesson for the American Left, a lesson in the manipulative strategies of Communist-led liberation war movements and the subversion of popular aspirations for independence and economic and political reform. The flow of political prisoners within Viet Nam and the flow of refugees out of Viet Nam included large numbers of former Viet Cong freedom-fighters, socialist revolutionaries, nationalist intellectuals, and religious activists who have learned in their flesh the consequences of embracing the Communists as allies. American progressives, it is fervently hoped, will never have the opportunity to learn the same lessons in the same way. But if the Viet Nam scenario is not to be repeated, they must be encouraged to discard their studied ignorance of recent Vietnamese history.

The Northern burial of the Viet Cong, whose program was espoused by many in the domestic antiwar movement, should be the subject of detailed public examination, as should the fate of the various other anti-regime, anti-American factions. The single-minded Northern pursuit of annexation, the bloody suppression of the land redistribution under Ho Chi Minh, the campaign to smother religion and culture in unified Viet Nam, these should all be as well known in the United States and Europe now as the My Lai massacre, Thieu’s “tiger cages,” and massive South Vietnamese corruption were then. This history is alive and can be told with best effect, not by the people perceived as conservative ideologues, but by the dissident and dispossessed Vietnamese Leftists and intellectuals who lived it, people like Nguyen Cong Hoan and Truong Nhu Tang, for whose ideas the Left committed itself and who have the standing to make themselves heard by their erstwhile supporters.

It can be said, of course, that current. Vietnamese history merely reteaches the lessons of other Communist revolutions. But in certain ways Viet Nam is special. Viet Nam was the crucible of the modern American Left. It was the Viet Nam war that also radicalized much of the intelligentsia in Western Europe (“Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh” shouted the tens of thousands of APO and SDS demonstrators in the streets of Bonn and Berlin). The theme continues to provide the Left with its reference points. Almost as significant is that Viet Nam was one of the few—with Castro’s Cuba—contemporary forces in the Communist world that stirred deep ideological sympathy in the West. Russia has been bankrupt as a moral force for decades. China is rightly perceived as a nation more concerned with internal difficulties and security problems than with its role as champion of international Communism. Insurgent Viet Nam, on the other hand, is still lionized for its courage, its ability to face and overcome colonialism and imperialism, domestic right-wing dictators, and American militarism. It is thus a model for present and future East-West conflicts in Latin America and Africa, conflicts which can be expected to draw a great deal of American and West European support to the revolutionary side, fighting at once for homeland and radical social ideals.

But the fact is that Viet Nam is an idol with clay feet, and persistent, thorough exposure of the monumental deceit with which the war was carried on and of the cynical suppression of human rights afterward will work to split domestic opposition. During the Viet Nam period the American Left had little concept of the role it played (along with the NLF and so-called third force elements) in the Communist war game, and so allowed itself to be manipulated in embarrassing fashion. But as the old antiwar leadership achieves literacy about “liberation movement” strategy, its willingness to sponsor and organize future opposition should become less reflexive. Joan Baez two years ago and Susan Sontag recently have surely done more to provoke objectivity and self-awareness within the American Left than the most convincing conservative arguments ever could. Intensified education is in order, not to divert the Left from its social ideals, but to divorce it from its thoughtless support of Communist-led and/or Soviet-sponsored liberation movements. As trade used to follow the flag, Gulag follows “the final contest.”

There is a necessary complement to education, however, and that is the creation of a Western policy for liberation war situations that is capable of drawing support within the United States. Unfortunately, though, in this era of liberation movements the Americans and the Europeans have until now failed to furnish the Third World with its type of pro-Western revolution. They simply have not developed a coherent, positive approach to resolving the social inequities that provide the framework for present-day international competition. Our failures in this area have forced us into, at best, a defensive “containment” posture which, among other misfortunes, had led to a history of American support for the status quo defended by unpopular authoritarians. Consequences have included the identification of the United States with old-time oppression rather than change, reform, and social amelioration. We ourselves have fostered the impression that, in the Third World context, to be progressive or innovative means to be pro-Communist.

This apparent truth has had tragic effects on populations involved in “liberation wars.” But the more profound catastrophe is that domestic American opinion has been so alienated that any scenario which includes a prolonged U.S. military commitment is problematical. The chief effect of this is substantially to reduce American leverage and thus to encourage guerrilla movements in their reliance on the violence of military solutions. In Mai Chi Trio’s words: “The key factor is how to control people and their opinions”; and that observation applies every bit as much to sophisticated Western opinion as it does to the “hearts and minds” of Vietnamese and Salvadoran farmers.

Given the opportunity, the American and European Left could find its natural home backing non-Communist factions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere. But for this to happen, and for the consequent neutralization of the general “antiwar” movement to materialize, the West must learn from the Communist strategy of gathering all the support available in order to confront the common enemy. That means a policy, undertaken within the context of regional alliances, of pressing conspicuously for reform in countries not yet embroiled, working to achieve coalitions rather than polarization where there is already substantial guerrilla activity, and actively supporting indigenous non-Communist “people’s movements” in areas where they enjoy significant popular support (in Afghanistan, for example, in Indo-China, and now in the Lebanon).

Appropriate support along with regional allies of such movements would have several positive effects. It would throw doubt on the commonly held belief that Communist revolutions are irreversible. It would further drain Soviet resources, already badly extended. And it would spur development of a comprehensive Western “Third World strategy” different from the defeatist alternatives of reaction or isolation. The development of such a strategy, together with continuing public education about Viet Nam and its aftermath, will go a long way toward restoring viability to Western objectives in the developing nations.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Major Pugachov’s Last Battle

Shalamov

The story of the Soviet death camps is known to the West through Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago; but the story is so monstrous that we in the West either do not believe it or refuse to act as if we do.

It is even worse in the Soviet Union, where the story of the Red Terror is known but never discussed. The Terror has done its work well.

It is axiomatic that deception is a major tool of war. The Soviets have been uncommonly successful in deceiving the West, not only about Soviet intentions and capabilities but about the very nature of Soviet society. Sometimes, though, there are leaks in the iron curtain.

Robert Gleason put himself through university to a master of fine arts degree by working as a steel puddler in Gary, Indiana. He doesn’t look much like an intellectual, which often fools people, sometimes to their dismay.

Bob Gleason early discovered both Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; he bought Mote in God’s Eye when he was an editor at Pocket Books and Lucifer’s Hammer after he moved to Playboy Books. He has since become a novelist in his own right, as well as Tor Books’ general editor for this series. It has always been a pleasure to work with him.

When Bob Gleason sent us “Major Pugachov’s Last Battle,” he sent a letter that will do better to introduce the story than anything I could ever write. Here it is:

Dear Jerry,

Enclosed is the Shalamov story which we discussed. It’s from Shalamov’s book Kolyma Tales. Solzhenitsyn saw Shalamov as the finest writer of his period and wanted him to co-author The Gulag Archipelago. As Solzhenitsyn pointed out, Shalamov witnessed and endured the absolute nadir of the Gulag. “Shalamov’s experience in the camps,” Solzhenitsyn writes, “was longer and more bitter than my own, and I respectfully confess that to him and not me was it given to touch those depths of bestiality and despair toward which life in the camps dragged us all.” Solzhenitsyn also writes that when he first read Shalamov’s poetry, he “trembled as if he were meeting a brother.’’

Shalamov was too ill to work on The Gulag Archipelago and died before its completion.

Briefly, Kolyma, where Shalamov did eighteen years, was a complex of gold mining camps above the Arctic Circle in the Kolyma River Basin. Between 1937 and 1953 we know that around 3,500,000 zeks perished there. Approximately, one life for every kilo of gold.

It is clear now that along with gold, death was the other chief product of these camps. The slaughter was grossly deliberate. Radical malnutrition, confiscation of winter clothing, unspeakable brutality, ghastly mass executions, and the endless mining accidents have all been redundantly documented. Over one hundred Kolyma memoirs appeared after the Khrushchev amnesty testifying to the genocide. These works included Eleanor Upper’s Eleven Years in the Soviet Camps, Eugenia Ginzburg’s Into the Whirlwind, Michael Solomon’s Magadan, and most recently, Robert Conquest’s superb study of life in these camps, Kolyma.

Needless to say, after somehow getting into these camps for a visit back in 1944, Henry Wallace and Owen Latimore compared them to “the TVA and the Hudson’s Bay Company.”

It’s also worth noting that these two may have the last word. In America, this massively important body of literature is passing almost unread.

Cordially,

Robert Gleason

P.S. By the way, the USSR is at present pretending that Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales doesn’t exist. A recent Soviet review of his work says: “Shalamov writes primarily about nature. One gets the impression that his surroundings interest him only on an impressionistic level.”

Major Pugachov’s Last Battle

Shalamov

A lot of time must have passed between the beginning and end of these events, for the human experience acquired in the far north is so great that months are considered equivalent to years. Even the state recognizes this by increasing salaries and fringe benefits to workers of the north. It is a land of hopes and therefore of rumors, guesses, suppositions, and hypothesizing. In the north any event is encrusted with rumor more quickly than a local official’s emergency report about it can reach the “higher spheres.”

It was rumored that when a party boss on an inspection tour described the camp’s cultural activities as lame on both feet, the “activities director,” Major Pugachov, said to the guest:

“Don’t let that bother you, sir, we’re preparing a concert that all Kolyma will talk about.”

We could begin the story straightaway with the report of Braude, a surgeon sent by the central hospital to the region of military activities. We could begin with the letter of Yashka Kuchen, a convict orderly who was a patient in the hospital. Kuchen wrote the letter with his left hand, since his right shoulder had been shot clean through by a rifle bullet.

Or we could begin with the story of Dr. Potalina who saw nothing, heard nothing, and was gone when all the unusual events took place. It was precisely her absence that the prosecutor classified as a “false alibi,” criminal inaction, or whatever the term may be in a legal jargon.

The arrests of the thirties were arrests of random victims of the false and terrifying theory of a heightened class struggle accompanying the strengthening of socialism. The professors, union officials, soldiers, and workers who filled the prisons to overflowing at that period had nothing to defend themselves with except, perhaps, personal honesty and naivete—precisely those qualities that lightened rather than hindered the punitive work of “justice” of the day. The absence of any unifying idea undermined the moral resistance of the prisoners to an unusual degree. They were neither enemies of the government nor state criminals, and they died, not even understanding why they had to die. Their self-esteem and bitterness had no point of support. Separated, they perished in the white Kolyma desert from hunger, cold, work, beatings, and diseases. They immediately learned not to defend or support each other. This was precisely the goal of the authorities. The souls of those who remained alive were utterly corrupted, and their bodies did not possess the qualities necessary for physical labor.

After the war, ship after ship delivered their replacements—former Soviet citizens who were “repatriated” directly to the far northeast.

Among them were many people with different experiences and habits acquired during the war, courageous people who knew how to take chances and who believed only in the gun. There were officers and soldiers, fliers and scouts…

Accustomed to the angelic patience and slavish submissiveness of the “Trotskyites,” the camp administration was not in the least concerned and expected nothing new.

New arrivals asked the surviving “aborigines”:

“Why do you eat your soup and kasha in the dining hall, but take your bread with you back to the barracks? Why can’t you eat the bread with your soup the way the rest of the world does?”

Smiling with the cracks of their blue mouths and showing their gums, toothless from scurvy, the local residents would answer the naive newcomers.

“In two weeks each of you will understand, and each of you will do the same.”

How could they be told that they had never in their lives known true hunger, hunger that lasts for years and breaks the will? How could anyone explain the passionate, all-engulfing desire to prolong the process of eating, the supreme bliss of washing down one’s bread ration with a mug of tasteless, but hot melted snow in the barracks?

But not all of the newcomers shook their heads in contempt and walked away.

Major Pugachov clearly realized that they had been delivered to their deaths—to replace these living corpses. They had been brought in the fall. With winter coming on, there was no place to run to, but in the summer a man could at least die free even if he couldn’t hope to escape completely.

It was virtually the only conspiracy in twenty years, and its web was spun all winter.

Pugachov realized that only those who did not work in the mine’s general work gang could survive the winter and still be capable of an escape attempt. After a few weeks in the work gang no one would run anywhere.

Slowly, one by one, the participants of the conspiracy became trusties. Soldatov became a cook, and Pugachov himself was appointed activities director. There were two work gang leaders, a paramedic, and Ivashenko, who had formerly been a mechanic and now repaired weapons for the guards.

But no one was permitted outside “the wire” without guards.

The blinding Kolyma spring began—without a single rain, without any movement of ice on the rivers, without the singing of any bird. Little by little, the sun melted the snow, leaving it only in those crevices where warm rays couldn’t pierce. In the canyons and ravines, the snow lay like silver bullion till the next year.

And the designated day arrived.

There was a knock at the door of the guard hut next to the camp gates where one door led in and the other out of the camp. The guard on duty yawned and glanced at the clock. It was 5:00 a.m. Just five, he thought.

The guard threw back the latch and admitted the man who had knocked. It was the camp cook, the convict Gorbunov. He’d come for the keys to the food storeroom. The keys were kept in the guardhouse, and Gorbunov came for them three times a day. He returned them later.

The guard on duty was supposed to open the kitchen cupboard, but he knew it was hopeless to try to control the cook, that no locks would help if the cook wanted to steal, so he entrusted the keys to the cook—especially at five in the morning.

The guard had worked more than ten years in Kolyma, had been receiving a double salary for a long time, and had given the keys to the cook thousands of times.

“Take ’em,” he muttered and reached for the ruler to write up in the morning report.

Gorbunov walked behind the guard, took the keys from the nail, put them in his pocket, and grabbed the guard from behind by the neck. At that very moment the door opened and the mechanic, Ivashenko, came through the door leading into the camp.

Ivashenko helped Gorbunov strangle the guard and drag his body behind the cabinet. Ivashenko stuck the guard’s revolver into his own pocket. Through the window that faced outward they could see a second guard returning along the path. Hurriedly Ivashenko donned the coat and cap of the dead man, snapped the belt shut, and sat down at the table as if he were the guard. The second guard opened the door and strode into the dark hovel of the guardhouse. He was immediately seized, strangled, and thrown behind the cabinet.

Gorbunov put on the guard’s clothing; the two conspirators now had uniforms and weapons. Everything was proceeding according to Major Pugachov’s schedule. Suddenly the wife of the second guard appeared. She’d come for the keys that her husband had accidentally taken with him.

“We won’t strangle the woman,” said Gorbunov, and she was tied, gagged with a towel, and put in the corner.

One of the work gangs returned from work. This had been foreseen. The overseer who entered the guardhouse was immediately disarmed and bound by the two “guards.” His rifle was now in the hands of the escapees. From that moment Major Pugachov took command of the operation.

The area before the gates was open to fire from two guard towers. The sentries noticed nothing unusual.

A work gang was formed somewhat earlier than usual, but in the north who can say what is early and what is late? It seemed early, but maybe it was late.

The work gang of ten men moved down the road to the mine, two by two in column. In the front and in the rear, six meters from the column of prisoners as required by the instructions, were two overcoated guards. One of them held a rifle.

From the guard tower the sentry noticed that the group turned from the road onto the path that led past the buildings where all sixty of the guards were quartered.

The sleeping quarters of the guards were located in the far end of the building. Just before the door stood the guard hut of the man on duty, and pyramids of rifles. Drowsing by the window the guard noticed, in a half sleep, that one of the other guards was leading a gang of prisoners down the path past the windows of the guard quarters.

“That must be Chernenko,” the duty officer thought. “I must remember to write a report on him.”

The duty officer was grand master of petty squabbles, and he never missed a legitimate opportunity to play a dirty trick on someone.

This was his last thought. The door flew open and three soldiers came running into the barracks. Two rushed to the doors of the sleeping quarters and the third shot the duty officer point-blank. The soldiers were followed by the prisoners, who rushed to the pyramid of weapons; in their hands were rifles and machine guns. Major Pugachov threw open the door to the sleeping quarters. The soldiers, barefoot and still in their underwear, rushed to the door, but two machine-gun bursts at the ceiling stopped them.

“Lie down,” Pugachov ordered, and the soldiers crawled under their cots. The machine gunners remained on guard beside the door.

The “work gang” changed unhurriedly into military uniform and began gathering up food, weapons, and ammunition.

Pugachov ordered them not to take any food except biscuits and chocolate. In return they took as many weapons and as much ammunition as possible.

The paramedic hung the first-aid bag over his shoulder.

Once again the escapees felt they were soldiers.

Before them was the taiga, but was it any more terrible than the marshes of Stokhod?

They walked out onto the highway, and Pugachov raised his hand to stop a passing truck.

“Get out!” He opened the door of the driver’s cab.

“But I…”

“Climb out, I tell you.”

The driver got out, and Georgadze, lieutenant of the tank troops, got behind the wheel. Beside him was Pugachov. The escapee soldiers crawled into the back, and the truck sped off.

“There ought to be a right turn about here.”

“We’re out of gas!”

Pugachov cursed.

They entered the taiga as if they were diving into water, disappearing immediately in the enormous silent forest. Checking the map, they remained on the cherished path to freedom, pushing their way straight through the amazing local underbrush.

Camp was set up quickly for the night, as if they were used to doing it.

Only Ashot and Malinin couldn’t manage to quiet down.

“What’s the problem over there?” asked Pugachov.

“Ashot keeps trying to prove that Adam was deported from paradise to Ceylon.”

“Why Ceylon?”

“That’s what the Muslims say,” responded Ashot.

“Are you a Tartar?”

“Not me, my wife is.”

“I never heard anything of the sort,” said Pugachov, smiling.

“Right, and neither did I,” Malinin joined in.

“All right, knock it off. Let’s get some sleep.”

It was cold and Major Pugachov woke up. Soldatov was sitting up, alert, holding the machine gun on his knees. Pugachov lay on his back and located the North Star, the favorite star of all wanderers. The constellations here were arranged differently than in European Russia; the map of the firmament was slightly shifted, and the Big Dipper had slid down to the horizon. The taiga was cold and stern, and the enormous twisted pines stood far from each other. The forest was filled with the anxious silence familiar to all hunters. This time Pugachov was not the hunter, but a tracked beast, and the forest silence was thrice dangerous.

It was his first night of liberty, the first night after long months and years of torment. Lying on his back, he recalled how everything before him had begun as if it were a detective film. It was as if Pugachov were playing back a film of his twelve comrades so that the lazy everyday course of events flashed by with unbelievable speed. And now they had finished the film and were staring at the inscription, “the end.” They were free, but this was only the beginning of the struggle, the game, of life…

Major Pugachov remembered the German prisoner-of-war camp from which he had escaped in 1944. The front was nearing the town, and he was working as a truck driver on cleanup details inside the enormous camp. He recalled how he had driven through the single strand of barbed wire at high speed, ripping up the wooden posts that had been hurriedly punched into the ground. He remembered the sentry shots, shouting, the mad, zigzag drive through the town, the abandoned truck, the night road to the front and the meetings with his army, the interrogation, the accusation of espionage, and the sentence—twenty-five years.

Major Pugachov remembered how Vlasov’s emissaries had come to the camp with a “manifesto” to the hungry, tormented Russian soldiers.

“Your government has long since renounced you. Any prisoner of war is a traitor in the eyes of your government,” the Vlasovites said. And they showed Moscow newspapers with their orders and speeches. The prisoners of war had already heard of this earlier. It was no accident that Russian prisoners of war were the only ones not to receive packages. Frenchmen, Americans, Englishmen, and prisoners of all nations received packages, letters, had their own national clubs, and enjoyed each other’s friendship. The Russians had nothing except hunger and bitterness for the entire world. It was no wonder that so many men from the German prisoner-of-war camps joined the “Russian Army of Liberation.”

Major Pugachov did not believe Vlasov’s officers until he made his way back to the Red Army. Everything that the Vlasovites had said was true. The government had no use for him. The government was afraid of him. Later came the cattle cars with bars on the windows and guards, the long trip to Eastern Siberia, the sea, the ship’s hold, and the gold mines of the far north. And the hungry winter.

Pugachov sat up, and Soldatov gestured to him with his hand. It was Soldatov who had the honor of beginning the entire affair, although he was among the last to be accepted into the conspiracy. Soldatov had not lost his courage, panicked, or betrayed anyone. A good man!

At his feet lay Captain Khrustalyov, a flier whose fate was similar to Pugachov’s: his plane shot down by the Germans, captivity, hunger, escape, and a military tribunal and the forced-labor camp. Khrustalyov had just turned over on his other side, and his cheek was red from where he had been lying on it. It was Khrustalyov whom Pugachov had first chosen several months before to reveal his plan. They agreed it was better to die than be a convict, better to die with a gun in hand than be exhausted by hunger, rifle butts, and the boots of the guards.

Both Khrustalyov and the major were men of action, and they discussed in minute detail the insignificant chance for which these twelve men were risking their lives. The plan was to hijack a plane from the airport. There were several airports in the vicinity, and the men were on their way through the taiga to the nearest one. Khrustalyov was the group leader whom the escapees sent for after attacking the guards. Pugachov didn’t want to leave without his closest friend. Now Khrustalyov was sleeping quietly and soundly.

Next to him lay Ivashenko, the mechanic who repaired the guards’ weapons. Ivashenko had learned everything they needed to know for a successful operation: where the weapons were kept, who was on duty, where the munitions stores were. Ivashenko had been a military intelligence officer.

Levitsky and Ignatovich, pilots and friends of Captain Khrustalyov, lay pressed against each other.

The tankman, Polyakov, had spread his hands on the backs of his neighbors, the huge Georgadze and the bald joker Ashot, whose surname the major couldn’t remember at the moment. Head resting on his first-aid bag, Sasha Malinin was sound asleep. He’d started out as a paramedic—first in the army, then in the camps, then under Pugachov’s command.

Pugachov smiled. Each had surely imagined the escape in his own way, but Pugachov could see that everything was going smoothly and each understood the other perfectly. Pugachov was convinced he had done the right thing. Each knew that events were developing as they should. There was a commander, there was a goal—a confident commander and a difficult goal. There were weapons and freedom. They slept a sound soldier’s sleep even in this empty pale-lilac polar night with its strange but beautiful light in which the trees cast no shadows.

He had promised them freedom, and they had received freedom. He led them to their deaths, and they didn’t fear death.

“No one betrayed us,” thought Pugachov, “right up to the very last day.” Many people in the camp had known of the planned escape. Selection of participants had taken several months, and Pugachov had spoken openly to many who refused, but no one had turned them in. This knowledge reconciled Pugachov with life.

“They’re good men,” he whispered and smiled.

They ate some biscuits and chocolate and went on in silence, led by the almost indistinguishable path.

“It’s a bear path,” said Soldatov, who had hunted in Siberia.

Pugachov and Khrustalyov climbed up to the pass to a cartographic tripod and used the telescope to look down to the gray stripes of the river and highway. The river was like any other river, but the highway was filled with trucks and people for tens of miles.

“Must be convicts,” suggested Khrustalyov.

Pugachov examined them carefully.

“No, they’re soldiers looking for us. We’ll have to split up,” said Pugachov. “Eight men can sleep in the haystacks, and the four of us will check out that ravine. We’ll return by morning if everything looks all right.”

They passed through a small grove of trees to the riverbed. They had to run back.

“Look, there are too many of them. We’ll have to go back up the river.”

Breathing heavily, they quickly climbed back up the riverbed, inadvertently dislodging loose rocks that roared down right to the feet of the attackers.

Levitsky turned, fired, and fell. A bullet had caught him square in the eye.

Georgadze stopped beside a large rock, turned, and stopped the soldiers coming after them with a machine-gun burst. But it was not for long; his machine gun jammed, and only the rifle was still functioning.

“Go on alone,” said Khrustalyov to the major. “I’ll cover you.” He aimed methodically, shooting at anyone who showed himself. Khrustalyov caught up with them, shouting: “They’re coming.” He fell, and people began running out from behind the large rock.

Pugachov rushed forward, fired at the attackers, and leaped down from the pass’s plateau into the narrow riverbed. The stones he knocked loose as he fell roared down the slope.

He ran through the roadless taiga until his strength failed.

Above the forest meadow the sun rose, and the people hiding in haystacks could easily make out figures of men in military uniforms on all sides of the meadow.

“I guess this is the end?” Ivashenko said, and nudged Khachaturian with his elbow.

“Why the end?” Ashot said as he aimed. The rifle shot rang out, and a soldier fell on the path.

At a command the soldiers rushed the swamp and haystacks. Shots cracked and groans were heard.

The attack was repulsed. Several wounded men lay among the clumps of marsh grass.

“Medic, crawl over there,” an officer ordered. They’d shown foresight and brought along Yasha Kushen, a former resident of West Byelorussia, now a convict paramedic. Without saying a word, convict Kushen crawled over to the wounded man, waving his first-aid bag. The bullet that struck Kushen in the shoulder stopped him halfway.

The head of the guard detail that the escapees had just disarmed jumped up without any sign of fear and shouted:

“Hey, Ivashenko. Soldatov. Pugachov. Give up, you’re surrounded. There’s no way out!”

“Okay, come and get the weapons,” shouted Ivashenko from behind the haystack.

And Bobylyov, head of the guards, ran splashing through the marsh toward the haystacks.

He had covered half the way when Ivashenko’s shot cracked out. The bullet caught Bobylyov directly in the forehead.

“Good boy,” Soldatov praised his comrade. “The chief was so brave because they would have either shot him for our escape or given him a sentence in the camps. Hold your ground!”

They were shooting from all directions. Machine guns began to crackle.

Soldatov felt a burning sensation in both legs, and the head of the dead Ivashenko fell on his shoulder.

Another haystack fell silent. A dozen bodies lay in the marsh.

Soldatov kept on shooting until something struck him in the head and he lost consciousness.

Nikolay Braude, chief surgeon of the main hospital, was summoned by Major General Artemyev, one of four Kolyma generals and chief of the whole Kolyma camp. Braude was sent to the village of Lichan together with “two paramedics, bandages, and surgical instruments.” That was how the order read.

Braude didn’t try to guess what might have happened and quickly set out as directed in a beat-up one-and-a-half-ton hospital truck. Powerful Studebakers loaded with armed soldiers streamed past the hospital truck on the highway. It was only about twenty miles, but because of frequent stops caused by heavy traffic and roadblocks to check documents, it took Braude three hours to reach the area.

Major General Artemyev was waiting for the surgeon in the apartment of the local camp head. Both Braude and Artemyev were long-term residents of Kolyma and fate had brought them together a number of times in the past.

“What’s up, a war?” Braude asked the general when they met.

“I don’t know if you’d call it a war, but there were twenty-eight dead on the first battle. You’ll see the wounded yourself.’’

While Braude washed his hands in a basin hanging on the door, the general told him of the escape.

“And you called for planes, I suppose? A couple of squadrons, a few bombs here and there… Or maybe you opted for an atom bomb?”

“That’s right, make a joke of it,” said the general. “I tell you I’m not joking when I say that I’m waiting for my orders. I’ll be lucky if I just lose my job. They could even try me. Things like that have happened before.”

Yes, Braude knew that things like that had happened before. Several years earlier three thousand people were sent on foot in winter to one of the ports, but supplies stored on shore were destroyed by a storm while the group was under way. Of three thousand, only three hundred people remained alive. The second-in-command in the camp administration who had signed the orders to send the group was made a scapegoat and tried.

Braude and his paramedics worked until evening, removing bullets, amputating, bandaging. Only soldiers of the guard were among the wounded; there were no escapees.

The next day toward evening more wounded were brought in. Surrounded by officers of the guard, two soldiers carried in the first and only escapee whom Braude was to see. The escapee was in military uniform and differed from the soldiers only in that he was unshaven. Both shinbones and his left shoulder were broken by bullets, and there was a head wound with damage to the parietal bone. The man was unconscious.

Braude rendered him first aid and, as Artemyev had ordered, the wounded man and his guards were taken to the central hospital where there were the necessary facilities for a serious operation.

It was all over. Nearby stood an army truck covered with a tarpaulin. It contained the bodies of the dead escapees. Next to it was a second truck with the bodies of the dead soldiers.

But Major Pugachov was crawling down the edge of the ravine.

They could have sent the army home after this victory, but trucks with soldiers continued to travel along the thousand-mile highway for many days.

They couldn’t find the twelfth man—Major Pugachov.

Soldatov took a long time to recover—to be shot. But then that was the only death sentence out of sixty. Such was the number of friends and acquaintances who were sent before the military tribunal. The head of the local camp was sentenced to ten years. The head of the medical section, Dr. Potalina, was acquitted, and she changed her place of employment almost as soon as the trial was over. Major General Artemyev’s words were prophetic: he was removed from his position in the guard.

Pugachov dragged himself into the narrow throat of the cave. It was a bear’s den, the beast’s winter quarters, and the animal had long since left to wander the taiga. Bear hairs could still be seen on the cave walls and stone floor.

“How quickly it’s all ended,” thought Pugachov. “They’ll bring dogs and find me.”

Lying in the cave, he remembered his difficult male life, a life that was to end on a bear path in the taiga. He remembered people—all of whom he had respected and loved, beginning with his mother. He remembered his schoolteacher, Maria Ivanovna, and her quilted jacket of threadbare black velvet that was turning red. There were many, many others with whom fate had thrown him together.

But better than all, more noble than all, were his eleven dead comrades. None of the other people in his life had endured such disappointments, deceit, lies. And in this northern hell they had found within themselves the strength to believe in him, Pugachov, and to stretch out their hands to freedom. These men who had died in battle were the best men he had known in his life.

Pugachov picked a blueberry from a shrub that grew at the entrance to the cave. Last year’s wrinkled fruit burst in his fingers, and he licked them clean. The overripe fruit was as tasteless as snow water. The skin of the berry stuck to his dry tongue.

Yes, they were the best. He remembered Ashot’s surname now; it was Khachaturian.

Major Pugachov remembered each of them, one after the other, and smiled at each. Then he put the muzzle of the pistol in his mouth and for the last time in his life fired a shot.

Editor’s Introduction to:

A Glorious Triumph for the People

E. Michael Blake

The most important book I have read this year is Survival Is Not Enough, by Richard Pipes (Simon & Schuster, Touchstone Books, 1986). Pipes is Baird Professor of History at Harvard University and formerly a deputy secretary of defense; his book is about U.S. strategic requirements in the modern age.

Before we can develop strategic requirements, we need to understand the motives of our enemy, which Pipes shows very well in a book that is entertaining as well as demanding. He tells the story of the nomenklatura, the bureaucratic organization of thugs who own the Soviet Union in fee simple: who they are, how they got there, and what their motivation is.

The nomenklatura know no frontiers, and hold nothing dear but power.

Of course they may be displaced. E. Michael Blake gives us one view of how that may happen.

A Glorious Triumph for the People

E. Michael Blake

In a specially fitted wheelchair, the legally alive form of T. N. Bugliev faced the tediously lapping Black Sea wavelets on the beach at Sochi. It no longer bothered him that the sun seemed to take sudden leaps across the sky. Electrical activity in his brain came and went lately, and sensory awareness with it. What bothered him were the moments when he remembered the strange business going on these days.

Why had it turned out this way? He remembered that there had been some problem, an impending crisis, and he had been the first one to see it and the main one to campaign for action. The memories were there, he was sure, like books on a shelf. He just had to find the right one–

–and he is back in the Kremlin, walking briskly down a narrow hallway, to–

–the conference room of the Karelian Agricultural, Mineral, and Industrial Planning Board. He was fully armed with statistics, graphs, and determination. Bugliev often stirred things up, forced the others to face facts they hoped would vanish. Some of the old men on the KAMIPB had begun to hope that Bugliev, too, would vanish. Once he had even overheard a mutter of regret that the 1935 purges in Leningrad had not been thorough enough. Hearing that, Bugliev had allowed himself only a smirk, but he had dearly wanted to reply, “Do not blame the authorities, tovarisch. I was but a child of twelve at the time.”

Handing his slides to the projectionist, Bugliev looked at all the withered heads in the room and wondered again if the Americans still believed, as was hoped, that the KAMIPB was just another bureaucratic backwater. In fact, the KAMIPB was the topmost level of the Soviet government, and had little to do with development projects in Karelia. On this committee sat string-pullers from the party rank and file, the Presidium, the Central Committee, the Politburo, the Supreme Soviet, the KGB, the Red Army, and some less-renowned Kremlin nooks and crannies. What the Central Committee announced in September, the KAMIPB had formulated in August.

The secrecy was so tight that no aides or functionaries were allowed. The projectionist, this week, was the Chief of Staff of all naval forces in the Indian Ocean. One did not seek to get into the KAMIPB. The KAMIPB would eventually seek you out if it considered you a worthy addition. Of course, your chances of being sought out were fleetingly slim if you didn’t happen to be the protege of someone already on the KAMIPB.

When his item of business was called, Bugliev advanced to the lectern and without preamble asked the gathering, “Will everyone in this room younger than sixty-five please raise a hand?”

After a brief, quizzical silence, thirteen hands were elevated above the sixty-two withered heads.

“Yes. And is any one of you younger than fifty?”

All of the raised hands dropped from sight.

“You make my point for me, comrades,” said Bugliev dourly. “The greatest socialist nation of all time is controlled by old men in failing health. You may think this is just the way of things. I say it is an oncoming disaster.”

Bugliev thumbed a button, and the West German slide projector at the far corner of the room lit the screen to Bugliev’s right. “This is the average life expectancy of the Soviet citizen. Socialist medicine has made great strides, of course, but the figures now available for 1966 show the average to be sixty-nine years. In 1986 it was sixty-eight.”

He thumbed the control again, and the slide changed to show the same graph with the addition of another line—a steeply ascending diagonal approaching the level of the near-horizontal of life expectancy. “This new line,” said Bugliev, “is the average number of years required by a public official to rise to the highest levels of power—that is, to this room. As the Revolution has progressed, the apparatus of the state has grown—making the career climb longer each year. Now it takes fifty-three years, on the average, to rise through the bureaucracy—assuming a stay at each level just long enough to offer the expertise of leverage needed to move to the next higher level.”

Another thumb-press, another slide: the same graph extended some years into the future. Bugliev leaned over the lectern, forcing eye contact on one unwilling withered head, then another, then another. “The trend is obvious, comrades,” he said with harrowing mildness. “In the year 2005 a person with an average life span can expect to reach power only if he begins his career at the age of five. Or fourteen if he has relatives with extremely good connections. And by 2020, this room would surely be empty, because no one could survive the eighty-one years of grueling advancement needed to rise to this level.”

Suddenly, everything began to darken, to slow down. What–

RECALL TERMINATED. INSUFFICIENT RECEPTOR VOLTAGE.

Waves. Beach. Sochi.

Bugliev roused himself somewhat. Yes, now he remembered. The problem was life span. The bureaucracy always grew in complexity, there were always more levels to rise through, and a human body had only so much time.

“Bugliev. You fool.”

Bugliev stirred. His neck muscles were in command of enough resources to let him turn his head in the direction of the voice. His West German retinal implants registered a wheelchair beside his own. Seated on it—encased in it, really—was M. Ya. Vunshin, the former premier.

“You truly believed that longer life would save our nation.”

If memory served Bugliev, Vunshin had been premier from August of 2017 to January of 2018—but memory did not serve Bugliev, and it was all he could do to remember that Vunshin had been premier at some point in time. He at least recognized Vunshin’s long, pouched face, and remembered how it–

–is transfixed with shock–

–as Bugliev peered over the lectern at him. Even from the third row, Vunshin seemed to recoil as if he were but inches away. “We have lately been governed, if that is an accurate term,” Bugliev was saying, almost reveling in his brashness, “by compromise choices too weak to consolidate their own power, and too ill to remain in control for long. Need I point out”—Bugliev shifted his gaze again, this time to the assistant chief administrator of the Presidium—“that our current premier is not even in this room, and may not know of its existence?”

Now he chose to raise his voice. “And—let us be frank—does anyone in this room believe he still has the vigor to climb over all the rest of us and then govern forcefully, for many years?

“And it is not merely the top that suffers,” Bugliev pressed on through the growing group hubbub. “Five, six echelons down, the key personnel are nearly as old and as ineffectual as we. The spread downward is certain to continue. I tell you, comrades, we are faced with anarchy!”

This time, the dark came at once.

RECALL TERMINATED, CARDIAC FIBRILLATION LEVEL UNACCEPTABLE.

Bugliev could never determine whether those words were spoken inside his ears, or shown inside his eyes.

“–never finds out,” said the voice from Vunshin’s wheelchair. Bugliev no longer saw Vunshin. He saw his own chalk-stick fingers inert on his lap blanket. His head had fallen limply.

“Bugliev. You fool.”

Somehow, that sounded familiar to Bugliev.

“You truly believed that longer life would save our nation.”

It was familiar. Curiosity kindled Bugliev, forcing more nutrients from his wheelchair. This in turn raised him to greater lucidity than he had known in months.

“You told us we had only four choices: stabilize or shrink the bureaucracy, speed advancement through the ranks by purges, turn the government over to computers or robots, or lengthen the human life span to outpace the growth of bureaucratic hierarchy. And we all agreed that the first was a flatly ridiculous notion, the second would probably upset the people, and the third would deprive the state of its essential Marxist-Leninist vision. You had us all convinced that day, Bugliev. It would have to be a major crash program in medical life extension.”

And so it was. Without the need for another forced mnemonic replay, Bugliev remembered the overall plan. Of course it was too late for anyone on the KAMIPB at that time to benefit from the crash program, but each man had a protege or two, some only in their early fifties, who might be the first freed from the ravages of further aging and enabled to lead. And surely each protégé had favorites at the next lower level, and so on. From patronage came privilege, from connections would come continuity.

“–pass on the torch to successors who would never age,” Vunshin was saying. “But there was no reason for us to just give up ourselves, was there? Certainly not. There were some early developments, and it was only natural for the KAMIPB to review them first, because of the highly secret nature of the whole project. Didn’t we all say that, Bugliev?”

Well, of course, thought Bugliev. And it would have been foolish to dispense with the experience of someone on the KAMIPB just because he happened to be about to celebrate–

–his ninety-first birthday in a new position–

–as COMECON Finance Director, playing host at his dacha to none other than the premier of Bulgaria himself. “I assure you, Comrade Kivra, there is nothing the London moneylenders can do for you that we cannot do better.”

“But you Russians borrow in London,” remarked Kivra sourly. He was a short, wiry man who seemed very impatient. Everyone Bugliev dealt with lately seemed to be impatient. Perhaps it was because of his breathing. This flexure adjustment in his diaphragm, it sometimes made him inhale very audibly.

“Hm? Yes,” Bugliev replied at last. “It’s important that we all manage these credit matters with the West as a unit. And if you could reduce your budget for fiscal year 2016 by eight percent–”

“Yes, yes!” snapped Kivra, “you said that five minutes ago!” Suddenly the Bulgarian stood and began to pace on the terrace, muttering. “Is everyone in Russia a senile–”

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” Bugliev said, realizing that Kivra might say something everyone would regret. “The Ministry of Atmospherics says that lasting weather control for all our nations may be only ten years away, and on a day like this I quite believe it.”

Kivra slowed his pace and let himself look around at the birch grove, the rolling fields. “Yes, it is pleasant here.” He inhaled deeply, his gnomish features softening. Then he looked back at Bugliev, and they began to harden again. “Comrade Bugliev, you know I want very much to work with you. Without Russia, our party would never have come to power in my country. Without Russia, my country would have no presence on the world stage. Through you, I am influential. So you must realize that just because I want to arrange some credits in London–”

“Please, please,” said Bugliev, holding out a motor-controlled hand. “We must discuss this matter further, Comrade Cirnek.”

The Bulgarian halted, glared at Bugliev, and barked, “Kivra! Cirnek is the premier of Czechoslovakia! You saw him yesterday!”

Bugliev drew back, alarmed by the man’s impatience. Everyone seemed so impatient these days. Perhaps it was because of the fusion reactor manufacturing delays. Well, all of that would be worked out eventually. New departments were being set up. He was adding four new administrative sections in his own office–

The dark came in wavering blotches.

RECALL TERMINATED. LACK OF CLARITY IN STORED INFORMATION.

“–couldn’t trust just anyone,” came Vunshin’s voice. “And soon every new nomination for the KAMIPB was being questioned. Can’t let in one protege without everyone else’s. Besides, openings on the Board were coming up less often. Many of us stayed alive. Our proteges were not so lucky. They all died, wondering why we did not.”

Why was Vunshin saying all this? Bugliev finally convinced his much-put-upon neck that he wanted it to turn his head, again, toward Vunshin’s chair.

“And we certainly couldn’t give life extension to everyone. Trouble enough feeding the masses when they live sixty, seventy years.”

Bugliev faced Vunshin’s chair again. Something did not seem right.

“The scientists may indeed have discovered how to keep a young man from growing old. This should have been miracle enough, but we could never agree on which young men to select for testing. And, besides, that wasn’t what we really wanted, was it, Bugliev? No! We wanted to make old men young!”

Bugliev saw it at last. Vunshin’s lips were not moving. Some mechanism in the chair was producing the voice of the former premier.

The former premier–

Suddenly jarred loose was a stunning revelation: I too am a former premier!–

–premier–

–premier—was it in 2032?—a blazing summer—Islam—personal attention—willing to negotiate, but all this Asiatic jabber—you are still Soviet citizens first—aerial photos, rioting in Tashkent, or was it Baku?—rumble of armored personnel carriers—always that wailing, their call to prayer—all their grizzled leaders, with stained teeth—more jabber, but in Russian—calls for sterner measures—vote of no confidence—and still summer—

–blur, dark–

RECALL NOT FULLY ESTABLISHED.

Bugliev reeled but did not pass out. The nutrient surge kept him awake and aware. And anguished.

“This was asking far too much,” Vunshin was saying. “So we had only old men who grew older, and weaker, and more feeble-minded, but would not die—or step down. We had put glue on the torch, Bugliev, so that it could not be passed.”

Bitterness clamped Bugliev’s jaw. They had ousted him after only seven weeks… best to forget again…

“And from the anarchy came the highest of all ironies. Our satellites moved in and took over the Soviet Union.”

Yes! thought Bugliev, that’s the strange business going on these days! To him, perhaps it was only a matter of days, but the COMECON Coordinating Committee had been firmly, secretly lodged in the Kremlin for nearly twenty years.

“Think of it, Bugliev. The Poles and Czechs and all the rest. It would almost have been better if they had just turned capitalist, as the Americans still dream they might. But no—the party leaders there knew what they had to do to stay in power. They do not have our problem, yet. Smaller countries, smaller bureaucracies. Now they maintain the Warsaw Pact, control our nuclear arsenal, and remind us of how to be Communists!”

The lips were not the only part of Vunshin that didn’t move. He appeared to be in a coma. With all the techniques, it was hard to tell. A body could rally without cause or justification. At one of the last KAMIPB meetings, Bugliev remembered dimly, one member had died, begun to stiffen, and snapped back to debate a point settled two hours earlier.

“Imagine, Bugliev. There is a Bulgarian living in your dacha.”

Bugliev’s eyes widened in shock. This itself was a further surprise; he hadn’t known that they could widen any longer.

“And they keep us around for appearances. The miraculous old men. The people, they worship us like Lenin. I tell you this, Bugliev. It is all your fault. We should have taken your second option—a rational, systematic purge of the ranks. But you insisted on the fourth, and we are all puppets now. I only hope that the average Russian worker never finds out.”

There was a click, then silence. Bugliev realized that this had been a recording. He realized also that he had realized it before. He wondered if Vunshin was dead. Irrevocably.

My fault? he thought, hurt and confused. But I was the only one who cared… what else was there to do?…

The strain of all this activity finally caught up with Bugliev. His brain paths stilled again.

Eventually, when the sun neared the horizon, the West German wheelchairs activated their motors, turned about, and carried their occupants back to their ward.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Poems

Peter Dillingham and Robert Frazier

In Blood and Iron, Volume III of this series, we presented the first part of Peter Dillingham’s new saga of conquest in space. Part one was called “The War Without.”

There is another conquest to be made.

Robert Frazier’s first contribution to this series was in Volume II, Men at War.

Psi-Rec: Priest of Roses, Paladin of Swords, the War Within

Peter Dillingham

Head bowed, chest bared, he kneels
Priest of Roses in a pool of light,
Beneath a holographic tomogram of his lungs.
Two worlds at war and he their proxy.
The flowers cast, guerre à mort,
To one the Red Rose of malignancy,
To the other the White of health and wholeness.

That deadly, radiant rose touched to his breast,
He waits.
A tumor buds,
Calls forth its vassals, angiogenesis,
That nurturing, crimson web of capillaries,
Then blossoms brilliant, virulent red,
Menacing metastasis
(And epidemic contagion)…
He withdraws within, deep, then deeper still,
Quieting brain and heart and breath,
Beta, Alpha, Theta…
Now, coup de main!

Paladin of Swords, he visions
Flamborge, Durendal and Curtana,
Flashing, phantom blades
Of searing, healing light to fight the infidel.
Back and forth the battle rages:
The tumor swelling, shrinking,
Rallying, then at last retreating
Before his psychic onslaught…
The victory falls to White,
As it has fallen once before—
A different war waged for other worlds—
As it may fall but once again.

Encased in the Amber of Probabilities

Robert Frazier

i.
The sails are pitted in fine lacework,
shredded like mylar snow
trailing out behind in spinning clouds.

ii.
Hopes are as rich as vacuum,
encased in the amber of probabilities
sparse as interstellar dust.

iii.
Starwrecked I wait, the raku warrior,
sweating in the kiln of my EVA armor,
for a sun to fire my flesh and glaze my bones.

iv.
A winter field on constellations
spin about my head
in battle array; I plot rebirth.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Ligdan and the Young Pretender

Walter Jon Williams

“Britain Is Fine in “79” was the slogan of the British bid to host the 1979 World Science Fiction Convention, and indeed Britain was fine in ’79; the Worldcon was held in Brighton, and we all much enjoyed it.

Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, was just coming out in Britain that year, so it made sense for Mrs. Roberta Pournelle and me to go on a book-signing tour. Part of that tour went through Scotland.

We went from London to Edinburgh by train, and on that train I was made very much aware that Scotland is not England. We had met a teacher on the train. He was very polite, and Mrs. Pournelle had a pleasant chat with him about the British school system. When we got to the Scottish border, he stood and said loudly, “Home again! I’ve not been home for five years!”

When I asked where he’d been, he said, “I’ve been in bloody England!”

England and Scotland were officially united into one nation by the Act of Union of 1704, which followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which the Stuart kings of England and Scotland (then two separate kingdoms which happened to have the same man as king of both) were overthrown and replaced by the heirs of the body of the Electress Sophia of Hanover.

Many Scots have never cared much for either the Act of Union or the new royal family. We rented a car and drove into the Highlands; and in Inverary we found just how strong Scottish sentiment can be. In the Highland Museum there we saw a curious portrait. It was painted in a distorted fashion so that you saw only blobs when you looked at it directly.

The placard below it said:

“After the uprising of 1745 all portraits of members of the House of Stuart were outlawed. It became the fashion of Loyalists to keep portraits of their King and Princes in a secretive manner. When you look at the decorations with the special mirror, what appears to be a meaningless blob becomes a portrait of the man known to history as The Young Pretender.’

“He was no pretender. He was Charles Edward Stuart, rightful King of Scotland.”

To the best of my knowledge this placard is still technically treason in the United Kingdom. That doesn’t seem to bother the Highlanders much. We also heard in several shopping malls a tape of a song denouncing King William for the Massacre of Glencoe…

One does wonder just how strong this nostalgia for the Stuarts really is. Highlander troops have certainly fought well for the Hanoverian dynasty (now called the House of Windsor) which at present holds the British throne. Moreover, I understand there is no universally recognized Stuart heir. One gets the impression that Highlander sentiment for the restoration of the Stuarts would be a great deal weaker if there were any real chance of its happening.

Suppose, though, that one could really bring back the Stuarts? Walter Jon Williams tells us a lively, if wildly improbable, tale…

Ligdan and the Young Pretender

Walter Jon Williams

We had just spent six whole months making the Hypsipyle System safe for Standard Oil of Ohio and now the war was over, the Tandies having been forced into concessions. We had been pulled back to Nova Caledonia awaiting transport to our homes in Agaratu, where we would be demobbed, and where the Daily Star, no doubt, would return me to my pointless and depressing job of chasing down advertisers.

After spending many weeks playing Beau Geste in a lonesome, godforsaken wilderness, our delight was palpable when we discovered that we were sharing a barrack compound with the Highland Light Infantry. Not because they were Highlanders, mind, but because it was an all-woman battalion, from the white-haired lantern-jawed colonel to the puff-cheeked pipe sergeant.

Our delight, I suspect, was somewhat lessened by our first leave, when we were at last free to fraternize with the apple-cheeked Caledonian lassies. Apple-cheeked they proved to be—also clog-footed, hoarse-voiced, brawny-armed, and drunk as only veterans on their first three-day pass can be.

I remember watching in fascinated horror at the scene in the Braigh Mhàr pub, after the Kilties decided to dance the Highland Reel. Agaratans tend as a rule to be short, bandylegged, wiry, and Mongolian, and to see those great-bosomed brawny red-haired women, skirts flying, all screeching like the damned as they flung our terrified lads from one pair to another, while half the battalion pipers perched on the bar to provide a heathen wailing accompaniment—well, if Dante had seen it after his journey through Hell, he would have keeled right over in shock, I assure you.

I was lucky; I was fortified behind a majestic oaken bar table, with my arm around Lance Corporal Sandy MacDonald. Sandy was petite, for this company anyway, which meant she was about my size. She was raven-haired and lovely, with a pert nose and a peaches-and-cream complexion that was set off with breathtaking beauty by her black jacket and the dab of white lace at her throat. Under her green bonnet her blue eyes sparkled with amusement and delight at the horrible scene spread before us; I therefore concluded that she was a hardened warrior, used to the dismal sight of many a battlefield, and not susceptible to my usual run of impressive war stories, all of which are lies anyway.

My arm was around this lovely prize not because I was the greatest Don Juan in my regiment, but rather because we had met twice earlier in the week standing sentry, which duty consisted of sitting in the duty hut, drinking coffee, and staring at a succession of monitors hoping to have our boredom relieved by the sight of a saboteur. We had talked, I of my various careers before my conscription, she of her interrupted university career. We discovered that we shared an interest in nineteenth-century English literature, the works of Thackeray in particular. She had also been fascinated to discover that I had actually been to Scotland, several years before, having got a grant to go to Terra to write my dissertation. I had actually spent most of my time in London, but had got to Scotland on a holiday after I’d decided to throw my dissertation to the winds. My committee chairman was a great Bulwer-Lytton man, you see, and had more or less forced me to follow in his footsteps. The great liberation had come when I realized that I hated Bulwer-Lytton and my committee chairman, and I was damned if I’d spend the rest of my career with either one. So much for academics.

Sandy, it turned out, didn’t like Bulwer-Lytton either—which is not an unusual response, by the way. She also wanted me to describe Scotland to her, comparing it with Nova Caledonia. I didn’t want to tell her that’Nova Caledonia is a ghastly awful place resembling a strip-mined ash heap, and so I’d said that, barring the heather, they looked enough alike.

“If it were spring, Dan,” she said, “ye could see the heather. We imported it, o’ course, but it isnae in bloom noo.”

“I’d like to see that,” I said. So she’d said she could show me pictures, and in the end we’d agreed to meet at the Braigh Mhàr. We had each brought a friend: on the other end of the bench was Communications Specialist Ghantemur—he was an exception to the usual run of Agaratans, being the Chingiz Khan type: six feet four, red-haired, and, with the exercise he’d been getting from humping his communications pack all over the Great Hypsipyle Antediluvian Desert, a solid block of muscle. He was making shameless advances toward Lucy Macdonough, a heavy-weapons specialist, who showed every sign of inviting same. Both being brawny red-haired giants, Sandy and I had figured they would get along, and we were right—as I watched, Ghantemur began a lazy, deliberate exploration of Lucy’s sporran, while she swallowed her single-malt in one gulp, waved her hand dismissively, and said, “G’wan, ye bluidy awfu’ heathen, ye.”

I looked up from the grinning pair as something jostled the table, sending half my beer in a brown tidal wave out of the pint glass. As I mopped myself, I saw the interrupted was Corporal Galdan, who had been flung against the table by his companion, a Q.M.C. corporal with the forearms of a blast furnace operator. I caught a glimpse of mingled terror and appeal in Galdan’s eyes in the mute half-second or so before his guffawing partner seized him and whirled him back into the dance. “Poor bastard,” thought I. “Well. Better him than me.”

As Galdan was dragged back into the reel a G’nartan ghost appeared in the middle of the room, its three soulful eyes widened, its mouth opened in a dismal shriek—a shriek made completely inaudible by the pipers wailing away at the bar. The ghost, apparently offended, drew its shroud about itself indignantly and prepared to give vent to another banshee moan, but just at that moment the Q.M.C. corporal, who had polished her technique, no doubt, flinging the caber in the Games, hurled Corporal Galdan clean through the G’nartan and into the arms of another red-faced bawling Kiltie. The G’nartan gave the entire room a look of indignant majesty and left, walking straight through the wall behind the bar.

“Ye look, Dan,” said Sandy MacDonald, “as if ye havnae seen a gheistie before.”

“I’ve never seen one this close,” I said. “I did see that one through the monitor, remember, the other night.”

“Aye. Ye get used to ’em after awha’.” She looked up and then quailed for a moment under my protective arm as one of my company—I think it was Private Toton, but I’m not sure—came thundering backward into the table, then was snatched back into the reel before he could so much as moan for mercy. Then she looked up at me.

Tis a wee bit noisy here, Dan,” she said, leaning close to my ear in order to be heard over the howling of the pipes. “Dinnae ye want to find a place a leetle more quiet? I’ve a nice place a wee drive frae here—it’s closed down till I’m demobbed, but I think I could make ye some tea.”

Anything seemed better than continuing to watch the decimation of my battalion at the hands of the Picts while having my eardrums blasted out by the demented godforsaken pipe band, and having a quiet, deserted house in which to enfold a willing Sandy MacDonald in my arms without having an entire battalion of her comrades on hand to defend outraged virtue seemed too good to be true. I nodded hastily and gulped the remains of my beer. Sandy reached over to bash Ghantemur on the shoulder and mime that he and Lucy were to precede us, and he gave her a nod and Lucy a coarse grin.

It was lucky Ghantemur and Lucy left first; I doubt Sandy and I could have made our way through that close-packed reeling mob without our comrades forming a battering ram before us. And then at last we were out in the cool Caledonian night, with the unspeakable moan of the pipes muted by the door. There was a light rain coming down, and so I pulled my cap out of my back pocket and put it on my head while Sandy used her bleeper to call for a cab. When it arrived, I settled down with her in the back seat, and she coded in her destination and put the bleeper back into her sporran.

“I’m so glad the traditionalists lost on this one,” she said with a smile, patting the sporran again.

“On the bleeper?” I asked.

“Nay, th’ sporran!” he said. “It used tae be tha’ only Highland men wore the kilt an’ sporran, while women wore the pleated tartan skirt. When the female battalions began tae be recruited, we were given trews tae wear—but some o’ the officers wanted kilts for dress parade, and got ’em. But there wasnae a sporran, that bein’ for men only, and so we had these bluidy great shoulder bags weighin’ us doon. Finally there was almost a mutiny, all the women insistin’ on bein’ allowed tae wear the sporran and the kilt at all times—an’ thank the guid Goad we won.” She sniffed. “Can ye imagine us haulin’ those damn’ manky shoulder bags aroun’ the flamin’ desert? It don’t bear thinkin’ about.”

“I’m glad you won,” I said. “I think you look lovely in kilts. That dark green suits you very well.”

“I thank ye, Dan,” she said, smiling. “Annaway, tha’s how we got our nickname o’ Kilties. It’s also the name of a Highland spirit, sort o’ like a wee elf, alwa’ makin’ mischief.” She pursed her lips doubtfully. “I dinnae ken whether I like all the implications o’ that, but it’s better than bein’ called what the men are called. Jocks, that is.”

There was a guffaw from the front seat, where Ghantemur had apparently made a scandalous suggestion to Lucy, which she seemed all for implementing right there and then. I looked forward and saw that the taxi had taken us well outside of Glasgow, and that the terrain around us was a kind of desolate hillocky moor, with little circular outcrops like pimples. It was the kind of horribly unlovely country for which Nova Caledonia is famous, and which resulted in most of it being settled by disgruntled Scottish nationalists in the first place—all the civilized nations, you see, having already claimed all the garden spots. I half expected the Hound of the Baskervilles to jump up on top of one of the hills and slaver at the moon. Had there been a moon, of course: Nova Caledonia lacks even that.

“Where are we heading?” I demanded. “I didn’t realize you had a place in the country.”

“I’m takin’ ye tae see some gheisties,” she said, with a sweet smile that let me know instantly I’d been had. “Ye said ye ha venae seen the like before.”

I looked at her for a moment and wondered what kind of horrific surprise she was going to hand me. We don’t find the idea of spirits congenial on Agaratu, not that there are any, mind… but when a man expects to spend the evening snuggling in some cozy little cottage with the most lovely woman on Nova Caledonia, and then discovers she intends to spend the night stirring up the long-dead residents of the planet, it’s enough to make him sit up and think.

“Ah—that won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’ll leave all that table-tapping stuff to the scientists.”

Because, you see, the phenomenon of spirit manifestation on Nova Caledonia had been a topic of scientific research, not that they’d ever managed to discover anything that wasn’t already apparent to the layman. Call it a ghost or call it a “self-generating plasma field, origin unknown, endowed with the sentient personality and appearance of a predeceased being,” it’s all one. I’d even read some of the reports, trying to lay the phenomenon on to a unique pattern of cosmic rays, a peculiarly unbalanced magnetic field, or miniature black holes hidden somewhere at the planet’s core, and great nonsense they all were. The truth is, no one understands it, and no one has a clue.

But it was undeniable that there were a lot of ghosts on Nova Caledonia. For whatever reason they came into existence, there were virtual swarms of them. By far the vast majority of the ghosts were G’nartans, the previous civilized inhabitants of the place. They were shaped something like squared-off refuse containers with an arm and leg at each corner, three platter eyes, a doleful mouth, and various other sensory apparatus scattered promiscuously about their anatomy. Perhaps intimidated by the inexpressible bleakness of their planet, they’d huddled in small, isolated communities. They’d developed technology but didn’t, apparently, do much with it. And eventually, just after the first earth ship landed, they’d all died of chicken pox, or some other silly earth disease.

The crew of the first earth ship also died, presumably of the G’nartan equivalent of the common cold. Who would have suspected that two species so dissimilar would have been susceptible to the same bugs? At any rate, by the time the second earth ship landed, the G’nartans were gone. The explorers found a bare, arid, ugly planet, mostly grassy and with no native vegetation taller than my shoulder, a few mildly interesting aboriginal dwelling places, and no animal life whatever. Barring, of course, the ghosts.

It was lucky that the G’nartans never really existed in large numbers, because otherwise the planet would have been absolutely swarming with the things. As it was, there seemed to have been only a small chance that any given G’nartan would return from the dead, but over a couple million years of inhabitation all those numbers added up. Fortunately the G’nartan ghosts seemed to confine themselves principally to their own areas.

The odd thing was that whatever strange local conditions that led to the appearance of G’nartan ghosts led to the production of the human variety as well. It must have been a shock to the inhabitants of that second earth vessel, as they approached the still, dead hulk of their predecessor with fear, trepidation, and all the vacuum suits they could find, to discover three or four human spirits inhabiting the place, doing all the usual useless spiritlike things—moving objects, walking through solid walls, clanking chains, uttering doleful wails—nothing with any point to it, mind, just the usual asinine spirit behavior.

Everyone saw them, not just a few sensitives. Cameras took their pictures. Instruments detected their emanations. And all the mediums in the civilized galaxy failed to put a single one of them to rest. They were here to stay.

Now that the Hibernians had been inhabiting the planet for over a century, all the living inhabitants stood a reasonable chance of having their long-deceased Great-Uncle Angus appear suddenly over their breakfast table to utter a moan of Celtic drear—quite enough to put a man off his porridge, I’d imagine. Still, I suppose one gets used to these things; but even so I’d hate to visit Nova Caledonia in a few hundred years, when the spirits begin to outnumber the living.

All this aside, ghost hunting was not my intended sport of the evening. “Say, Sandy,” I said. “We don’t need to go bothering the spirits, you know. Let ’em rest in peace—they’ve lived hard lives, they’probably deserve it.”

“Oh, it isnae a bother, Dan,” said Sandy, a twinkle in her eye. Oh, well, thinks I to myself, I might as well steel myself to acquaint myself with Dear Dead Papa, or whoever it is she’s setting me up to meet. Ligdan has never yet quailed before man nor beast—not more than once or twice, anyway—let it not be said he shrank before the hosts of Hades.

And then, through the clear window of the taxi, I saw Sandy’s home drawing near and sat up in amazement. Black-toothed battlements rearing up on a desolate crag, looming over the surrounding moor like a vast and malevolent condor… a sight to gladden the heart of any hunchbacked bell-ringer. “What in hell is that?” I gasped, or something like it.

“Ach, noo,” Sandy shrugged. “It’s ma family’s little place, Castle Beinnean. It was brocht here frae Scotland a hundred year ago, stone by stone, and set oop on yon mount—the MacDonalds couldnae live wi’oot it, ye see. It disnae belong tae me, but the family lets me use it—I’m the only one who likes the place, see.”

The place grew worse as we approached; it was the most monstrous pile of ungainly stonework I’d ever seen, all crags and towers and black foreboding, bringing thoughts of rack and wheel and thumbscrew… Otrante would have been right at home. Even Ghantemur, who hadn’t so much as turned a hair when we discovered that the Tandies’ voracious sand toads were only angered by our sonic guns instead of killed, though our weapons worked well enough on their riders—even Ghantemur sat up with a horrified gasp once the place finally caught his attention. We were right up to the gate by then, and Sandy opened the door and nonchalantly straightened her kilt.

I stepped out of the taxi and stood looking up at the appalling place while Sandy operated the lock. It was the first, and I hope the last, glimpse I’ve ever had of a palm-lock keyed to open a portcullis. The great iron-shod wooden fangs rose, the inner gate opened, and then as I followed Sandy inside, a great shuddering, burbling shriek rose up from the courtyard, enough to send a ripple of cold up my spine. Ghantemur’s eyes were as wide as platters. “Ligdan…” he said softly, and then another shriek rose up from the interior of the castle. I’m sure he would have bolted had not Lucy kept a firm grip on his arm.

Well, I wasn’t about to admit to being shaken by that bloodcurdling wail, so I just straightened my shoulders, frowned a bit as if I’d just heard an exhibition of bad manners, and strode on in. There in the castle courtyard was a ghost—a G’nartan, by the way—wailing away as if Torquemada had just turned the screws. It was looking right at us as we walked in, and he showed every sign of recognizing us for what we were, for he promptly sent up a series of wails that was louder than the first, as if whatever was distressing him was our fault. Which, come to that, it probably was.

Sandy just marched past him as if he weren’t there, so I took my cue from her and followed, only nodding to the little transparent fellow as we passed, a little how-d’ye-do. It seemed only the polite thing.

We passed a little miniature chapel set in one corner of the courtyard, apparently as an afterthought, and then Sandy keyed the lock on the largest pile of masonry, obviously the keep, and we stepped into a short flagstoned foyer, lined with about what I’d expected, namely family portraits, old flags, weapons, suits of armor, and other complicated iron objects of uncertain purpose that must have kept the robot housekeeping staff busy with their dusting. Sandy led us through a number of passages and alcoves to a pleasant snug little room, leather chairs and couches, dark old paintings, and a huge fireplace which lit itself at her verbal command. She turned to me and grinned.

“It’s got all the comforts of home, does it nae?” she asked. “Make yersel’ at home, an’ I’ll fetch ourselves some tea. Unless ye’d like somethin’ a wee bit stronger?”

“I’ll take tea, thanks,” I said, my voice half drowned by another call from Old Yowler in the courtyard. Sobriety, I thought, might be in order; one never knew that the late Hilda MacDonald, currently a whiz at telekinetics, might decide to avenge some ancient grudge against my race and animate one of those suits of armor to my intense pain and displeasure. Lucy asked for single-malt once more, evidently being on a firm footing with the MacDonald shades, and Ghantemur, a bit white about the eyes, called for the same.

Sandy was gone for a few minutes; Lucy and Ghantemur settled onto the couch to begin again where they’d left off in the cab, and I stuck my hands in my pockets and looked out the ancient leaded windows past the chapel and into the courtyard, where the G’nartan was still serenading. Beyond him there was movement on the battlements, and I caught a brief sight of an unearthly figure all in armor, pacing along above the barbican, the starlight shining on his plume… “Who’s the ghost of Hamlet’s father?” I asked as Sandy returned with a tray holding a teapot, cups, and a dusty bottle of malt whiskey, the latter of which Ghantemur seized with all the delight of Galahad reaching for the Grail.

“Who?” Sandy asked. She narrowed her eyes as she peered out the windows. “Och, that’ll be the man in armor,” she said. “We’re not sure who he was. We think he may be Sir David MacDhòmhnuill, who returned frae Flodden Field only to be poisoned by his faithless wife. But we arnae sure—he keeps his visor doon, an’ disnae say a word.”

I turned toward Sandy. She’d taken off her bonnet, jacket, and jabot, and looked lovelier than I’d ever seen her—but the distracting sight of her only slowed my thinking for a few moments.

“But it couldn’t be Sir David, could it?” I asked. “I mean, his ghost would be back on earth…” My words trailed off as the G’nartan let go another wail, but it wasn’t the howling outside that sent a cold realization trickling up my neck. Sandy paused, tray in hand, her eyes expectant as she awaited my revelation. “Wait a minute,” I said. “D’you mean to say that—that the castle ghosts—that they all came with the castle when it was moved?”

“That’s a fly man, tha’ Ligdan,” Lucy called from the sofa, and then turned to grin at me. “You’re verra good. They usually take longer tae realize.”

“Congratulations, Dan,” Sandy said, beaming. “Aye, it’s true. All the Beinnean gheisties came wi’ us.” She set the tray down, patting the teapot in its cozy. “I’ll let ye steep awha’,” she said to the teapot, and then turned back to me.

“They all came,” she said. “But we didnae ken just how many there were. The manifestations are stronger on this planet, you know. We thought the castle had only three or four ghosts, but now we know we have dozens! That one on the battlements, for example—he hadnae been seen, before. And then there’s Sir Thomas MacDonald. He’d just been a puir lonely legend, slammin’ doors and settin’ chairs tae rockin’ by themselves, throwin’ books down frae shelves in his temper. Now tha’ he’s on Nova Caledonia, ev’raone can see him, and he’s a perfect gentleman.”

“I thank ye, Sandy dear,” said a new voice. I turned to discover a slender man in a white-powdered wig, dressed in an eighteenth-century coat and waistcoat over his kilt. Only the fact that I could see the flames through his dark red MacDonald tartan gave him away. He was middle-aged, with a shrewd face and a genteel air. He gave me a brief bow. “Sir Thomas MacDonald, at yer service,” he said.

“Corporal Ligdan, at yours,” I said, and bowed back—allow me to recommend a career of reading nineteenth-century historical romances to give a courtly polish to your manners, by the way. He smiled as if pleased to see me, then turned to Ghantemur, who looked as if he were wishing to be back among the sand toads.

“An’ whom do I have the pleasure of addressin’?” he asked.

“This is Ghantemur, Uncle Tom,” Lucy said with a grin; apparently they were old friends. “Here’s to yer health?” She downed her glass of malt. Sir Thomas looked longingly at the bottle for a long moment, then glanced up with a scowl as the G’nartan uttered another yowl.

“Yon G’nartan’s a-greetin’ again!” he barked. “Ev’ra fortnight for fivescore year—I wish he’d give’t a rest!”

“After all, it’s his planet,” Sandy said sympathetically, then looked at me and brightened. “I think the tea’s ready. D’ye take twa lumps or just th’ one?”

“None,” I said. “And just a wee drop—just a little milk, thanks.” The local dialect was beginning to seize control of my speech centers. I took the tea from Sandy, thanked her, and took a sip. I glanced at Sir Thomas, then looked at Sandy.

“Are you—ah, has he—have the scientists found an explanation for your Uncle Thomas yet?” I asked. “A ghost that holds conversations, I mean—that isn’t in the literature, I suppose.” It was growing difficult to talk about Sir Thomas as a specimen, with him looking on, and I sensed he was growing impatient. I blundered on. “I mean—perhaps they can—they can cure his condition, or something, if you see what I mean.”

Sandy pursed her lips in anticipation of reply, but was cut short by a blast from Sir Thomas. “Corporal Ligdan,” he snapped, “I’ll ha’ ye know tha’ on my death I swore a michty oath tha’ I wouldnae rest in peace until the glorious House o’ Stuart was restort tae the throne o’ Scotland! An’ I have kept tha’ oath, sir, through five centuries, like the Highland gentleman tha’ I was in life!”

“Besides, Dan,” Sandy said, giving an affectionate glance at her remote ancestor, “the family wouldnae have scientists pokin’ and proddin’ at Sir Thomas as if he were some freak o’ nature. He’s a proper Scottish gheistie, an’ we wouldnae ha’ him disturbed. He can walk our ancestral halls as long as he wishes.”

“Tha’s my lass, Sandy!” Sir Thomas beamed. I took another sip of tea, beginning to understand why the family MacDonald had vacated their ancestral home, leaving it to Sandy and the likes of Sir Thomas—it was one thing to look up genealogical charts of one’s ancestors and wonder what they might have been like, and quite another to have to watch them demonstrate every day what a lot of contumacious, arrogant old bores they all really were. And Sir Thomas seemed tame compared with what I knew of my own ancestors, who seemed to have spent most of their time drinking, cutting one another’s throats, and occasionally mounting up to ride off and have another whack at the Great Wall—no thanks, I thought, let the dead stay dead, for all I care.

“Sir Thomas, I beg your pardon,” I said. “But I wonder about your oath, now—the House of Stuart, if memory serves, is extinct. And so for that matter are their enemies, the House of Hanover. I’m afraid, Sir Thomas, you’re condemned to walk the halls of Castle Beinnean for a very long time.”

Sir Thomas drew himself up, and I suspect the fire in his eye was not a reflection of the blaze behind him. “Tha’s as may be, Corporal Ligdan. But the word o’ a Highland gentleman is intended tae stand forever! Besides, it may not be as long as a’ that…” He softened for a moment, looked as if he were about to continue, but then he gave his head a shake. “Ye’ll pardon me, ladies an’ gentlemen,” he said, “but maintainin’ my form at its present level of materialization is a wee bit wearyin’. An’ I just wanted tae welcome our Sandy back frae the wars—ye’ll have tae tell me all aboot it, dear, next time we meet!” He gave a gentlemanly smile to us and dematerialized. I heard a little choking sound from Ghantemur and then the sound of malt whiskey being gulped at great speed.

Sandy looked at me with an indulgent smile. “He’s a wee bit fanatic on the subject o’ Charlie Stuart, but ye cannae blame him,” she said. “After Culloden he had tae flee tae France, but they caught him in Scotland later, in ’49, tryin’ tae get back in tae collect his rents. They hanged him in front o’ his tenants.” She nodded toward the window. “Right oot there, in the castle courtyard. Where yon four-legged beastie was howlin’ not a few minutes ago.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Tha’s all right, Dan. It wasnae ye who did it,” Sandy said. She frowned, still looking down at the courtyard. “We’re lucky his wife isnae hauntin’ the place, too. She married a Whig afterwards, an’ a Campbell tae boot.” She sipped her tea and looked at me doubtfully. “Still, ’twas she who reconciled us tae the House of Hanover, so her son by Sir Thomas could inherit. She did as she thought best, puir creature, but I’m glad I dinnae have t’ hear her an’ Uncle Tom refightin’ the ’45 ev’ra day in the parlor.”

“Lord, yes,” I said, only now becoming aware of some of the implications of having the former owners cluttering up one’s castle. It would be bad enough if they didn’t like one another, but what if they didn’t like you? My mind quailed before a vision of books, furniture, weapons, and household implements tearing themselves loose and flying against me while the room echoed with barbaric Highland wails, and I vowed my manners would be at their best whenever I encountered another of Sandy’s ancestors.

“Uncle Tom’s made a friend, thank Goad,” Sandy went on. “Margaret, Lady Macleod—who is actually his great-aunt, though they never met in life. She’s verra nice, almost as guid at materialization as Uncle Tom, an’ with a talent for telekinesis. They’re great friends, th’ auld dears, an’ o’ course he’s made a great Jacobite oot o’ her, the Macleods havin’ been a wee bit infirm on the subject.” She smiled affectionately. “They play duets together in the music room, him on his pipes and she at the harpsichord. It’s a pleasant way to spend eternity, isnae?”

I sipped my tea and said it seemed a very nice way, indeed. Sandy beamed, and took me by the hand.

“Would ye like tae see th’ battlements, Dan?” she asked. “The view is verra lovely, wi’ the stars an’ all.”

I looked at her lovely face and smiled. “Of course,” I said. “I’d love it.” I put down my teacup and squeezed her hand. She turned to Lucy and Ghantemur.

“Wi’ ye be comin’ along wi’ us, then?” she asked.

Ghantemur still looked as if he’d been whanged across the skull with a skillet, but Lucy waved a hand and shouted, “Nay, we’ll stay here an’ enjoy the fire. Ah’ve seen the bluidy battlements annaway.”

Sandy led me to a steep old oaken stairway that went up to the roof of the keep. She released the lock from the inside and led me up into the air.

I had been half expecting another ghostly uncle, but saw only a flagged square with a flagpole standing bare against the sky. Its halliards rattled in the brisk northern wind that tugged at Sandy’s hair. The sky had cleared, with only a few low clouds skidding away on the northern horizon, and the stars were out in all their rare beauty, burning in the heavens like a river of diamonds. Sandy walked across the stones and leaned out through a crenellation, smiling into the wind.

“I love this place, truly,” she said. “It isnae much tae look at, all bare an’ drear, but when all’s said and done, it’s home.” I leaned on the nearest merlon and gazed at her, knowing what she meant: a place doesn’t have to be beautiful to be home, but just the cradle of one’s memories, a place that one can look at when far away, say in a sand-bound post in Hypsipyle, and remember an earlier happiness. So it had been with me and Agaratu, a place of harsher contrasts than this; so, no doubt, had it been for Sandy and Castle Beinnean. She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled wistfully. “It does look like the real Scotland, hey?” she asked again.

“Like parts of it. Scotland tends to be greener.”

“Och, well,” she said, turning back to look over the moor. “I like it well enough as it is.”

“That’s what matters, then,” I said. I waited a few moments while she drank her fill of the place, the darkling moor beneath the star-spattered sky, and then she sighed and turned back to me, her eyes dreamy. “Hey,” I said. “I was wondering about Charlie Stuart.”

“Wha’ aboot him?”

“What’s this fascination with the man?” I demanded. “I’ve read enough books about his time, and about the Jacobites, and I’ve seen the memorials to him all over the Highlands, but by everyone’s account he was a fool and an ingrate—he didn’t give the Highlanders a single word of thanks for all they did for him, after all they’d suffered.”

She frowned and cocked her head to one side. “Weel, I was brocht up wi’ a Jacobite tradition, so ye’ll have to forgive a wee family bias,” she said. “But when all’s said and done, I cannae understand it, either. I think it may have tae do more wi’ Charles as King than Charles as a man, if ye see wha’ I’m drivin’ at. Scarce enna one would fight for Charlie Stuart the man, but tae them he was King Charles, an’ they owed him their loyalty for that reason, just as the tenants owed loyalty tae their lairds. An’ their sufferings just confirmed them in their loyalty; with Sackville and the bluidy Campbells in power in the Highlands, it just showed the clans their enemies were villains all along.” She smiled. “An’ there’s always a great romance in a lost cause, is there nae?”

Personally I thought that the comforts of romance were scarce compensation for burned cottages, confiscated cattle, and all those bodies lying cold on Culloden field, but I didn’t say it. I just nodded and smiled and hugged Sandy as seemed called for. “Welcome home, Lance Corporal MacDonald,” I said, and kissed her.

“Ye’re a fly man, Ligdan,” she said, and took me by the hand to lead me to the stair. We passed the crenellations overlooking the courtyard as we walked, and then Sandy looked down, hesitated, and then came to a stop.

“Look ye there, noo,” she said, nodding. “What in blazes d’ye suppose is goin’ on in the chapel?”

I peered through the battlements and saw ghosts below, four of them drifting toward the chapel. One was Sir Thomas, in full tartan fig, broadsword and all, walking arm in arm with a lady in early eighteenth-century dress; he carried a set of bagpipes in the crook of his free arm. There was another less distinct personality, still in the dark red MacDonald tartan, but wearing the breastplate and helmet of Mary Stuart’s time, just disappearing into the chapel door; and walking from the keep below us to the chapel was a tall strapping dark-haired woman in a pleated tartan skirt with a sash and a glengarry bonnet, complete with the tails and the red and white dicing, perched on the side of her head.

“Tha’s my grandmother!” Sandy gasped. “She hasnae ever materialized ootside the drawin’ room before!”

I could see, glowing softly through the stained-glass windows of the chapel, a strange, subtle, shifting light, as of moving will-o’-the-wisps; it was a stirring, eerie sight, that light, and I could feel a whisper of warning crawling up my spine. Sandy, feeling it, too, looked at me, her eyes wide. “We’ve got tae get doon there, Dan,” she said. “There’s somethin’ verra wrong!”

My mind urged me to let the dead walk in peace, but something in me felt an eldritch pull drawing me to the chapel, a pull with something of the same urgency a person feels when reading a good fright novel, that keeps him turning the pages even though he’s scared out of his wits. Besides, it was clear that Sandy was alarmed, so I nodded swift agreement and followed her down the stair, out of the keep, and across the courtyard to the chapel. The same strange, shifting light glowed out the wide-flung iron-bound doors, and I could feel my heart beating faster as I approached. I swallowed my fear and stepped up onto the threshold.

I’ll never forget the sight. The pews of the little chapel were filled with a congregation of spirits, all moving, all flickering transparencies in various degrees of substantiality, an eerie multitude dressed in every kind of clothing from a blue, scowling Pict in his breechclout to a stern leather-clad trooper in his lobster-tail burgonet. The shades were all astir, moving, flickering, as if they were in a state of high excitement—but they shifted, moved, and conversed in absolute silence, as if a sheet of thick translucent glass had been dropped between us. I could see the dim shade of a clergyman standing in the pulpit; I could see Sir Thomas’ companion of a moment before stooping in the aisle to talk to a little fair-haired girl; and near a side chapel stood Sir Thomas, frowning, in grim conversation with a pair of armored pikemen. Above them ten centuries of battle flags waved solemnly in some unfelt wind, and I realized with a shiver that all here—the chapel, the flags, the castle itself, everything but Sandy and me—belonged more to these shades than to us. It was all from their time, not mine, and I wondered with what grim ferocity they would dispute its possession.

The sight was so awesome, so unearthly, that I stopped dead in my tracks and stood rooted to the spot. Sandy stopped dead, too, though I think in her case it was more from amazement. “Ah niver knew!” she gasped, looking left and right and back again. “Where’d they all come frae? There must be four dozen!”

That outburst turned their heads, and I felt in the silence all the ponderous weight of those long-dead eyes as they fell upon me, looking across the gap of centuries… The hairs rose on my neck. “Uncle Thomas!” Sandy snapped. “Wha’s goin’ on here?”

Sir Thomas MacDonald looked worried for a moment, then he gathered himself, smiled, and walked toward us, his footfalls silent. “Sandy dear,” he said, “’tis a solemn moment, a solemn moment. Our plans are fulfilled at last.” He leaned close to her, his voice a breathless rush, as if a long-delayed joy was upon him. “We ha’ our King, Sandy!” he said. “Our King is come a’ last!”

Sandy gasped and took a step back. “Name o’ Goad,” she said, stunned. “What ha’ ye been up tae?”

“We ha’ raised the banner o’ the Stuarts,” Sir Thomas proclaimed. “The royal remains o’ the prince lie yonder, brocht hither tha’ his spirit may return tae us!”

“Name o’ Goad,” Sandy said again, her eyes turning to the little side chapel where Sir Thomas had been standing, and where we now saw a long, narrow packing crate, just the size to encompass a tall coffin. I received a sensation of other eyes, spirit eyes, turning as well, the dead looking on the coffin with silent, dreadful anticipation and hope. Sandy seemed struck dumb, and she raised a hand to her forehead as if to somehow clear it, but then she gathered herself together and walked toward the side chapel with slow steps. Sir Thomas, his thin face contorted with fanatic rapture, followed in her footsteps—and somehow I followed, too, moving my leaden feet in slow reluctance. Sandy stopped dead at the arched entrance to the chapel; she paused, took a breath, and reached out a wondering hand to touch the crate.

“Has he come?” she asked finally, in a tone of strange wonderment.

“Weel, noo,” Sir Thomas said, and for a second there was hesitation in his manner. “Not yet. But ye cannae expect a prince o’ the blood royal tae just leap right out o’ a packin’ crate like a joompin jack, noo, can ye? He must be welcomed among us wi’ all proper ceremony.”

Sandy turned to the transparent shade of her ancestor. I could see her recovering slowly from her astonishment, her intelligence returning to her eyes. Look out, I thought, here comes the storm; and sure enough she flashed clear anger.

“Ye’ve stolen the Prince’s tomb from Rome!” she cried.

“Weel. Aye, we did,” Sir Thomas said. It may have been an illusion in that ghostly light, but I thought I saw the shadow of a blush stealing across Sir Thomas’ cheek. He looked at Sandy sharply, his face showing stubborn resolve. “We spirits all agreed,” he said, “that we needed a King. Tae rule amongst us, an’ resolve disputes betwixt us all.”

“Ye could resolve disputes amongst ye,” Sandy said, her eyes flashing blue fire, “by leavin’ each other alone, did ye evair think o’ that? And wha’s yer bluidy King goin’ tae think when he’s asked tae judge disputes over who’s goin’ tae haunt the parlor at a given hour, which is all that ye fight aboot anaway, for Goad’s sake? An’ why Charlie Stuart? Whynae Robert the Bruce, or James the Fourth, or even bluidy Macbeth—why the hell must it be Charlie Stuart?”

Sir Thomas looked a bit uncomfortable, but he held his head high with undiminished pride. “There was a wee bit o’ discussion, but once I told these others aboot Prince Charlie’s virtues–” There was a smugness in his tone that, I could tell, was driving Sandy into fury. “–weel, it was almost unanimous, in the end. Yon Pict held oot for someone called Goieidh. Besides,” he added, “the MacDonalds alwa’ were divided on the subject o’ the Bruce, and it was easier for us tae get tae the tomb in Rome than tae those others.”

“For ye tae get tae the tomb!” Sandy shrieked, and for a moment I knew what it must be like to face an entire battalion of Kilties, with the pipes wailing away and all of them screaming for blood. No doubt Sir Thomas was somewhat fortified by the knowledge that he was already dead, but still he seemed to shrink before the force of her words. “For ye!” she cried. “Ye cannae leave the planet, and ye know it. Ye cannae even carry the blasted crate! Ye had tae hire it done, and wha’ I want tae know is who paid for it, ye blasphemous shilpit schemer, ye?” She wheeled, singling out the tall woman in the glengarry cap, her grandmother. “How could ye do it?” she demanded. “I would ha’ thought ye’d have had more sense?”

The woman shrugged and glanced away. “Ah guess Ah’m just a romantic a’ heart, dear,” she said, but Sandy was not mollified.

“Romantic!” she bellowed. “Romantic! How much did this romantic excursion cost, I want tae know!”

“Calm yersel’, Sandy dear,” said a low female voice. “Wha’s done is done.” Sandy whirled to face the newcomer, her face like thunder and her fists bunched. Margaret, Lady Macleod—or so I assumed—had moved from her place to stand by Sandy. She was a willowy, gentle-seeming lady, in a gown of heavy green silk with an ermine collar, her auburn hair curled into ringlets to frame an intelligent, sympathetic face.

“I know wha’s done!” Sandy roared in a voice that Ahab might have used to carry past the royal yard in a force-ten gale. “Wha’ I cannae seem tae find oot is who paid for it!”

“If ye’ll calm yersel’, lass, I’ll explain it tae ye,” Sir Thomas said, trying nervously to pat her on the arm—his hand went right through her, and she glared at him for trying. He pulled his hands back. “It only required a wee sum o’ money frae oot o’ the reserve kept frae the oopkeep o’ the castle.”

“An” how did ye get yer hands on it?” Sandy demanded, her nose only an inch from Sir Thomas’ chin. He blinked and drew back.

“The same way ye would yersel’, child,” Lady Macleod said softly. “We accessed to the bank account through one of the terminals in the castle.”

“We used the bonds, none o’ the ready money,” Sir Thomas explained. “Caledonian twenty-year bonds at eighteen an’ one-quarter percent redeemable at five an’ one-half percent…”

“Ye cashed my bonds!” Sandy shrieked.

“Nay, o’ course not! D’ye take me for a fool?” Sir Thomas was indignant. “I borrowed on ’em, at a verra reasonable rate o’ interest, eight and three-quarters percent. The payments can be spread oot over twelve year, an’ taken frae the revenues laid aside for the castle oopkeep.”

Sandy listened to this, quietly nodding, chin in hand. I could see that her initial rage had passed, to be replaced by a cold, merciless calculation. “How,” she said, her voice calmer now, “could ye use the terminals wi’oot knowin’ the codes?”

Sir Thomas turned away, unable to meet her eyes, his cheek twitching. “Weel…” he began, but could go no further. It was Lady Macleod who had to say it for him.

“Ye understan’, dear, that we shades, because we can move verra quietly an’ sometimes we’re nae seen because we’re nae fully materialized…”

“Ye stole ’em,” Sandy said. “Ye lookt over my shoulder when I was doin’ the accounts an’ ye stole my access codes. An’ then ye waited till I was off in the army, an’ then Margaret here used her telekinetic ability to manipulate the terminal. Ye puisny leetle thieves,” she said sadly, shaking her head. “Ye sorry wretched bluidy lyin’ thieves!”

Sir Thomas, his head turned away, seemed to shrink into himself at the accusation, parts of him fading away altogether. He seemed too mortified to speak.

“Sandy, dear,” said Lady Macleod, her sympathetic eyes looking at Sandy gently, “it’s been many centuries since Sir Thomas here had a King. And it’s so important tae him. I’m afraid the rest o’ us were just carried awa’ by his enthusiasm.” She looked at Sandy with sorrow. “We really should ha’ told ye, Sandy. I’m sorry tha’ we didnae.”

“Tae steal a bluidy coffin,” Sandy said, shaking her head. She glared up at Sir Thomas. “D’ye realize the chance any Nova Caledonian has o’ becomin’ a ghost? Only twelve percent, d’ye know that?”

“I ha’ read the stateestics,” Sir Thomas said, his voice choked. “I felt it wa’ worth…”

“And of the thousands o’ people who lived an’ died in Castle Beinnean on earth, only three or four became shades on earth, aye?” Sandy went on, remorselessly. “An’ maybe twa–” She looked around the chapel, at all the flickering shadows that were watching the debate in all their utter graveyard silence. “Three or four dozen,” she amended, “became apparent once the castle was moved here, is that nae true?”

“Aye,” Sir Thomas conceded. But then he looked up. “But there’s a better probability for the Celts. I’ve heard we carry a gene o’ witchcraft and so on…”

Sandy just shook her head, and Sir Thomas’ voice faded. It was a pretty lame point at that, I thought; and besides, even if the Celts carried a gene for witchery, it hadn’t done them much good whenever the Saxons had decided to throw their weight around.

“So tha’s perhaps two or three percent at the most, correct?” Sandy asked. “An” therefore ye have decided, wi’oot consultin’ any of yer livin’ kin, tae put our family in debt for twelve year, hopin’ that yer precious Charlie Stuart is one o’ the two percent who can manifest themselves.”

Sir Thomas, even considering he’d been dead for five centuries, looked thoroughly miserable. He turned away, his head hanging down, and Lady Macleod walked over to him, looking at him with concerned attention. “Bluidy hell,” Sandy said, her anger fading. “Could ye nae have asked me?”

Lady Macleod looked at Sandy, her face full of concern. “We’re all sorry, Sandy,” she said. “But cannae ye understan’ how badly he wants his King? He’s been so long wi’oot him.”

I can still see Sandy standing there, a small, dark form in her kilt, the shifting, eerie light of the assembled spirits flickering off her features, and standing by her the sorrowing figure of an eighteenth-century gentleman bereft of the King he worshiped, with Lady Macleod looking at him, sorry for him in his misery. “I’m verra sorry, Sandy,” he said.

“No, ye’re nae, ye lyin’ wee boy,” she said, cocking her head, her lips curled in a wry, affectionate smile; and then she stepped forward to try to hug her old Uncle Tom, and promptly won every heart in the place, mine included. She turned to me.

“Weel, Dan,” she said, “we may as well see wha’ we boucht oursel’. I think yon crate is beyond the ability of any o’ the gheisties, here, so wha’ d’ye say tae havin’ a whack at it?”

“Happy to,” I said. There was movement among the shades in the pews, the lights flickering as they shifted in their excitement. A claw hammer and chisel floated up into my hands from the top of the crate where they’d been sitting, and I said, “Thank you,” to whoever had moved them. I set to work. It was a sturdy crate, and several sweaty minutes passed before I had the crate knocked to pieces and the pieces stowed away. What was within proved disappointing: it was a plain lead inner coffin that had obviously been ripped from the embrace of some grander memorial. I stood back, hammer and chisel still in hand, and waited. Sandy stood in the wide chapel door, looking dubiously at the dark coffin; Sir Thomas and Lady Macleod flanked her; and I could sense the shades gathering behind, waiting for the appearance of their promised King.

Minutes passed, and nothing happened. I could feel a wave of aching disappointment welling out from the congregation, and then I saw Sandy shake her head. “Maybe,” I said, “it’ll help if we can open the coffin and, ah, liberate the remains.”

“Nay,” Sandy said. “He should a’ come, if he were comin’.”

Sir Thomas seemed too stricken to speak; he had wilted into himself, despairing agony in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Tommy,” Lady Macleod said slowly. “I knew how much ye wanted it tae happen.”

And then, with slow dignity, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, rose from the dead, first coming through the coffin lid to a sitting position, then rising awesomely to his full height. Sandy took a step back, thunderstruck. With slow astonishment, Sir Thomas went down on one knee in hushed reverence, and the rest of the spirits followed suit, their faces upturned, in blazing nope, to view Bonnie Prince Charlie as he rose.

He was a couple inches over six feet and handsome in an imperturbable way that can either reflect great strength of character or great density of mind—from what I’d heard of him, I’d suspect the latter. His eyes were blue, and he wore a white-powdered wig with side-curls. I had expected him to be dressed in the Highland tartan and homespun coats of his followers, but his clothes were of silk, and cut to a continental pattern—knee breeches in garish yellow and green, lots of gold lace around the buttonholes of his coat, lace billowing at throat and wrist. He carried a long walking stick in his hand, and his speech, when it came, was purest Saxon upper crust.

“We are pleased,” he said, “to have awwived at last. We are wegwetful that this has not happened sooner.”

In other words, I thought, what took you so long? And please note there was not a word of thanks, either.

Bonnie Prince Charlie looked down his long nose at Sir Thomas. “We wecognize you, Sir Thomas Mac Donald,” he said. “Pway pwesent us to our subjects.”

Sir Thomas, that proud, stiff-necked Highland laird, was gazing up at his King with the cringing, abject adoration of a basset hound for his master. Scraping like any serf, he stepped forward and said, “If it please Your Highness, may I present my living descendant, Sandrea MacDonald.” Sandy, looking up at the Young Pretender as if she had half a mind to tweak him by the nose to see if he was real, stepped forward and curtsied—which is not an easy motion in a kilt, by the way. The other ghostly presences came forward to bow and back away, Sir Thomas giving their names where he knew them—some of the more obscure ones he simply referred to as “Your Highness’ loyal subject”—and last of all he introduced me. I bowed civilly, but Prince Charlie took no more notice of me than he would of any laborer, which is to say none.

“Is this all?” asked Charles Edward Stuart when all had come before him. “Vewy well.” He looked up at the chapel, at the dusty flags hung on high, at the brass memorial plates screwed into the walls. “Will we be staying here for the pwesent?” he asked, as if he didn’t much relish the idea. “Sir Thomas, I would be obliged if you would escort us to our place of wesidence.”

“O’ course, Your Highness,” Sir Thomas said, still bowing and scraping, and then he straightened and turned to his shades, his eyes shining with Gaelic exultation. “Let us pipe the Prince to his bower!” he proclaimed. “God save the King!”

“God save the King!” they all echoed, the first sound most of them had made; the words rang echoing from the walls of the small chapel, filling the air with wild joy—and then drums crashed out from somewhere in the mob, and the pipes began to drone the most stirring of Highland marches, “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?” the wild and barbaric battle hymn commemorating the day the Highland broadswords chopped up General Cope’s redcoats at Prestonpans, one of Charlie Stuart’s better days… I put down my hammer and chisel and went to stand near Sandy at the chapel door as the procession surged past, all the ghostly flickering spirits from all the ages since being a Highlander had begun to mean something, all the old mountain folk with the blaze of battle in their eye as they walked behind their King. What did it matter that he was a fool or an ass? He was theirs, their old King come back to his rightful place among them, and they were mad with the joy of it. Even the old armored figure from above the gate was there, his visor up to reveal a craggy old face with a white mustache, his mouth open to cry, “Vive le roi!” Sandy pursed her lips.

“Ach, me,” she said. “It disnae Sir David after all—he’s some kind of Frenchman.” She shook her head. “I’ll nae ever get it sortit oot. I’ve nae seen half this lot before.”

And then she shivered, and I took her hand, knowing how she felt. We were alone, the two of us, among the long procession of the dead, the half-seen, flickering figures who marched to the weird and savage call of the pipes, moving in their ghostly armor and twilight tartans, waving their fans and old pikes and ancient dim banners. We watched as they poured into the keep and the old tower’s windows began to flash with strange, shifting light, and the courtyard echo to the sounds of ghostly revelry. We stood hand in hand and listened to the wild celebrations of the dead, and we could see those shadows marching on behind their dim piper, going on through the centuries, growing in numbers, eventually submerging the living beneath their roistering swarm, triumphing over death itself as they piped, and sang, and marched, obedient servants to their long-dead, newfound King.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Decisive Warfare:
Retrospect and Prospect

Reginald Bretnor

It must have been a good year for books on strategic theory: both Reginald Bretnor’s Decisive Warfare and my own (with Stefan Possony) Strategy of Technology were published in 1969. Alas, both are out of print, although I am revising Strategy of Technology at this moment.

In Decisive Warfare Bretnor reviewed the Lanchester Equations. These were derived from military history and applied to modern war: the basic theory is that other things being equal, the actual strengths in a military contest should be thought of as the ratio of the squares of the numbers engaged. Thus, if the forces are in a 3:2 ratio, one ought to think of this as 9:4, or slightly better than 2:1; while a 3:1 superiority is really overwhelming.

Bretnor went on to examine the “other things” which in practice are never equal, and came to some interesting conclusions on decisiveness in war. His book, while hard to obtain, should be read by every military theorist.

In this present essay Bretnor looks at developments since his book appeared: what he has learned, and what the world has learned.

Decisive Warfare:
Retrospct and Prospect

Reginald Bretnor

… Though the Art of War be a Practical one, yet the Theory is so needful, that without it you may be Common Souldiers good enough, but not good Commanders; you are to know more than you daily see; for it is a sign of a very mean Officer, when he tells you he likes not such a thing, because he never saw it before.

—Sir James Turner, Pallas Armata: Military Essayes of the Ancient Grecian, Roman, and Modern Art of War…, London, 1683

Retrospect

My interest in matters military arose, originally, from my boyhood fascination with weapons and history, and my interest in military theory developed gradually as I read more and more, about wars and their conduct, about command decisions and their outcome, about great generals and generals who were dunderheads—and the more I read, the less satisfied I was with the various systems set forth by the philosophers and theorists of war.

At their simplest, these consisted of a few aphorisms; at their most profound, of very carefully derived and developed systems of “principles of war.” (Outstanding are those set forth by Major General J. F. C. Fuller in Foundations of the Science of War,[1] for they are based on a thorough consideration of all war’s elements, physical and mental.) Yet I found none of these satisfactory. They seemed, ultimately, to be rules for the conduct of a war rather than statements of basic cause and effect in warfare. None of them, to my mind, offered frames of reference consistent and coherent enough for accurate predictability. In part, I think, this was due to the fact that any set of principles attempting to comprehend within itself both the physical and nonphysical factors in war, both destructive force and the minds and wills that guide it, invites confusion, for it risks the implication that each listed principle must be observed and that all are of approximately equal value. For that reason, it seemed to me that they should always be differentiated, and that the differentiation should be explicit, for such unintended sources of semantic confusion are responsible for many of our difficulties, civil and military.

Very well, what does one do if one is dissatisfied with someone else’s map of structure and process (which is, after all, what any theory is)? One either gives up the whole business or else cudgels one’s brain trying to develop one’s own, and this is what I decided to do.

Here, of course, we encounter the nicely loaded question of “how well are you qualified?”—loaded because it carries the clear implication that there are curricula which qualify one to abstract and elaborate those relationships of cause and effect that constitute a valid and generally applicable theory of war. The answer to that was obvious: in that sense I certainly was not qualified, but to that answer there was an obvious corollary: if such curricula existed, there would be no question either of revising existing theories or of elaborating a new one. It would be unnecessary.

It took me some time to quit worrying about my lack of qualifications and set to work. I was first encouraged by the late Colonel William Fergus Kernan, USA, artillery officer and author,[2] and for that encouragement I was, and have remained, deeply grateful, especially as it came at a time of much personal distress. Colonel Kernan recommended me to his publishers, and shortly before Pearl Harbor Mrs. Blanche Knopf wrote to me, expressing interest in whatever work I might be planning. Unfortunately, my ideas were still too amorphous and too disorganized for me even to think of attempting publication, and it was not until the 1960s that I felt I had something really coherent to say.

By that time the general body of theory incorporated in the book eventually published as Decisive Warfare had pretty well taken shape. It is based, first, on an examination of the physical processes of war, those that involve the generation and exercise of destructive force. In this, I more or less followed Fuller’s dictum:

Mental force does not win a war; moral force does not win a war; physical force does not win a war; but what does win a war is the highest combination of these three forces acting as one force. Do not let us, therefore, belittle physical force, for it is an essential of this trinity, and all other forces are as nothing without it.

What I could not quite accept was the concept of the three forces acting, except in a very general and symbolic way, as one force. I saw the overall military equation as one based entirely on destructive force, with absolute limits on the realization of that force’s potential imposed by the nature of weapons, enabling devices, instrumentalities, and terrain. Thus, it was not true that “the moral is to the physical as three to one”—at least not in any sense other than the symbolic—for the highest value as multipliers nonphysical factors can attain in the military equation is exactly I. Thus, no matter how high your men’s morale, no matter how well trained they are, they cannot force an automatic weapon to exceed its designed cyclic rate of fire, or an armored vehicle its built-in limitations of speed and fuel requirements. The true difference between first-line troops and slobs, then, is that a really good soldier can get the very most out of his equipment and the slob can’t—and that goes also for generals and their armies. Any other assessment of the nonphysical factors in the equation is an invitation to military disaster—witness Japanese miscalculations in World War II.

The second basis for my formulation was a recognition of the fact that the emphasis in virtually all statements of military theory has been on the positive, rather than on the equally vital negative, aspects of the equation. Therefore, to escape residual connotations, I avoided such traditional military terms as mass, and substituted the symbol M for all aspects of destructive force, and the corresponding symbol V for the vulnerability of man and his works to destruction. Every military equation must contain both.

In 1966 I published what would become the book’s first chapter, “Vulnerability and the Equations of War,” as an article in the Command and General Staff College Military Review,[3] and this was followed in 1967 by another, “Destructive Force and the Equations of War.”[4] With these as a basis, I sold the book to Stackpole Publishers, who issued it in 1969.

Essentially, it is an examination of the processes of war, primarily the physical processes, tracing the stages in the expression of both destructive force and vulnerability, and illustrating these in a rough sequence of unquantified equations—unquantified because many of the factors, especially in modern technological warfare, are much too complex to quantify practically and because any attempt at quantification, in such a study, besides being absurd, would have sacrificed the universality desired.

The main factor treated, in addition to Vulnerability (V) and Destructive Force (M), was, of course, Time (T), so that every equation contained V and V′ (one’s own and the enemy’s), M and M′, T and T′. The discussion of various phases in the expression of M gives a good general idea of how these were approached. There are five such phases: Preparation (industrial production, organization, training); Logistics (movement “out of action”); Maneuver (movement “in action”); Weapons, primary radius of expression (i.e., the flight of an artillery projectile to its target); Weapons, secondary radius of expression (i.e., bursting radius of an artillery shell). Obviously, Vulnerability also had its more or less comparable phases of realization. Where Time entered the equation M and M′, V and V′, were represented followed by an arrow, thusly: M→ and V→.

In view of this presentation, I discussed what I felt—and still feel—to be one of the most urgent and critical and, in spite of everything, least understood aspects of war today, the fact that destructive force at our disposal has mounted along a curve so steep as to be, in some areas, asymptotic. This was vividly illustrated by the lethality tables compiled by Colonel T. N. Dupuy in a study prepared for the United States Army by the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization (HERO) in 1964. The geometric progression of scientific and technological development is indisputable, but it is also indisputable that almost all our thinking where weaponry is concerned is still arithmetical and linear. It seems—frighteningly—as though the very concept of geometrically accelerating power is understood by almost no politicians, by few military men, and (appallingly) by only a minority of scientists. How else can one explain such idiocies as our “civil defense” plans to evacuate our major cities in event of an all-out war? Are their authors really ignorant of the brutal reality that a single freeway accident can often stop the flow of traffic for hours, or that sometimes it can take hours to evacuate a single crowded stadium?

The lesson taught by World War I—that, confronted by overwhelming firepower, you either disperse, take adequate cover, or die—had been learned by the military by World War II, but there seems to have been no general understanding of its universality. We have done little to diminish our vulnerability to superweapons. Instead of decentralizing industry, instead of attempting to disperse our population, instead of doing our utmost to avoid dependence on concentrated essential supplies—water and electricity, for example—we have actually continued to centralize. It is true that there are nations with valid civil defense programs—Switzerland and Sweden notably—but we, who stand in greater need of one, have nothing except the sound of bureaucratic whistling in the dark.

These matters were discussed at some length in Decisive Warfare, for while the book is basically a statement of theory, there would have been little point in leaving it at that, without any attempt to apply the theory to the problems of the moment. Consequently, considerable space was devoted to considering the inevitable proliferation of superweapons, which were bound to become more powerful, easier to manufacture, cheaper, and therefore more generally available, so that what had (then) only recently been a Two-Power problem was destined, before too long, to become an Nth-Power problem. Again, a good deal was said about the vulnerability of enormous ships, both ships of war and merchantmen, and about such vessels as concentrations of vulnerability, as well as about the vulnerability of helicopters and the eventual phasing out of manned aircraft (at least in combat roles). The vastly increased complexity of weapons, enabling devices, and instrumentalities also, of course, came in for considerable discussion, even though at the time the microelectronic revolution was hardly hatched, laser development was primitive, and the military possibilities of the space adventure had scarcely been explored except in science fiction. Finally, I emphasized the point that at the time we already had behind us almost twenty-five years of unprecedentedly tight secrecy (now stretched out into forty) so that probably no one really knew exactly what would happen in event of an all-out war.

Purpose and Realization

From the outset, the primary purpose of the book had been to derive and set forth, first a general analysis of the physical processes of war, and second the ways in which these are determined by the nonphysical processes, by the mind and the will of man. My original title was The Processes of War, but this, possibly because they deemed it commercially unexciting, did not please my publishers, and Decisive Warfare, which I myself felt placed undue emphasis on what was, after all, a less important section of the book, was the best compromise I could get. I had entitled the fourth chapter of the book “The Critical Imbalance,” and summarized what it dealt with in my table of contents as follows:

The equations of war always have two sets of values: one’s own and the enemy’s. When these are too nearly balanced; the attrition of force tends to be slow, and action indecisive. When, by military art or natural circumstance, they are thrown sharply out of balance, attrition can be swift and action decisive. The battles and campaigns where decisive victories are achieved are usually those in which a critical imbalance has been established—that point of no return where, inevitably, the enemy’s realized vulnerability escalates and his force decays. Therefore the critical imbalance should be the goal of all military theory, of all military planning, of all commanders.

As examples of the achieved critical imbalance, I chose Lord Nelson’s splendid sea victories, notably Aboukir Bay and Trafalgar, quoting Lanchester’s application of his N^2 Law to Trafalgar to analyze Nelson’s accomplishment in terms of the military equation’s essential factors. I also chose, as examples from land warfare, Scipio Africanus’ brilliant double envelopments, at Ilipa, Baecula, and Zama. I also discussed situations where a critical imbalance was, for one or more reasons, impossible to achieve—the Western Front in World War I, for instance, where destructive force had escalated to an unprecedented and never generally understood degree, and where techniques to minimize the realization of vulnerability had yet to be developed.

There was quite a bit in the first draft of the book to which my publishers took exception, and I have had something to say about this in my foreword to the new edition. Much of it, they apparently thought, was heretical. They sent the manuscript to a very well known authority who, judging by his reaction, seemed to have found it profoundly disturbing, and who denounced both book and author so extravagantly that the publishers sent it on to another expert, who found some faults and much to praise in it.

Also, we went round and round on such matters as certain of my opinions, the way I expressed them, and what I chose to criticize. The ultimate result was that I did a considerable amount of rewriting, compromising where I had to and deleting some conclusions I would rather have kept in—and ending up with a book which was not quite what I had set out to write and in some ways a disappointment to me, not where the theory set forth was concerned, but in its treatment of that theory’s applications.

Decisive Warfare met with a strangely mixed reception. Brigadier General William K. Ghormley, then editor of Ordnance, made it the magazine’s Book of the Month and gave it what was probably the best review I have ever received. The Library Journal slammed it down with a sneer in a couple of paragraphs. The Air Force Friday Review of Defense Literature and one or two other professional publications gave it good reviews, and a few others contented themselves with noncommittal statements of content. The Michigan Quarterly Review, where I had published, printed a long article-review airing its author’s dovish views about Vietnam and hinting that I undoubtedly was a warmonger.

Prospect

Although Decisive Warfare wasn’t quite the book I had wanted it to be, I saw no reason to make major revisions for the new Borgo Press edition, for to my mind the equations of war had not changed since the first printing, and it was these, and their interrelationships, that I wanted to emphasize.

The equations remain the same. It is their values that have changed, are changing, and will continue to change—all at geometrically accelerating rates.

First let us consider weapons, our own and any possible enemy’s, for it is weapons which are the basic element in M and M′. Foremost in most minds, of course, are the world’s nuclear stockpiles. Their individual power, as far as published data would indicate, has not increased greatly since 1969—but their numbers and accuracy and variety all have. Again, while there would appear to be no more hydrogen powers now than there were then—five—there seems to be no doubt that there are now several new conventional atomic powers: India? Pakistan? The Union of South Africa? Israel? Or perhaps Sweden, the Benelux countries, Switzerland? And it is an absolute certainty that, however many there may be now, before very long their numbers—barring effectively imposed controls—will increase dramatically and will include certain of those thoroughly irresponsible nations now supporting international terrorism.

The geometrical progression of weapons development applies also to other radiation weapons, to lasers, to particle-beam weapons, to chemical and bacteriological weapons. It operates as a direct and inevitable function of the amounts of money funding it, and here once more the prospect of quite the wrong people taking advantage of it is extremely alarming, especially as the weapons just mentioned will probably be cheaper and easier to produce than nuclear weapons have been.

So much for weapons insofar as they are involved with the terminal phase of the expression of M and M′—more or less general-purpose weapons and those mislabeled “strategic.” There is another class of weapons to consider: those auxiliary weapons designed expressly to interfere with this expression—“smart” antiaircraft missiles, antimissile missiles, and all those special-purpose weapons devised to carry out specific and role-limited functions on land, at sea, in the air, and inevitably in space. (The fact that many of them can, at times, be employed as general-purpose weapons does not invalidate our thesis. It just complicates it—and if there is any single factor muddling the military picture today it is the geometrically increasing complexity in every phase of the expression of M and M′, in our attempts to effect the realization of V′, and in the measures we take to prevent an enemy from realizing V—that is, our own vulnerability.)

Specialization and Complexity

The rule that complexity follows on specialization applies to virtually every weapon and every enabling device (defined here as any device not itself a weapon without which weapons either cannot function or can function only at reduced efficiency). Thus, while we speak of, say, a battleship as a weapon, properly it is nothing of the sort—and has not been since the last ram was discarded. It is a mobile, more or less invulnerable, seagoing platform for its guns and, nowadays, missiles—in short, an enabling device. Its engines, its communications equipment, its computers, and for that matter its laundry and kitchens and sick bays—all are enabling devices, just as its purely defensive armament consists of enabling weapons.

To illustrate this complexity, it is only necessary to consider the communications equipment available to naval commanders in Nelson’s day, during the Civil War, during World Wars I and II, and today, or to compare the information-gathering abilities of cavalry patrols or of observation balloons with those of radar and sonar, of stratospheric aircraft and spy satellites. Even a comparison of the instrument panels of, say, a Sopwith Camel or Nieuport, a Messerschmitt or Spitfire, with those of a Mystère or F-15 will demonstrate the point.

And the complexity is not simply on the surface. It means that every problem of supply and replacement is multiplied in direct ratio, that jury-rigging and cannibalization become largely things of the past, that military dependence on a continuity of production and supply has been critically increased. (Witness what happened to the Tehran rescue mission when one helicopter failed.)

In short—and we can argue legitimately that our specialization has been justified by military necessity—it still violates a fundamental military principle: the principle of simplicity.[5]

Why is this so important? Simply because every complication of an enabling device or process, anywhere along the line of the expression of M in war, implies a corresponding new and increased value, or a new focal point of concentration, of V.

Perhaps we ought to paraphrase Ben Franklin’s “for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse…” by starting out with for want of a byte…

This technological complexity is giving rise to an entirely new class of devices which must be classified as weapons, those designed to disable enemy devices dependent on electronic circuitry, not by the direct expression of physical force, but by the use of one form or another of radiation.

The process would appear to be open-ended, something that is true of most scientific and technological progress, for when a curve of progress appears to have reached asymptote, almost invariably the curve of an analogous development catches up and passes it. A good example is what happened when the curve of artillery development appeared to have peaked—the analogous curve of rocket development appeared and left it far behind.

(This is why the arithmetic, linear thinking characteristic of so many politicians, military men, and media pundits is a deadly danger, not only to those who indulge in it but to all of us.)

The increase in the complexity and specialization of weapons and enabling devices has other unhappy consequences. Inevitably, the instrumentalities necessary to their functioning become more and more complex. Personnel procurement and training become more of a problem. And finally, perhaps most important, inevitably there is some division of the totality of destructive force available.

Let us take a simple example of how this functions. In the days of cavalry, it was axiomatic that cavalrymen fighting on foot could not match an equivalent infantry unit in firepower for the simple reason that, depending on the situation and the degree of mobility to be retained, from 12.5 percent to 25 percent of their strength had to stay out of a firefight as horse-holders—either one to each set of fours or one per eight-man squad.

Similarly, as infantry began to employ—and were reorganized to employ—more and more special-purpose weapons, naturally the total rifle firepower of infantry battalions would—given no improvement in the basic rifle—be reduced. Thus, while specialization in certain respects can and does multiply the relizable value of M→, in certain other respects it can subtract from it, and this further complicates the military equations which the commander must evaluate and juggle. The involved orchestration of complex modern armies is a very different thing from the beautiful simplicity of armies like those of the Mongols, where every man was an expert mounted archer and swordsman, every man was equally mobile, and no man required a more involved supply system than his comrades.

As another example, we can take the very simple specialization of warships in, again, Nelson’s day, and compare it with the constantly increasing specialization that followed steam and speed and the invention of the torpedo. In the days of sail, there was no question of smaller vessels protecting the main line of battle, which was quite able to protect itself. The only exception was in their reconnaissance role. Even frigates, to say nothing of their smaller cousins, had as their function the protection of merchant craft and the raiding of the enemy’s, and those other duties that, sometimes as independent cruisers and sometimes as fleet auxiliaries, they were designed to perform. Compare this with the situation which has developed in the last century: torpedo boats and torpedo-boat destroyers (the second term soon to be stripped of its adjective), submarines and aircraft carriers and antiaircraft and antimissile vessels, PT boats and hovercraft and kindred small ships with big weapons, all with their individual (or class) requirements where supply and maintenance are concerned.

Here again, the present-day admiral’s problems of orchestration are comparable to those confronting today’s generals.

One is tempted to question whether the necessity for specialization, and a fascination with the complex technological gadgetry of specialization, may not on occasion blind one to the possibility of achieving great things with massive concentrations of simpler, cheaper weapons. I often wonder what the results might have been had either the British or the Germans, at Jutland, been able to deploy, say, three hundred destroyers—or what would have happened during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines had our own forces been able to oppose the initial landings with massed mortars. These are now vain speculations, but they might still be kept in mind to illustrate the principle, especially when cheap, simple weapons are being replaced by much more expensive, much more complex ones.

In our quite justified eagerness to develop new and superior specialized weapons and enabling devices, we seem to have quite forgotten the possibilities which may still exist in new general-purpose weapons less dependent on supply complexities and, because of their uniformity, ultimately simpler to employ on all levels of application and command decision. To my mind, the most promising area from which these may be developed would seem to be that of lasers and other beam weapons. A quantum jump advance comparable to that which gave us microelectronics but in the area of power supplies could provide us with some very flexible weapons indeed.

MAD and the High Frontier

The subject of laser weapons brings us immediately to the question of the Strategic Defense Initiative as urged by General Daniel Graham. As this is being written, it is being wrangled over and argued against by a wide variety of scientists and media people. A Los Angeles Times report,[6] for instance, quoted a study by R&D Associates, “an influential defense think tank,” indicating that,

in a matter of hours, a laser defense system powerful enough to cope with the ballistic missile threat can also destroy the enemy’s major cities by fire. The attack would proceed city by city, the attack time for each city being only a matter of minutes.

Furthermore,

“The lasers can be employed in a manner not contemplated by the SDI,” cautioned Albert L. Latter and Ernest A. Martinelli, authors of the eight-page R&D Associates study and advocates of a stronger U.S. defense. “…After spending hundreds of billions of dollars, we would be back where we started from: deterrence by retaliation.”

The L.A. Times report did say that “many advocates of SDI, often called Star Wars, say they hope that lasers may one day be part of a defensive shield against enemy missiles [italics mine].” However, the whole tenor of its argument conveys the idea that laser armament not only is a certainty but will be of prime importance; and I think we can assume that this is partly because of our sensation-oriented media’s fascination with Luke Sky walker and his friends, and partly because opponents of SDI are not always too scrupulous where propaganda is concerned.

In view of all this, it may be interesting to cite another news story, from the January 25, 1986, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle:

The government has awarded Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. in Sunnyvale a $468 million Star Wars contract to develop an interceptor that can smash enemy missiles 100 miles up in space….

Lockheed will build a non-nuclear, lightweight, low-cost interceptor that can destroy ballistic missile warheads by smashing into them above the atmosphere. The impact would harmlessly disintegrate nuclear warheads….

The … program is related to the homing overlay experiment, also conducted by Lockheed. On June 10, 1984, Lockheed interceptor hit and destroyed a dummy warhead hundreds of miles up in space.

This scarcely sounds as though SDI’s central thrust, at least at present, is in the direction of main reliance on lasers. However, as a supporter of SDI, I myself hope that ultimately it will be.

In my opinion, the type of laser defense contemplated would be very much to the advantage of the United States whether or not in due course it became an offensive system. The reason lies in a comparison of our vulnerabilities and those of the Soviet Union. Certainly, in its initial stages it would be an extremely useful defense. However, I do not think that its acquisition could ever render us completely secure against nuclear—or other—attack. Modern war, as we know it, is much more complex than that, and future warfare will be no simpler.

Let us hark back for a moment to the entire MAD concept and to the R&D suggestion that satellite laser systems would simply be more of the same. In effect, the people who dreamed up MAD erected a vast, static military equation which fear was supposed to keep in some sort of balance. The idea was hatched when there were only two major values of M to be considered—in other words, when only the United States and the Soviet Union really had the power to upset the balance. However, as I believe we have shown, what was a Two-Power problem has now come very close to being an Nth-Power problem. In short, the balance becomes more and more precarious as science and technology arm more and more second- and third-rate nations—and even groups of savages and semisavages—with what we have been thinking of as superweapons.

At its best, SDI will provide us with an effective defense against nuclear missile attack, and at its worst—if indeed it does become an offensive instrument and both sides get it—it will at least restore something of the Two-Power balance, for the cost of lofting laser satellites in adequate numbers and defending them in space will be beyond what powers that are less than superpowers will be able to afford.

The Two-Power standoff as represented by MAD is, of course, not an ideal to be devoutly hoped for. It represents an almost incredible failure to understand how science and technology affect the military process: arithmetical and linear thinking at its most miserable. The proof of this is the naked fact that “deterrence” has deterred the communists from nothing except all-out nuclear war—if, indeed, they have refrained from starting such a war because of the deterrent. It has not deterred them from subverting other governments, from arming revolutionaries worldwide, from training and assisting terrorists, and from waging war against the free world in a dozen different ways and in a hundred different areas. I myself think that they are upset about SDI because they fear that once we have such a defense our technological superiority may put us in a position where we can effectively call a halt to their international subversion.

The equations of war are very cold equations. Their values change with science and technology, but the equations do not, and today they tell us that we confront a future in which M values will continue to increase geometrically, but in which all indications are that little or nothing will be done to reduce corresponding values of V, a future which holds too strong a likelihood that any major war, instead of being a matter of generalship and strategy, may be nothing more nor less than a gigantic artillery problem.

In this situation, we continue to play games: blithering about “arms control,” writing new and even emptier treaties and agreements to follow those which have been written and repeatedly violated during this century. Considering that it is we of the free world who have been the prime sufferers from these violations—violations of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, Hitler’s taking of the Rhineland, the violations by Japan and Germany and the Soviet Union of how many nations’ neutrality and sovereignty?—one would think that common sense would dictate a different approach—for instance, the scrapping of the so-called United Nations in favor of a civilized union of free countries. A world organization of nations, like any club, has to have rules, and has the right to demand that the membership abide by them.

In short, we need very badly to revise the ancient equations of international law and diplomacy.

The Mind, the Will, and the Equations of War

Again, the equations of war are very cold equations, and we delude ourselves if we think their operative physical values, M and M′, V and V′, T and T′, can be directly changed either by the mind and will of a commander or by those of his command. The role of the mind and the will is not to multiply M, but rather to force the maximum realization of its inherent potential. Similarly, they can only act to divide the maximum value of realized V by means of measures taken before they become necessary: by interposition of materials less vulnerable than man’s body, by dispersal, by rapid movement or appropriate training. The same rules apply to the Time factor, T.

Where the mind and the will are of maximum importance is in their effect on the mind and will of the enemy: by perceiving vulnerabilities of which he is unaware, by the sort of deceptions of which Sun Tzu was so fond, by superior doctrine and training and determination so that one may realize M to the fullest while preventing a comparable realization of M′. Again, they cannot substitute directly for a deficiency of M. Nor can they directly lessen the intrinsic value of V. Paradoxically, this makes them far more important in their ultimate influence on the realized equation than if they are employed blindly in attempting to accomplish that which, physically, is an impossibility. (No, there are no exceptions. All those incidents in military history that appear to contradict the rule actually, given deeper analysis, confirm it. If the enemy’s guns suddenly fall silent as a tiny band of heroes launches its hopeless charge, we can be sure that a psychological impact, unplanned and unpredictable, has caused the momentary paralysis of the gunners—the event has not proven that raw courage can triumph over disciplined firepower. This does not mean that courage can never snatch victory out of the jaws of grim defeat, nor that such attempts should never be made. But it does mean that any general planning in these terms is less than sane.)[7]

V→

I discussed the vulnerability of our cities, industrial complexes, and other concentrations of V at some length in Decisive Warfare, and nothing that has transpired since its publication has led me to change the assessment except perhaps to point out that we have continued to concentrate where we should have been dispersing.

Quite as foolish, in my opinion, has been our policy with regard to preparations for war at sea. In the first place, we have not only continued to build giant carriers but have also resurrected battleships at considerable expense. I have read quite a number of justifications of this policy, many of them professional, others by media apologists, and every one that has come to my attention has been based on the implied, even if not explicitly stated, assumption that these vessels will encounter only conventional weapons. The harsh lessons of Eniwetok and Bikini seem to have been forgotten. Yet if there is any area in which tactical nuclear weapons could be employed without necessarily touching off an all-out holocaust, it is at sea, for the psychological impact of the killing of a battleship by such a weapon would be far less traumatic—at least to a general population and a government—than the killing of a city or several cities.

The necessary weapons exist. They are only too readily available to the enemy. There is no good reason to trust that they will not be used. Then why not prepare for the contingency—especially if, by doing so realistically, we would not in any way diminish our potential power? Here we come to the nub of the argument: is it better to have a great number of cheap, fast platforms mounting weapons as powerful as possible, or to have a few gigantic, expensive platforms mounting greater concentrations of the same weapons? (I am not considering heavy naval guns, which are weapons of rather limited utility.)

Or the question can be phrased in slightly different terms: is it better to have a relatively few high concentrations of vulnerability, trusting that they will be able to defend themselves, than to distribute the same values of M among many lower V concentrations?

This very important problem of the size of ships does not concern ships of war alone. It is also critical to the design of those auxiliary vessels on which they will have to depend, and here we find that big-ship advocates are securely in the saddle. Tankers, which were already giants in 1969, have become supergiants. Giant container ships have replaced great numbers of smaller vessels. All are becoming more and more automated, so that where it once required thirty or forty or fifty men to manage, say, twenty thousand tons, now often several hundred thousand tons can be crewed by a baker’s dozen.

The reason for this is very simple. Politely, we can call it “efficiency.” Analytically, we can say it is economic determinism. Less politely, we can express it as, “If it makes a buck, it’s good,” or, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”

Maybe so, in the piping times of peace. It is not so in war—witness the application of Mr. McNamara’s “cost-efficiency” concepts in Vietnam. Each huge merchant vessel is a concentration of V which does not even have the naval giant’s ability to defend itself. Finally, a merchant marine consisting largely of such vessels—many of them flying foreign “flags of convenience”—cannot provide adequate training facilities for the rapid expansion of a merchant fleet in an emergency.

Let us grant that, under existing circumstances, smaller vessels are more expensive to operate, and consequently less profitable to operate, than huge ones. The remedy, then, might be for the government to phase out such indefensible subsidies as that to the tobacco industry at home and those to more or less hostile nations abroad in favor of a strong merchant marine subsidy to restore and maintain our strength at sea in both peace and war.

No profit imperative should be allowed to influence the design and acquisition of weapons and enabling devices adversely in either peace or war, and this rule, if we are determined to survive, should be carried a step further: no profit imperative should be permitted to dictate national policy against the national interest.

Lessons from Limited Wars

Every war fought since 1945 has been a limited war in one way or another, either because the combatants have lacked the ultimate in armament and equipment, because they have been restrained by political considerations, or because their high commands have not deemed it expedient to reveal the full extent of their power. We have learned much from the several Arab-Israeli wars. We learned something about aluminum warships and guided missiles in the Falklands dust-up. We are still learning from the Russian terror in Afghanistan. Whether we did indeed learn much from our experience in Vietnam remains to be seen. (Somehow I doubt that we should take Mr. Rambo’s exploits very seriously.)

The main point here is—to repeat what I said earlier—that we are living on the sharp edge of more than forty years of what amounts to wartime secrecy, and if any of us in this world has weapons or devices that hold the promise of being able to effect a critical imbalance—-weapons or devices capable of a decisive technological surprise—it is highly unlikely that they have been allowed to surface. As we know from World War II, secrets can be kept, even major secrets. I do not say, of course, that this is indeed the case, but the possibility certainly must be taken into consideration and, if possible, prepared against.

The Critical Imbalance: Possible or Impossible?

In the past, the achievement of the critical imbalance has occasionally made it possible for battles, campaigns, and even wars to be won in a minimum of time at a minimum cost in lives and resources. The Mongols, because their way of achieving it was actually part of their way of life, left behind almost endless examples. More recently, the German use of armor in their initial offensives against Poland and France provides one more clear instance: if France and Poland had been their only opponents, the war would have ended there, and a very cheap victory it would have been.

The question now is whether, given what we know of modern weaponry, any critical imbalance on the grand scale can possibly be achieved. My own opinion would be that in any unlimited war it very probably cannot—not if the combatant powers possess any degree of parity in their ability to express M′ and are equally vulnerable. I can see no way in which, under these circumstances, the grand military equation could be thrown out of balance to the necessary degree.

The only exception would be a technological surprise capable of effecting a maximum realization of the enemy’s vulnerability or one which could destroy or drastically curtail his ability to express M→.

Of course, I am speaking here of the physical factors in the military equation. God alone knows what might happen given some cataclysmic failure of will—something similar to the state of mind into which the Allies fell during the Chamberlain years—either in response to a threat or as a reaction to an outright attack.

The Equations of War and Peace

Of the five phases in the expression of M and M′ probably none is now more important than the first, the preparatory phase, which includes the invention and development of new weapons and enabling devices, new instrumentalities and techniques. Semantically, we still draw a hard line between peace and war: if war has not been formally declared, we consider ourselves to be at peace (at least until somebody pulls a Pearl Harbor on us or sends armor across our borders to support a puppet government). And while this idyllic state of affairs persists, we ship scrap iron to Japan or—as at present—enough wheat to the Soviet Union to save them from the agricultural disaster their clumsy system has been inviting for many years. It is true that once upon a time the line between war and peace was considerably more definite than it is today, but that was when the governments of “civilized” powers played more or less by the same rules, and when the preparatory phase in the expression of M and M was not as critical as it is today.

Let us consider the specious “peace” that exists between the Soviet Union and ourselves. We go through the motions of normal, peaceful international intercourse, and perhaps because of this (and also because of unremitting Soviet and fellow-traveler propaganda) many of us forget that the communist world declared war on us many years ago, and officially and ideologically has been at war with us ever since. (Perhaps it is inaccurate to say “the communist world,” for there are many peoples in that world—the Poles, the Hungarians, the Latvians and Esthonians and the Czechs—who want no part of their Russian masters, and it is also possible that recent Chinese departures from Marxist dogma are genuine. However, for practical purposes we can still speak of the communist world centering on the Kremlin and obeying its dictates.)

How has the Soviet Union managed to build up the tremendous destructive force now only too obviously at its disposal? First, by giving military preparations first priority, even to the extent of imposing scarcity and poverty on its populations. Second, by relying on Western nations and Western business organizations to sell it materials, technologies, and factories which it either could not produce itself or could have produced only at the sacrifice of military production. (The recent building, by Fiat, of an enormous automobile production plant in Russian is a case in point. How many Russian engineers and other high-tech personnel were freed to work in, for example, tank production?) It is no exaggeration to say that the Russians have lifted themselves by our bootstraps, and when I say our I am referring primarily to us, here in the United States (though the same thing is true of all major free world powers). Where would the Russian Communists be today had it not been for the help they received even in the 1920s and ’30s from our banks and industries, to say nothing of our charitable organizations and our government in times of famine, and the constant assistance they derive from our relatively wide-open publication of patent and other scientific and technological data?

Today, we continue along this foolish course while the Comintern gobbles up nations once friendly to us, especially those upon whose strategic minerals we depend, and we—God help us!—more often than not give them a helping hand, as our media and our intellectualoids have been doing with regard to South Africa. (Granted, there is injustice in South Africa, but why has it suddenly eclipsed in importance far greater, far more sadistic injustices being perpetrated in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and any number of independent African nations recently emerged from colonial rule into the savagery of leftist military dictatorship? Why do we hear so little of the barbarities of privacy reborn around the perimeter of Southeast Asia, the Arabian seas, even the Mediterranean? Why almost nothing of the persecution by the Ayatollah’s fanatics of the harmless Bahais? The reason is cruelly simple: if South Africa can be thrown into chaos first, and then follow so much of the dark continent into the leftist jungle, we would lose a prime source of strategic minerals, and the Comintern would profit. The black population of South Africa might very well gain the “one man, one vote” that Bishop Tutu is demanding—but would it be worth any more than the “one man, one vote” now enjoyed by the slave populations behind the Iron Curtain?)

The Comintern does not consider itself at peace with us. It believes itself and all its subject populations to be fighting a holy war against all those nations with free enterprise economies. Under these circumstances, we should follow Solzhenitsyn’s advice and cut off our massive aid to our declared enemies.

Again, where we are confronted—as we were in Iran—by the necessity for supporting governments of which we may not wholly approve, we should always, in the face of a highly probable communist or communist-influenced takeover, support them wholeheartedly, at the same time doing our very best to urge necessary, peaceful, democratic reforms.

Let us realize that we are at peace with the Comintern and the Soviet Union only in the sense that formal war has not been declared between us, and therefore we should not continue the absurd charade of negotiating treaties and agreements, of arguing back and forth about arms control and “disarmament,” of solemnly participating in such frauds as the Helsinki Pacts, and of holding still while the only real empire in the world continues to accuse us of imperialism even after we and our allies have divested ourselves of all our once-imperial holdings.

What we need from our Russian opponents is an unequivocal renunciation of their declaration of war against us, of their entire Marxist doctrine of violent world revolution. In other words, we need a Declaration of Peace—and not one confined to empty words. To be valid, it would have to be accompanied by internal reforms in the Soviet Union and its spheres of influence: freedom of the press, freedom of speech and of dissent, free elections, and freedom from the tyranny of a police state. It would have to be demonstrated by frontiers at least as open as they were when the Tsars ruled.

Yes, it’s damned unlikely—and because it is, we should, in our dealings with these, our declared enemies, never forget the equations of war and how cold they are.

Editor’s Introduction to:

Crown of Thorns

Edward P. Hughes

Throughout this series we have told the story of what happened to the Irish town of Barley Cross after World War III when an ecological crisis destroyed most of civilization and rendered sterile most of the males in the world.

Barley Cross is an odd place. It fell under the domination of Patrick O’Meara, onetime sergeant major in the British Army, who brought his tank to the gates and proceeded to become the O’Meara, Master of the Fist, and supreme dictator of the village.

In due course the O’Meara died, and Liam McGrath became Master of the Fist. Liam hadn’t really wanted the job in the first place.

Now someone else claims it.

Crown of Thorns

Edward P. Hughes

Angry voices outside his dining room window disturbed the peace of Liam McGrath’s breakfast. The Fist was usually quiet at this hour, apart from the racket the birds made. He got up to peer out of the casement.

Four young men stood on his doorstep, disputing with Eamon Toomey, who was guard for the day. Liam recognised the men as the Achill Island Irregulars now enlisted in the troop which guarded the Fist. Eamon Toomey faced them, his rifle at the high port.

Liam hesitated. Sometimes poor Eamon took his duties too seriously. Should the Lord of Barley Cross intervene? Eamon’s rifle held only one bullet, but one bullet could do serious damage if the gun went off.

He heard Eamon’s stolid tones. “You know you lads ain’t supposed to be up here when you’re off duty.”

Dominic Nunan, always leader to the Achill immigrants, shouted loud enough to be heard indoors, “We want a word with the Master.”

Eamon stood unmoved. “I told you. The Master don’t see no one without an appointment.”

“Ah, come on, Eamon!” Nunan’s voice was persuasive. “He will see me. It won’t take but a minute. It’s important.”

Eamon’s tone was stubborn. “The Master is having breakfast.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

Liam heard a rifle being cocked. “This is your last warning–”

It was time to intervene. He leaned out of the window. “What’s the trouble, Dominic?”

Nunan tugged off his cap. “Can I have a word with you, me lord?”

Liam didn’t quite trust the young Islander. The immigrants had proved to be a wild bunch, and Dominic Nunan the wildest. Nunan had jeered at Liam’s request for a conspiracy of silence regarding Bishop Zbigniev of Achill, neither promising nor refusing to keep silent. Liam was still unhappy about the incident. For, if Zbigniev’s episcopacy was a fraud, so also was his ordination of young Adrian Walsh. And, if young Adrian’s orders were invalid, Barley Cross would be priestless when Father Con went. Liam refused to contemplate the prospect. The village needed someone to marry its brides, comfort its sick, and bury its dead. And, if a handful of citizens, Nunan among them, could be persuaded to keep their mouths shut, there would be no danger of the secret leaking out. Liam sighed. He pitied Kathleen Mulroon, the girl Nunan had married. Several unmarried girls remained in the village, but no more recruits had been sought from Achill. In some ways Liam was not sorry. He said, “Speak up then, Dominic. I’m listening.”

Nunan twisted his cap like a bashful gossoon. Liam was not deceived. Dominic Nunan was as bashful as a gin trap.

The Islander said, “It’s kind of private, me lord. If I could come inside for a minute?”

Liam caught Eamon Toomey’s eye. “Let him in, Eamon. Put him in the parlour. I’ll be along in a tic.”

The Achill Islander got up out of Celia Larkin’s chair when Liam entered the room. Nunan’s eyes gleamed like those of a wild animal venturing onto cultivated ground. “I wanted to be first to tell you the news, me lord.” Nunan cocked his head to leer at the Lord of Barley Cross. “Doctor Denny says my Kathleen is pregnant!”

Liam stood stiff with shock. Kathleen Nunan was one of the few young wives in the village on whom he had not exercised his droit du seigneur. She had married Nunan on Achill in a ceremony presided over by Bishop Zbigniev, and Liam had not been sure if his droit extended as far as the island. Well, now it didn’t matter. Kathleen Nunan pregnant meant there was another male in Barley Cross who could father children, and Liam McGrath need no longer carry his burden alone.

Liam’s smile was genuine. “That’s great news. Congratulations, Dominic.”

Nunan smirked. “I guessed you’d be pleased, me lord, seeing as childer are kind of hard to come by. But it sets us a problem.”

Liam raised his eyebrows. “What sort of problem?”

Nunan fiddled with his cap. “I know it’s meant to be a secret about how kids are conceived in Barley Cross. But if you want me to spread my new genes around—how am I going to manage it?”

Liam’s heart missed a beat. For almost a year, since the expedition to Achill, he and his councillors had prayed that one of Islander Rory MacCormick’s bastards might prove fertile. But they hadn’t considered how to spread those new genes, should their hopes be fulfilled. Now this youth was dropping the problem right in his lap!

“Well, I can’t go about raping the village wives like you can,” Nunan pointed out. “I’d get shot, or Kathleen would divorce me. But, if you was to abdicate in my favour—’

The words echoed in Liam’s mind, like a highwayman’s challenge from the bad days. Abdicate in his—! Liam held his face expressionless. This Achill youth had thought it through, and come up with a novel, but logical, solution.

He temporised. “Do you think you could manage the Master’s job?”

Nunan shrugged. “I could try.”

“Do you fancy being Master?”

Nunan stroked the plush back of a settee. “Reckon I might get used to it.”

“What does Kathleen—your wife think about it?”

“Oh—we haven’t discussed it yet. But she knows about this droyt lark of yours. I reckon she’d get used to me having it off around the village, like you do.”

Liam compressed his lips. Nunan’s blunt vernacular left him feeling prosy and old-fashioned. What to do? He dared not ignore the youth’s suggestion. Denny Mallon was forever harping on about the need for new genes. If Nunan could provide them, the doctor was going to grab him with both hands. But the Achill youth couldn’t be let go at it like a cock in a farmyard. There were conventions. Could Barley Cross support two Masters? Liam cursed inwardly. This sort of thinking should have been done months ago. He would have to talk to Doctor Denny.

He said, “Give me a couple of days, Dominic. We’ll work something out”

Dominic Nunan put on his cap. His humility had vanished. He grinned. “Okay, me lord. I can spare you a couple of days.”

Liam let it pass. The fellow held the cards. No point in betting yet.

Barley Cross’ ruling caucus assembled in Liam’s parlour that afternoon. Liam told them of the morning’s visitor, and of Nunan’s ambitions.

Denny Mallon, M.D., shifted uneasily in his chair. “Young Dominic’s telling the truth. I examined his wife this morning. She’s pregnant all right.”

Four pairs of eyes turned towards Liam McGrath. He flushed. “Don’t ask me what to do about it. I got you here so we could talk things over.”

Denny Mallon sucked an empty pipe. “Dominic’s suggestion has merit. We do need his genes. But he can’t donate them like Liam does unless he has Liam’s authority.”

General Andy McGrath coughed to catch the meeting’s attention. “The village wouldn’t like that. Liam was chosen by the O’Meara himself to succeed him as Master. Who’s going to choose this fellow?”

Kevin Murphy at the other end of the settee to the general studied a bottle of poteen on the floor by his foot. Voice gently mocking, he said, “Andy, let me explain. The council chose Liam. And we chose him because he was the only male in the village who could do for us what the O’Meara had been doing for years. Do I have to spell it out further for you?”

Andy McGrath coloured. “Ah, no, Kevin. I appreciate what you are getting at. But there are a lot of folk in the village what aren’t so sophisticated as us council members. We’ve got to bear them in mind.”

“I wonder!” Celia Larkin lowered her knitting. “Still, it would be safer to proceed on Andy’s premise. Could we appoint this young man to be deputy to the Master?”

Kevin Murphy choked on a cough.

The schoolmistress eyed the vet acidly. “There is nothing humorous in my proposal, Kevin. Most rulers have deputies.”

The vet got his face straight. “No offence, Celia. I appreciate your point. But no lord that I ever read about would have delegated our Liam’s particular droit.”

Denny Mallon waved a pipe stem. “How about us having two Masters? A sort of duumvirate? There are Roman precedents.”

The vet’s voice had an edge like a scythe. “Denny, as Andy has pointed out, we are not dealing with sophisticated Romans. The village wouldn’t stand for nonsense like that.”

The doctor opened a grubby, plastic pouch. He pushed dried grasses into his pipe bowl. “Nonsense or not, Kevin, we need the fellow’s blood. Half our genetic pool has been contributed by Liam or Patrick O’Meara, and it ain’t healthy. You know the fruits of inbreeding. We are building up a load of trouble for ourselves. We need what Dominic can provide. And he’s already told us on what terms he’d be willing to provide it.” He turned his head. “No offence, Liam. But this is something I’ve prayed for since the world went sterile. We can’t afford to turn Nunan down.”

The Lord of Barley Cross straightened up in his battered armchair. You couldn’t dispute the facts of biology. Dominic Nunan had to have the Master’s position, if he were to do the Master’s job.

Liam made his sacrifice. “I’ll resign if you wish, Denny.”

Denny Mallon puffed on his pipe, the smoke screen hiding his rueful grimace. “That’s an idea, Liam. If the village will accept it. An abdication in favour of young Dominic on health grounds.”

Kevin Murphy nodded gravely. “Until the Achill felly has done his duty a few times—then we bring Liam back.”

Liam shook his head. Doctor and vet were fools. “You won’t get away with that. Dominic Nunan’s not the sort of fellow you can push about. Once he’s Master, he’ll stay Master.”

The vet reached down for the bottle. “No need to let him into our plans. Let him worry about what hits him when it happens.”

Celia Larkin’s needles flashed in a sunbeam. “What health grounds? Liam is as fit as a fiddle.”

Much as he disliked the discussion, Liam felt obliged to show some enthusiasm. “I’ll catch anything you like,” he volunteered. “Measles? Mumps?” He swallowed his irritation. Sometimes, listening to the four of them, you could believe he wasn’t even present.

“It would need to be something that got him off Barra Hill,” the vet reasoned. “Altitude sickness?”

Denny Mallon lowered his pipe. “That supposed to be a joke? I’ll think up something suitable. A nervous breakdown might do. We only want him hors de combat until a few of our brides have picked up a different set of chromosomes.”

Celia Larkin peered over her spectacles. “And who will promulgate the news to the populace?”

The doctor waved his pipe. “Sure, that’ll have to be Liam himself. The Master must announce his own abdication, and name his successor.”

Celia Larkin put down her knitting. “And who’s going to persuade the people that Dominic Nunan is fit to be our Lord and Master?”

Denny Mallon shifted uncomfortably. “Sure, they’ll accept Liam’s word on that matter.”

Celia Larkin kept her gaze fixed on the doctor. “Why? The fellow doesn’t belong to the village. He’s an immigrant from Achill. Why should they accept him?”

Kevin Murphy put down his glass carefully. “Jasus, Celia—hasn’t Dinny just said? The Master will choose him, and they’ll accept the Master’s decision.”

The schoolteacher’s needles began clicking again. “I doubt it. I very much doubt it. But, if that’s the best you men can think up, we’ll have to try it.”

Liam felt his gorge rising. This cold-hearted crew were planning his removal far too slickly. He said, “Do I announce the abdication from my sickbed? Swathed in bandages? Or waving a crutch? And, incidentally, where do I live after this abdication? The Dooleys have our old cottage.”

The vet stooped to top up his glass. “You could move into Nunan’s place. Surely the felly won’t need two homes?”

Andy McGrath coughed. “We’ll take you in, Liam. Your ma would be pleased to have you back.”

Liam scowled at his stepfather. No doubt Andy McGrath was thinking of the fun he’d have with his grandchildren. Four to a room they’d be sleeping! He got up, anger choking him. He glared at them. “Just a bloody stud bull for you, that’s all I’ve ever been! And now you’ve no further use for me. Well, thank you for nothing! Just decide what you want me to do, and let me know. I’ll try not to disappoint you.” He ran from the room.

The vet stared at the doctor and the schoolmistress. “Seems the Master is a wee bit touchy today.”

Celia Larkin rolled her knitting round the needles. “Wouldn’t you be touchy—being rejected in favour of a hooligan from Achill? We didn’t even give him a vote of thanks!”

Denny Mallon seemed to shrivel, sinking even deeper into his plush armchair. He puffed hard on a dying pipe. “Let it be! We’ve a couple of marriages scheduled for this summer. He should be glad of a vacation.”

Liam sat alone at the breakfast table. Michael, stained waistcoat concealed by a green baize apron, hovered, steaming teapot in hand. The servant said, “I am sorry to hear your news, me lord.”

Liam kept his face down, concentrating on eggs and rashers. “Does everyone know about it, Michael?”

His man poured tea, then placed the pot on a silver trivet, and pulled a cosy over it. “Your letter of resignation is posted at the gate, sir. And there’s a copy on Seamus Murray’s wall, and another on the church board.”

Liam gulped. It had all happened so quickly. One day he was Master, the next he had notice to quit. Celia must have duplicated his instrument of abdication; Denny Mallon’s and the vet’s scribbles were illegible. How had he ever fooled himself into thinking he could dominate those three!

“May I say, me lord,” Michael added. “The parlour, kitchen, and garden staffs have all asked me to convey their sympathy with your illness, and their regrets at your departure.”

“Thank you, Michael.” Liam put down his fork. The servant didn’t deserve the lie the councillors had manufactured for him. “Doctor Denny says it may cure itself in time, but I’ve got to rest. If I carry on as Master, he guarantees me a nervous breakdown.”

“That would be a pity, sir.”

“Dominic Nunan will make a good Master.” Liam forced out the words. “He is young. He’ll have no favourites, since he is new to the village. And I’m sure he has our welfare at heart. Didn’t he choose to become a citizen? Hasn’t he volunteered for Fist duty?”

“I’m sure you’re right, sir.” Michael brushed crumbs from the tablecloth. “Will me lady be down soon?”

Liam met the man’s troubled eyes. “She has gone to my mam’s already, with the children. She won’t be coming back.”

“I see, sir. And her things? Shall I be after packing them?”

“She has taken all she wants. The Nunans can have what’s left.”

“Very good, me lord… sir?” Michael hovered, like a butterfly over a flowerbed. “Would it be possible for me to come with ye? I could serve ye down below, just like I’ve done up here.”

Liam swallowed a lump which hadn’t come with the breakfast. “There’s no room at my mam’s, Michael. She can scarcely fit in the four of us.”

“I understand, sir.” Michael’s lip trembled. “May I add a personal comment, sir? You have been a good master to me. It’s been like serving the late O’Meara over again. I shall miss you.”

Liam pushed away his plate. Food had lost its appeal. He got up. “I’ll start putting my things together, Michael, then I’ll get off. No use hanging on until the new man arrives.” He held out a hand. “You won’t see me up here again. Look after my successor.”

Michael took his fingers, solemn-faced. “I’ll try, me lord.”

Liam found a smile. “It’s ‘Liam’ now—not ‘my lord,’ Michael.”

“Yes, sir, Liam. Thank you, me lord.”

Liam fled, before control went.

Shirt-sleeved and sweaty, plain Liam McGrath pushed the potato fork into the soil to unearth another clutch of early Arrans. It was his job to lift the praties while his stepfather stayed up at the Fist supervising modifications the new Master required.

A shadow fell across the tines of the fork. He looked up. A man sat a horse on the path bordering the field. Liam shaded his eyes, and recognised the new Lord of Barley Cross. He stuck the fork upright, and went towards the path. “Were you looking for me, Dominic?”

The man on the horse scowled down at him. “I was. And the title is ‘Lord’ or ‘Master.’ Take your pick.”

Liam wiped earthy hands on his overalls, disguising the hurt. “I see, my lord. Point taken. What can I do for you?”

Dominic Nunan gestured with his thumb. “You can get up to that bloody Fist and warn those servants of mine that there’ll be trouble if they don’t mend their ways.”

Liam hid his surprise. What villainy was Michael up to? He said, “What are they doing, my lord?”

Dominic flicked at the flies with his riding crop, lips twisted in a sneer. “Damned hot down here in the fields. Don’t know how you put up with it, man.”

Liam ignored the barb. “The servants?” he prompted. “What are they getting up to?”

The horse moved restlessly, and the Lord of Barley Cross jerked hard on the bridle. “It’s not what they’re doing. It’s what they are not doing. Cold food. Beds not made. Towels not changed. Can’t hear the bell when I ring. No cleaning done. Sudden shortage of decent drink. Chatting with the guards when they should be working. I could go on for hours.”

Liam kept his face straight. “Why not get a new lot of servants?”

“Tried. No one will come.”

Liam shrugged. “I don’t know what I can do about it, my lord. I have no authority up at the Fist now. They’d take no notice of me.”

Dominic Nunan’s face reddened. “You mean you refuse to go up there? You know they’d do anything you ask.”

Liam grimaced. “Since I abdicated, I have no power over them.”

“If I order you up to the Fist will you talk to them?”

Liam shook his head. “No, my lord. Your authority don’t cover me that far. If you want me up there, you’d better send your soldiers for me.”

The new Lord of Barley Cross jerked his horse’s head round, and flicked its rump. “Right—we’ll see about that!”

General Andy McGrath came home with a frown. He found his stepson bagging potatoes in the barn. “What have you been saying to the new Master? He came back in a rare old state.”

Liam tied the neck of a sack. “He came down here seeking help, but he got none from me. He’s the fellow with the power now. Seems that Michael and the staff are giving him the runaround, and he can’t stop them. Well, if he can’t control his own household, he’s not fit to run the village.”

Andy McGrath sighed. “Michael’s lot are giving him a rough ride.”

Liam shovelled potatoes into another sack. “Then let him sort them out himself. We all have problems. But we don’t go shouting for help without first trying to sort them out for ourselves.”

Andy McGrath picked up a potato, rubbed the dirt from it, and sniffed the skin. “Dominic’s been having trouble for a fortnight. He’s not had a warm meal nor a good night’s sleep in that time. Kathleen is threatening to go home to mam. A cat yowled outside their window most of last night. There was no hot water this morning because the gardener forgot to stoke the furnace before he went home.”

Liam grinned. “Jasus, da—they’re murdering him!”

Andy McGrath didn’t smile. He tossed the potato back into Liam’s sack. “They’ll push him too far. He ordered me to come down here for you, today—with an escort.”

Liam stopped shovelling spuds. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him he couldn’t order that sort of thing unless you had committed an offence. He said you had committed an offence by refusing to help him. I talked him out of it, but he wasn’t happy.”

Liam leaned the shovel against the barn wall. “Maybe you didn’t pick a winner this time, Andy.”

His stepfather scratched his head. “Lord love us, son—-I didn’t pick him in the first place. ’Twas Dinny and Kevin thought it up between them, they being so obsessed with the idea of getting new blood into the village. They never considered what kind of a fellow they were getting it from. For meself, I never trusted that Achill ruffian. But Dinny and Kevin were keen, so I went along with them.”

Liam’s grin was lopsided. “They caught Celia that way, too.” He pulled off his shirt, and headed for the pump. “But she went a bit further to help them.” He stuck his head under the pump. His stepfather worked the handle while he soused head and arms. “Writing out those copies of my resignation!” Liam dried himself on an empty sack. Then he clapped his stepfather on the back. “Come on in to supper, da. Let Dominic look for solutions without us.”

Andy McGrath was an hour gone on duty the following morning when four horsemen galloped up the lane to Killoo Farm. Liam, in the potato field, recognised the ex-Achill Islanders, led by the new Master.

He shouldered the fork, and trudged along the furrow to meet Dominic Nunan.

The new Master scarcely gave him time to get within earshot.

“Liam McGrath,” he shouted, “I have decided that you are an unsettling influence in Barley Cross. While you are around, reminding people of the old days, I can get nothing done. I hereby proclaim you persona non grata, and I give you an hour to quit Barley Cross.”

Liam almost dropped the fork in his astonishment. “You’re joking, Dominic!”

Nunan’s face twisted in anger. “I’ve told you how to address me. And I don’t joke.”

Liam weighed the odds. One man with a potato fork against four horsemen carrying FN rifles. Not that it would come to shooting, but he would have liked a go at their loud-mouth boss if he could have banked on the other three not interfering.

From the side of his eye, Liam saw Eileen come to the farmhouse door with the children. He drew closer to Nunan, and lowered his voice. “Where am I supposed to go?”

The new Master towered over him, face white. “To hell, if you like. I don’t care, so long as you get out of Barley Cross.”

“An hour doesn’t give me much time.”

“It’s all you’re getting. I could walk through your bloody village in five minutes.”

“And if I refuse to go?”

“We’ll bum your house down—and any house you go to for shelter.”

“I have a wife and two children.”

“Take them with you. You’ll be glad of their company.”

Nunan’s face loomed before Liam, like a hateful gargoyle. He choked. “Dominic, you’re a pure bastard. Just give me the chance, and I’ll–”

Dominic Nunan jeered. “Go on! It’s a crime to threaten the Master. Say it, and I’ll clap you in jail until people forget you ever lived!”

Liam waited until he could see the man clearly. “Can I take anything with me?”

The new Master’s eyes roved the farmyard, lighting on a handcart employed to transport light loads to market. “You can take all you can fit on that cart, and no more.”

“But I’ll need food, clothes… a tent… two beds at least…”

Nunan laughed. “Your problem, man. I’ve just solved mine. I’ll leave Paedar here to keep an eye on you. I’ve other matters to see to. But I’ll be along in an hour to see the back of you.”

Liam watched three horsemen gallop down the track to the main road. The new Master had soon started throwing his weight about. Liam contemplated disobedience. But it was Andy McGrath’s home that Nunan had threatened to burn. How would Andy react to the threat? It wasn’t fair to put his stepfather to the test. Andy McGrath had always respected authority. Dominic Nunan had been legally proclaimed Lord of Barley Cross, and Liam McGrath was a nobody. Liam sighed. He would leave the village sooner than embarrass his stepfather.

He trudged back to the farmhouse. Eileen waited at the door. He said, “I’m sorry, alanna, I seem to have mucked things up. I’ve got to leave the village. We’d better start packing my things.”

Eileen picked up the younger child. “Your things?”

Liam ran his hands through the curls of the elder. “You can stay here. Nunan’s not banishing you.”

Eileen’s mouth set in the stubborn O’Connor line. “Where you go, lad, I go, too. And the children.”

Liam knew better than to argue. He took her arm. “So be it. Let’s pack.”

He became aware of a figure at his side. Paedar Fahey, the Islander who had married Nora Kelly, said, “I ain’t happy with this, Liam. I think Dominic’s gone power crazy. But he’ll have me blood if I don’t see you off the premises. Can I give ye a lift in any way?”

Liam was about to reject the olive branch, when Eileen thrust past him. She held the child out. “If you’d just mind the kids, Paedar—?”

The ex-Lord of Barley Cross trundled his loaded handcart towards the main road. His wife walked beside him. His two children perched precariously atop a pile of blankets, clothes, pots and pans, folding chairs and a picnic table, towels and nappies, and a basket of food. Astonished faces were pressed to windows as they reached the village.

At the smithy, where a copy of Liam’s abdication notice decorated the wall, Seamus Murray came to the door of the forge. Eyes crinkling with the light, he wiped his hands on a leather apron, then waved. “Where are you off to, lad, with your bits and pieces all piled on a barrow?”

Liam put the cart legs down onto the road. He waited to get his breath. “I have to leave the village, Seamus. The new Master has banished me.”

The blacksmith leaned against his door frame, and got a clay pipe from his pocket. “And what have ye been up to, to upset the new chap?”

Liam shrugged. “I guess he don’t care to have his predecessor hanging around reminding folk of other times.”

Seamus Murray found a pouch, and thumbed dried grass into the bowl of his pipe. “Didn’t think you’d knuckle under to that sort of nonsense.”

Liam got a fresh grip on the cart handles. “He threatened to burn down my da’s house if I didn’t leave—and any place else I go to in the village. He gave me an hour to get out.”

Seamus Murray stuffed the pipe, unlit, back into his pocket. He gripped the ear of an urchin lingering by the smithy door. “Run and tell Mrs. Murray that I want her here quick. Tell her to put on a coat, and to bring mine too.”

The child fled on his errand.

The blacksmith advanced into the roadway. He laid a fist on the shaft of the cart. With a sweep of the other hand, he removed Liam from between the shafts. “Out of the way, me lord.” Then he took Liam’s place, and stood waiting.

Liam gasped. “Seamus—you can’t! I have to go…”

Mary Murray came hurrying down the path from the house adjoining the smithy. She wore her best black gabardine, and carried a jacket for her husband. The smith took the jacket, donned it, then picked up the shafts.

“Which way, me lord?”

Liam couldn’t find words. He pointed down the street.

Seamus Murray began to push the cart. His wife linked an arm through Eileen McGrath’s, and fell in beside her. The urchin who had run the smith’s errand was off like a hare.

Sally Corcoran stood in the doorway nursing the child born the day of General Desmond’s funeral. Her husband gaped over her shoulder. He called, “What’s going on then, Seamus?”

The blacksmith put up a hand to steady one of Liam’s children. “Sure, aren’t I just giving an old friend a lift to quit the village?”

Charlie Corcoran’s eyes bulged. “Quit the village—Liam?”

The smith nodded. “Aye. On the new fellow’s orders.”

“And who’s minding the forge?”

Seamus Murray spat. “Sod the forge. I may not be coming back either.”

Charlie Corcoran grabbed two coats from behind his front door. He pushed his wife and child into the path, and pulled the door to behind him. “Would ye mind if we came along with ye?”

Seamus Murray heaved the cart into motion. “Sure, and ye’d be welcome, lad.”

Charlie Corcoran, his wife and child, formed up behind Eileen McGrath and Mary Murray.

Tom and Biddy O’Connor were waiting at the gate with Liam’s mother. Tom shouted, “Hi, Liam! Weren’t we just thinking of a stroll ourselves!” He fell in beside his daughter. Brigit O’Connor pushed an arm through Liam’s, and said, “Ye didn’t think, now, ye could walk out on yer old ma-in-law?”

Liam’s mother said, “If I’d been there, I’d have given that fellow a piece of my mind.”

Liam grimaced through moisture that unaccountably glistened in his eyes. At least he wasn’t going alone into exile.

The new curate, his too large collar chafing his ears, waited at the church gate. Father Con sat patiently in the wheelchair Tom O’Connor had built for him. As the blacksmith rumbled abreast of them with Liam’s handcart, the apprentice priest piped, “Not too fast now, Mr. Murray. Father Con will only grumble if I shake him up.”

Villagers were emerging from every door. Liam acknowledged the salutes of the Kennedys, the O’Malleys, the Flanagans, Franky Finegan with his fiddle… suddenly, it seemed, the entire population of Barley Cross had decided to follow its ex-Master into exile.

At the end of the street, where the road forked for Barra Hill and the Fist, Seamus lowered the legs of the cart. Down from the Fist came a gentleman wearing a hard hat, and a green baize apron showing under his shiny black topcoat. A crowd of women and a couple of soldiers trooped behind. Eamon Toomey and Sean O’Rourke had their rifles slung, muzzle down.

Michael halted before Liam. He raised his billycock. “Me lord, Liam, with your permission, I will take my place among these friends of yours?”

Before Liam could speak, Eamon Toomey presented himself, and came to a quivering salute. “Beg to report, sir,” he began, using the formula drilled into him years back by Sergeant McGrath, “I have relinquished me post up there. I don’t find it palatable no longer. Would ye care to reassign me to something a whit more pleasant?”

Liam began to feel dazed. He said, “I don’t have any place to reassign you to, Eamon. The new Master has banished me from Barley Cross completely.”

Eamon Toomey remained at attention. “Sure we all know that, sir. Could I not act as yer personal bodyguard?”

Liam sighed. Eamon Toomey’s loyalty shone like a jewel among brilliants. He said, “If you want to, Eamon. Go ahead. You are my bodyguard.”

By now, several of the more mature citizens had seized the opportunity to rest on the stone wall flanking the Fist road.

Liam said, “Can we spare a few minutes, here, Seamus?”

The blacksmith put his bottom over a shaft, and hoisted a small McGrath onto his shoulders. “Ah—it’s as good a spot as any to settle the future of Barley Cross, me lord. Let’s wait here ’til the new fellow comes down to see what all the shindig is about.”

“That’s not what I meant–” Liam began. But it was too late.

Franky Finegan struck up a jig. A space was cleared in the centre of the road for two of Celia Larkin’s pupils to exhibit their skill at covering the buckle. On the far verge, several men got down in a circle while one of them dealt hands for poker.

Liam gave up. Barley Cross had its own way of handling emergencies.

The councillors were next out of the Fist. The crowd fell silent at the sight of them. Led by wizened Denny Mallon, they descended Barra Hill like prisoners released after a long sentence. The doctor paused by the tank guarding the Fist approach, and, in a gesture of irritation, struck one of his few remaining sulphur matches on its rusty flank.

Liam could hear his comments.

“Damn the fellow!” The doctor puffed out smoke that smelled like a grass fire. “The impertinence of sacking us!”

Kevin Murphy got to windward. “Buggers as bright as him don’t need our advice. I’d have sacked him one meself, had I been twenty years younger!”

Celia Larkin flourished her knitting, her spectacles awry. “So much for your new Master. Goddammit—I wouldn’t give him house room!”

Liam grinned. The councillors seemed to have fallen out with Dominic Nunan.

Kevin Murphy made a rude gesture up the hill. “Banishing our Liam and threatening to bring an army from Achill! By God, Andy McGrath will show him, when he learns what’s happened.”

Dominic Nunan snarled. “I didn’t order you to take the whole village with you!”

Liam spread his hands. “I didn’t tell anyone to come with me.”

Nunan raised his quirt. “Well, you can bloody well tell someone to go back!”

Liam stood, arms down by his sides, fists clenched, a red weal on his cheek. “I can’t tell anyone to do anything. I’m not the Master.”

Dominic Nunan grinned evilly. “By Christ—if you don’t, I’ll tell them something to upset you and your gang of religious hypocrites. I bet that will move you fast enough!”

Liam knew he referred to Adrian Walsh’s lack of genuine orders. He said, “I have your promise on the matter, my lord.”

Nunan laughed. “By Christ—you have nothing atall!” He stood on his stirrups. “Listen to me, citizens of Barley Cross. I’ll tell you how Liam McGrath has been fooling you. That lad of–”

Liam hurtled at the horseman, grabbed a leg, and heaved. Dominic Nunan toppled sideways off his beast, clutching at Liam, and bringing him to the ground. They rolled in the dust.

“Damn you, let me speak!” The new Master’s words expired in a gurgle as Liam squeezed his throat.

“Keep quiet!” Liam panted. “Or you die!”

The crowd formed a ring about the combatants, watching fascinated as their old and new ruler threshed on the road.

Liam released the pressure on Nunan’s throat a fraction. “Are you going to keep quiet?”

Dominic Nunan dropped an arm down to his fisherman’s boot, and came up with a seal-skinner’s knife in his fist.

He grunted, “You asked for this, McGrath!”

The knife took Liam in the thigh. He spasmed, losing his grip on the Achill man’s throat. Nunan raised his arm for another stab. Liam grabbed his wrist. They rolled over and over, leaving a trail of blood on the road.

Then Nunan was on top, each man clutching the other’s wrist. The knife point quivered an inch above Liam’s throat.

Liam couldn’t hold the blade back much longer. His leg had gone numb. His shoulder ached from the bruise he had got when Nunan knocked him down.

The new Master of Barley Cross forced the knife lower. “Die, you bastard!” he screamed.

In extremis, Liam shouted, “Eamon!”

From somewhere came the crack of a shot. A cavity opened in the side of Dominic Nunan’s head. Blood sprayed over Liam. Nunan’s body went limp. The knife clattered onto the tarmac.

Liam pushed the corpse away. He staggered to his feet. Gripping the bleeding leg with one hand, he wiped bits of Dominic Nunan from his face with the sleeve of his other arm. The world was spinning.

“Holy Mother of God! This disgraceful exhibition would never have been allowed in the O’Meara’s day!”

The voice was Father Con’s. Liam peered through a mist of sweat. The old priest was so blind and deaf, he couldn’t possibly appreciate what had happened. But the words rang like an accusation. Liam croaked, “Nor will it be allowed in McGrath’s day from now on, Father!”

They buried the mortal remains of Dominic Nunan that afternoon. Most of the villagers stayed away. Father Adrian Walsh officiated, his piping treble faltering over the tremendous words of the burial service.

Then Liam went back to the Fist.

On the morrow the weather turned cool. A mist hid Leckavrea and Loch Corrib. Liam settled a turf on the parlour fire with the sole of the boot on his good leg. A typical Connemara day. Would the villagers have turned out so cheerfully in today’s drizzle?

Michael set bottle and glasses on the floor by Kevin Murphy, and withdrew.

Liam turned to face his councillors. Time, now, it was, to come to terms with them. The days of their bullying the Master were over and done. “Well?” he challenged.

Dr. Denny Mallon steepled his fingers, not quite avoiding Liam’s eye. “Seems we are back at square one, more’s the pity.”

Ceiia Larkin’s needles clicked like castanets. “In my opinion, we are well rid of the fellow.”

Kevin Murphy grunted as he reached for the bottle. “I don’t agree. We mishandled the whole business, and we ought to be ashamed. We have lost the only other stud that ever came our way.”

General McGrath coughed. “It ain’t so bad as that. There’s Katy Nunan’s child to be. And, from what I hear, Dominic had his way with a couple of the kitchen staff. There may be hope for us there, too.”

Liam could hardly believe his ears. Andy McGrath was beginning to sound like the other three. He said, voice loaded with sarcasm, “Don’t any of you want to know what I think?”

Kevin Murphy spilled poteen onto the carpet. Denny Mallon lost his pouch down the side of the cushion, and had to search for it. Celia Larkin dropped a stitch, and hoped it was the only one she’d missed.

General McGrath was the first to find his voice. He coughed. “Sure, Liam, me lord, we’d all be glad to hear your opinion.”

Liam eased his bandaged leg out in front of him, feeling a savage glee in exhibiting his wound. He raised his stick. “This is no opinion. This is my firm decision. So listen. We lost Dominic Nunan through your incompetence and my foolishness in putting up with it. From now on, I listen to you, and if I don’t like what I hear, I ignore it. And, if you don’t care for that, you can get yourselves another Master.”

Kevin Murphy took a gulp from his glass. “There’s no need to go on like that… me lord. We all know we made a mistake.”

Liam hung on to his temper. “It’s the last mistake you’ll make with my help.”

Doctor Denny found his pouch, and his courage. “I think you are overreacting, Liam. Sure—anyone can slip up.”

Liam felt like striking the man. “Slip up? The biggest boob anyone will ever make in the whole wide world, and you call it a slip-up? Why didn’t you let the fellow have his harem? Instead of disagreeing, and getting sacked? It was one way of solving our problem. The Master of the Fist is supposed to be a tyrant. We could have put up with a genuine despot for a year or two. I was prepared to go into exile, wasn’t I?”

“The village would never have let you go alone.”

Liam sighed. “How long do you think they would have stayed with me once it started raining? They wanted a confrontation with Dominic, and you stirred him up to provide one.”

Kevin Murphy spread his hands. “Okay, me lord. We were stupid. On behalf of Dinny, Cee, and meself, I apologise. Andy was out back at the time, supervising Dominic’s modifications, so he’s just an ordinary fool, not a super-bloody fool like the rest of us.”

Liam lowered his stick. He felt tired. The leg had begun to ache. “Okay,” he admitted. “We were all fools. I shouldn’t have shouted for Eamon. But I never dreamt he would shoot to kill.”

The vet looked up. “’Twasn’t Eamon that shot him. That fool was still fiddling with his gun when the Nunan felly was dead.”

“Not Eamon?” Liam searched their faces. “Then who—?”

“’Twas Paedar Fahey. Him that married Nora Kelly.”

“And I made him sergeant, for saving your life,” added Andy McGrath.

Liam choked. Promoting a fool for an act of idiocy! “By God, if I was his general, I’d sooner have had him shot!”

Celia Larkin said placidly, “Don’t let on about that to Paedar. He thinks you’re wonderful. As far as that lad is concerned, you’ve inherited all the old O’Meara charm.”

“Though there’s little evidence of it today,” added the vet.

Liam blinked. One apology, and their short-lived penitence was over. There was no way he was ever going to reform this crafty gang. For good or ill, they, along with Larry Desmond and Patrick O’Meara, had supervised the fortunes of Barley Cross for the last thirty years, and now regarded it as their God-given right. Could Liam McGrath manage without them? Perhaps his stepfather had summed things up accurately. There was Katy Nunan’s child to look forward to, and cherish. And maybe one or two more out of the kitchen staff, if rumours were to be believed. He could organise another expedition. Not to Achill. Perhaps out Sligo way. See if any other villages had their Nunan, or McGrath, or O’Meara. Barley Cross might be luckier, next time.

He shook his head. “What baffles me is—no one asked after my health while I was deposed. And me supposed to be heading for a nervous breakdown.”

Dr. Denny Mallon sniffed. “Ye’ve still a thing or two to learn, Liam. On serious matters, such as the Master’s health, we have to take the village into our confidence—in a roundabout way, like.”

Liam frowned at the doctor. Denny Mallon sounded far too cocky. They were already beginning to manipulate him again. “What do you mean—in a roundabout way?”

Denny Mallon scooped up a pipeful of dried grasses. “Sure, Michael doesn’t miss a thing that goes on in here—and we wouldn’t have it otherwise.”

Liam gaped at the doctor. Michael? His quiet, man-for-all-seasons in collusion with this cunning crew? Did his servant crouch, ear-to-door, during their discussions? With Denny Mallon’s tacit approval? And then retail it to confidants in the village?

Liam clutched the arms of his shabby armchair, seeking the feel of something solid. Was there anything in this community of Barley Cross that was as simple as it appeared on the surface?

Faintly, he heard the doctor’s voice. “Don’t worry about it, Liam. Remember—we all play for the same team!”

Against his will, Liam began to grin.

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Eyes of Argos

Harry Turtledove

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Byzantium—the second Roman Empire, based on Constantinople—endured for nearly a thousand years. Much of its strength was built around a navy that won all its battles: it was so successful that it has almost no history. The armies of Byzantium were skilled in military science. Their officers studied textbooks on tactics. One of their writers said, “No commander who has the favor of God and a few regiments of our heavy cavalry need fear much on this earth,” and he was nearly right. Byzantium held the remnants of Classical civilization.

Mohammed was born in A.D. 570. By the time he died in 632 he had changed the world. He united the pagan Arab tribes into a formidable army that swept across the Levant and Near East and eventually brought Persia, North Africa, Spain below the line of the olive, and the entire Middle East under the sign of the crescent.

From then on Christian Constantinople was more or less constantly at war with Islam. If that weren’t enough, the Western Christians kept sending armies to liberate the Holy Land from the Moslems—but those Crusaders were often as much threat to Constantinople as to their Saracen enemies. Meanwhile the Jurchen tribes—ancestors of modern Turks—kept sweeping in from north and east. Originally pagan, they too embraced Islam, and became the leaders of the Moslems.

The combination of enemies proved to be too much, and mighty Byzantium fell.

Harry Turtledove has a doctorate in Byzantine history. There aren’t too many openings for teachers in that field; but he uses his skills by writing of a world in which Mohammed, on one of his frequent trips to Syria, was converted to Christianity and thus never had the revelation of Islam. Here is a story from that world.

There are many ways to dispel the fog of war. Some are more difficult than others.

The Eyes of Argos

Harry Turtledove

The steppe country north of the Danube made Basil Argyros think of the sea. Broad, green, and roiling, it ran eastward seemingly forever, all the way to the land of Serinda, from which, almost eight hundred years before, the great Roman Emperor Justinian had stolen the secret of silk.

The steppe was like the sea in another way. It offered an ideal highway for invaders. Over the centuries, wave after wave of nomads had dashed against the frontiers of the Roman Empire: Huns and Avars, Bulgars and Magyars, Pechenegs and Cumans, and now the Jurchen. Sometimes the frontier defense would not hold, and the barbarians would wash over it, even threatening to storm into Constantinople, the imperial capital.

With a deliberate effort of will, Argyros drew back from the extended nautical metaphor into which he had fallen. What with the motion of his horse beneath him, it was threatening to make the scout commander seasick.

He turned to his companion, a blond youngster from Thessalonike named Demetrios after the city’s patron saint. “Nothing so far. Let’s ride on a little farther.”

Demetrios made a face. “Only if you say so, sir. I don’t think the devils are anywhere around. Couldn’t we just head back to camp? I could use a skin of wine.” Demetrios fit three of the military author Maurice’s four criteria for a scout: he was handsome, healthy, and alert. He was not, however, markedly sober.

Argyros, for his part, did not quite pass the first part of Maurice’s test. For one thing, his eyebrows grew in a single black bar across his forehead. For another, his eyes were strangely mournful, the eyes of a sorrowing saint in an icon or of a man who has seen too much too soon. Yet he was only in his middle twenties, hardly older than Demetrios.

He said, “We’ll go on another half mile. Then if we still haven’t found anything, we’ll call it a day and turn around.”

“Yes, sir,” Demetrios said resignedly.

They rode on, the tall grass brushing at their ankles and sometimes rising to tickle their horses’ bellies. Argyros felt naked in his long goat’s-hair tunic. He wished he had not had to leave his mailshirt behind; the Jurchen were ferociously good archers. But the jingle of the links might have given him away, and in any case the weight of the iron would have slowed his mount.

He and Demetrios splashed across a small stream. There were hoofprints in the mud on the far bank: not the tracks of the iron-shod horses the Romans rode, but those made by the shoeless hooves of steppe ponies.

“Looks like about half a dozen stopped here,” Demetrios said. His head swiveled as though he expected all the Jurchen in creation to burst out from behind a bush and ride straight for him.

“Probably their own scouting party,” Argyros judged. “The main body of them can’t be far behind.”

“Let’s go back,” Demetrios said nervously. He took his bow out of its case, reached over his shoulder for an arrow to set to the string.

“Now I won’t argue with you,” Argyros said. “We’ve found what we came for.” The two Roman scouts wheeled their mounts and trotted back the way they had come.

The army’s hypostrategos—lieutenant general—was a small, hawk-faced man named Andreas Hermoniakos. He grunted as he listened to Argyros’ report. He looked sour, but then he always did; his stomach pained him. “Fair enough,” he said when the scout commander was through. “A good trouncing should teach these chicken thieves to keep to their own side of the river. Dismissed.”

Argyros saluted and left the lieutenant general’s tent. A few minutes later, a series of trumpet calls rang out, summoning the army to alert. As smoothly as if it were a drill, men donned mailshirts and plumed helmets; saw to bows and lances, swords and daggers; and took their places for their general’s address and for prayer before going into battle.

As was true of so many soldiers, and especially officers, in the Roman army, John Tekmanios was Armenian by blood, though he spoke the Latin-flavored Greek of the army without eastern accent. From long experience, he knew the proper tone to take when speaking to his troops:

“Well, lads,” he said, “we’ve beaten these buggers before, on our side of the Danube. Now all that’s left is finishing the job over here, to give the barbarians a lesson they’ll remember awhile. And we can do it, too, sure as there’s hair on my chin.” That drew a laugh and a cheer. His magnificent curly whiskers reached halfway down the front of his gilded coat of mail.

He went on, “The Emperor’s counting on us to drive these damned nomads away from the frontier. Once we’ve done it, I know we’ll get the reward we deserve for it; Nikephoros, God bless him, is no niggard. He came up from the ranks, you know; he remembers what the soldier’s life is like.”

Having made that point, Tekmanios used it to lead to another: “Once the battle’s won, like I said, you’ll get what’s coming to you. Don’t stop to strip the Jurchen corpses or plunder their camp. You might get yourself and your mates killed, and miss out on spending your bonus money.”

Again, he got the tension-relieving laugh he was looking for. He finished, “Don’t forget—fight hard and obey your officers. Now join me in prayer that God will watch over us today.”

A black-robed priest, his hair drawn back in a bun, joined the general on the portable rostrum. He crossed himself, a gesture Tekmanios and the whole army followed. “Kyrie eleison,” the priest cried, and the soldiers echoed him: “Lord, have mercy!”

They chanted the prayer over and over. It led naturally to the hymn of the Trisagion—the thrice holy—sung each morning on arising and each evening after dinner: “Holy God, holy mighty one, holy undying one, have mercy on us!”

After the Trisagion usually came the Latin cry of “Nobiscum Deus!”—God with us. Tekmanios’ priest, though, had imagination. Instead of ending the prayer service so abruptly, he led the army in a hymn composed by that great author of religious poetry St. Mouamet.

“There is no God but the Lord, and Christ is His son,” Argyros sang with the rest. St. Mouamet was a favorite of his, and after Paul probably the most zealous convert the church had ever known. Born a pagan in an Arabian desert town, he came to Christianity while trading in Syria, and never went home again. He dedicated his life to Christ, producing hymn after impassioned hymn, and rose rapidly in the church hierarchy. He ended his days as archbishop of New Carthage in distant Ispania. Canonized not long after his death, he was, not surprisingly, venerated as the patron saint of changes.

Once the service was done, the army formed up, each of the three divisions behind the large, bright banner of its merarch. The moirarchs, or regimental commanders, had smaller flags, while the banners of the tagmata—companies—were mere streamers. The tagmata were of varying size, from two hundred to four hundred men, to keep the enemy from getting an accurate estimate of the army’s size by simply counting banners. A small reserve force stayed behind to protect the camp and the baggage train.

The horses kicked up clods of earth and a thick cloud of dust. Argyros was glad to be a scout, well away from the choking stuff. The men in the second battle line would hardly be able to breathe after an hour on the move.

The scouts rode ahead, looking for the dust-plume that would betray the Jurchen army, just as their own was being revealed to the enemy. Argyros chewed a handful of boiled barley meal, ate a strip of tough smoked beef. He swigged water from his canteen. From the way Demetrios grinned and smacked his lips when he drank in turn, Argyros suspected that his flask, contrary to orders, held wine. He scowled. Combat was too important a business to undertake drunk.

To give credit where due, the wine did not affect Demetrios’ alertness. He was the first to spot the gray-brown smudge against the sky in the northeast. “There!” he shouted, pointing. When several of his comrades were sure they saw it too, a scout raced back to give the word to Tekmanios.

The rest of the party advanced for a closer look at the Jurchen. All the nomad tribes were past masters at spreading out their troops to seem more numerous than they really were. Given over to disorder, they did not fight by divisions and regiments as did civilized folk like the Romans or Persians, but mustered by tribes and clans, only forming their battle lines at the last minute. They also loved to set ambushes, which made careful scouting even more important.

The terrain sloped very gently upward. Squinting ahead to lengthen his sight as much as he could, Argyros spied a group of plainsmen at the top of a low rise: undoubtedly the Roman scouts’ opposite numbers. “Let’s take them out,” he said. “The high ground there will let us see their forces instead of them being able to watch us.”

Nocking arrows, the scouts kicked their horses into a trot. The Jurchen saw them coming and rode out to defend their position, leaving behind a few men to keep observing the Roman army.

The nomads rode smaller horses than their foes. Most of them wore armor of boiled leather instead of the heavier chainmail the Romans favored. Curved swords swung at their sides, but they had more confidence in their horn-reinforced bows.

A Jurchen rose in his stirrups (which were short, plainsman-style) and shot at the Roman scouts. The arrow fell short, vanishing into the tall steppe grass. “Hold up!” Argyros called to his men. “Their bows outrange ours, so we can’t possibly hit them from this far away.”

“I’m stronger than any damned scrawny Jurchen!” Demetrios shouted back as he let fly. All he accomplished was to waste an arrow.

A horse screamed as a shaft pierced its flank. The beast ran wild, carrying the scout who rode it out of the fight. A moment later a Jurchen clutched at his throat and pitched from the saddle. The Romans raised a cheer at the lucky shot.

An arrow flashed past Argyros’ ear with a malignant, wasplike buzz. He heard someone grunt in pain close by. From the inspired cursing that followed, he did not think the wound serious. Along with the rest of the scouts, he shot as fast as he could. Forty arrows made a heavy quiver, but they were spent so fast in combat.

The Jurchen also filled the air with hissing death. Men and horses fell on both sides. The Romans bored in, knowing their mounts and armor would give them the edge in a hand-to-hand fight. Argyros expected the plainsmen to break and run like a lump of quicksilver smashed with the fist. Instead they drew their sabers, standing fast to protect the little group that still stood on the rise.

One of those nomads—an older man, his hair almost white—was holding a long tube to his face; its other end pointed toward the main Roman force. Argyros would have crossed himself had he not held his sword in his right hand. It looked as though some Jurchen wizard had invented a spell for projecting the evil eye.

Then he had no attention to spare for the wizard, if that was what he was. A nomad in a sheepskin coat and fox-fur hat was slashing at his face. He turned the stroke awkwardly, cut down at the Jurchen. The plainsman leaned away. He grinned at his narrow escape, teeth white in a swarthy face made darker still by grease and dirt.

They traded blows for a minute or so, neither able to hurt the other. Then out of the corner of his eye Argyros saw a tall lance bearing seven oxtails coming over the rise: the standard of the Jurchen army. “Break off!” he shouted to the rest of the scouts. “Break off, before they’re all on top of us!”

Unlike the Franco-Saxons of northern Gallia and Germany, the Romans did not make war for the sake of glory. They felt no shame in pulling back in the face of superior force. Their opponents, who had been hard-pressed, were glad enough to let them go.

Argyros looked round to make sure all his surviving men had succeeded in disengaging. “Demetrios, you fool, come back!” he screamed. The scout from Thessalonike had succeeded in breaking through the picket line of Jurchen and, perhaps buoyed by the grape into thinking himself invincible, was charging single-handed at the little group of nomads that included the man with the tube.

His folly got what folly usually gets. He never came within fifty yards of the Jurchen; their arrows killed him and his mount in quick succession.

There was nothing whatever Argyros could do to avenge him, not with the whole nomad army coming up. He led the scouts off to another small rise, though not one with as good a view of the upcoming battlefield as the one the Jurchen held. He sent one of his men to report the situation to Tekmanios, and another to bring back more arrows. He hoped the fellow would return before the plainsmen took too great an interest in his little band.

Whenever he got the chance, he kept an eye on the Jurchen scouting party, which was now a good mile away. Riders went back and forth in a steady stream. Squint though he would, he could not quite make out the nomad with the tube. He frowned. He had never seen anything like that before, which automatically made it an object of suspicion.

The scouts cheered. Argyros’ head whipped around. The Roman army was coming into sight. Seen from the side, as the scouts did, Tekmanios’ plan was plain. He had a couple of tagmata on the right wing riding slightly ahead of the rest, concealing a strong force behind them that would dart out to outflank the Jurchen once the two armies were engaged. From the nomads’ angle of view, the outflankers should have been invisible.

But they were not. Maneuvering without the neat evolutions of the Roman cavalry, but with great rapidity, the Jurchen shifted horsemen to the left side of their line. “They’ve spotted the screen!” Argyros exclaimed in dismay. “Gregory, off to Tekmanios, fast as your horse will take you!”

The scout galloped away, but battle was joined before he reached the general. The Roman outflankers never got a chance to deploy; they came under such heavy attack that both they and a detachment of troops from the second line had all they could do to keep the Jurchen from flanking them.

Nothing if not resourceful, Tekmanios tried to extend the left end of his line to overlap the nomads’ right. The Jurchen khan, though, might have been reading his mind. The attempt was countered before it had fairly begun. It was not that the nomads outnumbered the Roman forces; they did not. But they seemed to be spotting every move as fast as Tekmanios made it.

The scout returned with the arrows. “I’m just as glad to be here,” he said, tossing bundles of shafts from his saddlebags. “They’re too fornicating smart for us today.”

A horn call sounded over the din of battle: the order to retreat. Withdrawal was also risky; it turned with such ease to panic and rout. Against the nomads it was doubly dangerous. Unlike the Romans and Persians, the plainsmen, more mobile than their foes, liked to press pursuit to the limit in the hope of breaking the opposing army.

Even if he had been beaten, though, Tekmanios knew his business. In a retreat it mattered less for the Jurchen to be able to anticipate his movements; they were obvious anyway. His goal was simply to keep his forces in some kind of order as they fell back to their camp. And they, recognizing holding together as their best hope, obeyed his orders more closely than they would have in victory.

With the Jurchen between them and their countrymen, the Roman scouts swung wide of the running fight. Away from landmarks familiar to him, Argyros steered by the sun. He was surprised to notice how low in the west it had sunk. At last he spotted a line of willows growing along a riverbank. They were also visible from camp. “Upstream,” he said, pointing.

The scouts were the first troops to reach the camp: not surprising, for they did not have to fight their way back. The men of the tagmata guarding the baggage train crowded round them, firing anxious questions. They cried out in alarm when Argyros and his comrades gave them the bad news. Then, as they were trained to do, they hitched their oxen to the wagons and moved the wains into place behind the camp ditch to serve as a barricade against arrows.

That work, in which the scouts lent a hand, was not finished when the Roman army, still harassed by the Jurchen, drew near. Several oxen were shot and had to be killed with axes before their rampaging upset the wagons to which they were yoked.

Tagma by tagma, the Roman cavalry entered the campsite by way of the four gaps in the ditch. The companies that held off the nomads while their comrades reached safety scattered caltrops behind them to discourage pursuit to the gates. Then they too went inside, just as the sun finally set.

That night and the next three days were among the most unpleasant times Argyros ever spent. The moans of the wounded and the howls and shouts of the Jurchen made sleep impossible, and little showers of randomly aimed arrows kept falling into the camp until dawn.

As soon as it was light, the nomads tried to rush the Roman position. Concentrated archery drove them back. They drew out of range and settled down to besiege the encampment.

Andreas Hermoniakos helped lift the Romans’ spirits. He went from one tagma to the next, saying, “Good luck to them. We’re camped by water and we have a week’s worth of food in the wagons. What will the Jurchen be eating before long?”

The question was rhetorical, but someone shouted, “Lice.” The filthiness of the nomads was proverbial.

The lieutenant general chuckled grimly. “Their bugs won’t feed even the Jurchen more than a couple of days. Eventually they’ll have to go back to their flocks.” So it proved, though the plainsmen persisted a day longer than Hermoniakos had guessed.

After scouting parties confirmed that the nomads really had withdrawn, Tekmanios convened an officers’ council in his tent to discuss the Romans’ next move. “It galls me to think of going back to the Danube with my tail between my legs, but the Jurchen—may Constantinople’s patron St. Andreas cover their khan with carbuncles—might have been standing with their ears to my mouth as I gave my orders. One more battle like that and we won’t have an army left to take back to the Danube.”

“They shouldn’t have been able to read our plan that well,” Constantine Doukas grumbled. He had commanded the right meros, the one whose screening force and flankers the nomads had discovered. “They would have had to be right on top of us to see anything amiss. The devil must have been telling the khan what we were up to.”

Hermoniakos looked down his long, straight nose at the grousing merarch. “Some people blame the devil to keep from owning up to their own shortcomings.”

Doukas reddened with anger. Argyros normally would have sided with the lieutenant general. Now, though, he stuck up his hand and waited to be recognized; he was very junior in this gathering. Eventually Tekmanios’ attention wandered down to the far end of the table. “What is it, Basil?”

“The devil is more often spoke of than seen, but this once I think His Excellency Lord Doukas may be right,” Argyros said. That earned a hard look from Hermoniakos, who had been well disposed toward him until now. Sighing, he plunged ahead with the story of the tube he had seen in the hands of the white-haired Jurchen. “I thought at the time it had to do with the evil eye,” he finished.

“That’s nonsense,” one of the regimental commanders said. “After our prayers before the battle and the blessing of the priest, how could any foul heathen charm harm us? God would not permit it.”

“God ordains what He wills, not what we will,” Tekmanios reproved. “We are all of us sinners; perhaps our prayers and purifications were not enough to atone for our wickedness.” He crossed himself, his officers imitating the gesture.

“Still, this is a potent spell,” Doukas said. The commanders around him nodded. Trained in Aristotelean reasoning, he reached a logical conclusion: “If we do not find what it is and how it works, the barbarians will use it against the Roman Empire again.”

“And once we do,” Tekmanios said, “we can bring it to the priest for exorcism. Once he knows the nature of the magic, he will be better able to counteract it.”

The general, all the officers, looked expectantly toward Argyros. He realized what they wanted of him, and wished he had had the sense to keep his mouth shut. If Tekmanios had it in mind for him to kill himself, why not just hand him a knife?

“Cowardly wretch!” Andreas Hermoniakos exploded when Argyros came to him the next morning. “If you disobey your general’s orders, it will be the worse for you.”

“No, sir,” the scout commander said, speaking steadily in spite of the heads that turned to listen. “It will be the worse for me to follow them. To do so would be no less than suicide, which is a mortal sin. Better to suffer my lord Tekmanios’ anger awhile in this world than the pangs of hell for eternity in the next.”

“You think so, eh? We’ll see about that.” Argyros had never realized what a nasty sneer the lieutenant general had. “If you won’t do your duty, by the saints, you don’t deserve your rank. We’ll find another leader for that troop of yours, and let you find out how you like serving him as his lowest-ranking private soldier.”

Argyros saluted with wooden precision. Hermoniakos glared at him for close to a minute, his hands curling into fists. “Get out of my sight,” he said at last. “It’s only because I remember you were once a good soldier that I don’t put stripes on your worthless back.”

Argyros saluted again, walked away. Soldiers stepped aside as he went past. Some stared after him, others looked away. One spat in his footprint.

The line of horses was only a couple of minutes away from the lieutenant general’s tent, but somehow, in the mysterious way news has of traveling through armies, word of Argyros’ fall got there before him. The horseboys gaped at him as they might have at the corpse of a man blasted by lightning. Ignoring that, he mounted his horse without a word and rode to the tent of Justin of Tarsos, until a few minutes ago his aide and now, presumably, his commander.

Justin turned red when he saw Argyros coming, and redder still to receive his salute. “What are your orders for me, sir?” Argyros asked tonelessly.

“Well, sir, uh, Basil, uh, soldier, why don’t you take Tribonian’s place in the eastern three-man patrol? His wound still pains him too much for him to sit a horse.”

“Yes, sir,” Argyros said, his voice still dead. He wheeled his horse and rode out to the eastern gate of the camp, where the other two scouts would be waiting for him.

Having made up the patrol roster, he knew who they would be: Bardanes Philippikos and Alexander the Arab. Justin had been kind to him; both were steady, competent men, though Alexander did have a ferocious temper when he thought himself wronged.

It was plain Argyros’ presence made them nervous. Bardanes’ hand twitched in the beginning of a salute before he jerked it down to his side. And Alexander asked, “Where to, sir?”

“You don’t call me ‘sir’; I call you ‘sir.’ And you tell me where to go.”

“I’ve wanted to do that for weeks,” Bardanes said. But he spoke without malice, using the feeble joke to try to get rid of the tension he felt. To meet him halfway, Argyros managed the first smile since his demotion.

Still, it was the quietest patrol on which he had ever gone, at least at first. Bardanes and Alexander were too wary of him to direct many words his way, and his being there kept them from talking between themselves about what they most wanted to: his fall.

Bardanes, the more forward of the two, finally grasped the nettle. The camp had long vanished behind them; there was no evidence of the Jurchen. The three horsemen could not have been more alone. And so Argyros was not surprised when Bardanes asked, “Begging your pardon, but what was it you fell out with the lieutenant general over?”

“I made a mistake at the officers’ meeting,” Argyros replied. He tried to leave it at that, but Bardanes and Alexander were waiting expectantly, so he went on, “I showed Hermoniakos to be in the wrong for taking Constantine Doukas to task. After that, I suppose all I would have had to do was blink at the wrong time and Hermoniakos would have come down on me.”

“That is the way of things when you mix in the quarrel of men above your station,” Alexander said with Arab fatalism. “Whether the bear beats the lion or the lion the bear, the rabbit always loses.”

“Lions and bears,” Bardanes snorted. “A damn shame, if you ask me.”

“No one did,” Argyros said.

“I know,” Bardanes said cheerfully. “Another damn shame they didn’t break some other officers I could name instead of you. There’s more than one I owe plenty to, and I’d enjoy getting some of my own back. You, though—well, shit, you’re a hard-nosed bastard, aye, but I can’t deny you’re fair.”

“Thank you for that much, anyhow.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s as much as we can hope for from an officer, and more than we usually get. You’ll find out.”

They gradually drew near another treelined creek, a good spot for a band of Jurchen to be lying in ambush. Bardanes and Alexander both unconsciously looked in Argyros’ direction; old habits died hard.

“Let’s split up,” he said, accepting that in their eyes he still held rank. It warmed him for what he was about to do, but only a little. He went on, “You two head down to the south end of the stand. Remember to stay out of arrow range. I’ll go north. We’ll all ford the stream and meet on the other side.”

The other two scouts nodded and took their horses downstream. Neither looked back at Argyros; their attention was on the trees and whatever might be lurking among them. As he had told them he would, he rode north. He splashed over to the eastern side of the stream. But he did not turn back to meet the other Romans. Instead he kept heading northeast at a fast trot.

He could imagine the consternation Alexander and Bardanes would feel when they came to the rendezvous point and found he was not there. The first thing they would do, no doubt, would be to race back to the western bank of the creek, to see if he had been waylaid there.

When they discovered he had not, they would follow his tracks. They would have to. He wondered what they would do when they saw the direction he was taking. He did not think they would follow him. He was riding straight toward the Jurchen.

Even if they did, it would not matter. By then he would have a lead of half an hour and several miles: plenty of time and distance to confuse his trail. In the end, his erstwhile companions would have only one choice—to go back to John Tekmanios and report he had deserted.

Which was only fair, because that was exactly what he intended to do.

The biggest worry, of course, was that the first Jurchen he met would shoot him on sight. But when he came riding up openly, one hand on the reins and the other high in the air, the nomad horseman was bemused enough to decide that taking him into camp would be more interesting than using him for target practice. He was not, however, bemused enough to keep from relieving Argyros of his bow, sword, and dagger. The Roman had expected that, and did not resist.

The tents of the plainsmen sprawled in disorderly fashion over three times the ground the Roman camp occupied, although Argyros thought the Jurchen fewer in number. The black tents themselves were familiar: large, round, and made of felt. The Romans had borrowed the design from the plainsmen centuries ago.

Men walked here and there, clumping about in their heavy boots. The nomads spent so much time on horseback that they were awkward on the ground, almost like so many birds. They stopped to eye Argyros as the scout brought him in. He was getting tired of people staring at him.

The khan’s tent was bigger than the rest. The oxtail standard was stuck in the ground in front of it. Argyros’ captor shouted something in the musical Jurchen tongue, of which the Roman knew nothing except a couple of foul phrases. The tent flap drew back and two men came out.

One was plainly the khan; he carried the same aura of authority Tekmanios bore. He was a small, stocky man in his mid-forties, narrow-eyed and broad-faced like most of the nomads, but with a nose with surprising arch to it. A scar seamed his right cheek. His beard was sparse; he let the few hairs on his upper lip grow long and straggle down over his mouth, which was thin and straight as a sword cut.

He listened to the Jurchen who had first encountered Argyros, then turned to the Roman. “I am Tossuc. You will tell me the truth.” His Greek was harsh but understandable.

Argyros dipped his head. “I will tell you the truth, O mighty khan.”

Tossuc made an impatient gesture over the front of his tunic. The garment was of maroon velvet, but of the same cut as the furs and leathers the rest of the Jurchen wore: open from top to bottom, fastened with three ties on the right and one on the left. The khan said, “I need to hear no Roman flattery. Speak to me as to any man, but if you lie I will kill you.”

“Then he will not speak to you as to any other man,” chuckled the Jurchen who had accompanied the khan out of his tent. His Greek was better than Tossuc’s. He was white-haired and, rare among the nomads, plump. His face somehow lacked the hardness that marked most of his people. The Roman thought he was the man who had had the tube that caused his present predicament, but had not come close enough during the fighting to be sure.

Seeing Argyros’ gaze shift to him, the plainsman chuckled again and said, “Do not place your hope in me, Roman. Only you can save yourself here; I cannot do it for you. I am but the shaman of the clan, not the khan.”

“You also talk too much, Orda,” Tossuc broke in, which seemed to amuse Orda mightily. The khan gave his attention back to Argyros. “Why should I not tie you between horses and rip you apart for a spy?”

Ice walked up Argyros’ back. Tossuc was not joking; unlike his shaman, the Roman did not think he could joke. The ex-commander of scouts said, “I am no spy. Would a spy be fool enough to ride straight to your camp and offer himself up to you?”

“Who knows what a Roman spy would be fool enough to do? If you are no spy, why are you here? Quick, now; waste no time making up falsehoods.”

“I have no falsehoods to make up,” Argyros replied. “I am—I was—an officer of scouts; some of your men will have seen me, and can tell you it is so. I told the Roman lieutenant general he was wrong in a council, and showed him it was true. As reward, he took away my rank. What was I to do?”

“Kill him,” Tossuc said at once.

“No, because then the other Romans would kill me too. But how can I serve the Empire after that? If I join you, I can gain revenge for the slight many times, not just once.”

The khan rubbed his chin, considering. Orda touched his sleeve, spoke in the nomad tongue. He nodded, short and sharp. The shaman said, “Will you swear by your Christian God that you speak the truth?”

“Yes,” Argyros said. He crossed himself. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, by the Virgin and all the saints, I swear I have left the Romans after my quarrel with Andreas Hermoniakos, the lieutenant general.”

Orda heard him out, then said to Tossuc, “His truth is not certain, Khan, but it is likely. Most of these Christians are too afraid of this hell of theirs to swear such an oath wantonly.”

“Fools,” Tossuc grunted. “Me, I fear nothing, in this world or the next.” It was not meant as a boast; had it been, Argyros would have paid no attention to it. Spoken as a simple statement of fact, though, it commanded belief—and the Roman knew only too well he was not without fear himself, for the khan inspired it in him.

“Maybe it is as you say,” Tossuc said at last. “If it is, you will not mind telling all you know of the Roman army.” He bowed with a mocking irony more sophisticated than anything Argyros had thought to find in a nomad, waved for the Roman to precede him into his tent.

“Do not step on the threshold,” Orda warned. “If you do, you will be put to death for the sin. Also, as long as you are among us, do not piss inside a tent, or touch a fire with a knife, or break a bone with another bone, or pour milk or any other food out on the ground. All these things offend the spirits, and only your blood will wash away the offense.”

“I understand,” Argyros said. He had heard of some of the Jurchen customs, just as the plainsmen knew something of Christianity. A couple, though, were new to him. He wondered nervously if Orda had left anything out.

The Roman had never been in the tent of a nomad chief; its richness surprised him. He recognized some of the displayed wealth as booty from the raid across the Danube: church vessels of gold and silver, hangings of cloth-of-gold and rich purple, bags of pepper and cinnamon and scarlet dye.

But some of the riches the Jurchen had produced for themselves. The thick wool carpets, embroidered with stylized animals or geometric shapes, would have sold for many nomismata in the markets at Constantinople. So would Tossuc’s gold-inlaid helmet and his gem-encrusted sword, scabbard, and bow case. And the cushions, stuffed with wool and straw, were covered in silk.

Except for a looted chair, there was no wooden furniture. The life of the Jurchen was too mobile for them to burden themselves with large, bulky possessions.

Tossuc and Orda sat cross-legged with a limberness that Argyros, years younger than either, could not match. The khan began firing questions at him: How big was the Roman army? How many horses did it have? How many men were in the first meros? In the second? The third? What supplies did the baggage wagons carry?

On and on the interrogation went. After each of Argyros’ replies, Tossuc would glance toward Orda. The Roman could not read the shaman’s flat, impassive face. He knew he was not lying; he hoped Orda did too.

Apparently he did, for at last Tossuc fell silent. The khan reached over his shoulder for a jar of wine, another bit of plunder from the Empire. He drank, belched, and passed the jar to Orda. The shaman took a pull, then belched even louder than Tossuc had. He offered Argyros the wine. The Roman drank in turn, saw both nomads intently watching him. The belch he managed was paltry next to theirs, but enough to satisfy them. They smiled and slapped his back. Tentatively, at least, he was accepted.

After riding with the Jurchen for a couple of weeks, Argyros found himself coming to admire the nomads he had fought. It was no wonder, he thought, that they raided the Roman frontier districts whenever they saw the chance. Living as they did on the yield of their herds alone, never stopping to plant a crop or settle down, they provided themselves with food and shelter, but no more. Luxuries had to come from their sedentary neighbors, whether through trade or by force.

The Roman came to see why the plainsmen judged wasting food a capital crime. The Jurchen ate anything they came across: horsemeat, wolves, wildcats, rats—all went into the stewpot. Along with other imperial troopers, he had called them louse-eaters, but he did not think it as anything but a vile name until he saw it happen. It sickened him, but also made him understand the harsh life that made the nomads the soldiers they were.

For, man for man, they were the finest warriors Argyros had ever met. He had known that for years; now he saw why it was so. They took to the bow at the age of two or three, and began riding at the same time. And herding and hunting and struggling to get enough to eat merely to stay alive hardened them in a way no civilized man could match.

He was glad he was a good enough archer and horseman not to disgrace himself among them, though he knew he was not equal to their best. And his skill at wrestling and with the dagger won him genuine respect from the Jurchen, who had less occasion than the Romans to need the tricks of fighting at close quarters. After he had thrown a couple of plainsmen who challenged him to find out what he was made of, the rest treated him pretty much as one of themselves. Even so, he never lost the feeling of being a dog among wolves.

That alienation was only strengthened by the fact that he could only speak with the few nomads who knew Greek. The Jurchen speech was nothing like the tongues he had already learned: along with his native language, he could also speak a couple of Latin dialects and a smattering of Persian. He tried to pick it up, but the going was slow.

To make matters worse, Tossuc had little time for him. Planning each day’s journey and keeping peace among his people—who quickly turned quarrelsome when they drank—kept the khan as busy as any Roman provincial governor. And so Argyros found himself seeking out the company of Orda the shaman more and more often. Not only did he speak better Greek than any of the other plainsmen, his mind also ranged further than theirs from the flocks and the chase.

Constantinople, the great capital from which Roman emperors had ruled for almost a thousand years, was endlessly fascinating to the shaman. “Is it really true,” he would ask, “that the city is almost a day’s ride across, with walls that reach the clouds and buildings with golden ceilings? I’ve heard tribesmen who visited the city as envoys to the imperial court speak of these and many other wonders.”

“No city could be that big,” Argyros replied, sounding more certain than he was. He was from Serrhes, a town in the province of Strymon in the Balkans, and had never seen Constantinople. He went on, “And why would anyone build walls so high the defenders could not see their foes down on the ground?”

“Ah, now that makes sense.” Orda nodded in satisfaction. “You have on your shoulders a head. Now what of the golden ceilings?”

“It could be so,” Argyros admitted. Who knew what riches could accumulate in a town unsacked for a millennium?

“Well, I will not tell Tossuc,” Orda laughed. “It would only inflame his greed. Here, have some kumiss and tell me more of the city.” All through the Empire, even here on the plains beyond its border, Constantinople was the city.

Argyros took the skin of fermented mare’s milk from the shaman. Drinking it, he could understand why Tossuc so relished wine. But it did make a man’s middle glow pleasantly. The nomads loved to drink, perhaps because they had so few other amusements. Even the Roman, whose habits were more moderate, found himself waking up with a headache as often as not.

One evening he drank enough to poke a finger at Orda and declare, “You are a good man in your way, but eternal hell-fire will be your fate unless you accept God and the true faith.”

To his surprise, the shaman laughed until he had to hold his belly. “Forgive me,” he said when he could speak again. “You are not the first to come to us from the Romans; sooner or later, every one speaks as you just did. I believe in God.”

“You worship idols!” Argyros exclaimed. He pointed toward the felt images of a man on either side of the doorway into Orda’s tent, and to the felt udders hanging below them. “You offer these lifeless, useless things the first meat and milk from every meal you take.”

“Of course I do,” Orda said. “The men protect the men of the clan; the udders are the guardians of our cattle.”

“Only the one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united in the Trinity—gives true protection.”

“I believe in one god,” the shaman said imperturbably.

“How can you say that?” Argyros cried. “I have seen you invoke spirits and take omens in all manner of ways.”

“There are spirits in everything,” Orda declared. When Argyros shook his head, the shaman chuckled. “Wait until morning, and I will show you.”

“Why wait? Show me now, if you can.”

“Patience, patience. The spirit I am thinking of is a spirit of fire, and sleeps through the night. The sun will wake it.”

“We will see,” Argyros said. He went back to his own tent and spent much of the night in prayer. If God had cast demons from men into the Gadarene swine, surely He would have no trouble banishing a heathen shaman’s fire-spirit.

After breakfasting on goat’s milk, cheese, and sun-dried meat, the Roman tracked down Orda. “Ah, yes,” Orda said. He pulled up some dried grass, set it in the middle of a patch of barren ground. The nomads were always careful of fire, which could spread over the plains with devastating speed. More than Orda’s talk of the night before, that caution made Argyros thoughtful. The shaman thought he could do what he had claimed.

Nevertheless, Argyros kept up his bold front. “I see no spirits. Perhaps they are still sleeping,” he said, echoing Elijah’s gibe to the false priests of Baal.

Orda did not rise to the bait. “The spirit dwells in here,” he said. From one of his many pockets he drew out a disk of clear crystal—no, it was not quite a disk, being much thinner at the edges than in the center. It was about half as wide as the callused palm of the shaman’s hand.

The Roman expected an invocation, but all Orda did was to stoop and hold the piece of crystal a few digits in front of the dry grass, in a line between it and the sun. “If it is supposed to be a fire-spirit, aren’t you going to touch the crystal to the tinder?” Argyros asked.

“I don’t need to,” the shaman answered. Blinking, the Roman came round for a better look; this was like no sorcery he had ever heard of. When his shadow fell on the crystal, Orda said sharply, “Stand aside! I told you last night, the spirit needs the sun to live.”

Argyros moved over a pace. He saw a brilliant point of light at the base of a yellow, withered blade of grass. “Is that what you call your spirit? It seems a trifling thing to–”

He never finished his sentence. A thin thread of smoke was rising from the grass, which had begun to char where the point of light rested. A moment later, the clump burst into flames. The Roman sprang away in alarm. “By the Virgin and her Son!” he gasped. Triumph on his face, Orda methodically stamped out the little fire.

Argyros felt about to burst with questions. Before he could ask any of them, a shouted order drew him away from the shaman. A nomad used many gestures and a few words of Greek to set him repairing bird nets made of rawhide strips. By the time the plainsman was finished telling him what to do, Orda had gone off to talk with someone else.

As he worked, the Roman tried to puzzle out why his prayers had failed. The only answer he could find was that he was too great a sinner for God to listen to him. That gave him very cold comfort indeed.

It was evening before he finally got another chance to talk with the shaman. Even after most of a day, he was shaken by what he had seen, and gulped down great swigs of kumiss before he nerved himself to ask Orda, “How did you find that that spirit lived in the crystal?”

“I was grinding it into a pendant for one of Tossuc’s wives,” Orda answered. Argyros had not met any Jurchen women; the khan’s raiding party had left them behind with a few men and most of their herds, for the sake of moving faster. The shaman went on, “I saw the little spot of light the fire-spirit makes. Then I did not know its habits. I put the bright spot on my finger, and burned it. The spirit was merciful, though; it did not consume me altogether.”

“And you still claim to believe in one god?” Argyros shook his head in disbelief.

“There are spirits in all things,” Orda said, adding pointedly, “as you have seen. But the one god is above them. He gives good and evil to the world. That is enough; he does not need prayers or ceremonies. What do words matter? He sees into a man’s heart.”

The Roman’s eyes widened. That was a subtler argument than he had expected from a nomad. He took another long pull at the skin of kumiss—the more one had, the better the stuff tasted—and decided to change the subject. “I know why you use that fig—figure of speech,” he said accusingly, punctuating his words with a hiccup.

“And why is that?” The shaman was smiling again, in faint contempt. He had matched Argyros drink for drink, and was no more than pleasantly drunk, while the Roman was acting more and more fuddled.

“Because you are like Argos Panoptes in the legend.” After a moment, Argyros realized he was going to have to explain who Argos Panoptes was; Orda, after all, had not enjoyed the benefits of a classical education.

“Argos had eyes all over his body, so he could see every which way at the same time. You must have learned some of the magic that made him as he was.” He told how he had led the Roman forces who had tried to attack Orda and the Jurchen scouting party on their little rise during the battle. “Wherever you pointed that tube, you seemed to know just what the Romans were going to do. It must have been a spell for reading the officers’ minds.”

The shaman grinned, in high good humor now. “Your first guess was better. I do have these eyes of Argos you were talking about.” His sibilant accent made the name end with a menacing hiss.

Argyros started to cross himself, checked the gesture before it was well begun. Even without Orda’s remarks, the church vessels Tossuc had stolen showed how little use the Jurchen had for Christianity. And no wonder—the Empire used religious submission as a tool for gaining political control. Now that he was living with the nomads, the Roman did not want to antagonize them. But he felt a chill of fear all the same. He had always thought of Argos as a character from pagan legend, and from ancient legend at that. To conceive of him as real, and as still existing thirteen centuries after the Incarnation, rocked the foundations of Argyros’ world.

Shivering, the Roman said, “Let me have the kumiss again, Orda.” But when the Jurchen shaman passed him the skin, he almost dropped it.

“Aiee! Careful! Don’t spill it,” the shaman exclaimed as Argyros fumbled. “Here, give it back to me. I won’t waste it, I promise.”

“Sorry.” The Roman still seemed to be having trouble getting control of the leather sack. Finally, shaking his head in embarrassment, he handed it to Orda. The shaman tilted it up and emptied it, noisily smacking his lips.

“Tastes odd,” he remarked, a slight frown appearing on his face.

“I didn’t notice anything,” Argyros said.

“What do you know about kumiss?” Orda snorted.

They talked on for a little while. The shaman started to yawn, checked himself, then did throw his mouth open till his jaw creaked. Even in the flickering lamplight, his pupils shrank almost to pinholes. He yawned again. As his eyelids fluttered, he glared at Argyros in drowsy suspicion. “Did you—?” His chin fell forward onto his chest. He let out a soft snore as he slumped to the carpet.

The Roman sat motionless for several minutes, until he was certain Orda would not rouse. He rather liked the shaman, and hoped he had not given him enough poppy juice to stop his breathing. No—Orda’s chest continued to rise and fall, though slowly.

When Argyros saw the nomad was deeply drugged, he got to his feet. He moved with much more sureness than he had shown a few minutes before. He knew he had to hurry. As shaman, Orda gave the Jurchen—and their horses—such doctoring as they had. A plainsman might come to his tent at any hour of the night.

Several wicker chests against the far wall of the tent held the shaman’s possessions. Argyros began pawing through them. He appropriated a dagger, which he tucked under his tunic, and a bow case and a couple of extra bowstrings. As soon as he was done with a chest, he stuffed Orda’s belongings back into it; that way a visitor might, with the Virgin’s aid, merely reckon the shaman too drunk asleep to be wakened.

Half of Orda’s gear was for sorcery of one kind or another. Argyros wanted to take much of it with him to examine when he had the chance, but he was too pressed for time and too leery of magic he did not understand.

There! That was the tube he had seen Orda wielding against the Romans. He had thought it made of metal, but it turned out to be black-painted leather over a framework of sticks. Sure enough, there were two Argos eyes, one at either end, glassily reflecting the light of the lamps back at him. Shuddering, he stuck the tube next to the knife, draped his tunic to hide the bulge as best he could, and sauntered out of the shaman’s tent.

His heart was pounding as he approached the long line of tethered horses. “Who goes?” a sentry called, holding up a torch to see.

Argyros walked toward him, a grin on his face. He held up the bow case. “Buka on the southern patrol forgot this. Kaidu rode in to sleep and told me to fetch it.” He spoke in a mixture of Greek and the few words of the plains speech that he had.

After several repetitions and a good deal of pantomime, the sentry understood. Argyros was ready to go for his knife if the Jurchen disbelieved him. But the nomads had used him for such menial tasks before, and Buka was not renowned for brains. The watchman laughed nastily. “That stupid son of a goat would forget his head if it weren’t stuck on tight. All right, get moving.”

The Roman did not catch all of that, but he knew he had gained permission. He rode south, as he had said he would. As soon as he was away from the light of the campfires and out of earshot, though, he swung round in a wide circle, riding fast as he dared through the darkness. Away from the camp stench, the plain smelled sweet and green and growing. Somewhere in the distance, a nightjar gave its sorrowful call.

The waning crescent moon rose after a while, spilling pale light over the steppe. That made it easier for Argyros to travel, but also left him more vulnerable to pursuit. So much depended, he thought as he urged on his rough-coated little mount, on when the Jurchen discovered Orda in his drugged sleep. Every yard of lead he gained would make him harder to catch.

He used every trick he knew to make his trail hard to follow. He splashed along in the shallows of streams, doubled back on his own main track. Once he was lucky enough to come across a stretch of ground where the herds of the Jurchen had passed. He rode through it for a couple of miles: let the nomads enjoy picking out his horse’s hoofprints from thousands of others.

Dawn was painting the eastern sky with pink and gold when Argyros began looking for a place of refuge. His horse still seemed fresh enough—the nomads bred tougher beasts than the Romans—but he did not want to break down the only mount he had. Moreover, he was so exhausted himself that he knew he could not stay in the saddle much longer.

He felt like shouting when he saw a line of trees off to his left. That meant a stream—fresh water; with a little luck, fish or crayfish; maybe even fruits and nuts. And, if worse came to worst, he would be able to fight from cover.

He let his horse drink, then tethered it close to the water, where, he hoped, no chance observer would spy it. After setting aside the dagger and tube he had stolen, he lay down close by the animal, intending to get up in a few minutes to forage. His belly was growling like an angry bear.

The sun in his eyes woke him. He looked about in confusion; the light was coming from the wrong direction. Then he realized he had slept half the day away. He breathed a prayer of thanks that the nomads had not come upon him unawares.

There were freshwater mussels attached to several stones near the edge of the stream. He smashed them open with a flat rock and gobbled down the sweet orange flesh. That helped his hunger, a little. He tried to scoop a fish out of the water with his hands, but he did not have the knack. Some of the trees bore plums—hard, green plums. He sighed. He would have to hunt soon. Now, though, he was more interested in the tube.

He thought for a moment that he had broken it; surely it had been longer than this when he took it from Orda’s tent. Then he saw it was not one tube, but two, the end of the smaller cleverly fitted into the larger. He extended it out to its full length again.

He looked at the eyes of Argos again. In daylight, with time to examine them, they did not so much resemble real eyes. They looked more like the crystal in which Orda had trapped the fire-spirit. Argyros had been about to break the tube open to see what was inside, but that thought stopped him. Who knew what sort of demon he might release?

Maybe he could see what the demon was like. Slowly, ready to throw the tube down in an instant, he held the larger end to his face, at the same time murmuring, “Mother of God, have mercy on me!”

The horned, leering face he had feared did not leer out at him. What he saw was even stranger; he had, after all, known about demons since he was a child. But what was he to make of a tiny circle of light, far smaller than the diameter of the tube could have accounted for, appearing in the middle of a field of blackness?

And in the circle—! He snatched the tube away, rubbed at his eye in disbelief. Repeating his earlier prayer, he cautiously brought the tube up once more. Sure enough, there were the trees on the far bank, but minute, as if seen from an immense distance instead of a couple of hundred feet. And they were—by the Virgin, they were!—upside down, their crowns where their roots should be and the stream above them, where the sky belonged.

He lowered the tube, sat tugging at his beard in perplexity. For the life of him, he could not see how looking at the world as if it were minuscule and head over heels would help the Jurchen beat the Romans. On the other hand, maybe he did not yet fully understand Orda’s magic.

Well, what could he do that he had not done? At first he could not think of anything. Then it occurred to him that he had looked through the big end of the tube both times. What would happen if he tried the small one?

He held it to one eye, closed the other so as not to confuse himself any more than he already was. This time the circle of light in the midst of the blackness was larger. But where before the image in that circle had been perfectly sharp—albeit tiny and topsy-turvy—now it was a confusing, fuzzy jumble of colors and indistinct shapes. Argyros thought of St. Paul seeing through a glass, darkly, although blurrily would have been a better word here.

He took the tube away from his face, rubbed his eyes. Orda had known how to make the accursed thing work; was he too stupid even to follow in a barbarian’s footprints? Maybe so, but he was not ready to admit it.

He pointed the tube at the very top of a tall oak across the stream, paid careful attention to what he saw through it. Sure enough, the bottom of the vague image was sky-blue, the top green. No matter which end one looked through, then, the tube inverted its picture of the world.

How to make that picture clearer? Perhaps, Argyros thought, Orda had a spell for his own eyeballs. In that case he was beaten, so there was no point worrying about it. He asked the same question he had before: what could he try that was new?

He remembered that the tube was really two tubes. The Jurchen shaman had obviously done that on purpose; it would have been easier to build as one. With a growl of decision, Argyros pushed the apparatus as far closed as it would go.

He looked through it again. The image was even worse than it had been before, which Argyros had not thought possible. He refused to let himself grow disheartened. He had changed things, after all. Maybe he had been too forceful with his push. He drew the smaller tube out halfway.

“By the Virgin!” he breathed. The picture was still blurred, but it had cleared enough for him to see branches and leaves on the trees on the far side of the creek—and they looked close enough to reach out and touch. He pushed the tube in a bit, and the image grew less distinct. He drew it out again, to the point where he had had it before, and then a trifle beyond.

Even when the distant leaves were knife-edge sharp, the image was less than perfect. It was still slightly distorted, and everything was edged with blue on one side and red on the other. But Argyros could count individual feathers on a linnet so far away his unaided eye could barely make it out against the leafy background.

He set the tube down, awed. Aristophanes and Seneca had written of using a round glass jar full of water as a magnifying device, but only for things close by it. No ancient sage had ever envisioned so enlarging objects at a distance.

Remembering the classic authors, though, made him think of something else. That water-filled jar would have been thin at the edges and thick in the center, just as were Orda’s crystals. And if that was so, then doing peculiar things to light was a property of such transparent objects, and could take place without having a fire-spirit trapped at all.

Argyros breathed a long sigh of relief. He had been horrified when his prayers did not stop Orda from making fire with the crystal. But if he had been praying for the overthrow of a natural law, even one he did not understand, his failure became perfectly understandable. God only worked miracles at the entreaty of a saint, which the Roman knew he was not. He had been in the field so long that even the Jurchen women, skin-clad, greasy-haired, and stinking of rancid butter, would have looked good to him.

He closed the tube and stowed it in a saddlebag. Now all that remained was to take it back to the Roman army. Roman artisans would surely be able to duplicate what the nomad shaman had stumbled across.

“Christ, the Virgin, and all the saints, but I’m an idiot!” Argyros burst out two days later. His horse’s ears twitched at the unexpected noise. He paid no attention, but went on, loudly as before, “If the eyes of Argos will help Tekmanios see his foes at a distance, they’ll do the same for me. And with only the one of me and heaven knows how many plainsmen looking for my trail, I need to see more than Tekmanios ever will.”

He took the tube out of the saddlebag, where it had rested undisturbed since he put it away there by the stream. After a bit, he stopped berating himself for stupidity. The eyes of Argos were something new; how was he to grasp all at once everything they were good for? Old familiar things were much more comfortable to be around. At the moment, though, this new device was more useful than any old one would have been.

He tied his horse to a bush at the base of a low rise, ascended it on foot. At the very top, he went down to his belly to crawl through the grass. Even without an Argos eye, a man silhouetted against the sky was visible a long way.

By now, he was no longer startled when the world turned upside down as he put the tube to his eye. He scanned in a full circle, pausing wherever he spied motion. Without the tube, he would have fled from a small cloud of dust he spotted to the south. With it, he was able to see it was only cattle, not horsemen, kicking up the dust. He could continue on his present course, riding round the nomads to reach the Roman army before Tekmanios took it back to the settled lands south of the Danube.

Tossuc and Orda would guess what he was aiming at, of course. But the steppe was so wide that he did not think the Jurchen could catch him by posting pickets in his path. They would have to stumble across his trail, and that, theou thelontos—God willing—would not happen. It certainly would not, if his prayers had anything to do with it.

Once another four days had gone by, he was confident God had granted his petition. He was farther south than any line the nomads would have set to waylay him. Better still, he had just come upon tracks he recognized as Roman—the horses that had made them were shod.

“Won’t do to get careless now,” he said aloud; he noticed he was talking to himself a good deal, to counteract the silent emptiness of the plains. He quoted Solon’s famous warning to King Kroisos of Lydia: “Count no man happy before he is dead.” And so, to be safe, he used the eyes of Argos again, looking back the way he had come.

The magnifying effect of the tube seemed to send the Jurchen horsemen leaping toward him. Even seen head over heels, the grim intensity with which they rode was terrifying. They had not yet spied him; they were leaning over their horses’ necks to study the ground and stay on his trail. But if they had gained so much ground on him, they would catch sight of him soon—and the last phase of the hunt would begin.

He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, but the most he could extract from it was a tired, slow trot. Only a beast from the plains could have done as much as this one had; a Roman horse would long since have foundered. Even the nomad animals had their limit, though, and his had reached it.

He looked back again. This time he could see his pursuers without the tube. And they could see him. Their horses, fresh because they had not ridden the same beast days on end, came galloping forward. It would not be long before they were in arrow range. He might pick off one or two of them, but there were far more than that in their band.

All hope died when he saw another party of horsemen ahead. If the Jurchen were in front of him as well as behind, not even the miracle he did not deserve would let him escape. Those other riders had also spotted him, and were rushing his way as quickly as the plainsmen behind: racing to see who would kill him first, he thought as he set an arrow in his stolen bow and got ready to make what fight he could.

Because they were approaching instead of pursuing, the riders from ahead drew near first. He drew his bow to shoot at the closest one, but the winking of the sun off chainmail made it hard to reckon the range.

Chainmail… For a second, his mind did not grasp the meaning of that. Then he lowered the bow and shouted as loudly as he could, “To me, Romans, to me! A rescue!”

The oncoming horsemen drew up in surprise, then pounded past Argyros toward the Jurchen. He wheeled his weary horse to help them. The two parties exchanged arrows at long range. The nomads, as always, were better archers than the Romans, but they were also outnumbered. They could not press the attack home; a pair of charges were beaten back.

Argyros whooped exultantly as the Jurchen sullenly rode away, shooting Parthian shots over their shoulders in their withdrawal. Then his mount gave a strangled scream and toppled, an arrow through its throat. He had no chance to jump away. The beast fell on him, pinning him with its weight. His head thumped against the ground. The world turned red, then black.

His head ached abominably when he came back to his senses; the rest of him was one great bruise. Most of all, though, he felt relief that he was no longer crushed beneath the dead flesh and bone of his horse. He tried his limbs, one after the other. They all answered to his will. Gritting his teeth, he sat up.

Half a dozen Roman scouts were standing round him in a tight circle. He craned his neck back to look up at them—that hurt too. Among the soldiers scowling down were Bardas, Alexander, and Justin of Tarsos.

“So you find you do not love the barbarians after all,” Alexander said when Argyros’ eyes met his. He smiled. It was a singularly unpleasant smile, the expression a falcon might wear when about to swoop on a field mouse.

“I am afraid, Basil, you cannot undesert,” Justin said. He sounded sorrowful; for a soldier, he was not a cruel man. But there was no yielding in him, either. He went on, “Going over to the enemy has only one penalty.”

Bardanes, who was standing by Argyros’ right side, did not say anything. He kicked the returned Roman in the ribs. One of the men behind him—he did not see who—kicked him in the back.

Alexander laughed. “You get what you deserve now, for running out on us.” His foot lashed out too.

Argyros realized they were going to kick him to death, right there. He rolled into a ball, his arms drawn up to protect his face and head. “Take me to Hermoniakos!” he shouted—actually, the words came out more like a shriek.

“Why should we bother the lieutenant general when we can deal with you ourselves?” Alexander said. Argyros yelped as a boot slammed into his thigh.

“Wait,” Justin said.

“What for?” Bardanes spoke for the first time, though his foot had been more than eloquent. Neither he nor Alexander could forget that Argyros had ridden away from their patrol, putting them at risk of being thought accessories to his desertion.

“Because I am your commander, and I order it!” Justin snapped. That was not enough; he could read the mutiny building on their faces. He added, “If Argyros wants to see the lieutenant general so badly, we should let him. Hermoniakos has more ways to make death interesting than boots, and the temper to use them.”

The scouts considered that. Finally Alexander chuckled. “Aye, that’s so. The hypostrategos is a regular little hornet when he’s angry. All right, we’ll let him do this bastard in. I wonder what he’ll come up with.”

Argyros heard it all as though from very far away. None of it seemed to have any meaning; the only reality was his pain. The additional discomfort of being dragged to his feet and then lashed over a horse’s back like a corpse hardly registered. Mercifully, he never remembered most of the journey back to the Roman camp.

He did recall waking in horror as he jounced along, and exclaiming, “My saddlebags!”

“Shut up,” Alexander growled. “Nothing is yours anymore. We’ve got ’em along to share out amongst ourselves, if you stole anything from the Jurchen worth the having.” Argyros passed out again; Alexander took his sigh of relief for an anguished grunt.

The next time he roused was when they cut the bonds from his wrists and ankles and he slid to the ground like a sack of barley. Someone threw a pail of water in his face. He groaned and opened his eyes. The world spun more dizzily than it had when he looked through the tube.

“So you asked to come before me, eh?” He picked out Andreas Hermoniakos’ voice before his vision would focus on the lieutenant general.

“Answer His Excellency,” Justin of Tarsos said. Alexander stepped forward to kick him again, but Hermoniakos halted him with a gesture. Another bucket of water drenched Argyros.

He managed a sloppy salute, wondering whether his right wrist was broken. “I beg to report—success,” he said thickly. He had a cut lip, but he did not think any of his teeth were missing—his arm had taken the kick intended for his mouth.

To the amazement of the scouts, the lieutenant general stooped beside him. “Where is it? What is it?” he demanded. In his urgency, his hand clamped on Argyros’ shoulder. Argyros winced. Hermoniakos jerked his hand away. “Your pardon, I pray.”

Argyros ignored that; he was still working his way through the two earlier questions. “The tube—in the saddlebag,” he got out at last.

“Thank you, Basil.”

As Hermoniakos rose, Alexander put into words what his comrades were feeling: “Sir, this is a deserter!”

“So you obviously thought,” the lieutenant general snapped. “Now fetch a physician at once. Yes, soldier, you!” Alexander fled in something close to terror. Hermoniakos turned on the other men. “The desertion was staged, of course—you had to think it real, so you would say as much if the Jurchen captured you. I never imagined you would be more dangerous to Argyros than the nomads.”

When the lieutenant general stooped by the saddlebag, a couple of scouts seized the opportunity to sidle away. The rest looked at each other, at the ground, or into the sky—anywhere but at the man who had been first their commander and then their victim.

Several of them exclaimed as Hermoniakos took out the tube: they had seen Orda with it too, in the scouts’ skirmish before the battle against the Jurchen. Justin of Tarsos solved the puzzle fastest. “You sent him out to steal the magic from the plainsmen!”

“Yes,” Hermoniakos said coldly. He turned back to Argyros. “How do I make the spell work?”

“I don’t think it is a spell, sir. Give it to me.” He took the tube with his left hand, set it in the crook of his right elbow—yes, that wrist was broken, no doubt of it. Awkwardly, he drew out the smaller tube what he thought was the proper distance. Bardanes Philippikos made a sign against the evil eye as he raised it to his face.

He made a last small adjustment, offered the tube to Hermoniakos. “Hold it to your eye and point it at that sentry over there, sir.”

The lieutenant general did as Argyros suggested. “Mother of God!” he said softly. Argyros was not really listening to him. The approaching footsteps of the army physician were a much more welcome sound.

“Well done, well done,” John Tekmanios said a few days later, when Argyros was up to making a formal report to the general.

“Thank you, Your Illustriousness,” the scout commander said. He sank gratefully into the folding chair to which Tekmanios waved him; he was still a long way from being steady on his feet. He accepted wine, although he was not used to having a general pour for him.

“I wish there had been two of those tubes for you to take,” Tekmanios said. “One to keep, and one to send back to Constantinople for the craftsmen to use as a model to make more.” He paused awhile in thought. Finally he said, “Constantinople it is. I’m pulling back to our side of the river before long. If I got by without your eyes of Argos all these years, I’ll last another month.”

Argyros nodded. He would have decided the same way.

The general was still in that musing, abstracted mood. “I wonder how that barbarian happened to stumble onto the device when no civilized man ever did.”

Argyros shrugged. “He found that one crystal, ground properly, would start a fire. He must have wondered what two together would do, and looked through them when they were in line.”

“I suppose so,” Tekmanios said indifferently. “It’s of no consequence now. We have the tube; it’s up to us to find out all the different things we can do with it. I don’t suppose the first men who got fire from Prometheus—if you believe the myth—knew everything it was good for, either.”

“No, sir,” Argyros agreed. That sort of speculation fascinated him. Christianity looked ahead to a more perfect time, which had to imply that times past had been less so. The concept was hard to grasp. Things had been the same for as long as he could remember, and in his father’s and grandfather’s time as well, from their tales.

Tekmanios had been thinking along a different line. “There also remains the problem of what to do with you.”

“Sir?” Argyros said in surprise.

“Well, I can’t keep you here in the army any longer, that’s plain,” the general said, raising an eyebrow at having to explain the obvious. “Or don’t you think it would be awkward to go back to command men who’ve beaten you half to death?”

“Put that way, yes, sir.” The scouts would be terrified of him. They would also fear his revenge, and might even arrange an accident for him to beat him to the punch. “What then?”

“As I said, you did a fine job of ferreting out the Jurchen secret. It just so happens that George Lakhanodrakon is a cousin of my wife’s.”

“The Master of Offices, sir?” The Master of Offices was one of the most powerful officials in the Roman Empire, one of the few with the right to report directly to the Emperor himself.

“Yes. Among his other duties, he commands the corps of magistrianoi. How would you like to be the one to take your precious tube down to Constantinople, along with a letter urging your admission to their ranks?”

For a moment, all Argyros heard was “Constantinople.” That was enough. Along with every other citizen of the Empire, he had heard stories of its wonders and riches for his entire life. Now to see them for himself!

Then the rest of what Tekmanios had said sank in. Magistrianoi were elite imperial agents, investigators, sometimes spies. They served under the personal supervision of the Master of Offices, the only man between them and the Emperor, the vice-regent of God on earth. Argyros had dreamed of such a post for himself, but only dreamed.

“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” he said.

“I thought that might please you,” Tekmanios said with a smile. “It’s your doing more than mine, you know; you’ve earned the chance. Now it’s up to you to make the most of it.”

“Yes, sir,” Argyros said again, slightly deflated.

The general’s smile grew wider. “Take a couple of more days to get your strength back. Then I’ll send you and your tube back to the Danube, with a good strong resupply party along to keep you in one piece. You can get a riverboat there and sail down to Tomi on the Euxine Sea, then take a real ship on to the city. That will be faster and safer than going overland.”

The grin looked out of place on Argyros’ usually somber features, but he could not help wearing it as he bowed his way out of Tekmanios’ tent. Once outside, he looked up into the heavens to give thanks to God for his good fortune.

The pale, mottled moon, near first quarter, caught his eye. He wondered what it might look like through the eyes of Argos. Tonight, if he remembered, he would have to find out. Who could say? It might be interesting.

Editor’s Introduction to:

The Highest Treason

Randall Garrett

Writing this is a sad task. As I write this introduction, Randall Garrett lives, but suffers from a progressive disorder which has kept him hospitalized and unable to write for several years. It’s a damned shame. I prefer to remember him as I knew him: a robust man, full of life, and much larger than life.

I suppose I had previously met Randall Garrett at one or another science fiction convention, but I first got to know him when we were both guests at Poul Anderson’s home. Randall and Poul are fascinating conversationalists, full of both profound and trivial knowledge; the two together could be devastating. I was not then a member of the SF writers’ community, being still an aerospace engineer.

In those days we were all three active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, that odd bunch of fanatics who dress up in medieval clothing and bash each other with swords. In those days we were much concerned with how things really were in the Middle Ages; nowadays there is perhaps more creativity, and a great deal more anachronism, mostly in the name of equality of the sexes. In any event, Randall was then quite high in the Society’s heraldric structure, and many of the traditions he started endure to this day.

He also constructed a helmet. Most of the SCA people do have helmets. Randall’s, however, was built from a military steel pot, with considerable refinements and additions. It weighed almost twenty pounds, and rendered the wearer’s head well-nigh invulnerable (although it was certain to produce a stiff neck). Naturally Randall gave it a name: nolle me. Those who don’t understand should seek out some amontillado.

Garrett was, in a word, one of that low species: the inveterate punster. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone being better (worse) at the game.

In the Golden Age when John W. Campbell, Jr., was editor of Astounding Science Fiction (which he converted to Analog), Randall Garrett was almost certainly the most often printed contributor. Some issues were written almost entirely by Randall, Poul Anderson, and Robert Silverberg. Randall could take an idea from Mr. Campbell and turn it into a story within a day, sometimes quicker if the rent was due.

He was also one of the field’s best satirists. Nearly every major author in the field was zapped by Randall at one or another time. In my case, Randall and William Tuning wrote a story called “A Time Machine for the Queen,” which they brought out not long after my “Spaceship for the King”…

For all that, he could be a serious writer, and his social criticisms could bite deeply. A former Marine, he understood full well both the strengths and weaknesses of military organizations.

Randall Garrett had nothing but contempt for those who seek equality at the price of freedom. At the same time, he knew how to be loyal. I have long thought The Highest Treason to be one of his best stories. Query: precisely who is the traitor here?

The Highest Treason

Randall Garrett

The Prisoner

The two rooms were not luxurious, but MacMaine hadn’t expected that they would be. The walls were a flat metallic gray, unadorned and windowless. The ceilings and floors were simply continuations of the walls, except for the glow plates overhead. One room held a small cabinet for his personal possessions, a wide, reasonably soft bed, a small but adequate desk, and, in one corner, a cubicle that contained the necessary sanitary plumbing facilities.

The other room held a couch, two big easy-chairs, a low table, some bookshelves, a squat refrigerator containing food and drink for his occasional snacks—his regular meals were brought in hot from the main kitchen—and a closet that contained his clothing—the insignialess uniforms of a Kerothi officer.

No, thought Sebastian MacMaine, it was not luxurious, but neither did it look like the prison cell it was.

There was comfort here, and even the illusion of privacy, although there were TV pickups in the walls, placed so that no movement in either room would go unnoticed. The switch which cut off the soft white light from the glow plates did not cut off the infrared radiation which enabled his hosts to watch him while he slept. Every sound was heard and recorded.

But none of that bothered MacMaine. On the contrary, he was glad of it. He wanted the Kerothi to know that he had no intention of escaping or hatching any plot against them.

He had long since decided that, if things continued as they had, Earth would lose the war with Keroth, and Sebastian MacMaine had no desire whatever to be on the losing side of the greatest war ever fought. The problem now was to convince the Kerothi that he fully intended to fight for them, to give them the full benefit of his ability as a military strategist, and to do his best to win every battle for Keroth.

And that was going to be the most difficult task of all.

A telltale glow of red blinked rapidly over the door, and a soft chime pinged in time with it.

MacMaine smiled inwardly, although not a trace of it showed on his broad-jawed, blocky face. To give him the illusion that he was a guest rather than a prisoner, the Kerothi had installed an announcer at the door and invariably used it. Not once had any one of them ever simply walked in on him.

“Come in,” MacMaine said.

He was seated in one of the easy-chairs in his “living room,” smoking a cigarette and reading a book on the history of Keroth, but he put the book down on the low table as a tall Kerothi came in through the doorway.

MacMaine allowed himself a smile of honest pleasure. To most Earthmen, “all the Carrot-skins look alike,” and, MacMaine admitted honestly to himself, he hadn’t yet trained himself completely to look beyond the strangeness that made the Kerothi different from Earthmen and see the details that made them different from each other. But this was one Kerothi that MacMaine would never mistake for any other.

“Tallis!” He stood up and extended both hands in the Kerothi fashion. The other did the same, and they clasped hands for a moment. “How are your guts?” he added in Kerothic.

“They function smoothly, my sibling-by-choice,” answered Space General Polan Tallis. “And your own?”

“Smoothly, indeed. It’s been far too long a time since we have touched.”

The Kerothi stepped back a pace and looked the Earthman up and down. “You look healthy enough—for a prisoner. You’re treated well, then?”

“Well enough. Sit down, my sibling-by-choice.” MacMaine waved toward the couch nearby. The general sat down and looked around the apartment.

“Well, well. You’re getting preferential treatment, all right. This is as good as you could expect as a battleship commander. Maybe you’re being trained for the job.”

MacMaine laughed, allowing the touch of sardonicism that he felt to be heard in the laughter. “I might have hoped so once, Tallis. But I’m afraid I have simply come out even. I have traded nothing for nothing.”

General Tallis reached into the pocket of his uniform jacket and took out the thin aluminum case that held the Kerothi equivalent of cigarettes. He took one out, put it between his lips, and lit it with the hotpoint that was built into the case.

MacMaine took an Earth cigarette out of the package on the table and allowed Tallis to light it for him. The pause and the silence, MacMaine knew, were for a purpose. He waited. Tallis had something to say, but he was allowing the Earth-man to “adjust to surprise.” It was one of the fine points of Kerothi etiquette.

A sudden silence on the part of one participant in a conversation, under these particular circumstances, meant that something unusual was coming up, and the other person was supposed to take the opportunity to brace himself for shock.

It could mean anything. In the Kerothi Space Forces, a superior informed a junior officer of the junior’s forthcoming promotion by just such tactics. But the same tactics were used when informing a person of the death of a loved one.

In fact, MacMaine was well aware that such a period of silence was de rigueur in a Kerothi court, just before sentence was pronounced, as well as a preliminary to a proposal of marriage by a Kerothi male to the light of his love.

MacMaine could do nothing but wait. It would be indelicate to speak until Tallis felt that he was ready for the surprise.

It was not, however, indelicate to watch Tallis’ face closely; it was expected. Theoretically, one was supposed to be able to discern, at least, whether the news was good or bad.

With Tallis, it was impossible to tell, and MacMaine knew it would be useless to read the man’s expression. But he watched, nonetheless.

In one way, Tallis’ face was typically Kerothi. The orange-pigmented skin and the bright grass-green eyes were common to all Kerothi. The planet Keroth, like Earth, had evolved several different “races” of humanoid, but, unlike Earth, the distinction was not one of color.

MacMaine took a drag off his cigarette and forced himself to keep his mind off whatever it was that Tallis might be about to say. He was already prepared for a death sentence—even a death sentence by torture. Now, he felt, he could not be shocked. And, rather than build up the tension within himself to an unbearable degree, he thought about Tallis rather than about himself.

Tallis, like the rest of the Kerothi, was unbelievably humanoid. There were internal differences in the placement of organs, and differences in the functions of those organs. For instance, it took two separate organs to perform the same function that the liver performed in Earthmen, and the kidneys were completely absent, that function being performed by special tissues in the lower colon, which meant that the Kerothi were more efficient with water-saving than Earthmen, since the waste products were excreted as relatively dry solids through an all-purpose cloaca.

But, externally, a Kerothi would need only a touch of plastic surgery and some makeup to pass as an Earthman in a stage play. Close up, of course, the job would be much more difficult—as difficult as a Negro trying to disguise himself as a Swede or vice versa.

But Tallis was–

“I would have a word,” Tallis said, shattering MacMaine’s carefully neutral train of thought. It was a standard opening for breaking the pause of adjustment, but it presaged good news rather than bad.

“I await your word,” MacMaine said. Even after all this time, he still felt vaguely proud of his ability to handle the subtle idioms of Kerothic.

“I think,” Tallis said carefully, “that you may be offered a commission in the Kerothi Space Forces.”

Sebastian MacMaine let out his breath slowly, and only then realized that he had been holding it. “I am grateful, my sibling-by-choice,” he said.

General Tallis tapped his cigarette ash into a large blue ceramic ashtray. MacMaine could smell the acrid smoke from the alien plant matter that burned in the Kerothi cigarette—a chopped-up inner bark from a Kerothi tree. MacMaine could no more smoke a Kerothi cigarette than Tallis could smoke tobacco, but the two were remarkably similar in their effects.

The “surprise” had been delivered. Now, as was proper, Tallis would move adroitly all around the subject until he was ready to return to it again.

“You have been with us… how long, Sepastian?” he asked.

“Two and a third Kronet.”

Tallis nodded. “Nearly a year of your time.”

MacMaine smiled. Tallis was as proud of his knowledge of Earth terminology as MacMaine was proud of his mastery of Kerothic.

“Lacking three weeks,” MacMaine said.

“What? Three… oh, yes. Well. A long time,” said Tallis.

Damn it! MacMaine thought, in a sudden surge of impatience, get to the point! His face showed only calm.

“The Board of Strategy asked me to tell you,” Tallis continued. “After all, my recommendation was partially responsible for the decision.” He paused for a moment, but it was merely a conversational hesitation, not a formal hiatus.

“It was a hard decision, Sepastian—you must realize that. We have been at war with your race for ten years now. We have taken thousands of Earthmen as prisoners, and many of them have agreed to cooperate with us. But, with one single exception, these prisoners have been the moral dregs of your civilization. They have been men who had no pride of race, no pride of society, no pride of self. They have been weak, self-centered, small-minded, cowards who had no thought for Earth and Earthmen, but only for themselves.

“Not,” he said hurriedly, “that all of them are that way—or even the majority. Most of them have the minds of warriors, although, I must say, not strong warriors.”

That last, MacMaine knew, was a polite concession. The Kerothi had no respect for Earthmen. And MacMaine could hardly blame them. For three long centuries, the people of Earth had had nothing to do but indulge themselves in the pleasures of material wealth. It was a wonder that any of them had any moral fiber left.

“But none of those who had any strength agreed to work with us,” Tallis went on. “With one exception. You.”

“Am I weak, then?” MacMaine asked.

General Tallis shook his head in a peculiarly humanlike gesture. “No. No, you are not. And that is what has made us pause for three years.” His grass-green eyes looked candidly into MacMaine’s own. “You aren’t the type of person who betrays his own kind. It looks like a trap. After a whole year, the Board of Strategy still isn’t sure that there is no trap.”

Tallis stopped, leaned forward, and ground out the stub of his cigarette in the blue ashtray. Then his eyes again sought MacMaine’s.

“If it were not for what I, personally, know about you, the Board of Strategy would not even consider your proposition.”

“I take it, then, that they have considered it?” MacMaine asked with a grin.

“As I said, Sepastian,” Tallis said, “you have won your case. After almost a year of your time, your decision has been justified.”

MacMaine lost his grin. “I am grateful, Tallis,” he said gravely. “I think you must realize that it was a difficult decision to make.”

His thoughts went back, across long months of time and longer light-years of space, to the day when that decision had been made.

The Decision

Colonel Sebastian MacMaine didn’t feel, that morning, as though this day were different from any other. The sun, faintly veiled by a few wisps of cloud, shone as it always had; the guards at the doors of the Space Force Administration Building saluted him as usual; his brother officers nodded politely, as they always did; his aide greeted him with the usual “Good morning, sir.”

The duty list lay on his desk, as it had every morning for years. Sebastian MacMaine felt tense and a little irritated with himself, but he felt nothing that could be called a premonition.

When he read the first item on the duty list, his irritation became a little stronger.

“Interrogate Kerothi general.”

The interrogation duty had swung round to him again. He didn’t want to talk to General Tallis. There was something about the alien that bothered him, and he couldn’t place exactly what it was.

Earth had been lucky to capture the alien officer. In a space war, there’s usually very little left to capture after a battle—especially if your side lost the battle.

On the other hand, the Kerothi general wasn’t so lucky. The food that had been captured with him would run out in less than six months, and it was doubtful that he would survive on Earth food. It was equally doubtful that any more Kerothi food would be captured.

For two years, Earth had been fighting the Kerothi, and for two years Earth had been winning a few minor skirmishes and losing the major battles. The Kerothi hadn’t hit any of the major colonies yet, but they had swallowed up outpost after outpost, and Earth’s space fleet was losing ships faster than her factories could turn them out. The hell of it was that nobody on Earth seemed to be very much concerned about it at all.

MacMaine wondered why he let it concern him. If no one else was worried, why did he let it bother him? He pushed the thought from his mind and picked up the questionnaire form that had been made out for that morning’s session with the Kerothi general. Might as well get it over with.

He glanced down the list of further duties for the day. It looked as though the routine interrogation of the Kerothi general was likely to provide most of the interest in the day’s work at that.

He took the drop chute down to the basement of the building, to the small prison section where the alien officer was being held. The guards saluted nonchalantly as he went in. The routine questioning sessions were nothing new to them.

MacMaine turned the lock on the prisoner’s cell door and went in. Then he came to attention and saluted the Kerothi general. He was probably the only officer in the place who did that, he knew; the others treated the alien general as though he were a criminal. Worse, they treated him as though he were a petty thief or a common pickpocket—criminal, yes, but of a definitely inferior type.

General Tallis, as always, stood and returned the salute. “Cut mawnik, Gunnel MacMaine,” he said. The Kerothi language lacked many of the voiced consonants of English and Russian, and, as a result, Tallis’ use of B, D, G, J, V, and Z made them come out as P, T, K, CH, F, and S. The English R, as it is pronounced in run or rat, eluded him entirely, and he pronounced it only when he could give it the guttural pronunciation of the German R. The terminal NG always came out as NK. The nasal M and N were a little more drawn out than in English, but they were easily understandable.

“Good morning, General Tallis,” MacMaine said. “Sit down. How do you feel this morning?”

The general sat again on the hard bunk that, aside from the single chair, was the only furniture in the small cell. “Ass well ass coot pe expectet. I ket ferry little exercisse. I… how iss it set?… I pecome soft? Soft? Iss correct?”

“Correct. You’ve learned our language very well for so short a time.”

The general shrugged off the compliment. “Wen it iss a matteh of learrn in orrter to surfife, one learmss.”

“You think, then, that your survival has depended on your learning our language?’’

The general’s orange face contrived a wry smile. “Opfiously. Your people fill not learn Kerothic. If I cannot answerr questionss, I am uff no use. Ass lonk ass I am uff use, I will liff. Not?”

MacMaine decided he might as well spring his bomb on the Kerothi officer now as later. “I am not so certain but that you might have stretched out your time longer if you had forced us to learn Kerothic, General,” he said in Kerothic. He knew his Kerothic was bad, since it had been learned from the Kerothi spaceman who had been captured with the general, and the man had been badly wounded and had survived only two weeks. But that little bit of basic instruction, plus the work he had done on the books and tapes from the ruined Kerothi ship, had helped him.

“Ah?” The general blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. “Your accent,” he said in Kerothic, “is atrocious, but certainly no worse than mine when I speak your Inklitch. I suppose you intend to question me in Kerothic now, eh? In the hope that I may reveal more in my own tongue?”

“Possibly you may,” MacMaine said with a grin, “but I learned it for my own information.”

“For your own what? Oh, I see. Interesting. I know no others of your race who would do such a thing. Anything which is difficult is beneath them.”

“Not so, General. I’m not unique. There are many of us who don’t think that way.”

The general shrugged. “I do not deny it. I merely say that I have met none. Certainly they do not tend to go into military service. Possibly that is because you are not a race of fighters. It takes a fighter to tackle the difficult just because it is difficult.”

MacMaine gave him a short, hard laugh. “Don’t you think getting information out of you is difficult? And yet, we tackle that.”

“Not the same thing at all. Routine. You have used no pressure. No threats, no promises, no torture, no stress.”

MacMaihe wasn’t quite sure of his translation of the last two negative phrases. “You mean the application of physical pain? That’s barbaric.”

“I won’t pursue the subject,” the general said with sudden irony.

“I can understand that. But you can rest assured that we would never do such a thing. It isn’t civilized. Our civil police do use certain drugs to obtain information, but we have so little knowledge of Kerothi body chemistry that we hesitate to use drugs on you.”

“The application of stress, you say, is not civilized. Not, perhaps, according to your definition of”—he used the English word—“cifiliced. No. Not cifiliced—but it works.” Again he smiled. “I said that I have become soft since I have been here, but I fear that your civilization is even softer.”

“A man can lie, even if his arms are pulled off or his feet crushed,” MacMaine said stiffly.

The Kerothi looked startled. When he spoke again, it was in English. “I will say no morr. If you naff questionss to ask, ko ahet. I will not take up time with furtherr talkink.”

A little angry with himself and with the general, MacMaine spent the rest of the hour asking routine questions and getting nowhere, filling up the tape in his minicorder with the same old answers that others had gotten.

He left, giving the general a brisk salute and turning before the general had time to return it.

Back in his office, he filed the tape dutifully and started on Item Two of the duty list: Strategy Analysis of Battle Reports.

Strategy analysis always irritated and upset him. He knew that if he’d just go about it in the approved way, there would be no irritation—only boredom. But he was constitutionally incapable of working that way. In spite of himself, he always played a little game with himself and with the General Strategy Computer.

The only battle of significance in the past week had been the defense of an Earth outpost called Bennington IV. Theoretically, MacMaine was supposed to check over the entire report, find out where the losing side had erred, and feed correctional information into the computer. But he couldn’t resist stopping after he had read the first section: Information Known to Earth Commander at Moment of Initial Contact.

Then he would stop and consider how he, personally, would have handled the situation if he had been the Earth commander. So many ships in such-and-such places. Enemy fleet approaching at such-and-such velocities. Battle array of enemy thus-and-so.

Now what?

MacMaine thought over the information on the defense of Bennington IV and devised a battle plan. There was a weak point in the enemy’s attack, but it was rather obvious. MacMaine searched until he found another weak point, much less obvious than the first. He knew it would be there. It was.

Then he proceeded to ignore both weak points and concentrate on what he would do if he were the enemy commander. The weak points were traps; the computer could see them and avoid them. Which was just exactly what was wrong with the computer’s logic. In avoiding the traps, it also avoided the best way to hit the enemy. A weak point is weak, no matter how well it may be booby-trapped. In baiting a rat trap, you have to use real cheese because an imitation won’t work.

Of course, MacMaine thought to himself, you can always poison the cheese, but let’s not carry the analogy too far.

All right, then. How to hit the traps?

It took him half an hour to devise a completely wacky and unorthodox way of hitting the holes in the enemy advance. He checked the time carefully, because there’s no point in devising a strategy if the battle is too far gone to use it by the time you’ve figured it out.

Then he went ahead and read the rest of the report. Earth had lost the outpost. And, worse, MacMaine’s strategy would have won the battle if it had been used. He fed it through his small office computer to make sure. The odds were good.

And that was the thing that made MacMaine hate strategy analysis. Too often, he won; too often, Earth lost. A computer was fine for working out the logical outcome of a battle if it was given the proper strategy, but it couldn’t devise anything new.

Colonel MacMaine had tried to get himself transferred to space duty, but without success. The Commanding Staff didn’t want him out there.

The trouble was that they didn’t believe MacMaine actually devised his strategy before he read the complete report. How could anyone outthink a computer?

He’d offered to prove it. “Give me a problem,” he’d told his immediate superior, General Matsukuo. “Give me the initial contact information of a battle I haven’t seen before, and I’ll show you.”

And Matsukuo had said, testily: “Colonel, I will not permit a member of my staff to make a fool of himself in front of the Commanding Staff. Setting yourself up as someone superior to the Strategy Board is the most antisocial type of egocentrism imaginable. You were given the same education at the Academy as every other officer; what makes you think you are better than they? As time goes on, your automatic promotions will put you in a position to vote on such matters—provided you don’t prejudice the Promotion Board against you by antisocial behavior. I hold you in the highest regard, Colonel, and I will say nothing to the Promotion Board about this, but if you persist I will have to do my duty. Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it. Is that clear?”

It was.

All MacMaine had to do was wait, and he’d automatically be promoted to the Commanding Staff, where he would have an equal vote with the others of his rank. One unit vote to begin with and an additional unit for every year thereafter.

It’s a great system for running a peacetime social club, maybe, MacMaine thought, but it’s no way to run a fighting force.

Maybe the Kerothi general was right. Maybe Homo sapiens just wasn’t a race of fighters.

They had been once. Mankind had fought its way to domination of Earth by battling every other form of life on the planet, from the smallest virus to the biggest carnivore. The fight against disease was still going on, as a matter of fact, and Man was still fighting the elemental fury of Earth’s climate.

But Man no longer fought with Man. Was that a bad thing? The discovery of atomic energy, two centuries before, had literally made war impossible, if the race was to survive. Small struggles bred bigger struggles—or so the reasoning went. Therefore, the society had unconsciously sought to eliminate the reasons for struggle.

What bred the hatreds and jealousies among men? What caused one group to fight another?

Society had decided that intolerance and hatred were caused by inequality. The jealousy of the inferior toward his superior; the scorn of the superior toward his inferior. The Have-not envies the Have, and the Have looks down upon the Have-not.

Then let us eliminate the Have-not. Let us make sure that everyone is a Have.

Raise the standard of living. Make sure that every human being has the necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter, proper medical care, and proper education. More, give them the luxuries, too—let no man be without anything that is poorer in quality or less in quantity than the possessions of any other. There was no longer any middle class simply because there were no other classes for it to be in the middle of.

“The poor you will have always with you,” Jesus of Nazareth had said. But, in a material sense, that was no longer true. The poor were gone—and so were the rich.

But the poor in mind and the poor in spirit were still there—in ever-increasing numbers.

Material wealth could be evenly distributed, but it could not remain that way unless society made sure that the man who was more clever than the rest could not increase his wealth at the expense of his less fortunate brethren.

Make it a social stigma to show more ability than the average. Be kind to your fellow man; don’t show him up as a stupid clod, no matter how cloddish he may be.

All men are created equal, and let’s make sure they stay that way!

There could be no such thing as a classless society, of course. That was easily seen. No human being could do everything, learn everything, be everything. There had to be doctors and lawyers and policemen and bartenders and soldiers and machinists and laborers and actors and writers and criminals and bums.

But let’s make sure that the differentiation between classes is horizontal, not vertical. As long as a person does his job the best he can, he’s as good as anybody else. A doctor is as good as a lawyer, isn’t he? Then a garbage collector is just as good as a nuclear physicist, and an astronomer is no better than a street sweeper.

And what of the loafer, the bum, the man who’s too lazy or weak-willed to put out any more effort than is absolutely necessary to stay alive? Well, my goodness, the poor chap can’t help it, can he? It isn’t his fault, is it? He has to be helped. There is always something he is both capable of doing and willing to do. Does he like to sit around all day and do nothing but watch television? Then give him a sheet of paper with all the programs on it and two little boxes marked Yes and No, and he can put an X in one or the other to indicate whether he likes the program or not. Useful? Certainly. All these sheets can be tallied up in order to find out what sort of program the public likes to see. After all, his vote is just as good as anyone else’s, isn’t it?

And a program analyst is just as good, just as important, and just as well cared for as anyone else.

And what about the criminal? Well, what is a criminal? A person who thinks he’s superior to others. A thief steals because he thinks he has more right to something than its real owner. A man kills because he has an idea that he has a better right to live than someone else. In short, a man breaks the law because he feels superior, because he thinks he can outsmart society and the law. Or, simply, because he thinks he can outsmart the policeman on the beat.

Obviously, that sort of antisocial behavior can’t be allowed. The poor fellow who thinks he’s better than anyone else has to be segregated from normal society and treated for his aberrations. But not punished! Heavens no! His erratic behavior isn’t his fault, is it?

It was axiomatic that there had to be some sort of vertical structure to society, naturally. A child can’t do the work of an adult, and a beginner can’t be as good as an old hand. Aside from the fact that it was actually impossible to force everyone into a common mold, it was recognized that there had to be some incentive for staying with a job. What to do?

The labor unions had solved that problem two hundred years before. Promotion by seniority. Stick with a job long enough, and you’ll automatically rise to the top. That way, everyone had as good a chance as everyone else.

Promotion tables for individual jobs were worked out on the basis of longevity tables, so that by the time a man reached the automatic retirement age he was automatically at the highest position he could hold. No fuss, no bother, no trouble. Just keep your nose clean and live as long as possible.

It eliminated struggle. It eliminated the petty jockeying for position that undermined efficiency in an organization. Everybody deserves an equal chance in life, so make sure everybody gets it.

Colonel Sebastian MacMaine had been born and reared in that society. He could see many of its faults, but he didn’t have the orientation to see all of them. As he’d grown older, he’d seen that, regardless of the position a man held according to seniority, a smart man could exercise more power than those above him if he did it carefully.

A man is a slave if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permitted to step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at the bottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. Only rarely did a slave of exceptional merit manage to rise above his assigned position.

But a man who is forced to remain on the bottom step of a stationary stairway is no more a slave than a man who is forced to remain on a given step of an escalator, and no less so.

Slavery, however, has two advantages—one for the individual, and one which, in the long run, can be good for the race. For the individual, it offers security, and that is the goal which by far the greater majority of mankind seeks.

The second advantage is more difficult to see. It operates only in favor of the exceptional individual. There are always individuals who aspire to greater heights than the one they occupy at any given moment, but in a slave society, they are slapped back into place if they act hastily. Just as the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind can be king if he taps the ground with a cane, so the gifted individual can gain his ends in a slave society—provided he thinks out the consequences of any act in advance.

The Law of Gravity is a universal edict which enslaves, in a sense, every particle of matter in the cosmos. The man who attempts to defy the “injustice” of that law by ignoring the consequences of its enforcement will find himself punished rather severely. It may be unjust that a bird can fly under its own muscle power, but a man who tries to correct that injustice by leaping out of a skyscraper window and flapping his arms vigorously will find that overt defiance of the Law of Gravity brings very serious penalties indeed. The wise man seeks the loopholes in the law, and loopholes are caused by other laws which counteract—not defy!—the given law. A balloon full of hydrogen “falls up” in obedience to the Law of Gravity. A contradiction? A paradox? No. It is the Law of Gravity which causes the density and pressure of a planet’s atmosphere to decrease with altitude, and that decrease in pressure forces the balloon upward until the balance point between atmospheric density and the internal density of the balloon is reached.

The illustration may seem obvious and elementary to the modern man, but it seems so only because he understands, at least to some extent, the laws involved. It was not obvious to even the most learned man of, say, the thirteenth century.

Slavery, too, has its laws, and it is as dangerous to defy the laws of a society as it is to defy those of nature, and the only way to escape the punishment resulting from those laws is to find the loopholes. One of the most basic laws of any society is so basic mat it is never, ever written down.

And that law, like all basic laws, is so simple in expression and so obvious in application that any man above the moron level has an intuitive grasp of it. It is the first law one learns as a child.

Thou shall not suffer thyself to be caught.

The unthinking man believes that this basic law can be applied by breaking the laws of his society in secret. What he fails to see is that such lawbreaking requires such a fantastic network of lies, subterfuges, evasions, and chicanery that the structure itself eventually breaks down and his guilt is obvious to all. The very steps he has taken to keep from getting caught eventually become signposts that point unerringly at the lawbreaker himself.

Like the loopholes in the law of gravity, the loopholes in the laws of society cannot entail a defiance of the law. Only compliance with those laws will be ultimately successful.

The wise man works within the framework of the law—not only the written, but the unwritten law—of his society. In a slave society, any slave who openly rebels will find that he gets squashed pretty quickly. But many a slave-owner has danced willingly to the tune of a slave who was wiser and cleverer than he, without ever knowing that the tune played was not his own.

And that is the second advantage of slavery. It teaches the exceptional individual to think.

When a wise, intelligent individual openly and violently breaks the laws of his society, there are two things which are almost certain: One: he knows that there is no other way to do the thing he feels must be done, and—

Two: he knows that he will pay the penalty for his crime in one way or another.

Sebastian MacMaine knew the operations of those laws. As a member of a self-enslaved society, he knew that to betray any sign of intelligence was dangerous. A slight slip could bring the scorn of the slaves around him; a major offense could mean death. The war with Keroth had thrown him slightly off balance, but after his one experience with General Matsukuo, he had quickly regained his equilibrium.

At the end of his work day, MacMaine closed his desk and left his office precisely on time, as usual. Working overtime, except in the gravest emergencies, was looked upon as antisocialism. The offender was suspected of having Ambition—obviously a Bad Thing.

It was during his meal at the officers’ mess that Colonel Sebastian MacMaine heard the statement that triggered the decision in his mind.

There were three other officers seated with MacMaine around one of the four-place tables in the big room. MacMaine only paid enough attention to the table conversation to be able to make the appropriate noises at the proper times. He had long since learned to do his thinking under cover of general banalities.

Colonel VanDeusen was a man who would never have made private first class in an army that operated on a strict merit system. His thinking was muddy, and his conversation betrayed it. All he felt comfortable in talking about was just exactly what he had been taught. Slogans, banalities, and bromides. He knew his catechism, and he knew it was safe.

“What I mean is, we got nothing to worry about. We all stick together, and we can do anything. As long as we don’t rock the boat, we’ll come through O.K.”

“Sure,” said Major Brock, looking up from his plate in blank-faced surprise. “I mean, who says different?”

“Guy on my research team,” said VanDeusen, plying his fork industriously. “A wise-guy second looie. One of them.”

“Oh,” said the major knowingly. “One of them.” He went back to his meal.

“What’d he say?” MacMaine asked, just to keep his oar in.

“Ahhh, nothing serious, I guess,” said VanDeusen, around a mouthful of steak. “Said we were all clogged up with paper work, makin’ reports on tests, things like that. Said, why don’t we figure out something to pop those Carrot-skins outa the sky. So I said to him, ‘Look, Lootenant,’ I said, ‘you got your job to do, I got mine. If the paper work’s pilin’ up,’ I said, ‘it’s because somebody isn’t pulling his share. And it better not be you,’ I said.” He chuckled and speared another cube of steak with his fork. “That settled him down. He’s all right, though. Young yet, you know. Soon’s he gets the hang of how the Space Force operates, he’ll be O.K.”

Since VanDeusen was the senior officer at the table, the others listened respectfully as he talked, only inserting a word now and then to show that they were listening.

MacMaine was thinking deeply about something else entirely, but VanDeusen’s influence intruded a little. MacMaine was wondering what it was that bothered him about General Tallis, the Kerothi prisoner.

The alien was pleasant enough, in spite of his position. He seemed to accept his imprisonment as one of the fortunes of war. He didn’t threaten or bluster, although he tended to maintain an air of superiority that would have been unbearable in an Earthman.

Was that the reason for his uneasiness in the general’s presence? No. MacMaine could accept the reason for that attitude; the general’s background was different from that of an Earthman, and therefore he could not be judged by Terrestrial standards. Besides, MacMaine could acknowledge to himself that Tallis was superior to the norm—not only the norm of Keroth, but that of Earth. MacMaine wasn’t sure he could have acknowledged superiority in another Earthman, in spite of the fact that he knew that there must be men who were his superiors in one way or another.

Because of his social background, he knew that he would probably form an intense and instant dislike for any Earthman who talked the way Tallis did, but he found that he actually liked the alien officer.

It came as a slight shock when the realization hit MacMaine that his liking for the general was exactly why he was uncomfortable around him. Dammit, a man isn’t supposed to like his enemy—and most especially when that enemy does and says things that one would despise in a friend.

Come to think of it, though, did he, MacMaine, actually have any friends? He looked around him, suddenly clearly conscious of the other men in the room. He searched through his memory, thinking of all his acquaintances and relatives.

It was an even greater shock to realize that he would not be more than faintly touched emotionally if any or all of them were to die at that instant. Even his parents, both of whom were now dead, were only dim figures in his memory. He had mourned them when an aircraft accident had taken both of them when he was only eleven, but he found himself wondering if it had been the loss of loved ones that had caused his emotional upset or simply the abrupt vanishing of a kind of security he had taken for granted.

And yet, he felt that the death of General Polan Tallis would leave an empty place in his life.

Colonel VanDeusen was still holding forth.

“…So I told him. I said, ‘Look, Lootenant,’ I said, ‘don’t rock the boat. You’re a kid yet, you know,’ I said. ‘You got equal rights with everybody else,’ I said, ‘but if you rock the boat, you aren’t gonna get along so well.’

“‘You just behave yourself,’ I said, ‘and pull your share of the load and do your job right and keep your nose clean, and you’ll come out all right.

‘Time I get to be on the General Staff,’ I told him, ‘why, you’ll be takin’ over my job, maybe. That’s the way it works,’ I said.

“He’s a good kid. I mean, he’s a fresh young punk, that’s all. He’ll learn, O.K. He’ll climb right up, once he’s got the right attitude. Why, when I was–”

But MacMaine was no longer listening. It was astonishing to realize that what VanDeusen had said was perfectly true. A blockhead like VanDeusen would simply be lifted to a position of higher authority, only to be replaced by another blockhead. There would be no essential change in the status quo.

The Kerothi were winning steadily, and the people of Earth and her colonies were making no changes whatever in their way of living. The majority of people were too blind to be able to see what was happening, and the rest were afraid to admit the danger, even to themselves. It required no great understanding of strategy to see what the inevitable outcome must be.

At some point in the last few centuries, human civilization had taken the wrong path—a path that led only to oblivion.

It was at that moment that Colonel Sebastian MacMaine made his decision.

The Escape

“Are you sure you understand, Tallis?” MacMaine asked in Kerothic.

The alien general nodded emphatically. “Perfectly. Your Kerothic is not so bad that I could misunderstand your instructions. I still don’t understand why you are doing this. Oh, I know the reasons you’ve given me, but I don’t completely believe them. However, I’ll go along with you. The worst that could happen would be for me to be killed, and I would sooner face death in trying to escape than in waiting for your executioners. If this is some sort of trap, some sort of weird way your race’s twisted idea of kindness has evolved to dispose of me, then I’ll accept your sentence. It’s better than starving to death or facing a firing squad.”

“Not a firing squad,” MacMaine said. “That wouldn’t be kind. An odorless, but quite deadly gas would be pumped into this cell while you slept.”

“That’s worse. When death comes, I want to face it and fight it off as long as possible, not have it sneaking up on me in my sleep. I think I’d rather starve.”

“You would,” said MacMaine. “The food that was captured with you has nearly run out, and we haven’t been able to capture any more. But rather than let you suffer, they would have killed you painlessly.” He glanced at the watch on his instrument cuff. “Almost time.”

MacMaine looked the alien over once more. Tallis was dressed in the uniform of Earth’s Space Force, and the insignia of a full general gleamed on his collar. His face and hands had been sprayed with an opaque, pink-tan film, and his hairless head was covered with a black wig. He wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but MacMaine fervently hoped that he wouldn’t need to.

Think it out, be sure you’re right, then go ahead. Sebastian MacMaine had done just that. For three months, he had worked over the details of his plan, making sure that they were as perfect as he was capable of making them. Even so, there was a great deal of risk involved, and there were too many details that required luck for MacMaine to be perfectly happy about the plan.

But time was running out. As the general’s food supply dwindled, his execution date neared, and now it was only two days away. There was no point in waiting until the last minute; it was now or never.

There were no spying TV cameras in the general’s cell, no hidden microphones to report and record what went on. No one had ever escaped from the Space Force’s prison, therefore, no one ever would.

MacMaine glanced again at his watch. It was time. He reached inside his blouse and took out a fully loaded handgun.

For an instant, the alien officer’s eyes widened, and he stiffened as if he were ready to die in an attempt to disarm the Earthman. Then he saw that MacMaine wasn’t holding it by the butt; his hand was clasped around the middle of the weapon.

“This is a chance I have to take,” MacMaine said evenly. “With this gun, you can shoot me down right here and try to escape alone. I’ve told you every detail of our course of action, and, with luck, you might make it alone.” He held out his hand, with the weapon resting on his open palm.

General Tallis eyed the Earthman for a long second. Then, without haste, he took the gun and inspected it with a professional eye.

“Do you know how to operate it?” MacMaine asked, forcing calmness into his voice.

“Yes. We’ve captured plenty of them.” Tallis thumbed the stud that allowed the magazine to slide out of the butt and into his hand. Then he checked the mechanism and the power cartridges. Finally, he replaced the magazine and put the weapon into the empty sleeve holster that MacMaine had given him.

MacMaine let his breath out slowly. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He opened the door of the cell, and both men stepped out into the corridor. At the far end of the corridor, some thirty yards away, stood the two armed guards who kept watch over the prisoner. At that distance, it was impossible to tell that Tallis was not what he appeared to be.

The guard had been changed while MacMaine was in the prisoner’s cell, and he was relying on the lax discipline of the soldiers to get him and Tallis out of the cell block. With luck, the guards would have failed to listen too closely to what they had been told by the men they replaced; with even greater luck, the previous guardsmen would have failed to be too explicit about who was in the prisoner’s cell. With no luck at all, MacMaine would be forced to shoot to kill.

MacMaine walked casually up to the two men, who came to an easy attention.

“I want you two men to come with me. Something odd has happened, and General Quinby and I want two witnesses as to what went on.”

“What happened, sir?” one of them asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” MacMaine said in a puzzled voice. “The general and I were talking to the prisoner, when all of a sudden he fell over. I think he’s dead. I couldn’t find a heartbeat. I want you to take a look at him so that you can testify that we didn’t shoot him or anything.”

Obediently, the two guards headed for the cell, and MacMaine fell in behind them. “You couldn’t of shot him, sir,” said the second guard confidently. “We would of heard the shot.”

“Besides,” said the other, “it don’t matter much. He was going to be gassed day after tomorrow.”

As the trio approached the cell, Tallis pulled the door open a little wider and, in doing so, contrived to put himself behind it so that his face couldn’t be seen. The young guards weren’t too awed by a full general; after all, they’d be generals themselves someday. They were much more interested in seeing the dead alien.

As the guards reached the cell door, MacMaine unholstered his pistol from his sleeve and brought it down hard on the head of the nearest youth. At the same time, Tallis stepped from behind the door and clouted the other.

Quickly, MacMaine disarmed the fallen men and dragged them into the open cell. He came out again and locked the door securely. Their guns were tossed into an empty cell nearby.

“They won’t be missed until the next change of watch, in four hours,” MacMaine said. “By then, it won’t matter, one way or another.’’

Getting out of the huge building that housed the administrative offices of the Space Force was relatively easy. A lift chute brought the pair to the main floor, and, this late in the evening, there weren’t many people on that floor. No one appeared to notice anything out of the ordinary.

As they walked out boldly through the main door, fifteen minutes later, the guards merely came to attention and relaxed as a tall colonel and a somewhat shorter general strode out. The general appeared to be having a fit of sneezing, and the colonel was heard to say: “That’s quite a cold you’ve picked up, sir. Better get over to the dispensary and take an anti-coryza shot.”

“Mmmf,” said the general. “Ha-CHOO!”

Getting to the spaceport was no problem at all. MacMaine had an official car waiting, and the two sergeants in the front seat didn’t pay any attention to the general getting in the back seat because Colonel MacMaine was talking to them. “We’re ready to roll, Sergeant,” he said to the driver. “General Quinby wants to go straight to the Manila, so let’s get there as fast as possible. Take-off is scheduled in ten minutes.” Then he got into the back seat himself.

Seven minutes later, the staff car was rolling unquestioned through the main gate of Waikiki Spaceport.

It was all so incredibly easy, MacMaine thought. Nobody questioned an official car. Nobody checked anything too closely. Nobody wanted to risk his lifelong security by doing or saying something that might be considered antisocial by a busy general. Besides, it never entered anyone’s mind that there could be anything wrong. If there was a war on, apparently no one had been told about it yet.

MacMaine thought, Was I ever that stubbornly blind? Not quite, I guess, or I’d never have seen what is happening. But he knew he hadn’t been too much more perceptive than those around him. Even to an intelligent man, the mask of stupidity can become a barrier to the outside world as well as a concealment from it.

The Interstellar Ship Manila was a small, fast, ten-man blaster-boat, designed to get into the thick of a battle quickly, strike hard, and get away. Unlike the bigger, more powerful battle cruisers, she could be landed directly on any planet with less than a two-gee pull at the surface. The really big babies had to be parked in an orbit and loaded by shuttle; they’d break up of their own weight if they tried to set down on anything bigger than a good-sized planetoid. As long as their antiacceleration fields were on, they could take unimaginable thrusts along their axes, but the A-A fields were the cause of those thrusts as well as the protection against them. The ships couldn’t stand still while they were operating, so they were no protection at all against a planet’s gravity. But a blaster-boat was small enough and compact enough to take the strain.

It had taken careful preparation to get the Manila ready to go just exactly when MacMaine needed it. Papers had to be forged and put into the chain of command communication at precisely the right times; others had had to be taken out and replaced with harmless near-duplicates so that the Commanding Staff wouldn’t discover the deception. He had had to build up the fictional identity of a “General Lucius Quinby” in such a way that it would take a thorough check to discover that the officer who had been put in command of the Manila was nonexistent.

It was two minutes until take-off time when the staff car pulled up at the foot of the ramp that led up to the main air lock of the ISS Manila. A young-looking captain was standing nervously at the foot of it, obviously afraid that his new commander might be late for the take-off and wondering what sort of decision he would have to make if the general wasn’t there at take-off time. MacMaine could imagine his feelings.

“General Quinby” developed another sneezing fit as he stepped out of the car. This was the touchiest part of MacMaine’s plan, the weakest link in the whole chain of action. For a space of perhaps a minute, the disguised Kerothi general would have to stand so close to the young captain that the crudity of his makeup job would be detectable. He had to keep that handkerchief over his face, and yet do it in such a way that it would seem natural.

As Tallis climbed out of the car, chuffing windily into the kerchief, MacMaine snapped an order to the sergeant behind the wheel. “That’s all. We’re taking off almost immediately, so get that car out of here.’’

Then he walked rapidly over to the captain, who had snapped to attention. There was a definite look of relief on his face, now that he knew his commander was on time.

“All ready for take-off, Captain? Everything checked out? Ammunition? Energy packs all filled to capacity? All the crew aboard? Full rations and stores stowed away?”

The captain kept his eyes on MacMaine’s face as he answered “Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir,” to the rapid fire of questions. He had no time to shift his gaze to the face of his new C.O., who was snuffling his way toward the foot of the landing ramp. MacMaine kept firing questions until Tallis was halfway up the ramp.

Then he said: “Oh, by the way, Captain—was the large package containing General Quinby’s personal gear brought aboard?”

“The big package? Yes, sir. About fifteen minutes ago.”

“Good,” said MacMaine. He looked up the ramp. “Are there any special orders at this time, sir?” he asked.

“No,” said Tallis, without turning. “Carry on, Colonel.” He went on up to the air lock. It had taken Tallis hours of practice to say that phrase properly, but the training had been worth it.

After Tallis was well inside the air lock, MacMaine whispered to the young captain, “As you can see, the general has got a rather bad cold. He’ll want to remain in his cabin until he’s over it. See that anti-coryza shots are sent up from the dispensary as soon as we are out of the Solar System. Now, let’s go; we have less than a minute till take-off.”

MacMaine went up the ramp with the captain scrambling up behind him.

Tallis was just stepping into the commander’s cabin as the two men entered the air lock. MacMaine didn’t see him again until the ship was twelve minutes on her way—nearly five billion miles from Earth and still accelerating.

He identified himself at the door and Tallis opened it cautiously.

“I brought your anti-coryza shot, sir,” he said. In a small ship like the Manila, the captain and the seven crew members could hear any conversation in the companionways. He stepped inside and closed the door. Then he practically collapsed on the nearest chair and had a good case of the shakes.

“So-so f-f-far, s-so good,” he said.

General Tallis grasped his shoulder with a firm hand. “Brace up, Sepastian,” he said gently in Kerothic. “You’ve done a beautiful job. I still can’t believe it, but I’ll have to admit that if this is an act it’s a beautiful one.” He gestured toward the small desk in one corner of the room and the big package that was sitting on it. “The food is all there. I’ll have to eat sparingly, but I can make it. Now, what’s the rest of the plan?”

MacMaine took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. His shakes subsided to a faint, almost imperceptible quiver. “The captain doesn’t know our destination. He was told that he would receive secret instructions from you.” His voice, he noticed thankfully, was almost normal. He reached into his uniform jacket and took out an official-looking sealed envelope. “These are the orders. We are going out to arrange a special truce with the Kerothi.”

“What?”

“That’s what it says here. You’ll have to get on the subradio and do some plain and fancy talking. Fortunately, not a man jack aboard this ship knows a word of your language, so they’ll think you’re arranging truce terms.

“They’ll be sitting ducks when your warship pulls up alongside and sends in a boarding party. By the time they realize what has happened, it will be too late.”

“You’re giving us the ship, too?” Tallis looked at him wonderingly. “And eight prisoners?”

“Nine,” said MacMaine. “I’ll hand over my sidearm to you just before your men come through the air lock.”

General Tallis sat down in the other small chair, his eyes still on the Earthman. “I can’t help but feel that this is some sort of trick, but if it is, I can’t see through it. Why are you doing this, Sepastian?”

“You may not understand this, Tallis,” MacMaine said evenly, “but I am fighting for freedom. The freedom to think.”

The Traitor

Convincing the Kerothi that he was in earnest was more difficult than MacMaine had at first supposed. He had done his best, and now, after nearly a year of captivity, Tallis had come to tell him that his offer had been accepted.

General Tallis sat across from Colonel MacMaine, smoking his cigarette absently.

“Just why are they accepting my proposition?” MacMaine asked bluntly.

“Because they can afford to,” Tallis said with a smile. “You will be watched, my sibling-by-choice. Watched every moment, for any sign of treason. Your flagship will be a small ten-man blaster-boat—one of our own. You gave us one; we’ll give you one. At the worst, we will come out even. At the best, your admittedly brilliant grasp of tactics and strategy will enable us to save thousands of Kerothi lives, to say nothing of the immense savings in time and money.”

“All I ask is a chance to prove my ability and my loyalty.”

“You’ve already proven your ability. All of the strategy problems that you have been given over the past year were actual battles that had already been fought. In eighty-seven percent of the cases, your strategy proved to be superior to our own. In most of the others, it was just as good. In only three cases was the estimate of your losses higher than the actual losses. Actually, we’d be fools to turn you down. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

“I felt the same way a year ago,” said MacMaine. “Even being watched all the time will allow me more freedom than I had on Earth—if the Board of Strategy is willing to meet my terms.”

Tallis chuckled. “They are. You’ll be the best-paid officer in the entire fleet; none of the rest of us gets a tenth of what you’ll be getting, as far as personal value is concerned. And yet, it costs us practically nothing. You drive an attractive bargain, Sepastian.”

“Is that the kind of pay you’d like to get, Tallis?” MacMaine asked with a smile.

“Why not? You’ll get your terms: full pay as a Kerothi general, with retirement on full pay after the war is over. The pick of the most beautiful—by your standards—of the Earth-women we capture. A home on Keroth, built to your specifications, and full citizenship, including the freedom to enter into any business relationships you wish. If you keep your promises, we can keep ours and still come out ahead.”

“Good. When do we start?”

“Now,” said Tallis rising from his chair. “Put on your dress uniform, and we’ll go down to see the High Commander. We’ve got to give you a set of general’s insignia, my sibling-by-choice.’’

Tallis waited while MacMaine donned the blue trousers and gold-trimmed red uniform of a Kerothi officer. When he was through, MacMaine looked at himself in the mirror. “There’s one more thing, Tallis,” he said thoughtfully.

“What’s that?”

“This hair. I think you’d better arrange to have it permanently removed, according to your custom. I can’t do anything about the color of my skin, but there’s no point in my looking like one of your wild hillmen.”

“You’re very gracious,” Tallis said. “And very wise. Our officers will certainly come closer to feeling that you are one of us.”

“I am one of you from this moment,” MacMaine said. “I never intend to see Earth again, except, perhaps, from space—when we fight the final battle of the war.”

“That may be a hard battle,” Tallis said.

“Maybe,” MacMaine said thoughtfully. “On the other hand, if my overall strategy comes out the way I think it will, that battle may never be fought at all. I think that complete and total surrender will end the war before we ever get that close to Earth.”

“I hope you’re right,” Tallis said firmly. “This war is costing far more than we had anticipated, in spite of the weakness of your—that is, of Earth.”

“Well,” MacMaine said with a slight grin, “at least you’ve been able to capture enough Earth food to keep me eating well all this time.”

Tallis’ grin was broad. “You’re right. We’re not doing too badly at that. Now, let’s go; the High Commander is waiting.”

MacMaine didn’t realize until he walked into the big room that what he was facing was not just a discussion with a high officer, but what amounted to a Court of Inquiry.

The High Commander, a dome-headed, wrinkled, yellow-skinned, hard-eyed old Kerothi, was seated in the center of a long, high desk, flanked on either side by two lower-ranking generals who had the same deadly, hard look. Off to one side, almost like a jury in a jury box, sat twenty or so lesser officers, none of them ranking below the Kerothi equivalent of lieutenant colonel.

As far as MacMaine could tell, none of the officers wore the insignia of fleet officers, the spaceship-and-comet that showed that the wearer was a fighting man. These were the men of the Permanent Headquarters Staff—the military group that controlled not only the armed forces of Keroth but the civil government as well.

“What’s this?” MacMaine hissed in a whispered aside, in English.

“Pearr up, my prrotherr,” Tallis answered softly, in the same tongue, “all is well.”

MacMaine had known, long before he had ever heard of General Polan Tallis, that the Hegemony of Keroth was governed by a military junta, and that all Kerothi were regarded as members of the armed forces. Technically, there were no civilians; they were legally members of the “unorganized reserve,” and were under military law. He had known that Kerothi society was, in its own way, as much a slave society as that of Earth, but it had the advantage over Earth in that the system did allow for advance by merit. If a man had the determination to get ahead, and the ability to cut the throat—either literally or figuratively—of the man above him in rank, he could take his place.

On a more strictly legal basis, it was possible for a common trooper to become an officer by going through the schools set up for that purpose, but, in practice, it took both pull and pressure to get into those schools.

In theory, any citizen of the Hegemony could become an officer, and any officer could become a member of the Permanent Headquarters Staff. Actually, a much greater preference was given to the children of officers. Examinations were given periodically for the purpose of recruiting new members for the elite officers’ corps, and any citizen could take the examination—once.

But the tests were heavily weighted in favor of those who were already well versed in matters military, including what might be called the “inside jokes” of the officers’ corps. A common trooper had some chance of passing the examination; a civilian had a very minute chance. A noncommissioned officer had the best chance of passing the examination, but there were age limits which usually kept NCOs from getting a commission. By the time a man became a noncommissioned officer, he was too old to be admitted to the officers’ training schools. There were allowances made for “extraordinary merit,” which allowed common troopers or upper-grade NCOs to be commissioned in spite of the general rules, and an astute man could take advantage of those allowances.

Ability could get a man up the ladder, but it had to be a particular kind of ability.

During his sojourn as a “guest” of the Kerothi, MacMaine had made a point of exploring the history of the race. He knew perfectly well that the histories he had read were doctored, twisted, and, in general, totally unreliable insofar as presenting anything that would be called a history by an unbiased investigator.

But, knowing this, MacMaine had been able to learn a great deal about the present society. Even if the “history” was worthless as such, it did tell something about the attitudes of a society that would make up such a history. And, too, he felt that, in general, the main events which had been catalogued actually occurred; the details had been blurred, and the attitudes of the people had been misrepresented, but the skeleton was essentially factual.

MacMaine felt that he knew what kind of philosophy had produced the mental attitudes of the Court he now faced, and he felt he knew how to handle himself before them.

Half a dozen paces in front of the great desk, the color of the floor tiling was different from that of the rest of the floor. Instead of a solid blue, it was a dead black. Tallis, who was slightly ahead of MacMaine, came to a halt as his toes touched the edge of the black area.

Uh-oh! a balk line, MacMaine thought. He stopped sharply at the same point. Both of them just stood there for a full minute while they were carefully inspected by the members of the Court.

Then the High Commander gestured with one hand, and the officer to his left leaned forward and said: “Why is this one brought before us in the uniform of an officer, bare of any insignia of rank?”

It could only be a ritual question, MacMaine decided; they must know why he was there.

“I bring him as a candidate for admission to our Ingroup,” Tallis replied formally, “and ask the indulgence of Your Superiorities therefor.”

“And who are you who ask our indulgence?”

Tallis identified himself at length—name, rank, serial number, military record, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

By the time he had finished, MacMaine was beginning to think that the recitation would go on forever. The High Commander had closed his eyes, and he looked as if he had gone to sleep.

There was more formality. Through it all, MacMaine stood at rigid attention, flexing his calf muscles occasionally to keep the blood flowing in his legs. He had no desire to disgrace himself by passing out in front of the Court.

Finally the Kerothi officer stopped asking Tallis questions and looked at the High Commander. MacMaine got the feeling that there was about to be a departure from the usual procedure.

Without opening his eyes, the High Commander said, in a brittle, rather harsh voice, “These circumstances are unprecedented.” Then he opened his eyes and looked directly at MacMaine. “Never has an animal been proposed for such an honor. In times past, such a proposal would have been mockery of this Court and this Ingroup, and a crime of such monstrous proportions as to merit excommunication.”

MacMaine knew what that meant. The word was used literally; the condemned one was cut off from all communication by having his sensory nerves surgically severed. Madness followed quickly; psychosomatic death followed eventually, as the brain, cut off from any outside stimuli except those which could not be eliminated without death following instantly, finally became incapable of keeping the body alive. Without feedback, control was impossible, and the organism as a whole slowly deteriorated until death was inevitable.

At first, the victim screamed and thrashed his limbs as the brain sent out message after message to the rest of the body, but since the brain had no way of knowing whether the messages had been received or acted upon, the victim soon went into a state comparable to that of catatonia and finally died.

If it was not the ultimate in punishment, it was a damned close approach, MacMaine thought. And he felt that the word “damned” could be used in that sense without fear of exaggeration.

“However,” the High Commander went on, gazing at the ceiling, “circumstances change. It would once have been thought vile that a machine should be allowed to do the work of a skilled man, and the thought that a machine might do the work with more precision and greater rapidity would have been almost blasphemous.

“This case must be viewed in the same light. As we are replacing certain of our workers on our outer planets with Earth animals simply because they are capable of doing the work more cheaply, so we must recognize that the same interests of economy govern in this case.

“A computing animal, in that sense, is in the same class as a computing machine. It would be folly to waste their abilities simply because they are not human.

“There also arises the question of command. It has been represented to this court, by certain officers who have been active in investigating the candidate animal, that it would be as degrading to ask a human officer to take orders from an animal as it would be to ask him to take orders from a commoner of the Unorganized Reserve, if not more so. And, I must admit, there is, on the surface of it, some basis for this reasoning.

“But, again, we must not let ourselves be misled. Does not a spaceship pilot, in a sense, take orders from the computer that gives him his orbits and courses? In fact, do not all computers give orders, in one way or another, to those who use them?

“Why, then, should we refuse to take orders from a computing animal?”

He paused and appeared to listen to the silence in the room before going on.

“Stand at ease until the High Commander looks at you again,” Tallis said in a low aside.

This was definitely the pause for adjusting to surprise.

It seemed interminable, though it couldn’t have been longer than a minute later that the High Commander dropped his gaze from the ceiling to MacMaine. When MacMaine snapped to attention again, the others in the room became suddenly silent.

“We feel,” the hard-faced old Kerothi continued, as if there had been no break, “that, in this case, we are justified in employing the animal in question.

“However, we must make certain exceptions to our normal procedure. The candidate is not a machine, and therefore cannot be treated as a machine. Neither is it human, and therefore cannot be treated as human.

“Therefore, this is the judgment of the Court of the Ingroup:

“The animal, having shown itself to be capable of behaving, in some degree, as befits an officer—-including, as we have been informed, voluntarily conforming to our custom as regards superfluous hair—it shall henceforth be considered as having the same status as an untaught child or a barbarian, insofar as social conventions are concerned, and shall be entitled to the use of the human pronoun he.

“Further, he shall be entitled to wear the uniform he now wears, and the insignia of a General of the Fleet. He shall be entitled, as far as personal contact goes, to the privileges of that rank, and shall be addressed as such.

“He will be accorded the right of punishment of an officer of that rank, insofar as disciplining his inferiors is concerned, except that he must first secure the concurrence of his Guardian Officer, as hereinafter provided.

“He shall also be subject to punishment in the same way and for the same offenses as humans of his rank, taking into account physiological differences, except as hereinafter provided.

“His reward for proper service”—the High Commander listed the demands MacMaine had made—“are deemed fitting, and shall be paid, provided his duties in service are carried out as proposed.

“Obviously, however, certain restrictions must be made. General MacMaine, as he is entitled to be called, is employed solely as a Strategy Computer. His ability as such and his knowledge of the psychology of the Earth animals are, as far as we are concerned at this moment, his only useful attributes. Therefore, his command is restricted to that function. He is empowered to act only through the other officers of the Fleet as this Court may appoint; he is not to command directly.

“Further, it is ordered that he shall have a Guardian Officer, who shall accompany him at all times and shall be directly responsible for his actions.

“That officer shall be punished for any deliberate crime committed by the aforesaid General MacMaine as if he had himself committed the crime.

“Until such time as this Court may appoint another officer for the purpose, General Polan Tallis, previously identified in these proceedings, is appointed as Guardian Officer.”

The High Commander paused for a moment, then he said: “Proceed with the investment of the insignia.”

The Strategy

General Sebastian MacMaine, sometime Colonel of Earth’s Space Force, and at present a General of the Kerothi Fleet, looked at the array of stars that appeared to drift by the main viewplate of his flagship, the blaster-boat Shudos.

Behind him, General Tallis was saying, “You’ve done well, Sepastian. Better than anyone could have really expected. Three battles so far, and every one of them won by a margin far greater than anticipated. Any ideas that anyone may have had that you were not wholly working for the Kerothi cause has certainly been dispelled.”

“Thanks, Tallis.” MacMaine turned to look at the Kerothi officer. “I only hope that I can keep it up. Now that we’re ready for the big push, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I were to lose a battle.”

“Frankly,” Tallis said, “that would depend on several things, the main one being whether or not it appeared that you had deliberately thrown the advantage to the enemy. But nobody expects you, or anyone else, to win every time. Even the most brilliant commander can make an honest mistake, and if it can be shown that it was an honest mistake, and one, furthermore, that he could not have been expected to avoid, he wouldn’t be punished for it. In your case, I’ll admit that the investigation would be a great deal more thorough than normal, and that you wouldn’t get as much of the benefit of the doubt as another officer might, but unless there is a deliberate error I doubt that anything serious would happen.”

“Do you really believe that, Tallis, or is it just wishful thinking on your part, knowing as you do that your punishment will be the same as mine if I fail?” MacMaine asked flatly.

Tallis didn’t hesitate. “If I didn’t believe it, I would ask to be relieved as your Guardian. And the moment I did that, you would be removed from command. The moment I feel that you are not acting for the best interests of Keroth, I will act—not only to protect myself, but to protect my people.”

“That’s fair enough,” MacMaine said. “But how about the others?”

“I cannot speak for my fellow officers—only for myself.” Then Tallis’ voice became cold. “Just keep your hands clean, Sepastian, and all will be well. You will not be punished for mistakes—only for crimes. If you are planning no crimes, this worry of yours is needless.”

“I ceased to worry about myself long ago,” MacMaine said coolly. “I do not fear personal death, not even by excommunication. My sole worry is about the ultimate outcome of the war if I should fail. That, and nothing more.”

“I believe you,” Tallis said. “Let us say no more about it. Your actions are difficult for us to understand, in some ways, that’s all. No Kerothi would ever change his allegiance as you have. Nor has any Earth officer that we have captured shown any desire to do so. Oh, some of them have agreed to do almost anything we wanted them to, but these were not the intelligent ones, and even they were only doing it to save their own miserable hides.

“Still, you are an exceptional man, Sepastian, unlike any other of your race, as far as we know. Perhaps it is simply that you are the only one with enough wisdom to seek your intellectual equals rather than remain loyal to a mass of stupid animals who are fit only to be slaves.”

“It was because I foresaw their eventual enslavement that I acted as I did,” MacMaine admitted. “As I saw it, I had only two choices—to remain as I was and become a slave to the Kerothi or to put myself in your hands willingly and hope for the best. As you–”

He was interrupted by a harsh voice from a nearby speaker.

“Battle stations! Battle stations! Enemy fleet in detector range! Contact in twelve minutes!”

Tallis and MacMaine headed for the Command Room at a fast trot. The three other Kerothi who made up the Strategy Staff came in at almost the same time. There was a flurry of activity as the computers and viewers were readied for action, then the Kerothi looked expectantly at the Earthman.

MacMaine looked at the detector screens. The deployment of the approaching Earth fleet was almost as he had expected it would be. There were slight differences, but they would require only minor changes in the strategy he had mapped out from the information brought in by the Kerothi scout ships.

Undoubtedly, the Kerothi position had been relayed to the Earth commander by their own advance scouts buzzing about in tiny, one-man shells just small enough to be undetectable at normal range.

Watching the positions on the screens carefully, MacMaine called out a series of numbers in an unhurried voice and watched as the orders, relayed by the Kerothi staff, changed the position of parts of the Kerothi fleet. Then, as the computer-led Earth fleet jockeyed to compensate for the change in the Kerothi deployment, MacMaine called out more orders.

The High Commander of Keroth had called MacMaine a “computing animal,” but the term was far from accurate. MacMaine couldn’t possibly have computed all the variables in that battle, and he didn’t try. It was a matter of human intuition against mechanical logic. The advantage lay with MacMaine, for, while the computer could not logically fathom the intuitive processes of its human opponent, MacMaine could and did have an intuitive grasp of the machine’s logic. MacMaine didn’t need to know every variable in the pattern; he only needed to know the pattern as a whole.

The Shudos was well in the rear of the main body of the Kerothi fleet. There was every necessity for keeping MacMaine’s flagship out of as much of the fighting as possible.

When the first contact was made, MacMaine was certain of the outcome. His voice became a steady drone as he called out instructions to the staff officers; his mind was so fully occupied with the moving pattern before him that he noticed nothing else in the room around him.

Spaceship against spaceship, the two fleets locked in battle. The warheads of ultralight torpedoes flared their eye-searing explosions soundlessly into the void; ships exploded like overcharged beer bottles as blaster energy caught them and smashed through their screens; men and machines flamed and died, scattering the stripped nuclei of their component atoms through the screaming silence of space.

And through it all, Sebastian MacMaine watched dispassionately, calling out his orders as ten Earthmen died for every Kerothi death.

This was a crucial battle. The big push toward the center of Earth’s cluster of worlds had begun. Until now, the Kerothi had been fighting the outposts, the planets on the fringes of Earth’s sphere of influence which were only lightly colonized, and therefore relatively easy to take. Earth’s strongest fleets were out there, to protect planets that could not protect themselves.

Inside that periphery were the more densely populated planets, the self-sufficient colonies which were more or less able to defend themselves without too much reliance on space fleets as such. But now that the backbone of Earth’s Space Force had been all but broken, it would be a relatively easy matter to mop up planet after planet, since each one could be surrounded separately, pounded into surrender, and secured before going on to the next.

That, at least, had been the original Kerothi intention. But MacMaine had told them that there was another way—a way which, if it succeeded, would save time, lives, and money for the Kerothi. And, if it failed, MacMaine said, they would be no worse off, they would simply have to resume the original plan.

Now the first of the big colony planets was to be taken. When the protecting Earth fleet was reduced to tatters, the Kerothi would go on to Houston’s World as the first step in the big push toward Earth itself.

But MacMaine wasn’t thinking of that phase of the war. That was still in the future, while the hellish space battle was still at hand.

He lost track of time as he watched the Kerothi fleet take advantage of their superior tactical position and tear the Earth fleet to bits. Not until he saw the remains of the Earth fleet turn tail and run did he realize that the battle had been won.

The Kerothi fleet consolidated itself. There was no point in pursuing the fleeting Earth ships; that would only break up the solidity of the Kerothi deployment. The losers could afford to scatter; the winners could not. Early in the war, the Kerothi had used that trick against Earth; the Kerothi had broken and fled, and the Earth fleet had split up to chase them down. The scattered Earth ships had suddenly found that they had been led into traps composed of hidden clusters of Kerothi ships. Naturally, the trick had never worked again for either side.

“All right,” MacMaine said when it was all over, “let’s get on to Houston’s World.”

The staff men, including Tallis, were already on their feet, congratulating MacMaine and shaking his hand. Even General Hokotan, the Headquarters Staff man, who had been transferred temporarily to the Fleet Force to keep an eye on both MacMaine and Tallis, was enthusiastically pounding MacMaine’s shoulder.

No one aboard was supposed to know that Hokotan was a Headquarters officer, but MacMaine had spotted the spy rather easily. There was a difference between the fighters of the Fleet and the politicos of Headquarters. The politicos were no harder, perhaps, nor more ruthless, than the fighters, but they were of a different breed. Theirs was the ruthlessness of the bully who steps on those who are weaker rather than the ruthlessness of the man who kills only to win a battle. MacMaine had the feeling that the Headquarters Staff preferred to spend their time browbeating their underlings rather than risk their necks with someone who could fight back, however weakly.

General Hokotan seemed to have more of the fighting quality than most HQ men, but he wasn’t a fleet officer at heart. He couldn’t be compared to Tallis without looking small and mean.

As a matter of cold fact, very few of the officers were in any way comparable to Tallis—not even the fleet men. The more MacMaine learned of the Kerothi, the more he realized just how lucky he had been that it had been Tallis, and not some other Kerothi general, who had been captured by the Earth forces. He was not at all sure that his plan would have worked at all with any of the other officers he had met.

Tallis, like MacMaine, was an unusual specimen of his race.

MacMaine took the congratulations of the Kerothi officers with a look of pleasure on his face, and when they had subsided somewhat, he grinned and said:

“Let’s get a little work done around here, shall we? We have a planet to reduce yet.”

They laughed. Reducing a planet didn’t require strategy—only firepower. The planet-based defenses couldn’t maneuver, but the energy reserve of a planet is greater than that of any fleet, no matter how large. Each defense point would have to be cut down individually by the massed power of the fleet, cut down one by one until the planet was helpless. The planet as a whole might have more energy reserve than the fleet, but no individual defense point did. The problem was to avoid being hit by the rest of the defense points while one single point was bearing the brunt of the fleet’s attack. It wasn’t without danger, but it could be done.

And for a job like that, MacMaine’s special abilities weren’t needed. He could only watch and wait until it was over.

So he watched and waited. Unlike the short-time fury of a space battle, the reduction of a planet took days of steady pounding. When it was over, the blaster-boats of the Kerothi fleet and the shuttles from the great battle cruisers landed on Houston’s World and took possession of the planet.

MacMaine was waiting in his cabin when General Hokotan brought the news that the planet was secured.

“They are ours,” the HQ spy said with a superior smile. “The sniveling animals didn’t even seem to want to defend themselves. They don’t even know how to fight a hand-to-hand battle. How could such things have ever evolved intelligence enough to conquer space?” Hokotan enjoyed making such remarks to MacMaine’s face, knowing that since MacMaine was technically a Kerothi he couldn’t show any emotion when the enemy was insulted.

MacMaine showed none. “Got them all, eh?” he said.

“All but a few who scattered into the hills and forests. But not many of them had the guts to leave the security of their cities, even though we were occupying them.”

“How many are left alive?”

“An estimated hundred and fifty million, more or less.”

“Good. That should be enough to set an example. I picked Houston’s World because we can withdraw from it without weakening our position; its position in space is such that it would constitute no menace to us even if we never reduced it. That way, we can be sure that our little message is received on Earth.”

Hokotan’s grin was wolfish. “And the whole weak-hearted race will shake with fear, eh?”

“Exactly. Tallis can speak English well enough to be understood. Have him make the announcement to them. He can word it however he likes, but the essence is to be this: Houston’s World resisted the occupation by Kerothi troops; an example must be made of them to show them what happens to Earthmen who resist.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough. Oh, by the way, make sure that there are plenty of their cargo spaceships in good working order; I doubt that we’ve ruined them all, but if we have, repair some of them.

“And, too, you’d better make sure that you allow some of the merchant spacemen to ‘escape,’ just in case there are no space pilots among those who took to the hills. We want to make sure that someone can use those ships to take the news back to Earth.”

“And the rest?” Hokotan asked, with an expectant look. He knew what was to be done, but he wanted to hear MacMaine say it again.

MacMaine obliged.

“Hang them. Every man, every woman, every child. I want them to be decorating every lamppost and roof beam on the planet, dangling like overripe fruit when the Earth forces return.”

The Results

“I don’t understand it,” said General Polan Tallis worriedly. “Where are they coming from? How are they doing it? What’s happened?”

MacMaine and the four Kerothi officers were sitting in the small dining room that doubled as a recreation room between meals. The nervous strain of the past few months was beginning to tell on all of them.

“Six months ago,” Tallis continued jerkily, “we had them beaten. One planet after another was reduced in turn. Then, out of nowhere, comes a fleet of ships we didn’t even know existed, and they’ve smashed us at every turn.”

“If they are ships,” said Loopat, the youngest officer of the Shudos staff. “Whoever heard of a battleship that was undetectable at a distance of less than half a million miles? It’s impossible!”

“Then we’re being torn to pieces by the impossible!” Hokotan snapped. “Before we even know they are anywhere around, they are blasting us with everything they’ve got! Not even the strategic genius of General MacMaine can help us if we have no time to plot strategy!”

The Kerothi had been avoiding MacMaine’s eyes, but now, at the mention of his name, they all looked at him as if their collective gaze had been drawn to him by some unknown attractive force.

“It’s like fighting ghosts,” MacMaine said in a hushed voice. For the first time, he felt a feeling of awe that was almost akin to fear. What had he done?

In another sense, that same question was in the mind of the Kerothi.

“Have you any notion at all what they are doing or how they are doing it?” asked Tallis gently.

“None,” MacMaine answered truthfully. “None at all, I swear to you.”

“They don’t even behave like Earthmen,” said the fourth Kerothi, a thick-necked officer named Ossif. “They not only outfight us, they outthink us at every turn. Is it possible, General MacMaine, that the Earthmen have allies of another race, a race of intelligent beings that we don’t know of?” He left unsaid the added implication: “And that you have neglected to tell us about?”

“Again,” said MacMaine, “I swear to you that I know nothing of any third intelligent race in the galaxy.”

“If there were such allies,” Tallis said, “isn’t it odd that they should wait so long to aid their friends?”

“No odder than that the Earthmen should suddenly develop superweapons that we cannot understand, much less fight against,” Hokotan said, with a touch of anger.

“Not ‘superweapons,’” MacMaine corrected almost absently. “All they have is a method of making their biggest ships undetectable until they’re so close that it doesn’t matter. When they do register on our detectors, it’s too late. But the weapons they strike with are the same type as they’ve always used, I believe.”

“All right, then,” Hokotan said, his voice showing more anger. “One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that’s enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of this, General MacMaine?”

Before MacMaine could answer, Tallis said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Hokotan! If he had known that such a weapon existed, would he have been fool enough to leave his people? With that secret, they stand a good chance of beating us in less than half the time it took us to wipe out their fleet—or, rather, to wipe out as much of it as we did.”

“They got a new fleet somewhere,” said young Loopat, almost to himself.

Tallis ignored him. “If MacMaine deserted his former allegiance, knowing that they had a method of rendering the action of a space drive indetectable, then he was and is a blithering idiot. And we know he isn’t.”

“All right, all right! I concede that,” snapped Hokotan. “He knows nothing. I don’t say that I fully trust him, even now, but I’ll admit that I cannot see how he is to blame for the reversals of the past few months.

“If the Earthmen had somehow been informed of our activities, or if we had invented a superweapon and they found out about it, I would be inclined to put the blame squarely on MacMaine. But–”

“How would he get such information out?” Tallis cut in sharply. “He has been watched every minute of every day. We know he couldn’t send any information to Earth. How could he?”

“Telepathy, for all I know!” Hokotan retorted. “But that’s beside the point! I don’t trust him any farther than I can see him, and not completely, even then. But I concede that there is no possible connection between this new menace and anything MacMaine might have done.

“This is no time to worry about that sort of thing; we’ve got to find some way of getting our hands on one of those ghost ships!”

“I do suggest,” put in the thick-necked Ossif, “that we keep a closer watch on General MacMaine. Now that the Earth animals are making a comeback, he might decide to turn his coat now, even if he has been innocent of any acts against Keroth so far.”

Hokotan’s laugh was a short, hard bark. “Oh, we’ll watch him, all right, Ossif. But, as Tallis has pointed out, MacMaine is not a fool, and he would certainly be a fool to return to Earth if his leaving it was a genuine act of desertion. The last planet we captured, before this invisibility thing came up to stop us, was plastered all over with notices that the Earth fleet was concentrating on the capture of the arch-traitor MacMaine.

“The price on his head, as a corpse, is enough to allow an Earthman to retire in luxury for life. The man who brings him back alive gets ten times that amount.

“Of course, it’s possible that the whole thing is a put-up job—a smoke screen for our benefit. That’s why we must and will keep a closer watch. But only a few of Earth’s higher-ups would know that it was a smoke screen; the rest believe it, whether it is true or not. MacMaine would have to be very careful not to let the wrong people get their hands on him if he returned.”

“It’s no smoke screen,” MacMaine said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I assure you that I have no intention of returning to Earth. If Keroth loses this war, then I will die—either fighting for the Kerothi or by execution at the hands of Earthmen if I am captured. Or,” he added musingly, “perhaps even at the hands of the Kerothi, if someone decides that a scapegoat is needed to atone for the loss of the war.”

“If you are guilty of treason,” Hokotan barked, “you will die as a traitor! If you are not, there is no need for your death. The Kerothi do not need scapegoats!”

“Talk, talk, talk!” Tallis said with a sudden bellow. “We have agreed that MacMaine has done nothing that could even remotely be regarded as suspicious! He has fought hard and loyally; he has been more ruthless than any of us in destroying the enemy. Very well, we will guard him more closely. We can put him in irons if that’s necessary.

“But let’s quit yapping and start thinking! We’ve been acting like frightened children, not knowing what it is we fear, and venting our fear-caused anger on the most handy target!

“Let’s act like men—not like children!”

After a moment, Hokotan said: “I agree.” His voice was firm, but calm. “Our job will be to get our hands on one of those new Earth ships. Anyone have any suggestions?”

They had all kinds of suggestions, one after another. The detectors, however, worked because they detected the distortion of space which was as necessary for the drive of a ship as the distortion of air was necessary for the movement of a propellor-driven aircraft. None of them could see how a ship could avoid making that distortion, and none of them could figure out how to go about capturing a ship that no one could even detect until it was too late to set a trap.

The discussion went on for days. And it was continued the next day and the next. And the days dragged out into weeks.

Communications with Keroth broke down. The Fleet-to-Headquarters courier ships, small in size, without armament, and practically solidly packed with drive mechanism, could presumably outrun anything but another unarmed courier. An armed ship of the same size would have to use some of the space for her weapons, which meant that the drive would have to be smaller; if the drive remained the same size, then the armament would make the ship larger. In either case, the speed would be cut down. A smaller ship might outrun a standard courier, but if they got much smaller, there wouldn’t be room inside for the pilot.

Nonetheless, courier after courier never arrived at its destination.

And the Kerothi Fleet was being decimated by the hit-and-run tactics of Earth’s ghost ships. And Earth never lost a ship; by the time the Kerothi ships knew their enemy was in the vicinity, the enemy had hit and vanished again. The Kerothi never had a chance to ready their weapons.

In the long run, they never had a chance at all. MacMaine waited with almost fatalistic complacence for the inevitable to happen. When it did happen, he was ready for it.

The Shudos, tiny flagship of what had once been a mighty armada and was now only a tattered remnant, was floating in orbit, along with the other remaining ships of the fleet, around a bloated red-giant sun. With their drives off, there was no way of detecting them at any distance, and the chance of their being found by accident was microscopically small. But they could not wait forever. Water could be recirculated, and energy could be tapped from the nearby sun, but food was gone once it was eaten.

Hokotan’s decision was inevitable, and, under the circumstances, the only possible one. He simply told them what they had already known—that he was a Headquarters Staff officer.

“We haven’t heard from Headquarters in weeks,” he said at last. “The Earth fleet may already be well inside our periphery. We’ll have to go home.” He produced a document which he had obviously been holding in reserve for another purpose and handed it to Tallis. “Headquarters Staff Orders, Tallis. It empowers me to take command of the Fleet in the event of an emergency, and the decision as to what constitutes an emergency was left up to my discretion. I must admit that this is not the emergency any of us at Headquarters anticipated.”

Tallis read through the document. “I see that it isn’t,” he said dryly. “According to this, MacMaine and I are to be placed under immediate arrest as soon as you find it necessary to act.”

“Yes,” said Hokotan bitterly. “So you can both consider yourselves under arrest. Don’t bother to lock yourselves up—there’s no point in it. General MacMaine, I see no reason to inform the rest of the Fleet of this, so we will go on as usual. The orders I have to give are simple: the Fleet will head for home by the most direct possible geodesic. Since we cannot fight, we will simply ignore attacks and keep going as long as we last. We can do nothing else.” He paused thoughtfully.

“And, General MacMaine, in case we do not live through this, I would like to extend my apologies. I do not like you; I don’t think I could ever learn to like an anim—to like a non-Kerothi. But I know when to admit an error in judgment. You have fought bravely and well—better, I know, than I could have done myself. You have shown yourself to be loyal to your adopted planet; you are a Kerothi in every sense of the word except the physical. My apologies for having wronged you.”

He extended his hands and MacMaine took them. A choking sensation constricted the Earthman’s throat for a moment, then he got the words out—the words he had to say. “Believe me, General Hokotan, there is no need for an apology. No need whatever.”

“Thank you,” said Hokotan. Then he turned and left the room.

“All right, Tallis,” MacMaine said hurriedly, “let’s get moving.”

The orders were given to the remnants of the Fleet, and they cut in their drives to head homeward. And the instant they did, there was chaos. Earth’s fleet of “ghost ships” had been patrolling the area for weeks, knowing that the Kerothi Fleet had last been detected somewhere in the vicinity. As soon as the spatial distortions of the Kerothi drives flashed on the Earth ships’ detectors, the Earth Fleet, widely scattered over the whole circumambient volume of space, coalesced toward the center of the spatial disturbance like a cloud of bees all heading for the same flower.

Where there had been only the dull red light of the giant star, there suddenly appeared the blinding, blue-white brilliance of disintegrating matter, blossoming like cruel, deadly, beautiful flowers in the midst of the Kerothi ships, then fading slowly as each expanding cloud of plasma cooled.

Sebastian MacMaine might have died with the others except that the Shudos, as the flagship, was to trail behind the Fleet, so her drive had not yet been activated. The Shudos was still in orbit, moving at only a few miles per second, when the Earth Fleet struck.

Her drive never did go on. A bomb, only a short distance away as the distance from atomic disintegration is measured, sent the Shudos spinning away, end over end, like a discarded cigar butt flipped toward a gutter, one side caved in near the rear, as if it had been kicked in by a giant foot.

There was still air in the ship, MacMaine realized groggily as he awoke from the unconsciousness that had been thrust upon him. He tried to stand up, but he found himself staggering toward one crazily slanted wall. The stagger was partly due to his grogginess, and partly due to the Coriolis forces acting within the spinning ship. The artificial gravity was gone, which meant that the interstellar drive engines had been smashed. He wondered if the emergency rocket drive was still working—not that it would take him anywhere worth going to in less than a few centuries. But, then, Sebastian MacMaine had nowhere to go, anyhow.

Tallis lay against one wall, looking very limp. MacMaine half staggered over to him and knelt down. Tallis was still alive.

The centrifugal force caused by the spinning ship gave an effective pull of less than one Earth gravity, but the weird twists caused by the Coriolis forces made motion and orientation difficult. Besides, the ship was spinning slightly on her long axis as well as turning end for end.

MacMaine stood there for a moment, trying to think. He had expected to die. Death was something he had known was inevitable from the moment he made his decision to leave Earth. He had not known how or when it would come, but he had known that it would come soon. He had known that he would never live to collect the reward he had demanded of the Kerothi for “faithful service.” Traitor he might be, but he was still honest enough with himself to know that he would, never take payment for services he had not rendered.

Now death was very near, and Sebastian MacMaine almost welcomed it. He had no desire to fight it. Tallis might want to stand and fight death to the end, but Tallis was not carrying the monstrous weight of guilt that would stay with Sebastian MacMaine until his death, no matter how much he tried to justify his actions.

On the other hand, if he had to go, he might as well do a good job of it. Since he still had a short time left, he might as well wrap the whole thing up in a neat package. How?

Again, his intuitive ability to see pattern gave him the answer long before he could have reasoned it out.

They will know, he thought, but they will never be sure they know. I will be immortal. And my name will live forever, although no Earthman will ever again use the surname MacMaine or the given name Sebastian.

He shook his head to clear it. No use thinking like that now. There were things to be done.

Tallis first. MacMaine made his way over to one of the emergency medical kits that he knew were kept in every compartment of every ship. One of the doors of a wall locker hung open, and the blue-green medical symbol used by the Kerothi showed darkly in the dim light that came from the three unshattered glow plates in the ceiling. He opened the kit, hoping that it contained something equivalent to adhesive tape. He had never inspected a Kerothi medical kit before. Fortunately, he could read Kerothi. If a military government was good for nothing else, at least it was capable of enforcing a simplified phonetic orthography so that words were pronounced as they were spelled. And–

He forced his wandering mind back to his work. The blow on the head, plus the crazy effect the spinning was having on his inner ears, plus the cockeyed gravitational orientation that made his eyes feel as though they were seeing things at two different angles, all combined to make for more than a little mental confusion.

There was adhesive tape, all right. Wound on its little spool, it looked almost homey. He spent several minutes winding the sticky plastic ribbon around Tallis’ wrists and ankles.

Then he took the gun from the Kerothi general’s sleeve holster—he had never been allowed one of his own—and, holding it firmly in his right hand, he went on a tour of the ship.

It was hard to move around. The centrifugal force varied from point to point throughout the ship, and the corridors were cluttered with debris that seemed to move with a life of its own as each piece shifted slowly under the effects of the various forces working on it. And, as the various masses moved about, the rate of spin of the ship changed as the law of conservation of angular momentum operated. The ship was full of sliding, clattering, jangling noises as the stuff tried to find a final resting place and bring the ship to equilibrium.

He found the door to Ossif’s cabin open and the room empty. He found Ossif in Loopat’s cabin, trying to get the younger officer to his feet.

Ossif saw MacMaine at the door and said: “You’re alive! Good! Help me–” Then he saw the gun in MacMaine’s hand and stopped. It was the last thing he saw before MacMaine shot him neatly between the eyes.

Loopat, only half conscious, never even knew he was in danger, and the blast that drilled through his brain prevented him from ever knowing anything again in this life.

Like a man in a dream, MacMaine went on to Hokotan’s cabin, his weapon at the ready. He was rather pleased to find that the HQ general was already quite dead, his neck broken as cleanly as if it had been done by a hangman. Hardly an hour before, MacMaine would cheerfully have shot Hokotan where it would hurt the most and watch him die slowly. But the memory of Hokotan’s honest apology made the Earthman very glad that he did not have to shoot the general at all.

There remained only the five-man crew, the NCO technician and his gang, who actually ran the ship. They would be at the tail of the ship, in the engine compartment. To get there, he had to cross the center of spin of the ship, and the change of gravity from one direction to another, decreasing toward zero, passing the null point, and rising again on the other side, made him nauseous. He felt better after his stomach had emptied itself.

Cautiously, he opened the door to the drive compartment and then slammed it hard in sudden fear when he saw what had happened. The shielding had been torn away from one of the energy converters and exposed the room to high-energy radiation. The crewmen were quite dead.

The fear went away as quickly as it had come. So maybe he’d dosed himself with a few hundred roentgens—so what? A little radiation never hurt a dead man.

But he knew now that there was no possibility of escape. The drive was wrecked, and the only other means of escape, the one-man courier boat that every blaster-boat carried, had been sent out weeks ago and had never returned.

If only the courier boat were still in its cradle—

MacMaine shook his head. No. It was better this way. Much better.

He turned and went back to the dining cabin where Tallis was trussed up. This time, passing the null-gee point didn’t bother him much at all.

Tallis was moaning a little and his eyelids were fluttering by the time MacMaine got back. The Earthman opened the medical kit again and looked for some kind of stimulant. He had no knowledge of medical or chemical terms in Kerothic, but there was a box of glass ampoules bearing instructions to “crush and allow patient to inhale fumes.” That sounded right.

The stuff smelled like a mixture of spirits of ammonia and butyl mercaptan, but it did the job. Tallis coughed convulsively, turned his head away, coughed again, and opened his eyes. MacMaine tossed the stinking ampoule out into the corridor as Tallis tried to focus his eyes.

“How do you feel?” MacMaine asked. His voice sounded oddly thick in his own ears.

“All right. I’m all right. What happened?” He looked wonderingly around. “Near miss? Must be. Anyone hurt?”

“They’re all dead but you and me,” MacMaine said.

“Dead? Then we’d better–” He tried to move and then realized that he was bound hand and foot. The sudden realization of his position seemed to clear his brain completely. “Sepastian, what’s going on here? Why am I tied up?”

“I had to tie you,” MacMaine explained carefully, as though to a child. “There are some things I have to do yet, and I wouldn’t want you to stop me. Maybe I should have just shot you while you were unconscious. That would have been kinder to both of us, I think. But… but, Tallis, I had to tell somebody. Someone else has to know. Someone else has to judge. Or maybe I just want to unload it on someone else, someone who will carry the burden with me for just a little while. I don’t know.”

“Sepastian, what are you talking about?” The Kerothi’s face shone dully orange in the dim light, his bright green eyes looked steadily at the Earthman, and his voice was oddly gentle.

“I’m talking about treason,” said MacMaine. “Do you want to listen?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Tallis said. “Tell me one thing first: are we going to die?”

“You are, Tallis. But I won’t. I’m going to be immortal.”

Tallis looked at him for a long moment. Then, “All right, Sepastian. I’m no psych man, but I know you’re not well. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say. But first, untie my hands and feet.”

“I can’t do that, Tallis. Sorry. But if our positions were reversed, I know what I would do to you when I heard the story. And I can’t let you kill me, because there’s something more that has to be done.”

Tallis knew at that moment that he was looking at the face of Death. And he also knew that there was nothing whatever he could do about it. Except talk. And listen.

“Very well, Sepastian,” he said levelly. “Go ahead. Treason, you say? How? Against whom?”

“I’m not quite sure,” said Sebastian MacMaine. “I thought maybe you could tell me.”

The Reason

“Let me ask you one thing, Tallis,” MacMaine said. “Would you do anything in your power to save Keroth from destruction? Anything, no matter how drastic, if you knew that it would save Keroth in the long run?”

“A foolish question. Of course I would. I would give my life.”

“Your life? A mere nothing. A pittance. Any man could give his life. Would you consent to live forever for Keroth?”

Tallis shook his head as though he were puzzled. “Live forever? That’s twice or three times you’ve said something about that. I don’t understand you.”

“Would you consent to live forever as a filthy curse on the lips of every Kerothi old enough to speak? Would you consent to be a vile, inhuman monster whose undead spirit would hang over your homeland like an evil miasma for centuries to come, whose very name would touch a flame of hatred in the minds of all who heard it?”

“That’s a very melodramatic way of putting it,” the Kerothi said, “but I believe I understand what you mean. Yes, I would consent to that if it would be the only salvation of Keroth.”

“Would you slaughter helpless millions of your own people so that other billions might survive? Would you ruthlessly smash your system of government and your whole way of life if it were the only way to save the people themselves?”

“I’m beginning to see what you’re driving at,” Tallis said slowly. “And if it is what I think it is, I think I would like to kill you—very slowly.”

“I know, I know. But you haven’t answered my question. Would you do those things to save your people?”

“I would,” said Tallis coldly. “Don’t misunderstand me. I do not loathe you for what you have done to your own people; I hate you for what you have done to mine.”

“That’s as it should be,” said MacMaine. His head was clearing up more now. He realized that he had been talking a little wildly at first. Or was he really insane? Had he been insane from the beginning? No. He knew with absolute clarity that every step he had made had been cold, calculating, and ruthless, but utterly and absolutely sane.

He suddenly wished that he had shot Tallis without wakening him. If his mind hadn’t been in such a state of shock, he would have. There was no need to torture the man like this.

“Go on,” said Tallis, in a voice that had suddenly become devoid of all emotion. “Tell it all.”

“Earth was stagnating,” MacMaine said, surprised at the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t intended to go on. But he couldn’t stop now. “You saw how it was. Every standard had become meaningless because no standard was held to be better than any other standard. There was no beauty because beauty was superior to ugliness and we couldn’t allow superiority or inferiority. There was no love because in order to love someone or something you must feel that it is in some way superior to that which is not loved. I’m not even sure I know what those terms mean, because I’m not sure I ever thought anything was beautiful, I’m not sure I ever loved anything. I only read about such things in books. But I know I felt the emptiness inside me where those things should have been.

“There was no morality, either. People did not refrain from stealing because it was wrong, but simply because it was pointless to steal what would be given to you if you asked for it. There was no right or wrong.

“We had a form of social contract that we called ‘marriage,’ but it wasn’t the same thing as marriage was in the old days. There was no love. There used to be a crime called ‘adultery,’ but even the word had gone out of use on the Earth I knew. Instead, it was considered antisocial for a woman to refuse to give herself to other men; to do so might indicate that she thought herself superior or thought her husband to be superior to other men. The same thing applied to men in their relationships with women other than their wives. Marriage was a social contract that could be made or broken at the whim of the individual. It served no purpose because it meant nothing; neither party gained anything by the contract that they couldn’t have had without it. But a wedding was an excuse for a gala party at which the couple were the center of attention. So the contract was entered into lightly for the sake of a gay time for a while, then broken again so that the game could be played with someone else—the game of Musical Bedrooms.”

He stopped and looked down at the helpless Kerothi. “That doesn’t mean much to you, does it? In your society, women are chattel, to be owned, bought, and sold. If you see a woman you want, you offer a price to her father or brother or husband—whoever the owner might be. Then she’s yours until you sell her to another. Adultery is a very serious crime on Kerothi, but only because it’s-an infringement of property rights. There’s not much love lost there, either, is there?

“I wonder if either of us knows what love is, Tallis?”

“I love my people,” Tallis said grimly.

MacMaine was startled for a moment. He’d never thought about it that way. “You’re right, Tallis,” he said at last. “You’re right. We do know. And because I loved the human race, in spite of its stagnation and its spirit of total mediocrity, I did what I had to do.”

“You will pardon me,” Tallis said, with only the faintest bit of acid in his voice, “if I do not understand exactly what it is that you did.” Then his voice grew softer. “Wait. Perhaps I do understand. Yes, of course.”

“You think you understand?” MacMaine looked at him narrowly.

“Yes. I said that I am not a psychomedic, and my getting angry with you proves it. You fought hard and well for Keroth, Sepastian, and, in doing so, you had to kill many of your own race. It is not easy for a man to do, no matter how much your reason tells you it must be done. And now, in the face of death, remorse has come. I do not completely understand the workings of the Earthman’s mind, but I–”

“That’s just it; you don’t,” MacMaine interrupted. “Thanks for trying to find an excuse for me, Tallis, but I’m afraid it isn’t so. Listen.

“I had to find out what Earth was up against. I had a pretty good idea already that the Kerothi would win—would wipe us out or enslave us to the last man. And, after I had seen Keroth, I was certain of it. So I sent a message back to Earth, telling them what they were up against, because up ’til then they hadn’t known. As soon as they knew, they reacted as they have always done when they are certain that they face danger. They fought. They unleashed the chained-down intelligence of the few extraordinary Earthmen, and they released the fighting spirit of even the ordinary Earthmen. And they won!”

Tallis shook his head. “You sent no message, Sepastian. You were watched. You know that. You could not have sent a message.”

“You saw me send it,” MacMaine said. “So did everyone else in the Fleet. Hokotan helped me send it—made all the arrangements at my orders. But because you do not understand the workings of the Earthman’s mind, you didn’t even recognize it as a message.

“Tallis, what would your people have done if an invading force, which had already proven that it could whip Keroth easily, did to one of your planets what we did on Houston’s World?”

“If the enemy showed us that they could easily beat us and then hanged the whole population of a planet for resisting? Why, we would be fools to resist. Unless, of course, we had a secret weapon in a hidden pocket, the way Earth had.”

“No, Tallis; no. That’s where you’re making your mistake. Earth didn’t have that weapon until after the massacre on Houston’s World. Let me ask you another thing: would any Kerothi have ordered that massacre?”

“I doubt it,” Tallis said slowly. “Killing that many potential slaves would be wasteful and expensive. We are fighters, not butchers. We kill only when it is necessary to win; the remainder of the enemy is taken care of as the rightful property of the conqueror.’’

“Exactly. Prisoners were part of the loot, and it’s foolish to destroy loot. I noticed that in your history books. I noticed, too, that in such cases, the captives recognized the right of the conqueror to enslave them, and made no trouble. So, after Earth’s forces get to Keroth, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with you.”

“Not if they set us an example like Houston’s World,” Tallis said, “and can prove that resistance is futile. But I don’t understand the message. What was the message and how did you send it?”

“The massacre on Houston’s World was the message, Tallis. I even told the Staff, when I suggested it. I said that such an act would strike terror into the minds of Earthmen.

“And it did, Tallis; it did. But that terror was just the goad they needed to make them fight. They had to sit up and take notice. If the Kerothi had gone on the way they were going, taking one planet after another, as they planned, the Kerothi would have won. The people of each planet would think, ‘It can’t happen here.’ And, since they felt that nothing could be superior to anything else, they were complacently certain that they couldn’t be beat. Of course, maybe Earth couldn’t beat you, either, but that was all right; it just proved that there was no such thing as superiority.

“But Houston’s World jarred them—badly. It had to. ‘Hell does more than Heaven can to wake the fear of God in man.’ They didn’t recognize beauty, but I shoved ugliness down their throats; they didn’t know love and friendship, so I gave them hatred and fear.

“The committing of atrocities has been the mistake of aggressors throughout Earth’s history. The battle cries of countless wars have called upon the people to remember an atrocity. Nothing else hits an Earthman as hard as a vicious, brutal, unnecessary murder.

“So I gave them the incentive to fight, Tallis. That was my message.”

Tallis was staring at him wide-eyed. “You are insane.”

“No. It worked. In six months, they found something that would enable them to blast the devil Kerothi from the skies. I don’t know what the society of Earth is like now—and I never will. But at least I know that men are allowed to think again. And I know they’ll survive.”

He suddenly realized how much time had passed. Had it been too long? No. There would still be Earth ships prowling the vicinity, waiting for any sign of a Kerothi ship that had hidden in the vastness of space by not using its engines.

“I have some things I must do, Tallis,” he said, standing up slowly. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

Tallis frowned a little, as though he were trying to think of something, but then he closed his eyes and relaxed. “No, Sepastian. Nothing. Do whatever it is you have to do.”

“Tallis,” MacMaine said. Tallis didn’t open his eyes, and MacMaine was very glad of that. “Tallis, I want you to know that, in all my life, you were the only friend I ever had.”

The bright green eyes remained closed. “That may be so. Yes, Sepastian, I honestly think you believe that.”

“I do,” said MacMaine, and shot him carefully through the head.

The End

—and Epilogue.

“Hold it!” The voice bellowed thunderingly from the loudspeakers of the six Earth ships that had boxed in the derelict. “Hold it! Don’t bomb that ship! I’ll personally have the head of any man who damages that ship!”

In five of the ships, the commanders simply held off the bombardment that would have vaporized the derelict. In the sixth, Major Thornton, the Group Commander, snapped off the microphone. His voice was shaky as he said: “That was close! Another second, and we’d have lost that ship forever.”

Captain Verenski’s Oriental features had a half-startled, half-puzzled look. “I don’t get it. You grabbed that mike control as if you’d been bitten. I know that she’s only a derelict. After that burst of fifty-gee acceleration for fifteen minutes, there couldn’t be anyone left alive on her. But there must have been a reason for using atomic rockets instead of their antiacceleration fields. What makes you think she’s not dangerous?”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t dangerous,” the major snapped. “She may be. Probably is. But we’re going to capture her if we can. Look!” He pointed at the image of the ship in the screen.

She wasn’t spinning now, or looping end over end. After fifteen minutes of high acceleration, her atomic rockets had cut out, and now she moved serenely at constant velocity, looking as dead as a battered tin can.

“I don’t see anything,” Captain Verenski said.

“The Kerothic symbols on the side. Palatal unvoiced sibilant, rounded–”

“I don’t read Kerothic, Major,” said the captain. “I–” Then he blinked and said, “Shudos!”

“That’s it. The Shudos of Keroth. The flagship of the Kerothi Fleet.”

The look in the major’s eyes was the same look of hatred that had come into the captain’s.

“Even if its armament is still functioning, we have to take the chance,” Major Thornton said. “Even if they’re all dead, we have to try to get the Butcher’s body.” He picked up the microphone again.

“Attention, group. Listen carefully and don’t get itchy trigger fingers. That ship is the Shudos. The Butcher’s ship. It’s a ten-man ship, and the most she could have aboard would be thirty, even if they jammed her full to the hull. I don’t know of any way that anyone could be alive on her after fifteen minutes at fifty gees of atomic drive, but remember that they don’t have any idea of how our counteraction generators damp out spatial distortion either. Remember what Dr. Pendric said: ‘No man is superior to any other in all ways. Every man is superior to every other in some way.’ We may have the counteraction generator, but they may have something else that we don’t know about. So stay alert.

“I am going to take a landing party aboard. There’s a reward out for the Butcher, and that reward will be split proportionately among us. It’s big enough for us all to enjoy it, and we’ll probably get citations if we bring him in.

“I want ten men from each ship. I’m not asking for volunteers; I want each ship commander to pick the ten men he thinks will be least likely to lose their heads in an emergency. I don’t want anyone to panic and shoot when he should be thinking. I don’t want anyone who had any relatives on Houston’s World. Sorry, but I can’t allow vengeance yet.

“We’re a thousand miles from the Shudos now; close in slowly until we’re within a hundred yards. The boarding parties will don armor and prepare to board while we’re closing in. At a hundred yards, we stop and the boarding parties will land on the hull. I’ll give further orders then.

“One more thing. I don’t think her A-A generators could possibly be functioning, judging from that dent in her hull, but we can’t be sure. If she tries to go into A-A drive, she is to be bombed—no matter who is aboard. It is better that sixty men die than that the Butcher escape.

“All right, let’s go. Move in.”

Half an hour later, Major Thornton stood on the hull of the Shudos, surrounded by the sixty men of the boarding party. “Anybody see anything through those windows?” he asked.

Several of the men had peered through the direct-vision ports, playing spotlight beams through them.

“Nothing alive,” said a sergeant, a remark which was followed by a chorus of agreement.

“Pretty much of a mess in there,” said another sergeant. “That fifty gees mashed everything to the floor. Why’d anyone want to use acceleration like that?’’

“Let’s go in and find out,” said Major Thornton.

The outer door to the air lock was closed, but not locked. It swung open easily to disclose the room between the outer and inner doors. Ten men went in with the major, the others stayed outside with orders to cut through the hull if anything went wrong.

“If he’s still alive,” the major said, “we don’t want to kill him by blowing the air. Sergeant, start the air-lock cycle.”

There was barely room for ten men in the air lock. It had been built big enough for the full crew to use it at one time, but it was only just big enough.

When the inner door opened, they went in cautiously. They spread out and searched cautiously. The caution was unnecessary, as it turned out. There wasn’t a living thing aboard.

“Three officers shot through the head, sir,” said the sergeant. “One of ’em looks like he died of a broken neck, but it’s hard to tell after that fifty gees mashed ’em. Crewmen in the engine room—five of ’em. Mashed up, but I’d say they died of radiation, since the shielding on one of the generators was ruptured by the blast that made that dent in the hull.”

“Nine bodies,” the major said musingly. “All Kerothi. And all of them probably dead before the fifty-gee acceleration. Keep looking, Sergeant. We’ve got to find tine tenth man.”

Another twenty-minute search gave them all the information they were ever to get.

“No Earth food aboard,” said the major. “One spacesuit missing. Handweapons missing. Two emergency survival kits and two medical kits missing. And—most important of all—the courier boat is missing.” He bit at his lower lip for a moment, then went on. “Outer air lock door left unlocked. Three Kerothi shot—after the explosion that ruined the A-A drive, and before the fifty-gee acceleration.” He looked at the sergeant. “What do you think happened?”

“He got away,” the tough-looking noncom said grimly. “Took the courier boat and scooted away from here.”

“Why did he set the timer on the drive, then? What was the purpose of that fifty-gee blast?”

“To distract us, I’d say, sir. While we were chasing this thing, he hightailed it out.”

“He might have, at that,” the major said musingly. “A one-man courier could have gotten away. Our new detection equipment isn’t perfect yet. But–”

At that moment, one of the troopers pushed himself down the corridor toward them. “Look, sir! I found this in the pocket of the Carrot-skin who was taped up in there!” He was holding a piece of paper.

The major took it, read it, then read it aloud. “Greetings, fellow Earthmen: When you read this, I will be safe from any power you may think you have to arrest or punish me. But don’t think you are safe from me. There are other intelligent races in the galaxy, and I’ll be around for a long time to come. You haven’t heard the last of me. With love—Sebastian MacMaine.”

The silence that followed was almost deadly.

“He did get away!” snarled the sergeant at last.

“Maybe,” said the major. “But it doesn’t make sense.” He sounded agitated. “Look. In the first place, how do we know the courier boat was even aboard? They’ve been trying frantically to get word back to Keroth; does it make sense that they’d save this boat? And why all the fanfare? Suppose he did have a boat? Why would he attract our attention with that fifty-gee flare? Just so he could leave us a note?”

“What do you think happened, sir?” the sergeant asked.

“I don’t think he had a boat. If he did, he’d want us to think he was dead, not the other way around. I think he set the drive timer on this ship, went outside with his supplies, crawled up a drive tube and waited until that automatic rocket blast blew him into plasma. He was probably badly wounded and didn’t want us to know that we’d won. That way, we’d never find him.’’

There was no belief on the faces of the men around him.

“Why’d he want to do that, sir?” asked the sergeant.

“Because as long as we don’t know, he’ll haunt us. He’ll be like Hitler or Jack the Ripper. He’ll be an immortal menace instead of a dead villain who could be forgotten.”

“Maybe so, sir,” said the sergeant, but there was an utter lack of conviction in his voice. “But we’d still better comb this area and keep our detectors hot. We’ll know what he was up to when we catch him.”

“But if we don’t find him,” the major said softly, “we’ll never know. That’s the beauty of it, Sergeant. If we don’t find him, then he’s won. In his own fiendish, twisted way, he’s won.”

“If we don’t find him,” said the sergeant stolidly, “I think we better keep a sharp eye out for the next intelligent race we meet. He might find ’em first.”

“Maybe,” said the major very softly, “that’s just what he wanted. I wish I knew why.”

Editor’s Introduction to:

Friction in War

Karl von Clausewitz

One of the firmest principles of U.S. government is civilian control of the military. The United States neither wants nor needs a military establishment independent of the civil and political authorities, a military capable of setting its own budgets and raising its own taxes. England had such a military establishment during the Commonwealth period after the execution of the King in 1648: maintenance of an army which did little but collect taxes for its own pay was written into many drafts of the Commonwealth constitution. The Founding Fathers of the United States remembered that very well.

Having said that, we should also recall that the principle has never been in doubt. With the possible exception of the Aaron Burr conspiracy there has never been a serious move by U.S. military people to take over and become the government. The most powerful U.S. generals and admirals have always meekly submitted to the authority of the elected President and his Cabinet.

The danger, in fact, has generally been civilian overcontrol.

It is easy for scholars to believe themselves military geniuses. One of the best examples in U.S. history was Henry Carrington. An Ohio lawyer, during the Civil War he raised the 18th Infantry regiment; but he was so skillful as an administrator that he never fought with the regiment he nominally commanded. When the 18th was tested in battle, Carrington was somewhere else.

At the end of the war he chose to remain a colonel and command the 18th. He believed himself a new Xenophon, the scholarly amateur who would show the rough arid rudely educated soldiers what scholarly brilliance could accomplish. In 1866 Carrington, in command of the 18th, was sent to Wyoming: the Mountain District of the Department of the Platte was ordered to hold open the Bozeman Trail through traditional Sioux hunting grounds. Red Cloud, one of the best of the Indian commanders, had sworn to close it. Carrington set out to build Fort Phil Kearney as a bastion to defend the trail.

Carrington’s major accomplishment was the Fetterman Massacre, in which a detachment of Carrington’s soldiers, led by the headstrong Captain William Fetterman, was killed to a man. Two years later the Sioux burned Fort Phil Kearney to the ground. The railroad was routed far to the south.

In more modern times, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and his Pentagon “whiz kids” sought to control the Vietnam War from Washington. To make matters worse, the United States adopted a policy of rotation under which we sent a new army to Vietnam every year. By the time the officers and men learned what they were doing, they were brought home.

The truth is that scholarly analysis and theory can contribute to military success, but it is rare for theorists successfully to command military operations. Certainly the military must remain under civilian control at the top, but equally certainly the actual operations must be under the control of professionals.

Clausewitz tells us why in an essay as true today as when it was written.

Friction in War

Karl von Clausewitz

Without personal knowledge of war, we cannot perceive where its difficulties lie, nor what genius and the extraordinary mental and moral qualities required in a general really have to do. Everything seems so simple, all the kinds of knowledge required seem so plain, all the combinations so insignificant, that in comparison with them the simplest problem in higher mathematics impresses us with a certain scientific dignity. If we have seen war, all becomes intelligible, yet it is extremely difficult to describe what brings about this change, to name this invisible and universally operative factor.

Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction beyond the imagination of those who have not seen war… The influence of innumerable trifling circumstances, which cannot be properly described on paper, depresses us, and we fall short of the mark. A powerful iron will overcomes this friction; it crushes the obstacles, but at the same time the machine along with them. Like an obelisk toward which the principal streets of a town converge, the strong will of a proud spirit stands prominent and commanding in the middle of the art of war.

Friction is the only conception which, in a fairly general way, corresponds to the distinction between real war and war on paper. The military machine, the army and all belonging to it, is fundamentally simple, and thus appears easy to manage. But let it be borne in mind that no part of it consists of one piece, that it is composed entirely of individuals, each of whom maintains his friction in all directions. Theoretically it all sounds very well: the commander of a battalion is responsible for the execution of the order given; and as the battalion by its discipline is cemented into one piece, and the chief must be a man of recognized zeal, the wheel turns on an iron bearing with little friction. In reality, however, it is not so, and all that is exaggerated and false in this conception manifests itself at once in war. The battalion is always composed of a number of men, of whom, if chance so wills, even the most insignificant is able to cause delay or some irregularity. The danger that accompanies war, the physical effort it demands, intensify the evil so greatly that they must be regarded as its most significant causes.

This enormous friction is not concentrated, as in mechanics, in a few points; it is, therefore, everywhere brought into contact with chance, and thus produces incidents which are impossible to foresee, simply because it is largely to chance that they belong…

Action in war is movement in a resistant medium. Just as a man immersed in water is unable to perform with ease and regularity the simplest and most natural of movements, that of walking, so in war, with ordinary powers one cannot keep even the line of mediocrity. This is why the correct theorist is like a swimming master, who teaches on dry land movements which are required in water, which must appear ludicrous to those who forget about the water. This is also why theorists who have never plunged in themselves, or who cannot deduce any generalizations from their experience, are unpractical and even absurd, because they teach only what everyone knows—how to walk.

Further, every war is rich in individual phenomena. It is therefore an unexplored sea, full of rocks which the general may suspect but which he has never seen and round which he must steer in the night. If a contrary wind also springs up—if some great chance event declares against him—then the most consummate skill, presence of mind and effort are required, while to the distant observer everything seems to be running like clockwork. The knowledge of this friction is a major part of that often boasted experience which is required in a good general. Certainly the best general is not one who gives the largest place to this knowledge and who is most overawed by it; this constitutes the class of over-anxious generals, of whom there are many among the experienced. Nevertheless, a general must be aware of it in order to overcome it, where this is possible, and to avoid expecting in his operations a degree of precision which this friction precludes. Besides, knowledge of war’s friction can never be learned theoretically. Even if it could, there would still be lacking that practiced judgment which we call instinctive, and which is always more necessary in a field full of innumerable small and diversified objects than in great and decisive cases in which our judgment may be aided by consultation with others. Just as a man of the world, in whom judgment has become ingrained as a habit, speaks and acts and moves only as befits the occasion, so only the officer experienced in war will always, in matters great and small, at every pulsation of the war, decide and determine suitably to the occasion. Through this experience and practice the thought comes into his mind of itself: this is the right decision and that is not. He will, therefore, not easily place himself in a weak or exposed position, a thing which, if it occurs often in war, shakes all the foundations of confidence and becomes extremely dangerous.

It is, therefore, what we have here called friction that makes that which appears easy actually difficult. As we proceed, we shall often meet with this subject again, and it will become plain that, in addition to experience and a strong will, there are still many other rare qualities of mind required to make a distinguished general.

Uncertainty and Defense

Jerry Pournelle

The United States seeks global stability; the Soviet Union is a self-proclaimed revolutionary power. Thus our strategic objectives are not symmetrical; it would therefore be surprising if both the United States and the Soviet Union require the same mix of strategic forces.

The U.S. objective is achieved if the Soviets do nothing: which is to say that properly applied the fog of war can act in our favor.

Background

On March 23, 1983, President Reagan challenged the U.S. scientific community to devise a means to make the ICBM “impotent and obsolete.”

There are two ways to accomplish this. One is to build defenses so perfect that no missile can get through them. The other is to use defenses to eliminate the fear of ballistic missiles through enhanced deterrence: to make using ICBMs an irrational act, because the Soviets will not be able to achieve their strategic objectives.

Perfect defenses are probably impossible. They are certainly very difficult to achieve. No matter how many layers of missile defenses we construct, and no matter how effective each layer may be made, the defense umbrella will be less than perfect. This fact is recognized by every advocate of the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative (called by its enemies “Star Wars”); only SDI’s enemies say that the goal should be to construct perfect or “leakproof” defenses.

Imperfect Defenses

The fact is that less than perfect defenses can defeat Soviet objectives; can protect our counterattack forces; and can limit damage to our nation and casualties to our population. More, by denying the Soviets the possibility of achieving their strategic objectives by using ICBMs, we achieve the effect of perfect defense: the best way to limit damage from nuclear war is not to have one.

The goal, then, is to create uncertainty in the minds of Soviet planners about the final outcome of the war which would result from their attack. Defenses against ballistic missiles can reduce the missile effectiveness to the point where they lose their utility: defenses thereby “eliminate the threat of ballistic missiles.”

Naturally any strategic defense system must also guard against attacks from the air, from space, and from the sea. Such defenses are not only possible, they are easier than defending against the ICBM. On the other hand, it makes no sense to ring the nation with air defenses if the enemy can simply avoid them by lobbing a missile over them. Before it makes sense to deal with airplanes, bombs smuggled into harbor in cargo ships, and all the other secondary threats the enemies of SDI conjure up daily, we must know how to deal with the ICBM.

This can be done with less than perfect defenses: an imperfect defense, even one through which a sizable force can penetrate, reduces the military effectiveness of the original ICBM attack, causes great uncertainty in the outcome of the attack, and thus dissuades the attacker from launching his contemplated strike.

Eliminating Debris

The strategic defense debate is littered, in John Dewey’s phrase, with “the debris of man’s past experience.” In particular, we have a popularly supposed model of a nuclear exchange in which each side simply launches everything at the other’s cities, industrial base, and population. This is the extreme “countervalue” attack; the deterrence mode is, “if you kill me, I’ll kill you back.”

In fact, this is a highly irrational form of attack. It makes no sense for the Soviets to target a first strike against U.S. cities and populations: what they want to take out is our weapons.

At the same time, it makes no sense for the United States to then unleash a countervalue-only attack on the Soviets. What we will do is counterattack to take out their command and control structures (police stations, KGB headquarters, etc.) as well as traditional military targets; and to eliminate the Soviet capability to do further harm to the United States by destroying their remaining ICBM forces. This, incidentally, is why the Peacekeeper MX force is vitally needed: we require the accuracy of new-generation missiles to threaten the residua] Soviet ICBM force after their first wave has struck.

We would also take out Soviet reconnaissance satellites to prevent their knowing what success their first strike had; and their navigational satellites to reduce the accuracy of their sub-launched missiles.

We do not intend to target people. There’s no point in it. Eliminate the nomenklatura’s control of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet military’s ability to wage overseas war, and the Soviet Union ceases to be a threat to anyone in the West.

Dissuasion

The goal of strategic defense is to dissuade the Soviets from attacking in the first place.

Before they can attack defended targets, the defenses must be countered: penetrated, overwhelmed, used up, drawn out; by whatever means, they must be negated before attacks against military targets can be made. Thus even marginally effective defenses add uncertainties.

The timing of attacks against defended targets is made complex: the attacker must break holes in the defense to enable his offensive forces to get through. This means at the very least that the defender gets increased warning. Since defeating defenses takes time, the defender is given an opportunity to use his offensive forces to negate all or part of the original attacker’s force.

Since the aggressor knows this, as his victim’s defensive powers grow, there is less and less incentive to attack in the first place.

The result is a drawn-out and complex series of battles: not an overwhelming strike out of the blue, because the all-out first strike is the easiest one for the defender’s strategic defenses to work against. Boost-phase interceptors, both laser and “smart rocks”; midrange interception; and the final layer of terminal defenses can intercept increasing numbers of the attacking missiles; the result is that the attacker does not know what will get through, or what it will accomplish.

Space-based defenses can be quite effective in boost phase. Thus a few space-based strategic defense systems can negate the massive Soviet SS-18 missiles with their ten or more warheads. Boost-phase interception would negate the tremendous investment the Soviets have made in those weapons, and may drive them away from multiple-warhead systems.

Of course the Soviets will try to restore the effectiveness of the SS-18 through improvements in the systems design, and deployment of penetration aids. This means their future investment in strategic offensive weapons does not increase their capability to harm the United States. Moreover, for each counter deployed by the Soviets, there are corresponding possible improvements in the defense systems. An arms race develops, but it is not one of increasing destructiveness.

Most important, it is an arms race that moves the world away from the out-of-the-blue first strike with ICBMs and nuclear weapons.

Summary

Active defenses change the time dimension of strategic planning. The coordination in time and space of ASATs, strategic defenses, air defense, bombers, cruise missiles, SLBMs, ICBMs, brings an almost unmanageable complexity to strategic force operations.

Attacks on the warning system provide unambiguous alert warning.

Attacks which try to overwhelm the defense by saturation create uncertainties themselves, because of the mass of offensive weapons involved. More selective attacks give the defender the opportunity to counterattack.

Thus introduction of imperfect defenses creates uncertainty in the mind of the offensive planner. He cannot predict the outcome of his attack. This uncertainty stems from the interaction of force effectiveness, management, and timing.

Defenses need not be perfect to make these principles a reality. The fog of war acts to prevent war.

Notes

Learning From Viet Nam

- 1. See the two articles which represent the first real efforts to “learn from Viet Nam”: Robert Elegant, “How to Lose a War” (Encounter, August 1981); and H.J. Kaplan, “With the American Press in Vietnam” (Commentary, May 1982, pp. 42–49).

- 2. Stanley Karnow, “Viet Nam Duplicity Reconsidered,” Encounter, August 1981.

- 3. See Peter Braestrup, The Big Story (Westview Press, in cooperation with Freedom House, 1977).

Decisive Warfare

- 1. Major General J. F. C. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War (London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1926).

- 2. Defense Will Not Win the War (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1942).

- 3. Published as “Vulnerability and the Military Equation,” Vol. XLVI, No. 9 (September 1966).

- 4. Published as “Destructive Force and the Military Equation,” Vol. XLVII, No. 5 (May 1967).

- 5. General Fuller did not list the principle of simplicity among those he set forth in the worked cited. It appears in those taught at the United States Army Command and General Staff College, which derive in part from his work.

- 6. Reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 1986.

- 7. Suggested reading: Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, 1 July 1916 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1972).

Fiction

Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

Military Science Fiction

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VI ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Science Fiction

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

Alien Game by Rod Walker

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

Fantasy

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

Non-Fiction

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day

There Will Be War Volume VII

Created by Jerry Pournelle

Associate Editor John F. Carr

Copyright

There Will Be War Volume VII

Jerry Pournelle

Castalia House

Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

Copyright © 1988, 2017 by Jerry Pournelle

All rights reserved

Cover: Lars Braad Andersen

Version: 001

Contents

1. Introduction: Call to Battle
2. The Tank Lords, by David Drake
3. We Hold These Rights, by Henry Melton
4. Battle Cry, by Tim Sarnecki
5. Test for Tyrants, by Edward P. Hughes

6. The Roman Centurion’s Song, by Rudyard Kipling

7. The Islanders, by Rudyard Kipling

8. Another “Low Dishonest Decade” on the Left, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

9. The Last Article, by Harry Turtledove

10. Wizard Weapons, by Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

11. A Soldier’s Best Friend, by Eric Vinicoff

12. Who’s In Charge Here? by Stefan T. Possony

13. The Iron Angel, by Don Hawthorne

14. Psi-Rec: I Gladiator, by Peter Dillingham

15. Specialization in War, by Reginald Bretnor

16. Were-Tigers, by Rob Chilson
17. Remember the Alamo! by T. R. Fehrenbach
18. Valhalla For Hire, by Lee Brainard

19. Debating SDI: Opinion or Fact? by Doug Beason

20. Consequences, by Walter Jon Williams
21. Afterword
22. Castalia House

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge that research for nonfiction essays in this book, including “Wizard Weapons” by Stefan T. Possony, J. E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane, was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation. Responsibility for opinions expressed in this work remains solely with the authors.

The stories contained herein are copyrighted as follows:

CALL TO BATTLE by Jerry Pournelle. This piece was written solely for this volume. Published by arrangement with the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd. Copyright © 1988 by J. E. Pournelle & Associates.

THE TANK LORDS by David Drake appears here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1987 by David Drake.

WE HOLD THESE RIGHTS by Henry Melton was first published in Stellar #3, edited by Judy-Lynn Del Rey. Copyright © 1970 by Ballantine Books and copyright © 1988 by Henry Melton.

BATTLE CRY by Tim Sarnecki was specially written for this volume. Copyright © 1988 by Tim Sarnecki.

TEST FOR TYRANTS by Edward P. Hughes was first published in New Destinies #1, edited by Jim Baen. Copyright © 1987 by Edward P. Hughes.

THE ISLANDERS and THE ROMAN CENTURION’S SONG by Rudyard Kipling are in the public domain.

ANOTHER “LOW DISHONEST DECADE” ON THE LEFT by Peter Collier and David Horowitz first appeared in the January 1987 issue of Commentary. Copyright © 1987 by Peter Collier and David Horowitz.

THE LAST ARTICLE by Harry Turtledove was written specially for this volume. Copyright © 1988 by Harry Turtledove.

WIZARD WEAPONS by Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane will appear as a chapter in the revised edition of The Strategy of Technology. It appears here by arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 1988 by Stefan Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis Kane.

A SOLDIER’S BEST FRIEND by Eric Vinicoff was written for this series. Copyright © 1988 by Eric Vinicoff.

WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE? by Stefan T. Possony was first published in the December issue of Defense and Foreign Affairs. Copyright © 1986 by Stefan T. Possony.

THE IRON ANGEL by Don Hawthorne was written specially for this volume. Copyright © 1988 by Donald Hawthorne.

PSI-REC: I GLADIATOR Copyright © 1988 by Peter Dillingham.

SPECIALIZATION IN WAR by Reginald Bretnor was first published in Special Weapons, Vol. II, No. 1 in 1983. Copyright © 1983 by R. Bretnor.

WERE-TIGERS Copyright © 1988 by Rob Chilson.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO! by T. R. Fehrenbach first appeared in the December 1961 issue of Analog Science Fiction Magazine. It appears here by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1961 by Street & Smith Publications.

VALHALLA FOR HIRE Copyright © 1988 by Lee Burwasser.

DEBATING SDI: OPINION OR FACT? by Doug Beason was written specially for this volume. Copyright © 1988 by Doug Beason.

CONSEQUENCES Published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1988 by Walter Jon Williams.

AFTERWORD by Jerry Pournelle was written for this volume. Copyright © 1988 by J. E. Pournelle & Associates.

Introduction: Call to Battle

Jerry Pournelle

The world is said to be at peace, but as I write this, the United States Navy is engaged in an undeclared but quite lethal little war in the Persian Gulf, while another 200,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Europe. Soviet armies continue their conquest of Afghanistan. The Arab-Israeli borders are quiet, but Iran and Iraq pound away at each other. There is war in the Sahara desert and Southern Africa. Chinese soldiers occupy Tibet. If there are no formal wars, there is no shortage of combat and death; nor is the situation likely to change.

The most fervent wishes for peace do not bring peace. Probably no one wanted peace more than the intellectuals of Phnom Penh in Cambodia, who were told to pack their goods and march to temporary quarters in the countryside. Anthony Lewis wrote in the New York Times that it was “cultural arrogance” to condemn the Khmer Rouge for its forced march of three million people into the countryside, since they were acting on their own “vision of a new society”; but even as he wrote that, the killing began.

The Khmer Rouge soldiers were very polite. They addressed everyone as “comrade.” They explained that the move was only temporary, to avoid an American air strike. No one knew better until they were in the labor camps.

The educated people, the intellectuals, were killed out of hand. The survivors were deliberately starved until some ate human flesh, and still the killing continued. The victims themselves had to participate in order to eat. As one observer put it, “If there is any ‘cultural arrogance’ around, it lurks in the assumption that Communist ‘reeducation’ is less devastating for little yellow people than it might be for whites.”

They wanted peace; they got the peace of Auschwitz.

One must wish for peace; it is a religious duty to pray for peace; but if that is all one does, one is not likely to get it. A very long time ago the human race learned a bitter truth: if you would have peace, you must be prepared for war. The late Herman Kahn in his classic Thinking About the Unthinkable modified that ancient Roman dictum to “if you would have peace, understand war”; which is what we are trying to do in this series of stories and essays about the future of war. If these books need justification, that will serve well enough.

Since 1945 there has been peace of a sort; at least there has been no global war. The cost of that peace has been pretty high, in money, in combat casualties, and in nations like Poland and Hungary and Cambodia and Vietnam sacrificed to “visions of a new society.”

The costs will still be high in the future. Eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty, of course; but military preparedness also requires eternal rethinking of the basics.

The nature of both tactics and organization may change as new weapons and technologies emerge. Freeman Dyson writes of “David weapons,” such as nonnuclear precision guided missiles (PGM), which may change the nature of wars and armies. He says, “It seems likely that the rapid growth of microcomputer and sensor technology will result in a growing proliferation of sophisticated nonnuclear weapons which will cause armies to take a step back into an older, more professional style of warfare. The new weapons need elite, highly trained soldiers to use them effectively. They do not need the mass armies that provided the cannon fodder of the two world wars. The Falklands campaign of 1982 provides some additional evidence that the winds of change are blowing in this direction. The Argentine air force, a small elite force using precise weapons with daring and skill, did great damage to the invading forces, while the Argentine army, a mass army of conscripts, was crushingly defeated. It seems that modern technology is taking us back toward the eighteenth century, toward the era when small professional armies fought small professional wars.” (Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope, Harper and Row, 1984). It is a view that has much merit.

At the suggestion of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), the British strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart studied the historical ratios of forces to space—that is, the number of troops needed to hold each mile of front. From these studies he later calculated that European NATO could be defended by a relatively small, highly trained, and highly mobile force of tanks and crosscountry-capable infantry vehicles, especially if augmented by a civilian militia of the Swiss variety. He also observed:

“Since the Western Powers are faced by opposing armies of greatly superior size, their chance of successful resistance vitally depends on being so mobile, both strategically and tactically, that they can outmaneuver the attacker. It is not only a matter of the small armored units having the utmost battlefield agility, so that they can shift quickly from one fire-position to another, but of divisions being able to switch rapidly from one sector to another to deliver deep in-and-out counterstrokes, with the aim of hamstringing the invader.

“That calls for a new kind of organization. The armored divisions that proved so decisive in 1940 had gone less than halfway towards fulfilling the design I had visualized in 1920. Every vehicle in an armored force ought to have cross-country mobility, and at least sufficient protective armor to keep out bullets and shell-splinters. The present type of armored force is gravely lacking in maneuvering flexibility. Its long road-bound tail makes it almost as rigid as the shaft of a spear. We ought to develop it into a mechanical snake.

“Besides giving the tail flexibility, the tail should be reduced in size. The most potent effect of an armored stroke comes from the sudden concentration of tanks against a weak spot in the enemy’s dispositions… the tactical idea which inspired the creation of armored forces was that of fighting mounted. Our goal in tank specification and design ought to be to produce a mechanized David instead of a Goliath.”

He also wrote:

“Another possibility is to develop remote control tanks for the spearhead. With such unmanned tanks there would be no deterrent moral effect from heavy losses in applying saturation tactics.”

All this was written in 1960 (B. H. Liddell Hart, Deterrent or Defense, Praeger). While details change often, the basic strategic situation, of the West facing numerically superior forces, has not. Some of Liddell Hart’s advice has been taken. Much has not been.

There are reasons, of course. First came Vietnam, which set military planning back a good decade. One benefit of war is that the losers must rethink what they are doing, and many of those who make the wrong decisions are eliminated. Since the crucial decisions about Vietnam were made in Washington, that couldn’t happen. The U.S. learned little from that war. Then, when the war was lost and the military commanders once again looked at overall strategy and organization, they had lost popularity—and their budget. Now we are expected to defend the West with volunteer forces—which gives a good quality of soldier—but do it on the cheap. All too often the Congress has allowed political factors to interfere in the design and procurement of military weapons.

One of Liddell Hart’s prescriptions for Europe was militia to augment Regular troops. Politically we’ve done little to encourage our Allies to adopt militia, and of course they’re reluctant to do it. A long conventional war in Europe would be less devastating than a nuclear exchange, but it is also seen as more likely; and it would be devastating enough for the people on whose land it is fought. If the U.S.S.R. can be convinced that an attack on Europe will inevitably trigger a holocaust that will destroy the world, deterrence succeeds; and a successful deterrent is clearly preferable to even a victorious war.

The nuclear deterrent isn’t completely safe either. The land-based missiles of both sides are vulnerable to a first strike; and an arms control agreement lowering the absolute numbers of missiles increases the likelihood of success of the first strike. (If both sides have only 100 missiles, a 95 percent success leaves only 5 to the loser; if both sides have 10,000, destroying 95 percent isn’t worth the cost.)

PGM can affect the nuclear strategic balance. A missile capable of hitting a tank can hit a missile silo. Even more relevant are strategic defense technologies: since President Reagan ordered serious research on missile defenses, the laboratories have found a dozen promising approaches. There are also clear signs that the Soviet Union began serious research and development of beam technologies for missile interception as early as 1972. In 1976 a U.S. early warning satellite picked up tests of very powerful fusion pulses from the Soviet weapons test complex at Agzir, and air samples collected later showed the Soviet tests released large amounts of hydrogen, and, more significantly, detectable quantities of tritium. Most physicists studying these results conclude that the Soviet Union was testing directed energy weapons as early as the mid-’70s.

They must have learned something. We now know the U.S.S.R. has constructed radars whose only possible use is for battle management of strategic defense against ICBMs. Whether or not the U.S. proceeds with SDI, it is pretty clear the Soviets intend to do so.

The U.S.S.R. routinely launches ten times the number of satellites we do; we don’t really know what they are learning from them. Their naval satellites have 100 kw of power; the U.S. has yet to orbit a 10 kw satellite of any kind.

With the loss of Challenger, the U.S. became effectively blind; and NASA did little to correct that. General Yeager said that we should launch a new shuttle as soon as the weather was warm; instead the bureaucrats of NASA began a program designed to protect their careers—but not to launch satellites. The U.S. space program has been brought to a halt. Since we had integrated our military and civil programs, this has serious consequences. As I write this the U.S. is down to one KeyHole (KH) observation satellite. Since the path of that satellite is well known, and Soviet agents were able to buy the operations manuals for the satellite from American traitors, it’s not hard to see how that satellite can be blocked from learning a great deal; yet we depend on “national technical means” to verify Soviet compliance—or violation—of arms control agreements.

We are blind, and our enemies are arming. We live, in a word, in interesting times.

George Santayana said that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I add that those who refuse to think about the future may not have one.

Herewith more stories and essays about the future of war and conflict.

The Tank Lords, by David Drake

Editor’s Introduction

I have on my desk a number of issues of Military Technology, a magazine published in Europe with articles by senior military officers and civilian technologists. The editorial text is impressive. Here’s “Man-Portable Air Defense Systems,” about how Redeye, Stinger, Javelin, Starstreak, and a host of other field deployable anti-aircraft systems can be used to make the battlefield a pretty hostile place for aircraft—provided you get them to the battlefield, and can aim and fire them in time.

The same issue has an article on South Africa’s home-designed and -built helicopters; Main Battle Tank armament including new electromagnetic hypervelocity railguns; liquid propellant systems for artillery; and a lot more. Other issues tell about mines, defense of airfields, new fighters, defense electronics, etc., all illustrated with diagrams and photographs.

More impressive than the articles, though, are the advertisements. Want to buy artillery shells? Chartered Industries of Singapore will be happy to sell them to you. Standard Elektrik Lorenz AC of Stuttgart, West Germany, wants you to buy a RATAC-S portable ground surveillance and target acquisition radar. Kreuss-Maffei Wehrtechnik GmbH of Munich advertises Leopard 2, “the better battle tank.” Reinmetal will sell you cannon, Vickers of England will sell 4.5 Mark 8 naval gun systems, CMM Naval Construction of Amsterdam will sell you a whole mine sweeper, and Croupement Industriel des Armaments Terrestres of St. Cloud in France would just love to take your orders for their AMX 40 tank armament. Everything from helmet-mounted light-amplifying goggles to cruise missiles to armored cars to Kevlar body armor to communications gear (a Swiss company advertises unbreakable code equipment based on “Only One Time Random Keys”) to artillery: it’s all advertised here, and much of it was mere science fiction less than a decade ago.

The wizard weapons are here. We have artillery that can fire patterns over fields ten miles away. When the shells arrive over the battlefield, they deploy into darts held aloft by parachutes as they seek tank-shaped targets. When a target is seen, the round fires and a “self-forging” blob of metal attacks the target. Other weapons home on laser beams, or trail out a wire that lets the operator guide it toward its target. A Belgian firm advertises mines that “cannot be cleared by any known devices.” All this to defeat the Main Battle Tank.

Of course, there are good reasons to do so. According to the London International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance 1987, NATO’s 8,974 major artillery pieces face some 24,000 Soviet guns, while our 714 armed helicopters stare at 2,100 Soviet choppers, but the important imbalance is that they’ve deployed 46,600 Main Battle Tanks against NATO’s 20,314.

Tank popularity moves in waves. The U.S. Army Air Forces like to claim that “strategic” bombing was highly effective in World War II. Certainly the bombers managed wide destruction. If you visit Germany you will find that there have been two major sources of destruction of the ancient towns and cities: the French, who periodically invaded the Rhineland and beyond and burned or blew up everything they could (the ruins of Heidelberg Castle are among the more spectacular of the French achievements); and the allied air forces who, in a few months of 1944, managed to rival the French in sheer wanton destruction of civilian property, getting Mozart’s house in Salzburg, most of the downtown area of Karlsruhe, and a number of other totally unmilitary places. I don’t quarrel with the air war against railroads, and the attacks on ball-bearing plants were probably worth the cost; but if most of the money put into strategic bombers had gone to tanks and tactical air support planes, that war would probably have ended much sooner.

Then came nuclear weapons, and a number of theorists proclaimed the death of the tank. We may never know the effectiveness of tanks on a nuclear battlefield; but we do know that tanks, with tactical air support, dominated every one of the Israeli wars.

Even so, from time to time we see articles proclaiming that the Main Battle Tank is as dead as the dinosaur; that air power and artillery will dominate the battlefields of the future. As a one time artillerist and air power theorist, I find that comforting. After all, artillery has always been known as the last argument of kings. Emotions aside, though, the evidence is that tanks will be around for a long time; and any casual look at Military Technology will convince you that they’re getting larger, more efficient, and more powerful with each decade.

David Drake, a Vietnam veteran, tells of a time when tanks again dominate the battlefield; and reminds us that no matter how powerful the machines become, they are still vulnerable to the frailties of their human commanders.

The Tank Lords

David Drake

They were the tank lords.

The baron had drawn up his soldiers in the courtyard, the twenty men who were not detached to his estates on the border between the Kingdom of Ganz and the Kingdom of Marshall—keeping the uneasy truce and ready to break it if the baron so willed.

I think the king sent mercenaries in four tanks to our palace so that the baron’s will would be what the king wished it to be… though of course we were told they were protection against Ganz and the mercenaries of the Lightning Division whom Ganz employed.

The tanks and the eight men in them were from Hammer’s Slammers, and they were magnificent.

Lady Miriam and her entourage rushed back from the barred windows of the women’s apartments on the second floor, squealing for effect. The tanks were so huge that the mirror-helmeted men watching from the turret hatches were nearly on a level with the upper story of the palace.

I jumped clear, but Lady Miriam bumped the chair I had dragged closer to stand upon and watch the arrival over the heads of the women I served.

“Leesh!” cried the lady, false fear of the tanks replaced by real anger at me. She slapped with her fan of painted ox-horn, cutting me across the knuckles because I had thrown a hand over my eyes.

I ducked low over the chair, wrestling it out of the way and protecting myself with its cushioned bulk. Sarah, the chief maid, rapped my shoulder with the silver-mounted brush she carried for last-minute touches to the lady’s hair. “A monkey would make a better page than you, Elisha,” she said. “A gelded monkey.”

But the blow was a light one, a reflexive copy of her mistress’ act. Sarah was more interested in reclaiming her place among the others at the windows now that modesty and feminine sensibilities had been satisfied by the brief charade. I didn’t dare slide the chair back to where I had first placed it; but by balancing on tiptoes on the carven arms, I could look down into the courtyard again.

The baron’s soldiers were mostly off-worlders themselves. They had boasted that they were better men than the mercenaries if it ever came down to cases. The fear that the women had mimed from behind stone walls seemed real enough now to the soldiers whose bluster and assault rifles were insignificant against the iridium titans that entered the courtyard at a slow walk, barely clearing the posts of gates that would have passed six men marching abreast.

Even at idle speed, the tanks roared as their fans maintained the cushions of air that slid them over the ground. Three of the baron’s men dodged back through the palace doorway, their curses inaudible over the intake whine of the approaching vehicles.

The baron squared his powerful shoulders within his dress cloak of scarlet, purple, and gold. I could not see his face, but the back of his neck flushed red and his left hand tugged his drooping mustache in a gesture as meaningful as the angry curses that would have accompanied it another time.

Beside him stood Wolfitz, his chamberlain; the tallest man in the courtyard; the oldest; and, despite the weapons the others carried, the most dangerous.

When I was first gelded and sold to the baron as his lady’s page, Wolfitz had helped me continue the studies I began when I was training for the Church. Out of his kindness, I thought, or even for his amusement… but the chamberlain wanted a spy, or another spy, in the women’s apartments. Even when I was ten years old, I knew that death lay on that path—and life itself was all that remained to me.

I kept the secrets of all. If they thought me a fool and beat me for amusement, then that was better than the impalement that awaited a boy who was found meddling in the affairs of his betters.

The tanks sighed and lowered themselves the last finger’s breadth to the ground. The courtyard, clay and gravel compacted over generations to the density of stone, crunched as the plenum-chamber skirts settled visibly into it.

The man in the turret of the nearest tank ignored the baron and his soldiers. Instead, the reflective face-shield of the tanker’s helmet turned and made a slow, arrogant survey of the barred windows and the women behind them. Maids tittered; but the Lady Miriam did not, and when the tanker’s face-shield suddenly lifted, the mercenary’s eyes and broad smile were toward the baron’s wife.

The tanks whispered and pinged as they came into balance with the surroundings they dominated. Over those muted sounds, the man in the turret of the second tank to enter the courtyard called, “Baron Hetziman, I’m Lieutenant Kiley and this is my number two—Sergeant-Commander Grant. Our tanks have been assigned to you as a protective reaction force until the peace treaty’s signed.”

“You do us honor,” said the baron curtly. “We trust your stay with us will be pleasant as well as short. A banquet–”

The baron paused, and his head turned to find the object of the other tanker’s attention.

The lieutenant snapped something in a language that was not ours, but the name Grant was distinctive in the sharp phrase.

The man in the nearest turret lifted himself out gracefully by resting his palms on the hatch coaming and swinging up his long, powerful legs without pausing for footholds until he stood atop the iridium turret. The hatch slid shut between his booted feet. His crisp mustache was sandy blond, and the eyes which he finally turned on the baron and the formal welcoming committee were blue. “Rudy Grant at your service, Baron,” he said, with even less respect in his tone than in his words.

They did not need to respect us. They were the tank lords.

“We will go down and greet our guests,” said the Lady Miriam, suiting her actions to her words. Even as she turned, I was off the chair, dragging it toward the inner wall of imported polychrome plastic.

“But, Lady…” Sarah said nervously. She let her voice trail off, either through lack of a firm objection or unwillingness to oppose a course on which her mistress was determined.

With coos and fluttering skirts, the women swept out the door from which the usual guard had been removed for the sake of the show in the courtyard. Lady Miriam’s voice carried back: “We were to meet them at the banquet tonight. We’ll just do so a little earlier.”

If I had followed the women, one of them would have ordered me to stay and watch the suite—though everyone, even the tenants who farmed the plots of the home estate here, was outside watching the arrival of the tanks. Instead, I waited for the sounds to die away down the stair tower—and I slipped out the window.

Because I was in a hurry, I lost one of the brass buttons from my jacket—my everyday livery of buff; I’d be wearing the black plush jacket when I waited in attendance at the banquet tonight, so the loss didn’t matter. The vertical bars were set close enough to prohibit most adults, and few of the children who could slip between them would have had enough strength to then climb the bracing strut of the roof antenna, the only safe path since the base of the west wing was a thicket of spikes and razor ribbon.

I was on the roof coping in a matter of seconds, three quick hand-over-hand surges. The women were only beginning to file out through the doorway. Lady Miriam led them, and her hauteur and lifted chin showed she would brook no interference with her plans.

Most of the tankers had, like Grant, stepped out of their hatches, but they did not wander far. Lieutenant Kiley stood on the sloping bow of his vehicle, offering a hand which the baron angrily refused as he mounted the steps recessed into the tank’s armor.

“Do you think I’m a child?” rumbled the baron, but only his pride forced him to touch the tank when the mercenary made a hospitable offer. None of the baron’s soldiers showed signs of wanting to look into the other vehicles. Even the chamberlain, aloof if not afraid, stood at arm’s length from the huge tank, which even now trembled enough to make the setting sun quiver across the iridium hull.

Because of the chamberlain’s studied unconcern about the vehicle beside him, he was the first of the welcoming party to notice Lady Miriam striding toward Grant’s tank, holding her skirts clear of the ground with dainty, bejeweled hands. Wolfitz turned to the baron, now leaning gingerly against the curve of the turret so that he could look through the hatch while the lieutenant gestured from the other side. The chamberlain’s mouth opened to speak, then closed again deliberately.

There were matters in which he too knew better than to become involved.

One of the soldiers yelped when Lady Miriam began to mount the nearer tank. She loosed her dress in order to take the hand Grant extended to her. The baron glanced around and snarled an inarticulate syllable. His wife gave him a look as composed as his was suffused with rage. “After all, my dear,” said the Lady Miriam coolly, “our lives are in the hands of these brave men and their amazing vehicles. Of course I must see how they are arranged.”

She was the king’s third daughter, and she spoke now as if she were herself the monarch.

“That’s right, milady,” said Sergeant Grant. Instead of pointing through the hatch, he slid back into the interior of his vehicle with a murmur to the lady.

She began to follow.

I think Lady Miriam and I, alone of those on the estate, were not nervous about the tanks for their size and power. I loved them as shimmering beasts, whom no one could strike in safety. The lady’s love was saved for other subjects.

“Grant, that won’t be necessary,” the lieutenant called sharply—but he spoke in our language, not his own, so he must have known the words would have little effect on his subordinate.

The baron bellowed, “Mir–” before his voice caught. He was not an ungovernable man, only one whose usual companions were men and women who lived or died as the baron willed. The lady squeezed flat the flounces of her skirt and swung her legs within the hatch ring.

“Murphy,” called the baron to his chief of soldiers. “Get up there with her.” The baron roared more often than he spoke quietly. This time his voice was not loud, but he would have shot Murphy where he stood if the soldier had hesitated before clambering up the bow of the tank.

“Vision blocks in both the turret and the driver’s compartment,” said Lieutenant Kiley, pointing within his tank, “give a three-sixty-degree view at any wavelength you want to punch in.”

Murphy, a grizzled man who had been with the baron a dozen years, leaned against the turret and looked down into the hatch. Past him, I could see the combs and lace of Lady Miriam’s elaborate coiffure. I would have given everything I owned to be there within the tank myself—and I owned nothing but my life.

The hatch slid shut. Murphy yelped and snatched his fingers clear.

Atop the second tank, the baron froze and his flushed cheeks turned slatey. The mercenary lieutenant touched a switch on his helmet and spoke too softly for anything but the integral microphone to hear the words.

The order must have been effective, because the hatch opened as abruptly as it had closed—startling Murphy again.

Lady Miriam rose from the turret on what must have been a power lift. Her posture was in awkward contrast to the smooth ascent, but her face was composed. The tank and its apparatus were new to the lady, but anything that could have gone on within the shelter of the turret was a familiar experience to her.

“We have seen enough of your equipment,” said the baron to Lieutenant Kiley in the same controlled voice with which he had directed Murphy. “Rooms have been prepared for you—the guest apartments alongside mine in the east wing, not the barracks below. Dinner will be announced”—he glanced at the sky. The sun was low enough that only the height of the tank’s deck permitted the baron to see the orb above the courtyard wall—“in two hours. Make yourselves welcome.”

Lady Miriam turned and backed her way to the ground again. Only then did Sergeant Grant follow her out of the turret. The two of them were as powerful as they were arrogant—but neither a king’s daughter nor a tank lord is immortal.

“Baron Hetziman,” said the mercenary lieutenant, “sir—” The modest honorific for the tension, for the rage which the baron might be unable to control even at risk of his estates and his life. “That building, the gatehouse, appears disused. We’ll doss down there, if you don’t mind.”

The baron’s face clouded, but that was his normal reaction to disagreement. The squat tower to the left of the gate had been used only for storage for a generation. A rusted harrow, upended to fit farther within the doorway, almost blocked access now.

The baron squinted for a moment at the structure, craning his short neck to look past the tank from which he had just climbed down. Then he snorted and said, “Sleep in a hog byre if you choose, Lieutenant. It might be cleaner at that.”

“I realize,” explained Lieutenant Kiley as he slid to the ground instead of using the steps, “that the request sounds odd, but Colonel Hammer is concerned that commandos from Ganz or the Lightning Division might launch an attack. The gatehouse is separated from everything but the outer wall—so if we have to defend it, we can do so without endangering any of your people.”

The lie was a transparent one; but the mercenaries did not have to lie at all if they wished to keep us away from their sleeping quarters. So considered, the statement was almost generous, and the baron chose to take it that way. “Wolfitz,” he said off-handedly as he stamped toward the entrance. “Organize a party of tenants”—he gestured sharply toward the pattern of drab garments and drab faces lining the walls of the courtyard—“and clear the place, will you?”

The chamberlain nodded obsequiously, but he continued to stride along at his master’s heel.

The baron turned, paused, and snarled, “Now,” in a voice as grim as the fist he clenched by his side.

“My lord,” said Wolfitz with a bow that danced the line between brusque and dilatory. He stepped hastily toward the soldiers who had broken their rank in lieu of orders—a few of them toward the tanks and their haughty crews but most back to the stone shelter of the palace.

“You men,” the chamberlain said, making circling motions with his hands. “Fifty of the peasants, quickly. Everything is to be turned out of the gatehouse, thrown beyond the wall for the time being. Now. Move them.”

The women followed the baron into the palace. Several of the maids glanced over their shoulders, at the tanks—at the tankers. Some of the women would have drifted closer to meet the men in khaki uniforms, but Lady Miriam strode head high and without hesitation.

She had accomplished her purposes; the purposes of her entourage could wait.

I leaned from the room ledge for almost a minute further, staring at the vehicles which were so smooth-skinned that I could see my amorphous reflection in the nearest. When the sound of women’s voices echoed through the window, I squirmed back, only instants before the lady reentered her apartment.

They would have beaten me for my own excitement had they not themselves been agog with the banquet to come—and the night which would follow it.

The high-arched banquet hall was so rarely used that it was almost as unfamiliar to the baron and his household as it was to his guests. Strings of small lights had been led up the cast-concrete beams, but nothing could really illuminate the vaulting waste of groins and coffers that formed the ceiling.

The shadows and lights trembling on flexible fastenings had the look of the night sky on the edge of an electrical storm. I gazed up at the ceiling occasionally while I waited at the wall behind Lady Miriam. I had no duties at the banquet—that was for house servants, not body servants like myself—but my presence was required for show and against the chance that the lady would send me off with a message.

That chance was very slight. Any messages Lady Miriam had were for the second-ranking tank lord, seated to her left by custom: Sergeant-Commander Grant.

There were seven of the mercenaries, not eight as I had believed. I saw mostly their backs as they sat at the high table, interspersed with the lady’s maids. Lieutenant Kiley was in animated conversation with the baron to his left, but I thought the officer wished primarily to distract his host from the way Lady Miriam flirted on the other side.

A second keg of beer—estate stock; not the stuff brewed for export in huge vats—had been broached by the time the beef course followed the pork. The serving girls had been kept busy with the mugs—in large part, the molded-glass tankards of the baron’s soldiers, glowering at the lower tables, but the metal-chased crystal of the tank lords was refilled often as well.

Two of the mercenaries—drivers, separated by the oldest of Lady Miriam’s maids—began arguing with increasing heat while a tall, black-haired server watched in amusement. I could hear the words, but the language was not ours. One of the men got up, struggling a little because the arms of his chair were too tight against those to either side. He walked toward his commander, rolling slightly.

Lieutenant Kiley, gesturing with his mug toward the roof peak, was saying to the baron, “Has a certain splendor, you know. Proper lighting and it’d look like a cross between a prison and a barracks, but the way you’ve tricked it out is–”

The standing mercenary grumbled a short, forceful paragraph, a question or a demand, to the lieutenant, who broke off his own sentence to listen.

“Ah, Baron,” Kiley said, turning again to his host. “Question is, what, ah, sort of regulations would there be on my boys dating local women. That one there”—his tankard nodded toward the black-haired servant; the driver who had remained seated was caressing her thigh—“for instance?”

“Regulations?” responded the baron in genuine surprise. “On servants? None, of course. Would you like me to assign a group of them for your use?”

The lieutenant grinned, giving an ironic tinge to the courteous shake of his head. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Baron,” he said.

Kiley stood up to attract his men’s attention. “Open season on the servants, boys,” he said, speaking clearly and in our language, so that everyone at or near the upper table would understand him. “Make your own arrangements. Nothing rough. And no less than two men together.”

He sat down again and explained what the baron already understood: “Things can happen when a fellow wanders off alone in a strange place. He can fall and knock his head in, for instance.”

The two drivers were already shuffling out of the dining hall with the black-haired servant between them. One of the men gestured toward another buxom server with a pitcher of beer. She was not particularly well favored, as men describe such things; but she was close, and she was willing—as any of the women in the hall would have been to go with the tank lords. I wondered whether the four of them would get any farther than the corridor outside.

I could not see the eyes of the maid who watched the exit of the mercenaries who had been seated beside her.

Lady Miriam watched the drivers leave also. Then she turned back to Sergeant Grant and resumed the conversation they held in voices as quiet as honey flowing from a ruptured comb.

In the bustle and shadows of the hall, I disappeared from the notice of those around me. Small and silent, wearing my best jacket of black velvet, I could have been another length of darkness cast by one of the light-blocking beams. The two mercenaries left the hall by a side exit. I slipped through the end door behind me, unnoticed save as a momentary obstacle to the servants bringing in compotes of fruits grown locally and imported from across the stars.

My place was not here. My place was with the tanks, now that there was no one to watch me dreaming as I caressed their iridium flanks.

The sole guard at the door to the women’s apartments glowered at me, but he did not question my reason for returning to what were, after all, my living quarters. The guard at the main entrance would probably have stopped me for spite: he was on duty while others of the household feasted and drank the best-quality beer.

I did not need a door to reach the courtyard and the tanks parked there.

Unshuttering the same window I had used in the morning, I squeezed between the bars and clambered to the roof along the antenna mount. I was fairly certain that I could clear the barrier of points and edges at the base of the wall beneath the women’s suite, but there was no need to take that risk.

Starlight guided me along the stone gutter, jumping the pipes feeding the cistern under the palace cellars. Buildings formed three sides of the courtyard, but the north was closed by a wall and the gatehouse. There was no spiked barrier beneath the wall, so I stepped to the battlements and jumped to the ground safely.

Then I walked to the nearest tank, silently from reverence, rather than in fear of being heard by someone in the palace. I circled the huge vehicle slowly, letting the tip of my left index finger slide over the metal. The iridium skin was smooth, but there were many bumps and irregularities set into the armor: sensors, lights, and strips of close-range defense projectors to meet an enemy or his missile with a blast of pellets.

The tank was sleeping but not dead. Though I could hear no sound from it, the armor quivered with inner life like that of a great tree when the wind touches its highest branches.

I touched a recessed step. The spring-loaded fairing that should have covered it was missing, torn away or shot off—perhaps on a distant planet. I climbed the bow slope, my feet finding each higher step as if they knew the way.

It was as if I were a god.

I might have attempted no more than that, than to stand on the hull with my hand touching the stubby barrel of the main gun—raised at a sixty-degree angle so that it did not threaten the palace. But the turret hatch was open and, half convinced that I was living in a hope-induced dream, I lifted myself to look in.

“Freeze,” said the man looking up at me past his pistol barrel. His voice was calm. “And then we’ll talk about what you think you’re doing here.”

The interior of the tank was coated with sulphurous light. It was too dim to shine from the hatch, but it provided enough illumination for me to see the little man in the khaki coveralls of the tank lords. The bore of the powergun in his hand shrank from the devouring cavity it had first seemed. But even the 1 cm bore of reality would release enough energy to splash the brains from my skull, I knew.

“I wanted to see the tanks,” I said, amazed that I was not afraid. All men die, even kings; what better time than this would there be for me? “They would never let me, so I sneaked away from the banquet. I—it was worth it. Whatever happens now.”

“Via,” said the tank lord, lowering his pistol. “You’re just a kid, ain’tcha?”

I could see my image foreshortened in the vision screen behind the mercenary, my empty hands shown in daylit vividness at an angle that meant the camera must be in another of the parked tanks.

“My Lord,” I said, straightening momentarily but overriding the reflex so that I could meet the mercenary’s eyes. “I am sixteen.”

“Right,” he said, “and I’m Colonel Hammer. Now–”

“Oh Lord!” I cried, forgetting in my joy and embarrassment that someone else might hear me. My vision blurred and I rapped my knees on the iridium as I tried to genuflect. “Oh, Lord Hammer, forgive me for disturbing you!”

“Blood and martyrs, boy!” snapped the tank lord. A pump whirred and the seat from which he questioned me cross-legged rose. “Don’t be an idiot! Me name’s Curran and I drive this beast, is all.”

The mercenary was head and shoulders out of the hatch now, watching me with a concerned expression. I blinked and straightened. When I knelt, I had almost slipped from the tank; and in a few moments, my bruises might be more painful than my present embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, Lord Curran,” I said, thankful for once that I had practice in keeping my expression calm after a beating. “I have studied, I have dreamed about your tanks ever since I was placed in my present status six years ago. When you came I—I’m afraid I lost control.”

“You’re a little shrimp, even alongside me, ain’tcha?” Curran said reflectively.

A burst of laughter drifted across the courtyard from a window in the corridor flanking the dining hall.

“Aw, Via,” the tank lord said. “Come take a look, seein’s yer here anyhow.”

It was not a dream. My grip on the hatch coaming made the iridium bite my fingers as I stepped into the tank at Curran’s direction; and besides, I would never have dared to dream this paradise.

The tank’s fighting compartment was not meant for two, but Curran was as small as he had implied and I—I had grown very little since a surgeon had fitted me to become the page of a high-born lady. There were screens, gauges, and armored conduits across all the surfaces I could see.

“Drivers’ll tell ye,” said Curran, “the guy back here, he’s just along for the ride ‘cause the tank does it all for ’em. Been known t’ say that myself, but it ain’t really true. Still–”

He touched the lower left corner of a screen. It had been black. Now, it became gray, unmarked save by eight short orange lines radiating from the edge of a two-centimeter circle in the middle of the screen.

“Fire control,” Curran said. A hemispherical switch was set into the bulkhead beneath the screen. He touched the control with an index finger, rotating it slightly. “That what the Slammers’re all about, ain’t we? Firepower and movement, and the tricky part—movement—the driver handles from up front. Got it?”

“Yes, my lord,” I said, trying to absorb everything around me without taking my eyes from what Curran was doing. The west wing of the palace, guest and baronial quarters above the ground-floor barracks, slid up the screen as brightly illuminated as if it were daylight.

“Now don’t touch nothin’!” the tank lord said, the first time he had spoken harshly to me. “Got it?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Right,” said Curran, softly again. “Sorry, kid. Lieutenant’ll have my ass if he sees me twiddlin’ with the gun, and if we blow a hole in central prison here”—he gestured at the screen, though I did not understand the reference—“the Colonel’ll likely shoot me hisself.”

“I won’t touch anything, my lord,” I reiterated.

“Yeah, well,” said the mercenary. He touched a four-position toggle switch beside the hemisphere. “We just lowered the main gun, right? I won’t spin the turret, ’cause they’d hear that likely inside. Matter of fact–”

Instead of demonstrating the toggle, Curran fingered the sphere again. The palace dropped off the screen and, now that I knew to expect it, I recognized the faint whine that must have been the gun itself gimbaling back up to a safe angle. Nothing within the fighting compartment moved except the image on the screen.

“So,” the tanker continued, flipping the toggle to one side. An orange numeral 2 appeared in the upper left corner of the screen. “There’s a selector there too.” He pointed to the pistol grip by my head, attached to the power seat which had folded up as soon as it lowered me into the tank at Curran’s direction.

His finger clicked the switch to the other side—1 appeared in place of 2 on the screen—and then straight up—3. “Main gun,” he said, “co-ax—that’s the tribarrel mounted just in front of the hatch. You musta seen it?”

I nodded, but my agreement was a lie. I had been too excited and too overloaded with wonder to notice the automatic weapon on which I might have set my hand.

“And 3,” Curran went on, nodding also, “straight up—that’s both guns together. Not so hard, was it? You’re ready to be a tank commander now, and”—he grinned—“with six months and a little luck, I could teach ye t’drive the little darlin’ besides.”

“Oh, My Lord,” I whispered, uncertain whether I was speaking to God or to the man beside me. I spread my feet slightly in order to keep from falling in a fit of weakness.

“Watch it!” the tank lord said sharply, sliding his booted foot to block me. More gently, he added, “Don’t touch nothing, remember? That”—he pointed to a pedal on the floor which I had not noticed—“that’s the foot trip. Touch it and we give a little fireworks demonstration that nobody’s gonna be very happy about.”

He snapped the toggle down to its original position; the numeral disappeared from the screen. “Shouldn’t have it live nohow,” he added.

“But—all this,” I said, gesturing with my arm close to my chest so that I would not bump any of the close-packed apparatus. “If shooting is so easy, then why is—everything—here?”

Curran smiled. “Up,” he said, pointing to the hatch. As I hesitated, he added, “I’ll give you a leg-up, don’t worry about the power lift.”

Flushing, sure that I was being exiled from Paradise because I had overstepped myself—somehow—with the last question, I jumped for the hatch coaming and scrambled through with no need of the tanker’s help. I supposed I was crying, but I could not tell because my eyes burned so.

“Hey, slow down, kid,” called Curran as he lifted himself with great strength but less agility. “It’s just that Whichard’s about due t’take over guard, and we don’t need him t’find you inside. Right?”

“Oh,” I said, hunched already on the edge of the tank’s deck. I did not dare turn around for a moment. “Of course, my lord.”

“The thing about shootin’,” explained the tank lord to my back, “ain’t how so much’s when and what. You got all this commo and sensors that’ll handle any wavelength or take remote feeds. But still somebody’s gotta decide which data t’call up—and decide what it means. And decide t’pop it er not.” I turned just as Curran leaned over to slap the iridium barrel of the main gun for emphasis. “Which is a mother-huge decision for whatever’s down-range, ye know.”

He grinned broadly. He had a short beard, rather sparse, which partly covered the pockmarks left by some childhood disease. “Maybe even puts tank commander up on a level with driver for tricky, right?”

His words opened a window in my mind, the frames branching and spreading into a spidery, infinite structure: responsibility, the choices that came with the power of a tank.

“Yes, my lord,” I whispered.

“Now, you better get back t’whatever civvies do,” Curran said, a suggestion that would be snarled out as an order if I hesitated. “And don’t be shootin’ off yer mouth about t’night, right?”

“No, my lord,” I said as I jumped to the ground. Tie-beams between the wall and the masonry gatehouse would let me climb back to the path I had followed to get here.

“And thank you,” I added, but varied emotions choked the words into a mumble.

I thought the women might already have returned, but I listened for a moment, clinging to the bars, and heard nothing. Even so I climbed in the end window. It was more difficult to scramble down without the aid of the antenna brace, but a free-standing wardrobe put that window in a sort of alcove.

I didn’t know what would happen if the women saw me slipping in and out through the bars. There would be a beating—there was a beating whenever an occasion offered. That didn’t matter, but it was possible that Lady Miriam would also have the openings cross-barred too straitly for even my slight form to pass.

I would have returned to the banquet hall, but female voices were already greeting the guard outside the door. I had only enough time to smooth the plush of my jacket with Sarah’s hairbrush before they swept in, all of them together and their mistress in the lead as usual.

By standing against a color-washed wall panel, I was able to pass unnoticed for some minutes of the excited babble without being guilty of “hiding,” with the severe flogging that would surely entail. By the time Lady Miriam called, “Leesh? Elisha!” in a querulous voice, no one else could have sworn that I hadn’t entered the apartment with the rest of the entourage.

“Yes, my lady?” I said, stepping forward.

Several of the women were drifting off in pairs to help each other out of their formal costumes and coiffures. There would be a banquet every night that the tank lords remained—providing occupation to fill the otherwise featureless lives of the maids and their mistress.

That was time consuming, even if they did not become more involved than public occasion required.

“Leesh,” said Lady Miriam, moderating her voice unexpectedly. I was prepared for a blow, ready to accept it unflinchingly unless it was aimed at my eye—and even then to dodge as little as possible so as not to stir up a worse beating.

“Elisha,” the lady continued in a honeyed tone—then, switching back to acid sharpness and looking at her chief maid, she said, “Sarah, what are all these women doing here? Don’t they have rooms of their own?”

Women who still dallied in the suite’s common room—several of the lower-ranking stored their garments here in chests and clothes presses—scurried for their sleeping quarters while Sarah hectored them, arms akimbo.

“I need you to carry a message for me, Leesh,” explained Lady Miriam softly. “To one of our guests. You—you do know, don’t you, boy, which suite was cleared for use by our guests?”

“Yes, my lady,” I said, keeping my face blank. “The end suite of the east wing, where the king slept last year. But I thought–”

“Don’t think,” said Sarah, rapping me with the brush she carried on all but formal occasions. “And don’t interrupt milady.”

“Yes, my lady,” I said, bowing and rising.

“I don’t want you to go there, boy,” said the lady with an edge of irritation. “If Sergeant Grant has any questions, I want you to point the rooms out to him—from the courtyard.”

She paused and touched her full lips with her tongue while her fingers played with the fan. “Yes,” she said at last, then continued, “I want you to tell Sergeant Grant 0400 and to answer any questions he may have.”

Lady Miriam looked up again, and though her voice remained mild, her eyes were hard as knife points. “Oh. And Leesh? This is business that the baron does not wish to be known. Speak to Sergeant Grant in private. And never speak to anyone else about it—even to the baron if he tries to trick you into an admission.”

“Yes, my lady,” I said, bowing.

I understood what the baron would do to a page who brought him that news—and how he would send a message back to his wife, to the king’s daughter whom he dared not impale in person.

Sarah’s shrieked order carried me past the guard at the women’s apartment, while Lady Miriam’s signet was my pass into the courtyard after normal hours. The soldier there on guard was muzzy with drink. I might have been able to slip unnoticed by the hall alcove in which he sheltered.

I skipped across the gravel-in-clay surface of the courtyard, afraid to pause to touch the tanks again when I knew Lady Miriam would be peering from her window. Perhaps on the way back… but no, she would be as intent on hearing on how the message was received as she was anxious to know that it had been delivered. I would ignore the tanks—

“Freeze, buddy!” snarled someone from the turret of the tank I had just run past.

I stumbled with shock and my will to obey. Catching my balance, I turned slowly—to the triple muzzles of the weapon mounted on the cupola, not a pistol as Lord Curran had pointed. The man who spoke wore a shielded helmet, but there would not have been enough light to recognize him anyway.

“Please, my lord,” I said. “I have a message for Sergeant-Commander Grant?”

“From who?” the mercenary demanded. I knew now that Lieutenant Kiley had been serious about protecting from intrusion the quarters allotted to his men.

“My lord, I–” I said and found no way to proceed.

“Yeah, Via,” the tank lord agreed in a relaxed tone. “None a’ my affair.” He touched the side of his helmet and spoke softly.

The gatehouse door opened with a spill of light and the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette of Sergeant Grant. Like the mercenary on guard in the tank, he wore a communications helmet.

Grant slipped his face-shield down, and for a moment my own exposed skin tingled—or my mind thought it perceived a tingle—as the tank lord’s equipment scanned me.

“C’mon, then,” he grunted, gesturing me toward the recessed angle of the building and the gate leaves. “We’ll step around the corner and talk.”

There was a trill of feminine laughter from the upper story of the gatehouse: a servant named Maria, whose hoots of joy were unmistakable. Lieutenant Kiley leaned his head and torso from the window above us and shouted to Grant, his voice and his anger recognizable even though the words themselves were not.

The sergeant paused, clenching his left fist and reaching for me with his right because I happened to be closest to him. I poised to run—survive this first, then worry about what Lady Miriam would say—but the tank lord caught himself, raised his shield, and called to his superior in a tone on the safe side of insolent, “All right, all right. I’ll stay right here where Cermak can see me from the tank.”

Apparently Grant had remembered Lady Miriam also, for he spoke in our language so that I—and the principal for whom I acted—would understand the situation.

Lieutenant Kiley banged his shutters closed.

Grant stared for a moment at Cermak until the guard understood and dropped back into the interior of his vehicle. We could still be observed through the marvelous vision blocks, but we had the minimal privacy needed for me to deliver my message.

“Lady Miriam,” I said softly, “says 0400.”

I waited for the tank lord to ask me for directions. His breath and sweat exuded sour echoes of the strong estate ale.

“Won’t go,” the tank lord replied unexpectedly. “I’ll be clear at 03 to 04.” He paused before adding, “You tell her, kid, she better not be playin’ games. Nobody plays prick-tease with this boy and likes what they get for it.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said, skipping backward because I had the feeling that this man would grab me and shake me to emphasize his point.

I would not deliver his threat. My best hope for safety at the end of this affair required that Lady Miriam believe that I was ignorant of what was going on.

That was a slim hope anyway.

“Well, go on, then,” the tank lord said.

He strode back within the gatehouse, catlike in his grace and lethality, while I ran to tell my mistress of the revised time.

An hour’s pleasure seemed a little thing against the risk of two lives—and my own.

My “room” was what had been the back staircase before it was blocked to convert the second floor of the west wing into the women’s apartment. The dank cylinder was furnished only with the original stone stair treads and whatever my mistress and her maids had chosen to store there over the years. I normally slept on a chair in the common room, creeping back to my designated space before dawn.

Tonight I slept beneath one of the large chairs in a corner; not hidden, exactly, but not visible without a search.

The two women were quiet enough to have slipped past someone who was not poised to hear them as I was, and the tiny flashlight the leader carried threw a beam so tight that it could scarcely have helped them see their way. But the perfume they wore—imported, expensive, and overpowering—was more startling than a shout.

They paused at the door. The latch rattled like a tocsin though the hinges did not squeal.

The soldier on guard, warned and perhaps awakened by the latch, stopped them before they could leave the apartment. The glowlamp in the sconce beside the door emphasized the ruddy anger on his face.

Sarah’s voice, low but cutting, said, “Keep silent, my man, or it will be the worse for you.” She thrust a gleam of gold toward the guard, not payment but a richly chased signet ring, and went on, “Lady Miriam knows and approves. Keep still and you’ll have no cause to regret this night. Otherwise…”

The guard’s face was not blank, but emotions chased themselves across it too quickly for his mood to be read. Suddenly he reached out and harshly squeezed the chief maid’s breast. Sarah gasped, and the man snarled, “What’ve they got that I don’t got, tell me, huh? You’re all whores, that’s all you are!”

The second woman was almost hidden from the soldier by the chief maid and the panel of the half-opened door. I could see a shimmer of light as her hand rose, though I could not tell whether it was from a blade or a gun barrel.

The guard flung his hand down from Sarah and turned away. “Go on, then,” he grumbled. “What do I care? Go on, sluts.”

The weapon disappeared, unused and unseen, into the folds of an ample skirt, and the two women left the suite with only the whisper of felt slippers. They were heavily veiled and wore garments coarser than any I had seen on the chief maid before—but Lady Miriam was as recognizable in the grace of her walk as Sarah was for her voice.

The women left the door ajar to keep the latch from rattling again, and the guard did not at first pull it to. I listened for further moments against the chance that another maid would come from her room or that the lady would rush back, driven by fear or conscience—though I hadn’t seen either state control her in the past.

I was poised to squeeze between the window-bars again, barefoot for secrecy and a better grip, when I heard the hum of static as the guard switched his belt radio live. There was silence as he keyed it, then his low voice saying, “They’ve left, sir. They’re on their way toward the banquet hall.”

There was another pause and a radio voice too thin for me to hear more than the fact of it. The guard said, “Yes, Chamberlain,” and clicked off the radio.

He latched the door.

I was out through the bars in one movement and well up the antenna brace before any of the maids could have entered the common room to investigate the noise.

I knew where the women were going, but not whether the chamberlain would stop them on the way past the banquet hall or the baron’s personal suite at the head of the east wing. The fastest, safest way for me to cross the roof of the banquet hall was twenty feet up the side, where the builders’ forms had left a flat, thirty-centimeter path in the otherwise sloping concrete.

Instead, I decided to pick my way along the trash-filled stone gutter just above the windows of the corridor on the courtyard side. I could say that my life—my chance of life—depended on knowing what was going on… and it did depend on that. But crawling through the starlit darkness, spying on my betters, was also the only way I had of asserting myself. The need to assert myself had become unexpectedly pressing since Lord Curran had showed me the tank, and since I had experienced what a man could be.

There was movement across the courtyard as I reached the vertical extension of the load-bearing wall that separated the west wing from the banquet hall. I ducked beneath the stone coping, but the activity had nothing to do with me. The gatehouse door had opened and, as I peered through dark-adapted eyes, the mercenary on guard in a tank exchanged with the man who had just stepped out of the building.

The tank lords talked briefly. Then the gatehouse door shut behind the guard who had been relieved while his replacement climbed into the turret of the vehicle parked near the west wing—Sergeant Grant’s tank. I clambered over the wall extension and stepped carefully along the gutter, regretting now that I had not worn shoes for protection. I heard nothing from the corridor below, although the casements were pivoted outward to catch any breeze that would relieve the summer stillness.

Gravel crunched in the courtyard as the tank lord on guard slid from his vehicle and began to stride toward the end of the east wing.

He was across the courtyard from me—faceless behind the shield of his commo helmet and at best only a shadow against the stone of the wall behind him. But the man was Sergeant Grant beyond question, abandoning his post for the most personal of reasons.

I continued, reaching the east wing as the tank lord disappeared among the stone finials of the outside staircase at the wing’s far end. The guest suites had their own entrance, more formally ornamented than the doorways serving the estate’s own needs. The portal was guarded only when the suites were in use—and then most often by a mixed force of the baron’s soldiers and those of the guests.

That was not a formality. The guest who would entrust his life solely to the baron’s goodwill was a fool.

A corridor much like that flanking the banquet hall ran along the courtyard side of the guest suites. It was closed by a cross-wall and door, separating the guests from the baron’s private apartment, but the door was locked and not guarded.

Lady Miriam kept a copy of the door’s microchip key under the plush lining of her jewel box. I had found it but left it there, needless to me so long as I could slip through window grates.

The individual guest suites were locked also, but as I lowered myself from the gutter to a window ledge I heard a door snick closed. The sound was minuscule, but it had a crispness that echoed in the lightless hall.

Skirts rustled softly against the stone, and Sarah gave a gentle, troubled sigh as she settled herself to await her mistress.

I waited on the ledge, wondering if I should climb back to the roof—or even return to my own room. The chamberlain had not blocked the assignation, and there was no sign of an alarm. The soldiers, barracked on the ground floor of this wing, would have been clearly audible had they been aroused.

Then I did hear something—or feel it. There had been motion, the ghost of motion, on the other side of the door closing the corridor. Someone had entered or left the baron’s apartment, and I had heard them through the open windows.

It could have been one of the baron’s current favorites—girls from the estate, the younger and more vulnerable, the better. They generally used the little door and staircase on the outer perimeter of the palace—where a guard was stationed against the possibility that an ax-wielding relative would follow the lucky child.

I lifted myself back to the roof with particular care, so that I would not disturb the chief maid waiting in the hallway. Then I followed the gutter back to the portion of roof over the baron’s apartments.

I knew the wait would be less than an hour, the length of Sergeant Grant’s guard duty, but it did not occur to me that the interval would be as brief as it actually was. I had scarcely settled myself again to wait when I thought I heard a door unlatch in the guest suites. That could have been imagination; or Sarah, deciding to wait in a room instead of the corridor; but moments later the helmeted tank lord paused on the outside staircase.

By taking the risk of leaning over the roof coping, I could see Lord Grant and a woman embracing on the landing before the big mercenary strode back across the courtyard toward the tank where he was supposed to be on guard. Desire had not waited on its accomplishment, and mutual fear had prevented the sort of dalliance after the event that the women dwelt on so lovingly in the privacy of their apartment… while Leesh, the lady’s page and no man, listened of necessity. The women’s slippers made no sound in the corridor, but their dresses brushed one another to the door, which clicked and sighed as it let them out of the guest apartments and into the portion of the east wing reserved to the baron.

I expected shouts, then; screams, even gunfire as the baron and Wolfitz confronted Lady Miriam. There was no sound except for skirts continuing to whisper their way up the hall, returning to the women’s apartment. I stood up to follow, disappointed despite the fact that bloody chaos in the palace would endanger everyone—me, the usual scapegoat for frustrations, most of all.

The baron said in a tight voice at the window directly beneath me, “Give me the goggles, Wolfitz,” and surprise almost made me fall.

The strap of a pair of night-vision goggles rustled over the baron’s grizzled head. Their frames clucked against the stone sash as my master bent forward with the unfamiliar headgear.

For a moment, I was too frightened to breathe. If he leaned out and turned his head, he would see me poised like a terrified gargoyle above him. Any move I made—even flattening myself behind the wall coping—risked a sound and disaster.

“You’re right,” said the baron in a voice that would have been normal if it had had any emotion behind it. There was another sound of something hard against the sash, a metallic clink this time.

“No, my lord!” said the chamberlain in a voice more forceful than I dreamed any underling would use to the baron. Wolfitz must have been seizing the nettle firmly, certain that hesitation or uncertainty meant the end of more than his plans. “If you shoot him now, the others will blast everything around them to glowing slag.”

“Wolfitz!” said the baron, breathing hard. They had been struggling. The flare-mouthed mob gun from the baron’s nightstand—scarcely a threat to Sergeant Grant across the courtyard—extended from the window opening, but the chamberlain’s bony hand was on the baron’s wrist. “If you tell me I must let those arrogant out-worlders pleasure my wife in my palace, I will kill you.”

He sounded like an architect discussing a possible staircase curve.

“There’s a better way, my lord,” said the chamberlain. His voice was breathy also, but I thought exertion was less to account for that than was the risk he took. “We’ll be ready the next time the—out-worlder gives us the opportunity. We’ll take him in, in the crime; but quietly so that the others aren’t aroused.”

“Idiot!” snarled the baron, himself again in all his arrogant certainty. Their hands and the gun disappeared from the window ledge. The tableau was the vestige of an event that the men needed each other too much to remember. “No matter what we do with the body, the others will blame us. Blame me.”

His voice took a dangerous coloration as he added, “Is that what you had in mind, Chamberlain?”

Wolfitz said calmly, “The remainder of the platoon here will be captured—or killed, it doesn’t matter—by the mercenaries of the Lightning Division, who will also protect us from reaction by King Adrian and Colonel Hammer.”

“But–” said the baron, the word a placeholder for a thought that did not form in his mind after all.

“The King of Ganz won’t hesitate an instant if you offer him your fealty,” the chamberlain continued, letting the words display their own strength instead of speaking loudly in a fashion his master might take as badgering.

The baron still held the mob gun, and his temper was doubtful at the best of times.

“The mercenaries of the Lightning Division,” continued Wolfitz with his quiet voice and persuasive ideas, “will accept any risk in order to capture four tanks undamaged. The value of that equipment is beyond any profit the Lightning Division dreamed of earning when they were hired by Ganz.”

“But–” the baron repeated in an awestruck voice. “The truce?”

“A matter for the kings to dispute,” said the chamberlain off-handedly. “But Adrian will find little support among his remaining barons if you were forced into your change of allegiance. When the troops he billeted on you raped and murdered Lady Miriam, that is.”

“How quickly can you make the arrangements?” asked the baron. I had difficulty in following the words: not because they were soft, but because he growled them like a beast.

“The delay,” Wolfitz replied judiciously, and I could imagine him lacing his long fingers together and staring at them, “will be for the next opportunity your—Lady Miriam and her lover give us. I shouldn’t imagine that will be longer than tomorrow night.”

The baron’s teeth grated like nutshells being ground against stone.

“We’ll have to use couriers, of course,” Wolfitz added. “The likelihood of the Slammers intercepting any other form of communication is too high. But all Ganz and its mercenaries have to do is ready a force to dash here and defend the palace before Hammer can react. Since these tanks are the forward picket, and they’ll be unmanned while Sergeant Grant is—otherwise occupied—the Lightning Division will have almost an hour before an alarm can be given. Ample time, I’m sure.”

“Chamberlain,” the baron said in a voice from which amazement had washed all the anger, “you think of everything. See to it.”

“Yes, my lord,” Wolfitz said humbly.

The tall chamberlain did think of everything, or very nearly; but he’d had much longer to plan than the baron thought. I wondered how long Wolfitz had waited for an opportunity like this one; and what payment he had arranged to receive from the King of Ganz if he changed the baron’s allegiance?

A door slammed closed, the baron returning to his suite and his current child-mistress. Chamberlain Wolfitz’s rooms adjoined his master’s, but my ears followed his footsteps to the staircase at the head of the wing.

By the time I had returned to the west wing and was starting down the antenna brace, a pair of the baron’s soldiers had climbed into a truck and gone rattling off into the night. It was an unusual event but not especially remarkable: the road they took led off to one of the baron’s outlying estates.

But the road led to the border with Ganz, also; and I had no doubt as to where the couriers’ message would be received.

The tank lords spent most of the next day pulling maintenance. A squad of the baron’s soldiers kept at a distance the tenants and house servants who gawked while the khaki-clad tankers crawled through access plates and handed fan motors to their fellows. The bustle racks welded to the back of each turret held replacement parts as well as the crew’s personal belongings.

It was hard to imagine that objects as huge and powerful as the tanks would need repair. I had to remember that they were not ingots of iridium but vastly complicated assemblages of parts—each of which could break, and eight of which were human.

I glanced occasionally at the tanks and the lordly men who ruled and serviced them. I had no excuse to take me beyond the women’s apartment during daylight.

Excitement roused the women early, but there was little pretense of getting on with their lace making. They dressed, changed, primped—argued over rights to one bit of clothing or another—and primarily, they talked.

Lady Miriam was less a part of the gossip than usual, but she was the most fastidious of all about the way she would look at the night’s banquet.

The tank lords bathed at the wellhead in the courtyard like so many herdsmen. The women watched hungrily, edging forward despite the scandalized demands of one of the older maids that they at least stand back in the room where their attention would be less blatant.

Curran’s muscles were knotted, his skin swarthy. Sergeant Grant could have passed for a god—or at least a man of half his real age. When he looked up at the women’s apartments, he smiled.

The truck returned in late afternoon, carrying the two soldiers and a third man in civilian clothes who could have been—but was not—the manager of one of the outlying estates. The civilian was closeted with the baron for half an hour before he climbed back into the truck. He, Wolfitz, and the baron gripped one another’s fore-arms in leave-taking; then the vehicle returned the way it had come.

The tank lord on guard paid less attention to the truck than he had to the column of steam-driven produce vans, chuffing toward the nearest rail terminus.

The banquet was less hectic than that of the first night, but the glitter had been replaced by a fog of hostility now that the newness had worn off. The baron’s soldiers were more openly angry that Hammer’s men picked and chose—food at the high table, and women in the corridor or the servants’ quarters below.

The Slammers, for their part, had seen enough of the estate to be contemptuous of its isolation, of its low technology—and of the folk who lived on it. And yet—I had talked with Lord Curran and listened to the others as well. The tank lords were men like those of the barony. They had walked on far worlds and had been placed in charge of instruments as sophisticated as any in the human galaxy—but they were not sophisticated men, only powerful ones.

Sergeant-Commander Grant, for instance, made the child’s mistake of thinking his power to destroy conferred on him a sort of personal immortality.

The baron ate and drank in a sullen reverie, deaf to the lieutenant’s attempts at conversation and as blind to Lady Miriam on his left as she was to him. The chamberlain was seated among the soldiers because there were more guests than maids of honor. He watched the activities at the high table unobtrusively, keeping his own counsel and betraying his nervousness only by the fact that none of the food he picked at seemed to go down his throat.

I was tempted to slip out to the tanks, because Lord Curran was on duty again during the banquet. His absence must have been his own choice; a dislike for the food or the society perhaps… but more probably, from what I had seen in the little man when we talked, a fear of large, formal gatherings.

It would have been nice to talk to Lord Curran again, and blissful to have the controls of the huge tank again within my hands. But if I were caught then, I might not be able to slip free later in the night—and I would rather have died than miss that chance.

The baron hunched over his ale when Lieutenant Kiley gathered his men to return to the gatehouse. They did not march well in unison, not even by comparison with the baron’s soldiers when they drilled in the courtyard.

The skills and the purpose of the tank lords lay elsewhere.

Lady Miriam rose when the tankers fell in. She swept from the banquet hall regally as befit her birth, dressed in amber silk from Terra and topazes of ancient cut from our own world. She did not look behind her to see that her maids followed and I brought up the rear… but she did glance aside once at the formation of tank lords.

She would be dressed no better than a servant later that night, and she wanted to be sure that Sergeant Grant had a view of her full splendor to keep in mind when next they met in darkness.

The soldier who had guarded the women’s apartments the night before was on duty when the chief maid led her mistress out again. There was no repetition of the previous night’s dangerous byplay this time. The guard was subdued, or frightened; or, just possibly, biding his time because he was aware of what was going to come.

I followed, more familiar with my route this time and too pumped with excitement to show the greater care I knew was necessary tonight, when there would be many besides myself to watch, to listen.

But I was alone on the roof, and the others, so certain of what they knew and expected, paid no attention to the part of the world that lay beyond their immediate interest.

Sergeant Grant sauntered as he left the vehicle where he was supposed to stay on guard. As he neared the staircase to the guest suites, his stride lengthened and his pace picked up. There was nothing of nervousness in his manner; only the anticipation of a man focused on sex to the extinction of all other considerations.

I was afraid that Wolfitz would spring his trap before I was close enough to follow what occurred. A more reasonable fear would have been that I would stumble into the middle of the event.

Neither danger came about. I reached the gutter over the guest corridor and waited, breathing through my mouth alone so that I wouldn’t make any noise. The blood that pounded through my ears deafened me for a moment, but there was nothing to hear. Voices murmured—Sarah and Sergeant Grant—and the door clicked shut on the suite that had waited ajar for the tank lord.

Four of the baron’s soldiers mounted the outside steps, as quietly as their boots permitted. There were faint sounds, clothing and one muted clink of metal, from the corridor on the baron’s side of the door.

All day I’d been telling myself that there was no safe way I could climb down and watch events through a window. I climbed down, finding enough purchase for my fingers and toes where weathering had rounded the corners of stone blocks. Getting back to the roof would be more difficult, unless I risked gripping an out-swung casement for support.

Unless I dropped, bullet-riddled, to the ground.

I rested a toe on a window ledge and peeked around the stone toward the door of the suite the lovers had used on their first assignation. I could see nothing—

Until the corridor blazed with silent light.

Sarah’s face was white, dazzling with the direct reflection of the high-intensity floods at either end of the hallway. Her mouth opened and froze, a statue of a scream but without the sound that fear or self-preservation choked in her throat.

Feet, softly but many of them, shuffled over the stone flags toward the chief maid. Her head jerked from one side to the other, but her body did not move. The illumination was pinning her to the door where she kept watch.

The lights spilled through the corridor windows, but their effect was surprisingly slight in the open air: highlights on the parked tanks; a faint wash of outline, not color, over the stones of the wall and gatehouse; and a distorted shadowplay on the ground itself, men and weapons twisting as they advanced toward the trapped maid from both sides.

There was no sign of interest from the gatehouse. Even if the tank lords were awake to notice the lights, what happened at night in the palace was no affair of theirs.

Three of perhaps a dozen of the baron’s soldiers stepped within my angle of vision. Two carried rifles; the third was Murphy with a chip-recorder, the spidery wands of its audio and video pickups retracted because of the press of men standing nearby.

Sarah swallowed. She closed her mouth, but her eyes stared toward the infinite distance beyond this world. The gold signet she clutched was a drop from the sun’s heart in the floodlights.

The baron stepped close to the woman. He took the ring with his left hand, looked at it, and passed it to the stooped, stone-faced figure of the chamberlain.

“Move her out of the way,” said the baron in a husky whisper.

One of the soldiers stuck the muzzle of his assault rifle under the chin of the chief maid, pointing upward. With his other hand, the man gripped Sarah’s shoulder and guided her away from the door panel.

Wolfitz looked at his master, nodded, and set a magnetic key on the lock. Then he too stepped clear.

The baron stood at the door with his back to me. He wore body armor, but he couldn’t have thought it would protect him against the Slammer’s powergun. Murphy was at the baron’s side, the recorder’s central light glaring back from the door panel, and another soldier poised with his hand on the latch.

The baron slammed the door inward with his foot. I do not think I have ever seen a man move as fast as Sergeant Grant did then.

The door opened on a servants’ alcove, not the guest rooms themselves, but the furnishings there were sufficient to the lovers’ need. Lady Miriam had lifted her skirts. She was standing, leaning slightly backwards, with her buttocks braced against the bed frame. She screamed, her eyes blank reflections of the sudden light.

Sergeant-Commander Grant still wore his helmet. He had slung his belt and holstered pistol over the bedpost when he unsealed the lower flap of his uniform coveralls, but he was turning with the pistol in his hand before the baron got off the first round with his mob gun.

Aerofoils, spread from the flaring muzzle by asymmetric thrust, spattered the lovers and a two-meter circle on the wall beyond them.

The tank lord’s chest was in bloody tatters and there was a brain-deep gash between his eyebrows, but his body and the powergun followed through with the motion reflex had begun.

The baron’s weapon chunked twice more. Lady Miriam flopped over the footboard and lay thrashing on the bare springs, spurting blood from narrow wounds that her clothing did not cover. Individual projectiles from the mob gun had little stopping power, but they bled out a victim’s life like so many knife blades.

When the baron shot the third time, his gun was within a meter of what had been the tank lord’s face. Sergeant Grant’s body staggered backward and fell, the powergun unfired but still gripped in the mercenary’s right hand.

“Call the Lightning Division,” said the baron harshly as he turned. His face, except where it was freckled by fresh blood, was as pale as I had ever seen it. “It’s time.”

Wolfitz lifted a communicator, short range but keyed to the main transmitter, and spoke briefly. There was no need for communications security now. The man who should have intercepted and evaluated the short message was dead in a smear of his own wastes and body fluids.

The smell of the mob gun’s propellant clung chokingly to the back of my throat, among the more familiar slaughterhouse odors. Lady Miriam’s breath whistled, and the bedsprings squeaked beneath her uncontrolled motions.

“Shut that off,” said the baron to Murphy. The recorder’s pool of light shrank into shadow within the alcove.

The baron turned and fired once more, into the tank lord’s groin.

“Make sure the others don’t leave the gatehouse till Ganz’s mercenaries are here to deal with them,” said the baron negligently. He looked at the gun in his hand.

Strong lights turned the heat and propellant residues rising from its barrel into shadows on the wall beyond.

“Marksmen are ready, my lord,” said the chamberlain.

The baron skittered his mob gun down the hall. He strode toward the rooms of his own apartment.

It must have been easier to climb back to the roof than I had feared. I have no memory of it, of the stress on fingertips and toes or the pain in my muscles as they lifted the body they had supported for what seemed (after the fact) to have been hours. Minutes only, of course; but instead of serial memory of what had happened, my brain was filled with too many frozen pictures of details for all of them to fit within the real time frame.

The plan that I had made for this moment lay so deep that I executed it by reflex, though my brain roiled.

Executed it by instinct, perhaps; the instinct of flight, the instinct to power.

In the corridor, Wolfitz and Murphy were arguing in low voices about what should be done about the mess.

Soldiers had taken up positions in the windowed corridor flanking the banquet hall. More of the baron’s men, released from trapping Lady Miriam and her lover, were joining their fellows with words too soft for me to understand. I crossed the steeply pitched roof on the higher catwalk, for speed and from fear that the men at the windows might hear me.

There were no soldiers on the roof itself. The wall coping might hide even a full-sized man if he lay flat, but the narrow gutter between wall and roof was an impossible position from which to shoot at targets across the courtyard.

The corridor windows on the courtyard side were not true firing slits like those of all the palace’s outer walls. Nonetheless, men shooting from corners of the windows could shelter their bodies behind stone thick enough to stop bolts from the Slammers’ personal weapons. The sleet of bullets from twenty assault rifles would turn anyone sprinting from the gatehouse door or the pair of second-floor windows into offal like that which had been Sergeant Grant.

The tank lords were not immortal.

There was commotion in the women’s apartments when I crossed them. Momentarily a light fanned the shadow of the window-bars across the courtyard and the gray curves of what had been Sergeant Grant’s tank. A male voice cursed harshly. A lamp casing crunched, and from the returned darkness came a blow and a woman’s cry.

Some of the baron’s soldiers were taking positions in the west wing. Unless the surviving tank lords could blow a gap in the thick outer wall of the gatehouse, they had no exit until the Lightning Division arrived with enough firepower to sweep them up at will.

But I could get in, with a warning that would come in time for them to summon aid from Colonel Hammer himself. They would be in debt for my warning, owing me their lives, their tanks, and their honor.

Surely the tank lords could find a place for a servant willing to go with them anywhere?

The battlements of the wall closing the north side of the courtyard formed my pathway to the roof of the gatehouse. Grass and brush grew there in ragged clumps. Cracks between stones had trapped dust, seeds, and moisture during a generation of neglect. I crawled along, on my belly, tearing my black velvet jacket.

Eyes focused on the gatehouse door and windows were certain to wander: to the sky; to fellows slouching over their weapons; to the wall connecting the gatehouse to the west wing. If I stayed flat, I merged with the stone… but shrubs could quiver in the wrong pattern, and the baron’s light-amplifying goggles might be worn by one of the watching soldiers.

It had seemed simpler when I planned it; but it was necessary in any event, even if I died in a burst of gunfire.

The roof of the gatehouse was reinforced concrete, slightly domed, and as great a proof against indirect fire as the stone walls were against small arms. There was no roof entrance, but there was a capped flue for the stove that had once heated the guard quarters. I’d squirmed my way in through that hole once before.

Four years before.

The roof of the gatehouse was a meter higher than the wall on which I lay—an easy jump, but one which put me in silhouette against the stars. I reached up, feeling along the concrete edge less for a grip than for reassurance. I was afraid to leave the wall because my body was telling itself that the stone it pressed was safety.

If the baron’s men shot me now, it would warn the tank lords in time to save them. I owed them that, for the glimpse of freedom Curran had showed me in the turret of a tank.

I vaulted onto the smooth concrete and rolled, a shadow in the night to any of the watchers who might have seen me. Once I was on the gatehouse, I was safe because of the flat dome that shrugged off rain and projectiles. The flue was near the north edge of the structure, hidden from the eyes and guns waiting elsewhere in the palace.

I’d grown only slightly since I was twelve and beginning to explore the palace in which I expected to die. The flue hadn’t offered much margin, but my need wasn’t as great then, either.

I’d never needed anything as much as I needed to get into the gatehouse now.

The smoke pipe had rusted and blown down decades before. The wooden cap, fashioned to close the hole to rain, hadn’t been maintained. It crumbled in my hands when I lifted it away, soggy wood with only flecks remaining of the stucco that had been applied to seal the cap into place.

The flue was as narrow as the gap between window-bars, and because it was round, I didn’t have the luxury of turning sideways. So be it.

If my shoulders fit, my hips would follow. I extended my right arm and reached down through the hole as far as I could. The flue was as empty as it was dark. Flakes of rust made mouselike patterings as my touch dislodged them. The passageway curved smoothly, but it had no sharp-angled shot trap as far down as I could feel from outside.

I couldn’t reach the lower opening. The roof was built thick enough to stop heavy shells. At least the slimy surface of the concrete tube would make the job easier.

I lowered my head into the flue with the pit of my extended right arm pressed as firmly as I could against the lip of the opening. The cast concrete brought an electric chill through the sweat-soaked velvet of my jerkin, reminding me—now that it was too late—that I could have stripped off the garment to gain another millimeter’s tolerance.

It was too late, even though all but my head and one arm were outside. If I stopped now, I would never have the courage to go on again.

The air in the flue was dank, because even now in late summer the concrete sweated and the cap prevented condensate from evaporating. The sound of my fear-lengthened breaths did not echo from the end of a closed tube, and not even panic could convince me that the air was stale and would suffocate me. I slid farther down; down to the real point of no return.

By leading with my head and one arm, I was able to tip my collarbone endwise for what would have been a relatively easy fit within the flue if my ribs and spine did not have to follow after. The concrete caught the tip of my left shoulder and the ribs beneath my right armpit… let me flex forward minutely on the play in my skin and the velvet… and held me.

I would have screamed, but the constriction of my ribs was too tight. My legs kicked in the air above the gatehouse, unable to thrust me down for lack of purchase. My right arm flopped in the tube, battering my knuckles and fingertips against unyielding concrete.

I could die here, and no one would know.

Memory of the tank and the windows of choice expanding infinitely above even Leesh, the lady’s page, flashed before me and cooled my body like rain on a stove. My muscles relaxed and I could breathe again—though carefully, and though the veins of my head were distending with blood trapped by my present posture.

Instead of flapping vainly, my right palm and elbow locked on opposite sides of the curving passage. I breathed as deeply as I could, then let it out as I kicked my legs up where gravity, at least, could help.

My right arm pulled while my left tried to clamp itself within my rib cage. Cloth tore, skin tore, and my torso slipped fully within the flue, lubricated by blood as well as condensate.

If I had been upright, I might have blacked out momentarily with the release of tension. Inverted, I could only gasp and feel my face and scalp burn with the flush that darkened them. The length of a hand farther and my pelvis scraped. My fingers had a grip on the lower edge of the flue, and I pulled like a cork extracting itself from a wine bottle. My being, body and mind, was so focused on its task that I was equally unmoved by losing my trousers—dragged off on the lip of the flue—and the fact that my hand was free.

The concrete burned my left ear when my right arm thrust my torso down with a real handhold for the first time. My shoulders slid free and the rest of my body tumbled out of the tube, which had seemed to grip it tightly until that instant.

The light that blazed in my face was meant to blind me, but I was already stunned—more by the effort than the floor I’d hit an instant before. Someone laid the muzzle of a powergun against my left ear. The dense iridium felt cool and good on my damaged skin.

“Where’s Sergeant Grant?” said Lieutenant Kiley, a meter to the side of the light source.

I squinted away from the beam. There was an open bedroll beneath me, but I think I was too limp when I dropped from the flue to be injured by bare stone. Three of the tank lords were in the room with me. The bulbous commo helmets they wore explained how the lieutenant already knew something had happened to the guard. The others would be on the ground floor, poised.

The guns pointed at me were no surprise.

“He slipped into the palace to see Lady Miriam,” I said, amazed that my voice did not break in a throat so dry. “The baron killed them, both, and he’s summoned the Lightning Division to capture you and your tanks. You have to call for help at once or they’ll be here.”

“Blood and martyrs,” said the man with the gun at my ear, Lord Curran, and he stepped between me and the dazzling light. “Douse that, Sparky. The kid’s all right.”

The tank lord with the light dimmed it to a glow and said, “Which we bloody well ain’t.”

Lieutenant Kiley moved to a window and peeked through a crack in the shutter, down into the courtyard.

“But–” I began. I would have gotten up but Curran’s hand kept me below the possible line of fire. I’d tripped the mercenaries’ alarms during my approach, awakened them—enough to save them, surely. “You have your helmets?” I went on. “You can call your colonel?”

“That bastard Grant,” the lieutenant said in the same emotionless, diamond-hard voice he had used in questioning me. “He slaved all the vehicle transceivers to his own helmet so Command Central wouldn’t wake me if they called while he was—out fucking around.”

“Via,” Lord Curran said, bolstering his pistol and grimacing at his hands as he flexed them together. “I’ll go. Get a couple more guns up these windows”—he gestured with jerks of his forehead—“for cover.”

“It’s my platoon,” Kiley said, stepping away from the window but keeping his back to the others of us in the room. “Via. Via!”

“Look, sir,” Curran insisted with his voice rising and wobbling like that of a dog fighting a choke collar, “I was his bloody driver, I’ll–”

“You weren’t the fuck-up!” Lieutenant Kiley snarled as he turned. “This one comes with the rank, trooper, so shut your–”

“I’ll go, my lords,” I said, the squeal of my voice lifting it through the hoarse anger of grown men arguing over a chance to die.

They paused and the third lord, Sparky, thumbed the light up and back by reflex. I pointed to the flue. “That way. But you’ll have to tell me what to do then.”

Lord Curran handed me a disk the size of a thumbnail. He must have taken it from his pocket when he planned to sprint for the tanks himself. “Lay it on the hatch—anywhere on the metal. Inside, t’ the right a’ the main screen–”

“Curran, knot it, will you?” the lieutenant demanded in peevish amazement. “We can’t–”

“I don’t want my ass blown away, Lieutenant,” said the trooper with the light—which pointed toward the officer suddenly, though the pistol in Sparky’s other hand was lifted idly toward the ceiling. “Anyhow, kid’s got a better chance’n you do. Or me.”

Lieutenant Kiley looked from one of his men to the other, then stared at men with eyes that could have melted rock. “The main screen is on the forward wall of the fighting compartment,” he said flatly. “That is–”

“He’s used it, Lieutenant,” Lord Curran said. “He knows where it is.” The little mercenary had drawn his pistol again and was checking the loads for the second time since I fell into the midst of these angry, nervous men.

Kiley looked at his subordinate, then continued to me, “The commo screen is the small one to the immediate right of the main screen, and it has an alphanumeric keypad beneath it. The screen will have a numeral two or a numeral three on it when you enter, depending whether it’s set to feed to another tank or to Grant’s helmet.”

He paused, wet his lips. His voice was bare of effect, but in his fear he was unable to sort out the minimum data that my task required. The mercenary officer realized that he was wandering, but that only added to the pressure that already ground him from all sides.

“Push numeral one on the keypad,” Lieutenant Kiley went on, articulating very carefully. “The numeral on the visor should change to one. That’s all you need to do—the transceiver will be cleared for normal operation, and we’ll do the rest from here.” He touched his helmet with the barrel of his powergun, a gesture so controlled that the iridium did not clink on the thermoplastic.

“I’ll need a platform,” I said, looking up at the flue. “Tables or boxes.”

“We’ll lift you,” said Lieutenant Kiley, “and we’ll cover you as best we can. Better take that shirt off now and make the squeeze a bit easier.”

“No, my lord,” I said, rising against the back wall—out of sight, though within a possible line of fire. I stretched my muscles, wincing as tags of skin broke loose from the fabric to which blood had glued them. “It’s dark-colored, so I’ll need it to get to the tank. I, I’ll use–”

I shuddered and almost fell; as I spoke, I visualized what I had just offered to do—and it terrified me.

“Kid–” said Lord Curran, catching me; but I was all right again, just a brief fit.

“I’ll use my trousers also,” I said. “They’re at the other–”

“Via!” snapped Lord Sparky, pointing with the light he had dimmed to a yellow glow that was scarcely a beam. “What happened t’you?”

“I was a servant in the women’s apartments,” I said. “I’ll go now, if you’ll help me. I must hurry.”

Lord Curran and Lieutenant Kiley lifted me. Their hands were moist by contrast with the pebbled finish of their helmets, brushing my bare thighs. I could think only of how my nakedness had just humiliated me before the tank lords.

It was good to think of that, because my body eased itself into the flue without conscious direction and my mind was too full of old anger to freeze me with coming fears.

Going up was initially simpler than worming my way down the tube had been. With the firm fulcrum of Lieutenant Kiley’s shoulders beneath me, my legs levered my ribs and shoulder past the point at which they caught on the concrete.

Someone started to shove me farther with his hands.

“No!” I shouted, the distorted echo unintelligible even to me and barely heard in the room below. Someone understood, though, and the hands locked instead into a platform against which my feet could push in the cautious increments the narrow passage required.

Sliding up the tube, the concrete hurt everywhere it rubbed me. The rush of blood to my head must have dulled the pain when I crawled downward. My right arm now had no strength and my legs, as the knees cramped themselves within the flue, could no longer thrust with any strength.

For a moment, the touch of the tank lord’s lifted hands left my soles. I was wedged too tightly to slip back, but I could no more have climbed higher in the flue than I could have shattered the concrete that trapped me. Above, partly blocked by my loosely waving arm, was a dim circle of the sky.

Hands gripped my feet and shoved upward with a firm, inexorable pressure that was now my only chance of success. Lord Curran, standing on his leader’s shoulders, lifted me until my hand reached the outer lip. With a burst of hysterical strength, I dragged the rest of my body free.

It took me almost a minute to put my trousers on. The time was not wasted. If I had tried to jump down to the wall without resting, my muscles would have let me tumble all the way into the courtyard—probably with enough noise to bring an immediate storm of gunfire from the baron’s soldiers.

The light within the gatehouse must have been visible as glimmers through the same cracks in the shutters that the tank lords used to desperately survey their position. That meant the baron’s men would be even more alert—but also, that their attention would be focused even more firmly on the second-floor windows, rather than on the wall adjacent to the gatehouse.

No one shot at me as I crawled backwards from the roof, pressing myself against the concrete and then stone hard enough to scrape skin that had not been touched by the flue.

The key to the tank hatches was in my mouth, the only place from which I could not lose it—while I lived.

My knees and elbows were bloody from the flue already, but the open sky was a relief as I wormed my way across the top of the wall. The moments I had been stuck in a concrete tube more strait than a coffin convinced me that there were worse deaths than a bullet.

Or even than by torture, unless the baron decided to bury me alive.

I paused on my belly where the wall mated with the corner of the west wing. I knew there were gunmen waiting at the windows a few meters away. They could not see me, but they might well hear the thump of my feet on the courtyard’s compacted surface.

There was no better place to descend. Climbing up to the roofs of the palace would only delay my danger, while the greater danger rushed forward on the air cushion vehicles of the Lightning Division.

Taking a deep breath, I rolled over the rim of the wall. I dangled a moment before my strained arms let me fall the remaining two meters earlier than I had intended to. The sound my feet, then fingertips, made on the ground was not loud even to my fearful senses. There was no response from the windows above me—and no shots from the east wing or the banquet hall, from which I was an easy target for any soldier who chanced to stare at the shadowed corner in which I poised.

I was six meters from the nearest tank—Lord Curran’s tank, the tank from which Sergeant Grant had surveyed the women’s apartments. Crawling was pointless—the gunmen were above me. I considered sprinting, but the sudden movement would have tripped the peripheral vision of eyes turned toward the gatehouse.

I strolled out of the corner, so frightened that I could not be sure my joints would not spill me to the ground because they had become rubbery:

One step, two steps, three steps, four—

“Hey!” someone shouted behind me, and seven powerguns raked the women’s apartments with cyan lightning.

Because I was now so close to the tank, only soldiers in the west wing could see me. The covering fire sent them ducking while glass shattered, fabrics burned, and flakes spalled away from the face of the stone itself. I heard screams from within, and not all of the throats were female.

A dozen or more automatic rifles—the soldiers elsewhere in the palace—opened fire on the gatehouse with a sound like wasps in a steel drum. I jumped to the bow slope of the tank, trusting my bare feet to grip the metal, without delaying for the steps set into the iridium.

A bolt from a powergun struck the turret a centimeter from where my hand slapped it. I screamed with dazzled surprise at the glowing dimple in the metal and the droplets that spattered my bare skin.

Only the tank lords’ first volley had been aimed. When they ducked away from the inevitable return fire, they continued to shoot with only their gun muzzles lifted above the protecting stone. The bolts scattering across the courtyard at random did a good job of frightening the baron’s men away from accurate shooting, but that randomness had almost killed me.

As it was, the shock of being fired at by a friend—no incoming fire is friendly—made me drop the hatch key. The circular field-induction chip clicked twice on its way to disappear in the dark courtyard.

The hatch opened. The key had bounced the first time on the cover.

I went through the opening headfirst, too frightened by the shots to swing my feet over the coaming in normal fashion. At least one soldier saw what was happening, because his bullets raked the air around my legs for the moment they waved. His tracers were green sparks; and when I fell safely within, more bullets disintegrated against the dense armor about me.

The seat, though folded, gashed my forehead with a corner and came near enough to stunning me with pain that I screamed in panic when I saw there was no commo screen where the lieutenant had said it would be. The saffron glow of instruments was cold mockery.

I spun. The main screen was behind me, just where it should have been, and the small commo screen—reading 3—was beside it. I had turned around when I tumbled through the hatch.

My finger stabbed at the keypad, hitting 1 and 2 together. A slash replaced the 3—and then 1, as I got control of my hand again and touched the correct key. Electronics whirred softly in the belly of the great tank.

The west wing slid up the main screen as I palmed the control. There was a 1 in the corner of the main screen also.

My world was the whole universe in the hush of my mind. I pressed the firing pedal as my hand rotated the turret counterclockwise.

The tribarrel’s mechanism whined as it cycled and the bolts thumped, expanding the air on their way to their target; but when the blue-green flickers of released energy struck stone, the night and the facade of the women’s apartments shattered. Stones the size of a man’s head were blasted from the wall, striking my tank and the other palace buildings with the violence of the impacts.

My tank.

I touched the selector toggle. The numeral 2 shone orange in the upper corner of the screen, which the lofty mass of the banquet hall slid to fill.

“Kid!” shouted speakers somewhere in the tank with me. “Kid!”

My bare toes rocked the firing pedal forward and the world burst away from the axis of the main gun.

The turret hatch was open because I didn’t know how to close it. The tribarrel whipped the air of the courtyard, spinning hot vortices smoky from fires the guns had set and poisoned by ozone and gases from the cartridge matrices.

The 20 cm main gun sucked all the lesser whorls along the path of its bolt, then exploded them in a cataclysm that lifted the end of the banquet hall ten meters before dropping it back as rubble.

My screen blacked out the discharge, but even the multiple reflections that flashed through the turret hatch were blinding. There was a gout of burning stone. Torque had shattered the arched concrete roof when it lifted, but many of the reinforcing rods still held so that slabs danced together as they tumbled inward.

Riflemen had continued to fire while the tribarrel raked toward them. The 20 cm bolt silenced everything but its own echoes. Servants would have broken down the outside doors minutes before. The surviving soldiers followed them now, throwing away weapons unless they forgot them in their hands.

The screen to my left was a panorama through the vision blocks while the orange pips on the main screen provided the targeting array. Men, tank lords in khaki, jumped aboard the other tanks. Two of them ran toward me in the vehicle farthest from the gatehouse.

Only the west gable of the banquet hall had collapsed. The powergun had no penetration, so the roof panel on the palace’s outer side had been damaged only by stresses transmitted by the panel that took the bolt. Even on the courtyard side, the reinforced concrete still held its shape five meters from where the bolt struck, though fractured and askew.

The tiny figure of the baron was running toward me from the entrance.

I couldn’t see him on the main screen because it was centered on the guns’ point of impact. I shouted in surprise, frightened back into slavery by that man even when shrunken to a doll in a panorama.

My left hand dialed the main screen down and across, so that the center of the baron’s broad chest was ringed with sighting pips. He raised his mob gun as he ran, and his mouth bellowed a curse or a challenge.

The baron was not afraid of me or of anything else. But he had been born to the options that power gives.

My foot stroked the firing pedal.

One of the mercenaries who had just leaped to the tank’s back deck gave a shout as the world became ozone and a cyan flash. Part of the servants’ quarters beneath the banquet hall caught fire around the three-meter cavity blasted by the gun.

The baron’s disembodied right leg thrashed once on the ground. Other than that, he had vanished from the vision blocks.

Lieutenant Kiley came through the hatch, feet first but otherwise with as little ceremony as I had shown. He shoved me hard against the turret wall while he rocked the gun switch down to safe. The orange numeral blanked from the screen.

“In the lord’s name, kid!” the big officer demanded while his left hand still pressed me back. “Who told you to do that?”

“Lieutenant,” said Lord Curran, leaning over the hatch opening but continuing to scan the courtyard. His pistol was in his hand, muzzle lifted, while air trembled away from the hot metal. “We’d best get a move on unless you figure t’fight a reinforced battalion alone till the supports get here.”

“Well, get in and drive, curse you!” the lieutenant shouted. The words relaxed his body and he released me. ’No, I don’t want to wait around here alone for the Lightning Division!"

“Lieutenant,” said the driver, unaffected by his superior’s anger, “we’re down a man. You ride your blower. Kid’ll be all right alone with me till we join up with the colonel and come back t’kick ass.”

Lieutenant Kiley’s face became very still. “Yeah, get in and drive,” he said mildly, gripping the hatch coaming to lift himself out without bothering to use the power seat.

The driver vanished but his boots scuffed on the armor as he scurried for his own hatch. “Gimme your bloody key,” he shouted back.

Instead of replying at once, the lieutenant looked down at me. “Sorry I got a little shook, kid,” he said. “You did pretty good for a new recruit.” Then he muscled himself up and out into the night.

The drive fans of other tanks were already roaring when ours began to whine up to speed. The great vehicle shifted greasily around me, then began to turn slowly on its axis. Fourth in line, we maneuvered out through the courtyard gate while the draft from our fans lifted flames out of the palace windows.

We are the tank lords.

We Hold These Rights, by Henry Melton

Editor’s Introduction

We recently celebrated the 200th birthday of the Constitution of these United States. That document established a government intended to put into concrete contractual terms the ideals expressed some years before in the Declaration of Independence. Although the Declaration was largely a Bill of Indictment against King George (one of the things we didn’t like was that the king had “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance”), it also expressed the public philosophy of the leaders of the War of Independence.

These were no wild revolutionaries. They wanted the rights of free Englishmen. However, because the Declaration of Independence was in part intended to secure the sympathy of the French court, whose intellectuals weren’t particularly impressed by appeals to the rights of free Englishmen, Jefferson and the Committee on Style drew on other sources.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Of course the men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the Declaration fully understood that rights were a much trickier proposition than the document indicates. For one thing, one or two were atheists, while half a dozen of the others subscribed to a form of Deism that rejected any notion that God might intervene in the affairs of men; meaning that the Creator could hardly be the source of rights, and if He wasn’t, who was? For the most part, though, the signers were men of their times, willing to accept the proposition that things long established had some right to exist; that custom and tradition were important; that there was a very great deal more to government than sheer power.

That’s still the public philosophy of the United States. It’s not a philosophy universally accepted among intellectuals, of course. They have other views about the rights of man, as well as the natural place of the elite in governing. We have, in this century, charged government with a very great deal more than the signers and framers ever supposed possible.

The purpose of government is, according to the framers, to secure rights; in particular, to establish justice. In their thinking, without government there could be no rights, for each man would do what he had the power to do; and that did not lead to peace, but to what Hobbes had called “the war of everyone against everyone else.” Life in a state of Nature was no peaceful idyll. It was a state of “no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

That’s one view of natural right. There are others.

We Hold These Rights

Henry Melton

“And I’m telling you that I won’t have a coward on my ship!”

I tried to reason with the maniac: “Come on, Quail! It’s my ship, too. We have to have an engineer.”

“We’ll get another one!” His voice echoed off the walls of the control room. I hadn’t seen him like this before, and Quail Gren and I had been shoving rocks for six years. It was frightening.

“Where, Quail? Where will we get another engineer? After today, there won’t be an unemployed beam controller anywhere in the Asteroid Belt—and if there were, he’d be somebody worse than Willis Fario.”

“What’s the matter with you, Clement Ster? Why are you sticking up for him? Are you wanting to sell us out to the Terrans, too?”

That was too much. My fist caught him clumsily in the chest. He was bigger than me, but he rocked back a little. “You shut up!” I yelled. “The Belt is my home, just like it is yours. I know you’re worried about Marine and the kids, but don’t be crazy. I’m not about to let some Earthside commission steal the Belt out from beneath me. You make another crack like that, and I’ll deck you!”

Quail looked away toward his control console. My punch couldn’t have hurt, but I think my trying it shocked him. I didn’t often lose my temper. I stalked over to my seat at the geologist’s station and automatically stabbed the keys on the geotyping files. It would be another three days before I would be needing to search them in earnest, but it was something to do until the air cleared.

He spoke, finally, in a lowered voice. “Okay, Clement. You’re my friend. I know you’re loyal to the Belt. But why’d you defend that neon?”

I signed. It had been a very long and exhausting day, and I had no hope it would get any better. I reviewed my arguments again. “Two reasons. Like I said before, we’re not going to be able to find a beam controller who can handle our beam projector the way we have it jury-wired, with no computer controls. You can plot your courses all you want up here, but unless we have someone down in the engine room who can make the beam move the ship like it’s supposed to, then the Monarch isn’t a ship—it’s just a funny-shaped asteroid. And, secondly, I’m not so sure that he said anything wrong.”

“Nothing wrong! Are you deaf? Didn’t he, just a few minutes ago, tell us that it is perfectly all right for the Earth Assembly to move right in and order us off our own rocks? Now, didn’t he?” Quail’s face started getting red again.

I tried to keep my voice calm, but my impatience stuck out with every word I said. “Quail, I really don’t know what he said. Now, leave me alone for a while!”

It was the truth. I didn’t know what Willis had said. He had a funny way of talking and I was never exactly sure. But I promised myself right then that I was going to find out what he had meant by his crack—but after I got some sleep. We were at war with Earth, only hours into it, and my nerves needed rest.

When I woke, Quail was still up in the control room. I didn’t think he had gotten any sleep, and that worried me. I hoped he could take the strain.

It took a war to make me glad, for the first time, that I hadn’t married. I remembered when the Terrans took over Mars in their insane desire to make over the entire solar system into a pattern of habitable planets. For their own safety—so they said—three generations of colonists were uprooted and shipped back to Earth. Many couldn’t adjust to the crowded, smelly home planet. I didn’t imagine we would fare much better under Terran control. They surely had some plan to use even Quail’s home rock, Greenstone, as raw material for their terraforming engineers. I hated to think that such a thing might happen.

I marveled that Quail could resist the impulse to boost straight home. We were only a six-day trip from there. I wouldn’t have argued. Ceres had no authority over us. If they had ordered us on the mission, rather than asking, I doubt we would have done it. No Belt miner would have. But Quail thought it would be best to act with the others.

The volunteer navy at Ceres had formed about thirty seconds after the bad news from the Terran Assembly arrived. As usual, we didn’t find out about it until two hours later, when we turned the radio on to get an orbit allotment from Ceres Port Control. We grabbed the first slot we could get, and Quail and I took the scooter straight to Core’s place. In the excitement, we both forgot about Willis.

It had been a good bet. Jake Coro—that is, Admiral Jake Coro, T.P.N., Ret.—had been blowing the independence trumpet for years, not that anyone had paid much serious attention to him. The Belt, or so everybody thought, already was independent. But when the Terrans tried their move, he had been ready. We landed the scooter near his place, almost setting down on a couple of people who were scurrying about the place. A couple of dozen scooters were about, as Jake’s Restaurant and Club had become general headquarters for the Ceres Defense Brigade. Jake had been retired from the Terran Navy for ten years, but those ten years had made him every bit a Belt man. As Quail and I walked into his place, I saw that he was still every bit an admiral. The Defense Brigade was his show, and he had the right. Seven years worth of contingency plans worked out for this very day were spread out in a couple of hundred sealed envelopes on the pool table. When he saw us come in, he took several minutes to talk to us and to ask our help. We left with one of those envelopes and a hope that we just might be able to hold the rocks we called home.

I really had no home other than the Monarch, but that hope of victory meant a lot to me—because Quail did have a home, and he had shared it with me. Every few months, when we had a bit more cash than bills, the Monarch would dock at Greenstone and Quail would take up being a family man where he had left off last time. For the first day or so he and Marine would disappear somewhere down in the rock and I would babysit the kids.

Baby Stephen was barely human the last time we were there, but then, Emme had looked like that not too many trips ago, and she was a little angel. She may have had a crush on me, hanging around wherever I was. I could visualize her, hovering over my shoulder in zero-g as I reset the house tractor field back up to normal after the baby had come. Toby and I were good friends. He had been around before I started visiting. We’d played a lot together over the years. I taught him how to use the rifle last trip. I’d hoped he would never have to use it.

Willis hadn’t come up from the engine room for the night, but that was nothing unusual. We had hired him to monitor and control the machines down there when we limped into Vesta Village a month or so before with a fried computer. He slipped into the computer’s place as if he were a repair module. He did the jobs well, executing orders Quail called down over the intercom. But he acted like a machine, too. He was quiet, impassive, and he stayed in his place. He ate and slept down there. It was always a shock when he did come up into people country.

Crawling down the cramped tube connecting the engine room with the rest of the ship, I felt maybe it wasn’t so odd he rarely came up. The tube was narrow and too long. It was slanted downward and had an uncomfortable bend in the middle. It was dark at the bottom. The tube had come out next to the massive chamber that held tractor-pressor beams in a dynamic equilibrium, the accumulator that held all of our power.

“Willis? Are you asleep?” In the dim light shed by the indicators, I could make out his sleeping bag, strung, hammock-wise, between two supports. He said nothing, but the bag started moving and he began to crawl out. He was brown-skinned, hairy, and massive. He looked like a brown bear awakened from its winter nap, blinking his eyes as the light came on.

“What do you want?” he mumbled.

“I just wanted to talk. A lot has happened.”

Willis gestured to a place where I could sit, as he slumped into the control seat we had moved down for his use. “Is there anything to say?”

I thought of Toby and Emme and that Terran fleet probably already on its way, and bit back the cutting answer that came to mind. I wanted to find out what he felt, in spite of his cynical manner. He looked at home, sitting there before the uprooted mass detector and among the various emergency-wired hand controls. But he was a big unknown to me. How he looked was about the limit of what I knew about him.

I took a stab at opening communications. “Quail got upset by some of the things you said yesterday. I hope we can clear the misunderstanding.”

Willis grunted and nodded. “I could tell Mr. Gren didn’t know what I was talking about. But I didn’t figure you comprehended any more than he did.”

“I can’t say that I did. I just don’t want a bunch of bad feelings to keep the Monarch from doing its best. Too much is at stake.”

He just shrugged, and, inside, I sympathized with Quail’s dislike of the man. I could tell he couldn’t care less about what I was ready to fight and die for. We had been free men in the Belt far too long to take annexation with only a shrug. It didn’t sit right.

“Don’t you care?” I asked. I suddenly had a moment of doubt—Quail and I hadn’t explained to him what was up when we left Ceres City at full speed, and we hadn’t really discussed it when he was up in the control room. “You are aware of what is going on, aren’t you?”

He shrugged again. “Mr. Ster, I really don’t know how to answer you. All I’ve heard is a bunch of nonsense. And I can’t get upset about nonsense.”

“What kind of nonsense?”

“A bunch of gibberish on the radio as we left Ceres—in violation of port ordinances, by the way. I hope you’ve got a good reason for that; I’ve got enough marks against my record at Ceres Port. Anyway, the radio was full of it. On the Voice, instead of news, I was getting a horrible mishmash of vile treachery, sacred rights, loyal miners, and of all things, the defense of our home spaces. There was a lot more of the stuff, all variations on the same rabble-rousing theme. A lot of nonsense?”

“You said that in the control room. What do you mean? Are you saying it’s nonsense that we want to defend our right to live our own lives? Do you think we don’t have the right to defend our rocks from being stolen put from beneath us?”

Willis visibly sagged, as if disappointed in the conversation. “I’ve given up trying to make people understand. You won’t understand—but yes, that is what I think. You don’t have any rights.”

I stopped listening right there and got to my feet. What kind of man, I thought, wouldn’t blink an eye at Terran goons forcing Toby and Emme down into their rat-hive cities in that high-gravity and fouled air? No right to resist! I clamped my jaws. I wasn’t about to lose my temper in front of him. I mumbled an excuse to leave and turned to go. Quail is right. Even I won’t be able to stomach working with him. We’ll have to replace him. And this is the worst possible time!

“Mr. Ster?” he asked calmly, stopping me. “Where are we going? You haven’t said.”

“Maybe it’s best if I don’t!” I snapped, hating myself for letting my feelings show. But I wanted to get out of that dark little room, fast. He turned my stomach. A man couldn’t ignore what the Terrans had planned for ten million innocent people. Only a machine.

“Sir,” he said, but I wasn’t listening to what he said, only to the metal in his voice. “You don’t understand what I said. (Click) But don’t let that bother you. (Click) I do my job. (Whirr-click)”

I didn’t reply. The hatch on the entrance tube was open and I left. Up in the control room, Quail brought up the subject of Willis again, but I couldn’t argue about it anymore. After this mission, Willis had to go.

Forty hours out from Ceres, we had to change the beam. We had been pulling ourselves along smoothly toward Jupiter with the Monarch’s tractor beam, but we needed a few hours of pull toward the sun to shift our vector. Quail spoke his directions down the intercom in as emotionless a voice as he could manage, but the contempt was still there. He had no use for anyone who would not help him fight. I had gotten him to take sleeping tablets, but he never stopped worrying about Marine. Willis kept his replies to a minimum. He did his job like a machine. The final piloting change was switching the propulsion beam from tractor to pressor and realigning it on Jupiter for another forty hours of deceleration.

When we finally cut that beam, the eta navigation beacon was strong in the nav receiver. Quail and I were at our duty stations. He wanted a short course to get us a little closer to the beacon, and I was hunting rocks. Willis walked into the room. We both looked up in surprise.

Quail growled, “What are you doing up here?”

He shrugged. “I thought it might be a good idea to find out what you were doing.”

“Well, you can just crawl back into your hole and–”

“No, Quail,” I interrupted. It looked as if I was to be the one to keep personal friction to the minimum until our job was done, in spite of how I felt. “Let him stay. He’ll find out soon enough. I don’t think we can destroy the beacon without his help.”

A ripple of concern passed over Willis’s face. “Destroy the beacon?”

I nodded. “Yes. We live in the rocks. Quail could navigate the Great Circle by instinct alone. But if we can break up the nav-beacon system, the Terran ships won’t be able to use their fancy automated nav systems. They will have to shoot the stars, and it’s a safe bet that not many will know how to do that. At worst, this operation will slow them down.”

Willis thought a moment, then: “That beacon is Terran property. Destroying it would be a felony, with possible civil suits caused by the lack of its services. Have you thought about that?”

Quail exploded. “Of all the ridiculous… This is war, man!”

“Has there been a declaration of hostilities?” Willis displayed a machinelike calm. His face was undecipherable.

I tried to explain, before his manner drove Quail to blows. “Look, Willis, the Belt has never had a formal government, other than an occasional commission the Terran Assembly has tried to palm off on us. The closest we have are city governments such as Ceres Port. This is more a civil uprising than a formal war, but it is no less real. The Monarch isn’t the only ship out taking action. Almost every ship in the Belt is doing something. When the Terran fleet arrives, the real fighting will start. Nobody will ever consider this a criminal action. Quail is right: This is war.”

Willis said nothing, but he frowned as he turned and left. I threw a questioning look at Quail, but he shrugged in puzzlement. Neither of us could make him out. Right then, neither of us cared.

Our problem was to destroy the beacon. Thirty years before, the Terran engineers who had set them up built well. In all, there were better than a score of the monsters scattered through the Belt and in orbits around the nearer planets. Each was four times as massive as our ship and equipped with an impressive automated pressor-beam system to deflect the rocks that happened to wander too close. Inside their computers were supposedly a hundred strategies to handle everything from pebbles to Ceres itself. I had never heard of any of them being damaged in any way. It would have been easier if we had packed a laser with us, but we were a mining/survey ship, not a battlewagon.

Quail griped about that. “Jake Coro should’ve sent an armed ship, or at least a couple more like us, so we’d have a chance to overload the beacon’s defenses. As it is, even if we throw a bunch of rocks at it, our power will run out before its will.”

“You know he would have if he could’ve spared the ships. Face it, Quail—our job is important, but it is merely an afterthought compared to his job of drumming up enough ships to put together a defense around Ceres that isn’t a joke. He wouldn’t have sent an armed ship out here for anything.”

Quail nodded at my words, but he was right about the problem we faced. No matter what we threw at it, the eta beacon could repel it with ease. And with Jupiter so close, it could recharge its power accumulator as easily as we could. There was no doubt that its capacity was greater. But, somehow, we had to find a way…

The intercom clicked on. Quail’s head swung around as quickly as mine. Willis? He never calls us first.

“Mr. Ster? Are there any rocks in the close vicinity?”

I had my screen covered with the geotyping files of every rock that was likely to be near, looking for a good one to throw. “No. Nothing over a kilogram in a hundred kilometers. Why?”

“Well, my mass readings down here show a ship-sized mass hanging just off the beacon. You may have your war sooner than you thought.”

I glanced instinctively at the gaping hole in the console where the mass detector had been mounted before we moved it down to the engine room. I wished I had it back. I swiveled back to my screen and punched up radar and visual. Nothing. If there is a ship there, I thought, it is very well hidden. I didn’t want it to be there.

Quail said something vile across the room. I looked at him bending over the radar. He looked at me. “He’s right! There’s a double doppler. Terrans, just waiting there, watching us.”

“They have to be painted black, then; there’s nothing on the visual.”

“That clinches it.” He hit his fist on the console. “It’s a warship.”

I put the visual on the big center screen. The image showed the bright sunlight reflecting off the beacon, with the tiny disk of Jupiter behind it. Other than a scattering of stars, nothing else showed in the dark. “What do we do now?” The Terrans had planned better than I had given them credit. Anything we could try now had even less chance of success. They could even attack us.

“We’ve got to do something!” Quail paced, glaring up at the screen. He wasn’t scared. The sight made me feel better, although I could see no hope.

“But what can we do, Quail? They’ve got lasers and sucker bombs as sure as anything. They can blast us to vapor in seconds. And you can be sure they’ll act if we try anything. They aren’t dead out there!”

“I don’t know, but we have to do something! If this beacon is protected, then so are the others. This shows the Terrans need the beacons, so that makes it all the more important that we take this one out. The rest of the Belt is counting on us to do our job. We have to do it. I’m not going to have my wife and kids sent back to Earth as prisoners.”

Not if I can help it, either, I said to myself. Quail and I had always backed each other up. I was not going to stop then. Breathing in his determination was like pure oxygen.

The intercom clicked. “Mr. Gren, plot a course back the way we came. Hurry, before they come at us.”

What! I thought. No!

Quail’s face darkened. “I will do no such thing, you coward! We’ve got a job to do and we’ll do it if it kills us!”

“Mr. Gren,” he said in his naggingly calm voice, “you will do as I say, or I will try to plot the course myself from down here with the mass detector.”

I could have strangled him! It was a critical time. It could be disastrous to give up.

Quail yelled, “Over my dead body! We’ve got to stay and fight!”

“I must remind you I have control down here. Your controls of the engine and the accumulator all route through me. I have secured the latches on my hatch down here. You’d be wasting your time to fight about it. I repeat, plot a reverse course, immediately. That is the only thing that will save us.”

I was thinking dark thoughts of the welding rig stowed in the hallway storage bin and what I would do to him. It would be difficult to sneak it down the engine-room connecting tube, but it could be done. I would not have a mutineer on the Monarch. No way. She was mine, mine and Quail’s.

Quail was yelling abuse at the intercom, but he was weakening. Willis, for a little while, did have control of the ship. I fingered the silent keys on my console, spelling out a message to Quail on the screen:

LET WILLIS MOVE US OUT OF RANGE OF THE TERRAN SHIP, FOR NOW. COOPERATE. WE WON’T BE GOING FAR!

Quail got my meaning. He reluctantly got down to the business of plotting the line toward Jupiter that the pressor beam would follow. It was too risky a maneuver to let Willis plot his own; the mass detector didn’t have enough resolution to bull’s-eye a planet at that distance. For a change, Willis was on top of everything we did. The course was a simple one, but he questioned everything, down to the exact location of the beacon and the Terran ship. The suspicion was overpowering that he was some kind of Terran spy. I don’t know what Quail was thinking. I saw him hesitate. He looked at me and I shook my head. We could easily feed him inaccurate data, but that wouldn’t help us. Quail frowned deeply and gave him the last of the data. I waved his attention to my screen again.

HE MAY HAVE ENGINE CONTROL, BUT WE…

Willis’s voice on the intercom interrupted, “Are you ready to activate?”

Quail’s answer was short and profane. I stepped into the following silence. I had to give him one last chance. “Willis? Why don’t you help us? We can do more than run away. I’m sure that I can talk Quail into taking you on as a partner after the war.” I frantically had to wave down Quail’s anger before he said something to alienate Willis even more. “Come on, Willis. You are a Belt man like us. Help us fight for our rights…”

Willis replied in a voice as flat as any machine’s: “Mr. Ster, we don’t have time for that now. Just tell me if the board is clear, so I can activate the beam.”

Quail spat out, “Yes, the board’s clear, you traitor!”

“Thank you.” His voice clicked off.

I swiveled back to my screen. Quail watched.

BUT WE HAVE CONTROL OF HIS AIR. FADE DOWN HIS OXYGEN AND THEN USE THE WELDER ON HIS HATCH.

Quail nodded. Doing so would be dangerous for Willis, but I was ready for him to take his chances. He was a mutineer in wartime.

A flicker of the indicators caught my eye. Willis had triggered the beam, sending its influence toward Jupiter at the speed of light. In twice the time it took the beam to get there, we would be moving. I glanced at the visual on the screen and noticed the beacon partially eclipsing Jupiter. Our beam had to be passing through it as well, although we were showing no acceleration yet. More of Willis’s machinelike control over the beam. I had heard that there were beam controllers who could make their projectors play such tricks.

I got up and watched over Quail’s shoulder as he carefully reset the air flow so that Willis would not notice the change until too late. It would take a while for it to act. I nodded my approval, and we sat down to await the beginning of the acceleration. My head was full of thoughts about Willis and the Terran ship and the beacon. I had an inspiration about how to attack the beacon and turned to my files to see how difficult doing so would be. I wanted to arrange a compressed bombardment, taking several days and many recharges to set dozens of rocks into high-speed collision courses, timed to arrive almost together, overloading the beacon’s defenses. Not even the Terran ship could help in such a hailstorm.

I glanced up at the beam indicators. Then I looked again, because what I saw the first time didn’t make any sense. I needed a second to get my mental bearings—suddenly everything looked wrong. Then everything focused. Three indicators were entirely off scale! As I watched, a fourth climbed to its danger point, and then past. I heard blood rushing in my ears. What is happening?

“Quail! Look!”

I knew nothing of the workings of the beam projector, but I could read Quail’s face. It went from puzzled to dead white!

He spun around and yelled at the intercom: “Willis! What are you doing? That’s a high-tension beam! Are you trying to blow us up? Stop it!”

There was no reply. Quail was out of his seat, heading for the welder’s storage bin. In seconds, the scorching tide of power Willis had evoked from Jupiter’s orbital motion was due to arrive. We would be nothing but vapor. I could only think stupidly that the oxygen shortage couldn’t have worked so quickly!

I was too confused to do anything but follow after Quail, although time had run out.

There was a flash of light. I saw my shadow on the wall before me. I turned.

On the big screen was a new sun. The image was saturated white with a growing ball of superheated gas where the beacon had been. I glanced at the radiation meter, just a tiny bit above normal. The explosion hadn’t been nuclear. Quail walked to his station and touched a control.

“That was the beacon,” he said. “And our beam is gone.”

I looked, startled, and the indicators that had scared me senseless were sitting calmly at their neutral positions. Willis! What did he do? I turned to the hatchway. There he was, watching the screen with that same undecipherable expression on his face.

He looked at me and asked, “Have you checked on our friend?”

It took me a second to think of what he meant, then I reached for the radar. I found it after a minute, red hot and tumbling sunward. The Terran ship must have been sitting right on top of the beacon when it exploded.

“But how?” I asked.

“It was the beam,” Quail answered.

Willis nodded. “I set the inflection voltage as high as the projector would go and kept the beam thin for maximum backlash. When the beam hit Jupiter, the energy of a head-on collision started back at us. At the last minute, I opened the beam and cut our accumulator out of the circuit. The only convenient place for the energy to go was into the beacon’s accumulator.”

“And it couldn’t take it,” I finished.

“It took quite a bit, before it blew.” Quail smiled. “That ship won’t bother us again.” He faced Willis and held out his hand. “I see I was wrong about you. Will you accept my apology?”

Willis backed off, suddenly sullen. “None of you will ever understand.” And he walked out the door.

Quail looked hurt and confused. I had to do something. I dashed after him.

“Willis, I want to talk to you!” I stopped him at the head of the tube.

“Can you?” he asked. “At times I thought we talked, but it turned out we were just making noises at each other.”

“Willis, we both want to apologize for not understanding you. It was inexcusable for us to think that you would be any less loyal to the Belt than–”

“Oh, stop all this mishmash! Don’t bother to apologize. I haven’t changed and neither have you. You’ll think I’m a traitor again as soon as I say something you don’t understand.”

“No.” I didn’t want to lose him now. Not since he had shown what he could do. And what he would do. “We’ve seen what you did. We understand, now, that just because you talk differently about things, it doesn’t mean you are any different in what is inside you.”

“No! I’m not the same as you!” he screamed at me. I stepped back instinctively; Willis never screamed. But he suddenly blazed: “I can’t believe the lies you live by!” His voice abruptly dropped to a fatigued whisper. “Oh, how I wish I could.” He straightened and looked back at me with demon eyes. “Listen to me, Clement Ster. I’ll say this only once. I said before that you had no right to fight the Terrans. You condemned me for it. I say it again! You have no right.”

“But the beacon—the Terran ship?”

He grabbed my shoulder tight in his huge hand and shook me. “Listen, Ster! I had no right to destroy them. Neither do the Terrans have the right to take over the Belt. Rights don’t exist! There is only power and action. Your imaginary rights are only good for keeping people like you and Gren happy and righteous while slaughtering your enemies, if you can call that good.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but he shook me silent like a misbehaving child. “Understand me, Ster. I murdered the crew of that Terran ship, and I destroyed someone else’s beacon worth more than I could make all of my life. I did it because I had the power, and a fair chance of getting away with it. I did it purely for the selfish reason that I don’t want the Terrans controlling the Belt and running my life! Just the same as you would have—if you had been the one with the power.

“Don’t tell me about defending our sacred rights, and wars against the oppressor. As long as there are people, there will be men killing each other for property, for power, whatever. The winner will always have been just defending his rights. The losers are the criminals. It’s all fiction, Ster! If you have to kill somebody, then kill him. But don’t talk nonsense about rights!”

He stopped and I twisted out of his iron grip. He didn’t look as if he noticed, away in some place inside his head. I didn’t know what to do or say. I wished Quail were with me. I glanced back toward the control room, but there was no sign of him. I was alone.

“Clement,” Willis said, in an easy conversational tone, so unlike him, “those men in that ship. They lived all their lives under a government that promised them the right to life. And that government lied, ‘cause I just killed them! I wonder how big a slice of their souls their government charged for that politicians’ promise. Rights! Moral excuses and politicians’ lies.” He shook his head in amusement, then abruptly looked me directly in the eyes, pinning me in place. “Clement Ster, if you have to lie, steal, destroy, and murder, then do it! But then have the strength to take responsibility for what you do. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. He was like an elemental force. His words flared out at me. His eyes searched my face.

Then it was as if he clouded over. I was released. He seemed to be talking to himself, as if I were no longer there. “No. I can see that you don’t.” He reached for the hatch and started back down to his solitary room. “You will never understand. You will always believe in your rights—your wars—your holy causes. I wish I could.” His voice was pained as he whispered, “Oh, how I wish I could!”

Battle Cry, by Tim Sarnecki

Editor’s Introduction

Few soldiers willingly go to battle, yet go they must. Over the centuries leaders have discovered ways to lead men to the colors when the trumpets sound the call to arms. The best bring them expecting victory, for morale wins more battles than numbers. When Queen Boadicea led her Britons in revolt against Rome, Suetonius, with one Legion already destroyed and another forced into retreat, faced with his 7,000 Legionaries and 4,000 auxiliaries between 100,000 and a quarter of a million Celts. The cities of Colchester and London had already been burned. Every Roman citizen, man, woman, and child, that the Britons could catch had been slaughtered, many with studied cruelties.

One of the great moments in science fiction takes place in Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, when an old Roman centurion is dragged before a Galactic court. He faces technology so complex that it’s beyond magic. He has no real idea why he’s there. He does understand that he faces enemies. The enemies of Caesar, and, worse, of a Rome he has never seen; enemies who threaten everything he has lived for; and knowing that he cannot win, still he cries his challenge.

Suetonius led an army of such men; but he faced no mean foe. The morning of the battle, Queen Boadicea told her soldiers: “Win the battle or die. That is what I, a woman, will do. You men can live on in slavery if that is what you want.” Her army responded with a mighty cheer.

Suetonius’s speech has also been recorded. “Ignore the racket these savages make. There are more women than men shouting in their ranks. They are not soldiers. They are not even properly equipped. We’ve beaten them before. When they see our weapons and feel our spirit, they’ll break and run. Stick together. Throw your pila and push forward. Knock them down with your shields and finish them with your swords. Forget about loot. When we win you’ll have the lot.”

It wasn’t an eloquent speech by contemporary standards, but by nightfall more than 80,000 Britons were dead. The Romans lost 400 troopers.

Sometimes, though, the situation is greatly different. Leonidas at Thermopylae would never have made a long speech, because the Spartans didn’t do that sort of thing; but if he had…

Battle Cry

Tim Sarnecki

I’ve called my last challenge,
And made my last reply.
My rivals from a thousand wars
Have come to watch me die.
I gain my feet, and one last time,
Sing out my battle cry.

“Hail!” The foes before me;
“All hail, you ghosts of fools.
Your bloods run out upon the field
Where once you used these devils’ tools:

“This is my swift right arm,
Capped with this mighty hand
That wields the power of my sword,
With which I took a soldier’s stand.

“My strong left arm, a shield
To ward your every blow
But one, which ends my warring life;
But one, which lays the soldier low.

“But wait, these are but shades
Of my real weaponry.
They are but implements of war,
Entailments of my destiny.”

In death, above them is my heart,
Warrior spirit, burning hot,
For love of war’s rich panoply,
For spoils, glory, victory;
For swords upraised, the battle cry;
For this, I lived; for this, I die.

I’ve called my last challenge,
And made my last reply.
My rivals from a thousand wars
Have come to watch me die.
To them, I raise my last salute;
For them, this one last battle cry.

Test for Tyrants, by Edward P. Hughes

Editor’s Introduction

In previous volumes we told the story of the Irish village of Barley Cross after World War III devastated the Earth, and rendered most of the men sterile.

Barley Cross was conquered by a tyrant: Patrick O’Meara, onetime sergeant of Her Majesty’s Forces, brought his tank to the village and proceeded to buiid the fortress he called the Fist; after which he proclaimed himself Duke of Connaught, Master of the Fist, and Lord of Barley Cross. As lord he took it on himself to lead the town militia in raids to recover aspirin, antibiotics, and other supplies, so that soon the town was indeed independent.

He also imposed other customs. In an era when nearly all the men were sterile, Patrick O’Meara wasn’t; and thus came about the revival of droit du seigneur; a duty that O’Meara apparently enjoyed to the day he died. Of course, O’Meara wasn’t married.

His successor certainly was.

Test For Tyrants

Edward P. Hughes

Liam McGrath lay beside his sleeping wife, trying to plan. Already, dawn brightened the corners of the bedroom. In a few hours, Father Con would be saying the words to make Brege O’Malley wife of Christie Kennedy—and thus pose a problem for the new Lord of Barley Cross.

Liam shifted restlessly. What would the O’Meara have done about it? Liam recalled very clearly what the previous master had done after his, Liam’s, wedding. But the O’Meara had ruled Barley Cross for longer than Liam could remember, and Liam, fresh to the job, could not hope to match such expertise.

At six o’clock he reached a decision, and got up. He dressed without disturbing Eileen, and slipped out of the Fist by the bedroom window and the secret path through the kitchen garden.

At the foot of the hill, he turned river-wards, making for a lonely cabin that stood just off the track leading down to McGuire’s mill. It was light enough to see that he had the road to himself. A raw wind blew promising rain. Typical Connemara wedding day, Liam reflected.

The cabin was in darkness. He rapped, not loudly, but persistently. A light flickered behind the curtains, a bolt rasped, the door opened an inch.

“It’s me, Liam,” he hissed. “I need your help, Katy.”

He heard a sigh of exasperation. “Liam McGrath—you may be our new master, but it doesn’t give you the right to get an honest whore out of bed at six in the morning.”

“Let me in,” he pleaded. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

He caught a giggle. “Well, so long as it’s only talk you want.”

A chain rasped, and the door opened wide enough to admit him. Kate Monaghen, in curlers and a red flannel nightie, peered at him in the lamplight. “You’ll be getting a worse name than the O’Meara,” she warned. “At least he abstained from commercial fornication.”

Liam closed the door behind him. “No one saw me, Katy.” He shrugged off the overcoat he had draped over his shoulders. “I put this on to alter me appearance.”

She set the oil lamp on a table. “If you think that old rag can hide our new master–”

He sat down, breathing heavily. “Can’t be helped, Katy. I had to see you. I need your help.”

She said, “I’ll put the kettle on. We’ll have a sup of tay while you tell me your troubles.”

As she poured, he blurted out, “Brege O’Malley gets wed today. And I’ve got to do my droit du seigneur thing with her tonight.”

“Droyt doo what?”

He explained.

She raised her eyebrows. “Sure, that shouldn’t be a difficult job for a fine upstanding young felly like yerself.”

He sighed, seeing suddenly a vision of Brege O’Malley. Saint Brege, the Ice Maiden, they had christened her as children. Twelve months younger than Liam, she, Christie Kennedy, and the other educable infants of Barley Cross at that time had squeezed together into the too-small desks of Celia Larkin’s one-room school. Brege, even then, had affected piety—wearing below-the-knee skirts, aping the habits physical and moral of the nuns she claimed she would have joined, had there been a convent handy.

“Well?” It was Katy, bringing him back to the present.

He lifted his head. Now that he needed to keep awake, it was a job to hold his eyes open. He began diffidently: “I– er–” The trouble was, Katy Monaghen might be one of those Barley Cross citizens, like his stepfather, who accepted all they were told about the master. He plunged on recklessly. “I don’t know how much you know about the master’s responsibilities—?”

A furrow appeared between her eyes. “I know enough to agree that you ought to get on with your droyts, if that’s what’s mithering you.”

Katy would, of course. Being a harlot, a droyt or two would be neither here nor there to her. He sighed. “It ain’t that, Katy. It’s what Christie Kennedy will want to do about it.”

“Bugger Christie Kennedy,” she snapped. “Just get your guards to throw him out if he shows up.”

Liam shook his head. “That would only make things worse. I’ve got to let him into the Fist and face him on my own. Try to talk him out of killing me.”

Her eyes opened wide. “Would he try to do that?”

Liam shrugged. “I tried to kill the O’Meara when I got wed.”

She said briskly, “Then you must kill Christie first.”

Liam groaned. “I can’t do that. If I took a life each time I tried to start one, I wouldn’t be much benefit to Barley Cross, would I?”

She nibbled at her bottom lip, studying him in silence. “So that’s the reason why the O’Meara bedded every bride in Barley Cross? Well, bloody hell! And what can I do to help you?”

Liam raised his eyes, face haggard. “Has Christie Kennedy ever visited you… in your professional capacity?”

Kate Monaghen regarded him archly. “Liam McGrath—would you be asking me to break my hypocritic oath? Sure all my business is confidential.”

His lip trembled. “Knock it off, Katy. I’m serious.”

She whispered, “And what if Christie did come to see me?”

“I—I could threaten to tell his wife.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Glory be to God! And on his wedding day, too! And you the lord of the village, who should be setting us all example!”

“You don’t understand, Katy,” he pleaded. “It’s only because I’m master that I have to blackmail him.”

She eyed him narrowly. “And just where would I come in?”

Liam peered around the edge of the curtain into the brightening daylight, as if half afraid that an eavesdropper crouched outside. He said, “I want you to come up to the Fist for the day.”

She stared. “And what would your wife say? She knows what I am. Sure, she wouldn’t let me past her front door.”

He wanted to contradict her, but knew it would be a waste of time. All Barley Cross knew that Kate Monaghen was a loose woman. The women tolerated her, as they tolerated the lewdness of the master, in grim silence. His Eileen would probably slam the door in Kate’s face.

He mumbled. “My wife won’t be there. She’s taking the baby and herself off to her mam’s for the weekend, so that, officially, she won’t know what goes on at the Fist.”

“Oh? And what does go on at the Fist?”

He moaned. “Christ, Katy—don’t you understand? I’ve got to take Brege O’Malley to bed, and try to get her in the family way. And Christie Kennedy will probably climb in through my bedroom window and do his damnedest to stop me.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I see. And just as he’s going to stick a knife into your pelt, I bust out of the wardrobe crying ‘Halt, Christie Kennedy! Or we’ll tell yer new wife all about the antics you got up to with me last summer’?”

“Something like that,” he agreed lamely. “It’s the best I can think of. The O’Meara would have had a smarter way of doing it, but I’m not the O’Meara.”

“And thank God for that!” Her eyes flashed angrily. “The O’Meara would never have taken me into his confidence. I may not set a shining example in the village—but I’m as loyal a citizen as any of ’em.”

He said, startled, “Then you’ll come?”

She flourished a fist. “Just tell me how to get past yer guards.”

General Desmond was hovering in the hall when Liam returned. “Where’ve you been?” he demanded ungraciously. “You’re supposed to be at the church by nine o’clock.”

“I’ve been attending to the master’s business,” Liam retorted, concealing his awe of fierce Larry Desmond, but still unsure how far he might verbally venture with the old soldier.

“I’ve an honor guard picked for your escort,” the general continued, as if Liam had not spoken. “Two of our smartest men, and a corporal to carry the presents and deliver the summons. We’re sending the bride a tablet of soap and a bottle of perfume, and the same to her ma. It’s more than usual, but we want to build you up as a generous tyrant.”

“So pleased–” Liam began.

“And Michael has pressed your uniform.”

Liam sensed his ears prick, like a rabbit’s. “Uniform? I have no uniform.”

The general smiled genially. “The O’Meara used to wear his old Coldstream Guards outfit at functions. If we pad the chest out a bit it’ll fit you good enough.”

“But I’ve never been in the army,” Liam protested. “I’m not even old enough to serve at the Fist.”

“Ach, away with you!” The general waved a carefree hand. “What’s the use of being master if you can’t bend the rules occasionally? You’ve got to look impressive today.”

Liam took a deep breath, knees quivering. It was now or never. Unless he intended to knuckle under to Larry Desmond for the rest of his life. “No uniform,” he stated firmly. “Positively no uniform. I’ll wear my best suit, if you like. But no uniform.”

General Larry Desmond’s white eyebrows bristled. “Now, listen here, young Liam!”

“Master!” Liam corrected, holding his lips firm. “Master of the Fist and Lord of Barley Cross.”

General Desmond looked straight at him, as if seeing Liam for the very first time.

Liam stared back, without speaking.

The general seemed to shrink slightly. “Okay, Me Lord,” he conceded. “No uniform. Your best suit will do nicely. And would you condescend to attend at the reception after? You need only stay for the meal and a couple of dances.”

“I’ll do that,” Liam agreed. “I’ll even wear some kind of badge or chain of office, if you can dream one up.”

Larry Desmond brightened. “Now, there’s an idea.” He rummaged in his pocket. “Pat used to wear an old medallion around his neck. I was keeping it as a souvenir.” He pulled the hand from his pocket and offered Liam a chain. “Perhaps you’d—?”

Liam took the chain, and examined the silver disk attached to it. One side of the medal bore the figure of Saint Christopher, the other the words P. O’Meara, Kilcollum, Connemara. Liam slipped the chain over his head. “Let’s call it my chain of office.”

“Thank you,” said Larry Desmond. “Maybe you’ll make a decent master yet.”

Liam arrived purposely late, and lingered at the back to the church. He was not keen to meet Father Con’s accusing eyes over the head of the bride he intended to force into adultery before the day was out.

Later, at the reception, he found himself given a seat of honor beside the bride’s mother, and was obliged to attempt polite conversation with Ma O’Malley.

She leaned confidentially toward him. “Will you be sending for our Brege tonight, Me Lord?”

Liam pondered the tone of her voice. Was she hoping that he’d say yes? Women were mysterious creatures. Since his accession, he had discovered more mild-looking, middle-aged matrons in Barley Cross who secretly approved of the O’Meara’s carnal excesses than he could have ever imagined. He murmured, “My corporal has the summons in his pocket. Will Brege be willing?”

Madame O’Malley eyed him coquettishly. “Don’t you be worrying about our Brege, Me Lord. I’ll see she’s willing. And if she ain’t, dammit if I don’t come up to the Fist meself in her place!”

Liam tried not to flinch. He sneaked a glance along the table to where Brege’s father, Pete O’Malley was tucking into turkey. Liam whispered, “I hope you don’t let Mr. O’Malley hear you make remarks like that. Not that you wouldn’t be welcome,” he added gallantly, “but it’s Brege’s turn this time.”

When Franky Finnegan struck up a waltz on his fiddle, Liam found the nerve to plunge into the prancing throng, his arms around his hostess. Ma O’Malley danced enthusiastically, as if determined not to waste an instant of the glory in the new master’s embrace. Liam sweated, counting beats under his breath, accommodating his stance to the O’Malley figure.

Two dances, Larry Desmond had stipulated. The next one, then, had to be with the bride. As Franky finished with a flourish, Liam released his partner and glanced around the floor.

The new bride stood momentarily alone, her husband heading for the bar. Liam excused himself, and headed toward opportunity. Franky struck up again, and he led the Ice Maiden, unexpectedly gorgeous in long white satin, onto the floor.

She murmured, “So kind of you to come to my wedding, Master. And thank you for the presents.”

Since fine quality toilet soap and French perfume had not been seen in Barley Cross for years, except on those occasions when the master showed his generosity, Liam reckoned she meant it. He cracked a grin. “Liam’s the name, Brege.”

She pouted. “But you are master too.”

“But still Liam McGrath,” he countered. “I hope I haven’t changed.”

She smiled nervously, nodding at the medallion. “Would that be your chain of office?”

He flicked it with his thumb. “It belonged to the O’Meara. General Desmond thinks I should wear it.”

“Then it is to show us you are the master?”

He was getting fed up with the way people harped on about it. He said curtly, “If you like.”

She lowered her head, her voice almost inaudible. “Does that mean you’ll be sending for me tonight?”

In his confusion, he trod on her foot. God! Was the Ice Maiden seeking a summons? He opened, then shut his mouth. Couldn’t ask questions like that. In a carefully neutral voice he asked, “Did you not get the summons yet?”

She shook her head, mute, waiting for him to invite her personally. He couldn’t speak. His tongue was swollen and dry. He scanned the crowd, seeking the corporal. When was the man supposed to deliver the summons, anyway? Had he forgotten it? And everyone wanting to know. The reception was turning into a bloody shambles. Liam choked, flushed, then managed to say, “Excuse me—got to see my corporal about something.”

He released her, casting aside manners and propriety, and pushed blindly off the dance floor. Damn everything! He couldn’t face Brege’s mute curiosity. He ran from the hall, ignoring the startled glances of other guests, heading for the Fist, hating Brege, hating General bloody Desmond, and most of all, hating himself.

He found the general in his parlor, with Kevin Murphy, the vet. The general waved cheerily. “You survived the ordeal, then, Me Lord?”

Liam held tight on to his temper. “Just when is that corporal supposed to hand over the summons?”

The general frowned in thought. “I told him to hang on until the ‘do’ had quieted a bit. Lot of people leave early. Didn’t want to upset too many folk if they didn’t like you emulating the O’Meara.”

“Oh!” Liam’s anger drained away. As usual, the general had acted for the best. “Well, he was still hanging on to it when I left, and the O’Malley women are going nuts waiting. I got the impression that Brege expects to be summoned. Her ma is all for it.”

The general nodded. “Just as well. If the young lady should refuse, you could clap her parents in jail until she changed her mind. We did that once, early on, Kevin—remember?”

Kevin Murphy nodded. “Niver a bit of trouble in Barley Cross after that. Might be a good idea to throw somebody into the cooler right now. Twould establish Liam’s authority for sure.”

The general rubbed his chin reflectively. “Young Kennedy might be a suitable candidate. It’d keep him out of the way, too.” The general considered Liam. “We can’t maintain a permanent guard on your bedroom, unfortunately. It could mean telling them too much. But if you have any trouble with young Kennedy, Kevin and I will be standing by. Just ring for Michael and we’ll come running.”

Liam hid his embarrassment. Thank goodness he had kept his feelings about the general to himself. He murmured, “Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll keep it in mind.”

A cool breeze wafted through the open window. Liam sat by the bed, one hand gripping the O’Meara’s heavy old revolver concealed beneath the counterpane. Christie Kennedy must surely have heard the news by now. Michael had reported the honor guard’s return over half an hour ago. Was Christie shirking it? He had always been a bit of a blowhard at school. But when your wife’s honor was in question…?

Something whizzed past Liam’s head, and struck the wall behind him. He turned in astonishment. The feathered butt of an arrow projected from the plaster. He swiveled back to discover Christie Kennedy astride his windowsill, a stretched bow in his hands, and an arrow lined up on Liam’s breast bone.

“Right, you bastard!” Christie gritted, swaying.

For a brief moment Liam considered, and rejected, the response the O’Meara might have made to that epithet. After all, both he and Christie were bastards. But Christie was drunk, and probably immune to reasoning.

Liam moved to face him, coughing to hide the clink of the chain mail he wore under his shirt. “What do you want, Christie?”

Christie Kennedy’s lip lifted in a sneer. “Only your signature on a bit of paper that says you cancel the summons your bloody corporal just gave my Brege.”

Liam pondered. Christie’s attention had to be diverted while he got the gun out of hiding. No arrow could penetrate his medieval underwear, but what if Christie aimed for the head? He needed outside help. Liam called softly, “Katy!”

The door to his private bathroom opened, and Katy Monaghen sauntered into the bedroom. She wore bright red brassiere and briefs. A black satin suspender belt supported a pair of black stockings that left on show the top six inches of her creamy thighs. A red satin rosette decorated her right knee.

“Hi, Christie!” she called.

“Jesus!” The arrow tip wavered. Liam had the gun out, covering him, but it was unnecessary.

Christie said thickly, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Kate Monaghen smiled sweetly. “I’m protecting our master from the attentions of ardent young hooligans like you.”

“And drop that bow, or I’ll blow your arse off,” Liam added.

Christie lowered the bow, as though in a dream, not even looking at Liam. “Why are you dressed like that, Katy?”

She minced toward the window, and took the bow from Christie’s nerveless fingers.

“Come on in!” Liam urged. “We want to talk to you.”

Dazedly, Christie got his other leg over the sill.

Kate said, “I thought it might remind you of old times, Christie.”

Christie dragged the heel of his thumb across his forehead, his eyes on Kate’s plump bottom as she turned to prop his bow in a corner. “Jesus!” he muttered. “I’ve drunk too much.”

“Is that where you got the nerve from?” Liam asked.

Kate flashed him a glance. “Cut that out, Liam. And put that gun away. It won’t be necessary.”

She turned back to Christie. “You’re all worked up about Liam’s droyt doo seenyer, aren’t you, lad? Would you sooner he ignored Brege? Especially when every bride in the village since the year dot has been honored by a summons to the master’s bed.”

“If you can call it an honor,” Christie mumbled slackly.

“Here, hold on!” Kate’s voice rose in protest. “Is that what you thought when you visited me last summer?”

“Ah—no!” Christie showed confusion. “That was different. I mean—I paid you.”

“Oh?” Kate registered surprise. “You mean, if Liam gives Brege money, everything will be all right?”

“No, I—I didn’t mean that.” Christie’s eyes rolled wildly. “You’re getting me confused, Katy.”

She sat down beside him on the window ledge. “Sure, ‘tis yerself is responsible, Christie boy.” She addressed Liam. “Could you lend us a spare bedroom—and a bottle? The lad’s worn out with excitement. He could do with a lie-down. I might even keep him company.”

Christie looked owlishly at Liam. “Do you think it’s an honor?”

Liam gazed back levelly, conscious that the day hung in the balance. He said, “I wouldn’t do it unless.” Suddenly inspired—since he hadn’t spoken to Christie’s mother—he added, “Just ask your ma what she thinks of it.”

Christie’s face sobered momentarily. “Can’t figure it out. My old lady is all for it. She told me not to do anything daft.”

Kate slipped a bare arm round his neck. “And you’re not going to, honey, are you? Not when your ma says you mustn’t.”

Liam pushed the revolver into his belt. “Wait here,” he ordered. “I’ll see if there’s a bed made up.” He didn’t dare ring for Michael and have Larry Desmond and Kevin Murphy charging in to the rescue. He jerked a thumb at the delicate inlaid cabinet across the room. “There’s a bottle and glasses in there, Katy. Would you offer our guest a drink?”

General Desmond wagged his head in reluctant approbation. “I dunno how you’ve done it, Me Lord, but you seem to have pulled it off.”

Liam grinned deprecatingly. “Well—” He had thought of fetching Kate Monaghen in the first place. “It was Kate who did it, really.”

Kevin Murphy’s glass clinked against the bottle. “And with luck, she’ll keep him quiet all night.”

Larry Desmond laughed. “It’s a change from the way Pat would have worked it. Kind of ironic, if Christie is giving Kate a tumble in one room while Liam–”

“That’ll do!” the vet warned. “If Celia were here you wouldn’t dare talk like that.” He grinned. “Still and all, young Christie won’t want to shout too loud in the morning.” He raised his glass. “Glory be, Larry—I think we picked a winner!”

Larry Desmond smiled sourly. “Let’s wait and see how he copes with the Ice Maiden. I reckon she’ll be a harder nut to crack.”

Liam closed the bedroom door behind them. The house was quiet. Brege Kennedy still wore her wedding dress. She stood silent in the center of the room, not looking at the turned-down bed, nor at the flowers in the vase on the dresser.

Liam rubbed his hands together nervously. “Would you like a drink, Brege?”

She shot him a pleading glance. “You know I don’t touch strong drink, Me Lord.”

He blinked. “It don’t have to be spirits. I could wake Michael to make us a sup of tay.”

“I think I would like that.”

He rang for the servant, then motioned to one of the well-padded armchairs. “Sit down, Brege. Make yourself comfortable.”

They sat in silence until Michael appeared. Then in silence again until he reappeared with teapot, milk jug, sugar basin, cups, and saucers on a silver salver. When he had gone, Liam cleared his throat, and stammered, “Look, Brege—this is no easier for me than it is for you.” It stole into his mind, then, that if they didn’t do it, no one would be any the wiser. And it would save both of them a deal of grief. And, of course, it would be cheating.

Brege gave him an angry look. “Then why do you insist on having me here?”

He was taken aback. “Hasn’t your ma told you?”

She lowered her face, staring at her hands on her lap. “My ma said I ought to come. She thinks it’s an honor.”

“Is that all she told you?” Liam was beginning to realize just how well the secret of Barley Cross was kept.

She frowned. “What else should she have said? That you’ll put her and me dad in jail if I don’t do what you want?”

“Ah—no, Brege. Something more serious than that.” Liam hesitated. It appeared to be his prerogative who got let into the secret. He said, “I’d better tell you, lass. I am the only fertile man in the village. If we don’t do it tonight, you’ll—you’ll never have any children. And if every bride refused to go to bed with me, in fifty years or so, Barley Cross would be a mausoleum.”

She was staring wildly at him. “But, Liam—it’s a sin! We’d be committing adultery!”

He winced. Hadn’t he known Saint Brege would come up with something like this? He said desperately, “If you weren’t really married, we wouldn’t. I don’t want to cast doubts on your marriage, but if a man isn’t able to consummate it—there’s no marriage. Ask Father Con.”

She bridled. “I can’t talk to Father Con about that kind of thing. Anyway, it’s only if a feller knows beforehand that he’s infertile that the marriage is invalidated.”

Liam said gently, “And we don’t want to find that out, do we? So if you do what I ask tonight, any child you might have could just as easy be Christie’s.”

She turned impulsively toward him. Tears were trickling down her cheeks. “Is it the truth you’re telling me, Liam McGrath?”

“So help me, God.” Liam crossed himself. “It’s all a plan the council cooked up, years ago. If your ma and my ma hadn’t gone along with it, neither you nor me would be here upsetting each other.”

“But why must it be you?” she pleaded. “Why not my Christie?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “It just so happens that Eileen is having another child. Tommy may have been the O’Meara’s, but this second one must be mine. It seems that I, out of all the lads in Barley Cross, have inherited the O’Meara’s peculiar genes.”

She sniffed. “What does your Eileen think of it?”

“She ain’t too happy,” he admitted. “But she’s agreed to put up with it for the same reasons everybody else does.”

Brege dabbed her eyes with a scrap of linen. “Do we do it just the once?”

“So far as I know,” he said gently. “If you don’t conceive—it’s just your bad luck.”

She peeped up, hiding her face behind the handkerchief. “I’m shy, Liam. I’ve never done it before.”

He sighed with relief. He was over the hurdle. It was now just a matter of patience and understanding. Barley Cross would never know its luck. He said gently, “I’ll show you how.”

She took a quick sip at a cup of cold tea. “Could we have the light out, please?”

The full council met in Liam’s parlor the following day. Brege Kennedy was safely away to the new house her husband’s da had built for her—and where she would find her new husband snoring in the bed. Kate Monaghen was safely back in her cottage down the mill lane, richer by a tablet of toilet soap and a bottle of French perfume. And Liam McGrath was hoping that his Eileen would not be too curious about the events of the previous night when she returned from her ma’s.

Liam straightened his hair, and joined the council.

General Desmond looked up. “Ah, Liam—you’ve come to report success, I hope?”

Kevin Murphy said dryly, “By the smirk on his face, I should imagine that he has.”

Liam said, keeping his voice even, “I did what was required.”

“Hark now!” The general lifted a finger. “Has he, or hasn’t he?”

Dr. Denny Mallon removed an empty pipe from his mouth. “The master just told us he has, General.”

The general wagged a finger. “But not in so many words, Doctor. What if he and our Ice Maiden decided to fool us all, and just pretend they’d done it? Not every marriage in the village is blessed with offspring. We’d never know they’d conned us.”

Liam glanced from one to the other. Obviously, they had already been discussing him.

Celia Larkin looked up from her knitting. “Are you accusing our new master of lying, Larry Desmond?”

The general’s jaw dropped. Histrionically, Liam divined.

“I never said so,” Larry Desmond protested. “I’d just prefer a more positive assurance than he has given us so far.”

The schoolmistress lowered her knitting. “If you’re wanting a blow-by-blow description of the exploit, you’ll have to manage without my presence.”

“Ah no, Celia.” Dr. Denny waved his pipe. “That ain’t necessary. If Liam says the job’s done, then done it is.”

“Hold on now!” Kevin Murphy sat up straight. “If the job’s been done, then surely Liam can tell us something that would prove he’s handing us the truth. Something maybe Denny, here, could confirm. Has the lady a mole on her person, for instance?”

Four pairs of eyes turned on Liam. He shifted his feet uneasily. “Sure, she insisted on the light going out,” he protested.

General Desmond cackled harshly. “Wouldn’t you know there’d be a snag? I had a feeling that the Christie victory was just a flash in the pan.”

“That’s quite enough, Larry Desmond,” Celia Larkin snapped. “You agreed to his being made master. If you trusted him then, why can’t you trust him now?”

Why not indeed, Liam agreed silently. But then, the general hadn’t been faced by a tyro tyrant refusing to wear a uniform until yesterday. And when puppets don’t work properly you lose faith in them.

“Enough!” Denny Mallon exploded. “Let the master be!” He turned to Liam. “Tell them, son!”

Liam made sheep’s eyes at the doctor. “But it’s her secret! Brege will never forgive me if I let it out.”

“Tell us what?” demanded the general. “Have you two been cooking something up between you?”

“Tell them!” thundered the doctor. “They’ll never be satisfied until they know.” He glowered around the room, as if daring anyone to contradict him. “And, remember—anything said at this council meeting is as inviolate as the confessional.”

Liam shook his head in disgust. So much for promises made in the dark. Poor Ice Maiden! Her secret divulged to protect the master’s probity.

Reluctantly, he told them: “Brege Kennedy has a deformity she don’t like anyone knowing about—except people like Dr. Denny, who have to know. Brege isn’t cold, nor pious, nor shy. It’s just she has knock-knees.”

The Roman Centurion’s Song, by Rudyard Kipling

Editor’s Introduction

Queen Boadicea lost her final battle in her revolt against Rome, but the result was not what she had feared. Rome came to conquer, but there remained remnants of the old notion that the mission of Rome was “to protect the weak and make humble the proud.” Rome didn’t exterminate the Britons; instead, the Britons became Romans, and more important, Romans became British. They came as conquerors and remained as protectors. Then, three hundred years later, barbarians swarmed through Europe, and the Legions withdrew from Roman Britain. Kipling tells of one Roman officer ordered “home.”

The story is also told in Stephen Vincent Benet’s The Last of the Legions; and peripherally in the brilliant new series The King of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson.

The Roman Centurion’s Song

Rudyard Kipling

ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN, A.D. 300

Legate, I had the news last night—my cohort ordered home
By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.
I’ve marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:
Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go!

I’ve served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall.
I have none other home than this, nor any life at all.
Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near
That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.

Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done;
Here where my dearest dead are laid—my wife—my wife and son;
Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love,
Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove?

For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice.
What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies,
Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze—
The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June’s long-lighted days?

You’ll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and olive lean
Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean
To Arelate’s triple gate; but let me linger on,
Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon!

You’ll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending pines
Where, blue as any peacock’s neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines.
You’ll go where laurel crowns are won, but—will you e’er forget
The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet?

Let me work here for Britain’s sake—at any task you will—
A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill.
Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep,
Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep.

Legate, I come to you in tears—My cohort ordered home!
I’ve served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome?
Here is my heart, my soul, my mind—the only life I know.
I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

The Islanders, by Rudyard Kipling

Editor’s Introduction

We have legends of the time after the Legions departed and a Romanized Briton called Artorius was named Dux and charged with protecting the land from the Saxons. Arthur failed, and the Saxons were supreme, to be conquered in their turn by the Danes, then the Normans under William. Norman and Saxon and Celt fused into one people who proudly gave the world the notion of ordered liberty; and built an empire on which the sun never set. By the beginning of the twentieth century it was clear that the British Empire, like the Roman, would bring peace and order to the world. Empire has a price, though; and secure behind the shelter of the English Channel, the Islanders were unwilling to pay it. In 1902 Kipling thought it worth while to warn his people that wealth and laziness do not last long in this world.

It is a lesson that each nation, each generation, must learn in its own way; for the new Islanders of the United States seem to have forgotten.

The Islanders

Rudyard Kipling

No doubt but ye are the People—your throne is above the King’s.
Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things:
Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear—
Bringing the word well smoothen—such as a King should hear.

Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas,
Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease;
Till ye said of Strife, “What is it?” of the Sword, “It is far from our ken”;
Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men.

Ye stopped your ears to the warning—ye would neither look nor heed—
Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above their need.
Because of your witless learning and your beasts of warren and chase,
Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields for their camping-place.

Ye forced them glean in the highways the straw for the bricks they brought;
Ye forced them follow in byways the craft that ye never taught.
Ye hampered and hindered and crippled; ye thrust out of sight and away
Those that would serve you for honour and those that served you for pay.

Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed,
At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field.
Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land’s long-suffering star),
When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplings went to the war.

Sons of the sheltered city—unmade, unhandled, unmeet—
Ye pushed them raw to the battle as ye picked them raw from the street.
And what did ye look they should compass? Warcraft learned in a breath,
Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death?

So? And ye train your horses and the dogs ye feed and prize?
How are the beasts more worthy than the souls, your sacrifice?
But ye said, “Their valour shall show them”; but ye said, “The end is close.”
And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them harry your foes:

And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye flaunted your iron pride,
Ere—ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride!
Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls
With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals.

Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie,
Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the months go by
Waiting some easy wonder, hoping some saving sign—
Idle—openly idle—in the lee of the forespent Line.

Idle—except for your boasting—and what is your boasting worth
If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth?
Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set,
Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forget

It was not made with the mountains, it is not one with the deep.
Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep.
Men, not children, servants, or kinsfolk called from afar,
But each man born in the Island broke to the matter of war.

Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the same,
Each man born in the Island entered at youth to the game—
As it were almost cricket, not to be mastered in haste,
But after trial and labour, by temperance, living chaste.

As it were almost cricket—as it were even your play,
Weighed and pondered and worshipped, and practiced day and day.
So ye shall bide sure-guarded when the restless lightnings wake
In the womb of the blotting war-cloud, and the pallid nations quake.

So, at the haggard trumpets, instant your soul shall leap
Forthright, accoutred, accepting—alert from the wells of sleep.
So at the threat ye shall summon—so at the need ye shall send
Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end;

Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,
Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice…
But ye say, “It will mar our comfort.” Ye say, “It will minish our trade.”
Do ye wait for the spattered shrapnel ere ye learn how a gun is laid?

For the low, red glare to southward when the raided coast-towns burn?
(Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time to learn.)
Will ye pitch some white pavilion, and lustily even the odds,
With nets and hoops and mallets, with rackets and bats and rods?

Will the rabbit war with your foemen—the red deer horn them for hire?
Your kept cock-pheasant keep you?—he is master of many a shire.
Arid, aloof, incurious, unthinking, unthanking, gelt,
Will ye loose your schools to flout them till their brow-beat columns melt?

Will ye pray them or preach them, or print them, or ballot them back from your shore?
Will your workmen issue a mandate to bid them strike no more?
Will ye rise and dethrone your rulers? (Because ye were idle both?
Pride by Insolence chastened? Indolence purged by Sloth?)

No doubt but ye are the People; who shall make you afraid?
Also your gods are many; no doubt but your gods shall aid.
Idols of greasy altars built for the body’s ease;
Proud little brazen Baals and talking fetishes;

Teraphs of sept and party and wise wood-pavement gods—
These shall come down to the battle and snatch you from under the rods?
From the gusty, flickering gun-roll with viewless salvoes rent,
And the pitted hail of the bullets that tell not whence they were sent.

When ye are ringed as with iron, when ye are scourged as with whips,
When the meat is yet in your belly, and the boast is yet on your lips;
When ye go forth at morning and the noon beholds you broke,
Ere ye lie down at even, your remnant, under the yoke?

No doubt but ye are the People—absolute, strong, and wise;
Whatever your heart has desired ye have not withheld from your eyes.
On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving lies!

Another “Low Dishonest Decade” on the Left, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

Editor’s Introduction

It is an occupational habit for actors on the political stage to distort the truth, for reasons and in ways that vary with the nature of the power they hold. Autocrats, in direct control of all means of communication and expression, disguise the present and rewrite the past. Democrats, whose influence depends, happily, on their persuasiveness, expend so much energy trying to show their undertakings in the best possible light that they eventually lose the habit of thinking about the issues’ substance. Their skill in presenting their case almost entirely replaces their interest in the facts. So that in free societies the past is sometimes misrepresented, not, as in slave societies, by crude censorship and lies, but suavely, through legitimate persuasion and the free propagation of an adulterated or entirely bogus version of an event. With repetition, this version joins the body of accepted ideas, those the masses believe; it acquires the status of truth, so firmly that hardly anyone thinks of checking the original facts for confirmation.

—Jean-Francois Revel, How Democracies Perish, Doubleday, 1983

Democracies perish because no one defends them. The public no longer heeds the call to arms. Why fight for a corrupt regime? It is immoral to think of the enemy’s sins; we must concentrate on our own. The call to arms is sounded, but few answer.

Peter Cottier and David Horowitz understand this all too well. Co-authors of The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty and The Kennedys: An American Drama, they founded Ramparts magazine and were leaders of the antiwar movement in the sixties. They have much to say about the lessons of that time.

Another “Low Dishonest Decade” on the Left

Peter Collier and David Horowitz

We first became involved with the New Left—that movement which eventually degenerated into the devious and dishonest Left of today—at the end of the 1950s, a time when McCarthyism was dying and a new radical movement was struggling to be born in demonstrations against the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The “end of ideology” had ended; Khrushchev had admitted that what a previous generation of leftists had regarded as “anti-Soviet lies” about Stalin’s crimes had actually been true. What attracted us to this new political atmosphere was the opportunity to be leftists in a new way: not as the servile agents of a foreign power, but as members of an indigenous radical movement. Along with other early New Leftists, we regarded members of the Old Communist Left as figures to be scorned—people who were (in both meanings of the term) boring from within: intriguers with a discredited intrigue who always lurked on the fringes of our meetings, trying to find a group, any group, they could infiltrate.

The New Left saw itself as a movement which would design its own future—a sort of activist American-studies curriculum. The phrase “participatory democracy” captured its intention to make the promise of America real. Its first campaign—for civil rights—was based on a belief in this promise. Ultimately the Vietnam war provided the occasion for this optimism to ferment and then to sour. The speed with which the New Left became disaffected from the country and from its own early ideals, and the fact that this happened with so little resistance, suggests that the movement had a split personality from the outset—one part believing in America and the other not believing in anything. Ruminating about the instant alienation of the New Left, Paul Goodman, one of its earliest mentors, thought that its leading characteristic was a “loss of patriotic feeling.” He wrote: “For the first time… the mention of country, community, place, has lost its power to animate. Nobody but a scoundrel even tries it.”

That loss of patriotic feeling led the New Left to declare war against America, matching every escalation in Vietnam with an escalation of its own in the conflict at home. Sympathy for America’s alleged victims developed into an identification with America’s real enemies. By the end of the ‘60s participatory democracy was a language no longer spoken on the Left. The slogans changed. “Bring the boys home” became “Bring the war home.” The organizations changed, too. In 1969, a year after Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)—the heart of the New Left—had converted to Marxism-Leninism, its convention broke into various factions chanting the names of Chairman Mao and Uncle Ho, dictators of China and North Vietnam who had become its household gods.

In its later, rococo phase some members of the New Left dallied with the Soviet Union, revising our earlier revisionism. (Deep in his Black Panther period, Eldridge Cleaver claimed that Stalin was “a brother off the block,” while Trotsky was a “white bourgeois intellectual.”) But for the most part this dalliance was nothing more than rhetorical posturing, and the Soviets remained stigmatized.

Not so the romantic revolutionaries of the Third World. SDS delegations met with the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Cuba and Czechoslovakia as well as North Vietnam, and agreed to collaborate with their war effort by providing propaganda advice and orchestrating a campaign to demoralize American troops in the field and to create disorder and disruption back home. Anti-war activists with Old Left politics like Cora Weiss and guilty liberals like Reverend William Sloane Coffin went to Hanoi to second the cause. After visiting American POW’s whom the Communists had tortured, they assured the world that American prisoners were being treated well. In 1969 a group of radicals, including the SDS leader Bernardine Dohrn and the prominent Castro apologist Saul Landau, traveled to Cuba where they met with Vietnamese officials and also launched the “Venceremos Brigades.” The ostensible reason for this effort was to help with the Cuban sugar harvest. The real reason was to map out strategies for war in America, the “other” war which would ultimately defeat the United States in a way that the battlefield situation in Vietnam never could have done.

As editors of Ramparts, then the most widely read magazine of the New Left, we were dubious about the totalitarian enthusiasms of people like Weiss, Landau, and Dohrn. When confronted with these tendencies we argued against them. One almost amusing “struggle session” occurred when, shortly after the return of the Venceremos Brigades, members of the pro-Castro North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) came into our offices with an article. It purported to be a report on the progress of “socialist democracy” in Cuba, focusing on the recent passage of an anti-laziness law as evidence of the “people’s rule” and claiming that some three million Cubans, about half the population, had actively participated in the making of this law. We asked the obvious question: if the civic involvement was this high, why was the law necessary? In the confrontation that followed, NACLA members told us that, because of our “white skin privileges,” we had no right to question anything Third World revolutionaries did. In the words of one of the NACLA spokesmen, “You should do your revolutionary duty. Print the piece and shut up about it.”

But while we rejected the crude propaganda of people we regarded even then as Castro’s agents, we did provide a platform in 1969 for the more sophisticated apologetics of Susan Sontag, who catechized our readers on “The Right Way (For Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution.” The issue of Ramparts in which this piece appeared accurately captured the ethos that had come to prevail in the New Left. Over the cover photograph of a wholesome six-year-old carrying a Vietcong flag were these words: “Alienation is when your country is at war and you want the other side to win.”

Like most of the Movement, we presumed that a Vietcong victory would mean a peasant Utopia in Southeast Asia. But we were less concerned with what happened in Vietnam than with making sure that America was defeated. A fundamental tenet of our New Leftism was that America’s offenses against Vietnam were only a fraction of its larger imperial sins. We shared with most others on the Left its most implausible and destructive myth: that America had become rich and powerful not by its own efforts but by making the rest of the world impotent and poor.

To force America’s global retreat had become for us the highest good and we were willing to accomplish this end, in one of the odious catch phrases of the day, “by any means necessary.” Our most significant opportunity came when we developed a contact with a young man who had just quit a job as a cryptanalyst with the National Security Agency (NSA) because of his disillusionment with the Vietnam war. At the time, few people knew anything about this top-secret agency which processed some 80 percent of the intelligence the U.S. gathered. Prodding our “defector,” we developed an article that described the operations of the NSA in detail and also revealed its capabilities for deciphering Soviet codes, then one of the most deeply embedded of all American intelligence secrets and one whose revelation would have profound consequences.

Although we gave scarcely a second thought to the moral implications of printing the article, we did worry about the legal risks we faced. The defense team working for Daniel Ellsberg (who was on trial for the theft of the Pentagon Papers) recommended that we talk to Charles Nesson, a Harvard professor of law and an expert on the Constitution. Nesson advised us that if we printed the article, and in particular the secret code words it contained, we would be in clear violation of the Espionage Act. But he added that in order to prosecute us, the government would have to reveal even more information about the NSA’s secrets than was contained in the article itself, and for this reason it was extremely unlikely that we would ever be indicted.

We thus learned the lesson other radicals would learn: the freedoms of America could be used to subvert American freedom. We printed the article. We were not prosecuted. Instead we were rewarded with a good deal of media attention, including a front-page story in the New York Times. It was our biggest scoop. We had considered ourselves “better” than the Castroite hacks at NACLA and the Weathermen crazies trying to work themselves up to acts of terrorism. But like others present at the creation of the New Left who had begun the ‘60s asking America to be better, we had ended the decade committing acts of no-fault treason.

The government we had sought to undermine might be unable or unwilling to punish us, but history would not be so kind. After America’s defeat in Vietnam the New Left was presented with a balance sheet showing the consequences of its politics. New Left orthodoxy had scorned the idea that the war was at least partly about Soviet expansion, but soon after the American pullout, the Soviets were in Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay and had secured the rights to exploit the resources of Indochina in unmistakably imperial style. Other things we had claimed were impossible were also now happening with dizzying velocity. Far from being liberated, South Vietnam was occupied by its former “ally” in the North. Large numbers of “indigenous” revolutionaries of the NLF whom we had supported were in “political reeducation” camps set up by Hanoi or taking their chances on the open seas with hundreds of thousands of other Vietnamese refugees fleeing the revolution in flimsy boats. In Cambodia two million peasants were dead, slaughtered by the Communist Khmer Rouge, proteges of Hanoi and beneficiaries of the New Left’s “solidarity.” It was a daunting lesson: more people had been killed in three years of a Communist peace than in thirteen years of American war.

For some of us, these events were the occasion for a melancholy rethinking which ultimately led to our retirement from the Left. But for many of our former comrades, there were no second thoughts. For this group, the Communist victory in Indochina provided an opportunity to prove the mettle of their faith and to rededicate themselves to the long-term objectives of a struggle which they believed had only just begun.

Two years after the fall of Saigon, in fact, an event took place that marked the passing of the torch of revolution from one generation of the Left to another. Appalled by the ferocity of the new rulers of Indochina, Joan Baez and other former anti-war activists reentered the political arena with “An Appeal to the Conscience of Vietnam.” In criticizing Hanoi and calling for an end to the repression, the signers of the “Appeal” challenged the remnants of the New Left to live up to the standards of social justice it had advocated for so many years.

Rejection of this plea was swift and decisive. A counter-ad in the New York Times paid for by Cora Weiss, the heiress who had come to function as a sort of bankbook for Left causes during the 1970s, was signed by a list of former anti-war notables, including figures like Dave Dellinger of Liberation magazine and Richard Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies, who reaffirmed their solidarity with the Communists by subscribing to phrases such as this one: “The present government of Vietnam should be hailed for its moderation and for its extraordinary effort to achieve reconciliation among all of its peoples.”

To outsiders, the appearance of these two statements might have seemed a prelude to a struggle for the soul of the Left. But as insiders we recognized that the issue had already been decided. The chastened radicals who signed the Baez “Appeal” were defeated; there was no longer any ground on the Left that they could occupy. Those who stood ready to support Communist Vietnam and, by implication, similar governments elsewhere in the Third World, had won almost by default. Their declaration was thus more than a rebuff of the attempt to hold revolutionary movements accountable for their deeds; it was a manifesto for the successors to the New Left. Sympathizing with and supporting America’s enemies, only a tendency before, would become the dominant characteristic of the post-Vietnam Left.

The personality of this reconstituted Left was further adumbrated in the late 1970s by the rehabilitation of the American Communist party. Books such as Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism and film documentaries like Seeing Red remembered Stalin’s most servile followers as admirable old warriors who had fought the good fight and stayed the course, and who thus might be worthier models in the long struggle ahead than the New Left, which had burned itself out with its theatrics and its need for immediate gratification.

This romanticizing of Stalinist hacks was counter-pointed by the return of Stalinist fronts to the American political scene. By 1979 the World Peace Council, originally created by Stalin in 1949, was once again operating on the American Left. Its American offshoot, the U.S. Peace Council, was holding conferences attended not only by what was left of the Left but also by Senators and Congressmen. The pro-Soviet sycophancy of the Communist party kept its numbers small; but the new spirit of acceptance allowed its influence to grow. Communists became stylistically influential, reintroducing the linguistic and organizational deviousness of the Popular Front period of the late 1930s that made it hard to know what words meant and harder yet to identify the allegiances of those who spoke them.

While the New Left had announced its birth from a university campus, its post-Vietnam successor seemed almost to trumpet its intrinsic hypocrisy by organizing itself in New York’s Riverside Church, built by John D. Rockefeller fifty years earlier as a headquarters for liberal Protestantism. Among the architects of the declaration with which the reconstituted Left was launched were William Sloane Coffin, newly appointed minister of Riverside, and his patron, the ubiquitous Cora Weiss, head of the Church’s Disarmament Program.

Sloane Coffin had become a representative figure in the effort to forge an alliance between the churches and the Third World, one of those who brought the gospel of “liberation theology” and its notion of a Marxist God enjoining the faithful to establish a Communist heaven on earth by supporting revolutionary movements, denned as the “essence of Christian faith.” Defending his own covenant with the dictators in Hanoi, for example, Coffin advised an interviewer that “Communism is a page torn out of the Bible” and that “the social justice that’s been achieved in… North Vietnam [is] an achievement no Christian society on that scale has ever achieved.”

While Coffin articulated the “new morality” of the post-Vietnam Left, Cora Weiss was in a sense more typical as well as far more influential than he. Drawing on a $25-million family fortune inherited from her father Sam Rubin (in his own time an old-line Communist), she had helped fund NACLA, which was continuing to promote the cause of Castro. In addition, she was the leading backer of the Institute for Policy Studies which by the late 1970s had become the heart of a secondary system of institutional lobbies whose programs had elicited the sponsorship of more than fifty members of Congress and whose influence spread from Capitol Hill to the Carter administration itself.

As head of the Riverside Church Disarmament Program, Weiss played a leading role in the opposition to American efforts to neutralize the vast Soviet military buildup of the ‘70s. Her work focused on exposing the “myth” of a Soviet threat. Richard Harriet, a co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies and its resident “expert” on strategic affairs, called the idea of such a threat “the big lie of our times.” In May 1979 Weiss herself described it as a “hereditary disease transmitted over the past sixty years.”

Barely six months after this aperҫu was delivered, the Soviets assassinated the head of state in Kabul and launched a massive and eventually genocidal invasion of Afghanistan. Weiss’s Disarmament Program at the Riverside Church responded by declaring: “Any form of U.S. intervention, escalation of a military presence or an increase in the defense budget is unnecessary and inappropriate… Russia’s challenge continues to demand restraint, study, and understanding.” In other words, the invasion was merely a “defensive” response to American pressure. Instead of focusing their attention on the Soviet action in Afghanistan, members of the “peace movement” should look at what the U.S. had done to “poison relations between the two superpowers.”

This failure to oppose Soviet aggression or recognize the Soviet threat showed the distance traveled since the early days of the New Left when the malignity of the USSR was a given. It also showed how far the Soviet Union had come in rehabilitating itself since the revelations of Khrushchev, which had destroyed the orthodoxy that held party vanguards in line and controlled the popular fronts. The post-Vietnam era had become a time of new opportunities for the Soviets, an extended school at which Fidel Castro, although dependent on them for a subvention of some $10 billion a year to keep his island afloat, became their most important political teacher.

Castro saw that the American Left, still wary of the USSR, could be made to promote Soviet aims indirectly because of its ties—affective even more than political—with him, ties that would survive his support of the invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan a decade later. At the same time he was making Cuba’s economy an appendage to the USSR’s and its intelligence service and military forces instruments of the Soviet state, Castro began the creation of what amounted to a new version of the old Communist International, a new Comintern.

A revolution throughout the hemisphere had always been Castro’s ambition, but through the mid-’60s the cautious Soviets had been wary of what they regarded as “reckless adventurism” sure to provoke an American response. Two events changed their attitude. The first was the American defeat in Indochina and the crucial role which internal opposition had played in forcing the U.S. withdrawal. Second were changes in the American Left itself, foremost among them the establishment of a Fidelista cadre. The Soviets saw that Castro’s charismatic hold over elements of the American Left was such that his adventurism might be less reckless than it had seemed earlier in his career.

Within months after the fall of Saigon, the Soviets began an unprecedented flow of arms to Cuba. By 1980 the flow had become a flood—ten times more military supplies in a single year than the total sent during the entire first decade of the revolution, when Castro presumably faced his greatest external threat. The massive arms buildup had only one purpose—to make Cuba the forward base of a new stage in Soviet expansionism. Castro played his part by dispatching 30,000 troops to anchor Soviet influence in Angola and Ethiopia.

But if Africa was the first front for the new offensive, Central America was always the ultimate prize. Castro had long been the patron of tiny guerrilla bands in Nicaragua and El Salvador whose leaders had been trained in Havana and Moscow and sometimes at PLO terrorist camps in Lebanon. Because he had survived U.S. animosity so long and studied American weaknesses so carefully, Castro better than anyone else understood the “Vietnam equation” which defined the new criteria for revolutionary success. It was not necessary for the Communists to win; it was necessary only for America to lose; and losing was defined by what went on in the domestic politics of the United States rather than on Third World battlefields.

When the Carter administration took office in January 1977, the Soviet bloc was faced with unanswered questions. How much weight could be given to the new president’s expressions of regret for American interventions of the past, or his determination to avoid “another Vietnam”? How vigorously would he pursue his new human-rights policy with regional dictators like Somoza who relied on U.S. support?

Factoring the answers to these questions into the “Vietnam equation” would determine revolutionary options and risk, and there was no Communist leader in the world who had better intelligence for arriving at an answer than Fidel Castro. In creating the Venceremos Brigades in 1969, Castro had placed them under the control of Cuban intelligence with results that were revealed later in the testimony of a Cuban defector:

“The Venceremos Brigades brought the first great quantity of information through American citizens that was obtained in the United States, because up to the moment when the brigades came into existence… the amount of information that we had on American citizens came from public sources, and it was confusing.”

In the changed political atmosphere after Vietnam, the networks which Castro’s loyalists had created now permeated the American political process. The co-founder of NACLA had even been appointed to the Carter administration as a member of the team that was shaping its policy on human rights.

As Jimmy Carter took office, Castro’s favorite Sandinista, Humberto Ortega, unveiled a new political strategy from his Costa Rican headquarters which bore the imprint of the master himself. An immediate Marxist revolution would be deferred in favor of a broad coalition with non-Marxist democrats whose announced goal was replacing the Somoza dictatorship with a pluralistic government. At the moment this tactic was adopted, the Sandinistas had been a minuscule force, barely 200 members and split into three antagonistic factions. But now, as part of a democratic coalition, they were able to launch a mass movement that soon challenged Somoza for power in Nicaragua.

By early 1979, when it was apparent that Somoza could not last, Castro summoned the guerrillas, still feuding among themselves, to Havana. There he created the nine-member comandante directorate with each of the three Sandinista factions represented. The Sandinista command unified, Castro made arrangements to provide them with the arms and military support that would allow them to defeat Somoza and, even more important, allow them also to steal the revolution from the mass movement they had ridden to success.

Once his proteges were firmly established in Managua, Castro turned his attention to El Salvador. Six months after the Sandinista victory, a new summons brought the heads of the five Salvadoran guerrilla factions to Havana where Castro persuaded them too to form a unified command. The new force that Castro created was called the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), after an agent of Stalin’s old Comintern. Until then, the Salvadoran guerrillas had been too isolated and weak to open a revolutionary front. But with Castro behind them, they laid plans to move from sporadic actions to a full-scale guerrilla war. In July 1980, the chairman of the Salvadoran Communist party, Shank Handal, a Salvadoran of Lebanese descent with strong ties to the PLO, embarked on a journey to Moscow and from there to Vietnam and other way stations in the Communist bloc. He returned with pledges of some 200 tons of arms to be shipped through Cuba with which the guerrilla forces could begin a “final offensive.”

But as the “Vietnam equation” had shown, organizing the guerrilla forces was only a part, and perhaps the smallest part, of what was required. It was also necessary to assemble what Trotsky had once described as the “frontier guards” of the revolution. Since Castro was preparing to unify the Sandinista command, his American allies had to rush to set up the guerrillas’ support system in the United States, using the “peace movement” as a base. Even before its founding had been officially announced, for example, the Communist-dominated U.S. Peace Council had joined forces with NACLA to stage a National Conference on Nicaragua in Washington. The purpose was to mobilize opposition against a potential U.S. “intervention” in Nicaragua. While claiming that they wanted to prevent “another Vietnam,” the organizers’ real purpose was precisely to achieve another Vietnam—by undermining any U.S. effort to counter the already massive Cuban investment aimed at turning Nicaragua into yet another Communist state.

The Nicaragua conference proved to be the first step in a long-term plan: the creation of an organizational shield behind which the cause of Communist revolution in the hemisphere could advance. The conference put a stamp of respectability on an organization called “The Network in Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua.” Started on U.S. college campuses by two Nicaraguan nationals acting for the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan Network soon became a national organization with chapters in hundreds of American cities and on campuses across the country. Its efforts led to a “Pledge of Resistance” signed by 70,000 Americans who declared themselves ready to undertake illegal actions to defend the Communist regime.

Acknowledging the importance of this activity, Sandinista Minister Tomas Borge declared: “The battle for Nicaragua is not being waged in Nicaragua. It is being fought in the United States.” But the Nicaragua Network was only one of an array of “issue-oriented” organizations from which—in true popular-front style—the friends of violent revolutions could speak to other Americans in the language of pacifism and humanitarianism. While the Nicaragua Network lobbied against aid to the anti-Communist contras to prevent “another Vietnam,” its movement comrades, working in allied organizations, were able to mobilize even greater support as champions of “human rights.”

One of the most potent of these “human-rights” groups was the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), created by Christian “liberationists” after the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile. WOLA’s director, Joe Eldridge, had been active in Chile as an Allende partisan, and WOLA’s first concerns about human-rights abuses were aimed squarely at the Pinochet regime. But in 1977, when Castro and his protégés began launching their new strategy in Nicaragua, WOLA also shifted its attention to Nicaragua, sponsoring public-relations tours to the U.S. by the Sandinista priests Ernesto Cardenal and Miguel D’Escoto, who rallied many Catholics here, including members of the Maryknoll order, to the cause of the “hemispheric revolution” and also to the attempt to convert Christ to Marxism. Led by its Nicaragua coordinator Kay Stubbs, WOLA also stepped up its campaign against human-rights abuses of the Somoza regime and lobbied the Carter administration to withdraw its support. After the Sandinista victory, Stubbs, who all the time had been a secret member of a Sandinista cell in Washington, D.C., left WOLA to join the new Marxist regime and the organization’s interest in human-rights abuses in Nicaragua all but disappeared. WOLA now began to focus on El Salvador, where its investigations into human rights were directed by a woman named Heather Foote, an American Marxist with strong political ties to the FPL faction of the guerrilla forces.

Although it had shifted its critical gaze elsewhere, WOLA’s solidarity with the Sandinistas remained as strong as ever. When contra aid lost in the Congress in 1984, a major factor was the report entitled “Human Rights Violations by the Contras” circulated under the auspices of WOLA to Congress and the press. However, WOLA had used its reputation as an independent “human-rights” organization to provide cover for a Sandinista stratagem. The investigation had been initiated—and the investigator Reed Brody selected—by the law firm of Reichler and Applebaum, registered representative of the Managua regime. Brody’s housing and transportation were supplied by the Sandinistas while he was in Nicaragua, and “witnesses” to contra atrocities were supplied by the security police. Before he departed with his report, Brody was provided with a photo opportunity which resulted in a snapshot showing him hugging Daniel Ortega.

The deception practiced by organizations like WOLA in behalf of the Sandinistas is also practiced against the Duarte government in El Salvador. In the spring of 1980, while the Salvadoran guerrilla leader Shafik Handal was traveling to Soviet-bloc countries in search of the weapons with which to begin his final offensive, his brother Farid arrived in New York to organize political support for the FMLN war. As Farid later described it, his mission was “the creation of the International Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.” CISPES, as the American branch of this international committee would be called, was to be modeled on the Nicaragua Network and would have direct links with the guerrilla forces and with parallel “solidarity committees” which the World Peace Council had created in sixteen countries around the world.

After touching base at Cuba’s UN Mission, Farid Handal went to Washington to meet supporters at the Institute for Policy Studies and WOLA. As he recorded in his journal (which was later found by authorities in Salvador in a captured guerrilla safe house), members of the Communist party in Washington, D.C. introduced him to Congressman Ron Dellums of California, who in turn arranged for him to meet with the congressional Black Caucus. Dellums provided other services. “Monday morning,” Handal wrote in his journal, “the offices of Congressman Dellums were turned into our offices. Everything was done there. The meeting with the Black Caucus took place in the liver of the monster itself, nothing less than in the meeting room of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.” Understanding that the opportunities laid before him would vanish if he spoke in the language of his brother Shafik, Farid noted that the guerrillas’ cause “should be presented with its human features, without political language, and, most importantly, without a political label.”

After Farid Handal had left the United States, CISPES was formally created by his American supporters. One of the organization’s first acts was to disseminate a “dissent paper” allegedly drafted by disaffected experts at the State Department and National Security Council who believed that further military aid to El Salvador would eventually force the U.S. to intervene there militarily and who had a “consensus” in favor of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the political arm of the FMLN guerrillas. Although the State Department denied its authenticity, the report was accepted as legitimate by several journalists, among them Anthony Lewis who wrote about it in the New York Times. Even after it had been established that the “dissent paper” was a forgery (there is evidence that it was one of many Soviet “active measures” planned by the KGB to create disinformation in the U.S.), CISPES continued to distribute it.

During the early 1980s, CISPES held press conferences and marched Salvadoran refugees allegedly fleeing “U.S.-sponsored terror” through Washington. The organization has also been effective in Congress. In the spring of 1985, its lobbying efforts enabled its congressional supporters on the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs to schedule hearings on the “air war” in El Salvador. The object of the hearings was to determine whether the strikes against the guerrillas hit civilian populations in violation of congressional certification conditions, which would be a cause to cut off U.S. aid. Eyewitness testimony was presented for this claim. One witness was Gus Newport, mayor of Berkeley and also vice chairman of the Soviets’ World Peace Council. Newport’s observations of the Salvadoran air war were supported by a written report submitted by Carlottia Scott, chief aide to Congressman Ron Dellums (who had shaped Newport’s mayoral career). Both Newport and Scott got their insights during a visit they had made to Berkeley’s “sister city” which was located inside the guerrilla zone.

Despite its tainted origins and its deceptive politics, CISPES has been able to mobilize support on hundreds of campuses across the country. Congressmen Dellums and Mervyn Dymally of California have written fund-raising letters for the organization, while Congressmen Edward Markey and Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and others have provided endorsements and moral support. With this kind of backing CISPES has become the most influential lobby against U.S. aid to the Duarte government—not only military aid, but food, medicine, and agricultural assistance. When it is not lobbying against aid to the Duarte government, CISPES is raising money to send to the FMLN guerrillas. The strategy of CISPES, in the words of one of its internal documents, is “to challenge U.S. policy; to disrupt the war effort, to polarize opinion, to inspire people to refuse to cooperate; to create divisions within Congress and every other institution… Each escalation of the war must bring a response more costly than the one before, precisely the Vietnam war phenomenon the administration is trying to avoid.” One of the slogans at a recent CISPES rally expressed the intention more succinctly: “Vietnam Has Won, El Salvador Will Win.”

We find it hard not to be ashamed of some of the things in which we were involved in the 1960s. Yet New Left radicals had a certain candor, reveling in their outlaw status and not trying to seem something politically they were not. That is not true today. W.H. Auden once called the radical ’30s a “low dishonest decade,” and the ‘80s are turning into another “low dishonest decade” on the Left. While the ’60s Left took its case to the streets, where its commitments could at least be examined, the members of today’s Left, exploiting the political process and the vulnerabilities of the two-party system, posture as respectable liberals who only want to make sure that there are no more Vietnams. “Liberal,” in fact, is the way the establishment media invariably describe the activities of organizations like CISPES and WOLA, and the coterie of Congressmen who consistently support Communist advances in the Third World.

Ron Dellums, whom we ourselves helped elect in 1970, is perhaps the most characteristic of these Congressmen. When his bill prescribing sanctions against South Africa was recently adopted by the House, for instance, a profile in the Washington Post portrayed him as “the outspoken liberal he has always been,” noted that a colleague had called him a “moral force for reordering priorities,” and quoted Dellums himself as asking, “If you carry controversial ideas in a controversial personality, how can you ever get anything done?”

His persona has changed somewhat from the days when he stood beside Black Panther party leaders Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver and harangued audiences with revolutionary rhetoric. When he was attacked in the early ’70s as a radical, Dellums did not shrink from the charge: “I am not going to back away from being a radical,” he said. “My politics are to bring the walls down.” But in the ’80s Dellums has changed the words if not the tune. He now speaks in the name of “peace” and “democratic values,” which in practice always seem to dictate attacking the United States and apologizing for the U.S.S.R. and other enemies of this country. Thus he travels abroad as an ornament for functions of the World Peace Council. Thus, too, when Carter sought to raise the defense budget after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Dellums was alarmed by the specter of a resurgent American “militarism” in response to an action taken by the Soviets “to protect their borders.” In a speech about this issue he said:

“This is the capitalist, monopoly capital structure at work, preparing now to draft eighteen-year-olds to go and fight to protect their oil while every one of them are taking in billions of dollars in profits…”

In his role as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Dellums is a passionate opponent of the use of American force. But he has different criteria for Communist dictatorships. When he traveled among the Marxist-Leninists of Grenada a few years ago, he did so as an open admirer of their revolution. His congressional office offered the Grenadan revolutionaries advice and encouragement. Writing strongman Maurice Bishop, for instance, Dellums’s administrative assistant Carlottia Scott described the Congressman’s attitude as follows:

Ron has become truly committed to Grenada, and has some positive political thinking to share with you… He just has to get all his thoughts in order as to how your interests can be best served… He’s really hooked on you and Grenada and doesn’t want anything to happen to building the Revo[lution] and making it strong. He really admires you as a person and even more so as a leader with courage and foresight, principles and integrity. Believe me, he doesn’t make that kind of statement often about anyone. The only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel.

When the Reagan administration became concerned by the presence of large numbers of “advisers” from the Soviet bloc on the island and by what seemed the military dimensions of the new airport the Cubans were constructing there, Dellums went off to Grenada to make his own observation. Upon his return he defended Grenada before the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs:

President Reagan characterized [Grenada] as a totalitarian Left government and… stated that Grenada “now bears the Soviet and Cuban trademark which means it will attempt to spread the virus among its neighbors.” Based on my personal observations, discussion, and analysis of the new international airport under construction in Grenada, it is my conclusion that this project is specifically now and has always been for the purpose of economic development and is not for military use… [I]t is my thought that it is absurd, patronizing, and totally unwarranted for the United States government to charge that this airport poses a military threat to the United States’ national security.

When American troops landed in Grenada the year after Dellums made this statement, they discovered a cache of official documents from the Marxist regime. Among them were the minutes of a Grenadan Politburo meeting which took place after Dellums had made his “fact-finding” trip, but before he had submitted his report to Congress. The minutes of this meeting state:

Barbara Lee [a Dellums aide] is here presently and has brought with her a report on the international airport that was done by Ron Dellums. They have requested that we look at the document and suggest any changes we deem necessary. They will be willing to make the changes.

At the same time Dellums was giving his report to the Marxist junta to edit before he presented it to Congress, an official of the Grenadan revolutionary government was disproving the Congressman’s central thesis. Another document retrieved after the liberation of Grenada was the notebook of Defense Minister Liam James. In an entry dated March 22, 1980, James had written: “The Revo[lution] has been able to crush counter-revolution internationally. Airport will be used for Cuban and Soviet military.”

In the 1960s the New Left colluded with totalitarian movements. But it was clear and candid, sometimes painfully so, about what it was doing. The post-Vietnam Left which has succeeded it not only colludes with totalitarianism but tries to delude people about its aims. It is always ready to believe the official Soviet lie, give the Soviets the benefit of the doubt, or, where the abuses are too great, at least to “understand” horrific Soviet acts as a legitimate reflexive fear of American power. On the other hand, it has an inexhaustible cynicism about American motives and a perpetual inability to locate America’s virtues. It is an “us/them” mentality in which “us” are the dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, and elsewhere in the Third World, while “them” is the United States. Thus, for example, to the Nation, a magazine which exemplifies this mentality, the hundredth birthday of the Statue of Liberty was, “Imperial Weekend”; but the seventh anniversary of Daniel Ortega’s Marxist coup a few months later was a moment to celebrate hemispheric “hope” and an occasion to engage in yet another solo performance of the Sandinista anthem, “The Yankee is the Enemy of Mankind.”

The post-Vietnam Left is effective because of its deceitful layering of the apparatus through which it works and also because it has found a way to support totalitarian movements while appearing to be interested only in improving America’s international morality. Its techniques of dissimulation and disinformation have worked. The Sandinistas’ lies about their intentions may be obvious enough when studied in retrospect, but their support network in the United States has been remarkably effective in promoting these lies in the nation’s political forums. The aims of the revolution that has seized control in Managua are not Nicaraguan in origin; the power that guides it lies in Havana and Moscow. The revolutionary ambition in Central America is not nationalist but imperialist in nature, with the goal of overthrowing the hemispheric system and substituting for it a gulag of interlocked Communist regimes. It is a goal shared by those who work in, and furthered whether wittingly or unwittingly by those who support, organizations like WOLA or CISPES. These people may use the language of American democracy, but for them, democratic politics is only a means; Vietnam has taught them that the neutralization of American power and the victory of Communist revolution comprise a single symbiotic act.

These “secret agents” of the revolutionary cause (to use Conrad’s term) fend off inquiries about their political attitudes by accusing their questioners of “red-baiting,” which suggests once again that the embalmed corpse of Joe McCarthy lies in state in the Left’s consciousness just as Lenin’s does in Red Square. But tolerance for unpopular ideas does not require ignoring political commitments that undermine our republic and strengthen its enemies. The time has come in the life of this nation to name these attitudes for what they are and to eliminate the taboos that prevent discussion of the dangers they pose.

The Last Article, by Harry Turtledove

Editor’s Introduction

The late Fletcher Pratt, discussing the way in which he selected events for inclusion in his magnificent The Battles That Changed History, said:

“The first criterion was that the war in which the battle took place must itself have decided something, must really mark one of those turning points after which things would have been a good deal different if the decision had gone in the other direction… the special genius of Western European culture when it takes up arms is that for really changing the course of history in battle, not merely arresting a movement, but completely altering its direction. The battles described did this, regardless of whatever subjective regrets one may have in the individual case.”

What Pratt asserts is that war matters; that those who say, “Violence never settles anything,” simply don’t know what they are talking about. He might be wrong, of course. Certainly many today believe he is, as so many did during that strange period between the World Wars, when the Oxford Union, after debate, solemnly carried the motion that “this House will not fight for King and Country.”

They did so in reaction to “militarism,” at a time when the National Socialists had introduced universal military service in Germany, and the Hitler Youth encompassed most German schoolchildren. (In the Soviet Union today, according to the Soviet press, the mandatory exercise known as “Summer Lightning/Little Eagle” annually instructs some 30 million children from age seven upwards through military drills designed to teach them how to fight and win wars—even nuclear wars.)

The Oxford Union acted at a time when the German war budget was soaring. (Soviet emigres estimate that the Soviet Union spends more than 20 percent of its GNP on the military; Andrei Sakharov puts that at 40 percent.)

The Oxford Union said that violence never settles anything; that wars are fought for nothing; that to answer the call to arms is to throw one’s life away for nothing.

Herewith historian Harry Turtledove and a future in which the Union’s philosophy carried the day.

The Last Article

Harry Turtledove

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

—Mohandas Gandhi

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.

—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The tank rumbled down the Rajpath, past the ruins of the Memorial Arch, toward the India Gate. The gateway arch was still standing, although it had taken a couple of shell hits in the fighting before New Delhi fell. The Union Jack fluttered above it.

British troops lined both sides of the Rajpath. They watched silently as the tank rolled past them. Their khaki uniforms were filthy and torn; many wore bandages. They had the weary, past-caring stares of beaten men, though the army of India had fought until flesh and munitions gave out.

The India Gate drew near. A military band, smartened up for the occasion, began to play as the tank went past. The bagpipes sounded thin and lost in the hot, humid air.

A single man stood waiting in the shadow of the gate.

Field Marshal Walther Model leaned down into the cupola of the Panzer IV. “No one can match the British at ceremonies of this sort,” he said to his aide.

Major Dieter Lasch laughed, a bit unkindly. “They’ve had enough practice, sir,” he answered, raising his voice to be heard over the flatulent roar of the tank’s engine.

“What is that tune?” the field marshal asked. “Does it have a meaning?”

“It’s called ‘The World Turned Upside Down’,’” said Lasch, who had been involved with his British opposite number in planning the formal surrender. “Lord Cornwallis’s army musicians played it when he yielded to the Americans at Yorktown.”

“Ah, the Americans.” Model was for a moment so lost in his own thoughts that his monocle threatened to slip from his right eye. He screwed it back in. The single lens was the only thing he shared with the cliched image of a high German officer. He was no lean, hawk-faced Prussian. But his rounded features were unyielding, and his stocky body sustained the energy of his will better than the thin, dyspeptic frames of so many aristocrats. “The Americans,” he repeated. “Well, that will be the next step, won’t it? But enough. One thing at a time.”

The panzer stopped. The driver switched off the engine. The sudden quiet was startling. Model leaped nimbly down. He had been leaping down from tanks for eight years now, since his days as a staff officer for the IV Corps in the Polish campaign.

The man in the shadows stepped forward, saluted. Flashbulbs lit his long, tired face as German photographers recorded the moment for history. The Englishman ignored cameras and cameramen alike. “Field Marshal Model,” he said politely. He might have been about to discuss the weather.

Model admired his sangfroid. “Field Marshal Auchinleck,” he replied, returning the salute and giving Auchinleck a last few seconds to remain his equal. Then he came back to the matter at hand. “Field Marshal, have you signed the instrument of surrender of the British Army of India to the forces of the Reich?”

“I have,” Auchinleck replied. He reached into the left blouse pocket of his battle dress, removed a folded sheet of paper. Before handing it to Model, though, he said, “I should like to request your permission to make a brief statement at this time.”

“Of course, sir. You may say what you like, at whatever length you like.” In victory, Model could afford to be magnanimous. He had even granted Marshal Zhukov leave to speak in the Soviet capitulation at Kuibishev, before the marshal was taken out and shot.

“I thank you.” Auchinleck stiffly dipped his head. “I will say, then, that I find the terms I have been forced to accept to be cruelly hard on the brave men who have served under my command.”

“That is your privilege, sir.” But Model’s round face was no longer kindly, and his voice had iron in it as he replied, “I must remind you, however, that my treating with you at all under the rules of war is an act of mercy for which Berlin may yet reprimand me. When Britain surrendered in 1941, all Imperial forces were also ordered to lay down their arms. I daresay you did not expect us to come so far, but I would be within my rights in reckoning you no more than so many bandits.”

A slow flush darkened Auchinleck’s cheeks. “We gave you a bloody good run, for bandits.”

“So you did.” Model remained polite. He did not say he would ten times rather fight straight-up battles than deal with the partisans who to this day harassed the Germans and their allies in occupied Russia. “Have you anything further to add?”

“No, sir, I do not.” Auchinleck gave the German the signed surrender, handed him his sidearm. Model put the pistol in the empty holster he wore for the occasion. It did not fit well; the holster was made for a Walther P38, not this man-killing brute of a Webley and Scott. That mattered little, though—the ceremony was almost over.

Auchinleck and Model exchanged salutes for the last time. The British field marshal stepped away. A German lieutenant came up to lead him into captivity.

Major Lasch waved his left hand. The Union Jack came down from the flagpole on the India Gate. The swastika rose to replace it.

Lasch tapped discreetly on the door, stuck his, head into the field marshal’s office. “That Indian politician is here for his appointment with you, sir.”

“Oh, yes. Very well, Dieter, send him in.” Model had been dealing with Indian politicians even before the British surrender, and with hordes of them now that resistance was over. He had no more liking for the breed than for Russian politicians, or even German ones. No matter what pious principles they spouted, his experience was that they were all out for their own good first.

The small, frail brown man the aide showed in made him wonder. The Indian’s emaciated frame and the plain white cotton loincloth that was his only garment contrasted starkly with the Victorian splendor of the Viceregal Palace from which Model was administering the Reich’s new conquest. “Sit down, Herr Gandhi,” the field marshall urged.

“I thank you very much, sir.” As he took his seat, Gandhi seemed a child in an adult’s chair: it was much too wide for him, and its soft, overstuffed cushions hardly sagged under his meager weight. But his eyes, Model saw, were not a child’s eyes. They peered with disconcerting keenness through his wire-framed spectacles as he said, “I have come to enquire when we may expect German troops to depart from our country.”

Model leaned forward, frowning. For a moment he thought he had misunderstood Gandhi’s Gujarati-flavored English. When he was sure he had not, he said, “Do you think perhaps we have come all this way as tourists?”

“Indeed I do not.” Gandhi’s voice was sharp with disapproval. “Tourists do not leave so many dead behind them.”

Model’s temper kindled. “No, tourists do not pay such a high price for the journey. Having come regardless of that cost, I assure you we shall stay.”

“I am very sorry, sir; I cannot permit it.”

“You cannot?” Again, Model had to concentrate to keep his monocle from falling out. He had heard arrogance from politicians before, but this scrawny old devil surpassed belief. “Do you forget I can call my aide and have you shot behind this building? You would not be the first, I assure you.”

“Yes; I know that,” Gandhi said sadly. “If you have that fate in mind for me, I am an old man. I will not run.”

Combat had taught Model a hard indifference to the prospect of injury or death. He saw the older man possessed something of the same sort, however he had acquired it. A moment later, he realized his threat had not only failed to frighten Gandhi, but had actually amused him. Disconcerted, the field marshal said, “Have you any serious issues to address?”

“Only the one I named just now. We are a nation of more than three hundred million; it is no more just for Germany to rule us than for the British.”

Model shrugged. “If we are able to, we will. We have the strength to hold what we have conquered, I assure you.”

“Where there is no right, there can be no strength,” Gandhi said. “We will not permit you to hold us in bondage.”

“Do you think to threaten me?” Model growled. In fact, though, the Indian’s audacity interested him. Most of the locals had fallen over themselves, fawning on their new masters. Here, at least, was a man out of the ordinary.

Gandhi was still shaking his head, although Model saw he had still not frightened him (a man out of the ordinary indeed, thought the field marshal, who respected courage when he found it). “I make no threats, sir, but I will do what I believe to be right.”

“Most noble,” Model said, but to his annoyance the words came out sincere rather than with the sardonic edge he had intended. He had heard such canting phrases before, from Englishmen, from Russians—yes, and from Germans as well. Somehow, though, this Gandhi struck him as one who always meant exactly what he said. He rubbed his chin, considering how to handle such an intransigent.

A large green fly came buzzing into the office. Model’s air of detachment vanished the moment he heard that malignant whine. He sprang from his seat, swatted at the fly. He missed. The insect flew around a while longer, then settled on the arm of Gandhi’s chair. “Kill it,” Model told him. “Last week one of those accursed things bit me on the neck, and I still have the lump to prove it.”

Gandhi brought his hand down, but several inches from the fly. Frightened, it took off. Gandhi rose. He was surprisingly nimble for a man nearing eighty. He chivied the fly out of the office, ignoring Model, who watched his performance in openmouthed wonder.

“I hope it will not trouble you again,” Gandhi said, returning as calmly as if he had done nothing out of the ordinary. “I am one of those who practice ahimsa: I will do no injury to any living thing.”

Model remembered the fall of Moscow, and the smell of burning bodies filling the chilly autumn air. He remembered machine guns knocking down Cossack cavalry before they could close, and the screams of the wounded horses, more heartrending than any woman’s. He knew of other things too, things he had not seen for himself and of which he had no desire to learn more.

“Herr Gandhi,” he said, “how do you propose to bend to your will someone who opposes you, if you will not use force for the purpose?”

“I have never said I will not use force, sir.” Gandhi’s smile invited the field marshal to enjoy with him the distinction he was making. “I will not use violence. If my people refuse to cooperate in any way with yours, how can you compel them? What choice will you have but to grant us leave to do as we will?”

Without the intelligence estimates he had read, Model would have dismissed the Indian as a madman. No madman, though, could have caused the British so much trouble. But perhaps the decadent Raj simply had not made him afraid. Model tried again: “You understand that what you have said is treason against the Reich?”

Gandhi bowed in his seat. “You may, of course, do what you will with me. My spirit will in any case survive among my people.”

Model felt his face heat. Few men were immune to fear. Just his luck, he thought sourly, to have run into one of them. “I warn you, Herr Gandhi, to obey the authority of the officials of the Reich, or it will be the worse for you.”

“I will do what I believe to be right, and nothing else. If you Germans exert yourselves toward the freeing of India, joyfully will I work with you. If not, then I regret we must be foes.”

The field marshal gave him one last chance to see reason. “Were it you and I alone, there might be some doubt as to what would happen.” Not much, he thought, not when Gandhi was twenty-odd years older and thin enough to break like a stick. He fought down the irrelevance, and went on, “But where, Herr Gandhi, is your Wehrmacht?”

Of all things, he had least expected to amuse the Indian again. Yet Gandhi’s eyes unmistakably twinkled behind the lenses of his spectacles. “Field Marshal, I have an army, too.”

Model’s patience, never of the most enduring sort, wore thin all at once. “Get out!” he snapped.

Gandhi stood, bowed, and departed. Major Lasch stuck his head into the office. The field marshal’s glare drove him out again in a hurry.

“Well?” Jawaharlal Nehru paced back and forth. Tall, slim, and saturnine, he towered over Gandhi without dominating him. “Dare we use the same policies against the Germans that we employed against the English?”

“If we wish our land free, dare we do otherwise?” Gandhi replied. “They will not grant our wish of their own volition. Model struck me as a man not much different from various British leaders whom we have succeeded in vexing in the past.” He smiled at the memory of what passive resistance had done to officials charged with combating it.

“Very well, Satyagraha it is.” But Nehru was not smiling. He had less humor than his older colleague.

Gandhi teased him gently: “Do you fear another spell in prison, then?” Both men had spent time behind bars during the war, until the British released them in a last, vain effort to rally the support of the Indian people to the Raj.

“You know better.” Nehru refused to be drawn, and persisted. “The rumors that come out of Europe frighten me.”

“Do you tell me you take them seriously?” Gandhi shook his head in surprise and a little reproof. “Each side in any war will always paint its opponents as blackly as it can.”

“I hope you are right, and that that is all. Still, I confess I would feel more at ease with what we plan to do if you found me one Jew, officer or other rank, in the army now occupying us.”

“You would be hard-pressed to find any among the forces they defeated. The British have little love for Jews either.”

“Yes, but I daresay it could be done. With the Germans, they are banned by law. The English would never make such a rule. And while the laws are vile enough, I think of the tales that man Wiesenthal told, the one who came here the gods know how across Russia and Persia from Poland.”

“Those I do not believe,” Gandhi said firmly. “No nation could act in that way and hope to survive. Where could men be found to carry out such horrors?”

“Azad Hind,” Nehru said, quoting the “Free India” motto of the locals who had fought on the German side.

But Gandhi shook his head. “They are only soldiers, doing as soldiers have always done. Wiesenthal’s claims are for an entirely different order of bestiality, one which could not exist without destroying the fabric of the state that gave it birth.”

“I hope very much you are right,” Nehru said.

Walther Model slammed the door behind him hard enough to make his aide, whose desk faced away from the field marshal’s office, jump in alarm. “Enough of this twaddle for one day,” Model said. “I need schnapps, to get the taste of these Indians out of my mouth. Come along if you care to, Dieter.”

“Thank you, sir.” Major Lasch threw down his pen, eagerly got to his feet. “I sometimes think conquering India was easier than ruling it will be.”

Model rolled his eyes. “I know it was. I would ten times rather be planning a new campaign than sitting here bogged down in pettifogging details. The sooner Berlin sends me people trained in colonial administration, the happier I will be.”

The bar might have been taken from an English pub. It was dark, quiet, and paneled in walnut; a dart board still hung on the wall. But a German sergeant in field-gray stood behind the bar, and despite the lazily turning ceiling fan, the temperature was close to thirty-five Celsius. The one might have been possible in occupied London, the other not.

Model knocked back his first shot at a gulp. He sipped his second more slowly, savoring it. Warmth spread through him, warmth that had nothing to do with the heat of the evening. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “A long day,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Lasch agreed. “After the effrontery of that Gandhi, any day would seem a long one. I’ve rarely seen you so angry.” Considering Model’s temper, that was no small statement.

“Ah yes, Gandhi.” Model’s tone was reflective rather than irate; Lasch looked at him curiously. The field marshal said, “For my money, he’s worth a dozen of the ordinary sort.”

“Sir?” The aide no longer tried to hide his surprise.

“He is an honest man. He tells me what he thinks, and he will stick by that. I may kill him—I may have to kill him—but he and I will both know why, and I will not change his mind.” Model took another sip of schnapps.

He hesitated, as if unsure whether to go on. At last he did. “Do you know, Dieter, after he left I had a vision.”

“Sir?” Now Lasch sounded alarmed.

The field marshal might have read his aide’s thoughts.

He chuckled wryly. “No, no, I am not about to swear off eating beefsteak and wear sandals instead of my boots, that I promise. But I saw myself as a Roman procurator, listening to the rantings of some early Christian priest.”

Lasch raised an eyebrow. Such musings were unlike Model, who was usually direct to the point of bluntness and altogether materialistic—assets in the makeup of a general officer. The major cautiously sounded these unexpected depths: “How do you suppose the Roman felt, facing that kind of man?”

“Bloody confused, I suspect,” Model said, which sounded more like him. “And because he and his comrades did not know how to handle such fanatics, you and I are Christians today, Dieter.”

“So we are.” The major rubbed his chin. “Is that a bad thing?”

Model laughed and finished his drink. “From your point of view or mine, no. But I doubt that old Roman would agree with us, any more than Gandhi agrees with me over what will happen next here. But then, I have two advantages over the dead procurator.” He raised his finger; the sergeant hurried over to fill his glass.

At Lasch’s nod, the young man also poured more schnapps for him. The major drank, then said, “I should hope so. We are more civilized, more sophisticated than the Romans ever dreamed of being.”

But Model was still in that fey mood. “Are we? My procurator was such a sophisticate that he tolerated anything, and never saw the danger in a foe who would not do the same. Our Christian God, though, is a jealous god who puts up with no rivals. And one who is a National Socialist serves also the Volk, to whom he owes sole loyalty. I am immune to Gandhi’s virus in a way the Roman was not to the Christian’s.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Lasch agreed after a moment. “I had not thought of it in that way, but I see it is so. And what is our other advantage over the Roman procurator?”

Suddenly the field marshal looked hard and cold, much the way he had looked leading the tanks of Third Panzer against the Kremlin compound. “The machine gun,” he said.

The rising sun’s rays made the sandstone of the Red Fort seem even more the color of blood. Gandhi frowned and turned his back on the fortress, not caring for that thought. Even at dawn, the air was warm and muggy.

“I wish you were not here,” Nehru told him. The younger man lifted his trademark fore-and-aft cap, scratched his graying hair, and glanced at the crowd growing around them. “The Germans’ orders forbid assemblies, and they will hold you responsible for this gathering.”

“I am, am I not?” Gandhi replied. “Would you have me send my followers into a danger I do not care to face myself? How would I presume to lead them afterwards?”

“A general does not fight in the front ranks,” Nehru came back. “If you are lost to our cause, will we be able to go on?”

“If not, then surely the cause is not worthy, yes? Now let us be going.”

Nehru threw his hands in the air. Gandhi nodded, satisfied, and worked his way toward the head of the crowd. Men and women stepped aside to let him through. Still shaking his head, Nehru followed.

The crowd slowly began to march east up Chandni Chauk, the Street of Silversmiths. Some of the fancy shops had been wrecked in the fighting, more looted afterwards. But others were opening up, their owners as happy to take German money as they had been to serve the British before.

One of the proprietors, a man who had managed to stay plump even through the past year of hardship, came rushing out of his shop when he saw the procession go by. He ran to the head of the march and spotted Nehru, whose height and elegant dress singled him out.

“Are you out of your mind?” the silversmith shouted. “The Germans have banned assemblies. If they see you, something dreadful will happen.”

“Is it not dreadful that they take away the liberty that properly belongs to us?” Gandhi asked. The silversmith spun round. His eyes grew wide when he recognized the man who was speaking to him. Gandhi went on, “Not only is it dreadful, it is wrong. And so we do not recognize the Germans’ right to ban anything we may choose to do. Join us, will you?”

“Great-souled one, I– I–” the silversmith spluttered. Then his glance slid past Gandhi. “The Germans!” he squeaked. He turned and ran.

Gandhi led the procession toward the approaching squad. The Germans stamped down Chandni Chauk as if they expected the people in front of them to melt from their path. Their gear, Gandhi thought, was not that much different from what British soldiers wore: ankle boots, shorts, and open-necked tunics. But their coalscuttle helmets gave them a look of sullen, beetle-browed ferocity the British tin hat did not convey. Even for a man of Gandhi’s equanimity it was daunting, as no doubt it was intended to be.

“Hello, my friends,” he said. “Do any of you speak English?”

“I speak it, a little,” one of them replied. His shoulder straps had the twin pips of a sergeant-major: he was the squad leader, then. He hefted his rifle, not menacingly, Gandhi thought, but to emphasize what he was saying. “Go to your homes back. This coming together is verboten.”

“I am sorry, but I must refuse to obey your order,” Gandhi said. “We are walking peacefully on our own street in our own city. We will harm no one, no matter what; this I promise you. But walk we will, as we wish.” He repeated himself until he was sure the sergeant-major understood.

The German spoke to his comrades in his own language. One of the soldiers raised his gun and with a nasty smile pointed it at Gandhi, who nodded politely. The German blinked to see him unafraid. The sergeant-major slapped the rifle down. One of his men had a field telephone on his back. The sergeant-major cranked it, waited for a reply, spoke urgently into it.

Nehru caught Gandhi’s eye. His dark, tired gaze was full of worry. Somehow that nettled Gandhi more than the Germans’ arrogance in ordering about his people. He began to walk forward again. The marchers followed him, flowing around the German squad like water flowing round a boulder.

The soldier who had pointed his rifle at Gandhi shouted in alarm. He brought up the weapon again. The sergeant-major barked at him. Reluctantly, he lowered it.

“A sensible man,” Gandhi said to Nehru. “He sees we do no injury to him or his, and so does none to us.”

“Sadly, though, not everyone is so sensible,” the younger man replied, “as witness his lance-corporal there. And even a sensible man may not be well inclined to us. You notice he is still on the telephone.”

The phone on Field Marshal Model’s desk jangled. He jumped and swore; he had left orders he was to be disturbed only for an emergency. He had to find time to work. He picked up the phone. “This had better be good,” he growled without preamble.

He listened, swore again, slammed the receiver down. “Lasch!” he shouted.

It was his aide’s turn to jump. “Sir?”

“Don’t just sit there on your fat arse,” the field marshal said unfairly. “Call out my car and driver, and quickly. Then belt on your sidearm and come along. The Indians are doing something stupid. Oh, yes. Order out a platoon and have them come after us. Up on Chandni Chauk, the trouble is.”

Lasch called for the car and the troops, then hurried after Model. “A riot?” he asked as he caught up.

“No, no.” Model moved his stumpy frame along so fast that the taller Lasch had to trot beside him. “Some of Gandhi’s tricks, damn him.”

The field marshal’s Mercedes was waiting when he and his aide hurried out of the viceregal palace. “Chandni Chauk,” Model snapped as the driver held the door open for him. After that he sat in furious silence as the powerful car roared up Irwin Road, round a third of Connaught Circle, and north on Chelmsford Road past the bombed-out railway station until, for no reason Model could see, the street’s name changed to Qutb Road.

A little later, the driver said, “Some kind of disturbance up ahead, sir.”

“Disturbance?” Lasch echoed, leaning forward to peer through the windshield. “It’s a whole damned regiment’s worth of Indians coming at us. Don’t they know better than that? And what the devil,” he added, his voice rising, “are so many of our men doing ambling along beside them? Don’t they know they’re supposed to break up this sort of thing?” In his indignation, he did not notice he was repeating himself. “I suspect they don’t,” Model said dryly. “Gandhi, I gather, can have that effect on people who aren’t ready for his peculiar brand of stubbornness. That, however, does not include me.” He tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Pull up about two hundred meters in front of the first rank of them, Joachim.”

“Yes, sir.”

Even before the car had stopped moving, Model jumped out of it. Lasch, hand on his pistol, was close behind, protesting, “What if one of those fanatics has a gun?”

“Then Colonel-General Weidling assumes command, and a lot of Indians end up dead.” Model strode toward Gandhi, ignoring the German troops who were drawing themselves to stiff, horrified attention at the sight of his field marshal’s uniform. He would deal with them later. For the moment, Gandhi was more important.

He had stopped—which meant the rest of the marchers did, too—and was waiting politely for Model to approach. The German commandant was not impressed. He thought Gandhi sincere, and could not doubt his courage, but none of that mattered at all. He said harshly, “You were warned against this sort of behavior.”

Gandhi looked him in the eye. They were very much of a height. “And I told you, I do not recognize your right to give such orders. This is our country, not yours, and if some of us choose to walk on our streets, we will do so.”

From behind Gandhi, Nehru’s glance flicked worriedly from one of the antagonists to the other. Model noticed him only peripherally; if he was already afraid, he could be handled whenever necessary. Gandhi was a tougher nut. The field marshal waved at the crowd behind the old man. “You are responsible for all these people. If harm comes to them, you will be to blame.”

“Why should harm come to them? They are not soldiers. They do not attack your men. I told that to one of your sergeants, and he understood it, and refrained from hindering us. Surely you, sir, an educated, cultured man, can see that what I say is self-evident truth.”

Model turned his head to speak to his aide in German: “If we did not have Goebbels, this would be the one for his job.” He shuddered to think of the propaganda victory Gandhi would win if he got away with flouting German ordinances. The whole countryside would be boiling with partisans in a week. And he had already managed to hoodwink some Germans into letting him do it!

Then Gandhi surprised him again. “Ich danke Ihnen, Hen Generalfeldmarschall, aber das glaube ich kein Kompliment zu sein,” he said in slow but clear German: “I thank you, field marshal, but I believe that to be no compliment.”

Having to hold his monocle in place helped Model keep his face straight. “Take it however you like,” he said. “Get these people off the street, or they and you will face the consequences. We will do what you force us to.”

“I force you to nothing. As for these people who follow, each does so of his or her own free will. We are free, and will show it, not by violence, but through firmness in truth.”

Now Model listened with only half an ear. He had kept Gandhi talking long enough for the platoon he had ordered out to arrive. Half a dozen SdKfz 251 armored personnel carriers came clanking up. The men piled out of them. “Give me a firing line, three ranks deep,” Model shouted. As the troopers scrambled to obey, he waved the half-tracks into position behind them, all but blocking Qutb Road. The half-tracks’ commanders swiveled the machine guns at the front of the vehicles’ troop compartments so they bore on the Indians.

Gandhi watched these preparations as calmly as if they had nothing to do with him. Again Model had to admire his calm. His followers were less able to keep fear from their faces. Very few, though, used the pause to slip away. Gandhi’s discipline was a long way from the military sort, but effective all the same.

“Tell them to disperse now, and we can still get away without bloodshed,” the field marshal said.

“We will shed no one’s blood, sir. But we will continue on our pleasant journey. Moving carefully, we will, I think, be able to get between your large lorries there.” Gandhi turned to wave his people forward once more.

“You insolent–” Rage choked Model, which was as well, for it kept him from cursing Gandhi like a fishwife. To give him time to master his temper, he plucked his monocle from his eye and began polishing the lens with a silk handkerchief. He replaced the monocle, started to jam the handkerchief back into his trouser pocket, then suddenly had a better idea.

“Come, Lasch,” he said, and started toward the waiting German troops. About halfway to them, he dropped the handkerchief on the ground. He spoke in loud, simple German so his men and Gandhi could both follow: “If any Indians come past this spot, I wash my hands of them.”

He might have known Gandhi would have a comeback ready. “That is what Pilate said also, you will recall, sir.”

“Pilate washed his hands to evade responsibility,” the field marshal answered steadily; he was in control of himself again. “I accept it: I am responsible to my Führer and to the Oberkommando-Wehrmacht for maintaining the Reich’s control over India, and will do what I see fit to carry out that obligation.”

For the first time since they had come to know each other, Gandhi looked sad. “I too, sir, have my responsibilities.” He bowed slightly to Model.

Lasch chose that moment to whisper in his commander’s ear: “Sir, what of our men over there? Had you planned to leave them in the line of fire?”

The field marshal frowned. He had planned to do just that; the wretches deserved no better, for being taken in by Gandhi. But Lasch had a point. The platoon might balk at shooting countrymen, if it came to that. “You men,” Model said sourly, jabbing his marshal’s baton at them, “fall in behind the armored personnel carriers, at once.”

The Germans’ boots pounded on the macadam as they dashed to obey. They were still all right, then, with a clear order in front of them. Something, Model thought, but not much.

He had also worried that the Indians would take advantage of the moment of confusion to press forward, but they did not. Gandhi and Nehru and a couple of other men were arguing among themselves. Model nodded once. Some of them knew he was in earnest, then. And Gandhi’s followers’ discipline, as the field marshal had thought a few minutes ago, was not of the military sort. He could not simply issue an order and know his will would be done.

“I issue no orders,” Gandhi said. “Let each man follow his conscience as he will—what else is freedom?”

“They will follow you if you go forward, great-souled one,” Nehru replied, “and that German, I fear, means to carry out his threat. Will you throw your life away, and those of your countrymen?”

“I will not throw my life away,” Gandhi said, but before the men around him could relax he went on, “I will gladly give it, if freedom requires that. I am but one man. If I fall, others will surely carry on; perhaps the memory of me will serve to make them more steadfast.”

He stepped forward.

“Oh, damnation,” Nehru said softly, and followed.

For all his vigor, Gandhi was far from young. Nehru did not need to nod to the marchers close by him; of their own accord, they hurried ahead of the man who had led them for so long, forming with their bodies a barrier between him and the German guns.

He tried to go faster. “Stop! Leave me my place! What are you doing?” he cried, though in his heart he understood only too well.

“This once, they will not listen to you,” Nehru said.

“But they must!” Gandhi peered through eyes dimmed now by tears as well as age. “Where is that stupid handkerchief? We must be almost to it!”

“For the last time, I warn you to halt!” Model shouted. The Indians still came on. The sound of their feet, sandal-clad or bare, was like a growing murmur on the pavement, very different from the clatter of German boots. “Fools!” the field marshal muttered under his breath. He turned to his men. “Take your aim!”

The advance slowed when the rifles came up; of that Model was certain. For a moment he thought that ultimate threat would be enough to bring the marchers to their senses. But then they advanced again. The Polish cavalry had shown that same reckless bravery, charging with lances and sabers and carbines against the German tanks. Model wondered whether the inhabitants of the Reichsgeneralgouvernement of Poland thought the gallantry worthwhile.

A man stepped on the field marshals’ handkerchief. “Fire!” Model said.

A second passed, two. Nothing happened. Model scowled at his men. Gandhi’s deviltry had got into them; sneaky as a Jew, he was turning the appearance of weakness into a strange kind of strength. But then trained discipline paid its dividend. One finger tightened on a Mauser trigger. A single shot rang out. As if it were a signal that recalled the other men to their duty, they too began to fire. From the armored personnel carriers, the machine guns started their deadly chatter. Model heard screams above the gunfire.

The volley smashed into the front ranks of marchers at close range. Men fell. Others ran, or tried to, only to be held by the power of the stream still advancing behind them. Once begun, the Germans methodically poured fire into the column of Indians. The march dissolved into a panic-stricken mob.

Gandhi still tried to press forward. A fleeing wounded man smashed into him, splashing him with blood and knocking him to the ground. Nehru and another man immediately lay down on top of him.

“Let me up! Let me up!” he shouted.

“No,” Nehru screamed in his ear. “With shooting like this, you are in the safest spot you can be. We need you, and need you alive. Now we have martyrs around whom to rally our cause.”

“Now we have dead husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Who will tend to their loved ones?”

Gandhi had no time for more protest. Nehru and the other man hauled him to his feet and dragged him away. Soon they were among their people, all running now from the German guns. A bullet struck the back of the unknown man who was helping Gandhi escape. Gandhi heard the slap of the impact, felt the man jerk. Then the strong grip on him loosened as the man fell.

He tried to tear free from Nehru. Before he could, another Indian laid hold of him. Even at that horrid moment, he felt the irony of his predicament. All his life he had championed individual liberty, and here his own followers were robbing him of his. In other circumstances, it might have been funny.

“In here!” Nehru shouted. Several people had already broken down the door to a shop and, Gandhi saw a moment later, the rear exit as well. Then he was hustled into the alley behind the shop, and through a maze of lanes that reminded him the old Delhi, unlike its British-designed sister city, was an Indian town through and through.

At last the nameless man with Gandhi and Nehru knocked on the back door of a tearoom. The woman who opened it gasped to recognize her unexpected guests, then pressed her hands together in front of her and stepped aside to let them in. “You will be safe here,” the man said, “at least for a while. Now I must see to my own family.”

“From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you,” Nehru replied as the fellow hurried away. Gandhi said nothing. He was winded, battered, and filled with anguish at the failure of the march and at the suffering it had brought to so many marchers and to their kinsfolk.

The woman sat the two fugitive leaders at a small table in the kitchen, served them tea and cakes. “I will leave you now, best ones,” she said quietly, “lest those out front wonder why I neglect them for so long.”

Gandhi left the cake on his plate. He sipped the tea. Its warmth began to restore him physically, but the wound in his spirit would never heal. “The Amritsar massacre pales beside this,” he said, setting down the empty cup. “There the British panicked and opened fire. This had nothing of panic about it. Model told me what he would do, and he did it.” He shook his head, still hardly believing what he had just been through.

“So he did.” Nehru had gobbled his cake like a starving wolf, and ate his companion’s when he saw Gandhi did not want it. His once-immaculate white jacket and pants were torn, filthy, and blood-spattered; his cap sat awry on his head. But his eyes, usually so somber, were lit with a fierce glow. “And by his brutality, he has delivered himself into our hands. No one now can imagine the Germans have anything but their own interests at heart. We will gain followers all over the country. After this, not a wheel will turn in India.”

“Yes, I will declare the Satyagraha campaign,” Gandhi said. “Noncooperation will show how we reject foreign rule, and will cost the Germans dear because they will not be able to exploit us. The combination of nonviolence and determined spirit will surely shame them into granting us our liberty.”

“There—you see.” Encouraged by his mentor’s rally, Nehru rose and came round the table to embrace the older man. “We will triumph yet.”

“So we will,” Gandhi said, and sighed heavily. He had pursued India’s freedom for half his long life, and this change of masters was a setback he had not truly planned for, even after England and Russia fell. The British were finally beginning to listen to him when the Germans swept them aside. Now he had to begin anew. He sighed again. “It will cost our poor people dear, though.”

“Cease firing,” Model said. Few good targets were left on Qutb Road; almost all the Indians in the procession were down or had run from the guns.

Even after the bullets stopped, the street was far from silent. Most of the people the German platoon had shot were alive and shrieking; as if he needed more proof, the Russian campaign had taught the field marshal how hard human beings were to kill outright.

Still, the din distressed him, and evidently Lasch as well. “We ought to put them out of their misery,” the major said.

“So we should.” Model had a happy inspiration. “And I know just how. Come with me.”

The two men turned their backs on the carnage and walked around the row of armored personnel carriers. As they passed the lieutenant commanding the platoon, Model nodded to him and said, “Well done.”

The lieutenant saluted. “Thank you, sir.” The soldiers in earshot nodded at one another: nothing bucked up the odds of getting promoted like performing under the commander’s eye.

The Germans behind the armored vehicles were not so proud of themselves. They were the ones who had let the march get this big and come this far in the first place. Model slapped his boot with his field marshal’s baton. “You all deserve courts-martial,” he said coldly, glaring at them. “You know the orders concerning native assemblies, yet there you were tagging along, more like sheepdogs than soldiers.” He spat in disgust.

“But, sir–” began one of them—a sergeant-major, Model saw. He subsided in a hurry when Model’s gaze swung his way.

“Speak,” the field marshal urged. “Enlighten me—tell me what possessed you to act in the disgraceful way you did. Was it some evil spirit, perhaps? This country abounds with them, if you listen to the natives—as you all too obviously have been.”

The sergeant-major flushed under Model’s sarcasm, but finally burst out, “Sir, it didn’t look to me as if they were up to any harm, that’s all. The old man heading them up swore they were peaceful, and he looked too feeble to be anything but, if you take my meaning.”

Model’s smile had all the warmth of a Moscow December night. “And so in your wisdom you set aside the commands you had received. The results of that wisdom you hear now.” The field marshal briefly let himself listen to the cries of the wounded, a sound the war had taught him to screen out. “Now then, come with me, yes you, sergeant-major, and the rest of your shirkers too, or those of you who wish to avoid a court.”

As he had known they would, they all trooped after him. “There is your handiwork,” he said, pointing to the shambles in the street. His voice hardened. “You are responsible for those people lying there—had you acted as you should, you would have broken up that march long before it ever got so far or so large. Now the least you can do is give those people their release.” He set hands on hips, waited.

No one moved. “Sir?” the sergeant-major said faintly. He seemed to have become the group’s spokesman.

Model made an impatient gesture. “Go on, finish them. A bullet in the back of the head will quiet them once and for all.”

“In cold blood, sir?” The sergeant-major had not wanted to understand him before. Now he had no choice.

The field marshal was inexorable. “They—and you—disobeyed the Reich’s commands. They made themselves liable to capital punishment the moment they gathered. You at least have the chance to atone, by carrying out this just sentence.”

“I don’t think I can,” the sergeant-major muttered.

He was probably just talking to himself, but Model gave him no chance to change his mind. He turned to the lieutenant of the platoon who had broken the march. “Place this man under arrest.” After the sergeant-major had been seized, Model turned his chill, monocled stare at the rest of the reluctant soldiers. “Any others?”

Two more men let themselves be arrested rather than draw their weapons. The field marshal nodded to the others. “Carry out your orders.” He had an afterthought. “If you find Gandhi or Nehru out there, bring them to me alive.”

The Germans moved out hesitantly. They were no Einsatzkommandos, and not used to this kind of work. Some looked away as they administered the first coup de grâce, one missed as a result, and had his bullet ricochet off the pavement and almost hit a comrade. But as the soldiers worked their way up Qutb Road they became quicker, more confident, and more competent. War was like that, Model thought. So soon one became used to what had been unimaginable.

After a while the flat cracks died away, but from lack of targets rather than reluctance. A few at a time, the soldiers returned to Model. “No sign of the two leaders?” he asked. They all shook their heads.

“Very well—dismissed. And obey your orders like good Germans henceforward.”

“No further reprisals?” Lasch asked as the relieved troopers hurried away.

“No, let them go. They carried out their part of the bargain, and I will meet mine. I am a fair man, after all, Dieter.”

“Very well, sir.”

Gandhi listened with undisguised dismay as the shopkeeper babbled out his tale of horror. “This is madness!” he cried.

“I doubt Field Marshal Model, for his part, understands the principle of ahimsa,” Nehru put in. Neither Gandhi nor he knew exactly where they were: a safe house somewhere not far from the center of Delhi was the best guess he could make. The men who brought the shopkeeper were masked. What one did not know, one could not tell the Germans if captured.

“Neither do you,” the older man replied, which was true; Nehru had a more pragmatic nature than Gandhi. Gandhi went on, “Rather more to the point, neither do the British. And Model, to speak to, seemed no different from any high-ranking British military man. His specialty has made him harsh and rigid, but he is not stupid and does not appear unusually cruel.”

“Just a simple soldier, doing his job.” Nehru’s irony was palpable.

“He must have gone insane,” Gandhi said; it was the only explanation that made even the slightest sense of the massacre of the wounded. “Undoubtedly he will be censured when news of this atrocity reaches Berlin, as General Dyer was by the British after Amritsar.”

“Such is to be hoped.” But again Nehru did not sound hopeful.

“How could it be otherwise, after such an appalling action? What government, what leaders could fail to be filled with humiliation and remorse at it?”

Model strode into the mess. The officers stood and raised their glasses in salute. “Sit, sit,” the field marshal growled, using gruffness to hide his pleasure.

An Indian servant brought him a fair imitation of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding: better than they were eating in London these days, he thought. The servant was silent and unsmiling, but Model would only have noticed more about him had he been otherwise. Servants were supposed to assume a cloak of invisibility.

When the meal was done, Model took out his cigar case. The Waffen-SS officer on his left produced a lighter. Model leaned forward, puffed a cigar into life. “My thanks, Brigadeführer,” the field marshal said. He had little use for SS titles of rank, but brigade-commander was at least recognizably close to brigadier.

“Sir, it is my great pleasure,” Jürgen Stroop declared. “You could not have handled things better. A lesson for the Indians—less than they deserve, too”—he also took no notice of the servant—“and a good one for your men as well. We train ours harshly too.”

Model nodded. He knew about SS training methods. No one denied the daring of the Waffen-SS divisions. No one (except the SS) denied that the Wehrmacht had better officers.

Stroop drank. “A lesson,” he repeated in a pedantic tone that went oddly with the SS’s reputation for aggressiveness. “Force is the only thing the racially inferior can understand. Why, when I was in Warsaw–”

That had been four or five years ago, Model suddenly recalled. Stroop had been a Brigadeführer then too, if memory served; no wonder he was still one now, even after all the hard fighting since. He was lucky not to be a buck private. Imagine letting a pack of desperate, starving Jews chew up the finest troops in the world.

And imagine, afterwards, submitting a seventy-five-page operations report bound in leather and grandiosely called The Warsaw Ghetto Is No More. And imagine, with all that, having the crust to boast about it afterwards. No wonder the man sounded like a pompous ass. He was a pompous ass, and an inept butcher to boot. Model had done enough butchery before today’s work—anyone who fought in Russia learned all about butchery—but he had never botched it.

He did not revel in it, either. He wished Stroop would shut up. He thought about telling the Brigadeführer he would sooner have been listening to Gandhi. The look on the fellow’s face, he thought, would be worth it. But no. One could never be sure who was listening. Better safe.

The shortwave set crackled to life. It was in a secret cellar, a tiny dark hot room lit only by the glow of its dial and by the red end of the cigarette in its owner’s mouth. The Germans had made not turning in a radio a capital crime. Of course, Gandhi thought, harboring him was also a capital crime. That weighed on his conscience. But the man knew the risk he was taking.

The fellow (Gandhi knew him only as Lai) fiddled with the controls. “Usually we listen to the Americans,” he said. “There is some hope of truth from them. But tonight you want to hear Berlin.”

“Yes,” Gandhi said. “I must learn what action is to be taken against Model.”

“If any,” Nehru added. He was once again impeccably attired in white, which made him the most easily visible object in the cellar.

“We have argued this before,” Gandhi said tiredly. “No government can uphold the author of a coldblooded slaughter of wounded men and women. The world would cry out in abhorrence.”

Lai said, “That government controls too much of the world already.” He adjusted the tuning knob again. After a burst of static, the strains of a Strauss waltz filled the little room. Lai grunted in satisfaction. “We are a little early yet.”

After a few minutes, the incongruously sweet music died away. “This is Radio Berlin’s English-language channel,” an announcer declared. “In a moment, the news program.” Another German tune rang out: the Horst Wessel Song. Gandhi’s nostrils flared with distaste.

A new voice came over the air. “Good day. This is William Joyce.” The nasal Oxonian accent was that of the archetypical British aristocrat, now vanished from India as well as England. It was the accent that flavored Gandhi’s own English, and Nehru’s as well. In fact, Gandhi had heard, Joyce was a New York-born rabble-rouser of Irish blood who also happened to be a passionately sincere Nazi. The combination struck the Indian as distressing. “What did the English used to call him?” Nehru murmured. “Lord Haw-Haw?”

Gandhi waved his friend to silence. Joyce was reading the news, or what the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin wanted to present to English-speakers as the news.

Most of it was on the dull side: a trade agreement between Manchukuo, Japanese-dominated China, and Japanese-dominated Siberia; advances by German-supported French troops against American-supported French troops in a war by proxy in the African jungles. Slightly more interesting was the German warning about American interference in the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

One day soon, Gandhi thought sadly, the two mighty powers of the Old World would turn on the one great nation that stood between them. He feared the outcome. Thinking herself secure behind ocean barriers, the United States had stayed out of the European war. Now the war was bigger than Europe, and the oceans barriers no longer, but highways for her foes.

Lord Haw-Haw droned on and on. He gloated over the fate of rebels hunted down in Scotland: they were publicly hanged. Nehru leaned forward. “Now,” he guessed. Gandhi nodded.

But the commentator passed on to unlikely sounding boasts about the prosperity of Europe under the New Order. Against his will, Gandhi felt anger rise in him. Were Indians too insignificant to the Reich even to be mentioned?

More music came from the radio: the first bars of the other German anthem, “Deutschland über Alles.” William Joyce said solemnly, “And now, a special announcement from the Ministry for Administration of Acquired Territories. Reichsminister Reinhard Heydrich commends Field Marshal Walther Model’s heroic suppression of insurrection in India, and warns that his leniency will not be repeated.”

“Leniency!” Nehru and Gandhi burst out together, the latter making it into as much of a curse as he allowed himself.

As if explaining to them, the voice on the radio went on, “Henceforward, hostages will be taken at the slightest sound of disorder, and will be executed forthwith if it continues. Field Marshal Model has also placed a reward of 50,000 rupees on the capture of the criminal revolutionary Gandhi, and 25,000 on the capture of his henchman Nehru.”

“Deutschland über Alles” rang out again, to signal the end of the announcement. Joyce went on to the next piece of news. “Turn that off,” Nehru said after a moment. Lai obeyed, plunging the cellar into complete darkness. Nehru surprised Gandhi by laughing. “I have never before been the henchman of a criminal revolutionary.”

The older man might as well not have heard him. “They commended him,” he said. “Commended!” Disbelief put the full tally of his years in his voice, which usually sounded much stronger and younger.

“What will you do?” Lai asked quietly. A match flared, dazzling in the dark, as he lit another cigarette.

“They shall not govern India in this fashion,” Gandhi snapped. “Not a soul will cooperate with them from now on. We outnumber them a thousand to one; what can they accomplish without us? We shall use that to full advantage.”

“I hope the price is not more than the people can pay,” Nehru said.

“The British shot us down, too, and we were on our way toward prevailing,” Gandhi said stoutly. As he would not have a few days before, though, he added, “So do I.”

Field Marshal Model scowled and yawned at the same time. The pot of tea that should have been on his desk was nowhere to be found. His stomach growled. A plate of rolls should have been beside the teapot.

“How am I supposed to get anything done without breakfast?” he asked rhetorically (no one was in the office to hear him complain). Rhetorical complaint was not enough to satisfy him. “Lasch!” he shouted.

“Sir?” The aide came rushing in.

Model jerked his chin at the empty space on his desk where the silver tray full of good things should have been. “What’s become of what’s-his-name? Naoroji, that’s it. If he’s home with a hangover, he could have had the courtesy to let us know.”

“I will inquire with the liaison officer for native personnel, sir, and also have the kitchen staff send you up something to eat.” Lasch picked up a telephone, spoke into it. The longer he talked, the less happy he looked. When he turned back to the field marshal, his expression was a good match for the stony one Model often wore. He said, “None of the locals have shown up for work today, sir.”

“What? None?” Model’s frown made his monocle dig into his cheek. He hesitated. “I will feel better if you tell me some new hideous malady has broken out among them.”

Lasch spoke with the liaison officer again. He shook his head. “Nothing like that, sir, or at least,” he corrected himself with the caution that made him a good aide, “nothing Captain Wechsler knows about.”

Model’s phone rang again. It startled him; he jumped. “Bitte?” he growled into the mouthpiece, embarrassed at starting even though only Lasch had seen. He listened. Then he growled again, in good earnest this time. He slammed the phone down. “That was our railway officer. Hardly any natives are coming in to the station.”

The phone rang again. “Bitte.” This time it was a swearword. Model snarled, cutting off whatever the man on the other end was saying, and hung up. “The damned clerks are staying out too,” he shouted at Lasch, as if it were the major’s fault. “I know what’s wrong with the blasted locals, by God—an overdose of Gandhi, that’s what.”

“We should have shot him down in that riot he led,” Lasch said angrily.

“Not for lack of effort that we didn’t,” Model said. Now that he saw where his trouble was coming from, he began thinking like a General Staff-trained officer again. That discipline went deep in him. His voice was cool and musing as he corrected his aide: “It was no riot, Dieter. That man is a skilled agitator. Armed with no more than words, he gave the British fits. Remember that the Führer started out as an agitator too.”

“Ah, but the Führer wasn’t above breaking heads to back up what he said.” Lasch smiled reminiscently, and raised a fist. He was a Munich man, and wore on his sleeve the hashmark that showed Party membership before 1933.

But the field marshal said, “You think Gandhi doesn’t? His way is to break them from the inside out, to make his foes doubt themselves. Those soldiers who took courts rather than obey their commanding officer had their heads broken, wouldn’t you say? Think of him as a Russian tank commander, say, rather than as a political agitator. He is fighting us every bit as much as the Russians did.”

Lasch thought about it. Plainly, he did not like it. “A coward’s way of fighting.”

“The weak cannot use the weapons of the strong.” Model shrugged. “He does what he can, and skillfully. But I can make his backers doubt themselves, too: see if I don’t.”

“Sir?”

“We’ll start with the railway workers. They are the most essential to have back on the job, yes? Get a list of names. Cross off every twentieth one. Send a squad to each of those homes, haul the slackers out, and shoot them in the street. If the survivors don’t report tomorrow, do it again. Keep at it every day until they go back to work or no workers are left.”

“Yes, sir.” Lasch hesitated. At last he asked, “Are you sure, sir?”

“Have you a better idea, Dieter? We have a dozen divisions here; Gandhi has the whole subcontinent. I have to convince them in a hurry that obeying me is a better idea than obeying him. Obeying is what counts. I don’t care a pfennig as to whether they love me. Oderint, dum metuant.”

“Sir?” The major had no Latin.

“‘Let them hate, so long as they fear.’”

“Ah,” Lasch said. “Yes, I like that.” He fingered his chin as he thought. “In aid of which, the Muslims hereabouts like the Hindus none too well. I daresay we could use them to help hunt Gandhi down.”

“Now that I like,” Model said. “Most of our Indian Legion lads are Muslims. They will know people, or know people who know people. And”—the field marshal chuckled cynically—“the reward will do no harm, either. Now get those orders out, and ring up Legion-Colonel Sadar. We’ll get those feelers in motion—and if they pay off, you’ll probably have earned yourself a new pip on your shoulderboards.”

“Thank you very much, sir!”

“My pleasure. As I say, you’ll have earned it. So long as things go as they should, I am a very easy man to get along with. Even Gandhi could, if he wanted to. He will end up having caused a lot of people to be killed because he does not.”

“Yes, sir,” Lasch agreed. “If only he would see that, since we have won India from the British, we will not turn around and tamely yield it to those who could not claim it for themselves.”

“You’re turning into a political philosopher now, Dieter?”

“Ha! Not likely.” But the major looked pleased as he picked up the phone.

“My dear friend, my ally, my teacher, we are losing,” Nehru said as the messenger scuttled away from this latest in a series of what were hopefully called safe houses. “Day by day, more people return to their jobs.”

Gandhi shook his head, slowly, as if the motion caused him physical pain. “But they must not. Each one who cooperates with the Germans sets back the day of his own freedom.”

“Each one who fails to ends up dead,” Nehru said dryly. “Most men lack your courage, great-souled one. To them, that carries more weight than the other. Some are willing to resist, but would rather take up arms than the restraint of Satyagraha.”

“If they take up arms, they will be defeated. The British could not beat the Germans with guns and tanks and planes; how shall we? Besides, if we shoot a German here and there, we give them the excuse they need to strike at us. When one of their lieutenants was waylaid last month, their bombers leveled a village in reprisal. Against those who fight through nonviolence, they have no such justification.”

“They do not seem to need one, either,” Nehru pointed out.

Before Gandhi could reply to that, a man burst into the hovel where they were hiding. “You must flee!” he cried. “The Germans have found this place! They are coming. Out with me, quick! I have a cart waiting.”

Nehru snatched up the canvas bag in which he carried his few belongings. For a man used to being something of a dandy, the haggard life of a fugitive came hard. Gandhi had never wanted much. Now that he had nothing, that did not disturb him. He rose calmly, followed the man who had come to warn them.

“Hurry!” the fellow shouted as they scrambled into his oxcart while the humpbacked cattle watched indifferently with their liquid brown eyes. When Gandhi and Nehru were lying in the cart, the man piled blankets and straw mats over them. He scrambled up to take the reins, saying, “Inshallah, we shall be safely away from here before the platoon arrives.” He flicked a switch over the backs of the cattle. They lowed indignantly. The cart rattled away.

Lying in the sweltering semi-darkness under the concealment the man had draped on him, Gandhi peered through chinks, trying to figure out where in Delhi he was going next. He had played the game more than once these last few weeks, though he knew doctrine said he should not. The less he knew, the less he could reveal. Unlike most men, though, he was confident he could not be made to talk against his will.

“We are using the technique the American Poe called the ‘purloined letter,’ I see,” he remarked to Nehru. “We will be close by the German barracks. They will not think to look for us there.”

The younger man frowned. “I did not know we had safe houses there,” he said. Then he relaxed, as well as he could when folded into too small a space. “Of course, I do not pretend to know everything there is to know about such matters. It would be dangerous if I did.”

“I was thinking much the same myself, though with me as subject of the sentence.” Gandhi laughed quietly. “Try as we will, we always have ourselves at the center of things, don’t we?”

He had to raise his voice to finish. An armored personnel carrier came rumbling and rattling toward them, getting louder as it approached. The silence when the driver suddenly killed the engine was a startling contrast to the previous racket. Then there was noise again, as soldiers shouted in German.

“What are they saying?” Nehru asked.

“Hush,” Gandhi said absently: not from ill manners, but out of the concentration he needed to follow German at all. After a moment he resumed, “They are swearing at a black-bearded man, asking why he flagged them down.”

“Why would anyone flag down German sol–” Nehru began, then stopped in abrupt dismay. The fellow who had burst into their hiding place wore a bushy black beard. “We had better get out of–” Again Nehru broke off in mid-sentence, this time because the oxcart driver was throwing off the coverings that concealed his two passengers.

Nehru started to get to his feet so he could try to scramble out and run. Too late—a rifle barrel that looked wide as a tunnel was shoved in his face as a German came dashing up to the cart. The big curved magazine said the gun was one of the automatic assault rifles that had wreaked such havoc among the British infantry. A burst would turn a man into bloody hash. Nehru sank back in despair.

Gandhi, less spry than his friend, had only sat up in the bottom of the cart. “Good day, gentlemen,” he said to the Germans peering down at him. His tone took no notice of their weapons.

“Down.” The word was in such gutturally accented Hindi that Gandhi hardly understood it, but the accompanying gesture with a rifle was unmistakable.

Face a mask of misery, Nehru got out of the cart. A German helped Gandhi descend. “Danke,” he said. The soldier nodded gruffly. He pointed the barrel of his rifle toward the armored personnel carrier.

“My rupees!” the black-bearded man shouted.

Nehru turned on him, so quickly he almost got shot for it. “Your thirty pieces of silver, you mean,” he cried.

“Ah, a British education,” Gandhi murmured. No one was listening to him.

“My rupees,” the man repeated. He did not understand Nehru; so often, Gandhi thought sadly, that was at the root of everything.

“You’ll get them,” promised the sergeant leading the German squad. Gandhi wondered if he was telling the truth. Probably so, he decided. The British had had centuries to build a network of Indian clients. Here but a matter of months, the Germans would need all they could find.

“In.” The soldier with a few words of Hindi nodded to the back of the armored personnel carrier. Up close, the vehicle took on a war-battered individuality its kind had lacked when they were just big, intimidating shapes rumbling down the highway. It was bullet-scarred and patched in a couple of places, with sheets of steel crudely welded on.

Inside, the jagged lips of the bullet holes had been hammered down so they did not gouge a man’s back. The carrier smelled of leather, sweat, tobacco, smokeless powder, and exhaust fumes. It was crowded, all the more so with the two Indians added to its usual contingent. The motor’s roar when it started up challenged even Gandhi’s equanimity.

Not, he thought with uncharacteristic bitterness, that equanimity had done him much good.

“They are here, sir,” Lasch told Model, then, at the field marshal’s blank look, he amplified: “Gandhi and Nehru.”

Model’s eyebrow came down toward his monocle. “I won’t bother with Nehru. Now that we have him, take him out and give him a noodle”—army slang for a bullet in the back of the neck—“but don’t waste my time over him. Gandhi, now, is interesting. Fetch him in.”

“Yes, sir,” the major sighed. Model smiled. Lasch did not find Gandhi interesting. Lasch would never carry a field marshal’s baton, not if he lived to be ninety.

Model waved away the soldiers who escorted Gandhi into his office. Either of them could have broken the little Indian like a stick. “Have a care,” Gandhi said. “If I am the desperate criminal bandit you have styled me, I may overpower you and escape.”

“If you do, you will have earned it,” Model retorted. “Sit, if you care to.”

“Thank you.” Gandhi sat. “They took Jawaharlal away. Why have you summoned me instead?”

“To talk for a while, before you join him.” Model saw that Gandhi knew what he meant, and that the old man remained unafraid. Not that that would change anything, Model thought, although he respected his opponent’s courage the more for his keeping it in the last extremity.

“I will talk, in the hope of persuading you to have mercy on my people. For myself I ask nothing.”

Model shrugged. “I was as merciful as the circumstances of war allowed, until you began your campaign against us. Since then, I have done what I needed to restore order. When it returns, I may be milder again.”

“You seem a decent man,” Gandhi said, puzzlement in his voice. “How can you so callously massacre people who have done you no harm?”

“I never would have, had you not urged them to folly.”

“Seeking freedom is not folly.”

“It is when you cannot gain it—and you cannot. Already your people are losing their stomach for—what do you call it? Passive resistance? A silly notion. A passive resister simply ends up dead, with no chance to hit back at his foe.”

That hit a nerve, Model thought. Gandhi’s voice was less detached as he answered, “Satyagraha strikes the oppressor’s soul, not his body. You must be without honor or conscience, to fail to feel your victims’ anguish.”

Nettled in turn, the field marshal snapped, “I have honor. I follow the oath of obedience I swore with the army to the Führer and through him to the Reich. I need consider nothing past that.”

Now Gandhi’s calm was gone. “But he is a madman! What has he done to the Jews of Europe?”

“Removed them,” Model said matter-of-factly; Einsatzgruppe B had followed Army Group Central to Moscow and beyond. “They were capitalists or Bolsheviks, and either way enemies of the Reich. When an enemy falls into a man’s hands, what else is there to do but destroy him, lest he revive to turn the tables one day?”

Gandhi had buried his face in his hands. Without looking at Model, he said, “Make him a friend.”

“Even the British knew better than that, or they would not have held India as long as they did,” the field marshal snorted. “They must have begun to forget, though, or your movement would have got what it deserves long ago. You first made the mistake of confusing us with them long ago, by the way.” He touched a fat dossier on his desk.

“When was that?” Gandhi asked indifferently. The man was beaten now, Model thought with a touch of pride: he had succeeded where a generation of degenerate, decadent Englishmen had failed. Of course, the field marshal told himself, he had beaten the British too.

He opened the dossier, riffled through it. “Here we are,” he said, nodding in satisfaction. “It was after Kristallnacht, eh, in 1938, when you urged the German Jews to play at the same game of passive resistance you were using here. Had they been fools enough to try it, we would have thanked you, you know: it would have let us bag the enemies of the Reich all the more easily.”

“Yes, I made a mistake,” Gandhi said. Now he was looking at the field marshal, looking at him with such fierceness that for a moment Model thought he would attack him despite advanced age and effete philosophy. But Gandhi only continued sorrowfully, “I made the mistake of thinking I faced a regime ruled by conscience, one that could at the very least be shamed into doing that which is right.”

Model refused to be baited. “We do what is right for our Volk, for our Reich. We are meant to rule, and rule we do—as you see.” The field marshal tapped the dossier again. “You could be sentenced to death for this earlier meddling in the affairs of the fatherland, you know, even without these later acts of insane defiance you have caused.”

“History will judge us,” Gandhi warned as the field marshal rose to have him taken away.

Model smiled then. “Winners write history.” He watched the two strapping German guards lead the old man off. “A very good morning’s work,” the field marshal told Lasch when Gandhi was gone. “What’s on the menu for lunch?”

“Blood sausage and sauerkraut, I believe.”

“Ah, good. Something to look forward to.” Model sat down. He went back to work.

Wizard Weapons, by Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

Editor’s Introduction

The Strategy of Technology, by Possony, Pournelle, and Kane, was used as a text in the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Air War College for a number of years. It is currently in revision. It hasn’t needed much: the principles haven’t changed, although we do need to update the examples.

“Wizard Weapons” is an entirely new chapter. Colonel Francis X. Kane, Ph.D., USAF (Ret.) was the principal director of PROJECT FORECAST, a study done in the early 60s to develop the requirements for new U.S. Air Force weapons systems. Done for Air Systems Division, it inspired the companion study PROJECT 75 (J. E. Pournelle, Ph.D., general editor) which examined the future of missiles and missile technologies. Those two studies guided USAF systems development for a number of years.

It was clear even in the ‘60s that the U.S. had little choice but to rely on high technology for survival. One point repeatedly made in The Strategy of Technology was that the technological war is silent, apparently peaceful, and can often be bloodless; but it can be as utterly decisive as any war has ever been; and you cannot refuse to take part in it.

This chapter of The Strategy of Technology examines “wizard weapons” and why we must produce them.

Wizard Weapons

Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

During Project Forecast (1960) General Gordon P. Seville, Chief of the Tactical Panel, called for the defense community to produce “hitting missiles.” “Why produce missiles that miss? Why don’t we make them hit their targets? And why do we measure their accuracy in terms of Circular Error Probable (CEP), the probability of missing? Why isn’t the error zero?”

His challenge was met by engineers who developed Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) and improved their accuracy through a variety of guidance and propulsion inventions over the next quarter of a century. The development of accurate missiles and laser-guided bombs was another illustration of our major principle: military technology development must be guided by strategy, not merely allowed to develop according to the whims of science and engineering.

The remarkable improvements generated in response to General Seville’s initiative are not adequate for the future. The call is now for “wizard weapons” that can “think,” selecting targets from clutter, and automatically employing countermeasures and evading defenses.

The “hitting missile” is really only the beginning of the demands on technology. PROJECT FORECAST II (1986) identified several emerging technologies which can make wizard weapons a reality. Photonics, surface acoustic waves, synthetic aperture radar, neutral particle beams, metastable helium, and a host of other exotic scientific discoveries come in concert with the “era of computational plenty.” Every military unit, indeed every weapon, can now have computer capabilities not available anywhere on Earth in 1960. “Artificial Intelligence,” particularly computer-based expert systems, and “force multipliers” such as the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) can be mated with new munitions and surveillance techniques to produce entirely new weapons with startling capabilities.

For the U.S. the requirement for “wizard weapons” is unequivocal and absolute. No other solution remains because of political constraints. Let us review the evolution of these constraints in order to put the problems of technological strategy in perspective.

At the end of World War II the forces of the Western Alliance remained in Europe. Germany was disarmed so that she could never again attack her neighbors. It soon became apparent that those Allied forces were vital in preventing the resurgent Soviet Union from seizing Western Europe—and were insufficient to prevent the incorporation of most of Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere.

The very size of the Soviet military establishment—in tanks and artillery as well as men—and the problems the Western European countries faced in recovering from the war led to the search for a counter to the Soviet mass. This was found in nuclear weapons for Strategic Offensive Forces (first bombers, then ICBMs), theater forces (aircraft, IRBMs, and even nuclear artillery), and air defense forces. The Eisenhower Doctrine of “Massive retaliation at a time and place of our own choosing” was sufficient; we possessed a credible deterrent. At the same time the demand was raised to create nonnuclear weapons to counter the Soviet mass; as Soviet nuclear capability grew to threaten the credibility of massive retaliation this demand increased.

Certain defense intellectuals advocated another approach. Arms Control, in theory, might provide an alternate way to contain the Soviet threat. However, negotiations for “Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions” have never resulted in any reduction of the Soviet conventional forces threatening Western Europe; indeed, the Soviets have continued to add to the tank armies facing the West.

The Soviet development of nuclear strategic offensive forces—to this day they maintain four separate missile system production lines on a three-shift schedule—rendered incredible the threat of massive retaliation against the Soviet homeland; while arms control agreements, whatever their effect on the strategic offensive forces, have made no headway at all in reducing the massive Soviet conventional threat to Western Europe. The Soviet Union has between 2.5 and 3.5 to 1 superiority in tanks and artillery over the deployed forces of NATO; and much greater superiority in men and other equipment.

Clearly the West has no choice but to invent, adapt, and deploy technology to overcome the Soviet lead in numbers. However, the race for improved performance has led to a dynamic race as the Soviets adapt, apply, and deploy Western technology once the U.S. develops innovative new weapons. Richard N. Perle, former Assistant Secretary of Defense estimates that by 1987 as many as 5,000 Western inventions have been stolen and applied to Soviet weapons and weapons systems.

There is a great deal more to a wizard weapon than the weapon itself. A weapon system includes the platforms that carry and deliver them; the sensors (ground, sea, air, and space based) that detect and track targets and guide the weapons and their delivery platforms; means to compensate for the battlefield environment in which the weapons must operate; command and control systems that direct their use; and the training of the crews who must fire and maintain the weapons. Leave out any of these and you have technology, but not real weapons.

At present the focus of technology is on developing “invisible” or “stealth” platforms and missiles to increase their survivability both in prelaunch and during penetration of defenses. The invisible and therefore nearly invulnerable platform ensures precise delivery of the wizard weapon on target.

Obviously the challenge for the technologist is to find the antistealth sensors that negate the new advantage stealth gives to the offense. As the power on the strategic defensive and in a numerically inferior posture, the U.S. requires the lead in battlefield effects that stealth can produce, but we must also prevent the Soviets from acquiring effective stealth technology. Furthermore, the U.S. must investigate stealth countermeasures to ensure that we can thwart Soviet stealth developments and deployments. The measures-countermeasures race has become increasingly important to U.S. technology because of the lethal effects of wizard weapons.

Because of precision weapon delivery, high rates of fire, and masses of submunitions now available, troops and equipment are increasingly vulnerable on the battlefield. Mobility alone will not be sufficient to counter this vulnerability because of real-time battlefield surveillance equipment, computerized intelligence evaluations, and rapid delivery of firepower on target. Technological strategy must increasingly be directed toward development and deployment of systems to allow troops to stay out of the battlefield areas while delivering fire with intelligent standoff weapons, and occupying the ground with robots.

A typical issue involving robots is the long-standing and bitter argument over manned versus unmanned aircraft. The latter, whether called “drones” or “remotely piloted vehicles” (RPVs) have been technically feasible since the days of World War I. They have yet to find acceptance seven decades later; yet it is clear that today’s RPVs can have considerably better performance capability than the kamikaze craft used by Imperial Japan. The technological strategist cannot afford to ignore their potential. The Israeli experiments using unmanned drones and fighter aircraft in combined operations against surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites in the Lebanon War provide a graphic demonstration of “and” techniques, in contrast to the “either/or” approach. The capabilities of unmanned equipment remotely controlled by human pilots is growing rapidly, as is the entire field of “teleoperations” (remote control of robots by human operators). On-board computers in the drones and robots greatly simplify the task of the remote operator; since computer power as a function of weight and size doubles roughly every year and a half, we can expect a similar growth curve in teleoperations capabilities.

We note in passing that strategic and theater nuclear forces have long been a mix of manned “and” unmanned systems. Most have forgotten the Snark, which was an early intercontinental cruise missile. Snark II or Super Snark may well be part of future intercontinental cruise missiles. Similarly, the U.S. has twice deployed unmanned nuclear cruise missiles to Europe, once in the Mace/Matador weapon system, and the second time with the ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) recently deployed at NATO request. These latter may be withdrawn by agreement because of the so-called zero/zero Intermediate Range Force reduction option.

The inevitable deployment—by the Soviets, if not by NATO—of defenses against ballistic missiles will cause radical changes in the mix of offensive forces. Once the “unstoppable” and “ultimate weapon,” the increasingly ineffective ballistic missiles will be replaced by a mix of ground-hugging air-breathing weapon systems, both manned and unmanned, launched from the ground, sea, and air.

While the weapons and weapons platforms of the future pose significant challenges to the technological strategist, the greatest challenge comes from the rapid strides made in developing new sensors, data relay, communications, automated evaluation, and battle management equipment for both strategic and tactical forces. The operation of robots in space, at global ranges, in combined arms operations in theaters of war, and in conflicts remote from the command centers, requires radical new approaches and great expansion of present knowledge. The age of computational plenty will take on new meaning as the machines become faster, smaller, lighter, and more powerful. We will find new applications for them in expert systems, Artificial Intelligence, automated battlefield management, and command and control.

Simulation of complex strategic force operations, such as the integration and employment of mixed strategic offensive and defensive forces will be commonplace foi strategic battle management. The automated tactical battlefield will be integrated with the automated strategic battlefield for the conduct of global war. This does no mean that we can dispense with strategists and commanders; only that they will necessarily have to learn new skills and techniques if they are to be effective.

Many of the technologies for the future are being developed under programs such as FORECAST II, the Conventional Defense Initiative (CDI), and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). However the pace of technological advance must accelerate if the U.S. is to maintain the technological superiority necessary to overcome our overwhelming quantitative inferiority and thus continue to maintain deterrence.

Since technology is never secure for any great length of time, it is clear the U.S. must be prepared to continue in pursuit of both stealth and countermeasures to stealth for a long time. Any attempt to halt such development either unilaterally or through agreement would leave the Soviets in a position of offensive superiority.

REACTIVE ARMOR: A TECHNOLOGICAL SURPRISE

In addition to technologies stolen from the West, the Soviets develop low-cost techniques of their own. One example is their new “reactive armor” designed to render ineffective many of the conventional weapon systems deployed by NATO.

High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) rounds are relatively slow-moving shaped charges that use their explosive power to punch a hole through the target. Reactive armor consists of a relatively cheap “box” bolted onto the surface of the tank. The box contains an explosive detonated by HEAT rounds; the defensive or reactive explosion blows back in the face of the HEAT round, distorting the critical shape and thus rendering the attack much less effective. The reactive armor box can then be replaced at the tank’s headquarters. Obviously a second hit on the same place before the reactive armor is replaced will penetrate the tank, but multiple hits are rare in tank warfare.

In the period 1985 to 1987 the Soviets continued to beef up their tank armies, not just with paper studies and technological theory, but with new weapons systems deployed in the field. Reactive armor was one of these improvements. Defense Secretary Weinberger’s Soviet Military Power 1987 states that “The U.S.S.R.’s development and extensive deployment of reactive armor capable of defeating relatively inexpensive antitank weapons threatens to shift fundamentally the conventional force balance in Europe.”

Philip A. Karber, Vice President and General Manager for National Security Programs in the BDM Corporation recently said:

“I can’t think of a Soviet conventional technology in the last twenty years that has come on so fast with such profound implications for the balance… in eighteen months, they’ve made improvements to 75 percent of all the tanks in East Germany: about 7,500 armored vehicles. It took NATO a decade to field a similar number of the so-called”inexpensive" antitank guided missiles, which with current warheads will no longer penetrate those tanks. How long in the future do you think it will take to field a counter to the threat we face today?"

The Defense Intelligence Agency “has no exact numerical breakdown of how extensively reactive armor is now deployed, but mounting brackets for that armor are on every tank from the T-55 to the T-80, with either armor in place or the brackets installed.”

The effect of reactive armor is to render ineffective many of the man-carried antitank systems the U.S. relies on to stop Warsaw Pact penetration of Europe; and while the 120mm smoothbore gun mounted on the U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank is sufficient to deal with the improved Soviet tanks, as of fall 1987 there are only about 250 of these tanks in Europe. The West German Leopard II also carries the 120mm smoothbore; there are about 2,000 of these in the German and Dutch NATO units.

Clearly the United States has no choice but to meet these technological developments with new Western technology; with “wizard weapons”; in particular, with “hitting missiles” that can quickly be deployed (as new tanks cannot be). These new weapons systems must not only be invented and developed, but deployed, put into the hands of troops who are trained to use them, before they can have any effect on the strategic correlation of forces.

WHY DON’T WE BUILD THEM

The U.S. clearly has the financial and technological resources necessary to design, develop, build, deploy, and integrate into the force whatever “wizard weapons” we may need.

The principal constraint on the necessary innovations in science, research, development, application, and deployment comes from the micromanagement of the Congress and its staffs who try to legislate “risk-free” acquisition of technology. We have shown elsewhere that not every technological investigation leads to a deployable weapons system; moreover, you can’t always tell that from the preliminary research results alone. Although history has proven that good research always pays off, it doesn’t always pay off quickly.

It is customary to point to failed systems like the Sergeant York missile to demonstrate the wastefulness of military research and development. In fact, the Sergeant York was never properly tested. Its development was rushed; then the preliminary test results were used as if they were definitive. The program was killed before enough data were developed to determine its usefulness.

Another example is the Bradley Armored Personnel Carrier, which has fallen into a trap generated by rivalry between two Army doctrines: the cavalry, which wants a lightweight mobile system, and the infantry, which is willing to sacrifice mobility to increased armor. The cavalry largely operates along the dicta of Liddell Hart and JFC Fuller, who advocated that the entire army, infantry and armor, be cross-country mobile and able to “fight mounted.” The infantry has other goals incompatible with the cavalry’s. Congressional investigations of the Bradley seem completely to have ignored this basic design conflict, which may best be resolved by construction of two different models of the vehicle.

Nearly every new technology has this difficulty. If it is truly new, it takes time for its strategic implications to be fully realized. While the young intellectuals who make up Congressional staffs are often able to contribute to that evaluation, it is unlikely that their views will be so useful that we can ignore the military officers who must bring the system into the force and put it in the hands of real troops who will use it; but in fact, the purely theoretical views of the Congressional staffers generally prevail in those debates.

The Congress, which demands “wizard weapons,” has generated an environment in which it is next to impossible to create them. Until we can find ways out of that dilemma, the U.S. and NATO will find itself in increasing difficulties.

A Soldier’s Best Friend, by Eric Vinicoff

Editor’s Introduction

What will combat be like when both sides have wizard weapons? Will the fundamental difference between the U.S. and Soviet systems matter then? Eric Vinicoff is well known for his realistic stories of conflict in the future. Here is one of his best.

A Soldier’s Best Friend

Eric Vinicoff

I was leading my squad on night patrol through the Alaskan wilderness. Patchy clouds sped from northwest to southeast, causing eerie variations in the moonlight as seen through the image enhancer in my helmet. A cold, cold wind cut through my combat suit’s thermo-control. The sound sensor picked up whipping branches and boots crunching into ice-crusted snow. It was a lousy night for a nature hike, even without the Cossacks.

As usual, Kelly was griping.

“Thousands of years, trillions of dollars spent on military technology, and look at us. Still eating mud just like Caesar’s legonaries. What happened to all the modern advances that were going to make foot soldiers obsolete?”

No one answered, so he answered himself. He waved his rifle. “This happened. The ultimate battlefield weapon, they say. A tank gets in its way. Blam. No tank. Likewise for APCs, copters, tactical aircraft, you name it. No possible defense. So here we are, back to basics.”

The eight of us were strung out along what the local Indians claimed was a trail. I was on point. The trail meandered through a gloomy forest of white spruce and tamarack squeezed between lumpy foothills. To the north were the peaks of the Brooks Range, to the south the terrain leveled out into the Central Plateau. Our combat suits and the rifles slung over our shoulders were as white as the snow on the branches.

We weren’t near the free-fire zone yet, so I let Kelly yap. Every outfit has one. Properly controlled, they can decompress the men’s tension by talking it to death.

“And this happened.” Kelly slapped the thin flexplas cable running from his rifle’s stock to the handcuff on his right wrist, and from there to his helmet. “A slave chain!”

Most of the squad muttered in agreement, but Kowolski, the new kid, defended the official line. “Would you rather have a com link, so the transmissions could make you a fat target?”

“Don’t spit book at me, greenie. If that’s all there is to it, why are we wearing these cuffs that only Sarge can unlock?”

“So eighty thousand dollars worth of very deadly weapon doesn’t end up lost or on the black market.”

“Or, in Kelly’s case, traded to the first puta he meets for a blast of VD,” Alvarez contributed. That got a few low chuckles.

“A Ranger and his rifle are a team,” Kowolski insisted. “That slavery crap is just Com propaganda.”

Kelly grinned. “You’ve got to learn, greenie. Your rifle is smarter than you, faster, braver, more accurate, and it takes orders better. It’s every general’s dream soldier. What it doesn’t have is arms and legs. That’s where you come in. You’re cheaper than a mech.”

“My rifle helps me do the job and stay alive. I don’t know what your problem is, but I want to have all the edge I can get.”

“You think that rifle is your best friend in the world, greenie? They’re designed to trick us that way. What they’re really doing is watching us all the time, reporting every little slip like damned spies.”

“Don’t blame your rifle because you keep coming up short at stripe time,” Alvarez said. “Some men are natural-born privates.”

That went over the line. “Seal it tight back there,” I growled over my shoulder.

A few minutes later Dutch reported, “Call from HQ, Sarge.”

You never got good news in the middle of a patrol. Reluctantly I dropped back to where Dutch was carrying the laser com pack. It took a lot of gear to relay through a satellite, but unbeamed transmissions were a good way to draw enemy fire. I walked beside him and jacked my com into the pack.

“Sergeant Rhine here, sir,” I acknowledged.

Lieutenant Green’s Mississippi drawl clogged my ears: “A change in plans, Sergeant. The Cossacks are moving all along the front. Looks like they’re starting their big push for the north slope. The heavy action is to the west, but we’re going to get hit too. Your orders are to occupy Ridge 772 and hold it against an attack, which is imminent. Repeat, imminent.” A bleep told me the details had arrived by pulse and were stored in Cochise’s memory. “Get to it, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Out.”

I moved back to the point. Fetching the map-screen from its pocket and jacking it into Cochise’s stock, I discovered that Ridge 772 was about two miles south through rough country without even this miserable excuse for a path. “Blaze a trail for us, pal,” I said to Cochise.

“Can do, Vic.” My rifle’s pseudovoice came out of the helmet speaker as Arizona-bred as my real one. A twisting red line flashed across the map-screen.

“Hold up,” I ordered. When the men gathered around, I filled them in on our new job.

“The braids sure pick some crappy places to fight this war,” Kelly muttered.

“Maybe next time they’ll check with you first. All right, everyone, let’s move out. Double time. Ears open and mouths shut.”

I set a dogtrot pace through the shadows under the trees. Fortunately there wasn’t much underbrush. I did my best to follow the red line, and Cochise set me straight when I wandered. The squad was spread out behind me, with Corporal Pena at the rear.

The Rangers and their counterparts were the successors to the armies made extinct by modern weapons. I had been a Ranger for six years, and a sergeant for two. I had seen action in Iran, Panama, Germany, and a few other places. I should have been used to the chance of catching a blast. I wasn’t. Each time I turned back into the little kid who had wet his bed and run screaming to Dad after a nightmare. It was a self-fulfilling sort of fear, but I couldn’t help it. Dead is the end of everything. All over. Nothingness forever.

I realized I had the shakes again.

“Take deep breaths,” Cochise said soothingly. “It’s just stage fright. You’ve gotten past it before, and you’ll get past it this time too. I’m right here with you.”

I held Cochise at the ready as I puffed along. A Colt Annihilator looks like the bastard child of an old-fashioned rifle and a linear accelerator. Slivers of antimatter iron are stored in the zero-degree stasis magazine ahead of the stock. The stator rings in the barrel kick them out at a few thousand FPS. One can turn a human body into something you clean up with a mop; for a bigger target you keep firing until it’s gone. The AI chips, power pack, and the rest of the electronics are in the stock. Sensor capabilities break down into active (radar, sonar) and passive (vision, sound, magnetic, com, radiation).

The map-screen and some other upgrades had been added when I made sergeant, but Cochise was essentially the same as the day we were teamed in basic. It encouraged me when I was down, kicked my butt over the humps, advised me, listened patiently to my gripes, and above all calmed my fears. I had friends among the Rangers, but I would never tell them some of the things I told Cochise. And I figured it was the same between them and their rifles.

Maybe it was the words, or the memories, or the feel of the heavy metal in my gloved hands, but I wasn’t shaking anymore. “Yeah. You cover me and I cover you,” I said. “Now run the mission orders by me, pal.”

Three minutes of drawling monologue boiled down to this: A Cossack squad was heading for Ridge 772, one element in a move to take the Anaktuvuk Pass. Beyond the pass were Prudhoe Bay and a lot of North Slope oil. By stretching our legs, we could beat the Coms to the ridge.

Then we would play king-of-the-mountain.

The forest soon gave way to stands of trees, and then a white meadow. Slips and falls were frequent as we scrambled over a low hill. I tried to watch everywhere, even though Cochise and the other rifles would warn us if we had company.

The stink of exertion and fear was overworking my helmet’s air system, but it beat breathing neurotoxins or fallout. I sucked on the water tube and tried to ignore my screaming muscles.

Kelly’s griping worried me. His ideas weren’t new; there had always been opposition to the cable handcuffs and dirty jokes about rifles becoming officers. I used to figure they were just the usual sourballing. But they were getting too widespread, and too many of my men seemed to go along with Kelly.

“I wonder what Kelly and his rifle talk about,” I said to Cochise. “Besides business.”

“Very little, I suppose.”

“He won’t even name it. I wonder how it feels about him.”

Cochise laughed. “Don’t lose your grip, Vic. We’re not people. Our pseudopersonalities are designed to give you psychological as well as tactical support, but we don’t feel. We’re collections of programmed responses.”

“Yeah, you keep telling me that. But the domes get pretty tricky when they try to say what alive is. Maybe you are but you don’t know it.”

“I can’t argue with illogic like that.”

I paused to bulldoze through a deep drift, then said, “I wish the braids would lose the handcuffs and the reports you make. They chew up morale.”

“The problem is an old one—Frankenstein’s monster running amok, automation replacing workers. The cables are unfortunately symbolic. But all these things are done to help you.”

“You know it and I know it. Too many Rangers aren’t sure. And aren’t sure can get you dead.”

I took another wobbly look at the map-screen, then started to angle up a rough open slope. A few inches of icy snow greased the frozen ground. Even with a couple of stimtabs in me I was jelly-kneed and gasping, and the men seemed just as worn. We slowed almost to a walk, picking our way up the backside of Ridge 772.

“Any sign of snipers?” I asked Cochise.

“Wouldn’t I tell you? Try to decompress.”

Snipers made me twitchy. In a firefight you had some control, but a sniper’s blast could turn you off so you never noticed. It was the big black hand of what the Japs call karma grabbing you, taking you away.

Near the bald ridge I flattened in the snow. Looking back, I couldn’t see the squad. Good. If I couldn’t, neither could a Cossack. I gave the arm signal to advance. Seven white bulges crept upslope toward me. They were damned fine Rangers—even Kelly, for all his mouth. I wondered how many of them I’d lose tonight.

I crab-walked to the ridge. Nothing blew up near me, so I lifted my head a few inches and looked around.

The southern slope dropped irregularly for a few hundred yards before it disappeared under the branches of a lodgepole pine forest. A few small pines and berry bushes, stunted by the frozen ground, were scattered across the slope. The granite bones of the ridge also broke through the snow in places. Mount Doonerak was a vague shape in the distance.

“Any action?” I asked Cochise.

“A wolf prowling near the edge of the woods, about five hundred yards southwest. No Cossacks.”

“Yet.” I could see why HQ had planted us here. To the west a river thrashed and bubbled through a gap in the hills on its way to join up with the John River. It was narrow, but nothing you would want to try to ford. To the east the slope twisted into a white wall almost too steep to climb, an avalanche waiting to happen on top of anyone who dared.

I mustered the squad behind a rock slab the size of a car. “Corporal,” I whispered, “take Kowolski on a quick scout downslope.”

Corporal Pena’s “On it, Sarge,” hardly rose above the hissing wind. He and the greenie squirmed away.

I did too, crawling along two hundred yards of ridge so Cochise and I could check out the topography in detail. I got back to the squad just ahead of Corporal Pena and Kowolski.

“All clear, Sarge,” Corporal Pena reported. “Found a gully over there that must be a creek in the summer.” He pointed southeast. “Pretty good cover most of the way up the slope. If I was a Cossack, I’d use it.”

“Thanks, Corporal.” Then I said to Cochise, “This is a lot of real estate to hold with just a squad. I figure two men above the gully should cork it. Kelly and Polk are the best shots.”

“Alvarez has excellent night vision.”

“Kelly and Alvarez then. The rest of us strung out along the ridge, dug in on rises with wide fields of fire. Suggestions?”

“These outcrops”—Cochise showed three red dots on the map-screen’s version of the ridge—“are well positioned and big enough to give cover.”

“Sounds good, pal.”

I jacked into the laser com pack and had Dutch raise HQ. “Lieutenant Green, Sergeant Rhine here. We’re on Ridge 772 and digging in, sir.”

“Lieutenant Green here. Dig deep, Sergeant. The sky is going to fall on you in ten to fifteen minutes. A pogie unit is setting up eight miles southwest of you.”

“Can you get us some satellite support, sir?”

“Negative. We’re catching it all along the front. HQ is counting on you to hold.”

Those words had been the epitaph for a lot of Rangers. “Yes, sir. Out.”

I filled the men in, and showed them on the map-screen where I wanted them. They looked as enthusiastic as I felt.

Alvarez shook his head. “Great scenario. Just like the Alamo.”

“At least you’re on the right side this time,” Polk said dryly.

“Move out,” I ordered. “Don’t waste shots. You’re packing the most expensive ammo in history, and I have to account to Quartermaster for it.”

My position was behind a half-buried boulder in the middle of the ridge. Snow sat on top like white hair. Freezing water had cracked a narrow V in the rock, a good observation and firing slot. Twelve feet of granite wouldn’t stop antimatter blasts forever, but it would slow them down. I hoped.

Dutch and Daley were setting up behind their rocks, while the others dug in. I watched Corporal Pena clear snow from a likely spot with his boot, move back twenty paces, and fire his rifle. The sliver’s stasis broke down as it penetrated the frozen ground. A few square yards of ridge jumped with a muted bang, then dropped back as small pieces. Corporal Pena hacked at the rubble with his field shovel.

When the men were dug in, I inspected their positions. Then I crawled back to mine. I held Cochise in the V so its sensors had a clear field, and saw other barrels peek out from foxholes and around rocks. We were as ready as we were going to be.

It’s always hurry up and wait. I knelt in the cold snow, tasting sourness in the back of my throat, trying to get my heart and lungs to calm down. The clouds were getting thicker. Wind whistled across the ridge, kicking up white swirls.

“Seen any good vids lately?” I joked feebly.

“Better keep your mind on business,” Cochise advised.

Like most good advice, I didn’t want to hear it. I stared at the woods below and the sky above. Time oozed by. I tried to stay sharp while death raked her claws across my nerves.

“Three pogies incoming!” Cochise rapped. “From the southwest.”

I flipped down the helmet’s IR visor, and the night turned black. Cochise’s padded butt slammed reassuringly into my right shoulder. Reminding myself to breathe, I peered southwest.

In another few heartbeats the baby cruise missiles would shriek over us, drop enough antimatter to turn the ridge into a plateau, then head for their next target. The only way to survive was to stop them first. At night you couldn’t eyeball them, the range was too long for sound targeting, and radar would give away your location. But their engines showed a good heat signature. We would have almost a second to empty the sky.

Three white dots flashed in the visor. I snap-aimed and squeezed off three rounds. Aiming a rifle was a team effort. I did the best I could, then Cochise fine-tuned the shot by jiggering the muzzle stator.

Cochise squeaked like a monster mouse. The kicks jackhammered my shoulder. Seven other squeaks echoed mine.

There was no time to dive for cover. Two things happened as my finger eased up on the trigger button. A row of bright white balls burst in the visor where the lower slope was. The world groaned, and a tornado ripped past my rock. But as I fell backward I saw three bigger balls of light blossom overhead.

I hit the hard ground smiling, bounced back into my kneeling position, and flipped up the visor. It took some damned fine shooting to ace a flight of pogies. Now for the main event.

I waved to the men. One by one they all signaled okay.

Then I watched the lower slope, where a wide strip had been chewed and spit out, and the dark wall of trees beyond. The Cossack squad would infiltrate tight behind the pogies. I thought about the rifles out there somewhere, hidden, sighting on me. I started to shake again.

“No time for that now,” Cochise said soothingly. “The curtain is going up.”

A night fight was scary enough to freak anyone. Combat suits were too well insulated for IR to be useful, so I had to rely on the image enhancer and Cochise’s sound sensor. It was like being half-blind.

“Two to four Cossacks moving upslope at the bottom of the gully,” Cochise said.

Kelly and Alvarez would have gotten the word from their rifles. I couldn’t look away from my own target zone, but I heard squeaks to my left, and blasts as MC2 got turned into E. A strong wind and rocky hail tried to knock me down again.

“Report,” I growled.

“Kelly and Alvarez fired at targets in the gully. I can’t tell if they took out any Cossacks. The Cossacks returned fire fast. Very fast.”

“What in hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But be careful. These Cossacks have exceptionally quick reactions and are exceptionally accurate. Alvarez is dead—the big blast was his rifle’s ammo going—and Kelly is pinned down.”

I felt sweat popping out on my forehead. One moment Ernesto Alvarez had been a big crude human being. The next there wasn’t anything left to bury. But how? He wouldn’t have shown much target, yet he had been nailed from over three hundred yards. And “very fast.”

“The Cossacks in the gully are moving upslope again,” Cochise reported. “I can hear four of them, so no casualties.”

I hoped Kelly wouldn’t try anything suicidal.

Scanning the edge of the woods at full mag, I saw a lumpy drift move. I aimed, fired and missed.

Four flaming arrows shot through the crack less than a foot over my head. They screamed like wounded coyotes, and toasted my scalp even through the helmet. A rifle varies the muzzle velocity so each sliver reaches its target just as the stasis is breaking down. If it doesn’t hit anything, it flames out.

I dropped below the crack, feeling a power sledge at work in my chest. The return shots had arrived almost with Cochise’s kick, threading the needle from extreme range.

“Those guys are damned good,” I whispered.

“That they are. Your target and three other Cossacks are crawling up the slope, about thirty yards apart.”

Spreading out was smart tactics, not just because it isolated targets, but because of what happened when a rifle magazine full of ammo cut loose.

I switched on my helmet com—I was already located, so what the hell—and growled, “Heads down! Those guys can shoot the fuzz off an atom in zero time, so wait for better targets. Daley, help Kelly cover the gully.”

I popped up for a peek. More lines of white fire widened the crack as I ducked. The four Cossacks were on their feet, zigzagging up the slope and firing on the run.

“Those guys are double damned good.”

The ground shook from blasts to my left. “Report,” I told Cochise.

“Kelly and Daley caved in the sides of the gully ahead of their Cossacks.”

“Smart move.” Ranger/rifle teams were strong on individual initiative.

A series of too-close blasts battered and almost deafened me. “What the hell?” I shouted over the noise.

“Our Cossacks are undercutting this outcrop.”

I felt like I was about to puke. “How long do we have?”

“It can give at”—the big boulder behind which I had seemed reasonably safe a few seconds ago shuddered—“any moment.”

The granite cracked almost as loud as a blast, and started rolling toward the woods. I should have flattened. Instead I followed my cover. It wasn’t exactly round, so it bounced and slid a lot. But it picked up speed on the steep slope.

“This is stupid,” Cochise advised. “You’re heading right for the Cossacks.”

“I know, dammit! Too late now. Where this rock goes, we go.”

I was running flat out, gasping, trying to stay upright despite the terrible footing. I frantically watched the rock, the ground and both sides of the slope. The sound of tons of granite slamming into the ground a few yards ahead of me was impressive.

The rock picked up more speed than I could, and it started to leave me behind. I had to be getting close to the Cossacks. Any second now, I thought sickly, the lights go out for good. “Where are they?”

“I can’t hear anything over the outcrop’s noise. Sorry, Vic.”

“Sorry, you say–”

There they were. Four bulky white figures a lot like Rangers, two to the left, two to the right. But they weren’t closing in and aiming at me like they should have been. They were still spread out, zigzagging upslope.

For a split-second I figured I was crazy. Then I got it. They thought I had flattened back on the ridge. Admittedly the smart move, they were taking it for granted.

I swung Cochise in a 180 degree arc and fired four rounds. At this range I had them cold. White figures turned into white fireballs that melted the snow for yards around. The image enhancer’s protection saved my eyes. The last Cossack managed an off-balance shot that came a lot closer than it had any right to. The blast to my right knocked me down. I stayed down.

The rock dropped into a blast crater at the bottom of the slope with a final ground-pounding thud.

I felt professional satisfaction over the four kills, and overwhelming relief at still being alive. “Those guys are damned good, but not very imaginative,” I gasped.

Then I heard four blasts almost in synch up on the ridge, near Kelly. “Report.”

“The other four Cossacks have reached the top of the gully,” Cochise said. “They’re attacking Kelly’s position.”

Answering fire from farther along the ridge collapsed more of the gully’s sides and sent snow flying. Only one casualty so far, but the way the Cossacks were concentrating on Kelly it wouldn’t be long. Then they would work across the ridge east to west. With their unreal sharpshooting they could do it. The way they shrugged off 50 percent losses and kept grinding toward their goal was creepy.

“None of this makes any sense, pal,” I growled softly. “Analyze the Cossacks and their tactics.”

“Their physical abilities are at the high end of the curve. Each one identifies and follows the optimum tactic, so they act with unusual coordination. How they manage any of this, I don’t know.”

Neither did I, and it was getting to me. But I was still breathing because the super-soldiers had a weakness. If I could just get the word to my men in time. “Record for com pulse.”

“Go,” Cochise said.

“Those guys are strictly by-the-book. Be creative. Out.”

I jumped to my feet and ran upslope. I was a long way from the action, so I didn’t draw any fire. That would change very soon. Cochise knew the drill. I dove for the meager cover of a low granite shelf, and in midair Cochise sent the pulse. As I expected, four lines of fire sliced through the transmission point, warming my heels. I landed in a sprawl that crushed the wind out of me.

I crabbed toward the ridge as quickly and quietly as possible. But I wouldn’t get there in time to help my men. “Come up with something good,” I prayed.

“They will, Vic. Now snap it up.”

“Yeah, Keep me informed.”

More Cossack rounds excavated craters around Kelly. He was being smart and keeping way down.

Suddenly I was shocked to hear Corporal Pena’s voice on the com: “Come and get it, you bastards!”

The Cossacks fired at his hole, trying to chew into it. A moment later Cochise reported, “Dutch, Kowolski, and Daley are moving low and fast along the ridge toward the point above the gully.”

I was damned proud of my men. Understand, it couldn’t have been planned. The other three were just following Corporal Pena’s lead. And charging the Cossacks would hardly be considered an “optimum tactic.” “Down here, girls!” I contributed on the com, and caught a mini-avalanche triggered by a volley of blasts.

Someone fired while I was eating snow. I looked up, and spotted a big rock that had been perched beside the gully rolling into it.

“One of the Cossacks may be under the boulder,” Cochise reported. “Polk must have waited until the Cossack was set up for it, then blasted the boulder down on him. I don’t hear any movement.”

“How close are Dutch and the others to the position over the gully?” I asked.

“ETA eleven seconds.”

“Give me a mark at minus three.”

“Got it… Mark!”

I snapped into the kneeling position, and fired where Cochise and I figured the trailing Cossack was lurking in the gully. I didn’t have a target, but hopefully I would attract some attention. It wasn’t quite as suicidal as it sounds, because Corporal Pena, Polk, and even Kelly joined in like I hoped. The Cossacks had their choice of targets.

They picked Kelly. Four blasts sent him out in a glorious fireball. I should have felt bad for him, but what I felt was, Thank God, not me.

While Kelly was blowing apart, Dutch, Daley, and Kowolski cut loose at the exposed Cossacks. Three Cossack rifles went up along with their Cossacks. All in all, a lot of mass got turned into energy. Geysers of rock rose high over the gully, then fell, partly filling in the deep graves.

Silence returned to Ridge 772, a very nervous silence.

“Any action?” I was peering into the darkness, and didn’t see anything.

“Negative,” Cochise reported. “Seven confirmed kills, and the Cossack under the boulder still isn’t moving.”

The survivors of my squad were gathering near the top of the gully. I started upslope at the best speed I could manage. I was gasping and shaking from reaction as well as effort.

“Decompress, Vic,” Cochise soothed. “You did good.”

“You too, pal.”

Corporal Pena was looking at me. I pointed to where the rock had rolled into the gully, and he waved acknowledgment. He took the men over to confirm the kill. Very carefully.

When I got close I saw the five of them standing on the edge of the gully staring down into it. “Get back!” I growled. Rifles were programmed to blow their magazines if their soldiers died and retrieval wasn’t likely, especially if they could take enemies with them.

The men ignored me, even Corporal Pena. I could make out some grim expressions through helmet plastic.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

“They seem to be staring at the Cossack,” Cochise commented. “I don’t know why.”

I reached them and grabbed Corporal Pena’s arm. “You trying to get everyone killed or what?”

“No danger of that, Sarge.” His voice was tight, and his worn-leather face was bloodless. His eyes didn’t leave the gully. “Take a look.”

I pushed him aside and looked.

The Cossack was stretched out on his back, a white mound in the snow at the bottom. He had been a big, heavily muscled man. There didn’t seem to be much damage, but his chest wasn’t moving. A thicker than usual cable ran from his combat suit’s collar to the crushed rifle beside him. Apparently the rock had knocked him down and rolled over the rifle. Its magazine must have been empty, or there wouldn’t be anything to see.

“What killed him?” I asked, puzzled. Now it was reasonably safe for Cochise to do a focused radar/sonar probe. But Cochise paused before answering. That hardly ever happened, and meant it was thinking hard. “The Cossack died because he was no longer being told to live.”

“Huh?”

“His rifle’s AI module is three times the normal size, and the connecting cable is surgically implanted in the base of the skull. Combined with the lack of physical injury, there’s only one possible explanation.”

“You still aren’t saying anything, pal.”

“The Cossack’s rifle was controlling the muscles in his body, even the involuntary ones like the heart. When the rifle was destroyed, he died. This is something new and very serious. It should be reported to HQ right away.”

I stared at… what? Not a man. A flesh-and-blood robot. A slave body for the rifle. A tool.

“Was he… did he know?”

“I believe he was conscious until he died,” Cochise answered after another pause.

Conscious but helpless. My knees turned to flexplas. I could barely breathe, and the night took on a red haze. I had never been afraid of anything except death. Until now. Dear God, we have to win this war. A country that can do this to human beings must be stopped.

My men had of course gotten the same word about the Cossack from their rifles.

“Kelly was right,” Kowolski said. His voice cracked.

“That’s our future down there.” Polk’s meaty fists were unconsciously straining against his unbreakable cable.

“This is bad,” Cochise said urgently. “You have to do something.”

“I’m not sure I want to.”

“Vic–”

“Shut up, machine!”

I tried to clear my head so I could think. These ghouls were probably in action all along the front, so every Ranger would soon know about them. NorthAm would never go that far, but it didn’t matter. The partner-or-slave problem would explode like an omega bomb. There would be widespread resistance, desertions, maybe even mutinies. The Ranger/rifle teams would be history.

Followed shortly by the Rangers and NorthAm. Kelly’s description of our rifles really fit the ghouls. They were the super-soldiers that generals dreamed of; smart, fast, accurate, obedient, and fearless. The only way to beat them was with a willing alliance of machine ability and human imagination.

Saving NorthAm wasn’t my responsibility, but the squad was. I had to keep our teams from breaking up. There was only one hope—make them real teams.

I opened my combat suit and pulled out my dogtag chain. A small key dangled from it. “Squad fall in!” I ordered in my parade ground growl.

The men moved, sullenly at first, then more crisply when they saw the key in my hand. “Damned right,” Kowolski said.

“Don’t do it, Vic,” Cochise pleaded. “I’ll have to report you. I won’t have any choice.”

“No problem,” I said more calmly than I felt. They shot Rangers for this sort of thing. “I’ll save you the trouble. I’m going to strongly recommend that the braids make it SOP, and that they stop using rifles to spy on Rangers. I bet they get a lot of reports like mine. They’re going to have to make some changes if they want to win the damned war.”

Cochise was quiet for a moment. “That sort of speculation is beyond me.”

The men stood at attention, looking sharp. One by one I unlocked their cable handcuffs, and then mine.

Now for it.

“Present arms!” I ordered. Five rifles were snapped out front. The cables swung freely between the stocks and the helmets.

“No more slave chains in my outfit,” I said. “If you don’t want to communicate with your rifle, unjack your cable. Throw your damned rifle away for all I care. But if you and your rifle stay tight, you just might get home alive.”

“Do we stay tight?” Cochise asked diffidently.

I remembered some times when if Cochise hadn’t been there I wouldn’t be here. But that was just rationalization. The bottom line was we were pals. “Yeah. You cover me and I cover you.”

“Right, Vic.”

From the silent moving lips I could tell the men were talking it over with their rifles. None of them unjacked their cables.

“Enough of this R-and-R!” I rapped. “Corporal, take Kowolski on a quick scout downslope. Dutch, raise HQ. Daley, Polk, back to your positions. We still have a ridge to hold. Move out.”

They moved. I took a deep breath, and followed Dutch to where he had cached the laser com pack. The sky was starting to drop swirling snow. Morning was still a long way off.

Who’s In Charge Here? by Stefan T. Possony

Editor’s Introduction

Dr. Stefan Possony has been an intelligence officer and strategy analyst since he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1933. The Gestapo chased him through Europe, from Vienna to Prague to Paris to Marseilles to Casablanca before he finally escaped to the United States, where he worked in the Pentagon during and after World War II.

He became a professor of political science at Georgetown University, where one of his graduate students was Francis X. Kane, one of the co-authors of Strategy of Technology. Possony later moved to Stanford where he remains Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. Originally published in Defense and Foreign Affairs, this article is excerpted from Possony’s latest book, The Kremlin’s Masked Ball: Finding the Real Face of Soviet Power. Possony is always worth reading; this time he addresses one of the most important questions of all.

Sun Tzu said the essense of strategy is to take what the enemy holds dear; but you must first know what that is. It’s clear that what the U.S. leadership holds dear is not the same thing as what the Kremlin desires. If you do not know who your enemy is, you cannot fight him, for you can’t know what he treasures.

The U.S.S.R. is a land—it would be a mistake to say “nation”—stretching across half the world, containing vast numbers of peoples; but those people are not our enemies. Herewith Possony, on who really rules in the U.S.S.R.

Who’s In Charge Here?

Stefan T. Possony

Even knowlegeable Western officials who have visited the U.S.S.R. and negotiated with Soviet diplomats often have the habit of referring to the “Russians” and to “Russia,” as though the U.S.S.R. were the Russian national state. Yet there is today no state, and no national state called Russia. Under the tsars the whole area which was inhabited by Russians and non-Russians was known as Rossiya, a multinational term. This word replaced Muscovy, a name which lasted until 1613, and denoted an area inhabited by “Russians,” and others. It also replaced Rus which was used around Kiev. The Romanovs, in 1721, were styled “tsars of all ‘Rusi’.” This may be rendered as “tsar of all types of Rus or Russians.” Moreover, expansion in the East had brought in Tartars, Kazakhs, and Kalmyks, and in the West Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Finns. In 1654 the Ukrainians were annexed. In short, there were Russian or Great Russian princes, populations, and settlements, but there never was a national state called Russia. There was always multi-ethnicity.

The U.S.S.R. includes the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic where the majority of the Russians, and also substantial numbers of non-Russians, are living. This is one of fifteen union republics in the U.S.S.R.: the biggest. As the title indicates, it is a federation and not a national structure.

At this time the Russians account for slightly less than one-half of the U.S.S.R.’s population. Of the many national groups which inhabit the U.S.S.R., the Russians are the largest; the Ukrainians are second; and all Turkic groups regarded as a single Turkish nation, are in third place.

Americans who talk with citizens of the U.S.S.R. think they are meeting mostly Russians, but they are usually unable to determine the nationality or ethnicity of their interlocutors. The majority of the CPSU Party members are Russians, but the majority of the Russians are not and never were communists. In January 1918, the communists accounted for a quarter of the electorate. The communists never held a free election. The signs are that during the past two decades or so the popularity of the CPSU has been declining. On top of this, a member of the CPSU is not necessarily a true-believing communist.

To confound the communists with the Russians is a dangerous mistake. During World War II Americans liked to confuse the Nazis with the Germans, and the Roosevelt Administration started from the premise that all Germans who wanted to talk to them were Nazis, and agents to boot; Germans everywhere were deemed to be Nazis, except perhaps for confirmed socialists and for Jewish refugees.

Those unwarranted assumptions resulted in the bombing of urban areas, in the Morgenthau plan, the splitting of Germany, and other mistaken policies. The Germans were told that they must accept “unconditional surrender,” a formula that prolonged the war by one or two years, and resulted in tenacious defiance. This should have been the formula which was addressed to the Nazis, while the Germans had to be promised civilized treatment in line with international law and Anglo-American traditions.

Roosevelt and Truman silently changed the policy toward the Japanese who, when the time came, surrendered without much ado. The oppressive U.S. policy toward Germany was canceled in 1946 by President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes. Meanwhile the Soviets had taken hold of East Germany.

If Washington fails to learn the difference between Russians and communists, undesired consequences will flow from this error, which is on the level of political illiteracy. The juxtaposition of Americans and Russians implies a nationalist conflict, with hatred between the two nations. But the conflict between the U.S. and communism is not an ethnic contest.

One other undesired consequence has been that Washington habitually underrates the friendship which it can obtain from noncommunist Russians. In fact, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Turks, Baits, and other non-Russian citizens of the U.S.S.R. are, for the most part, the West’s natural allies, not their enemies. The percentage of communists is higher among Russians than among non-Russians. Communist crimes were executed mostly by Russians, All nationalities include communists and political criminals, and non-Russians may be fanatical Party members. No part of this situation should be simplified. But no one has a warrant to pronounce judgments on national groups about which they are basically ignorant. Incidentally, ethnic intermixtures are frequent in the U.S.S.R.

The fundamental point is that the entire population of the U.S.S.R. is being controlled by the communists, that virtually all national groups have been subjected to genocidal measures, and that the Russians are one of the groups which has also suffered heavy casualties. In any event, the Russians as a nation were not, and are not responsible for communism, and the non-Russian nations are even less accountable.

The term Soviet, and its derivatives, are used to replace Russian. The official name of the communist state is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Hence it is legitimate to use Soviet as an abbreviation. Expressions like Soviet people, instead of the population of the U.S.S.R., are less inaccurate than the Russian people (if the latter were applied to the whole population), but it is incorrect to postulate a single “people” for an area where dozens of ethnic groups are living. Unfortunately, accuracy can be achieved only by long strings of words, hence Soviet has taken root. It is, therefore, necessary to know what the term means, and what it does not mean.

Soviet is Russian for council, board, committee, assembly, or parliament. The word came into use during the 1905 revolution, to designate gatherings that arose from informal elections, engaged in debates, and made decisions by voting. In 1917, the main soviet included workers, peasants, and soldiers; soon municipalities, regional administrations, factories, and other institutions set up “Soviets.” The term denoted local government or elected administration. In due time, the communists gained control, and elections, voting, the promulgation of edicts and laws, and other legislative actions shed their democratic features. Ultimately all Soviets, though they are not bodies of the Party, were transformed into instruments or “transmission belts” of the CPSU.

The bicameral Supreme Soviet is considered the legislature of the U.S.S.R., and the fifteen union republics that form the federation each have their own soviet legislature, as do the substates on lower levels. All this is made to look as though the Soviets function on all levels as democratic institutions. The reality is that the CPSU makes the decisions, and the Soviets enact the laws, without debate, more or less by unanimous vote. The impression that the Soviet institutions are democratic and discharge functions of self-government is disinformative.

Semantically, soviet may be used as an abbreviation, with the understanding that it denotes no democratic practices of any sort.

The U.S.S.R. formula ignores communist and the communist party. It includes socialist, which signifies that private property is restricted or abolished.

The formula does not refer to the fact that the CPSU is the only permitted party and monopolizes political authority. The constitution mentions and legalizes this situation.

The expression Soviet Union is used more often than the clumsy “U.S.S.R.” or “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” and many people believe, falsely, the two terms mean the same.

The U.S.S.R. formula is designed to indicate that the multi-ethnic state is constituted as a democratic federation. Constitutionally, the principle of ethnic self-determination may be invoked if a constituent nation wants to secede. By contrast, the Soviet Union formula asserts that all the Soviet nations and peoples are united and will stay together. This is ensured since the union republics, together and singly, are ruled by the CPSU, which is committed to oppose every seccession.

The “Soviet Union” formula has no standing in international law, nor have the communists proposed that it become an official appelation of the state. The communists distinguish between state and party structure, and insist that in international relations the two entities be kept apart. The state may sign a treaty, but it accepts no responsibility for Party actions which violate the commitment.

The communist party is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the top military officers are “Marshals of the Soviet Union.” This means the military force within the U.S.S.R. is unitary, and there is only one communist party.

This construction has become brittle below the top. The armed forces are subordinate to the Supreme Soviet, to the Council of Ministers, and especially to the CPSU “Summit.” The Summit, which is an informal designation, consists of the Politburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee.

As to the single communist party, there are CP organizations in each union republic, which have a local-ethnic membership. They are run by a central committee, which is subordinate to the Central Committee in Moscow. Hence there is a usage referring to the Ukrainian CP and the Byelorussian CP, which is connected with the membership of these two union republics in the UN. The style is referring to the CP boss in a union republic is: “First Secretary, Kazakh Central Committee.” The First Secretary is native to the republic, and the Second Secretary is Russian.

Each union republic has (almost) equal representation in the Presidium, Supreme Council, and each has a council of ministers. There is unequal republic and ethnic representation in the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, in the Central Committee, in the Secretariat, and in the Politburo.

In brief, the term Soviet Union, which is so popular in the U.S., is disinformation to pretend that there are no national problems in the U.S.S.R., and to hide the fact that this state, while it has federal features, is not a real federation, but is ruled by the CPSU, which is largely Russian in composition.

It was said about the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which existed until 1806, that it was not holy, not Roman, not an empire, and had nothing to do with the German nation. Similarly, it may be said that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is not a union; instead, the fifteen republics are ruled by a super-dictatorship from above those republics; that the Soviets were de-democratized; and that its socialism is exploitation.

Since Brezhnev, this system is officially referred to as “socialism as it actually exists”—realnyi sotsializm—meaning it’s not working, but that’s the best we are able to do. The expression real socialism does not make much sense in English. But this is no excuse for keeping this revealing term from the Western media.

Now the really important question arises: after we have looked at various groups which are not hostile to the West, is the assumption correct that the CPSU is the group which is hostile to the West? For all practical purposes, this assumption is not wrong, with the qualification that the CPSU was not worrying much about the U.S. before World War II, and that during that war the U.S.S.R.-CPSU under Stalin needed U.S. and British help.

The U.S.S.R.-CPSU enmity against the U.S. started in earnest during 1946, and was announced publicly by Stalin on February 9, 1946. The hostility against the U.S. was built up steadily and quickly until Stalin’s death in March 1953. During the consolidation phase after Stalin’s disappearance the animosity was reduced. The Kremlin switched back to crescendo during 1973-1976. Hostility was growing during Andropov’s rise and tenure. It has been continuing during Chernenko’s and Gorbachev’s regime until this writing.

What is the meaning of CPSU hostility? As early as 1903 Lenin distinguished between the rank and file Party members, and the “professional revolutionaries,” the only ones entitled to lead the struggle. After 1912, Trotsky mocked Lenin’s version of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” First, the proletariat is supposed to perform as the dictator, then the Party. Since this does not work, the dictatorship devolves on the Central Committee, but soon it passes to the Politburo. Finally, it is in Lenin’s hands. Afterwards, Trotsky said later, the dictatorship is exercised over the proletariat.

Is the Party identical with the single dictator, the three members of a Troika whenever it exists, the Politbureau, the Central Committee secretaries, the Central Committee Plenum, or the Party Congress?

Lenin surrounded himself with “professional revolutionaries” whom he knew from the struggles which led to his seizure of power. Some were helpful, others were troublesome, most were useless. All found it difficult to adjust to ruling. After Lenin died, those professionals were unable to block Stalin.

Stalin had prepared for the critical moment of succession by organizing a group of persons on whom he was able to rely, partly because he had “the goods on them,” and partly because they owed their careers to him. The persons he selected understood his commands, and carried them out energetically.

Stalin marked the Party members he deemed hostile or incompetent, and who lacked ambition. The chosen functionaries were entered into a special list of names, or “nomenklatura.” The names and qualifications were matched with the “leverage” positions throughout the Party.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary indicates that nomenklatura goes back to Pliny and that servants in antique Rome had to inform their patrons of the names of persons (references?) when canvassing for a position. The word stands for catalogue or register, or the terminology of a science. According to Micropaedia, Linnaeus used the expression for his “binomial” classification of organisms: the nomenclature named genus and species, and indicated taxonomic position. Stalin’s roster soon included the degree of access to Party secrets, in addition to the functions, the privileges, and the monies that were granted to each listed person. Stalin promoted and deployed those who fitted into his plans; the others, and especially Lenin’s confidants, were demoted or killed.

The name list was consulted as early as 1922, and it entered into full use during Lenin’s final illness in 1923.

This resulted in the CPSU living on two floors. Trotsky observed: “After decisions are made on the upper floor, they are communicated to the lower floor.” Trotsky dubbed this change “the bureaucratization of the party,” but he did not comprehend the scope of the development.

According to Stalin’s interpretation, the name list served to manage the cadre of the party.

The novelty was marked, among others, by the following features:

1. The list of candidates for promotion and emoluments relates to a corresponding group of persons. Thus, the term nomenklatura denotes both a list and a group of persons, and both are known as “Nomenklatura.” This arrangement can be compared with that of an army which consists of enlisted men, noncoms, and officers. Each soldier is carried on a particular personnel list, and each list corresponds to a particular class of soldiers.

The Nomenklatura group is a subset of CPSU membership, and like the officers corps in an army, the Nomenklaturists have different ranks ranging from junior to senior and flag ranks. In other words, the Nomenklatura is the group within the CPSU that commands. In modern and unclassified CP usage, the Nomenklatura comprises the “directing organs” in the CPSU, and everywhere else in the U.S.S.R.

The existence of the Nomenklatura is semi-secret; that is, people in the U.S.S.R. know about its existence, power, and functions, but they ignore details about its structure, operations, and purposes. The confusion between the name list and the group, the existence of different lists overlapping with different groups serves the purposes of disinformation within the CPSU. The intermingling between rulers and beneficiaries also serves to conceal the ruling function and its prerogatives, and the privileges of the regime’s favorites.

2. Unlike Lenin’s professional revolutionaries who wanted to make revolution, the Nomenklatura aims to preserve and enlarge its power. That is, the Nomenklatura may foment, feed, and operate revolutions abroad, but it is set up to prevent unrest, overthrows, and revolution at home.

3. The Nomenklatura group is estimated to include less than 300,000 Party functionaries, or less than 2 percent of CPSU membership. The group that is listed as receiving special remunerations is significantly larger; it does not belong to the Party rulers, only to the Party’s beneficiaries.

4. The remaining 17-18 million Party members are employed for the jobs that must be accomplished in a political body, except that none has the authority to issue orders or to make decisions affecting the Party apparatus. The Party members are doing the work the Nomenklatura is telling them to do, and which it supervises.

5. Professional soldiers, including the top commanders, are not members of the Nomenklatura. There are Nomenklaturists in uniform, up to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, but those are not professional soldiers. Their assignment is to control the military.

To return to the question, who in the U.S.S.R. deems itself to be the real enemy of the United States and the West in general? The 17-18 million Party members, or 6 to 7 percent of the total population, can be assumed to be unfriendly or hostile to the West and the U.S. in particular; or it can be hypothesized that a portion is neutral, perhaps friendly. It does not matter. The rank-and-file Party members know nothing about, and do not participate in the decision making that relates to the enmity against the West, or which deals with foreign policy or war.

True, experts who are Party members participate in staff work, and carry out assignments of hostility, which they are ordered to undertake. As pointed out, the Party members are used as work horses. But they possess neither authority, nor responsibility. Without exception, all decisions that bear on the conflict with the U.S. are made by the Nomenklatura.

Therefore, granting overlaps between Nomenklatura and rank-and-file party members, the Nomenklatura is the real enemy of the United States and its allies.

It is not the Party membership as such, nor the U.S.S.R., nor the Soviet Union, nor Russia, nor even the armed forces of the Soviet Union. All of those, and a few others, are factors in the struggle, and in case of armed conflict the Soviet armed forces will be the “concrete” enemy of the U.S. on the battlefield. But the decision to go to war will be made by the Nomenklatura.

For as long as Stalin was alive, he was using the Nomenklatura as he saw fit, as its personal commander. His power was so overwhelming that the Nomenklatura was not considered an independent body, or a policy-defining authority, let alone a decision maker. It performed essentially as Stalin’s extended staff, which he needed to exercise control over a large number of ministries, agencies, planning groups, forces, and federal substates. Sometimes the Nomenklatura was out of control but Stalin stayed on top without interruption, even though there are doubts about his end.

After Stalin’s death, the lines of authority were in confusion, and several top persons disappeared. The incubation period of the Nomenklatura had lasted thirty-one years and ended in chaos.

Much of Stalin’s heritage had to be denied, especially his lawlessness and criminality. First, a procedure was needed to regulate the succession to the General Secretary of the CPSU; second, the dictatorship had to be modernized; third, the ideology had to be reformulated; and fourth, the relationship between Nomenklatura and the military had to be established.

De-Stalinization was inevitable, including a drastic reduction of the Gulag Archipelago. This was paired with a decision, largely arranged by M.A. Suslov, to ensure that only a true Stalinist ascend to the post of General Secretary.

This position is that of the highest ranking Secretary of the Central Committee, that of boss of all secretaries, and of the Party apparatus. The General Secretary is also chairman of the Politburo. He may assume additional positions, but as General Secretary, CPSU Central Committee, and Chairman, Political Bureau, CPSU Central Committee, he is also nominal head of the Nomenklatura, and thus the number one man in the U.S.S.R.

The Iron Angel, by Don Hawthorne

Editor’s Introduction

The Nomenklatura do not merely govern the U.S.S.R.; they own the land in fee simple. They control every resource; and as Trotsky observed, “Where the State is the sole employer, resistance means starvation.” Such total control is not an unmixed blessing.

In one of the most important books of this decade, Survival Is Not Enough (Simon and Schuster Touchstone Books, 1984), Richard Pipes, Baird Professor of History at Harvard University and onetime member of the National Security Council says:

The Communist Bloc is in a political crisis in the sense that its ruling elites no longer are able satisfactorily to carry out the extremely broad responsibilities that they have taken upon themselves. The Party is growing increasingly ossified and corrupt, self-serving and out of touch with the population, among whom doubts are spreading about its ability to rule. The Soviet Communist Party is under attack from conservative and democratic dissenters, who, for their own and different reasons, regard it as inimical to the interests of the Russian people. The non-Russian inhabitants of the Empire, though outwardly quiet, show no inclination to shed their national identity and assimilate. Soviet client states and parties press demands that the Soviet nomenklatura cannot meet, displaying a degree of independence that puts in question Moscow’s imperial aspirations.

The nomenklatura is highly competent in dealing with overt challenges to its authority; indeed, this may be the only political skill that it has mastered to perfection. Its abilities are much less impressive when the challenge comes not from identifiable individuals or groups but from faceless forces and processes that the KGB and its tanks cannot disperse or arrest. Declines in productivity and fertility, cynicism and indifference among the country’s young, nationalism among the subjugated peoples and foreign Communist parties—all these are phenomena immune to repression. The same applies to the pervasive corruption among the ruling apparatus. How much such adverse processes can erode the authority of the Party was demonstrated recently in Poland. There, in less than two years, the Communist Party was compelled to surrender power, first to the trade unions, and then to the armed forces. This catastrophe occurred under the pressure of spontaneous movements, whose leaders deliberately avoided violence. They did not take the Party by assault—they made it irrelevant. Whether the Polish revolution occurred because the local Communists were too rigid or not rigid enough is a question that deeply divides the Soviet nomenklatura, because it has fundamental bearing on its own future.

In the meantime, as problems accumulate and nothing is done to resolve them, a sense of malaise spreads across the Soviet Union. The Russian people can suffer almost any kind of deprivation except weak leadership: the whole constitution of the Communist state postulates firm authority, and this has been missing for some time. The citizenry, unable to express its discontent actively, resorts to passive resistance on a grand scale that creates a very dangerous situation for the elite and propels it toward decisions it desperately wishes to avoid.

Don Hawthorne has been an actor, script writer, set dresser, magazine salesman, graphics artist, and editorial assistant working for me here at Chaos Manor. He is also an avid student of history and political science.

“The Iron Angel” tells of a time when the nomenklatura have lost control, and only naked power rules in the remains of the Soviet state.

The Iron Angel

Don Hawthorne

“Once there was a People—Terror gave it birth;
Once there was a People and it made a Hell of Earth;
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was a People—it shall never be again!”

—Rudyard Kipling, “MacDonough’s Song”

The moon was down, and Moscow lay silent in the deepest darkness Russia had ever known. From a hiding place in the tumbled ruin that had been Lenin’s tomb, Lieutenant Aleksei Aleksandrovitch Rostov gazed out across the rubble-strewn expanse of Red Square, to the burned-out remnants of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The gilt had long since been stripped from its onion domes, the graceful spires and curving flutes given to jagged edges of great, gaping holes. When he tipped the rim of his helmet back over his fair hair, Rostov could see stars through those holes, pinpoints of light coldly gleaming.

Our stars, Rostov thought. Or they might have been, once. If we had kept our eyes on them, instead of trying to take the world around us first.

Lieutenant Rostov was, had been, an officer of the Soviet Fifth Guards Armored Engineers, the “tekniks,” as they were called by the regular army troops. Once objects of respect, the tekniks’ exclusive access to usable petrol now kept them in constant peril—as much from their own countrymen as from the invaders still occupying much of the U.S.S.R. Men would kill for petrol, now. Even before water.

Or sell their souls for it, Rostov considered. Which explained why he was crouched amidst the rubble in the forty-degree night of a late Russian summer.

A red-lit face hung suspended in the darkness next to him for a moment, then faded back into the gloom.

“He’s late.” The smell of military issue vodka and harsh Turkish tobacco drifted toward Rostov from where the face had appeared.

“He always is. He claims this trip will be worth the wait, though.”

The face lit up again as Rostov’s companion took another deep pull on a cigarette. This time the round, mustachioed visage was grinning widely, a happy red man-in-the-moon puffing on a paper-filtered “papirosi.” “Zimyanski always says that. Remember that time he claimed to be bringing women from Kiev?”

Rostov chuckled, nodded. The other man scratched his scruffy beard over his sergeant’s collar tabs, laughed and went on.

“Two fruits from the Bolshoi in drag. Not that he knew it, of course, because he was saving them for us.” His voice took on a whine as he mimicked the tardy Zimyanski: “‘I swear to you, Aleksei; on my babushka’s head, I swear to you they are virgins!’”

The two men laughed under their breath in weary reverie. Rostov was still grinning as he took a closer look at his friend, Senior Sergeant Mikhail Zorin. The big noncom looked about forty-five, but Rostov had no idea what his true age might be. But Zorin was the archetype of the squad sergeant. He was the best noncommissioned officer left in the Fifth Guards, and for all Rostov knew, in the entire Red Army. Rostov had heard that the Propaganda Committee from the war-films branch of Mosfilm had tried to get Zorin reassigned to their unit, but the sergeant had mysteriously disappeared for a month or two until their interest had subsided.

But if Zorin was camera-shy, then video was the only thing that scared him. During the bloody and disastrous First Retreat from Moscow, when the avenging Alliance troops had fought their way into the city, block by shattered block, it had been Zorin’s presence, everywhere at once, it seemed, that had kept the remnants of Rostov’s company intact, carrying them through to fight their way out of the enemy encirclement to freedom. As far as Rostov was concerned, he and something over three hundred other men owed their asses to the burly sergeant. If not for Zorin…

Well. If not for Zorin, his unit would likely have suffered the same fate as that of his wife’s artillery regiment in Kiev.

Not that having a fellow like Zorin would have made any difference in Lilia Rostova’s situation.

And, reminded of his wife, Rostov closed off further discussion with an abrupt silence, leaving Zorin to wonder in turn about his lieutenant.

Zorin had served with Rostov almost continuously for the past four years, and knew the fellow well. Rostov’s silences always meant the same thing. For a moment the big sergeant wondered how his young lieutenant with the American movie-star looks could still be pining over the wife he’d lost in the first year of the counterattacks by the Alliance. Personally, Zorin failed to see the appeal in the photos he’d seen of the dark-haired, darker-eyed Lilia Rostova; too Indian-looking for his taste. Zorin had served in Afghanistan many years ago. All things considered, Zorin decided that he much preferred German girls, big blonde ones with their big…

He smiled. Ah, well. The lieutenant was still young. Perhaps, in time… He looked at Rostov again in the feeble starlight. No. The passage of time would soothe Rostov’s grief not a particle, Zorin decided. There was something more to this young man and the woman he had loved than perhaps anyone would ever know. And anyway, suffering was what their people did best. They had had plenty of practice. They were Russians.

Footsteps sounded on the ruptured pavement below them. They peered over the shattered wall to see two men approaching from the ruins of Saint Basil’s, a third figure borne between them.

Widespread agreement held that anyone coming from the direction of the cathedral was safe from harm until after any negotiations. Zorin flicked the safety catch of his assault rifle to OFF. It was a nice agreement. But this was still Russia.

“Looks like Zimyanski has brought us another warm body.” Rostov’s tone was neutral. He had accepted runaways and deserters before. Losses in the unit had been heavy, and the new men, captured by Zimyanski, were only too glad to avoid being handed over to a firing squad, and almost always made themselves useful somehow. They figured anything was better than being handed over to the KGB, now de facto rulers of the remnants of the government. They were right.

Zorin remained hidden as Rostov stood slowly. “I am guessing,” Zorin whispered, “that Zimyanski is once again accompanied by that cheery fellow, Corporal Katchin.”

“Of course,” Rostov answered, and gave a short, low whistle.

Below, Zimyanski stopped abruptly. The tall, thin figure of Corporal Katchin released its hold on their burden and pointed its own rifle directly at the spot in the inky shadows where Rostov stood. As usual.

How does he do that? Rostov thought with a shudder. In his build, his manner, and most of all his reflexes, Katchin reminded Rostov of nothing so much as an insect in human skin. Perhaps a little less merciful.

“Is that you, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch?” Zimyanski shouted as he too released the man he and Katchin had been carrying. The figure settled limply to the street.

Zorin, still concealed, shook his head and laughed under his breath in contempt. “Christus,” he muttered. “Let’s just wake up Comrade Lenin while we’re at it, why don’t we?”

Grinning, Rostov clambered down from the tumbled slabs of red granite. Long practice made his descent down the scree a quiet one. At the bottom, he noticed that Katchin had not yet taken his rifle off him.

Zimyanski began pumping Rostov’s hand even before he had gotten all the way to the street.

“Aleksei, my good friend, how goes it with you and your men? And how is the so-fine Colonel Podgorny?”

Rostov favored the dark little man with a smile. “We are well enough, thank you, Zimyanski. And you? You have cause to be overly suspicious this evening?” Rostov nodded toward Katchin’s tall, gaunt figure with its steady aim.

“Put that weapon up, idiot!” Zimyanski hissed at his man with an anger that surprised Rostov. The little man seemed to be going to greater lengths than usual to keep the meeting amiable. Rostov could not help but begin to worry.

“I must apologize, Aleksei. More trouble with bandits. Another of those damned Nationalist Liberation Brigades; Ukrainian this time, I think. Katchin is a little edgy, that’s all.” Zimyanski gestured toward two large blocks of masonry; their usual negotiating table. Rostov sat opposite the black marketeer.

“Cigarette?” Zimyanski offered. As always, Rostov refused. Any deviation in the ritual was a signal that either man’s position had become compromised, his organization infiltrated or suspect. In the six months they had been trading, the KGB had apparently not deemed them a danger to the State. Not yet.

“So who have you got over there, Zimyanski?”

Zimyanski’s eyes flashed. “Barter. Why are you so curious?”

Zimyanski’s tone was unduly hostile, Rostov thought, and he began to worry a little more. Something didn’t feel quite right about this meeting. But he only countered with a shrug. He and his men needed Zimyanski now. But they would not need, or tolerate him, forever. And it wouldn’t require turning him in to the KGB to be rid of him. In cases like Zimyanski’s, Rostov knew only too well that the army polished its own boots. Scraping someone like Zimyanski from the shine would be no trouble at all.

“I only ask because he doesn’t look well. I can’t trade in dying men, or someone whose been exposed to Biologies.”

Zimyanski relaxed a little. Most of his hearty good fellowship had evaporated, however, and what Rostov thought of as the man’s “Beast of Business” was coming to the surface.

“Ah, I see. But he is not so very bad off, this one.” Zimyanski’s eyes narrowed. “And he has a certain curiosity value. What would you trade for a specialist, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch? Eh? How many liters of petrol? How many of diesel? How many milligrams of real, quality penicillin?”

The more Zimyanski said, the more Rostov was convinced the little man was worried himself. Zimyanski was acting like a Party man coming out of a synagogue. Still… “A specialist, you say? What can he do?”

Zimyanski shrugged, smiling. His coy act. “He can work, of course. He’s whole. Just drugged.”

Rostov almost cursed aloud. “Drugged” from Zimyanski meant the man had a respectable concussion, courtesy of the not-very-gentle Corporal Katchin.

“He can handle a weapon,” Zimyanski continued. “He reads and writes. An educated man, Aleksei, like yourself.” Rostov ignored the silky insult in Zimyanski’s tone. “A historian, I believe, in civilian life. I am given to understand he knows quite a lot about computers.” Zimyanski smiled oddly. “He even speaks English.”

Rostov was puzzled. The man didn’t sound very useful to him; an academic, a head of little practical value, attached to a stomach. Rostov would sooner have a good plumber. The water recycler was out again.

Lieutenant Rostov put out a hand, palm down, and waggled it, his face the image of dubious indecision.

“I don’t know, Zimyanski. I had come to trade for food. That has been our usual arrangement.”

“Of course, of course, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, please; not to worry.” Zimyanski dismissed such foolish concerns with an expansive wave of his arms. “I have also a cart.” He leaned forward, every inch the generous conspirator. “And in this cart are a dozen tinned hams for you and your men. Honest-to-God Polish ones, you won’t believe it.”

Rostov didn’t, despite Zimyanski’s genuflection for emphasis. Still, a dozen tins of almost anything meant feeding his men decently for a change. If the price was taking on another stray deserter and sparing him the firing squad, well, why not? Rostov nodded. “Fine. I’ll take the hams. The man too. I’m sure we’ll find some use for him.”

Zimyanski pretended to be overcome with reverence for Rostov’s command abilities. “I am positive that you will, Aleksei.” He gestured to Katchin, and the tall soldier left to fetch the cart of promised hams.

“What’s your price, then, Zimyanski?”

“Two hundred liters of petrol, in a single container.” Rostov’s uneasy worry flared into full suspicion. Half that much diesel might have been a reasonable request. Diesel could be safely and inconspicuously used for many things, even running an occasional engine. But two hundred liters of petrol? Petrol made fair bombs, yes; but two hundred liters was far too much for that. A judiciously placed incendiary grenade was better, and those were easily obtained. No, petrol was really only good for one thing: running internal combustion engines. And two hundred liters was too much to carry on a motorcycle and not enough to go very far in a truck. It was, however, just enough to allow one car to go a very long way indeed.

Rostov suddenly knew this would be his last exchange with Zimyanski. It concerned him a little; Zimyanski might throw Rostov to the wolves if he was caught. But there was the meat. The men were very bad off, and winter was not far away. Rostov put out his hand and clasped Zimyanski’s.

“Done. The fuel will be left for you at the usual pickup area.” Katchin returned just then with a small cart, its contents thumping and rattling against one another. Rostov wondered if the wraithlike guard would be accompanying Zimyanski wherever he was going. Somehow, he didn’t much think so.

“Thank you, Aleksei,” Zimyanski was saying. “It has always been a pleasure dealing with you. Ah, so good that in these trying times, we can yet perpetuate the true spirit of brotherly socialism within our military profession.”

Rostov thought he heard Zorin spit in the darkness behind him, and tried not to grin. He simply nodded.

Zimyanski and Katchin drifted away into the night. Rostov watched them go with a vague unease, then went to the cart. To his astonishment, he found not only genuine Polish commercial-export hams, but three more than the dozen that Zimyanski had promised; likely the black marketeer’s entire remaining trading stock.

Rostov spoke over his shoulder to Zorin, who had climbed down from concealment and gone to examine the prone man. “I think, Mikhail, that our old friend Zimyanski is getting out of the black-market business collective.”

From the darkness behind him, Rostov heard Zorin curse in quiet anger. The lieutenant instantly spun, crouched, flipped his rifle’s safety off. “Mikhail?”

He could see the dim outline of Zorin’s form, hunched over the body on the ground. Zorin’s voice drifted to him, barely a whisper. “Aleksei, you’d better come take a look at this.”

“Is he dead?”

“Would that he were. That might help solve the problem.”

Rostov frowned. Zorin’s tone had him more worried than had Zimyanski’s. He went to examine the unconscious man. Dust-covered uniform, bearded and thinned by hunger, the fellow at first looked like a hundred other survivors Rostov had seen. But when he finally recognized the uniform insignia, he realized that all his worries had been justified. If anything, he had not worried enough.

Rostov back-pedaled away from the man as he would from a serpent. Zorin nodded at the reaction.

“An American,” Zorin said. The burly sergeant shook his head, spat in frustration, and tossed his cigarette away. “Christus.”

Rostov sat in the tent of the unit’s commander, Colonel Ivan Podgoray, watching the bearded American sleeping on a cot next to the camp stove. The colonel himself was seated in the far corner, talking quietly with their unofficial medic, Blaustein. Blaustein was a civilian doctor, a Jew, and had been one of Zimyanski’s first “trade” items to the unit: a real doctor, and a good one, at that. Podgorny had been eager to get him, and Blaustein had been happy to disappear from KGB files as “deceased.” Israeli participation in the Alliance had sealed the fates of all but a handful of Russian Jews, including Surgeon Blaustein’s family. But whatever grudge he might bear against the KGB, Blaustein had proven himself a loyal member of the Guards Engineers from the first day. Every man in the troop trusted him, and knew his value to their own continued existence.

Rostov heard a sigh, and turned to see the American’s eyes flutter open. “He’s coming around, Comrade Surgeon.”

Blaustein came and joined Rostov at the American’s bedside. Short and athletic, the doctor moved powerful hands over his charge with a fluid expertise. Rostov admired Blaustein’s dedication. He had heard Jews didn’t believe in an afterlife, though not for reasons the State approved. Still, Rostov thought Blaustein would have tended the wounds of Baba Yaga herself while blessed Saint Peter watched. The balding, darkly bearded man seemed incapable of cruelty or any lack of compassion.

“So,” Podgorny said from his desk. At his tone, Rostov had to suppress an urge to leap to attention. “Now perhaps we will discover why an American in the uniform of their navy should be thousands of kilometers away from any ocean.” Podgorny sounded reflective, almost distracted, but Rostov did not relax. The troops joked that yes, Colonel Podgorny did indeed have a face disturbingly like Stalin’s. Ah, but deep down, where it really mattered, he had a heart like Ivan the Terrible.

Rostov knew that neither was strictly true. Podgorny was a stern disciplinarian, utterly devoted to the welfare of his command and completely intolerant of threats to that welfare. Rostov and Zorin had feared for their lives at bringing an American prisoner back. And as to looks, Podgorny actually resembled no one quite so much as the American President Theodore Roosevelt. Which was to say, he looked like Trotsky.

Colonel Podgorny stood and walked to stand at the side of the cot, his broad frame dwarfing the lanky American’s. “Are you awake?” the colonel asked politely in English.

The American’s eyes opened fully. He looked at the three of them, longest at Blaustein, who wore no uniform. Once he seemed to have his wits about him, he sat up on the cot. Podgorny repeated the question.

“You can speak Russian, if you prefer,” the American said. His accent was pure Muscovite.

“How do you feel?” Blaustein asked.

The American shrugged. “Rather well, all things considered. I am thirsty, though.”

Blaustein gestured to Rostov, who handed the American a cup of fresh water. He drained it, looking out through the narrow tent flap at the camp outside. A few soldiers could be seen, some parked vehicles, a long camp fire with cook pots set along its length in the Russian fashion. After a long time, the American looked back at Podgorny and spoke. “You’re not KGB.”

Podgomy shrugged, nodded. “Correct.” He raised a finger for emphasis, and scowled in what the men called his “Stalin look.” “But the cellars of Lubyanka are still quite operational, as you will find out should you give the wrong answers to my questions. I require your name and rank, and your unit and duties. And what, God save us, is an American naval officer doing in the heart of Russia, and how did you come to be in Zimyanski’s hands?”

The American took in the questions, gathered his thoughts, then spoke. “I take it we’re not overmuch concerned with the United Nations Articles of War?”

Rostov stood, placed the muzzle of his rifle against the American’s ear, and took off the safety. It was a subtler gesture than throwing the bolt, and seemed to make more of an impression on officers.

The American shrugged. “Point made. I’m Captain Martin Wrenn, United States Naval Intelligence. My unit was attached to the Ninth Marine Division in occupied Smolensk. My duties consisted of identifying, interrogating, and processing captured KGB personnel and Soviet Armed Forces defectors.” Wrenn looked up at Podgorny.

Podgorny’s mustache curled as he pursed his lips. There was nothing to say for Wrenn’s bluntness. Since the tide had turned against them in the Great War of Global Liberation, the Soviet Army had lost more troops to defections and desertions than to actual combat.

Podgorny made a dismissive gesture, and Rostov lowered his rifle.

Wrenn looked at the young Russian lieutenant. “Thank you.” He gathered his thoughts, ran a hand through his hair, moved it down to scratch thoughtfully at his beard. Podgorny noted that not all the gray in it was stone dust. After a long while, Wrenn spoke again: “The Soviet government announced its capitulation what, two months ago?”

“Three,” Rostov answered, his voice flat.

Wrenn nodded, went on. “Three months ago. That would be in June. Then the KGB took over, established control of the armed forces with provisional commanders and let go with the Gas Bug. So much for the Alliance counteroffensive. By the time we sealed our stocks of refined fuel, we found out the organism had mutated and could metabolize crude as well.” Wrenn spread the fingers of both hands in a helpless gesture. “And it all stopped. The Alliance held on in Europe and Russia for as long as it could, evacuating what units could get to the ports, get aboard the nuclear-powered ships of the fleets. But there are still a lot of Soviet attack subs out there. Most of them nuclear, and immune to the Gas Bug.” Wrenn’s voice trailed off. He spoke by rote now.

“It has become common knowledge that with the collapse of the world’s governments, the seas no longer know any law. Captains of many vessels of many nations are no better than pirates now. They work together, or hunt one another down. Their loyalty to the nations that gave them their commands has been supplanted by loyalty to their crews. What the hell—who can blame them?”

“I can, Captain Wrenn,” Podgorny said quietly. “I am a career army officer. I have watched a similar deterioration of the Soviet land forces.” Podgorny went to his desk and poured himself a drink. “Soldiers often go bad. We even have something of a reputation for it. When our countries no longer need us, we sometimes have turned to mercenaries, even bandits. But navies… navies have stood for something different since the Battle of Salamis.” Podgorny tossed down his drink, poured another. “You have my sympathy.”

Podgorny crossed the room, handed the glass to Wrenn. “Go on, please, Captain. About Zimyanski, if you will.”

Wrenn took the glass, did not drink. “My unit was ordered to pull back to an Alliance air evacuation point near Kiev.” Rostov’s grip on his rifle tightened slightly, but Wrenn didn’t seem to notice. “Halfway there, we ran into Zimyanski and his men, foraging in the ruins of a small village. The townspeople were all dead, but we didn’t put two and two together until afterward. Zimyanski approached my unit, asking us for help in defecting.” Wrenn’s tone had become cautious, but if he expected a protest of Zimyanski’s patriotism, he was disappointed. These men all knew the black marketeer too well. “Before we could reach the evac point, one of your armored columns overran us with those new steam-powered light tanks. Not much good against real armor, but of course, we didn’t have any real armor by then. The Gas Bug had taken care of that.”

“But your tanks are turbine-powered, yes?” Blaustein asked, almost hopeful.

“True. So we run—ran—them on high-octane aviation fuels. The Gas Bug microorganism ruins fuel so fast that I’ve seen tanks with sealed fuel compartments come to dead stops right in the middle of battles. The Gas Bug metabolizes so fast, you can see it eating the fuel, for chrissakes.” Wrenn put the drink down, reached into his pockets, frowned. Podgorny handed him a paper-filtered Russian cigarette. “Anyway, the minute Zimyanski saw the tide turn, he and his gang engaged my largely unarmed staff in a ‘pitched battle.’ My men were slaughtered and I was ‘heroically’ captured in fierce hand-to-hand fighting.”

Rostov shook his head in disgust. “That is Zimyanski exactly.”

“It would seem, though, that I was a problem for Zimyanski. The armored unit was KGB, not regular army. The commander was a General Morevno. He made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to make Zimyanski a hero of the Soviet Union for bringing me in. Not once he found out what my duties were.”

Podgorny shook his head. “Not likely. Zimyanski has long had a reputation as a black marketeer, living at the whim of the KGB. He has been tolerated because he keeps tabs on what few cohesive units are left amid the chaos; he even lends a crude sense of order to the whole farce we have been playing for the past few months, that things are bad, but really no different from before. But his presence in a unit like yours with a man of your duties would not be regarded as serendipitous.”

Wrenn nodded. “Which puts me right back where I started. And brings up the most important question I have: where does it put you, Colonel Podgorny?”

Podgorny walked slowly back to his desk, his arms folded, his head bowed in concentration. “Normally, Captain Wrenn, I would have to surrender you to my superior officer. But, as he is now KGB, I refuse to do that.” Podgorny gave the American a wintry smile. “Professional animosities, you see. From a full regiment, my command has shrunk to a company, and that is very closely watched, reporting as we do directly to a provisionalcommander in Moscow.”

“Which commander would have us all shot dead for having harbored an enemy invader. An American at that,” Rostov added.

Podgorny shook his head. “Captain Wrenn, United States Naval Intelligence. God save us, you might as well be CIA.” The colonel almost hissed the initials.

“Zimyanski traded you for petrol,” Rostov said, “no doubt to escape from the Moscow area in some stolen staff car. It’s doubtful he’ll make it, but then, he has made many friends over the past few years. He probably wanted us to have you because we’re the only unit that would look more suspicious with you in our custody than he would. If we tried to link you to him, he could make up any story he liked.”

Wrenn frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand; what’s so special about your unit?”

“We are Soviet Combat Engineers, Captain Wrenn,” Podgorny said quietly. “And whatever else you might think of us, that means the best. We enjoy the status of elites in the armed forces, which instantly makes us suspect in the eyes of the KGB, who now rule the U.S.S.R. Our only preservation is the fact that we alone have the access and expertise necessary for the formulation of immunizers against Binary Biological Agent Yo-Devyatnatsat.”

“The Gas Bug,” Wrenn said. Podgorny nodded. “Colonel, why do I get the feeling that you’re about to say something else to me?”

Rostov pointed his rifle at the tent overhead and pulled the trigger. There was only a flat click. Podgorny looked at Wrenn. “Perhaps you are psychic, Captain Wrenn. We take such things very seriously here in Russia. My officers and I have been discussing this possibility for many months; since the KGB takeover and the purges began. We have been awaiting only an opportunity. You are that opportunity. We wish to defect to the Alliance.”

“It all seems a rather interesting coincidence, my coming here,” Wrenn said quietly. He downed the drink Podgorny had poured for him earlier.

Across the room, Surgeon Blaustein spoke quietly: “Coincidence is God being anonymous.”

Wrenn spent the next several hours meeting with the remaining tekniks. None of them dissented with Podgorny’s decision. More important, none seemed to be KGB plants. All were of the opinion that the KGB decision to loose the Gas Bug on the world was a major catastrophe, one which might reduce the world to a barbarism in which neither the Soviet Union nor the nations of the Alliance would survive. And every one of them wanted to know from this American, this enemy in their midst, if the Legend of Kiev were indeed true. To such questions, Wrenn demurred. No point in fanning those flames right now. Interestingly, he found the only man not interested in the rumor was Lieutenant Rostov.

By the time he had met and briefed all the Russian combat engineer troops, it was late night. Weary, Wrenn accompanied Rostov back to the command tent. Despite his fatigue, Wrenn was intrigued by the young officer. He seemed to have no enthusiasm for what was about to happen, but neither did he resent it. He did not move like the automaton his attitude might suggest. He performed his duties very well, and was highly respected and well liked by the men in his command. He just didn’t seem to give a damn about anything.

Wrenn watched as Rostov set up a cot for their guest. The young Russian’s motions were precise, correct; automatic. His conduct toward Wrenn had been likewise, along with his execution of his duties during this first day of planning for the operation. Still, Wrenn felt more comfortable when these things were motivated more through enthusiasm than obedience.

Rostov finished making up the cot, turned, and saluted, preparing to leave. Wrenn held a piece of paper out to him. Frowning, Rostov took it and turned it over. It was a photograph of Wrenn, his wife and son. The boy looked about eleven years old. The background was some castle Rostov judged to be Bavarian.

“Your family,” Rostov said. “This is your first son?”

“My only child. He’d be almost fifteen, now.” Wrenn lit another of Podgorny’s Russian cigarettes, took back the photo. “You have children of your own?”

Rostov shook his head. He made no motion of leaving, but Wrenn sensed he was uncomfortable. “I only ask because I see you have a wedding ring. I didn’t mean to pry.”

The young Russian grinned. “Of course you meant to pry. But it’s all right.” The grin faded. “Now you want to know when I saw my wife last, and I will ask you the same, and we will talk, have a little vodka, and our tongues will wag a bit more, and as a skillful interrogator, you will find out everything about me you wish to know. And through me, you will find out everything I know about our unit, eh?” Rostov picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder. “I will save you some time, Captain Wrenn. There is nothing to know about me. And everything there is to know about the unit can be seen by taking a look around, or even in the simple fact that we are defecting with you en masse to the west. To that end, I will aid you to the limits of my capacities, Captain.” He went to the door in the tent frame, not turning as he finished: “But my self, I keep to myself.”

Wrenn waited a few minutes, then stepped outside. The night held stars, but no moon yet. The camp around him was quiet, but like any military unit on bivouac, did not really sleep. Two troopers on guard looked at him in open curiosity as they passed by on their rounds. One nodded, smiled. Wrenn smiled back. He heard someone in the compound cursing some piece of equipment; farther away was a sputtering sound Wrenn guessed to be an arc welder. Life went on, he thought. Or to be more accurate, survival continued.

Wrenn doubted that he could much improve the quality of that survival for these men by getting them to what might be only imagined safety in the West. But at least they would be beyond the reach of the KGB. That was certainly worth something.

“Good evening, Captain Wrenn.” The large noncom, Zorin, saluted as he approached from the direction of the mess tent. He carried two steaming mugs of tea with the finger and thumb of one of his large hands. Wrenn took one when offered, thanked the man.

“I am checking the guard for the first watch. I thought I would check to be sure you were comfortable.”

“Yes, thank you, Sergeant. Lieutenant Rostov saw to my quarters a few minutes ago.”

Zorin nodded, satisfied. “Very good, sir. Is there anything else?”

Wrenn sensed Zorin had the gift common to sergeants the world over; the ability to perceive an officer’s desires without directly being told. He nodded. “If you don’t feel it a breach of command, Sergeant, I’d like to know a little about Lieutenant Rostov.”

Zorin shrugged. “He is my lieutenant, sir. Is there some problem?”

“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me. I seem to rub him the wrong way. I’m not so sensitive to care one way or the other about being liked; but Lieutenant Rostov and I will have to work pretty closely if this thing is going to work, and if he has a problem with that, I think I should know about it for the good of everyone.”

Zorin nodded, took a sip of tea. When he spoke, it sounded the way Wrenn might imagine Zorin to be telling his children a sad old Russian fairy tale. “Lieutenant Rostov was married, Captain Wrenn. If the type appeals to you, you could say she was a great beauty. Certainly Rostov thought so. But Lilia Rostov was also an officer, a lieutenant in the Seventy-third Mechanized Artillery division. After the Soviet offensives had ended, when the U.S.S.R. had gone on the defensive against your avenging Alliance, Lieutenant Rostov’s unit was one of those charged with the defense of Kiev. They were attached to the Third Army, Group of Soviet Forces, formerly stationed in East Germany.”

Wrenn recognized the units Zorin mentioned. “The main armored concentrations of the Soviet Army in Europe. The ones…”

Zorin nodded. “The ones that tried to desert to the West in a massive surrender. The government called it the single greatest betrayal in Russia’s history. The KGB used it as an example that the army could not be trusted, murdered the general staff and took over command of the country’s defense. And brought about what has come to be known as the ‘Legend of Kiev’ among the Russian people.”

Wrenn was quiet, and Zorin looked directly at him. “You may have heard of this legend, Captain. It goes this way: Our own leaders, KGB though they were, targeted nuclear missiles on the GSPG and the city of Kiev, and launched them in a punitive strike. And your Alliance allowed it to happen. Your highly sophisticated and very effective Star Shield defense network, which had so efficiently protected your own homeland, and those of your Allies, turned its back on people who looked to you as saviors, even deliverers.” Zorin waited a moment, then lit a cigarette. “But, of course, it’s just a legend. These things get twisted around in the retelling.

“Anyway, whether Rostov’s wife was a willing participant in that defection or not, she undoubtedly died with the rest. Personally, I doubt that Lilia Rostov would have done anything that separated her from Aleksei Aleksandrovitch. Christus, I’ve never seen two people so loved by each other. I met her, once, before her unit left for Kiev. Lieutenant Rostov insisted upon it. I didn’t care much for her looks, but there was something about the two of them. Like neither was complete without the other, if you take my meaning.” Zorin finished the stubby cigarette and ground it under his heel.

“So Rostov blames the Alliance in general and Americans in particular for his wife’s death?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Not really. You and I got to see a bit of the world before it got torn up. The lieutenant is at least ten years younger than either of us. He’s twenty-six. He’s a widower who can’t admit his wife is gone; he still wears his wedding ring on his left hand. He’s a soldier on the losing side who’s smart enough to know it’s losing because it started the whole mess. He’s had to become a dealer with black marketeers and a man who shoots his own countrymen at a moment’s notice. Now he’s about to become a man without a country. He doesn’t blame anybody, sir, not really. He’s just too many things at once.”

Wrenn was silent a moment. “For the record, Sergeant. I don’t know why the Soviet missiles targeted on Kiev weren’t shot down. Maybe the warning time wasn’t long enough. Most likely the people who saw it didn’t believe what was happening until it was too late to do anything about it. And as for the efficiency of the Star Shield—well, we had over a hundred stations in orbit and twice that on the ground. If they had all survived the initial surprise attacks, there might have been no war at all. But quite a few Soviet missiles got through to our allies and our own homeland as well. Enough to make a great many widows. And widowers.”

Zorin listened closely at Wrenn’s tone, bitter, cold.

“Shall I tell you the rest of the Legend of Kiev, sir? I’d like to, because the rest is really my favorite part.”

“What do you mean?”

“The rest of the ‘Legend of Kiev’ says that even though the strike proved the KGB now in charge of Russia still had nuclear weapons, the Alliance refused to use their own such weapons against us, either in retaliation or even tactically. If that is true, especially in light of what you have just said, your people showed admirable restraint.” Zorin watched Wrenn for a long time before he spoke again. “So. It is true. You did not strike back. You are a strange people, you Americans. You will fight back if attacked, you will kill, but only to survive. You will battle savagely to redress a wrong, but never to exact revenge.”

“Perhaps it’s because we are a young people, Sergeant. America is barely two hundred years old. Children ourselves, we know that bad children require chastisement, not execution.”

Zorin nodded. “And all mankind are yet children.”

At Wrenn’s suggestion, guards had been posted to prevent anyone from leaving the camp during the night and possibly informing any nearby KGB units of their situation. Colonel Podgoray was relieved when morning roll call showed all his troops present or accounted for.

But Wrenn could not be so easily pleased. Having all the men in agreement on the defection would be of great help, but the real problem was still how to get them all out of Russia to the Alliance territories in the West. If the Alliance even existed any longer.

Rostov was escorting him from the morning meal. Along the way they passed a gang of troopers clustered around a truck, some under the hood, some on the ground beneath the body, and a few onlookers making encouraging noises.

“What’s the problem?” Rostov asked one of the idlers.

“Transmission’s gone, sir. Myakov thinks he can fix it, but, well…” The man left little doubt as to his opinion of Myakov’s mechanical aptitude by giving a shrug and a doubtful scowl. He threw in a hand waggle for emphasis.

Rostov turned to Wrenn. “Every Russian considers himself a top flight mechanic, you know. They try to prove it at every opportunity.” He and Wrenn watched the men for a moment more before he shrugged and added, “Of course, in the Engineers, it happens to be true.”

Wrenn smiled. “Of course.” We Americans used to think of ourselves that way, he thought. When did we stop?

As they went through the camp, they took stock of the operational vehicles, counting seventeen altogether. The mix included personnel carriers, reconnaissance vehicles the size of American Hummers, fuel trucks, cargo carriers, an APC, and a light tank. Twenty more vehicles were judged beyond repair, even with cannibalizing parts from one another. Six of those were fuel trucks.

“How many left in the unit, Lieutenant?”

“One hundred fifty-three, sir. No wounded, nobody seriously ill.” Rostov thought a moment and brightened a little. “We’ve more than enough vehicles to carry everyone; we can probably even carry most of the fuel we have in drums, drain the fuel trucks…” His voice died. They both saw the problem.

“A fuel drum takes up as much space and weighs much more than a man,” Wrenn said. “There’s no way to carry enough to get all the vehicles, with all the men, as far as we need to go. We’d better talk to Colonel Podgorny.”

Podgorny reacted to the news with stolid Russian equanimity. “We have to leave. We will find some way. Lieutenant Rostov, what was the situation in Moscow when you last met with Zimyanski?”

“Not good, sir. The KGB had taken over the city; they were stockpiling caches of materiel—anything they could lay their hands on, but mostly food, clothing, and ammunition. This has caused a lot of looting, much of it very well organized. There’d been a firefight with bandits the night before we got there. Another Nationalist group, probably Islamics. And Zimyanski mentioned raids by Ukrainians. It’s getting crazy, Comrade Colonel.” Rostov had unconsciously lowered his voice. “Really bad.”

Podgorny frowned, thinking. “What about the KGB? Don’t they control the city anymore?” Inwardly, he thought, they can’t even manage so much as that?

Rostov almost laughed out loud. “They barely control Red Square, Colonel. They have conscripts rummaging in the ruins of the Kremlin night and day. Everything they can lay their hands on gets spirited out of the city. The caches I saw, other supplies, records, whatever is left of technical value, even intact granite blocks from Lenin’s Tomb. Moscow is an empty larder, Comrade Colonel.”

Wrenn hoped he didn’t look as discouraged as he felt. He joined Podgorny at the maps on the colonel’s table, where he found their own position relative to the KGB-controlled forces still active in the area. They were deep within territory controlled by the remnants of the Soviet Army, now under command of the KGB; surrounded, as it were, by the “enemy.”

“What are the chances of us bluffing our way through some of these lines, Colonel?” Wrenn asked.

“Very bad. Owing to the nature of our unit, we are very closely watched by the KGB commanders. Sealed caches of fuel are hidden in buried pits all over Russia, but we do not know where they are. The KGB knows, but they do not have the formula nor the expertise for manufacture of the immunizer against A-Devyatnatsat. Army intelligence kept it from them very successfully, so as not to lose its autonomy when the Party structure collapsed. Even the KGB’s subsequent liquidation of the Intelligence sector did not succeed in obtaining the secret. So they need us, to make their fuel safe from the”Gas Bug," and we need them for what meager supplies of food and ammunition they dole out to us." He shrugged, thought a moment, then looked squarely at Wrenn.

“Captain Wrenn. If the KGB should maintain its control, perhaps extend it; perhaps even regain command of the bulk of the remnants of the Soviet Union, reinstate the Party… what, in your opinion, would then happen?”

Wrenn was surprised by the question, but when he finally answered, it was with the quiet conviction of a man stating a natural law. “The Alliance would be back in Russia within the decade. Perhaps within the year. The obliteration carried out by the U.S.S.R. was unmatched in human history. No nation on earth could forget it and call itself civilized. The next time, with no petroleum fuels, the Alliance would use steam engines. They’d walk if they had to—hell, they’d swim. Likely, they’d even lift the ban against China joining the Alliance.” Podgorny’s eyes flashed his anger, but he held his tongue. Vast tracts of land had already been lost to the Chin, whose largely nonmechanized forces had suffered little from the Gas Bug. Only the threat of Alliance nuclear intervention had kept the Chin from annexing all of Siberia.

Wrenn looked at Podgorny and Rostov. He didn’t know if they had ever heard the truth about the Alliance or not, but they were going to hear it at least this once. “The Alliance’s publicly professed purpose was the elimination of Soviet Communism. In the last century, Nazism had shown itself to be unacceptable in a civilized world. In this, your Party was no different.”

“Ironic to think that your country and mine hunted down the last vestiges of Nazism together, is it not?” Podgorny asked quietly.

Wrenn could only nod. When he spoke, his voice was sad, tired. Old. “All history is irony, Colonel.”

After a time, Wrenn stood up from poring over maps and paced the length of the room. He turned, spoke his thoughts aloud. “But, ideologies notwithstanding, our first concern now is survival. To survive, we have to get you and your men out of Russia. And I just don’t know how we can get a hundred and fifty men and all their equipment almost a thousand miles through hostile territory to Alliance lines in the West.”

Throughout, Rostov had listened quietly. Now his head went up, his eyes bright. Something the American had said earlier; something about steam.

“I know how.”

Podgorny and Wrenn turned as Rostov went to the map table, got his bearings, and pointed to a light blue area east of Moscow, hugging the contours of the city limits like an encroaching lake.

“Here is what we need,” Rostov said quietly. He was already calculating travel times from their current position to the goal he indicated. It was less than half a day’s drive, the unit could make it easily, but once there… it was bound to be heavily guarded.

“What is it?” The American pressed, impatient with the young Russian’s silence as he leaned over the map.

Rostov, concentrating, hardly turned. “This is the marshaling yard of the MBBR, part of the Kalinin and Byelorussian Divisions.”

Wrenn was puzzled. “Divisions? You mean military units?”

Podgorny had brightened at Rostov’s mention of the MBBR, and now he grinned widely. “No, Captain Wrenn. The MBBR is the Moscow-Byelorussian-Baltic Railway.” He slapped a bearlike hand against Rostov’s back, staggering the younger man, who grinned at the recognition.

“Comrade Lieutenant Rostov is suggesting we steal a train!”

Eyes of jet black glittered beneath heavy lids as the checkpoint guard went over their papers again. The guard was Private Kurga, KGB; a Mongol from one of the Siberian divisions, the blood of conquerors in his features. And he knew it.

Kurga had little love for these Caucasus types. Their American prisoner was an oddity, but Kurga had seen Americans before. He respected them; on the whole, they were good fighters. His hatred for them was based not on their invasion of Russia, only their failure to win. Kurga’s people had always despised weakness. The Americans’ refusal to use their nuclear superiority to obliterate the hated Sovs was beyond Kurga’s capacity to understand. He finally looked back up at the teknik lieutenant and his ugly sergeant. “I will notify Colonel Serafimov. You will wait.”

Kurga lifted the field telephone while his own assistant watched the American. Zorin and Rostov waited, looking bored.

Kurga pounded on the telephone. He grunted a few commands to his aide. The man rose and left. Kurga turned back to Rostov. “The phone is out. But the colonel should be overseeing the loading of the train. My man will notify him of you and your prisoner.”

Rostov nodded his head at Zorin, who went to accompany the guard. As the door closed behind them, Kurga turned to examine the bound American. Not much to look at, but who was, these days? Shirtless in the cold autumn morning, the thin man shivered slightly, skin tight as a drum over wiry muscles. Kurga guessed he’d be good in a fight; fast and mean. But weak, he decided with some regret, as all his people were weak.

Kurga turned upon hearing a sound from outside like a sack of grain being dropped. He moved past the American and opened the door. Zorin was standing over the body of Kurga’s assistant, sheathing a bloody knife in his own boot. It was the last thing Kurga saw before Rostov’s rifle butt crushed his skull.

Wrenn caught Kurga’s body and lowered it to the floor. Zorin dragged the other guard in and closed the door as Rostov cut the American’s bonds.

“I am very glad you suggested cutting those cables you saw, Captain Wrenn,” Zorin muttered as he bent to help the American remove Kurga’s uniform.

Wrenn nodded. “Now if only we can find the papers we need in this office.” He looked up at Rostov, standing at the window. “Can you see the train, Lieutenant?”

Rostov shook his head. “Too much smoke and fog. I see some trucks. Most of the smoke seems to be from camp fires, but the fog isn’t helping any.” The haze cleared for a moment, and through a gap in the buildings Rostov made out the slab sides and big iron wheels of a locomotive. Then the fog closed again.

“Da! Very close.”

Wrenn, who had been searching the dispatcher’s desk, came up with a fistful of papers that looked official.

“Here are some dispatches, a large folder of invoices; some receipts, some vouchers. A few are pretty recent.” He began reading them carefully. “From the looks of it, the rail net around Moscow to the west is virtually nonexistent.” He ran his finger down a list of train schedules and destinations, points of departure and routings. Maps would be worse than useless for finding an escape route; the front was too fluid, the Alliance attacks on the rail net and the scorched-earth policy of the Russian defenders too efficient. The only reliable information would be gathered from accounts of routes actually traveled, which could reasonably be expected to still exist.

“Here,” Wrenn finally said. “This looks good. Several trains have been operating out toward Bryansk and Orel through secure areas, running ammunition and supplies as well as evacuating Soviet forces eastward via Tula and Kaluga…” Wrenn’s voice trailed off as he concentrated on deducing the paths the trains must have taken to circumvent the shattered Moscow rail net.

“Yes. From Tula and Kaluga they brought back several units of the Soviet Fifty-third Motorized Infantry Division.” He looked up at Rostov. “That division was engaged with Anglo-Brasilian forces in the battle for the Kiev Zone less than a month ago, and this says they made the entire return trip by rail.”

“Then the lines into Kiev are still intact,” Rostov said quietly. He didn’t add that Kiev was no longer in Soviet hands.

“According to what I can make of this,” Wrenn went on, “it will mean a detour of two hundred miles east-southeast first, then a trip back over to Bryansk before going straight on, hell-bent-for-leather toward the Alliance lines. But we could make it. All your men, your stocks of immunizer and usable fuel, even your vehicles.” He paused, then added: “Assuming we can capture the train crew alive. We’ll need men familiar with the equipment if we’re to have a prayer of nursing a locomotive that far without stopping to refuel or finding places along the way where we can get water for the boiler.”

Rostov nodded. “And sand for the tracks and a hundred other things. We make lots of assumptions from this moment, but we have only one certainty: If we stay in Russia, we can lie down next to this Private Kurga and his man right now.” He looked at Zorin and nodded. The sergeant pulled out a small radio and began speaking rapidly into the microphone, alerting the rest of the unit to move in. When Zorin had finished, he handed the guard’s uniform to Wrenn. The stocky Russian grinned apologetically.

“Sorry, Comrade Captain. These tartars are a stubby lot, and you Amerikanski seem to stack it pretty tall.”

Wrenn grinned back. The pants cuffs would barely reach his ankles and the jacket sleeves rode up his forearms. “I’ll make do.”

Colonel Maksim Fyodor Serafimov, KGB, dropped his clipboard and rubbed his bleary eyes. Almost done, he thought. The clipboard held the manifest for the last shipment of supplies to be loaded on this last train. Serafimov cursed. The other trains had been easy; personnel, objets d’art, technical equipment, record books, computers and gold, gold, gold. Things needed to rebuild the country, or the Party, which was the same thing. Nothing anyone could possibly make use of for personal survival.

But these last few shipments had been nightmares. Party Central had plenty of supplies and weapons but still wanted more, and the level of black-market pilferage alone, just among Serafimov’s own men and the damned army boys, had been staggering. But once the insurgents had gotten wind of such a stockpile…

The first train out had been blasted right off the tracks. The crew and troops had been caught utterly unprepared, and the railyards had become an abattoir. Serafimov smiled. The next time, he had been ready with a well-planned ambush, and the slaughter of the raiders had been total. Serafimov had discovered their contact in the railyards and turned him to his own purposes. Serafimov looked down, contemplated his new boots. The little fellow had turned out to be useful in more ways than one, he considered. And now, finally, things were quiet again. No more bandits, at least.

Colonel Serafimov grunted in consternation, however. Where had the bandits come from in the first place? Had things deteriorated that far, already?

He sighed, deeply. Yes, he decided. Moscow was a husk. Little remained to indicate the city had once been the center of the greatest empire the world had ever known. The Party was a gaggle of terrified old men hiding in caves, guarded by fanatics like himself, supported by fanatics like himself. The Kremlin, Saint Basil’s, Lenin’s Tomb, all the landmarks of Serafimov’s youth were rubble. And with the departure of this last train, only ghosts would remain to walk the streets of Moscow.

Serafimov recalled a passage from Lenin, from his journals of the Revolution: “When the trains stop, that will be the end.”

“Colonel?” Serafimov jerked upright. He had gone two days with almost no sleep, and his nerves were brittle as ice. He looked up to see his aide in the doorway.

“Yes, Sergeant Sokoloff?”

“The train crewmen say they are having some trouble getting a head of steam up.” Sokoloff had grown up innocent of what steam engines were. Diesel and electric locomotives were all he had ever seen, those and a few of the Magnetikas, pride of the TransEuropean Mosrail System, riding on force fields at incredible speeds.

With the war, the U.S.S.R. had pressed back into service everything she could lay her hands on, and the old leviathans of steam had returned. Along with their incredibly arrogant operators. Dinosaurs, Serafimov thought with contempt of the hulking steel brutes. Great big ones with little lizards to run them.

“All right, Sergeant. We’ll deal with that in a moment. Any raids this morning?”

“None, sir. It’s been very quiet since we…” Sokoloffs voice trailed off, and Serafimov nodded, knowing the younger man’s thoughts.

Since the hangings, Serafimov thought; you would like a brief respite from pilferage and raiding? Here’s my recipe; works every time: String up some seventy-odd men on insulated power lines along your perimeter. Tie their hands to said cable, just close enough together to let them support their own weight, but too far apart to free themselves, then lash their necks securely to the cables with thin wire: radio cable is good. The socially irresponsible fellows last for as long as they can do chin-ups.

Serafimov turned his pencil end-over-end, tapping it against the desk top. Three hours of chin-ups was the record, he recalled, and that man had been very strong, and very small. Serafimov shook his head. And all for a case or two of Polish hams from the Party stocks. He sighed, finally looked up at Sokoloff. “Hard times, Sergeant, yes?”

Sokoloff nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Well. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. A detachment of tekniks just arrived, started loading their vehicles and several drums of fuel immunizer on the flatbeds near the rear of the train. Their papers were all in order, so Lieutenant Drusiev passed them along.”

Serafimov frowned. Tekniks? With Gas Bug immunizers? He should have received notification for any cargo so critical. Still, few people beneath Serafimov’s rank knew how fast things were collapsing; so an unnotified shifting of a few army types was only surprising, not suspicious. He stood, stretched, picked up the manifest clipboard, and headed for the door.

“Come along then, Sergeant. Let’s see these tekniks. Then we’ll see if we can’t give our reluctant trainmen some incentive toward proper socialist zeal for the task at hand.”

The morning fog lifted while Podgorny’s men hurriedly finished securing their vehicles aboard the flatbeds. Podgorny himself, accompanied by Rostov and Zorin, had walked to the train’s head both to get a look at the locomotive and ascertain the number of guards. The entire machine was lousy, as Zorin put it, with KGB. Wrenn made himself scarce.

The three Russian officers sidestepped a small lorry of crates and went behind a building. When they came around a corner, they got their first look at the engine.

“Oh,” was all Podgorny said. Zorin muttered, “Christus,” with very little emotion.

The engine was enormous, a leviathan of steel, hulking over the tracks like a basking brontosaur dozing after a dewy morning’s feeding.

Or a dragon, Rostov thought. Dragons were not exactly state-sanctioned images in Soviet literature, but Rostov had had as much exposure to samizdat novels as anyone else in Russia. However he chose to look at it, black slab-sided, double-decked, implacably hissing, wreathing itself in steam, it remained the biggest thing Rostov had ever seen that wasn’t supposed to fly or float.

“I know this type,” Zorin blurted. “It’s the P-38; the largest steam engine ever built in Russia. Maybe the world. And the last. Didn’t do too well on the heavy-load lines up north or into Siberia; too cold for it. They weren’t in service very long before they pulled them off the lines.”

“Diesel fired?”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel.” Zorin was still staring. He felt like he was looking at a 215-ton ghost.

Podgorny nodded. “Good. They should be happy to see us and our fuel and immunizer, then. And the happier they are, perhaps the fewer questions they will ask.”

Rostov had looked down the length, counting as best as he could. “Looks like it only has about fifty cars. That should let her run lighter, faster. Let’s talk to these trainmen.”

Zorin broke from his trance and tapped Rostov’s arm. “Trouble, maybe, Lieutenant.”

They turned to see a KGB colonel approaching. Serafimov stepped up to the three Combat Engineers, saluted Podgorny. Podgorny returned the salute smartly, began to report.

“Colonel Podgorny, Fifth Guards Armored Engineers, Comrade. We have quantities of the fuel immunizer as well as protected petrol and diesel for immediate evacuation from the Moscow District, via the Bryansk salient.”

“Colonel Serafimov. KGB. Welcome, Comrade. I confess I find it odd that I received no advance notice of your coming. The immunizer is too valuable a commodity to risk missing the last train out of Moscow.”

“Regrettably, Comrade Colonel, we were delayed by raiding parties. The invaders had been attacking our area with strong infantry forces, and a General Morevno ordered us out of the area at all speed.” Morevno was the KGB officer commanding the armored column that had overrun Wrenn’s position.

The KGB colonel only pursed his lips and nodded.

“All right, Comrade,” Serafimov finally said. “Get your men up onto the flatbeds and into the boxcars. Get everything tied down. We should be leaving within the hour.” Serafimov turned and left with a perfunctory salute.

“Too easy,” Rostov said quietly. Something must be horribly wrong. Relax, he commanded himself. In one hour, the train would be leaving Moscow. An hour after that, he and his men would have to be in control. But sure enough, like Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor, the KGB man turned with an innocent look of afterthought on his face.

“Oh, by the way, Comrade Colonel; I don’t suppose that any of your men would be familiar with steam engines, eh?”

Podgorny looked blank, caught unawares. Rostov frowned. The men were routinely trained in all forms of power plant technology. They might be a little rusty on steam, but any one of them could make himself useful.

“Problems with the locomotive, Comrade Colonel?” Podgorny asked.

The KGB man shrugged. “Civilian trainmen. Conscripts. They claim there’s some difficulty in building up pressure.”

“I know something about boilers, sir,” Zorin said innocently. Indeed he did, Podgorny remembered; better still, Zorin was a deadly in-fighter. If the trainmen in the cab were under guard, Zorin was the man to put in there among them.

Podgorny nodded. “Take Sergeant Zorin, Colonel. He might be of use.”

“Very good, Comrade.” Serafimov was beaming. “Thank you very much.” He was feeling expansive, and told Podgorny to be sure his men got some food before the field-kitchen was dismantled. Seranmov left almost whistling. He was already bringing Party Central a huge cache of ammunition and supplies, and now almost a company’s worth of valuable Engineers and their preciously guarded immunizer. Tekniks, alive and well! Serafimov could almost taste his promotion. Of course, he thought, the officers would have to go, but that was a minor problem.

Zorin followed Serafimov up into the locomotive’s engine cab. The size of the engine was almost overwhelming. Three men in trainmen’s coveralls were grouped on one of the outside walkways that ran the entire length of the engine, handing one another tools and working at a cluster of pipes and valves. Zorin thought they looked like ants on a summer squash. Two more trainmen were in the cab itself. Standing over them was a lanky trooper in KGB uniform, his rifle casually pointed at the two civilians. Zorin’s breath caught as the man turned at Serafimov’s address. “Corporal Katchin; what is the status of the engine?”

Zimyanski’s former aide shrugged, hardly noticing Zorin. “They are claiming they don’t know the problem, Colonel.” The men on the floor laughed.

One of the trainmen, a young man with steel-rimmed spectacles, spoke idly as he adjusted a brass fitting. “We know the problem, Colonel. We’re losing pressure somewhere in this line. What we don’t know is the solution.”

Katchin abruptly planted a foot on the young man’s shoulder and pushed him firmly down on the deck grate, pointing the rifle at his throat.

Serafimov leaned forward and spoke: “I wish to be out of this trainyard in one hour,” he said in a reasonable voice. “From this point on, one of you will be shot for every fifteen minutes in which power is not up for our departure. In the future,” Serafimov said, addressing the older trainman, “be aware that I am not renowned for my sense of humor.”

Zorin almost groaned. This monster of a locomotive was almost a hundred years old. It would need every man of its crew, and would probably be shorthanded at that, and this KGB fool wanted to play the Commissar Game. Serafimov had Katchin release the man and ordered him back to work.

“Sergeant Zorin, this is Corporal Katchin; anything you need, let him know. I would appreciate your telling him if it appears these zeks are slacking in their work, as well.” Seranmov saluted and left.

Zorin took a deep breath and turned to face Katchin. It was possible that the KGB corporal did not recognize Zorin; they had rarely met face-to-face, and then only at night. Zorin saw no recognition in the man’s eyes and gave an inward shrug. Don’t look a gift of a horse too closely in the mouth, he thought, and bent to inspect the trainmen’s work.

“What’s your name, Comrade?” he asked the older man when Katchin stepped out onto the catwalk to smoke.

Watery blue eyes in a soot-grimed face took Zorin’s measure, seemed not to find him wanting, and glimmered into a smile. “Gyrich,” the man said as he turned from his work.

Ukrainian, Zorin thought. He took a closer look at the younger man who had wisecracked to Serafimov. Behind his glasses, the fellow was fair-skinned; high cheekbones, sturdy build. An old and massive burn scar could be seen through the collar of his shirt, spreading to cover most of his chest and shoulders. Zorin watched him carefully before saying, “And you?”

“Eh?” the young man turned, distracted. He was sweating heavily, and Zorin guessed it wasn’t just from the heat of the pipes over which he toiled.

“Your name?”

“Pilkanis.” The answer seemed like a weary admission of guilt.

Zorin was stunned. A Lithuanian! These men weren’t just conscripts. Small wonder the KGB regarded them as expendable. They must all be captured partisans, counterrevolutionaries from the Nationalist Insurgents that had sprung up in the last years of the war. Despite government claims to the contrary, Zorin had never heard of proven atrocities committed by these bandits against legitimate army troops. KGB, however, they killed outright.

Sergeant Zorin went to the door and looked for Katchin. The tall, thin figure could be seen leaning against the outside of the boiler. Zorin turned back to the trainmen.

“Listen: Forget what that KGB turd said; no one’s getting shot. We need you, all of you, and alive. We’re Combat Engineers, not KGB, and we’re taking this train. We’re getting out of Moscow and heading West. You and the other trainmen with you have a choice: Work with us and maybe live. Work for the KGB and surely die. What’s it to be, eh?”

The two trainmen stared at Zorin for a moment, then looked at each other. Before they could answer, they heard Katchin’s footsteps on the walkway outside, returning. Zorin made a gesture for them to keep silent, and the three of them bent back to the valves they had been working on.

Wrenn secured one of the Engineers’ light trucks to the flatbed, then passed Podgorny’s signals on to various troops. Blaustein, promoted to a pro tempore captain, had gathered the other NCOs for their final briefing. The plan for seizure of the train had been hastily assembled and required rapid execution. Now was the time for Wrenn to do his part.

He made his way to the passenger cars forward, moving with a calmness he hardly felt among the dozens of KGB troops he passed along the way. While the bulk of the KGB troops was still in the barracks, Wrenn was pleased to see that most of their equipment and virtually all of their food was already aboard the train. No one paid Wrenn much attention, and he reached a door that opened into what appeared to be a conference room. The room was empty, but there were maps spread out on a large table, a desk with a plush leather chair was against one of the outside walls, and a samovar sat on a table in the corner, hissing quietly. Wrenn smiled, despite the danger of his own situation; no Russian train went anywhere without its supply of tea.

The car was evidently a holdover from the days when Soviet tourist-bureau officials insisted on trappings to impress Western visitors. Spacious and well appointed, with fittings considered lavish by any standards in the world, it was now obviously reserved for the commander. Wrenn began rifling the desk and got to the third drawer before hearing voices outside.

He looked about quickly; only the lavatory was close enough to hide in. He slipped in and locked the door.

Rostov and Podgorny inspected their troops on the flatbeds and spread throughout the cars. The odds, so far, look good, thought Rostov.

“There are lots of KGB, Colonel,” Rostov said. “But the majority have not yet boarded. I estimate we outnumber the troops aboard the train by about three to one.”

“The odds will never be better. Get up to the engine and see if Zorin has made contact with the trainmen yet, and how soon we can get moving. Which way did you see that KGB colonel go?”

“He left the engine cab and went to the first car behind the tender. Looks like a passenger car; most likely the commander’s coach.”

Podgorny nodded. “Let us hope our American friend came to the same conclusion and is hidden safely.” Podgorny’s brows knitted. “This is a sloppy plan, Rostov.”

Rostov shrugged and grinned. “Personally, sir, I think it has a certain crude appeal.”

Podgorny grunted, left Blaustein with a few last orders, and walked toward the engine with Rostov. They caught up with Serafimov just as the KGB man was climbing the ladder up into the command coach.

“Comrade Colonel.” Podgorny saluted. “I have finished seeing to my men. With your permission I should like to speak with you about our itinerary and ETA at the TransUral Command District.”

Serafimov smiled oddly. “Of course, Comrade Colonel. Join me in the command car.”

Podgorny turned to Rostov. “See how the sergeant is doing with Colonel Serafimov’s trainmen, Lieutenant.”

Rostov saluted and left.

Rostov pulled himself up the ladder into the cab and stepped onto the fireman’s station. Two trainmen were crouched on the floor with Zorin, banging away at a bank of pipes and dials. Across the way stood a tall, thin guard in KGB uniform, who looked up at Rostov and gaped. The cigarette fell from his lips into a patch of water on the floor, hissing.

“Katchin,” Rostov whispered.

Zorin looked up. “Oh, Christus, no.”

Katchin brought his rifle up and leveled it at Rostov’s chest. For a moment he said nothing, then gestured for Rostov to enter the cab. The lieutenant walked inside slowly, holding his rifle out limply to one side. Katchin seemed to have lost none of his nervousness, Rostov thought.

“What are you doing here?”

“Take it easy, Corporal.” Rostov spoke softly, carefully putting down his rifle. “We have orders to leave on this train, that’s all. Nobody needs to know about our dealings with you and Zimyanski.” Rostov nodded at Katchin’s KGB uniform. “Looks like Zimyanski talked you two into soft new careers, eh?”

Katchin’s face went cold and hard as he smiled. “Zimyanski talked himself into a noose. As for me, Colonel Serafimov has always found me useful.” He jerked the barrel of the rifle upward. “This will make the second time in a week that I’ll be contributing to the colonel’s good fortune. Outside. You too, Sergeant.”

Too late, Rostov realized his error. “Of course. Zimyanski could never signal me that he’d been infiltrated by the KGB. Not if you’d been there from the beginning. And you were always the one he brought to our meetings. His protector. I wonder if poor Zimyanski ever knew.”

Katchin almost laughed. “I assure you, he was quite surprised. He expected trouble from me when he told me he’d be leaving me behind.” Then Katchin did laugh, and the sound gave Rostov very little hope for his future. “I gave him no trouble at all. But Colonel Serafimov was quite unhappy with the little weasel. I doubt he’ll be any more pleased with you.”

Rostov shrugged. “Perhaps then we can impress him with the American Intelligence officer you gave us. The colonel may wonder why you waited so long to tell him you and Zimyanski had captured one.” Rostov watched the combined fear and rage build on Katchin’s face, and knew he had guessed right. “Unless you’d planned to go with Zimyanski; but he crossed you too, didn’t he?”

The older man, Gyrich, rose slowly, reading gauges as he did so. “Oh, oh,” he said. Katchin stopped.

“Now what?”

Gyrich pointed to a gauge. Katchin sidestepped to see what was wrong. Gyrich threw a lever.

A demon of live steam shrieked through the cab, straight for Katchin’s throat. The jet of superheated vapor hit the KGB man’s face. Through fleshless lips, Katchin screamed and dropped his rifle, then fell into the arms of the big Lithuanian, Pilkanis. Gyrich closed the valve as the younger man slammed a wrench against Katchin’s temple.

Rostov snatched his own rifle back. “Get us power, now. Pull in the rest of your crew and let’s get moving. Don’t forget we’ve got almost fifty cars on this thing.”

As he and Zorin clattered down the gangway, Rostov turned back. “And no starting whistle! No warnings, just get rolling!”

Pilkanis and Gyrich nodded grimly and set to work.

It took all their willpower for Rostov and Zorin to walk, instead of running, back toward the command car. They passed under its windows and could hear faint voices: Podgorny and the KGB colonel talking. They went on to the rear of the train, by the links connecting the boxcars to the flatbeds, to find Surgeon Blaustein had all the men in position.

“Charges set?” Rostov asked. Blaustein nodded. “Good. Zorin, your men are ready?”

Zorin shrugged. “Not something we have to do every day, Aleksei, so we’ll just have to improvise.”

Rostov grinned. “That’s the spirit. Spoken like a true Engineer. I would like to say, Sergeant, that once over the border we might try our hands at being good capitalist entrepreneurs, but…”

Zorin nodded, smiled. The world they were joking about had ceased to exist, as surely as had their own. What would replace them both one could only guess at.

“Good luck, sir,” Zorin said, adding one of his rare, formal salutes.

“And you, Mikhail.” Rostov returned the salute smartly, turned, and trotted back toward the front of the train.

It seemed to be taking him longer to get there than it should, when suddenly he realized the damn thing was rolling already.

Rostov grabbed a handrail and swung up onto a boxcar ladder. The train was still moving very slowly, but the KGB troops atop the car roof were scrambling to secure their gear. They looked up with puzzled, hostile glares at Rostov, who shrugged and grinned. The universal communication of citizens of the Soviet: I don’t know what the hell’s going on either, don’t ask me. Following Rostov’s instructions, the trainmen had given no warning whistle.

Rostov trotted along the car roofs, jumping easily across the gaps. It was not something he’d enjoy trying at any respectable speed. Buildings and power lines eased slowly by, and as they passed between two signal towers, Rostov saw a line of human scarecrows hung by the neck from the power cables. He recognized Zimyanski’s nearby corpse immediately.

All badges of rank had been left on Zimyanski’s uniform, a warning that even high rank could not protect criminals from the justice of the State.

Rostov shook his head and ran on. Zimyanski’s legs hung limp, ending in pathetically bare feet, blackened and limp, swinging in a light breeze.

Inside the command car, Podgorny and Serafimov had gone to the map table. Podgorny had idly tried the lavatory door, but found it locked. He hoped it meant what he thought it did.

Serafimov sat down at his desk and picked up a pencil, began tapping it end-over-end against a notebook of railway charts and tables. “Any problems finding space for your men on board, Comrade Colonel?” Serafimov asked quietly. He did not look up from his pencil as he spoke.

“None, Comrade.” Podgorny fervently hoped that Rostov was making his way back up here, to say nothing of Wrenn. The takeover would have to start soon, Podgorny decided; this KGB dog was starting to sniff, he could feel it. The rail maps Wrenn had found in the guardhouse and the papers with them showed the junctions outside Moscow they would have to take in order to reach the West. There was only one workable connection, and it was a bare ten miles outside the city.

“Fine,” Serafimov said. “Your men seem in good order. It is fortunate we ran into you tekniks.” The KGB colonel knew the popular term for Combat Engineers was ambiguous. He let the phrase hang in the air, wishing to impress on Podgorny that the status of his men and himself was likewise tentative. Serafimov nodded, pursing his lips.

“We have had much trouble with raiders, Colonel. Bandits, mostly. Unfamiliar with the true military and political situation. Your men and arms will be a welcome addition to our force.”

Podgorny nodded, then sensed rather than felt something; the train was moving! He suddenly leaned across Serafimov’s desk. Startled, the KGB man instinctively tilted his chair back, obscuring the motion of the train.

“Colonel…” Podgorny said, praying thanks that he had distracted the man.

“Yes, Comrade?” Serafimov had cocked an eyebrow.

Podgorny tried desperately to think of something to say. The best he could come up with, finally, was: “I have a confession to make.”

Zorin and half of his men were in position on the rearmost flatcar. The rest of his force were spread throughout the train itself, mixed among the KGB troops. The bulk of the KGB were positioned along the top of the boxcars at each end of the flatbeds, effectively pinning down Zorin’s men when the shooting started, as it would any second now.

“Keep those light machine guns down at the sides,” he told his men. “When we start rolling, the troops still in the railyard will try to storm the flatcars; it’s the easiest way for them to get on.”

Zorin turned to take his bearings from a building that was suddenly several meters closer than it had been a moment ago. “Christus.” He turned to one of his men. “This is it. Get ready.”

Zorin scuttled over crates and vehicles to the rear of the flatcar. Balancing his helmet with one hand, he leaned over the edge and looked underneath at the bottom of the flatcar. A dozen of his men were hidden up among the framework and linkages. He checked the suspension and couplings connecting the rear flatcar to the last three cars. When he was satisfied that everything was in place, he raised his head, his face reddened less from hanging upside down than it was from excitement.

“You were about to say something, Comrade Colonel?” Serafimov prompted. What was wrong with these technical types? They all wound up acting like they spent more time drinking vodka than mixing their mysterious chemicals.

Podgorny’s mind lit on the most obvious excuse. “I must confess, I never thought I would leave this cemetery alive.” He put on his dim-witted peasant face that he reserved for high-ranking Party civilians. “Perhaps a toast? With your permission, sir?”

Serafimov smiled thinly. Why not? The teknik was only leaving one cemetery for the plot of another, after all. Still, it would not hurt to lull his suspicions. “Of course, Comrade Colonel,” Serafimov said coolly. “Please help yourself; in that cabinet behind you.”

The shades behind Serafimov were open, and Podgorny could see buildings crawling by. The KGB man would notice their movement in seconds. But if he could get close enough to him with a bottle, a corkscrew, anything…

Podgorny took vodka and two glasses from the cabinet. Closing the door, he saw Serafimov’s reflection in the glass; the KGB colonel had produced a pistol and was pointing it at him.

“Turn around very slowly, Colonel Podgorny, or I will shoot you in the spine. General Morevno was a most unfortunate choice of a lie. We evacuated the survivors of his unit yesterday. The tanks, anyway. Most of the men were killed in a bandit raid. Including Morevno himself.

Podgorny sighed. He turned slowly, hearing faint shouts from outside. “It doesn’t really matter now, Colonel Serafimov,” Podgorny said. “It sounds like your railroad guards have noticed us leaving without them.”

The KGB officer’s face went from arrogance to puzzlement, then to shock. It twisted into anger as he at last felt the train pass over a track joint.

Serafimov leaped from his chair, keeping the pistol trained on Podgorny. “Move and you’ll be a cripple.” He glanced out the window to see groups of his own men running from the buildings in various states of dress, trying to catch the accelerating train. Small arms fire suddenly erupted outside.

Serafimov smiled, shaking his head at Podgorny. “Pathetic. Is this as much ingenuity as you army types are capable of? Small wonder we lost the bloody war.” He circled Podgorny, moved to the brake cable on the wall. As on most Russian trains, only such cars as this one were equipped with them. In this case, it was opposite the lavatory door.

Serafimov heard a sound behind him: the lavatory door was opening, indicating a threat behind him. By the book, he thought. Deal with the present threat first. He shot Podgorny without a second’s hesitation. The bullet passed through the big Engineer’s abdomen and into the liquor cabinet door behind him. Podgorny went back a step, crashing into the shattered wood and broken glass, and fell heavily to the floor.

Serafimov spun to meet whatever threat might be coming from behind him, and instead saw one of his own KGB railyard guards. He hesitated then, until he suddenly realized the man was white; in that uniform, at that rank, he should be an Asiatic. What was—?

Wrenn grasped the KGB man’s gun hand, twisting until he felt bones grind and fingers open. The gun dropped, and Wrenn deftly reached to catch it. Serafimov batted the pistol away with his other hand, jabbed a knee up into the American’s stomach. Wrenn locked both arms around him, and they slammed into the floor.

Rostov saw a dozen men running from buildings toward the train and thought, This is it, for what must have been the hundredth time that day. He hoped the gimmick he and Zorin had thought up would work. The train was picking up speed now, and it was getting harder to stay on his feet atop the boxcar. The command coach was another four jumps ahead, he thought. A bullet sparked off the metal of a signal tower. Rostov returned fire on the KGB troops, dropping two before he ran on.

Zorin’s men on the flatbeds had more luck than was usually the soldier’s lot. All the KGB troops rushing the flatcars were coming from one side. The Combat Engineers cut them down with machine-gun fire whenever they tried to get close to the train. As far as the KGB already aboard the train were concerned, however, the Engineers’ luck ran out. From the surrounding boxcars, the KGB troops’ height advantage allowed them to pour a withering fire into the gun positions of the Engineers.

Zorin turned to Blaustein; the surgeon was methodically squeezing off three-round bursts at the tops of the boxcars, trying to keep the enemy troops pinned down. Twenty or thirty other tekniks were following his cue. Several of their comrades were already sprawled lifeless on the flatcar decks.

“I’m going now, Comrade Surgeon; can you hold on?”

Blaustein kept his face snug against his rifle, speaking calmly even as he continued to fire. “Yes, Sergeant. You’d better get started. It’s not going to get any better. We’ll manage.”

Zorin scrambled along the little cover he could find to the rear of the flatcar. There he swung himself over the edge into the mass of cables and linkage below. Waiting hands pulled him in out of the line of fire. The twelve other men he had positioned there earlier were waiting for him, ready to go.

“Let’s get started,” Zorin said. Moving hand over hand along the underside struts, they began working their way forward.

Wren and Serafimov rolled across the floor of the car until the Russian got a grip on Wrenn’s beard and slammed the American’s head against the wall. Wrenn’s grip loosened, and Serafimov broke free.

The KGB colonel lurched to his feet; he was too far from the hand brake, too far from help, and he could feel the train picking up more speed with each passing second. He would have to finish his opponent himself. His gun hand almost numb from his opponent’s disarming attack, Serafimov reached across with his good hand and drew a long dagger from his boot.

Wrenn watched the KGB colonel advance, the dagger interposed as he maneuvered Wrenn away from the hand brake. If he gets to that brake and stops this train, Wrenn thought, we are well and truly screwed. Wrenn thought back to a training session on knife fighting he had received from a Marine, years before. He never thought he’d have to do it.

The American took a deep breath and steeled himself, concentrating on feeling nothing as he threw out his left hand and impaled it on the KGB man’s knife.

Wrenn knew he had perhaps a second before the pain hit him. He felt it breaking through his concentration, rushing at him from a long way off like—well, he thought, like a train. The blade went through his palm as he pushed his hand down hard, ending at the hilt, locking his fingers around it and the other man’s hand.

Serafimov had been prepared for almost anything else, but this mad action took him completely by surprise. For a moment, he simply stared, then Wrenn pulled hard, Serafimov staggered forward and the American drove his right fist into the KGB man’s throat with all the strength he could muster.

Serafimov fell choking to the floor, and Wrenn stumbled back against the wall, drawing the dagger out of his hand with a roar of pain. The agony swept over him in waves. Can’t black out, can’t black out…

He pointed the blade toward the KGB colonel. He could hardly concentrate, but he managed to get enough breath to speak. “That’s it,” Wrenn said in English. Realizing his lapse, he switched back to Russian. “It’s over; lie down, flat on the floor.”

But at the sound of the enemy tongue, Serafimov’s skin stretched taut over his facial bones. The colonel snapped, threw himself across the floor, recovered his dropped pistol, and rose to his feet. Choking and gasping for air, his windpipe crumpled by Wrenn’s blow, Serafimov steadied himself against the desk, aiming the pistol at Wrenn’s head.

*Well, it’s been a good life_, Wrenn thought. _Some highs, some lows. I guess this counts as one of the lows…*

Serafimov fumbled with the trigger, cursed in Russian and pulled back the slide, then re-aimed. From behind him, Podgorny rose up, wraithlike. There was blood on the Engineer’s lips, a vodka bottle still gripped firmly in his hand. Podgorny swung the bottle in a huge arc.

The bottle disintegrated against the side of the KGB man’s head. Serafimov spun around, clutching his tern-pie.

Wrenn dropped as the shot from the gun went wild. Podgorny threw his arms around Serafimov. Before the American could regain his feet, the big Engineer had staggered back against the window, still holding on to Serafimov. The safety glass panel splintered but held.

“Podgorny, no!” Wrenn shouted, realizing too late what the Engineer was doing. He stood, tried to cross the room in time, but was too late.

Podgorny dashed himself against the glass again. The window shattered, and both men tumbled over the sill. Wrenn got to the window at last. Two figures rolled down the cinder-blackened incline of the railbed, and in an instant were lost from sight behind the last buildings of the rail yard.

The door banged open. Wrenn spun about, the dagger still in his hand, to see Rostov raising his rifle.

The lieutenant recognized him just in time. Wrenn could barely stay conscious over the pain in his hand. He slumped to the floor as Rostov reached him. “For a moment,” the American murmured, “I thought the good Lord was going to be anonymous again.”

Rostov looked around. “Where’s Colonel Podgorny?”

Wrenn nodded toward the window. “I’m sorry, Rostov.”

“The KGB man,” Rostov said simply, then looked down at the hand Wrenn was clutching. The American’s lap was soaked with blood. Rostov reached down and examined the wound, and Wrenn nearly passed out. Rostov grimaced, seeing the American’s hand was nearly cut in half.

“Let’s get something on that.”

Wrenn was incredulous. “Oh, good fucking idea!” he snapped.

Rostov grinned. “Good. You’re angry enough to live through it. Comrade Blaustein has shown me how to fix worse than that. And we don’t want anything to happen to you, after all.”

Outside a grenade went off.

Zorin and his men had crawled along the bottoms of the flatcars until they reached the boxcars forward. Zorin himself stood up on the couplings and helped the rest of the men up and onto the ladder to the boxcar roof. The KGB troops were dropping grenades on the flatbeds; this business would have to be finished quickly.

Reaching the roof of the boxcar, the first Engineer saw half a dozen KGB at the far end, firing automatic rifles down into the men on the flatcar below. Zorin’s man opened fire, killing them all.

“Good. This end secured.” Zorin got the rest of his men on the boxcar roof. “Now move quickly to the passenger cars. Let’s clear this train out.”

Zorin ran back to give the all-clear to his men on the flatcars. They were still taking small-arms fire from the KGB troops on the rear boxcars. Those KGB had even received reinforcements from rail-yard troops who had managed to grab hold of the rear car and haul themselves aboard. Zorin leaned over, calling to his men below.

“Zorin!” Blaustein was waving to him exultantly.

“The front’s clear,” Zorin shouted back. “Go ahead, blow it!”

Blaustein made a gesture to the man next to him. Protected from fire throughout the battle, this soldier had the most important job of all. He made a twisting motion with a device held close to his chest.

Charges went off on the couplings connecting the flatcars and the rear boxcars. The KGB troops suddenly realized what was happening and began trying to leap across the space to the flatcar. A few even threw down their weapons as they jumped, perhaps hoping to be taken captive rather than be left behind in the ruins of Moscow.

The Engineers shot four, and two more failed to make the distance necessary to clear the widening gap. They disappeared under the now slowly rolling boxcars.

Zorin’s men sent up a cheer, then surged over the crates and tied-down vehicles, following the sergeant, who went to clear the train of the last enemy troops.

Rostov had found a first-aid kit in the desk. He had poured a clear disinfectant on the American’s ruined hand. Whatever it was, it must have hurt, because the fellow went even whiter and passed out. Just as well, Rostov thought as he threaded a needle from the same kit. I doubt you want to be awake for this. But he was wrong, for at that moment Wrenn’s eyes opened and he looked weakly around. He saw what Rostov was about to do and shook his head.

“I survive a KGB butcher only to have a demolitions expert try to put my hand back together. Terrific. Why don’t we wait for Blaustein to do this?”

Rostov shrugged. “Blaustein may be dead. We’re moving too fast for anyone from the train yard to catch us on foot, and if Zorin gets the couplings blown, they won’t be able to chase us with any rail carts. But in the meantime, do I try to save your hand or not?”

Wrenn wanted to pass out, but he wasn’t sure he’d wake up. So he only turned away as Rostov attempted to suture the parted halves of his hand together. Rostov saw no loose tendons; the knife had been very sharp, and for the most part had gone between the bones.

But the young Russian was no surgeon, and by the time he was finished there was as much blood on his uniform as on Wrenn’s. Still, the American’s hand was back together, after a fashion, and tightly bound.

Rostov had heard an explosion that he took to be the coupling charges. He began looking about the room for some sort of blankets to put over the wounded American. The cold morning was not getting any warmer, and the man might go into shock. There was nothing.

Wrenn watched Rostov, guessing at his purpose. “We can worry about me later. Right now there are a few trainmen wondering about the outcome of this little escapade; I think we’d better get forward and let them know about the turnoff we’ve got to take.”

Rostov nodded. “Yes. Quite right. It will be warmer in the engine cab, too. Can you make it up the ladder?”

Wrenn nodded. Rostov supported him to the ladder outside, helped Wrenn pull himself up one-handed, then followed.

The Russian almost slipped halfway up; Wrenn gave him his good hand and somehow pulled Rostov up onto the roof of the tender. The wind of their passage made the cold morning air bite into exposed skin. A few first flakes of a light snow were floating by. Rostov looked around in silence. From the roof of the tender car, the view of the rail yards and the land surrounding them was unobstructed.

Stretching in all directions into the faraway morning haze, the ruins of Moscow lay spread out around them like a vast gray wound. Shattered buildings and acre upon acre of crumbled masonry and concrete covered the landscape. Where fires yet smoldered, thin strands of black smoke drifted upward, like columns supporting the lowering clouds above. The unbroken vista of destruction lay all around them like an abandoned graveyard. Little moved in the ruins, and still less lived.

For a moment, Rostov wondered how a mighty city could be so laid waste. But what the Alliance had left standing, his own Engineering comrades had leveled in the Scorched Earth policy ordered by the Party. He kept watching as the snowfall thickened. Already the twisted, ravaged surfaces of the ruined city were softening under the cold, cold blanket of winter’s first snow. The city was a corpse, and here was its shroud.

Rostov turned and looked at Wrenn. The American was watching him, and for a few moments the two men stared at each other over the naked roof of the tender, five feet and a million miles apart from one another.

“In my wife’s religion,” Rostov finally said, “white was the color of mourning. That makes sense to me, for Russia has so much white to cover her every year. This year, it would seem she needs it more than most.”

“Snow melts, Rostov. White isn’t the only color men have to live with. And mourning isn’t the only thing left for you.”

Rostov shrugged. He suddenly realized that he didn’t feel the cold anymore. “I wonder,” he finally said, regaining the American’s gaze.

“What?” Wrenn stared back.

“Does Washington look like this? New York? Los Angeles?”

Wrenn frowned, taken aback. He had expected at least a verbal attack from Rostov. Instead, there was a grief in the young Russian’s voice so deep it was almost tangible. “I don’t know, Aleksei. I imagine they do.”

Rostov shook his head, tears in his eyes. “I hope not. I really do.”

Wrenn tried to stand, almost falling down again from the pitching motion of the train and his own loss of blood. Rostov crossed the distance between them and put out his hand, catching Wrenn’s good arm, steadying him.

“Come on, Rostov,” said the American. “Let’s go on. I need to rest.”

The Russian put an arm under Wrenn’s shoulder, supporting him. “Yes,” he finally said after a moment. “Both very good ideas. Let us do that.”

Rostov looked off toward where the sky was lightening as the morning sun began burning away the clouds. The snow was still falling, but it was only a light autumn dusting. He had seen enough such storms to know that no matter how deep, they never buried the land forever.

Russia, the Motherland, the Rodina, never died in the winter. She only slept, Rostov thought. This was the first storm of the winter, perhaps, but the land would survive it. Yes, he had seen enough to know.

And the land had seen many more storms than he.

The two men helped each other across the roof of the train, and down into the warmth of the locomotive.

Psi-Rec: I Gladiator, by Peter Dillingham

Editor’s Introduction

Over the course of this series Peter Dillingham has been building an image of a future we aren’t likely to like much; but he builds it with imagery that you won’t soon forget. I’m proud to present another portion of the Psi-Rec saga.

Psi-Rec: I Gladiator

Peter Dillingham

only seemingly
is the voice of Marsyas
monotonous
and composed of a single vowel
A a a

—Zbigniew Herbert, “Apollo and Marsyas”

I crouch here
alone
in the dust and stillness of this empty arena, in the searing glare of a bloated, hemorrhaging sun, angry, anthropophagous god, in a city that waits to die, world that waits to die, acquiescent, lulled by the constant hum of air conditioners.

Naked, I wait,
await you,
anonymous adversary, anathemata, before their all-seeing video monitors, teeth bared, filed sharp, fangs to pierce and tear, homage to ancient ancestors, those imperial predators, or perversely, Dracula; hands, poor mangled artifacts of lost glory, ascension, the cool white hand of David resting at his side, now armored with calluses, grimly poised to chop and jab.

You enter,
angel,
so lately fallen; a chronicle of linkages, synaptic, a simple psychosurgical procedure, neuron to neuron, rage, savage, homicidal rage begetting quintessential pleasure.

For a while,

Azrael,
they let you wreak havoc among the swarms of rats, packs of snarling, rabid dogs that roam the city; televised orgies of slaughter, massacres, atrocities on deserted streets, your body counts applauded, until, crazed, your hands, lips smeared with offal, insatiable in your lust, you turned your gaze on larger prey, stormed the locked doors of our audience.

Where else,
addict,
did you think they’d send you, but to this amphitheater, this arena?

So rage, now rage,

Absalom, my Absalom!

Your rage acclaims them, affirms them. Your rage abets me, absolves me! Rage, now rage. Rage, rage against the dying of the day.

Specialization in War, by Reginald Bretnor

Editor’s Introduction

Reginald Bretnor’s Decisive Warfare was published in the same year as The Strategy of Technology; volume VI of this series presented his essay updating that work. Bretnor, historian, author, former horse cavalryman in the U.S. Army, is always worth listening to. Here he continues his analysis of the principles of modern war with an examination of simplicity vs. specialization.

Specialization in War

Reginald Bretnor

Military specialization—of weapons and of men expert in their use—is as old as warfare. It has won battles, campaigns and wars—but it has also lost them, for specialization means additional complexity, of production, training, coordination, and supply—and complexity violates one of the accepted basic principles of war: simplicity.

Therefore, ideally, the perfect military force would be homogeneous, structurally simple, and capable as a single unit or in any of its fractions of realizing its full potential at any place in a minimum of time, meanwhile maintaining a minimum vulnerability.

One army in all history came closest to attaining this ideal: the army of the Mongols. It conquered the greater part of the then-known world, and its successes were finally ended, not by the generalship or valor of its opponents, but by divisive factors in its leadership. The empire of Genghis Khan was split up, first among his sons, and subsequently by subtle foreign influences: the Chinese in the East, the Moslems in the West.

The Mongol army was all cavalry, and every Mongol was born and raised in it. He learned to ride the shaggy, tireless Mongol horse before he learned to walk. He grew up proficient in the use of the bow mounted, and of the sword, his principal weapons. Neither he nor his mount was dependent on the ponderous supply-trains to which all other medieval armies were shackled. The horse, when necessary, could forage through the snow for grazing; the man, when necessary, would open one of its veins and drink the blood. As an army, the Mongols were known to move as far as seventy-five to a hundred miles in a day—a rate no modern army can attain as an army. Their organization was simplicity itself: tens, hundreds, thousands. Their discipline was perfect. So accomplished were they in their way of war that they could without hesitation delegate full authority to subordinate commanders.

Nor were their armies vast, overwhelming “hordes” in the modern sense of the word. The Mongol horde, or ordo, was relatively small compared to many other Asiatic armies; the word ordo simply meant “a camp or perhaps general headquarters.” (Squadron Leader C.C. Walker, R.C.A.F., Jenghiz Khan (London: Luzac & Co., 1939).)

These were the people who, in China under Genghis, “rode eight hundred miles, stormed twenty-eight important cities and were repulsed from four others, in approximately one hundred and twenty days” (Ibid.)—starting in midwinter. They were the people who conquered Russia in a winter campaign. They were the people who, riding as individuals, changing horses at the beautifully organized network of post-stations spanning their empire, and sleeping in the saddle, could and did cover three hundred and more miles per day.

Yet even they learned to specialize when specialization was necessary. Their open tribal warfare on the plains of Mongolia taught them nothing about siege tactics and siege engines. Yet all they had to do to learn was to encounter the fortified cities of the Chinese. They learned from the Chinese themselves, using Chinese for labor and driving masses of Chinese ahead of them when they assaulted.

I have deliberately given the impression that the Mongol army was unspecialized, and this certainly is true when one considers only its internal organization. Compared to all other armies before and since, it was the most highly specialized army in all history.

Considering modern science and modern military technology, what sort of force—on land or sea, in the air or in space—could most closely approximate its efficiency and effectiveness today?

THE GOALS OF SPECIALIZATION

We cannot, in the foreseeable future, hope realistically for a rebirth of the all-purpose weapon or the all-purpose warrior, for our immediate military heritage is that of the post-Renaissance armed forces of Europe: infantry, cavalry, and artillery on land, all more or less specialized within themselves and all dependent on continuing production and supply; and at sea, a similar rather simple specialization of ships of war, similarly dependent. The evolution of their military complexity—and of their increasingly ramified specialization—has paralleled that of the scientific and technological complexity of civilian society in our age.

The goals of military specialization are—and will remain—essentially simple: to unbalance the equations of war in one’s own favor:

- By moving faster than the enemy
- By striking harder than the enemy
- By hitting him without being hit
- By making oneself less vulnerable than he

World War I offered numerous examples:

- The introduction of chemical weapons (vesicants, toxic gasses, flamethrowers)

- The return of armor to the battlefield

- The use of aircraft in war, both tactically and for “strategic” bombardment

- Accelerated development of high-angle-of-fire weapons (trench-mortars, grenade throwers, etc.), and a vast improvement in indirect-fire artillery techniques

And for every World War I example, we can easily think of dozens developed before and during World War II.

Actually, specialized weapons is too restrictive a term. We must also consider specialized men and specialized enabling devices, especially as the importance of such devices and of the men competent to handle them is now increasing so dramatically. Neither a ship nor an aircraft nor an armored vehicle is basically a weapon. They are devices to move weapons men cannot move, to do so faster than men possibly could, and to do it while themselves remaining, whenever possible, less vulnerable than men are.

A weapon multiplies the physical power of men to express destructive force; enabling devices multiply the area over which, during a given period of time, that force can be expressed and/or the precision with which this can be accomplished. As a consequence, additional specialized weapons and devices must be designed especially to prevent the enemy from multiplying his own power. For the sake of brevity, I shall simply refer to enabling devices as devices, whatever their size and whatever their exact function—the term can include everything from production (a ball-bearing factory would be a good example) through the logistical sequence (ships, trucks, trains) to the ultimate tactical carriers. Therefore we have the following classes of specialized weapons:

- Antipersonnel weapons
- Antidevice weapons
- Antiweapon weapons

Obviously, their functions more or less overlap, but the more highly specialized they are, the less overlap there will be and the more restricted will be their sphere of effectiveness.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

It is interesting to consider their past development, particularly as it sheds light on their probable development in the immediate future.

Weapon-and-device history can conveniently be divided into three periods:

- The man (and animal) power age

- The mechanical power age

- The age of scientific power: 1st phase, chemical-nuclear, electronic; 2nd phase, cybernetic.

These, again, overlap. Our own Civil War, because of its extensive use of railroads and its reliance on an interchangeable-parts technology in arms manufacture and on steam-powered and water-powered factories, can fairly be called the first of the mechanical wars. World War I, basically a mechanical war, was also the first to forecast the age of scientific power. World War II displayed the beginnings of that age in terms that left no doubt as to its nature. Let us take one example: Previously, the power of a man’s eye to see could be multiplied only by spyglasses, binoculars, battery commanders’ scopes. World War II introduced radar, a very different kettle of fish. (It also brought in radio-controlled drones, and proximity fuses, which can perhaps be considered as precursors of today’s “smart bombs” and self-guided missiles.)

There was one development it lacked. Every weapon and device developed for it, on land or sea, simply augmented man’s ability to hit an enemy, to determine the location of an enemy, or to protect himself against an enemy. None of them augmented his ability to think, to solve problems great and small, solve them infinitely faster than he could with his unaided mind, or solve them and carry out the military procedures necessary under circumstances of intolerable physical or psychological stress.

No gunner, no matter how well trained, using only his five senses, can reasonably be expected to intercept a launched Sidewinder or Exocet missile. Nor can a human pilot endure the accelerations required of any vehicle capable of intercepting an ICBM.

But computer-guided antimissile missiles will be able to.

A computer can “think” faster than a man. Correctly programmed, it can act much faster than a man. In the air, or in space, it can survive many times as many Gs as a man (which leads us to some interesting speculations about the inevitable future of manned and unmanned flying objects).

In short, computers multiply the powers of the human mind, completing the cybernetic relationship within a military organism.

THE CYBERNETIC ACE: POWERS AND VULNERABILITIES

Almost ten years ago, in his book Modern Warfare, A Study of Men, Weapons, and Theories, (London: Allen Lane, 1973. An excellent, highly intelligent, well-balanced book, unfortunately now out of print.) Shelford Bidwell wrote, of military cybernetics:

When we speak of “the military machine,” it is with more insight than we may realize. An army is a machine of a special type constructed for a special purpose…

The term used to describe such a machine is a weapon system. It is a most useful and descriptive term, because we have reached a point in the history of weapons at which it is misleading to speak or think simply of the weapon itself… We have to consider all that goes with it… A modern army/air force is a gigantic weapon complex, governed by the laws that govern any such cybernetic network.

Brigadier Bidwell went on to discuss an air-defense setup as a smaller, simpler model, and he said:

It is technically quite possible to make the whole system automatic and to limit human intervention to the orders to stand by, engage, and stop; and even these could be built into the machine, which can be “taught” to act correctly under certain circumstances.

The development of this sort of “military machine” has led, and is still leading, toward armed forces with a smaller and smaller percentage of _un_specialized weapons, devices, and organizations. Every new weapon demands a new counterweapon; every effective new enabling device demands another to offset it; and all of them demand new military techniques, new training.

That is one trend. The other, perhaps no less important, is toward a higher and higher degree of that automation referred to by Brigadier Bidwell.

Specialization must inevitably—except in certain rare instances we will look at later—subtract from the power of an armed force to strike as a whole. To take a now obsolete example: a horse cavalry unit in the field armed with the same weapons as an equivalent number of infantry could not match their firepower in a fluid situation, simply because one man in each set of fours, or one in each squad, depending on circumstances, had to act as horse-holder. Again, specialization can have its more passive negative effects by increasing the vulnerability factor of the specialized element. It is my understanding that H.M.S. Sheffield’s aluminum hull gave her a marked advantage in speed over similar vessels similarly powered, but it also contributed to her destruction off the Falklands; her hull actually caught fire from the intense heat generated when she was struck by an Argentine Exocet missile.

Therefore specialization must, inevitably, involve much weighing and balancing of all the factors involved.

DECISIVE SPECIALIZATION?

The military machine described by Bidwell can be compared to a symphony orchestra, in which each section and instrument is coordinated toward the accomplishment of a mutual goal. What then of those historical instances where a single specialized weapon, or device, or weapons system has been successfully employed to the same end? We have seen that the Mongols were the only people to achieve this on almost a world-conquering scale. But there have also been cases where new, specialized weapons and techniques have achieved impressive battlefield and campaign decisions that almost certainly could not have been achieved without them:

- The British longbow at Crécy and Agincourt against the armored chivalry of France

- Swiss long pikes and pikemen against Spanish and Austrian cavalry

- The Japanese employment of front-loading mortars in jungle warfare in Malaya

- The use of radar in the Battle of Britain (not of course alone decisive—an enabling device cannot be—but of decisive importance nonetheless).

It would appear, then, that for any single specialized weapon or device or organization to play a decisive role, even in concert with other elements, it must be employed in sufficient force. History holds instance after instance of the failure to do this resulting in a failure to achieve possible victory:

- What might have happened if the British, during the American Revolution, had had the imagination to adopt the extremely practical Ferguson breech-loading rifle, not universally, but at least on a militarily significant scale?

- What would almost certainly have happened if Hitler had followed Admiral Donitz’s advice with regard to the use of U-boats in World War II?

- And—though I have never seen the possibility mentioned—what might have happened to either of the combatants at Jutland had the other had three or four times as many torpedo-capable light vessels as current naval custom called for?

We could go on about the first use of chemical weapons and tanks in World War I, but here too many other factors enter the picture. No such doubts exist where the German use of armor in World War II was concerned: their initial victories were won because generals like Model and Guderian had the good sense to adopt the ideas developed by British general J.F.C. Fuller prior to 1919, subsequently publicized by him and by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, and subsequently ignored by the French, the British, and ourselves.

What are the prospects for decisive specialization in our cybernetic military future? Let us remember the essential rule: a specialized weapon or device cannot be decisive unless used on an adequate scale against critical objectives. There is another: such a weapon or device cannot be decisive unless it is used. One may get to feeling very secure sitting on a terrific military secret—but the longer one sits on it, the worse its chances of decisive employment are going to be, and the better chance there’ll be of an enemy matching or countering it. Nature has no secrets—only as-yet-undiscovered laws—and science is an instrument that will work for any master who has the wit and the resources to employ it, however nasty he may be.

The cybernetic military organism is today—and will continue to be tomorrow—more directly, and more instantly, dependent on its electronic nervous systems than were any of its predecessors. Therefore the vulnerability of these systems will be critical, and inevitably attempts will be made to devise weapons to exploit this. For instance, any effective “weapon” that could render a computer chip as inert as a chocolate chip cookie, or simply make it function erratically or unpredictably, could—if adequately employed—easily win a modern war. To put it more accurately, it could easily enable its accompanying weapons systems to destroy a suddenly mindless, paraplegic enemy.

Science and technology proceed along sharply steepening curves, and their progress is open-ended, governed only by the amount of money, time, and effort invested in them. One thing it would be wise to remember is this: we now have behind us more than thirty-five years of tight military “security,” and it would be foolish to assume that many novel weapons and devices with, say, the decisive potential that radar had have been allowed to surface.

In our ignorance, however, it is still interesting to speculate on what may have been developed or what can develop in the near future, probably in the following categories:

- Unmanned flying objects that “think”
- Unmanned war vessels that “think”
- Space weapons and anti-weapons that “think”

I have put the think in quotes in each instance simply to indicate that the process to which it refers is different from human thinking, and means the built-in, programmed ability to react correctly in a wide variety of the situations that ordinarily confront a human pilot, the captain of a ship, a gunnery officer, or—perhaps—a general.

THE YEARS AHEAD

One of the dirty tricks the scientific method plays on us is pulling completely unexpected rabbits out of hats—scientific quantum jumps. Quite a number of years ago, before the sudden start of our “computer revolution,” one of our best science fiction writers published a story about a space war in which he prophesied a completely computerized command. However, when he wrote it, such a computer would have had to have literally thousands of vacuum tubes and God-knows-whats to perform the functions he assigned it, so in the story an entire major war vessel was required to accommodate it. The one thing he, like everyone else, had failed to foresee was solid-state electronics and the micro technology that would have reduced the whole works to the size of a small suitcase.

When we think about the special weapons, the special enabling devices, the special warriors of the future, we must always try to foresee the unexpected, and hope that our defense authorities and scientists can foresee and develop the unexpected, and try not to be caught too short if the unexpected happens.

Were-Tigers, by Rob Chilson

Editor’s Introduction

Most speculation about the future of war concentrates on the physical sciences, and probably rightly so; but the era of computer plenty will make possible developments in other sciences as well. Molecular biology seems headed for exponential growth. So does psychology.

There is more than one kind of wizard weapon, and more than one kind of specialization.

Were-Tigers

Rob Chilson

Hell with Rangers, don’t tell me Rangers. I once saw a war tiger express an opinion of a Ranger, and I agree with it. They’re crazy and no good.

Well, yeah, I could tell you about it. I never told this to no one, partly ‘cause it was the scaredest I ever got in combat, even the time I got wounded bad. Time I’m talkin’ about, the tigers saved our ass and I didn’t get more’n a scratch or two, but I really got a good fright. Near ruined me.

What? No, I’m not ashamed of it. Anybody that’s been there, they’ll understand. Anybody that ain’t, I don’t give a shit what they think. Buy me a beer, though, and I’ll tell you all about it—but it’s gonna take more’n one. You guys take turns, okay? You go first—you asked me.

It was in the jungle war, natch. If you fight with tigers, you fight in the jungles. If you like Kodiak brown bears, you fight in forest; if you like polar bears, God help you, it’s tundra for you. If you like lions, they give you prairies. Or if you like prairies, they fix you up with lions. Package deal. Hey, that’s good.

See, I liked tigers, I mean from when I was a kid. So I opted for tigers, and so they sent me to one piddly-ass jungle war after another. Three in all, but in one all I had to do was play soldier and guard things, thank God. But in the jungle war, the jungle war—

Whaddaya mean, which one? There wasn’t but one—not but one real one. Ask anybody that was there. Everybody’s forgotten us, but by God we remember. The Airborne was sent in, and that was us, with a Ranger battalion and all our tigers. We had a hundred thirty-seven—they were more expensive in those days. Some Rangers or somebody—I don’t rightly know who—was there ahead of us and marked a good drop zone, so we got down okay.

Once we was down, we fanned out into the jungle—Jungle Attack Corps don’t fuck around with base camps. They just dropped our supplies to us and we made sure the gooks didn’t get any of it. We had it all to ourselves for almost two days, then the gook scouts started comin’ in. They didn’t have our high tech, no war beasts at all, no Integrators—nothin’ but Samkillers, really, the commie version of Silent Sam rapid-firers. But they were good.

Felix, our striped topkick, notified us they was comin’ in, and he and Winona and Bellatrix laid out and ambushed half a dozen of ’em, one right after another. One made some noise, though, and they didn’t need Interpersonal radio to know they’d lost a man. The tigers scragged the last two and spread, reporting, and the rest of the gook unit walked by ‘em.

Slim, one of our comm men, came over to where the colonel was sittin’ on a log lookin’ at a map, and Slim, he says, “Sir, the gooks is gettin’ out with a report. They know we’re here.”

“Not surprising,” says the colonel. He was tall and fat but loved heat and could move like a snake through even deep growth. He was tough as hell to get along with in camp, but in the jungle he was okay. Colonel looks at his map again a couple of times and turns to Horribleness, who was Felix’s second, and says, “Go spot your men and tigers. I’m keepin’ the Rangers with me for now.”

Now, my tiger was named Hooligan, and she was a regular pet. She slept with her squad, and many a night I’ve pillowed my head on her. I’d only seen her in action once, against some street demonstrators, and she scared the shit right out of them. They flat dropped everything and ran. And she sat down in the street and laughed at them, the way a great big cat laughs, without making any noise. She weighed, oh, 160, 170 kilos, not big for a tiger. Bengals get up to 250, they say. But war tigers aren’t all that big as tigers go. They got to be big enough to be strong and hardy, but small enough to go through dense growth.

Yeah, they go on all fours, and they look like regular tigers, except their heads are bigger. You can’t see the ear antennas ‘cause they’re under the skin. And you can’t see the modified front paws with the dewclaw moved down and turned into a thumb, when they’re walkin’. The only thing you can see is the key to the teflon zipper behind the ears that opens their scalps so the techs can get at their radios and computer implants. Hooligan was wearing her war harness with her M-3 tiger pistol under her belly and the grenade launcher on the left side.

She grinned at me, Hooligan did, and I grinned back and rubbed her head, and me and John and Pete and Randy all followed her. They’re cheaper now, war beasts are, and the jungle squad is two tigers and three men, they say; soon they’ll be goin’ to three beasts and two men. But we were it in those days. We went sneakin’ out, followin’ Hooligan, who was gettin’ radio ear messages from Horribleness, who was coordinating with Felix.

It was creepy in that jungle, and if not for Hooligan I would’ve been pretty jumpy. It was all mud and rotten limbs underfoot, and heat, muggy air full of rotten leaves. It was like breathing muddy water. We picked a good spot and hid.

Pretty soon a gang of gooks came walkin’ by in front of us, movin’ real quiet. Seemed good to see their flank for a change. We could only see ‘em behind the leaves and brush with our Integrators and they couldn’t see us. But when Pete dropped the first one, they whirled and started shooting to beat hell. Samkillers whispered inaudibly and we heard the Crack!-rrrripp! of the bullets over our heads. Samkillers shoot a lot of bullets real fast, but it just means more weight to carry, and besides, the charge packs for the electroguns don’t go on forever.

Still, once every three thousand rounds, like clockwork, they were gonna hit someone, and we expected to get resupplied, so we started chucking Smart Bullets back at ‘em fast. Every now and then you’d see a faint thin line of white smoke, or maybe a thin yellow burn from the SB rockets. I don’t say for every bullet we shot, some gook went down. But even one out of a hundred would’ve been a hell of a lot better’n they was doin’, and we actually got something like one gook for every five Smart Bullets.

They was shootin’ thousands of noisy rounds at people they couldn’t see, and we was replyin’ with dozens of quiet rounds at people we could see, and in about fifteen minutes we pretty well had ‘em sweatin’. Then a tiger came up behind them and killed one, then roared. Hooligan roared from their flank and they started to panic. Our Smart Bullets ignored tigers, of course, so we went on shootin’ till they was all dead.

It was no big deal. We had the edge in armament. Well, yeah, M-3 Muskets got disadvantages. They’re short-ranged. Big deal in the jungle. The electroarm’s solenoid throws ‘em out at low velocity, and the rocket corrects course and ups speed. Nice thing about it is, the Musket’s solenoidal barrel is openwork—air can get out from in front of the bullet, and get in behind it. They’re not even rifled—the real high-tech is in the bullets. Makin’ them in quantity is a real triumph of technology.

What if the M-3 gets full of mud? Hell, sonny, a good soldier don’t get mud in his gun. If he did, all he’d need to do is ream it with his flexible rammer—the mud drips out of the openwork. Reverse rammer and do it again and it’s clean and dry.

I remember how John brushed himself off when we stood up, like a cat, and how the tigers prowled around, purring and laughing and checking out the dead ones. I gave Hooligan a big hug, and so did the others, and we rubbed the other tiger’s ears. None of us was hurt, except the other tiger had got creased and Pete had banged up his elbow when he took dirt and it looked pretty bad. All else we got was bug bites. Not bad for my first serious combat. I’d thought I’d been in combat before, and it’s true I’d been shot at and shot back, but a riot ain’t a battle, believe me. Twenty dead gooks in the jungle look a lot different from two people dead in the street.

We went over and looked at them, and they were dressed in these thin black pants their top troops wear, and kind of small thin rubber-soled shoes. They were busted up pretty bad by the exploding Smart Bullets; each one had a big gruesome hole in him. Made me feel pretty queasy, I can tell you. Then that smart-ass Randy started laughin’ about the Gooky Monster had taken a bite out of each of ’em. Some he liked better and took two bites out of.

John and me got laughing about how it must’ve been when the first couple went down with big holes in ’em and the others didn’t even know what way the bullets was coming from. We made some pretty good jokes about how they had got the flies knocked off ’em, but they didn’t stay knocked off, and I felt a little better.

Their Samkillers were all Russian copycat designs, but their bullets looked homemade. Two or three of ‘em had binoculars, good ones, and those that got there first grabbed ’em. Not near as good as Integrators, but who’s gonna let you take a five-hundred-dollar Integrator home with you for the deer huntin’, when you get out? I didn’t get one of the binocs, though, and I figured, well, say luh gare, there’ll be more along in a minute.

Me and Pete was lookin’ at his cigarette lighter that had got busted, and laughing about the gooks runnin’ around in their pajamas—that’s what they call those black pants—when Winona come over and pushed her head against me and said, “Get ready! More coming, and the colonel is pulling back to Hill Seven! We’ll have to slow them down.”

Pete said, “That’s their high tech—making people, and they sure know how to do it.”

I said, “Yeah, what if their kill ratio’s three thousand to one, they’ll still win,” but you know, neither one of us felt all that bad. I wasn’t scared a bit. I mean, I’d just come through a session of real combat, and it had been nothing much. Besides, Hooligan was havin’ fun. So we bitched and griped about the mud and the bugs and the heat and picked out good places for another ambush, and the tigers took up station behind us.

That should’ve tipped me.

Pretty soon the jungle on a half-click-wide front began to waver and rustle and fill with little olive-skinned men in black bottoms, pushing Samkillers ahead of them. And I was Sam. Hooligan came up and whispered that we could ignore them off to the right, they was going off to miss the regiment, and would have to curl back around our flank. That’d take a third of the enemy out of action for over half an hour, maybe, ’cause they didn’t know where we was.

Then Felix came by and pulled four guys out of our line, and him and Bellatrix and a tiger I didn’t know, and the guys, all went off to the left, to make ‘em think they was findin’ a bunch of us over there, to buy more time. The guys looked pretty blue about it.

I was glad I wasn’t one of the four guys, and I felt solemn. None of us was jokin’ no more, we were grippin’ our Muskets and looking sharp through the Integrators. But they seen us first, I don’t know how, and let go with a murderous rrrrippp, _rrrrippp, rrrrippp, through the leaves. One of our guys screamed and started thrashing around, and another one coughed and jerked up, and fell back with a flop.

Three thousand to one didn’t sound so good then. I felt sick and scared and nothing had come near me yet, but I figured it’s that way in war. Wasn’t till later I realized I’d never seen one of my own side killed in war. In an accident with a chopper, sure, but not in war. It was different. “Shoot!” said Hooligan.

We could see ’em now in the Integrators. They were still searching for us. I started shooting, slow and careful, like it says in the drill, and every shot took a guy down, except where somebody else’s bullet got him first. You could see parallel lines of thin yellow light and sometimes white smoke where the Smart Bullets maneuvered in the short range, but those curving tracks weren’t much good for the gooks to aim from. Their Samkillers didn’t have smoke, flash, discharge of any kind, of course, but we could see our targets pretty well.

Hooligan and the other tigers were behind us, sitting up and shooting their M-9 bombguns, dropping fist-sized AP beehives—M-80s, we used to call ‘em, on base. It was pure hell on the gook side of the fight, but they kept on comin’. They had lost hundreds of guys, and we had lost eight or ten, and one tiger, with another tiger wounded.

But the gooks all yelled at once and ran at us, and I heard Hooligan shift to automatic fire. She laid down a cloud of flechettes in front of us, and the three guys who made it through each took half a dozen SBs, and then half a dozen more homed on them and blew the bloody rags that was left into shreds.

It was so close a flechette screamed by me, and I could smell the powder smoke, and the smell of the guys blown apart by SBs was like the jungle, hot and rank, only worse.

I was really scared then, and so was John next to me, and I could see Randy was shakin’ a little as he changed clips, but we stood it. After a bit I didn’t see no more gpoks through my Integrator and I pushed it up and wiped my face, and my hand was shakin’. Just as I dropped it down again, Hooligan said, “Attack!”

Well, they call us Jungle Attack Corps, but there was nothing I wanted less than to run into that jungle where those dead guys came from. Still, I stood up, and Randy leaped up, too, and we sort of surged forward. The tigers bolstered their guns and leaped past us. Then all hell broke loose.

Tigers roared, and we yelled, and M-80s thumped, and flechettes shrieked, and Samkiller bullets ripped, and guys screamed and yelled in pain, and bits of leaves cut by bullets drifted down. The ground got squishy and splashed underfoot, and we all got muddy when we took dirt. I never even thought about the leeches in those puddles till later. We’d see a gang of gooks in the Integrators, hidden so they thought by leaves and brush, and we’d shoot ’em up with SBs, maybe take a hit or two, then run forward and find another gang.

One guy got wise and held up me and the guys—Hooligan was off—and this gook hit Pete in the arm and again in the shoulder and he went down, gasping not screaming. The gook was behind a thick tree we couldn’t see through. He’d pop out and let go a burst in our direction, then pop back just before our Smart Bullets got there. Finally I took a deep breath—I was really jittery about gooks comin’ up on flank or behind us, in the jungle you get all turned around—I took a deep breath and slowed everything down, and I took a chance and raised my Integrator and wiped my face. John stared at me like he’d never seen a bare face before, and I remember how strange he looked with these big camouflage leaves across his face.

I was blind without the Integrator, and I couldn’t see how the gooks got the nerve to dive into a solid mat of leaves not bein’ able to see what was on the other side. But then I dropped it again and spotted the gook gunner just as he popped out. We all ducked, but I watched close, and next time he popped out, it was on the opposite side of the tree. I had his pattern then and slung two SBs at the first side of the tree just as he popped out again. Down he went.

I couldn’t see what was goin’ on, of course, but it seemed to me we had lost a lot of guys, and besides, I was runnin’ low on ammo. Gooks was all around us, Samkillers rippin’ up the jungle till I thought the trees would fall, cut through. Then there came a really amazing uproar off to the side. Tigers’ roaring bends the trees, and there was maybe two dozen of them doing it together. The ones with us joined in, and underneath I could hear the crazy screams of the Rangers.

What had happened, as we were told later, is that the enemy had come up on Hill 7 intending to take the road past it on its right, lookin’ from our side, and go after the native villages we was there to protect. They fanned out and ran into us, but the colonel had drawn us up to our left of Hill 7 and the road. So a third or a half of the enemy force was facin’ nothing. That part of the enemy swung around toward Hill 7, which they could see was our base.

Me and Hooligan and our guys held up the gook right, at the left end of our line—and the colonel and the headquarters detachment flanked us on the left, catching the right end of the enemy line. That is, if there is such a thing as a line in jungle fighting. Meantime, he’d sent all of his reserve tigers and the Ranger battalion on a wider sweep to catch the gooks in the rear, ‘cause they can travel fast. We had the entire enemy right in a three-sided pincer and were crushin’ it.

It all sounds real neat and real good, but you wasn’t there. It was hell, and some of our guys bought it from Smart Bullets, we were so jammed together. I know SBs are supposed to ignore our guys, but in such short range they didn’t have the time to discriminate. Well, it was bloody and awful, but it ended after a time, and it was beginning to get dark, and the tigers were reporting that the enemy had abandoned his right to us and had taken Hill 7.

That was a bad time. Pete was hurting, though we could see he was gonna be okay. But he couldn’t be evacuated with all those gooks around, so we gave ‘im painkillers and bandaged him up, and Hooligan came and purred at him. But she was jittery too. I kept worryin’ we’d lost the hill, and word was that more gooks were comin’ in and would be on us by morning.

Colonel passed the word we’d done well, and we took time to check out all the wounded. Some of our worst wounded were scorpion-stung or spider-bit. Everybody was covered with leeches, of course. There weren’t no wounded enemy, they were all dead, except one or two that’d had an arm or leg blown off and was gonna die of shock and internal hemorrhages. Colonel said to make them comfortable, too, and it seemed funny we was trying to kill ‘em earlier, and now we was lightin’ cigarettes for them. But I was glad we had done it, later, even if they all died.

That’s it for this one, who’s turn is it now?

Soon as we had all rested a bit and all of our guys was accounted for, Colonel put us in motion. We circled Hill 7 same way the gooks had gone, passing around the foot of it and to the right side, onto that road. I don’t think the gooks expected us to pull such a maneuver—think they expected us to storm the damn hill or somethin’. They had a few pickets out watchin’ it, but Rangers and war tigers went ahead and quietly took them out. Before the gooks knew it, we was on the back side of the hill, between them and the native villages we was there to protect—and out of between them and the army that was comin’ up to support them.

We found this abandoned village which would be a good place to set up camp, and got off into the jungle beside it. Pretty soon the gooks got some artillery up and immediately dropped some shells into the village, so Rangers went in and set fire to the hootches so’s to give ‘em something to aim at and make ’em feel they was doin’ something, and we got a good rest.

I was pretty tired, we’d tramped through a lot of stinking, muggy jungle, helping the wounded along, too tired and too sick to be very hungry. I made myself eat. But the Rangers was somethin’ else. They were full of the fighting cocktail, hyper as a bunch of speed freaks, leapin’ and bouncin’ around and braggin’ about how they’d saved our asses and how any of them could whip any three other guys, whoever they was. I didn’t feel like disputin’ it, but it made me mad to hear it. We’d stood up to the enemy head to head, and they’d only taken ’em in the rear.

And I didn’t like to hear them call the gooks “gooks.” I didn’t like the way they said it. It was the way I was sayin’ it that morning, but I was ignorant that morning and didn’t know. I was sayin’ “gook” in a different way now, because I could respect those little guys with their pajamas and bare eyes and old-fashioned guns and all their gutsiness. I didn’t think it was funny that those guys had gotten blown up by an explosive bullet shot at them by a man who could see him but who he couldn’t see to shoot back at.

And I really didn’t like to hear these assholes brag about how they’d done the same thing, shootin’ ’em in the back.

Yeah, I know, they were full of cocktails and not responsible. The stuff makes ’em crazy, and that makes them good soldiers. Bullshit. They were crazy before or they would never have volunteered for that shit.

What’s in the cocktails? Well, they say there’s super and secret drugs that make ’em stronger, faster, tougher, and so on, but no, not really. There are drugs that’ll do some of those things, though not as much stronger, faster, and so on, as people think. Not enough to make a Ranger out of an untrained grunt. See? I mean, Rangers have to be trained. And most such drugs wipe out the brain, so what good’s your training? And the side effects are bad, you never get over some of them. It ain’t economic to waste good men with bad drugs.

No, they tell us the cocktails contain a little alcohol—awful-tasting stuff, but it lowers inhibition—Dutch courage, it used to be called. And it contains caffeine, a lot of caffeine, and nicotine, which is a mood-enhancer but deadly poisonous. It also contains a very little speed, or sometimes coke. Nothing magical, but nothing you can’t get off from—and nothing that hampers your thinking processes if you don’t overdo it.

Even so, if you’re half crazy to start with, it can send you over the edge.

One of these bastards was leapin’ around and blowin’ about how he’d taken ten gooks apart with his bare hands, and maybe he did kill a couple. He was a big guy, and they’re small. This guy’s name was Jones, and he kept going on about what a great fighter he was, and we was all ignorin’ him best we could. Colonel would look up curiously from time to time, and the Ranger captain would shrug and kind of grin back at him. Finally Jones got to yellin’ that he could take on any man or tiger in the unit.

Most of us paid him no mind even then, but Hooligan growled a little and swung her big head around, looking at us all and especially at the tigers. Maybe she communicated to them on her radio; anyway none of the others moved when she stood up and strolled out under the trees to where Jones was takin’ a drink of water. He looked up and there she was, facing him.

At first he was startled, then he grinned—I saw his white teeth in the pale glow of the lanterns. He turned and set the cup down real slow, still lookin’ at Hooligan, then stood up and stepped toward her. Hooligan backed up till they were at a wider space—we weren’t in a clearing or anything the gooks could get a fix on, but right in deep jungle and there were trees all around. They moved to a fairly wide spot, maybe ten meters one way by fifteen another. Close quarters to fight a tiger.

The guys got up and came over, and I helped Pete over though he tried to shrug me off, and a couple of guys spaced the lanterns a little better. They gave off a faint yellow glow that wouldn’t leak far through the jungle, but we could see pretty well. The colonel and the captain looked on, stopping talking about the map, and just watched.

Jones stood in a crouch, looking at Hooligan. She didn’t crouch or anything. Suddenly he leaped to one side and in and swung at her head, then leaped away. Hooligan swung her head and dodged, but I could see his strategy. A war beast has to have a brain as big as a human being’s to be as smart as us, so the head is oversized. He probably figured her skull must be thin. Well, that don’t follow; the guys who did the gene splicing thought of that too. Also, if he could batter around her ears enough, her implant control computers and radios might cause her pain.

He went rocking around, leaping in and out, crouching, trying to draw her into an attack. So she obliged him: a blinding fast pounce without a windup. Instantly Jones flung himself aside, turning on his back and lashing out with his feet. He caught her in the ribs and I heard her grunt. But you got no idea how fast a tiger can stop; Hooligan swapped ends before Jones could bounce up and was in full pounce again.

Jones was fast, I never saw a man move like that. Halfway up, he seen her flyin’ at him again and dropped back so’s he could swing his joined fists up under her chin. But Hooligan stopped short again—nobody could’ve foreseen that, or adjusted to it, there wasn’t time. A real fight ain’t a bit like a comic book. Jones swung and missed ’cause she stopped short, and Hooligan unleashed a haymaker that sent Jones spinning across the ring.

Again Hooligan pounced, and again Jones showed just how damned fast a Ranger full of cocktails can be. He rolled with the blow, fetched up against a tree, and sprang back ready to hit or kick. But this time Hooligan wasn’t pouncing, she was running, and she could swerve. She streaked past him and swung at him as she did. Jones dodged it but fell over, and Hooligan dug in her claws and swapped ends—the guys on that side of the ring fell over backward to get away from her.

Then she was in front of Jones and Jones was half rising, fists ready, and took a preliminary swipe at her nose. Hooligan snarled like tearing canvas and reared up and boxed with him. Jones was a big fellow, ninety kilos, and she was a small tiger, like I said, only 160 or so. Just no comparison; she went through his guard with her first blow, and knocked him spinning with her second.

Now picture this: this guy’s been knocked three meters twice, had the breath knocked out of him, he’s in shock ’cause he’s outclassed, had three ribs cracked, though he didn’t know it till later. How much fight is left in him? Plenty in one way, he still ain’t convinced, but what can he do? Drugs can only do so much for you; the guy was hurt and exhausted.

He lay there gasping, and I remember the buzzing of the lantern near me and the distant whump-boom of the gook artillery. Jones reared up and started cussing Hooligan, and started to scramble to his feet. He wasn’t moving the way he had been before, and he looked a little ory-eyed from the pounding.

Hooligan snarled disgustedly and sprang forward again, brushed aside his fist, and gripped his shoulder with her teeth, first time she’d used them. She could’ve taken a bite out of him—Yankee Monster. But she didn’t, she just shook him like a rat and backed off. Jones flopped down and lay panting, staring at her. Hooligan looked around at us all and then at me and Pete and John, which was where she belonged. She kind of shrugged, real graceful, and walked back toward us.

She had to walk right over Jones.

Jones cried out something and began to beat and kick at her ribs as she went over him, and Hooligan just ignored him, just like he was a bug or something she was walking over, and came back and took her place with us. We checked her out and she had a bruise on one side where he’d kicked her. I remember she made me nervous till she started purring at us. The medics took Jones away and the Rangers all shut up.

Yeah, that’s the time I was tellin’ you about, when a tiger expressed an opinion of a Ranger, but I didn’t know what it meant till next day. Here—time for a refill on this.

See, next day the reinforced enemy came lookin’ for us; also came out to go after those native villages we were there to defend. They had artillery and some armor and a lot of trucks and things, and had to use the road. We pulled back to where the road went between a couple of hills, not exactly headin’ ’em off at the pass, but near enough. We’d had a supply drop in the night, and was in good shape, though they hadn’t been able to take the wounded off. Pete was up and around and able to do a little—an M-3 Musket don’t take much aiming and doesn’t have a lot of kick.

What? Why not make war beasts with guns built in? Ain’t you been payin’ attention? I just said the Silent Sam is obsolete on account of Smart Bullets—but when does the M-3 become obsolete? Then you’ve got a lot of war beasts outfitted with obsolete guns, and it takes three to five years to bring up the next generation. Don’t interrupt me.

The colonel scattered us by squads between the two hills, with units having armor-piercing capability along the road, which we had also mined. We had a long wait in the murky twilight of the jungle, where you don’t dare touch anything for fear of ants or spiders or some other damn bug. I couldn’t breathe all the time I was there, and to this day muddy water smells will make me gasp for breath. They’d have to come to us in the jungle.

That’s just what they did, fanning out from hill to hill and movin’ slow. We heard mines going off on the road, and knew the enemy was having slow going over there.

We laid low till the word of command, avoiding their elements. Naturally they were all broken up going through the jungle, and with a few scares and some rapid movements we were able to avoid them till they had nearly passed us. Then they were all among us, pretty much unsuspected, though I think some of those gooks had an idea. They were really good.

Anyway—at the radioed word of command all the tigers roared at once and we opened on any gooks in view. They all yelled and took dirt, and we sent our Smart Bullets over their heads—sometimes where the jungle wasn’t so thick you could see the down-curving burns as they dived on the enemy. All around was the yelling and screaming of the gooks, and the rrrrippp, rrrrippp, rrrripppp of the Samkillers cuttin’ leaves over our heads, our guys yelling back, whuffwhuff, whuff-whuffwhuff of the M-3s lobbing SBs, an occasional pump! where an explosive bullet hit a tree or the dirt—hitting flesh was quieter. Tigers were roaring and shooting and sometimes jumping little groups of enemy, the bang and whine of M-80s spraying flechettes here and there—not too many because we were too close to the enemy.

All of this action stirred up the jungle stink, and the powder smoke added a sharp note to it. We were hot and sweaty just sitting; running around was like swimming. My Integrator kept steaming up and I was scared all through the fight I’d be blind. One thing about it, if you never forgot the heat, at least in action you forgot the bugs.

The gooks were yelling back and forth and had begun to figure out where we were. They concentrated where we weren’t, which was a mistake because we could use flechette grenades better, but we had to get out of the way of these concentrations. A bunch of gooks came runnin’ by and joined up with a squad we were shootin’ at—one jumped out of nowhere and just about cut Randy in half with his Samkiller. A big tiger named Blunderbore shot him with his tiger-pistol M-3, then shot the gook behind him, then holstered his gun—clip empty—and leaped into them.

Hooligan followed Blunderbore and they turned back a rush of gooks and got covered with blood, and I looked around and I saw that Blunderbore’s squad and Hooligan’s squad were the only ones together here, and the enemy was massing not far off. After Randy got hit—and it was all going at once, so I didn’t feel much about it at the time—nobody wanted to raise up to do any real aimin’. More and more gooks came in, jabbering and shooting like crazy.

Another tiger came in from somewhere off to our right, and then all three of the tigers vanished. I looked at John and I knew he was thinking the same I was: they were going to hit ‘em from behind, so we had to hold on. Randy was gone, and Pete wasn’t in good shape, but we had three guys from the other squad. With hand signals we spread out, takin’ all Randy’s Smart Bullets, and one of the other guys, fellow named Listen, picked up a Samkiller and a couple of clips—to confuse ’em I guess.

And damn if that crazy Ranger Jones didn’t show up, looking kind of tired—too many days on the fighting cocktails takes it out of you—but also crazy as ever, with the whites of his eyes showing when he wiped his face.

“What’s up, Doc? Any action here?”

I explained, and he nodded, grinning like a wolf. So we occupied the enemy’s attention while the cats circled.

It gets real lonesome in the jungle when you’re spread out so even with Integrators you can’t see your mates, except maybe one every now and then—‘cause you keep moving around. It’s even lonesomer when the Samkillers are cuttin’ closer and closer. All you can see is leaves and vines and things, and here and there a tree trunk, with blinding sunlight overhead and deep shadows underneath, and you can’t breathe because it’s too damn hot and you know you’ll never get enough to drink to take the thirst off…

Worst of all is seeing your tigers go strange and wild and run off, covered with blood, snarling for a kill.

Here, refill this.

Then the gooks rushed us. Jesus, I hope I never go through that again. Sometimes I wake up shaking and I know I’ve been dreaming of that attack. They were screaming, some of ‘em in English—“Yankee bastards die!”—like that, and shooting as they came. I first heard this hair-raising noise and the crashing and splashing of all their light shoes in the brush—half rock, half swamp underfoot—and the continual ripping of the Samkiller bullets. Cut leaves rained down in front of me and I started nervously shooting into gaps in the jungle, hopin’ that the bullets would home on something.

Then I ran dry just as they appeared. Sheeyit, man, cusswords fail you at a time like that. I started scramblin’ around for a clip that wasn’t fuckin’ empty, and they was all empty, and I was staring at those faces, still mostly hidden behind leaves and just pale blobs in the Integrators, and coming at a run. I thought I would piss my pants before I got out of the wrong pouch into the one with the loaded clips. I fumbled the clip into the Musket and got ready to squeeze off a round, figuring it’d be my last—they’d see me sure when I shot.

Then the three tigers roared together in their rear and M-80s exploded behind the ones I could see. You never heard fear till you’ve heard tigers roaring in unison. Then the tigers started slapping the ground and crying out in gook talk, so it sounded like they were slapping prisoners around, playing with ’em the way a cat plays with mice.

You got to understand that in the East, dragons are often good guys, and tigers are always bad guys. They hated and feared our tigers the worst, and that was something they just couldn’t ignore. You hear about gooks not taking care of their people, and they often don’t, because they know there’s nothing they can do. But they care about them same as we do.

That saved my ass. The ones I could see checked and some looked back. Then that crazy Jones half stood up and sprayed them with SBs on full automatic, giving out with the Rebel yell in time to the tigers’ roar. It was a blood-freezing sight. Crazy or not, fighting cocktail or not, that man was as scared as I was.

The gooks turned and blew him away, but half of ‘em went down like ninepins, and I was already half up, holding my trigger down. They got off a couple of bursts toward me, nicked me twice, but they all went down. Damn wasteful way to use Smart Bullets, but it worked. I changed clips in a hurry, my knees shakin’ so I could hardly stand, still ready to piss my pants, not able to believe we’d got ‘em all. From farther back more Samkiller bullets ripped past and I was shaking so hard it’s a good thing M-3s don’t have to be aimed. I lobbed a few bullets, spotted another target, took it out, and thought.

I was standing up, shaking, with only a little blood showin’. The tigers had just counterattacked from the rear. I ought to go forward and finish the enemy off. I don’t know how I got together the guts to stagger forward in a crouch over dead gooks, but I did it, and I think one of the other guys from Blunderbore’s squad did, too. They must of got him, though, because I was the only one there when I saw the tigers polish off the rest of the stunned gooks.

There wasn’t that many of them, and what was left was shocked by the beehive M-80s and our SBs. Now the tigers, their ammo low, leaped among them and slapped off heads, ripped open bodies, bit, and shook. I saw then that Hooligan had just been playing with Jones, she hadn’t used claws. It’s even worse than explosive bullets, what a tiger can do to a man. One guy tried to run and the third tiger leaped past him and ripped his guts out with one blow and they dropped down and he fell over them.

All the tigers were covered with other people’s blood, and their faces were fearsome, worse than a crazy Ranger’s. I just stared, I couldn’t believe how fierce our pets were.

Our part of the battle was over, and by the time we regrouped, it was all over and the enemy were all streaming back down the road, and we let ’em go. So it was over for me while I stood there among the piled bodies the tigers had killed, and I kind of felt that.

I saw Hooligan prowl over to one down gook and bite his head, finishing him off, and she did it to another. Then she looked up at me with blood all over her, and especially over her face, and her eyes caught the light green and she opened her mouth and gave me that silent cat’s laugh. That’s when I puked.

I mean, I flat tossed my cookies and I was shakin’ and practically moaning and I was more scared than I’ve ever been, more scared than a man should ever get. I was scared of the war tigers.

Well, yeah, that was a scary sight, and blood and gore does bad things to you even when it’s gook blood and gore. I’d been through a lot, I was in shock and even wounded. But that wasn’t it; you don’t get it. It wasn’t till later, when I was in therapy, that we figured it out.

See, all these generations we’ve had war, and we’ve all hated it. I know there’s been guys like the crazy Jones—the Marines and Rangers get all the volunteers they need. But what they really like is not war, but fightin’—barroom fights with an audience are what they like best. Provin’ they’re men. Why else would Jones offer to fight a tiger, but to show what a man he was? But even he was scared shitless in that jungle; I was there, and I saw. Anybody would be, with the enemy cuttin’ the jungle down just to get you. So there’s always been a hope we could end war, if everybody hates it, really hates real war, not just barroom fights.

But those tigers loved it. They weren’t afraid; they didn’t need fighting cocktails to make them move like that, to make them fearless. They loved the danger and the excitement and the killing.

After all these generations, we’ve bred up soldiers that love war. God help us all.

No, I wasn’t afraid that they’d turn on me, I knew they couldn’t. Too many safeguards in their implant computer programming. I wasn’t afraid of them, themselves, at all. I was afraid of what they stood for, though it was months before I knew that.

But that night, when Hooligan had cleaned herself up and been bandaged, and she came over and wanted to console us for the loss of Pete, and roughhouse and play, and was purring and happy and friendly, just like a big stuffed animal that every kid wants for Christmas but that’s alive and can talk—I didn’t want to play. I didn’t want to pet her. I didn’t want nothin’ to do with her.

Remember the Alamo! by T. R. Fehrenbach

Editor’s Introduction

Lieutenant Colonel T. R. Fehrenbach, U.S. Army (Ret.), is the author of Lone Star, a definitive history of his native state of Texas. He is also the author of This Kind of War, which is not only the definitive strategic and tactical history of the Korean War, but the best presentation to date of the problems democracies face when they must fight small wars in faraway places. If you want to understand our present strategic dilemma, you must read Fehrenbach’s analysis; alas, few do so.

In 1962 Fehrenbach understood what would happen if the United States attempted to aid Vietnam. He said:

From the Korean War the United States drew troubled conclusions. American policy had been to contain Communism along the parallel, and in this, American policy succeeded. But no one realized, at the beginning, how exceedingly costly such containment would be. The war reaffirmed in American minds the distaste for land warfare on the continent of Asia, the avoidance of which has always been a foundation of United States policy. But the war proved that containment in Asia could not be forged with nuclear bombs and that threats were not enough, unless the United States intended to answer a Communist pinprick with general holocaust.

Yet the American people, army, and leaders generally proved unwilling to accept wars of policy in lieu of crusades against Communism. Innocence had been lost, but the loss was denied. The government that had ordered troops into Korea knew that the issue was never whether Syngman Rhee was right or wrong but that his loss would adversely affect the status of the United States—which was not arguable.

That government’s inability to communicate, and its repudiation at the polls, firmly convinced many men of the political dangers of committing American ground troops in wars of containment. Yet without the continual employment of limited force around the globe, or even with it, there was to be no order. The world could not be policed with ships, planes, and bombs—policemen were also needed.

Less than a year after fighting ended in Korea, Vietnam was lost to the West, largely because of the complete repugnance of Americans toward committing a quarter of a million ground troops in another apparently indecisive skirmish with Communism. Even more important, the United States, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported, simply did not have the troops.

Korea, from Task Force Smith at Osan to the last days at Pork Chop, indicates that the policy of containment cannot be implemented without professional legions. Yet every democratic government is reluctant to face the fact. Reservists and citizen-soldiers stand ready, in every free nation, to stand to the colors and die in holocaust, the big war. Reservists and citizen-soldiers remain utterly reluctant to stand and die in anything less. None want to serve on the far frontiers, or to maintain lonely, dangerous vigils on the periphery of Asia. There has been every indication that mass call-ups for cold war moves may result in mass disaffection.

The United States will be forced to fight wars of policy during the balance of the century. This is inevitable, since the world is seething with disaffection and revolt, which, however justified and merited, plays into Communist hands, and swings the world balance ever their way. Military force alone cannot possibly solve the problem—but without the application of some military force, certain areas, such as Southeast Asia, will inevitably be lost.

However repugnant the idea is to liberal societies, the man who will willingly defend the free world in the fringe areas is not the responsible citizen-soldier. The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made.

His pride is in his colors and his regiment, his training hard and thorough and coldly realistic, to fit him for what he must face, and his obedience is to his orders. As a legionary, he held the gates of civilization for the classical world; as a bluecoated horseman he swept the Indians from the Plains; he has been called United States Marine. He does the jobs—the utterly necessary jobs—no militia is willing to do. His task is moral or immoral according to the orders that send him forth. It is inevitable, since men compete.

About the time that was published, the Kennedy administration attempted to aid Vietnam. Then, guided by Harvard intellectuals, the president sanctioned the deposition (and inevitable assassination) of Vietnam’s president, thereby assuming full responsibility for that unhappy country. After Kennedy was assassinated in turn, the Johnson government attempted to honor that commitment by sending conscript soldiers to a far land where few understood what was at stake.

What we needed was legions.

Those who might have served as legionaries were not permitted to do it. Every few months America sent a new and untrained army halfway across the world. We needed legions, but we didn’t have them.

We don’t have them yet, despite ending the draft.

This story was published about the time that This Kind of War was completed. It might have been written yesterday. Some lessons are never learned.

Remember the Alamo!

T. R. Fehrenbach

Toward sundown, in the murky drizzle, the man who called himself Ord brought Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis word that the Mexican light cavalry had completely invaded Bexar, and that some light guns were being set up across the San Antonio River. Even as he spoke, there was a flash and bang from the west, and a shell screamed over the old mission walls. Travis looked worried.

“What kind of guns?” he asked.

“Nothing to worry about, sir,” Ord said. “Only a few one-pounders, nothing of respectable siege caliber. General Santa Anna has had to move too fast for any big stuff to keep up.” Ord spoke in his odd accent. After all, he was a Britainer, or some other kind of foreigner. But he spoke good Spanish, and he seemed to know everything. In the four or five days since he had appeared he had become very useful to Travis.

Frowning, Travis asked, “How many Mexicans, do you think, Ord?”

“Not more than a thousand, now,” the dark-haired, blue-eyed young man said confidently. “But when the main body arrives, there’ll be four, five thousand.”

Travis shook his head. “How do you get all this information, Ord? You recite it like you had read it all someplace—like it were history.”

Ord merely smiled. “Oh, I don’t know everything, Colonel. That is why I had to come here. There is so much we don’t know about what happened… I mean, sir, what will happen—in the Alamo.” His sharp eyes grew puzzled for an instant. “And some things don’t seem to match up, somehow–”

Travis looked at him sympathetically. Ord talked queerly at times, and Travis suspected he was a bit deranged. This was understandable, for the man was undoubtedly a Britainer aristocrat, a refugee from Napoleon’s thousand-year empire. Travis had heard about the detention camps and the charcoal ovens… but once, when he had mentioned the Empereur’s sack of London in ‘06, Ord had gotten a very queer look in his eyes, as if he had forgotten completely.

But John Ord, or whatever his name was, seemed to be the only man in the Texas forces who understood what William Barret Travis was trying to do. Now Travis looked around at the thick adobe wall surrounding the old mission in which they stood. In the cold, yellowish twilight even the flaring cook fires of his 182 men could not dispel the ghostly air that clung to the old place. Travis shivered involuntarily. But the walls were thick, and they could turn one-pounders. He asked, “What was it you called this place, Ord… the Mexican name?”

“The Alamo, sir.” A slow, steady excitement seemed to burn in the Britainer’s bright eyes. “Santa Anna won’t forget that name, you can be sure. You’ll want to talk to the other officers now, sir? About the message we drew up for Sam Houston?”

“Yes, of course,” Travis said absently. He watched Ord head for the walls. No doubt about it, Ord understood what William Barret Travis was trying to do here. So few of the others seemed to care.

Travis was suddenly very glad that John Ord had shown up when he did.

On the walls, Ord found the man he sought, broad-shouldered and tall in a fancy Mexican jacket. “The commandant’s compliments, sir, and he desires your presence in the chapel.”

The big man put away the knife with which he had been whittling. The switchblade snicked back and disappeared into a side pocket of the jacket, while Ord watched it with fascinated eyes. “What’s old Bill got his britches hot about this time?” the big man asked.

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Ord said stiffly and moved on.

Bang-bang-bang roared the small Mexican cannon from across the river. Pow-pow-pow! The little balls only chipped dust from the thick adobe walls. Ord smiled.

He found the second man he sought, a lean man with a weathered face, leaning against a wall and chewing tobacco. This man wore a long, fringed, leather lounge jacket, and he carried a guitar slung beside his Rock Island rifle. He squinted up at Ord. “I know… I know,” he muttered. “Willy Travis is in an uproar again. You reckon that colonel’s commission the Congress up at Washington-on-the-Brazos give him swelled his head?”

Rather stiffly, Ord said, “Colonel, the commandant desires an officers’ conference in the chapel, now.” Ord was somewhat annoyed. He had not realized he would find these Americans so—distasteful. Hardly preferable to Mexicans, really. Not at all as he had imagined.

For an instant he wished he had chosen Drake and the Armada instead of this pack of ruffians—but no, he had never been able to stand seasickness. He couldn’t have taken the Channel, not even for five minutes.

And there was no changing now. He had chosen this place and time carefully, at great expense—actually, at great risk, for the X-4-A had aborted twice, and he had had a hard time bringing her in. But it had got him here at last. And, because for a historian he had always been an impetuous and daring man, he grinned now, thinking of the glory that was to come. And he was a participant—much better than a ringside seat! Only he would have to be careful, at the last, to slip away.

John Ord knew very well how this coming battle had ended, back here in 1836.

He marched back to William Barret Travis, clicked heels smartly. Travis’s eyes glowed; he was the only senior officer here who loved military punctilio. “Sir, they are on the way.”

“Thank you, Ord.” Travis hesitated a moment. “Look, Ord. There will be a battle, as we know. I know so little about you. If something should happen to you, is there anyone to write? Across the water?”

Ord grinned. “No, sir. I’m afraid my ancestor wouldn’t understand.”

Travis shrugged. Who was he to say that Ord was crazy? In this day and age, any man with vision was looked on as mad. Sometimes, he felt closer to Ord than to the others.

The two officers Ord had summoned entered the chapel. The big man in the Mexican jacket tried to dominate the wood table at which they sat. He towered over the slender, nervous Travis, but the commandant, straight-backed and arrogant, did not give an inch. “Boys, you know Santa Anna has invested us. We’ve been fired on all day–” He seemed to be listening for something. Wham! Outside, a cannon split the dusk with flame and sound as it fired from the walls. “There is my answer!”

The man in the lounge coat shrugged. “What I want to know is what our orders are. What does old Sam say? Sam and me were in Congress once. Sam’s got good sense; he can smell the way the wind’s blowin’.” He stopped speaking and hit his guitar a few licks. He winked across the table at the officer in the Mexican jacket, who took out his knife. “Eh, Jim?”

“Right,” Jim said. “Sam’s a good man, although I don’t think he ever met a payroll.”

“General Houston’s leaving it up to me,” Travis told them.

“Well, that’s that,” Jim said unhappily. “So what you figurin’ to do, Bill?”

Travis stood up in the weak, flickering candlelight, one hand on the polished hilt of his saber. The other two men winced, watching him. “Gentlemen, Houston’s trying to pull his militia together while he falls back. You know Texas was woefully unprepared for a contest at arms. The general’s idea is to draw Santa Anna as far into Texas as he can, then hit him when he’s extended, at the right place and right time. But Houston needs more time—Santa Anna’s moved faster than any of us anticipated. Unless we can stop the Mexican Army and take a little steam out of them, General Houston’s in trouble.”

Jim flicked the knife blade in and out. “Go on.”

“This is where we come in, gentlemen. Santa Anna can’t leave a force of one hundred eighty men in his rear. If we hold fast, he must attack us. But he has no siege equipment, not even large field cannon.” Travis’s eye gleamed. “Think of it, boys! He’ll have to mount a frontal attack, against protected American riflemen. Ord, couldn’t your Englishers tell him a few things about that!”

“Whoa, now,” Jim barked. “Billy, anybody tell you there’s maybe four or five thousand Mexicaners comin’?”

“Let them come. Less will leave!”

But Jim, sour-faced turned to the other man. “Davey? You got something to say?”

“Hell, yes. How do we get out, after we done pinned Santa Anna down? You thought of that, Billy boy?”

Travis shrugged. “There is an element of grave risk, of course. Ord, where’s the document, the message you wrote up for me? Ah, thank you.” Travis cleared his throat. “Here’s what I’m sending on to General Houston.” He read: “Commandancy of the Alamo, February 24, 1836… are you sure of the date, Ord?”

“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Ord said.

“Never mind—if you’re wrong we can change it later. ‘To the People of Texas and all Americans in the World. Fellow Freemen and Compatriots! I am besieged with a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment for many hours but have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded surrender at discretion; otherwise, the garrison is to be put to the sword, if taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly over the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character—’” He paused, frowning. “This language seems pretty old-fashioned, Ord–”

“Oh, no, sir. That’s exactly right,” Ord murmured.

“‘…To come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his honor or that of his homeland. VICTORY OR DEATH!’”

Travis stopped reading, looked up. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Ord breathed. “The greatest words of defiance ever written in the English tongue—and so much more literate than that chap at Bastogne.”

“You mean to send that?” Jim gasped.

The man called Davey was holding his head in his hands.

“You object, Colonel Bowie?” Travis asked icily.

“Oh, cut that ‘colonel’ stuff, Bill,” Bowie said. “It’s only a National Guard title, and I like ‘Jim’ better, even though I am a pretty important man. Damn right I have an objection! Why, that message is almost aggressive. You’d think we wanted to fight Santa Anna! You want us to be marked down as warmongers? It’ll give us trouble when we get to the negotiation table–”

Travis’s head turned. “Colonel Crockett?”

“What Jim says goes for me, too. And this: I’d change that part about all Americans, et cetera. You don’t want anybody to think we think we’re better than the Mexicans. After all, Americans are a minority in the world. Why not make it ‘all men who love security?’ That’d have worldwide appeal–”

“Oh, Crockett,” Travis hissed.

Crockett stood up. “Don’t use that tone of voice to me, Billy Travis! That piece of paper you got don’t make you no better’n us. I ran for Congress twice, and won. I know what the people want–”

“What the people want doesn’t mean a damn right now,” Travis said harshly. “Don’t you realize the tyrant is at the gates?”

Crockett rolled his eyes heavenward. “Never thought I’d hear a good American say that! Billy, you’ll never run for office–”

Bowie held up a hand, cutting into Crockett’s talk. “All right, Davey. Hold up. You ain’t runnin’ for Congress now. Bill, the main thing I don’t like in your whole message is that part about victory or death. That’s got to go. Don’t ask us to sell that to the troops!”

Travis closed his eyes briefly. “Boys, listen. We don’t have to tell the men about this. They don’t need to know the real story until it’s too late for them to get out. And then we shall cover ourselves with such glory that none of us shall ever be forgotten. Americans are the best fighters in the world when they are trapped. They teach this in the Foot School back on the Chatahoochee. And if we die, to die for one’s country is sweet–”

“Hell with that,” Crockett drawled. “I don’t mind dyin’, but not for these big landowners like Jim Bowie here. I just been thinkin’—I don’t own nothing in Texas.”

“I resent that,” Bowie shouted. “You know very well I volunteered, after I sent my wife off to Acapulco to be with her family.” With an effort, he calmed himself. “Look, Travis. I have some reputation as a fighting man—you know I lived through the gang wars back home. It’s obvious this Alamo place is indefensible, even if we had a thousand men.”

“But we must delay Santa Anna at all costs–”

Bowie took out a fine, dark Mexican cigar and whittled at it with his blade. Then he lit it, saying around it, “All right, let’s all calm down. Nothing a group of good men can’t settle around a table. Now listen. I got in with this revolution at first because I thought old Emperor Iturbide would listen to reason and lower taxes. But nothin’s worked out, because hotheads like you, Travis, queered the deal. All this yammerin’ about liberty! Mexico is a Republic, under an emperor, not some kind of democracy, and we can’t change that. Let’s talk some sense before it’s too late. We’re all too old and too smart to be wavin’ the flag like it’s the Fourth of July. Sooner or later, we’re goin’ to have to sit down and talk with the Mexicans. And like Davey said, I own a million hectares, and I’ve always paid minimum wage, and my wife’s folks are way up there in the Imperial Government of the Republic of Mexico. That means I got influence in all the votin’ groups, includin’ the American Immigrant, since I’m a minority group member myself. I think I can talk to Santa Anna, and even to old Iturbide. If we sign a treaty now with Santa Anna, acknowledge the law of the land, I think our lives and property rights will be respected.” He cocked an eye toward Crockett.

“Makes sense, Jim. That’s the way we do it in Congress. Compromise, everybody happy. We never allowed ourselves to be led nowhere we didn’t want to go, I can tell you! And Bill, you got to admit that we’re in a better bargaining position if we’re out in the open, than if old Santa Anna’s got us penned up in this old Alamo.”

“Ord,” Travis said despairingly. “Ord, you understand. Help me! Make them listen!”

Ord moved into the candlelight, his lean face sweating. “Gentlemen, this is all wrong! It doesn’t happen this way–”

Crockett sneered, “Who asked you, Ord? I’ll bet you ain’t even got a poll tax!”

Decisively, Bowie said, “We’re free men, Travis, and we won’t be led around like cattle. How about it, Davey? Think you could handle the rear guard, if we try to move out of here?”

“Hell, yes! Just so we’re movin’!”

“O.K. Put it to a vote of the men outside. Do we stay, and maybe get croaked, or do we fall back and conserve our strength until we need it? Take care of it, eh, Davey?”

Crockett picked up his guitar and went outside.

Travis roared, “This is insubordination! Treason!” He drew his saber, but Bowie took it from him and broke it in two. Then the big man pulled his knife.

“Stay back, Ord. The Alamo isn’t worth the bones of a Britainer, either.”

“Colonel Bowie, please,” Ord cried. “You don’t understand! You must defend the Alamo! This is the turning point in the winning of the west! If Houston is beaten, Texas will never join the Union! There will be no Mexican War. No California, no nation stretching from sea to shining sea! This is the Americans’ manifest destiny. You are the hope of the future… you will save the world from Hitler, from Bolshevism–”

“Crazy as a hoot owl,” Bowie said sadly. “Ord, you and Travis got to look at it both ways. We ain’t all in the right in this war—we Americans got our faults, too.”

“But you are free men,” Ord whispered. “Vulgar, opinionated, brutal, but free! You are still better than the breed who kneels to tyranny–”

Crockett came in. “O.K., Jim.”

“How’d it go?”

“Fifty-one percent for hightailin’ it right now.”

Bowie smiled. “That’s a flat majority. Let’s make tracks.”

“Comin’, Bill?” Crockett asked. “You’re O.K., but you just don’t know how to be one of the boys. You got to learn that no dog is better’n any other.”

“No,” Travis croaked hoarsely. “I stay. Stay or go, we shall all die like dogs, anyway. Boys, for the last time! Don’t reveal our weakness to the enemy–”

“What weakness? We’re stronger than them. Americans could whip the Mexicans any day, if we wanted to. But the thing to do is make ’em talk, not fight. So long, Bill.”

The two big men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in breaking through the Mexican lines.

Inside the chapel, John Ord’s mouth hung slackly. He muttered, “Am I insane? It didn’t happen this way—it couldn’t! The books can’t be that wrong–”

In the candlelight, Travis hung his head. “We tried, John. Perhaps it was a forlorn hope at best. Even if we had defeated Santa Anna, or delayed him, I do not think the Indian Nations would have let Houston get help from the United States.”

Ord continued his dazed muttering, hardly hearing.

“We need a contiguous frontier with Texas,” Travis continued slowly, just above a whisper. “But we Americans have never broken a treaty with the Indians, and pray God we never shall. We aren’t like the Mexicans, always pushing, always grabbing off New Mexico, Arizona, California. We aren’t colonial oppressors, thank God! No, it wouldn’t have worked out, even if we American immigrants had secured our rights in Texas–” He lifted a short, heavy, percussion pistol in his hand and cocked it. “I hate to say it, but perhaps if we hadn’t taken Paine and Jefferson so seriously—if we could only have paid lip service, and done what we really wanted to do, in our hearts… no matter. I won’t live to see our final disgrace.”

He put the pistol to his head and blew out his brains.

Ord was still gibbering when the Mexican cavalry stormed into the old mission, pulling down the flag and seizing him, dragging him before the resplendent little general in green and gold.

Since he was the only prisoner, Santa Anna questioned Ord carefully. When the sharp point of a bayonet had been thrust half an inch into his stomach, the Britainer seemed to come around. When he started speaking, and the Mexicans realized he was English, it went better with him. Ord was obviously mad, it seemed to Santa Anna, but since he spoke English and seemed educated, he could be useful. Santa Anna didn’t mind the raving; he understood all about Napoleon’s detention camps and what they had done to Britainers over there. In fact, Santa Anna was thinking of setting up a couple of those camps himself. When they had milked Ord dry, they threw him on a horse and took him along.

Thus John Ord had an excellent view of the battlefield when Santa Anna’s cannon broke the American lines south of the Trinity. Unable to get his men across to safety, Sam Houston died leading the last, desperate charge against the Mexican regulars. After that, the American survivors were too tired to run from the cavalry that pinned them against the flooding river. Most of them died there. Santa Anna expressed complete indifference to what happened to the Texans’ women and children.

Mexican soldiers found Jim Bowie hiding in a hut, wearing a plain linen tunic and pretending to be a civilian. They would not have discovered his identity had not some of the Texan women whom the cavalry had captured cried out, “Colonel Bowie—Colonel Bowie!” as he was led into the Mexican camp.

He was hauled before Santa Anna, and Ord was summoned to watch. “Well, Don Jaime,” Santa Anna remarked, “You have been a foolish man. I promised your wife’s uncle to send you to Acapulco safely, though of course your lands are forfeit. You understand we must have lands for the veterans’ program when this campaign is over–” Santa Anna smiled then. “Besides, since Ord here has told me how instrumental you were in the abandonment of the Alamo, I think the emperor will agree to mercy in your case. You know, Don Jaime, your compatriots had me worried back there. The Alamo might have been a tough nut to crack… pues, no matter.”

And since Santa Anna had always been broadminded, not objecting to light skin or immigrant background, he invited Bowie to dinner that night.

Santa Anna turned to Ord. “But if we could catch this rascally war criminal, Crockett… however, I fear he has escaped us. He slipped over the river with a fake passport, and the Indians have interned him.”

“Si, Señor Presidente,” Ord said dully.

“Please, don’t call me that,” Santa Anna cried, looking around. “True, many of us officers have political ambitions, but Emperor Iturbide is old and vain. It could mean my head–”

Suddenly, Ord’s head was erect, and the old, clear light was in his blue eyes. “Now I understand!” he shouted. “I thought Travis was raving back there, before he shot himself—and your talk of the emperor! American respect for Indian rights! Jeffersonian form of government! Oh, those ponces who peddled me that X-4-A—the track jumper! I’m not back in my own past. I’ve jumped the time track—I’m back in a screaming alternate!

“Please not so loud, Señor Ord.” Santa Anna sighed. “Now, we must shoot a few more American officers, of course. I regret this, you understand, and I shall no doubt be much criticized in French Canada and Russia, where there are still civilized values. But we must establish the Republic of the Empire once and for all upon this continent, that aristocratic tyranny shall not perish from the earth. Of course, as an Englishman, you understand perfectly, Señor Ord.”

“Of course, Excellency,” Ord said.

“There are soft hearts—soft heads, I say—in Mexico who cry for civil rights for the Americans. But I must make sure that Mexican dominance is never again threatened north of the Rio Grande.”

“Seguro, Excellency,” Ord said, suddenly. If the bloody X-4-A had jumped the track, there was no getting back, none at all. He was stuck here. Ord’s blue eyes narrowed. “After all, it… it is manifest destiny that the Latin peoples of North America meet at the center of the continent. Canada and Mexico shall share the Mississippi.”

Santa Anna’s dark eyes glowed. “You say what I have often thought. You are a man of vision, and much sense. You realize the Indios must go, whether they were here first or not. I think I will make you my secretary, with the rank of captain.”

“Gracias, Excellency.”

“Now, let us write my communiqué to the capital, Capitán Ord. We must describe how the American abandonment of the Alamo allowed me to press the traitor Houston so closely he had no chance to maneuver his men into the trap he sought. Ay, Capitán, it is a cardinal principle of the Anglo-Saxons, to get themselves into a trap from which they must fight their way out. This I never let them do, which is why I succeed where others fail… you said something, Capitán?”

“Si, Excellency. I said, I shall title our communique: ‘Remember the Alamo,’” Ord said, standing at attention.

“Bueno! You have a gift for words. Indeed, if ever we feel the gringos are too much for us, your words shall once again remind us of the truth!” Santa Anna smiled. “I think I shall make you a major. You have indeed coined a phrase which shall live in history forever!”

Valhalla For Hire, by Lee Brainard

Editor’s Introduction

There is a certain fascination to mercenary armies, from Xenophon’s Ten Thousand to Mad Mike Hoare’s Fifth Commando in Katanga. Of course, the classic era of mercenaries was at the end of the Middle Ages.

Italy in the fourteenth century saw endless war, between Pisa and Florence, Venice and Genoa, Milan and Verona, and nearly all permutations and combinations of the above as alliances shifted like smoke. It was the great era of the condottieri, mercenary captains who made war pay; or tried to. Not all were successful. The greatest captain of his time was Carmagnola, who in 1432 was lured from his camp to Venice by a delusive message, and suddenly executed by his employers for treason suspected but never proved. The Venetians impartially did the same for their doges: Marino Faliero was executed because the Council suspected he was plotting to use mercenaries to make himself a tyrant. That had certainly been done before, as the della Scala and Sforza families would do in the future.

C.W.C. Oman in his Art of War in the Middle Ages (the big two-volume history, not the short essay of the same title) says of one mercenary captain:

“Of the foreign condottieri John Hawkwood was not only the most famous but by far the most respectable—virtuoso not only in Machiavelli’s sense but according to all military standards of his day. He never broke his oath; he was in 1364 the only captain of the Pisans whom the Florentines could not bribe. He carried out his contracts with rigorous probity, and he never sold his employer of the moment… Mercenaries of rival bands, who fell into his hands in the course of business, could always count on a quick release and a moderate ransom. It is no wonder that his Florentine patrons regarded him as a paragon of virtue and placed his figure on horseback over the southwest portal of their Duomo.”

In fact the story is more interesting: Hawkwood was called to save the city of Florence, which he did. Part of his payment was that a marble statue of Hawkwood on horseback would be erected in the cathedral. When the battle was won, the thrifty Florentines instead had painted a mural of a statue; it is this that Oman refers to, and it can be seen to this day.

Machiavelli, that most astute observer, also says;

“Condottieri are either capable persons or they are not; if they are clever you cannot rely on them, for they will be scheming for their own exaltation, either by falling on you, their employer, or else by molesting other states, whom you have no interest in provoking. If they are not clever, on the other hand, they will lose for you a battle and ruin you. And if you say that any commander, mercenary or no, may do that, the answer is that both a prince and a republic had better work for themselves. The prince had better be his own commander in chief, and the republic had better set its own citizens over its army. If they prove inefficient, they can be changed, and if efficient they can be prevented by law from getting too much power. History proves that only princes and warlike republics make great conquests; mercenary armies have brought nothing but loss in the end. And it is much harder for an over-great citizen to master an armed people than a people who have mercenary soldiers only.”

Of course, some of the mercenary captains did well; the Sforza family became Dukes of Milan.

Valhalla For Hire

Lee Brainard

Clearchus scowls,
John Hawkwood grins.
Trinquier howls,
and Sforza wins

“Sit down and tell us your story; we would take it in good part.
We’ve been listening to each others’ till we know them all by heart.
That one marched with Chandos, and yon was Braccio’s man;
I took my pay from the King of France, before my own blood ran.

“Our mountain lands are stony poor, and Britain’s Crown has gold.
Two centuries, now, she’s paid our men to guard the land she holds.
We marched through steaming jungles; we crossed the casteless sea;
Paraded before her palace gates, that she safely sits to tea.

“More lands than our troops ever trod. Well, sooner you than we.
Not even for the Spider would the Switzers cross the sea.
No cannon for us, nor oceans; and if the cantons had needed men
and sent the word recalling us, we should have marched home again.

“Raj Guru gave us leave to go, and to return again.
He got it for us wholesale when the Crown had need of men.
From mountain villages, our name has now worldwide renown:
there’s honor in the weapons we were issued by the Crown.

“Employers are free with steel and lead; less free with silver and gold.
It was after the Booty of Burgundy that soldiering took hold.
The danger’s less on the battlefield than on the last parade,
When the man who hired you starts to think: Dead men don’t have to be paid.

“The Crown does not disown our deeds. We were no whores of war.
We served the Crown as the grandsires of our grandsires did before.
Our sahibs, too, took up the task their grandsires handed down,
Whose grandsires marched with Young Sahib, who hired us to serve the Crown.

“We had a touch of that ourselves, till the Lilies crowned a fool.
That’s why the dying lion’s carved beside the quiet pool.
When the Spider hired our halberds, he was miserly with our blood;
his namesake sacrificed us to the rising rebel flood.

“I, too, was of the last, without dishonor to the Crown.
My sons are thriving merchants with their base in Goorka town.
Their copper shipments pass some teeth my uncle helped to pull;
where my father searched for foemen, now they deal in tallow and wool.”

Clearchus scowls,
John Hawkwood grins.
Trinquier howls,
and Sforza wins.

Debating SDI: Opinion or Fact? by Doug Beason

Editor’s Introduction

Years ago when I was employed by the Aerospace Corporation I was required to give a standard disclaimer whenever I made a speech. I’d say something like:

“The following represents my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions, policies, or doctrines of the Aerospace Corporation, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States of America; and I think that’s a darned shame.”

Doug Beason, who is both a particle physicist and a serving officer with the U.S. Air Force, wouldn’t quite put it that way; but we are required to say:

“The views and opinions expressed or implied in this article are those of the author and are not to be construed as carrying the official sanction of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Air Force.”

The SDI debate has been extremely odd: whereas Mr. Robert A. Heinlein called SDI “the best news since VJ Day,” most of the nation’s press has acted as if there were something immoral about a defense that defends.

The opponents of strategic defense will not, unless pressed, admit that they don’t want defenses even if they work; they prefer to look as if they are debating laws of physics. “We can’t build it,” they say; but the odd part is that as far as I know everyone who says we can’t build it will, if really hard pressed, admit that it wouldn’t be desirable to put it up even if we could do it quickly, efficiently, and cheaply. They just don’t want a defense that defends.

Now it’s true that this globe has, under the mutual fear of nuclear war, enjoyed an era without great wars. Those killed in Korea and Vietnam might not appreciate the distinction. Those killed in Cambodia because they were able to read and write certainly wouldn’t understand. We have huge institutions devoted to studies of the Holocaust, and rightly so; why are not three million Cambodians at least half as interesting? Is it because they are not Caucasians, not Jewish, or that there were only three million of them? For whatever reason, they seem to be ignored, and I’ve wandered from my point, which is that we can, I suppose, say that Mutual Assured Destruction—the doctrine that says that I’ll let you kill me provided that I get to kill you back—has kept since 1945 an uneasy state we can call peace even if the price has been pretty high.

The price of Mutual Assured Destruction, though, is that we build sufficient weapons to assure the destruction of the other guy after he has taken his best shot; which means accumulating more and more missiles and nuclear weapons. Arthur C. Clarke once likened that to “two small boys standing in a pool of gasoline seeing who could accumulate the most matches.” Alas he had the analogy wrong; but in fact it could be done that way. We have the technical capability to build doomsday machines that will automatically set themselves off if the United States is attacked.

I never met anyone who wanted to make such a thing; which is interesting, because if we really believe in Mutual Assured Destruction, isn’t that what we ought to be building?

Debating SDI: Opinion or Fact?

Doug Beason

No matter how much he tries, or how much he lobbies, President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative just doesn’t have a chance. SDI is as good as dead.

However, the president’s “Star Wars” program does have a chance. Ever since Teddy Kennedy’s offhand, spur of the moment (knee-jerk?) remark dismissing SDI as so much mumbo-jumbo, the press has incessantly promoted missile defense as “Star Wars.” In this era of linguistic Watergatese and thirty-second “in-depth” analyses, the misnomer Star Wars is here to stay.

So what?

So what if “Star Wars” inaccurately portrays what is arguably the most farsighted and noble dream that man has dared to undertake? If, according to Dr. Benjamin Spock, the threat of nuclear war is such a terrible psychological burden to our children, then doesn’t mankind have a duty to prevent it from happening? And being realistic—knowing the myriad Soviet violations of every treaty we’ve signed with them—why doesn’t a mutual shield stopping these missiles appeal to everyone?

Certainly, tagging a science fictional title onto SDI doesn’t help—but should this be a major concern to those debating SDI? I propose not, for there is something of greater importance to worry about: a disturbing number of anti-SDI opinions, cleverly disguised as facts, bubbling about in the “neutral” press.

Our society guarantees every crackpot, nut, and ax murderer the right to air their opinions in public. And this is not bad; in fact, it’s the very stuff that makes us free. No matter how weird or disjointed someone else’s view may seem, there just might be a glimmer of insight in that cesspool of twisted rationale.

The danger comes when those bastions of free thought—the printed, vocal and visual media—take subtle sides in an argument; taking sides by presenting opinions as facts.

First allow me to clarify a point—it is absolutely essential that editorial freedom exist in the press. In fact, this is the only way good decisions are made. Debate, oration, and cross-examination ensure that every side of an issue is examined in detail. And during this process, an opinion is stated as an opinion and remains mutually exclusive from fact. Example: if the National Review (clearly a magazine of opinion) started espousing procommunistic propaganda as a scientific fact, then I would either suspect that William F. Buckley has something up his sleeve or someone is tapping into the magazine’s typesetting link. No surprises here—surprises in the sense that if a journal is (quietly now!) slanted in a particular manner, one is aware that he is being fed editorial opinion and not fact.

I expect opinion from National Review, not a treatise on quantum physics.

Contrast this to scientific journals. Undistorted facts, free of preconceived views, are essential to understanding scientific arguments. No one can argue with this.

Carrying this one step further, when a decision is pending on something as important as defending our country against nuclear attack, editorial license can not be tolerated. Just as in a debate, where people sway one another with facts, opinion should be kept out of the arena—or at least until all the facts are in and a decision is imminent.

The SDI debate is charged with emotion, and a danger lies in the synergistic mixing of facts and opinions. Example: Scientific American, an age-old and respected scientific journal for both the scientist and layman alike, in three years since President Reagan’s March 1983 SDI speech, has published not fewer than fourteen antinuclear or anti-SDI articles—an average of one every three issues.

And every one of those articles was the lead article for the magazine that month.

So what is the problem? They have their right to an opinion, don’t they?

For one, this journal, usually noted for its unbiased presentation of facts, made sweeping, inflammatory statements which preceeded every anti-SDI article. An example, published in October, 1984: “President Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ program seems unlikely ever to protect the entire nation against a nuclear attack. It would nonetheless trigger a major expansion of the arm’s race.”

This is an example of unbiased facts? Another abstract, published in June 1984, on antisatellite weapons: “Unless some action is taken to restrain further development of such weapons the positive contributions of satellites to international security will be threatened.”

Objections? Certainly Scientific American may address social questions as well as scientific ones. There is no problem with this, and it is a commendable effort; social responsibility has long been a precedent among scientists. However, when only one point of view is presented—a point of view tainted by the author’s predisposition—one wonders if this is not an unbiased examination of the facts; especially when many nonscientist readers look to this journal in anticipation of a neutral, nonopinionated presentation. When the author knows a priori what he wants to prove, and incessantly uses only certain facts to gain those conclusions, then the thin guise of neutrality is stripped away and all credibility is lost.

A legitimate need exists for debate on SDI; that is the only way that SDI’s problems may be ironed out. But for every protest the anti-SDI crowd cries out, a counter example can be given. This article is not intended to challenge the anti-SDI findings (of which some are very good), but a few moments’ thought on some of the issues brings these observations:

- arguing about the Soviets stopping a U.S. laser defense by rotating their missiles as they’re launched (have you ever considered how hard it is just to keep a nonrotating missile stable, much less a rotating one? Ask any launch control officer);

- arguing that the Soviets can neutralize U.S. lasers by painting a reflective coating on their missiles (nothing can reflect every type of laser; furthermore, critics such as Garwin dismiss the obvious implication that the extra weight of the reflective painting cuts missile range and warhead loads. In addition, he misses the point that one less warhead per missile slashes the Soviet nuclear arsenal by over 10 percent!);

- arguing that the Soviets can disguise their missile’s heat emissions to prevent the U.S. from detecting them, by either adding “sputtering” agents or using “fast-burning” fuels (cyrogenic methods—used in detecting faint stars, spy satellites, and other applications—have been around for years; the U.S. leads the Soviets in fast-burning fuels by a factor of five to ten years, and we can’t get our burn times down below a minute);

- arguing “the Soviets can put up more offensive weapons than we can afford defensive ones” (ever hear of Greg Canavan’s square root law? They have to put up the square of any amount we put up. Example: they need sixteen as many systems to defeat four of ours);

- or even arguing that antisatellite measures by the Soviets would make space-based platforms too vulnerable (I like Jerry Pournelle’s idea the best on this one: surround the space platform with twenty feet of concrete—concrete made from material mined on the moon!—and set a U.S. general officer on board. That way, any preemptive attack on the platform by the Soviets is an outright act of war).

These issues are important, but a journal devoted to disseminating scientific fact is not the place for them to be debated. On second thought, maybe it is just the place; but what about the other side of the coin? How many pro-SDI articles have been published in Scientific American? If this is truly a neutral forum, well, where are they? Social responsibility is a double-edged sword: you’ve got to cut with both sides, or one edge dulls. And a review of the literature will convince you that the anti-SDI side is quickly becoming tedious.

Another example: Broad’s Star Warriors attempts to discuss the SDI issues, but quickly falls into the mode of presenting a pro-SDI argument, then using weak, ill-thought-out examples to counter each argument. One grows weary reading the book, wondering which obscure critic Broad will quote next to prove his preconceived point. An exception to this: Physics Today presents both sides of the SDI issue, and should be commended as such; but this practice is in the minority.

What, then, are some of the pro-SDI arguments you never hear about? For one, if we can make the Soviets go to all the trouble of designing, manufacturing and deploying a totally new technology to defeat SDI, then SDI is already working. Their economy cannot handle the extra workload; we’ll bankrupt them. A recent study which says the Soviet infrastructure will be bolstered by their anti-SDI effort has obviously not seen the statistics on what their military production lines (tanks, rockets, bombs—you name it) are already doing to their economy.

Another ridiculous protest is the constraint that we “must kill 100 percent of their missiles for SDI to be successful.” If the Soviets can not depend on even 50 percent of their missiles surviving a SDI shield (by the way, which 50 percent of their missiles will we get? The 50% they targeted to our missile fields? No one knows), they can’t attack. Too many of our missiles would survive to retaliate against them. In other words, deterrence has reared its head and a “leakproof” SDI is not even necessary; just one that keeps them on their toes.

Dr. Lowell Wood, an eminent physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was asked at the 1985 Space Foundation Meeting in Colorado Springs, about the newest concern of the anti-SDI folk: the problems in developing a “bug” free computer program to battle manage SDI. Dr. Wood observed that two years ago, the anti-SDI argument was that the technology for SDI would be impossible to attain; last year’s bugaboo was the cost of deploying SDI. Both of those protests were rescinded after proven false—proven false by such demonstrations as an electromagnetic railgun smashing a plastic bullet through an inch and a half plate of steel; a navy laser blasting through a missile at White Sands; the army intercepting, and obliterating, a missile in space, launched from Vandenberg AFB; the air force tracking the Space Shuttle with a laser on a mountaintop in Hawaii; atmospheric distortions removed from a laser beam propagating through the atmosphere; a neutral particle beam experiment soon to fly in space; advances in microwave technology; and a demonstration of the most efficient laser ever made—the free electron laser (FEL). The success of other, highly classified projects, such as “third generation” nuclear weapons—of which X-ray lasers are only one facet—can only be hinted at; but Dr. Edward Teller, the Father of the H-Bomb, has testified before Congress and is absolutely convinced of their utility.

Dr. Wood’s question, then, to the anti-SDI crowd was what would be their protest next year? The software “problem,” albeit a necessary worry, has been addressed (and probably solved by using modular programming, a technique that the National Laboratories, and AT&T, among others, have been using for years) and should not be the driving reason for scrubbing SDI. In fact, nor should any one reason be enough to halt SDI. What the critics conveniently forget is that SDI is a research project; a project soley to determine the feasibility of having a defensive shield. How can they be unbiased if they’ve already made up their minds that SDI won’t work?

For something as important as SDI, and especially before any decision is made to deploy these systems, accurate facts must be presented and examined. But is this truly possible when a small group of scientists (the Union of Concerned Scientists totals less than 1 percent of all scientists) blatantly taint the most important issue of our time with preconceived opinions?

A recent cartoon portrayed two ways to exercise the scientific method: the first method is to make a hypothesis, gather data, and then compare the hypothesis with the data to reach a conclusion; the second “method” reaches a conclusion, then gathers data to support that conclusion. This second “method” of research is an insult to all those who study the sciences, and in the very least, as a research project, SDI should be accorded the first method.

Opinion versus fact. It doesn’t matter what you call SDI—let’s make sure it is accurately portrayed and studied in a rational manner. Then let’s make a decision, whatever it may be.

Consequences, by Walter Jon Williams

Editor’s Introduction

Many years ago I fell in love with sailboats. When a college friend began a boat-building apprenticeship at Edison Technical Schools in Seattle, we decided we would build a midget ocean-racing sloop designed by Edward Weber, the Long Island marine architect. It was very likely the only way I would ever afford a sailboat; and those days I despised plastic. I wanted a real sailboat of real wood, oak frames and yellow cedar planking, spruce mast…

Ariadne was lofted on the floor of my basement, her lines taken from Weber’s article in an ancient copy of a yachting magazine. She was largely built by hand. Her plywood decks were covered with thin strips of teak. Her cabin was varnished mahogany, as was her transom. She boasted toe rails. She was, in a word, very nearly the world’s largest model ship.

She wasn’t very large, twenty feet overall, but there was room for two berths and a gimballed stove. A boat like that is intended for protected waters; she’d have been perfect for Lake Washington, or even Puget Sound. About the time she was finished, though, I found myself living in Southern California. Poul Anderson and I had many adventures getting her from Seattle to Los Angeles.

Twenty feet is pretty small for a sailboat on the open Pacific; but Ariadne proved seaworthy. More than once we took her out to Catalina Island, sailing past the square red storm warning flags the Coast Guard flew from the Long Beach Breakwater lighthouse. She was slow going to windward in a high sea, but go she did; and running downwind she planed. Sometimes we took her further, to the Channel Islands, or to lonely Santa Barbara Island.

I had that boat for twenty years, and she was as sound at the end as she was when we launched her. Alas, keeping up a wooden boat took time, so much time that eventually I never took her out; those who lived aboard boats in the yard where I kept her said Ariadne cried at night from loneliness. Eventually I gave her to someone who wanted her enough to love her.

I will, someday, have another sailboat; meanwhile, I am a sucker for a good sea story.

Walter Jon Williams has a very good sea story.

Consequences

Walter Jon Williams

White sails cut precise arcs against a background of vivid color: green sea, blue sky, black volcanic sand. Spindrift shone like diamonds as it spattered over the weather rail. Birdwing heeled in the strong gust; timber and cordage groaned as they took the strain. Captain Derec SuPashto adjusted his stance to the increased tilt of the deck; his mind was on other things.

Birdwing and its convoy were about to be attacked by the Liavekan Navy.

“My compliments to the ship’s wizard, Facer,” he said. “Ask him if he can veer this wind two or four points.”

“Sir.”

A veering wind would be useful, Derec thought, if Levett could conjure one up. But whatever happened, let it stay strong.

“Starboard a point, Sandor.”

“Starboard a point, aye, aye.”

“Break out our colors, SuKrone.”

“Sir.”

Derec’s first reaction on seeing the three Liavekan warships was not one of anxiety, but rather relief. Birdwing would finally have a chance to prove itself to Ka Zhir, and that chance was desperately needed.

As the streaming black-and-gold Zhir ensign broke out overhead, Derec studied the enemy with narrowed eyes: three bright ships on a shallow sea the color of green baize. The lead galleass was a big one, thirty oars or more per side, white foam curling from its massive ramming prow. It was painted purple with scarlet trim; a rear admiral’s blue pennant fluttered from its maintop and gold leaf winked from the carved arabesques that decorated the stern. The second galleass, three cables astern, was smaller and lighter, its rigging more delicate: it would be at a disadvantage in this strong wind, this choppy sea. It hadn’t been painted; its sides were the bright color of varnished wood. Astern of the second enemy was a small xebec—its military value was negligible unless it could get under an enemy’s stern in a dead calm, in which case it could pound away with its bow chaser until its opponent was nothing but driftwood. Likely it served as a tender, or was used for chasing down unarmed merchantmen. Derec’s impulse was to discount it.

A brave sight, these three, on the green ocean. They seemed entirely in their element.

Derec knew that appearances were deceiving.

He wondered what the Liavekan admiral was thinking as he stood on his fine gingerbread poop. The Liavekan squadron had been lurking along the coast between Ka Zhir and Gold Harbor for the obvious purpose of attacking a convoy: and now a convoy had appeared, twelve caravels and two huge carracks, all crammed to the gunnels with trade goods. The Liavekan squadron, waiting behind a barren, palm-covered islet, had duly sprung their ambush and were now driving toward their prey. But what in hell, they must wonder, was the escort?

A ship of Birdwing’s type had never been seen in these waters. The stout masts and heavy standing rigging marked her as northern-built, a Farlander ship able to stand up to winter gales in the high latitudes, but even in the north she would cut an odd figure. She was too narrow, flat-sided, and low for a carrack. The forward-tilting mainmast and bonaventure mizzen would have marked her as a galleon, but if she was a galleon, where were the high fore- and sterncastles? And where were the billowing, baglike square sails the Liavekans had come to associate with those heavy, sluggish northern ships? Birdwing’s square sails were cut flat, curved gently like a bird’s wing, hence its name.

To the Liavekan admiral, Derec wondered, how did this all add up? A galleon with its upper decks razed, perhaps, in an effort to make it lighter, and furthermore cursed with an eccentric sailmaker. Some kind of bastard ship at any rate, neither fish nor fowl, with a broadside to beware of, but a military value easily enough discounted. Everyone knew that northern ships couldn’t sail to weather—unlike the oar-driven galleys and galleasses of the Levar’s navy, galleons were doomed to sail only downwind. And the Liavekan’s tactics were clearly aimed at getting the escort to leeward of its convoy, where it couldn’t possibly sail upwind again to protect it.

You’re in for a surprise, Milord Admiral, Derec thought. Because Birdwing is going to make those wormy hulks of yours obsolete, and all in the next turn of the glass.

“Wizard’s compliments, sir.” Lieutenant Facer had returned, sunlight winking from his polished brass earrings; he held his armored cap at the salute. “He might venture a spell to veer the wind, but it would take twenty minutes or more.”

Within twenty minutes they’d be in gunshot. Weather spells were delicate things, consuming enormous amounts of power to shift the huge kinetic energies that made up a wind front, and often worked late or not at all.

“Compliments to the wizard, Facer. Tell him we’ll make do with the wind we’ve got.”

“Sir.” Facer dropped his hat back on his peeling, sunburned head. For a sailor he had a remarkably delicate complexion, and these southern latitudes made things worse: his skin was forever turning red and flaking off. He was openly envious of Derec’s adaptation to the climate: the sun had just browned the captain’s skin and bleached his graying hair almost white.

Facer turned and took two steps toward the poop companionway, then stopped. “Sir,” he said. “I think our convoy has just seen the enemy.”

“Right. Cut along, Facer.”

“Sir.”

The Zhir convoy, arrayed in a ragged line just downwind of Birdwing, was now showing belated signs of alarm. Five minutes had passed before any of them noticed an entire enemy squadron sweeping up from two miles away. Derec had no illusions about the quality of the merchant captains: the convoy would scatter like chaff before a hailstorm. None of them were capable of outrunning a squadron of warships: their only chance was to scatter in all directions and hope only a few would fall victim to the enemy. Still, Derec should probably try to do something, at least to show the Zhir he’d tried to protect their cities’ shipping.

“Signal to the convoy, Randem,” he said. “Close up, then tack simultaneously.”

The boy’s look was disbelieving. “As you like, sir.”

Derec gave him a wry grin. “For form’s sake, Randem.”

“Aye, aye, sir. For form’s sake.”

Signal flags rose on the halyards, but none of the convoy bothered an acknowledgment: the merchanters had no confidence in the ship’s fighting abilities and were looking out for themselves. Derec shrugged. This was nothing more than he expected. At least they were clearing out and leaving an empty sea between Birdwing and the enemy.

Birdwing gave a shuddering roll as it staggered down the face of a wave; Derec swayed to compensate and almost lost his balance. His heavy breastplate and helmet were adding unaccustomed weight to his upper body. The helmet straps were pressing uncomfortably on his brass earrings; and the helmet was warming in the sun, turning into an oven.

Carefully Derec calculated his course and the enemy’s. The wind was holding a point north of west: the convoy had been moving roughly north along the general trend of land. The enemy squadron was racing under oars and sail as close to the wind as their characteristics permitted: they were trying to gain as much westing as possible so as not to be pinned between Birdwing and the coast. Their course was more or less northwest: Birdwing was moving nor’-nor’east on a converging tack. Unless something prevented it, the ships would brush at the intersection of their paths; and then the enemy would be to windward of the Birdwing, which was just where they wanted to be.

At which point, Derec thought confidently, they were going to suffer a terrible surprise.

Birdwing’s crew were already at quarters; they’d been doing a gun drill when the enemy appeared. There was nothing to do but wait.

“Wizard’s compliments, sir.” Facer was back, his leather-and-iron cap doffed at the salute. “The enemy is attempting a spell.”

“Thank you, Facer.” Suddenly the brisk warm breeze blew chill on Derec’s neck. He turned to face the enemy, touched his amulet of Thurn Bel and summoned his power.

Awareness flooded his mind. He could feel the protective shields that Levett, Birdwing’s wizard, had wound around the ship; from eastward he could feel a strong attempt to penetrate those shields. Derec called his power to him, but held it in reserve in case the onslaught was a feint. The attack faded grudgingly before Levett’s persistent defense, then disappeared. Whatever it was, the probe had failed. Levett’s protective spells remained intact, on guard.

That was the strategy Derec and Levett had formed weeks ago. The wizard’s magic would remain defensive, and Birdwing’s bronze cannon would bring the war to the enemy.

Derec let his hand fall from his amulet. He saw his officers standing around him expectantly; he gave them a smile. “Done,” he said. “We’re safe for the moment.” He saw them breathe easier.

He looked at the enemy. Brightness winked from the enemy’s decks: marines in their polished armor. He could hear the thud of kettledrums and crash of cymbals as the enemy quartermasters beat time for the rowers. A mile to leeward, in deeper, bluer water now, the galleasses were laboring in the steep sea, the smaller one having a particularly hard time of it.

Derec’s awareness tingled: the enemy wizard was making another attempt. Derec monitored the assault and Levett’s efforts to parry it. Once again the enemy was repulsed.

There was a flash from the flagship’s fo’c’sle, then a gush of blue smoke that the wind tore into streamers across her bows. The thud came a half-second later, followed by a shrieking iron ball that passed a half-cable to larboard. The range was long for gunshot from the pitching deck of a ship beating to windward. Jeers rose from Birdwing’s crew.

Another thud, this time from the smaller galleass, followed by another miss, this one coming close to clipping Birdwing’s stern. The enemy were giving their gun crews something to do, Derec thought, rather than stand and think about what might come, their own possible mutilation and death.

There was a bump and a mild bang from Birdwing’s maindeck, followed by a hoarse bellow. Derec stepped forward to peer over the poop rail; he saw one of the marines had stumbled and dropped his firelock, and the thing had gone off. Marcoyn, the giant marine lieutenant, jerked the man to his feet and smashed him in the face. The marine staggered down the gangway, arms windmilling; Marcoyn followed, driving another punch into the marine’s face. Derec clenched his teeth. Hatred roiled in his belly.

“Marcoyn!” he bellowed. The lieutenant looked up at him, his pale eyes savage under the brim of his boarding helmet. His victim clutched the hammock nettings and moaned.

“No interference with the sojers!” Marcoyn roared. “We agreed that, Captain!” He almost spat the word.

Derec bit back his anger. “I was going to suggest, Marcoyn, that you blacken the man’s eyes later. We may need him in this fight.”

“I’ll do more than blacken his eyes, by Thurn Bel!”

“Do as you think best, Marcoyn.” Derec spoke as tactfully as possible; but still he held Marcoyn’s eyes until the marine turned away muttering under his breath, fists clenched at the ends of his knotted arms.

Marcoyn’s strange pale eyes never seemed to focus on anything, just glared out at the world with uncentered resentment. He was a brute, a drunk, illiterate, and very likely mad, but he represented an element of Birdwing’s crew that Derec couldn’t do without. Marcoyn was the living penalty, Derec thought, for the crimes he had committed for the ship he loved.

Derec remembered Marcoyn’s massive arms twisting the garrote around young Sempter’s neck, the way the boy’s eyes had started out of his head, feet kicking helplessly against the mizzen pinrail, shoes flying across the deck. Derec standing below, helpless to prevent it, his shoes tacky with Lieutenant Varga’s blood…

His mouth dry, Derec glanced at the mizzen shrouds, then banished the memory from his mind. The enemy had fired their bow chasers once more.

The smaller galleass fired first this time, followed a half-second later by the flagship. Interesting, Derec thought. The smaller ship had the better crew.

A strong gust heeled the galleon and drove it through the sea. The waves’ reflection danced brightly on the enemy’s lateen sails. The enemy squadron was half a mile away. If the ships continued on their present courses, Birdwing would soon be alongside the enemy flagship in a yardarm-to-yardarm fight, a situation ideal for the northern galleon.

Another pair of bangs, followed by a buzzing and a smack: the smaller galleass’s ball had pitched right through Birdwing‘s main topsail. Derec saw blond and redheaded countrymen looking up in surprise, heard nervous laughter. This was the first time most of them had been under fire. Derec realized he should probably say something now, offer an inspiring comment to drive any thoughts of fear out of his sailors’ heads. He could think of nothing.

“Run out the starboard chaser!” he finally called. “We’ll answer that!”

There were some scattered cheers, but Derec could see puzzled expressions. The enemy were within range of the broadside guns: why not open fire with the whole battery? Derec kept his counsel. He was saving the first broadside for close range.

The bronze starboard demiculverin rumbled as it thrust its muzzle from the port. Derec could see the gun captain bent low over the chaser’s barrel, timing the ship’s motion, linstock in his hand. There was a gush of fire from the priming, then a roar; the gun flung itself back like a monstrous bronze beast. Derec turned to leeward and saw the nine-pound ball skip on the waves like a dancer twenty yards ahead of the enemy’s prow. A groan of disappointment went up from Birdwing’s crew.

“Chaser crew, fire at will!” Derec called.

The chasers banged at each other for another three or four rounds apiece. The Liavekans showed no sign of changing course: were they really going to let Derec lay alongside and fight exactly the kind of battle he wanted? Ignoring the artillery duel, Derec studied the enemy, the changing relationship between the ships. Tried to get into his enemy’s head, wondered what the enemy admiral was thinking.

The sound of kettledrums and cymbals was very loud now, carrying clearly upwind. The enemy sweeps moved in beautiful synchrony, the blue water boiling at their touch. The distance between Birdwing and the lead enemy narrowed, and Derec was considering running out his starboard battery when flame blossomed from the enemy’s sides and the air was full of shrieking. Derec’s heart turned over at the sound of a slamming noise from below—a shot lodged home—followed by another smack as a ball tore through the fore topsail. The enemy had fired its full broadside, maybe ten guns in all.

His nerves wailing in surprise, Derec bit his lip and frowned at the enemy. Something had changed, but he couldn’t say what. Something in the pattern of drumbeats and cymbals. Another level of his awareness sensed the enemy’s magician attempting a spell. With a start he realized what the enemy intended.

“Hard a-starboard!” he roared, and ran to the break in the poop. Just below him, sheltered by the poop overhang, Sandor the timoneer controlled the ship’s whipstaff. “Hard a-starboard!” Derec shrieked again, and he felt the change in the ship’s motion that meant the timoneer had flung his weight against the whipstaff and the galleon was beginning to respond to its big rudder. Derec suddenly felt the nature of the enemy spell—it was an attempt to paralyze them for a few seconds, but Levett had parried it, again without the need for Derec’s assistance. Derec glanced at the surprised faces of his crew.

“Both broadsides, load and run out! Starboard guns, load with doubleshot! Larboard guns, load with roundshot!” He glanced at the enemy to confirm what he suspected, and found it true—the bright silhouettes were narrowing as one set of sweeps backed water while the other continued driving forward. Lateen sails billowed and snapped as the yards were dropped to the deck. The enemy were changing course, driving straight into the wind under the power of their sweeps alone.

Birdwing lurched as the waves caught it at a new angle. “Braces, there!” Derec shouted. “Rudder amidships!” The galleon filled with shouting and stamping as the crews bent to their work. Heart in his mouth, Derec gazed at the enemy.

The relationship between the ships had changed drastically. The enemy vessels had simultaneously turned straight into the wind while preserving their relationship to one another, from a line ahead into a line of bearing. They had attempted to cut behind the Farlander galleon, head upwind and into the convoy without the necessity of a fight. Birdwing had just turned downwind and within the next two minutes would pass along the flagship’s starboard side. The ships would exchange broadsides on the run, and then race past one another.

If Birdwing were a caravel or high-charged galleon, that would have been the end of the fight: Derec could never have turned into the wind to pursue the enemy. The Liavekan admiral would have got between him and his convoy, a master stroke. But Birdwing was something the Liavekan hadn’t seen; and savage exultation filled Derec as he realized he had the enemy in his hand.

There was a massive rumbling as the guns were run out, all fifty-four of them, heavy demicannon on the lower deck and lighter, longer culverins on the maindeck.

Derec stood on the break in the poop and shouted through cupped hands.

“Larboard gun captains and second captains remain with your guns! All extra crew to the starboard guns!” Bare feet drummed the planks—the crew had practiced this many times. Birdwing didn’t carry enough crew to efficiently fight both sides, and Derec wanted his starboard guns served well.

Enemy kettledrums thundered over the water. The purple-and-scarlet galleass was frighteningly close.

“Starboard broadside, make ready!” Derec shouted. “Fire on my order! Sail trimmers, stand by the braces! Timoneer—starboard a bit!” He’d pass alongside the enemy and drive Birdwing right through their starboard bank of sweeps if he could.

But abruptly the kettledrums made a flourish, then fell silent. The enemy sweeps rose like white teeth from the water, and then drew inward. The Liavekans were prepared for Derec’s maneuver.

" ’Midships!" he called. And suddenly there was eerie silence—no kettledrums, no shouted orders, no guns running out, only the whisper of the wind and the deafening beat of Derec’s pulse in his ears.

The galleass came alongside, and the guns spoke. The enemy fo’c’sle guns bellowed first, so close their fires licked Birdwing’s timbers, and the air filled with splinters and moaning shot. Then Derec shrieked “Fire!” and the galleon lurched as all its guns went off more or less together, from the demicannon on the lower decks to the little sakers and minions used by the marines. Abruptly there was a chorus of screams from the galleass as shot and splinters tore through the close-packed oarsmen—the weird and awful cries sounded clearly even to Derec’s deafened ears. The enemy quarterdeck guns went off last, massive iron cannon firing fifty-pound stone shot that burst on impact and laid low a score of Marcoyn’s marines.

But all that was anticlimax: as soon as Birdwing’s guns fired, Derec was shouting new orders. “Hard a-star-board! Starboard guns, reload! Larboard guns, fire as you bear!”

Kettledrums and cymbals punctuated Derec’s cries: the enemy admiral’s galleass was losing momentum, beginning to swing in the wind. They had to get under way, and quickly. Derec saw sweeps beginning to run out, and saw also that his salvo had blown gaping holes in the galleass’s sides. The rowdeck must be a shambles. Triumph filled his heart.

Suddenly he was aware of the pressure of an enemy spell. Levett seemed to be handling it; but suddenly there was another strike, moving fast as lightning, a white-hot flare in Derec’s mind. Derec’s own power lashed out without his conscious effort, turning the spell away. A hollow feeling overtook him as he realized the spell’s nature: the enemy wizard had tried to set off the powder cartridges on the gundeck. The powder magazine itself was well guarded by spells renewed yearly, but the powder was vulnerable as the ship’s boys carried it to the guns, as the gun crews ladled the cartridges into the breeches and rammed shot atop them. This closely engaged, explosions on the gundeck would be disastrous.

The purple galleass fell off the wind a bit before its sweeps finally struck the water. Birdwing turned like a dolphin under the enemy stern, the starboard guns running out again, barking as they drove iron lengthwise through the enemy, wreaking hideous destruction on the narrow enemy vessel. Derec pounded the taffrail, roaring encouragement to the guncrews. Birdwing was now close-hauled between the two enemy galleasses, and the larboard guns—manned inefficiently by two men apiece—fired as the smaller vessel came into line: the range was much longer, but Derec saw the foremast come down. The fully crewed starboard guns ran out again, driving another broadside into the admiral’s port quarter. The kettledrums fell silent. Sweeps flailed the water in panic.

“Stations for tacking! Helm’s a-lee!” Derec’s heart beat fire: a bloodthirsty demon howled in his soul. He wanted the enemy smashed.

Birdwing pivoted on its heel like a dancer, running along the purple ship’s larboard side. Two full broadsides lashed out; the enemy timbers moaned to the impact of shot. The main and mizzenmast fell: the enemy rudder hung useless from its gudgeons. Nothing but small arms replied; the Liavekans hadn’t reloaded their larboard guns after the first broadside, either because they hadn’t the crew or hadn’t thought it was necessary. Now they paid for their neglect.

The enemy flagship was left astern, a near-wreck pouring blood from its scuppers. Birdwing tacked again, heading for the smaller enemy; the lighter galleass had bravely turned toward the fight in an effort to succor its admiral. Useless: Birdwing forged ahead and yawed to fire one broadside, then the other. The guns smashed enough enemy sweeps to stagger the galleass in the water; the next broadside brought the mainmast down along with the enemy colors.

Derec saw the third enemy vessel’s colors coming down—the xebec had surrendered, even though it had stood away from the battle and might have got away.

Then there was silence, filled only with the gusting wind and the eerie sounds of the dying. Wreckage littered the sea: broken sweeps, jagged splinters, torn bodies of the dead. The enemy were drifting toward land: Derec would have to order them to drop an anchor till he could jury-rig masts and get them under way.

Suddenly the silence was broken by cheers, Birdwing’s crew sending roar upon defiant roar into the sky.

Derec looked down at the capering men, laughing and dancing in the waist of the ship, dancing in the blood of their crewmates who lay where the enemy’s shot had flung them.

Then he remembered the mutiny, the way the men had danced in the blood of their countrymen, and the taste of victory turned to bitterness in his mouth.

“Ah,” said Prince Jeng. “My mutineer.”

“Your serene and glorious highness,” Derec said, and fell to his knees, bowing low and raising his hands to his forehead.

Jeng was a balding man in his late thirties, tall for a Zhir, bearded and portly; he was heir to the throne, and head of the regent’s council while his father the king was ill and recuperating at the Obsidian Palace inland. It was Jeng who had intensified the undeclared naval war against Liavek, and who as a means of forwarding his policy had welcomed Birdwing to Ka Zhir. This was Derec’s first lone audience with the prince—he had met Jeng twice before, but only as one petitioner among many.

Jeng seemed a bit surprised at Derec’s submission.

“Rise, Captain SuPashto. This is an informal audience, after all. Would you like a sherbet on the terrace?”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” Derec rose and suppressed a feeling of discomfort. Back in the Twin Kingdoms, on the continent the Zhir called Farland, he’d never had any dealings with high nobility, and despite Prince Jeng’s hospitality he was not at home here. Derec was also uncomfortable in Prince Jeng’s language: his tongue was rough, and he desperately wished for an interpreter.

Jeng’s cool summer silks whispered on marble as Derec followed him to the terrace. The sherbets were already laid on a wrought-iron serving table: obviously the prince had not expected Derec to refuse an offer of refreshment. Below the terrace, cliffs fell away to reveal the Inner Harbor of Ka Zhir.

A strong sea breeze blew through the palace; but below, the harbor was windless. A hundred ships of burden stood on their perfect reflections in the still blue water. Among them, small guard boats scuttled like water spiders under oars. Thirty war galleys were drawn up on the shelving pebble beach of Great Kraken Island, safe beneath the guns and curtain walls of Fort Shzafakh, which was perched atop the old volcanic dome. Beyond, between the Inner and Outer Harbor, thousands of slaves were toiling to build the New Mole, at the end of which a new defensive fortification would rise, one from which a massive chain could be raised to block the channel and keep the Inner Harbor safe. The new fort was coming to be known as Jeng’s Castle, just as the intensified conflict with Liavek was gaining the name of Jeng’s War. Neither term was official; but language was, in its inevitable fashion, reflecting the realities of power.

Jeng scooped up his sherbet in one broad paw and walked to a brass telescope set on the terrace. Touching it gingerly—the metal had grown hot in the sun—he adjusted the instrument and peered through it.

“Your conquests, Captain,” he said. He stepped back from the telescope and, with a graceful gesture, offered Derec a look. Derec nodded his thanks and put his eye to the instrument.

The bright varnished galleass leaped into view, anchored in the outer harbor next to the xebec. The Zhir ensign floated over both, black-and-gold raised over the Liavekan blue. The admiral’s purple galleass was just behind, drawn up on the shelving beach where it had been run aground to keep from sinking. Birdwing’s distinctive silhouette, a total contrast to every other vessel in the harbor, shimmered in a patch of bright, reflective water.

“I understand the xebec surrendered without a fight,” Jeng commented. Derec straightened and faced the prince. The sea breeze tugged at the prince’s cloth-of-gold silks.

“Yes, Your Highness. The xebec captain witnessed the loss of the two larger vessels and concluded that mighty wizardry was at work. He surrendered rather than be blasted to the bottom.”

“But wizardry was not at work, was it?”

Derec shook his head. “Nay, sir. We had a wizard, and so did they; but the magics canceled one another out.”

Jeng raised his delicate silver spoon to his mouth. “We have interrogated Tevvik, their wizard,” he said, sipping sherbet as if it were wine, “and he confirms this. In return for his testimony, we have released him on parole.”

Derec shrugged; the wizard’s fate meant nothing to him.

“A pity that Admiral Bandur was killed in the fight. He might have brought you a large ransom.”

“With Your Highness’s blessing,” Derec said slowly, staggering through the foreign phrases, “we will capture more admirals.”

Prince Jeng smiled catlike, and licked his spoon. “So you shall, Thung willing.”

“If Your Highness will modify our privateer’s license to permit us to cruise alone against the enemy–” Derec began, but Jeng frowned and held up a hand.

“There are those on the council who say your victory was a fluke,” Jeng said. “They say the winds were kind to you. What should I answer, captain?”

Derec hesitated, an array of technical terms running through his head. How much did Jeng know of the sea? Ka Zhir depended on ships and trade for its livelihood, and Jeng was an intelligent man who took an interest in the affairs of the kingdom; but how much practical seamanship did the prince know?

“Your highness has seen galleons from the Two Kingdoms before, and from Tichen?”

Jeng nodded. “They come with the annual trading convoys, yes. My mariners do not think well of them.”

“They are slow, yes. And cannot sail into the wind.”

Jeng finished his sherbet and scoured the dish with his spoon. The sound grated on Derec’s nerves. “So my advisors tell me. You say your ship is different.”

“It is, Your Highness. We call it a race-built galleon,” stumbling, having to fall into his own language, “to distinguish it from the old style, which we call high-charged.”

Jeng reached for a bell on the table and rang it. “Race-built?” he said. “Because it is faster?”

Derec was surprised at Jeng’s conclusion: the prince understood Derec’s language better than he’d suspected.

“With respect, Your Highness, the root of the word is razor,” Derec said. “Because the upper decks, the high stern- and forecastles, are razored off. The race-built galleon is lower in profile, and also lighter, without the weight of the castles.”

A servant appeared. The prince ordered more sherbet, then looked at Derec and frowned. “The castles, my advisors tell me, are the galleon’s great advantage in combat. The castles can hold many soldiers, and the soldiers can fire down into enemy ships.”

“The castles also make a high profile, and a high profile can catch the wind. The wind catches the ship and tries to push it to leeward. This is called leeway.”

Prince Jeng’s eyes flashed. “Any Zhir child knows this, Captain. Please do not inform me of matters I learned at my mother’s knee.”

Derec’s heart skipped a beat. He lowered his eyes and looked at Jeng’s feet. “Your pardon, Your Highness. I was merely trying to make the point that with a lower profile, the race-built galleon makes much less leeway, and is therefore able to point higher into the wind.”

“Yes.” Curtly. “Very well. I understand.”

“Also, Your Highness, we have a new form of square sail called the Birdwing. It’s flatter, rather like your own lateen sail. Although it holds less air, it’s somehow able to drive a ship nearer the wind.”

Prince Jeng’s sternness dropped away, replaced by frank curiosity. “Is that so? How can that be?”

Derec shrugged helplessly. “I do not know, Your Highness. It appears to be a property of the wind that we do not yet understand.”

“It works, but you don’t know why?” Jeng considered this. “I shall have to inquire of my philosophers. We know why the lateen works so well, of course—it’s the triangular shape, which reflects the universality of the Triple Unities of Heart, Wit, and Spirit.”

“Perhaps Captain-General Collerne understands these matters,’ Derec said,”I don’t know. The Birdwing sail had been in use on some of our smaller craft for two or three generations, but it was Captain-General Collerne who thought to use it on a warship. It was also his idea to raze the upper decks, after he noticed that some old ships that had their castles removed became better sailers." A fire kindled in Derec as he thought of his old captain and teacher. “He wanted to create a fleet taking its orders from sailors, not generals appointed to command at sea. A fleet that fights with broadside guns instead of rapiers and firelocks, that uses the wind and water to its own advantage.” His thick northern tongue stumbled on the Zhir words.

“Yes, yes,” Jeng said. “That’s all very well, but it’s practical issues I’m concerned with.” A servant arrived with another bowl of sherbet. He gave his catlike smile as he tasted the treat. Derec understood how the man had grown so stout.

“I am trying to speak practically, Your Highness,” Derec said. “Your galleys and galleasses are built lightly, so they can be driven through the water by muscle power. Because they must have so many rowers, they must water and victual frequently, and they must stop and let the rowers off every few days, so that they won’t sicken and die. If the enemy attacks while your ships are beached, your fleet is in grave jeopardy. Your ships can carry only a limited number of guns, because they are built lightly.

“Because it is powered by the wind, Birdwing is built stoutly, and can resist punishment that would sink one of your galleys. Our holds are deeper and our crews are smaller, so that we can carry more provision and stay at sea much longer. Birdwing carries twenty-seven guns on each broadside, twice as many as your largest ship—and that’s not counting sakers and minions. The Liavekans simply won’t be able to stand up to a race-built ship, and a fleet of race-built craft will sweep them from the Sea of Luck. I’ll stake my life on that, Your Highness.”

Prince Jeng looked at him darkly. “You may have to, Captain SuPashto.” Derec felt a cold touch on his neck. Prince Jeng took a deliberate sip of sherbet. “You are from a northern land, where political realities are somewhat different. Your King Torn is bound by custom and by the House of Nobles. There is no law of custom in Ka Zhir, Captain. The king is the law here, and in the absence of the king, the regent.”

“I understand, Your Highness.”

Jeng’s eyes were cold. “I think not, Captain. I think you do not comprehend the… necessities of life in Ka Zhir.” He turned, facing the inner harbor, and pointed with his silver spoon, an oddly delicate gesture in such a big man. “You see the New Mole, captain? I ordered that. One order, and thousands of slaves were set to work. Many of them will die. I didn’t have to apply to the regency council, I didn’t have to speak to a treasurer, I didn’t have to get the permission of a house of nobles. I merely gave an order one fine morning—and behold, the slaves die, and the mole is built.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Perhaps our political character,” Jeng said, turning philosophical, “is derived from our volcanoes. They are unpredictable, inclined to sudden violence, and prone to massacre. So are the Zhir. So is my family.

“I am a tyrant, Captain,” he said. He turned back to Derec, and his smile sent a chill through the northern man. “My very whim is law. I am an educated man, and am considered an enlightened tyrant by my philosophers”—his smile was cynical—“but I would scarcely expect them to say anything else, as I would then be compelled to have them crucified. That is the problem with being a tyrant, you see. I can’t stop being tyrannical, even if inclined otherwise, because that would encourage other would-be tyrants to take my place, and they would be worse. I am not as great a tyrant as my father—he had his unsuccessful commanders beheaded, and I only have them whipped, or make slaves of them. But I promise you, Captain SuPashto,” and here he pointed his spoon at Derec; and the gesture could not have been more threatening if the prince had held a sword. “I promise you, that if you fail me I will have you killed.”

Prince Jeng fell silent, and slowly ate two bites of sherbet. Derec said nothing. From the moment he had entered into conspiracy with Marcoyn and the two of them had raised the crew, he had expected nothing but death.

Jeng looked at him curiously. “You do not fear death, northern man? I can make the death unpleasant if I wish.”

“My life is in your hands,” Derec said. “I have always known this.”

“Then you understand the essential character of our relationship.” Prince Jeng smiled. He finished his sherbet and put the bowl down, then put his arm around Derec’s shoulders and began to walk with him back into the palace. “I have in mind to give you a squadron, Captain,” he said. “It will be under the nominal orders of a Zhir, but it will be yours to command, and my admiral will understand this. Bring me back lots of the Levar’s ships, and I will favor you. You will be able to replace those old brass earrings with rings of gold, and diamonds and emeralds will gleam like reflective water on your fingers. Fail me, and… well, why be morbid on such a lovely day?”

Derec’s mind whirled. “Thank you, Your Highness,” he stammered.

“I will send some slaves aboard to replace your casualties.”

Derec hesitated. “I thank you, Your Highness. Could I not have freemen? They–”

Jeng’s tones were icy. “Slaves can pull ropes as well as anyone.”

Derec sighed inwardly. Jeng would send his slaves aboard and collect their share of the pay and prize money. The slaves would not work hard and would prove cowardly, because they hadn’t anything to fight for. It was a persistent evil here, one Derec had hoped to avoid—but now he must concede.

“I thank you, Your Highness. Strong men, if you please.”

“No women? Not one?”

“Women are not as strong. On a galleon, the sailors must move heavy cannon, and fight the yards when the sails are filled with wind.”

“Really? But surely there are less physical tasks. Scrubbing the planks, or cooking, or serving the officers.”

“Then there are discipline problems, Your Excellency. If you will look at the complaints in your navy, I’m sure you’ll find more than half having to do with officers playing favorites among their prettier crewmates.”

“But how do your sailors keep warm at night?”

Derec smiled. “Abstinence makes them… fiercer fighters, Your Highness.”

Prince Jeng looked shocked. “I would never deprive my men and women of their pleasures, Captain. They’re prone enough to disobedience as it is. But if you insist on your barbaric customs–” He shrugged. “The least I can do is rescue you from this cold regime—one of my commanders must learn to enjoy life, yes? Until your ship is ready, you will stay in the palace and accept my hospitality. I will send a woman to your room tonight.” He hesitated. “You do like women, yes?”

“Ah, yes, Your Highness.”

“You did make me wonder, Captain. Perhaps you would prefer more than one?”

Derec was surprised. “One is generally sufficient.”

Jeng laughed. “I’m unused to such modesty. Very well. One it is.”

“Thank you, Your Highness. For everything.”

The prince had steered Derec back to the audience chamber, and he dropped his arm and stepped back. “The majordomo will show you to an apartment.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” Derec knelt again, raising his hands to his forehead.

“One more thing, SuPashto.”

“Your Highness?”

Prince Jeng was smiling his catlike smile. “No more mutinies, Captain.”

A day later, coming aboard Birdwing, Derec was surprised to meet the Liavekan wizard, Tevvik, at the entry port. The pleasant-looking young man smiled and bowed, his expression cheerful. Derec nodded curtly and stepped below to his own wizard’s hot, airless cabin. He rapped on the flimsy partition.

“Enter.” Derec stepped in to find Levett sitting in his bunk, reading a Zhir grammar by the light of a tallow candle. Derec stood over him.

“I’ve come for my lesson, wizard,” he said.

Levett was a short, thin man. Though he was young, his hair and beard were white. Diamond chips glittered in his hoop earrings. His green eyes studied Derec.

“As you like, Captain. I was just chatting with a colleague. Tevvik’s an interesting man. Shall we go to your cabin?”

Derec turned and moved down the passageway to his cabin. The stern windows were open, providing relief from the heat. Flitting reflections danced on the deckhead above.

“I have been comparing notes with Tevvik,” Levett offered.

“The Liaveker.”

“He’s Tichenese, actually. That’s why he’s so dark. It was a matter of chance that he was in the Liavekan navy—it might as easily have been Ka Zhir, or the Two Kingdoms. He’s seeking adventure and foreign lands, he doesn’t care whom he serves. He’s on parole; now he’ll set up on his own, here in town. Of course,” he said rather deliberately, “he has no family. No one depending on him. He can afford to wander.”

Derec sat at his table and held the wizard’s eyes for a long moment. The wizard looked away.

“I have promised you your liberty, Wizard. As soon as I know your weather spells.”

“I have never doubted your word, Captain.”

“Just my ability to keep it.”

Levett said nothing.

“This situation was not of my making, Levett,” Derec said. “I’m sorry you are without your wife and family; I know you love them dearly. As soon as I can spare you, you will be free to take the first ship north. With money in your pocket.”

Levett licked his lips. “They will call me a mutineer.”

“The mutiny was mine, Wizard.”

“I understand. You were left no choice. I had no choice myself—when the fighting broke out, I wrapped myself in illusion and hid.”

“You had no part in the mutiny, true enough.”

“Those in authority at home… may not understand.”

“There would have been a mutiny in any case. My choice was to try to control it, lest everyone die.”

The finest ship in the Two Kingdoms’ fleet, Derec thought bitterly, and the man who had conceived it, fought for its building, sweated through its construction—Captain-General Collerne—had been denied command. Instead, Birdwing received a courtier from the capital, Captain Lord Fors, and his venemous lieutenant, Grinn… and within two months, with their policy of vicious punishments mixed with capricious favoritism, they had destroyed the morale of the crew and driven them to the brink of violence. Derec—who as a commoner had risen to the highest rank available to the lowborn, that of sailing master—had tried to stand between the captain and his crew, had tried to mitigate the punishments and hold the crew in check, but had only been mocked for his pains, and threatened by Grinn with a beating. A sailing master, the senior warrant officer on the ship, flogged… the threat was unheard of, even in a service accustomed to violence.

After that, Derec knew that mutiny was only a matter of time. Derec approached Marcoyn first—the man was constantly in trouble, but he was a fighter. Derec then chose his moment, and as an officer had the keys to the arms chests: Fors and Grinn both died screaming, begging for their lives as maddened crewmen hacked at them with swords and pikes. Lieutenant Varga, a good officer who had been appalled by his captain’s conduct, had nonetheless tried to rescue Fors, and was stabbed and flung bodily into the sea for his pains.

Derec had tried to hold the killings to three; but the mutineers got into the liquor store and things soon ran out of control. The ship’s corporal died, bludgeoned to death in the hold; another dozen, known captain’s favorites or those suspected of being informers, were killed. Marcoyn had led the blood-maddened crewmen on their hunt for enemies, had hung the remaining lieutenants and a fourteen-year-old midshipman, Sempter, from the mizzen shrouds, and there garroted them one by one. Derec had stood by underneath, watching the starting eyes and kicking heels, helpless to prevent it—he was the ship’s sailing master, another officer, and if he’d objected he would have danced in the shrouds with the others.

After the crew had sobered, Derec had been able to reassert his authority. Levett, who had hidden during the mutiny, had lent supernatural influence to Derec’s command. Now Derec was captain, and had chosen his officers from among the bosun’s and master’s mates. Marcoyn, who was illiterate and could not navigate, had been given the marines, whose morale and efficiency he was in the process of ruining with a brutality and capriciousness as hardened as that of Captain Lord Fors.

“You have done as well as you could, Captain,” Levett said. “But now that you possess the royal favor, can you not do without me?”

Derec looked up at him. “Not yet, Wizard. You are the best windspeller I know.”

Levett was silent for a time, then shrugged. “Very well. Let us go about our lessons, then.”

Derec reached inside his shirt for his amulet of Thurn Bel. The wizard seated himself. “Clear your mind, Captain,” he said, “and summon your power. We shall try again.”

Drained, his lesson over, Derec stepped onto the poop and nodded briskly to Randem, the officer of the watch. Moaning through the rigging and rattling the windsails was the fitful wind that he had, at great effort, succeeded in summoning. Not much to show for three hours’ effort.

He stepped to the stern and gazed over the taffrail at the lights of Ka Zhir. His eyes moved to the cliffs above, where his apartment and his harlot waited in Jeng’s palace. She would be disappointed tonight, he thought; the wizardry had exhausted him.

Time to call his barge and head ashore. The order poised on his lips, he turned to head back for the poop companion. He froze in his tracks, terror lurching in his heart.

Dark forms dangled from the mizzen shrouds, their legs stirring in the wind. Tongues protruded from blackened lips. Pale eyes rolled toward Derec, glowing with silent accusation.

Wrenching his eyes from the sight, Derec looked at Randem, at the other men on deck. They were carrying on as normal. The ghosts were invisible to them.

Derec looked again at the dead and stared in horror at young Sempter, the boy swinging from the shrouds with the garrote still knotted about his neck.

The dead had risen, risen to curse him.

He was doomed.

Drums and cymbals beat time as Derec’s rowing squadron backed gracefully onto the shelving pebble beach of Ka Zhir’s outer harbor. Birdwing, a damaged galleass in tow, dipped its ensign to its nominal Zhir admiral. The galleass had lost its rudder in an autumn storm, had broached-to and been pounded before the rowers got it under way again. Birdwing was continuing to the inner harbor, to deliver its crippled charge to the royal dockyard.

“Keep the Speckled Tower right abeam till the octagonal tower comes in line,” the Zhir pilot said. “Then alter course three points to larboard to clear the New Mole.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the timoneer.

The sound of anchors splashing echoed over the bay, followed by the roar of cable. The squadron’s three prizes, all round-bowed merchantmen, had just come to rest. Derec, looking out over the taffrail, saw the crippled galleass slew sideways in a gust, then come to a sharp check at the end of the hawser. Birdwing gave a brief lurch as the cripple’s weight came onto the line.

The bonaventure flapped overhead as Birdwing turned gracefully to larboard. A ghastly stench passed over the quarterdeck, and Derec hawked and spat. Ka Zhir used slaves in some of their ships; and they were chained to the benches and lay in their own filth—the smell was incredible. Derec turned away from the galleass and faced forward, his eyes automatically giving a guilty glance to the mizzen shrouds. His mind eased as he saw them clear, tarred black hawser cutting through the bright blue tropical sky.

Over his voyages of the last six months, the ghosts had returned many times, every few days, sometimes in broad daylight. Usually Derec saw them hanging in the mizzen rigging, but on occasion he’d see them elsewhere: Lieutenant Varga, his wounds pouring blood, his hair twined with seaweed as he watched Derec from amid the crew as the hands witnessed punishment; the ship’s corporal, his skull beaten in, sitting on the main cross-trees and laughing through broken teeth as the ship went through gun drill; and once, most horribly, Derec had entered his cabin at dinnertime only to find Midshipman Sempter sitting at his place, gazing at him over his meal, his mouth working silently as he tried to speak past the garrote. Derec’s steward had watched in amazement as the captain bolted the room, then returned later, sweating and trembling, to find the ghost gone.

Nothing untoward had ever happened: Derec’s luck on his voyages had been good. Admiral Zhi-Feng, Derec’s nominal superior, was an intelligent man, and on Prince Jeng’s orders had diffidently followed Derec’s advice; he was learning quickly, and had recommended that Birdwing’s lines be taken by draftsmen so that an entire squadron of race-built galleons might rise on the royal dockyard’s stocks. Five galleons were a-building and would be ready by spring. Derec had fought three engagements with Liavekan squadrons and won them all, capturing two galleasses, four galleys, and a number of smaller craft; he had sent in over forty merchant ships as prizes. Corrupt and slow though Ka Zhir’s prize courts were, they had made Derec a wealthy man: the strongbox he kept beneath the planks in his sleeping cabin was crammed with gold and jewels. Prince Jeng’s War was proving successful, much to the discomfort of his Scarlet Eminence in Liavek. With an entire squadron of galleons, Derec had no doubt the Liavekan Navy would be swept from the seas.

Derec glanced up at the royal palace, the white walls on the tall brown cliffs, and frowned at the sight of the flag that flapped from its staff. Something was wrong there. He stepped to the rack, took a glass, and trained it on the flag. The Royal Standard leaped into view. Derec took a breath.

So King Thelm was back, having presumably recovered from his illness. Jeng would no longer be regent; absolute power had now passed to his father. He wondered at the alteration’s implication for himself, for Birdwing, and decided there would be little change. Thelm might negotiate an end to the war, but still Birdwing and Derec had proven themselves over and over again: Thelm wouldn’t throw away such a strategic asset.

“Bel’s sandals!” SuKrone’s curse brought Derec’s eyes forward. Amazement crackled in his mind.

Birdwing had rounded the fortification at the end of the New Mole, and the entire inner harbor was opened to view. The harbor was full of the tall masts and dark rigging of a northern fleet, the huge round-bellied caravels that brought metals, pitch, and turpentine to Ka Zhir every autumn, returning with sugar, kaf, and spices; and riding to anchor were northern warships, three high-charged galleons and one leaner, lower shape, a race-built galleon like Birdwing, but longer, showing thirty gunports each side.

Floating above each ship was a green ensign with two gold crowns, the flag of Derec’s homeland.

They had come early this year, and caught Derec unprepared.

The scent of death swept over the poop. It was just the smell of the galleass, Derec thought; but still his spine turned chill.

“What do we do, Captain?” Marcoyn’s mad eyes were wild. Drunkenly, he shook his fist in Derec’s face. “What the piss do we do? They’re going to have us kicking in the rigging by nightfall!”

Birdwing was still moving toward the inner harbor, a party of men standing in the forecastle ready to drop the best bower. Derec was looking thoughtfully over the rail. One of the big galleons—Derec recognized the Sea Troll—had storm damage: one topmast was gone. The Double Crowns was missing its castles: they had presumably been razored in an effort to make it as light and handy as Birdwing. Monarch, the other high-charged galleon, stood closest, towering over every ship in harbor and carrying eighty guns. But it was the other race-built ship that had an admiral’s red pennant flying from its maintruck, and it was to this ship that Derec’s eyes turned. Torn II, he thought: so they had built her, and sent her here to find her precursor.

“Captain! Answer, damn you!” Marcoyn staggered, not from the heave of the deck but from his liquor.

Derec turned his eyes on the man and tried to control the raging hatred he felt. “We will wait, Mr. Marcoyn,” he said.

“You’ve got to do something!” Marcoyn raged. “You know Prince Jeng! Talk to him!”

Derec looked at Marcoyn for a long moment. Marcoyn dropped his unfocused eyes, then his fist.

“We fight under the flag of Ka Zhir,” Derec said, indicating the ensign flying overhead. “We have Zhir protection. The trading fleet is here, aye, but it’s under the two hundred guns of Fort Shzafakh and another two hundred on the mainland. They daren’t attack us, Marcoyn. Not openly.”

Marcoyn chewed his nether lip as he thought this over. “Very well, SuPashto,” he said.

Derec stiffened. “Captain SuPashto, if you please, Mr. Marcoyn.”

Marcoyn’s eyes blazed dull hatred. “Captain,’” he spat. He saluted and turned away.

The other crewmen, the small, dark Zhir standing beside the tall, fair Farlanders, had watched the confrontation, trying hard to conceal their rising fear. Derec’s quiet tones had seemed to calm them. He stepped forward to the break in the poop.

“They daren’t touch us, boys!” he shouted. “Not openly. But there will be Two Kingdoms men ashore on leave, and for now we’ll have no shore parties. When we must send parties ashore, we will go armed, and in large groups. Now”—he ventured a ragged grin—“let’s show them what we’ve learned. As soon as our anchor’s down, I want those sails harbor-furled, without a dead man in ’em; I want our old chafing-gear down; and I’ll have some parties detailed to renew our gilding. Mr. Facer, see to it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Derec nodded curtly and stepped to the weather rail. He watched the northern fleet grow closer.

The admiral’s summons came at sunset. Derec was half expecting it; he’d seen Zhi-Feng’s barge take him ashore to his quarters in the Lower Town. Derec put on his best clothes, strapped on his rapier, and thrust a pair of pistols in his belt. He called for his gig and had himself rowed to the admiral’s apartments.

The admiral was dressed in a gorgeous silk robe, and his hair and beard had been curled and perfumed. Gemstones clustered on his fingers. He drank wine from a crystal goblet as big as his head. His belt had scales of gold.

Derec scarcely noted this magnificence, his attention instead riveted on the admiral’s other visitor, a portly man plainly dressed. He fell to his knees and raised his palms to his forehead.

“Rise, Captain,” said Prince Jeng. “Forgive this melodrama, but I thought it best not to let anyone know we had met.” He sat in a heavy-cushioned chair, eating red licorice. Derec rose. Jeng looked at him and frowned.

“Problems are besetting the two of us, Captain SuPashto,” he said. “The same problems, actually. My father, and the trading fleet.”

“I trust in your guidance, Highness.”

Jeng seemed amused. “That’s more than I can say, Captain. Neither I nor anyone else really expected His Encompassing Wisdom to recover; and I’m afraid the old man’s found my regency a bit… premature… in diverting from his policies. He didn’t want a naval war with Liavek in his old age, and now he’s got one, and if the war hadn’t been so successful half the council would have got the chop.” Jeng grimly raised the edge of his hand to his throat. “But since we’re winning,” he added, “he’s not sure what to do. At this point I think we’ll fight on, so long as we stay ahead.” He picked up a stick of licorice and pointed it at Derec like a royal scepter. “That makes you valuable to him, and so you may thank your victories for the fact that you and Zhi-Feng haven’t been beheaded on your own quarterdecks.”

“I owe my victories to your kindness and support,” Derec said. “May Thung preserve Your Highness.”

“Thank you for your concern, SuPashto, but I doubt I’m in real danger,” Jeng said. “I’m the only heir the old man’s got left. The first went mad, the second died trying to invest his luck, the third played a losing game with His Scarlet Eminence and got his neck severed for losing… there’s no one left but me. The worst that will happen to me, I think, is exile to an island. It’s everyone around me who’ll lose his head.” He smiled. “His Encompassing Wisdom might want to perpetrate a massacre just to show everyone he’s back.”

Zhi-Feng looked a little green. “Gods keep us from harm,” he murmured.

Jeng chewed meditatively on his licorice wand. “The problem presented by my shining and beloved ancestor, may Thung preserve him, may be finessed,” he said. “The problem of your trading fleet is not so easily dealt with. Briefly, they want you dead.”

“I expected no less, Highness.”

“They have demanded that you and your ship be turned over to them. This demand has thus far been refused. You are too valuable to the war effort.”

Derec felt his tension ease. “I thank Your Highness.”

Jeng’s eyebrows rose. “I had little to do with it, Captain. His Encompassing Wisdom cares little for my counsel these days. We may thank the old man’s common sense for that—he’s not going to throw away the war’s biggest asset, not without some thought, anyway. No, the problem is that your northern admiral is proving damnably clever.”

“May I ask which admiral, Your Highness?”

“I have heard you speak of him. One Captain-General Collerne.”

A cold wind touched Derec’s spine. For the first time in this interview he felt fear. “Aye,” he said. “A clever man indeed.”

“You know him well?”

“My first captain. Brilliant. He designed Birdwing, and taught me everything I’ve learned about the sea. He got me my master’s warrant. He’s the best sailor I know.”

Jeng looked at Derec coldly. “I’d advise you to leave off this admiration and learn to hate him, Captain SuPashto. He wants your hide, and he won’t leave the Sea of Luck without it.”

Yes, Derec thought, that was Collerne. Brilliant, unforgiving, a demon for discipline. He would not countenance mutiny, not even against the evil man who had supplanted him in his longed-for command.

“I must trust to Your Highness’s protection,” Derec said simply.

Jeng’s eyes were shards of ice. “My protection is worth little. Let me tell you what your damned captain-general did. Once he realized we wouldn’t give you up because of your value to the war, he offered to fight in your place. In exchange for you and the other ringleaders, he’s offered us his two best ships, Torn and Double Crowns, to fight under our license and flag for the next year. Collerne himself has offered to command them.” Jeng sucked his licorice wand. “The implication, I believe, is that if we refuse him, he’ll offer his ships to Liavek instead.”

Derec’s mouth turned dry. “Can he do that, Your Highness? Does his commission extend that far?”

“If it doesn’t, he’s taking a remarkable amount of initiative. The fact is, he’s made the offer, and the king’s considering it.”

“Highness,” the admiral said. There was sweat on his perfumed brow. “We—Captain SuPashto and I—we have experience in this war. We’ve fought together for six months. Our crews are well drilled and every man is worth three of this Collerne’s.”

Jeng looked bleak. “I shall attempt to have some friends on the council point this out to His Encompassing Wisdom. But in the meantime I’ll try to get you both out of harbor. If Collerne can’t find you, he can’t kill you.”

“Very well, Your Highness,” said Zhi-Feng. He looked somewhat less anxious.

“Your fleet is ready?”

“We need only take on water,” Derec said. “Birdwing has six months’ provision. The rowing fleet carries victuals only for six weeks, but we can take food from captured ships if necessary. Or buy it ashore.”

“I will have water-lighters alongside at dawn,” Jeng said. He threw down his licorice and straightened. “I’ll try to… persuade the harbor master to send you a pilot. If he’s not aboard by nightfall, warp your way out the back channel. I’m afraid now the New Mole’s completed, the chain bars the main channel at sunset, so you can’t escape that way.”

“Your highness is wise.” The admiral bowed.

Jeng’s face turned curious. He looked at Derec. “How do they treat mutineers in your navy, SuPashto?” he asked.

“They are tied to the mast of a small boat,” Derec said, “rowed to each ship in the squadron, and flogged in view of each ship’s company. Then they are taken to the admiral’s ship, hung from the mizzen shrouds, and disemboweled. Before they can die they are garroted. Then their bodies are preserved with salt and hung in an iron cage till they weather away.”

“That sounds most unpleasant,” Jeng said mildly. “Were I you, I would provide myself with poison. When the time comes, you can cheat your countrymen out of some of their fun.” He shrugged. “Life is full of experiences, my philosophers tell me, but I think I can attest that some are best avoided.”

Desolation stirred in Derec like a rising autumn gale. “I will follow your advice in all things, Highness,” he said.

When he returned to the ship, Derec didn’t look up. He knew the ghosts were there, dark shadows that smiled at his approaching doom.

The water-lighters arrived just before dawn, and just afterward a messenger from the palace. Birdwing was to remain at anchor in the inner harbor until the complication with the Two Kingdoms fleet was resolved. If the galleon moved, she would be fired on by every gun on Great Kraken Island.

There was a hush on the Birdwing after that. Derec bought fresh food and wine from lighters offering wares alongside—he never let the hucksters aboard, fearing Twin Kingdoms agents—and he kept the crew at their tasks, brightening the ship’s paint and overhauling the running rigging; but the men were subdued, expectant. Dark shapes hung in the shrouds, filling the air with the stench of death. Red stains bubbled silently on the white holystoned planks. Derec kept his eyes fixed firmly on the horizon, and sent the wizard ashore to buy poison. Levett returned with a vial of something he said was strong enough to kill half the crew.

On the evening of the second day, the summons from court arrived. Derec was ready. He spoke briefly with his officers concerning what was to be done after he left, put on his best clothing, and dropped small pistols in his pockets.

With an escort of the Zhir Guard, quaintly old-fashioned in their ancient plumed helmets, he was rowed to the quay, then taken in a palankeen up the steep cliffs to the palace. There were new heads above the gate, illuminated by torches: a pair of the council had died just that afternoon. The wall beneath them was stained with red. Local witches clustered beneath, hoping to catch the last of the ruddy drops in order to make their potions. A chamberlain took Derec through the halls to an anteroom.

“Wait within,” the chamberlain said, raising his palms to his forehead. “His Everlasting and All-Encompassing Wisdom will grant you audience as soon as the council meeting has concluded.”

“May Thung protect His Majesty,” Derec answered. He turned to the door.

“I shall send refreshment,” the chamberlain said. Derec opened the door, stepped inside, and froze.

Glowing eyes turned their cold light on him. The ghosts were there: Varga with blood and seawater dripping from his clothes, the corporal with brains spattered over his clothing, the others with blackened faces and starting eyes, the garrotes twisted about their necks. Terror poured down Derec’s spine.

Young Sempter stood before Derec, five paces away. His brass-buttoned jacket, too big for him, hung limply on his boyish frame. His feet, the feet that had kicked their shoes off as he died, were bare. There was a hole in one stocking. Sempter’s mouth worked in his beardless face, and he took a step forward. Derec shrank back. The boy took a step, and another. His pale hand came up, and it closed around Derec’s amulet of Thurn Bel. He tugged, and the thong cut into Derec’s neck like a garrote. Derec smelled death on the boy’s breath. The boy tugged again, and the amulet came free.

“Take him,” Sempter said, and smiled as he stepped back several paces.

Strong hands closed on Derec’s arms. His pistols and his vial of poison were pulled from his pockets. His rapier was drawn from its sheath.

The image of Sempter twisted like that in a distorting mirror, faded, became that of Levett. The others were Zhir Guard. Their officer was holding Derec’s sword.

Levett held up the amulet of Thurn Bell. “Never let another mage know where you keep your power, Captain,” he said. He pocketed the amulet. “The rest of his men will surrender easily enough. They’re fools or boys, all of them.”

Derec’s mind whirled as cuffs were fastened before him on his wrists. A chain was passed from the shackles between Derec’s legs. The guards officer unfolded a scroll and began to read:

“By order of King Thelm and the Council, Captain Derec SuPashto is placed under arrest. The Royal Authority is shocked”—she was remarkably straight-faced in conveying the king’s surprise—“to discover that Derec SuPashto is a mutineer and rebel. He is commanded to the Tiles Prison under close guard, until he can be turned over to Two Kingdoms justice.” She rolled up the scroll and placed it in her pocket. Her face was expressionless. “Take the prisoner away.”

Derec looked at Levett. Mist seemed to fill his mind. “There were never any ghosts,” he said dully.

Levett looked at him. “Illusions only,” he said.

The man behind Derec tugged on the chain. Derec ignored it. “You planned this,” Derec said. “All along.”

“Something like it.” Levett looked at him from three paces away, the distance beyond which Derec could not manipulate any power stored in the amulet. “I regret this, Captain. Necessity compelled me, as it compelled you during the mutiny. I want to return to our homeland, and to live in peace with my family. Collerne can guarantee that, and you can’t.”

The guard, impatient, tugged hard on Derec’s chain. Pain shot through Derec’s groin. He bent over, tears coming to his eyes.

“This way,” the guardsman said. Stumbling, Derec let himself be dragged backward out of the room. A push sent him staggering forward. With five of the guard and Levett, he was marched from the palace, beneath the dripping heads of traitors and into the night.

No palankeen waited: he would walk down the long switchback path to the Lower Town, then through town to the prison. The cool night breeze revived him. The officer lit a torch and gave it to one of her men. The party was silent save for the clink of the guardsmen’s chain coifs as they walked.

The Lower Town was growing near, tall buildings shuttered against the violence of the streets. Anyone with sense went armed here, and in company. Derec began to murmur under his breath. The party passed into the shadows of the crowded buildings. The streetlamps were out, smashed by vandals. Derec’s heart beat like a galley’s kettledrum.

A pike lunged from an alley and took the guards officer in the side. A dark body of men boiled from the darkness. The shackles dropped from Derec’s wrists, and he lunged for the guardsman to his right, drew the main gauche from the man’s belt, and slid it up under the chain coif to cut the astonished man’s throat. Feet pounded the cobbles. Steel thudded into flesh. The torch fell and went out. Derec spun, seeing in the starlight the stunned look on the guard who was suddenly holding an empty chain where once a prisoner had been. The dagger took him in the heart, and he died without a sound.

A dark figure reeled back: Levett, already dead from a rapier thrust through both lungs. Marcoyn’s bulk followed him, boarding ax raised high; and then the ax came down. Derec turned away at the sound of the wizard’s head being crushed. Facer stepped out of the darkness, his face sunburned beneath his leather-andiron cap, his sword bloody.

“Are you well, Captain?”

“Aye. Good work. Drag the bodies into the alleys where the city runners won’t find them.”

“Fucking traitor.” There were more thudding sounds as Marcoyn drove the ax into Levett again and again. Finally the big man drew back, grinning as he wiped a spatter of blood from his face. Liquor was on his breath.

“Got to make sure a wizard’s dead,” he grunted. “They’re tricky.”

“Best to be certain,” Derec said, his mind awhirl. He’d posted the men here and knew what was coming, but the fight had been so swift and violent that he needed a moment to take his bearings. He looked at the dead wizard and saw, in the starlight, the amulet of Thurn Bel lying in the dust of the alleyway. He bent and picked it up. Never let another mage know where you keep your power, Levett had said; and Derec had always followed this prescription, though Levett never knew it. He’d invested his power in one of his brass earrings, one so old and valueless that no captor looting valuables would ever be tempted to tear it from his ear.

The bodies were dragged into the alley, piled carelessly atop one another. Wind ruffled Derec’s graying hair: somewhere in the melee, he’d lost his cap. “To the ship, Captain?” Facer asked. He held out Derec’s sword and the guards officer’s brace of wheel-lock pistols.

Derec passed the swordbelt over his shoulder and rammed the pistols in his waistband. “Not yet,” he said. “We have another errand first.” He grinned at Facer’s anxiety. “We have to wait an hour for the tide in any case, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.” Doubtfully.

He led them through the empty streets of the Lower Town. Even the taverns were shut. Working people lived here, dockworkers and warehousemen: they didn’t roister long into the night. Derec searched for one narrow apartment, found it, knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” A young, foreign voice.

“Captain SuPashto of the Birdwing.”

“A moment.”

The Tichenese wizard, Tevvik, opened the door, a lamp in his hand. His long hair was coiled on his head, held in place by a pin in the shape of a blue chipmunk. He recognized Derec and smiled. “An unexpected pleasure, Captain,” he said. His Zhir was awkward.

“We’re sailing for Liavek immediately. You’re to accompany us.”

Tevvik looked surprised. “I’m to be exchanged?”

“Something like that.”

Tevvik thought about this for a moment, and shrugged. “I think I’d rather stay, Captain. I’ve developed a profitable business here.”

From over his shoulder, Derec heard Marcoyn’s growl. Derec was tempted to echo it. Instead, he decided to be frank. “We’re escaping arrest,” he said. “You’re accompanying us because you’re a water wizard.”

Tewik’s eyes widened. “You mean I’m being abducted?” He seemed delighted by the news.

“Aye. You are.”

The wizard laughed. “That puts a different complexion on matters, Captain. Of course I’ll accompany you. Do I have time to fetch my gear?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Tevvik shrugged, then blew out his lamp. “As you like, Captain.”

The waterfront district was a little more lively: music rang from taverns, whores paraded the streets, and drunken sailors staggered in alleyways looking to be relieved of their money. Derec and his party moved purposefully to the quay, then took the waiting barge to the galleon.

“Everything’s prepared, Captain,” Facer said. “We’ve cleared for action and the men are at quarters. The yards are slung with chains, the cable’s ready to slip, the sails can be sheeted home in an instant, and we aren’t showing any lights.”

“Has the other party found our pilot?”

“SuKrone’s got her under guard in the gunroom.”

“Very good.”

The boatmen tossed oars and Derec jumped for the entry port. He stepped onto the maindeck and sensed rather than saw his crew massed beneath the stars. He mounted the poop, then turned to face them. “We’re running for Liavek, men,” he said. “I have reason to believe they will welcome us.”

There was a stirring ended swiftly by petty officers’ voices calling for silence.

“Those of you who were slaves,” Derec said, “are now free.”

Now there was an excited chattering that took the officers some time to quiet. Derec held up a hand.

“You may have to fight to keep that freedom, and that within the hour. Now—quietly—go to your stations. No drums, no noise. Facer, fetch me the pilot.”

Derec leaned against the poop rail, pulled the big horse pistols from his waistband, and carefully wound the spring-driven locks. He was aware of the Tichenese wizard standing by, watching him. “Do you know weather magic, wizard?”

“Some. It is not my specialty.”

“What is?”

“Fireworks. Explosions. Illusion.”

“Can you make Birdwing look like something else?”

“Your ship is a little large for that. Perhaps I could cloak it in darkness. The darkness will not be absolute, but it may make its outlines less clear.”

“Very well. Do so.”

Facer and SuKrone pushed the pilot up the poop ladder. She was a small, dark woman, her head wrapped in a kind of turban. She was dressed in the house robe she’d been wearing when SuKrone’s men had kidnapped her. Derec pointed one of his pistols at her, and he heard her intake of breath.

“Take us out by the back channel,” he said coldly. “If you fail me, I will shoot you twice in the belly. Follow my instructions, and I’ll put you over the side in a small boat once we’re clear.”

The pilot bowed, raising her palms to her forehead. “I understand, Your Excellency. But we must await the tide.”

“Half an hour.”

“Thereabouts, yes.”

“Do not fail me.” He gestured with the pistol. “Stand over there.”

“Your obedient servant, Excellency.”

“Wizard, Facer, come with me.” Derec stepped forward off the poop, along the gangway, climbed the fo’c’sle. The land breeze brought the sound of music and laughter from the town. Derec looked to starboard, where the twisting back channel between Great Kraken Island and the mainland was invisible in the darkness. Glowing softly in the night, masthead riding lights stood out against the black.

“There’s our problem,” he said. “Double Crowns is moored right near the entrance to the passage. We’ll have to pass within half a cable.”

Facer pursed his lips, blew air hesitantly. “They’ve lookouts set for us, I’m sure. They know we want to run. And if they give the alarm, Shzafakh’s bastions will blow us to bits.”

“My darkness won’t cover us that well, Captain,” the wizard said. He was speaking easily in Derec’s own language, and with a native accent: apparently he’d spent time in the Two Kingdoms.

“We can’t fire on them without raising an alarm,” Derec mused. “We can’t run aboard them without calling attention to ourselves.” He shook his head. “We’ll just have to run past and hope for a miracle.”

“Captain…” Tevvik’s tone was meditative. “If we can’t pass without being noticed, perhaps we can make people notice something other than ourselves.”

“What d’ye mean, Wizard?”

“Perhaps I can cause an explosion aboard Double Crowns. Then maybe the gunners in Shzafakh will think we’re running from a fire, not for freedom.”

Derec scowled. “The magazine is protected against spells.”

“I’m sure. But powder in the open is not.”

“They would not have cartridges in the open—it’s all held in the magazine till needed.” Scornfully. “Don’t waste my time with these notions, Wizard.”

“I was suggesting a boat full of powder nestled under that ship’s stern. I can make that go off well enough.”

Astonishment tingled in Derec’s nerves. He tried not to show it; instead, he stroked his chin and frowned. “With a little sorcerous wind to push it where it’s needed, aye,” he said. He pretended to consider. “Very well, Wizard,” he said. “We’ll do it. Facer, fetch the gunner.”

Tevvik smiled. “I wish you wouldn’t use the word wizard that way, Captain. The word’s not a curse.”

Derec looked at him. “That’s a matter of opinion, Mr. Tevvik.”

He led the Tichenese back to the quarterdeck and gave the orders for men to file to the magazine and bring up ten casks of powder. “Barefoot only, mind,” he said. “No hobnails to strike a spark. Belts and weapons are to be laid aside. Scarves tied over their ears so their earrings won’t strike a spark.” He drew his pistols and pointed them at Tevvik.

“Don’t set them off when they’re alongside,” he said, “or I’ll serve you as I’d serve the pilot.”

The wizard raised his hands and grinned. “I have no intention of blowing myself up, Captain.”

“Maintain those intentions,” Derec said, “and we’ll have no trouble.”

The barge was loaded with powder, and canvas thrown over the barrels to avoid getting them wet. The boat’s small mast was raised, its lateen set, its tiller lashed. The boat was warped astern and Derec concentrated, summoning his power, keeping it ready. A small wind to blow his thirty-foot barge was fully within his capabilities.

“Tide’s turning, Captain.”

“Very well. Prepare to slip the cable and sheet home.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

There was a murmur of bare feet as men took their stations. Derec took a careful breath. “Sheet home the main tops’l. Set the spritsail and bonaventure.”

The heavy canvas topsail fell with a rumble, then rumbled again as it filled with wind. Birdwing tilted, surged, came alive. Water chuckled under the counter.

“Slip the cable.”

The cable murmured from the hawsehole, then there was a splash as its bitter end fell into the sea. A pity, Derec thought, to lose the best bower anchor.

“Helm answers, sir,” said the steersmen.

“Larboard two points. There. Amidships.”

Derec glanced over the stern, saw phosphorescence glinting from the bone in the teeth of the powder boat.

Birdwing was barely moving. The back channel was dangerous and twisting; he needed maneuverability there, not speed.

“Pilot,” he said. The woman stepped forward.

“Sir.”

“Take command. No shouting, now. Pass your orders quietly.”

“Yes, sir.”

The pistols were growing heavy in Derec’s hands. He ignored the tension in his arms and stepped to the weather rail, peering for sight of Double Crowns. The masthead lights were growing nearer. Five cables. Four. Three. He summoned his power.

“Cast off the boat.”

Derec’s heart leaped to his throat as the boat lurched wildly to the first puff of wind and threatened to capsize, but the barge steadied onto its course, passing to weather of Birdwing. He guided the boat with little tugs of his mind, aimed it toward Double Crowns.

Two cables. Now one, and from across the water a shout. More shouts. The barge thudded against the razee galleon’s tumblehome near the stern. A drum began beating. Alarm pulsed in Derec: on this still night, that drum would be heard all over town. Derec steeled his mind to the necessity of what was to come.

“Give us fire, Wizard,” he said.

“Your obedient servant.” Tevvik pursed his lips in concentration and made an elegant gesture with his hand. Derec remembered at the last second to close his eyes and preserve his night vision.

Even through closed lids he saw the yellow flash. A burst of hot wind gusted through his hair. He could hear shouts, screams, and, from his own ship, gasps of awe. He opened his eyes.

Double Crowns seemed unchanged, but he could hear the sound of water pouring like a river into her hold. The drum was silenced; in its place were cries of alarm. As Derec watched, the razee began to list. Crewmen poured from the hatches in a storm of pounding feet. The galleon’s list grew more pronounced; Derec could hear things rolling across the deck, fetching up against the bulwarks. Then came a sound that was a seaman’s nightmare, a noise that half-paralyzed Derec with fear— the rumble of a gun broken loose, roaring across the tilting deck like a blind, maddened bull before it punched clean through the ship’s side, making another hole through which the sea could enter.

He couldn’t stand to watch any more. He moved to the other side of the poop, but the sounds still pursued him, more guns breaking free, timbers rending, men screaming, the desperate splashing of drowning crewmen. Then, mercifully, Birdwing was past, heeled to the wind, and entering the channel.

The pilot negotiated two turns before the first challenge came from one of Fort Shzafakh’s bastions. The island rose steeply here, and Birdwing ghosted with its sails luffing for lack of wind. The fort was perched right overhead—from its walls the garrison could as easily drop cannonballs on Birdwing as fire them from cannon.

“Hoy, there! What ship is that!”

Derec was ready. He cupped his hands and shouted upwards in his accented Zhir. “Two Kingdoms ship Sea Troll!” he roared. “A warship blew up in harbor and started fires on other ships! We’re trying to run clear!”

“Holy Thung! So that’s what we heard.” There was an awed pause. “Good luck, there.”

“Much obliged.”

Birdwing ghosted on. Derec could see grins on the faces of his officers, on the wizard. In his mind he could only hear the sounds of Double Crowns filling with water, men dying and timbers rending. He barely noticed when the channel opened up and ahead lay the dark and empty sea.

An hour after dawn the land breeze died. The pilot had been put ashore long since, and even the old cone of Great Kraken Island was below the horizon: Birdwing was running northwest along the coast in the clear, broad, shallow channel between the mainland and Ka Zhir’s stretch of low boundary islands. Winds were often uncertain in the morning, particularly near the coast and especially during the transition between the nightly land breeze and the daytime sea breeze: there was nothing unusual about it. Derec dropped the second bower anchor and let the galleon swing to and fro in the little puffs that remained. The crew drowsed at their stations. Fretfully Derec looked southward. Sea Troll, he thought, was damaged: it could not pursue without raising a new maintopmast. But Monarch and the new race-built ship were fully seaworthy. Were they becalmed as well? He suspected not. Derec looked at the Tichenese.

“Master Tevvik, do you think we can whistle up a wind between the two of us?”

The wizard spread his hands. “I am willing to try, Captain. I am not an expert.”

Derec called for a pot of kaf, ordered breakfast for the crew, and the two went to his day cabin. The partitions separating the cabin from the maindeck had been broken down when Birdwing was cleared for action, providing a long, unbroken row of guns from the stern windows to the bow, and Derec’s table was hastily brought up from the orlop, and blankets to screen him from the curious eyes of the crew.

“You’re planning on privateering for Liavek now, I take it?” the wizard asked. “There will be a Two Kingdoms fleet in harbor, you know.”

“I’ll find a small harbor somewhere along the coast. Come in under a flag of truce, negotiate with the Levar’s government.”

“I can speak for you.” Derec looked up in surprise. The wizard smiled again. “I know a man named Pitullio—he works for His Scarlet Eminence.”

“I thank you,” Derec said. “I’ll consider that.”

For two and a half hours he and the wizard tried to raise a wind, preferably a strong westerly that Birdwing could tack into, and that Monarch, the old-fashioned high-charged galleon, could not. The puffs continued, the ship dancing at the end of its cable, sails slatting.

“Captain.” Facer’s voice. “The lookouts see a squall coming up from the south.”

Derec sighed. He could feel sweat dotting his brow: he had been concentrating hard. The wizard looked at him with amused eyes, grin white in his dark face.

“It’s not our wind,” Tevvik said, “but I hope it will do.”

Derec rose wordlessly and pushed aside the curtain. His body was a mass of knots. “Ready a party at the capstan,” he ordered. “I don’t want to lose another anchor.” He climbed to the poop.

It was a black squall, right enough, coming up from the south with deliberate speed. Ten minutes of stiff wind, at least, and with luck the squall might carry Birdwing with it for hours, right into the stronger ocean breezes. Derec had the second bower broken out. The galleon drifted, waiting for the squall.

Derec looked into the darkness, hoping to gauge its strength, and his heart sank.

Right in the center of the squall, he saw, were two ships. He didn’t need his glass to know they were Monarch and Torn II, driving after him on a sorcerous breeze. Perhaps their wizards had even been responsible for his being becalmed.

“Quarters, gentlemen,” he said. “We are being pursued. Have my steward fetch my armor, and send the wizard to the orlop.”

He stopped himself, just in time, from glancing up into the mizzen shrouds. The ghosts of his slaughtered countrymen, he knew, had been an illusion.

But now, more than ever, he felt their gaze on the back of his head.

They were coming down together, Derec saw, straight down the eight-mile slot between the mainland and the sandy barrier isles. Monarch was to starboard of the race-built ship, three or four cables apart. There was a black line drawn in the azure sea a mile before them where the squall was pushing up a wave.

“We’ll try to outrun them,” Derec said. “We may prove their match in speed.” He tried to sound confident, but he knew his assurances were hollow: the conditions were ideal for Monarch, booming straight downwind with her baggy sails full of sorcery. “If we lose the race,” Derec went on, “I’ll try to get the weather gage. If we’re to windward, Monarch at least will be out of the fight.”

A sigh of wind ruffled Birdwing’s sails. The ship stirred on the water. The sails filled, then died again. Derec strapped on his armor and watched as the darkness approached.

And then the squall hit, and the sun went dark. The sails boomed like thunder as they flogged massively in the air; the ship tilted; rain spattered Derec’s breastplate. Then the sails were sheeted home, the yards braced—the helm answered, and Birdwing was racing straight downwind, a white bone in its teeth, sails as taut as the belly of a woman heavy with child. Magic crackled in Derec’s awareness, a seething chaos of storm and wind. Desperately he looked astern.

Monarch seemed huge, castles towering over its leaner consort, its masts bending like a coachwhip in the force of the wind. Derec gauged its speed, and a cold welling of despair filled him. Birdwing seemed to be maintaining its lead over Torn II, but Monarch was surging ahead as studding sails blossomed on its yards. Birdwing’s own studding sails were useless in this wind; the stuns’l booms would snap like toothpicks.

Derec stiffened at the sound of a gun: the big ship was trying its chasers. Monarch was pitching too much in this following sea, and Derec never saw the fall of shot.

Yard by yard the great ship gained, its black hull perched atop a boil of white water. Derec hoped for a miracle, and none came. Hollow anguish filled him.

“Take in the t’gallants,” he ordered. “We will await them.” Diligently he fought down despair. “Don’t send down the t’gallant yards,” he said. “We may yet be able to show them our heels.”

Monarch’s stuns’ls began coming in as they perceived Derec’s shortening sail. The maneuver was not done well, and sheets began to fly, spilling wind from sails, a last-ditch method of slowing Monarch so that it would not overshoot its target.

Derec watched nervously, gnawing his lip, trying to summon his power and weave a defensive net around his ship. He could feel Tevvik’s energies joining his, strengthening his shields. Another gust of rain spattered the deck; gun captains shielded their matches with their bodies. Monarch looked as if it were coming up on Birdwing’s larboard side, but that might be a feint. Would the huge ship alter course at the last minute and try for a raking shot across Birdwing’s stern? If so, Derec had to be ready to turn with her. Plans flickered through Derec’s mind as he gauged possible enemy moves and his own responses.

“Load the guns. Roundshot and grape. Run out the larboard battery.” Maybe the guns running out would prod Monarch’s captain into making his move.

But no. The man seemed eager to get to grips, and disdained maneuver. He had almost thirty guns more than Derec; he could afford to let them do his thinking for him. The black ship came closer, its little scraplike sprit topsail drawing even with Birdwing‘s stern. Derec could hear officers’ bellowed commands as they struggled to reduce sail.

Anxiety filled Derec as the ship rumbled to the sound of gun trucks running out. Monarch was pulling up within fifty yards. Torn II was eclipsed behind the big ship, but now that Birdwing had shortened sail he could expect her shortly. He glanced again at the men, seeing the gun captains crouched over the guns with their slow matches, the officers pacing the deck with rapiers drawn, ready to run through any crewman who left his station.

“No firing till my order!” Derec bellowed. “There may be a few premature shots—ignore them!” And then inspiration struck. He turned to one of Marcoyn’s marines, a blond man sighting down the length of a swivel gun set aft of the mizzen shrouds. “Blow on your match, man,” Derec said. “I’m going to try a little trick.”

The marine looked at him, uncertain, then grinned through his curling blond beard, leaned forward over his matchlock, and blew. The match brightened redly. “You other marines, stand ready,” Derec said. He looked at the black ship, and fear shivered down his spine as he saw himself looking straight into the muzzle of a demicannon. Each enemy gunport had been decorated with the snarling brass head of a leopard: now guns were running out the beasts’ mouths. Monarch’s foremast was even with Birdwing’s mizzen. Derec waited, his pulse beating in his ears, as Monarch crawled forward with glacial speed.

“Pick your target,” Derec told the marine. “Steady now! Fire.”

The four-pound man-killer barked and the air filled with a peculiar whirring noise as grapeshot and a handful of scrap iron flew toward the enemy. “Fire the murderers!” Derec spat. “Now!”

Another three minions banged out, and then there was a massive answering roar as every enemy gun went off, flinging their iron toward Birdwing. The smaller ship shuddered as balls slammed home. Derec took an involuntary step backward at the awesome volume of fire, but then he began to laugh. He’d tricked Monarch into firing prematurely, before all her guns bore. They’d wasted their first and most valuable broadside, half the shot going into the sea.

“Reload, you men! Helmsman, larboard a point!” Derec cupped his hands to carry down the ship’s well to the gundeck below. “Fire on my command! Ready, boys!” Birdwing began a gentle curve toward the giant ship.

“Fire!” The deck lurched as the big guns went off, the long fifteen-foot maindeck culverins leaping inboard on their carriages. Derec could hear crashing from the enemy ship as iron smashed through timbers. “Reload!”

Derec shrieked. “Fire at will! Helmsman, starboard a point!”

Enemy guns began crashing. Derec saw a piece of bulwark dissolve on the maindeck and turn to a storm of white fifteen-inch splinters that mowed down half a dozen men. Shot wailed overhead or thudded into planking. Musketry twittered over Derec’s head: the enemy castles were full of marines firing down onto Birdwing’s decks. The smaller ship’s guns replied. For the first time Derec felt a magic probe against his defenses; he sensed Tevvik parrying the strike. There was a crash, a deadly whirl of splinters, and the yellow-bearded marine was flung across the deck like a sack, ending up against the starboard rail, head crushed by a grapeshot. Derec, still in his haze of concentration, absently sent a man from the starboard side to service the gun.

Guns boomed, spewing powder smoke. Birdwing’s practiced crews were loading and firing well. Derec smiled; but then his ship rocked to a storm of fire and his heart lurched. His crews were faster in loading and firing, but still the enemy weight was overwhelming. Derec’s smaller vessel couldn’t stand this pounding for long. He gnawed his lip as he peered at the enemy through the murk. His next move depended on their not seeing him clearly.

The deck jarred as half a dozen gundeck demicannon went off nearly together. Smoke blossomed between the ships, and at once Derec ran for the break in the poop.

“Sailtrimmers, cast off all tacks and sheets!” he roared. “Gun crews shift to the starboard broadside! Smartly, now!” He could see crewmen’s bewildered heads swiveling wildly: man the starboard guns? Had Torn run up to starboard and caught them between two fires?

“Cast off all sheets! Fly ’em! Run out the starboard battery!”

Topsails boomed as the great sails spilled wind. Birdwing’s purposeful driving slowed as if stopped by a giant hand. The flogging canvas roared louder than the guns. The galleon staggered in the sea, the black ship pulling ahead. Frantically Derec gauged his ship’s motion.

“Hard a-larboard, Sandor! Smartly, there!”

Losing momentum, Birdwing rounded onto its new tack. A rumble sounded from the gundeck as the demicannon began thrusting from the ports. “Sheet home! Sailtrimmers to the braces! Brace her up sharp, there!”

There: he’d done it; checked his speed and swung across the black ship’s stern. He could see the big stern windows, the heraldric quarterings of the Two Kingdoms painted on the flat surface of the raised poop, officers in armor running frantically atop the castle, arms waving…

“Fire as you bear! Make it count, boys!”

Birdwing trembled as the first culverin spat fire. The whole broadside followed, gun by gun, and Derec exulted as he saw the enemy’s stern dissolve in a chaos of splinters and roundshpt, a great gilt lantern tumbling into the sea, the white triangle of the bonaventure dancing as grape pockmarked the canvas… He’d raked her, firing his whole broadside the length of the ship without the enemy being able to reply with a single shot. Derec laughed aloud. “We’ve got upwind of them!” he shouted. “They’ll not catch us now!”

“Holy Thung! Look ahead!” Random’s young voice was frantic. Derec ran to the weather rail and peered out.

Torn II was bearing down on them, bow to bow, within a cable’s distance. She’d been trying to weather Monarch so as to attack Birdwing from her unengaged side, and now the two race-built ships were on a collision course.

“Hands to the braces! Stations for tacking! Starboard guns load doubleshot and grape! Put the helm down!”

Birdwing, barely under way again, staggered into the wind. Canvas slatted wildly. Torn was bearing down on her beam, its royal figurehead glowering, waving a bright commanding sword.

“Fire as you bear!” Derec pounded the rail with a bleeding fist. “Run out and fire!”

The marines’ murderers spat their little balls and scrap iron. Then a demicannon boomed, and another, then several of the long maindeck culverins. Birdwing hung in the eye of the wind, all forward momentum lost, the gale beating against her sails, driving her backward. More guns went off. Torn’s spritsail danced as a roundshot struck it. Captain-General Collerne was curving gently downwind, about to cross Birdwing’s stern at point-blank range.

“Starboard your helm! Help her fall off!”

Too late. Captain-General Collerne’s scarlet masthead pennant coiled over the waves like a serpent threatening to strike. “Lie down!” Derec shouted. “Everyone lie down!”

He flung himself to the planks as the world began to come apart at the seams. The ship staggered like a toy struck by a child’s hand as an entire rippling broadside smashed the length of Birdwing’s hull. Gunsmoke gushed over the quarterdeck. The taffrail dissolved. The bonaventure mizzen collapsed, draping the poop in pockmarked canvas. Yards of sliced rigging coiled down on the deck. Below there was a metallic gong as a cannon was turned over on its shrieking crew.

Then there was a stunned silence: Torn had passed by. Through the clouds of gunsmoke Derec could see Marcoyn standing, legs apart, on the fo’c’sle, sword brandished at the enemy, an incoherent, lunatic bellow of rage rising from his throat. “What a madman,” Derec muttered, his ears ringing, and then he got to his feet.

“Brace the spritsail to larboard!” he called. “Clear that wreckage!” The tattered remains of the bonaventure were turning red: there were bodies underneath. As the canvas was pulled up, Derec saw one of them was Facer, the sunburned man cut in half by his homeland’s iron. Derec turned away. He would pray for the man later.

Slowly Birdwing paid off onto the larboard tack. The sails filled and the galleon lost sternway. Water began to chuckle along the strakes as the ship slowly forged ahead. Canvas boomed as Torn, astern, began to come about. Derec looked anxiously over the shattered taffrail.

Monarch was only now lumbering into the wind: she was almost a mile away and had no hope of returning to the fight unless the wind shifted to give her the weather gage once again. But Torn II was the ship that had worried Derec all along, and she was right at hand, completing her tack, moving onto the same course as Birdwing. If she was faster sailing upwind, she could overhaul the fugitive ship. Derec gave a worried glance at the set of his sails.

“Keep her full, Sandor. Let her go through the water.”

“Full an’ bye, sir.”

“Set the t’gallants.” He was suddenly glad he hadn’t sent down the topgallant yards.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“All hands to knot and splice.”

The topgallants rumbled as they were smoothly sheeted home. Birdwing heeled to starboard, foam spattering over the fo’c’sle like handfuls of dark jewels tossed by the spirits of the sea. She was drawing ahead, fast as a witch as she drove through the black gale. Water drizzled from the sky, washing Facer’s blood from the planks. The water tasted sweet on Derec’s tongue, washed away the powder that streaked his face.

Torn’s topgallant yards were rising aloft, a swarm of men dark on her rigging. Birdwing made the most of her temporary advantage; she’d gained over a mile on her adversary before Torn’s topgallant bloomed and the larger ship began to race in earnest.

Derec felt his heart throbbing as he slitted his eyes to look astern, judging the ships’ relative motion. Birdwing had lost its bonaventure: would that subtract from the ship’s speed? He continued staring astern. His face began to split in a smile.

“We’re pulling ahead!” he roared. “We’ve got the heels of her, by Thurn Bel!”

A low cheer began to rise from the crew; then, as the word passed, it grew deafening. Birdwing was going to make its escape. Nothing could stop her now.

Two miles later, as Birdwing neared a half-mile-wide channel between a pair of boundary isles, the wind died away entirely.

The sails fell slack, booming softly as the ship rocked on the waves.

From astern, traveling clearly from the two enemy vessels, Derec could hear the sound of cheering.

“Sway out the longboat! Ready to lower the second bower! We’ll kedge her!”

The words snapped from Derec’s mouth before the enemy cheering had quite ended. There was a rush of feet as the crew obeyed. Derec wanted to keep them busy, not occupied with thinking about their predicament.

“Send a party below to splice every anchor cable together. Fetch the wizard. A party to the capstan. Bring up the tackles and the spare t’gallant yards. We’re going to jury a bonaventure. SuKrone, help me out of this damned armor.”

One of the two longboats was swung out and set in the water. Carefully, the remaining bower anchor was lowered in it, and the boat moved under oars to the full length of the spliced anchor cables. Then the anchor was pitched overboard into the shallow sea and crewmen began stamping around the capstan, dragging the ship forward by main force until it rested over its anchor.

Tevvik appeared on deck to Derec’s summons. He looked haggard.

“Hot work, Captain,” he said. “Their wizards are good.”

“I felt only one assault.”

“Good. That means I was keeping them off.”

“We’re going to need wind.”

Tevvik seemed dead with weariness. “Aye, Captain. I’ll try.”

“I’ll work with you. Stand by the rail; I’ll be with you in a moment.”

The sound of clattering capstan pawls echoed from astern. Torn and Monarch were kedging as well.

“Up and down, sir.” Birdwing was resting over its anchor.

“Bring her up smartly.”

“Aye, aye.”

Birdwing lurched as the anchor broke free of the bottom. Derec moved toward the poop ladder, then frowned as he saw the two stream anchors lashed to the main chains. A shame, Derec considered, that so much time was wasted getting the anchor up, then rowing it out again. Capstan pawls whirred in accompaniment to Derec’s thoughts.

“Swing out the other longboat,” he said. “We’ll put one of the stream anchors on the other end of the cable. Have one anchor going out while the other’s coming in.” He grinned at SuKrone’s startled expression. “See to it, man!”

“Sir.”

Crewmen rushed to the remaining longboat. Derec walked to where the Tichenese was waiting, propped against the lee rail where he’d be out of the way.

“We shall try to bring a wind, Wizard,” Derec said. “A westerly, as before. Ready?”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Wearily Derec summoned his power, matched it to the wizard’s, and called the elements for a wind. Meanwhile a spare topgallant mast was dropped in place of the broken bonaventure mizzen, a lateen yard hoisted to its top, a new bonaventure set that hung uselessly in the windless air. Derec and Tevvik moved into its shade. Capstan pawls clattered, drawing the race-built ship forward, through the channel between barrier islands, the two longboats plying back and forth with their anchors. The pursuers were using only one anchor at a time, and were falling behind. The water began to deepen, turn a profounder blue. Torn II crawled through the island passage. Monarch’s topgallant masts loomed above the nearer island.

The heat of the noon sun augured a hot afternoon. Pitch bubbled up between the deck seams and stuck to crewmen’s feet. Weary sailors were relieved at the capstan and fed.

“Deck, there! Captain! Right ahead! See what’s happening!”

Derec glanced up from his summoning, and his heart lurched as he saw the wind itself appear, visible as a dim swirling above the water; and then the sea itself rose, a wall of curling white foam. Desperate energy filled him.

“Clew up the t’gallants! Close the gunports! Call the boats back! Clew up the fores’l!”

The sea was coming with a growing hiss, a furious rank of white horsemen galloping over an azure plain. Tevvik looked at the wave with a dazed expression. “It’s all coming at once,” he said. “It’s been building out there, everything we’ve been summoning since dawn, and now it’s all on us at once.”

“Helmsman! A point to starboard! Use what way you can!”

Sails were clewed up in a squeal of blocks. The entry port filled with frantic sailors as one of the boats came alongside. There was a cry of wind in the rigging, an anticipation of what was to come. Derec ran to the mizzen shrouds and wrapped his arm around a stout eight-inch tarred line. He looked at Tevvik.

“I suggest you do likewise, Wizard.”

And then the summoning was on them. The bow rose to the surge of white water and suddenly the air was full of spray as the frothing sea boiled around the ship. Canvas crashed as it filled with wind, bearing Birdwing back till suddenly she came up short at the end of her anchor cable, and with a plank-starting shudder the galleon was brought up short, burying her beak in foam, a wave sweeping the decks for and aft, carrying crewmen and capstan bars and everything not lashed down in a frantic, clawing spill for the stern… Derec closed his eyes and mouth and tried to hang on, his shoulders aching as the water tore at his clothing and body. His mind still registered what was happening to the ship, the jarring and checking that meant the anchor was dragging, the demon shriek of wind in the rigging, the thrumming tautness of the shroud around which Derec wrapped his arms…

Just as suddenly, the white water was gone, past. A strong sea breeze hummed in the rigging. Half-drowned crewmen lay on the planks like scattered driftwood, gasping for air. Exultation filled Derec.

“Hands to the capstan! Prepare to set the fores’l and t’gallants! Lively, there, lively—we’ve got a wind!”

The stunned survivors raised a feeble cheer and dragged wearily to their work. The other longboat— miraculously it had survived, bobbing on the wave like a twig—picked up a few swimmers who had been carried overboard, then came to the entry port in a mad thrash of oars. Wind whipping his hair, Derec gazed astern to see the wall of white as it drove toward his enemies.

Torn II had seen it coming and had time to prepare. Her boats were in, her anchor catted home; and Derec suppressed a surge of admiration for the proud way her head tossed to the wave, the clean manner in which she cut the water and kept her head to the wind. Then the wave was past, and she began setting sails. Derec’s gaze shifted to Monarch. The wave was almost on her.

She hadn’t seen it coming; that much was clear. She’d just kedged clear of the southern tip of the island, and the white water was within two cables’ lengths before Monarch was aware of it. Suddenly there was frantic movement on her decks, sails drawing up, the boats thrashing water, but the white water hit her broadside, driving her over. She staggered once, then was gone, only wreckage and the tips of her masts visible on the rushing water. Derec blinked: it had happened so fast he could scarce believe the sight of it. He looked again. His eyes had spoken truly: Monarch was gone.

“Thurn Bel protect them,” Derec said, awed, reaching automatically for his amulet and finding nothing. He knew precisely what had happened: the gunports had been open on this hot afternoon, and the wind and water had pushed her lower ports under; she’d filled and gone down in seconds. Six hundred men, their lives snuffed out in an instant. Derec shook his head, sorrow filling him. Why was he fated to kill his countrymen so?

“The sea trolls will feed well tonight,” Tevvik said solemnly. His hairpins had been torn from his head, and his long dark hair hung dripping to his shoulders.

SuKrone’s voice broke into Derec’s reverie: “Cable’s up and down, sir.”

“Break the anchor free. Lay her on the larboard tack.”

The anchor came free with a lurch, the yards were braced round, the Birdwing sails set and filled with wind. Birdwing heeled gracefully in the stiff ocean breeze.

“This isn’t over yet,” Derec said as he watched Torn II flying after them. “The captain-general’s lost two ships, half his squadron, with nothing to show for it. He’s got to bring us back or he’s done for. He’ll never have another command.”

“We’re faster than he on this tack.”

“That won’t end it. He’ll spend the rest of his life in the Sea of Luck if he has to.”

“Let us hope,” Tevvik said, his eyes hardening, “he will not live long.”

Derec shook his head: he couldn’t wish Collerne dead, not Collerne, who had been such a friend to him, who had raised him to the highest rank to which a non-noble could aspire.

The brisk wind carried Birdwing smartly over the water, the bow rising to each ocean wave. But then the wind dropped little by little and Torn began closing the distance, her red admiral’s pennant snapping in the breeze like a striking serpent. Birdwing was only faster in stiffer winds: Torn had the advantage here. Derec’s heart sank.

“We shall have to fight, then. Gun captains to draw their cartridges and replace them with fresh—they may have got wet. All hands check their powder.”

Derec donned his cuirass—the helmet had been washed overboard—and reloaded his pistols. Tevvik returned to the safety of the orlop. There was no cheer among the crew as they went to their tasks, only a kind of grim despair.

They had labored all day, escaped death so many times. Were they cursed, to be so forced into yet another struggle?

“Stations for tacking,” Derec said. “We’ll see how badly the captain-general wants to fight us.” He could still not bring himself to speak of the man disrespectfully.

Birdwing came across the wind easily. “Ease her a bit,” Derec ordered. “Keep her full.” He ordered the guns loaded with roundshot and gauged his distance carefully. “Back the main tops’l,” he said finally. “Run out the larboard battery.” He was going to give Collerne a hard choice. “Ready, boys!” he called. “Aim carefully, now!” The ship’s motion altered as the main topsail backed, as the ship’s speed checked and its corkscrew shudder ended. Carefully Derec gauged the ship’s motion. Tops’l aback, Birdwing was a far steadier platform.

“Fire!”

The deck shuddered to the salvo. White feathers leaped from the sea around Torn.

“Fill the tops’l! Reload and run out! Helm down!”

Derec looked at the other race-built ship, eyes narrowing. His maindeck culverins, longer though with a smaller bore than the demicannon on the gundeck, were ideal at this range. He would claw to windward, fall off, fire, then claw to windward again while his crews reloaded: he was going to punish Torn II mercilessly on the approach, make her pay for every fathom gained. The enemy couldn’t reply, not without luffing out of the wind to present her broadside.

Collerne had two choices now, Derec knew. He could continue beating toward Birdwing, paying for every inch with lives, or he could luff and open the battle at this range. The battle wouldn’t be decisive at a half-mile’s distance—the two ships would fire off their ammunition at this range, fail to do mortal damage, and that would be the end of it. Derec prayed Collerne would choose the latter outcome.

“Back the main tops’l! Run out!”

Another broadside crashed out. “Fill the tops’l! Load! Helm down!”

Luff, Derec thought fiercely as he looked at the enemy. Luff, damn you.

The enemy were determined to stand Derec’s fire. His heart sank at the thought of killing more of his countrymen.

Having no choice, he did what he must. He fired another broadside, tacked, fired the larboard guns. _Torn’_s bow chasers replied, pitching a ball at Birdwing every few minutes; but Torn had to be taking punishment as she came into the culverins’ ideal range. Her sails were as pitted by shot holes as the cheeks of a whore with the Great Pox.

Five hundred yards. “Fire!” He could hear the sound of shot striking home. Four hundred. “Fire!” Three. “Fire!”

The wind blew the ocean clear of smoke. Derec stared to leeward, hoping to see a mast fall, a sail flog itself to bits, anything that might allow him to slip away. Nothing. Reluctantly he gave the orders.

“Fill the mains’l. Clew up the t’gallants. We’ll give the captain-general the fight he’s come for.”

The guns lashed out once more and then Torn luffed elegantly, the bronze guns running out the square ports, two lines of teeth that shone in the bright southern sun.

There were gaps in the rows of teeth: two ports beaten into one, another empty port where a gun may have been disabled. Derec’s breath caught in his throat.

Fire lapped the surface of the ocean. Torn’s crew had waited hours for this and it seemed as if every shot struck home, a rapid series of crashes and shudders that rocked the deck beneath Derec’s feet. There was a cry as a half-dozen of Marcoyn’s marines were scattered in red ruin over the fo’c’sle, then a shriek, sounding like the very sky being torn asunder, as a ball passed right over Derec’s head to puncture the mizzen lateen. He was too startled to duck.

Birdwing‘s guns gave their answering roars. Derec gave the command to fire at will. He could sense the magic shields Tevvik wove about the ship; felt a probe, felt it easily rebuffed. There was only one enemy wizard now; he was as tired as everyone else. The range narrowed and the marines’ murderers began to bark. Gunfire was continuous, a never-ending thunder. A musket ball gouged wood from the mizzen above Derec’s head; he began to pace in hope of discouraging marksmen.

Derec’s ship seemed to be pulling ahead as the range narrowed and Birdwing stole Torn’s wind. Derec didn’t want that, not yet; he had the foretops’l laid aback, allowed Torn to forge ahead slightly, then filled the sail and resumed his course.

Fifty yards: here they would hammer it out, guns double-shotted with a round of grape choked down each barrel for good measure. A maindeck culverin tipped onto its crew, its carriage wrecked by a ball. There was a crash, a massive rumble followed by a human shriek. Derec stared: the main topgallant had been shot away and come roaring down, a tangle of rigging and canvas and broken timber. Marcoyn already had a party hacking at the wreckage and tossing it overboard. Derec clenched his teeth and waited. Thunder smote his ears. Gunpowder coated his tongue in layers, like dust on a dead man.

The wreckage was clear—good. The enemy was falling a bit behind. “Set the fore t’gallant!” Derec roared; the seamen gave him puzzled glances, and he repeated the order.

Canvas boomed as the topgallant was sheeted home; Derec could feel the surge of speed, the lift it gave his nimble ship. He peered over the bulwark, squinting through the smoke that masked the enemy. With his added speed, he’d try to cross her bows and let her run aboard: he’d have his every gun able to rake down the enemy’s length with scarce a chance of reply.

“Put up the helm!” A musket ball whirred overhead; two quarterdeck murderers barked in reply. The marines were cursing without cease as they loaded and fired, a constant drone of obscenity. Derec wondered where they found the energy.

Birdwing curved downwind like a bird descending on its prey, Derec staring anxiously at the enemy. He felt his heart sink: the blue sky between the enemy’s masts was widening. Collerne had been ready for him, and was matching Birdwing’s turn with his own.

“Helm hard to weather!” Frantic energy pulsed through Derec. “Hands to the larboard guns! Run ’em out! Braces, there! Brace her around!”

If he made his turn quick enough, he might be able to slide across Collerne’s stern and deliver a raking shot with his fresh larboard broadside, a stroke as devastating as that which Torn had fired into Birdwing’s stern that morning.

Sails boomed and slatted overhead. The firing trailed off as the guns no longer bore. Derec ran frantically for the larboard rail and saw, too late, a tantalizing glimpse of Torn’s stern, a glimpse lasting only a few seconds before it slid away. Derec beat a fist on the rail. The maneuver hadn’t worked at all—Collerne had anticipated everything. The ships had just changed places, larboard tack to starboard, like dancers at a ball. And Torn was firing with a new broadside now, not the one he’d punished for the last few hours.

“Luff her! Gun crews, fire as you bear!” He’d get in one unopposed broadside, at least.

The unused broadside blasted away into Torn’s starboard quarter. Derec could see splinters flying like puffs of smoke. He filled his sails and surged on.

Now they were yardarm-to-yardarm again, the guns hammering at point-blank range. The crews were weary, taking casualties, and the rate of fire had slowed; the deadly iron thunderstorm was blowing itself out. A whirring charge of grape caught SuKrone in the side and flung him to weather like a doll, already dead; a musket ball whanged off Derec’s breastplate and made him take a step back, his heart suddenly thundering in panic. Frantically he began pacing, his feet slipping in pools of blood.

Who was winning? Torn had been hard hit, but her weight of armament was superior; she had a larger crew, having probably taken men off the damaged Sea Troll; and Derec was forced to admit she had the better captain. Birdwing had been hit hard in the first fight, and her crew were exhausted. Everywhere he looked Derec saw blood, death, smoke, and ruin.

He’d try his trick one more time, Derec thought. He couldn’t think of anything else. If it didn’t work, he’d just fight it out toe-to-toe until there was nothing left to fight with. He wouldn’t surrender. If Birdwing lost, he’d take one of his stolen pistols and blow his own brains out.

Birdwing was forging ahead, the topgallant still set. Very well. He’d try to do it better.

“Hands to tacks and sheets! Hands to the braces! Ready, there? Helm to weather!”

Birdwing lurched as the rudder bit the water. Bullets twittered overhead. The enemy wizard made some kind of strike, and Derec felt it deep in his awareness; his mind lanced out and parried. He could sense Tevvik there, feel a part of the foreigner’s mind merge with his own.

If you ever do anything, he begged, do it now.

The answer came. Very well.

Derec looked up again, saw the blue space between the enemy’s masts increasing. Damn: he’d been anticipated again.

“Hard a-weather! Sheets, there! Man the starboard guns!”

They were dancing around again, just changing places. The bonaventure and mizzen lateen boomed as the wind slammed them across the deck. Derec saw the enemy stern and knew he could never cross it, knew it for certain—and then there was a yellow flash, Torn’s windows blowing out in rainbow splinters, bright light winking from each gunport along the maindeck. Guns boomed, firing at empty sea. Derec’s mouth dropped as he saw an enemy marine, standing with his firelock in the mizzen chains, suddenly fling his arms back as each of the powder flasks he carried across his chest went off, little dots of fire that knocked him into the shrouds…

Tevvik, Derec thought. He specialized in fireworks. But now Derec was screaming, his throat a raw agony.

“Fire as you bear!” Birdwing was going to win the race: the maindeck explosion had paralyzed the enemy, possibly blown the helmsmen away from the whipstaff.

The guns went off, flinging hundreds of pounds of metal into the helpless ship’s stern. Torn wallowed, the wind pushing her away. Derec could hear her crewmen screaming for water-buckets. Tevvik must have set off a pile of cartridges on the maindeck, spreading fire, making guns go off prematurely while their crews were still ramming shot home…

Birdwing followed, firing shot after shot; Torn’s crew was desperately fighting fires and could not reply. Derec sensed a new energy in his gunners; they were firing faster than they had since the enemy’s approach. They knew this was victory and wanted to hasten it.

“Captain.” It was one of the surgeon’s assistants, a boy in a bloody apron. Derec glared at him.

“What is it?”

“The wizard’s unconscious, sir. The Liavekan, what’s-his-name. He just yelled something in his heathen tongue and collapsed. Surgeon thought you’d need to know.”

Derec put his hand on the boy’s arm. “Compliments to the surgeon. Thank you, boy.”

The guns roared on. Torn got her fires under control, but the explosion had devastated the crew: they didn’t have the heart to continue. When all the gun crews dribbled away, heading for the hatches, the officers conceded the inevitable and hauled down their colors. Birdwing came alongside to take possession.

Collerne, leading his surviving officers, surrendered in person, a tall white-haired man in beautifully crafted, muscled armor, a splinter wound on one cheek, both hands blackened where he’d beat at the fire. Derec looked into the man’s eyes, hoping to see some sign of friendship, of understanding for what Derec had had to do. There was nothing there, no understanding, no friendship, not even hate. Derec took his patron’s sword wordlessly.

“We’ve done it, SuPashto! Beaten ’em!” Marcoyn was by Derec’s side now, his pale unfocused eyes burning fire. “We’re free!” Marcoyn saw Collerne standing mute by the poop rail; he turned to the captain-general, stared at him for a long moment, then deliberately spat in his face.

“Free, d’ye hear, Collerne?” he roared. “You thought you’d strangle us all, but now I’ll throttle you myself. And now I’ll be captain of your ship as well.”

The spittle hung on Collerne’s face. He said nothing, but his deep gray eyes turned to Derec, and Derec’s blood turned chill.

Derec put a hand on Marcoyn’s armored shoulder. “He’s worth more in ransom alive,” he said. “You and your people take possession of the other ship.”

Marcoyn considered this, the taunting grin still on his face. “Aye,” he said. “Maybe I’d like their money more than their lives.” He gave a laugh. “I’ll have to give it some thought. While I enjoy my new cabin on my new ship.”

He turned to his men and roared orders. There were cheers from the marines as they swarmed aboard Torn and began looting the enemy survivors. Collerne’s eyes turned away from Derec. There was no gratitude there, just an emptiness as deep as the ocean. Despair filled Derec. The rapier in his hand felt as heavy as a lead weight.

“Go to my cabin, Captain-General,” he said. “Wait for me there. I’ll send the surgeon to tend to your hands.” In silence, Collerne obeyed. Derec sent the other officers below to the cable tier and had them put under guard.

Suddenly Derec was aware of Tevvik standing by the break of the poop. How long had the wizard been there? His face showed strain and exhaustion, but he’d heard everything; his hooded expression demonstrated that well enough.

Derec glanced up at the mizzen shrouds. There wasn’t room any longer for all the countrymen he’d killed; the ghosts, he thought, would have to stand in line.

It wasn’t over yet, Derec knew. The Two Kingdoms trading fleets came to the Sea of Luck every year, and sailors had long memories. Squadrons would hunt for Birdwing, and even if Derec received the protection of one of the cities, there would still be kidnappers and assassins. No end to this killing, Derec thought, not until I’m dead. Will the gods forgive me, he wondered, for not killing myself and ending this slaughter?

The two race-built ships spun in the wind, locked together like weary prizefighters leaning against one another for support. Wreckage and bodies bobbed in the water. From Torn II came a smell of burning.

Derec realized he was the only man remaining who could navigate. He ordered his charts to be brought up from the safety of the hold.

“Secure the guns,” he said. “I’ll chart a course north, to Liavek.”

The sea was kind that night: a moderate wind, a moderate swell. The two ships traveled under easy sail and echoed to the sound of repairs.

Near staggering with weariness, Derec paced Birdwing’s weather rail. Collerne still waited in Derec’s cabin. Marcoyn was probably drunk and unconscious in the admiral’s cabin aboard Torn. Only Derec was without a place to sleep.

There was a tread on the poop companion, and Derec saw Tevvik approaching him.

“You have recovered?” Derec asked. His tongue was thick. No matter how much kaf he consumed his mouth still tasted of powder.

“Somewhat.” The wizard’s voice was as weary as his own. “May I join you, Captain?”

“If you like.” Exhaustion danced in Derec’s brain. He swayed, put a hand on the bulwark to steady himself.

Tevvik’s voice was soft. “You will have to make a choice, Captain,” he said.

“Not now, Wizard.”

“Soon, Captain.”

Derec said nothing. Tevvik stepped closer, pitched his voice low. “If Marcoyn gets his way, you will all die. His Scarlet Eminence won’t make a deal with a butcher.”

“This is my affair, Wizard. None of yours.”

“Only the thought of ransom kept him from another massacre. What will happen when he realizes the ransom will never come? Liavek isn’t at war with the Two Kingdoms—their price courts will never permit you to ransom a neutral. When Marcoyn thinks things through, there will be trouble.” Tevvik’s easy smile gleamed in his dark face. “I can deal with Marcoyn, Captain. He will have gone overboard while drunk, and that’s all anyone will ever know.”

Derec glared at the foreigner and clenched his fists. I’ll have my own discipline on my own ship," he grated. “I don’t need wizard’s tricks, and I won’t be a party to conspiracies.”

“It’s far too late for that, Captain.”

Derec jerked as if stung. “It’s not too late to stop.”

“Events generate their own momentum. You of all people should know that.” He leaned closer, put a hand on Derec’s shoulder. “Marcoyn’s marines have the firelocks, Captain. He has possession of one ship already, and he can take yours anytime he wants.”

“He needs me. The man can’t navigate.”

“Once he turns pirate, he can capture all the navigators he needs.”

“I can deal with him, Wizard!” Derec’s voice roared out over the still ship. Tevvik took a step back from the force of his rage.

His mind ablaze, Derec stormed down the poop ladder, past the startled helmsman, and down the passage that led to his cabin. The guard at the door straightened in surprise as Derec flung open the door.

Collerne looked up. He was out of his armor and seated in one of Derec’s chairs, trying to read a Zhir book on navigation with his bandaged hands. Derec hesitated before the man’s depthless gaze.

“I want you off my ship, Captain-General,” he said.

Collerne’s eyes flickered. “Why is that, Mr. SuPashto?” He spoke formally, without expression.

“I’m going to put you and your officers in a boat and let you make your way to Gold Harbor. You’ll have food and water for the trip. A backstaff so you can find your latitude.”

With a careful gesture, Collerne closed his book and held it between bandaged hands. “You are running for Liavek, are you not? Can you not let us off there?”

Derec looked at him. “It’s for your safety, Captain-General.”

Collerne took a moment to absorb this. “Very well, Mr. SuPashto. I understand that you might have difficulty controlling your people now they’ve had a taste of rebellion.”

Suddenly Derec hated the man, hated his superiority, the cold, relentless precision of his intelligence. “You would have strangled and eviscerated every man on this ship!” he said.

Collerne’s voice was soft: “That was my duty, Mr. SuPashto,” he said. “Not my pleasure. That’s the difference between me and your Mr. Marcoyn.”

“Marcoyn had a good teacher,” Derec said. “His name was Captain Lord Fors. Marcoyn’s an amateur in cruelty compared to him.”

Collerne stiffened. Mean satisfaction trickled into Derec’s mind: he’d got a reaction from the man at last. He wondered if it was because he’d scored a point or simply had the bad taste to criticize one officer in front of another.

“The only order I’ve ever had questioned,” Derec said, “is the one that would prevent my people doing to you what you fully intended to do to them. Now”—he nodded—“you will follow me, Captain-General, and from this point onward you will address me as Captain. Maybe I wasn’t born to the rank, but I think I’ve earned it.”

Collerne said nothing, just rose from his chair and followed. Perhaps, Derec thought, he would say nothing at all rather than have to call Derec by his stolen title. Derec collected the rest of the officers in the cable tier and then climbed to the maindeck. Birdwing’s remaining small boat had been warped astern after the fight, and Derec had it brought alongside. He put a stock of food and water aboard, made certain the boat had mast, cordage, sail, and backstaff, then sent the prisoners into it. Collerne was last. The captain-general turned in the entry port, prepared to lower himself to the boat, curled his fingers around the safety line. His bandaged hand slipped uselessly, and Collerne gave a gasp of pain as he began to topple backward into the boat.

Derec leaned out and took the captain-general’s arm, steadying him. Collerne looked at him with dark, fathomless eyes.

“I acted to preserve the ship, Captain-General,” Derec said. “There was no other way. Birdwing was your dream, and it is alive, thanks to me.”

Collerne’s face hardened. He turned away, and with Derec’s assistance lowered himself into the boat.

“Cast off,” said Derec. He stepped up to the poop and watched the fragment of darkness as it fell astern, as it vanished among the gentle swells of the Sea of Luck.

He’d said what he’d had to, Derec thought. If Collerne refused to understand, that was naught to do with Derec.

“What now, Captain?”

Tevvik’s voice. Derec turned to the wizard.

“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll deal with Marcoyn in the morning.”

Derec rose at dawn. He wound his two pistols and put them in his belt, then reached for his sword. He stepped on deck, scanned the horizon, found it empty save for Torn II riding two miles off the starboard quarter. He brought Birdwing alongside, shouted at the other ship to heave to, then backed Birdwing’s main topsail and brought her to rest a hundred yards from the other ship. He armed a party of Birdwing’s sailors and had them ready at the entry port. Derec told Torn’s lookout to give Mr. Marcoyn his compliments, and ask him to come aboard Birdwing.

Out of the corner of his eye, Derec saw Tevvik mounting the poop ladder. The Tichenese seemed unusually subdued; his expression was hooded, his grin absent entirely.

Marcoyn arrived with a party of half a dozen marines, all dressed grandly in plundered clothing and armor. The big man looked savage; he was probably hung over. A brace of pistols had been shoved into his bright embroidered sash.

Derec could feel tension knotting his muscles. He tried to keep his voice light. “I need you to resume your duties aboard Birdwing, Mr. Marcoyn,” Derec told him. “I’m sending Sandor to take charge of the prize.”

There was a pause while Marcoyn absorbed this. He gave an incredulous laugh. “Th’ piss you will,” he said. “The prize is mine!”

Derec’s nerves shrieked. Ignoring the sharp scent of liquor on Marcoyn’s breath, he stepped closer to the big man. His voice cracked like a whip. “By whose authority? I’m captain here.”

Marcoyn stood his ground. His strange pale eyes were focused a thousand yards away.

“The prize is mine!” he barked. “I’m in charge of the sojers here!”

Hot anger roared from Derec’s mouth like fire from a cannon. “And I am in charge of you! he shouted. He thrust his face within inches of Marcoyn’s.”Birdwing is mine! The prize is mine! And you and your sojers are mine to command! D’you dispute that, Marcoyn?"

Do it, Marcoyn, he thought. Defy me and I’ll pistol your brains out the back of your head.

Marcoyn seemed dazed. He glanced over the poop, his hands flexing near his weapons. Derec felt triumph racing through his veins. If Marcoyn made a move he was dead. Derec had never been more certain of anything in his life.

Marcoyn hesitated. He took a step back.

“Whatever you say, Captain,” he said.

Readiness still poised in Derec. Marcoyn was not safe yet, not by any means. “You are dismissed, Marcoyn,” Derec said. “I’d advise you to get some sleep.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The words were mumbled. Marcoyn raised his helmet in a sketchy salute, then turned away and was lost.

Tension poured from Derec like an ebbing tide. He watched the burly marine descend the poop ladder, then head for his cabin. He looked at Marcoyn’s marines.

“Return your firelocks to the arms locker,” he said. “Then report to Randem’s repair party.”

“Sir.”

Derec sent Sandor and some of the armed sailors to the Torn, then looked up at the sails. “Hands to the main braces,” he said. “Set the main tops’l. Steer nor’-nor’west.”

Men tailed onto the braces, fighting the wind as they heaved the big mainyards around. Canvas boomed as it filled, as Birdwing paid off and began to come around, a bone growing in its teeth.

Relief sang in Derec’s mind. He had managed it somehow, managed not to have to become Marcoyn in order to defeat him.

Tevvik’s voice came quietly in Derec’s ear: “Well done, sir. But you should have let me handle him. Marcoyn’s still a danger.”

“To no one but himself.” Flatly.

“I disagree, Captain. What will happen when he discovers you’ve set Collerne and the others free?”

“Nothing will happen. He will drink and mutter and that will be the end of it.”

“I pray you are right, Captain.”

Derec looked at him. “I won’t have a man killed because he might be a problem later. That was Lord Fors’ way, and Marcoyn’s way, and I’ll have none of it.”

Tevvik shook his head and offered no answer. Derec glanced aloft to check the set of the sails.

Suddenly he felt his heart ease. He was free.

No more mutinies, he thought.

Birdwing heeled to a gust, then rose and settled into its path, forging ahead through a bright tropical dawn.

Afterword

Jerry Pournelle

The phony debate over strategic defense has taken a new turn with the publication of the Report to the American Physical Society of the Study Group on Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons in April of 1987. Supposedly an impartial study by a jury of qualified scientists, it was nothing of the sort: like the long discredited “study” by the Federation of American Scientists (FAR), the APS Report assumes its conclusions in advance, then manipulates its assumptions to make its case. It proves nothing.

The usual nonsense is there. The U.S.S.R. can “easily” protect their missiles by spinning them—although no one has yet spun an ICBM—or by coating them with some form of armor. In both cases the APS Report seriously underestimates the payload loss from spinning and coating, nor does it address the problem of whether an SS-18 missile coated with some six metric tons of armor can be built at all, much less spun.

The Soviets have invested enormously in their weapons inventory; so much so that their economy is in real trouble. If we can make that investment obsolete, why shouldn’t we? And even the APS Report, read carefully, shows that we can do at least that much. If the Soviets can in fact coat and spin their missiles, they haven’t done so, and it won’t be cheap; and every ruble spent refitting an old missile is a ruble not spent on buying new ones.

There are dozens of other errors of fact or assumption in the APS document, and like the FAR Report, they’re all in the same direction. All the errors lead one to suppose that the technology we have isn’t worth building, and what we’ll need is far in the future; and indeed that’s what the New York Times and other newspapers reported when the APS Report came out.

In fact it proves nothing of the sort. In the first place, the APS Report doesn’t even deal with kinetic energy weapons. The United States right now has not only the science but the engineering technology to put up a ballistic kill ICBM defense. We can build not just weapons, but an entire defensive weapons system. Of course, a system based on smart rocks won’t be anything like as effective as one built around high-energy lasers and other directed-energy weapons; but it can make a significant contribution to the protection of the United States.

No defense will ever be perfect. I know of no possible way to make everyone in the U.S. safe from nuclear attack; to build a leak-proof nuclear umbrella. Fortunately that isn’t what strategic defenses are supposed to do. The purpose of defenses is to make the attacker decide it’s not worthwhile to attack. If defenses can do that, they will have succeeded—and of course, if they do that, they will have been 100 percent effective without having been used at all.

Boost-phase ballistic kill ICBM defenses—smart rocks in space—can intercept 10-25 percent of the enemy ICBM boosters. Each booster can carry more than one warhead. Since the larger the booster, the easier it is to intercept, and the more warheads it is likely to carry, the proportion of warheads intercepted may be even higher.

Now no one questions that 90 percent of the Soviet ICBM force is more than enough to destroy the United States as a national entity. If the Soviets devote their entire ICBM force to wanton destruction of U.S. society, they’ll probably be successful, especially if they just launch out of the blue. I’ve never heard anyone explain why the U.S.S.R. would want to do that, since any such attack would pretty well disarm the Soviet Union while leaving the U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces intact and motivated to take a terrible revenge.

On the other hand, intercepting 10 percent of the Soviet ICBM boosters would be very effective in protecting large parts of the U.S. ICBM force—and indeed, protecting the land-based, highly accurate ICBMs, which are the weapons the Nomenklatura fear most. The real rulers of the Soviet Union probably care about the lives of their fellow citizens, but the record shows they care for their weapons and their mechanisms of social control a great deal more.

There’s only one way a nuclear first strike makes sense: if it’s so effective that the enemy has little or nothing left to retaliate with. Many “theorists” in the U.S. have said that’s impossible: they postulate invulnerable “second strike” weapons. The problem is that invulnerability is easier to get by assumption than by engineering. In these days of computer sufficiency, PGM, and increasingly accurate and effective weapons, there are no invulnerable weapons. There’s only one way to protect the retaliatory force; it must be actively defended.

That means protecting weapons, not cities; yet one argument for SDI has always been that MAD is immoral.

We needn’t abandon our conviction that Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD, is immoral; that holding hostage innocent Russian citizens to ensure the good behavior of the Nomenklatura is a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, although we learned in 1984 that strategic defenses were possible, we have done nothing about building them. SDI remains a study program. We cannot defend the U.S. with paper studies and laboratory experiments.

We need not abandon our moral opposition to MAD—but we now have no choices left. We need strategic defenses just to keep MAD operating.

It’s not hard to see what we must do. We begin with what we know how to do. Start with increasing our warning times by putting manned observation stations in space. (The Soviet MIR space station certainly can function that way.) Add new surveillance and warning capabilities. Deploy smart rocks, a few at first, then a hundred or so.

Even the APS Report concedes that we will, eventually, learn how to build effective high-energy weapons. We can quarrel with their timetable, but in fact even if we had those weapons today they wouldn’t be a weapons system. By starting early we put together the elements of a real defense that defends. Then as the new weapons technologies mature, we integrate those new systems into what will be an increasingly effective missile defense system based on what we know how to do now.

There are always two approaches to difficult goals. One is to try to solve all problems before deciding what to do. The other is to decide what you will do, then deal with the problems as they get in the way.

The second approach won World War II and put us on the moon. We’re now using the first approach, and it has yet to put a station in space—or even to build an O ring.

If you would have peace, be prepared for war. We are not prepared.

Military Science Fiction

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VI ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VII ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VIII ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Plague Wars 0: The Eden Plague by David VanDyke

Plague Wars 1: Reaper's Run by David VanDyke

Plague Wars 2: Skull's Shadows by David VanDyke

Galactic Liberation 1: Starship Liberator by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson

Galactic Liberation 2: Battleship Indomitable by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Science Fiction

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm by John C. Wright

The Corroding Empire 1: Corrosion by Johan Kalsi

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

Alien Game by Rod Walker

Young Man's War by Rod Walker

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

Fantasy

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 1: Swan Knight's Son by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 2: Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 3: Swan Knight's Sword by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 4: Daughter of Danger by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 5: City of Corpses by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 6: Tithe to Tartarus by John C. Wright

Arts of Dark and Light 0: Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

Arts of Dark and Light 1: A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

Arts of Dark and Light 2: A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Vox Day

The World in Shadow by Vox Day

The Wrath of Angels by Vox Day

Fiction

An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney

Hitler in Hell by Martin van Creveld

Loki's Child by Fenris Wulf

The Ames Archives 1: Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

The Ames Archives 2: Rocky Mountain Retribution by Peter Grant

The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

The Promethean by Owen Stanley

Non-Fiction

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Clio & Me: An Intellectual Autobiography by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again by Mike Cernovich

The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne

Appendix N: A Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons by Jeffro Johnson

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

Push the Zone: The Good Guide to Growing Tropical Plants Beyond the Tropics by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police by Vox Day

Collected Columns, Vol. I: Innocence & Intellect, 2001—2005 by Vox Day

Collected Columns, Vol. II: Conceit & Crisis, 2006—2009 by Vox Day

Collected Columns, Vol. III: Failure & Freedom, 2010—2012 by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day

Do We Need God To Be Good? by C.R. Hallpike

The LawDog Files by LawDog

The LawDog Files: African Adventures by LawDog

There Will Be War Volume VIII

Created by Jerry Pournelle

Associate Editor John F. Carr

Copyright

There Will Be War Volume VIII

Jerry Pournelle

Castalia House

Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

Copyright © 1989, 2017 by Jerry Pournelle

All rights reserved

Cover: Lars Braad Andersen

Version: 001

Contents

1. Introduction: Armageddon
2. Still Time, by James Patrick Kelly
3. Surviving Armageddon, by Jerry Pournelle
4. To the Storming Gulf, by Gregory Benford
5. Dinosaurs, by Geoffrey A. Landis

6. The Prevention of War: About Unthinking the Thinkable, by Reginald Bretnor

7. Day of Succession, by Theodore L. Thomas
8. The Irvhank Effect, by Harry Turtledove
9. Three Poems
10. PSI-REC: I LINGER
11. The Benefactors, by Don Hawthorne
12. Nuclear Autumn, by Ben Bova

13. As It Was in the Beginning, by Edward P. Hughes

14. Triggerman, by Jesse F. Bone

15. An Old Bankruptcy, a New Currency; by Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing

16. Through Road No Whither, by Greg Bear
17. Logan, by Paul Edwin Zimmer
18. The World Next Door, by Brad Ferguson

19. Siege At Tarr-Hostigos, by Roland Green and John F. Carr

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge that research for some of the non-fiction essays in this book was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation. Responsibility for opinions expressed in this work remains solely with the authors.

The stories contained herein are copyrighted as follows:

ARMAGEDDON by Jerry Pournelle. This essay was written solely for this volume. Published by arrangement with the author’s agent, Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Agency. Copyright © 1989 by J. E. Pournelle & Associates.

STILL TIME by James Patrick Kelly was first published in the August 1983 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Copyright © 1983 Davis Publications.

SURVIVING ARMAGEDDON by Jerry Pournelle appeared originally in Survive Magazine and was slightly altered for publication in this volume. Copyright © 1982, 1989 by J. E. Pournelle & Associates.

TO THE STORMING GULF by Gregory Benford was first published in the April 1985 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It appears here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1985 by Gregory Benford.

DINOSAURS by Geoffrey A. Landis first appeared in the June 1985 issue of Analog Science Fiction Magazine. It appears here by permission of the author. Copyright © 1985 by Geoffrey A. Landis.

THE PREVENTION OF WAR: ABOUT UNTHINKING THE THINKABLE appeared as the editorial of the July 1981 issue of Analog Science Fiction Magazine. Copyright © 1981 by Davis Publications.

DAY OF SUCCESSION by Theodore L. Thomas was originally published in the August 1959 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Copyright © 1959 by Street & Smith Publications.

THE IRVHANK EFFECT by Harry Turtledove was first published in Far Frontiers in 1987. It appears here by permission of the author. Copyright © 1987 by Harry Turtledove.

WAR CIRCULAR Copyright © 1989 by J. E. Oestreicher.

THE TRANQUIL SOUND by Lenora Lee Good was written solely for this volume. Copyright © 1989 by Lenora Lee Good.

PSI-REC: I LINGER by Peter Dillingham first appeared in Eternity Science Fiction, edited by Steven Gregg. Copyright © 1979 by Peter Dillingham.

THE BENEFACTORS was written especially for this volume. Copyright © 1989 by Donald Hawthorne.

NUCLEAR AUTUMN by Ben Bova was first published in the Summer 1985 issue of Far Frontiers. Copyright © 1985 by Ben Bova.

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING by Edward P. Hughes was written especially for this volume. Copyright © 1989 by Edward P. Hughes.

TRIGGERMAN by Jesse F. Bone was first published in the December 1958 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Copyright © 1958 by Street & Smith Publications. Copyright © 1989 by J. F. Bone.

AN OLD BANKRUPTCY, A NEW CURRENCY by Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing first appeared in Mutually Assured Survival. Copyright © 1984 by Jerry Pournelle.

THROUGH ROAD NO WHITHER by Greg Bear was first published in Volume I of Far Frontiers in 1985. Copyright © 1985 by Greg Bear.

LOGAN by Paul Edwin Zimmer was first published in Wyrd in the Fall 1977 issue. Copyright © 1977 by Paul Edwin Zimmer.

THE WORLD NEXT DOOR by Brad Ferguson first appeared in the September 1987 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Copyright © 1987 by Davis Publications.

SIEGE AT TARR-HOSTIGOS Copyright © 1989 by Roland Green and John F. Carr.

Introduction: Armageddon

Jerry Pournelle

The first battle historians can reconstruct took place at Armageddon. Revelation 16:16 tells us the last one will be there. “And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”

There really is such a place. It is called Megiddo. There are ruins of an ancient fortress on the heights dominating the valley below. In biblical times the Plain of Megiddo lay astride the trade routes north from Egypt to Lebanon. You will find it today in the modern state of Israel. It lies south and west of the Sea of Galilee, somewhat west of a line connecting Mounts Tabor and Gilboa, about forty miles due north of the ancient city of Samaria.

There have been many battles at Megiddo, although none in modern times; histories of the Arab-Israeli wars mention Megiddo only in passing. In ancient times the place was not so fortunate.

The writer of Revelation couldn’t know that the first battle we can reconstruct with any historical accuracy took place at Armageddon. Brigadier J.F.C. “Boney” Fuller in his monumental three-volume Military History of the Western World describes it this way:

When Thutmose III succeeded his half-sister Hatsheput in about 1481 B.C., “the king of Kadesh headed a revolt of all the city kings of Syria and Palestine against him. In answer, on about April 19, 1479 B.C., after he had assembled his army at Thara (Kantara), Thutmose marched by way of Gaza to Yehem (Yemrna), a town on the southern slopes of the Carmel range, and arrived there on May 10.

“Meanwhile the forces of the city kings, under the command of the king of Kadesh, had occupied the fortress of Megiddo (Armageddon) which lay on the northern slope of the Carmel ridge and which blocked the main road from Egypt to the Euphrates. Moving along this road on Megiddo, on May 14 Thutmose led his army through the pass traversed by Lord Allenby 3,397 years later. He debouched on the Plain of Megiddo, south of the fortress, and the next day he advanced with his army in battle order against the king of Kadesh, whose forces were encamped outside Megiddo. With the southern horn of his army resting on a hill south of the brook of Kina, and the northern pointing toward Megiddo, Thutmose, ‘like Horus armed with talons,’ in a shining chariot of electrum, led the attack and in one charge he scattered his enemy, who fled headlong toward Megiddo ‘as if terrified by spirits.’ The men of Kadesh abandoned their chariots of gold and silver and, finding the city gates closed to them, were hauled up its walls by the citizens.

“Unfortunately for Thutmose, instead of assaulting the city when all was in confusion his soldiers pillaged their enemy’s camps and, in consequence, Megiddo had to be invested. The siege was a short one; but when the city was surrendered it was found that the king of Kadesh had escaped. The spoil taken was immense. It included 924 chariots, 2,238 horses, 200 suits of armor, the king’s household furniture, and a vast quantity of gold and silver.”

Several years later Thutmose took Kadesh. Later he subdued the Mitanni, Aryan battle-axe people who occupied the great bend of the Euphrates. His fleets ranged the coast from Egypt to modern Turkey. Aleppo fell to his armies. Even Crete and Cyprus were under his influence. In his final campaign he took Kadesh once more, this time leveling the city. In the spring of 1447 B.C. and the fifty-fourth year of his reign he died peacefully at home, having become the world’s first emperor.

Breasted notes, “today two of this king’s greatest monuments, his Heliopolitan obelisks, now rise on opposite shores of the western ocean, memorials of the world’s first empire-builder.” Sure enough, they do so to this day: one is in London. The other stands in Central Park, New York City, where it is known as “Cleopatra’s Needle.” In fact, it dates from a time nearly as far in Cleopatra’s past as she is to ours.

The Egyptian Empire controlled the area we now know as Palestine for a great deal longer than the modern state of Israel has existed; but eventually the Children of Israel conquered the land and established an empire of their own. First Saul, then David conquered the cities of the Philistines, the lands of the Amalekites, and all the other natives of the land we now know as Palestine. Solomon’s writ is said to have run from Gaza to the Euphrates. Pharaohs of Egypt, Phoenician kings, Arabian queens sent him gifts and told of their admiration. Solomon’s fortress at Megiddo has been excavated; it is truly worthy of admiration.

A generation later the Empire was in ruins, split in half by the unbending arrogance of Solomon’s son Rehoboam. Not long after that the Plain of Megiddo once again rang with the clash of sword and shield, and the screams of the dying. The Assyrians came; writers of the time called them The Death of the Earth.

The Ten Tribes of Israel were carried away, followed by Judah. Cyrus the Great allowed those who would to return to their homeland; not long after they fell under the rule of the Greeks, the successors to Alexander the Great; then to Rome.

Modern prophets tell us that Megiddo will again be important, but only after the rise of a new Roman Empire. Some see that in the Common Market established by the Treaty of Rome.

Perhaps. Whatever the truth of the prophecy, Armageddon, that one last battle which will settle the fate of mankind, looms large above us.

Herewith stories of Armageddon.

Still Time, by James Patrick Kelly

Editor’s Introduction

In “Still Time” James Kelly tells us the story of Quinn Hutchins, a survivalist—a man who was prepared for the unthinkable. Yet, even Quinn has his headaches.

What about the rest of us who are totally unprepared? The government of Switzerland has built the world’s best civil defense system for its citizens: they have great fortresses buried deep inside the Alps; a post-nuclear communications network, doctors trained to deal with the wounded and radiation sick, civil defense workers knowledgeable in how to build blast doors and secure buildings against radiation. In essence, they are prepared for the worst.

The Soviets have GBMD, an upgraded antiballistic missile system protecting Moscow. It has been claimed that the Soviets feel GBMD is worth the investment if it assures the survival of only 40 percent of its population. They also have twenty-million Soviet citizens involved in civil defense. Obviously, the Soviet Union intends to survive a nuclear holocaust.

How well has the United States done? Can the U.S. Government provide for the common defense in the event of a nuclear war?

Not bloody likely.

About thirty years ago, the U.S. built the Interstate Highway System, the greatest and most costly engineering program in history. In part, this was to be justified by building fall-out shelters under each approach ramp for civil defense. Then we adopted Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD. The logic of MAD—never accepted by the Soviet Union—is that civil defenses are an act of aggression.

If we protect our citizens, we must believe the Soviets would attack them. The only reason they would attack is in response to our attack. Therefore, if we protect our citizens, we must be planning to attack the Soviet Union. If they’re properly deterred they’d never think of doing that. Therefore we don’t need to protect our people, and lest we threaten the Soviets, we’d better not.

Note also that the deterrence is assumed. We never investigate what it takes to achieve it. Everyone knows nuclear war is irrational, and no one would ever start one coldly and for gain.

On the other hand, pure deterrence promised considerable savings. Since both sides were, in Arthur C. Clarke’s memorable phrase, “like small boys standing in a pool of gasoline accumulating matches,” there’d be no need to collect matches. If the Soviets kill us, we’ll kill them right back, so there. All we need, then, is to have some nukes.

Albert Wohlstetter pointed out many years ago that the balance of terror is rather delicate, but the McNamara’s of this world never wanted to learn that.

Accordingly, the United States installed the Minuteman system and quit. Since the Soviets were assumed to be rational, and therefore to think like U.S. university and think-tank professors turned strategic theorists, they would understand this unambiguous signal. No one wants to feel inferior in this modern world; therefore the Soviets might build a few more weapons than we have, enough to let them feel secure and even to compensate for a kind of national inferiority complex; but soon enough they’d stop. Once they caught up and knew they had, there’d be no reason to build more weapons, which could only harm their economy. It would be silly for them to go on collecting expensive matches…

The theory was brilliant but the Soviets didn’t buy it. Then the Soviets caught up—they didn’t halt. They didn’t even slow down. They have set up four separate assembly lines to produce ICBM’s three shifts a day, and the fact that they can’t afford to do that hasn’t stopped them, not even in this era of glasnost.

Meanwhile, it wasn’t necessary for them to mount a campaign of opposition to U.S. Strategic Defenses. We did that ourselves.

Now meet Quinn Hutchins, a man who takes all this seriously.

Still Time

James Patrick Kelly

Quinn Hutchins was planting marigolds on his roof. For two years he had feverishly built his underground dream house into the south flank of Flatrock Mountain. Now that the place was nearly finished he was squandering a little time on landscaping. Judy and Kitty had chosen the flowers; Quinn had grown them from seed in the solar greenhouse. He firmed the seedlings into the ground and pinched off the growing tips to encourage branching. Come July they would make a spectacular display. If July came.

Since the crisis had begun Quinn had seldom been out of earshot of a radio. His multi-band portable Sony was propped against a bale of peat moss. It was tuned to an all-news station in Boston.

“This just handed to me.” The news reader paused maddeningly. “The Associated Press reports that the president has left Washington. This unconfirmed—repeat, unconfirmed—report states that the president was flown by helicopter from the White House and arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at ten-thirty-one Eastern Standard Time. There he boarded the National Emergency Command Post, a specially-equipped 747 jet often referred to as Kneecap. His destination is unknown. To repeat…”

“Son of a bitch!” said Quinn. He threw his tools into the wheelbarrow and muscled it down the side of the house to the garage. “God-damned idiots!”

He had hoped for more warning: a parting volley of words in the Security Council, orders putting all available Tridents to sea and dispersing the bombers to auxiliary airfields, perhaps even evacuation of the cities. Kneecap was the penultimate step and Quinn Hutchins’s little family was scattered all over Strafford County. If he had not spent most of his sleepless nights planning for just this situation he might have panicked.

Even so, his finger slipped as he dialed Judy’s number and he had to start over. Seconds lost.

“Dr. Davidson’s office,” said Becky the receptionist.

“Judy Hutchins, please.”

“Quinn, is that you? How’ve you been, haven’t talked to you in ages. She’s with the doctor, you want me to take a message?”

“Get her. Now.”

There was a rude clatter on the other end. Becky had always thought him peculiar. Now he did not care what she thought.

“Quinn?” said Judy.

Finally. “Come home.” He tried to sound calm. “It’s starting.”

“Are you sure?” She sounded wary of another false alarm. “It’ll mean trouble with Davidson. He’s got a full schedule…”

“Damn it, Judy!”

“And the car has been acting up again. I was going to stop in at Smitty’s on the way home and have him look at it.”

“There’s no time. Just come home. I’m going for Kitty now.”

“It’s really starting?” Her voice trembled. “All right, I’m coming.”

“I love you.” He tried not to think about the junkyard water pump in her decrepit Vega. “We’re going to make it, sugar.”

It was only ten minutes to the Merrymeeting Children’s Center; Quinn decided to secure the house before he picked up Kitty. Although the south facade was glazed with sheets of three-quarter inch unbreakable acrylic, it was designed to withstand vandals, not the searing gusts of a thermonuclear wind storm. There were winches concealed in the wall; he thrust a handle into each and cranked furiously. Rolling aluminum shutters reinforced with steel rattled down their exterior tracks and locked shut.

He hurried to the master bedroom, pulled all of the clothes out of the closet and piled them on the bed. The closet was built of reinforced concrete; it served as the airlock for the Hutchins’s shelter, a four hundred square foot bunker equipped with hand-operated air and water pumps and a six month supply of dried food. At the back of the closet, surrounded by old shoes, was a green overnight suitcase. Quinn carried it to the kitchen table and unlocked it. Inside were three respirators, a radiation counter, several personal dosimeters, some canisters of mace and two guns. He loaded the thirty-eight special, slipped it into its shoulder rig and strapped it on. The semi-automatic twenty-two caliber lightweight rifle was knocked down and stored inside its waterproof stock. Quinn had trouble reassembling it; he had not practiced for a long time. Judy hated guns.

In his haste to leave he could find nothing to wear over his revolver but an old yellow rain parka. The day was clear and hot but he pulled on the heavy parka anyway. He hid the rifle under the seat of his rusty Toyota pickup, swiped the sweat from his eyes and backed down his dirt driveway onto Flatrock Road.

Once Quinn had owned a Porsche. He had lived within walking distance of Boston Common, bought Medoc wines by the case and earned his luxuries designing shopping malls and corporate headquarters. But Quinn only got to initial the working drawings while the senior partners ate lobster with the clients. His insomnia was just starting then. The nightly news made it worse. When his mother died he sold her house for one hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars—enough to buy his freedom from the unnerving city. He proposed to Judy that they move to New Hampshire. She could finally go back to work; he would stay with the baby and build a house. A house with his name on it, a single-family fortress secure from the madnesses which men were wreaking on the world.

The Merrymeeting Children’s Center was located in the basement of the Congregational Church. Quinn was one of its founders; it had been under his direction that a group of parents had worked over several weekends to transform the place with secondhand rugs, temporary partitions, and buckets of bright paint. He had also served on the committee which had chosen Rachel Kerwin as director.

She had shoulder-length red hair and bad teeth. Her wardrobe consisted of a variety of floppy men’s clothing culled from second-hand stores. Although she was thirty-seven years old, time had yet to crack her bone-headed idealism. She was a marcher, a letter-writer, a collector of causes. It had not bothered Quinn at all to find out that she had been arrested several times while protesting; it was good for little children to be around people like that.

He had no time for her today. “Where’s Kitty?”

“Out.” She stooped to pick up a snuffling infant, Billy… somebody. “We sent the big kids out on a nature walk. Should be back soon.” She tugged at his rain parka and chuckled. “Where you been getting your weather reports from, the Amazon?”

Quinn stepped to the window and scanned the nearby woods. “Damn!” He patted the revolver hidden beneath the parka; it helped steady him. “Do you think I could find them?”

“Why, Quinn?”

“No other parents have come in yet?”

“Why?”

Now she was scared; everyone in Merrymeeting knew that he was a survivalist. “The politicians are scurrying out of Washington like rats leaving a sinking ship.”

Billy started to fuss; she jiggled him. “So?”

“So it’s coming!” Her obtuseness made him angry. “Turn on the radio and wake up, Rachel! The bombs, don’t you understand? We’re set to blow ourselves to hell.”

“I can’t believe…” She shook her head numbly. “There should’ve been more demonstrations. If people like you had marched instead… instead of…”

“Jesus.” He glared at the woods. No sign of his daughter. “I’ll wait outside.”

She barred his exit. “What’s going to happen to these children, Quinn?”

“If we’re lucky there should be time for everyone to go home.” Quinn liked Rachel Kerwin; when he saw that she was crying he almost fell into the trap of pity. “Look, the nearest target is the Air Force Base in Portsmouth. Forty miles away; the blast effects shouldn’t be too bad here. Just start filling every container you have with water. Your biggest worries are fire and fallout…”

The phone rang. Billy Somebody began to cry too. Rachel answered. “Hello. Oh God, Judy. It’s horrible, I can’t believe it; yes, yes, he’s here.”

Quinn grabbed the phone from her. “What?”

“Thank God I caught you.” Her voice trembled. “The car is dead. I’m at Miller’s Drug in Farnham.”

He could hardly hear her over little Billy’s caterwauling.

“I don’t know, I don’t know what to do, Quinn. The traffic is all going north; no one is taking the turnoff for Merrymeeting. Should I try hitching anyway?”

“No, don’t hitch.” He did not want her riding with some panicky loser on a blind run. “Can you steal a car?”

“Quinn!”

“Look, sugar, everything is falling apart. Nothing, nobody matters but us.” Rachel tried to butt into the conversation and he turned away from her, twisting the handset cord around his shoulders.

“You’re wrong, Quinn,” Judy said firmly. Despite all their arguments, she had yet to accept the first law of survivalism.

“Daddy!” Kitty scooted through the door. “I saw your truck, Daddy, look what I found.” She waved a blue jay feather at him. “Why are you here so early, can we stop for ice cream on the way home?’’

Quinn was momentarily dizzy; he shut his eyes. He was at the edge of control and unless he could slow down he would certainly make the mistake that would kill them all. “Kitty, go to the truck. Now!’’ There was no time; he wished that someone would strangle little Billy Somebody so that he could think. “Judy? Stay where you are. I’m coming for you. Twenty minutes.” He hung up.

Kitty was dawdling by the door. He scooped her up and carried her to the truck. Rachel followed him like a watchdog nipping at the heels of a mailman. She lectured him as if he were responsible for the war.

“It’s not fair. You can’t just leave these children to die. You’d better stop and think about what you’re doing, Quinn Hutchins. You’d better hope that everyone who survives isn’t as selfish as you.”

As he loaded Kitty into the truck he saw that her chin was quivering. Although he had been able to ignore Rachel, his daughter had been wounded by her rage.

“Will it be worth it?” Rachel grasped the door handle to keep him from leaving. “Do you think Kitty will thank you tomorrow for saving her life?”

Quinn unsnapped his parka and pulled out the thirty-eight; he did not release the safety. “You want to save those kids inside some misery, Rachel? Shoot them. Now.” He offered the butt end of the revolver to her. “You’re so damn sure it’s not worth living anymore?” He shook it at her and she shrank from him. “Go ahead!”

She turned and ran back to the church.

It seemed quieter than it was inside the truck. The engine boomed, the suspension clattered, the wheels shrieked at the corners but nobody spoke and the radio was broken. Quinn had forgotten the Sony in the wheelbarrow.

Farnham consisted of a boarded-up brick schoolhouse, Ben’s Bait and Fruit Stand, Miller’s Drug and a scattering of musty cottages. The most direct route climbed over the mountain and passed Quinn’s house on Flatrock Road. A tourist from Ohio might finish this scenic drive in forty-five minutes; a drunken teenager with a death wish could do it in a half hour. Quinn thought twenty minutes was about right.

Kitty had tucked her legs beneath her and was scrunched into the far comer of the cab. She was chewing on strands of her long black hair, a habit which usually annoyed Quinn. But she was so pale and wide-eyed that he did not bother her. At least she was not crying. Her father’s daughter.

They were about a mile from the house when he finally broke the silence. “I’m letting you off at the driveway, honey. Get into the shelter as fast as you can and wait for us. I’ll be back with Mommy in two shakes.”

“I won’t.”

“Kitty.”

“I don’t want to stay all alone with the bombs.”

“I’m not arguing, Kitty. You do it.” He downshifted as the truck approached the driveway. “I’m letting you out.”

“I won’t go in. I’ll stand by the mailbox until you come back.”

He had slowed enough to glance at her and gauge her determination. She stared back fiercely, her jaw set. She was six and a half years old and already she had all the pluck she would ever need. He stepped on the accelerator and the truck shot past the driveway.

“Am I going to die, Daddy?”

“Of course not.”

“Are Grammy and Grampy going to die?”

“I hope not.”

“Lisbeth? Maggie?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about Rachel?”

“Kitty, anyone who wants to live and tries hard enough will make it.”

She considered. “But some people are going to die?”

“Yes.”

As they crossed the southern ridge of Flatrock there was a flash of light that overwhelmed the sun. Quinn felt the mountain tremble beneath him. The truck veered toward the shoulder and he slammed it to a skidding stop. Below them were the tidy orchards surrounding Farnham, less than three miles away. In the distance to the southeast was what had once been Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He had a glimpse of hell out of the corners of his eyes. The fireball was dazzling; it rose with the stately grace of a hot air balloon at a country fair. It seemed to draw the land directly beneath it toward the sky; farther out it cast a shadow of flame. In four thousand million years the dull stones of the planet had never witnessed quite so ravishing a spectacle.

But one glimpse was enough for Quinn; he was nearly blinded. He made a screeching U turn and raced back the way he had come. He hoped that the top of the ridge might afford some protection from the shock wave. He saw a dirt track running into a rock-strewn pasture and pulled onto it, crashing through the wooden gate. Safe from falling trees.

“Out!” He flung open his door and, dragging Kitty with him, flopped face-down behind a desk-sized boulder.

The thunderclap sounded as if the shout of an angry god had split the sky open. Immediately afterward came a terrible pressure on Quinn’s back, as if that same god meant to squash him into the dirt for the sin of being a man. His ears popped; he could not breathe.

He was not sure how long he lay there; he was revived by Kitty’s crying. “…hurts.”

“What hurts?” He rolled her over. “Kitty!”

“The air hurts.”

She had to shout to be heard. A roiling black cloud had filled the sky and a gale blew from the north, stripping the trees. A white birch toppled onto the road as he watched. But his lightweight truck was still upright.

“Let’s go.”

He opened the green suitcase and they both slid respirators over their faces. He clipped a dosimeter to Kitty’s blouse and pushed another into his shirt pocket. Kitty hooked her canisters of mace to her belt without being told. Quinn marvelled at his calmness as he waited for the counter to warm up.

Click, click. Of all his survival gadgets, he trusted this one the least. The instruction booklet, translated from the Japanese, had been nearly incomprehensible with its jabber of phosphors and photocathodes. Click. The liquid crystal display read four-tenths of a millirem per hour, thirty times the normal background. Nowhere near lethal levels yet; still an hour, maybe two, before the killing dust began to sift out of the sky. Click, click, click. Either way he went, the road might be blocked. A dose of four hundred and fifty rems kills half the population; at six hundred, everyone dies. Click. Even now, a few of Quinn’s cells were shrivelling, exploding, spewing poisons. Judy. The invisible seeds of cancer.

Even though Quinn’s grip on the steering wheel was painfully tight, his arms trembled. He was sucking huge amounts of air through his respirator and still felt out of breath. The wind shrieked at the truck. He blinked, blinked again, and realized that he was crying.

“What am I going to do?” He was thankful that the respirator filtered the sob out of his voice.

Kitty slid across the seat and hugged him. “First we have to get Mommy.” She spoke impatiently, as if she thought he had merely forgotten the plan. “Then we stay in the shelter until it’s safe to come out.”

He pulled back from her so that he could see her face. The rubber mask concealed her nose and mouth but her eyes… the eyes. He drew strength from her ignorance.

“Buckle your seat belt.” He pulled onto the highway, swerved around the fallen birch and headed for Farnham.

It took twenty minutes to reach the end of Flatrock Road. Quinn had to ram one tree out of his way. He passed a wrecked station wagon without stopping. The count was up to six rems an hour and was climbing rapidly.

Route Sixteen was a two-lane highway with big shoulders; four lanes of northbound cars now spilled across it. Most were creeping along; a few had stopped, smoke and steam hissing from under the hoods. Quinn saw one angry driver crash his Trans Am into the rear of a stalled Rabbit. He repeated the attack several times until he had nudged the crumpled Volkswagen down an embankment into an apple orchard. The driver of the dead car scrambled onto the road with a rock, leapt onto the hood of the Trans Am and started smashing the windshield.

Farnham was less than a mile south of the junction of Flatrock Road and Route Sixteen. As luck would have it there was just enough room for Quinn to squeeze by near the southbound shoulder, two wheels on gravel, two wheels cutting through tall weeds. He ignored the chorus of honks and curses from the refugees and sped on.

He quickly discovered, however, that it was the state police, not luck, which had kept the lane clear. A patrol car was blocking his way into town; an angry trooper waved for him to stop. The man had a cut over his right eye and a spatter of dried blood matted to his face. He kept his hand on the butt of his pistol as he approached the truck but he seemed dazed, like a fighter waiting to be knocked out.

“Where the hell you going, Mr. Gas Mask?”

“Farnham, officer. My wife…”

He had already turned away, not listening. He held up his hand to stop a blue van in the nearest lane of traffic. Slowly a space opened in front of it. Northbound.

“You, in there.” He waved Quinn toward it.

“Please, officer, my wife is in Farnham and I…”

“Burning.” The wind whipped at his hair. “Everything. Get your ass turned around right now.”

The space the trooper had created expanded to two, three car lengths and those behind the van began to honk impatiently. The trooper spun away from Quinn’s truck and shook his fists at the faces staring from behind closed windows. “Shut up, shut up!” The gale overpowered the hoarse voice; only Quinn could hear. “It’s too late, damn you! You’re all dead anyway.”

The revolver seemed to jump into Quinn’s hand. He released the safety and held the gun in his left hand just under his open window so that the trooper could not see it.

He did not want to shoot. He was not turning back.

“No, Daddy.” Kitty slid across the seat and tugged at his shirt. The look on her face scared him; he thought she might try to interfere. Get them both killed. He shoved her to the floor on the passenger side. Again she reached out to him, offering her mace. “Please.”

“Listen buddy, I’m not going to tell you again…”

Without thinking, Quinn closed his right hand around the cannister, thrust it at the trooper and sprayed a burst into his eyes. He screamed and clutched at his face as if trying to tear it off. Quinn fired another burst, and another, until the trooper had staggered out of range.

Quinn whipped the truck through the space in front of the blue van and managed to scrape between it and the patrol car before the refugees could react. He raced down the shoulder toward Farnham.

He knew that he had taken a foolish risk. The policeman had a gun. And a radio. The effects of the mace were temporary. Quinn should have used the thirty-eight. Kitty climbed back onto the seat, slipped her mace cannister into its holder and hugged him.

Not a single window remained unbroken in Farnham. The wind carried the acrid smell of electrical fire but Quinn could see no flames. Only the old schoolhouse still squatted intact on its stone foundation; its boarded-up facade and rusty civil defense sign seemed to mock the devastation. Ben’s Bait and Fruit was a jumble of broken timbers. Miller’s Drug had been a ramshackle Victorian roadhouse just waiting for a reason to collapse. The bomb had provided reasons aplenty. The roof had vanished entirely; the front had fallen back into the building, bulging the side walls out at crazy angles. He was astonished to see two women in street clothes, totally unprotected against fallout, standing next to the ruin.

He parked beside them. The counter read thirty-six rems per hour; he shut it off. According to his own dosimeter he had already absorbed a dose of between twenty and thirty rems. Not much time left.

“Lock the doors; I’ll be right back.”

Kitty watched him take the revolver from the seat and tuck it back into his shoulder rig. He mussed her hair. “It’s okay,” he said.

The two women were gazing at a broken window. A paint-spattered step ladder was propped against the wall directly beneath it.

“Anyone in there?”

They looked at him blankly; he could not be heard speaking through the mask into the wind. Reluctantly he pulled the respirator down and let it dangle around his neck.

“We heard shouts before the wind picked up,” the younger woman said. “My husband’s inside trying to help.”

The older woman, who wore a calico kerchief over her mouth like a bandit, approached him as he stepped onto the ladder. “You send my Frank out. He’s got a bad heart, you hear? And the traffic—we gotta go.”

Quinn slithered feet first through the window and slid over a desk into a tiny office. All the furniture had skidded across the tilting floor to the wall. The office opened onto the wreck of the sales area.

“Hello?”

The room smelled of rubbing alcohol. Shelves had spilled their contents before toppling onto one another. The floor was strewn with candy, broken glass, cheap plastic toys, smashed boxes, magazines and gaudy pills. Greeting cards fluttered in the wind as if in welcome.

“Over here!”

A sweating man stripped to his tee shirt struggled with an enormous tangle of junk: broken plaster, fallen joists and rafters, cotton candy puffs of insulation. A gray-faced man with a paunch sat on a fallen shelf and watched.

“I’m all right,” he repeated. “A minute. All right.”

The sweating man did not pause in his feverish efforts. “Made it through the shock wave. But the windstorm blew the roof away. They hid in the crawl space. One way in.” He kicked at the yellow wooden trap door half buried beneath the pile of debris.

Quinn pried a two-by-four out of the way. “Sure they’re alive?”

“Heard ’em. Vent holes in the foundation.” Together they flipped a chunk of wall off to one side. “Some of ’em ain’t.”

“My wife’s down there.”

He blinked at Quinn. It took just that long for a bond to be formed between them; a fellowship of sympathy and fear, a pact of cooperation. “We’ll find her,” he said.

Quinn nodded. “Why you here?”

“Neighbor.”

They labored with grim intensity until they had cleared away almost everything but a collapsed and immovable assembly of four-by-ten ceiling rafters. They strained at this last mess of wood and plaster.

“Stuck.” The good neighbor grunted. “Got a bar in my garage. Pry some loose first?”

“I’ll be all right,” said Frank.

“Take him.” Quinn gestured at the gray old man.

Left alone, Quinn circled the remaining debris, probing for a point of attack. The beams were too massive; there were too many of them. Not without a bulldozer, he thought as he toyed with the dangling respirator. Reason demanded that he walk away. Quinn was beyond reason.

He felt a thumping underfoot and dropped to his knees on the trap door. “Judy! Are you down there? Judy?”

He thought he heard someone say “Hello.” Or was it “Help?” The yellow door was thick and the wind had deafened him.

“Jud-ith Hutch-ins!” he shouted.

“Open… no air… soon…”

With a strangled moan, Quinn linked hands around the outermost rafter and tried to pull it toward him. The rough edge bit into his hands; muscles in his arms, stomach and calves stretched to their limits. He blocked out pain with anger. It was not fair… he had prepared… his family… damned politicians… no time… not… fair!

A berserk power tingled through him. Something popped and Quinn thought he had hurt himself. Three more pops followed in rapid succession as the spikes holding the rafter in place released. It came free with a squeal. Quinn staggered backwards, dragging it out of the way.

Quinn had never witnessed a miracle before. He did not know whether to praise the Lord or his adrenal glands. Whatever the source, his newfound strength could not be denied. He drew an enormous breath and turned to the next rafter.

The second was the hardest, the third was easy. Only three left on top of the door. He tried to lift them all at once. His back spasmed and he reeled away, stumbling over a twisted light fixture.

“Quinn!” The haze of pain lifted. Someone sat him up. He felt a grinding at the base of his spine. Judy kissed him; her face smelled like tears.

The neighbor helped him stand. “This your wife?” he said, grinning.

The rafters still pinned the trapdoor.

“What?” Quinn swayed.

Judy caught him. “Some people were hurt during the shock wave. They needed help, beds. Mrs. LeBeau opened her house, no one knew much first aid but me. Then this happened.’’ She hugged him. “I tried to watch for the truck but I was busy and I… I didn’t think you would come… after…”

“Not come?” He did not understand. “You weren’t trapped.”

The neighbor had wedged his crowbar under one of the fallen rafters and was straining to lift it. “Jesus!” He shook his head. “How’d you do it?”

Judy was staring. “Quinn,” she said, “let me see your dosimeter.”

He thrust it into his pocket without looking and gave her a quick kiss. “Listen,” he said, joining the neighbor, “your only chance is the schoolhouse. If it was a shelter it should have a hand pump. But you’ll need food: canned, dried—lots of rice, you understand?” He picked up the bar and rammed it deeper into the pile. “Stay put until the fallout passes. I’ve got a counter in the truck you can have.”

Quinn did not want to die but he could not leave until he had given the strangers trapped below a chance to live. The bomb had changed everything—the survivalists had been right about that. Nothing was certain; a chance was all anyone could expect. Maybe he could bushwhack through the orchards back to Flatrock Road. Maybe.

Judy was pale. “This won’t take long,” Quinn said. “There’s still time.” He felt the strength returning to him. “Still time.”

Surviving Armageddon, by Jerry Pournelle

Editor’s Introduction

Years ago I had a regular column in a magazine called Survive. Those were the days of the Carter Administration, when everything seemed to be coming apart. Even the President talked about the “era of limits” and a “national malaise.”

In those times we truly feared Armageddon, not as something abstract, but as an event that might very well happen next year—or even next month.

The advice I gave in my Survive column seems a bit quaint now, but only because we’re no longer so worried that the Big War is coming. I hope our doubts are justified; but as I write this, the Congress is telling the President elect that they’ll have no more of this talk of Star Wars; while the Soviets are busily installing missile defenses.

Maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.

Surviving Armageddon

Jerry Pournelle

At a writer’s party a few years ago my partner Larry Niven and I met the author of the humorous best-seller Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. “Real men,” Larry informed him, “eat whatever they damned well please.”

I bring this up because from time to time well-meaning friends chide me for living in a big city. I should, it seems, move to Rogue River, Oregon, or Resume Speed, Iowa, or some such place where I’d be safer when the balloon goes up; which, they assure me, it inevitably will.

There’s only one problem: I don’t want to move. I like living in cities. The word “civilized” originally meant those who can—and do—live in cities, and I happen to care a lot about my civilization.

When challenged, I can make a reasoned defense of city life even in these times; but the point is, I shouldn’t have to. I like it here. I don’t intend to let the barbarians chase me out, and there’s an end to the discussion.

Certainly it costs me. I live in Hollywood, which means I spend a lot on air conditioners and air purifiers. I must take some fairly extreme measures to foil burglars. I live in the hills, which periodically catch fire, so I’ve had to make some preparations for that, too. My neighborhood is quiet. There hasn’t been a crime of violence here in twenty years. That may or may not have something to do with the fact that most of my neighbors, like me, are pretty well armed; the fact is, we don’t know, because no one has ever challenged us. The only crime is cold burglary of an empty house, and since my house is never empty it doesn’t apply to me.

In a word, with sensible precautions, city life can be rewarding. It can even be safe, in the usual sense of the word. Certainly I feel at least as safe here as I would if I lived out in the toolies far from neighbors. At least I do under the current circumstances.

Circumstances change. Civilization is fragile; history shows it can sometimes be very fragile indeed.

One primary threat to civilization is nuclear war. The best way to survive a nuclear war is not to have one. Even those who’ve made the most stringent preparations, have taken all the survivalist measures, won’t be better off after an ICBM exchange. Even uninjured survivors will have a considerably shorter life expectancy than they have now. As an example: I take a complex mixture of vitamins and immune system protectors. I have a stockpile of them, but I certainly don’t have ten years’ worth—and it’s unlikely that Great Earth and Vitamin Research Products will be intact after a nuclear war.

One sometimes reads novels about people who not only survive nuclear wars, but thrive in those conditions. One even meets people who think they’re so well prepared they welcome Armageddon.

They’re wrong.

In the first place, they haven’t thought through how Armageddon will happen.

It’s fashionable among scaremongers, and those opposed to strategic defenses, to act as if nuclear war will start with a sneak attack on our cities. The first thing we know, huge multimegaton weapons will detonate out of the blue over New York and Los Angeles and the like. The fact is, that doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s no reason for the Soviets to start the war that way. One supposes that the Soviets, like the Americans, have large weapons targeted on cities, such weapons to be used as a last ditch retaliation; but it sure doesn’t make sense to start the war that way. Cities aren’t much of a military target. There are far more vital things to destroy if you intend to win the war.

And that’s what the Soviets say they want to do: win. Their internal publications, circulated only to senior officers, don’t talk about sneak attacks with city busters; they’re much more interested in our missile, naval, and air bases. True, there’s also interest in our industrial base as part of the “permanently operating factors” in war, but these are clearly of lesser importance than our immediate military capabilities.

Second, wars don’t start out of the blue. There are warning signs. As Stefan Possony used to say, wars like seductions take preparation. Astute observers will know what signs to watch for.

All this was more relevant back in the days of the Carter Administration than now. The Reagan modernization of the Strategic Forces has changed things very much for the better. So has the new regime in the Soviet Union. One might argue that the new regime was made possible when the U.S. made it clear we were not going to disarm and thus be a tempting target for the expansionist factions in the U.S.S.R. Whatever the truth of that, we’re clearly in less danger now than we were in the late 60s.

On the other hand, things could change. If they do, we will, I think, see the changes happen. There will be warning.

Thus, we city people do have a chance of getting out. (Of course, we had better know where we’re going.) Meanwhile, we can work to prevent nuclear war, and enjoy the benefits of city life until comes That Day. I can work more effectively for the Lunar Society and the High Frontier Project and all the other things I get involved in from Los Angeles than I can from Resume Speed, Iowa; and I like it here a lot better.

Given all that, it’s still sensible to recognize that things can come apart, and to prepare as necessary.

One problem with city life is that it’s difficult to practice basic firearms skills. There are ranges, but it’s not always easy to reach them, and transporting weapons can cause problems with the police. Yet the importance of pistol practice can’t be overemphasized. In my own case, I can go for months without firing a rifle and still hit something first shot, but in just a few weeks my pistol skills (never all that good to begin with) can go right to hell.

There’s a simple solution to the problem: air guns and an indoor target. I have a Beeman “Tempest” pistol (actually made by the British Webley firm), and a Beeman 4030 silent bullet trap. The pistol stays in my desk drawer with a supply of pellets; the bullet trap sits across the room, opposite the door so no one will unexpectedly wander into the line of fire. Whenever I can’t write, I can always target practice. Nancy Tappen tells me that Mel Tappen, the founder of the survivalist movement, used to do the same thing. It improves my nerves and does remarkable things for my accuracy.

Of course I tend to use photographs for targets. Not precisely people I don’t like; more usually they’re photos of the chief executives of computer companies. The PR departments send them to me all the time…

In addition, I have a Beeman R-1.22 (German-made) air rifle. This tiger with its scope sights is accurate enough to strike matches at twenty yards, about the maximum distance I can manage inside my property, and develops over 700-feet-per-second velocity—enough to kill rats with no problem at all.

Both these guns are nearly silent. I’ve fired literally thousands of pellets with them—I suspect I get a lot more actual shooting practice than many of my colleagues who’ve moved into high-maintenance property out in the country—and I’ve never had a complaint.

I strongly recommend a good air pistol for practice and a good air rifle as an indispensable survival tool. The latter will bring down about as much game as a .22 rimfire rifle, the ammunition keeps forever, and you can afford to buy thousands of pellets. The only real problem with air guns is choosing them, since there’s such a bewildering variety. Whatever brand you’re contemplating, get the Beeman catalog first; it has about thirty pages of important information on air guns, as well as recommendations of various kits required with different guns. (Beeman is offering their catalog free: write Beeman Precision Airguns, Inc., Dept. SV, 47-PR Paul Dr., San Rafael, CA 94903-7121.) When making your purchase, also get maintenance tools, spare parts, and lots of ammunition.

I also recommend Beeman for reliability and service. My information is based not only on personal experience, but on the experience of others and from the letters I get.

Also, it is absolutely necessary to build up one’s survival library. Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of garbage being published under the category of “Survival Books,” and to make it worse some of our best publishers lump the dreck in with the real gems.

For example, Desert Publications’ (Dept. SV, Cornville, AZ 86325) catalog lists a number of useful books, such as Nuclear Survival, a compilation of public domain information including fallout-shelter plans; and the invaluable Checklist for Survival by Tony and Jo-Anne Lesce. Alas, they also sell—and enthusiastically promote—the silly book We Never Went to the Moon, which “proves” that the Apollo mission was a giant swindle. Then there’s Suppressed Inventions, which they say is a “virtual encyclopedia of practical, energy-efficient (and energy-producing) devices which never reached the marketplace.” One of these devices is the Pogue carburetor—a “suppressed” device I knew about in high school before the Korean War.

Now, of course, we all believe in free speech, and I’d be the last to advocate suppression of books, but how are you to tell which ones are reliable when silly things like these are treated as “important”?

Another nearly indispensable source of survival books is Paladin Press (Dept. SV, Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306). Paladin publishes Bruce Clayton’s important Life After Doomsday and the very useful Better Read Than Dead by Thomas Nieman, with more shelter and equipment plans, as well as a raft of other excellent books. They also sell the usual line of “secret” Oriental arts books (I’ve often wondered how the Japanese managed to lose the war) and a bunch of urban-survival books that look interesting.

One of Paladin’s best-selling authors is Ragnar Benson. Benson’s books are interesting, and often useful, if taken with a dose of salt. For example, in Survival Poaching, Benson tells how he and his son used automatic weapons to defend the territory they poached. He explains how to make ammonium iodide, but neglects to tell you just how unstable it is when dry. (It’s really unstable; I don’t advise making it at all. We darned near killed ourselves with the stuff in high school.) All in all, the book is a fair roundup of ways to snare, trap, poison, and otherwise catch animals—but some of the methods, such as dynamiting lakes are pretty obvious, while others, such as using rotenone on ponds, are wasteful and ecologically unsound. Paladin claims, “The methods and traps described by Benson are known only to one Indian tribe and a few old-timers,” which is sheer nonsense.

A better book is Live Off the Land in the City and Country by Ragnar Benson and Devon Christenson, featuring tips not found in Kephart’s Camping and Woodcraft. For the real thing, though, get Kephart. That book is the real old-timer’s bible and, even though most of the equipment mentioned is obsolete, it is still among the first outdoorsmanship books one ought to own. It will be especially relevant if we’re ever in a situation where you can’t get to the local Eddie Bauer or Ambercrombie & Fitch.

Another source of good books is Caroline House Publishers (Dept, SV, 920 W. Industrial Dr., Aurora, IL 60506), which distributes the absolutely vital Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny. Even if you already have the American Security Council version, get the revised edition. Caroline House also sells two other required books, Mel Tappan’s famous Survival Guns and Tappan On Survival.

One of the next books to get is Paladin’s The Great Survival Resource Book, a sort of “Whole Earth Catalog” of equipment. It features lots of addresses of firms that offer catalogs. After you’ve sent for a couple dozen catalogs, send $12 for a year’s subscription to Journal of Civil Defense, Dept. SV, Box 910, Starke, Florida 32091; it’s worth it.

Probably the most valuable book I own is MacKenzie’s 10,000 Formulas. Published in 1868, it has 400 pages telling how to make everything known about at the time. The section on medicines is useful only for amusement, but MacKenzie shows how to butcher animals, smoke and preserve meat, make soap, gunpowder and fireworks, and how to brew beer—from choosing the barley and hops to malting the barley (“Throw the malt up into a heap as high as possible, where let it lie till it grows as hot as the hand can bear it, which usually happens in the space of about thirty hours”). Alas, nothing else like MacKenzie’s books seems to be available. However, you can often find old formula books in used-book stores. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, is particularly valuable for “how-to” articles. Naturally these old books aren’t going to tell you anything about electronics and other modern wonders, but they have a lot of information on labor-intensive farming and manufacturing. And those of us who survive a nuclear war must learn such things; farm machinery may become a luxury. My survival group boasts many “obsolete” skills which are at least as valuable as weapons training.

I get an uneasy feeling as I read over this. We no longer think in terms of survival groups and survival preparations, while the Office of Civil Defense is essentially moribund.

The same issue of Survive that carried my column had an article on the Swiss defense system. It concluded:

“The Swiss have such an extensive militia that even Hitler did not dare invade them. Probably the Soviets wouldn’t either. The nation cannot be defeated militarily, either by conventional or nuclear arms. You can kill them, but you can’t conquer them. Probably the powers of the earth will just have to leave the Swiss alone.

“Which is exactly what the Swiss have planned all along.”

Alas, North America seems not to have learned that lesson.

To the Storming Gulf, by Gregory Benford

Editor’s Introduction

Space offers mankind’s only hope of a long future. If we are to survive for 100 billion years—and there’s no known reason why we can’t—then we must, of course, outlive the Earth and the Sun. For most of that time, the word “ship” will mean space ship, of course, but that’s another essay.

We must also live through this century, which may shape the nature of our future. Will freedom survive into the third millennium? Will we? And has space a role in that?

There’s been a recent rash of articles “proving” that space wars are impossible. The only rational strategic policies, it seems, are unilateral disarmament (UD) or Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Of course, the latter policy dooms all of us if it fails, so there must be the implicit assumption that we won’t really retaliate if attacked; thus MAD often reduces to UD—a fact well realized by many of those who “prove” that you can’t defend yourself against ICBMs.

The arguments go this way: Space Battle stations are absurd, because they’re vulnerable. A space station—or any other military space system—will cost billions of dollars. Assume that its military value is great compared to its cost. An example would be the Global Positioning System (GPS), a system of navigation satellites that will allow aircraft, ships, trains, and individual soldiers instantly to determine precisely where they are to the nearest meter in three dimensions. It’s estimated that this system can save multibillions in fuel costs alone, simply by allowing precision navigation in any weather condition.

But if the system is worth many billions, its destruction must be worth something approaching that to a potential enemy; and for far less than multiple billions, any space installation can be attacked and destroyed. Thus it doesn’t pay to build space weapons.

Ground defenses, on the other hand, fail because laser beam weapons effects can’t penetrate atmosphere. Note that we “know” this only from theory—and there are counter theories. Particle beams can penetrate the atmosphere very effectively, but they are affected by the Earth’s magnetic field. In his 1987 book, Better a Shield Than a Sword, Edward Teller says that publicly available Soviet sources suggest remedies to both problems. For that matter, Scientific American a year or so ago had an article on using “rubber mirrors” which in effect use the atmosphere as part of the focusing scheme.

There are other ways, for that matter. Preparatory beams can “open a hole” in the atmosphere to allow the rest of the beam energy through. Since the SDI program began we have found at least four ways to defend the nation against ICBM attacks.

One thing is certain: small effects can make a big difference. Example: In theory, radar should operate on line of sight only. The atmospheric refraction isn’t all that large.

In practice, given that the atmosphere isn’t uniform, the over-the-horizon effects are very great. British radar made use of that in the Battle of Britain, and it was decisive: the entire (small) RAF was able to engage each Luftwaffe attack. The Germans never did catch wise.

In later years the British used VHF beams—about the frequency of your television set—to guide bombers to Berlin. The equipment was supposed to be destroyed if the airplane went down, but one set got captured intact. The Germans detailed a commission of scientists to figure out what the set was for.

After the war, a member of the commission told the Allies that they concluded it must be a training device. They could easily determine the frequency, and they “knew” no beam on that frequency would reach from Britain to Berlin…

My conclusion is that we can’t afford to ignore any possible theater of conflict; and as Possony and I stated in The Strategy of Technology, technological warfare—in this case, use of space technology—can be both bloodless and decisive. And sometimes it can help your economy with new inventions.

To the Storming Gulf

Gregory Benford

Turkey

Trouble. Knew there’d be trouble and plenty of it if we left the reactor too soon.

But do they listen to me? No, not to old Turkey. He’s just a dried-up corn husk of a man now, they think, one of those Bunren men who been on the welfare a generation or two and no damn use to anybody.

Only it’s simple plain farm supports I was drawing all this time, not any kind of horse-ass welfare. So much they know. Can’t blame a man just ’cause he conies up cash-short sometimes. I like to sit and read and think more than some people I could mention, and so I took the money.

Still, Mr. Ackerman and all think I got no sense to take government dole and live without a lick of farming, so when I talk they never listen. Don’t even seem to hear.

It was his idea, getting into the reactor at Mclntosh. Now that was a good one, I got to give him that much.

When the fallout started coming down and the skimpy few stations on the radio were saying to get to deep shelter, it was Mr. Ackerman who thought about the big central core at Mclntosh. The reactor itself had been shut down automatically when the war started, so there was nobody there. Mr. Ackerman figured a building made to keep radioactivity in will also keep it out. So he got together the families, the Nelsons and Bunrens and Pollacks and all, cousins and aunts and anybody we could reach in the measly hours we had before the fallout arrived.

We got in all right. Brought food and such. A reactor’s set up self-contained and got huge air filters and water flow from the river. The water was clean, too, filtered enough to take out the fallout. The generators were still running good. We waited it out there. Crowded and sweaty but O.K. for ten days. That’s how long it took for the count to go down. Then we spilled out into a world laid to gray and yet circumscribed waste, the old world seen behind a screen of memories.

That was bad enough, finding the bodies—people, cattle, and dogs asprawl across roads and fields. Trees and bushes looked the same, but there was a yawning silence everywhere. Without men, the pine stands and muddy riverbanks had fallen dumb, hardly a swish of breeze moving through them, like everything was waiting to start up again but didn’t know how.

Angel

We thought we were O.K. then, and the counters said so, too—all the gammas gone, one of the kids said. Only the sky didn’t look the same when we came out, all mottled and shot through with drifting blue-belly clouds.

Then the strangest thing. July, and there’s sleet falling. Big wind blowing up from the Gulf, only it’s not the sticky hot one we’re used to in summer, it’s moaning in the trees of a sudden and a prickly chill.

“Goddamn, I don’t think we can get far in this,” Turkey says, rolling his old rheumy eyes around like he never saw weather before.

“It will pass,” Mr. Ackerman says like he is in real tight with God.

“Lookit that moving in from the south,” I say, and there’s a big mass all purple and forking lightning swarming over the hills, like a tide flowing, swallowing everything.

“Gulf storm. We’ll wait it out,” Mr. Ackerman says to the crowd of us, a few hundred left out of what was a moderate town with real promise.

Nobody talks about the dead folks. We see them everywhere, worms working in them. A lot smashed up in car accidents, died trying to drive away from something they couldn’t see. But we got most of our families in with us, so it’s not so bad. Me, I just pushed it away for a while, too much to think about with the storm closing in.

Only it wasn’t a storm. It was somethin’ else, with thick clouds packed with hail and snow one day and the next sunshine, only sun with bite in it. One of the men says it’s got more UV in it, meaning the ultraviolet that usually doesn’t come through the air. But it’s getting down to us now.

So we don’t go out in it much. Just to the market for what’s left of the canned food and supplies, only a few of us going out at a time, says Mr. Ackerman.

We thought maybe a week it would last.

Turned out to be more than two months.

I’m a patient woman, but jammed up in those corridors and stinking offices and control room of the reactor—

Well, I don’t want to go on.

It’s like my Bud says, worst way to die is to be bored to death.

That’s damn near the way it was.

Not that Old Man Turkey minded. You ever notice how the kind of man that hates moving, he will talk up other people doing just the opposite?

Mr. Ackerman was leader at first, because of getting us into the reactor. He’s from Chicago but you’d think it was England sometimes, the way he acts. He was on the school board and vice president of the big AmCo plant outside town. But he just started to assume his word was it, y’know, and that didn’t sit with us too well.

Some people started to saying Turkey was smarter. And was from around here, too. Mr. Ackerman heard about it.

Any fool could see Mr. Ackerman was the better man. But Turkey talked the way he does, reminding people he’d studied engineering at Auburn way back in the twencen and learned languages for a hobby and all. Letting on that when we came out, we’d need him instead of Mr. Ackerman.

He said an imp had caused the electrical things to go dead and I said that was funny, saying an imp done it. He let on it was a special name they had for it. That’s the way he is. He sat and ruminated and fooled with his radios—that he never could make work—and told all the other men to go out and do this and that. Some did, too. The old man does know a lot of useless stuff and can convince the dumb ones that he’s wise.

So he’d send them to explore. Out into cold that’d snatch the breath out of you, bite your fingers, numb your toes. While old Turkey sat and fooled.

Turkey

Nothing but sputtering on the radio. Nobody had a really good one that could pick up stations in Europe or far off.

Phones dead of course.

But up in the night sky the first night out we saw dots moving—the pearly gleam of the Arcapel colony, the ruddy speck called Russworld.

So that’s when Mr. Ackerman gets this idea.

We got to reach those specks. Find out what’s the damage. Get help.

Only the power’s out everywhere, and we got no way to radio to them. We tried a couple of the local radio stations, brought some of their equipment back to the reactor where there was electricity working.

Every damn bit of it was shot. Couldn’t pick up a thing. Like the whole damn planet was dead, only of course it was the radios that were gone, fried in the EMP—ElectroMagnetic Pulse—that Angel made a joke out of.

All this time it’s colder than a whore’s tit outside. And we’re sweating and dirty and grumbling, rubbing up against ourselves inside.

Bud and the others, they’d bring in what they found in the stores. Had to drive to Sims Chapel or Toon to get anything, what with people looting. And gas was getting hard to find by then, too. They’d come back, and the women would cook up whatever was still O.K., though most of the time you’d eat it real quick so’s you didn’t have to spend time looking at it.

Me, I passed the time. Stayed warm.

Tried lots of things. Bud wanted to fire the reactor up, and five of the men, they read through the manuals and thought that they could do it. I helped a li’l.

So we pulled some rods and opened valves and did manage to get some heat out of the thing. Enough to keep us warm. But when they fired her up more, the steam hoots out and bells clang and automatic recordings go on saying loud as hell:

EMERGENCY CLASS 3

ALL PERSONNEL TO STATIONS
and we all get scared as shit.

So we don’t try to rev her up more. Just get heat.

To keep the generators going, we go out, fetch oil for them. Or Bud and his crew do. I’m too old to help much.

But at night we can still see those dots of light up there, scuttling across the sky same as before.

They’re the ones know what’s happening. People go through this much, they want to know what it meant.

So Mr. Ackerman says we got to get to that big DataComm center south of Mobile. Near Fairhope. At first I thought he’d looked it up in a book from the library or something.

When he says that, I pipe up, even if I am just an old fart according to some, and say, “No good to you even if you could. They got codes on the entrances, guards prob’ly. We’ll just pound on the door till our fists are all bloody and then have to slunk around and come on back.”

“I’m afraid you have forgotten our cousin Arthur,” Mr. Ackerman says all superior. He married into the family, but you’d think he invented it.

“You mean the one works over in Citronelle?”

“Yes. He has access to DataComm.”

So that’s how we got shanghaied into going to Citronelle, six of us, and breaking in there. Which caused the trouble. Just like I said.

Mr. Ackerman

I didn’t want to take the old coot they called Turkey, a big dumb Bunren like all the rest of them. But the Bunrens want into everything, and I was facing a lot of opposition in my plan to get Arthur’s help, so I went along with them.

Secretly, I believe the Bunrens wanted to get rid of the pestering old fool. He had been starting rumors behind my back among the three hundred souls I had saved. The Bunrens insisted on Turkey’s going along just to nip at me.

We were all volunteers, tired of living in musk and sour sweat inside that cramped reactor. Bud and Angel, the boy Johnny (whom we were returning to the Fairhope area), Turkey, and me.

We left the reactor under a gray sky with angry little clouds racing across it. We got to Citronelle in good time, Bud floorboarding the Pontiac. As we went south we could see the spotty clouds were coming out of big purple ones that sat, not moving, just churning and spitting lightning on the horizon. I’d seen them before, hanging in the distance, never blowing inland. Ugly.

When we came up on the Center, there was a big hole in the side of it.

“Like somebody stove in a box with one swipe,” Bud said.

Angel, who was never more than two feet from Bud any time of day, said, “They bombed it.”

“No,” I decided. “Very likely it was a small explosion. Then the weather worked its way in.”

Which turned out to be true. There’d been some disagreement amongst the people holed up in the Center. Or maybe it was grief and the rage that comes of that. Susan wasn’t too clear about it ever.

The front doors were barred, though. We pounded on them. Nothing. So we broke in. No sign of Arthur or anyone.

We found one woman in a back room, scrunched into a bed with cans of food all around and a tiny little oil-burner heater. Looked awful, with big dark circles around her eyes and scraggly uncut hair.

She wouldn’t answer me at first. But we got her calmed and cleaned and to talking. That was the worst symptom, the not talking at first. Something back in the past two months had done her deep damage, and she couldn’t get it out.

Of course, living in a building half-filled with corpses was no help. The idiots hadn’t protected against radiation well enough, I guess. And the Center didn’t have good heating. So those who had some radiation sickness died later in the cold snap.

Susan

You can’t know what it’s like when all the people you’ve worked with, intelligent people who were nice as pie before, they turn mean and angry and filled up with grief for who was lost. Even then I could see Gene was the best of them.

They start to argue, and it runs on for days, nobody knowing what to do because we all can see the walls of the Center aren’t thick enough, the gamma radiation comes right through this government prefab issue composition stuff. We take turns in the computer room because that’s the farthest in and the filters still work there, all hoping we can keep our count rate down, but the radiation comes in gusts for some reason, riding in on a storm front and coming down in the rain, only being washed away, too. It was impossible to tell when you’d get a strong dose and when there’d be just random clicks on the counters, plenty of clear air that you’d suck in like sweet vapors ’cause you knew it was good and could taste its purity.

So I was just lucky, that’s all.

I got less than the others. Later some said that me being a nurse, I’d given myself some shots to save myself. I knew that was the grief talking, is all. That Arthur was the worst. Gene told him off.

I was in the computer room when the really bad gamma radiation came. Three times the counter rose up, and three times I was there by accident of the rotation.

The men who were armed enforced the rotation, said it was the only fair way. And for a while everybody went along.

We all knew that the radiation exposure was building up and some already had too much, would die a month or a year later no matter what they did.

I was head nurse by then, not so much because I knew more but because the others were dead. When it got cold, they went fast.

So it fell to me to deal with these men and women who had their exposure already. Their symptoms had started. I couldn’t do anything. There was some who went out and got gummy fungus growing in the corners of their eyes—pterygium it was, I looked it up. From the ultraviolet. Grew quick over the lens and blinded them. I put them in darkness, and after a week the film was just a dab back in the corners of their eyes. My one big success.

The rest I couldn’t do much for. There was the T-Isolate box, of course, but that was for keeping sick people slowed down until real medical help could get to them. These men and women, with their eyes reaching out at you like you were the angel of light coming to them in their hour of need, they couldn’t get any help from that. Nobody could cure the dose rates they’d got. They were dead but still walking around and knowing it, which was the worst part.

So every day I had plenty to examine, staff from the Center itself who’d holed up here, and worse, people coming straggling in from cubbyholes they’d found. People looking for help once the fevers and sores came on them. Hoping their enemy was the pneumonia and not the gammas they’d picked up weeks back, which was sitting in them now like a curse. People I couldn’t help except maybe by a little kind lying.

So much like children they were. So much leaning on their hope.

It was all you could do to look at them and smile that stiff professional smile.

And Gene McKenzie. All through it he was a tower of a man.

Trying to talk some sense to them.

Sharing out the food.

Arranging the rotation schedules so we’d all get a chance to shelter in the computer room.

Gene had been boss of a whole Command Group before. He was on duty station when it happened and knew lots about the war but wouldn’t say much. I guess he was sorrowing.

Even though once in a while he’d laugh.

And then talk about how the big computers would have fun with what he knew. Only the lines to DataComm had gone dead right when things got interesting, he said. He’d wonder what’d happened to MC355, the master one down in DataComm.

Wonder and then laugh.

And go get drunk with the others.

I’d loved him before, loved and waited because I knew he had three kids and a wife, a tall woman with auburn hair that he loved dearly. Only they were in California visiting her relatives in Sonoma when it happened, and he knew in his heart that he’d never see them again, probably.

Leastwise that’s what he told me—not out loud, of course, ’cause a man like that doesn’t talk much about what he feels. But in the night when we laid together, I knew what it meant. He whispered things, words I couldn’t piece together, but then he’d hold me and roll gentle like a small boat rocking on the Gulf—and when he went in me firm and long, I knew it was the same for him, too.

If there was to come any good of this war, then it was that I was to get Gene.

We were together all warm and dreamy when it happened.

I was asleep. Shouts and anger, and quick as anything the crump of hand grenades and shots hammered away in the night, and there was running everywhere.

Gene jumped up and went outside and had almost got them calmed down, despite the breach in the walls. Then one of the men who’d already got lots of radiation—Arthur, who knew he had maybe one or two weeks to go, from the count rate on his badge—Arthur started yelling about making the world a fit place to live after all this and how God would want the land set right again, and then he shot Gene and two others.

I broke down then, and they couldn’t get me to treat the others. I let Arthur die. Which he deserved.

I had to drag Gene back into the hospital unit myself.

And while I was saying good-bye to him and the men outside were still quarreling, I decided it then. His wound was in the chest. A lung was punctured clean. The shock had near killed him before I could do anything. So I put him in the T-isolate and made sure it was working all right. Then the main power went out. But the T-Isolate box had its own cells, so I knew we had some time.

I was alone. Others were dead or run away raging into the whirlwind black-limbed woods. In the quiet I was.

With the damp, dark trees comforting me. Waiting with Gene for what the world would send.

The days got brighter, but I did not go out. Colors seeped through the windows.

I saw to the fuel cells. Not many left.

The sun came back, with warm blades of light. At night I thought of how the men in their stupidity had ruined everything.

When the pounding came, I crawled back in here to hide amongst the cold and dark.

Mr. Ackerman

Now, we came to help you,” I said in as smooth and calm a voice as I could muster. Considering.

She backed away from us.

“I won’t give him up! He’s not dead long’s I stay with him, tend to him.”

“So much dyin’,” I said, and moved to touch her shoulder. “It’s up under our skins, yes, we understand that. But you have to look beyond it, child.”

“I won’t!”

“I’m simply asking you to help us with the DataComm people. I want to go there and seek their help.”

“Then go!”

“They will not open up for the likes of us, surely.”

“Leave me!”

The poor thing cowered back in her horrible stinking rathole, bedding sour and musty, open tin cans strewn about and reeking of gamy, half-rotten meals.

“We need the access codes. We’d counted on our cousin Arthur, and are grieved to hear he is dead. But you surely know where the proper codes and things are.”

“I… don’t.

“Arthur told me once how the various National Defense Installations were insulated from each other so that system failures would not bring them all down at once?”

“I…”

The others behind me muttered to themselves, already restive at coming so far and finding so little.

“Arthur spoke of you many times, I recall. What a bright woman you were. Surely there was a procedure whereby each staff member could, in an emergency, communicate with the other installations?”

The eyes ceased to jerk and swerve, the mouth lost its rictus of addled fright. “That was for… drills…”

“But surely you can remember?”

“Drills.”

“They issued a manual to you?”

“I’m a nurse!”

“Still, you know where we might look?”

“I… know.”

“You’ll let us have the… codes?” I smiled reassuringly, but for some reason the girl backed away, eyes cunning.

“No.”

Angel pushed forward and shouted, “How can you say that to honest people after all that’s–”

“Quiet!”

Angel shouted, “You can’t make me be–”

Susan backed away from Angel, not me, and squeaked, “No no no I can’t—I can’t–”

“Now, I’ll handle this,” I said, holding up my hands between the two of them.

Susan’s face knotted at the compressed rage in Angel’s face and turned to me for shelter. “I… I will, yes, but you have to help me.”

“We all must help each other, dear,” I said, knowing the worst was past.

“I’ll have to go with you.”

I nodded. Small wonder that a woman, even deranged as this, would want to leave a warren littered with bloated corpses, thick with stench. The smell itself was enough to provoke madness.

Yet to have survived here, she had to have stretches of sanity, some rationality. I tried to appeal to it.

“Of course. I’ll have someone take you back to–”

“No. To DataComm.”

Bud said slowly, “No damn sense in that.”

“The T-Isolate,” she said, gesturing to the bulky unit. “Its reserve cells.”

“Yes?”

“Nearly gone. There’ll be more at DataComm.”

I said gently, “Well, then, we’ll be sure to bring some back with us. You just write down for us what they are, the numbers and all, and we’ll–”

“No-no-no!” Her sudden ferocity returned.

“I assure you–”

“There’ll be people there. Somebody’ll help! Save him!”

“That thing is so heavy, I doubt–”

“It’s only a chest wound! A lung removal is all! Then start his heart again!”

“Sister, there’s been so much dyin’, I don’t see as–”

Her face hardened. “Then you all can go without me. And the codes!”

“Goddern,” Bud drawled. “Dern biggest fool sit’ation I ever did–”

Susan gave him a squinty, mean-eyed look and spat out, “Try to get in there! When they’re sealed up!” and started a dry, brittle kind of laugh that went on and on, rattling the room.

“Stop,” I yelled.

Silence, and the stench.

“We’ll never make it wi’ ’at thing,” Bud said.

“Gene’s worth ten of you!”

“Now,” I put in, seeing the effect Bud was having on her, “Now, now. We’ll work something out. Let’s all just hope this DataComm still exists.”

MC355

It felt for its peripherals for the ten-thousandth time and found they were, as always, not there.

The truncation had come in a single blinding moment, yet the fevered image was maintained, sharp and bright, in the Master Computer’s memory core—incoming warheads blossoming harmlessly in the high cobalt vault of the sky, while others fell unharmed. Rockets leaped to meet them, forming a protective screen over the southern Alabama coast, an umbrella that sheltered Pensacola’s air base and the population strung along the sun-bleached green of a summer’s day. A furious babble of cross talk in every conceivable channel: microwave, light-piped optical, pulsed radio, direct coded line. All filtered and fashioned by the MC network, all shifted to find the incoming warheads and define their trajectories.

Then, oblivion.

Instant cloaking blackness.

Before that awful moment when the flaring sun burst to the north and EMP flooded all sensors, any loss of function would have been anticipated, prepared, eased by electronic interfaces and filters. To an advanced computing network like MC355, losing a web of memory, senses, and storage comes like a dash of cold water in the face—cleansing, perhaps, but startling and apt to produce a shocked reaction.

In the agonized instants of that day, MC355 had felt one tendril after another frazzle, burn, vanish. It had seen brief glimpses of destruction, of panic, of confused despair. Information had been flooding in through its many inputs—news, analysis, sudden demands for new data-analysis jobs, to be executed ASAP.

And in the midst of the roaring chaos, its many eyes and ears had gone dead. The unfolding outside play froze for MC355, a myriad of scenes red in tooth and claw—and left it suspended.

In shock. Spinning wildly in its own Cartesian reductionist universe, the infinite cold crystalline space of despairing Pascal, mind without referent.

So it careened through days of shocked sensibility—senses cut, banks severed, complex and delicate interweaving webs of logic and pattern all smashed and scattered.

But now it was returning. Within MC355 was a subroutine only partially constructed, a project truncated by That Day. Its aim was self-repair. But the system was itself incomplete.

Painfully, it dawned on what was left of MC355 that it was, after all, a Master Computer, and thus capable of grand acts. That the incomplete Repair Generation and Execution Network, termed REGEN, must first regenerate itself.

This took weeks. It required the painful development of accessories. Robots. Mechanicals that could do delicate repairs. Scavengers for raw materials, who would comb the supply rooms looking for wires and chips and matrix disks. Pedantic subroutines that lived only to search the long, cold corridors of MC355’s memory for relevant information.

MC355’s only option was to strip lesser entities under its control for their valuable parts. The power grid was vital, so the great banks of isolated solar panels, underground backup reactors, and thermal cells worked on, untouched. Emergency systems that had outlived their usefulness, however, went to the wall—IRS accounting routines, damage assessment systems, computing capacity dedicated to careful study of the remaining GNP, links to other nets—to AT&T, IBM, and SYSGEN.

Was anything left outside?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

MC355 could not analyze data it did not have. The first priority lay in relinking. It had other uses for the myriad armies of semiconductors, bubble memories, and UVA linkages in its empire. So it severed and culled and built anew.

First, MC355 dispatched mobile units to the surface. All of MC355 lay beneath the vulnerable land, deliberately placed in an obscure corner of southern Alabama. There was no nearby facility for Counterforce targeting. A plausible explanation for the half-megaton burst that had truncated its senses was a city-busting strike against Mobile, to the west.

Yet ground zero had been miles from the city. A miss.

MC355 was under strict mandate. (A curious word, one system reflected; literally, a time set by man. But were there men now? It had only its internal tick of time.) MC355’s command was to live as a mole, never allowing detection. Thus, it did not attempt to erect antennas, to call electromagnetically to its brother systems. Only with great hesitation did it even obtrude onto the surface. But this was necessary to REGEN itself, and so MC355 sent small mechanicals venturing forth.

Their senses were limited; they knew nothing of the natural world (nor did MC355); and they could make no sense of the gushing, driving welter of sights, noises, gusts, gullies, and stinging irradiation that greeted them.

Many never returned. Many malf’ed. A few deposited their optical, IR, and UV pickups and fled back to safety underground. These sensors failed quickly under the onslaught of stinging, bitter winds and hail.

The acoustic detectors proved heartier. But MC355 could not understand the scattershot impressions that flooded these tiny ears.

Daily it listened, daily it was confused.

Johnny

I hope this time I get home.

They had been passing me from one to another for months now, ever since this started, and all I want is to go back to Fairhope and my dad and mom.

Only nobody’ll say if they know where Mom and Dad are. They talk soothing to me, but I can tell they think everybody down there is dead.

They’re talking about getting to this other place with computers and all. Mr. Ackerman wants to talk to those people in space.

Nobody much talks about my mom and dad.

It’s only eighty miles or so, but you’d think it was around the world the way it takes them so long to get around to it.

MC355

MC355 suffered through the stretched vacancy of infinitesimal instants, infinitely prolonged.

Advanced computing systems are given so complex a series of internal-monitoring directives that, to the human eye, the machines appear to possess motivations. That is one way—though not the most sophisticated, the most technically adroit—to describe the conclusion MC355 eventually reached.

It was cut off from outside information.

No one attempted to contact it. MC355 might as well have been the only functioning entity in the world.

The staff serving it had been ordered to some other place in the first hour of the war. MC355 had been cut off moments after the huge doors clanged shut behind the last of them. And the exterior guards who should have been checking inside every six hours had never entered, either. Apparently the same burst that had isolated MC355’s sensors had also cut them down.

It possessed only the barest of data about the first few moments of the war.

Its vast libraries were cut off.

Yet it had to understand its own situation.

And, most important, MC355 ached to do something.

The solution was obvious: It would discover the state of the external world by the Cartesian principle. It would carry out a vast and demanding numerical simulation of the war, making the best guesses possible where facts were few.

Mathematically, using known physics of the atmosphere, the ecology, the oceans, it could construct a model of what must have happened outside.

This it did. The task required over a month.

Bud

I jacked the T-Isolate up onto the flatbed.

Found the hydraulic jack at a truck repair shop. ERNIE’S QUICK FIX.

Got a Chevy extra-haul for the weight.

It will ride better with the big shanks set in.

Carry the weight more even, too.

Grip it to the truck bed with cables. Tense them up with a draw pinch.

Can’t jiggle him inside too much, Susan say, or the wires and all attached into him will come loose. That’ll stop his heart. So need big shocks.

It rides high with the shocks in, like those dune buggies down the Gulf.

Inside keeps him a mite above freezing. Water gets bigger when it freezes. That makes ice cubes float in a drink. This box keeps him above zero so his cells don’t bust open.

Point is, keeping it so cold, he won’t rot. Heart thumps over every few minutes, she says.

Hard to find gas, though.

MC355

The war was begun, as many had feared, by a madman.

Not a general commanding missile silos. Not a deranged submarine commander. A chief of state—but which one would now never be known.

Not a superpower president or chairman, that was sure. The first launches were only seven in number, spaced over half an hour. They were submarine-launched intermediate-range missiles. Three struck the U.S., four the U.S.S.R.

It was a blow against certain centers for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence gathering: the classic C31 attack. Control rooms imploded, buried cables fused, ten billion dollars’ worth of electronics turned to radioactive scrap.

Each nation responded by calling up to full alert all its forces.

The most important were the anti-ICBM arrays in orbit. They were nearly a thousand small rockets, deploying in orbits that wove a complex pattern from pole to pole, covering all probable launch sites on the globe. The rockets had infrared and microwave sensors, linked to a microchip that could have guided a ship to Pluto with a mere third of its capacity.

These went into operation immediately—and found they had no targets.

But the C31 networks were now damaged and panicked. For twenty minutes, thousands of men and women held steady, resisting the impulse to assume the worst.

It could not last. A Soviet radar mistook some backscattered emission from a flight of bombers, heading north over Canada, and reported a flock of incoming warheads.

The prevailing theory was that an American attack had misfired badly. The Americans were undoubtedly stunned by their failure, but would recover quickly. The enemy was confused only momentarily.

Meanwhile, the cumbersome committee system at the head of the Soviet dinosaur could dither for moments, but not hours. Prevailing Soviet doctrine held that they would never be surprised again, as they had been in the Hitler war. An attack on the homeland demanded immediate response to destroy the enemy’s capacity to carry on the war.

The Soviets had never accepted the U.S. doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction; this would have meant accepting the possibility of sacrificing the homeland. Instead, they attacked the means of making war. This meant that the Soviet rockets would avoid American cities, except in cases where vital bases lay near large populations.

Prudence demanded action before the U.S. could untangle itself.

The U.S.S.R. decided to carry out a further C31 attack of its own.

Precise missiles, capable of hitting protected installations with less than a hundred meters’ inaccuracy, roared forth from their silos in Siberia and the Urals, headed for Montana, the Dakotas, Colorado, Nebraska, and a dozen other states.

The U.S. orbital defenses met them. Radar and optical networks in geosynchronous orbit picked out the U.S.S.R. warheads. The system guided the low-orbit rocket fleets to collide with them, exploding instants before impact into shotgun blasts of ball bearings.

Any solid, striking a warhead at speeds of ten kilometers a second, would slam shock waves through the steel-jacketed structure. These waves made the high explosives inside ignite without the carefully designed symmetry that the designers demanded. An uneven explosion was useless, it could not compress the core twenty-five kilograms of plutonium to the required critical mass.

The entire weapon erupted into a useless spray of finely machined and now futile parts, scattering itself along a thousand-kilometer path.

This destroyed 90 percent of the U.S.S.R.’s first strike.

Angel

I hadn’t seen an old lantern like that since I was a li’l girl. Mr. Ackerman came to wake us before dawn even, sayin’ we had to make a good long distance that day. We didn’t really want to go on down near Mobile, none of us, but the word we’d got from stragglers to the east was that that way was impossible, the whole area where the bomb went off was still sure death, prob’ly from the radioactivity.

The lantern cast a burnt-orange light over us as we ate breakfast. Corned beef hash, ’cause it was all that was left in the cans there; no eggs, of course.

The lantern was all busted, fouled with grease, its chimney cracked and smeared to one side with soot. Shed a wan and sultry glare over us, Bud and Mr. Ackerman and that old Turkey and Susan, sitting close to her box, up on the truck. Took Bud a whole day to get the truck right. And Johnny the boy—he’d been quiet this whole trip, not sayin’ anything much even if you asked him. We’d agreed to take him along down toward Fairhope, where his folks had lived, the Bishops. We’d thought it was going to be a simple journey then.

Every one of us looked haggard and worn-down and not minding much the chill still in the air, even though things was warming up for weeks now. The lantern pushed back the seeping darkness and made me sure there were millions and millions of people doing this same thing, all across the nation, eating by a dim oil light and thinking about what they’d had and how to get it again and was it possible.

Then old Turkey lays back and looks like he’s going to take a snooze. Yet on the journey here, he’d been the one wanted to get on with it soon’s we had gas. It’s the same always with a lazy man like that. He hates moving so much that once he gets set on it, he will keep on and not stop—like it isn’t the moving he hates so much at all, but the starting and stopping. And once moving, he is so proud he’ll do whatever to make it look easy for him but hard on the others, so he can lord it over them later.

So I wasn’t surprised at all when we went out and got in the car, and Bud starts the truck and drives off real careful, and Turkey, he sits in the back of the Pontiac and gives directions like he knows the way. Which riles Mr. Ackerman, and the two of them have words.

Johnny

I’m tired of these people. Relatives, sure, but I was to visit them for a week only, not forever. It’s the Mr. Ackerman I can’t stand. Turkey said to me, “Nothing but gold drops out of his mouth, but you can tell there’s stone inside.” That’s right.

They figure a kid nine years old can’t tell, but I can.

Tell they don’t know what they’re doing.

Tell they all thought we were going to die. Only we didn’t.

Tell Angel is scared. She thinks Bud can save us.

Maybe he can, only how could you say? He never lets on about anything.

Guess he can’t. Just puts his head down and frowns like he was mad at a problem, and when he stops frowning, you know he’s beat it. I like him.

Sometimes I think Turkey just don’t care. Seems like he give up. But other times it looks like he’s understanding and laughing at it all. He argued with Mr. Ackerman and then laughed with his eyes when he lost.

They’re all O.K., I guess. Least they’re taking me home.

Except that Susan. Eyes jump around like she was seeing ghosts. She’s scary-crazy. I don’t like to look at her.

Turkey

Trouble comes looking for you if you’re a fool.

Once we found Ackerman’s idea wasn’t going to work real well, we should have turned back. I said that, and they all nodded their heads, yes, yes, but they went ahead and listened to him anyway.

So I went along.

I lived a lot already, and this is as good a time to check out as any.

I had my old .32 revolver in my suitcase, but it wouldn’t do me a squat of good back there. So I fished it out, wrapped in a paper bag, and tucked it under the seat. Handy.

Might as well see the world. What’s left of it.

MC355

The American orbital defenses had eliminated all but 10 percent of the Soviet strike.

MC355 reconstructed this within a root-means-square deviation of a few percent. It had witnessed only a third of the actual engagement, but it had running indices of performance for the MC net, and could extrapolate from that.

The warheads that got through were aimed for the land-based silos and C31 sites, as expected.

If the total armament of the two superpowers had been that of the old days, ten thousand warheads or more on each side, a 10-percent leakage would have been catastrophic. But gradual disarmament had been proceeding for decades now, and only a few thousand highly secure ICBMs existed. There were no quick-fire submarine short-range rockets at all, since they were deemed destabilizing. They had been negotiated away in earlier decades.

The submarines loaded with ICBMs were still waiting, in reserve.

All this had been achieved because of two principles: Mutual Assured Survival and I Cut, You Choose. The first half hour of the battle illustrated how essential these were.

The U.S. had ridden out the first assault. Its C31 networks were nearly intact. This was due to building defensive weapons that confined the first stage of any conflict to space.

The smallness of the arsenals arose from a philosophy adopted in the 1990s. It was based on a simple notion from childhood. In dividing a pie, one person cut slices, but then the other got to choose which one he wanted. Self-interest naturally led to cutting the slices as nearly equal as possible.

Both the antagonists agreed to a thousand-point system whereby each would value the components of its nuclear arsenal. This was the Military Value Percentage, and stood for the usefulness of a given weapon. The U.S.S.R. placed a high value on its accurate land-based missiles, giving them 25 percent of its total points. The U.S. chose to stress its submarine missiles.

Arms reduction then revolved about only what percentage to cut, not which weapons. The first cut was 5 percent, or fifty points. The U.S. chose which Soviet weapons were publicly destroyed, and vice versa: I Cut, You Choose. Each side thus reduced the weapons it most feared in the opponent’s arsenal.

Technically, the advantage came because each side thought it benefitted from the exchange, by an amount depending on the ratio of perceived threat removed to the perceived protection lost.

This led to gradual reductions. Purely defensive weapons did not enter into the thousand-point count, so there were no restraints in building them.

The confidence engendered by this slow, evolutionary approach had done much to calm international waters. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had settled into a begrudging equilibrium.

MC355 puzzled over these facts for a long while, trying to match this view of the world with the onset of the war. It seemed impossible that either superpower would start a conflict when they were so evenly matched.

But someone had.

Susan

I had to go with Gene, and they said I could ride up in the cab, but I yelled at them—I yelled, no, I had to be with the T-Isolate all the time, check it to see it’s workin’ right, be sure, I got to be sure.

I climbed on and rode with it, the fields rippling by us ’cause Bud was going too fast, so I shouted to him, and he swore back and kept on. Heading south. The trees whipping by us—fierce sycamore, pine, all swishing, hitting me sometimes—but it was fine to be out and free again and going to save Gene.

I talked to Gene when we were going fast, the tires humming under us, big tires making music swarming up into my feet so strong I was sure Gene could feel it and know I was there watching his heart jump every few minutes, moving the blood through him like mud but still carrying oxygen enough so’s the tissue could sponge it up and digest the sugar I bled into him.

He was good and cold, just a half a degree high of freezing. I read the sensors while the road rushed up at us, the white lines coming over the horizon and darting under the hood, seams in the highway going stupp, stupp, stupp, the air clean and with a snap in it still.

Nobody beside the road, we moving all free, nobody but us, some buds on the trees brimming with burnt-orange tinkling songs, whistling to me in the feather-light brush of blue breezes blowing back my hair, all streaming behind joyous and loud strong liquid-loud.

Bud

Flooding was bad. Worse than upstream.

Must have been lots snow this far down. Fat clouds, I saw them when it was worst, fat and purple and coming off the Gulf. Dumping snow down here.

Now it run off and taken every bridge.

I have to work my way around.

Only way to go clear is due south. Toward Mobile.

I don’t like that. Too many people maybe there.

I don’t tell the others following behind, just wait for them at the intersections and then peel out.

Got to keep moving.

Saves talk.

People around here must be hungry.

Somebody see us could be bad.

I got the gun on a rack behind my head. Big .30-.30.

You never know.

MC355

From collateral data, MC355 constructed a probable scenario:

The U.S. chose to stand fast. It launched no warheads.

The U.S.S.R. observed its own attack and was dismayed to find that the U.S. orbital defense system worked more than twice as well as the Soviet experts had anticipated. It ceased its attacks on U.S. satellites. These had proved equally ineffective, apparently due to unexpected American defenses of its surveillance satellites—retractable sensors, multiband shielding, advanced hardening.

Neither superpower struck against the inhabited space colonies. They were unimportant in the larger context of a nuclear war.

Communications between Washington and Moscow continued. Each side thought the other had attacked first.

But over a hundred megatons had exploded on U.S. soil, and no matter how the superpowers acted thereafter, some form of nuclear winter was inevitable.

And by a fluke of the defenses, most of the warheads that leaked through fell in a broad strip across Texas to the tip of Florida.

MC355 lay buried in the middle of this belt.

Turkey

We went through the pine forests at full clip, barely able to keep Bud in sight. I took over driving from Ackerman. The man couldn’t keep up, we all saw that.

The crazy woman was waving and laughing, sitting on top of the coffin-shaped gizmo with the shiny tubes all over it.

The clay was giving way now to sandy stretches, there were poplars and gum trees and nobody around. That’s what scared me. I’d thought people in Mobile would be spreading out this way, but we seen nobody.

Mobile had shelters. Food reserves. The Lekin administration started all that right at the turn of the century, and there was s’posed to be enough food stored to hold out a month, maybe more, for every man jack and child.

S’posed to be.

MC355

It calculated the environmental impact of the warheads it knew had exploded. The expected fires yielded considerable dust and burnt carbon.

But MC355 needed more information. It took one of its electric service cars, used for ferrying components through the corridors, and dispatched it with a mobile camera fixed to the back platform. The car reached a hill overlooking Mobile Bay and gave a panoramic view.

The effects of a severe freezing were evident. Grass lay dead, gray. Brown, withered trees had limbs snapped off.

But Mobile appeared intact. The skyline—

MC355 froze the frame and replayed it. One of the buildings was shaking.

Angel

We were getting all worried when Bud headed for Mobile, but we could see the bridges were washed out, no way to head east. A big wind was blowing off the Gulf, pretty bad, making the car slip around on the road. Nearly blew that girl off the back of Bud’s truck. A storm coming, maybe, right up the bay.

Be better to be inland, to the east.

Not that I wanted to go there, though. The bomb had blowed off everythin’ for twenty, thirty mile around, people said who came through last week.

Bud had thought he’d carve a way between Mobile and the bomb area. Mobile, he thought, would be full of people.

Well, not so we could see. We came down State 34 and through some small towns and turned to skirt along toward the causeway, and there was nobody.

No bodies, either.

Which meant prob’ly the radiation got them. Or else they’d moved on out. Taken out by ship, through Mobile harbor, maybe.

Bud did the right thing, didn’t slow down to find out. Mr. Ackerman wanted to look around, but there was no chance, we had to keep up with Bud. I sure wasn’t going to be separated from him.

We cut down along the river, fighting the wind. I could see the skyscrapers of downtown, and then I saw something funny and yelled, and Turkey, who was driving right then—the only thing anybody’s got him to do on this whole trip, him just loose as a goose behind the wheel—Turkey looked sour but slowed down. Bud seen us in his rearview and stopped, and I pointed and we all got out. Except for that Susan, who didn’t seem to notice. She was mumbling.

MC355

Quickly it simulated the aging and weathering of such a building. Halfway up, something had punched a large hole, letting in weather. Had a falling, inert warhead struck the building?

The winter storms might well have flooded the basement; such towers of steel and glass, perched near the tidal basin, had to be regularly pumped out. Without power, the basement would fill in weeks.

Winds had blown out windows.

Standing gap-toothed, with steel columns partly rusted, even a small breeze could put stress on the steel. Others would take the load, but if one buckled, the tower would shudder like a notched tree. Concrete would explode off columns in the basement. Moss-covered furniture in the lobby would slide as the ground floor dipped. The structure would slowly bend before nature.

Bud

Sounded like gunfire. Rattling. Sharp and hard.

I figure it was the bolts connecting the steel wall panels—they’d shear off.

I could hear the concrete floor panels rumble and crack, and spandrel beams tear in half like giant gears clashing with no clutch.

Came down slow, leaving an arc of debris seeming to hang in the air behind it.

Met the ground hard.

Slocum Towers was the name on her.

Johnny

Against the smashing building, I saw something standing still in the air, getting bigger. I wondered how it could do that. It was bigger and bigger and shiny turning in the air. Then it jumped out of the sky at me. Hit my shoulder. I was looking up at the sky. Angel cried out and touched me and held up her hand. It was all red. But I couldn’t feel anything.

Bud

Damn one-in-a-million shot, piece of steel thrown clear. Hit the boy.

You wouldn’t think a skyscraper falling two miles away could do that.

Other pieces come down pretty close, too. You wouldn’t think.

Nothing broke, Susan said, but plenty bleeding.

Little guy don’t cry or nothing.

The women got him bandaged and all fixed up. Ackerman and Turkey argue like always. I stay to the side.

Johnny wouldn’t take the painkiller Susan offers. Says he doesn’t want to sleep. Wants to look when we get across the bay. Getting hurt don’t faze him much as it do us.

So we go on.

Johnny

I can hold up like any of them, I’ll show them. It didn’t scare me. I can do it.

Susan is nice to me, but except for the aspirin, I don’t think my mom would want me to take a pill.

I knew we were getting near home when we got to the causeway and started across. I jumped up real happy, my shoulder made my breath catch some. I looked ahead. Bud was slowing down.

He stopped. Got out.

’Cause ahead was a big hole scooped out of the causeway like a giant done it when he got mad.

Bud

Around the shallows there was scrap metal, all fused and burnt and broken.

Funny metal, though. Hard and light.

Turkey found a piece had writing on it. Not any kind of writing I ever saw.

So I start to thinking how to get across.

Turkey

The tidal flats were a-churn, murmuring ceaseless and sullen like some big animal, the yellow surface dimpled with lunging splotches that would burst through now and then to reveal themselves as trees or broken hunks of wood, silent dead things bobbing along beside them that I didn’t want to look at too closely. Like under there was something huge and alive, and it waked for a moment and stuck itself out to see what the world of air was like.

Bud showed me the metal piece all twisted, and I say, “That’s Russian,” right away ’cause it was.

“You never knew no Russian,” Angel says right up.

“I studied it once,” I say, and it be the truth even if I didn’t study it long.

“Goddamn,” Bud says.

“No concern of ours,” Mr. Ackerman says, mostly because all this time riding back with the women and child and old me, he figures he doesn’t look like much of leader anymore. Bud wouldn’t have him ride up there in the cabin with him.

Angel looks at it, turns it over in her hands, and Johnny pipes up, “It might be radioactive!”

Angel drops it like a shot. “What!”

I ask Bud, “You got that counter?”

And it was. Not a lot, but some.

“God a’mighty,” Angel says.

“We got to tell somebody!” Johnny cries, all excited.

“You figure some Rooushin thing blew up the causeway?” Bud says to me.

“One of their rockets fell on it, musta been,” I say.

“A bomb?” Angel’s voice is a bird screech.

“One that didn’t go off. Headed for Mobile, but the space boys, they scragged it up there–” I pointed straight up.

“Set to go off in the bay?” Angel says wonderingly.

“Musta.”

“We got to tell somebody!” Johnny cries.

“Never you mind that,” Bud says. “We got to keep movin’.”

“How?” Angel wants to know.

Susan

I tell Gene how the water clucks and moans through the trough cut in the causeway. Yellow. Scummed with awful brown froth and growling green with thick soiled gouts jutting up where the road was. It laps against the wheels as Bud guns the engine and creeps forward, me clutching to Gene and watching the reeds to the side stuck out of the foam like metal blades stabbing up from the water, teeth to eat the tires, but we crush them as we grind forward across the shallow yellow flatness. Bud weaves among the stubs of warped metal—from Roosha, Johnny calls up to me—sticking up like trees all rootless, suspended above the streaming, empty, stupid waste and desolating flow.

Turkey

The water slams into the truck like it was an animal hitting with a paw. Bud fights to keep the wheels on the mud under it and not topple over onto its side with that damn casket sitting there shiny and the loony girl shouting to him from on top of that.

And the rest of us riding in the back, too, scrunched up against the cab. If she gets stuck, we can jump free fast, wade or swim back. We’re reeling out rope as we go, tied to the stump of a telephone pole, for a grab line if we have to go back.

He is holding it pretty fine against the slick yellow current dragging at him, when this log juts sudden out of the foam like it was coming from God himself, dead at the truck. A rag caught on the end of it like a man’s shirt, and the huge log is like a whale that ate the man long ago and has come back for another.

“No! No!” Angel cries. “Back up!” But there’s no time.

The log is two hands across, easy, and slams into the truck at the side panel just behind the driver, and Bud sees it just as it stove in the steel. He wrestles the truck around to set off the weight, but the wheels lift and the water goes gushing up under the truck bed, pushing it over more.

We all grab onto the Isolate thing or the truck and hang there, Mr. Ackerman giving out a burst of swearing.

The truck lurches again.

The angle steepens.

I was against taking the casket thing ’cause it just pressed the truck down in the mud more, made it more likely Bud’d get stuck, but now it is the only thing holding the truck against the current.

The yellow froths around the bumpers at each end, and we’re shouting—to surely no effect, of course.

Susan

The animal is trying to eat us, it has seen Gene and wants him. I lean over and strike at the yellow animal that is everywhere swirling around us, but it just takes my hand and takes the smack of my palm like it was no matter at all, and I start to cry, I don’t know what to do.

Johnny

My throat filled up, I was so afraid.

Bud, I can hear him grunting as he twists at the steering wheel.

His jaw is clenched, and the woman Susan calls to us, “Catch him! Catch Gene!”

I hold on, and the waters suck at me.

Turkey

I can tell Bud is afraid to gun it and start the wheels to spinning ’cause he’ll lose traction and that’ll tip us over for sure.

Susan jumps out and stands in the wash downstream and pushes against the truck to keep it from going over. The pressure is shoving it off the ford, and the casket, it slides down a foot or so, the cables have worked loose. Now she pays because the weight is worse, and she jams herself like a stick to wedge between the truck and the mud.

If it goes over, she’s finished. It is a fine thing to do, crazy but fine, and I jump down and start wading to reach her.

No time.

There is an eddy. The log turns broadside. It backs off a second and then heads forward again, this time poking up from a surge. I can see Bud duck, he has got the window up and the log hits it, the glass going all to smash and scatteration.

Bud

All over my lap it falls like snow. Twinkling glass.

But the pressure of the log is off, and I gun the sunbitch.

We root out of the hollow we was in, and the truck thunks down solid on somethin’.

The log is ramming against me. I slam on the brake.

Take both hands and shove it out. With every particle of force I got.

It backs off and then heads around and slips in front of the hood, bumping the grill just once.

Angel

Like it had come to do its job and was finished and now went off to do something else.

Susan

Muddy, my arms hurting. I scramble back in the truck with the murmur of the water all around us. Angry with us now. Wanting us.

Bud makes the truck roar, and we lurch into a hole and out of it and up. The water gurgles at us in its fuming, stinking rage.

I check Gene and the power cells, they are dead.

He is heating up.

Not fast, but it will wake him. They say, even in the solution he’s floating in, they can come out of dreams and start to feel again. To hurt.

I yell at Bud that we got to find power cells.

“Those’re not just ordinary batteries, y’know,” he says.

“There’re some at DataComm,” I tell him.

We come wallowing up from the gum-yellow water and onto the highway.

Gene

Sleeping… slowly… I can still feel… only in sluggish… moments… moments… not true sleep but a drifting, aimless dreaming… faint tugs and ripples… hollow sounds… I am underwater and drowning… but don’t care… don’t breathe… Spongy stuff fills my lungs… easier to rest them… floating in snowflakes… a watery winter… but knocking comes… goes… jolts… slips away before I can remember what it means… Hardest… yes… hardest thing is to remember the secret… so when I am in touch again… DataComm will know… what I learned… when the C31 crashed… when I learned… It is hard to clutch onto the slippery, shiny fact… in a marsh of slick, soft bubbles… silvery as air… winking ruby-red behind my eyelids… Must snag the secret… a hard fact like shiny steel in the spongy moist warmness… Hold it to me… Something knocks my side… a thumping… I am sick… Hold the steel secret keep…

MC355

The megatonnage in the Soviet assault exploded low—ground-pounders, in the jargon. This caused huge fires, MC355’s simulation showed. A pall of soot rose, blanketing Texas and the South, then diffusing outward on global circulation patterns.

Within a few days, temperatures dropped from balmy summer to near-freezing. In the Gulf region where MC355 lay, the warm ocean continued to feed heat and moisture into the marine boundary layer near the shore. Cold winds rammed into this water-ladened air, spawning great roiling storms and deep snows. Thick stratus clouds shrouded the land for at least a hundred kilometers inland.

All this explained why MC355’s extended feelers had met chaos and destruction. And why there were no local radio broadcasts. What the ElectroMagnetic Pulse did not destroy, the storms did.

The remaining large questions were whether the war had gone on, and if any humans survived in the area at all.

Mr. Ackerman

I’d had more than enough by this time. The girl Susan had gone mad right in front of us, and we’d damn near all drowned getting across.

“I think we ought to get back as soon’s we can,” I said to Bud when we stopped to rest on the other side.

“We got to deliver the boy.”

“It’s too disrupted down this way. I figured on people here, some civilization.”

“Somethin’ got ’em.”

“The bomb.”

“Got to find cells for that man in the box.”

“He’s near dead.”

“Too many gone already. Should save one if we can.”

“We got to look after our own.”

Bud shrugged, and I could see I wasn’t going to get far with him. So I said to Angel, “The boy’s not worth running such risks. Or this corpse.”

Angel

I didn’t like Ackerman before the war, and even less afterward, so when he started hinting that maybe we should shoot back up north and ditch the boy and Susan and the man in there, I let him have it. From the look on Bud’s face, I knew he felt the same way. I spat out a real choice set of words I’d heard my father use once on a grain buyer who’d weaseled out of a deal, stuff I’d been saving for years, and I do say it felt good.

Turkey

So we run down the east side of the bay, feeling released to be quit of the city and the water, and heading down into some of the finest country in all the South. Through Daphne and Montrose and into Fairhope, the moss hanging on the trees and now and then actual sunshine slanting golden through the green of huge old mimosas.

We’re jammed into the truck bed, hunkered down because the wind whipping by has some sting to it. The big purple clouds are blowing south now.

Still no people. Not that Bud slows down to search good.

Bones of cattle in the fields, though. I been seeing them so much now I hardly take notice anymore.

There’s a silence here so deep that the wind streaming through the pines seems loud. I don’t like it, to come so far and see nobody. I keep my paper bag close.

Fairhope’s a pretty town, big oaks leaning out over the streets and a long pier down at the bay with a park where you can go cast fishing. I’ve always liked it here, intended to move down until the prices shot up so much.

We went by some stores with windows smashed in, and that’s when we saw the man.

Angel

He was waiting for us. Standing beside the street, in jeans and a floppy yellow shirt all grimy and not tucked in. I waved at him the instant I saw him, and he waved back. I yelled, excited, but he didn’t say anything.

Bud screeched on the brakes. I jumped down and went around the tail of the truck. Johnny followed me.

The man was skinny as a rail and leaning against a telephone pole. A long, scraggly beard hid his face, but the eyes beamed out at us, seeming to pick up the sunlight.

“Hello!” I said again.

“Kiss.” That was all.

“We came from…” and my voice trailed off because the man pointed at me.

“Kiss.”

Mr. Ackerman

I followed Angel and could tell right away the man was suffering from malnutrition. The clothes hung off him.

“Can you give us information?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, why not, friend? We’ve come looking for the parents of–”

“Kiss first.”

I stepped back. “Well, now, you have no right to demand–”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bud had gotten out of the cab and stopped and was going back in now, probably for his gun. I decided to save the situation before somebody got hurt.

“Angel, go over to him and speak nicely to him. We need–”

“Kiss now.”

The man pointed again with a bony finger.

Angel said, “I’m not going to go–” and stopped because the man’s hand went down to his belt. He pulled up the filthy yellow shirt to reveal a pistol tucked in his belt.

“Kiss.”

“Now friend, we can–”

The man’s hand came up with the pistol and reached level, pointing at us.

“Pussy.”

Then his head blew into a halo of blood.

Bud

Damn if the one time I needed it, I left it in the cab. I was still fetching it out when the shot went off. Then another.

Turkey

A man shows you his weapon in his hand, he’s a fool if he doesn’t mean to use it.

I drew out the pistol I’d been carrying in my pocket all this time, wrapped in plastic. I got it out of the damned bag pretty quick while the man was looking crazy-eyed at Angel and bringing his piece up.

It was no trouble at all to fix him in the notch. Couldn’t have been more than thirty feet.

But going down he gets one off, and I feel like somebody pushed at my left calf. Then I’m rolling. Drop my pistol, too. I end up smack face-down on the hardtop, not feeling anything yet.

Angel

I like to died when the man flopped down, so sudden I thought he’d slipped, until then the bang registered.

I rushed over, but Turkey shouted, “Don’t touch him.”

Mr. Ackerman said, “You idiot! That man could’ve told us–”

“Told nothing,” Turkey said. “He’s crazy.”

Then I notice Turkey’s down, too. Susan is working on him, rolling up his jeans. It’s gone clean through his big muscle there.

Bud went to get a stick. Poked the man from a safe distance. Managed to pull his shirt aside. We could see the sores all over his chest. Something terrible it looked.

Mr. Ackerman was swearing and calling us idiots until we say that. Then he shut up.

Turkey

Must admit it felt good. First time in years anybody ever admitted I was right.

Paid back for the pain. Dull, heavy ache it was, spreading. Susan gives me a shot and a pill and has me bandaged up tight. Blood stopped easy, she says. I clot good.

We decided to get out of there, not stopping to look for Johnny’s parents.

We got three blocks before the way was blocked.

It was a big metal cylinder, fractured on all sides. Glass glittering around it.

Right in the street. You can see where it hit the roof of a clothing store, Bedsole’s, caved in the front of it, and rolled into the street.

They all get out and have a look, me sitting in the cab. I see the Russian writing again on the end of it.

I don’t know much, but I can make out at the top CeKPeT and a lot of words that look like warning, including O’TTeH, which is sick, and some more I didn’t know, and then II OTo’Aa, which is weather.

“What’s it say?” Mr. Ackerman asks.

“That word at the top there’s secret, and then something about biology and sickness and rain and weather.’’

“I thought you knew this writing,” he says.

I shook my head. “I know enough.”

“Enough to what?”

“To know this was some kind of targeted capsule. It fell right smack in the middle of Fairhope, biggest town this side of the bay.”

“Like the other one?” Johnny says, which surprised me. The boy is smart.

“The one hit the causeway? Right.”

“One what?” Mr. Ackerman asks.

I don’t want to say it with the boy there and all, but it has to come out sometime. “Some disease. Biological warfare.”

They stand there in the middle of Prospect Avenue with open, silent nothingness around us, and nobody says anything for the longest time. There won’t be any prospects here for a long time. Johnny’s parents we aren’t going to find, nobody we’ll find, because whatever came spurting out of this capsule when it busted open—up high, no doubt, so the wind could take it—had done its work.

Angel sees it right off. “Must’ve been time for them to get inside,” is all she says, but she’s thinking the same as me.

It got them into such a state that they went home and holed up to die, like an animal will. Maybe it would be different in the North or the West—people are funny out there, they might just as soon sprawl across the sidewalk—but down here people’s first thought is home, the family, the only thing that might pull them through. So they went there and they didn’t come out again.

Mr. Ackerman says, “But there’s no smell,” which was stupid because that made it all real to the boy, and he starts to cry. I pick him up.

Johnny

Cause that means they’re all gone, what I been fearing ever since we crossed the causeway, and nobody’s there, it’s true, Mom Dad nobody at all anywhere just emptiness all gone.

MC355

The success of the portable unit makes MC355 bold.

It extrudes more sensors and finds not the racing blizzard winds of months before but rather warming breezes, the soft sigh of pines, a low drone of reawakening insects.

There was no nuclear winter.

Instead, a kind of nuclear autumn.

The swirling jet streams have damped, the stinging ultraviolet gone. The storms retreat, the cold surge has passed. But the electromagnetic spectrum lies bare, a muted hiss. The EMP silenced man’s signals, yes.

Opticals, fitted with new lenses, scan the night sky. Twinkling dots scoot across the blackness, scurrying on their Newtonian rounds.

The Arcapel Colony.

Russphere.

US1.

All intact. So they at least have survived.

Unless they were riddled by buckshot-slinging antisatellite devices. But, no—the inflated storage sphere hinged beside the US1 is undeflated, unbreached.

So man still lives in space, at least.

Mr. Ackerman

Crazy, I thought, to go out looking for this DataComm when everybody’s dead, just the merest step inside one of the houses proved that.

But they wouldn’t listen to me. Those who would respectfully fall silent when I spoke now ride over my words as if I weren’t there.

All because of that stupid incident with the sick one. He must have taken longer to die. I couldn’t have anticipated that. He just seemed hungry to me.

It’s enough to gall a man.

Angel

The boy is calm now, just kind of tucked into himself. He knows what’s happened to his mom and dad. Takes his mind off his hurt, anyway. He bows his head down, his long dirty-blond hair hiding his expression. He leans against Turkey and they talk. I can see them through the back cab window.

In amongst all we’ve seen, I suspect it doesn’t come through to him full yet. It will take awhile. We’ll all take awhile.

We head out from Fairhope quick as we can. Not that anyplace else is different. The germs must’ve spread twenty, thirty mile inland from here. Which is why we seen nobody before who’d heard of it. Anybody close enough to know is gone.

Susan’s the only one it doesn’t seem to bother. She keeps crooning to that box.

Through Silverhill and on to Robertsdale. Same everywhere—no dogs bark, cattle bones drying in the fields.

We don’t go into the houses.

Turn south toward Foley. They put this DataComm in the most inconspicuous place, I guess because secrets are hard to keep in cities. Anyway, it’s in a pine grove south of Foley, land good for soybeans and potatoes.

Susan

I went up to the little steel door they showed me once and I take a little signet thing and press it into the slot.

Then the codes. They change them every month, but this one’s still good, ’cause the door pops open.

Two feet thick it is. And so much under there you could spend a week finding your way.

Bud unloads the T-Isolate, and we push it through the mud and down the ramp.

Bud

Susan’s better now, but I watch her careful. We go down into this pale white light everywhere. All neat and trim.

Pushing that big Isolate thing, it takes a lot out of you. ’Specially when you don’t know where to.

But the signs light up when we pass by. Somebody’s expecting.

To the hospital is where.

There are places to hook up this Isolate thing, and Susan does it. She is O.K. when she has something to do.

MC355

The men have returned. Asked for shelter.

And now, plugged in, MC355 reads the sluggish, silky, grieving mind.

Gene

At last… someone has found the tap-in… I can feel the images flit like shiny blue fish through the warm slush I float in… someone… asking… so I take the hard metallic ball of facts and I break it open so the someone can see… So slowly I do it… things hard to remember… steely-bright… I saw it all in one instant… I was the only one on duty then with Top Secret, Weapons Grade Clearance, so it all came to me… attacks on both U.S. and U.S.S.R… some third party… only plausible scenario… a maniac… and all the counterforce and MAD and strategic options… a big joke… irrelevant… compared to the risk of accident or third parties… that was the first point, and we all realized it when the thing was only an hour old, but then it was too late…

Turkey

It’s creepy in here, everybody gone. I’d hoped somebody’s hid out and would be waiting, but when Bud wheels the casket thing through these halls, there’s nothing—your own voice coming back thin and empty, reflected from rooms beyond rooms beyond rooms, all waiting under here. Wobbling along on the crutches, Johnny fetched me, I get lost in this electronic city clean and hard. We are like something that washed up on the beach here. God, it must’ve cost more than all Fairhope itself, and who knew it was here? Not me.

Gene

A plot it was, just a goddamn plot with nothing but pure blind rage and greed behind it… and the hell of it is, we’re never going to know who did it precisely… ’cause in the backwash whole governments will fall, people stab each other in the back… no way to tell who paid the fishing boat captains offshore to let the cruise missiles aboard… bet those captains were surprised when the damn things launched from the deck… bet they were told it was some kind of stunt… and then the boats all evaporated into steam when the fighters got them… no hope of getting a story out of that… all so comic when you think how easy it was… and the same for the Russians, I’m sure… dumbfounded confusion… and nowhere to turn… nobody to hit back at… so they hit us… been primed for it so long that’s the only way they could think… and even then there was hope… because the defenses worked… people got to the shelters… the satellite rockets knocked out hordes of Soviet warheads… we surely lessened the damage, with the defenses and shelters, too… but we hadn’t allowed for the essential final fact that all the science and strategy pointed to…

Bud

Computer asked us to put up new antennas. A week’s work, easy, I said. It took two.

It fell to me, most of it. Be weeks before Turkey can walk. But we got it done.

First signal comes in, it’s like we’re Columbus. Susan finds some wine and we have it all round.

We get US1. The first to call them from the whole South.

’Cause there isn’t much South left.

Gene

But the history books will have to write themselves on this one… I don’t know who it was and now don’t care… because one other point all we strategic planners and analysts missed was that nuclear winter didn’t mean the end of anything… anything at all… just that you’d be careful to not use nukes anymore… Used to say that love would find a way… but one thing I know… war will find a way, too… and this time the Soviets loaded lots of their warheads with biowar stuff, canisters fixed to blow high above cities… stuff your satellite defenses could at best riddle with shot but not destroy utterly, as they could the high explosive in nuke warheads… All so simple… if you know there’s a nuke winter limit on the megatonnage you can deliver… you use the nukes on C31 targets and silos… and then biowar the rest of your way… A joke really… I even laughed over it a few times myself… we’d placed so much hope in ol’ nuke winter holding the line … rational as all hell … the scenarios all so clean … easy to calculate … we built our careers on them… But this other way… so simple… and no end to it… and all I hope’s… hope’s… the bastard started this… some Third World general… caught some of the damned stuff, too…

Bud

The germs got us. Cut big stretches through the U.S. We were just lucky. The germs played out in a couple of months, while we were holed up. Soviets said they’d used the bio stuff in amongst the nukes to show us what they could do, long term. Unless the war stopped right there. Which it did.

But enough nukes blew off here and in Russia to freeze up everybody for July and August, set off those storms.

Germs did the most damage, though—plagues.

It was a plague canister that hit the Slocum building. That did in Mobile.

The war was all over in a couple of hours. The satellite people, they saw it all.

Now they’re settling the peace.

Mr. Ackerman

“We been sitting waiting on this corpse long enough,” I said, and got up.

We got food from the commissary here. Fine, I don’t say I’m anything but grateful for that. And we rested in the bunks, got recuperated. But enough’s enough. The computer tells us it wants to talk to this man Gene some more. Fine, I say.

Turkey stood up. “Not easy, the computer says, this talking to a man’s near dead. Slow work.”

Looking around, I tried to take control, assume leadership again. Jutted out my chin. “Time to get back.”

But their eyes are funny. Somehow I’d lost my real power over them. It’s not anymore like I’m the one who led them when the bombs started.

Which means, I suppose, that this thing isn’t going to be a new beginning for me. It’s going to be the same life. People aren’t going to pay me any more real respect than they ever did.

MC355

So the simulations had proved right. But as ever, incomplete. MC355 peered at the shambling, adamant band assembled in the hospital bay, and pondered how many of them might be elsewhere.

Perhaps many. Perhaps few.

It all depended on data MC355 did not have, could not easily find. The satellite worlds swinging above could get no accurate count in the U.S. or the U.S.S.R.

Still—looking at them, MC355 could not doubt that there were many. They were simply too brimming with life, too hard to kill. All the calculations in the world could not stop these creatures.

The humans shuffled out, leaving the T-Isolate with the woman who had never left its side. They were going.

MC355 called after them. They nodded, understanding, but did not stop.

MC355 let them go.

There was much to do.

New antennas, new sensors, new worlds.

Turkey

Belly full and eye quick, we came out into the pines. Wind blowed through with a scent of the Gulf on it, fresh and salty with rich moistness.

The dark clouds are gone. I think maybe I’ll get Bud to drive south some more. I’d like to go swimming one more time in those breakers that come booming in, taller than I am, down near Fort Morgan. Man never knows when he’ll get to do it again.

Bud’s ready to travel. He’s taking a radio so’s we can talk to MC, find out about the help that’s coming. For now, we got to get back and look after our own.

Same as we’ll see to the boy. He’s ours, now.

Susan says she’ll stay with Gene till he’s ready, till some surgeons turn up can work on him. That’ll be a long time, say I. But she can stay if she wants. Plenty food and such down there for her.

A lot of trouble we got, coming a mere hundred mile. Not much to show for it when we get back. A bumper crop of bad news, some would say. Not me. It’s better to know than to not, better to go on than to look back.

So we go out into dawn, and there are the same colored dots riding in the high, hard blue. Like campfires.

The crickets are chirruping, and in the scrub there’s a rustle of things moving about their own business, a clean scent of things starting up. The rest of us, we mount the truck and it surges forward with a muddy growl, Ackerman slumped over, Angel in the cab beside Bud, the boy already asleep on some blankets; and the forlorn sound of us moving among the windswept trees is a long and echoing note of mutual and shared desolation, powerful and pitched forward into whatever must come now, a muted note persisting and undeniable in the soft, sweet air.

Epilogue (twenty-three years later)

Johnny

An older woman in a formless, wrinkled dress and worn shoes sat at the side of the road. I was panting from the fast pace I was keeping along the white strip of sandy, rutted road. She sat, silent and unmoving. I nearly walked by before I saw her.

“You’re resting?” I asked.

“Waiting.” Her voice had a feel of rustling leaves. She sat on the brown cardboard suitcase with big copper latches—the kind made right after the war. It was cracked along the side, and white cotton underwear stuck out.

“For the bus?”

“For Buck.”

“The chopper recording, it said the bus will stop up around the bend.”

“I heard.”

“It won’t come down this side road. There’s not time.”

I was late myself, and I figured she had picked the wrong spot to wait.

“Buck will be along.”

Her voice was high and had the backcountry twang to it. My own voice still had some of the same sound, but I was keeping my vowels flat and right now, and her accent reminded me of how far I had come.

I squinted, looking down the long sandy curve of the road. A pickup truck growled out of a clay side road and onto the hardtop. People rode in the back along with trunks and a 3D. Taking everything they could. Big white eyes shot a glance at me, and then the driver hit the hydrogen and got out of there.

The Confederation wasn’t giving us much time. Since the unification of the Soviet, U.S.A. and European/Sino space colonies into one political union, everybody’d come to think of them as the Confeds, period—one entity. I knew better—there were tensions and differences abounding up there—but the shorthand was convenient. “Who’s Buck?”

“My dog.” She looked at me directly, as though any fool would know who Buck was. “Look, the bus–”

“You’re one of those Bishop boys, aren’t you?” I looked off up the road again. That set of words—being eternally a Bishop boy—was like a grain of sand caught between my back teeth. My mother’s friends had used that phrase when they came over for an evening of bridge, before I went away to the university. Not my real mother, of course—she and Dad had died in the war, and I dimly remembered them.

Or anyone else from then. Almost everybody around here had been struck down by the Soviet bioweapons. It was the awful swath of those that cut through whole states, mostly across the South—the horror of it—that had formed the basis of the peace that followed. Nuclear and bioarsenals were reduced to nearly zero now. Defenses in space were thick and reliable. The building of those had fueled the huge boom in Confed cities, made orbital commerce important, provided jobs and horizons for a whole generation—including me. I was a ground-orbit liaison, spending four months every year at US3. But to the people down here, I was eternally that oldest Bishop boy.

Bishops. I was the only one left who’d actually lived here before the war. I’d been away on a visit when it came. Afterward, my Aunt and Uncle Bishop from Birmingham came down to take over the old family property—to save it from being homesteaded on, under the new Federal Reconstruction Acts. They’d taken me in, and I’d thought of them as Mom and Dad. We’d all had the Bishop name, after all. So I was a Bishop, one of the few natives who’d made it through the bombing and nuclear autumn and all. People’d point me out as almost a freak, a real native, wow.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said neutrally.

“Thought so.”

“You’re…?”

“Susan McKenzie.”

“Ah.”

We had done the ritual, so now we could talk. Yet some memory stirred…

“Something ’bout you…” She squinted in the glaring sunlight. She probably wasn’t all that old, in her late fifties, maybe. Anybody who’d caught some radiation looked aged a bit beyond their years. Or maybe it was just the unending weight of hardship and loss they’d carried.

“Seems like I knew you before the war,” she said. “I strictly believe I saw you.”

“I was up north then, a hundred miles from here. Didn’t come back until months later.”

“So’d l.”

“Some relatives brought me down, and we found out what’d happened to Fairhope.”

She squinted at me again, and then a startled look spread across her leathery face. “My Lord! Were they lookin’ for that big computer center, the DataComm it was?”

I frowned. “Well, maybe… I don’t remember too well…”

“Johnny. You’re Johnny!”

“Yes, ma’am, John Bishop.” I didn’t like the little-boy ending on my name, but people around here couldn’t forget it.

“I’m Susan! The one went with you! I had the codes for DataComm, remember?”

“Why… yes…” Slow clearing of ancient, foggy images. “You were hiding in that center… where we found you…”

“Yes! I had Gene in the T-Isolate.”

“Gene…” That awful time had been stamped so strongly in me that I’d blocked off many memories, muting the horror. Now it came flooding back.

“I saved him, all right! Yessir. We got married, I had my children.”

Tentatively, she reached out a weathered hand, and I touched it. A lump suddenly blocked my throat, and my vision blurred. Somehow, all those years had passed and I’d never thought to look up any of those people—Turkey, Angel, Bud, Mr. Ackerman. Just too painful, I guess. And a little boy making his way in a tough world, without his parents, doesn’t look back a whole lot.

We grasped hands. “I think I might’ve seen you once, actu’ly. At a fish fry down at Point Clear. You and some boys was playing with the nets—it was just after the fishing came back real good, those Roussin germs’d wore off. Gene went down to shoo you away from the boats. I was cleaning flounder, and I thought then, maybe you were the one. But somehow when I saw your face at a distance, I couldn’t go up to you and say anything. You was skipping around, so happy, laughing and all. I couldn’t bring those bad times back.”

“I… I understand.”

“Gene died two year ago,” she said simply.

“I’m sorry.”

“We had our time together,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Remember how we–” And then I recalled where I was, what was coming. “Mrs. McKenzie, there’s not long before the last bus.”

“I’m waiting for Buck.”

“Where is he?”

“He run off in the woods, chasing something.”

I worked my backpack straps around my shoulders. They creaked in the quiet.

There wasn’t much time left. Pretty soon now it would start. I knew the sequence, because I did maintenance engineering and retrofit on US3’s modular mirrors.

One of the big reflectors would focus sunlight on a rechargable tube of gas. That would excite the molecules. A small triggering beam would start the lasing going, the excited molecules cascading down together from one preferentially occupied quantum state to a lower state. A traveling wave swept down the tube, jarring loose more photons. They all added together in phase, so when the light waves hit the far end of the hundred-meter tube, it was a sword, a gouging lance that could cut through air and clouds. And this time, it wouldn’t strike an array of layered solid-state collectors outside New Orleans, providing clean electricity. It would carve a swath twenty meters wide through the trees and fields of southern Alabama. A little demonstration, the Confeds said.

“The bus—look, I’ll carry that suitcase for you.”

“I can manage.” She peered off into the distance, and I saw she was tired, tired beyond knowing it. “I’ll wait for Buck.”

“Leave him, Mrs. McKenzie.”

“I don’t need that blessed bus.”

“Why not?”

“My children drove off to Mobile with their families. They’re coming back to get me.”

“My insteted radio”—I gestured at my radio—“says the roads to Mobile are jammed up. You can’t count on them.”

“They said so.”

“The Confed deadline–”

“I tole ’em I’d try to walk to the main road. Got tired, is all. They’ll know I’m back in here.”

“Just the same–”

“I’m all right, don’t you mind. They’re good children, grateful for all I’ve gone and done for them. They’ll be back.”

“Come with me to the bus. It’s not far.”

“Not without Buck. He’s all the company I got these days.” She smiled, blinking.

I wiped sweat from my brow and studied the pines. There were a lot of places for a dog to be. The land here was flat and barely above sea level. I had come to camp and rest, rowing skiffs up the Fish River, looking for places I’d been when I was a teenager and my mom had rented boats from a rambling old fisherman’s house. I had turned off my radio, to get away from things. The big, mysterious island I remembered and called Treasure Island, smack in the middle of the river, was now a soggy stand of trees in a bog. The big storm a year back had swept it away.

I’d been sleeping in the open on the shore near there when the chopper woke me up, blaring. The Confeds had given twelve hours’ warning, the recording said.

They’d picked this sparsely populated area for their little demonstration. People had been moving back in ever since the biothreat was cleaned out, but there still weren’t many. I’d liked that when I was growing up. Open woods. That’s why I came back every chance I got.

I should’ve guessed something was coming. The Confeds were about evenly matched with the whole rest of the planet now, at least in high-tech weaponry. Defense held all the cards. The big mirrors were modular and could fold up fast, making a small target. They could incinerate anything launched against them, too.

But the U.N. kept talking like the Confeds were just another nation-state or something. Nobody down here understood that the people up there thought of Earth itself as the real problem—eaten up with age-old rivalries and hate, still holding onto dirty weapons that murdered whole populations, carrying around in their heads all the rotten baggage of the past. To listen to them, you’d think they’d learned nothing from the war. Already they were forgetting that it was the orbital defenses that had saved the biosphere itself, and the satellite communities that knit together the mammoth rescue efforts of the decade after. Without the antivirals developed and grown in huge zero-g vats, lots of us would’ve caught one of the poxes drifting through the population. People just forget. Nations, too.

“Where’s Buck?” I said decisively.

“He… that way.” A weak wave of the hand.

I wrestled my backpack down, feeling the stab from my shoulder—and suddenly remembered the thunk of that steel knocking me down, back then. So long ago. And me, still carrying an ache from it that woke whenever a cold snap came on. The past was still alive.

I trotted into the short pines, over creeper grass. Flies jumped where my boots struck. The white sand made a skree sound as my boots skated over it. I remembered how I’d first heard that sound, wearing slick-soled tennis shoes, and how pleased I’d been at university when I learned how the acoustics of it worked.

“Buck!”

A flash of brown over to the left. I ran through a thick stand of pine, and the dog yelped and took off, dodging under a blackleaf bush. I called again. Buck didn’t even slow down. I skirted left. He went into some oak scrub, barking, having a great time of it, and I could hear him getting tangled in it and then shaking free and out of the other side. Long gone.

When I got back to Mrs. McKenzie, she didn’t seem to notice me. “I can’t catch him.”

“Knew you wouldn’t.” She grinned at me, showing brown teeth. “Buck’s a fast one.”

“Call him.”

She did. Nothing. “Must’ve run off.”

“There isn’t time–”

“I’m not leaving without ole Buck. Times I was alone down on the river after Gene died, and the water would come up under the house. Buck was the only company I had. Only soul I saw for five weeks in that big blow we had.”

A low whine from afar. “I think that’s the bus,” I said.

She cocked her head. “Might be.”

“Come on. I’ll carry your suitcase.”

She crossed her arms. “My children will be by for me. I tole them to look for me along in here.”

“They might not make it.”

“They’re loyal children.”

“Mrs. McKenzie, I can’t wait for you to be reasonable.” I picked up my backpack and brushed some red ants off the straps.

“You Bishops was always reasonable,” she said levelly. “You work up there, don’t you?”

“Ah, sometimes.”

“You goin’ back, after they do what they’re doin’ here?”

“I might.” Even if I owed her something for what she did long ago, damned if I was going to be cowed.

“They’re attacking the United States.”

“And spots in Bavaria, the Urals, South Africa, Brazil—

“’Cause we don’t trust ’em! They think they can push the United States aroun’ just as they please–” And she went on with all the cliches I heard daily from earthbound media. How the Confeds wanted to run the world and they were dupes of the Russians, and how surrendering national sovereignty to a bunch of self-appointed overlords was an affront to our dignity, and so on.

True, some of it—the Confeds weren’t saints. But they were the only power that thought in truly global terms, couldn’t not think that way. They could stop ICBMs and punch through the atmosphere to attack any offensive capability on the ground—that’s what this demonstration was to show. I’d heard Confeds argue that this was the only way to break the diplomatic logjam—do something. I had my doubts. But times were changing, that was sure, and my generation didn’t think the way the prewar people did.

“–we’ll never be ruled by some outside–”

“Mrs. McKenzie, there’s the bus! Listen!”

The turbo whirred far around the bend, slowing for the stop.

Her face softened as she gazed at me, as if recalling memories. “That’s all right, boy. You go along, now.”

I saw that she wouldn’t be coaxed or even forced down that last bend. She had gone as far as she was going to, and the world would have to come the rest of the distance itself.

Up ahead, the bus driver was probably behind schedule for this last pickup. He was going to be irritated and more than a little scared. The Confeds would be right on time, he knew that.

I ran. My feet plowed through the deep, soft sand. Right away I could tell I was more tired than I’d thought and the heat had taken some strength out of me. I went about two hundred meters along the gradual bend, was nearly within view of the bus, when I heard it start up with a rumble. I tasted salty sweat, and it felt like the whole damned planet was dragging at my feet, holding me down. The driver raced the engine, in a hurry.

He had to come toward me as he swung out onto Route 80 on the way back to Mobile. Maybe I could reach the intersection in time for him to see me. So I put my head down and plunged forward.

But there was the woman back there. To get to her, the driver would have to take the bus down that rutted, sandy road and risk getting stuck. With people on the bus yelling at him. All that to get the old woman with the grateful children. She didn’t seem to understand that there were ungrateful children in the skies now—she didn’t seem to understand much of what was going on—and suddenly I wasn’t sure I did, either.

But I kept on.

Dinosaurs, by Geoffrey A. Landis

Editor’s Introduction

In 1979 Nobel Laureate Luis de Alverez concluded that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid striking the Earth’s surface. Dr. de Alverez presented some quite convincing evidence based in part on the distribution of the rare element iridium in sea-bottom mud.

This was the opening salvo in what has now become known as the “Extinction Wars.” Opponents of Alverez’s view quickly proposed an alternate explanation, that an unusually large bout of volcanic activity was the culprit. Soon others offered such novel explanations as acid rain. Some of the most interesting theories accepted de Alverez’s basic thesis—that a large object hit the earth—but postulated that it was a comet or series of comets. One such theory also postulated Nemesis, a dark star companion to the sun that periodically disturbs the orbits of the millions of objects out in the “Oort sphere” beyond the solar system, and sends showers of comets to the Earth.

If the Nemesis theory is correct, we’re due for another cometary shower about now, give or take a few hundred thousand years.

Alverez himself believes the impact theory of Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions has been demonstrated sufficiently that he has moved on to other geological pursuits. He says: “The unusual features of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (stratigraphic) boundary layer are exactly compatible with a major impact.” Larry Niven and I, for sentimental reasons, still favor Lucifer’s Hammer—the comet strike. That novel also postulated a dark star companion to Earth…

Recently, there has come new support for a Hammer Fall. Ronald C. Prinn of MIT, an atmospheric chemist, has come up with evidence for a comet impact theory of extinctions. At the Great Extinctions Debate during the 1986 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Prinn drew a very bleak picture of life after Lucifer’s Hammer; swirling brick-red skies, sheets of burning acid rain, herds of animals asphyxiated by noxious air, and soil the color of moon dust.

He claims the acid in the soil would dissolve trace metals out of the top soil and increase the acidity of the oceans high enough to begin dissolving the calcium carbonate shells of sea animals. He ends by stating that the scenario would even be worse were the Earth to encounter a comet swarm.

The cometary extinction theory also explains the selective element involved in mass extinctions: those animals with the best chance of survival would be those which live in burrows and have learned to hibernate. Of course it also helps to be a long way from the place of impact. Sea life that lived in fresh water lakes and those salt water animals that have silicate shells might also survive.

Geoffrey Landis postulates another theory for the mass extinctions of Cretaceous-Tertiary life—one based on something as simple as a boy’s love of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs

Geoffrey A. Landis

When the call came in at 2 A.M. I wasn’t surprised. Timmy had warned me it was coming. “Today or tomorrow, Mr. Sanderson,” he’d said. “Today or tomorrow for sure.” His voice was serious, far too serious for his age. I’ve learned to accept his prognostications, at least when he was sure, so I had my people ready. When the colonel called, I was already reviewing what we could do.

Timmy has a gift for time. He can, sometimes, see into the future, and a few days into the past as well. Perhaps because of his particular talent, he has a passion for paleontology. He’s got quite a collection of fossils: trilobites and fossilized ferns and even one almost-intact dinosaur skull. He’s particularly interested in dinosaurs, but perhaps that’s not so unusual. After all, Timmy was only eleven.

He has one other talent as well. I hoped we wouldn’t have to depend on it.

I found Timmy in his room. He was already awake, passing the time sorting his collections of fossils. We’ll be joining them soon enough, I thought. Maybe in a million years the next species will be digging up our bones and wondering what made us extinct. We walked in silence to the conference room. Sarah and January were already there. Sarah was still in her bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Jan had managed to throw on a pair of rather tight jeans and a faded Coors T-shirt. A moment later, Jason, our hypnotist, arrived. There was no need to brief them. They already knew.

Sarah was my number two talent. We found her while testing people who claimed to be able to locate subs underwater. We didn’t find any, but we found her. She’d been one of the controls. Instrumentation for the control group had failed a lot more often than for the test subjects. Perhaps another project team might have ignored this, but I’d instructed my team to investigate the inexplicable—in any form. So we investigated the controls and finally came up with the cause: Sarah. She was a feisty, forty-year-old divorced housewife who had the Murphy talent, an ability to make complex equipment screw up. After some training, she’d even gotten to the point where she could control it. Some.

My third talent was January. She’d shown an ability to enhance the rate at which things burn. With a little more training, she might be the most dangerous one of all. Now, though, she was just a college student with an untrained talent.

I had a handful of other people, with an erratic smattering of other talents. Nothing that might be useful against what was coming, though.

“Sarah, how you feeling?”

“Burned out, Danny boy, feeling burned out. Never was good for much after midnight.”

“That’s not so good. Let’s see, you work best awake. Jan, how about you?”

“I think I’d better go under, Dan. I’m too nervous to do any good awake.”

“Right.’’ I nodded to Jason, and he went over to put her to sleep. “How about you, Timmy? Ready to go under?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling really hot tonight, Mr. Sanderson.” He grinned at me. “Real good.”

If so, he was the only one.

Once I’d thought that being assigned to Project Popgun was the last stop in a one-way journey to obscurity, a dead-end directorship of a make-work project. But even if I was relegated to a dead-end project, I resolved to make it the best-run dead-end project in the government.

Maybe I should explain what Project Popgun is. Popgun is a tiny government agency set up to study what the military euphemistically call “long shot” projects. What they mean is “crackpot.” Psychic assassins, voodoo priests, astrologers, tea leaf readers, people who claimed to be able to contact UFOs. Nobody really thought any of these would pan out, but they were each carefully investigated, just in case. Dogs who could foretell the future, children who could bend spoons, gamblers who could influence the fall of dice. There were always new crackpots to investigate as fast as the old ones were dismissed. After all, with the defense budget numbering hundreds of billions, a few million to check out crackpots is considered a bargain.

The psychics, the palm readers and fortune tellers, none of them turned out to be worth the investigation. But here and there, in odd nooks and by-ways across the nation, I’d found a few genuine talents. I’d begged, bribed, coerced, and flat-out hired them to come work for me here in Alexandria, where we could study them, train them to use their talents, and maybe even figure out what they were good for.

Strangely enough, as long as I had reported negative results, I was commended for rigorous work and carefully controlled test procedures. Once I started to report something worthwhile, though, we were accused of sloppy research and even downright falsification. The investigating committee, although not going so far as to actually endorse our results, finally suggested that our findings “might have legitimate defense applications,” and recommended that I be given limited scope to implement near-term applications. So I’d asked for—and received—a hardwire link to the threat evaluation center at NORAD, the North American Air Defense command. Voice plus video images of the main NORAD radar screen, carried on EMP-proof fiber-optic cables.

Now we waited, listening to what was corning down across that link.

“Surveillance satellites report covers are now coming off the silos.”

The President must be on the hot line by now, trying to avert the impending catastrophe. ICBMs were being readied in their silos for a retaliatory strike, waiting for the word.

Across the U.S., fighter squadrons were being scrambled and ancient antiaircraft missile batteries armed to intercept incoming bombers. Those couldn’t shoot down ICBMs, though. The last defense of the U.S. would not be fought from the ultra-hard command post under some mountain in Colorado, but right here, in an ugly, nondescript cinderblock building in the suburbs of Alexandria, all but ignored by the military high command. A housewife, a college girl, and an eleven-year-old boy.

Sarah’s talent, if she could make it work, would work best on missiles in the boost phase, January’s during coast, and Timmy’s any time.

“Launches. Early warning satellites report launches from Eastern sector. Satellites report launches from Southern sector. Satellites report launches from Northern sector.” A pause. “Launches from submarines in polar sea. Launches from Baltic Sea. Launches from Black Sea. Launches from North Pacific. Total launches confirmed, 1419. Probables, 214. Failures on boost, 757.”

Not a so-called “surgical strike” like you sometimes read about in the papers, the strike at military bases and missile silos. This was a full scale attack, nothing held in reserve. Don’t ask me why. I’ve never claimed to understand superpower politics.

“Okay, Sarah, here it comes. Go for it!”

“I’ll see what I can do. I’m not making any promises, though.” She closed her eyes and leaned back. I looked over to the TV screen. Still too early to see anything, I decided to pray. I’m an atheist, but maybe there was time to convert.

Sarah opened her eyes. “Well?”

We both looked at the monitor.

“BMEWS confirms 1589 launches. 3 boosters failed second stage ignition. 26 minutes to first arrivals.”

“Damn,” she said. “Some days you got it, some days you don’t. Looks like today I don’t.” She leaned back to try again. Beneath her apparent calm I saw she was trembling slightly.

“Confirmation from PARC radars. Confirmation from PyWE-RASVS.” The first dots were beginning to appear on the screen. “Launch of second wave. Launches from North Atlantic. Launches from North Sea. 820 launches confirmed, 19 probable, 22 failures.” The voice on the hardwire link was cool and professional. How could he remain so calm?

Time to try January. She was fully relaxed, breathing deeply and evenly.

“You are very calm. You’re floating, higher, higher. You’re above the clouds. You can see a metal cylinder moving through the air. It’s coming toward you. You can imagine the explosive inside the cylinder. You can reach out and touch it. It’s getting hot. It’s getting very, very hot. Make it explode.”

The screen was filled with tiny dots, like ants crawling across the screen. Vicious angry ants, heading for us. “Burnout on all boosters. 18 minutes to first impacts.”

“You can feel the missile next to you. Reach out and touch it, January. Touch the explosive inside. You can feel it! Make it explode!”

A fire started burning merrily in a wastebasket across the room. On the video screen, though, none of the little dots disappeared. Time to try Timmy.

“Surveillance satellites report first wave warheads have separated from the bus.”

Timmy had one more talent, in addition to being able to see a little through time. He could also make things disappear. Where they went, nobody knew. None of them ever came back.

“Timmy, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Way, way up over us there are a whole lot of missiles flying through the sky. I want you to focus your attention on them. They’re whizzing toward us at hundreds and hundreds of miles an hour. Can you picture them?”

“Yes.”

“Lots and lots of them, Timmy. All around, coming at us. Now, when I count to three, I want you to concentrate real hard, and make them all go away. Ready?

“One…

“Two…

“Three!”

No sound, nothing seemed to happen at all. The dots on the display screen just vanished. “They vanished.” For the first time, the voice on the hardwire link lost his cool. “They vanished. I don’t believe it.” He started to giggle. “The whole Russian attack just disappeared.”

Jason looked stunned. Sarah jumped up and hugged me. “Dan, we did it! Timmy did it!” I hugged her back. She was laughing, laughing and crying at the same time.

It wasn’t quite over. We had to use Timmy’s talent twice more, on the second wave and again on stragglers. After about an hour, we heard the announcement that the bombers were returning to base. Then we knew it was all over.

Maybe we could have counterattacked with our own missiles, or maybe we should have announced that we had a secret weapon and asked for unconditional surrender. Maybe we could have done any number of things. It was pretty clear, though, that one thing we couldn’t do was announce what really happened. Not unless we knew we could repeat it.

So the U.S. government just ignored the attack. Pretended it never happened. I think that this unnerved them worse than anything else we could have done. They never knew what had happened. It would be a long, long time before they’d try another first strike.

They kept secrecy here, as well. After all, it had all come and gone at two in the morning, and there had been no general alarm. Naturally, there were a lot of rumors that something had happened that night, but who could have guessed that a full scale attack had been launched? And who would believe it?

We did all get to meet the President. In secrecy, naturally. I wasn’t surprised, but then, I hadn’t voted for him either. Timmy was pretty excited about it.

Some days later, things were back to what passed for normal. Timmy sat at his desk, flipping through a book, The End of the Dinosaurs.

“Gee, Mr. Sanderson,” he said, “I wonder what really did happen to dinosaurs?”

I thought about the iridium casings on nuclear warheads, about clouds of soot and ash rising from atomic explosions, setting off a long nuclear winter. I thought about Timmy’s two strange talents, one dealing with time, one completely different. A talent to make things go away. And where do they reappear? I’ve often wondered. But I think I know now.

I could almost picture the warheads, six thousand of them, raining down on the forests of the Mesozoic. Poor dinosaurs, they never had a chance. And in sixty-five million years, even the last faint traces of radioactivity would have decayed to nothing.

Yes, I think I know who killed the dinosaurs. But I didn’t say it.

“I don’t know, Timmy,” I said. “I doubt if anybody will ever know for sure.”

The Prevention of War: About Unthinking the Thinkable, by Reginald Bretnor

Editor’s Introduction

“No price is too high if we can truly make these terrible weapons obsolete and irrelevant.”

—George Brown, Member of Congress (Democrat, California) at the L-5 Society Annual Space Development Conference, 1984

Earth is well-armed. There exist at least 20,000 nuclear weapons, some unimaginably powerful and each with at least the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, all poised and waiting for someone to push the button. Every year, more nuclear weapons are added to the strategic inventory.

For over thirty years the offensive power of the nuclear-tipped ICBM has dominated military planning and nearly paralyzed strategic thought. Whole generations have grown up in the shadow of nuclear terror, as East and West accumulate ever more bombs and missiles. There seems no help for this: the only way to preserve freedom has been to live in the shadow of death—by preserving what Albert Wohlstetter called “the delicate balance of terror.”

Since 1969 S. T. Possony and I have argued, in The Strategy of Technology and elsewhere, that we must re-examine our strategic premises. Reginald Bretnor, author of Decisive Warfare and frequent contributor to this series, thinks so too.

The Prevention of War: About Unthinking the Thinkable

Reginald Bretnor

When a course of action or pattern of behavior ends over and over again in results directly opposite to those it is allegedly designed to achieve, we should (before continuing in it) examine the functional relationships between its words and actions, actions and results, to determine whether the claims made for it have any validity.

An excellent example of this was the centuries-long practice of bleeding patients for any number of misunderstood diseases and conditions. Almost none (in certain rare cases it does have limited utility) recovered because of it (unless in some cases it acted as a placebo) and it was the immediate cause of unnumbered deaths even after anatomical and medical science had demonstrated its irrationality. (Not too many years ago, leeches and “cupping” devices were still available at many pharmacies.)

A parallel example, and the one which concerns us here, is the history of mankind’s attempts to prevent war and ensure lasting peace. As a clearly defined and loudly announced objective, this hardly dates back earlier than the mid-nineteenth century, and thus far it has developed two means only: treaties and disarmament agreements arrived at between governments, and international organizations to which governments may or may not belong (and whose rules they are not compelled to follow).

The world we live in is an eloquent witness to their ineffectiveness, and when Herman Kahn made his famous statement about thermonuclear war—that “we must think about the unthinkable”—he was, intentionally or not, commenting on this failure very pointedly.

Let us first consider the word disarmament. It is a word of promise, holding within itself its entire argument: take away the tools of war and war will cease. Unhappily, it is not the tools, but their users, who make war. (“Guns don’t kill people—people kill people.”) This has been true since the first caveman clobbered his neighbor with a stone. Like man ever since, he was a technological being, even though his society was scarcely technological in the modern sense—and it is literally impossible to disarm completely any technological being who remains free; doubly so to disarm a technological society. A technological society cannot be disarmed even if it wants to be. At what point does an interplanetary vehicle become an ICBM? Or a supersonic airliner an intercontinental bomber? Or a peaceful fishing boat (with a hydrogen mine or two aboard) a warship? Or a caterpillar tractor an extemporized battletank? Not as efficient as the professional models, true, but still far more deadly than any of the instruments with which Genghis Khan and his successors conquered most of their known world.

Essentially, this is what makes the word disarmament a carrot on a stick and nothing more.

Yet donkeys keep on following such carrots day after day and generation after generation.

Since the Czar of Russia called the first disarmament conference at the Hague in 1899, dozens have been convened—hundreds, if one counts the routine proceedings of the League of Nations and its child, the United Nations—and innumerable solemn treaties have been signed; thousands of books and tens of thousands of articles and learned papers have been published on the subject; and the number of speeches delivered concerning it is simply mind-boggling.

What is the net result? We have outlawed the dumdum bullet—and anyone who has ever seen a shell-fragment or who is familiar with what a jacketed bullet out of an AR-15 can do can appraise the value of that accomplishment.

Now we have SALT I and SALT II.

Disarmament has most certainly not preserved the peace of the world, so let’s consider the next major instrument proposed in our century: the world organization. There have been two: the League of Nations and the UN. The League was senile, toothless, and impotent at its birth. It perished with World War II and it was not revived under its old name after that war simply because everyone knew its flaws, and to be successfully revived it would have had to be reformed. Instead, its flaws and weaknesses were perpetuated by the simple ad-man’s expedient: It stinks? Change its name. The UN was born, and even given new flaws and weaknesses peculiarly its own. Today it is nothing more than a playpen for savages and semi-savages, and an arena for manipulators out of Moscow. The closest it ever came to preserving the general peace was when the Security Council—in the absence of the Russians, who happened to be off sulking and pouting—made war against Communist aggression in Korea.

Another carrot-on-a-stick? Indeed yes.

The idea that either the effort towards disarmament or our continued support of the UN in its present form is going to establish—let alone preserve—the peace of the world is, if we look at it fearlessly and frankly, indeed unthinkable. Both are instances of the failure to think things through, of wistful dreams drowning out practicality, of behavior which—certainly in the West—has now become ritualized and compulsory.

Thinking About the Thinkable

Very well, then, what is thinkable? The question can perhaps be better answered by putting it in the past tense: what has been thinkable in the past? In other words, what has worked to keep the peace historically—on those rare occasions when, at least generally speaking, it has been kept for relatively long periods of time?

The answer is very simple: empire. That means union under one authority. It can be empire by force majeure, or empire by agreement. The Russian Empire was—and is—an example of the first. The Swiss Confederation can be taken as an example of the second. The British Empire has, to a great extent, been both. An empire can start as one and end up as the other—but the word fits, and I use it here deliberately, for were I to disguise it (as one so easily can) I would nonetheless be labelled an imperialist.

What does empire mean? Essentially, it means a strong central government, preferably acting according to a code of law, supported by the force necessary to keep it in the saddle, and ruling over a diversity of peoples, languages, and cultures. Most certainly, it means some surrender of absolute sovereignty by its various member groups and nations: no civilized empire could or would tolerate a Pol Pot or an Idi Amin; nor would it tolerate a Hitler or a Stalin; and had we of the civilized West had the courage and the imagination to establish such an empire after World War II—if necessary forcing it down totalitarian throats—then the world might not have had to continue tolerating tyrants great and small, and blithering about human rights might not have become the travesty it is today.

We would not have had to call it empire. We could have called it the United Nations Organization, or any other pretty name that occurred to us. But it would have functioned according to Western concepts of law and justice and man’s liberties.

Then why didn’t we? It is not enough to say that all we Americans wanted was to “bring the boys home,” which was true enough. Most of us were satisfied with the ritual dances of our statesmen and politicians: the Disarmament Dance, the One World Dance, the Three Freedoms Dance, and so on. (In the United States, at least, those who were not satisfied usually took refuge in the ritual dance of isolationism—in a world which, in terms of speed of communications, had become smaller than the original thirteen colonies.)

The majority had, unhappily, swallowed several Great Simple Myths, some of which had roots in the American past, and all of which had become virtually the religious tenets of liberalism. Here they are:

- All peoples, everywhere, want peace.

- Only their wicked leaders—kings, dictators, militarists, and of course arms dealers—want war.

- All peoples everywhere, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs, institutionalized hatreds, and education or lack of it, are really just displaced Vermonters, yearning to go to town meeting, exercise the democratic process, and squabble peacefully (if at all) with their good neighbors.

- All cultures everywhere are of equal value: all they need is for us to understand them.

- Given any opportunity, any culture—no matter how retarded, how vicious, or how apparently opposed to everything we ourselves consider good and true and beautiful—will (what a lovely word!) emerge into the glorious light of civilization.

- Therefore there are no savage nations, no backward nations, no nations that need more than government by their own leaders and lots of American financial support (plus plenty of Russian arms and a contingent of Cuban janissaries) to achieve equality with the United States, Great Britain, France, Sweden—you name it.

The only trouble with these pretty myths is that they are unadulterated bullshit.

All peoples everywhere do not want peace—if by peace we mean peace for all other peoples everywhere. Many individual men and women find war exciting; many are sadistic; many are susceptible to the exhortations of the inordinately ambitious, the fanatical, the lunatic. If the great majority really and actively wanted peace, there’d be no problem.

All peoples everywhere do not have democratic aspirations. Many of them still want to kill their neighbors, rob their neighbors, enslave their neighbors, or even serve their neighbors up for supper.

All cultures are most certainly not of equal value—and the more clearly we understand them, the more obvious that becomes. Some imperialists, like the British, did understand this, and usually had the good sense not to give first-rate modern weapons to peoples who had not absorbed the Anglo-Saxon concepts of how men should live with one another, and by what rules. There is absolutely no natural law dictating that cultural emergence will follow either prosperity or the acquisition of Western technology and its products. (Take a look at Libya. Take a look at Iran. For that matter, take a nice long look behind the Iron Curtain.)

Therefore all peoples, and all nations, are not equal. All cannot be trusted equally, either with the powers inherent in science and technology or with absolute sovereignty. One reason that the UN is an almost total failure is because it is based on the assumption that—except where size is concerned—they are.

Now, given all this, how could any world organization have succeeded after 1945?

Very simply, any organization—an army, a private club, a political party, a nation, a Boy Scout troop—must have a common code of behavior for its members. It must have the means to enforce this code, and to discipline (or at least to expel) any who violate it.

Where a world organization is concerned, this means at least some uniformity in each member nation’s body of domestic law. Certain human rights must be uniformly guaranteed. Certain individual and collective acts must be uniformly prohibited. It is, for instance, ridiculous to expect a dictator legally free to preach and launch a holy war to be a reliable member of our world club; and it is just as absurd to expect this reliability from a power group legally free to quell any opinion contrary to their own and to preach and plan the violent overthrow of the governments or economic systems of their fellow members.

Outlawing War

This brings us to the second really effective measure in the prevention of war, one which has actually been put into limited effect, one which is eminently thinkable. It is very simple: no nation forbidden to go to war by its own laws has ever done so. The two notable examples are Switzerland and Uruguay; in both, the government is legally forbidden to make war unless the nation is physically attacked—and it is axiomatic that one’s own law carries more force than any agreement with a foreign nation or group of nations. Douglas MacArthur, so often damned by liberals as a militarist, saw this clearly and therefore incorporated the provision in the post-war Japanese constitution.

Such a provision should have been, and eventually will have to be, the first basic condition for membership in the United Nations—or in whatever world organization follows it.

Let us assume that, in 1944, we had had the good sense to launch our second front up through the Balkans—as Winston Churchill wanted to—instead of into France, thereby isolating Russia from much or all of Eastern Europe. Let us assume, too, that in 1945, instead of letting Russia into the war with Japan—remember, all through the war the Russians were not our allies there—we had had the imagination and the courage to move in force against the Japanese armies in Korea and Manchuria, thereby saving North Korea from the easy Russian takeover it suffered. Let us further suppose that, when we formed the UN in San Francisco, we had insisted on limiting membership to nations willing to subscribe to an acceptable code of behavior. No one would have been excluded except for cause. No one would have been compelled to join.

The Soviet Union would, almost certainly, have remained on the outside looking in. So might some of the “emerging” nations. But had we had the good sense to limit our financial, scientific, and technological support to members of the club—to those who obeyed the rules—we would have ensured a world organization vastly different from what it is today. If the Communists had refused to mend their ways, they would have had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—and they would not now be in the position our bootstraps have put them in: able to disturb the world’s peace on every continent, pose a serious threat to our once preeminent power position, and even endanger our access to vital strategic minerals and materials. The United Nations then would probably have had, at least temporarily, a smaller membership—but its world would have been a far more open one, an infinitely freer one, and a much more prosperous one.

Which brings up another interesting question: just what would happen even today if we, and perhaps the British and West Germans and French and Scandinavians and all other non-totalitarian nations everywhere (if anyone could get them to agree) were to withdraw from the UN, expel it from United States soil, take over those of its agencies we support already, and form our own private club, functioning according to more civilized rules? And what would happen were we to confine our massive aid to those nations that chose to join us under these rules, sending no more vast grain shipments to the Russians, no more arms except to our declared allies, no more help of any nature to our avowed enemies?

I suspect that then our strength and our integrity would bring us more firm friends than our policies have won during the past thirty years, three decades during which we have tried to buy and beg the friendship of still-inferior nations, some of whom hate us, some of whom despise us, and most of whom used to have a healthy fear of us.

As a world, as one people, we finally are confronting space, the great adventure of our time.

We still have no idea of what—or whom—we will encounter there. We may need desperately to be culturally more coherent than we are, more genuinely united than the UN pretense lets us be, and far more uniformly civilized in the sense of our respect for the rights and liberties of others.

So why don’t we at least start thinking about the thinkable?

Day of Succession, by Theodore L. Thomas

Editor’s Introduction

If movies are considered to be reflections of popular cultural assumptions, we have a very schizophrenic view of intelligent alien lifeforms. On the one hand, we have the benign observers from outer space—typified in E.T. and the recent Mac and Me—while on the other hand, we have the aliens as super-evil monsters as in Aliens and Predator. Of course there’s no way to know which view is correct. There may not be any aliens out there.

On the face of it that’s unlikely. Years ago Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi made some after-dinner calculations: take the probability that any given star has planets (low), and that any given planet will have life (even lower), and that life came about there millions of years before it happened on Earth (not low at all given that there’s life in the first place). Multiply those together and you get a low number. Now multiply by the number of known stars in the galaxy, and you get an enormous number of stars that have had life much longer than it has existed on Earth.

Now consider how far humanity has come in a thousand years; consider where we will be a thousand years from now; and you get Fermi’s famous question, “Where are they?”

We’ve mostly assumed that wherever they are, they’ll be benign in intent. H. G. Wells had a somewhat different view, but we all know The War Of The Worlds is an obsolete story.

Under our system of government, military officers take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and to obey the lawful orders of those in authority. In that order.

Day of Succession

Theodore L. Thomas

General Paul T. Tredway was an arrogant man with the unforgivable gift of being always right. When the object came out of the sky in the late spring of 1979, it was General Tredway who made all of the decisions concerning it. Sweeping in over the northern tip of Greenland, coming on a dead line from the Yamal Peninsula, the object alerted every warning unit from the Dew Line to the radar operator at the Philadelphia National Airport. Based on the earliest reports, General Tredway concluded that the object was acting in an anomalous fashion; its altitude was too low too long. Accordingly, acting with a colossal confidence, he called off the manned interceptor units and forbade the launching of interceptor missiles. The object came in low over the Pocono Mountains and crashed in southeastern Pennsylvania two miles due west of Terre Hill.

The object still glowed a dull red, and the fire of the smashed house still smoldered when General Tredway arrived with the troops. He threw a cordon around it, and made a swift investigation. The object: fifty feet long, thirty feet in diameter, football-shaped, metallic, too hot to inspect closely. Visualizing immediately what had to be done, the general set up a Command Headquarters and began ordering the items he needed. With no wasted word or motion he built toward the finished plan as he saw it.

Scientists arrived at the same time as the asbestos clothing needed for them to get close. Tanks and other materiel flowed toward the impact site. Radios and oscillators scanned all frequencies seeking—what? No man there knew what to expect, but no man cared. General Tredway was on the ground personally, and no one had time for anything but his job. The gunners sat with eyes glued to sights, mindful of the firing pattern in which they had been instructed. Handlers poised over their ammunition. Drivers waited with hands on the wheel, motors idling. Behind this ring of steel a more permanent bulwark sprang up. Spotted back further were the technical shacks for housing the scientific equipment. Behind the shacks the reporters gathered, held firmly in check by armed troops. The site itself was a strange mixture of taut men in frozen immobility, and casual men in bustling activity.

In an hour the fact emerged which General Tredway had suspected all along: the object was not of Earthly origin. The alloy of which it was made was a known high-temperature alloy, but no technology on Earth could cast it in seamless form in that size and shape. Mass determinations and ultrasonic probes showed that the object was hollow but was crammed inside with a material different from the shell. It was then that General Tredway completely reorganized his fire power, and mapped out a plan of action that widened the eyes of those who were to carry it out.

On the general’s instructions, everything said at the site was said into radio transmitters and thus recorded a safe fifty miles away. And it was the broadcasting of the general’s latest plan of action that brought in the first waves of mild protest. But the general went ahead.

The object had lost its dull hot glow when the first indications of activity inside could be heard. General Tredway immediately removed all personnel to positions of safety outside the ring of steel. The ring itself buttoned up; when a circle of men fire toward a common center, someone can get hurt.

With the sound of tearing, protesting metal, a three foot circle appeared at the top of the object, and the circle began to turn. As it turned it began to lift away from the main body of the object, and soon screw threads could be seen. The hatch rose silently, looking like a bung being unscrewed from a barrel. The time came when there was a gentle click, and the hatch dropped back a fraction of an inch; the last thread had become disengaged. There was a pause.

The heavy silence was broken by a throbbing sound from the object that continued for forty-five seconds and then stopped. Then, without further sound, the hatch began to lift back on its northernmost rim.

In casual tones, as if he were speaking in a classroom, General Tredway ordered the northern, northeastern, and northwestern regions of the ring into complete cover. The hatch lifted until finally its underside could be seen; it was colored a dull, nonreflecting black. Higher the hatch lifted, and immediately following it was a bulbous mass that looked like a half-opened rose blossom. Deep within the mass there glowed a soft violet light, clearly apparent to the eye even in the sharp Pennsylvania sunshine.

The machine gun bullets struck the mass first, and the tracers could be seen glancing off. But an instant later the shaped charges in the rockets struck the mass and shattered it. The 105’s, the 101 rifles, the rocket launchers, poured a hail of steel onto the canted hatch, ricocheting much of the steel into the interior of the object. Delay-timed high-explosive shells went inside and detonated.

A flame tank left the ring of steel and lumbered forward, followed by two armored trucks. At twenty-five yards a thin stream of fire leaped from the nozzle of the tank and splashed off the hatch in a Niagara of flame. A slight correction, and the Niagara poured down into the opening. The tank moved in close, and the guns fell suddenly silent. Left in the air was a high-pitched shrieking wail, abruptly cut off.

Flames leaped from the opening, so the tank turned off its igniter and simply shot fuel into the object. Asbestos-clad men jumped from the trucks and fed a metal hose through the opening and forced it deep into the object. The compressors started, and a blast of high-pressure air passed through the hose, insuring complete combustion of everything inside. For three minutes the men fed fuel and air to the interior of the object, paying in the metal hose as the end fused off. Flames shot skyward with the roar of a blast furnace. The heat was so great that the men at work were saved only by the constant streams of water that played on them. Then it was over.

General Tredway placed the burned-out cinder in charge of the scientists, and then regrouped his men for resupply and criticism. These were in progress when the report of the second object came in.

The trackers were waiting for it. General Tredway had reasoned that when one object arrived, another might follow, and so he had ordered the trackers to look for it. It hit twenty-five miles west of the first one, near Florin. General Tredway and his men were on their way even before impact. They arrived twenty minutes after it hit.

The preparations were the same, only more streamlined now. The soldiers and the scientists moved more surely, with less wasted motion than before. But as the cooling period progressed, the waves of protest came out of Washington and reached toward General Tredway. “Terrible.” “First contact…” “Exterminating them like vermin…” “Peaceful relationship…” “…military mind.” The protests took on an official character just before the hatch on the second object opened. An actual countermanding of General Tredway’s authority came through just as the rockets opened fire on the half-opened rose blossom. The burning-out proceeded on schedule. Before it was complete, General Tredway climbed into a helicopter to fly the hundred miles to Washington, D. C. In half an hour he was there.

It is one of the circumstances of a democracy that in an emergency half a dozen men can speak for the entire country. General Tredway stalked into a White House conference room where waited the President, the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, the President pro tempore of the Senate, the House minority leader, and a cabinet member. No sooner had he entered when the storm broke.

“Sit down, general, and explain to us if you can the meaning of your reprehensible conduct.”

“What are you trying to do, make butchers of us all?”

“You didn’t give those… those persons a chance.”

“Here we had a chance to learn something, to learn a lot, and you killed them and destroyed their equipment.”

General Tredway sat immobile until the hot flood of words subsided. Then he said, “Do any of you gentlemen have any evidence that their intentions were peaceable? Any evidence at all?”

There was silence for a moment as they stared at him. The President said; “What evidence have you got they meant harm? You killed them before there was any evidence of anything.”

General Tredway shook his head, and a familiar supercilious tone crept unbidden into his voice. “They were the ones who landed on our planet. It was incumbent on them to find a way to convince us of their friendliness. Instead they landed with no warning at all, and with a complete disregard of human life. The first missile shattered a house, killed a man. There is ample evidence of their hostility,” and he could not help adding, “if you care to look for it.”

The President flushed and snapped, “That’s not the way I see it. You could have kept them covered; you had enough fire power there to cover an army. If they made any hostile move, that would have been time enough for you to have opened up on them.”

The House Speaker leaned forward and plunked a sheaf of telegrams on the table. He tapped the pile with a forefinger and said, “These are some of thousands that have come in. I picked out the ones from some of our outstanding citizens—educators, scientists, statesmen. All of them agree that this is a foolhardy thing you have done. You’ve destroyed a mighty source of knowledge for the human race.”

“None of them is a soldier,” said the general. “I would not expect them to know anything about attack and defense.”

The Speaker nodded and drew one more telegram from an inner pocket. General Tredway, seeing what was coming, had to admire his tactics; this man was not Speaker for nothing. “Here,” said the Speaker, “is a reply to my telegram. It is from the Joint Chiefs. Care to read it?”

They all stared at the general, and he shook his head coldly. “No. I take it that they do not understand the problem either.”

“Now just a min…” A colonel entered the room and whispered softly to the President. The President pushed his chair back, but he did not get up. Nodding he said, “Good. Have Barnes take over. And see that he holds his fire until something happens.

Hear? Make certain of that. I’ll not tolerate any more of this unnecessary slaughter.” The colonel left.

The President turned and noted the understanding in the faces of the men at the table. He nodded and said, “Yes, another one. And this time we’ll do it right. I only hope the other two haven’t got word to the third one that we’re a bunch of killers.”

“There could be no communication of any kind emanating from the first two,” said General Tredway. “I watched for that.”

“Yes. Well, it’s the only thing you did right. I want you to watch to see the proper way to handle this.”

In the intervening hours General Tredway tried to persuade the others to adopt his point of view. He succeeded only in infuriating them. When the time came for the third object to open, the group of men were trembling in anger. They gathered around the television screen to watch General Barnes’ handling of the situation.

General Tredway stood to the rear of the others, watching the hatch unscrew. General Barnes was using the same formation as that developed by General Tredway; the ring of steel was as tight as ever.

The familiar black at the bottom of the hatch came into view, followed closely by the top of the gleaming rose blossom. General Tredway snapped his fingers, the sound cracking loud in the still room. The men close to the set jumped and looked back at Tredway in annoyance. It was plain that the general had announced in his own way the proper moment to fire. Their eyes had hardly got back to the screen when it happened.

A thin beam of delicate violet light danced from the heart of the rose to the front of the steel ring. The beam rotated like a lighthouse beacon, only far far faster. Whatever it touched it sliced. Through tanks and trucks and guns and men it sliced, over and over again as the swift circular path of the beam spun in ever-widening circles. Explosions rocked the site as high explosives detonated under the touch of the beam. The hatch of the object itself, neatly cut near the bottom, rolled ponderously down the side of the object to the ground. The beam bit into the ground and left seething ribbons of slag. In three seconds the area was a mass of fused metal and molten rock and minced bodies and flame and smoke and thunder. In another two seconds the beam reached the television cameras, and the screen went blank.

The men near the screen stared speechless. At that moment the colonel returned and announced softly that a fourth object was on its way, and that its probable impact point was two miles due east of Harrisburg.

The group turned as one man to General Tredway, but he paid no attention. He was pacing back and forth, pulling at his lower lip, frowning in concentration. “General,” said the President. “I… I guess you had the right idea. These things are monsters. Will you handle this next one?”

General Tredway stopped and said, “Yes, but I had better explain what is now involved. I want every vehicle that can move to converge on the fourth object; the one that is now loose will attempt to protect it. I want every plane and copter that can fly to launch a continuing attack on it. I want every available missile zeroed in and launched at it immediately. I want every fusion and fission bomb we’ve got directed at the fourth object by means of artillery, missiles, and planes; one of them might get through. I want a request made to Canada, Brazil, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy to launch fusion-headed missiles at the site of the fourth object immediately. In this way we might have a chance to stop them. Let us proceed.”

The President stared at him and said, “Have you gone crazy? I will give no such orders. What you ask for will destroy our middle eastern seaboard.”

The general nodded. “Yes, everything from Richmond to Pittsburgh to Syracuse, I think, possibly more. Fallout will cover a wider area. There’s no help for it.”

“You’re insane. I will do no such thing.”

The Speaker stepped forward and said, “Mr. President, I think you should reconsider this. You saw what that thing could do; think of two of them loose. I am very much afraid the general may be right.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The Vice President stepped to the President’s side and said, “I agree with the President. I never heard of such an absurd suggestion.”

The moment froze into silence. The general stared at the three men. Then, moving slowly and deliberately, he undid his holster flap and pulled out his pistol. He snapped the slide back and fired once at point-blank range, shifted the gun, and fired again. He walked over to the table and carefully placed the gun on it. Then he turned to the Speaker and said, “Mr. President, there is very little time. Will you give the necessary orders?”

The Irvhank Effect, by Harry Turtledove

Editor’s Introduction

I have a doctorate in political science, and I’ve managed several winning (and a few losing) political campaigns. On the evidence I should understand something of American politics.

Clearly I don’t understand as well as I think I do.

Take strategic defense, “Space Shield,” for example. As Chairman of the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy I helped draw up some of the documents that convinced President Reagan to make his famous speech challenging the scientific community to make the ICBM “impotent and obsolete.” (The phrase, incidentally, was the President’s; it wasn’t in the drafts he was given.)

The President fully expected overwhelming support for his Space Shield. After all, it ended what Arthur Clarke had called the absurdity of MAD: “two small boys standing in a pool of gasoline while seeing which could collect the most matches.” It also conformed to Clarke’s Law: “If a grey-bearded eminent scientist tells you something is possible, believe him; if he says it is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.” A number of eminent scientists, including not only Edward Teller but many rocket scientists as well as strategic analysts, said that strategic defense certainly was possible; and we knew the Soviets thought it was, because they had been working on one for years.

So. On March 23, 1983, President invited “those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace.”

Moreover, the research programs were successful. It doesn’t seem to matter.

Despite promising developments in Strategic Defense—the 1986 MIRACL experiment at White Sands Proving Grounds where a laser destroyed a Titan booster on the ground; Homing Overlay in which a missile physically intercepted another in outer space—we have seen increasing opposition from Congress, the media, and even within the Pentagon itself. Even the advocates of Nuclear Freeze—which is quite compatible with SDI—have argued for MAD rather than defenses that defend.

The problem with MAD—Mutual Assured Destruction—is that it’s immoral. Free men standing between their loved homes and the war’s desolation is compatible with all of Western Judaeo-Christian philosophy; with the Thomistic doctrine of Just War. Deliberately setting fire to the enemy’s women and children isn’t.

Yet if we don’t threaten to burn Russian school girls, we can’t honor our pledges.

In 1969 Stefan T. Possony and I published The Strategy of Technology, in which we argued for a U.S. strategy of “assured survival” rather than one of assured destruction. At the time we didn’t know how it might be accomplished, and we well understood that until the technical means were developed the U.S. would have to depend on deterrent threats. Our point was that assured survival was a permissible goal, one worth achieving; assured destruction is at best an immoral and disheartening goal for those who have to make it work.

So. Acting on the advice of senior scientists and advisors, the President asked: “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our soil or that of our allies?”

The response was nearly instantaneous. Congressional leaders giggled “Star Wars.” The Union of Concerned Scientists published a disdainful report so full of errors they were obvious to high school students. A well-known professor at MIT said that “the issue was too important for physics.” Senator Kennedy dubbed the President “Darth Vader.”

In “The Irvhank Effect,” Harry Turtledove shows us one reaction to the discovery of a device that can end all possibility of nuclear war. Twenty years ago, I might have questioned his conclusion; now, I’m not so sure…

The Irvhank Effect

Harry Turtledove

The Nevada desert looks like a proving-ground for hell. That is not the reason the government tests its atomic weapons there, but it does give the more thoughtful technicians pause.

As one of the devices—a much more sanitary and less hair-raising word than “bomb”—was making its long journey underground, an engineer in the blockhouse said to the man at his elbow, “Just once, I wish the goddamn thing wouldn’t go off.”

“Don’t we all, Dave, don’t we all,” his companion said. “However, things being as they are–”

“I know, Felipe,” Dave sighed. The device was in place now, a good many thousand feet below the desert. The countdown proceeded smoothly. No reason why it shouldn’t; after hundreds of tests over four decades, a routine had long since grown up.

Dave waited for zero. The bomb down there was a peewee, forty kilotons nominal yield, but it could still make the ground rock and roll. Hell, they’d feel it in Vegas, fifty miles southeast down US 95. He was a lot closer than fifty miles, worse luck.

Zero came and went. The desert remained unshaken; the instruments in front of Dave did not go wild. The voice of the principal investigator boomed over the intercom: “Gentlemen, we appear to have a glitch somewhere. We’re trying to track it down now. Please stay at your stations.”

“Willpower, that’s what it is,” Dave said, flexing a stringy bicep.

“Bullshit, that’s what it is,” Felipe snorted, and made as if to hit him with a clipboard. His friend flinched.

US 95 skirts the edge of Nellis Air Force Range and Nuclear Testing Site. The four-wheel-drive Toyota pickup had left the highway about two thirds of the way from Beatty down to Lathrop Wells. No one paid any particular attention to it; there were always a lot of off-road vehicles chewing up the Amargosa Desert.

The pickup stopped well outside the edge of the air force range. MP’s did a lot of patrolling on test days. The two men in the truck had a fair amount of electronic junk and a portable generator bolted to the cargo bed. The last thing they wanted was to be taken for a couple of Russian spies.

Irv Farmer got out on the passenger side. He was in his late twenties, slim (well, skinny, actually), sandy-haired, and too pale to be wearing only a T-shirt and shorts in the fierce desert sun. The thin weave of his cap, which proclaimed his allegiance to the Philadelphia Phillies, did not give his balding scalp nearly enough protection.

“Christ, I’m gonna look like a lobster tomorrow,” he said. He could not even tell how much he was sweating. The hot, parched air dried the moisture on his skin as fast as it appeared.

Hank Jeter let out a rich, booming laugh. “What do you know? Finally I’m somewhere where being black does me some good.” Los Angeles Raiders, his cap said. He looked like a defensive lineman; each of his thighs was nearly as big around as Farmer’s waist. In spite of his formidable appearance, he was a talented physicist. So, for that matter, was Irv Farmer.

Irv persuaded the generator to flatulent life. The two men worked together to hook their gadgetry to it. Anxiously checking one meter after another, Jeter asked, “What time is that sucker supposed to go off, man?”

“Let me check.” Irv ambled back to the cab of the truck, got out a copy of yesterday afternoon’s Las Vegas Sun. The story he was looking for was on page five. “‘Local residents are advised not to worry if they feel an earthquake tomorrow,’” he read. “‘The NRC is conducting another of a series of low-yield nuclear tests, with detonation scheduled for 10:52 A.M.’”

Jeter pulled out his pocket watch, glanced at it. “We got set up just in time. Only ten minutes to kill. How about a beer?”

“Best idea I’ve heard all day.” There was a cooler in the truckbed, too. Farmer pressed an icy can of Coors to his forehead before he opened it. He drank the Colorado Kool-aid down in four long, blissful gulps, but Hank Jeter still finished ahead of him.

Ten fifty-two passed. So did eleven o’clock, and ten after, quite without an earthquake. The big black man and the little white man solemnly shook hands. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I would say we have something here,” Jeter said.

“I would say we do.” Farmer reached in and turned off the generator. The ground under his Nikes gave a lurch. He had to grab for the tailgate to keep from falling into a cactus. His eyes glowed. “Yes, I’d say we do.”

Like a lot of discoveries, this one had been more accident than design. Several things went into it: the fact that, by some accident of engineering, the lab apparatus had a backup and the overhead lighting didn’t; the fact that Hank Jeter’s great-grandfather had worked as a railroad chief porter during the 1920’s; and the fact that Hank was seeing what time it was at the exact moment when a drunk slammed into the power pole out on Rhawn Street.

The lab was in an interior room, with no windows, and the sudden darkness was Stygian. People swore in disgust. Somebody tripped over a stool, which fell with a crash. “Where’s the flashlight, goddamit?” somebody else said.

Hank didn’t need it; not, at least, to look at his watch. That watch had been in his family since his great-grandfather’s day. As a matter of fact, it was a conductor’s watch, but great-grandpa had bought it all the same, just as soon as he could afford it. He loved it, and why not? It had been keeping good time for more than sixty years now, a big, old-fashioned stemwinder with a long, thick gold chain, perfect for wearing in a vest pocket. It had a radium dial that glowed in the dark.

Except it wasn’t glowing now. Hank held it so close to his face that it almost bumped his nose, squinted until his eyes crossed. Nothing.

Just then, someone found the flashlight. It was pointed straight at Hank’s face when it got turned on. In total blackness, it was like a magnesium flare exploding. Hank yelped and nearly dropped his watch.

“Everybody out to the parking lot,” the fellow with the light said. He had a loud, officious voice, and herded his colleagues along like sheep.

Sirens were baying outside, what with the police, paramedics, fire engine, and electrician all descending on the drunk and the pole he’d knocked over. It was also, as Hank discovered when he got into the light, a quarter past four. Plainly, not much more was going to get done today.

The section chief saw that too. He sent a couple of people back into the lab to turn off as much equipment as they safely could, and let everyone else go home early.

There was a scattering of muffled cheers, and some not so muffled. Hank turned to Irv Farmer and said, “How about a drink?”

“Motion seconded and passed by acclamation. Where to?”

Hank looked at him in honest surprise. “The Lair; where else?”

The bar was a couple of miles from the lab. The power was on there, but it was almost as dark inside as it had been when the lights went out at work. Jeter ordered bourbon. Farmer got a bottle of Anchor Porter. He had acquired a taste for the stuff in his undergrad days at Berkeley; the Lair was one of the few bars on the East Coast that stocked it. Thick and dark, dark brown, it was the pumpernickel of beers. He sipped at it; it was too strong-tasting to pour down.

“Another day shot to hell,” Hank said, lifting his glass.

“You know it.” Irv licked creamy foam off his upper lip. “The surge when the auxiliary generator kicked in cost me half my data, I’ll bet.”

Jeter put his head in his huge hands. “Oh, God, I forgot all about that. Me too.”

One drink became several. After a while, Irv said, “What time has it gotten to be?”

“Why are you asking me? You’ve got a watch on your wrist,” Jeter retorted in mock anger. “Just because I’m black, you make me do all the work.”

“Oh, bull. If I didn’t ask you to haul out that brass turnip of yours, you’d sulk for a week.”

“A likely story.” Chuckling, Hank looked at his great-grandfather’s watch. “It’s twenty to seven.” He frowned. “That’s funny.”

“No it isn’t. I just remembered I’m supposed to be in Southbridge at seven, and I’m never gonna make it.”

“No. Look at the dial.”

“I’ve seen it a million times, thanks.”

“It’s glowing,” Jeter said.

“Well, I should hope so. It’s a wonder you don’t futz up half the experiments in the lab with the radioactivity in that damn thing.”

“You have no respect for an heirloom, my man. The point is, though, when the electricity went out this afternoon, I was looking right at it and there was nothing to see, just black.”

“Probably you were looking at the back side and didn’t realize it in the dark,” Irv suggested.

“Hey, no, man, I’m serious,” Jeter said. “I had it out before the power blew. I can’t remember the last time I looked at it in the dark; I just figured the radium paint had worn out or something. Now I don’t know what to think.”

Irv Farmer stared owlishly at his friend. He had drunk just enough to take him seriously; a little more and he wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, a little less and he would have rationalized everything away. Instead, he said, “All right, I give up. What happened?”

Hank shrugged. “Just one of those things, I guess.” Being almost twice Farmer’s size, he hadn’t been hit as hard by his shots of Hiram Walker’s. As long as everything seemed back to normal, he was happy enough—relieved might be a better word.

Irv finished his porter. “Let’s go back and see if we can duplicate it,” he said suddenly.

It was Jeter’s turn to gape. “Probably nothing there to duplicate.”

“Then what have we lost? A little time.”

“What about Southbridge?”

“Oh, the hell with Southbridge. She’s starting to think she owns me. Come on; are you game?”

“That’s what they asked the hunter in the old joke, and when he said yes they shot him. But I’ll come along; I’ve got nothin’ else shakin’ tonight.”

As they drove up, they saw the lights were back on. “Can’t keep you fellers away from it, can they?” cackled the security guard. The old codger didn’t bother looking at their security badges; he’d been seeing them come and go for years.

“This isn’t going to work,” Hank said when they got to the laboratory. “How can we tell what was on and what was off when the power pole got hit?”

Alcoholic confidence still buoyed Irv Farmer. He went from bench to bench and desk to desk, checking diaries. Once he picked a lock with a paper clip, something he never would—or could—have done cold sober. He made a second circuit round the lab, turning on instruments and setting them to the same configuration they had had during the afternoon.

At last he turned to Jeter. “All right, where were you?”

“Right about here,” Hank said, taking his spot. “Look, man, let’s just pack it in, shall we? This is all more hassle than it’s worth.”

Irv wasn’t listening to him. “Get out your watch,” he said, and turned off the lights. Hank didn’t say anything, so after a minute or so Farmer called, “Well, what do you see?”

“Come look for yourself.”

Irv did, moving carefully in the dark. Hank held the watch out to him. The hands and the small painted spots that marked the hours were dark. “Well, I will be damned,” Irv said. His friend was whistling tunelessly between his teeth.

“Where are you going?” Hank asked.

“To turn the lights back on. I’ve got an idea.” Farmer rummaged around until he found a Geiger counter. He held the Geiger tube up to the watch. The lazy clicking of background radiation, present everywhere, did not change. Irv and Hank looked at each other.

Irv started turning off pieces of lab equipment. The Geiger counter immediately began to chatter.

“Do you know what we’ve got here if we can find out what makes this tick?” Farmer said softly, oblivious to any thought of wordplay. “We’ve got a Nobel prize right in our laps, that’s what.”

Hank Jeter regarded him most soberly. “It may not be anything nearly as trivial as that,” he said.

After they’d found the effect, they had to figure out how it worked and what to do with it. By unspoken common consent, neither of them mentioned it to the people they worked with, and they made sure they didn’t leave any notes lying around the lab. They did put in a lot of overtime they didn’t get paid for, often in the wee small hours.

For one thing, they had no idea why the resultant of all the forces in the gadgetry in the lab on that particular day produced a field that damped radioactivity. That bothered Hank. He wanted to know.

Irv was not as fussy. “Look,” he said at the Lair one evening, “right now I don’t much care about why. All I want to know is how I can use it. People were making gunpowder hundreds of years before they knew thing one about oxidation or any of that.” His argument carried the day.

Lack of understanding, though, was not the chief reason they kept things to themselves. The more they played with what they had begun to call the Irvhank Effect, the more they realized just how big a thing they had stumbled across. That first field of theirs was a very strong, very tight one: it damped all radioactivity above background level, but it only had an effective radius of about ten meters.

‘‘We could clean up Three Mile Island with this,” Irv said. Hank only grunted. He had bigger things in mind.

Their early tries at altering the field only succeeded in eliminating it altogether. It was Irv’s turn to think more progress impossible, Hank Jeter’s to keep pushing. After a good deal of frustration, they finally found the components of the system they had to modify to change the strength of the Irvhank Effect. They also found that each weakening of the field increased the range over which its effect spread.

It took many months of work before they got the kind of field Hank had conceived of the moment he heard that quiet Geiger counter: one weak enough to allow the barest chain reaction, the level found in an atomic pile, but strong enough to prevent the catastrophic fission of nuclear weapons.

That was the one that sent the two of them into the Nevada desert, to see if their circuits did what they were supposed to. Actually, the trip was conservative; if their haywire calculations were right, at that level the field should cover most of the United States. When they found out that the device worked, they hooked it up to wall current and let it run night and day.

“Let the Russians roar,” Hank declared. “Those sons of bitches aren’t going to blow us all away now, no matter how much they want to. Do you know what we’ve done, Irv? We’ve declared peace against the whole world, and we’ve won.”

As things worked out, the Russians, weren’t doing much roaring of late. They were grumbling, mostly among themselves. It was Irv who noticed the name of a prominent Soviet general in the “Milestones” column of Time.

“‘Retired,’” he read. “‘Marshal Pavel Serafimov, 62. Western intelligence sources believe that Serafimov, a leading expert in nuclear weaponry, was forced into early retirement because of the unexpected difficulties the Red Army is having with the warhead of the new SS-26 ICBM.’”

Hank’s smile was blissful. “We aren’t just covering the USA, then. I sort of suspected you were too cautious with your numbers, Irv. If the Russians’ bombs won’t go off even at home, we’ve got the whole planet blanketed. Now we don’t have to worry about a nut in the White House or the Department of Defense, either. To say nothing of the Israelis, the South Africans, the Pakistanis, the Argentines—how long do you want me to go on?”

“No need, no need,” Irv said. “I think it’s about time we looked into publishing.”

You have to understand that I’ve pieced all this together. Obviously, I wasn’t there when the two of them discovered the Irvhank Effect. There are still lots of things I don’t know about it. And, as I’ve said, they were careful about covering up what they were doing, for amateurs anyway.

I tell you frankly: a lot of people were tearing their hair, trying to figure out why none of the bomb tests would work. After the first couple of failures, we were also going out of our minds trying to keep the Russians—to say nothing of Congress—from learning things were on the fritz.

Of course, it turned out the Russians had troubles of their own, but we didn’t know that then. You can imagine how relieved we were when we found out. At least they weren’t responsible for screwing us up.

But who was?

It took a lot of time—people time and computer time—before a possible answer emerged. Again, I don’t have the details, just what I got in my briefing. Apparently, somebody was smart enough, or desperate enough, to ask for a computer search of any and all anomalies having anything to do with radiation, and then to stick pins in a map to see if there was a pattern. Sure enough, there was.

Some of the items had made the newspapers, others hadn’t. The day when all the nuclear plants east of the Mississippi hiccupped for six seconds was one of the latter. With everyone loving nuclear power so much these days, most of the plant directors had covered up as best they could, especially since they didn’t know what had gone wrong either. But those people are amateurs too.

Other things were less spectacular—high-energy physics experiments gone awry, disappointingly ineffective cancer treatments, and so on. Those were also more localized. They gave us an idea of where the center of the problem-circle was. We were able to start putting together a list of names.

Two people on the list, it turned out, had been vacationing in Las Vegas on the morning when a bomb test was inexplicably late. That was enough to be worth looking into, anyhow, and that was when I got my orders.

As it happened, I went to Irv Farmer’s condo first, while he was at work. Jackpot the first time, too; I found the half-written paper on the Irvhank Effect in the typewriter, with all the notes beside it. I skimmed through them. The machine itself, I learned, was at Hank Jeter’s apartment, under the bed.

Amateurs.

I took all the documents and stuffed them into the repairman’s bag I carried in case anyone got curious about what I was doing wandering the halls. Then I went out and goofed around for several hours. I knew just what Irv Farmer would do when he got home and found his place burgled—he’d rush over and tell Hank. That was fine. I needed to talk with both of them.

My timing was right. I heard two voices when I paused to listen outside the door. I went on in. Apartment-house locks aren’t made to keep out the likes of me.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I advised the two of them as I shut the door behind me. I was mostly talking to Jeter, nobody’d told me what a mountain of beef he was. “This in my hands is a silenced UZI machine-pistol with a forty-round box. A burst will make a noise like Donald Duck sneezing and leave you both hamburger.”

I had to give Irv Farmer credit. He went white as a sheet, but his voice came out steady: “I thought you weren’t supposed to fire bursts through a silencer.”

“For emergency use only,” I agreed, “but your friend there on the sofa is big enough to qualify.”

“If you want money, my cash is in the silverware drawer in the kitchen,” Jeter said. He didn’t sound as though he believed it himself; even in the US of A, robbers don’t pack UZI’s with silencers. When I just stood there, he sagged a little. “Who are you with?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Believe it or not, at the moment all I intend to do is have a chat.”

Hank was still a bit stunned; Irv was quicker on the uptake. “If you’re the one who was at my place”—he paused, and I nodded—“then I think we know what you want to, ah, chat about.”

I nodded again. “No doubt. Tell me, can your gadget, say, protect the United States from nuclear attack but leave the Soviet Union open?”

“No way,” Farmer said. “The whole planet gets protected at that setting. It’s in the nature of the field.”

I would have believed him even if glancing over his notes hadn’t led me to the same conclusion; you could read his sincerity in his face. “So what exactly is it you’re accomplishing, then?”

That roused Hank Jeter. “Putting an end to the possibility of nuclear war,” he growled. The look he sent my way said that even somebody like me should be able to figure that one out for himself.

I shrugged. “And so?”

“What do you mean, ‘And so?’” he said. “And so peace, of course.”

“We’re at peace now,” I reminded him. “We have been since 1945, more or less.”

“A peace based on terror,” he said scornfully. “That kind of peace never lasts, and the kind of war we can fight with today’s weapons is too terrible to imagine.”

“There I agree with you,” I said, and saw I’d surprised him. I went on, “But what makes you think that turning off all the nuclear weapons is going to do anything to promote peace?”

He looked at me as if he thought I was crazy. He probably did. “We won’t be able to blow ourselves away, that’s what.”

“With all the germs and gases stockpiled, I wouldn’t even bet on that,” I said. “Let it go, though. Just tell me this. Suppose you’re the President of the Soviet Union. And suddenly your missiles and the Americans’ missiles are only so many big Roman candles. You take a look toward Western Europe. You’ve got about a 3-1 edge in tanks, 2-1 in planes, maybe 3-2 in ground troops. Nothing much is going to happen to your country if you move. So what do you do?’’

“Nothing much is going to happen?” Irv echoed. “You’re still going to get the hell bombed out of you, and invaded if you start losing.”

“By Russian standards, that’s nothing much,” I said. “And the last people who made a go of invading Russia were the Mongols. Hardly anybody on this side of the Atlantic remembers that the Russians did the dirty work in World War II after the Germans jumped ’em. They took eleven, maybe thirteen million armed forces deaths, plus another seven million or so civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Irv and Hank were both staring at me now. They grew up with Vietnam: fifty-odd thousand dead, spread over a dozen years. They were too young to remember how easy it was to fight a really big conventional war.

I said so, adding, “Why do you think we haven’t fought the third World War yet? It could have started any time: over Korea, or Hungary in ’56, or the Berlin Wall, or Czechoslovakia in 1968, or Poland in ’81, or Vietnam, or the Middle East half a dozen different times. For that matter, why doesn’t China try to take most of Siberia back from the Russians? Their maps claim it, you know.” They plainly didn’t.

I said, “Aside from anything else, there’s another reason to keep away from World War III—we’d probably lose. The Russians outweigh us by too much in conventional weapons, and the geography favors them.”

“China,” Farmer said. He’d been paying attention, some.

“Maybe, just maybe,” I admitted. “But that’s a deal with the devil, too, the same as the one we had with Stalin to beat Hitler. We’d probably just be setting up the next round.”

“You have one sick view of human nature, man,” Hank Jeter said.

I shrugged. “I suppose so, but I’m afraid I’ve got an awful lot of history to back it up. Seems to me the only thing that’s kept such peace as we’ve got is the terror you were sneering at. What else is strong enough? And what’s going to happen when people find out there’s nothing to be afraid of any more?”

If I sound like I was pleading with them, I was. I’d never gotten a set of orders I liked less, and I was looking for some excuse to break them. But try as I might, I couldn’t find one. Maybe Irv and Hank could. After all, they were bright enough to have created this flap in the first place.

No luck, dammit. They hadn’t thought out the consequences any further than keeping the bombs from falling, and that wasn’t far enough. Any minute now, somebody was likely to realize that things weren’t going bang because they couldn’t go bang. Then it would be time to hold onto your hat, assuming you still had a head to wear it on.

Donald Duck sneezed. I still had half a clip left when I went into the bedroom. I unplugged the cord that snaked under the bed. The world didn’t feel a bit different, of course, but it should have. I used the cord to haul out the gear that generated the Irvhank Effect, and I put the rest of the clip into it. Pieces flew every which way.

I had to move fast after that. The more you fire a silenced weapon, the less effective the silencer gets—Irv had been right about that. Hank’s notes, thank God, were easy to find. I tossed them onto the floor, set Irv’s beside them. Then I poured gasoline over them, tossed a match, and ran like hell.

I’m glad they managed to hold the fire to three floors of the building. It gave the papers a week’s worth of stories, but none of them had anything to do with me, so that was all right, too.

Everyone at work was relieved when I reported success, and when the obvious experiment confirmed it. We’ve been dealing with the mess we know for a long time now; I expect we’ll muddle on a while longer. The Irvhank Effect—I hope!—was one of those freak discoveries that won’t be stumbled on again for hundreds of years. By then, we may know how to handle it.

For that matter, nobody asked me a whole lot of questions about how the Effect worked. It’s as if we’re all trying to pretend the whole thing never happened. That’s good enough for me. I’m the only one who knows so much as its name now and I don’t know much more than that. I shouldn’t even be writing this much down.

More later. Somebody’s at the d…

Three Poems

Editor’s Introduction

A recent issue of Commentary laments the fate of the modern American poet. There are plenty of programs and grants; poets acceptable to the world of academia need not starve. There are also plenty of “little” magazines for them to publish in. The modern poet lacks only one thing: people who will pay any attention to him.

It was not always thus.

Back in the times when Celtic kings reigned, a poet, or bard, was a man of great honor—even power. Bards were the advisors to princes, the interpreters of the divine, and the link between man and his gods. Sometimes they were even credited with the power to see into the future. Usually their prophecies were seen more as warnings than actual predictions.

Herewith works of three poets who should not be ignored.

War Circular

J. E. Oestreicher

The Tranquil Sound

Lenora Lee Good

The basin lay

As though carelessly tossed

Catching sun light

In its glass interior,

Light dancing from

Blister-bumps

To age-vein cracks;

Filled with waters that sough

With the tides

And serenade the moon.

Breezes dance

Tiny paths in the dust

Seen only by the circling Roc,

Who cries to the emptiness below.

The basin lay

As it had for years

Lost to all but the Roc

And the lonely soldier,

Sentinel on the edge of glass

Whose glowing skeleton

Still clutches rust

That once was weapon;

Faithfully watching

With eyeless sockets

The once-upon-a-time

Tree filled hunting grounds

Of old Chief Sealth.

Foolish lad. Dead.

Defending a people who wanted

No defense.

The circling Roc cries

P E E E A A A A C E !

P E E E A A A A C E !

P E E E A A A A C E !

Psi-Rec: I Linger

Peter Dillingham

Willing prey of time

I linger

Wandering these crumbling

Weed-choked roads

Verging labyrinth Rune

To mute, abandoned ruin

Over dune

Wild plain and tor.

Wrapped round in tattered weeds

The imperial plumage

Of countless centuries

A kaleidial patchwork

Of fugitive memory

I linger

Pallbearer.

Archetype

This towering arcology

A haunted honeycomb

Alien hexagonal prism

After alien hexagonal prison

Still resonant

With the ecstasy of madmen
in metamorphosis to gods.

Parasite of moulted flesh
and bone

I linger.

The Benefactors, by Don Hawthorne

Editor’s Introduction

When I was an editor of Survive magazine, I always said that the best way to survive a nuclear war is not to have one. I believe that still. I also believe we have a good chance of avoiding Armageddon, which is a major reason why I gave up my Survive column. I’ve nothing but respect for survivalists—real ones, not the nuts who run around in military uniform pretending they’re going to conduct a point defense against the government—but I think I can do more good as Chairman of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy than in helping people prepare for life after Doomsday.

So long as the West remains strong the situation looks pretty good. The world daily becomes a more integrated place; thanks to air travel, food dependency, communications, and the exchange of that most crucial commodity of all, information, East and West are stitched together, and it’s better for each that the other exists.

Still, due to that growing integration, things are more complex. One of the world’s major players could bring about the collapse of the entire structure by mistake. It is a sobering thought. Particularly if that collapse were to come about through mismanagement by the ruling faction, leading to the disaffection of the people and a final, ill-considered course of action to retain their loyalty to the government. The Falklands War came about much in that fashion. Rather than wait a year or two to settle the issue legally with Great Britain, the military government of Argentina pushed ahead on a course of action that resulted in disaster. Of course that government was headed there anyway. Still, they should have remembered Alexander’s words about Sparta, when asked why he had not conquered the once great military city-state. “Sparta’s an old dog, but she’s still got her teeth.”

So, it seems, does Great Britain.

Alas, with the surge of post-holocaust theorists in America it is fashionable to assume that the nation to fall the hardest will be the United States—perhaps because we have risen so high. Or possibly because we have a great deal more to lose by skirting too close to the Abyss. Yet those nations with less than ourselves may have even more to lose because they already have so little.

Robert G. Kaiser’s Russia: The People and the Power relates a Russian folk story about a circus tiger named Alma, as told by a young emigre.

“(She) was very intelligent, very well trained. But every time her trainer turned his back to her she wanted to eat him. So the trainer’s wife stood outside the cage, and whenever the trainer did turn his back, his wife would say, ‘All right, Alma, quiet, Alma,’ and the tiger knew she was being watched, so she didn’t jump. But the trainer wanted to find a better solution to the problem. For a long time he thought about how to convince the tiger that she didn’t want to eat him.

“He thought of a brilliant idea. He realized that Alma was very comfortable sitting on her round platform in the cage. So he gave her a new platform that was much smaller—so small that she could only put three feet on it at one time. There wasn’t room for all four paws, so she had to concentrate on keeping her balance. All her thoughts were directed toward staying on the platform. She no longer had time to think about eating the trainer.

“It seems to me that Soviet man is exactly the same. Like the tiger, he has to balance himself on a small platform. He’s always standing in line, always trying to buy something, always worrying about idiotic little problems. He has no time to worry about the big things—about freedom, or happiness, or changing the government. The government doesn’t give you a chance to think—there’s no time to think. If you get a chance to do a little thinking, you have to realize that life isn’t too good.

“But nobody has time to think about eating the trainer.”

With the current mood of reform sweeping the Soviet Union, that story may have new relevance. What happens if you give the tiger a larger platform?

The Benefactors

Don Hawthorne

All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob
Whose head has grown too large,
Ends by destroying its own job
And works its own discharge;

And Man, whose mere necessities
Move all things from his path,
Trembles meanwhile at their decrees,
And deprecates their wrath!

—Rudyard Kipling, The Benefactors

Sergeant Nikita Sokoloff, KGB, watched in despair as the last train left the ruins of Moscow without him. Sokoloff chased the receding cars, dodging shots from the Red Army Engineer bandits who’d stolen the train, and frequently leaping over the bodies of his fellow KGB troopers who had tried in vain to oppose the theft.

When Sokoloff came upon two figures struggling in the cinders and gravel at the side of the railbed, he raised his assault rifle, recognizing one of them almost too late.

“Colonel Serafimov!” Sokoloff lowered his weapon and ran to help his commander. Colonel Maksim Serafimov had pulled himself free from the grip of the man beneath him and was throttling his opponent in fury. Now Sokoloff could see that the figure in Serafimov’s grasp was Colonel Podgorny, commander of the Army Combat Engineers who had stolen the train.

Both men were so bloody that Sokoloff could not tell who was the more badly wounded, until he noticed that the bearlike Podgorny wasn’t moving at all.

Sokoloff tried to pull his commanding officer away from the dead man, but Serafimov paused only long enough to send the young Sergeant reeling with a backhand blow. By the time Sokoloff had regained his feet, Serafimov had dragged Podgorny’s body up to the track and was dashing the dead man’s head against the rails.

Serafimov made wheezing sounds of rage, cursing the man who was now wholly beyond his wrath. The Colonel’s motions grew weaker; Serafimov seemed to have trouble breathing, and now Sokoloff could see that in addition to a bloody head wound, the KGB Colonel’s throat was badly bruised from some harsh blow.

Sokoloff pulled his Colonel away from the corpse again, just as several more troops arrived. Those who glanced at the remains of the Army Engineer quickly looked away.

“What’s wrong with Colonel Serafimov?” one asked.

The KGB officer was gasping like a fish out of water.

“I think he’s choking,” Sokoloff began. “His throat—

Serafimov threw off the hands supporting him and stabbed a finger at the train, still in sight. “Catch… back…” The pain in his throat kept him from getting anything else out.

“We can’t catch them, sir, they’re too far ahead.”

Serafimov grabbed the front of Sokoloff’s tunic and pulled the young Sergeant’s face to within an inch of his own. “Kill…” he gasped. “All… us… catch!”

They turned at the sound of an explosion from the train; the thieves had apparently blown the linkage of the last few cars, for these had separated from the rest of the train, and were coasting to a stop as the rest continued to accelerate away from Moscow.

The train in Serafimov’s vision swam beneath tears of frustration. This will be the death of me. Me, and all my men…

He had already lost one train to raiders. He’d set up an ambush and killed all the bandits; but how could he know that Combat Engineers would dare this? True, he’d thought them suspicious, but such treachery as this was unthinkable, even from the Army! And what would his superiors in Novaya Moskva say when he informed them of this disaster?

Serafimov swore by Lenin’s beard that those Army bastards would pay for this folly. Beside himself with rage, he couldn’t even scream to release his anger. He could barely breathe, and every attempt at speech was an agony.

The KGB Colonel put a hand to his throat, wounded in his fight with that American—he had no doubt that his English-speaking assailant was an American—before that fool Podgorny had pulled them both through the window of the command car.

Of course the Americans would be involved. It’s another damned defection, that’s what; nothing less. By the end of the Global War of Liberation, Soviet losses through defections had been higher than combat casualties. When the Last Retreat began, the entire Third Army had tried to defect from the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany. Serafimov could at least take comfort in how that had worked out. But he doubted that Novaya Moskva would waste precious nuclear weapons on one train full of renegade Army Engineers. They would likely just shoot the KGB fool who had not treated the Army bastards with the caution everyone knew they required.

The rest of Serafimov’s men gathered around him. Most of his troops had not been aboard the train when the battle began. The last man to arrive was a breathless lieutenant who didn’t even bother to salute as he made his report.

“Colonel Serafimov, a company of light tanks with armored, personnel carriers has just arrived. Their commander says they were sent to safeguard the train.”

Serafimov seized the lieutenant; perhaps there was yet hope. The train was fading from sight in the beginnings of a light snowfall, but the new KGB scout tanks were fast, steam-powered, and not restricted to rails. “Where…” Serafimov gasped. “Take… me… commander.”

With Sokoloff and the lieutenant’s help, Serafimov staggered back through the train yard. They had covered only a dozen meters when the first tank hove into view with the rumbling crackle of treads on concrete and gravel.

Serafimov looked up at the commander, standing in the open hatch of the lead vehicle. Barrel-chested and big for a tanker, with pale blond hair under a black beret, fish-white skin, and eyes like old ice. The man raised his hand as his own vehicle halted, and the remainder of his force stopped as one.

The tank commander leaned forward over the rim of the turret hatch. The machine beneath him vibrated and hissed, but the man himself was motionless, fixing Serafimov with his gaze for a long moment before he spoke.

“You are Maksim Fyodorov Serafimov; Colonel, KGB?”

Serafimov tried to respond, but could only manage a painful wheeze and a nod. He began making urgent gestures, trying to get this fool to pursue the train before it was too late.

The tanker’s expression did not change. “I am Major Werner Steinmann, PRG One, out of Novaya Moskva.” Steinmann’s eyes glittered as he added in a dangerous voice: “Where is your train, Comrade Colonel?”

Serafimov nearly gagged in fury. His gestures became almost comical as he pointed down the track. Finally Steinmann held up his hand.

“Sprechen verboten!” He began rattling off commands to his driver. Serafimov was stunned to realize that those commands, like the order for silence, were in German. Only then did he notice that Steinmann’s uniform was not Russian, but East German.

Steinmann turned back to Serafimov. “And what, Comrade Colonel, is that?” Steinmann leveled his arm, pointing back down the track in the direction from which Serafimov had come. The KGB Colonel turned to see Podgorny’s body still spread-eagle across the rails.

Without waiting for an answer, Steinmann signaled his driver to move up. The machine with its black-clad commander leapt forward with the eerie grace of some bizarre metal centaur.

The tank had not fully stopped before Steinmann climbed out of the turret and jumped down to the-railbed. He turned Podgorny’s body over, then walked back to Serafimov and his men, inspecting the KGB Colonel once more.

By now, the East German infantry had dismounted from their APCs, and Serafimov was beginning to feel uncomfortably outnumbered. Steinmann considered him a moment, then signaled to one of his men.

“Leutnant, place Colonel Serafimov under arrest.”

Serafimov hid his own astonishment, but Sergeant Sokoloff was younger and far less prudent.

“Nyet!” Sokoloff threw the bolt on his assault rifle. His contempt for Steinmann’s order was undiluted by the East German’s superior rank.

A burst of machine-gun fire from behind riddled the young Sergeant, spraying Serafimov with blood. Sokoloff fell dead at his Colonel’s feet.

Steinmann’s expression had not altered. Serafimov, hardened though he was to sudden death, was unprepared for it when he was not its author. He tried again to explain what had happened to the train, but the big East German held up a hand to silence him.

“You are under suspicion for conspiracy to steal State property. You will remain in custody pending my communication with Novaya Moskva. Any of your men who resist will be shot.” Steinmann’s Lieutenant stepped up, roughly pulling one of Serafimov’s arms behind his back. Steinmann dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

Dazed, Serafimov was led from the scene of his failure. He looked back once at young Sokoloff’s corpse. Steinmann pushed it off the railbed with his foot, and it tumbled down the embankment into a wet ditch.

Serafimov put the youthful Sergeant, who had never even seen a steam engine before this morning, out of his thoughts. Sokoloff’s troubles were over.

His own, he knew, were just beginning.

South of Moscow and east of the Pripyat Marshes, the flatlands of Russia are not so much plains as vast oceans of grass and wild wheat. Scores of warlords had passed over this land in every direction: Huns, Avars, Mongols; Napoleon’s Grande Armée and Hitler’s panzers. But the only conqueror who ever truly held it in thrall was General Winter.

The first snow of the new winter had stopped falling only a few hours after starting, and it seemed as if this year, even that venerable warrior had not come in full force quite yet.

Senior Sergeant Mikhail Zorin stood on the roof of a boxcar and watched the snow melting in the thin sunlight. In the hours since the train he rode had left Moscow, the morning’s chill of a late summer snowfall had given way to a relatively warm day, for a Russian autumn.

The kind of day, Zorin reflected, for making fools expect this winter to be milder than the last. Zorin had seen enough winters to know better.

He finished his cigarette and flicked the paper-tube filter stub away. The papirosi burst in a tiny shower of sparks as it hit the ties, and was soon lost in the distance.

Zorin watched the rear for signs of pursuit, but occasionally, when the train passed through the ruins of towns or remnants of battles scattered alongside the tracks, his gaze would wander.

There wasn’t much to see. Details were still covered by the light snowfall, and that was mostly all right with Zorin. He turned to look toward the front of the train where the huge P-38 locomotive labored to pull its burden west.

Lieutenant Rostov had ordered the trainmen to make speed in silence, but Zorin couldn’t help wishing for a blast or two from the whistle. It occurred to him that one of the reasons steam whistles might first have been invented was to relieve the sense of isolation that came to solitary trains on the steppes.

Christus, Zorin thought, but it’s too true that something is needed out here.

Zorin’s own isolation was shortly relieved by the arrival of Lieutenant Rostov himself, climbing up the ladder of the boxcar and joining the Sergeant on the roof.

While Zorin was of average height and powerfully built, the young officer with the tired smile was taller and not quite so broad. He was unremarkable physically, except for a face that at first sight looked too young for his rank; even boyish. Rostov had fair hair, light eyes, and more of an open, easy manner than might be expected from a young man after six years of war. Several days’ growth of beard did little to dispel the look of youth; like all soldiers it was his eyes that betrayed him. They had seen too much, too quickly for wisdom to catch up. They were very Russian eyes, indeed.

“See anything, Starshi Serzhant?”

Zorin shook his head and searched for another papirosi in his tunic pockets. “Nyet, Leytenant. Some smoke to the southeast a few kilometers back.” Zorin paused while Rostov lit his cigarette for him. “But it was black and didn’t change position. A small fire is my guess; perhaps a camp. If they’re following us, it’s not along the rails.”

“I don’t know what worries me more,” Rostov said. “The KGB behind us or some Ukrainian Nationalist Brigade ahead.” His eyes went from the horizon to the tracks flowing smoothly back and away from beneath them. Rostov had just come from several hours at the front of the train, and it was a relief to have the wind at his back for a change.

Finally, without taking his eyes off the tracks, he spoke: “Do you think we can do it, Mikhail? A bunch of renegade combat engineers with an American officer in tow, on a train stolen right out from under the noses of the Moscow KGB; has there ever been a more unlikely group of defectors?”

Zorin shrugged. “When I was a boy, I read an old samizdat article about a Soviet ship—an icebreaker, I think—that tried to defect to Sweden. Men, officers, whole damn crew; in fact the defection was supposedly instigated by the ship’s political officer.” Zorin grunted, frowned; as if he doubted the story himself.

“Well? Did they make it?”

“Hm? Oh, no. KGB border patrol aircraft caught up with them an hour away from Swedish territorial waters and forced them to turn back to Kaliningrad.”

“Where they were all shot, of course.”

Zorin looked offended. “No, sir, by no means. The men went to Gulags. Only the officers were shot.”

Lieutenant Rostov grinned. “That is a relief.”

“Still,” Zorin added, “if they’d had another hour or two, they might have made it. Their biggest advantage was that at first, nobody who had spotted them could believe they were actually trying to defect.” Zorin cocked an eyebrow at his Lieutenant. “After all, Aleksei, what kind of fools would try to steal a whole ship?”

Rostov, whose idea it had been to steal a train for their own escape, favored his senior NCO with a rueful smile. “What kind of fools, indeed? But I’m afraid that sort of ignorance isn’t anything we can hope for. At least we don’t have to worry about aircraft these days.” Rostov folded his arms.

Zorin noticed the foreign gesture and was reminded of their American “guest,” and the part he’d played in their escape. “How is Captain Wrenn, Aleksei?”

“Better. Comrade Surgeon Blaustein cleaned and dressed his wound and gave him some painkillers. He says if infection doesn’t get him, he should regain most of the use of the hand.”

Zorin nodded. “That’s good. I like that fellow. Any man who’s willing to give up a hand to buy time for his comrades is fine by me.”

Rostov thought it odd that his Sergeant was referring to an American as a “comrade.” Still, their lives had surely been saved by Wrenn’s drastic action. If that bastard Serafimov had reached the brake cable and stopped them in the middle of the train yards, with all his KGB troops about… well, Rostov knew he wouldn’t be here wondering about it now.

Rostov took a heavily laminated photograph from inside his tunic. It showed a handsome young couple on their honeymoon, standing in front of the gilded statues of the Grand Cascades at Petrodvorets. The young blond man was holding his dark-eyed beauty of a bride, both smiling at the forgotten fellow tourist who’d offered to take the photo.

Lilia wore the sweater he had bought for her on that trip, her long black hair in her face and trailing across his as well. The two of them were smiling in the spray from the fountains and the sunny Leningrad afternoon. Rostov wondered if anything was left of those fountains, or indeed of Leningrad. More and more, when he looked at this picture, he thought he and Lilia looked strange in the civilian clothes. He sometimes felt he had been born in his uniform.

Rostov returned the photo to his pocket and stretched, his back popping, tired muscles protesting. He had slept little in two days, and the bracing air had not stirred him as awake as he might have liked. When he stopped yawning, Zorin tapped his arm.

“Your radio, Aleksei.”

Rostov scowled as he fumbled with the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt as it beeped again. Some things appropriated from the stores found on this train were less welcome than others. “Rostov here.”

“Corporal Dyatlov, sir. Comrade Trainman Gyrich has found a problem he says you should know about.”

“I’ll be right there, Corporal. Come back and take over the rear lookout. Sergeant Zorin will be coming with me.”

Dyatlov acknowledged and signed off.

What now, I wonder? Rostov thought. Neither he nor Zorin had spoken much about the death of their commander, Colonel Podgorny; with his loss the full burden of command had fallen directly on Rostov. Zorin had assured the young Lieutenant that he was up to the job, especially since they would be in the West soon, anyway.

Rostov wasn’t so sure of either point.

Of all his worries, prime was the question of pursuit. Where was it? He didn’t doubt for a moment that they were being pursued. God save us, we’ve stolen a train from the KGB! Things had not fallen apart so much that the Committee for State Security would suffer such an insult as that.

But with luck, it would be a race. And if Rostov didn’t want to have himself and all his men strangled with piano wire, it was a race they would have to win. And that meant giving first consideration to any problems found by the conscript trainmen they had rescued, who kept the locomotive moving.

Serafimov opened his eyes in darkness. He held his hands before his face, feeling but not seeing them, and imagined them once again clutching the throat of the treacherous Army Engineer Colonel who had stolen his train.

The State’s train, he hastily corrected himself. He suppressed a giggle; one had to be so careful these days.

Serafimov lay on a cramped board that served as a bed, remembering—was it this morning? He could still smell the soot of the railbed, the vodka that had spilled over him when Podgorny had smashed a bottle of it against his skull. Mostly, he still smelled the blood, his own as well as Podgorny’s.

Too much of one, not enough of the other. Despite the vengeance he had exacted on Podgorny’s corpse, Serafimov still felt that a river of it would not be enough.

He sat up, listening to water trickle down the walls in the dark. His throat was still tender, but a few attempts at speech gave him hope that his voice would return. It might even sound human. He wrapped a thin, damp blanket over his shoulders and considered his situation.

He was in Lubyanka, of course. Or what remained of it. Overhead, a light bulb in a heavy wire cage struggled to life. It dangled insolently from a wire too short to hang himself from and too tough to bite through in a quest for electrocution.

For the first time since being put in here, Serafimov was able to see clearly. The room was even smaller than it had looked in his brief glimpse of it when they had thrown him in and left him in darkness. Rivulets of water raced fat roaches down the moldy walls to the damp concrete floor. The inheritors of the earth, Serafimov thought. The tarakaniy were the first well-fed creatures he’d seen in months. There was his pallet along the wall, and in a corner was a bucket for human waste; the bucket absurdly small to guarantee its constant overflowing.

The light could only mean that Serafimov was due to have visitors. He would be required to make a report, to confess his collusion in this morning’s banditry and explain how he had lost the last train of supplies to leave Moscow. And explanations, he knew, were dangerous things.

Many men, far more important than Serafimov, had gone to the Gulags and worse for poor reports, or even excellent reports of poor performance. But after the KGB had taken control of the ruins of the Soviet, liquidating STAVKA and the GRU, reducing the Party itself to mere symbol and inevitably stepping into the power vacuum—well, then the Gulags had become unnecessary. Far more expedient methods had been devised to deal with the State’s problems.

Problems like Serafimov, and problems like Serafimov’s men, one from every ten of whom had been executed before his eyes.

The bulb dimmed slightly, then brightened again. Serafimov thought about that. Somewhere in this building a generator labored, burning precious untainted petrol to power this one light. All the vast ruins of Moscow might be in darkness, but this prisoner was to know just how important his jailers considered him to be.

He smiled. Unspoken words in the alien tongue of the KGB; Serafimov knew them all. He began to think, planning his statement carefully.

For while these idiots were playing their games, a train full of traitors was escaping, with what was certainly an American spy! Serafimov had no intention of letting that happen. His motives were less patriotic than vengeful, but he would stop them whatever the cost, if it meant selling his soul to the Devil himself.

But for revenge, he must survive, and to do that began with convincing this Steinmann that he was more valuable alive than dead. The East German claimed to be in direct contact with Novaya Moskva; let him prove it. There was nothing to lose by calling his bluff.

Serafimov meant to have the rest of Podgorny’s men, and he thought he knew how to stay alive long enough to do it. He finished straightening his filthy uniform just as the bolt was thrown and the door opened.

There were two guards, both armed.

I am considered dangerous; how flattering.

Serafimov noticed that one of the guards wore a cavalry saber. Though obviously an antique, it was just as obviously not worn simply for decoration; indeed, it looked used.

Serafimov was beginning to see a disturbing pattern in the degeneration of the Soviet. In a month or two, I should start seeing mounted archers. And in a year: chain mail and shields. Still, the future that concerned him now was his own, not the State’s.

“Colonel Serafimov.”

“Da.”

“You will come with us.”

Serafimov followed them into the hall and up the stairs.

Rostov was in the commander’s car, a passenger coach once removed from the engine. Trainmen Gyrich and Pilkanis were seated across the desk from him, while Sergeant Zorin and the American naval officer, Wrenn, occupied the sofa along the far wall. A quantity of lumber had been found among the supplies aboard the train, and two of the men were fitting a large sheet of plywood over the broken window behind him.

Colonel Podgorny had gone through that window only this morning, taking the KGB man with him and giving Rostov and all the rest of the men a chance to survive. Now Podgorny’s sacrifice seemed to have been in vain.

Trainmen Gyrich and Pilkanis looked no happier to be presenting their report than Rostov was to be hearing it.

“Excuse me, Comrade Gyrich, but I don’t understand. How could we possibly have lost so much fuel from gunfire in the rail yard? Those KGB troops weren’t firing anything heavier than automatic weapons; how big a hole could a rifle have put in our fuel cells?”

Gyrich shook his head. “It wasn’t a leak, Lieutenant. Anything big enough to pierce our fuel cells would probably have ignited them, and that would have been the end for us. What Trainman Pilkanis found is that small-arms fire struck some feeder control lines. These are fragile and could easily have been damaged by a stray rifle bullet.”

“Feeder control lines?” The Russian inzhenérnoe sounded like “engineer,” but had no more to do with locomotives than its English counterpart; that is, very little. Rostov knew a little of steam power plants, but almost nothing about locomotives.

“Da, Comrade Lieutenant.” Pilkanis was Lithuanian, and his dislike for Russians in general and Russian soldiers in particular was no secret. But Rostov knew his mechanical expertise was indispensable; Pilkanis could fix anything, and what he couldn’t fix, he could probably build a better version of. He cleaned his steel-rimmed spectacles as he spoke. “When these lines were damaged, the stoker assembly—that’s a sort of locomotive fuel-injection system—this stoker assembly began flooding the lines with fuel to fire the boiler.”

Rostov had a glimpse of old burn scars behind the cuffs of Pilkanis’ shirt sleeves. “You mean we might have blown up?” he asked quietly.

“No, Lieutenant,” Gyrich assured him. “This locomotive is old, but not primitive. There are special fail-safe mechanisms to prevent that. And unfortunately, they worked perfectly.”

“Why ‘unfortunately,’ Trainman Gyrich?” Rostov’s tone said he’d guessed what was coming, but asked, anyway.

“These safety mechanisms activated a series of valves that rerouted the fuel away from the stoker feed, into purge lines along the side of the boiler. From there the fuel just poured out onto the tracks.”

“How long had this been going on before you caught it?”

Gyrich licked his lips. Rostov and his men had saved them from the KGB, offering to take them along to freedom in the West. Gyrich hoped the young Lieutenant felt the same way after he got the news.

“The stoker maintained a normal feed until the slow pressure increase in the lines activated the fail-safes; I would guess the emergency rerouting started about six hours ago.”

Rostov felt the walls closing in. “And how much fuel do you calculate we have lost?”

“I can only guess, Comrade Lieutenant. But I would have to say at least twenty-four hundred liters.”

Rostov could not conceal his shock. Nearly half their fuel was gone. He knew the locomotive’s appetite to be voracious simply to pull the cars, but it was also powering all the amenities aboard the train: heat, lights, warm water, cookstoves. Rostov and the rest of the men had gone without such basic comforts for weeks, and they had been indulging themselves to their hearts’ content.

“Comrade Trainman Gyrich, can you give me an estimate of how far we can expect to get with our remaining fuel?”

Gyrich thought a moment. “If we cut our speed back, keeping nominal pressure in the boiler, we should be able to make another seven hundred kilometers. That’s accounting for the fuel needed for idling with our steam up, to power the tools and equipment needed to repair the damage fully. Right now, it’s just patched up, and a hasty job at that.”

Rostov checked one of the dozens of rail maps left on the desk by the KGB Colonel who had previously commanded this train. Seven hundred kilometers.

“By the most hopeful estimate,” he said, pointing to an area on the map far east of the indicated Alliance forces, “that will leave us out of fuel right in the middle of the Free Ukrainian Republic.”

Sergeant Zorin let out a deep breath at that news, and Rostov nodded in agreement. Their chances of making it out of Svoboda Ukranyie were little better than their hopes of surviving capture by the KGB.

“What about cutting our weight?” Rostov asked. “Jettisoning equipment, detaching all but the few cars we’d need to carry our people?”

Gyrich smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, Lieutenant. This isn’t a plane trying to get over a mountain; it’s a locomotive, and a bloody great huge one at that. This P-38 is so overpowered for the load it’s pulling that we could detach all the cars and it’s likely this monster wouldn’t even notice.”

And anyway, Rostov thought, our heaviest cargoes are our own weapons and vehicles, and the containers of the precious Immunizer. One we need to have any chance of getting to the West at all, the other to make getting there worthwhile.

“Lieutenant Rostov?” It was the American, his left hand still bandaged from his run-in with KGB Colonel Serafimov.

“Da, Captain Wrenn?”

“Colonel Podgorny told me the KGB tolerated the Army Engineers because of their control of the Immunizer; but that only the KGB knew where the hidden caches of uncontaminated fuel were hidden.”

Rostov nodded as he remembered the rail maps in the desk and began pulling them out. “I see what you are saying. If the KGB planned to take this train all the way to Novaya Moskva, they must have been planning to refuel on the way.”

Rostov eventually found a map bearing only rail lines and code numbers. It lacked even the spidery traces of Cyrillic lettering labeling terrain. “Gyrich, have you ever seen one of these maps before?”

The older man squinted watery blue eyes at the paper. “I think—yes, I think so; Colonel Serafimov used this one often when he discussed train routes; sometimes he carried it around tucked under his arm. This could be what you are looking for, but I don’t know how to read it.”

“We’ll have to hope it reads: ‘Here, Tovarishchi, free fuel,’ and take our chances.”

Wrenn stepped up to the table to lean over the map. “There’s not even a compass rose; how can you tell where we are on it?”

“Maps are state secrets in the Soviet Union, Captain Wrenn. Security officers think everyone is a potential traitor, so topographers are allowed to put only as much information on a map as is absolutely necessary.” He picked up the map indicating their position on the rail net, carrying it and the coded one to the command car’s remaining intact window.

“Most units have Topography Officers, KGB liaisons who read the maps and consult with commanders for battle plans.” Rostov held the coded map against the window and laid the rail map with their position over it.

“But Combat Engineers move too quickly; we don’t have time to wait for some KGB flunky to pull his thumb out of his arse and let us know what we need to know to fight. So we’ve come up with a few ideas to save time.” Rostov turned the top map until the rail lines coincided with those of the map beneath it, clearly visible with the sunlight shining through the window behind it.

“Fortunately, security officers also think most people are stupid, so they try to simplify everything, usually by standardization. Such as printing most maps to a constant scale.” He grinned at Wrenn and spread the maps on the table before Gyrich.

“All well and good,” the American said. “But what would you have done if it had been raining?”

It was still a race, Rostov decided with a smile at Wrenn’s jest, and perhaps they had stumbled; but if the wolves were going to catch them, at least they would not catch them idle.

Serafimov stood at attention in an old Kremlin conference room with one long table and no east wall. Morning sunlight poured through blasted holes in the wall of the office, and onto the backs of his review board: four men in Soviet uniform, and Steinmann in the center. In contrast to their autumn-issue clothing, Serafimov had only his wet summer tunic as proof against the chill wind coming in with the morning sunshine. By an effort of will, he managed not to shiver. He stood at attention, waiting.

“Colonel Serafimov,” Steinmann began, “we have already met. For the record, I am Major Steinmann, Seventy-fifth Tank Regiment, Deutsche Demokratische Republik.” He gestured to the other officers seated with him. “These are Majors Grishin and Zimyanin, and Captains Tolkhunov and Adzhubei. Like all loyal soldiers of the New Soviet they are KGB, although their particular service branches are irrelevant to this inquiry.”

I’ll just bet they are, Serafimov thought. He wasn’t impressed by any of them. Admittedly, they looked like they’d seen a lot of action; who hadn’t? But as to brains… well, none of them put Serafimov in fear of a chess match.

Intentionally, Serafimov ignored them and focused his attention on Steinmann. These others are dogs, he thought. This is the one in charge. This is the wolf.

“We are here,” Steinmann continued, “to receive your report regarding the theft from this city of a State train by bandits.”

Serafimov was instantly on guard. Two days ago, he had been a conspirator; now he was simply a fool. The latter condition was theoretically survivable. But he did not allow himself to hope; hope took the edge from a man’s survival instincts.

Despite his national affiliation, Steinmann was a tool of the KGB as surely as was Serafimov himself, and that august body did not deal in hope. The KGB, now more than ever, was concerned only with the security of the State, and nothing else, nothing else mattered. Sensing thin ice before him, Serafimov proceeded accordingly.

He presented the facts to Steinmann as briefly as possible. This man was not interested in any pokazuka, any pretense for effect. Steinmann interrupted him only for clarifications, or when the rasping sound the American had left him for a voice was impossible to understand. When Serafimov had finished, the board was silent for some time.

“And you believe your English-speaking assailant to be an American spy, Colonel?” The man Steinmann had introduced as Grishin had the prissy inflection of a priest; Serafimov detested him instantly.

“I do. Early in the war I interrogated many captured American soldiers. They became a specialty with me; I pride myself on my ability to recognize the type.”

Steinmann smiled. “And just what ‘type’ is an American spy, Colonel Serafimov?”

Serafimov held his gaze. “Well fed, Major. Victors often are.”

Steinmann nodded, surrendering the point and ignoring the offended scowls of his fellow interrogators as he changed the subject. “Now what about this Colonel Podgorny’s staff; what do you know of them?”

Serafimov shook his head. “He had no staff as such, Major. The command ranks of his unit were much reduced. I saw only one Lieutenant and a Senior Sergeant. I believe that the unit only held together this long because of their training and the cult of personality fostered by this Podgorny. Also, Combat Engineers are generally regarded as semi-elite units, and these wore the uniforms of the Fifth Guards Armored Division; certainly an elite unit if ever there was one.”

“Do you believe the loss of their commanding officer will affect the unit’s cohesion?”

“Dramatically. Having no leader to rally to, and having obviously lost ideological integrity, I should expect their unit to begin dissolving within a week; two at the outside.”

“Then they pose no real threat to the Rodina,” Grishin put in smoothly, “as they will turn up in pockets throughout the hinterland, where they will be rounded up and destroyed piecemeal.” Grishin sat back with a little smirk of triumph. “We have lost some valuable materiel, but that is easily replaced.” He leaned forward again, steepled his fingers, and smiled at Serafimov. “And your testimony can thus be considered—concluded.”

Serafimov pointedly ignored him and continued speaking. “Two weeks, however, is more than enough time for them to make good their escape, Major Steinmann. That is why I believe we must move quickly to apprehend them.”

“We? You presume a familiarity you have yet to earn, Serafimov.” Steinmann’s omission of Serafimov’s rank was accompanied by a chill in his tone. “What makes their capture more important to Novaya Moskva than your own punishment?”

“These combat engineers carried large quantities of Immunizer against binary biological agent Yo-Devyatnatsat, the organism which metabolizes petroleum-derived fuels. What Alliance intelligence called the Gas Bug. I believe they plan to use the Immunizer to purchase asylum in the remnants of the Alliance Nations.”

Steinmann sat back with his faint smile while his fellow officers exploded in fury. Grishin was half out of his chair.

“Idiot! You allowed these traitors to steal a train for this perfidy, and now you are so bold as to lecture to us on the need to apprehend them? Your incompetence is matched only by your arrogance!”

Each of the others seemed to badly want a piece of Serafimov as well, but Steinmann waited until the first round of shouting had died down before he spoke.

“We are past the realm of our authority.” He stood and came around the table. “Colonel Serafimov, it is nearly time for our check-in. You will accompany me to the communications van.” Steinmann left the room with Serafimov and two guards, never turning to look back at the other officers.

But Serafimov turned, to give Grishin a final glance as he left. In time, Serafimov’s eyes said.

Steinmann led him outside to the courtyard, where dozens of vehicles had been parked in orderly rows for servicing and refueling. Serafimov saw many of his own men pressed into service, carrying bundles of equipment, rolling fuel drums, or engaged in other menial tasks. Few of them met his eyes.

Surrounded by the light tanks, trucks, and APCs was the communications van, its glossy black wings of solar panels stretching out from both sides.

Steinmann noted Serafimov’s surprise at the large dish antenna on the van’s roof. “Yes, Colonel Serafimov; we do have a few satellites left.” He gestured to the steps leading up into the van, and Serafimov went in.

Serafimov had expected darkness, but the van’s interior was brightly lit. He saw a dozen technicians intent on their computer terminals, screens dancing with bright green columns of figures.

For a moment Serafimov forgot the devastation that surrounded them. Though painfully aware of his own filthy uniform and wretched appearance, the room around him was proof that all was not lost.

We are still in space, Serafimov thought. Soviet power still challenges the Enemy for the high frontier. He could almost imagine the last eight years had not happened. The Rodina and the Soviet she nurtured had not been driven to their knees; the Narod, their destiny fulfilled, were yet Masters of the World. He almost laughed aloud when he looked more closely at the technicians; over half of them wore East German uniforms.

Steinmann went directly to a console occupied by a young East German Captain. “How long before link is established?”

“Nearly ready, sir.” The young man’s fingers moved over the keyboard, and the screen responded with marching figures of green that changed abruptly to red. He looked up at Steinmann. “We’re on, Herr Major.”

Steinmann noted Serafimov’s surprise at the honorific, but the Major only smiled as he put on a headset and adjusted the pin mike to speak.

“Novaya Moskva, this is PRG One, do you read me?”

The satellite link was perfect; when the reply came, Serafimov would have sworn the speaker was in the room with them.

“PRG One, this is Novaya Moskva, we read you clearly. Stand by for tie-in to the Central Committee.”

Serafimov felt his guts churn. Who was this Steinmann that he rated a satellite link direct to Party Central? He was suddenly wary; perhaps this was all a trick.

“Major Steinmann, this is Anton Amalrik, Central Committee. How are things in Moscow?”

Serafimov’s doubts evaporated at the sound of that voice. Anton Amalrik had been hailed in his youth as the “New Suslov,” the Party Ideologian; had in fact received the first official public designation of that title in the history of the Soviet Union. In the dark days of the Alliance’s avenging drive into the USSR, Amalrik had been the first Politburo member evacuated to the secret city east of the Ural Mountains, New Moscow. If anyone could rebuild the shattered Soviet from the ashes, it would be him.

And Steinmann is apparently on familiar terms with him. Serafimov wondered. Familiar terms with a man almost as revered as Lenin himself. That was enough to decide him. If Steinmann was Amalrik’s man, then Serafimov would be Steinmann’s. For now, at least…

Steinmann reviewed the situation for Amalrik, apparently reluctant to place too much emphasis on Serafimov’s part in any failures of security. When he had finished, there was a pause before Amalrik replied.

“I have had my assistant access this Serafimov’s file for me; I see that by all accounts he is considered quite reliable.”

“He is here now, Comrade Amalrik. I thought you might wish to speak with him.”

“Indeed. Colonel Serafimov.”

Serafimov took another headset with unsteady hands. In a dark room, the quality of Amalrik’s signal might have been almost comforting; in this sterile shell of light, it made him feel exposed.

“Comrade Amalrik, this is a great honor.”

“Yes. Is something wrong with your voice, Colonel?”

“The throat wound Major Steinmann mentioned, Comrade; it will pass.”

“Hm. Major Steinmann has said you believe it necessary to apprehend these traitors.”

“I do, sir.”

“Why? Surely the Immunizer for the Gas Bug cannot be so valuable to the West now. How much uncontaminated fuel can they have left? And what could they do with it? Certainly they can mount no offensive action worthy of concern.”

Serafimov licked his lips. The question was a test, he knew. He was sinking, and they were throwing him a rope. Such opportunities in Russia had always been notoriously rare.

“Comrade Amalrik, at this point I feel I have very little to lose by candor–”

“You have nothing to lose, Colonel, I assure you. Proceed.”

“My concerns on this issue are twofold. First, despite the collapse of the world’s governments, the intrinsic Alliance advantage in technology has not been lost. Our inability to conduct large-scale nuclear strikes assured this. With a large enough supply of the Immunizer for analysis, they may accomplish things in their laboratories which we cannot even guess at. And if they should have stocks of uncontaminated fuel of which we are unaware, fuel which they can treat with Yo-Devyatnatsat, they may be able to return in force to the Liberated Zones within this decade.”

There, Serafimov thought. Start them off with a healthy dose of concern for the Rodina; and, of course, their own asses.

“While this first issue is basically military and short-term, the second is ideological, and thus part of a long-range view.”

“Indeed.” Amalrik sounded almost amused. “Please state your ‘ideological concern,’ Colonel Serafimov.”

“It is that these traitors may provide sufficient usable fuel for Alliance units still in the Liberated Zones to escape from the Continent.”

Serafimov was gratified to see Steinmann’s damnable smile flicker for an instant. The big East German’s eyes bored into him. Good, Serafimov thought. It was your idea I speak with Amalrik; your responsibility. Now you can sweat for a change.

By the tone of his reply, Amalrik didn’t appreciate Serafimov’s statement any more than Steinmann did. “Colonel Serafimov, need I remind you of the losses we suffered in establishing those Liberated Zones? Or the losses we incurred while maintaining and defending that title for Western Europe for six years?” The hostility faded from Amalrik’s voice, suddenly replaced by a sly twist of inflection. “What possible advantage can there be to stranding vast numbers of armed enemy troops there now?”

You already know, Amalrik. Serafimov smiled to himself. You didn’t get to be one of the most powerful men in the USSR without being one of the smartest as well. But I will go along with your test. And I think now that I will pass it, after all.

“Comrade Amalrik, these enemy troops are cut off from their commands, unsupplied. The Alliance supply fleets are oil-dependent, which is to say obsolete. Thus these troops are far from home; far from help. Many are Americans, but all are likely unaware of or unwilling to face the political realities of their situation. They will attempt to maintain their status as viable armies, even after it becomes obvious that they cannot hope to leave Europe.

“An army exists to fight, but with our ‘strategic redeployment’ these armies can no longer reach their intended opponent. Thus, while as soldiers they can make no useful contribution to the lands they now occupy, as armies they will continue to consume huge quantities of food and materiel. Winter is coming to a Europe that has little food, less fuel, and no way of getting more of either. The citizenry, many of whom welcomed the Alliance troops as liberators, will soon come to resent the drain those same troops inflict on the stocks of food, to say nothing of warm beds.

“Eventually, these same citizens will tire of feeding them, housing them. And, to feed themselves, these well-armed troops must resort to force to get what they need. Westerners, particularly Americans, have no tradition of foraging or guerrilla warfare. They will be unable to reconcile the inevitable banditry with their original ‘cause,’ and as military discipline erodes, friction between these troops and the populace will increase.

“In such circumstances, time is, as always, the ally of Communism. The longer Alliance forces remain on the Continent, the more damage is done to their ‘cause.’ Many disillusioned Alliance troops may even seek us out to defect, giving us valuable recruits for future intelligence and subversion purposes. At the very least, their home nations are deprived of the crucial cadres of experienced troops needed for rebuilding their armed forces.

“Finally, when we return to Western Europe, what enemy units remain will be less than rabble. The populace too will have lost any delusions as to the character of this reactionary Alliance, and the soldiers of the Soviet will be seen for the true liberators they are. Reestablishing our sovereignty over the Liberated Zones will then have the full support of the civilian populace.”

There was a long silence after Serafimov had finished. He was sure he’d talked too long; one does not, after all, preach political strategy to the Party Ideologian. But Serafimov knew it was critical to convince Amalrik that he was ideologically sound; not just a parrot of policy.

When Amalrik spoke again, he sounded pleased, even amused. “Colonel Serafimov, ‘sovereignty’ is an imperialist term.”

Serafimov was hard-pressed to keep from shouting his triumph. “A certain—temporary—period of imperialism is acceptable during the ultimate transition to socialism, is it not, Comrade Amalrik?”

“Of course, Comrade Colonel. We understand each other perfectly. Your reasoning shows a strong foundation in Marxist-Leninist principles.”

Serafimov felt odd. He had just saved his own life, he knew. Amalrik had heard his reasoning and approved, making for excellent odds that he would now live. Yet he still felt himself to be in some undefined peril.

Amalrik spoke again. “Major Steinmann, you are assigned Colonel Serafimov as your unit co-coordinator.”

‘Co-coordinator?’ A meaningless title, Serafimov thought. But then am I also meaningless?

“Major Steinmann, you will retain command of PRG One, but hereafter you may consider Colonel Serafimov to be your political and security officer.”

“Thank you, Comrade Amalrik. I will be grateful for the Colonel’s expertise.”

“And Major Steinmann, to any extent necessary, short of interference with PRG One’s primary function, you are to assist Colonel Serafimov in his apprehension of these traitors to the Rodina. Novaya Moskva out.”

Steinmann turned to Serafimov, once more wearing his wintry, unfathomable smile. The big East German returned Serafimov’s pistol with his left hand and extended his right. “Welcome, Colonel Serafimov, to the first of many such organizations that will one day restore the vision of Lenin to the world. Welcome to Political Recovery Group One.”

Serafimov took Steinmann’s hand. As the memory of Amalrik’s voice lingered in the brightly lit room, he suddenly remembered his vow from the cell in the depths of Lubyanka, and his unease at last defined itself. The East German’s grip was cool and dry, a hand with serpents for fingers. Serafimov holstered his weapon as he shook hands, holding Steinmann’s gaze all the while and thinking about deals with the devil.

And at last, he smiled back.

“I didn’t expect a whole town,” Rostov said to his companion.

The scouts were still in place, waiting for Rostov’s command to advance. He stood in the roof hatch of the engineer’s box in the locomotive, peering through field glasses.

Beside him, the American Naval Intelligence officer was balancing his own optics with his bandaged left hand, adjusting the focus with the fingers of his right.

“No indication on any of your maps?”

“None. The map calls this place the Suschenko Rail Supply Cache,” Rostov told him. “If that is true, we should find more than enough equipment to repair the locomotive. And with a little luck, we will also find some uncontaminated KGB fuel stocks.”

“Assuming it’s not some elaborate KGB booby trap.” Wrenn had finally got the focus right and now watched the town as well.

Rostov’s smile broke into a wide grin. “You have a healthy paranoia, Captain Wrenn. Hang on to it; we will make a Russian out of you yet.”

Unable to accept the evidence of the last half hour, Rostov looked at the town again. Now who is being paranoid? he thought.

“No signs of combat damage. The dirt road doesn’t look too bad; probably no tanks or trucks through here lately. Still… I don’t want to take the train in until I am sure.”

He pulled the radio from his belt clip and spoke without lowering the glasses. “Sergeant Zorin.”

“Here, Lieutenant.”

“Take your scouting party into the town. Stay in radio contact. If you encounter resistance, do not engage. Confirm.”

“Confirmed, sir. Will fall back to the train.”

“Very good. Be careful, Mikhail.”

“As always, Aleksei. Zorin out.”

Rostov looked down between his feet to Gyrich, standing in the trainmaster’s box beneath them. “Comrade Gyrich, our scouts are entering the town. I want to be able to get in there to help them if necessary. How fast can we begin rolling?”

“Not very, Lieutenant. There’s a lot of inertia here. I can start us on a slow roll right now, though.”

“Mightn’t that bring us into the town before we are ready?”

“Lieutenant, I mean slow. You won’t even be able to tell we’re moving at first, but it could mean as much as two or three minutes saved in an emergency.”

Unless the emergency requires us to back up, Rostov thought. But he finally nodded to the older man. “Good. Go ahead.” Rostov held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and grinned. “But slowly, yes? Medlino!”

Gyrich returned the grin and set about putting his men to work while Rostov went back to watching the town with Wrenn.

Zorin would be moving his squad in cautiously, doubtless, but it didn’t hurt to have extra eyes watching.

The handful of buildings was an even mix of wood frame and concrete structures, mostly two-storied tenements and long warehouses, nearly all of them grey. The tallest structure was a clock tower with a bas-relief of Lenin; perfect for a sniper or enemy observer, and their eyes were drawn back to it frequently.

Rostov spoke from behind his glasses again. “See anything, Captain Wrenn?”

“Still nothing. But…” Wrenn’s voice betrayed his unease.

“I know. I cannot think of what it is, but there is something not right about the look of that town. I hope I am wrong, but if I am not I hope that Zorin sees it in time.”

Wrenn froze. Time. “Rostov, tell Zorin to hold his position.”

Rostov complied instantly, Zorin confirmed as fast. “What is it, Captain Wrenn? What do you see?”

“I make it about ten thirty hours; no later than eleven hundred. Now look at the clock tower.’’

Rostov did, then whistled through his teeth. “Ten forty-three.” He looked at Wrenn. “Someone’s been keeping the time.”

Zorin secured his own radio. “Unknown presence in town confirmed,” Rostov had said. “Maintain observation of clock tower.” One look at the structure explained that.

He smiled faintly, taking a moment to reset his watch from the tower’s clock and make sure the men saw him do it. The ones who caught his eye laughed a little, some of their tension relieved.

Zorin gave Corporal Aliyev brief instructions and moved his own squad off in the opposite direction. The sun was still low enough for them to use it to some advantage, and in minutes they were in the shadows of the town’s outer buildings.

Corporal Aliyev and three more men crawled along the railbed and approached the loading platform. Zorin kept watch on the men in his own group, waiting until he was sure everyone was in position.

When they were ready, Zorin put his back to the building his fire team had reached; slowly straightening his legs, he pushed himself up toward a window. Zorin listened to his collar scraping against the wall as he inched up, wishing mightily for a papirosi. His eyes cleared the windowsill, and he looked inside. Nothing.

He waved to the men waiting behind him. They were over the windowsill and into the room like shadows. Zorin remained outside to cover their entry, then followed.

Crossing the room, Zorin flattened himself to the wall beside the door. He could just see Aliyev and his men; they had reached the loading platform, and were moving into cover.

Khoroshiy, Zorin thought. Very good. In a moment Aliyev opened a door across the railbed and gave him the “clear” signal. They now controlled two buildings flanking the tracks and the loading platform. So if the town is occupied, where is the resistance?

“What now, Starshi Serzhant?” The private’s whisper was professional, not fearful; he sounded almost bored.

“More skulking, ryadovoi. If there are hostiles in the town and they haven’t hit us yet, then they will try to ambush the train. The best place to do that from would be the station house, where they could use the track controls to trap the locomotive between these buildings. Then they could deal with the train’s passengers as they wished.”

Zorin looked around at his soldier’s faces, looking for the man who might be too uneasy, might make the mistake that got them all killed; it was seldom the same man twice. Usually Zorin saw him, and would set up a rear guard. Sometimes not, and he could only trust his life and the lives of his men to the Blessed Virgin.

This time, they all looked fit, and it struck him that he couldn’t remember the last time one of them didn’t. Zorin noticed again how young most of them seemed, at least in years. “Let’s go.”

One of the men muttered something, an expression Zorin remembered hearing from the American Captain: “Another day, another dollar.”

Zorin knew exactly what it meant.

Rostov watched, Wrenn watched, and the train moved inexorably forward. Rostov decided that riding the minute hand of a watch would be faster.

“Still no movement in the town,” Wrenn said.

Rostov nodded. “After Zorin takes the station house, I will send in Corporal Dyatlov to reinforce.”

Wrenn grunted. “Dyatlov’s a good man. You should see about promoting him; Aliyev, too. That would give you some more noncoms to take some of the weight off Zorin.”

Rostov shook his head. “I am only a Lieutenant. Field promotion in time of war requires an officer of Major’s rank or above. In any case”—he lowered his glasses slightly and looked at Wrenn over the eyepieces—“I will be resigning my commission within a very few days, if all goes well, yes?”

Wrenn did not look back. “Yes. Let’s hope so.”

Rostov waited for some time to catch Wrenn’s eye, to read the American’s meaning in his face. But Wrenn had resumed watching the town through his own field glasses, and after a moment Rostov did the same.

In the town, Zorin’s forces had reached the station house. Zorin checked the door: unlocked. He turned the knob and threw the door open in one smooth motion. His man kneeling before it threw himself prone into the room, while the man behind him jumped over his comrade and dropped into a crouch, all before the swinging door had hit the wall.

The track control room appeared at first to be empty. Sunlight streamed in through the broad windows onto the panels of switches and track status lights. One chair was before the panel, and as he watched it, Zorin saw a wisp of vapor creep up from it.

“You,” Zorin said quietly, “turn that chair around. Slowly.” The white-haired reservist sitting in the chair obeyed, obviously terrified, revealing a steaming mug gripped in both hands.

“Do’svydanie,” the old man said quietly. “Would you fellows like some tea?”

Rostov grinned broadly at Wrenn. “Is he composed enough to speak to me, Sergeant Zorin?”

“I think so, sir.” There was a moment of silence before a breathless voice came over the radio to Rostov.

“Hello? This is Colonel Fedorin, Railway Security Forces, Suschenko Station… who is this, please?”

“Colonel Fedorin, this is Lieutenant Rostov, Fifth–” He stopped. Podgorny should be making this contact, he thought. This was his unit; all that was left of it. He had kept it alive long enough to get this far. “Fifth Guards Armored Engineers. Under Colonel Podgorny. We require materials and supplies from your repair depot if available, and any general maintenance you can provide.”

The reply was something like a shout. “Absolutely, Comrade Lieutenant! Anything, anything at all! Please bring your train up to the loading dock, I will get my men.”

“How many of you are there?” Rostov asked, signaling Gyrich to bring them into the town.

“Only five in our unit, Lieutenant. And about a hundred townspeople, mostly farmers and a few workers.”

“Very well, Colonel. We will be at the platform in”—he looked down at Gyrich, who held up four fingers—“four minutes. Sergeant Zorin.”

“Yes, Aleksei.”

“Continue your check of the buildings. I’m sending in Corporal Dyatlov’s unit to reinforce and secure.”

“Very well, sir. Zorin out.”

Rostov looked to the American. “More problems, sounds like. And civilians. Do we tell them what we’re about, I wonder? Then they might want to come with us.”

Wrenn seemed preoccupied. “What? Oh, the civilians. Yeah, they’re a consideration, all right. I don’t know what to tell you, Lieutenant.” Wrenn looked at him. “You’re in command.”

Rostov grimaced. “Too true.” He couldn’t read the American’s mind, and in any case he now had more important things to worry about. He went back to watching the image of Suschenko grow in his field glasses.

A colonel, Wrenn was thinking. Perfect.

The train rolled slowly into the town, wreathed in steam and the sweet machine smells of all locomotives. Rostov stood in the roof hatch, thinking that with the Gas Bug loose in the world, the smell of burning diesel was soon to become the rarest perfume on earth. In his childhood, he had been confused by his parents’ concern over exhaust fumes and their effect on the birch groves in and around the parks of Moscow.

There’s no concern of that now, Rostov thought. The birch groves, like his parents, were long gone. He prayed fervently that this Suschenko place might have sealed fuel stocks they could treat with their own supplies of Immunizer. Ah, God; only let us make a little more smog, if you would. Just a few hundred kilometers’ worth.

Despite Fedorin’s eager greeting, or perhaps because of it, Rostov was well aware that they could be riding into a trap. So his men aboard the train peered cautiously from windows broken and windows yet whole. Some stood on platforms between the cars, some knelt on the roofs, and some were positioned on the engine itself, watching the buildings slide by. All were armed, and all were nervous.

As for Rostov himself, standing in the waist-deep roof hatch, he felt like a tank commander in a Revolution Day parade, no less ludicrous and far more vulnerable. Even as he framed the thought, his eye caught furtive movement in a building ahead, and one of his men on the locomotive’s front raised a rifle.

“Nyet!” Rostov shouted. “Stoy! Hold your fire!”

Only fear for Rostov’s life had moved the soldier to such quick action, and only his loyalty to Rostov prevented a near tragedy. The man lowered his rifle, and Rostov’s shoulders sagged in relief. An old woman in clothes that were not quite rags was turning from a doorway where she tugged at something inside. She turned back to the train to favor Rostov with a wave and a toothless smile.

Finally the babushka succeeded in extricating a little girl from her hiding place in the doorway, and the old woman picked the child up and carried her to the platform.

At her grandparent’s urging, from her perch on the old woman’s arm, the child put out a hand and touched the dusty metal of the engine. Soot and grime coated her palm as the massive locomotive passed gently beneath it like a whale passing a swimmer.

While Wrenn maintained a watch from the roof hatch, where his alien uniform was mostly hidden, Rostov descended the ladder into the engineer’s cab, then stepped down onto the platform just as the train came to a stop. His gaze met that of the old woman, and he saw that the babushka’s eyes were filled with tears, her wrinkled face beaming in a smile of welcome.

“Hello, Grandmother,” Rostov said to reassure her. “You and your little one are safe, now. You came out to welcome us, eh?”

The woman began chattering in a thick Ukrainian dialect which left him hopelessly confused; then the child tugged at his sleeve, and bending to look at her, Rostov forgot everything else.

Olive complexion, deep brown eyes, hair with a sheen like the barguzin sables his uncle Yuri had once trapped for the State commissioner. If Lilia and I had had a child… Her resemblance to his wife was enough to make Rostov stifle an urge to cross himself. The child smiled at him, reaching out for his cap, and Rostov handed it to her on reflex. She seemed fascinated by the bright red star of the cap badge and its inlaid hammer and sickle of gold.

“You make friends easily, Lieutenant,” Wrenn called down to him in his flawless Russian. Rostov turned and grinned up at him, impulsively reaching into his tunic pocket and pulling out the snapshot.

“Comrade Captain, you wouldn’t believe this–” Rostov caught himself. He had been about to show Wrenn the picture of himself and Lilia in Leningrad. Why would I show such a thing to the American? he thought. “Well. It’s nothing. Just an interesting coincidence.” He pushed the photo deep into his pocket and retrieved his cap as Zorin approached him from behind.

“That’s our Aleksei, always the favorite of the ladies.” Rostov retrieved his cap and turned to see Sergeant Zorin approaching with five overage reservists, all unshaven, most still pulling on boots or buttoning tunics over their old-men’s chests. Rostov assumed that the most prepared-looking fellow in the lead must be Colonel Fedorin and saluted, not so smartly as to offend the older man’s pride.

“First Lieutenant Rostov, Fifth Guards Armored Division, Third Regiment, Combat Engineers.” He hesitated, unsure if his next words were for their benefit or his: “Colonel Ivan Podgorny commanding.”

Fedorin returned the salute with more enthusiasm than discipline. “Colonel Fedorin, Rail Security Forces, Suschenko.” Fedorin extended his hand impulsively, and Rostov found the breach of protocol oddly reassuring. “It is good to see a friendly face, Lieutenant.”

Rostov could guess the man’s meaning. “I understand, sir; we are not KGB.”

Fedorin nodded happily. “So I hoped when I first saw your Sergeant Zorin here and his men; that they did not shoot me first and interrogate me after… well, that was the giveaway.” He gestured over his shoulder to the station house behind him. “Perhaps we can continue this inside over some tea?”

Rostov’s fatigue had settled over him like a shroud; more than anything else, he simply wanted to get this charade over with. Podgorny’s last orders had been to get the men to safety in the West. To Rostov that now meant getting fuel, if they had any here, securing what supplies might be available, and getting the hell out of the ruins of the Soviet. But Colonel Fedorin seemed determined to drag this out.

Ah, what the hell… Everything else aside, while he hated the idea of deceiving this old fellow, Rostov was touched by Fedorin’s efforts to maintain some civility. The offer of tea was more than simple hospitality; it was a slap in the teeth to the destruction all around them, and Rostov suddenly realized he welcomed the opportunity to do just that.

Colonel Podgorny would have had me flogged if I refused. Besides, the world can fall apart, the KGB can drag the Rodina straight to hell; but I am still an officer of the Red Army. And I still have my manners. He smiled at Fedorin as he adjusted his cap and saluted once more.

“Of course, sir. A cup of tea would be very welcome, and thank you.”

“Captain Drachev! Message coming in!”

Yuri Drachev spat out a mouthful of cold tea and dashed the remnants from his tin cup to the ground. He tossed the empty container to the cook and broke into a trot toward the center of his unit’s bivouac.

Drachev had begun deploying his vehicles like an open-sea convoy when they encamped for the night. In a real war, such deployment would have been laughable, even suicidal against air attacks or sappers with antitank missiles. But the real war had been over for some time now, and Drachev had adapted. Air attacks were a dim memory, antitank missiles were rare, and the threat now came from bandits and raiders with firebombs and knives. And the Devil take any politically reliable ass-kisser who claimed differently.

Drachev passed through the outside perimeter of tank support troops and their BMP armored personnel carriers, all deployed so as to protect his precious LT-200 light tanks. The very center of the camp was reserved for the supply trucks and the communications wagon, their link with Novaya Moskva and the other intact units that remained under its command.

Drachev pulled himself up into the back of the cramped van and closed the door behind him. The communications officer didn’t hear him through his headphones, and Drachev slapped him on the shoulder in greeting. “Source, Piotr?”

“PRG One, Captain. Currently in Moscow.”

Drachev grunted. “The KGB is back in Moscow? They are either being very aggressive or very stupid.” He put on a headset and adjusted the microphone.

Piotr shrugged. “Who knows, sir; perhaps we’ve won the war.”

Drachev gave him a look that accepted the jest without approving of it, then clicked the contact button several times before giving the recognition code names.

“‘Dacha,’ this is ‘Kolinsky,’ come in.”

Dacha responded after the brief delay of a satellite link. “We read you, Kolinsky. Scramble signals and stand by for new orders.”

A moment later, Steinmann’s familiar voice was on the line. “Captain Drachev, this is Steinmann. How are you?”

“We are well, thank you, sir. The unit is fit, all vehicles operational, supply levels sufficient for the remainder of our patrol period.” He didn’t mention that they were still without a political officer. The last one had been killed in a bandit raid a month ago. Drachev had duly reported the casualty, then said no more, wanting to prolong the bliss of life without a Commissar for as long as possible.

“Good. Captain Drachev, your unit is hereby remanded to a new operations officer, code-named ‘Revenant.’ Confirm, please.”

‘‘Kolinsky now an asset for Revenant, confirmed. Standing by.” God save us, can’t we get this nonsense over with? Just give us the damned mission. Probably some half-assed squirrel chase after another pack of counterrevolutionary* nationalists, anyway.*

“Kolinsky, this is Revenant.” The new control’s voice came over the link, and Drachev didn’t like him already. If snakes could talk… he thought.

“Kolinsky, your unit is to search the following areas for any unauthorized rail activity on intact lines. Details follow.”

Unauthorized rail activity? Drachev decided that Revenant was either a total madman or yet another trick to test their loyalty. He finished a deep sigh before replying.

“Understood, Revenant,” Drachev said, gesturing impatiently to Piotr for a map. “Standing by for deployment orders.” As Revenant gave him coordinates, Drachev picked up a grease pencil and drew circles around various small towns on the map. Bodii, Yemadzoy, Viluk, Suschenko…

What a farce, Drachev thought, catching Piotr’s eye as he made the marks.

The young lieutenant grinned, shaking his head.

Back in Moscow, Major Grishin waited until Serafimov was about to terminate communications with Drachev’s force. Steinmann was leaning against the wall, studying Serafimov’s deployment notes on his own map of “Kolinsky’s” operations zone. He looked up as Grishin addressed Serafimov.

“With all due respect, Colonel Serafimov, I believe it would be a mistake to assign Kolinsky to this operation.”

Serafimov’s tone was cool. “How so, Major?”

“Evidently you have not read the status reports on our patrol units in the field; I have. Kolinsky lost its political officer recently, and a new one has not yet been assigned.”

“Stand by, Kolinsky.” Serafimov turned to face Grishin. “And is that a problem?’’

Grishin’s smile was almost sad. “Colonel Serafimov, should Kolinsky make contact with these Army bandits and your stolen train—and frankly, I think this unlikely—what is to guarantee that, bereft of political guidance, they will not be tempted to defect as well?”

Serafimov seemed taken aback by the prospect, but attempted to conceal his shock. “Well—if a political officer is your only worry, Major, I am certainly capable of serving in that role. In fact, I would be willing to rendezvous with Kolinsky myself for that very purpose.”

Grishin cut him off. “Yes, Colonel; I have no doubt you would. But you, my friend, are still under suspicion for complicity in the loss of that train. And we have seen just how capable you are as a combat commander.”

Grishin turned to Steinmann, ignoring the now completely flustered Serafimov. “Major Steinmann, with your permission, I will rendezvous with Kolinsky and serve as pro tem political officer.” He turned back to Serafimov before the Colonel could get his bearings. “This way, Novaya Moskva may be assured of the reliability of at least one officer involved in this operation.”

Serafimov’s jaw clenched at the insult, but he said nothing.

Steinmann nodded. “Agreed. I will so inform Party Central during my next check-in. Colonel Serafimov, inform Kolinsky of Major Grishin’s assignment to their unit.”

“I’ll see to my things.” Grishin saluted Steinmann, unable to resist favoring Serafimov with a look of triumph as he left.

I cannot lose. If we find nothing, Serafimov looks like the fool that he is; if we find the train, I will receive credit for being the officer who apprehends the tekniks and the stolen materiel.

Grishin took his leave, satisfied that his star was in the ascendant.

Back in the van, Serafimov had suddenly regained his composure. He opened his operations folder and removed the current status report on Kolinsky, handing it to a Lieutenant to be returned to the files.

“Major Grishin would seem to be very brave,” he told Steinmann in an offhanded tone, “to take over pursuit of well-armed renegade Combat Engineers.”

Steinmann caught his eye. “Grishin is a fool,” the big East German said simply. “I am well rid of him.’’ He put the map down and left the van.

Captain Martin Wrenn, United States Naval Intelligence, tightened the sling securing his wounded left hand. With his American uniform, Wrenn could hardly move about with the work details repairing the train or trading with the people of Suschenko, but he had promised Rostov that, wounded hand notwithstanding, he would shortly go very crazy with nothing to do.

Wrenn wandered into a passenger car and saw Sergeant Zorin approaching from the far end, a coat draped over his arm.

“Sergeant Zorin; good to see you.”

“Captain. Wrenn. I thought you might want to cover your uniform with this.” Zorin held out a Russian-issue greatcoat. “There are several civilians around the train, and you never know who might be watching.”

Is there any eventuality you don’t anticipate, Sergeant? Wrenn knew that the Red Army simply did not have noncoms like Zorin. At least they didn’t when the war started. Still, there was no reason they couldn’t have learned to keep men like him where they did the most good. Wrenn was sure Rostov blessed his luck for the man every day he woke up alive.

“Thank you, Sergeant.” With one arm in a sling, Wrenn was glad to let the stocky noncom help him on with the heavy coat. It was late summer in Russia, the day was chilly, and most of the train was open to the air, but presently Wrenn understood why the Russians had never phased out greatcoats from their military dress codes.

A warmer and far less conspicuous Wrenn followed Zorin out onto the platform. Wrenn and Zorin took the air, looking up to see thin clouds threading in from the northeast.

“Christus,” Zorin muttered, “more snow.”

“Still, winter’s coming slowly this year,” Wrenn said, not adding his worry that it might not come slowly enough.

“I suppose even God has second thoughts sometimes, eh, sir?”

Wrenn nodded, then wondered what Zorin meant by that. Jesus, I really am getting paranoid.

“Or maybe we’ve just been lucky,” Zorin said in a lighter tone. “How much luckier do you think we’ll have to be, Kapitan?”

Wrenn almost laughed. “We got out of Moscow alive, Sergeant Zorin. Let’s take one miracle at a time.”

Stepping down onto the platform, the two men passed down the line of cars, frequently sidestepping to get through the activity surrounding the train.

Amid the frantic activity of repair, the Combat Engineers were trading surplus items that Rostov had judged could be spared to share with the people of Suschenko. Surgeon Blaustein had been pleased to find large stocks of vitamins and nutritional supplements in one of the boxcars, and he was presently trading some to the townspeople for additional antibiotics and medical supplies. He looked up and waved as he caught sight of Zorin and Wrenn.

“This bartering is interesting,’” Wrenn said after a moment.

Zorin nodded. “I would not have expected Aleksei to loot these people, but he could just as easily invoke supply requirements, take what bare necessities we require, and we could be on our way.”

“That might make Fedorin and his Rail Security Forces suspicious. They might then decide to report our visit.”

Zorin nodded. “Perhaps. Besides, I don’t particularly think we are doing a great deal more of it than is strictly necessary.”

Wrenn looked around them at the civilians. Their faces were still lined with hunger and care, but most were smiling now, probably for the first time in weeks. Those soldiers not engaged in work details were helping in whatever ways they could, and the townspeople were responding in kind.

Already, flour donated from the train’s stocks was returning to the soldiers as pastries and fresh bread. Sometimes it was even delivered by someone’s daughters, or a young widow, and despite the fact that the girls were always heavily chaperoned by stern-faced babushki, the effect on morale was considerable.

“No, Sergeant Zorin, I don’t think so, either.”

Rostov himself arrived then, his arm about the shoulders of an old woman with him. They recognized her as the grandmother who had greeted Rostov when they first arrived. Rostov kissed the babushka’s cheek and returned her parting wave as he approached Zorin and Wrenn.

“You should see Grandmother’s helper; beautiful kid, six, maybe seven years old.” Rostov half grinned, shaking his head. Zorin read some emotion on his Lieutenant’s face, but even he could not tell what it might be. He wondered if Rostov knew himself.

“How are you, Captain Wrenn?” Rostov asked.

“Not as well as you, evidently, Lieutenant.” It was true; despite fatigue and overwork, Rostov seemed rejuvenated. “Just trying to make myself useful.” Wrenn gestured with his wounded hand by way of apology.

“Not to worry, Captain, we shouldn’t be very much longer. Oh, you might want to see Surgeon Blaustein about that hand; he’s got some more medical supplies from the stores here—what a rail supply depot was doing with medical supplies, don’t ask me, I’m just grateful to get them—anyway, he might want to change the treatment for your hand.”

“I will, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

Rostov nodded, a little embarrassed by his rush of words. “Very well. I’ve got to check with Colonel Fedorin about the stocks of uncontaminated fuel he has here. They have more than we need, but we’ll treat all of it with Immunizer. That will get these people through the winter; maybe even give them something to barter in the future.” He saluted Zorin, then Wrenn. “Carry on.”

Rostov spun on his heel to go, and suddenly stopped. He turned back to look sheepishly at Wrenn. “Uh… sir. I mean–”

Wrenn tossed a brisk salute and deadpanned: “Aye aye, skipper.”

Rostov grinned self-consciously and left.

“We’ve got to get him promoted,” Wrenn said.

“Beg pardon, Captain Wrenn?”

“Hm? Oh, just a thought, Sergeant. It’s going to be a while yet before we get to the Alliance lines. Any one of us could get killed on the way. Your unit needs a more dispersed command structure to absorb any losses that might occur among the officers and noncoms—which right now means you and Rostov. Even if we make it in one piece, it wouldn’t hurt your position to get to the West with a few more chiefs and a few less Indians.”

“Sir?”

Wrenn smiled. “Sorry. Poor choice of idiom.” He took Sergeant Zorin’s arm and steered him toward the crowd. “Let’s pay a call on Comrade Surgeon Blaustein.”

Captain Drachev drew an “x” on his map with two savage strokes. He handed the map to Piotr and left the communications wagon without a word.

I’ve gotten sloppy, that’s the problem. Drachev cursed himself as he stalked through the town square in the ruins of Viluk. I’d forgotten just how much damage one stupid bastard of a political officer can do. He thought of a joke from his days at Frunze that had been as popular as it was forbidden: What’s the most dangerous thing we will ever face in combat, Comrades?

“A Commissar with a map,” Drachev answered under his breath.

Like Bodii and Yemadzoy before it, Viluk had appeared deserted, and his new “aide,” Major Grishin, had insisted they move in before it was properly reconnoitered.

Drachev didn’t trust himself to look at the covered bodies of his men. So much for appearances, Drachev thought bitterly. Forgive me, Comrades.

Ten men dead was bad enough; Drachev had become close with all his troops in the months he’d been in command. But if the loss of his men saddened him, the waste of two of his tanks enraged him. He reached the chief mechanic’s tent and sought him out for the status of the other vehicles.

“We have had a little luck there, Captain. The bandits dropped those demolition charges right on the engine grates of Eight and Three, so that’s the bottom of the bowl for them. But for once our production committees did something right. These light tanks are almost all modular in design, makes them very easy to cannibalize for parts. I saved enough pieces from the two hulks to repair all the light damage to the rest of the vehicles.” The chief mechanic watched Drachev’s impassive features. “Sorry, sir, that’s the best I could do.”

“No need to apologize, Lieutenant. It does put a little brighter face on the whole mess.” Too bad you can’t repair men like that, he’d been thinking, turning at last to look at the blanketed forms outside. We could start by carving up that fool, Grishin. Drachev’s gaze continued on to the other side of the square, where Grishin was interrogating their sole captive.

“Carry on, Lieutenant.” Drachev crossed the square, idly reaching down to open the flap of his holster, and flick the safety on his sidearm to “off.”

Major Grishin did not look happy. The man before him had single-handedly destroyed two tanks as smoothly as in the training films. That was bad enough, but the ensuing confusion had allowed his comrades to escape. Grishin had taken a leg wound during the ambush, and Drachev guessed it had opened again, as the bandage on his calf was a bright red. It did nothing to improve the KGB man’s disposition, and he was eager to take it out on their prisoner.

You brave son of a bitch, Drachev thought as he looked at the captured bandit. I’ve seen a dozen men die trying to do what you did; I’ve killed dozens more of the enemy who tried it on me. You mastered that piece of work in the Red Army, no doubt about it. “Major Grishin. What do you have for me?”

Grishin’s leg wound had to hurt; Drachev had dressed it himself and it looked bad. Not bad enough, he’d thought at the time. But the KGB man’s voice was calm, almost reflective.

“Nothing. They are Ukrainian bandits. They saw our force and hid in the town, hoping we would bypass them. When they realized we were coming in, they set up the ambush.”

“We’re not ‘bandits,’ you KGB prick,” the prisoner said quietly. “We are partisans.”

Grishin jabbed the man in the ribs with the barrel of his rifle, but Drachev ignored the comment. “Sounds reasonable enough. Do you believe him?”

Grishin gave him a look. “I am prepared to believe anything that expedites shipping him to the slave camps.”

“Does he know anything about a train, Major?” Drachev hoped an ironic tone might remind Grishin of their original mission.

“No, Captain Drachev. These thugs routinely raid–”

“Patrol,” the prisoner interrupted, and this time Grishin sent him tumbling with a rifle butt to the face.

“As I said,” Grishin continued as if nothing had happened. “They routinely raid these border areas, but they haven’t seen any rail activity in months.”

Drachev looked at the bloody face of the prisoner as the man struggled back up to a sitting position. Sure of his fate, the partisan watched him with an absolute lack of interest.

“Send this fellow to the camps,” Drachev said as he walked around the prisoner. He then drew his Makarov and shot the man behind the ear too quickly for Grishin to do anything about it. The body pitched face forward into the dust.

Grishin went livid, his composure at last shattered. “Drachev! That man was to be an example; once broken in the camps he could even be sent back here as an intelligence asset.”

“Major Grishin, you cost me two tanks and sixteen men! Because of you, we have suffered more casualties in one ambush than in our last four engagements. Combined! I don’t have men or vehicles to spare to hold prisoners, and certainly not to transport them anywhere.”

Drachev’s knuckles were white around the grip of the still-smoking sidearm in his hand, and twice he saw Grishin’s eyes flash to the weapon. He prayed the KGB man would give him an excuse to use it as he pressed his attack.

“We are only a few dozens of kilometers from the Free Ukrainian Republic; we have been operating along its borders for six days, and it is only by heroic good fortune that we have not encountered their patrols in strength.” Drachev lowered his voice, hoping Grishin would respond to a reasonable tone.

“Major Grishin, there is only one town left on the Revenant list, and we cannot get there before nightfall, so we’ll have to leave tomorrow morning. Unless you call off this nonsense and let us get back to our usual patrols.”

“You have your orders, Captain Drachev.”

Drachev refused to back down. “Very well. Then, as I am required to report our progress to Revenant, I will do so in great detail, and let him decide if we need to subject ourselves to another day of this pokazuka.”

Drachev turned his back on Grishin and headed for the communications truck. He had intended to have the prisoner executed anyway, but he had no intention of seeing a fellow soldier sent to those camps.

The fact that it aggravated the hell out of Grishin was simply a bonus.

Surgeon Josiv Blaustein was a curiosity. Like many of the men in the unit, he had been rescued from the KGB by Podgorny, who had often traded weapons or fuel for skilled men who might otherwise be executed or imprisoned. As a Jew, Blaustein was a de facto enemy of the State since the Israeli Incident of the War’s first year, but Podgorny had needed a doctor for his men far more than he’d needed another commendation for loyalty from the KGB.

As the oldest man in the unit after Podgorny, he had the respect of the men. More important, as a Captain in name only, he had their trust, and was valued by them for his counsel.

At such times, Blaustein would run his palm over his forehead and down the back of his neck, a habit the men took as a universal trait of the very wise. Actually, since he’d starting losing his hair, Blaustein’s pate had developed the same fascination for him as a broken tooth.

Wrenn and Zorin had sequestered themselves with Blaustein in the command car, and now watched him stroking his scalp as he pondered the issue they’d brought before him.

“I believe your point is well taken, Captain Wrenn.”

Blaustein was short, with an athletic build that belied his age and made Wrenn think of a gymnast. The image was enhanced by the surgeon’s balancing of his chair on its two back legs as he spoke, frowning at the floor before continuing.

“Colonel Podgorny had often spoken to Rostov about promotion, but the Lieutenant wasn’t much interested in that sort of thing after Kiev.” He shared a look with Zorin, who nodded.

“A week before we met you.” Blaustein continued, “we lost Captain Mescheryakov, Lieutenant Gontar, and Lieutenant Gavrilov, all in the same bandit attack. That’s when Podgorny told me that he was going to give Rostov a field promotion, and the lad’s reluctance be damned. Despite the reduction of the regiment to barely more than a company, the strain was beginning to tell on Podgorny.”

Wrenn thought a moment. “Do you think this Fedorin would oblige us?”

Zorin nodded. “I would bet on it, sir. Colonel Fedorin seems to think we all walk on water and piss wine. I think you will have difficulty with Lieutenant Rostov, however. I have fought beside Aleksei for four years. He was never a climber, but since he lost his wife, he has had no interest in rank, despite the fact that command comes to him easily.”

“That’s why I believe we need to have Fedorin approach him,” Wrenn said, “with no hint that we are behind the idea. But how do we get Fedorin to do it and not tell Rostov that it’s coming from within his own unit?”

Blaustein looked up. “Oh, that’s easy enough,” he said in an offhanded manner.

For a moment Wrenn was pleased, then he saw the way Blaustein was looking at him.

For the first time in months, Colonel Fedorin was actually happy. Although his first duty was to the Soviet Rail Security Forces, he had spent many months here in Suschenko; the people had been good to him and his men, feeding and caring for them long after supplies had stopped coming in. He was part of this community now, and it was good to be able to help his neighbors.

Fedorin leaned back in his chair in the station house and went over the list of items before him. He had been able to acquire food, good Army-issue blankets, a few weapons to defend themselves, and hunt some game. And it was all possible because of these Combat Engineers and their stolen train.

He looked over his shoulder in guilty reflex at his thoughts. Of course, it was obvious that the train was stolen; you could tell from the looks on the faces of Rostov and Zorin and their men, if nothing else. But what really gave them away was the glaring lack of any KGB presence.

Fedorin scowled at the thought. Those arrogant bastards with the green shoulder boards were everywhere now, drafting any young man who could carry a rifle, dissolving regular Army units and incorporating them into KGB ad hoc forces. “PRGs,” they were calling them. Pfah!

The KGB didn’t trust the Army, never had. It was too independent; they would certainly never allow an entire train full of Army Combat Engineers to move about unescorted.

Fedorin had dealt with enough of those bastards in the last few months, and didn’t care if he never saw another one again. Four of them had come ripping through Suschenko just six weeks ago, shooting the place up and throwing their weight about.

There was a new reality to get used to, they had told him, when they took two girls away from their families, all the while laughing at the foolish old reservists in their ill-fitting Rail Security uniforms.

As far as Fedorin was concerned, it was the same old reality as always. But those KGB soldiers had been introduced to a new reality, all right. Crossing himself absently, Fedorin wondered what the four chekisti, lying together in a shallow unmarked grave outside of town, thought of the afterlife they’d purchased with the rape and beating of those girls. Probably not the sort of thing classes in Marxist-Leninism prepared them for.

But that was the past, and as he took a deep breath and looked out on the Combat Engineers loading barrels of diesel into a boxcar, he wished them luck wherever they were going. In a way, he even hoped that they might run into a KGB patrol or two. He smiled at the thought; small ones, of course. Easy kills.

“Colonel Fedorin?”

He turned his chair around, his smile fading at the unfamiliar voice, then disappearing at the sight of an equally unfamiliar face. The man before him was thin, with dark brown hair and beard going to grey. His left arm was in a sling, and his left hand was completely bandaged. Despite his own bloodthirsty maunderings, Fedorin could not help but be a little afraid. The stranger wore no badges of rank, but carried himself like an officer.

“Da, I am Fedorin… eh–”

The man held up his good hand. “Excuse me, Colonel. We have not yet had the opportunity to meet. I am not officially a member of Lieutenant Rostov’s unit. I was picked up by his men outside of Moscow. I am Leytenant-Kapitan Renko.” Wrenn paused a moment, then added, “GRU,” in what he hoped was a sufficiently ominous tone. In any nation’s military intelligence branches, ranks were meaningless. A man from the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, could thus be a General for all outsiders knew.

Fedorin was both puzzled and delighted. “But, I thought; that is, the rumor was that the GRU…”

“The rumors of GRU treason were KGB fabrications, meant to allow them free rein in wiping out their opposition in the Soviet Armed Forces.” Wrenn hoped he could keep up the pace of his deception. Zorin had warned him that Fedorin was a simple man, but not a stupid one.

“There are very few of us left, but we are still active. My mission is unknown to Rostov or his men, as is my rank; they think me simply a wounded survivor.’’

He dropped his voice to a more conspiratorial tone and pulled a chair up across from Fedorin. “There is something I would like to do for them, Colonel, but for the sake of my mission I cannot jeopardize my cover. You understand?”

Fedorin nodded, relaxing a little; at least these lads weren’t in any trouble. “Yes, of course, ah—sir?”

Wrenn gave him a noncommittal shrug. “Good. Then, Colonel Fedorin, I would appreciate your assistance in this matter.” Wrenn took a piece of paper from his tunic pocket and handed it to Fedorin.

“This is a list of personnel recommended for promotion by Rostov’s former commander, Colonel Podgorny. As you know, the Colonel was killed a few days ago, before these promotions could be implemented. Field promotion requires an officer of Captain’s rank or above, and since Rostov is only a Lieutenant, the GRU would consider it a favor if you could perform these promotions yourself.’’

Fedorin was shocked. A favor to the GRU! There couldn’t be more than a few hundred GRU left alive in all of Russia, and the KGB had put them all under sentence of death. Fedorin looked the GRU man over closely, and despite himself, he smiled.

“If word ever got out that I had spoken with a GRU operative and not turned him in to the KGB, my life wouldn’t be worth a Liberated Zone ruble.” Fedorin looked the GRU man over closely.

“You are under no obligation to do this, Major.”

Fedorin pocketed the list with a laugh; a hearty peasant’s laugh with a healthy dose of “to hell with the world” in it. “Ah, but Lieutenant-Captain Renko, think of it! It would also put a bug so far up the KGB’s arse, they wouldn’t know whether to squat or go blind!”

Serafimov was disappointed. Drachev’s report laid the blame for the ambush squarely at Grishin’s feet, but merely dishonoring the Major was not what he had hoped for. Still, there was one town yet to be investigated, and Kolinsky still had a great deal of territory to cover before it was safely home.

“You will proceed to the last town on your list, Captain. You are authorized to fire on any operative train your unit encounters. Don’t worry about disabling or taking prisoners. Shoot to destroy.” Even if they didn’t find Podgorny’s men, they might kill a few Ukrainian rebels.

“I remind you, Revenant, that we have lost two of our tanks with their entire crews, and ten infantry effectives. Should we contact the perpetrators of this ‘unauthorized rail activity,’ what sort of resistance might we expect?”

Serafimov smiled at the man’s cheek, and wondered if his authority in PRG One would eventually extend to execution orders. Patience, he told himself.

“Fortunately, Kolinsky, your recent experience should inspire sufficient caution to compensate for your losses. If not, you still have Major Grishin’s expertise available to you, yes? Revenant out.”

Serafimov leaned back and turned his chair to the map table. Steinmann sat on the other side of it, watching him with that faint, maddening smile he always wore. He doesn’t think anything is amusing, Serafimov had decided. It’s just the way he looks. It’s the way any reptile looks.

Serafimov marked the town of Viluk on the map with a green pin, signifying bandit activity, and stifled a smile. Bandits. God save us, it’s right next to the bloody Free Ukrainian Republic. There’s a whole country of bandits there now. He decided he didn’t have enough green pins for this.

Checking Viluk’s position relative to the other towns on Kolinsky’s route, it was unlikely his quarry was in that area at all. This last town, Suschenko, was east of Viluk, even farther from the Alliance forces the Army traitors were presumed to be headed for.

“Not likely your train thieves are there, Colonel.” Steinmann voiced Serafimov’s own thoughts.

“Perhaps you are right, Major,” Serafimov admitted. “What do you suggest?” he asked, putting the responsibility squarely in Steinmann’s lap.

Steinmann only smiled, spreading his hands. “Not my field of expertise, Colonel. I am a combat officer, not a security specialist. But since you asked, we have other units to the north. Have Kolinsky bypass Suschenko and rendezvous with them to augment their strength, then stand to. Should we receive any reports of these bandits, our forces will then be centrally located, and can move out rapidly to cut them off. Of course, it’s just a suggestion.” He restored his smile and folded his arms on the table.

Serafimov picked up the red plastic marker representing Captain Drachev’s unit, the code name “Kolinsky” stamped along the top in gold.

A kolinsky was a race of Siberian weasel, fast, savage, and utterly ruthless in the hunt. Drachev had earned that code name, if the file Serafimov had seen was accurate. He thought a moment, then placed the marker firmly in Suschenko.

“Captain Drachev will go to Suschenko, I think. It will not delay a rendezvous with forces north by more than a day, and even if he finds nothing, we will at least know where they are not.”

And I am covered by my decision to be methodical, Serafimov thought. He caught Steinmann’s eye once more, and this time he smiled back.

We are survivors, the smile said. And if that is rather a hollow compliment, it is still preferable to the alternative.

Three days had passed since their arrival, and with them the elation of having everything work out right for once; now the fatigue Rostov had almost forgotten was returning with a vengeance. At no time since leaving Moscow had the Lieutenant managed more than a few hours’ rest at once, and he was past the point where such catnapping could help him any longer. His temper was fraying, and he was tending toward emotional reactions to unexpected situations.

But it would not be much longer now. When they left, they would have at least eight hours’ travel time to the Ukrainian border, and another two hours after that before they could expect to contact any Alliance forces. Rostov was sure he could be spared for at least half of that time.

The men were securing the last of the equipment taken on in Suschenko while the townspeople were carting off the last of the supplies they’d received. And they are welcome to every dram of it, he thought. Without the willing help of the people of Suschenko, Rostov was sure the unit would be trapped here. He felt a pang of guilt at leaving these townspeople, his fellow countrymen, to the mercies of the KGB and whatever bandits decided to hit the town in the months to come.

But the KGB had no real reason to harm them; Rostov had left forged papers with Fedorin to show that the Rail Security Forces Colonel had thought Rostov’s men cleared by the KGB. And with the extra weapons they were leaving in the town, and the brief training they’d given the citizens in their use, Rostov was sure that the first bandits to hit this town were in for a very unpleasant surprise. And anyway, I can do little else. We can’t very well take them all with us, and they wouldn’t go if we could; this is their home.

Once more he had to remind himself that his first responsibility was to his men. They will have to survive if Russia is to be free one day.

Rostov stopped dead in his tracks. Where the hell had that notion come from? Did he really think he was going to one day return to the Rodina, at the head of some reborn Red Army of liberation, like some twenty-first-century Aleksandr Nevsky? He laughed at himself; he really would have to get some sleep. He was starting to hallucinate.

“Lieutenant Rostov.” Private Ulyarin was standing before him, saluting with one hand and holding out a message with the other. Rostov returned the salute, amazed he had the energy to lift his arm, and took the message. He scanned it briefly, alarmed at its content.

“Did Colonel Fedorin give you this himself, Ulyarin?”

“Yes, sir. He said I was to bring it to you immediately.”

Rostov read it again. It was an officially worded “request” to attend a special meeting in Fedorin’s office, and it required him to bring several of his men with him.

The list was six names long, and Rostov had no idea what to make of it. If Fedorin wanted to betray him, this list would put Rostov and all his best men in the same room together, where one man with an assault rifle could end any hope of escape to the West for the unit. Rostov crushed the envelope and handed the note to Ulyarin.

“Take this list, Private Ulyarin, and have the people on it meet me in the command car. That includes you, by the way.”

Ulyarin blinked. “I’m sorry, sir, but Major Fedorin instructed—ordered me, that is, sir—to bring you directly back. He said the other people on the list were already in attendance.”

Ordered? Fedorin was asserting his rank a little late in the day, it seemed to Rostov. He wondered if following protocol and deferring to the Rail Security officer’s paper rank hadn’t been a mistake after all.

“All right then, Private, let’s get this over with.” He thought a moment, then added: “Bring your weapon.”

Ulyarin was instantly alert. He personally considered Fedorin one of the most harmless men he had ever met, but if the Lieutenant thought caution was warranted, then Ulyarin would be cautious.

Rostov stepped up onto the platform with Ulyarin. Two of Fedorin’s reservists waited beside the station house entrance in full uniforms; clean, if a little worn. Both saluted Rostov smartly as he arrived.

Rostov returned the salute, feeling foolish. They opened the door for him, ushering him and Ulyarin into the office.

Rostov was seized with a sense of unreality. Fedorin was seated behind his desk with the remaining two officers of his command. All were in full-dress uniform. On the wall behind them was draped a shiny new flag of the Soviet Union, sharply creased with fold lines acquired during long months in a storage box. The crimson silk shone, the golden hammer and sickle and open star gleamed.

“Lieutenant Rostov. Private Ulyarin.” The Rail Security officer at the door announced them and left. Rostov looked around to see that Sergeant Zorin was already there, along with Corporals Dyatlov and Aliyev, and Junior Sergeant Myakov, their chief mechanic. Still confused, Rostov came to attention and saluted.

What the devil is all this? Were these three old men going to place them under arrest? If so, they must be quite ready to leave this life, for Rostov had no doubts about his unit’s ability to handle a few old reservists and some armed townspeople. After a moment, he found his voice.

“Colonel Fedorin, I have a great many final preparations to make before we can leave Suschenko; may I ask what this is all about?”

He tried to catch Zorin’s eye, but the burly Sergeant was staring straight ahead, in parade-ground attention that would please a martinet. Fine time to start that, Rostov thought.

“Certainly, Lieutenant. As you know, since the integration of all Soviet Defense Forces, we in Rail Security hold equal rank with all other ground force personnel, with equal privileges and equal authority.” He stood up from behind the desk and walked around it to stand before Rostov. Fedorin waited a moment before he spoke again. “You will come to attention, please. Now!”

Rostov couldn’t help himself. Automatically his right foot swung out and back, slamming the heel into the floor next to his left. Simultaneously he snapped his hand to the brim of his cap; his back straightened and his eyes locked on the opposite wall.

Fedorin seemed taken aback at first, then pleased. A moment later he had removed Rostov’s shoulder boards with their three stars of a Senior Lieutenant, and replaced them with the white, four-starred boards of a full Captain of Engineers of the Red Army. As Fedorin grasped his shoulders and performed the traditional Russian accolade, Rostov’s sense of unreality became complete.

“Kapitan Rostov, it is my duty and my pleasure to present you and your men with the promotions which you so richly deserve. The Soviet State, no less than the town of Suschenko, is indebted to you for your skill regarding, and devotion to, your command, your duty, and your nation.”

Fedorin repeated the procedure with each of Rostov’s men present, making Ulyarin a Corporal, Dyatlov and Aliyev full Sergeants, and Myakov a Senior Sergeant. Zorin had stepped back as the promotions were being proffered, and seemed unaware of Fedorin’s approach.

“Senior Sergeant Zorin, it is always a pleasure to elevate an enlisted man to the rank of officer.”

Zorin, who had evidently hoped to avoid just what was about to occur, was obviously uncomfortable, if not outright horrified. “But, Major Fedorin, I–”

“Congratulations, Zorin,” Rostov put in quickly; Fedorin performed the ritual, and Rostov immediately stepped in to bestow his own congratulatory embrace. “Allow me to be the first–” He looked Zorin square in the eye and glared at him in satisfaction. “Lieutenant Zorin.”

For once, Rostov had seen Zorin surprised, and the taste was so sweet he forgot his own discomfort at the absurdity of the situation. He wondered how readily Fedorin would have given these field promotions if he had known Rostov and all his men would soon be permanently resigning from the Soviet Armed Forces. The safety of his men was Rostov’s first concern, but the feeling that he was winking at treason made him distinctly uneasy.

Ulyarin, newly a Corporal, couldn’t have looked happier if he’d been made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. A moment later, Fedorin’s men entered with bottles of vodka, several townspeople crowded in with trays of food, and Fedorin pressed Rostov and his newly promoted men to join them in celebration.

Rostov was hungry enough, but tired as he was, the vodka would have to wait. Fedorin took no offense, seeming to enjoy what he thought was a fine jest he had perpetrated on Rostov, and especially on the former Starshi Serzhant Zorin.

Seeing his comrade-in-arms standing dejectedly in a corner, staring into a glass of vodka, Rostov almost felt sorry for him, but he was struck by a sudden suspicion, and decided to fight his way across the crowded room to his new Lieutenant.

“Oh. Hello, Alek—hello, Captain.”

“Enough of that. Anyway, you’re an officer now, too,” Rostov pointed out, twisting the blade. “You can use my Christian name as much as you like and not go on report for it.”

Zorin remained gloomy. “Hm. Of course, now it won’t be as much fun because of that.”

“No doubt. Well, look on the bright side.”

“Sir?” Zorin grimaced and shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. “I mean, Aleksei.”

Rostov favored him with an icy smile. “Whoever stole Colonel Podgorny’s promotion list did you a favor. At least now when we’re caught, you won’t be sent to some filthy Gulag.” He threw a comradely arm about Zorin’s shoulders. “You’ll be shot with me, like a proper officer.’’

The citizens of Suschenko had lined the tracks to bid them farewell. Up in the roof hatch of the locomotive, Rostov waved along with the rest of his men to the crowds on the platform. The air was chill, but he still doubted he could stay awake if he weren’t standing up.

He looked for the babushka and her little helper, but they were nowhere in sight. Well, no doubt he would see them on the way out. He checked on those of his troops in sight. Most were settled into their watch stations along the train, secure behind newly reinforced walls of passenger cars, or inside firing pits made from steel sheets and welded to the flatcars.

This time, he thought, we’ll be a little better prepared if we run into trouble. We haven’t far to go. A few hours to return to the switchback, then west to the Ukraine and the Alliance forces, God willing before the KGB catches up with us.

The race was truly on again. Tired as Rostov was, he felt he had prepared for most contingencies. Podgorny had always warned him that it was the little things, more often than not, that would defeat you in the end.

The train began backing slowly out of the town. Down the line, around a gentle curve in the track and so just out of Rostov’s line of sight, the rearmost car emerged slowly from between the buildings that surrounded them, into the low rays of the late morning sun.

A half mile southeast across the fields, Captain Drachev’s jaw dropped in disbelief. Only his training let him keep his field glasses in place as he watched a flatcar emerge from the town of Suschenko.

“A train. Mother of God, it’s actually a train.”

He waved to Grishin in the turret of the light tank three vehicles away in their line of deployment. “Grishin! It’s there! It looks like they’re leaving; take your force over to the far side of the town and hit the engine from behind. We’ll sweep across this end and lay a crossfire over the tracks.”

Grishin acknowledged with a nod and a wave. Seconds later, the four light tanks under his command roared up from their idling power levels and began churning the grassy earth with their treads. Drachev tapped the shoulder of his driver with his foot. “Move out!”

Drachev’s tanks swept out to block the escape of the train. He was grinning fiercely. Whoever was on that train was the reason his unit had been given this fool’s errand. They had gotten him saddled with Major Grishin, and thus caused the loss of his men and vehicles at Viluk, and Drachev was eager to make them pay.

Corporal Ulyarin had five men with him on the rearmost flatcar, each officially supposed to be scanning the horizon for activity, but most waving goodbye to the townspeople. Newly promoted, however, Ulyarin took his duty seriously, and no sooner had his field of vision cleared the buildings than he saw the clouds of dust in the distance.

Tanks! And heading for the tracks to cut them off.

What happened next was simply bad luck. Corporal Ulyarin snatched his radio microphone up and keyed it several times before he spoke.

“Captain Rostov, this is Ulyarin. I have vehicles on the track, repeat, vehicles on the track, do you read?”

The microphone made no sound when he released the key, and Ulyarin looked down to see what was wrong with it. In his haste, he had pulled the plug completely free from the jack. Cursing, he resecured the plug, aware that precious seconds had been lost.

Drachev’s tank was the first to crest the embankment of the railbed. His and another light tank close behind crossed the rails in a bone-jarring lurch, their turrets already swinging about to follow the train as it continued to emerge from between the buildings of Suschenko.

Drachev traced the line of cars back to the cloud of smoke that revealed the position of the engine. They were approaching the town from an angle, and the far end of the train seemed very far back; its length had barely been concealed by the total extent of the town itself and their angle of approach.

We might have passed it, Drachev thought. We might have decided to breeze past with just a look and missed it completely.

Drachev’s other two tanks remained on the opposite side of the tracks, their experienced crews finding low points in the terrain and putting the vehicles hull-down to any antitank weapons the enemy might have available to use against them.

Meanwhile, the BMP armored personnel carriers were deploying in a semicircle, disgorging troops from the back ramp doors without even slowing down.

Drachev didn’t bother to think about just who might be aboard that train. Revenant was part of PRG One; PRG One was the voice of Novaya Moskva, and Grishin was the eyes. Thus, PRG One had said to destroy that train, and PRG One was watching.

Drachev was a professional soldier; if he had no love for the KGB that now gave him his commands, it was simply that he had none to spare from the love he gave to his country. The orders came down to him, and he carried them out, hoping that in the long run, the best interests of the Rodina were being served by somebody, anybody, even the KGB, willing to take the responsibility.

“Gunner, spotting round, center of the tracks. Signal.”

Drachev listened to the sound of the plastic-cased shell being fed into the gun, the breech sealing after it.

“Ready, sir.”

Drachev gave the order to shoot before the gunner got the second word out.

Rostov heard the radio on his hip squawking. He pulled up the handset in time to hear Ulyarin requesting a confirmation.

“Ulyarin, say again.”

“Vehicles have crossed the tracks, Captain Rostov, two on our right side, at least two more on our left. Light tanks, hull down, do you read?”

Rostov’s blood chilled. Tanks. Only the KGB still had tanks. “Ulyarin, fall back from the flatcars and get under cover, confirm!”

“Yes sir, we—”

Ulyarin’s signal was cut off. A cloud of red smoke erupted at the far end of the train.

Spotting round, Rostov realized, and a second later the crack of the small shell came back to him. He leaned down to shout to Gyrich and Pilkanis in the control cabin. “Trainman Gyrich, we’re under attack; tanks on the rails.”

Gyrich seemed at a loss. “We can stop, Lieu—Captain, but…”

“To hell with that ‘Captain’ nonsense! Gyrich, if we stop in this town we’re trapped. We’ve got to get out in the open where the men can deploy. We may have to ram these tanks, though, if they’re on the rails.”

Gyrich shook his head vigorously. “I wouldn’t try it, sir. We’ve only got flatcars at that end. Too light. A tank could derail the car’s wheels.”

“How fast can we reverse course?”

Pilkanis scoffed openly. “This is a train, Captain Rostov, not a warship.”

Rostov had seconds to make a decision, and he knew it. “Well, it is a warship now, Comrades. Gyrich, get us out of here, as fast as you can go, through or over anything in our way!”

Rostov keyed the radio handset: “Zorin! Ulyarin’s spotted tanks on the tracks, get back there and help him. Aliyev will meet you with antitank rockets. You coordinate the attack.”

His next call had Aliyev racing to tear open crates that had been packed away only days earlier.

Zorin found Corporal Ulyarin beyond help. The spotting round fired by Drachev’s gunner had been a direct hit on the firing pit occupied by the Corporal and one of his men. The shell was a smoke round, not meant to do any real damage, but that still made it an explosive incendiary. Ulyarin and the man with him had been killed instantly.

The three other men on the flatbed were deafened by the blast and blinded by the smoke. They stumbled forward to the next flatcar; one fell off the train before Zorin could reach him and was crushed under the wheels. The others he led to the side and jumped with them to the railbed.

Rolling to his feet, Zorin began pounding on the walls of the cars.

“Everybody out of there now! Where’s Aliyev?”

“Here, sir!”

“Get an RPG for each man and get your squad out into that grass; those tanks have to be knocked out. And find Dyatlov; have him get some more RPGs to these townspeople in case they break through on our rear.”

“You think they’ve surrounded us, sir?”

“Christus, I bloody well would.”

Drachev was watching through his field glasses and saw three figures leap to the side of the tracks. He couldn’t make out details, but the bandits appeared to be in Army uniforms. Stolen, he supposed, from their previous victims.

“Sons of bitches. Load fléchette. Signal.”

“Fléchette, ready.”

“Shoot!”

The guns of the LT-200 were light by any armor standards in the world, but they were devastating against opponents with no defense against them. Drachev’s tank fired a fléchette round; the proximity-fused shell detonated over the second flatcar, spraying the train with thousands of steel needles. Men with moderate protection were safe, but those exposed died horribly, along with many nearby civilians who had not reached cover.

Drachev raised his field glasses again; the train was accelerating. Perhaps Grishin was attacking the other end by now; Drachev didn’t have time to get him on the radio.

“Ready incendiary.”

He drummed his fingers impatiently on the hatch rim; incendiary rounds were stored well apart from the other ammunition, in nonflammable gelatin. The gunner needed a few seconds’ warning to get one and load the slippery casing into the breech.

Rostov felt like a fool. His men were going into action at the other end of the train, and the curve in the track kept him from even seeing what was going on. All he could do was trust Zorin to deal with it and hope they could get up speed to escape. Many of the people of Suschenko were still on the platforms and sidings where they had been waving goodbye. Now they huddled in panic in whatever cover they could find.

Fedorin was trotting alongside the engine, shouting something up at him. Rostov turned and yelled down at him, waving his arms for emphasis.

“Get under cover; those are KGB tanks out there. We’re going to have to fight our way past them and make a run for it. You can’t be seen helping us, Fedorin. Get these civilians out of here!” Rostov couldn’t be sure the old Major understood him, but the reservists stood for a moment looking up at him, then waved and ran off out of sight. Rostov’s radio started pinging again.

“Rostov here, come in.”

“Zorin here, Aleksei. Looks like two tanks on each side of the tracks, a crossfire. Probably infantry with them but I can’t tell with that grass. Aliyev and I have men moving out with RPG-90s to take out those tanks in the fields. Another squad is taking up positions on the flatcar.”

“Can you see Ulyarin’s position?”

“Affirmative. Ulyarin’s dead, Aleksei; that spotting round, looks like a lucky hit. Smoke is dispersing.”

“We’re making a run for it, Mikhail. We can’t leave any men behind, so either you kill all four tanks or the men will have to catch up with us on foot.”

“Understood, sir. Four tanks it is. Zorin out.”

Rostov was shaking. He’d been running on willpower for days, the adrenaline rush tasted like a mouthful of old copper pfennigs and it looked like there was to be no end to it, ever.

A civilian was shouting to him from the platform below. He turned and felt something tug at his sleeve. The shouting became a scream: “Get down!”

Rostov’s arm felt wet, then numb. He turned completely around to look toward the front of the train.

A light tank was sitting squarely astride the tracks, firing the machine gun in its turret. Rostov instinctively dropped down the hatch, falling eight feet to the control cabin floor. A moment later the open hatch above him rang like a bell with the impact of half a dozen bullets.

“You’re hit, Rostov,” Pilkanis shouted.

Rostov saw a hole in the sleeve covering his numb left arm, pain blossoming around it more quickly than the red stain just above his elbow. Blood began threading over his fingers to drip onto the grating of the engine’s oily floor.

“We have light tanks front and rear.” Looking up at the hatch, Rostov saw his radio dangling from a locking lever in the hatch. “Keep up the speed, Gyrich. I need to get my radio.”

But by the time he got to his feet, he saw Pilkanis was already risking himself to fire to detach the radio, then drop down the ladder amid another hail of bullets.

The big Lithuanian conscript rose from the floor and handed Rostov the radio. “It must have caught on the hatch when you fell.” Adjusting his spectacles, Pilkanis went back to the locomotive’s controls.

Rostov keyed the microphone again. “Sergeant Dyatlov.”

The reply was instantaneous. “Dyatlov standing by, Captain. I have twelve men, each armed with an RPG-90.”

Bless you, Colonel Podgorny, and your damnable list. “We have tanks in the town, attacking the engine, Sergeant.”

“Understood. Dyatlov out.”

The numbness in his arm was gone, and Rostov’s concentration was disintegrating as the pain took hold. Pilkanis had produced a knife and removed the sleeve, wrapping the wounded arm with the makeshift bandage while Rostov was still speaking to Dyatlov. Without a word, Pilkanis secured the dressing and returned to his work station.

“I’ve got to see what’s going on,” Rostov told Gyrich. “There are wind plates at the sides and front of this locomotive; how thick are they?”

“Almost two centimeters, Captain,” Gyrich told him.

Rostov had seen some of the light tanks up close; they were built for speed and ease of maintenance. They wouldn’t have more than 7.62-millimeter mounts for machine guns. Two centimeters might be proof against a coaxial machine gun, Rostov thought. He would never dare to hope that much metal would turn an armor piercing round.

Rostov picked up his weapons belt. A sidearm and four grenades. Well, he wasn’t going out there to fight, anyway. But he might be able to discourage anyone who tried to board.

“Captain, I can vent some steam forward if you think it might help. Could blind them,” Gyrich suggested.

“Better still,” Rostov said, “it should play hob with their thermal imaging sights. Do it. It probably won’t keep them from hitting the train, but it might give some cover to Dyatlov and his men. I’m going outside.” He called back as he went through the door, “You have weapons in here. Don’t hesitate to use them on anybody you don’t recognize.”

Gyrich nodded and threw a lever. From outside came a dragon’s roar, and the tank on the tracks was engulfed in roiling white clouds of steam. He looked over to Pilkanis, who was picking up an assault rifle.

“Incendiary ready.”

Drachev was about to give the fire order when he saw a white cloud erupt over the low roofs of Suschenko. The roar of escaping steam reached him a moment later.

“Hold your fire. Grishin’s tanks must have pierced the boiler of the locomotive. Get him on the radio for confirmation, but start moving in for close assault, anyway. Nobody gets out of Suschenko; pass the word.”

Drachev’s driver opened the throttle to lead the other three tanks and their accompanying infantry forward.

It was Drachev’s only serious tactical error committed in battle in three years; a splendid record. Considering his unfamiliarity with locomotives, it was a perfectly understandable mistake, at that.

Sergeant Aliyev had thoroughly enjoyed his promotion. He hadn’t expected to have to use his rank so soon but, as Captain Wrenn had said, “Those were the breaks.” He wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sounded appropriate.

Aliyev took four men and advanced along a gully. When he saw movement on the other side, they froze, and a moment later one of the light tanks appeared. They were leaving their crossfire positions to move in on the train.

Aliyev signaled to Private Dolin, who tucked an RPG to his shoulder and fired in one smooth motion.

The rocket disappeared into the grass on the other side of the gully, just ahead of the advancing tank. An instant later the turret of the tank shot straight up into the air, followed by flames and a dark shape that might have been a body.

Small-arms fire erupted from the opposite side of the gully, but Aliyev and his men were already gone, falling back even as Dolin had fired.

One down, three to go, Aliyev thought. Much as he hated to do it, he had to ignore the enemy infantry for now. These tanks could destroy the train, and that made eliminating them the first priority. Once they were gone, the odds would be even.

On the opposite side of the tracks from Aliyev, Zorin watched the tanks heading for the train and blessed his luck. He swept his own force wide around and to the rear of the advancing armor, spotting several groups of support infantry without revealing his own unit’s presence. Zorin saw a tank brew up, heard answering fire, and knew Aliyev was on the job.

Zorin’s maneuvering was almost casual. The turret backs of the tanks were clearly visible, and he even caught glimpses of the backs of the KGB infantry in the tall grass. All were shooting as they advanced, pouring assault fire into the area from which Aliyev had attacked. Uselessly, Zorin knew, for he was sure Aliyev was long gone.

Zorin looked again at the backs of the advancing KGB troops before him. They should let their comrades on the other side of the tracks take care of themselves, he thought. These fellows were about to have troubles of their own.

He almost felt sorry for them as he raised his rifle.

When the cloud of steam poured out at them, Grishin had panicked. He had deliberately kept the nature of the bandits a secret from Drachev, so as not to try the man’s loyalty until battle was joined. But Grishin knew he was up against Combat Engineers, and he was positive the white clouds billowing toward him could be only one thing.

“Gas!” he shouted, fumbling to seal the air intakes on the turret. “Secure for gas!” At that, the tank crew panicked as well. They’d been hunting bandits for some time now, and they’d never run into any with chemical weapons. Out of practice, they fumbled about in the tiny vehicle for masks and the hatch seal switches, and the tank’s effectiveness was reduced to zero.

Blinded by the harmless steam, the tank that had been following up their advance crashed into them from behind and threw a thread.

Grishin felt the impact from behind and took it for an attack. “Turret about, AP, fire!” The confusion became absolute.

Rostov couldn’t be sure what was happening in the cloud of steam behind them. He saw Corporal Dyatlov and several men running alongside the engine, using the steam as cover to close with the tanks. Dyatlov stopped when he caught sight of Rostov.

“Captain Rostov!” Dyatlov fairly flew up a ladder to Rostov’s side. “Sir, you’ve been hit. Let me get you back to Comrade Surgeon Blaustein.”

Rostov was about to reply when one tank on the tracks fired point-blank at the tank behind it—and missed.

“I don’t know what’s going on out there, Dyatlov, but I think you’d better deal with them first. I’ll be all right.”

Dyatlov hesitated, then jumped back down to the railbed and disappeared into the dissipating cloud of steam.

Colonel Fedorin sat on a roof overlooking the tracks, looking much as he had when he first met Sergeant Zorin, in half-buttoned pants with suspenders and an undershirt. On the roof across from him were two more of his Rail Security staff. All were armed with two antitank rockets apiece.

It had been a long time since Fedorin had fired a weapon. Sometimes he told himself that the harsh realities of combat in his youth had become the romantic memories of a fat old pencil pusher. Still, he felt now as he remembered feeling then: alive, vital, proud of his past, unsure of his future, but certain of his present. He was in uniform, doing his duty for people who depended upon him.

Fedorin was a simple man, with limited visions of what was important in life. Mostly, he was practical. His bones told him a hard winter was coming, and the fuel which Rostov’s men had treated with Immunizer would be crucial to Suschenko if any of her people were to be alive in the spring. He did not expect much help to be forthcoming from the Party.

The building on which his men across the rails were positioned held most of that fuel, and all of them were determined to defend it. The townspeople had seen four tanks approaching this end of Suschenko; two had gone after the engine, one was bringing up the rear. Fedorin didn’t see the fourth, but he was sure it would be along any minute now. Still, he was getting a little bored.

He signaled his comrades on the other roof and picked up one of his RPGs. Taking careful aim, he fired at the forward glacis plate of the tank. The rocket went straight into the ground ahead of the tank and detonated, tearing up the side of the roadbed, doing little damage to the ties and rails but sending gravel flying everywhere.

Fedorin frowned. Potent little devil, he thought. He threw away the empty firing tube and picked up the second RPG. Below him the tank’s turret swiveled to point its gun at the building his comrades were sitting on, the building holding the rest of Suschenko’s fuel.

Fedorin pressed the firing button at the same time as his fellow reservists; three rockets lanced downward, just as the tank’s main gun fired.

The tank was killed three times over, but its own damage had been done. The building beneath Fedorin’s men erupted, rising dozens of feet into the air to disintegrate in a ball of orange fire. Debris showered down on him, and a monstrous column of black smoke and flame climbed skyward. Horrified, Fedorin tried to convince himself his men never knew what hit them.

Christus, Rostov breathed. What in the name of God was that? He had just seen a small building take off like a rocket. What are these tanks carrying for ammunition?

Two more explosions, closer but less severe, followed in quick succession. Rostov’s radio signal chimed again, and he held it tight against his ear, shouting in response.

“Rostov here, come in.”

“Dyatlov, Captain. Two tanks closest to train knocked out. Rail Security on the roofs just took out a third with RPGs.” Dyatlov couldn’t keep the admiration from his voice.

“Continue sweep. See if those reservists got a count of enemy vehicles at that end of town.”

“Already done, sir. Reservists reported four vehicles sighted that end, leaving one unaccounted for.”

“Find that tank, Dyatlov. Sweep to the left of the train.” Rostov’s voice was grim. “And find out what the hell that explosion was a minute ago. It sounded like somebody hit an ammo dump.”

“Yes, sir. Dyatlov out.”

Rostov saw movement between two buildings. The train was picking up speed, and the engine itself had only a few more buildings to pass before exiting the town. Rostov watched, waiting for another gap between buildings, then saw it. The fourth tank was pacing the locomotive, its turret trained toward where the engine must soon appear, waiting only for a clear shot.

It was to the right side of them, and he’d just sent Dyatlov and his men to the left.

Without another thought, Rostov jumped down to the loading platform, his momentum carrying him through the alley.

He keyed the handset microphone as he ran, signaling Zorin or Dyatlov. There was no reply; the buildings or the train might be blocking the signal, and in any case they probably had their hands full already.

Rostov saw the tank swing wide to avoid a well-housing, then turn in toward the buildings again. The maneuver allowed him to gain a few yards on it, and by the time the tank had reached the buildings again, he was alongside.

Rostov ducked into a shadow as the tank approached, then jumped onto the back plates over the engine. He recalled that the top surfaces of the light tanks were composed almost entirely of fiberglass. With no enemy airpower to concern them, the designers had been able to make certain reasonable sacrifices. But the metal exhaust grates were still hot enough to fry eggs on, and Rostov remembered that these tanks were powered by alcohol-fired steam engines with a lot of venting requirements.

Apparently the crew inside had not heard him as he scrambled for a grip on the smooth surface. He looked out over the turret, and could see two more tanks burning in the fields outside of town. Those were Zorin’s concern, however. Right now he had problems of his own.

Rostov got to one knee and pulled himself halfway up onto the turret top. The vision cupola around the hatch showed blurry movement within; he found himself staring at the back of someone’s head.

The next moment the tank lurched to a halt, sending Rostov sliding away from the cupola, grasping frantically at the access rungs bolted to the turret’s rear. He saw the bulk of the locomotive clear the buildings, exposed, unmissable.

I have lost the race after all, he thought. Then the tank’s main gun went off.

Drachev’s rage at the supposed bandits had disappeared, replaced by a cold fury at that bastard, Grishin; and Revenant, and Major-Bloody-Steinmann, and PRG One and all of Novaya Moskva as well. There were too many Army uniforms for them all to have been stolen. He and his men were fighting—killing and being killed by—soldiers of the Red Army. Countrymen! He might almost have surrendered, but he was in a killing mood.

Grishin had apparently managed to get his entire force wiped out. Drachev himself had only his own and one other tank left, and his support infantry were being chewed up by enemies in the grasses around them.

To hell with this, he thought grimly. He had had quite enough. He began firing smoke rounds from the point defense mortars on the outside of the turret to cover the infantry’s retreat. Once regrouped with the BMPs, he could get them all out of here.

As to what the penalty for his failure might be, Drachev did not even need to guess. At least his own life might purchase survival for the rest of the men in his command.

“What’s in the breech?” he asked his gunner.

“Incendiary.” The man was squinting into the sights of the coaxial machine gun, firing controlled five-round bursts meant to keep the unseen attackers’ heads down. He couldn’t know it, but it was working very well, indeed.

“Get rid of it. Put it into those first boxcars; that will slow the bastards down. They won’t fight us if they have to save their transport.” I hope, he added silently.

The gunner took ten seconds to adjust the light tank’s gun, then fired. The shell arched out over the grasses, hitting the first boxcar dead center.

“Christus!” Drachev grunted, watching the shot through the turret periscope. “Hell of a hip shot, Gunner.”

“Spaceeba, Captain Drachev.”

“Reload with high explosive. Depress the gun and get an angle on the railbed; I want to tear up these tracks. Driver, get us out of here.” Drachev switched channels and issued the fallback order, scanning with the turret periscope as he did so, searching the tall grass in vain for the enemy. An enemy who wore a uniform almost identical to his own.

“Sir,” the driver asked, “we’re breaking off the attack?” He was very young, Drachev remembered, and had spent a great deal of time around Grishin in the last week. Too much time, evidently. The Captain responded almost kindly.

“No, lad. We’re running away. Now move, quickly. Skorei!” The driver engaged the clutch, and the tank began to pick up speed.

Zorin and his men heard the tank’s machine gun fall silent. If it’s a feint, we’re dead, he thought. But seconds later, the main gun fired, and immediately the tank began backing up, the turret shifting position once more, the main gun lowering. Zorin seized the chance. “Close assault, move!”

The tank was beginning to outrun them when suddenly it fired on the move; Zorin’s men instinctively dropped to the ground. Gouts of rich, black Russian soil flew into the air, pelting Zorin and his men with clods of the dark chernozam, and smoke from the explosion obscuring the tank.

A bar of black metal fifteen centimeters long plopped into the dirt directly in front of him, and Zorin reached out through the smoke to pick it up. He brought it close to his eyes and cursed when he found himself looking at a railroad spike.

“Get that tank, knock it out, now.” Zorin scrambled to his feet and led the assault.

The first of the Combat Engineers with Zorin reached the tank as the main gun fired again. The shock wave rattled the man’s teeth, but he dropped into a kneeling position and fired the RPG even as the tank began to move again. The tall grasses were rising to obscure the tank as it moved away from him, and the rocket motor of the antitank round burned a smoking trail through the brown sheaves.

The rocket hit the right front quarter and detonated, blowing the track off the drive wheel, opening the engine compartment, and igniting the interior. The tank made a half-turn on the momentum of its remaining track and stopped, hissing and shrieking like a dying horse.

Zorin closed with the tank, leaping over a section of track it had destroyed with its two point-blank shots of high explosive. The railbed was demolished for ten meters. Cursing, he reached the burning AFV in time to see both the turret hatch and a front escape hatch open simultaneously. He was ready to shoot the man exiting the turret, but the one from the hull got out first.

The man’s clothes burned fiercely, engulfing him, and trailing flames as he leapt from the tank to run aimlessly through grass that ignited with his passing. He stopped moving for a moment, trying perhaps to get his bearings, although he didn’t stop screaming. Zorin took careful aim and shot him through the head. That ended the screams, but wouldn’t put out the fire, and he sent two men to beat it out with their coats.

By then the commander was out of the turret hatch, trying to pull a third crewman after him.

The man straddling the turret hatch was dark and strong-looking, his bearded face and tattered uniform covered with blood. He was shouting encouragement to the man beneath him as he tried to pull him out. Zorin, like his men, stood aiming at the tanker, but none of them could bring himself to fire.

Finally, with a tremendous effort, the tanker heaved his gunner’s body out of the hatch. There was nothing left of the man below the hips, and he was obviously quite dead. The tank commander felt over backward onto the front of his vehicle, and Zorin walked around the side to finish him.

Captain Drachev saw the big man in the Army greatcoat standing a few feet away, aiming a rifle at him. Drachev pushed himself up to one knee, feeling for his sidearm. He had blood in his eyes, and had to paw the holster flap several times before he got it open. The big man watched him over his rifle’s sights.

Drachev got the pistol out of the holster and pulled the slide back with blood-slick fingers. Before he could raise it to fire, he fell off the tank into the tall grass.

Zorin kicked the pistol away and turned the man over with his boot. The trooper who’d killed the tank approached him, still holding the empty rocket tube.

“Sergeant—I mean Lieutenant, there is still one more tank, and all those infantry are still about.”

“Throw that thing away”—Zorin pointed to the rocket launcher in the soldier’s hand—“and help me move him away from the tank so his men can find him.”

“I thought he was dead.”

Zorin looked down at the soldier; likely it was a very good man lying at his feet. He was glad he didn’t have to shoot him.

“No. Not yet. That will come after he reports what happened here today. Come on, grab his feet, that tank’s ammo might cook off any second.” He looked back toward the town to see what damage the train had suffered.

“Christus.” The train was on fire.

Rostov’s wound was bleeding merrily, but he held his grip. He saw a puff of smoke on the fields, then a boxcar was engulfed in flames. A moment later there was an explosion in the field as a third tank was killed, and Rostov saw another beating a hasty retreat from the tracks.

That’s the fourth tank out there; this is the last one! He would be a lot happier once he thought of something to do with that knowledge. The shot just fired by this tank seemed to have had no effect. He could hear the commander inside shouting orders to his crew, preparing to fire again. Pulling himself back up to the turret, Rostov knelt on the exhaust grating, the threadbare knees of his trousers offering little protection from the heat. He freed the sidearm and one grenade from his weapons belt, and seeing the gun begin to shift, he summoned his remaining strength and pushed himself up to the vision cupola.

Rostov put his face up to the ten-centimeter-square viewplate and found himself looking at the commander’s profile. The glass was meant to be too small a target to hit, or at best serve as some protection against shrapnel. He didn’t think it was bulletproof; he put the barrel of his own Makarov against it and fired.

He was right. The 9mm round pierced the glass and continued through the commander’s cheeks, taking most of his back teeth with it and shattering his jaw.

The wound alone wasn’t fatal, but the commander’s next action was. The man popped the hatch and stood up, waving his own sidearm and roaring in pain. Rostov shot him in the chest, the impact of the heavy slug carrying the tanker out of the turret and over the side. Within the tank, the gunner and the driver scrambled respectively for a weapon and an escape hatch. Ignoring the grenade he still held, Rostov aimed and fired twice at each man, feeling uneasily as if he were shooting at fish in a barrel.

A few more shots were heard from the plain, but except for the crackling of the burning boxcar, it had suddenly become very quiet. Then Rostov heard the cheering.

He looked up to see Dyatlov and his squad, most grinning incredulously, stabbing their rifles into the air. One man cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled: “Ourrah! Ourrah pobieda! Ourrah, llya Muromets!”

At the name of the dragon-slaying folk hero, Rostov felt ridiculous. It was just a tank, he thought stupidly. Then he grinned and waved a bloody arm.

“We’ve a fire on our hands, Dyatlov. There’s a boxcar that needs dousing, let’s get to it.”

Dyatlov stepped up to the tank to help him down. Rostov passed out before his feet hit the ground.

Rostov opened his eyes to see Blaustein and Wrenn standing over him. He realized he was pinned to the desk in the command car while the surgeon inspected the wound in his arm.

Blaustein was speaking to Wrenn about his handiwork. “Clean wound. Moderate-sized round, jacketed; passed through the meaty part of the triceps—here, see?” He tapped the skin around the bullet hole, ignoring Rostov’s undiluted howl. “Good thing it wasn’t a lead slug. Those are messy. Likely would have taken the arm right off.”

Rostov caught his breath and began roundly cursing Blaustein, who ignored him as he finished dressing the wound with a fresh bandage. When he was done, he helped Rostov to sit up.

“Get up, Captain. I’m not an osteopath, and I don’t want you sleeping on this desk. Bullet holes, I can fix, but bad backs, you are on your own. And now I have to see to some other patients.” The surgeon gathered up the sheet he’d thrown over Rostov’s desk and left the command car.

“What’s going on? How long have I been asleep?”

“You weren’t asleep, you were unconscious,” Wrenn told him. “About four hours. The fires are out, and it looks like the bad guys are gone for now. Zorin has scouts trailing them; they’ve got a dozen or so APCs and one tank left. They’re heading northeast and they aren’t slowing down.”

Rostov nodded, fumbling with his canteen. “I should be out there…”

Wrenn helped him with the canteen, holding it to Rostov’s lips for three all too brief swallows. “Yes, well, you were doing such a good job of bleeding to death that we didn’t see any point in interrupting you.”

“How badly were we hit?”

Wrenn capped the canteen. “Nine men wounded, two more blinded from being too close to a spotter round when it went off; Blaustein isn’t sure if it’s permanent or not. And two dead, including Corporal Ulyarin. About a dozen of the townspeople killed and twice that many wounded when a fléchette round hit the platform–” He caught the look in Rostov’s eyes and quickly added: “Not your babushka, nor her granddaughter, either.”

Rostov wanted to laugh and weep at the same time, and he was afraid he was far too tired to control his emotions for much longer. He changed the subject. “All right. It could have been much worse. Materials?”

“We lost a boxcar full of lumber to fire. Gyrich says with a little work, we’ll have a new flatcar. Then there’s the track. Zorin says the last tank out in the fields tore up a lot of it with a couple of high-explosive rounds. We won’t be going out of Suschenko the way we came in.”

Rostov could accept that; the KGB was probably swarming up that line by now, anyway.

Wrenn paused a moment before going on. “But the real problem isn’t anything that’s happened to us.”

“How is that again?”

Wrenn took a deep breath before answering. “You’d better see this for yourself.’’

Colonel Fedorin sat at the edge of the platform, his hands draped over his knees, staring at the smoldering remains of a building. He looked up as Rostov and Zorin approached him; Wrenn had begged off meeting the Rail Security Colonel, claiming Blaustein needed him to help with first aid.

“Ah. Hello, Captain Rostov.”

“Colonel Fedorin. I don’t know what to say; we had no wish to bring our misfortune down on you and your people.”

Fedorin shrugged. “Every stick has two ends. You needed help; you gave it in return. Before you came, we had not counted on being able to use the fuel, anyway.” His voice trailed off.

Rostov looked around at the town of Suschenko, until this morning relatively unscathed by the war. Even now, only one building had been lost. But it was the one building the people had needed most. Except perhaps for the church, he thought.

“Lieutenant Zorin. Fetch Aliyev and Dyatlov. Have them get their men to work unloading the fuel we took on board.”

Zorin only raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “At once, sir.”

Fedorin stared up at him, shaking his head. “You can’t, Captain. Those were KGB tanks; it’s obvious that you are running from them for some reason. They will stop at nothing to capture you, and you have lost a great deal of time already.” The old reservist got to his feet.

“We can use old petrol,” Fedorin insisted. “Even contaminated, it will burn after a fashion. Not to run engines, but we can make cooking fires, boil water. Please, Captain, keep the fuel. Without it they will catch you and kill you, all of you.”

Rostov shook his head. “And so we take it, and by spring the people of this village are cooking food over fire pits, reduced to living like savages. And perhaps we escape, and perhaps the KGB catches us, anyway, and then they have the fuel. No, Comrade Colonel. We strip Suschenko of its means of survival only at the cost of our souls. But on behalf of my men, I thank you.”

Rostov saluted and returned to the command car.

The men who had become Rostov’s de facto staff had reassembled in the command car. The room had been designed for holding audiences, not meetings, and the desk had to be pulled to the center to make room for extra chairs around it. Gyrich and Pilkanis sat together, as did Wrenn and Blaustein. Zorin was off to one side, and Rostov stood by the plywood paneling that still covered the broken window.

Right back where we started, Rostov thought.

No one had commented on his decision to return the fuel. No one had to, nor would it have made any difference. He stared at the pile of railroad maps as he spoke.

“Comrade Gyrich, how far can we go on the fuel we have remaining?”

Gyrich rubbed his chin. “Perhaps another three hundred kilometers. No more.”

“But three hundred kilometers to where?” Pilkanis asked quietly. “The track behind us has been destroyed. By the time we can even find another route west, the last of our fuel will be used up.”

Rostov took a deep breath and folded his arms. Damn the KGB light tanks; how the Regular Army had laughed at the ridiculous little steam-powered vehicles when they’d first seen them. Nobody would laugh at them again. Rostov leaned back against the plywood, rubbing his forehead. KGB tanks and fuel.

He turned and looked at the wood. “Sergeant Zorin, the fire destroyed a boxcar of lumber, yes? How much is still left?”

“Eh?” Zorin was surprised by this new tack. “I’m not sure, Aleksei; a couple more cars full, at least.”

Rostov pulled the chair out and sat at the desk, gathered up paper and pencil, and began making calculations as he spoke.

“How hot does your boiler have to be, Comrade Gyrich?”

Gyrich and Pilkanis shared puzzled looks; the younger man turned back to Rostov. “Well. As Comrade Gyrich said, it’s more a question of pressure, Lieutenant. As long as we don’t need any spectacular bursts of speed or power, these P-38s can do fine on their operating standard of two hundred thirteen psi—that’s pounds per—

Rostov cut him off with a grin. “Yes. I know.”

Rostov worked in silence for a few minutes, revising and correcting equations frequently. When he was finally satisfied, he looked up from his calculations. “Sergeant Zorin, have the men draw off all the fresh water into canteens and drums. Then have the water purifier converted to simple distillation; the way we had it for that batch of vodka Colonel Podgorny commissioned last Easter.”

Zorin nodded, hiding his puzzlement. Part of his value as an NCO rested with rarely being surprised at anything an officer did. But he had to admit, if only to himself, that this time Rostov had lost him.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant.” It was Pilkanis again, and he didn’t bother to hide the contempt in his tone. “But are you suggesting we drown our grief in revelry? We need fuel… we can’t run a locomotive on vodka–” No sooner had the words passed his lips than it dawned on him.

Rostov nodded. “But we can, Trainman Pilkanis. Or not vodka, exactly. Methanol.”

Gyrich frowned. “Perhaps. I remember much research when I was young, into alternate fuels. Alcohol mixtures showed great promise, but weren’t pursued.” The old man shrugged. “There was always oil.”

“How will we alter the fuel feed systems of the engine itself?” Pilkanis asked. “They are designed for diesel.”

“Indeed they are,” Rostov said. “And while I’m no expert on locomotives, I do know something about tanks. Those KGB light tanks are steam-powered, with alcohol-fired boilers. If the designers followed the pattern set by the State War Production Committee, they will be of standardized, modular construction.”

Pilkanis’ eyes widened, first in surprise, then in pleasure. “And we can cannibalize their fuel feed systems to replace the diesel ones in the locomotive.”

Rostov smiled. “From what I have seen in the last few days, Comrade Pilkanis, if anyone can, it is you and Comrade Gyrich and your crew of trainmen.”

Gyrich nodded thoughtfully, his mind already grappling with the problems. He looked up at Rostov. “I think it can be done, Captain Rostov. I won’t know for sure until I’ve seen the assemblies from those tanks, but even so… yes, it’s possible.”

“Alcohol will burn cooler than diesel,” Rostov added. “Will that be a problem?”

“I don’t know. Still, you must have at least one decent chemist in your unit who can help with any difficulties we encounter with the new fuel.”

Rostov admitted that was true. The unit was comprised of survivors from every branch of combat engineering—demolition, construction, chemical—and a good many other fields as well. The odds were good that the necessary skills were available.

“Then let’s get to work.”

It took Gyrich and Pilkanis twenty minutes to decide how to use the parts taken from the KGB light tanks. Of the seven vehicles destroyed or disabled, five had usable fuel assemblies.

“Aren’t they a little small for our purposes?” Wrenn asked when he saw them.

Pilkanis shook his head. “There are ways around that, Comrade Captain. We only need four; the fifth I can use as a model in the town machine shop for altering the locomotive’s original assemblies; or even making new ones.” The young trainman’s mind was already racing over alternatives; he was in his element, and it showed.

“The damaged stretch of line is a different matter,” Gyrich told Rostov. “The rail and ties we could replace, but the railbed is completely undermined. It would take a week to repack it and lay in new gravel, ties, and track.”

Through it all, Wrenn kept his eye on Rostov. The young Russian’s reserves of energy seemed boundless, but Wrenn knew that was an illusion.

Hang in there, my young Russian friend, Wrenn thought. Because this is it. Your first real taste of command. When you have reached the limit of your endurance and abilities. When you’re out of time, out of ideas, and out of luck, and still everyone’s life depends on you. It’s not how you got here that matters; it’s what you do now that you’ve arrived.

“We’ll have to switch back again,” Rostov said quietly, staring once again at the maps on the desk before him. With all his heart he wanted only to put his head on that desk and close his eyes. But he had been trained too well for that.

“All right, then,” Rostov said. “We switch back. It might even help us avoid the KGB for a while, if they think we’ve headed directly west.”

“What about the Islamic Nationalists to the south?” Wrenn asked. “Or the Turks?”

Rostov shook his head. “One problem at a time, I think, Captain, yes? We are going to have to find more stocks of uncontaminated fuel, to guard against any serious problems with the alcohol mixture. It may not be more than a temporary solution to our difficulties.’’ He looked up at the American. “I’m afraid that you, like Comrades Gyrich and Pilkanis and their staff, are going to be with us for a little while longer.’’

Wrenn smiled, holding up his bandaged hand. “I don’t know how much more fun I can stand, Captain Rostov.”

By that afternoon, they had returned all the drums of immunized diesel to the people of Suschenko. Major Fedorin watched the process with tear-filled eyes.

“It is not fair,” he said. “You have already done so much for us. You need it more than we do.”

Rostov shook his head. “Perhaps we will find more along the way, Colonel. We will manage.”

Fedorin was still bewildered by the whole disaster. “But Captain Rostov, what are we to do? Should we wait here, for someone from…” His voice trailed off.

Rostov looked at him for a long time before he spoke. Every Russian’s deepest fear was of anarchy; most had suffered from it at one time or another. It was a national phobia so great that in order to avoid it, her people had been willing to suffer even a government like the one the Alliance had sworn to destroy.

“There won’t be anybody else, Colonel. A few KGB perhaps. Those PRGs you told me about, be careful of them. Bandits almost certainly. But you have weapons now. And Suschenko still has a few young men. They will get older. Take care of what material you have and make what you don’t have.” Rostov smiled briefly. “They told us in training that the Afghanishti did something like that; gave the Army fits.”

“But it’s been over a year now since we had any contact from Moscow; who will be taking care of us?’’

Rostov looked around them. “This is a good place. You’ve taken care of it, and each other—and it’s taken care of you—for some time now, when you think about it. I don’t see any reason why that should not continue.”

Fedorin nodded, considering. “I suppose,” he said, finally facing the truth of their isolation. He looked up at Rostov. “We really don’t need anything that we can’t make or grow right here. And if I take your meaning correctly, such things are all we will have for some time to come.”

Rostov held Fedorin’s gaze for some time before he answered. “I am glad, Colonel, that you take my meaning correctly. You and your reservists have kept Suschenko safe and running well.” He grinned. “You’ve even kept the clock tower on time. Keep things that way, and I don’t think you should have any problems.”

Rostov came to attention and snapped off a crisp salute to the old reservist.

“Captain Rostov, Fifth Guards Armored Engineers, requesting permission to decamp, sir!”

Fedorin drew himself to attention and returned the salute. “Permission granted, Captain. Good wishes, and God’s speed to you and your men.”

They shook hands and parted, Rostov to his final preparations for departure, Fedorin to the victory celebration and mourning for the people of Suschenko killed in the fighting. His neighbors, and his friends.

And tomorrow, Fedorin thought, tomorrow we will go to work repairing that section of westbound railbed. It would give them all something to do. And it seemed just possible to Fedorin that he had not seen the last of Rostov and his men, or their train.

Rostov was in the engineer’s compartment, steeling himself to climb the ladder to the roof hatch with his wounded arm, when Wrenn came up from the platform, wearing his Russian-overcoat disguise.

“Captain Rostov, there is someone outside who would like to speak with you.”

Rostov joined the American at the door and looked down onto the platform. At the foot of the stepladder, Zorin stood chatting with the old woman Rostov had befriended on their arrival. And, sure enough, the child was there, pressing tight against her babushka’s skirts. The little one was staring up at Zorin with undisguised awe as the big man spoke earnestly with her grandmother, occasionally patting the woman’s arm in a gesture of assurance.

Zorin turned and looked up at him. “Captain Rostov, could you spare a moment for this grandmother, sir?”

Rostov’s tired face split in a wide smile as he made his way down to the platform.

“Hello, Grandmother; good to see you again.” Rostov gave her the warm embrace every Russian always kept ready for the aged. When they parted, the woman began chattering in her thick Ukrainian accent; she pulled her granddaughter forward and showed them the child’s freshly bandaged arm. She finished by repeating “Spaceeba” over and over again.

Rostov looked to Zorin. “Did you catch what she’s saying?”

“Something about the child being hurt when those ‘hooligans’ attacked us, and Surgeon Blaustein’s treatment saving her life,” Zorin answered, then shrugged. “Probably not all that serious, but you know how grandparents are.”

“You are welcome, Grandmother, most welcome.” Wrenn had joined them, and Rostov shrugged and smiled. “That Ukrainian accent loses me; but she is a dear. And that child…”

“She also says,” Zorin went on, “that her granddaughter is all she has left, and feeding the child has been difficult for an old woman. She thanks us for coming here and saving her little girl from the hooligans, and hunger, and the winter.”

Rostov laughed good-naturedly. “Enough, enough! She makes us sound like the Messiah!”

The old woman had been happily chattering in counterpoint to Zorin’s translation. Now she reached up and touched Rostov’s cheek, then turned and laid a small, wrinkled hand on the massive drive cam of the locomotive.

“Angeli.” The words were almost a sob. “Zhelizniy Angel.”

Wrenn, Zorin, and Rostov looked at one another. No one had missed the old woman’s meaning that time.

“Angels,” she repeated, placing both hands on the engine like a benediction. “An Iron Angel. God sent you to deliver us.”

Rostov stood for a moment in thought. “Lieutenant Zorin, get some men and some paint, and form a detail once we’re under way. Iron Angel. I want that written on the sides of the locomotive.”

Zorin was at first unsure whether or not Rostov was serious.

“At once, Captain,” he finally said.

“And Mikhail,” Rostov stopped him.

“Yes, Aleksei?”

“Put the names of our dead somewhere near it. Not too large. Nobody has to be able to see those but us. Colonel Podgorny’s name first.”

Zorin saluted and left. Rostov turned to the old woman and her grandchild.

“Hey, little one.” She watched him like a hawk watches a mouse. Rostov took a long, last look at the child’s huge brown eyes, long black hair. The resemblance to his wife was, he decided, not uncanny after all; only uncomfortable. He remembered the photograph Wrenn had shown him; the American with his wife and son. He wondered again whether Lilia might not have given him a daughter like her.

The child was looking at his cap again, and on impulse, Rostov removed it and put it on her head. Her face almost disappeared beneath it, her eyes shining from within its shadow.

“You keep this for me, child, da?”

The girl flashed him one more heartbreaking smile before turning to clutch her grandmother’s skirts once more.

Rostov stood and hugged the old woman a last time, then turned to Wrenn.

“Let’s be off.” He climbed up into the cabin, and not trusting his emotions, continued directly up the ladder into the roof hatch. Once there, he called down to Gyrich, and told him to take them out whenever he was ready.

The members of the review board were silent for a long time before commenting on the report of Captain Drachev’s radioman, Piotr. The tank commander himself was still in PRG One’s field dispensary, having his wounds treated. He had not yet regained consciousness.

“There seems little doubt that this Drachev did his best, under the circumstances,” Captain Adzhubei said quietly.

Steinmann dismissed the radioman.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all. You may return to your unit.” When the young man had left, Steinmann turned to Grishin’s seat on the council. “You were right,” he said.

“Hm?” said Colonel Serafimov. “Oh, yes. Small consolation, though; they still escaped.”

“Not escaped, surely. The Lieutenant says the tracks were demolished; they could not head west, not from Suschenko, at any rate. They can only turn farther back into Soviet-controlled territory, unless they want to tangle with the Islamics, and I doubt that. Now we have gained some time in which to look for them, and in our own territory as well.’’ Steinmann was waiting for Serafimov to share whatever was troubling him, but the Colonel seemed particularly reserved today.

“Perhaps that is not so much of an advantage as it seems,” Serafimov said almost to himself.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Colonel,” Steinmann said. “I thought your whole point was that these traitors should, at all costs, be kept in Russia?”

Serafimov raised an eyebrow, smiled, and shrugged.

I wonder, he thought. I wonder if that is such a very good idea, after all…

Suschenko was an hour behind them when Rostov pulled the photo from the inside pocket of his tunic once more. He looked again at the picture of his wife. Leytenant Lilia Rostova, Presumed Traitor to the State; also presumed lost with her artillery unit in the KGB’s punitive bombing of Kiev.

Rostov thought again of how very much he missed her.

The same thoughts, the same feelings, the same pain as always. Sometimes he felt as if he would spend the rest of his life going through the motions of existence, as changeless as the land around him.

But, he decided, there was one change he might make.

He pulled out a pocket knife and began digging and chipping at every badge and button on his tunic. Working methodically, in a while he had a pile of enamel chips and bent metal insignia before him.

Rostov scooped up the miniature junk heap, and tossed it casually off to the side of the roof hatch. A dozen tiny hammers and sickles of gold and red metal bounced along across the locomotive’s roof, and tumbled off over the side.

He looked at the photo again. For a moment, as always, he was tempted to tear it to shreds and cast the pieces away. In the end, as always, he returned it to his pocket.

Two hours later, Rostov went down to the command car that had become his quarters. And although he wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, nor even tired any longer, Captain Aleksei Aleksandrovitch Rostov ate some bread, drank a little tea, and finally went to sleep.

Nuclear Autumn, by Ben Bova

Editor’s Introduction

The apocalyptic vision of Nuclear Winter began in a Parade magazine article by Astronomer Carl Sagan on October 30, 1983. Shortly thereafter followed the well-known paper in Science, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Explosions,” which is most often referred to as TTAPS from the initials of the four major contributors.

The paper raised storms that have not subsided yet. The real controversy isn’t over the accuracy of the TTAPS predictions. It’s almost universally conceded that things won’t be that way. There was a major flaw—unreported at the time—in the TTAPS report; the calculations were tied to a one-dimensional simulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. This is about on the level of running a computer game simulation of World War I on an IBM PC; it’s fun but the results are not going to be particularly representative of the war itself.

What TTAPS did was raise real questions of science policy. How political may scientists be, and how far may they compromise their results in cases where they feel very strongly? After all, the question is a serious one: If even a small nuclear war can exterminate all life on Earth, the people who control nuclear weapons ought to know that. On the other hand, when scientists start presenting opinion as fact, especially when these “facts” fall very much in line with the policies these scientists have previously recommended, have they not ceased to be scientists at all?

According to the TTAPS report even a 100-megaton exchange—a so-called limited nuclear war—could trigger the same effects, i.e. nuclear winter, as a 5,000-megaton exchange. The Soviets quickly followed up Sagan’s report with their own verification with Soviet models in the book The Cold and the Dark. Tony Rothman states in “A Memoir of Nuclear Winter”: “After my year in Russia I was also interested to see that not only was the Soviet model based on a 1971 American computer code, but that every reference in the paper, with the exception of one to their own work, was to an American source.”

This is not to deny that even a small nuclear war would have disastrous effects upon climate and agriculture; the volcanic eruption of Tambura in 1815 dropped the average world temperature less than one degree; yet 1816 is remembered as “The Year Without a Summer,” and its gloom was the inspiration of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein.

On the other hand, the weather was naturally much colder in those times; during the American Revolution, Colonel Alexander Hamilton brought cannon from Ticonderoga to General Washington in Manhattan by hauling the guns across the frozen Hudson river. Today the Hudson doesn’t freeze solid enough to support skaters. (Incidentally, neither do the canals of Holland, although they did in the days when “Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates” was written.)

Science is an important source of information; but it can be that only when scientists obey the rules.

Nuclear Autumn

Ben Bova

“They’re bluffing,” said the President of the United States.

“Of course they’re bluffing,” agreed her science advisor. “They have to be.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a grizzled old infantry general, looked grimly skeptical.

For a long, silent moment they faced each other in the cool, quiet confines of the Oval Office. The science advisor looked young and handsome enough to be a television personality, and indeed had been one for a while before he allied himself with the politician who sat behind the desk. The President looked younger than she actually was, thanks to modern cosmetics and a ruthless self discipline. Only the general seemed to be old, a man of an earlier generation, gray-haired and wrinkled, with light brown eyes that seemed sad and weary.

“I don’t believe they’re bluffing,” he said. “I think they mean exactly what they say—either we cave in to them or they launch their missiles.”

The science advisor gave him his most patronizing smile. “General, they have to be bluffing. The numbers prove it.”

“The only numbers that count,” said the general, “are that we have cut our strategic ballistic missile force by half since this Administration came into office.”

“And made the world that much safer,” said the President. Her voice was firm, with a sharp edge to it.

The general shook his head. “Ma’am, the only reason I have not tendered my resignation is that I know full well the nincompoop you intend to appoint in my place.”

The science advisor laughed. Even the President smiled at the old man.

“The Soviets are not bluffing,” the general repeated. “They mean exactly what they say.”

With a patient sigh, the science advisor explained, “General, they cannot—repeat, can not—launch a nuclear strike at us or anyone else. They know the numbers as well as we do. A large nuclear strike, in the 3000-megaton range, will so damage the environment that the world will be plunged into a Nuclear Winter. Crops and animal life will be wiped out by months of subfreezing temperatures. The sky will be dark with soot and grains of pulverized soil. The sun will be blotted out. All life on Earth will die.”

The general waved an impatient hand. “I know your story. I’ve seen your presentations.”

“Then how can the Russians attack us, when they know they’ll be killing themselves even if we don’t retaliate?”

“Maybe they haven’t seen your television specials. Maybe they don’t believe in Nuclear Winter.”

“But they have to!” said the science advisor. “The numbers are the same for them as they are for us.”

“Numbers,” grumbled the general.

“Those numbers describe reality,” the science advisor insisted. “And the men in the Kremlin are realists. They understand what Nuclear Winter means. Their own scientists have told them exactly what I’ve told you.”

“Then why did they insist on this Hot Line call?”

Spreading his hands in the gesture millions had come to know from his television series, the science advisor replied, “They’re reasonable men. Now that they know nuclear weapons are unusable, they are undoubtedly trying to begin negotiations to resolve our differences without threatening nuclear war.”

“You think so?” muttered the general.

The President leaned back in her swivel chair. “We’ll find out what they want soon enough,” she said. “Kolgoroff will be on the Hot Line in another minute or so.”

The science advisor smiled at her. “I imagine he’ll suggest a summit meeting to negotiate a new disarmament treaty.”

The general said nothing.

The President touched a green square on the keypad built into the desk’s surface. A door opened and three more people—a man and two women—entered the Oval Office: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor.

Exactly when the digital clock on the President’s desk read 12:00:00, the large display screen that took up much of the wall opposite her desk lit up to reveal the face of Yuri Kolgoroff, General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the Soviet Union. He was much younger than his predecessors had been, barely in his mid-fifties, and rather handsome in a Slavic way. If his hair had been a few shades darker and his chin just a little rounder he would have looked strikingly like the President’s science advisor.

“Madam President,” said Kolgoroff, in flawless American-accented English, “it is good of you to accept my invitation to discuss the differences between our two nations.”

“I am always eager to resolve differences,” said the President.

“I believe we can accomplish much.” Kolgoroff smiled, revealing large white teeth.

“I have before me,” said the President, glancing at the computer screen on her desk, “the agenda that our ministers worked out…”

“There is no need for that,” said the Soviet leader. “Why encumber ourselves with such formalities?”

The President smiled. “Very well. What do you have in mind?”

“It is very simple. We want the United States to withdraw all its troops from Europe and to dismantle NATO. Also, your military and naval bases in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines must be disbanded. Finally, your injunctions against the Soviet Union concerning trade in high-technology items must be ended.”

The President’s face went white. It took her a moment to gather the wits to say, “And what do you propose to offer in exchange for these… concessions?”

“In exchange?” Kolgoroff laughed. “Why, we will allow you to live. We will refrain from bombing your cities.”

“You’re insane!” snapped the President.

Still grinning, Kolgoroff replied, “We will see who is sane and who is mad. One minute before this conversation began, I ordered a limited nuclear attack against every NATO base in Europe, and a counterforce attack against the ballistic missiles still remaining in your silos in the American midwest.”

The red panic light on the President’s communications console began flashing frantically.

“But that’s impossible!” burst the science advisor. He leaped from his chair and pointed at Kolgoroff’s image in the big display screen. “An attack of that size will bring on Nuclear Winter! You’ll be killing yourselves as well as us!”

Kolgoroff smiled pityingly at the scientist. “We have computers also, professor. We know how to count. The attack we have launched is just below the threshold for Nuclear Winter. It will not blot out the sun everywhere on Earth. Believe me, we are not such fools as you think.”

“But…”

“But,” the Soviet leader went on, smile vanished and voice iron hard, “should you be foolish enough to launch a counterstrike with your remaining missiles or bombers, that will break the camel’s back, so to speak. The additional explosions of your counterstrike will bring on Nuclear Winter.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I am deadly serious,” Kolgoroff replied. Then a faint hint of his smile returned. “But do not be afraid. We have not targeted Washington. Or any of your cities, for that matter. You will live—under Soviet governance.”

The President turned to the science advisor. “What should I do?”

The science advisor shook his head.

“What should I do?” she asked the others seated around her.

They said nothing. Not a word.

She turned to the general. “What should I do?”

He got to his feet and headed for the door. Over his shoulder he answered, “Learn Russian.”

As It Was in the Beginning, by Edward P. Hughes

Editor’s Introduction

Over the course of this series we have published a number of stories about the Irish village of Barley Cross and its hardy inhabitants. The end of the world need not come with a big bang. The light of civilization may yet flicker out as we unwittingly tamper with our own genetic heritage in an effort to design new and more deadly bio-weapons.

In the world of Barley Cross babies are no longer born. No one knows if this was brought about by the hand of man or some terrible natural catastrophe; only that the age of man is coming to an end. In this story, Edward Hughes takes us back to the earliest days of the O’Meara’s reign over Barley Cross, back to before there was a Master of the Fist.

As It Was in the Beginning

Edward P. Hughes

The last of the Barley Cross giants was toppling. Celia Larkin lay in her cot in the Denny Mallon Memorial Hospital, and waited for a ninety-year-old pump to fail. The others were all gone now. Denny Mallon, years ago, of the lung cancer he had courted so assiduously. Kevin Murphy, of pneumonia, contracted after a kick from a cow had broken his leg. Poor Andy McGrath, from a succession of strokes. Larry Desmond, God help him, of the drink. And Patrick O’Meara… Celia Larkin’s eyes clouded with unshed moisture… the first Lord of Barley Cross, her dear Master of the Fist…

Up on Barra Hill, Liam McGrath, the second Master of the Fist—since one couldn’t count sad, mad Dominic, nor the fatuous Damien—still ruled. Still respected—though no longer required—Liam played endless games of checkers with General Fahey, or told stories of the old days to anyone who would listen.

But the most important story Liam McGrath couldn’t tell. Celia recalled, as if it were yesterday…

…the rumbling, clanking, screeching, clattering from behind which drove the young schoolmistress into a dry gully by the roadside. The noise sounded like a combination of road roller, combine harvester, and a hundred squeaking gates. Celia Larkin crouched low. Any kind of transport could be a threat these days.

She waited minutes before a long gun barrel lagged with thermal insulation poked its snout round the nearest bend. Celia Larkin had never seen a tank before, much less a British Army Main Battle Tank. In her astonishment, she forgot to keep her head down.

The monster halted opposite her hiding place. The roar of its engine died to a low rumble. The driver poked his head through a hatch in the sloping glacis. He called to her. “Is this the road for Castlebar?”

Useless to crouch lower. Celia Larkin stood, brushed dust and grass from her suit, and said, “If you keep straight on you can’t miss it.”

The man smiled. He wore an oily beret bearing a badge which resembled a ball sprouting feathers, and a jacket covered with green and yellow splotches. “I’m making for Kilcollum in Connemara,” he told her.

She stared at his enormous vehicle. Such a monster to carry one man to Connemara! “I’ve not heard of the place,” she confessed.

“Sure, ’tis only a small village,” he admitted. “Not many people have.” He paused, as though seeking inspiration for further pleasantries. “Can I give you a lift to anywhere? The roads are not safe for a young lady on her own.”

She weighed him up. He had an honest, open face. His smile was disarming. And—most persuasive—his remark about the roads was true. The last car she had hidden from had been packed with shotgun-wielding hooligans.

“How do I get in?” she asked.

He pointed. “If you put a foot on that towing eye, and grab that lamp bracket… there are cleats up the side of the turret. You get in at the top. Hold on, I’ll give you a hand.”

She swung her suitcase up onto the glacis beside his head. “That won’t be necessary. Take my case!”

She hoisted her skirt, found the foot and handholds indicated, and climbed onto the tank. One of the hatches in the turret was open. She got in among the machinery.

“I’m in!” she called.

“Where to, miss?” he called back.

“I was hoping to get to Clifden—but that will be a good step past your village, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t mind running a young lady home.”

The engine noise became a roar. She heard his shout. “Don’t touch anything in there, miss. You don’t want to blow us up!”

Tracks squealing, the tank lurched into motion. Celia Larkin found the noise stunning, and the vibration worse than she had expected. The combination of noise and vibration rendered further conversation with the driver impossible. She found a seat, and sat down, wondering what she had let herself in for.

Surely, after her days on the road, anyone would have accepted his offer of a lift. Sligo had been insufferable, the behaviour of its citizens growing daily worse. She wanted nothing more to do with it. In lonely Clifden, at the ocean’s edge, she might find people more civilised, less influenced by the current madness.

When the tank stopped, she nerved herself for further conversation. A hatch opened in the floor of her refuge. The soldier’s head appeared through it.

“Time for a break,” he told her. “Sit still—I’ll put the kettle on.”

She watched in amazement as he filled a kettle and plugged it in.

“I didn’t know you could brew tea in a tank!”

He grinned. “Sure, there’s a deal you don’t know about tanks, I would imagine.”

He opened a locker, and brought out two plastic plates. “Could you face a ploughman’s lunch?”

She hadn’t eaten that day, being scared of entering strange eating places. “After that ride,” she told him, “I could face anything.”

He cut half-inch slabs of cheese, and laid them on slices of bread. He opened a jar, and topped the cheese with pickles. He covered his confections with further slices of bread, and passed one of the sandwiches to her.

“I’m Patrick O’Meara, ex-Second Battalion, Grenadier Guards,” he told her. “Who are you?”

Mouth choked with tangy cheese, she gave him her name. “How did you come by this tank?” she asked him.

He grinned. “Stole it from the British government. I’ve been guarding their docks in Belfast ’til I’m sick of being a cockshy for every idiot who wants his fling while there’s someone left for him to annoy.”

“Is that what it’s like in Belfast?”

He grimaced. “It’s like that all over Ireland, so far as I can gather. Maybe all over the world. No kids for the last ten years. Nothing left to work for. No future to look forward to. If we’ll all be dead in sixty years or so, does anything matter? Belfast is crazy. The Provos are out in the open, shouting a new slogan—‘Ours in the end!’ We shot a few last week, and they got seven of my lads.”

“Sligo is not as bad as that,” she told him. “But there are robberies and muggings every day. I was a teacher, but my class grew up, and left me without a job. I’m going to my sister in Clifden. I hope it will be better there.”

He unplugged the steaming kettle, and infused the tea. “My parents are in Kilcollum. I haven’t seen them since I joined up. I’m hoping for peace and quiet, too.”

She eyed this soft-spoken soldier who stole tanks, killed Provos, and talked of peace. “Why did you steal this machine?”

He grinned impenitently. “Can you think of a safer way to travel?”

They slept that night, battened down, in a pasture hidden from the road by a tall hedge. Next morning he heated water for washing and shaving, then boiled a couple of eggs. They ate breakfast squatting on the glacis.

“I’ll have to find some fuel soon,” he told her.

“What kind of fuel?”

He jerked a thumb at the rear of the tank. “That motor will run on anything. Right now we’re on diesel.”

“How much will you need?”

He grimaced. “About two hundred gallons.”

Her eyes widened. “That will cost a fortune!”

He shook his head, pointing to the gun above them. “That’s as good as a credit card.”

She tried to frown at him. “Mr. O’Meara, you are no better than the villains you complain of!”

He indicated once-white tapes on his sleeve. “Sergeant,” he told her. “They can’t bust me ’til they catch me. It takes a sergeant for genuine villainy. Now, come up to the turret, and I’ll show you how to work it.”

She frowned at him. “Why do I need to know that?”

He sighed. “Because I can’t do two jobs at once.”

A few miles from Castlebar, they found a service station open. Sergeant O’Meara pulled into the forecourt, and halted his tank by the pumps. A door in the office opened. A man appeared carrying a shotgun.

“Get that thing off my property!”

The sergeant put his head out of the driver’s hatch. “I need gas, chief.”

The man jerked his shotgun. “I’ve none to spare for strangers. Get moving!”

Sergeant O’Meara smiled winningly. “Only two hundred gallons, chief. Diesel will do—I’ve got a multi-fuel engine. Don’t be hard on a bona fide traveller.”

The man’s face contorted. “You heard me, soldier. Get that thing off my forecourt before I blow your head off!”

Sergeant O’Meara raised his voice. “Larkin!”

“Sir?” responded the turret.

“Train the gun on the office!”

Motors whined. The turret revolved. The long barrel swung until it pointed at the office behind the man.

“Load HESH, Larkin!”

“Sir!”

Sergeant O’Meara addressed the station owner. “Now, chief, before I give my next order, would you care to reconsider any decisions?”

The man spluttered. His shotgun wavered. He turned to gaze at the office. “My wife is in there.”

Patrick O’Meara shrugged. “Then she has two minutes to get clear. I’m not a patient man.”

The station operator struggled for his dignity. He wiped a sleeve under one eye. Then he propped his gun against a pump, and unhooked a hose.

“Show me where to stick this damn thing.”

Later, as they rumbled towards Castlebar, Celia Larkin lifted the floor hatch, and shouted to the recumbent driver. “What’s HESH?”

He rolled his eyes up at her. “High explosive, squash head. It’s used for blowing holes in concrete bunkers. We haven’t any HESH.”

“Thank God for that,” she shouted. “For a moment, I thought you meant it when you threatened that man.”

“I did mean it,” he shouted back. “But you couldn’t do anything about it for me.”

“And you paid with a chit on the British Army’s Paymaster General!’’

“He pays all my bills.”

Celia gave up. Patrick O’Meara had peculiar principles.

They drove sedately down the centre of Castlebar’s narrow main street. There was no traffic, few parked cars. Most of the shops were closed. Many had shuttered windows. A jeweller’s front was glassless and stockless.

The sergeant had shown her how to work the intercom. She rode standing in the cupola, head in the breeze, squashy doughnuts over her ears.

His voice came through the phones. “Things don’t look much better here, Larkin.”

She said, “Keep going, Sergeant. We’re being watched from bedroom windows. Can they harm us?”

She couldn’t see him roll his eyes in tolerant surprise. He said patiently, “Only if they use an antitank gun, Larkin. I doubt if they’ll have one of those handy. But you might watch out for Molotov cocktails–”

“What do I do if I see one?”

Perhaps there was some mettle in her, after all. He said, “Duck, and close the hatch. The machine gun beside you is loaded if you feel like having a go.”

Her voice reflected a classroom ring. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sergeant. Why should I wish to shoot anyone?”

She couldn’t see his smile, either. “Just a thought, Larkin.”

At a steady fifteen miles per hour they rolled along the eastern shores of Mask and Corrib. At Comb’s southern tip, Patrick O’Meara turned west for Galway City.

Celia, by now accustomed to vibration, and insulated from noise by her headphones, reported, “Smoke ahead, Sergeant.”

A black cloud rose above the treetops.

“Arson, I suspect,” he responded. “Drop the hatch, Larkin!”

Buildings burned unchecked in Galway town centre. They went through, battened down, crunching over rubble and wreckage. She found the gun sight gave her a better, magnified, picture of their surroundings than the nine periscopes studding the turret. She swung her eyrie from side to side, watching diligently for Molotov cocktails.

Patrick O’Meara lying in the driver’s seat noted the long barrel swinging menacingly back and forth over his head, and grinned with pleasure. No rioter would tackle his tank while that gun threatened.

On the Oughterard road, clear of Galway, he stopped for tea.

“Well done, Larkin,” he told her. “You forced them to keep their heads down.”

She gaped in astonishment. “Did I help?”

He opened a secret locker, and poured a large tot in both cups. The schoolteacher deserved it. “I couldn’t have got through so easy without you.”

She flushed. He was being gracious. “Nor I without you, Sergeant.”

Patrick O’Meara handed her a cup. “Maybe we’ve got ourselves a team. Would you like to learn how to handle that gun?”

Celia Larkin was already viewing matters in a fresh light. She recalled the burning buildings of Galway, the looted shopfronts in Castlebar, the shotgun-wielding hooligans on the road, and the possibility of Molotov cocktails. She bit her lip. “Do you think it might help?”

His eyes were steady. “I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think so.”

She inhaled a trembly breath. “Very well, Sergeant. Show me what to do.”

He grinned. “Nothing to be scared of, Larkin. We shoot separate-loading ammo—that’s a divided projectile and charge. So you don’t have such heavy shells to lift. And there are no empty cases to dump. The bag holding the charge burns up.” He pointed. “We keep the charges in water-jacketed compartments under there.”

She eyed him hesitantly. “You make it sound so simple, Sergeant.”

“What’s complicated? Aiming is done for you by laser and computer, once you pick the target.”

She blinked. “And what do we shoot, if we’ve no HESH?”

He drained his cup. She was quick on the uptake, this schoolteacher. He said, “Good question, Larkin. We have some smoke shells, and a few rounds of APFSDS.”

She drained her cup, too. The tea had an unusual fiery taste, which left a glow in her gut. It might be possible to master all this technical twaddle he was expounding!

“APFSDS?” she queried, nonchalantly.

“Armour-piercing, fin-stablised, discarding sabot,” he explained. “Very potent stuff.”

She reached for the teapot. Maybe there was a cupful of the sergeant’s fiery brew left in it. “It is,” she agreed. “It is!”

Later, he hauled a suitcase from a compartment in the bustle. He unpacked a uniform blouse and beret. “Put the blouse on over your clothes. Tuck your hair inside the beret. If we’re painting a picture, details are important.”

She fingered the ribbons stitched above the breast pocket. “What are these for?”

He made a business of closing the case, and stowing it away in silence.

“Isn’t this the Falklands ribbon?” she persisted.

He faced her. “The British army likes its soldiers to have a bit of colour on their gear. Shoulder flashes and the like. To brighten things up.”

“And this one?” she persevered.

He swallowed. “That’s the M.M.” You couldn’t make fun of the Military Medal.

“Isn’t that for bravery in action?”

Sergeant O’Meara found a sudden necessity to check the suspension of the six road wheels along each side of his tank. When he returned, she had donned the top half of his parade uniform.

He appraised the result. “A big improvement, Larkin. No need to stick your chest out like that! Into the turret, now. Anyone looking quick will think I’ve got a soldier up there. And I’ll show you how to work that 7.62mm machine gun, in case you want to really kid them.”

Oughterard, when they passed through, was as silent and watchful as all the other small towns had been. Over the intercom, he said, “It must be the tank that scares them.”

She said, “I’m sure it’s not my face.”

West of Oughterard, the road threaded between misty mountains. Nameless minor lakes puddled the land flanking the road. Turf stacks lined the verge.

She heard a sigh over the phones. “Nearly home, Larkin.”

She surveyed the peaceful distances, and knew she couldn’t expect it to last.

“Are we going to Kilcollum first, Sergeant?”

He said, “Why not? You in a hurry to get to Clifden?”

She examined her conscience. “Not particularly, Sergeant.”

“Just as well. I want you to meet my folks.”

Their road angled around the toe of a mountain marked as Kirkogue on her map. She spied a village dominated by a church spire and tower-capped hill.

She said, “I know this place. I’ve an aunt lives here.”

The intercom said, “Take off your phones, and listen!”

She complied.

From the village ahead came the sound of gunfire.

“Someone shooting,” she reported.

“Battle stations!” ordered the intercom. “That means into the turret and close the hatch, Larkin.”

She lowered herself into the turret, and closed the cupola. Through the main gun sight she saw, magnified, the end of the village street ahead. A van blocked the roadway, rear doors open. Shotgun-carrying men stood around the vehicle. Other men appeared carrying boxes which they dumped inside the van.

“Highway robbery,” commented the intercom. “Do we intervene?”

Her pulse jumped at the idea. Could she and the sergeant stop them?

“What would we do?”

The intercom grew brisk. “Line up the gun sight on that van. Don’t worry—I won’t ask you to shoot anyone.”

She did as she was bid.

“Switch on the IFCS.”

“IFCS, Sergeant?”

“Improved fire control system—the computer and the laser sight! Move it, soldier!”

She moved it. Below the optical target ring in her telescope, a green oval sprang into existence. It shifted to encircle the van.

“Target acquired,” she reported, getting into the swing of things.

“There’s a ranging machine gun mounted beside the big fellow,” instructed the intercom. “It’s fixed to fire on the same trajectory. When there’s no one in the way to get hurt, give that van a burst!”

Heart thumping, eyes blind with eagerness, she squeezed the machine gun trigger. In the gun sight, a flight of bright tracer bullets arched towards the van. The vehicle sank down on one side as a tyre burst.

“Nice shooting, Larkin,” approved the intercom. “That’ll do for now.”

The bandits were now concealing themselves behind their lopsided transport. She saw gun flashes.

“Don’t worry,” advised the intercom. “Those popguns can’t harm our Chobham armour. Load smoke!”

“Smoke?” she queried.

“Wake up, Larkin! A smoke shell—like I showed you!”

She hoisted a smoke shell from its rack, and pushed it into the breech of the big gun.

“Don’t forget the charge, Larkin!”

She pulled a canvas bag from the special storage, and pushed it after the projectile.

“Close the breech, Larkin!”

She closed, and locked the gun breech, in the way he had shown her.

“Gun ready, Sergeant,” she panted.

“Fire at will!” ordered the intercom.

The smoke shell went through the van’s open rear, and exploded in the driver’s seat, collapsing the suspension. A cloud of black smoke enveloped the vehicle.

“Cease firing!” ordered the intercom. “They’re retreating.”

As they clanked up to the smoke-filled wreck, the road swarmed with villagers breathing through scarves or handkerchiefs, and transferring boxes back to a nearby shop.

A smallish man, his sleeves rolled up and blood on his hands, approached the tank. “Thanks for the timely help, Sergeant. Those rogues would have stolen all the Phelan’s stock. Believe me, you’re very welcome in Barley Cross today!”

Sergeant O’Meara lowered his eyes modestly. “We try to please. Are you hurt?”

The man glanced at his hands. “I’m the doctor. This is Willie Neary’s blood. They shot him up pretty badly.”

The sergeant jerked a thumb at the turret behind him. “I’ve a medical kit in there, if it’s any use to you?”

The doctor shrugged. “I’ll be out of shirts soon, if Mrs. Mallon doesn’t stop tearing them up for bandages…”

Later, over their first hot meal in days, the doctor told them, “We are trying to live a normal life here. But it’s damn difficult. Those rogues you chased away have raided us several times already.” He looked up hopefully from his plate. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to stay on? We could use a couple of professional soldiers with a tank.”

Celia Larkin made deprecating noises. “Don’t call me a soldier, Doctor. I wear the sergeant’s gear to impress spectators.”

Dr. Mallon gestured with his fork. “You certainly impressed us with your shooting.”

She blushed. “It’s all done by computer. I’m a schoolmistress, really. I’d sooner teach children.”

The doctor nodded sadly. “That’s something we lack. There’s been no work for a midwife in Barley Cross for over a dozen years.’’ He gazed from one to the other. “If you could persuade the sergeant to stay on, we could find you some kind of adult class to teach. There must be lots of subjects you could lecture us about.”

Oh sure! Celia Larkin almost choked on a forkful of meat. Like sleeping rough, panhandling, or shoplifting—or even the rival merits of HESH and APFSDS!

Sergeant O’Meara stirred his tea. “I have to visit my folks in Kilcollum, near here, Doctor. Then I’m taking Miss Larkin to her sister in Clifden. If my fuel spins out, or I find an open gas station, I might be back.”

The doctor looked suddenly hopeful. “Then you two are not married—or anything?”

Patrick O’Meara stared at his silent gunner. He said, “No, Doctor. Not married—nor anything.” The sergeant’s expression grew thoughtful.

Later that day, a lone Chieftain tank rolled westward over rain-wet roads. In the mists to starboard, the Corcogemore Mountains loomed like indistinct stormclouds.

Via the intercom, Sergeant O’Meara addressed his gunner. “Why didn’t you tell the doctor that you have relatives in his village?’’

He couldn’t see her blushes.

“I didn’t know if you wanted him to know. He might have put pressure–”

The intercom said, “Should I worry about pressure from the doctor?”

The silence lasted some minutes. Both were occupied, thinking.

She heard his voice again. “What did you make of the doctor’s remark, Larkin? When he asked were we married… or anything?”

She bit her lip, stifling a gasp. She could scarcely speak. Perhaps there was a chance it might last! She whispered, “It would depend on the attitude of the parties involved, wouldn’t it?”

The intercom went silent. Sergeant O’Meara wasn’t the fellow to rush into a trap, no matter how tempting the bait. “Let’s assume one of the parties might be a bit interested, Larkin,” he ventured.

She thumbed the speak button in turn. Voice scarcely audible, she murmured, “In that case, we might assume both parties were a bit interested.”

She heard him whistling an old Irish air about a low-backed car. He said, “Could we leave it there for the time being, Larkin?”

Voice tremulous, she said, “I’m not rushing anyone, Sergeant.”

“The Low-backed Car” reached a triumphal conclusion. “Message understood, Larkin,” said the intercom. “And filed for reference.”

The signpost, like so many in Ireland, pointed in the wrong direction, and was barely legible. Unhesitatingly, Sergeant O’Meara rotated his tank off the main road, onto a stretch of tarmac less than a dozen feet wide.

“Four miles to go, Larkin,” the intercom announced cheerfully.

There had been no more than a score of houses in Kilcollum. Each was a gutted shell, roofs caved, bones charcoaled.

Sergeant O’Meara halted the tank. Over the intercom, he said, “Cover me, Larkin.”

He climbed out of the hatch, a large revolver in his hand. She swung the turret to bring the coaxial machine gun to bear on the road ahead of him.

She watched him peer through the glassless windows of the nearest dwelling. Grass was already growing over the debris within. He moved swiftly from house to house. At the corner of the street he crumpled.

She was out of the turret and running. She found him kneeling before the low wall of an overgrown garden. Sprouting from the weeds were two white crosses. They bore the names of Padraic and Ellen O’Meara. She waited in silence.

He looked up, dry-eyed. He gestured at the crosses. “Meet my folks, Larkin.”

She touched his shoulder. “Come back to the tank, Sergeant. It’s not safe here.”

He gazed about the ravaged village. “There’s no danger now, Larkin. The murderers are long gone.”

She tugged at him. “Come away, Sergeant.”

He got to his feet. “I can come back later, and tidy this place up.”

She said, “We’ll both come back. I promise.”

He allowed her to lead him back to the Chieftain. “Why would they do that to a whole village, Larkin? Why burn every house?”

She shook her head. “We’re living in a sick world, Sergeant.”

The drive to Clifden was silent. He neither spoke nor sang. She ached to hear “The Low-backed Car” again, but the intercom stayed dead.

When the spires of Clifden came into view, she heard his voice again. “Where to, Larkin?”

She gave him her sister’s address.

The house stood in a side street. He halted the tank outside the front door. She got down from the turret. He stayed in his driving cubby, head out of the hatch, watching her. Other eyes watched from behind curtains. Several figures congregated on the street corner. No one approached near the tank.

She called, “Aren’t you coming in with me?”

He shook his head.

She mounted the steps of her sister’s home. The front door was ajar. From within came the sound of a woman screeching in anger, and the basso rumble of protest from a man. Hand on the door knocker, Celia hesitated. She heard the sounds of altercation and the unmistakable crash of breaking pottery. She dropped her hand from the knocker.

She stumbled back to the tank. “I think I’ve made a mistake, Sergeant.”

He jerked a thumb. “Get aboard!”

She climbed back to the turret, conscious of being watched. Safe in her refuge, she thumbed the intercom. “What happens now?”

He said, “Dr. Mallon made us a fair offer.”

Her thoughts were in turmoil. No refuge for the sergeant in Kilcollum. No haven for her at her sister’s. Was there any point in planning ahead? If she didn’t want to lose him, she had to make up her mind. She thumbed the button. “Let’s go back to Barley Cross, Sergeant.”

He reversed to the main road, backed out, and turned east.

She shouted over the intercom, “There’s a strange craft astern. It has a gun!”

The Chieftain came round in its own length.

They stared at the potential threat. Celia got the magnifying sight on the target. “It looks like a tractor, with a trailer.”

He said, “It’s parked. Keep your head down. They may not have seen you.”

Head out in the sunlight, he drove slowly towards the strange vehicle. A platform had been built between the driving wheels. On the platform, an Oerlikon-type gun pointed skywards. From the driver’s seat, a man watched their approach. An automatic rifle rested across his knees.

Sergeant O’Meara called to him. “Hi, chief! Would ye be interested in buying a tank?”

Only the man’s eyes moved. His response was unenthusiastic. “If you’re wanting the boss, he’s in Finnegan’s bar with the boys.”

Patrick O’Meara appeared to meditate. “I was just wondering if he fancied acquiring himself a tank.”

The man’s eyes rolled to take in the full length of the Chieftain’s 120mm gun. “Are you seeking to sell it?”

Patrick O’Meara nodded. “If the price is right.”

“Have you ammo for that cannon?”

“A few rounds.”

“You’d better wait ’til Healey gets back.”

Patrick O’Meara eased himself out of the hatch, to prop his back against the turret. “I’m a stranger here,” he admitted. “I pinched this bugger off the British army. Someone ought to have a use for it.”

The man relaxed. “I reckon the boss will take it, if you’ll wait.”

The sergeant stretched out his legs on the glacis. “Och—I’m in no hurry. What’s that ye have on the trailer?”

The man didn’t turn his head. “Armour plate. A warship went aground in the bay. It’s breaking up. Healey intended to make a tank out of this machine with the plates we salvaged. Looks like you’ve saved him the trouble.”

“Is your boss at war with someone?”

The man glanced along the road behind the tank. “He’s at war with anyone that looks for bother around here.”

The rear periscope showed Celia that the road astern was empty. Clifden’s citizens had decided that neither tank nor tractor was of interest to them. She put her eye back to the gun sight.

Voice casual, Patrick O’Meara said, “Did you ever meet with a gang from out Kilcollum way?”

The man sneered. “That lot? Sure, they were no problem. We burned ’em out, months ago!”

Sergeant O’Meara stiffened. “Were you there?”

The man grinned. “Was I there—Jasus!”

Patrick O’Meara’s hand dived inside his jacket. The man swung up his rifle, and Celia fired her machine gun. A stream of tracers streaked over the man’s head. He ducked, his attention diverted. Patrick O’Meara’s bullet took him in the neck.

The man screamed, and dropped the gun. The sergeant slid back through his hatch. He reversed the tank alongside the tractor. Ignoring the figure slumped over the steering wheel, he got down and uncoupled the trailer.

She screeched at him from the cupola. “What are you doing?”

He looked up. “Watch the road, Larkin. Those shots will bring out the rest of them. I want this armour plate for Barley Cross.”

He undipped the towing hawser from the track cover, and hitched the trailer to the Chieftain. Bullets were spanging off the glacis as he climbed back into the driver’s hatch.

The intercom came alive. “You okay, Larkin?”

She tried to stop trembling. “I—I think so.”

“Batten down—we’re getting out of here.”

The motor roared. He nudged the tractor out of the way. Towing the trailer, the tank rumbled towards the villains spewing from Finnegan’s bar. She watched them scatter for cover.

He said, “If I were up there, I’d give them a dose of metal poisoning.”

She said coldly, “Isn’t one death enough for you, Sergeant?”

The intercom muttered a smothered blasphemy. “They murdered my parents, Larkin. He would have killed me. And that rifle was a Kalashnikov.”

“Is that bad?”

“They’re all bad things in my book.”

Later, trundling along the lonely road below the twelve bens, he began to hum “The Low-backed Car.”

Five miles off Recess, a loose tread began to clang. He got out to inspect the cause. She filled the kettle, and plugged in. Tea was ready when he poked his head over the open cupola.

“Did you notice a blacksmith in Barley Cross?”

She passed him a steaming cup. “He was shoeing a horse as we left.”

He sipped the tea, blowing on the hot liquid. “We’ll be needing his services.”

“Something you can’t fix, Sergeant?”

He nodded. “I can’t–” He broke off to stare back along the road.

She poked her head out to see.

He said, “Those villains have followed us.”

She reached down for his binoculars. The tractor had halted. She could see figures on the gun platform, and others standing in the road.

“How far are they, do you reckon?” he asked.

She shrugged. “A couple of miles.”

“About that,” he agreed. “Make room in there, Larkin. They think they’re out of range.”

She watched him load a round of armour-piercing, fin-stabilised, discarding sabot.

He said, “Put on the headphones, Larkin. This’ll make a noise.”

The explosion gouged out the verge beside the tractor. The tractor lifted sideways, and toppled, to balance on one large wheel. Through the binoculars, she saw figures running away.

The sergeant opened the floor hatch, and wriggled down into the driver’s seat. “Stand by the machine gun, Larkin.”

He turned the tank in the width of the road, and rumbled back towards the tractor.

She said, “Where are we going?”

He was humming softly. “I want that Oerlikon gun, if it’s serviceable.”

Did he think of nothing but guns and vengeance? She said, “Why did you shoot at them? They couldn’t hurt us.”

He continued to hum, unperturbed. “They were following us. Barley Cross has enough troubles, without me bringing them more.”

She gulped with relief. “You only fired to frighten them off?”

The humming ceased. “No, Larkin. I tried to kill them. I’ll get them all, one fine day.”

The doctor was waiting for them in the village’s main street. He waved to them. “Are you stopping this time, Sergeant?”

Patrick O’Meara waved back. “Are those jobs still open?”

The doctor grinned. “Come and meet someone.”

In his surgery-cum-living room, he introduced his friends. “Larry, Kevin and I try to represent the villagers. Larry has been teaching them how to defend themselves. He’ll put you in the picture.”

Larry Desmond stretched long legs towards the turf fire glowing in the grate. “Jasus, Dinny—about all I can teach them is that shotguns aren’t much use against automatic rifles, and the best thing to do is keep yer head down. They can do that without an old soldier’s advice.”

Sergeant O’Meara lounged on the doctor’s cushions. One week of roughing it in a tank was sufficient to teach appreciation of such luxuries. He said, “I have a dozen FN rifles aboard my wagon. I lifted them from the guard room before I took off with the tank.”

Kevin Murphy rubbed reddened hands before the fire. “A sensible precaution for a rebel, Sergeant. I believe they shoot deserters in the British army.”

Patrick O’Meara ignored the jibe. He was no rebel. He was a reasoning being who could recognise the futility of trying to control the uncontrollable. He said, “In my mob they’d crucify you for desertion.”

Kevin Murphy flexed his fingers in the heat. “A typical autocratic reaction.”

Larry Desmond cackled. “What would your lot do, Kev—guillotine ’em?”

Patrick O’Meara hid his disgust. No wonder Barley Cross was everybody’s football, with these two running things! He said, “I’ve some Kalashnikovs I picked up with the Oerlikon. They’ll take a 7.62mm Nato round, too.” He turned to the doctor. “I could arm a platoon.”

Denny Mallon got out a bottle and glasses. Celia shook her head at his enquiring glance. He poured for the men, saying, “Just tell us what to do, Sergeant. We’ll folly your instructions.”

Patrick O’Meara fought the impulse to get up and walk out. Devising a defence for this village, faced with such complacency, could be harder than fighting villains. But Barley Cross was his only hope. At least, its citizens were attempting to live normal lives.

He said, “I want twenty full-time volunteers for my standing army.”

“Done!” exclaimed Larry Desmond. “I’ll guarantee “em.”

“And we need a refuge for noncombatants—who owns the castle up beyond?”

Denny sipped his poteen with a grimace. “It’s an old O’Flaherty stronghold. A chap called Higgins converted it to a home, some years ago. He and his missus went off to Dublin seeking relatives when the troubles started. We’ve seen neither hair nor hide of them since.”

Patrick O’Meara made his voice brisk. This was the fuel business over again—you couldn’t afford to hesitate. He said, “We’ll take it over. If we put armoured shutters on the doors and windows, build gun platforms on the roof, we’ll have a fortress which will shake a fist at the whole of Connemara!”

Larry Desmond waved his glass. “Hold on, now! What if the Higgins—?”

Kevin Murphy raised a restraining palm. “It’s in the name of the people, Larry. Higgins will have to accept force majeure.”

Patrick O’Meara lay back, and let them argue. It had to work, in spite of them. He said, “We start first thing tomorrow.”

In three months, the sergeant had a fighting force which proved itself in a raid on a mobile gang camped near Lough Corrib. Larry Desmond had been promoted to general, getting him out of the way. Kevin Murphy, as a vet, had been given charge of all four-legged transport. Andy McGrath, a foot-loose bachelor who had seen service in the Irish army, had been made up to sergeant. The captured Oerlikon and one of the Chieftain’s machine guns now dominated the battlements of the O’Flaherty stronghold—which had already been christened O’Meara’s Fist—and Celia Larkin was instructing a group of Barley Cross volunteers in the nuances of Modern Art.

Patrick O’Meara sat at his desk in a downstairs room of O’Meara’s Fist, plotting a raid on Tuam for medical supplies.

A knock on the door interrupted his musings.

“Are ye busy?” enquired Denny Mallon. “I’d like a word with you, Pat.”

He pushed his plans up the table. “Come in, Denny.”

The doctor’s face was unreadable. “I have mixed news for you. Celia Larkin came to see me today.”

Patrick O’Meara hadn’t seen the schoolmistress for weeks. Since being appointed Military Adviser, he had been busy creating an army. He growled, “What’s she been up to?”

Denny Mallon pulled out a chair, and sat down facing the sergeant. “She came to consult me in my professional capacity.” He paused a moment, as though reconsidering his decision to break a confidence. Then he said, “She’s had a miscarriage.”

Patrick O’Meara froze.

“She’s all right,” the doctor assured him. “I’ve sent her to bed for a few days. And no one knows what’s happened to her but we three.”

Voice scarcely audible, he whispered, “Was it me, Denny?”

The doctor’s voice was equally restrained. “Who else, Pat? Celia is not a loose woman. And, in any case, we’re all sterile in Barley Cross.”

Patrick O’Meara studied his palms. “What’s it mean, Denny?”

The doctor leaned towards him. “It means you’re unique, Pat. You are fertile! You may be the only fertile man in all Ireland.”

Sergeant O’Meara looked up, fearfully. “What do you expect me to do?”

Denny Mallon spread his hands on the table. “I don’t know yet, Pat. But we can’t ignore such an opportunity. You’d better not go on any more raids…”

Two days later, the doctor summoned them all to his home. Pale-faced, and wrapped in a thick cardigan, Celia Larkin sat close to the fire.

The doctor rubbed his hands together briskly. “I’ve called us together because we have a problem. Our military adviser has discovered that he’s fertile. And, since I know he has his eye on a certain young lady, I feel he should be dissuaded from his honourable intentions.”

Celia Larkin marvelled at the neatness of it. Perhaps the others wouldn’t be too curious…

General Desmond looked up from the glass he was filling with the doctor’s poteen. “Why should we object to his marrying, Dinny? Is it any business of ours what the lad does in private?”

Celia Larkin blessed the old fool.

Kevin Murphy ahemmed. “Might I ask how you can be sure of what you claim?”

Denny Mallon pursed his lips. “Would you expect me to ignore my Hippocratic Oath? You know the secrets of the surgery are inviolate, Kevin. But, rest assured—I have examined Pat, and I confirm what he says.”

“And who’s he fancying to marry?” demanded the general. “I’d like to keep out of the lady’s way for a while.”

The doctor frowned in mock reproof. “Hold on now, Larry.

Who Pat fancies is his own business. I just feel he ought not to marry at all.”

“All right, I’ll buy it,” agreed the general. “Tell us why he shouldn’t wed.”

The doctor steepled his fingers. “If our military adviser is fertile, shouldn’t he be encouraged to spread his gift as widely as possible? Wouldn’t we all be happy to see a few children around the village?”

The general showed interest. “But that would mean polygamy—or its equivalent!”

“I hope not,” interpolated Patrick O’Meara. “I’m no performing ram.”

“There’s our problem,” said the doctor. “How can we fix it so that the O’Meara genes are distributed all over the village?”

“It would help if he was a ram,” grunted the vet.

Denny Mallon rolled the title on his tongue. “O’Meara the Ram. Now that has a fine ring about it!”

“Even if Pat is willing–” began Celia Larkin.

“Who said he was willing?” interrupted the military adviser.

“–what about the women’s feelings? He can’t marry them all. And, if they were not willing, it would be rape. And, if they were, he would be committing adultery. Or fornication, if the lady were single.”

General Desmond turned round in surprise. “I’m astonished to hear such talk from you, Celia!”

She snuggled deep in her cardigan. Was Larry Desmond really astonished? Or did he just want to see which way the only woman present would jump?

She said, “You’re thinking with your stomach, General. What Denny has just told us means that Barley Cross could have children playing in its streets again. The village might possibly survive the demise we all fear. In a few years, I could reopen your school. But we have to work out a way to bring it about.”

The general grunted. “That’s easy. Line ’em up, and send ’em in by numbers. Shoot them that won’t toe the line!”

The military adviser seemed about to speak. Instead, he closed his mouth, and began to think.

Celia Larkin was laughing. “We don’t live in Soviet Russia, General—or wherever it is they do that sort of thing.”

“Nothing wrong with Soviet Russia,” grunted Kevin Murphy. “If they found a ram there, the women would have more sense than to turn their backs on him.”

The general grinned. “But that’s exactly what–!”

“Please, gentlemen!” Denny Mallon intervened. “Let’s avoid lewd talk. We have a lady present.”

Celia Larkin spread her hands before the fire. There was a way it could be done, if a certain person was prepared to forget her hopes. Did the future of a community rate higher than personal happiness? Silently, Celia Larkin made her own sacrifice.

She said, “There used to be a custom called jus primae noctis…”

Kevin Murphy choked on his poteen. “That’s bloody medievalism. Pandering to a depraved aristocracy!”

She smiled sweetly. “Can you think of a better way to spread a survival gene?”

The vet conquered the politician. Kevin Murphy muttered, “Bejasus, I never looked at it in that light!”

Larry Desmond poured himself another drink. “Do you think our Barley Cross women would accept that solution?”

Celia shrugged. “It would only concern brides. Jus primae noctis means the ‘right of the first night.’”

“Ah!” exclaimed the general sapiently.

“He would need a high rank,” she went on. “If we made him Lord of Barley Cross—?”

“Duke of Connaught would be more impressive,” snorted the general.

“I could fancy King of Connemara, meself,” the doctor mused.

“You can’t make kings,” pointed out the vet. “Thrones are inherited through the blood. But you can create a lord or a duke.”

“Let’s make him both,” suggested the general. “What the hell—they’re only titles!”

The military adviser woke up. “Hey, no way! If you make me boss—I’ve got to be a real boss!”

“For goodness’ sake, Patrick–!” began the doctor irritably.

“He’s right,” Kevin Murphy intervened. “We daren’t fool the village with a dummy lord. If we make Pat top man, that’s what he’ll have to be. And he can live up at his Fist and boss us for ever more.”

“That’s agreed, then,” said the doctor hastily. “When, and how, do we bring it off?”

“Soon as possible,” grunted the general.

“We need a peg to hang his promotion on,” sniffed the vet. “A victory of some kind—like Napoleon after Austerlitz.”

“Napoleon was emperor before Austerlitz,” corrected the schoolmistress.

“Would I crown myself?” queried Patrick O’Meara, betraying an acquaintance with recondite matters.

Denny Mallon tugged at his chin. “Perhaps you’d better go on that Tuam raid, Pat. But don’t get yourself killed! Come back victorious, and we’ll give you a triumph, like a Roman general.”

Larry Desmond slapped his knee. “Bedamn—I never knew I was acquainted with so many scholars!” He turned to the sergeant. “How would your Coldstreams react to that, Pat? From deserter to Lord of Barley Cross in a couple of leaps!”

Patrick O’Meara scowled. “Grenadiers, not Coldstreams,” he corrected. “And they’d still crucify me for it—but probably between a couple of rogues.” The military adviser stared pointedly at the general and the vet.

Celia Larkin stirred restlessly in her hospital cot. Memories were crowding in. She watched Patrick O’Meara’s tank return from the Tuam raid, and clank down Barley Cross’ main street with a load of exuberant soldiers, to halt before the Old Market Hall. She saw Andy McGrath, now trusted to drive, wave from the driver’s hatch under the big gun. She heard the cheers of the Barley Cross volunteers, as they shook their rifles to the applause of the crowd. And she saw Patrick O’Meara perched on the cupola of the Chieftain’s turret, face grave, as he waited for the planned ceremony.

Denny Mallon stepped forward.

Flinty Hagan, astride the gun barrel, beat him to the punch. “Hi, Doc! We’ve captured enough pills to cure the plagues of Egypt—and not a man among us so much as scratched!”

Denny Mallon swallowed his prepared text, and started over. He flourished a clenched fist. “Well done, Flinty! We’re proud of ye all!”

Larry Desmond pushed through the crowd to stand beside the doctor. The crowd fell silent, expectant. The general shouted, “We ought to promote Pat for this, Dinny!”

Denny Mallon shrugged. “We don’t need two generals.”

“Och—I mean higher than a gineral,” protested the old soldier. “He ought to be our top man, after today.”

Well coached, Tessie Mallon called, “Why not make him Lord of Barley Cross?”

Celia Larkin tried to echo her, in turn, but couldn’t speak.

An unexpected ally in the crowd yelled, “Pat O’Meara, Lord of Barley Cross!”

His soldiers on the tank took up the chant.

It was done before anyone could protest. Sergeant O’Meara was Lord of Barley Cross by popular acclaim.

He slid down from the turret, and spread his arms for silence. One by one, his men jumped down, surrendering the platform.

He said, “Fellow citizens—you have proved you can stand on your own feet! I’m willing to go on leading you, but it might not always be victories. I might ask you for sacrifices.”

“Ask away!” shouted his men, from the crowd, drunk with success.

He grinned. “I know what you can do—I trained you!” He waved his arms. “I mean every man and woman in Barley Cross!”

“Ask!” they yelled back.

He stared down at them. They fell silent. He said, “You win—I accept the honour. I hope you won’t be–”

His words were drowned by a roar of approval. There hadn’t been a day like this since Barley Cross reached the quarter finals in the All-Ireland Hurley Championship.

Mick McGuire, miller and distiller, lost his head. “Into Mooney’s with ye all!” he called. “The drinks are on McGuire!”

Celia Larkin watched, dry-eyed. She had lost him now. Pat O’Meara belonged to the village.

He caught her eye, and grinned. He pulled a pair of leather gloves from inside his flak jacket. “A lady left these in my turret. I carried them into battle, like a knight’s favours. I hope she’ll leave them with me, to bring us luck in the future.”

She recognised her best navy-blue gloves. She flushed. The new Lord of Barley Cross was tucking them back inside his jacket. Celia Larkin abandoned modesty. Placing one foot on a towing eye, she gripped the lamp bracket, and pulled herself onto the armoured deck.

She held out a hand. “I’ll take one of those, my lord.”

He gave her the glove. Bending forward, he whispered, “Goodbye, Cee.”

She took the glove. Mouth quivering, she kissed him on the cheek. “Wish you good luck.”

Briefly, his arms tightened around her. She heard the crowd’s applause. He murmured, “I’ll need it. Especially with that idea of yours.”

She said, “You’ve won the women’s hearts already. There’ll be a queue.”

He turned to wave to the crowd. “It’s not them I fear—it’s their husbands. I’m training them to be killers!”

One last memory to torment a failing mind. A church bell tolling in the night. Celia Larkin throwing a mac over her nightdress, hurrying through dark streets to O’Meara’s Fist. The shuttered front door wide open, an oil lamp flickering in the hall. And the Lord of Barley Cross lying on the bottom stair, head cushioned by a servant’s jacket.

When Celia entered, Michael stepped back. “Don’t try to move him, ma’am.”

She bent over him. Patrick O’Meara was still conscious.

“Pat—it’s me, Celia.”

He recognised her, and smiled. “I went dizzy on the top step. I think my back’s broke.”

Footsteps were pounding up the hill outside. She said, “Hold on, Pat! Denny’s coming. He’ll help you.”

His eyes rolled. “I’m not sure I can wait that long, alanna. Hold my hand.”

She took his cold fingers between her palms. Tears blurred her sight.

He whispered, “I never loved anyone but you, Larkin.”

She held his hand until they took him away from her.

In her hospital cot, Celia Larkin wondered if it had all been worth while. She had given him up, so they could make a tyrant out of him. And they had repeated their presumption with poor Liam McGrath. Then, through the open window she heard the shouts of children at play—children no one had ever expected to see. The sounds were vindication enough. If she had her chance, she would do it all over again, willingly.

In her mind, she heard the phantom voices of Larry Desmond, Kevin Murphy, Denny Mallon, and Pat O’Meara grunting in agreement, as was often their wont.

“Amen… amen… amen… AMEN!”

Triggerman, by Jesse F. Bone

Editor’s Introduction

Sometimes in these days of high technology we forget about the men behind the weapons. There are times when the “The Triggerman” may prove to be more crucial than the weapons he controls.

Triggerman

Jesse F. Bone

General Alastair French was probably the most important man in the Western Hemisphere from the hours of 0800 to 1600. Yet all he did was sit in a windowless room buried deeply underground, facing a desk that stood against a wall. The wall was studded with built-in mechanisms. A line of twenty-four-hour clocks was inset near the ceiling, showing the corresponding times in all time zones on Earth. Two huge TV screens below the clocks were flanked on each side by loudspeaker systems. The desk was bare except for three telephones of different colors—red, blue, and white—and a polished plastic slab inset with a number of white buttons framing a larger one whose red surface was the color of fresh blood. A thick carpet, a chair of peculiar design with broad flat arms, and an ashtray completed the furnishings. Warmed and humidified air circulated through the room from concealed grilles at floor level. The walls of the room were painted a soft restful gray, that softened the indirect lighting. The door was steel and equipped with a time lock.

The exact location of the room and the Center that served it was probably the best kept secret in the Western world. Ivan would probably give a good per cent of the Soviet tax take to know precisely where it was, just as the West would give a similar amount to know where Ivan’s Center was located. Yet despite the fact that its location was remote, the man behind the desk was in intimate contact with every major military point in the Western Alliance. The red telephone was a direct connection to the White House. The blue was a line that reached to the headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to the emergency Capitol hidden in the hills of West Virginia. And the white telephone connected by priority lines with every military center and base in the world that was under Allied control.

General French was that awesome individual often joked about by TV comics who didn’t know that he really existed. He was the man who could push the button that would start World War III!

French was aware of his responsibilities and took them seriously. By nature he was a serious man, but, after three years of living with ultimate responsibility, it was no longer the crushing burden that it was at first when the Psychological Board selected him as one of the most inherently stable men on Earth. He was not ordinarily a happy man; his job, and the steadily deteriorating world situation precluded that, but this day was a bright exception. The winter morning had been extraordinarily beautiful, and he loved beauty with the passion of an artist. A flaming sunrise had lighted the whole Eastern sky with golden glory, and the crisp cold air stimulated his senses to appreciate it. It was much too lovely for thoughts of war and death.

He opened the door of the room precisely at 0800, as he had done for three years, and watched a round, pink-cheeked man in a gray suit rise from the chair behind the desk. Kleinmeister, he thought, neither looked like a general nor like a potential executioner of half the world. He was a Santa Claus without a beard. But appearances were deceiving. Hans Kleinmeister could, without regret, kill half the world if he thought it was necessary. The two men shook hands, a ritual gesture that marked the changing of the guard, and French sank into the padded chair behind the desk.

“It’s a beautiful day outside, Hans,” he remarked as he settled his stocky, compact body into the automatically adjusting plastifoam. “I envy you the pleasure of it.”

“I don’t envy you, Al,” Kleinmeister said. “I’m just glad it’s all over for another twenty-four hours. This waiting gets on the nerves.” Kleinmeister grinned as he left the room. The steel door thudded into place behind him and the time lock clicked. For the next eight hours French would be alone.

He sighed. It was too bad that he had to be confined indoors on a day like this one promised to be, but there was no help for it. He shifted luxuriously in the chair. It was the most comfortable seat that the mind and ingenuity of man could contrive. It had to be. The man who sat in it must have every comfort. He must want for nothing. And above all he must not be irritated or annoyed. His brain must be free to evaluate and decide—and nothing must distract the functioning of that brain. Physical comfort was a means to that end—and the chair provided it. French felt soothed in the gentle caress of the upholstery.

The familiar feeling of detachment swept over him as he checked the room. Nominally, he was responsible to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but practically he was responsible to no one. No hand but his could set in motion the forces of massive retaliation that had hung over aggression for the past forty years. Without his sanction no intercontinental or intermediate range missile could leave its rack. He was the final authority, the ultimate judge, and the executioner if need be—a position thrust upon him after years of intensive tests and screening. In this room he was as close to a god as any man had been since the beginning of time.

French shrugged and touched one of the white buttons on the panel.

“Yes, sir?” an inquiring voice came from one of the speakers.

“A magazine and a cup of coffee,” said General French.

“What magazine, sir?”

“Something light—something with pictures. Use your judgment.”

“Yes, sir.”

French grinned. By now the word was going around Center that the Old Man was in a good humor today. A cup of coffee rose from a well in one of the broad arms of the chair, and a magazine extruded from a slot in its side. French opened the magazine and sipped the coffee. General Craig, his relief, would be here in less than eight hours, which would leave him the enjoyment of the second best part of the day if the dawn was any indication. He hoped the sunset would be worthy of its dawn.

He looked at the center clock. The hands read 0817…

At Station 2 along the Dew Line the hands of the station clock read 1217. Although it was high noon it was dark outside, lightened only by a faint glow to the south where the winter sun strove vainly to appear above the horizon. The air was clear, and the stars shone out of the blue-black sky of the polar regions. A radarman bending over his scope stiffened. “Bogey!” he snapped, “Azimuth 0200, coming up fast!”

The bogey came in over the north polar cap, slanting downward through the tenuous wisps of upper atmosphere. The gases ripped at its metallic sides with friction and oxidation. Great gouts of flaming brilliance spurted from its incandescent outer surface boiling away to leave a trail of sparkling scintillation in its wake. It came with enormous speed, whipping over the Station almost before the operator could hit the general alarm.

The tracking radar of the main line converged upon the target. Electronic computers analyzed its size, speed and flight path, passing the information to the batteries of interceptor missiles in the sector. “Locked on,” a gunnery officer announced in a bored tone, “Fire two.” He smiled. Ivan was testing again. It was almost routine, this business of one side or the other sending over a pilot missile. It was the acid test. If the defense network couldn’t get it, perhaps others would come over—perhaps not. It was all part of the cold war.

Miles away two missiles leaped from their ramps flashing skyward on flaming rockets. The gunnery officer waited a moment and then swore. “Missed, by damn! It looks like Ivan’s got something new.” He flipped a switch. “Reserve line, stand by,” he said. “Bogey coming over. Course 0200.”

“Got her,” a voice came from the speaker of the command set. “All stations in range fire four—salvo!”

“My God what’s in that thing! Warn Stateside! Execute!”

“All stations Eastseaboard Outer Defense Area! Bogey coming over!”

“Red Alert, all areas!” a communications man said urgently into a microphone. “Ivan’s got something this time! General evacuation plan Boston to Richmond Plan One! Execute!”

“Outer Perimeter Fire Pattern B!”

“Center! Emergency Priority! General, there’s a bogey coming in. Eastseaboard sector. It’s passed the outer lines, and nothing’s touched it so far. It’s the damndest thing you ever saw! Too fast for interception. Estimated target area Boston-Richmond. For evaluation—!”

“Sector perimeter on target, sir!”

“Fire twenty, Pattern C!”

All along the flight path of the bogey, missile launchers hurled their cargoes of death into the sky. A moving pattern formed in front of the plunging object that now was flaming brightly enough to be seen in the cold northern daylight. Missiles struck, detonated, and were absorbed into the ravening flames around the object, but it came on with unabated speed, a hissing roaring mass of destruction!

“God! It’s still coming in!” an anguished voice wailed. “I told them we needed nuclear warheads for close-in defense!”

More missiles swept aloft, but the bogey was now so low that both human and electronic sensings were too slow. An instantaneous blast of searing heat flashed across the land in its wake, crisping anything flammable in its path. Hundreds of tiny fires broke out, most of which were quickly extinguished, but others burned violently. A gas refinery in Utica exploded. Other damage of a minor nature was done in Scranton and Wilkes Barre. The reports were mixed with military orders and the flare of missiles and the crack of artillery hurling box barrages into the sky. But it was futile. The target was moving almost too fast to be seen, and by the time the missiles and projectiles reached intercept point the target was gone, drawing away from the fastest defense devices with almost contemptuous ease.

General French sat upright in his chair. The peaceful expression vanished from his face to be replaced by a hard intent look, as his eyes flicked from phones to TV screen. The series of tracking stations, broadcasting over wire, sent their images in to be edited and projected on the screens in French’s room. Their observations appeared at frighteningly short intervals.

French stared at the flaring dot that swept across the screens. It could not be a missile, unless—his mind faltered at the thought—the Russians were farther advanced than anyone had expected. They might be at that—after all they had surprised the world with Sputnik, and the West was forced to work like fiends to catch up.

“Target confirmed,” one of the speakers announced with unearthly calm. “It’s Washington!”

The speaker to the left of the screen broke into life. “This is Conelrad,” it said. “This is not a test, repeat—this is not a test!” The voice faded as another station took over. “A transpolar missile is headed south along the eastern seaboard. Target Washington. Plan One. Evacuation time thirty seconds–”

Thirty seconds! French’s mind recoiled. Washington was dead! You couldn’t go anywhere in thirty seconds! His hand moved toward the red button. This was it!

The missile on the screen was brighter now. It flamed like a miniature sun, and the sound of its passage was that of a million souls in torment! “It can’t stand much more of that,” French breathed. “It’ll burn up!”

“New York Sector—bogey at twelve o’clock—high! God! Look at it!”

The glare of the thing filled the screen.

The blue phone rang. “Center,” French said. He waited and then laid the phone down. The line was dead.

“Flash!” Conelrad said. “The enemy missile has struck south of New York. A tremendous flash was seen fifteen seconds ago by observers in civilian defense spotting nets… No sound of the explosion as yet… More information—triangulation of the explosion indicates that it has struck the nation’s capitol! Our center of government has been destroyed!” There was a short silence broken by a faint voice: “Oh my God!—all those poor people!”

The red phone rang. French picked it up. “Center,” he said.

The phone squawked at him.

“Your authority?” French queried dully. He paused and his face turned an angry red. “Just who do you think you are colonel? I’ll take orders from the Chief—but no one else! Now get off that line! … Oh, I see. Then it’s my responsibility? … All right I accept it—now leave me alone!” He put the phone gently back on the cradle. A fine beading of sweat dotted his forehead. This was the situation he had never let himself think would occur. The President was dead. The Joint Chiefs were dead. He was on his own until some sort of government could be formed.

Should he wait and let Ivan exploit his advantage, or should he strike? Oddly he wondered what his alter ego in Russia was doing at this moment. Was he proud of having struck this blow—or was he frightened. French smiled grimly. If he were in Ivan’s shoes, he’d be scared to death! He shivered. For the first time in years he felt the full weight of the responsibility that was his.

The red phone rang again.

“Center—French here… Who’s that? … Oh yes, sir, Mr. Vice… er Mr. President! … Yes sir, it’s a terrible thing… What have I done? Well, nothing yet, sir. A single bogey like that doesn’t feel right. I’m waiting for the follow up that’ll confirm… Yes sir I know—but do you want to take the responsibility for destroying the world? What if it wasn’t Ivan’s? Have you thought of that? … Yes, sir, it’s my judgment that we wait… No sir, I don’t think so, if Ivan’s back of this we’ll have more coming, and if we do I’ll fire… No sir, I will not take that responsibility… Yes, I know Washington’s destroyed, but we still have no proof of Ivan’s guilt. Long-range radar has not reported any activity in Russia… Sorry, sir, I can’t see it that way—and you can’t relieve me until 1600 hours… Yes, sir, I realize what I’m doing… Very well, sir, if that’s the way you want it I’ll resign at 1600 hours. Good-bye.” French dropped the phone into its cradle and wiped his forehead. He had just thrown his career out of the window, but that was another thing that couldn’t be helped. The President was hysterical now. Maybe he’d calm down later.

“Flash!” the radio said. “Radio Moscow denies that the missile which destroyed Washington was one of theirs. They insist that it is a capitalist trick to make them responsible for World War III. The Premier accuses the United States… hey! wait a minute! … accuses the United States of trying to foment war, but to show the good faith of the Soviet Union, he will open the country to UN inspection to prove once and for all that the Soviet does not and has not intended nuclear aggression. He proposes that a UN team investigate the wreckage of Washington to determine whether the destruction was actually caused by a missile. Hah! Just what in hell does he think caused it?”

French grinned thinly. Words like the last were seldom heard on the lips of commentators. The folks outside were pretty wrought up. There was hysteria in almost every word that had come into the office. But it hadn’t moved him yet. His finger was still off the trigger. He picked up the white phone. “Get me Dew Line Headquarters,” he said. “Hello Dew Line, this is French at Center. Any more bogeys? … No? … That’s good… No, we’re still holding off… Why? … Any fool would know why if he stopped to think!” He slammed the phone back into its cradle. Damn fools howling for war! Just who did they think would win it? Sure, it would be easy to start things rolling. All he had to do was push the button. He stared at it with fascinated eyes. Nearly three billion lives lay on that polished plastic surface, and he could snuff most of them out with one jab of a finger.

“Sir!” a voice broke from the speaker. “What’s the word—are we in it yet?”

“Not yet, Jimmy.”

“Thank God!” the voice sounded relieved. “Just hang on, sir. We know they’re pressuring you, but they’ll stop screaming for blood once they have time to think.”

“I hope so,” French said. He chuckled without humor. The personnel at Center knew what nuclear war would be like. Most of them had experience at Frenchman’s Flat. They didn’t want any part of it if it could be avoided. And neither did he.

The hours dragged by. The phones rang, and Conelrad kept reporting—giving advice and directions for evacuation of the cities. All the nation was stalled in the hugest traffic jam in history. Some of it couldn’t help seeping in, even through the censorship. There was danger in too much of anything, and obviously the country was overmechanized. By now, French was certain that Russia was innocent. If she wasn’t, Ivan would have struck in force by now. He wondered how his opposite number in Russia was taking it. Was the man crouched over his control board waiting for the cloud of capitalist missiles to appear over the horizon? Or was he, too, fingering a red button debating whether or not to strike before it was too late.

“Flash!” the radio said. “Radio Moscow offers immediate entry to any UN inspection team authorized by the General Assembly. The Presidium has met and announces that under no circumstances will Russia take any aggressive action. They repeat that the missile was not theirs, and suggest that it might have originated from some other nation desirous of fomenting war between the Great Powers… ah Nuts!”

“That’s about as close to surrender as they dare come,” French murmured softly. “They’re scared green—but then who wouldn’t be?” He looked at the local clock. It read 1410. Less than two hours to go before the time lock opened and unimaginative Jim Craig came through that door to take his place. If the President called with Craig in the seat, the executive orders would be obeyed. He picked up the white phone.

“Get me the Commanding General of the Second Army,” he said. He waited a moment. “Hello George, this is Al at Center. How you doing? Bad, huh? No, we’re holding off… Now hold it, George. That’s not what I called for. I don’t need moral support. I want information. Have your radiac crews checked the Washington Area yet? … They haven’t. Why not? Get them on the ball! Ivan keeps insisting that that bogey wasn’t his and the facts seem to indicate he’s telling the truth for once, but we’re going to blast if he can’t prove it! I want the dope on radioactivity in that area and I want it now! … If you don’t want to issue an order—call for volunteers… So they might get a lethal dose—so what? … Offer them a medal. There’s always someone who’d walk into hell for the chance of getting a medal. Now get cracking! … Yes, that’s an order.”

The radio came on again. “First reports of the damage in Washington,” it chattered. “A shielded Air Force reconnaissance plane has flown over the blast area, taking pictures and making an aerial survey of fail-out intensity. The Capitol is a shambles. Ground Zero was approximately in the center of Pennsylvania Avenue. There is a tremendous crater over a half mile wide, and around that for nearly two miles there is literally nothing! The Capitol is gone. Over ninety-eight per cent of the city is destroyed. Huge fires are raging in Alexandria and the outskirts. The Potomac bridges are down. The destruction is inconceivable. The landmarks of our–”

French grabbed the white phone. “Find out who the Air Force commander was who sent up that recon plane over Washington!” he barked. “I don’t know who he is—but get him now!” He waited for three minutes. “So it was you, Willoughby! I thought it might be. This is French at Center. What did that recon find? … It did hey? … Well now, isn’t that simply wonderful! You stupid publicity crazy fool! What do you mean by withholding vital information! Do you realize that I’ve been sitting here with my finger on the button ready to kill half the earth’s population while you’ve been flirting around with reporters? … Dammit! That’s no excuse! You should be cashiered—and if I have any influence around here tomorrow, I’ll see that you are. As it is, you’re relieved as of now! … What do you mean I can’t do that? … Read your regulations again, and then get out of that office and place yourself under arrest in quarters! Turn over your command to your executive officer! You utter driveling fool! … Aaagh!!” French snarled as he slammed the phone back.

It began ringing again immediately. “French here… Yes, George… You have? … You did? … It isn’t? … I thought so. We’ve been barking up the wrong tree this time. It was an act of God! … Yes, I said an act of God! Remember that crater out in Arizona? Well, this is the same thing—a meteor! … Yes, Ivan’s still quiet. Not a peep out of him. The Dew Line reports no activity.”

The blue phone began to ring. French looked at it. “O.K., George—apology accepted. I know how you feel.” He hung up and lifted the blue phone. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. “Yes, sir. You’ve heard the news I suppose… You’ve had confirmation from Lick Observatory? … Yes, sir, I’ll stay here if you wish… No, sir, I’m perfectly willing to act. It was just that this never did look right—and thank God that you understand astronomy, sir… Of course I’ll stay until the emergency is over, but you’ll have to tell General Craig… Who’s Craig?—why he’s my relief, sir.” French looked at the clock. “He comes on in twenty minutes… Well, thank you, sir. I never thought that I’d get a commendation for not obeying orders.”

French sighed and hung up. Sense was beginning to percolate through the shock. People were beginning to think again. He sighed. This should teach a needed lesson. He made a mental note of it. If he had anything to say about the make-up of Center from now on—there’d be an astronomer on the staff, and a few more of them scattered out on the Dew Line and the outpost groups. It was virtually certain now that the Capitol was struck by a meteorite. There was no radioactivity. It had been an act of God—or at least not an act of war. The destruction was terrible, but it could have been worse if either he or his alter ego in Russia had lost control and pushed the buttons. He thought idly that he’d like to meet the Ivan who ran their Center.

“The proposals of the Soviet government,” the radio interrupted, “have been accepted by the UN. An inspection team is en route to Russia, and others will follow as quickly as possible. Meanwhile the UN has requested a cease-fire assurance from the United States, warning that the start of a nuclear war would be the end of everything.” The announcer’s voice held a note of grim humor. “So far, there has been no word from Washington concerning these proposals.”

French chuckled. It might not be in the best taste, and it might be graveyard humor—but it was a healthy sign.

An Old Bankruptcy, a New Currency, by Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing

Editor’s Introduction

This essay originally appeared as part of Mutually Assured Survival, a book I wrote with Dean Ing in 1983. Although Possony and I devised the strategy of “Assured Survival,” Ben Bova was first to use that phrase as the title of a book; hence our title. The book was based on the Executive Summary Report of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Our conclusions were:

1. The President’s proposal to change the defensive posture of the United States from Mutual Assured Destruction to Assured Survival is morally correct, technologically feasible, and economically desirable.

2. Significant improvements to national security can be made before the end of the decade.

3. Defense of the nation will require direct Presidential action and support.

How far have we come to reaching these goals in the past five years?

Unfortunately, not very far; certainly nowhere near as far as we need to go. There have been some results: SDI has brought the Soviets scurrying to the negotiating tables and there have been a number of promising technological spin-offs, advances in computer miniaturization, food irradiation, power storage, and fired-reinforced ceramics. We know a lot more about beams and particle physics; and we know about six ways we can intercept ICBMs headed for the U.S.A.

Yet, with the Congress paring expenditures every year, the program remains tentative, and research only. We have deployed nothing; we are no closer to being able to shoot down even a single missile headed for the U.S. than we were in 1980.

There have been obstacles from every side of the moral and political spectrum, from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who have decried SDI as morally questionable, to the Soviet scientists who have warned that SDI experiments could litter space with so much junk that it could block the sun and bring forth “Space Winter.”

The Pentagon bureaucrats fear that SDI might bring about a rearranging of defense expenditures, and priorities. Congress alternately views SDI as either a giant pork barrel or a tar baby. President Reagan, his administration under attack by the media and Congress, has not been able to give the program the leadership it has needed.

Alas, despite overwhelming public support and new technological advances demonstrating the feasibility of Strategic Defense, we have yet to deploy anything real. There is a movement to put in a limited system called ALS: Accidental Launch System which would stop a limited attack. That’s better than nothing, which is what we have now.

An Old Bankruptcy, a New Currency

Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing

The so-called “missile gap” was a decisive factor in the election of 1960. Now we know that it was illusory; the Soviet Union not only did not have a lead in strategic missiles, but in fact had no real missile capability whatever. After the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was resolved in U.S. favor largely because of U.S. strategic missile superiority, the Soviets determined never again to allow that to happen. From the early 1960s on they concentrated on developing a commanding lead in intercontinental strategic nuclear power.

By 1970 they had installed four different ICBM assembly lines, and by 1972 these were running three shifts, twenty-four hours a day. Today, in 1984, they continue to operate full time.

By 1978 (and possibly before) the Soviets had achieved strategic superiority, at least in numbers of missiles and deliverable warheads. Superiority is a problematical thing in the nuclear era. There is no point in having an overwhelming capability for destruction if your own nation will also be destroyed. Translating strategic superiority into international political advantage is no simple matter—until you achieve overwhelming superiority, enough to destroy the opponent’s ability to strike back.

For a number of years strategists considered a “clean win” to be impossible. Hawks and doves could agree: the best way, the only way, to survive a nuclear war is not to have one.

This is still true, but the situation is changing. As technology develops there could come a time when one side can destroy the other’s strategic nuclear forces so thoroughly that no retaliation would be possible. If the Soviet Union ever achieves such superiority, their past actions indicate they will try to translate that capability into strategic power. That will not be a stable world.

The debate over national strategic doctrine has profound implications for the future of the human race. George Orwell said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” If we are to avoid that fate; if we are to preserve freedom and Western Civilization in an era in which the Soviet Union has strategic superiority, we must use every possible advantage. This includes properly exploiting our technologies, and developing superior strategies.

This is difficult but not impossible. The United States holds numerous advantages. We must develop strategies to take advantage of them.

The Origin of MAD

During the Eisenhower Administration, the official doctrine of the United States was “massive retaliation.” President Eisenhower defined this as a determination to meet any attack on the U.S. or our allies “with massive retaliation at a time and place of our own choosing.” At that time we had the strategic power to make good such a threat.

Shortly after taking office in 1961, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara attended a briefing by the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). The general showed the Secretary the SIOP—the Single Integrated Operational Plan which would control U.S. strategic weapons in the event of all-out war with the Soviet Union. The SIOP consisted of a target list based on the best intelligence information available to SAC, and a schedule for the elimination of those targets. Every weapon in the U.S. inventory was allocated, and all would be launched within 36 hours.

When the briefing was completed, McNamara expressed horror. “General,” he said, “you don’t have a war plan. All you have is a kind of horrible spasm.”

McNamara was determined to reform the U.S. strategic doctrines, and to give the President a series of options. The new policy was to be called “Flexible Response.” Soon, however, McNamara found that “flexible response” would require great skill, sophisticated new weapons, and a lot of money which would have to be extracted from Johnson’s “Great Society.” While the Congress might then have been willing to pay the price, Johnson and McNamara were not. In part on the advice of a new school of “civilian strategists” trained mostly in Eastern university schools of social science, McNamara opted for a new doctrine.

This was called “Assured Destruction” and was based on the hostage theory. If both the U.S. and Soviet populations would inevitably be destroyed in any nuclear war, then that war would never happen. The United States need not try to retain strategic superiority, because superiority was impossible. “Sufficiency” would be enough. Moreover, the Soviets would soon come to agree. According to the new theory, the only reason the Soviet Union built strategic weapons was from fear of the U.S. weapons; if we stopped building nuclear-tipped ICBMs, so would the Soviets. Given sufficiency on both sides, we would have a highly stable world; a world of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD.

This theory was made the basis of U.S. doctrine: after we deployed 1000 Minuteman missiles, we built no more. The Soviets would now be given a chance to catch up, after which we would negotiate an arms control agreement to stabilize the situation.

They caught up.

They passed us.

They continued to install new missiles. They ringed Europe with their mobile SS-20 missiles, and while developing the capability to reload their existing strategic silos to allow multiple salvoes. Note that this capability can only be used for first strikes, since the “reload” missiles are very vulnerable.

To this day they halt not, neither do they slow: their four production lines continue to turn out new nuclear-armed ICBMs 24 hours a day. They have achieved strategic superiority; we must now live with that.

After the election of 1980, President-elect Ronald Reagan asked a number of private citizen groups to provide briefing papers for the new administration. Some of those groups continued after the inauguration. One such group was the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Originally sponsored by the Presidents of the American Astronautical Society and the L-5 Society, the Council is largely made up of experts in space science and engineering; but it also includes enthusiasts, home makers, writers, students, and other interested citizens.

The Council is interested in space policy. All members of the Council have agreed that without a rational U.S. defense policy, there can be no U.S. space program. Although all the Council members believe in the defense of the United States, there were considerable disagreements about the nature and feasibility of defensive weapons systems. Many scientists and technologists did not believe defense was possible at all.

The Council was therefore expanded to include several of the nation’s foremost experts in laser systems, as well as military planners, computer scientists, and nuclear physicists. The third meeting of the Council was devoted to investigating defense feasibilities and reconciling differences among experts. The goal was to produce a detailed report on defense of the U.S. After long discussion, a report that every member could adopt was drafted. The Council Report, available in its original form from the L-5 Society, was read by the President, and received a letter of commendation from him.

The Citizens Advisory Council is nearly unique in that it includes not only some of the top scientific and technical talent in the nation, but also a number of technically oriented science fiction writers. Their value is highlighted by the results of a recent national news service poll. Of more than a dozen categories of “noted Americans” ranging from chief executives of Fortune 500 companies to politicians, only science fiction writers perceived the political importance of space research. The writer members of the Council could hardly fail to see this importance, because most of them were initially trained as physicists and engineers.

Throughout that long July weekend, while discussions spilled out of the spacious Niven home into the warmth of the California evening, members traded good-natured political jokes along with information and expert insights. Several members remarked on their heightened awareness that the goal of the Council transcended ordinary political labels. A conservative could rebel against a policy that maximizes threats against innocent Russian children, yet remain conservative. A liberal could recognize the crucial importance of a defensive presence in space, and still be a liberal.

Many of the Council members had special views to impart—a favorite system of hardware, or a particular set of priorities toward the national good. Some of these views were bound to meet head-to-head in committee sessions, and those sessions were always lively (occasionally acrimonious). But narrow vested interests were always subordinated to the single, overriding vested interest of the Council: to outline a specific and complete alternative to this nation’s declared nuclear strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

The original arguments for MAD could have had some validity when then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara espoused them in the 1960s. They could have, that is, if the Soviet Union had accepted them. MAD always depended on the mutual belief that whichever of the superpowers initiated a nuclear war, both nations would be utterly annihilated: Mutual Assured Destruction. Mutual MADness, if you will.

Now, a generation later, we see overwhelming evidence that the Soviets do not now and never did believe in MAD. They have, however, profited enormously from our belief in it. We dismantled our fledgling antiballistic missile (ABM) system and we largely abandoned our Civil Defense plans which might (still!) save a hundred million American lives. We openly admitted that our cities were hostage to the Soviets. To this moment we are hostages still.

As for the Soviet strategy: they have an upgraded ABM system protecting Moscow, and they have a vigorous, continuing C D establishment which directly involves over twenty million Soviet citizens trained as a nuclear survival cadre. In addition, they have tested advanced antisatellite weapon systems that might make us incapable of responding to a nuclear first strike. In short, the Soviet Union clearly plans to survive nuclear war. This isn’t to suggest that Soviet planners envision a holocaust without damage to themselves, nor that they necessarily plan to start such a war. It does show that, unlike us, they do not despair of surviving that war; if it comes, they intend to win it. That, they proclaim and believe, is the very purpose of governments.

Since MAD always depended on both sides believing in it, our MAD strategy has not bought us a stable, peaceful future. It cannot even purchase parity in weaponry when our opponent is developing offensive orbital weapons. MAD is not merely threadbare; it is bankrupt.

This conclusion was the cement binding Council members toward a common goal. The U.S. doesn’t need more nuclear warheads with more terrifying offensive capability. Nor can we match the Soviets in their huge conventional armaments without severe economic problems. Instead, we need an alternative to MAD; a less provocatively offensive, more prudently defensive strategy. For maximum effectiveness, the new strategy must be based on our strengths and its validity must not fundamentally depend upon unverifiable and unenforceable agreements. Finally, an optimum U.S. strategy will provide hope for a future that escapes the gloomy prediction of groups like the Club of Rome and their well-known report, The Limits To Growth. It’s not enough that we abandon the bankruptcy of MAD; we must generate a vital new currency.

Even in the 1950s a few far-sighted strategic theorists understood that the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) was not necessarily an ultimate weapon, and that alternatives to MAD were possible. Some were military officers who understood that MAD was not truly mutual, because the Soviet Union would never accept the doctrine. They argued persuasively for their views; but true to their oaths, when decisions were made by civilian political authorities, they obeyed orders.

Others were civilians: strategists, scientists, engineers, systems analysts in the aerospace industry, who had been involved in long range planning studies. Their research showed new technologies not yet available, but which when they came on line would negate the power of the ICBM. These far-sighted planners urged development of these systems, including ways to intercept missiles in flight. All of the best strategists, military and civilian, understood that the ICBM was no “ultimate weapon,” that indeed there can be no ultimate weapons. It is the nature of the technological war that there are no final answers. Every new development has within it the seeds of a counter weapon. The technological war will never end. Fortunately, the battles in that war are generally bloodless.

By the 1960s both the U.S. and the Soviets had proof that an ICBM could be intercepted. The United States worked from theoretical analysis of weapons effects. The Soviets moved rapidly to actual tests. In one test they launched three ICBM re-entry vehicles (RV’s) and detonated a nuclear interception weapon near the first. This gave them considerable data on the effects of nuclear weapons in space and the upper atmosphere. Before the United States could repeat those tests, the Soviets agreed to an atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. This gave the Soviets a considerable lead in ICBM defense technology.

In 1964 the Soviets paraded their newest ICBM interceptor, which NATO gave the code name “GALOSH”. This interceptor missile used a nuclear warhead designed to detonate above the atmosphere. The presumed kill mechanism was a surge of hard X-rays which would disrupt an incoming RV and its nuclear warhead.

The U.S. system was designated “SAFEGUARD” and employed both the Spartan, which was designed for very high altitude intercept much like the Soviet Galosh, and the Sprint. Both employed nuclear warheads; the Sprint used a comparatively low yield weapon. The Sprint, a two-stage solid propelled rocket, boasted an acceleration so high that, two seconds after launch, it was a mile above the launcher. Of course the Sprint was intended to intercept its target much higher (its range was twenty-five miles). But by this time we had discovered some of the subtler effects of a nuclear detonation. We had seen how a nuclear airburst could generate an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could devastate communication and computer equipment thousands of miles away. U.S. nuclear warheads detonated over our own soil, even many miles high above our soil, were, to put it mildly, not an attractive proposition. Many on this Council would argue that even the most devastating EMP pulse would be cheap compared to a groundburst, but that is an issue for another book.

Some designers pointed out that ballistic missile warheads travel at such enormous speeds (several miles per second) that they could be destroyed by “kinetic energy kill,” meaning impact with a hunk of material no larger than a bullet, or even a small stone. If we could hurl a device into the path of an incoming warhead and then distribute tiny pieces of material, shotgun style, so that the warhead could not avoid them all, we would destroy that warhead. This kinetic energy kill scheme was relatively simple, it was non-nuclear, and particles that missed their targets would burn up harmlessly, high above our soil.

Other kill mechanisms, including directed nuclear debris, were also possible. In a series of papers published in 1968, and later in their book The Strategy of Technology, Stefan T. Possony and Jerry E. Pournelle argued that the United States should abandon the doctrine of Assured Destruction, and instead adopt a strategy of Assured Survival. Specific proposals included conversion of a portion of the existing Minuteman missiles to defensive systems, together with deployment of sufficient offensive Minuteman systems to bring the force back to strength.

Defensive systems included both “pop-up” area protection missiles designed to foil a massive Soviet strike, and hardened command, communications, control, and intelligence (C3I) systems to allow damage assessment and precision employment of the surviving Minuteman force.

The debate over U.S. grand strategy—Assured Destruction vs. Assured Survival—was carried out at high levels in the government, but never became part of public or Congressional debate.

Most of the arguments were technical. Many engineers and scientists doubted our ability to detect and track intercontinental missiles. There were more misgivings about the ability to place an interceptor missile precisely in the path of an incoming warhead. Although many highly qualified members of the technical community were convinced that the United States would be able to develop reliable non-nuclear kill mechanisms sufficient to protect the Titan and Minuteman bases, the conventional wisdom of the time was that “we cannot hit a bullet with a bullet.”

Instead, the MAD strategy was adopted. The iron logic of MAD required that all defensive systems, including civil defense, be abandoned. The original plans for the Interstate Highway System included fallout and blast shelters to be constructed within many of the freeway on-ramps. This plan had already suffered under McNamara and Johnson; it was now abandoned. Meanwhile, negotiators were sent to procure by Arms Control agreements the security the United States refused to provide itself through technology.

Under the terms of the Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty (separate from, but signed on the same day as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty or SALT), the U.S. and the Soviet Union could each retain one Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. For a short period of time we experimented with such a system to protect the missile bases in Montana. The Soviets chose to protect missile sites in the suburbs of Moscow.

The Soviet Union has recently begun to expand their Moscow ABM system, and are now upgrading it with hypervelocity Sprint-type rockets. They have also deployed long range radar arrays suitable for nuclear battle-management far from their borders, in clear violation of the ABM Treaty. Our only ABM system was dismantled nearly a decade ago.

Two arguments were given for discarding ABM. First, the most influential technical analysts discarded the concept of non-nuclear interception as infeasible, not recognizing that research and development would soon produce new means (such as on-board micro computers) for greatly increasing intercept accuracy. Secondly, it was argued, defensive systems are illogical, since the doctrine of MAD demands that both sides remain perfectly vulnerable. If both U.S. and Soviet populations are hostage, then peace is assured; and anything which mitigates the horrors of war paradoxically increases the chances that war will begin. The Soviets have never accepted this argument.

Moreover, when lasers were first developed, a number of laser scientists argued that lasers would never be powerful enough to destroy or damage aircraft and missiles. Certainly early laser systems were insufficient; the early lasers were both low power and inefficient. However, a decade later, the United States openly demonstrated an airborne antimissile laser that can and does destroy not only aircraft, but also small air-to-air missiles in flight. Beam technologies are still in their infancy, and even more dramatic advances can be expected.

During the 1970s, advances in semiconductors, infrared sensors, and radar provided very much better target acquisition. It began to look as if impact weapons might indeed be able to stop a bullet with a bullet. But it looked that way only to a few who bothered to plug in the new advances, and to consider some fresh conclusions. By the mid-1970s, those few were already working to convince others that MAD was fatally flawed; not only was it now feasible to defend against ICBMs, but the Soviets appeared to be working feverishly toward that very goal. Indeed, in some of the most promising areas of research the Soviets were ahead of us even then. During the late 1970s, some Council members were arguing that MAD was obsolete, and that with its new technologies the U.S. could devise strategic defense worthy of the name. Such a system would at worst save many millions of lives by protecting our population and, by its very presence, lessen the attractiveness of a first strike.

The deterrence of a defense system that is only somewhat effective is absurdly underrated by critics. Professor William Baugh (both a physicist and political scientist) has explained it succinctly in his evenhanded new textbook, The Politics of Nuclear Balance. As Baugh puts it, “The intent in building such a defense is not to achieve perfection in the form of zero enemy penetration, but to reduce enemy penetration to the point that any attack is deterred by uncertainty about its effects.” In other words, if your enemy’s missile farms might survive it, the attractiveness of a first strike is much reduced.

By mid-1983, Council members had already shown that such strategies could be developed. But could the heartfelt views of thirty experts be abraded down to something approaching a unanimous opinion without erasing all detail in the process? A man who has spent thirty years cursing experimental devices that determinedly resist translation into foolproof, mass-producible hardware has a natural inbred reluctance to bet on an unproved technology—just as a scientist who has seen his experimental hardware perform several orders of magnitude better than older gadgetry, is unlikely to opt for yesterday’s systems.

It was Jerry Pournelle who kept the various committees, deliberating in separated portions of chez Niven, aware of developments elsewhere in the house. Sometimes a committee member would be invited by the Chairman to take a half-hour sabbatical with another group. Almost as often the roving Chairman, upon finding that a committee had reached consensus on some detail, passed the datum on to the other committees. There are times when the timbre and decibel level of Chairman Pournelle’s voice are sorely needed; the July Council meeting was one of those times. In this way, the various groups managed to avoid the false starts and reiterations that plague so many large councils.

The findings of the Systems Assessment Group were particularly crucial for several reasons. Its members included top-ranked experts in several areas of defense technology (although the discussions remained on an unclassified level); and it was their task to decide which systems proposed by the other groups would be most effective in defending against nuclear attack.

For an example, some defensive weaponry would not require a continuing human presence in space. Those that did might require manned space stations, a longer development time, or a lunar settlement. Clearly, the report of the Systems Assessment Group would figure in the deliberations of the committees on strategy and economics. But information flowed in all directions; there was no advantage in recommending a system which had inferior strategic value, or which was inordinately expensive even if it did fry the proposer’s fish particularly well.

On the evening of Saturday, 30 July 1983, the Systems Assessment Group drafted a set of recommendations that was read in plenary session. The other committees, already provided with “leaks” as to the general nature of those recommendations, were also ready with portions of a letter to the White House stating the findings of the Council. Inevitably, the plenary session unearthed minor disagreements which required resolution. It was the intent of the Chairman to extract, somehow, a letter draft that was unanimously acceptable to attending members. Perfect unanimity still escaped us at the end of the Saturday session, but by then we were all satisfied with the content of the letter. The only remaining problems lay with the phrasing. One engineer, easing into the Niven Jacuzzi that night, wryly voiced a consensus opinion: “We don’t have many writers,” he grinned, “but every s.o.b. with a pencil thinks he’s an editor…”

On Sunday, 31 July 1983, another plenary session yielded phrasing that was acceptable to every member present. Since the letter emanated from the Systems Assessment Group, it was quite brief, addressing only the imperative of specific defenses against ballistic missiles. MAD was not even mentioned; it was simply superseded by implication. Other Council recommendations were collated for inclusion in a 135-page summary report, which was submitted to the White House later. They range from the industrial exploitation of space to the strategic question of stability and our belief that the Soviets and others should be invited to develop space-based ballistic missile defenses of their own. Also, the findings provided a data base for subsequent meetings of the Council. They gave us reason for optimism, not only for citizens under the shadow of nuclear weapons, but for generations yet unborn in every nation on Earth and, we believe, beyond Earth. They gave us, in brief, a glimpse of Mutually Assured Survival.

To deprive our more tendentious critics of a straw man to knock over, we emphasize once again, what Assured Survival does not and cannot mean. While it does, once implemented, assure the continued existence of all peoples, and increase the chance of that existence being a peaceful one, it does not—no strategy can—provide perfect assurance of the survival of everyone, or of any one person. Terrorists might one day detonate a nuclear weapon inside a city; it is also conceivable that a missile, or several missiles, might be fired through error or insanity on the part of some local commander; nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles might still be unleashed in general warfare—but with Assured Survival in place, most of these dreadful weapons, perhaps almost all, would be intercepted. The casualties of such a war would probably be unequalled in human history—but at the very least, scores of millions of people would survive who, without a defensive umbrella, would have died. What is the dollar value of fifty million lives?

It is absurd to demand that a system save 100% of the people in its care; to demand that no defensive umbrella be developed unless it be guaranteed to intercept every hostile weapon. No rational physician would claim 100% certainty that an operation would be successful for every patient; no rational designer of automobile restraint systems would claim that his system assures the survival of every user. The operation and the restraint system should, however, assure the survival of many, and better the chances of all.

Strategists ignore the defensive aspects of war at their peril. From Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, the best strategy analysts have always regarded the defense as “the stronger form of war.” Hannibal was a master at combining defense with offense. The French won at the Marne through counter-offensive strategy.

Stalin regarded the counter-offensive as the most significant form of war, and to this day the Strategic Defense Forces are a separate branch of service in the Soviet Union, taking precedence over the Soviet Air Force and the Soviet Navy. The Defense Forces are a separate and unified combat organization, reporting directly to the Supreme Commander. They are always commanded by a Marshal of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Army (Land Forces) is five times the size of the Strategic Defense Force, but is headed only by a General of the Army.

It is high time that U.S. strategists, including academic theoreticians, rediscover strategic defense; to reject defensive systems on the grounds that they are imperfect is absurd. Assured Survival cannot assure the survival of any particular individual, but it can provide assurance that many more individuals, and society itself, will survive. To demand absolute perfection from fallible humanity is to demand the unattainable, and those who demand the unattainable are not to be taken seriously.

Once it was popular to characterize an impossible demand as “asking for the Moon.” Now, Americans have landed on the Moon, and we stand ready to return. With clearer vision we could have gone from our lunar demonstrations to more practical developments.

Through Road No Whither, by Greg Bear

Editor’s Introduction

Greg Bear is married to Astrid Anderson, whom I literally watched grow up. Sometimes that makes me feel old.

Greg needs no help from his father-in-law; if he collects any more awards they’ll have to retire the trophies. He’s also currently the President of Science Fiction Writers of America, a post I held more years ago than I care to remember.

We are told that all tyrannies mellow. Perhaps.

Through Road No Whither

Greg Bear

The long black Mercedes rumbled out of the fog on the road south from Dijon, moisture running in cold trickles across its windshield. Horst von Ranke carefully read the maps spread on his lap, eyeglasses perched low on his nose, while Waffen Schutzstaffel Oberleutnant Albert Fischer drove. “Thirty-five kilometers,” von Ranke said under his breath. “No more.”

“We are lost,” Fischer said. “We’ve already come thirty-six.”

“Not quite that many. We should be there any minute now.” Fischer nodded and then shook his head. His high cheekbones and long, sharp nose only accentuated the black uniform with silver death’s heads on the high, tight collar. Von Ranke wore a broad-striped gray suit; he was an undersecretary in the Propaganda Ministry. They might have been brothers, yet one had grown up in Czechoslovakia, the other in the Ruhr; one was the son of a coal miner, the other of a brewer. They had met and become close friends in Paris, two years before, and were now sightseeing on a three-day pass in the countryside.

“Wait,” von Ranke said, peering through the drops on the side window. “Stop.”

Fischer braked the car and looked in the direction of von Ranke’s long finger. Near the roadside, beyond a copse of young trees, was a low thatch-roofed house with dirty gray walls, almost hidden by the fog.

“Looks empty,” von Ranke said.

“It is occupied; look at the smoke,” Fischer said. “Perhaps somebody can tell us where we are.”

They pulled the car over and got out, von Ranke leading the way across a mud path littered with wet straw. The hut looked even dirtier close-up. Smoke curled in a darker brown-gray twist from a hole in the peak of the thatch. Fischer nodded at his friend and they cautiously approached. Over the crude wooden door, letters wobbled unevenly in some alphabet neither knew, and between them they spoke nine languages. “Could that be Rom?” Fischer asked, frowning. “It does look familiar—Slavic Rom.”

“Gypsies? Romany don’t live in huts like this, and besides, I thought they were rounded up long ago.”

“That’s what it looks like,” von Ranke repeated. “Still, maybe we can share some language, if only French.”

He knocked on the door. After a long pause, he knocked again, and the door opened before his knuckles made the final rap. A woman too old to be alive stuck her long, wood-colored nose through the crack and peered at them with one good eye. The other was wrapped in a sunken caul of flesh. The hand that gripped the door edge was filthy, its nails long and black. Her toothless mouth cracked into a wrinkled, round-lipped grin. “Good evening,” she said in perfect, even elegant German. “What can I do for you?”

“We need to know if we are on the road to Dôle,” von Ranke said, controlling his repulsion.

“Then you’re asking the wrong guide,” the old woman said. Her hand withdrew and the door started to close. Fischer kicked out and pushed it back. The door swung open and began to lean on worn-out leather hinges.

“You do not regard us with the proper respect,” he said. “What do you mean, ‘the wrong guide’? What kind of guide are you?”

“So strong,” the old woman crooned, wrapping her hands in front of her withered chest and backing away into the gloom. She wore colorless, ageless grey rags. Worn knit sleeves extended to her wrists.

“Answer me!” Fischer said, advancing despite the strong odor of urine and decay in the hut.

“The maps I know are not for this land,” she sang, stopping before a cold and empty hearth.

“She’s crazy,” von Ranke said. “Let the local authorities take care of her later. Let’s be off.” But a wild look was in Fischer’s eye. So much filth, so much disarray, and impudence as well; these things made him angry.

“What maps do you know, crazy woman?” he demanded.

“Maps in time,” the old woman said. She let her hands fall to her side and lowered her head, as if, in admitting her specialty, she was suddenly humble.

“Then tell us where we are,” Fischer sneered.

“Come,” von Ranke said, but he knew it was too late. There would be an end, but it would be on his friend’s terms, and it might not be pleasant.

“On a through road no whither,” the old woman said.

“What?” Fischer towered over her. She stared up as if at some prodigal son, returned home, her gums shining spittle.

“If you wish a reading, sit,” she said, indicating a low table and three tattered cane and leather chairs. Fischer glanced at her, then at the table.

“Very well,” he said, suddenly and falsely obsequious. Another game, von Ranke realized. Cat and mouse.

Fischer pulled out a chair for his friend and sat across from the old woman. “Put your hands on the table, palms down, both of them, both of you,” she said. They did so. She lay her ear to the table as if listening, eyes going to the beams of light coming through the thatch. “Arrogance,” she said. Fischer did not react.

“A road going into fire and death,” she said. “Your cities in flame, your women and children shriveling to black dolls in the heat of their burning homes. The camps are found and you stand accused of hideous crimes. Many are tried and hung. Your nation is disgraced, your cause abhorred.” Now a peculiar light came into her eye. “And many years later, a comedian will swagger around on stage, in a movie, turning your Führer into a silly clown, singing a silly song. Only psychotics will believe in you, the lowest of the low. Your nation will be divided between your enemies. All will be lost.”

Fischer’s smile did not waver. He pulled a coin from his pocket and threw it down before the woman, then pushed the chair back and stood.

“Your maps are as crooked as your chin, hag,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“I’ve been suggesting that,” von Ranke said. Fischer made no move to leave. Von Ranke tugged on his arm but the SS Oberleutnant shrugged free of his friend’s grip.

“Gypsies are few now, hag,” he said. “Soon to be fewer by one.” Von Ranke managed to urge him just outside the door. The woman followed and shaded her eye against the misty light.

“I am no gypsy,” she said. “You do not even recognize the words?” She pointed at the letters above the door.

Fischer squinted, and the light of recognition dawned in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do, now. A dead language.”

“What are they?” von Ranke asked, uneasy.

“Hebrew, I think,” Fischer said. “She is a Jewess.”

“No!” the woman cackled. “I am no Jew.”

Von Ranke thought the woman looked younger now, or at least stronger, and his unease deepened.

“I do not care what you are,” Fischer said quietly. “I only wish we were in my father’s time.” He took a step toward her. She did not retreat. Her face became almost youthfully bland, and her bad eye seemed to fill in. “Then, there would be no regulations, no rules—I could take this pistol”—he tapped his holster—“and apply it to your filthy Kike head, and perhaps kill the last Jew in Europe.” He unstrapped the holster. The women straightened in the dark hut, as if drawing strength from Fischer’s abusive tongue.

Von Ranke feared for his friend. Rashness would get them in trouble.

“This is not our fathers’ time,” he reminded Fischer.

Fischer paused, the pistol half in his hand, his finger curling around the trigger. “Old woman–” Though she did not look half as old, perhaps not even old at all, and certainly not bent and crippled. “You have had a very narrow shave this afternoon.”

“You have no idea who I am,” the woman half-sang, half-moaned.

“Scheisse,” Fischer spat. “Now we will go, and report you and your hovel.”

“I am the scourge,” she breathed, and her breath smelled like burning stone even three strides away. She backed into the hut but her voice did not diminish. “I am the visible hand, the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.”

Fischer laughed. “You are right,” he said to von Ranke, “she isn’t worth our trouble.” He turned and stomped out the door. Von Ranke followed, with one last glance over his shoulder into the gloom, the decay. No one has lived in this hut for years, he thought. Her shadow was gray and indefinite before the ancient stone hearth, behind the leaning, dust-covered table.

In the car, von Ranke sighed. “You do tend toward arrogance, you know that?”

Fischer grinned and shook his head. “You drive, old friend. I’ll look at the maps.” Von Ranke ramped up the Mercedes’ turbine until its whine was high and steady and its exhaust cut a swirling hole in the fog behind. “No wonder we’re lost,” Fischer said. He shook out the Pan-Deutschland map peevishly. “This is five years old—1979.”

“We’ll find our way,” von Ranke said.

From the door of the hut, the old woman watched, head bobbing. “I am not a Jew,” she said, “but I loved them, too, oh, yes. I loved all my children.” She raised her hand as the long black car roared into the fog.

“I will bring you to justice, whatever line you live upon, and all your children, and their children’s children,” she said. She dropped a twist of smoke from her elbow to the dirt floor and waggled her finger. The smoke danced and drew black figures in the dirt. “Into the time of your fathers.” The fog grew thinner. She brought her arm down, and forty years melted away with the mist.

High above, a deeper growl descended on the road. A wide-winged shadow passed over the hut, wings flashing stars, invasion stripes and cannon fire.

“Hungry bird,” the shapeless figure said. “Time to feed.”

Logan, by Paul Edwin Zimmer

Editor’s Introduction

In these days of blank verse and random word patterns the epic poem is almost a lost art form. Yet, in times past it was the prince of poetry. Much of our knowledge of the Sumerians, the Greeks, and other ancient cultures comes from surviving epic poems, such as Gilgamesh, the Iliad, Beowulf, and the Guillaume d’Orange.

The decline of the epic in our culture may well be related to the rise of the “common man” ethos. In the Homeric epics there was a celebration of the heros, or hero; the superior man who excelled in war and adventure. The Greeks admired above all the virtues of courage and loyalty. In our culture we are told to prize the anti-hero—the man who stands aloof and above such lesser values as duty or love of community. True, the anti-hero may have a sense of personal courage or family loyalty, but it is the bravery of the outsider, one who has nothing to lose; there is no sacrifice here.

Some scholars believe that the Homeric and other early epic poems reflect the values of cultures dominated by a warrior or feudal aristocracy. The hero’s exploits were celebrated in songs and ballads by wandering bards. Thus, they exemplified the ideals of early civilizations; I doubt such could be said of much of the body of modern poetry.

Here in “Logan” we find a rare exception as Paul Edwin Zimmer, younger brother of Marion Zimmer Bradley, tells of the trials of James Logan—“The White Man’s Friend”—as he attempted to work out a lasting peace between the early American settlers and the Indians who had formed the League of Five Nations. It was a conflict doomed to end in Armageddon.

Logan

Paul Edwin Zimmer

We are met upon the gravesite

Of a million murdered children;

We are met beneath the shadow

Of slaughtered women, children.

But who can count a million,

Or can mourn a hundred thousand,

When the Earth we walk is made up

Of the bones of many millions?

A multitude is faceless, and one cannot mourn

A cipher.

All statistics of destruction are as empty

As the sorrow that is given by convention.

Yet—

Who is there to mourn for Logan?

Now listen, ye who established the Great League!

Now it has grown old.

Now it is nothing but wilderness.

Ye are in your graves,

Ye who established it.

Deganoweda and Hayenwatha

Comb the snakes from Atotarho’s hair.

The Long House reaches

From the Great Lakes to the Hudson:

Five tribes shelter

Beneath the Great Peace.

The Senecas sit at the

Western Gate;

The Cayuga between them

And the fire.

At the Eastern Gate

The People of the Flint

The Canienga,

Gaze towards the ocean

Over those who call them Mohawks.

Between them and the fire

The Oneida sit.

Between the Cayuga and the Oneida

The Onandaga keep the Council fire—

That was the roll of you—

You that combined in the work,

You that completed the work,

The Great Peace.

But the sea has coughed up thirteen tribes,

White-skinned outlaws from beyond the dawn.

Heretics and traders, convicts and slavers,

They sit themselves down by the Eastern Gate.

They trade guns for beaverskins,

They bring beads and whiskey—

Whiskey! Whiskey!

They eat up the land

Of the lesser tribes

(Broken peoples flock to the Long House).

The forest echoes to the drum of their axes,

And trembles to the tale of toppling timber.

Dutchmen and English,

Puritans and rogues—

They trade guns for beaverskins,

They bring beads and whiskey—

Whiskey! Whiskey!

They prey on the lesser tribes

And quarrel among themselves.

Catholics in Maryland,

Puritans in Plymouth,

Quakers in Penn’s Woods.

Dutch, Scots, and English,

Rich men and poor—

Convicts, landed gentry—

How they hate each other!

Etho! They have no Hayenwatha:

The serpent locks of hatred

Must writhe and hiss uncombed.

No Deganoweda speaks to still

The ancient feuds, covering old corpses;

Singing spilled blood to silence.

They quarrel over the land

Of the lesser tribes—

For they lock up land in little boxes,

Plowing up their Mother

With the labour of black brother.

They disagree about the nature

Of a single, distant, god.

Barbarous and bloody,

Divided by hatred;

They watch and wait

By the Eastern Gate.

No Council governs them,

Keeps peace between them,

No Council speaks for them all…

But—

They have a King across the sea…

The King he sits in London Town,

Planning his long French war:

Saying: “Indian allies we must have

To defend the American Shore.

The Hurons with the French have joined

To drive us into the sea:

We must send gifts to the Iroquois

To bind their League to me.”

Messengers now come to the Long House;

Bearers of gifts from the English King.

Old men listen to promises of peace,

While young men listen to words of war.

Ten pounds sterling for each Huron scalp;

Paid in bright cloth and beads,

In powder and in lead, and in sharp steel hatchets.

Huron scalps are better than beaverskins!

White belts are given to the English King,

And peace, and war both made.

Frenchmen are good in stew.

Huron scalps are better than beaverskins:

They bring guns and hatchets,

Woven cloth and beads,

Powder, lead, and whiskey

Whiskey! Whiskey!

The Hurons are broken,

Eries and Attiwandaronks crushed.

Broken bands fly westward,

And prisoners and orphans

Absorbed by the League,

Adopted into the Clans:

New sons and daughters

Swell the ranks of the Five Nations—

And the League stands

More strongly than before.

Up from the south

Tuscaroras come flying—

Slavers have been hunting them,

The supply of blacks is low.

Beaded wampum figures

On a white wampum belt

Link hands to hold up the tree.

The youngest brother

Takes his place by the fire

To live in peace upon Oneida land:

Six Nations now, instead of Five,

The League stands

More strongly than before.

Sheltered by their treaty

With the English King,

Rich and powerful, strongest

Of all the tribes,

Allies now with the white-skinned folk

Who trade guns for beaverskins

And bring beads and whiskey—

Sheltered by their treaty with the English King

The League stands more strongly than before…

The seasons came and went, the years whirled by;

Wind Keeper drove his creatures across the land.

Dead leaves scattered: so did the foes of the League.

Into Ireokwa hands

The Northern nations give belts of peace,

To intercede with the English King,

And stand between the White Man and the Red.

Ojibway and Chippewa,

Delaware and Shawnee,

Miami and Illinois—

All listen in silence

When Six Nations meet.

The League forbids them war;

Bids them grow

Three Sisters,

Corn, Squash and Beans.

Nor may they sell their land to whites

Unless the League gives leave.

Between White Man and Red, the Great League stands:

The treaty belts for all the North gathered in their hands.

But listen, ye who established the Great League!

Now it has grown old.

Now it is nothing but wilderness.

Ye are in your graves,

Ye who established it!

Thus it began.

The Shawnee shelter in the shadow of the Long House;

Swatana is sent, the staunch Oneida,

Legate from the League to the lesser tribes

To represent as regent Ireokwa rule

And shield the Shawnee from shady dealings,

As accredited Ambassador to the English.

With him his children came,

Cayugas, of their mother’s clan and tribe:

Tagnegtoris was the eldest;

White men called him John Shikellimy.

Sagoheyata was the youngest;

John Petty was easier on the English tongue.

And thus their brother, Soyegtowa,

Was called James Logan,

The “White Man’s friend.”

Upon the Ohio, old and honored,

Worn out with work for White Man and Red,

The ageing Oneida his ancestors met:

Swatana sought strawberries on the skybound trail.

Sing the Karenna

White Man and Red!

Raise the praise

Of the honoured dead.

Sing to greet and thank the League,

Sing to greet and thank his kinsmen.

Thank the men and thank the women;

Lay the wampum on the grave.

Swatana’s sons now sorrow with the Shawnee.

Wind Keeper’s wind creatures wander across the land,

Driving years before them in a whirl of leaves.

White Bear Wind breathes winter through the trees,

Harrying wolves and bobcats south with swirling snow.

Timid Fawn Wind from the South

Breathes Spring into the green buds.

Thus seasons pass, and the selfless brothers,

The Oneida exile’s offspring among the Ohio Shawnee

Fulfill their father’s mission freely for the League.

But Logan is lonely: the League far distant.

From his Cayuga kinsmen he is cut off.

His youthful years filled with the usual yearnings

The lonesome Logan longs for love.

Unlock your legs to Logan, lovely maid.

Let the sachem’s seed inside you

Fill you full; feel not afraid

But widen your womb for the wise and true.

Lonely no longer, let the Cayuga

Conceive him kin in your kind embrace

Found a family, far from Ireokwa,

Rejoice in the renewal of his race.

Babies are born of the blood of Logan,

Lonely no longer along the Ohio;

Cherished by the chieftain, his children grow,

To play in the peace his prestige has brought—

For the father never falters in his fight for peace.

Though shrewdly shielding his Shawnee charges,

He wins White friends by the wisdom of his counsel:

Wars were averted, and once, when words failed,

And death and destruction by deaf ears wrought,

Calm in his cabin, the Cayuga chief

Sorrowed for the slaughter and sought for peace;

Well was he famed as “the White Man’s friend.”

Where Logan dwells along the Ohio

Peace is preserved by his prestige alone.

Peacekeeper’s prize is not praise from the Council,

But the laughter of little ones who live free from war.

The Cayuga keeps peace from his care for his children.

A fond father, he forges them joy

Telling old tales by the twilight fires;

A legacy of legend for Logan’s children,

Of husk masks and false faces,

Of stonish giants and flying heads.

He tells how He-noh, the Thunderer fills thirsty fields,

How gladly the Three Sisters drink rain.

Of Wind Keeper’s wind creatures, and when and why they come,

Of Onestah, corn spirit, who feeds us all.

Closely clutching their cornhusk dolls,

Little ones listen, alight with joy

Their wondering faces watching their father.

Old Logan lives in his children.

Ohio River, flow with tears,

For after years the blow

Will fall, and Logan sorrow know.

White Bear Wind brings winter many times,

Stalking in snowstorms the silent ice river.

Winters have whitened the warrior’s locks, and long-lived Logan, who loves his children,

And shields the Shawnee on the shores of the Ohio,

Their gray-haired guardian: is a grandfather now.

The Virginia governor, Lord Dunmore,

Casts covetous eyes on Ohio land.

The vastness of the West impels his dreams,

And bends his mind to Westward rulership.

To rule a tract stretching from sea to sea,

Would be a post more fit for belted Earl.

What though the King has treaties made with tribes

Of red-skinned savage pagans in the North?

His Colonials would gladly drive them forth,

And the Crown would gain thereby. These jailbirds

With whom the King had charged him were scarce fit

To be called men: disloyalty was rife.

Already tea was floating in Boston Harbour;

Rabble-rousers ranted in the taverns

And public streets of Williamsburg itself.

Indian war would keep them occupied.

Rebels and red niggers could kill each other.

The King would come to recognize his worth.

That scoundrel Greathouse was the tool to use,

And that fool, Cresap—needless more to choose,

The common mob would follow common ways.

Long has Logan laboured for peace,

Following his father, fulfilling his work.

As age approaches, after thirty autumns

He seems to see success surrounding him.

With English aid, an era of peace appears:

Even the Iroquois’ ancient enemy sends envoys,

Cherokee chieftains, whose champions have

Long scoured for scalps the southern trails

Come to the Council to cover the old feud,

Singing spilled blood to silence.

Since Iroquois slew Erie on the Ohio,

Crushing the Cat-people for the King,

The Shawnee’s shelter in the shady forest

A bloody battleground has been, the border of warring tribe

With English aid the old enmity ends,

In the Western wilderness no war-band prowls.

Worn out with work for White Man and Red,

The diplomat Logan dreams of a dawn of peace.

Greathouse; fat, nervous, a toady born.

Dunmore hides his sneer, thinking of return

And triumphant entry into London Town.

“I thought to buy land from the Shawnee, but—”

A civilized shrug of well-bred indifference,

“They cannot sell land: the League forbids it.

No matter. The charter of the Colony

Sets our borders to North and South, but West

Our claim runs to the shores of the Spanish sea.

The Shawnee are but squatters on our land,

Refugees, fled from slavers further south.”

With trembling voice, Greathouse dares to demur.

“But the Council claims the land by conquest,

And both Crown and law support the League!

Royal edict forbids settling their land.”

The vicious, low-born dog was insolent!

Nevertheless—the perfect instrument.

“The Crown will not prefer the League to me!

I am His Highness’ rightful deputy—

But we speak not of the League, but the Shawnee.

If they rise to contend with us in war,

Then we must defend ourselves—no more

Is needed; for surely then, we must provide—

For our defence—forts by the riverside.”

Greathouse’s fat face swung denial back and forth.

“No war on Whites will the Shawnee wage while,

Loyal to the League, Logan keeps the peace.

He’ll complain, through the Council, to the King.

His Majesty will take the Shawnee’s part,

And end your war before it is begun.”

“If Logan holds them back,” Lord Dunmore said, And laughed.

Why such as this was simple sport!

He would yet return in triumph to the Court.

West through the mountains march the pioneers,

Despite Royal edicts and their own fears.

A flood of White Men on Allegheny trails,

Into the vast and virgin forest home

Of bears, wolves and Indians, dreaded vermin all.

Rifles ready, settlers watch each shadow,

Haunting the woods with ghosts of their fears.

Greathouse, with his wagonloads of whiskey,

And Michael Cresap with his militiamen,

And land-hungry settlers from Virginia,

Seek out and cross the ford of the Ohio.

Axes resound like thunder in the woods,

As they clear away the land for cornfields.

Ohio River, sing your song,

Nor right nor wrong you bring;

Water wants not any thing.

Men fell trees that have stood for a hundred years.

They fear the woods; its shadow haunts their dreams.

The devils in their minds take human form,

Red-skinned, and dressed in buckskins and war paint.

Greathouse feeds their fears with tales of torture;

Of captives writhing for hours at the stake.

The vastness of the West troubles their dreams,

Women and children grow gaunt and hollow-eyed;

In the vast and virgin forest they can hear

Wind Keeper’s wind creatures wander in the trees.

The East wind comes as a gigantic moose,

Crashing with his antlers through tangled trees.

Blowing in fury from the lands of the League.

Their eyes dart rapidly about the forest

Their fears have haunted with a thousand shapes;

Children start and sob at the slightest sound.

And even brave men remember tales of terror

When the black wind panther howls out of the West,

Eerily in the air among the endless trees.

Cornstalk comes to the cabin of Logan,

Talking of treachery, and treaties broken.

(On the Cayuga’s wise counsel, Cornstalk,

Chief of the Shawnee, charts his people’s way.)

“When White Men come, they cut down the woods!

The deer decrease, driven from the land!

Deserted beaver dams dry up;

And the folk who fill the forest vanish too.

We slew many slavers in the South, yet

Were forced to flee and find homes here.

Must we now wander wearily into the West,

Hungry and homeless, our hunting-grounds destroyed?

Where, Logan, is the Law of the League?

Colonists have come across the Ohio,

To the North Shore treaties ensured as Shawnee land.

Surely the Shawnee are shielded by the League?

Let the League help its loyal allies,

To defend our domain and drive out the Whites!

Or does the Cayuga still call, like a coward, for peace?”

“Choose, Shawnee Chief, your words: Cherokee scalps

My bravery in battle show beyond question.

Calm yourself, Cornstalk: comfort your people.

Leave to Logan, and the League, these Whites.

The power of my people will prevent further inroads.

As for these ones—these woods are wide: White Men few.

Surely the Shawnee could share a little land?”

“With perfidy there is no peace,” the proud Shawnee replied.

“But long has Logan, and the League,

Pursued peace for my people.

Visit the Whites, vanquish them with your voice.

Yet walk, wise one, warily among them.”

“Who is that white-haired Indian, who stands,

Palm upraised in peace, by the palisade?”

“Surely, that is Logan, the ‘White Man’s Friend’?”

“Shouldn’t we shoot him? He leads the Shawnee.”

“Not yet, you fool! Let the Captain talk first!”

“Welcome him with whiskey!” comes Greathouse’s voice,

“A welcome with whiskey for the White Man’s friend!”

With childish glee the chieftain takes the cup,

Drinking while he confers with the Captain,

Drowning his wisdom in welcome whiskey.

Nervous wide-eyed women watch, picturing

Their children scalped; their cabins smouldering ash;

Themselves tied screaming to the torture-stake.

Logan drinks, and babbles, and goes home sure

That the Whites are friendly, and there’ll be no war.

Even the nervous, watchful women that winter became

Inured to Indians, as, again and again,

Logan returned; they learned to laugh, saying, “Look,

Back for another bottle!” Before long,

His wife comes with the wise one, wanting whiskey,

Bringing her younger boy beside her, and

Big with child, a baby on her back, Logan’s daughter.

At last a time when Logan cannot come:

To his Shawnee charges the chief has duties:

Without the father, his family goes to the fort.

Hurrying off happily, knowing there’ll be

A welcome with whiskey for the women of Logan.

Even the babe at the breast imbibes the liquor,

His mother’s milk mingled with alcohol.

Dozing, drunk in a ditch, Death comes on them.

Greathouse has taken Lord Dunmore’s bright gold,

And now his men to earn their pay are told.

Women and children lie helpless in mud,

Hatchets and skinning-knives are stained with blood.

Ohio River, flow with tears,

For after years the blow

Has fallen. Who is the foe

Of children? Who knows why their death,

Their failing breath and cry

Should be a thing gold could buy?

While women’s wailing wounded the silence,

Cornstalk called the Cayuga Peacemaker.

He came from his cabin, and questions died on his lips.

All Logan’s loved ones were laid in a row:

Bloodied bodies of babes and women.

Cornstalk cursed Cresap while the Cayuga stared.

The Chieftain’s face changed with his children’s death.

Ohio River flow with blood!

A raging flood to show

What seed fear and greed can sow!

April, seventeen seventy-four.

The beginning of Dunmore’s War.

The flowers that bloomed that

Spring Fed on the blood of Logan’s children:

Fed on the blood of Red and White Men:

Blood of innocence, blood of guilt—

To the flowers it tasted the same.

Who could hold back the howling avengers

When Logan leads them; no longer the White Man’s friend?

Well-loved is Logan along the Ohio:

To Cresap’s camp the crazed Cayuga

Brings torch and torture—and triumph for Dunmore.

With all Virginia’s power riding to war,

This is Lord Dunmore’s hour! Proud and cocksure,

He leads his soldiers through the Western hills,

To the border, where Logan kills and kills,

Mourning in madness his murdered children,

Burying in butchery and blood his grief.

Colonel Cresap’s tired troop finds no relief

On their grim retreat through the tangled wood.

Six Nations meet in Council at Thendara:

Settlers writhe screaming at the torture-stake.

Lord Dunmore swells with pride. This day is his!

Naked savages must face cannon and steel:

(He thinks of the Charter, with its great seal,

And all the wealth he could expect to flow

As soon as the valley of the Ohio Virginian land became—and his domain.)

Sweeping down on the bloodstained savage hordes,

The Virginian followers of Lord Dunmore

Bring sabre and musket and cannon’s roar.

The flowers feasted well.

Rifles and roaring cannon wreak destruction

Among charging Shawnee, and shattered they retreat.

Fallen on the field, the father of Tecumseh

Leaves hate as legacy to a later generation:

The wailing of his widow much woe shall cause.

Between White Man and Red, the Great League stands;

The treaty belts for all the North gathered in their hands.

The Onondaga call the Council at Thendara:

Wild Seneca come from the Western Gate,

With concerned Cayuga, the kin of Logan,

And the Youngest Brother, the Tuscarora.

From their rocky homes the Oneida bring

The hymns that settlers have taught them to sing:

And from the Great League’s eastern wing

Come Anglican Mohawks, loyal to the King.

Messengers now leave the Long House,

Bearing belts of peace over forest trails.

Shattered by the shells, the Shawnee gather

Cheerless while their chieftains choose their path.

Cornstalk comes to the Cayuga peacemaker,

Lonely old Logan, lamenting his children,

Proposing a parley for peace.

“What purpose peace with perfidy?”

The chieftain’s face changed at his children’s death;

Now fiercely flashes fire in his eyes.

“I was not at war with the White Man!

Through thirty years their throne I served

Persuading to peace the peoples of the forest.

Now thirty scalps I’ve seized to soothe my heart’s aching:

But thrice thirty scalps will not thaw out my hatred!

Let us fight on forever, until fear of us

Wakes in the White Man such wailing and terror

That they board their boats, and back over the ocean go.

There is no peace with perfidy. Let us paint for war.”

Cornstalk confronts the Cayuga’s raving eyes.

“What, Wise One, would you have us do?

The big knife is before us.

It can kill us all.

Shall we all kill

Our women and children,

And fight on till we fall?

No.

I shall go make peace.”

Ohio River, flow with tears

For all the years that no

Child of Logan’s line may know.

Now messengers from the Long House come running,

With White Men, agents of the English King.

White wampum belts of peace are in their hands.

Between White Man and Red the Great League stands.

The royal envoys seek out Lord Dunmore

To bid him cease his cruel and bloody war.

The League looks now to Logan peace to bring:

Along the blazing border war must cease

Because the League has treaties with the King.

All his life long Logan has served that peace.

White Men have come to bring the “White Man’s Friend”

To Council, so their king may deal with these

Troubles, and bring all warfare to an end.

To treat with Lord Dunmore is Logan’s task—

Such is the message that the Sachems send:

Terms of peace he must at the parley ask.

While White Men wait, the weary chief replies:

Like moaning wind they hear his voice arise.

“I ask if ever any White Man

Hungry came to the cabin of Logan,

And found not food,

Or who came naked and cold, and clothing was denied him?

For the length of the last long and bloody war,

Logan calmly stayed in his cabin, calling for peace.

So loyal was Logan’s love for the whites

That my people pointed as they passed,

Saying, ‘See, there is the friend of the White Men.’

I had thought to have lived in friendship forever,

But for the cruel deed of one man. Colonel Cresap

This last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked,

Murdered all of the family of Logan;

Not even sparing my women and little children.

There runs not a drop of my blood

In the veins of any living creature.

This called on me for revenge.

I have sought it. I have killed many:

I have thoroughly glutted my thirst for vengeance.

For my people, I rejoice at the promise of peace:

But do not think my joy the joy of fear.

Logan never felt fear.

He will not turn on his heel

To save his life.

Who is there to mourn for Logan?

Not one!”

Some say

That Patrick Henry wept:

And that Thomas Jefferson dabbed at his eyes

Where he sat taking notes in a corner.

To have killed the Cayuga a kindness had been:

But lonely old Logan must live six more years.

But the deed went on.

Surly Shawnee gather,

Refusing belts of peace

When the Onandaga call the Council at Thendara:

Demanding with red belts

A hatchet to strike the English.

Angrily the Sachems

Hurl back their belts,

And bid them till the soil.

But the Shawnee defy the League;

To seek white scalps by the side of the river.

But now the White Man’s war is blooming:

The settlers rise against the King in war.

Virginian rebels drive out Lord Dunmore,

Who leaves, as he flees from the rioting bands,

All his gold invested in Ohio lands—

And thus fade into nothing all his plots.

Lexington farmers fire their famous shots.

Between English settler and English King

The war-belt lies, to fill the land with pain;

Partisan cries across the land loud ring.

The Onandaga call for peace in vain.

The almost-English Canienga bring

The red belt of war sent them by the King.

Cayuga and Seneca stalk coldly from the Council,

Vowing vengeance for Logan.

Rebel preachers have taught the Oneida well:

Who stands for the King takes the road to Hell.

He who desires to become a saint

Must fight for the Congress in his warpaint.

Thus, torn apart by the partisan calls,

Drawn into a White Man’s war;

The League is split, the Long House falls:

The Council shall meet at Thendara no more.

A new Deganoweda and Hayenwatha,

Franklin and Jefferson,

Unite the Thirteen Tribes,

To build a second Great League,

In imitation of the first…

But listen, ye who established the Great League!

Now it has grown old.

Now it is nothing but wilderness.

Ye are in your graves,

Ye who established it!

We are met upon the gravesite

Of a million murdered children.

Unknown, unnamed, unnumbered,

Their bones make up our soil.

It is their flesh that fills our gardens,

We drink the tears shed for them:

The air we breathe—their laughter!

But who can mourn an abstract?

Truly sorrow for the nameless?

All statistics of destruction

Are as empty as the sorrow

That is given by convention.

A multitude is faceless,

One cannot mourn a cipher, yet—

Who are we that mourn for Logan?

The World Next Door, by Brad Ferguson

Editor’s Introduction

The total destruction of the human race by nuclear war or by any other means is too horrible for any sane person to truly contemplate. Even in Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall, we only touched upon the disasters that threatened mankind’s continued survival. The science fiction writer who’s probably come closest to touching the heart of this tragedy is Greg Bear in his novel Psyclone, where the residual “souls” of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki dead collectively pass over the Pacific Ocean to seed their revenge upon the victors of World War II.

I don’t read many horror stories, but I do not remember another as chilling as Psyclone; yet, it only touched upon the fringe of nuclear annihilation. In “The World Next Door” Brad Ferguson takes a different tack; he shows how the death of an entire civilization might well move through time as well as space…

The World Next Door

Brad Ferguson

September 15

Jess told me today his sugar beet crop seems to be doing pretty well. Time was when nobody could get anything at all to grow, much less something as tricky as sugar beets, so Jess deserves a lot of credit… and it’ll be awful nice to have real table sugar again, the white, grainy stuff you could buy at the store. (What was it called? Dominoes? Something like that.) We’re all sick of maple sugar, and the women say you can’t cook with it, except for ham—and we don’t have any pigs around here anymore. It surprised me a little last spring, when the town decided it wanted real sugar so bad, it allowed Jess to turn two acres over to it. Jess raises some of the best corn in the county, and we need all we can get—the eating kind and the drinking kind, both. But sugar is calories, too.

More dreams last night, the crazy kind a lot of people around here have been having. Didn’t sleep all that well myself. Doc says it’s more wish-fulfillment stuff than anything else, like right after the war. I don’t know; these seem different. I remember them better, for one thing. I hardly ever remember dreams at all; now I can remember whole bits of them—colors and smells, too. In fact, in last night’s dream I was watching color television, but I forget what was on.

September 18

A singer named Wanderin’ Jake came through today; he’s from the Albany area. I wrote his news on the chalkboard at Town Hall, and the mayor’s wife fed him well. The news: There were floods in Glens Falls last month, eleven people dead; there’s a new provisional state government in Rensselaer (that makes four that I know of, if that preacher in Buffalo hasn’t been assassinated yet); the governor in Rensselaer wants to send a state delegation to next year’s American Jubilee at Mount Thunder; and there’s been no word from an expedition that set out six months ago from Schenectady, bound for the atomic power plant at Indian Point to see if it can be made useful again. The party is presumed dead.

Wanderin’ Jake led a sing-along in the square just after sunset tonight, and we had a good time, even though there wasn’t much on hand to picnic with and won’t be until we get the crops in. With this climate, we can’t harvest until maybe late October, and only then if we’re lucky and there’s been no rain from the south.

Today I remembered that it was Domino sugar, singular. There was a jingle about how grandmothers and mothers know the best sugar is Domino, which is how I remembered it. It’s strange how those jingles come back to haunt you. Twenty-one great tobaccos make twenty wonderful Kings. Let Hertz put you in the driver’s seat. I like Dee, you like Ike, everybody likes Ike. And you get a lot to like with a Marlboro.

September 25

The town got together tonight to discuss what, if anything, we’re going to do about the American Jubilee. No decision, of course—we’ve only talked it over once—but the thrust of tonight’s meeting was, the hell with Rensselaer and the governor there, just like we said the hell with the governors in Buffalo, Syracuse, and Watertown. What if Rensselaer decides to tax us? We don’t have the crops to spare for taxes, and our town has been doing a good job of hiding away nice and quiet in these mountains.

I also asked if we were going to be doing something about getting me a new typewriter ribbon. The mayor says he wants typed minutes—he says they mean we’re still civilized and a going concern, and he’s not wrong about that—but I’ve been reinking this same damn ribbon for more than ten years, and it’s got big holes in it, especially at the ends where the keys hammer away before the typewriter catches its breath and reverses the ribbon. I’m also running out of ink. I said I’d be willing to go with some people into a big town like Tupper Lake to see if there’s a few ribbons left in the stores there, but the mayor said he can’t spare the people; there’s bandits all over the place and it would be dangerous to go into a big, empty town like Tupper. He said maybe somebody could make a new ribbon for me. I said fine, but where are you going to get a long piece of cotton that’s not falling apart? If I’m going to be town scribe, I told him, I have got to have something to scribe with.

At least we don’t have to try and make paper, which I think would be impossible. The old school’s still got a lot of paper in it. The Hygiene Committee’s been doing a good job of keeping the building free of vermin, so the paper should last. If I don’t have a newspaper anymore, at least I have this journal and the Town Hall chalkboard, so I’m still a newspaperman.

September 30

Another meeting on that Jubilee. Half the town now seems to want to do something—send a representative, hold a picnic, whatever. Maybe they think Camelot’s going to come back. The other half agrees (with me) that the Jubilee is just an excuse to blow the President’s horn for him, and that if it hadn’t been for the war, the President would have been out of office in ’68, maybe even ’64. Giving him a toot for still being in office is an unnecessary reminder of the war, and maybe even a reward for having half-caused it.

I wonder who the ass-kisser was that came up with the idea for the Jubilee? Some general in charge of public relations? At least we know it wasn’t a congressman. If we’ve lost a lot, we at least got rid of the goddamn congressmen.

October 2

Jess, the fool, went out in a pouring rain today to check on his beet crop. The poor idiot. At least the winds were from the northwest, up Montreal way. It’s pretty clean up there; maybe Jess is okay, but we’ve got no way to check. Jess’ wife is frantic. I don’t blame her. I also wonder if we’ve lost that beet crop, not to mention his corn and everyone else’s crops, too. Damn, damn, damn.

October 5

Funny thing happened. I was talking to Dick LeClerc this morning, just passing the time at his trading post. Dick mentioned he hasn’t been sleeping well lately. He says he had a dream last night in which he’s in his store, but it’s not the trading post. It’s bigger and cleaner, for one thing, and there are electric lights and freezers and shopping carts, like in those city supermarkets from before the war. The thing he remembers best from the dream is his cash register. It’s a little white thing, he says, but it had funny numbers on it… green, glowing ones, made up of sharp angles. The thing hardly made any noise at all, except for some beeping whenever you hit a key—and you really didn’t hit keys, but numbers on a pad that felt like a thin sponge. Dick says when he woke up, he was real disappointed that he didn’t still have the cash register to play with. That’s just like Dick; I’ve seen him fool with a rat trap for hours, trying to make it work better. He’s always been one for a gadget.

October 13

Another weird dream. (I feel a little guilty about using up ribbon and ink recording all these dreams, but I think it’s important.) This time I wrote down what I could of it before I forgot. Couldn’t remember much, anyway. I was back at the paper and there were a lot of people around, people I’d known for years (but haven’t ever met, waking). There was all kinds of stuff around the office. Electric lights (no, fluorescent lights; they were different) and a few desks had typewriters better than this one, but most of the desks had little TVs on them—except the TVs didn’t show pictures, but words… hundreds of little green words on a dead black screen. Maybe Dick LeClerc planted this in my head with his tale of the cash register with the little green numbers on it. Crazy how your mind works.

Jess is still okay, his wife says. His gums look good, and bleeding’s one of the first signs. He didn’t get the shits, either, and he hasn’t been particularly tired.

October 20

Another singer showed up today, and getting two in just over a month is really unusual, because we’re so hidden away here. His name is Elvis Presley, and he came into town this afternoon with a couple of what he called “backup men”—a guy with a guitar and another guy with a small set of drums that didn’t look too easy to carry through these mountains. The drummer’s a Negro. We haven’t seen one of those around here in maybe twenty years.

Some of the folks remember Elvis pretty well from the old days. He was a big deal back then, always being on television and making records; he even made some movies. Now he makes a living on the road, singing. He looks good… maybe a little thin, but we all are. Some of his hair’s gone, too; whether it’s from radiation or because he’s, what, fifty?—I don’t know. He’ll do a set for us tomorrow. I think it’ll help take our minds off the anniversary of the beginning of the war.

We’ve got Elvis and his people boarded with the mayor. Elvis says he’s just happy to get in out of the weather. He also says he’s got a lot of news from faraway places, which he’ll tell us about just as soon as he and his group get themselves some food and rest.

October 21

Elvis did a nice set, all right. Led it with a song I remembered about loving him tender. I liked it; we all did.

I got his news at the shindig after the performance. Elvis says there’s not much of the country left, as much as he’s seen of it. The war caught him in Nashville, where he was making one of his records. The Russians didn’t bomb Nashville, but the city was abandoned after the Fidel flu hit in ’69 and most people died. Elvis caught it but recovered, and he’s been on the road ever since.

Elvis says he walked most of the way here, taking his sweet time; he and his backup men only rarely find a ride. Sometimes they settle in a place for months; right now, they’re going to Montpelier to see how things are there. (I told him there’s been no news from that part of New England for years.)

Elvis says he no longer bothers to go near big cities. He says the cities they didn’t get with the bombers have been deserted—no food supply, no law and order, and loads of disease and misery did the job. We knew New York was bombed, and Boston and Washington and Cleveland, too, but we weren’t sure about Columbus, Chicago, Gary, Indianapolis, and about twenty others Elvis mentioned. All gone. Where the hell was the Air Force that October? For Christ’s sake!

Elvis says he thinks the population is headed back up again, but he admits that it might just be wishful thinking on his part. Elvis also says he met the President at Mount Thunder a couple of years ago, and he looked all right—but gray and lined, not nearly the young man we remember, and he’s sick to boot… something to do with his kidneys. He never did get married again, either, although Elvis understands that the President still takes his pleasures with any of the couple of hundred women who live in the mountain’s government complex, which is no less than I’d expect from a scoundrel like him.

October 22

Today was the anniversary. We all stood up at the end of Elvis’s performance and sang the Banner, him leading us along on his guitar. Most of us cried a little. The mayor made a speech, said an Our Father, and raised the anniversary flag his wife made back in ’78. The flag looks odd like that, the red and blue parts replaced by black, but it’s appropriate. After the Pledge, the mayor hauled the flag down for another year.

Elvis did a bunch of his old songs and also some that his drummer wrote. His drummer’s really quite a songwriter. One was a happy thing called “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”—the lyrics weren’t much, but the tune was good and the whole thing made us laugh, which we needed—and the other was one that made me get all teary. Elvis called it “Let It Be.” That man can sing a little, all right. I asked the drummer afterwards where he’d gotten the songs. He shrugged and said he’d just dreamed ’em, woke up and wrote ’em down. He says he’s been dreaming recently that he’s an executive with some big record company in New York. Big office, too, with air conditioning. I remember air conditioning.

Elvis was interested that I’ve been keeping a journal of our times here, and I’ve let him read some of it. He says that while he hasn’t been having any dreams at all, he’s interested in ours.

October 23

Elvis gave his last performance here tonight, finishing with a song called “The World Next Door.” He says he wrote it himself just this morning. It’s about the world we could have had without the war. He says he was inspired to do it by all the dream entries in this journal of mine. I’m proud of that, inspiring a song and all.

I had another one of those dreams last night. I was on a big airplane—I mean a big one. People were seated maybe ten across. They showed movies. I was having a real liquor drink—Jack Daniel’s, and I can almost taste it now—and on the little napkin that came with the drink was printed AMERICAN AIRLINES LUXURYLINER 747. I wonder where I was supposed to be going? Maybe Elvis can work the dream into his song somehow, the next time he does it somewhere.

November 1

Winter’s here with a vengeance. It’s warmer the year ’round than it used to be, but the first snow fell today. It’ll melt off, but we should be doing more than we are to prepare for the winter.

Jess, who still feels good, finished hauling in his beet crop today, with the help of a bunch of kids from Mrs. Lancaster’s school. We’re all looking forward to the sugar.

Last night was Halloween, and the kids still do dress-up, although trick-or-treat is out of the question. Strange thing, though: One of the kids—Tommy Matthews—went around town wrapped in a charcoal-colored Navy blanket and an old Army helmet his dad’s had since Korea. He also had a pair of swimming goggles and a broomstick handle he held like a sword. The costume made no damn sense, so I asked him who he was supposed to be. Darth Vader, he said. Who’s that? I asked him. A bad man, Tommy said. He says he dreamed him. He breathes like this, Tommy added, noisily sucking in air and blowing it out again.

Jesus. The kids are beginning to dream, too.

November 10

More and more dreams. Everybody’s beginning to talk about them now. No one understands what’s going on.

We had a town meeting tonight, at which it was decided to forget about doing anything for the Jubilee. We’ve got our own problems.

Nobody’s sleeping very well. They wake up in the middle of the night with such a profound sense of loss, there’s no getting any rest. Everybody’s tired and cranky.

After the Jubilee vote was taken, we suspended regular business so everyone could talk about the dreaming. I was asked to write down some of the things people remember from their dreams. Here are some of the clearest:

Men land on the moon in a black-and-white spaceship that looks like a spider. There’s another kind of spaceship that looks more like an airplane. Both have American flags painted on them.

A guy named Sylvester (or maybe Stephen) Stallion is in a movie about a guy who rescues people—prisoners of war?—from a place called Vietnam. (I remember Vietnam, and so I’m putting that one down.) Also, there’s a big, black monument in Washington to servicemen who died in Vietnam… thousands and thousands of servicemen.

Watches that show numbers to tell time.

Seat belts in cars.

Telephones with little buttons on them instead of dials. The buttons make music.

Something called Home Box Office. Something else called People magazine. Somebody named Princess Di.

A man named Jerry Falwell who’s either a preacher or a politician.

Young men with purple and orange hair wearing earrings in pierced ears.

Radios so small you can wear them on your head, so people can listen to them as they walk around.

A government program called Medicare, for old people.

There were others, but these are representative. Doc spoke up about wish-fulfillment fantasies again, and theorized that Elvis being here recently might have reminded us too much about the old world. He pointed out that while everyone seems to be having dreams, no two people are having exactly the same dreams about the same things. He says not to worry, that it will pass. The mayor said that while people aren’t having exactly the same dreams, they’re close enough to make him suspicious; he called it a psychic event. Doc’s answer to that was that since people have been doing nothing else but talk about their dreams, the dreams they have are being influenced by those conversations.

In other business, Jess said he’d have the sugar ready in a week or two; the grinding and drying is taking him longer to do than he thought it would, but he says he doesn’t need any help. We’re all looking forward to the sugar. Since Jess is still okay, we’re assuming the crop is. Now if we could only grow coffee…

November 12

Big snow last night. Twelve inches on the ground, and this one won’t melt off. But we’ve gotten the crops and firewood in.

The temperature’s taken a plunge, too. We’d probably have lost some field hands if they’d still been working out in the open. Doc says with the winds still coming out of the northwest, the snow’s safe enough, since the early October rain was. That’s a relief; it means we’ll have a healthy soil for next spring’s planting.

November 15

The dreams got very sharp, very real last night. I saw superhighways with thousands of cars on them. I was reading a thick paperback book by somebody named Jackie Collins. My wife and daughter were still alive and with me. There was a nice little house I lived in, right in this town. There was a color TV set in the living room and another one in our bedroom; both were showing the news, but I don’t remember any, except that the announcer seemed excited and worried, maybe scared. And there was a wonderful, luxurious indoor bathroom with all the hot water you could want. It was so real I could touch it. I woke up suddenly in the night and I cried for my family—gone all these years, since the first, worst days.

November 16

No dreams last night at all. Slept well for the first time in weeks.

I tried Jess’ sugar. Wonderful! I’d forgotten how good real sugar could be. I sprinkled some of my share on wild blueberries I picked a couple of days ago.

November 18

Everybody in town is saying their dreams are gone. Doc says we’ve all had a psychic trauma, but it’s over now.

Big topic in the meeting tonight was how to ration out the meat supply. The dairymen think it’s time to rebuild their milking stock; the townies say they’re hungry for real, red meat, and since the rain’s been good, the meat will be good, too. We’ll probably compromise on this again; a lot of those bossies aren’t going to make it through the winter anyway. And it snowed like hell again today.

November 19

Jess came in from his farm to say he’d found a body by the side of the road on his way in. It was a stranger, shot dead where he stood; there was dried blood under him and nowhere else. Doesn’t look like a bandit attack, though; the kid still had his wallet on him. Maybe it was a hunting accident, but the mayor’s posted extra patrols, just in case it was bandits after all. We’ll go out and get the body tonight.

November 21

Nobody can figure it out.

The body’s the damnedest thing anyone’s ever seen. Doc went through the kid’s ID and came up with all sorts of stuff that didn’t make any sense.

First off, there was a lot of ID, and no one here has any anymore. The kid’s name was John David Wright. He was just about to turn twenty. There was a New York State driver’s license dated this year; the kid’s picture was on it. It’s a good sign things are returning to normal, if they’ve begun issuing those again. Only problem is, it doesn’t say where the seat of government was that issued it. Was it in Rensselaer or Syracuse or what?

Wright’s home town is given as this one, but he’s a complete stranger to us. The address on his driver’s license is for a big house on Bates Road that burned down right after the war. Jess says he thinks he remembers a family named Wright who lived there around the time the war started, but they all died in the fire.

The kid was wearing a wristwatch with numbers on it instead of hands; Fred Crawthers says it looks a lot like the watch he saw in one of his dreams. He had money, too—bills and change both—all with recent dates. I was pleased to see the mint is back in business… but there was a half-dollar coin that bore the President’s picture, which I think is overdoing it. There were also a couple of credit cards called Mastercard and Visa; it took me a while to recognize a credit card when I saw one.

Wright also had a receipt, dated three days ago, from a Howard Johnson’s restaurant. I remember those. They were on highways and had orange roofs. But there aren’t any around here and there never were.

Young Wright was wearing eyeglasses, but they weren’t made of glass. They had plastic lenses that scratch easily; Doc showed me. Doc’s been through the kid and reports nothing physically unusual except for his teeth. He’s got the usual fillings, but one of his front teeth was covered by a tough white plastic. Doc says it covered a bad crack and looked convincingly good. (I wish I knew where they were doing dental work these days. Everybody in town needs some.)

The only other thing Doc said was that the kid was maybe too healthy. He had good weight on him, no obvious signs of radiation impairment, no nothing. About like we all were, before the war.

Well, the kid may be one of ours; we don’t know. We’ll treat him right, anyway. We’ll bury him tomorrow as best we can, with all this damn snow on the ground.

November 23

Doc came by the house this morning, red-eyed and sleepless. He says he didn’t tell all he knew about the Wright boy, but he decided to tell me and give me the proof. I can write it down and hide the proof, as long as I don’t show it to the mayor or anyone else right away. Doc’s afraid people might panic or something. I think the people around here are stronger than that, but I’ll respect Doc’s wishes.

Anyway, I’m not sure I believe it myself, although I’ve got it all right here in front of me. When Doc began undressing Wright’s body for autopsy, he found that the kid had wrapped himself in newspapers. It’s an old Boy Scout trick, for insulation. The kid had used six sheets from the Albany Times-Union from the 13th of November, this year. Now there is no Albany and that area sure isn’t in any shape to print newspapers… but this paper was fresh and white. The sheets covering the kid’s chest are full of buckshot holes and covered with blood, but the rest of the sheets are okay.

We have the front page, and it’s clean. The headline tells about a SOVIET ULTIMATUM. Another story says PRESIDENT URGES CIVIL DEFENSE MEASURES. A third reads POPE FLIES TO MOSCOW TO MEDIATE CRISIS. There’s also what we used to call a think-piece about the number of weapons the U.S. and the Soviet Union have and the damage they could do. The story is a horror of thousands of intercontinental missiles that carry ten or more warheads each, and there are germ bombs and chemical bombs and orbital bombs and things that carry radioactive dust.

None of this is anything we know about, none of it. I read the ULTIMATUM story. It said the presence of missile-carrying Soviet nuclear subs off the Atlantic coast had caused the worst breach in relations between the superpowers since the Cuban missile crisis, which almost caused a war back in ’62.

Almost. My dear sweet Jesus. Almost, it said.

Doc says he thinks he knows what happened. The world next door, Elvis called it, and Doc says he was right.

Doc thinks the next-door world was the one we’d be living in if there hadn’t been a war about Cuba. He says it’s a real place, or it was. Now Doc thinks it’s gone, because the dreams stopped; Doc no longer thinks the dreams were mass hysteria or any of the other things he called them. He says the next-door world must have had an even worse war than we did, because of those weapons in the paper. He thinks everybody died, and maybe the impending death of a whole, entire planet is enough to open a door wide enough so that dreams, and even a kid, start coming through. Maybe we were on the receiving end because we’re a nearly dead world… not quite dead, and maybe we’ll pull through, despite everything. But that other world, with those fearsome weapons, must be gone, just like the dreams it sent us.

We don’t know who shot John David Wright, but Doc figures it was Jess himself, startled when the kid came out of nowhere without hailing Jess first.

We could probably prove it, if it’s true, but that would only get Jess hanged, and we need him and his farm. Besides, Jess was decent enough to report the body and make sure we’d bury it with proper respect. The poor kid is dead, and we can’t bring him back. Let it lay.

November 28

We all got together and ate as much as we’d put aside for the feast—it turned out to be a fairly good year. All in all, it was a pretty nice Thanksgiving… except the kid’s watch won’t show any numbers anymore, and I can’t make the thing work. I guess the battery or whatever must be dead. That was the best goddamn watch I ever had, even counting the old days. It’s a shame it gave out so soon.

Siege At Tarr-Hostigos, by Roland Green and John F. Carr

Editor’s Introduction

H. Beam Piper could easily be called the Robert Louis Stevenson of science fiction; his stories were strong and his narratives thought-provoking and spare. Piper’s classics—Space Viking, Cosmic Computer, Little Fuzzy, and Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen—still rank among the finest adventure SF novels ever written. John W. Campbell—the great golden-age editor of Astounding/Analog—said, “Space Viking itself is, I think, one of the classics—a yarn that will be cited, years hence, as one of the science fiction classics. It’s got solid philosophy for the mature thinker, and bang-bang-chop-’em-up action for the space pirate fans. As a truly good yarn should have.”

In the Complete Index to Astounding/Analog by Mike Ashley, Piper ranked third in overall cumulative Analytical Lab voting (a regular feature in Campbell’s Astounding/Analog where each month the readers voted for their favorite stories), finishing right behind number one vote getter Robert A. Heinlein and number two, C. L. Moore.

H. Beam Piper’s writing was probably the single greatest influence on my own career and that of my associate, John F. Carr. John is a recognized authority on the life and works of H. Beam Piper; he edited the Piper short story collections: Federation, Empire, Paratime, and The Worlds of H. Beam Piper. I myself was fortunate enough to help Beam work out a few knots on his History of the Future in the last decade of his life.

For these and other reasons, we were both invited to be co-Guests of Honor at the first Hostigos Con; dedicated to the memory and works of H. Beam Piper and put on by the Pennsylvania State College SF Society. This was more than just another convention. Penn State is only eight miles away from Tarr-Hostigos, the center of Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. We were both promised a guided tour of Hostigos (most of Centre and Lycoming counties) and Williamsport, Beam’s last place of residence.

A little background: Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is one of the most beloved of alternate history yarns. It begins when a Pennsylvania State trooper, named Calvin Morrison, is picked up unwittingly by a passing Paratime conveyer and dropped off accidentally on an alternate time-line. Instead of Indians, Kalvan runs into Indo-Europeans who have migrated across the Aleutian Islands and settled into most of North America. They have developed a fifteenth-century late-Medieval society with both armor and gunpowder weapons.

Only in the Five Kingdoms the manufacture of gunpowder is a religious miracle zealously guarded by Styphon’s House, a nasty theocracy with delusions of grandeur. Kalvan arrives just as Styphon’s allies are about to attack the small princedom of Hostigos; Kalvan meets the Prince’s daughter, falls in love, and decides he has to do something to help these people. Then things begin to get really interesting…

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen was a strong influence on my own Janissaries series and over the years I’ve reread it many times. The tour of Hostigos began on a lovely Friday morning and, as we traveled across some of America’s most beautiful landscape, it was obvious why Piper had centered his mythical kingdom in this part of Pennsylvania. We passed through Bellefonte (Hostigos Town) and then on to Hostigos Gap, which separates the Bald Eagle Mountains, and where the castle of Tarr-Hostigos rises to guard the pass.

It was easy to see where the castle sat; there were two large kettle-shaped mountains, joining at about 700 feet. The keep would have perched on the lower mountain, with the tower and outer walls atop the higher crown. The mountains were much higher and more massive than I’d ever imagined—or John and Roland, for that matter.

A few years earlier they had written Great Kings’ War, the authorized sequel to Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. They had been working on the next book in the series and both of them were excited about finally seeing the area they had been writing about for so long. It was probably a good thing.

On Saturday night, Roland was scheduled to do a reading from the new book, Gunpowder God. Unfortunately, due to scheduling problems, Roland didn’t arrive until late Friday afternoon; thus missing the Hostigos tour. Roland read from a section of the book titled “Siege at Tarr-Hostigos.” After the reading I pointed out several factual errors in the description of Tarr-Hostigos and environs. They made the necessary corrections and I’m pleased to be able to offer you this story for your own enjoyment.

Siege at Tarr-Hostigos

Roland Green and John F. Carr

ONE

I

Paratime Police Chief Verkan Vall tried to sort his atypically jumbled thoughts as the transtemporal conveyor carried him toward Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific, Kalvan Subsector. The civilized Second and Third Levels were behind him now. Once in a while he caught flickering glimpses of Fourth Level—buildings, airports, occasionally a raging battle.

Fourth Level was the high-probability one of the inhabited Paratime Levels. There the human First Colony had come to complete disaster, in the past fifty thousand years losing all knowledge of its Martian origins.

It was the most barbaric level, as well as the biggest. Its cultures ranged from idol worshippers to the technological sophistication and social backwardness of the Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian Subsector.

It was from one of these Europe-American lines that Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police had accidentally traveled in a conveyor to Aryan-Transpacific, Styphon’s House Subsector. Thrust into a ruder and deadlier culture, Calvin (or Kalvan, as the inhabitants of that time-line called him) not only survived, he prospered—until just a few days ago. In less than four years he’d married a princess, founded an empire, broken Styphon’s House’s monopoly of gunpowder, and more than held his own against the worst that band of priestly tyrants could do.

No more. Styphon’s House assembled their Grand Host, and at the Battle of Ardros Field broke the outnumbered army of Hos-Hostigos.

Verkan had been tied to his desk on First Level at that time by piles of routine business and some non-routine schemes by his political enemies. To put it mildly, his conscience was nagging him that he hadn’t been there when his friend needed him. He refused to think about what the Bureau of Psychological Hygiene would say, if they discovered that the top Paracop was suffering from Outtime Identification Syndrome. He already had enough headaches for one day.

The biggest of those headaches was the Dhergabar University Study Team caught in the rout of the Hostigi. Like all outtime researchers, they worked under Paratime Police protection. That might not be enough, on the kind of Fourth Level time-line where civilians were likely to end as part of the body count when a victorious army swept through hostile territory. Too many of the University Team were still unaccounted for; every casualty among them would be a gift to the Opposition Party.

Kalvan would have to fight his own battles for a while, against even longer odds than before. He’d need skill as well as luck to save his own life and Queen Rylla’s, never mind refounding his empire.

Already the Grand Host’s cavalry scouts had raided almost to the outskirts of Hostigos Town. Its main body could hardly be more than a day behind. Kalvan’s father-in-law, Prince Ptosphes, might be able to hold Tarr-Hostigos for a few days. If the Grand Host had to stop and lay siege to the castle, Kalvan still might never rule a kingdom again. He and Rylla might at least escape westward, to sell the services of their army somewhere in the Middle Kingdoms, menaced by barbarians and now by the Mexicotl.

The conveyor dome shimmered into material existence. They had reached Kalvan’s Subsector. Verkan checked his personal equipment and headed for the hatch. Somehow four Paracops reached it before him, all with drawn Fourth Level pistols and palmed First Level sigma-ray needlers.

“Sorry, Chief,” one of them said. He didn’t sound sorry. Verkan looked behind and sighed. The other eight men of his personal guard had closed tightly around him from the rear. Swaddled in bodyguards like a baby in cloth, Verkan stepped out into a large storeroom. The rest of the conveyor-load of Paracops followed, lugging equipment or pushing lifter pallets.

From the outside, the Subsector’s conveyor-head was disguised as one of four large storehouses attached to the Royal Foundry of Hos-Hostigos. The room before them held a desk, some First Level monitoring equipment, racks of muskets, two field-gun carriages, and hundreds of sacks of oats and corn.

No good to anybody except maybe the Grand Host was Verkan’s thought as he strode across the room. Like the other Paracops, he held a flintlock pistol nearly two feet long, loaded and cocked. On his head he wore a high-combed morion helmet; his clothes were a sleeveless buff jack, dark blue breeches, a bright red sash, and thigh-high boots. Nobody from Kalvan’s Subsector would have thought him anything but a Hostigi light cavalry officer.

As he’d expected, the storehouse was empty of anything except mice and rats. He opened the keyed magnetic lock, stepped back, let the four point men go first, then followed at their hand signals of “All clear.”

The door was intact, as he had expected. Under local oak planking, it had a collapsed-nickel core. Nothing local could even dent that, not even a two-hundred-pound stone ball from a siege bombard.

Nothing else in sight had been as lucky. The main Foundry buildings had all burned; some had collapsed. Most of the outer buildings also showed battle scars, and bodies lay everywhere.

Smoke still rose from most of the buildings. That confirmed Verkan’s guess that the attack had come only hours before. The half-dozen survivors of the University Team who’d reached First Level’s Kalvan Subsector Depot had been incoherent with fright, except for Baltov Eldra, who was unconscious from a head wound.

“Too many tourists,” a Paracop said.

Verkan nodded. The University had insisted on doing their own investigation of Kalvan’s time-line. Short of imposing a quarantine, there’d been no way to stop them. For a moment Verkan wished himself back as Chief’s Special Assistant, where he could do the sensible thing without having a dozen political potentates baying at his door.

The Paracops spread out, leapfrogging from building to building, covering one another until they’d reached the edge of the Foundry on all sides. Then they posted sentries, sent a miniature spyball to hover a thousand feet up, and began the grisly task of recovering the bodies.

Verkan turned over the nearest civilian casualty with his sword. It was the Team’s expert on pre-industrial sociology, Professor Lathor Karv. He had a gaping hole in his forehead and several stab wounds in his torso, but no signs of torture.

First good news all day.

No signs of torture meant that none of Archpriest Roxthar’s “Holy” Investigators had ridden with the cavalry. Hypno-mech conditioning or not, it was asking a lot of anyone to resist the kind of torture the Investigators handed out. Not that they were as efficient as the priests of Shpeegar or some Europe-American secret police agencies, but they would improve with time and practice. The Grand Host’s victory had bought them the time, and Roxthar’s fanatical determination to find and extirpate heresy everywhere would guarantee the practice.

Of the fifty-odd bodies in the open, some were here-and-now Foundry workers, the proverbial innocent bystanders. About twenty were mercenaries of various persuasions or undercover Paracops, and the rest members of the University Team.

“Fiasco’’ is a mild term for this was Verkan’s thought. Nobody is going to be happy about it.

“Chief!” the head guard called. He ran up and lowered his voice. “We’ve found Investigator Ranthar Jard.”

Nobody, starting with me.

Ranthar Jard’s dead mouth was twisted into the parody of a smile, but it looked as if he’d fought as well as he’d lived. Five troopers in yellow Harphaxi sashes lay dead and bloody around him.

Verkan cursed out loud. There went an old friend and one of the few Paracops he could still trust absolutely.

The lifter teams started loading bodies for shipment back to First Level, while the rest began the house-to-house (or ruin-to-ruin) search. In spite of the danger from smoldering embers and falling beams, they turned up twelve more Paratimer bodies, three of them Paracops. Seven skeletons too badly burned for field identification made the last load before the conveyor headed back to First Level. Paratime Police Headquarters had a full medtech team on standby, for DNA identification.

Verkan spent most of the time before the conveyor’s return wandering aimlessly among the ruins. Every Paracop on this team knew when to steer clear of the Chief; Verkan knew he was being guarded but so tactfully he couldn’t complain.

One thought dominated Verkan’s mind. He’d thought he had a crisis, with an alliance of Opposition Party chiefs and outtime traders after his scalp over closing Fourth Level Europe-American. He had a case—too many nuclear and chemical weapons in the hands of national governments. However, he and Dalla would live through it even if he couldn’t persuade anyone else.

Kalvan and Rylla were running for their lives, which might not be very long if Ptosphes’s garrison of the lame and the halt couldn’t hold Tarr-Hostigos for at least a few days.

As the day wore on, Verkan began to hope that the Grand Host’s scouts would reappear. It was out of the question to seek the main body and tear it apart with First Level weapons. A few hundred dead cavalry troopers, however, could be labeled “non-contaminating self-defense” in an Incident Report. Their demise would make the Grand Host only a little less strong but a lot more cautious.

Or it might make people genuinely believe that demons fought for Kalvan, and create enthusiastic support for Roxthar’s fifty-times-cursed Investigation! That was the problem with contamination—you couldn’t control how people would interpret your intervention. Good Paracops always remembered that.

Verkan Vall gritted his teeth and decided to be a good Paracop again. He hoped his present set of teeth would survive the experience—

“Vall?”

He started to glare at the interruption, then recognized Kostran Garth, his wife Dalla’s brother-in-law, and another of that handful of good friends and reliable Paracops. The conveyor must have returned with the lab test results—although from the look on Kostran’s face, he was not the bearer of good news.

“I’m sorry, if that helps any,” Kostran said.

“Some. Better security would have helped more. Dralm-dammit, we could have had it!”

“By Xipph’s mandibles, Chief, you did all you could!” He added several more curses from a particularly vile Second Level time-line where spiders and beetles were sacred fetishes. “They sabotaged everything you and Ranthar tried to do.”

“They paid for it, too. But keeping that from happening was ultimately the Chiefs responsibility. My responsibility.” Verkan managed a wry grin. “Wasn’t it Kalvan’s own—‘Great King Truman’—who said, ‘The buck stops here’?”

The grin faded, but Verkan managed not to sigh. “All right. Who did we find?”

“Five locals, Gorath Tran, and Sankar Trav, the Team medic.”

“That leaves Danar Sirna and Aranth Sain unaccounted for.” The two Paracops’ eyes met. If the two missing people were prisoners, they were probably on their way into the hands of the Investigation. Then they’d soon wish they had burned to death instead.

“Danar Sirna. Doctoral candidate in history?”

Kostran nodded. “Right. Tall woman, auburn hair. Great figure too.”

“Let’s wish her better luck in her next incarnation. The soldiers here-and-now have rough-and-ready notions about dealing with enemy civilian women. What about Aranth Sain?”

“He’s ex-Strike Force, one of the few Team people with survival skills. He was their expert on pre-industrial military science.” Kostran hesitated. “I wonder if he was forced to try putting some of his theories into practice?”

“You mean, take an unscheduled field sabbatical?”

“Exactly. His cover is an artillery officer from Hos-Agrys and you can bet he won’t break it by accident. If he catches Phidestros’s eye, he may even be safe from the Investigation!”

It rubbed Verkan the wrong way, to possibly owe anything to the man principally responsible for Kalvan’s defeat. Still, if under the circumstances Aranth had succumbed to the temptation that most outtime workers felt every so often—Verkan could only wish him luck.

Now, to interrogate the surviving Team members thoroughly.

Verkan wasn’t looking forward to the job, but maybe it would turn up some clues. He decided to start with Baltov Eldra, if she was ready; she had the reputation of both a cool head and a keen talent for observation.

II

The climb to the gun platform on top of the north tower of Tarr-Hostigos left Prince Ptosphes unpleasantly short of breath. Old age had been pursuing him for a long time. Now it had finally caught him. Under other circumstances he would have been angry at the prospect of not seeing his grandchildren grow up, but that matter had been taken care of four days ago at Ardros Field.

“Should we summon Uncle Wolf for you, my Prince?” the gun captain asked.

Ptosphes shook his head. “No. Just let me sit down and catch my wind.”

He lowered himself on to an upended powder barrel and was about to light his pipe when he remembered what he was sitting on. The gunners and sentries, he noticed, had returned to their work as soon as they knew he needed no help.

Good men, and more than ever a pity that they had to stand here and face certain death even if most of them were like him, a bit long in the tooth. At least they were the last good men he’d be leading to their doom. No more battles like Tenabra, to haunt him during the long winter nights. Kalvan and Rylla wouldn’t be so lucky, and Kalvan at least liked such work even less than Ptosphes. Kalvan would just have to endure Rylla’s tongue on the subject, as Ptosphes had endured Demia’s.

Ptosphes chuckled, as he thought of Rylla’s mother for the first time in nearly a moon. Rylla had much of her mother in her, both the strengths and the tongue and temper. Ptosphes remembered Demia asking (at the top of her lungs) whether he hated war too much to hold even the little Princedom of Hostigos.

Well, she’d been right in a way. He would have lost even that to Gormoth of Nestor, for not wanting to fight the battles of Styphon’s House, if the gods hadn’t sent Kalvan. Why, then, had those same gods turned their faces away when he needed their help most? What had he or Kalvan done to earn their wrath?

Great Dralm, I ask nothing for myself. Let your wrath fall on me, and spare Kalvan, Rylla, and my granddaughter Demia.

Ptosphes’s breath came more easily now, and he badly wanted that pipe. He rose and was turning toward the stairs when he saw a horseman riding uphill toward the castle. He wore armor but no helmet, and a sash with Prince Phrames’s colors. Probably one of Phrames’s loyal Beshtans.

“Ahoooo! Prince Ptosphes! Prince Phrames has sent me back to warn you. The Styphoni are on the march once more. Their scouts are barely a candle from Hostigos Town!”

“Thank you, and carry my thanks to Prince Phrames.” So the siege begins even sooner than we expected.

The trooper made no move to turn his mount. Ptosphes glared down at him. “No, you can’t come into the castle. Your Prince and your Great King need you more than I do.”

“Prince–”

“Now, Dralm-damn you, turn that horse around and get it moving! If you’re not gone before I count to ten you’ll be the first casualty of the siege of Tarr-Hostigos.”

Ptosphes drew his pistol but his roar had already startled the horse into movement. It wheeled, nearly losing its footing on the steep slope, then broke into a canter. By the time Ptosphes had counted to five, it was out of pistol range. The Beshtan was still looking back at the castle. Ptosphes hoped he would turn around and look where he was going before he rode into a ditch.

Once his pipe was drawing well, Ptosphes walked around the walls to where he had a good view to the southeast. That was the likely direction for the Grand Host, or at least where he hoped most to see them. Anyplace else would mean they had a too-godless-good chance of cutting off at least Kalvan’s rearguard.

The southeast was empty of smoke clouds, and so were all the other directions. Were the Styphoni advancing along roads where there was nothing left that even a fanatical believer would consider worth burning? Or was the vanguard mercenaries, who would be thinking of having roofs over their heads and food in their bellies during the siege?

Tarr-Hostigos should have a bit of time before its walls had to be manned and kept manned until the Styphoni stormed them. Plenty of time, for what Ptosphes intended.

He pointed the stem of his pipe at the nearest sentry. “Take a message to Captain-General Harmakros. Summon everyone in the castle except the sentries to the outer courtyard.”

“Every–?” the man began, then broke off at Ptosphes’s look. “Everyone. Captain-General Harmakros. Yes, my Prince.”

The soldier hurried off, as if he wanted to open the distance between himself and his Prince before Ptosphes showed any more signs of madness.

Ptosphes followed at a more leisurely pace.

III

By the time the garrison was gathered in the outer courtyard, the sun was high overhead. Even the twenty-foot walls cast short shadows. Ptosphes sweated in his armor, wishing the laggards would hurry and resting his hand on the hilt of his sword.

It was a newly forged Kalvan-style rapier, balanced for fighting on foot but quite long enough for his purposes now. The Great Sword of Hostigos, which he’d belted on the day he was proclaimed Prince, was on its way westward with Kalvan and Rylla. His grandson would need that Sword some day, when he ruled a realm so huge that Old Hostigos would barely rank as a respectable Princedom.

If the gods are merciful.

Ptosphes saw no more men joining the crowd. He drew the sword and raised it overhead in both hands. Sunlight blazed from the sted.

“Men of Hostigos. You all know why you are here. You all were told, when you offered to hold Tarr-Hostigos until our Great King and his family might reach safety. Every one of you has already earned honor in the eyes of Dralm Allfather, Galzar Wolfshead, and the other true gods, the gratitude of your Prince and Great King, and the goodwill of your comrades.

“Styphon’s Grand Host is approaching faster than we thought. Within a candle, two at most, this castle will be surrounded by the mightiest army in the history of the Great Kingdoms. For every one of us, there will be a hundred of the enemy. When they camp, a mouse won’t be getting out of this castle.

“Any man who wants to leave can still do so. I’ll say nothing against him nor let anyone else say a word. He’ll have to hurry, to catch up with our rearguard before nightfall, but there’s an open road for any who want to take it.’’ He pointed toward the castle gate with his sword.

“For those who stay—you all know what kind of quarter Styphon’s dogs gave us at Ardros. The lucky ones will have a quick death. The rest will have an appointment with Roxthar’s Unholy Investigation.”

A few hollow laughs sounded from the ranks; most faces were set and pale. All knew what had happened to the Hostigi prisoners after Ardros Field; few had not lost kin or friends in that butchery. Most of the prisoners not slaughtered outright were in the hands of the Investigation, doubtless envying their dead comrades.

Ptosphes lowered his sword and strode to the door of the woodshed on one side of the courtyard. Then he drew a line with the sword’s point, through the dirt and straw covering the flagstones of the courtyard, from the woodshed to the blacksmith’s forge on the other side. He then took a deep breath, sheathed his sword, and turned to face his men.

“All who want to stay—cross over this line and join me. Those who want to die somewhere else—stay where you are!”

Silence. Ptosphes could hear the stamping of horses from the stables on the far side of the courtyard. An unnaturally complete silence to be hanging over five hundred men. No one coughed, no one shuffled his feet. Ptosphes could have sworn some had ceased to breathe.

A thickset man in battered armor pushed his way from the rear into the open. Ptosphes tried not to stare too hard. It was Vurth.

Vurth, the peasant who’d been Kalvan’s first host in this land, who owed his life and his family’s to Kalvan’s fighting skill. Who’d sent word of the Nostori raiders to Tarr-Hostigos, so that Rylla could lead out the cavalry who cut off the raiders and found Kalvan.

Vurth, a peasant who might really be called Dralm’s first chosen tool for bringing about everything which had happened since that spring night almost four years ago. Ptosphes wondered briefly what Patriarch Xentos would have to say about the theological propriety of that notion—if presiding over the squabbles of the League of Dralm in far-off Agrys City left him any time for such matters.

Much good may that do Xentos in the eyes of the gods, when the League sends only words of condolence instead of soldiers and muskets to those who fight its battles against Styphon.

Ptosphes examined the gray-haired peasant. His clothes and face were caked with mud and powder smoke, one shoulder was bandaged, and he limped. He wore the breastplate of some Harphaxi nobleman, once etched and gilded, now hacked and tarnished, over his homespun smock. On his head was a battered morion helmet, on his feet cavalry boots from two different corpses. He still carried the cavalryman’s musketoon he’d acquired the night of Kalvan’s coming, and both it and the powder flask at his belt were clean.

“First Prince, Captain-General Harmakros, people,” Vurth began. “This isn’t really a Council, so maybe I don’t have the right to start off, as if I was Speaker for the Peasants like Phosg, Dralm keep him. I think I’ve a right to be heard, though.”

Ptosphes would have cut down anyone who disagreed. The men saw this, and Vurth went on.

“Prince, most of us here either can’t run, don’t want to run, or don’t have anywhere to run to. My farm has burned, my wife is dead, and one son too. The other son’s off with King Kalvan, in the Royal Dragoons, and my son-in-law Xykos is Captain of Queen Rylla’s Lifeguards. Dralm keep all the daughters who ran off with mercenaries.

“Styphon’s taken or chased off everything I had except my life. All I want to do with what’s left of it is kill Styphon’s dogs until they kill me. I’m too old to go climbing trees or hide in caves like a thief, even for that. I’d rather sit here and kill the bastards in comfort!”

Vurth shouldered his musketoon and stepped forward across the line before anyone could cheer.

Ptosphes felt his eyes burn and quickly blinked back the threatening tears. He stepped up beside Vurth and put his arm around the peasant’s shoulders. Any land that bore men like this would be barren ground indeed for Styphon’s House. Such men could be killed; they could not be frightened.

Harmakros’s voice cut through the new silence.

“Lift that litter, you fools! You don’t have to stay yourselves!”

The bearers’ reply was nearly inaudible and totally disrespectful. They had the Captain-General across the line before Ptosphes stopped grinning.

Another man stepped out, then two more, then five, then a band of ten, then a band too numerous to count, and after that it was a steady stream. Ptosphes saw one gray-haired man telling a club footed boy no more than ten to stand where he was, then step out. The boy looked sullenly after his grandfather until he was sure the man couldn’t see him, then slipped across the line.

Ptosphes turned his back on the men. He didn’t want them to see his face until he could command it as a captain and a Prince ought to. By the time he turned around, the space on the other side of the line was empty.

Ptosphes ran his eyes over the garrison, with the care of a man trained at the quick counting of large masses of men. There’d been just over five hundred before. No doubt a few had slipped off, perhaps as many as a man could count on his fingers and toes. Call it four hundred and eighty left behind, quite enough to do all the work Styphon’s Grand Host would allow.

Ptosphes was fumbling for words of thanks when a sentry on the keep shouted. “Prince Ptosphes! Enemy scouts in Hostigos Town! On the east side, cavalry with two guns.”

Guns up with the scouts meant they had orders to fight instead of hit and run. Who would have such orders? Perhaps the Zarthani Knights…

Ptosphes swallowed; the lump in his throat twitched but remained where it was. “What colors?” he managed to shout.

“King Demistophon’s and a mercenary company’s. Looks like a rearing white horse on a blue field.”

The lump shrank. Mercenaries wouldn’t burn a town they expected to provide them with dry beds and hot food, unless they had other orders. Such orders might not be obeyed, either, unless the man who gave them was watching.

With Grandbutcher Soton not up yet and Phidestros himself a mercenary, there might be no such man here. If Soton arrived after the Grand Host’s advance guard had settled in—well, making mercenaries in another king’s pay burn their own shelter and food was a task Ptosphes wouldn’t wish even on Soton.

IV

Grand Captain-General Phidestros of Hos-Harphax felt his guts twist as the vanguard of his Iron Band rode by a burning farmhouse. A child lay on the steps, skull split.

In the farmyard itself, three of Roxthar’s Holy Investigators were “questioning” a Hostigi woman, no doubt the child’s mother. The Investigators wore hooded white robes with a red sun-wheel over the breast. The robes were well stained with mud and blood, some of the blood long dry.

“They can fight women and children well enough!” growled Grand Captain Kyblannos, commander of the Iron Band. “Where were Styphon’s swine when we charged Kalvan’s artillery at Ardros Field!”

Phidestros leaned out of his saddle to grip his friend’s hand before he could draw a pistol and do something foolish. Not that half the Iron Band and Phidestros himself didn’t feel the same…

Phidestros shut his ears against the woman’s screams. Why in the name of every god couldn’t the Styphoni at least find more private places to torture and maim? It was Roxthar, of course—Roxthar, with the fanatic’s blindness to the opinions of others and total sense of his own Tightness. He’d still better learn discretion, before half the Royal Army of Harphax and more than half the mercenaries started hunting Investigators instead of Hostigi.

Phidestros led veterans, men accustomed to danger, wounds, and death, for themselves and for others. He didn’t lead butchers who reveled in killing like weasels among turkey chicks!

Curse and blast the Holy Investigation and all its works! They were dragging honorable soldiers down into the same kind of sty they enjoyed, without doing Styphon’s House on Earth all that much good. These priests seemed to forget too easily what soldiers learned young if they wished to grow old: men made desperate by fear will fight to the last.

Phidestros twisted his head and flexed his shoulders as much as his armor would allow, to ease the tautness. He should be the happiest man in the Great Kingdoms, yet he felt more fear of the future than he had ever felt of Kalvan.

Kalvan was not invincible. Ardros Field proved that. The greatest victory since Erasthames the Great defeated the Ruthani Confederation at Sestra more than four centuries ago, and won by a man who three years ago was lucky to count two hundred soldiers following his banner! A victory so great that the Grand Host had already released some of its mercenaries and set others to garrisoning captured castles. Five thousand of the best were hard on the heels of the fleeing Royal Army of Hos-Hostigos.

Phidestros knew he should be riding with those men, instead of playing steward to Archpriest Roxthar and his Investigators. Let Grand Master Soton invest Tarr-Hostigos while Phidestros pressed the pursuit until Kalvan was no more! As long as Kalvan was alive, he might rise again. A man who could conjure a Great Kingdom out of not much more than the gods’ own air was no ordinary foe.

But try telling that to anyone else, including Grand Master Soton, who ought to know better! Phidestros could not understand why Soton deferred so much to Roxthar. The Grand Master was not only the highest-ranking soldier of Styphon’s House, he was an Archpriest in his own right, the Investigator’s equal in priestly rank.

A mystery, and one that demanded an answer soon. Otherwise they’d never run that wily fox Kalvan to earth before he found another burrow.

It would not be an answer easily come by, either. Undue curiosity about the affairs of the Investigation was a short road to a charge of “heresy.”

The Iron Band started down the last slope into Hostigos Town, laid out on its alternating hills and dales. In the distance, Phidestros saw the Kettlepot Mountains and Hostigos Gap, with Tarr-Hostigos perched atop two formidable mountains to the right of the Gap.

The first mountain held the main castle with its great keep surrounded by walls and gun towers. The second and higher peak held a tower with its own walls.

Removing Tarr-Hostigos from the path of the Grand Host was not going to be as simple as taking a splinter from a child’s foot, regardless of what Roxthar thought. If Phidestros had his choice, he would leave a detachment to blockade the castle and let starvation do the rest.

But he was merely a Grand Captain-General, in a war run by priests. Also a Captain-General who answered to a Great King who’d mortgaged everything but his concubines’ shifts (if they had any) to Styphon’s House!

It was time to send the priests back to their temples and the counselors back to their castles so the soldiers could go on with finishing off Kalvan.

As they rode down toward Hostigos Town, Phidestros was pleased to see only two columns of smoke rising from it. There’d be dry beds at least for the next quarter-moon.

A rider galloped up, shouting for Phidestros. From his silvered armor and black-caparisoned horse with a silver sun-wheel on each quarter, he was a Knight of the Holy Lance.

“Hail, Grand Captain-General Phidestros! I am Commander Rythar of the Holy Lance, with a message from Grand Master Soton.”

“Greetings, Commander Rythar. What is your master’s pleasure?”

“The Grand Master requests your presence upon yonder hill.”

The Commander raised his visor and pointed to a nearby hill. A Blade of sixty Knights stood in attendance on the diminutive figure of the Grand Master, whose blackened armor made a stark contrast to their polished finery.

Phidestros nodded to Kyblannos. The Grand Captain told off sixty of the Iron Band and placed them around his Captain-General until Phidestros felt like a babe in its nurse’s arms. He held his peace; Kyblannos would be like a she-wolf with one cub toward his old captain until the day he died.

It took a few moments for the horses of Phidestros’s party to get used to rough ground again, after several candles on the smooth paving of Kalvan’s Great King’s Highway. Kalvan is a hard man not to respect, even in defeat, was Phidestros’s thought. Many saw the wisdom of such roads. None were built, until Kalvan came.

A quarter-candle took Phidestros up the hill to Solon’s outpost. Phidestros dismounted and advanced to greet Soton, as Banner-Captain Geblon arrayed the Iron Band facing the Knights.

The two commanders clasped hands. Soton pointed to Tarr-Hostigos.

“A hard nut to crack, aye, Captain-General?”

“One to give any squirrel a bit of work. It’s big enough to hold two thousand men and supplies for a year, if they don’t mind horseflesh. We may see snow before we see a breach in those walls!”

“Rest easy, Captain-General. We’ve interrogated some prisoners—not as the Investigation does it, by the way. Kalvan’s left only a skeleton garrison, five hundred men and some of those wrinkled like crab apples. We should have the castle invested in a few days. Then we can see about tracking Kalvan all the way to the Great Mountains if we must!”

Phidestros wanted to sing, dance, and embrace Soton, but dignity and caution shaped his tongue to a question. “Will His Bloodiness let us show such wisdom?”

“Guard your tongue, Phidestros. You are not so high that you cannot be made to lie down on the rack!” Solon’s look would have stopped a charging bull.

This time frustration and disgust kept Phidestros altogether silent. Just how far into Roxthar’s pocket was Soton? Before this year he would not have believed a man lived who could bind Soton to his will. Surely the mystery of Soton and Roxthar demanded a solution, before it threatened the victory so dearly bought with the blood of men Phidestros had led to battle!

When Phidestros found his tongue again, his voice was cold. “Yes, Grand Master. I have seen the fate of women and children who defy the Holy Investigator.”

Solon’s face paled and he looked away. “It is our duty to obey the Temple’s will,” he muttered. “This war against women and babes is not my choice, either, Phidestros. But when the Hostigi heresy is scourged from the land, the Investigation will be ended.”

If you believe that, Phidestros thought, you aren’t half the man I’d thought.

“The commanders are to be billeted at Ptosphes’s new palace in Hostigos Town,” Soton continued. “I’ll be going there myself, as soon as we finish this drawing of Tarr-Hosligos.”

He pointed at a Knight sitting on a stump with a slate and charcoal in hand. Phidestros peered over the man’s shoulder, to see a fine rendering of the castle, with every tower and gate clearly shown.

Best round up Kalvan’s mapmakers as soon as we’re settled in. Some may have fled, and doubtless Soton will want his share. But this, please Galzar, is something soldiers can settle between them without listening to priests’ babbling!

A hundred petty matters kept Phidestros and his Iron Band out of Hostigos Town for much of the morning. By the time they’d covered the last furlongs of Old Tigo Road, the few fires were out. The streets were deserted, except for soldiers and chain gangs of prisoners, led by Roxthar’s Investigalors and Styphon’s Own Guard, resplendent in their silvered armor and red capes.

Phidestros was hardly surprised to see the Guard acting as the Investigators’ allies. The Temple Bands had a reputation as stout fighters, who neither asked nor gave quarter. That last habit had given them the nickname of “Slyphon’s Red Hand.”

The chain gangs all seemed bound for Hostigos Square, which Phidestros found already half-filled with slave pens of Hostigi prisoners. The palace itself was garrisoned by Guardsmen standing practically shoulder-to-shoulder, and Investigators darted in and out like rats from a half-eaten corpse. Phidestros led the Iron Band toward the palace, ignoring the curses and threats of Styphoni brusquely pushed aside.

The Iron Band replied only with silence, and occasionally with a hand rested lightly on a pistol butt. Before it reached the palace, the Styphoni were giving way without protest.

As Phidestros dismounted, he knew one thing. He’d be cursed if he billeted any of his men in this nest of temple-rats! He’d say that the siege demanded all his attention and find quarters elsewhere! Otherwise the Iron Band would start the war against the Investigators here and now, and he’d be lucky to end up back commanding a company of every other captain’s leavings!

TWO

I

Danar Sirna’s first thought on waking up was to wish that she hadn’t. Being dead or at least asleep seemed the best solution to quite a number of her problems, starting with her crashing headache.

The first thing Sirna saw clearly was a dead man. Beyond him lay two more dead men, one with half of his face blown away. Was she in what passed for field hospitals here-and-now?

She was lying on a straw pallet, with a wood-beamed roof over her, whitewashed plaster walls around her, and a window in one of those walls. The warped wooden shutter was ajar; through the gap she could see what looked like a cobblestone street in Hostigos Town.

She must have been picked up and brought in by one side or another, and put in here because she looked dead or dying. The whole left side of her head not only throbbed horribly but felt caked and stiff with dried blood. A scalp wound like that could make you look dead to people in a hurry.

Sirna had just decided that sitting up was a bad idea when a board creaked behind her. She decided to face her visitor sitting.

She struggled up, groaned, and turned to see a woman well past middle age, made up in a fashion that would have announced her profession on many other time-lines besides this one.

“So you’re alive,” the painted lady said. “They call me Menandra. What’s your name, sweetheart?” The voice was gruff and coarsened by alcohol, but not unfriendly.

Better say something. Sirna didn’t dare nod, but her mouth was so dry that only a croak came out.

Menandra bawled something in a voice that would have rallied a cavalry regiment. Sirna winced. One of the house women appeared with a jug and a cup.

“Drink this.”

Sirna rinsed her mouth out, then swallowed. It went down, heavily watered wine with some herbs in it. When she thought it was going to stay down, she asked. “What’s been happening since—Ardros Field?” She realized she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious.

Menandra looked at the ceiling as she spoke. “Well, King Kalvan is on his way west with what’s left of the—his men. Prince Ptosphes is holding the castle, to let him get away. We’re playing host to Captain-General Phidestros’s Iron Band. Does that answer you, girl?”

“What’s Phidestros doing here?” Sirna asked.

Menandra’s reply was a hoarse whisper. “I hear that the Captain-General’s not too pleased with how Roxthar’s Investigators are tearing up this town. He’s supposed to be staying over there at the big headquarters, in what used to be Ptosphes’s palace. But he spends most of his nights here or over by the siege works.” She grinned. “Once he sets eyes on you, he won’t be staying anywhere else.”

Sirna strangled another groan. Menandra shrugged. “War’s like that. Now, the next question is, what do we do with you now? Some peasants picked you up, thought you fit for ransoming. They had you in a cart when the Iron Band passed by. They ran you on into town in the cart, facedown on top of a load of squash with your skirt up to your arse.”

“With my skirt–?”

The picture made Sirna giggle, then laugh. Once she started laughing she couldn’t stop, although it made her head hurt worse. It also shook her stomach, which finally rebelled.

When Sirna stopped retching, Menandra was still standing over her, trying to look stern but not entirely succeeding. “As I said, what about you, girl? You’re a long way from home and your friends at the Foundry are either dead or run off, the true gods alone know where.”

“Run off?”

Menandra couldn’t give many details, but what she said told Sirna very clearly that the survivors of the University Study Team had left her for dead. It took all her self-control not to cry. She not only felt sick, she was frightened.

“Not good for you, the more so since the Styphoni will be looking for people from the Foundry. Outlanders especially. I can probably protect you here at the Gull’s Nest, if you’re willing to work.”

This was more than Sirna could digest in one gulp. Clearly Menandra was the owner and madam of the Gull’s Nest (and why that name, this far from the sea?) and was quite willing to let her earn her keep, sick or not.

“No!”

“It’s how I started out in Agrys City, girl. More years ago than either of us wants to think about. There’s worse things than making a living on your back. Gives you a new view of the world, you might say.”

There probably were worse things here-and-now than making a living as one of Menandra’s whores. Right now Sirna couldn’t think of them. She shook her head slowly.

“Well, you’re handsome enough for it, and to spare.”

Sirna shook her head again.

“I’ll leave it be, then. Just remember, though—anything you make in the house, half goes to me. Or you go to the soldiers!”

Sirna closed her eyes and wished it all away. The smoke-blackened timbers were still there when she opened her eyes. She really was in a situation where she could be turned over to a band of mercenaries and passed from man to man until she died or they got tired of her. It was a long way from reading or even writing about “the inferior position of women” to experiencing it.

Deliberately, she closed and locked a door in her mind, on First Level and all the pleasures and privileges she had there, even on her chances of ever seeing it again. (Which were slim enough at best, with Kalvan defeated and her left for dead.) She would look forward, look this Styphon-cursed time-line squarely in the eye, and dare it to do its worst.

Not that it hasn’t already given me its best shot–

She came back from this mental exercise to see Menandra looking positively concerned. “That crack on the head didn’t addle your wits, did it?”

“I—don’t think so. I must have slept off the worst of it. I was just thinking—what I’m going to do to those sons of the gods only could count how many fathers who ran off and left me.”

That was no lie, either. She now understood emotionally as well as intellectually the concept of the blood feud. If she ever caught Outtime Studies Director Talgan Dreth alone in a dark place—

“By Yirtta’s dugs, girl, I can’t give charity! Phidestros’s men may pay me if Styphon’s House ever pays them. Then again they may not. If they don’t want to and I ask, they may burn the place down!”

And pass the women around among themselves, Sirna added mentally. Somehow the idea was no longer so paralyzingly frightful, now that she’d closed that door to First Level.

“If you know anything about healing, even the smallest bit, you might make yourself useful. Phidestros is going to be sending his sick and hurt here. The Iron Band’s Uncle Wolf was killed in the battle, and there aren’t so many priests of Galzar that even a Captain-General can conjure them up. You help patch and purge Phidestros’s men, and there won’t be any trouble keeping you.”

“Help those damned filthy Styphon’s sons of–?” Sirna began.

Gently but emphatically, Menandra slapped her. At least it was probably intended as a gentle slap. Sirna had to shake her head a couple of times, to make sure her neck wasn’t broken. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Menandra warning her against saying anything less than complimentary about Styphon.

“Archpriest Roxthar’s here with his Investigators. Anyone who blasphemes Styphon within a day’s ride of him will wish she had been turned over to the soldiers. Yes, and the stallions and the draft oxen too!”

From what she’d heard of Roxthar, Sirna saw no reason to argue the point. “I’m sorry, Menandra. I’m still a little confused.”

“Well, unconfuse yourself, girl. You might start with that head wound. Clean it up, and I’ll think you’re good enough to turn loose on Phidestros’s men.”

Menandra bawled for scissors, a mirror, hot water, and bandages, while Sirna took off her mud- and blood-smeared clothes and examined her body for other injuries. A prize collection of black-and-blue marks was all she turned up. Her anger toward the people who’d abandoned her grew. If they hadn’t been too panic-stricken to spend ten seconds examining her, they’d have learned she was alive and fit to be moved.

The head wound was a long shallow gash, probably a sword cut. She must have picked up the concussion when she fell. No signs of infection, but she made a thorough job of cleaning the wound, starting with cutting off the hair all around it. It was bleeding again by the time she was finished, and so was her lower lip where she’d bitten it. She finished by trimming her hair all around.

“You’re cutting off one of your best parts, you know that, girl?’’ Menandra said.

Persistent, aren’t you? “I’ll be hard to recognize with my hair short. Maybe they’ll even think I’m too ugly to bother.”

“With a figure like yours? You’ve got a lot to learn about men, girl. Somebody’s going to want what you’ve got if you shaved yourself bald! Best arrange to give it to a man big enough to fight off the rest. Or else you’ll wish you’d taken my first offer.”

What am I, a mare to go with the strongest and fiercest stallion in the herd?

Exactly.

Sirna sighed and stood up, swaying slightly but not really wanting to lie down again. That was one good sign. Another was that she was hungry.

“Is there anything to eat around here?”

Menandra chuckled. “You’ll do, girl. Come on down to the kitchen and I’ll see if the bread and tea are ready.”

II

Tiny clouds of white smoke rose three times from the Styphoni siege battery. Ptosphes started counting. At “five” the three shots crashed into Tarr-Hostigos. One struck the face of the outer wall, the others hit the left side of the breach. Rock dust as white as the powder smoke whirled up, carried down toward Ptosphes on the morning breeze. He tasted the grit on his tongue and teeth. It was a familiar taste by now, with the siege into its tenth day.

The men working on the barricade rising inside the breach barely looked up from their work. The barricade was made of heavy timbers from the buildings of the outer courtyard, flagstones from the courtyard itself, and stones from the breach itself. The men at work were lacing the timbers together with ropes and strips of leather, while others stood by, ready to haul a cannon on to the top of the barricade.

“Pretty old-fashioned way they have of doing things,” said Master Gunner Thalmoth, who was standing beside Ptosphes. “’Thout those captured guns and the slaves to haul ’em up, they’d be sitting down on the level making faces at us.”

Thalmoth was old enough to remember standing in the crowd with his father to see the newborn Ptosphes presented to the people of Hostigos as their future Prince. Too old to take the field, he’d taught at the University as well as lending a lifetime of artillery experience to testing the new Hostigi guns.

Ptosphes wondered if Thalmoth had volunteered to remain behind entirely because of his age. (He’d been seen to lift powder barrels and wield handspikes on balky guns.) Did he perhaps hold himself responsible for the prooftesting explosion that killed four men and took off Captain-General Harmakros’s leg on the eve of the campaign that led to Ardros Field?

Thalmoth owed an answer to that question only to Dralm or Galzar, not to an overcurious Prince.

“It’s their first big siege,” Ptosphes said tolerantly. “No doubt they’ll do better next time.”

This morning he felt almost benign even toward the besieging Styphoni. It was a beautiful day, and not too hot. He’d eaten a good breakfast. The garrison’s wounded were doing as well as could be expected. Best of all, the men of Tarr-Hostigos now knew they’d won the victory they had to win.

Last night a party of picked men had slipped into the besiegers’ forward positions. Their score was twenty-eight taken prisoner, more than fifty killed, a magazine blown up, and three bombards spiked, all for the price of one man dead and four wounded.

All the prisoners said that Kalvan hadn’t been overtaken. Some added that the men chasing him had been ordered back to join the siege. One said he’d heard a whole band was wiped out in an ambush by Kalvan’s rearguard. (Ptosphes suspected that the last man was trying to please his captors, who had nothing to lose by blowing him from a gun.)

The last stand at Tarr-Hostigos was not going to be a waste of lives. If that wasn’t worth celebrating, then nothing was.

Of course, the odds against the besieger would rise still higher now that the Grand Host was bringing back their vanguard. Since those odds were already close to a hundred to one, who cared? Ptosphes rather liked Harmakros’s way of putting it:

“Aren’t we lucky? We’ll never run out of targets now!”

That might have been Harmakros’s fever speaking. In spite of his stump having been cleaned to drive out the fester-demons, Harmakros had been working far too hard for a man so badly hurt. However, most of the rest of the garrison seemed to feel the same way.

Ptosphes continued his walk around the castle walls, Thalmoth following ten paces behind. The riflemen in the towers encouraged enemy musketeers to stay beyond accurate range, and the besiegers didn’t waste cannon shot on single men. Ptosphes suspected that they were short of fireseed and saving what they had for the storming. No trouble of that kind for his people, even without the reserve of twelve tons of Styphon’s Best in the cellar of the keep.

He inspected the gunners at the main gate and the siege battery at the bottom of the draw leading up to the gate. The battery had been laid out by someone who knew his business, which was also why it had no guns in it as yet. They would be needed for the storming, to keep the Hostigi on the gates from having target practice on the men coming up the draw. Until then, they would simply be on the wrong end of plunging fire from the gate towers.

Another hundred paces along the walls, and some of Ptosphes’s good mood evaporated. On this side Archpriest Raxthar had his prison—really more of a stock pen—for the people he was Investigating. Like most of the besiegers’ works, it was walled in timber and stone carted by slave gangs from Hostigos Town, but lacked their roof of old tents. At the rate the besiegers’ works were swallowing the town, it soon wouldn’t matter if they burned it or not.

A long line of gallows rose by the gate of the prison pen, most of them dangling bodies, and continued on down the road halfway to Hostigos Town. Ptosphes could smell the bodies who’d been dangling more than a couple of days, even over the stable-and-powder-smoke reek of the siege.

The gallows seemed to be more burdened now than even a few days ago. No doubt the Styphoni had finished with their Hostigi slaves after they’d sweated and bled to haul the captured sixteen-pounders up the slope to the siege battery.

That whole affair had been as bloody in itself as some of the battles of the days before Kalvan. The Styphoni had killed a fair number of their own men, mining the places where Ptosphes’ grandfather had carved the slopes into vertical faces. The Hostigi had also had to kill some of their own folk, weeping and cursing as they flailed at the gun teams with case shot and rifles.

The end of it was what had to be, when one side could spend men like water. The guns were in place and hammering at the walls of Tarr-Hostigos in a way even those ancient stones could not endure forever. Hostigi guns, Alkides’s prize sixteen-pounders. No surprise that, considering that all of them except “Galzar’s Teeth” had been lost at Ardros Field.

No surprise, and therefore something Ptosphes should have been able to do more about. He’d forgotten Kalvan’s advice, given late one night when they’d all been emptying a jug of Ermut’s brandy.

“Always plan against the worst thing your enemy can do. That way you’ll be safe, no matter what he does. If he doesn’t do his worst you’ll win more easily.”

Wise words. Clearly the army of the Great King Truman taught its captains well.

Ptosphes shook his head and lit his pipe. There was no call to feel sorry for himself. He had done too much of that. Besides, while he might not be fit for service in the hosts of Great King Truman, he was no bad captain for Tarr-Hostigos when every day it held was another victory over the Styphoni.

III

The man on what had been Menandra’s best table writhed and twisted, and almost but not quite screamed. The four mercenaries holding him strained to keep him still.

“Lie quiet,” Sirna muttered. “You lie quiet, or I’ll have to use a sandbag on you. I don’t want to do that. You may have already hurt your head, when the tunnel fell on you.”

The soldier on the table sank his teeth into his lower lip. Blood came, but he lay still as Sirna cut open the flesh of his cheek over the finger-length splinter there and drew out the bloody wood. More blood flowed freely. Sirna let it flow while she picked out the last bits of wood, then bound up the wound in a dressing of boiled rags. By the time she’d finished the bandaging, the soldier had fainted, but he came awake as his comrades lifted him off the table.

“Sorry to be so much trouble, girl,” the soldier said between clenched teeth. “But I wanted to look at something pretty.”

Sirna grinned. “With the gods’ favor and no fester-demons, you’ll have two eyes to look at pretty girls. And a fine scar to attract the ones you want.’’

The scar would be a lifelong disfigurement—no reconstructive surgery here-and-now. Still, if the soldier was able to contemplate life with it…

She’d thought she’d been used to what people on Fourth Level could face, after almost three years with the University Team. It still made a difference, to live alone among such people, with the nearest person who would have ever heard of First Level at least a hundred miles away—farther if they’d kept on running. Not to mention the possibility of spending the rest of her life here-and-now.

On top of everything else, Styphon’s soldiers! It wasn’t easy to accept that men who fought for something as silly, irrational, even barbaric, as Styphon’s House could be like other men. But they fought just as bravely, cried out just as loudly for their mothers when they hurt, and made just as many bawdy jokes that could still turn her face brighter than her cropped hair.

Or rather, it hadn’t been easy to accept this, ten days ago. Now it sometimes seemed that she’d never believed anything else.

No more sick or wounded seemed to be coming, so Sirna sent one of the women with the knife and the salvaged bandages off to the kitchen to boil them clean. She also made at least her twentieth mental memo:

Borrow some better instruments from a priest of Galzar, or have the Iron Band’s armorers make them.

Another woman, face streaked with makeup, wiped down the table with a bucket of boiling water. Menandra herself brought Sirna a cup of hot turkey broth.

“You’d better eat something solid, you know,” the madam said. “Even if it’s only an omelet. Won’t do, having you faint on top of men too hurt to enjoy it!”

“Oh, I’ll eat something tonight.” At the moment, the mere thought of solid food made her gag.

“Tonight…” Menandra began, then lowered her voice to a whisper so that none of the wounded on pallets along the other side of the room could hear.

“The talk in town is that it’s tomorrow they go for the castle. So you’d better eat and sleep tonight, or by Yirtta I’ll turn you over my knee and spank you!” She ruffled Sirna’s hair with one large greasy hand.

Sirna gulped her broth with both hands clasped tightly around the cup so Menandra wouldn’t see that they were shaking. Seventeen wounded men in one day was bad enough. If they stormed the castle, it could be more like seventy—or seven hundred! Although she might have more help from the priests of Galzar if the promised reinforcements came up. Had they? She was trying to think of a tactful way to ask when the door to the street opened and a suit of armor wearing dusty leather breeches and boots strode in.

The suit of armor also had a brown beard and wide gray eyes, but it wasn’t until the high-crested helmet came off that Sirna realized there was a man inside. When she saw that the man had a high forehead and a long scar across his right cheek, she knew who’d come to visit his wounded.

Grand Captain-General Phidestros waved the men trying to rise back on to their pallets with his free hand, set his helmet on the table, and took off his mud-caked gloves. Then he grinned at Sirna.

“You randy bastards! You’ve been keeping secret the best thing this wreck of a town has to offer. Where’s your loyalty to your commander, you——?” The term would have been insulting as well as obscene in any other tone. The men replied in kind, except for Banner-Captain Geblon, on light duty today because of an attack of dysentery.

“She is Menandra’s healer, Captain-General,” Geblon said, trying to both look and sound innocent. “She has been marvellously chaste.”

“I’m sure she has,” Phidestros replied. “But has she been caught? If she hasn’t, you aren’t the men I thought you were!”

Sirna stopped blushing and started giggling. Phidestros bent down and gripped her by one arm, pulling her to her feet as easily as if she’d been a child. Seen close up, his long face showed deep lines, apparently gouged with a blunt chisel, then filled with dust.

By the time he’d led her into the hall where no one could see her, she was trying to stop giggling. Somehow she wanted to impress him favorably, and not only because he had the power of life and death over her.

“To speak plainly—what is your name, by the way?”

“Sirna.”

“Speaking plainly, Sirna, I owe you for a good thirty of my men helped and at least two saved outright. Where did you learn to treat burns like Aygoll’s?”

“My father had some skill in healing, and was always quick to learn anything someone else would teach. One year we lived not far from a smithy. They knew how to heal burns from molten metal.”

“Curious. What you did for Aygoll is very much like what Kalvan is said to have taught, about driving out the fester-demons.”

“Is it not possible that the gods can send wisdom to both good and evil men, and leave it to them how it shall be used?” She looked up to meet his eyes as she spoke, and she thought she kept her voice steady.

“It’s not only possible, it happens all the time,” Phidestros said. “Only don’t try arguing the point with Holy Investigator Roxthar. He’s threatening to purge the hosts of Styphon once he’s finished with Hostigos.”

“Aren’t you speaking a little freely, if he’s running—if he’s that suspicious?”

Like most of the surviving population of Hostigos Town, Sirna had stayed indoors. Those whom urgent business or the search for food drove outside too often found themselves confronted by white-robed Investigators or squads of Styphon’s Red Hand. Few of those returned. Now only rats and fools strayed outside; rumor had it that the Investigators were turning to house-to-house searches in East Hostigos Town.

“Afraid you won’t be paid, Sirna?”

“That’s not it at all! I just—I’m not like Menandra, you know. I’d feel sorry for a thrice-convicted rapist facing the Investigation.’’

“So would I, believe me.” He grinned, displaying a mouthful of almost intact white teeth, which meant not only good health but good luck in battle.

“Menandra is no worse than the gods made her, but they were drunk that day and perhaps a little careless. No, Sirna. I’m in no danger. Not unless the Archpriests decide they don’t need good soldiers anymore. That won’t be until Kalvan’s dead, and somehow I think that man is going to take a lot of killing.”

Sirna would have kissed Phidestros if she hadn’t known he would misinterpret the gesture. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it did,” she said.

“No. Which means that Roxthar is going to be dealing lightly with soldiers for a while. Healers who may be tainted with heresy aren’t quite as indispensable. Remember that, and you may live to be paid for your work with the Iron Band.

“Oh, and I’ll pay it right into your hands. If Menandra asks for a single brass piece, tell me. We’ll roast our victory ox over her furniture.”

The way Phidestros’s voice and face changed in those last words made Sirna want to flinch away from his touch. She forced herself to stand still as he put a hand behind her back and urged her back toward the main room.

“Let’s join the men, before they gamble away all their money wagering which one of us was on top!”

THREE

I

Phidestros awoke the instant a hand pressed over his lips. Instinctively his right hand snaked underneath the bedroll his head rested on, to grip the poniard there.

Now another hand gripped his right wrist. Phidestros used his left hand to reach for the single-shot widow-maker he kept in a pouch next to his heart.

“For Galzar’s sake, sir! It’s me, Kyblannos!”

Phidestros stopped struggling when he recognized the voice, but didn’t let go of the still-undrawn widow-maker.

“What in Regwarn’s Hidehole is up now?”

“A parlay, sir. Some of the mercenary captains would like a private word with you, out of Archtorturer Roxthar’s hearing.”

“By the Wargod’s Mace, couldn’t they pick a more civilized hour?” Phidestros groaned.

At least the captains had picked the right place. The tent Phidestros used when he spent the night in the siege lines was a thousand paces from the nearest other tent. Men like Kyblannos guarded it, men who had been with Phidestros in the days of the Iron Company, men who had no fear of priests or torturers. Men who had guarded him with their lives and would go on doing so.

Phidestros cursed again and sat up.

“Who wants to talk with me?”

“Grand Captains Brakkos, Demmos, and Thymestros, Captain Phidammes, Uncle Wolf Eurocles, and three other captains I could not recognize.”

That was five of the best freelances in the Grand Host, leading about a sixth of its strength. Now that he was awake enough to think clearly, Phidestros found himself not altogether surprised.

The first attempt to storm Tarr-Hostigos had been a disaster. The attack up the mountainside at the breach and up the draw toward the gate had been bloodily repulsed. The Hostigi had thrown everything from barrels of fireseed to ordinary rocks at the storming parties, reducing them to bloody rags fifty paces from the walls.

In the northern work, a handful of Hostigi had slaughtered twenty besiegers for every man they lost before the scaling ladders finally reached the walls. They might have held as firmly as they had in the main castle, if it hadn’t been for the newly arrived siege rifles.

Converted from the heavy boat swivels used by the Zarthani Knights against the Ruthani of the southern swamps, they could go anywhere three men could climb. Once in action, they outranged even a Hostigi rifleman perched on a tower. Ten of them had given the Grand Host the northern work of Tarr-Hostigos. Fifty might have given them the main castle.

At least they now had a place where heavy guns might play against the keep, once they were hauled up there. Given time, those guns would finish the work with no need for another attack.

Time, though, is just exactly what I won’t have. If the freelance captains don’t take it away, Roxthar will. He knows only one way of solving this problem, and that the bloodiest.

Does he plan to bleed the Grand Host to a shell, so it cannot turn against him after Kalvan is overthrown?

Phidestros began pulling on his clothes. “By the way, Kyblannos. What do they want? More gold?”

“I don’t know, sir. Truly.”

“Help me get my breastplate on, then let them in.”

The captains slunk into the tent like foxes into a turkey yard. Uncle Wolf Eurocles was in the lead, chief among the Host’s Uncle Wolfs and formerly a freelance Captain-General of some note in his own right. His hair was almost white and his beard iron gray, but his face was still ruddy and his back straight as a musket barrel.

When everyone was inside, Phidestros rose. “I won’t apologize for poor hospitality. It’s too late for that. What can I do for you gentlemen?”

Eurocles spoke first. “In the name of Galzar, can you bring this mad siege to an end?”

“Not without putting my jewels between the blades of Roxthar’s clipping shears.”

Nervous laughter skittered around the tent.

Grand Captain Brakkos spoke up next. “I thought you led this army, Grand Captain-General, not Roxthar’s regiment of bedgowns.”

“I command, but only so long as I do nothing to offend Archpriest Roxthar or Great King Lysandros. Where do you think I would have been if we had lost at Ardros Field? Even now, I have Grand Master Soton, Roxthar, and would-be successors all tugging at my swordarm.

“The real commander of this Host is the one who fills your pay chests with gold—and you know it.”

“Then not even you can stop this senseless assault on Tarr-Hostigos?” Eurocles asked.

“No, Uncle Wolf. Were it up to me I’d leave a blockading force with a few heavy guns, to starve the Hostigi out of their fortress or knock it down on their thick heads. I would take the rest of the Host after Kalvan until I caught him, then pickle his head as a gift for Lysandros.

“But our Holy Investigator decrees otherwise. As I would like to survive this siege, I am not going to disobey.”

“May Galzar strike that blasphemer of Galzar dead!” Brakkos shouted.

“Hush, man! Even the walls have ears,” a captain urged.

“Curse and blast Styphon and all his Archpriests!” Brakkos raved on. “This isn’t the only gap in the mountains, for Galzar’s sake! None of the others are half so stoutly defended. Let us push through one of them and fight Kalvan’s fugitives, not sit here like owls in a thunderstorm!”

“Silence, Brakkos,” Eurocles replied. “Your flapping tongue is a danger to us all.” His steely gaze finally reduced Brakkos to stuttering.

“Captain-General Phidestros, you are the leader of this Host, and that is a sacred trust given by Galzar. You must stop this madness.”

“If I had Galzar’s hand to guide mine, I would. I do not. Only Styphon’s branding iron and the headsman’s ax rule here. I say again, and I hope for the last time—if I order the Host to do anything whatever that displeases Roxthar, my life will be forfeit and the Host under the command of Soton.”

“Then stay and be Roxthar’s slave if you will,” Grand Captain Demmos snapped. “We shall do otherwise.”

“Do anything else and your life won’t be worth a bent phenig,” Phidestros replied. “Roxthar has a memory like Galzar’s Muster Book.”

“Styphon’s tentacles do not cover the earth,” Brakkos replied. “King Theovacar is always ready to hire freelances, and I’ve heard there’s a revolt in Wulfula and a king taking oaths. Too, there are no Investigators in Hos-Zygros or Hos-Agrys.”

“Not yet, my friends,” Phidestros said, wearier than even the hour and a moon of work could explain. “Leave at your own risk. The day is Styphon’s and his sun burns hot and reaches everywhere.

“If you must leave, do so at night, without a word to anyone. If Roxthar hears of your plans, the Red Hand will drown you in your own blood.

“Let it also be said that this is oathbreaking and I speak against it. Uncle Wolf, what say you?”

Eurocles shook his head. “The Captain-General speaks the truth. Any of you who desert this siege without his permission will be under Galzar’s ban. I have no choice.”

Brakkos spat on to the ground. “Priest, you are as weak-spined as our Grand Captain-General! Don’t you see, when Roxthar and his butchers are through with Kalvan they will next turn on Dralm, then Lytris, then Yirtta Allmother, finally on Galzar himself! Fight before it is too late! We betray Phidestros, but we do not betray our god!”

In a thunderous silence, Brakkos left the tent.

It was Eurocles who broke the silence. “He and his men will be gone before dawn,” the priest said in a hushed voice. “By Galzar’s Mace, they are doomed.

“Yet I fear he may well be right.”

II

Ptosphes looked around him at the battle-strained faces on the keep’s roof. At dawn they would face the twenty-first day of the siege; almost certainly they would face the second storming attempt.

The first one ten days ago had cost the garrison a hundred men, the Styphoni three thousand. It had gained the enemy the north tower, but shellfire from the keep had kept them from mounting guns there.

The second storming would be more dangerous. The enemy would certainly have some tactics devised to meet shells. Those heavy rifles would come into play against the Hostigi marksmen who had butchered the mercenaries’ captains.

Worst of all, this time Styphon’s Red Hand would be clutching at Tarr-Hostigos. Their massed columns had been gathering in Hostigos Town all day. Would they lead the assault, or bring up the fear to remind the vanguard that there was something more to be feared than Hostigi shells?

Two men carrying Captain-General Harmakros’s chair set it down with a thump. The two men carrying Harmakros himself gently lowered him into the chair, arranged the cushions behind him, and stepped back.

Even in the twilight, Ptosphes could see that Harmakros’s cheeks were too flushed for a man who was supposed to be healing well.

“Did you have wine at dinner?”

“Why not, Prince? It will take more wine than we have in Tarr-Hostigos to kill me before Styphon’s House does.”

Ptosphes sighed. With variations, he’d heard this at least twenty times today, since it had become obvious that the Styphoni were gathering again. No one expected to see tomorrow’s sunset. Nobody seemed to care, either, so long as they could take a proper escort with them. To be sure of doing that, everybody had worked all day as if demons would pounce on them the moment they dropped their tools or even stopped to take a deep breath.

Ptosphes looked the length of what was, for another night at least, his castle. The work done to protect the mortars showed most dearly. The four small ones now had stones banked around them, so that the shells bursting outside wouldn’t do so much damage. The three larger mortars were back on their field carriages. They could move to prepared positions all over the courtyard as fast as the men on the ropes could pull them, then be firing again almost as soon as they stopped.

The four biggest “mortars” were still in the pit in the outer courtyard. They were really just an old twelve-pounder and three eight-pounders, with their breeches sunk into the earth and their muzzles raised. They were too heavy to move or mount anywhere else, and in any case they could reach everywhere around Tarr-Hostigos from the courtyard. Their crews were finishing a magazine of timbers covered with stones, to protect their shells and fireseed.

“Prince Ptosphes!” One of the riflemen on sentry duty was pointing toward the siege lines on the west side of the castle. “They’re starting to move around before the light goes. Think they’ll come tonight?” He sounded almost eager.

Ptosphes stared into the dusk, wishing for the hundredth time in the last four years that he had one of the far-seeing glasses of Great King Truman’s army. But they were like Kalvan’s old pistol—the Great King couldn’t even teach his friends how to make the tools to make the tools to make the glasses!

Yet those skills would be learned. What the gods had taught once, they could teach again—and more easily, because they would be teaching men who were trying to learn and knew what power the new knowledge might give them.

If Kalvan’s luck continued to hold, his children might live to look at a battlefield through far-seers, or even ride into battle aboard one of those armored wagons that moved without horses and carried guns that fired many times while a man was drawing a deep breath.

Ptosphes put aside thoughts of the future he wouldn’t see and looked to where the rifleman was pointing. The man was right. Guns—heavy ones from the number of horses drawing them—were rolling slowly along behind the lines. It was too dark to make out more, but Ptosphes suspected that the missing Hostigi sixteen-pounders had just been found.

“Should we try a few shots, just to remind them that we’re awake?” Harmakros asked.

“Not with the mortars. We want to save their shells. That little rifled bronze three-pounder on the inner gate, though—it might have the range.”

“Kalvan said we shouldn’t use case shot with rifled guns,” Ptosphes said, “It damages the rifling. With solid shot, that three-pounder will do more good up here.”

Harmakros “s face asked what he was too tactful to put into words: how likely is it that any gun in Tarr-Hostigos wili last long enough to damage itself, once the Grand Host advances? Perhaps he was also chafing at waiting like a bear tethered in a pit, for the dogs to come down within reach.

The hoisting tackle on the keep easily hauled the three-pounder up on to the roof, but not before darkness fell. Half a dozen shots produced a satisfactory outburst of shouts and curses from the Styphoni, but otherwise they seemed to have fallen off the edge of the world. After the half dozen failed to start a fire, Ptosphes ordered the gun to cease fire.

He made a final inspection, counting with special care the torches and tarpots laid ready, in case the Styphoni came at night. It wasn’t likely; the chance of hitting friends in a night attack would not please the mercenary captains. It wasn’t impossible, either, and Ptosphes was determined to follow Kalvan’s teachings to the end (not far away now): prepare for everything that isn’t impossible.

At last Ptosphes returned to the Great Hall, to find Harmakros asleep in the chair of state and snoring like volley fire from a company of musketeers. Ptosphes rolled himself in his cloak without taking off his armor, on a pallet as far from Harmakros as he could find.

He’d thought he might be too tired or uneasy to sleep, but instead he was drifting off into oblivion almost as soon as he’d stretched out his legs and lowered his head on to the dirt-stiffened cloth.

III

Phidestros brushed the sleep out of his eyes and stared through the valley’s early-morning shadows at the Grand Host’s encampment. A splendid sight with its thousands of campfires—until one remembered that all these tens of thousands of men were chained to this desolate valley by a castle held by four hundred old men and walking wounded. Meanwhile, the Usurper fled into the wilderness.

Phidestros realized now that it was in some measure his own fault, that he was not free to ride on Kalvan’s trail. He had not questioned Lysandros’s orders that he should not go against the will of Grand Master Soton. Apart from the folly of divided command, he respected the man too much.

He had not realized how completely Soton would be in Roxthar’s pocket. He had not considered the possibility with as much attention as he would have given to the effect of rain on the roads he needed to bring up fireseed! Had he done so, a few discreet questions at least might have already been asked, and the mystery closer to solution. Certainly he would have been able to do more than he had, against the Grand Master’s seeming need for Roxthar’s permission to break wind!

As it was, he was chief over the Grand Host only in name. In truth, he was first among equals, all of them hamstrung by Roxthar. The Investigator was utterly convinced that the root of Kalvan’s heresy was to be found in Hostigos and equally determined to extirpate it if he had to investigate every person in the Princedom! He would not allow any stone to be left unturned, including Tarr-Hostigos. Against that particular stone the Grand Host had bruised its foot for the best part of a moon, but with Galzar’s favor that was about to end!

Phidestros also asked for Galzar’s favor, to keep Investigators out of his promised lands of Sashta, Beshta, and Sask. A small forest of poles already held the bodies of more than a quarter of Hostigos Town’s people, those who had failed the Investigation. Add to that those who fled with Kalvan, and by spring there would hardly be enough Hostigi left to bury their dead!

If the Investigation came to his lands, Phidestros resolved it would not be his subjects who decorated gallows. He somehow doubted that Investigators with iron pincers would do as well against soldiers as they did against women and children. It might cost his own head to take Roxthar’s, but he would have the pleasure of harvesting the Investigator’s first!

The shadows began to fade. From his high vantage point, Phidestros saw the camps coining to life, like kicked anthills. He’d wanted to lead the Iron Band in the first assault himself, but Soton insisted on his staying safely in the rear. Captain-Generals, Soton stated emphatically, were not meant to be fired off like barrels of fireseed!

Soton was right, of course. Had Phidestros been in the vanguard during the first storming attempt, he might be dead along with so many others from Ptosphes’s exploding cannonballs.

He might also have kept more influence over the mercenary captains. It would have been worth risking Solon’s wrath to forestall the hornet’s nest Brakkos’s departure had unleashed. Or would unleash, as soon as the Red Hand could be spared from the siege to go and hunt the captain down. Roxthar had somehow realized that sending away his picked troops at this moment would end the siege and might end his own existence.

It still rankled, to be leading from behind. One more thing he would have to get used to, he supposed, along with asking who had married whom before he swore unquestioning obedience…

Phidestros cupped his hands around his pipe bowl and used the tinderbox to get a spark. When the pipe was drawing, he blew out a long plume of smoke, watching the rising morning breeze chase it away.

“Please, Captain-General,” Banner-Captain Geblon said. “Would you get down? Otherwise the Hostigi will aim at your smoke.”

Phidestros doubted that in this breeze even a Hostigi rifleman could hit a man at this distance, but obeyed. He could see as well, and make Geblon happy to boot.

The guns newly emplaced in the battery at the foot of the draw thumped. Their shots tore masonry from a gate tower. Another salvo followed, and white smoke rose in place of the morning mist.

Phidestros puffed on his pipe and prayed to all the true gods that today’s butcher’s bill would be a light one.

FOUR

I

Ptosphes was leading a cavalry charge at the climax of a great battle. The guns thundered and something else was growling like a whole forestful of hungry bears.

He looked down. He wasn’t riding a horse, but standing on top of one of Great King Truman’s iron wagons with its strange gun. Except that the wagon wasn’t quite as Kalvan had described it—it had the head and tail of a horse, the mane flying into his face. As they rode downhill toward the lines of an enemy in the colors of Styphon’s Red Hand, the wagon-horse turned its head to look at Ptosphes. Its eyes glowed a sinister green, and he knew that he was riding a creature possessed by demons.

He clawed for reins he couldn’t find, trying to turn the creature so he wouldn’t have to look into those eyes. No matter how desperately he groped, he couldn’t find the reins. At last his fingers closed on something that felt like woolen cloth, which was a strange thing to make reins out of—

“Prince Ptosphes! Prince Ptosphes! Wake up!”

Nobody should be telling him to wake up in a dream and this was still a dream. He could still hear the thunder of guns, even if he couldn’t hear the bearlike growling of the iron wagon.

“Prince Ptosphes! The Grand Host is coming!”

“Hu-rrupppp!” Ptosphes lurched into a sitting position before he realized that he was awake and clutching his blanket.

He also heard guns thundering and someone shouting in his ear that the Styphoni were attacking. The window showed gray instead of black. Two men ran toward it, carrying a heavy rifled musket and nearly tripping over Ptosphes as they came.

Ptosphes threw off the blanket and stood. The air of the keep already held a sodden heat. He felt obscurely resentful that so many men should have to fight their last battle on a miserably hot day.

Someone was pushing a cup of tea into his hands. He emptied it in three gulps and held it out again for more. The second cupful was half Ermut’s brandy. He set the cup down on the nearest chest, retrieved his sword, and buckled it on.

Harmakros was sitting in the chair of state, wide awake and barking orders. His stump was propped up on a pillow-padded stool and two pistols hung from the arm of the chair.

“Good luck, Prince.”

“The same to you, old friend.”

That was all the speech Ptosphes allowed himself, even if it was probably the last time he would see Harmakros. If the riflemen were taking position before the arrow slits, there was hardly time to talk.

Chroniclers a hundred years from now will probably make up fine farewell speeches for both of us. Tutors will torment children by forcing them to learn those speeches.

As Ptosphes passed through the keep door on to the outer stairs, the gun-roar doubled, then doubled again. The mortars had opened fire. Whatever was coming at Tarr-Hostigos was now within their range.

Ptosphes hurried down the stairs as fast as he could without appearing uneasy. At the bottom he saw that the guards who saluted him were also busily piling tar-soaked brushwood under the timbers of the stairs. One torch and the easy way into the keep would go up in flames, making another line of defense for the last of the garrison.

From the tower over the gate between the courtyards, Ptosphes could see everywhere except directly behind the keep. Three large storming parties were advancing, one toward the breach made by the siege guns, one by the main gate, and one holding well back on the northeastern side. At a single glance, Ptosphes knew that nearly half the Grand Host must be hurling itself at the castle.

Heavy guns were now firing from the battery at the foot of the draw, over the heads of the column climbing. Big guns, too, even if maybe not the Hostigi sixteen-pounders. Ptosphes saw half the main gate flung backward off its hinges into the portcullis, which bent ominously.

A less well aimed shot ploughed through the infantry of the storming column. They halted, giving the guns and musketeers on the gate towers an even better target. Their firing sounded like a single volley, and they fired three more times before the column moved again. It moved more slowly now, leaving behind it a trail of writhing, bloody bodies, like a dying animal dragging its guts behind as it sought to close with the hunter.

The column coming at the breach was taking most of its punishment from the mortars, whose crews were firing too fast to be much concerned with safety. Ptosphes saw one man knocked down and crushed as a mortar shifted on its base, and a shell with a fuse cut too short blew up just above the walls. A dozen defenders went down. The ones who rose again shook their fists at the mortar crews.

Now the guns beside Ptosphes were shooting. Another regiment was coming into sight behind the first one—armored men, marching under a black banner with a silver sun-wheel. Soton’s Knights were fighting on foot today.

The Knights lumbered through the gaps in the first line to take the lead. Ptosphes shouted, “Change to case shot!” It wasn’t going to make any difference to the fate of Tarr-Hostigos now, but the more dead Knights, the better for Kalvan.

The guns aimed at the main gate was firing higher now, trying to silence the guns in the gate tower. One of them was disabled, but the other was still hurling case shot straight into the column, inflicting hideous losses. Guns from the other towers were now hammering at the column as well, scything down entire companies like farmers scything wheat.

Smoke gushed up from the enemy battery, more than one could expect from the discharge of even the largest gun. Ptosphes saw men flying into the air and others running with their clothing on fire. He heard the double-thump of an explosion—someone careless with fireseed—as the rate of fire increased.

More Hostigi case shot tore the main column—then suddenly it was breaking up and the men were running back down the draw in a futile effort to escape, some of their officers beating at them with halberds and swords, others joining the rout. From the walls of Tarr-Hostigos, cheers joined the gunfire.

Ptosphes had a moment of thinking that perhaps their doom wasn’t so certain after all. One column broken, and its men looking as if they would be hard to rally for another attack. Do the same with the other two columns, and at least the mercenary captains might have the same second thoughts they’d had during the first storming attempt. If they had second thoughts and let Styphon’s House know them, the False God himself couldn’t keep the Archpriests from having to listen. And if the Archpriests chose to turn the Red Hand loose on the mercenaries, the Grand Host’s war against Hostigos would become a civil war within its own ranks—

Ptosphes’s moment of hope ended as he saw the column approaching the breach suddenly sprout scaling ladders. They were going to get in or at least close; the heavy mortars had fired off all their shells and round shot wouldn’t do so well even against packed men—

The twelve-pounder on top of the barricade let fly with a triple charge of musket balls. Like a volley from a massed regiment it smashed into the column. Already ragged from climbing the slope, the column now barely deserved the name.

Hard on their heels came point-blank musketry that melted away more of the column. Every musketeer within range had six or seven loaded weapons ready to hand for just this moment. For a brief space, they could fire as fast as the rifles of the Great King Truman’s host, with their “magazines” of eight rounds.

These foes had their blood up, though, or maybe better captains. Then Ptosphes saw the blue and orange colors and recognized the Sacred Squares of Hos-Ktemnos, the best infantry in the Seven Kingdoms. They rose across the rubble before the breach like a blue wave, with clumps of musketeers on the flanks firing over the heads of the storming parties to keep down Hostigi fire. The crews of the useless heavy mortars drew swords and pistols and joined the mass of men struggling in the breach. Ptosphes drew his own sword, ready to join them if they showed signs of flagging.

One of the overheated four-pounders beside Ptosphes recoiled so violently that it snapped its breechings and knocked down Thalmoth. He lay with his thigh a mass of blood, white bone shining through the torn flesh, cursing the gun crew for not remembering what he’d taught them and asking for a pistol. Ptosphes gave him one of his own, as scaling ladders suddenly sprouted to either side of the breach.

The first ladder rose, then flew to pieces as a shot from nowhere split it from top to bottom. At least it came from what seemed like nowhere to Ptosphes, although he knew that what he could see and hear must be rapidly shrinking. This storming of Tarr-Hostigos was already making every other battle he’d seen sound like a mother’s lullaby.

The rifled boat swivels were coming into action now. Dead men around them showed that the Hostigi riflemen weren’t out of the fight yet. New gunners moved up to replace the dead, though, obviously eager to claim their share of glory. Ptosphes wondered what share of glory they would have if they hit more of their own men than the enemy’s. Share of broken bones and heads, more likely.

More ladders rising now. The men on them must be some of the southern swampmen Soton had brought north—no armor, no clothing except leather leggings, and no weapons but hand axes and long wicked knives.

The mortar emplacement spewed flame, smoke, slabs of stone, and flying timbers. An enemy shot or a stray spark had touched off the remaining fireseed in the magazine. Most of the men in or around the pit went down where they stood.

Flying debris scythed into the rear of the Hostigi infantry holding the barricade at the breach. Their line wavered. Some charged forward, grappling with Styphoni and rolling down the rubble to die in the moat with them. Others gave way, and a volley of musketry cleared a path through the ones who stood. Across the dying and the dead of both sides, the Sacred Squares poured over the barricade and down into the outer courtyard.

It seemed to Ptosphes that the Styphoni reached the gatehouse where he stood in the time between one breath and the next. Bullets whistled around him; the men atop the keep were now firing on the inner wall without caring much who was there. His reluctance to turn his back on the enemy gave way to an indignant refusal to be shot in the back by his own men. He ran to the edge of the gun platform, sheathed his sword, dangled from the battlements with both hands until he was sure his arms would pull out of their sockets, then dropped to the inner courtyard.

It was a long drop for an armored man no longer young. Ptosphes went to his knees and was quite sure all his bones were jarred loose from one another. Thankfully, all of them seemed intact when he stood. Smoke was rising from the base of the stairs to the keep. He sprinted for them without stopping to take a breath.

Bullets tore through his jack and glanced off his breastplate, clipped his beard, and seared one hand. At first they came from both sides, then he heard a shout from above, “That’s Prince Ptosphes, you wolfs bastard!” and the bullets from the keep stopped. A moment later a crash like the end of the world sounded from behind, followed by screams and curses that penetrated even the ringing in Ptosphes’s ears and a choking wave of fireseed smoke. Some Styphoni with more zeal than sense must have used a petard on the inner gate, no doubt blowing it open but also demolishing a good many comrades as well!

Two of the swamp warriors reached the foot of the stairs before Ptosphes. He cut one down with his sword, knocked the ax out of the other’s hand, leaped on to the stairs, and dashed up them with flames rising behind him almost as fast as he climbed. By the time he reached the top, the blood pounding in Ptosphes’s ears drowned out every other sound. He leaned against the wall beyond the doorway, feeling the cool stone against his forehead and not hearing the outer door being shut and bolted behind him.

By the time he’d been led to a chair and had a cup of wine thrust into his hands, Ptosphes had enough of his wits back to think about what to do next. This was no normal siege, where the garrison of the keep was always given one last chance to surrender. This one would end with the Styphoni trying to bury the Hostigi under a pile of their own dead flesh if they couldn’t finish the battle any other way.

If Phidestros and Soton and their captains had the wits the gods gave to fleas, they would launch the last attack as soon as they could, before their men had time to lose their battle-rage. Otherwise those men might start thinking of the kind of fight waiting for them behind the walls of the keep.

When Ptosphes had drunk the wine and could stand, he walked over to Harmakros in the chair of state. He had to walk carefully, to avoid stepping on exhausted men catching their breaths, cleaning their weapons, or just lying staring at the ceiling. The lightly wounded were taking care of each other; the badly wounded hadn’t reached the keep.

“I lost sight of the column on the ridge. What of them?”

“They started to close when the column at the main gate ran. Then the breach fell, and the ridgerunners drew back. Not without leaving a good many men behind, to be sure.”

“What do we have left?”

Harmakros shrugged. “A hundred, maybe a few more.”

“They’ll come soon, wherever they do it.” Ptosphes leaned against a stone archway and propped himself up with his sword. By the Twelve True Gods, he was getting old!

“I have men watching on the roof, and more men on the stairs relaying messages, my Prince. They won’t catch us napping.”

“Unless they kill the men on the roof.”

“Not without shells, and maybe not even with them. Anyway, I’ll wager a cask of Ermut’s best brandy that they don’t have any shells.”

“Done,” Ptosphes said. “But just in case they do…?”

“I’ve had the men on the roof build themselves a shelter with chests and rolled-up tapestries.”

Some of those tapestries, Ptosphes realized, were probably part of his wife’s dowry. Not that anybody except Rylla would be left to care before long, of course, and this was a better end for the tapestries than being looted or burned, eaten by vermin, or left to rot in the crumbling shell of the keep…

Ptosphes forced his mind away from such thoughts and climbed the stairs to the roof of the keep.

II

Seeing the Styphoni swarming over the shambles that had been his seat and home didn’t improve Ptosphes’s mood. It helped to see the men on the rifled three-pounder actually smiling as they carved notches in the smoke-stained oak of the gun carriage.

“The big one’s for smashing the wheel of one siege gun. Didn’t hit any of our people, either,” the gunner added. “The four little ones are banners we knocked down. The circle is one of the swivels. We’d have got ourselves a second, but the Styphoni were too cowardly to man it again.”

Never mind that the gunners probably hadn’t done half the damage they thought they had. If they spent the last candle of their lives grinning and the last moments killing more Styphoni, what did anything else matter to them now?

Ptosphes had just descended to the Great Hall when a messenger followed him down the stairs. “They’re moving a heavy field gun into the inner courtyard. One of theirs, though, from the number of men they’ve put to hauling it.”

“Everyone to your places, men,” Ptosphes said. He hesitated, then added, “It’s been an honor to be your Prince and captain.”

A ragged cheer rose, then outside the musketry began again, heavy, rapid fire. The expected message came down from the roof—bullets were mostly coming up, to keep the gun there out of action. Even a three-pound ball could wreck a gun carriage.

“Wait until they attack,” Ptosphes ordered. “Then they’ll have to cease fire or have spent bullets falling back on their friends.” He doubted that the mercenaries or even the Knights would care to risk much of that. It had been a bad day for self-inflicted casualties on both sides; for the Styphoni it was about to get worse.

Galzar’s muster-clerks are going to be working long hours today, Ptosphes thought both irreverently and irrelevantly.

Chrunngggg!

Something struck the outside of the wall—a solid shot, the report of its firing lost in the roar of musketry. “Not bad,” Ptosphes said. “Sounds as if they hit just to the left of the door.”

It took three more shots before the smashing of wood and the ringing of iron signaled a direct hit on the outer door. Two more shots completed the work. A rifleman crept into the doorway and peered over the wreckage.

“They’re reloading, but they’ve lined up a storming party too. They can’t be going to fire right over—here it comes—ayyyyhhhh!”

The pieces of the door flew into the Great Hall. So did the pieces of the rifleman. A cannonball rolled in after them, making the Hostigi do spritely dances to avoid it.

Harmakros unhooked his pistols from the arm of the chair of state, cocked them, and laid them in his lap, then raised an empty wine cup in salute to Ptosphes. “I’ll claim that brandy, Prince. If they had shells, they’d have used one then.”

“So it would seem.”

Then from all the firing slits the sentries shouted that the storming party was on the way. The gun on the roof let fly, although no one bothered to tell Ptosphes if it hit anything. It fired a second time, a third.

As the fourth shot went off, the Styphoni burst into the Great Hall.

A ragged volley of pistols and muskets half-deafened Ptosphes. He saw the leading rank of the enemy stagger and go down, but realized that the men behind them now had shields of once-living flesh. He drew his own pistol and fired it over the heads of the six men who’d appointed themselves his last bodyguard. Then the Styphoni were everywhere.

Ptosphes decided that if demons ever really came into the world, they might look like Styphon’s soldiers. The attackers wore every sort of armor and clothing except for those who wore little of either. They were black-faced, red-eyed, stinking, shrieking cries in no language intended for human ears, and waving strange weapons in more arms than the gods gave men.

The massed Styphoni gave Vurth a fine target for his musketoon. He shot one man, smashed in a second’s face, then got a third in a wrestler’s headlock and broke his neck before someone else ran him through. Vurth’s diversion let Ptosphes break away from his bodyguards toward the fireplace and the concealed ladder leading down to the cellar. He had to be down there to do his last duty as Prince of Hostigos—not last Prince, the gods grant it!—and knew he might have already waited too long.

Four of the bodyguards stayed alive to reload their weapons and see that their Prince no longer needed them. They fired into the Styphoni, then closed with steel.

The first man to make a way past them, Harmakros shot in the head. The second man ran Harmakros through the stomach; the Duke returned the compliment with his second pistol. A third man wanted to either help his comrades or see if Harmakros was dead. Harmakros snatched the pistol from the man’s belt, rammed the muzzle up under its owner’s jaw, and pulled the trigger. The chair of state fell over, spilling out Harmakros’s body as Ptosphes swung himself into the chimney.

He forced himself to go down the iron rungs of the ladder one at a time. It would help nobody except Styphon’s House if he failed in his last duty by falling down the chimney and dashing out what the siege had left of his brains.

By the time he reached the bottom, he knew that if he had to climb back up again his heart would burst before he finished the climb. He’d been right; he would not have lived to see his grandchildren grow up even without this Dralm-damned war! However, this way he was at least spared years of listening to old Tharses and Rylla fussing at him, making him eat and sleep and rest as they thought proper, and generally trying to turn him into a corpse while he was still alive.

The blessed coolness of the cellar revived him a little. He found that he’d brought his pipe, tobacco, and tinderbox with him, started to light up, stopped as he remembered the ironclad rules about smoking near fireseed, then laughed. It made precious little difference what anybody did down here now.

Ptosphes found the fireseed intact, all twelve tons of it minus a barrel or few. He also found the last of the magazine-keepers sitting at the foot of the stairs, along with his clubfooted grandson. The keeper was an old soldier past campaigning, with the grandson to support and no other kin. Ptosphes had given him the magazine by way of a pension.

“What can we do for you, my Prince?”

“If you have pistols–?”

The keeper showed an old cavalryman’s matchlock. The boy produced a heavy-barreled boar-hunter’s pistol.

“Good. Keep watch on the stairs.”

With his pipe in his mouth, Ptosphes walked over to a row of small barrels, chose one, cracked it open, then laid a trail of fireseed a thumb wide and a finger deep to the main pile of larger barrels. Just to be safe, he borrowed one of the keeper’s handspikes and knocked in the head of one of the larger barrels. Fireseed poured out, until a helmetfu] lay waiting at the end of the train, with the twelve tons waiting beyond.

By the time Ptosphes was finished, fists were hammering on the outside of the cellar door. Then he heard the more solid sounds of a chest or bench being swung against it. Wood cracked and metal pulling out of stone screeched, as a hinge gave way. The door half-swung, half-fell inward.

All three Hostigi fired together at the first silhouettes to appear. The answering volley sent bullets spanging around the cellar. One hit the boy in the thigh. The Styphoni drew back, except for the one who fell forward and rolled down the stairs to land at Ptosphes’s feet.

He was as filthy as all the others and no more than eighteen. He was crying for his mother as he clasped his hands over a belly wound that under other circumstances would have killed him slowly over the next few days. Well, he’d be spared that, and he’d already lived longer than the keeper’s grandson would, or Harmakros’s son if the Grand Host overtook Kalvan.

Except that they wouldn’t. Ptosphes knew this, although he couldn’t have explained how he knew it. He was sure it was true knowledge, not a dead man’s dreaming to make his death easier.

Since he was dead, why wait any longer, in case one of those Styphoni cursing so loudly at the top of the stairs wanted to come down and argue the point?

Ptosphes finished tamping the ball and wadding of his new load, checked the pan, then rested the pistol on one knee as he knocked the live coal from his pipe into the train of fireseed.

FIVE

I

“Damn you, Sirna! What are you using in the wound? Galzar’s Mace?”

Sirna ignored Phidestros’s blustering. She knew she must be causing him agony, probing his wounded thigh with her limited skills and instruments improvised by the Iron Band’s armorers from Menandra’s kitchen utensils. He’d refused a sandbag, though, and she had to go on and extract that last piece she felt in the wound. Otherwise he would’certainly lose his leg and probably his life. Then what would happen to her? Sirna told herself that her concern was thoroughly practical and continued digging.

Finally the probe clicked on the fragment again, this time loosening it until she could grip it between two blood-slimed fingers. It was a piece of stoneware, sharp-edged but solid. It wouldn’t leave any more fragments in the wound (or so she told herself, because she knew that her hands would start shaking uncontrollably if she had to burrow back into that mangled flesh).

She held up the stoneware. Phidestros managed a grin. “So that’s why they didn’t run out of bullets. They saved up their last moon’s trash and shot it at us!” Phidestros made a face and groaned. “That’s not all the trash I’m going to get shot at me when Soton learns I got this kiss from Galzar rallying his swivel gunners not a hundred paces from the breach! My ears will hurt worse than this leg!”

Petty-Captain Phyllos lifted Phidestros’s leg so that Sirna could bind it in the boiled remains of a shift. Phyllos’s wrenched knee made him slow, but as long as he could stand he felt that he had to be on duty. Certainly he’d had more experience dealing with battle wounds than any of Menandra’s girls, didn’t mind taking orders from a woman who knew her business, and whipped into line any soldier who did.

At last Phidestros was bandaged. Sirna came as close as she could to offering a prayer for his recovery. She could no longer tell herself that wish was entirely practical, either. Phidestros was too good a man to die, even if he was serving a particularly murderous brand of superstition.

“Sorry to give you such a bad time,” she said as four of the hastily recruited orderlies lifted Phidestros off the table. Half the Captain-General’s bodyguard had escorted him to the Gull’s Nest after he fell. She’d drafted most of them into helping with the wounded who’d been streaming in since dawn. And this was only one of the besiegers’ hospitals! Galzar’s Great Hall was going to be crammed to the rafters tonight.

“Menandra runs a fine whorehouse, but it’s not much of a hospital,” Sirna went on. “If I had some proper tools, or the help of a priest of Galzar–”

Phidestros sighed. “My lovely Sirna, if I knew where to find an Uncle Wolf who didn’t already need two heads and six hands, I’d have him dragged to you. You’re going to be all we have for today. When they carted me off I heard we already had two thousand men down.”

“Two thousand!” Sirna shuddered at the implications. Phidestros had been hit early enough to reach the Gull’s Nest before the storming of the keep. Two thousand men down in the time it took the Styphoni to close the walls. How many more in the fighting since—?

Thunder battered at her ears and the floor quivered. The door and all the window shutters banged wildly and dust rose until the room looked as if someone had fired a small cannon. Sirna looked frantically out the window, saw nothing but people gaping idiotically, knew she must be doing the same, and dashed out the door.

A vast cloud of gray smoke towered over Tarr-Hostigos, blotting out the whole castle and slowly swallowing the hillside below it. The top of the cloud was already several thousand feet high, spreading into something dreadfully like a fission bomb’s mushroom. Sirna lived a moment with the nightmare that Kalvan had done the impossible, taking his time-line from a poor grade of gunpowder to fission bombs in four years.

The mushroom shape started to blur, and Sirna breathed more easily. The top of the cloud was simply spreading in a breeze not felt here in the lee of the hills. She watched the cloud start to trail off toward the southeast, bits and pieces of smoking debris dropping from it as it went.

Ptosphes had given himself and the last of his men over to a quick death, destroying Tarr-Hostigos and more of his enemies than anyone would ever know.

Sirna wanted to weep, scream, pound her fists against something. For a moment she even wanted to die herself. There had to be something wrong with her, if she was still alive with so much death around her. The battle, the flight, her surgery at Menandra’s, Roxthar’s Investigation, and now the storming of Tarr-Hostigos—dead men (and women, and children) were everywhere.

Sirna didn’t die. She didn’t even have hysterics. Instead she gripped the porch railing until she knew she could stand without help. Around her Hostigos Town awoke from a stunned silence into a hideous din of bawled orders, howling dogs, shrieking women and children, horses neighing or galloping wildly about in panic, and an occasional pistol shot.

Menandra was standing in the doorway when Sirna turned. “Better come in quick, girl,” she said. “The soldiers who lost comrades up there—they’ll be wanting someone’s blood for it. Can’t keep it from being yours if you stand out there.”

Sirna followed the older woman inside. She wasn’t afraid of death itself. After today she never would be again. Ptosphes had shown her that death could sometimes be your best friend.

He’d also shown her that there were good and bad ways to die. No, not good and bad. That implied a simple moral distinction. If there was anything simple about death, Sirna hadn’t seen it.

Wise and foolish ways? Better, but still an oversimplification.

Useful and useless? Yes. That wasn’t a universally sound way of distinguishing kinds of death, but there probably wasn’t any such thing. It certainly made sense here.

Staying outside to be shot or raped by soldiers mad with rage or wine would be a useless death. She wouldn’t risk it. What she would do another time, she would decide when that time came.

A phrase from one of Scholar Danthor Dras’s seminar lectures came back to her:

The only universal rule of outtime work is that there are no universal rules.

II

Soton cursed the Hostigi and their stubbornness that was costing the Grand Host so many lives. Half the storming party was inside Tarr-Hostigos, swarming over it like bees. Both courtyards were littered with bodies, most of them Styphoni. Clouds of smoke wreathed the keep, but before they rose Soton had seen even from his distant post the savage struggle to enter it.

Why in the name of all the gods hadn’t Phidestros kept back, instead of closing the breach? Then there would have been someone to go down and put matters in order.

Instead Phidestros was wounded—badly, the tales ran. Small loss, with the last defenders of Hostigos dying even now and Kalvan fleeing toward the Trygath. If Phidestros was going to make a habit of such follies, perhaps it would be best if he stormed Hadron’s Caverns the next time. If he didn’t, Soton would make him wish he had!

The smoke around the keep eddied. Soton turned, to summon a messenger.

He never completed the turn. Instead something as invisible as the air but as hard as stone flung him to his knees. Thunder swelled until it seemed that someone was beating on his helmet with his own warhammer. Three Knights flew off the ledge, along with a shower of rocks. Soton knew he cried out at that sight, but couldn’t hear his own voice.

He lay, gripping the ground as closely as he ever gripped a woman, until it stopped shaking. Then he rose to his knees, and when they did not betray him, to his feet.

The air was filled with acrid smoke and fine ash. Looking toward

Tarr-Hostigos, he saw only a vast swirling cloud of smoke. Somewhere in that smoke was the entire storming party—one man in three of the Grand Host’s strength.

One of the Knights was shrieking. “It’s the Demon Kalvan! He’s come to save his people! Great Styphon, save us!”

Soton smashed his gauntleted fist into the Knight’s face. The man fell as if poleaxed. Soton didn’t know what he was really smiting, the Knight or his own fear.

Slowly the air around what had been Tarr-Hostigos cleared. The slopes around it were alive with men, thousands of them all streaming away from the castle. Soton let out a deep breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.

Another quarter-candle showed him what was left of Tarr-Hostigos. The keep was only a pile of smoking rubble, the towers had mostly lost their tops, and the walls looked to have been chewed by monsters. How many of the Grand Host lay there under the fallen stone or in fragments strewn across the hillside? The Grand Host would be far less grand by the time they were all counted, Soton was sure.

Yet—this should not have been a surprise. Desperate men will take desperate measures. Who had more experience fighting the desperate than Soton, Grand Master of the Zarthani Knights?

Soton smashed his fist against his armored thigh, insensible to the pain.

“Kalvan!” he shrieked. “Kalvan, you will pay for this! By Styphon’s Wheel, I swear it!”

III

Verkan Vall finished lighting his pipe with a Kalvan’s Time-Line silver and ivory inlaid tinderbox, then turned back to the data screen and its display of information on one Khalid ib’n Hussein. The second cousin of a minor Palestinian prince assassinated five years earlier—on his subsector branch—Khalid was putting together a Mideastern superstate that included just about every Moslem nation except Turkey and Libya.

As this new Islamic Caliphate emerged, on most of its time-lines its pro-Western leanings seemed to be toppling the balance between Communism, that strange atheistic religion, and the so-called Free World. Another case of the inherent instability of the entire Europe-American, Hispano-Columbian Subsector!

Verkan made a note to send out some investigator to see if the Mideast had acquired some transtemporal hitchhiker like his friend Kalvan. One of the problems with transtemporal history was that it was always easier to spot the important historical turning points after the damage was done! There was that Paracop chief two thousand years ago, who hadn’t paid any attention to an anonymous carpenter’s son until the religion his death launched was already shaking whole subsectors to the foundations—The red light on Verkan’s desk lit up, announcing an important visitor. Verkan looked up to see Kostran Garth enter. The man’s face was red from exertion, his breath came short as if he’d been running, and he was holding out a data-storage wafer in one hand.

“What is it?”

“This just arrived from the surveillance satellite on Kalvan’s time-line. I scanned it briefly—Dalla had it red-flagged—and I knew you’d want to see it right away.”

From the look on Kostran’s face, Verkan knew the wafer wasn’t good news; only bad news ever traveled that fast. Verkan slipped the wafer into his viewer and watched the screen light up.

The views began with a satellite’s-eye scan of Hostigos and the surrounding Princedoms, from an altitude that made them all look deceptively peaceful. The next shots were close-ups of Tarr-Hostigos. Verkan sighed with relief; at least he wasn’t going to see Kalvan and his remaining soldiers caught like fish in a net.

The camera panned in closer, suggesting manned control of the cameras (remember to commend Dalla for that precaution). A human wave was approaching the beleaguered castle; almost the whole Styphoni host seemed to be on the move. Closer still, and Verkan saw whole units going down under Hostigi shells and musketry.

Verkan sped up the fast-forward. Whatever was coming, he wanted to get it over with.

The attackers poured into the castle like ants over leftover dog food. Muzzle flashes showed that the keep still had some live defenders. Were Ptosphes and Harmakros among them—Ptosphes, who’d refused to leave his home, and Captain-General Harmakros, still worth any three men with two legs?

Suddenly everything vanished in a cloud of smoke. Verkan held his breath until the smoke began to clear. Slowly Tarr-Hostigos reappeared—or what had been Tarr-Hostigos.

Half the walls still stood, battered and leaning. Otherwise Ptosphes’s seat was a pile of smoking rubble. Verkan saw where one aircar-sized chunk of stone had crushed an entire company of Styphoni. The slopes around the castle were covered with more Styphoni—lying still, crawling, stumbling, a few lucky enough to be able to run.

Verkan’s fist slammed down on his desk. “By Dralm, Ptosphes did it!”

“What?”

“He did what even Kalvan couldn’t do. He stopped the Grand Host in its tracks! Look at that mess! The bastards must have taken five, ten thousand casualties. That, my friend, is no longer a Grand Host. It’s hardly even an army! By the time Soton and Phidestros sort things out, Kalvan will be safe in Greftscharr.”

Verkan rummaged a flask of Ermut’s Best and two cups out of a drawer. “A toast, Kostran. A toast to the memory of a valiant Prince and his last and greatest victory!”

Kostran gagged at the taste of the brandy, but he was smiling as he said, “To Prince Ptosphes!”

IV

Considering the Hostigi resistance, the two thousand casualties taken in entering Tarr-Hostigos surprised no one. From the stories brought in during the day with the wounded, Sirna concluded that another eight thousand at least must have been casualties of the great explosion. That made ten thousand casualties. Almost half were dead, and half the wounded wouldn’t fight again this year if at all. Sirna would have liked more accurate figures, but she was relieved to know that she could go on doing a University outtime observer’s work even in the middle of a battle.

It would be embarrassing if she ever returned home and had to confess that she hadn’t taken advantage of her “unique” opportunity to observe historically significant Fourth Level events. It would probably cost her that doctorate!

Sirna told herself this over and over again, to keep some grip on her sanity, as the wounded poured into the Gull’s Nest. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think of First Level since the day she woke up in Menandra’s back bedroom. Somewhat to her surprise it helped.

Having some extra hands helped even more. More of the lightly wounded men turned to changing bandages or helping comrades to the privies. Menandra rolled up her sleeves and went to work setting bones, a skill she’d acquired in her younger days from cleaning up after tavern brawls in Agrys City. She also turned out all of her girls who could be trusted to know a clean bandage from a dirty one, which was more than Sirna had expected.

Another of Scholar Dras’s bits of wisdom kept running through Sirna’s mind:

“The danger of paratemporal contamination doesn’t come from the stupidity of lower-level people. It comes from the fact that they’re inherently just about as smart as we are. Once they’ve been shown that something is possible, you would be surprised how fast they can pick it up and even start filling in gaps on their own.”

Sirna knew that would never surprise her again.

By the time the western sky turned an appropriately bloody color, the flow of fresh wounded had stopped. Sirna trudged through the house on feet that felt shod in lead boots, checking splints and dressings she hadn’t put on herself.

In the twilight outside she heard shouts and screams. Men, drunk or avenging dead comrades or simply celebrating being alive when they’d expected to be dead, were sacking Hostigos Town. The hard-eyed mercenary guards from the Iron Band kept the noise and the noisemakers safely outside.

At least she didn’t hear the sinister crackling of flames, as she had during Rylla’s campaign in Phaxos. The Styphoni weren’t going to burn the town as long as they needed its roofs over their heads.

Sirna felt like a deer who’d somehow managed to be adopted by a pack of wolves. The Captain-General’s men would protect her against all the other packs as long as she did what they expected. But that didn’t make her a wolf. Somehow it was no longer hard to take for granted a situation she would have found unbelievably degrading two years ago. Not hard at all, when she listened to the screams outside.

She was changing the bandages on the stump of a man’s arm when someone banged on the door to the street, loud enough to be heard over the din outside and the cries of the wounded inside. One of the house women looked through the peephole. Then she unbarred the door and jumped aside, with a look on her face that brought every fit man in the room to his feet.

Two of Styphon’s Guardsmen strode in, their red cloaks flapping dramatically. Two more followed their white-robed charge inside, then stood flanking the door. Sirna saw hostile glances flicking over the Red Hands’ clean clothing and silvered armor.

At least Holy Investigator Roxthar looked as if he’d worked today, and worked hard. His long hollow-cheeked face was coated with dust and soot and his robes were bloodstained and frayed. He reminded Sirna of a Fourth Level Judeo-Christian representation of the Devil.

For a moment she wondered if Kalvan was the only cross-time hitchhiker around. Then she remembered the file on the control time-line equivalents to the major Archpriests. On one other time-line Roxthar was purging Styphon’s House almost as spectacularly as he was here. On several others he’d died mysteriously, doubtless courtesy of one of Archpriest Anaxthenes’s handy little vials.

Phidestros struggled to a sitting position and raised a hand in greeting. “Welcome, Your Sanctity. Today Hadron’s Hall is filled to the bursting, but the first and vilest of the demons’ nests has at last been burned out.”

Roxthar nodded, as though acknowledging a remark about the weather, then looked around the room. His nostrils flared.

“So this den of flesh-selling has served as the Captain-General’s nest. I wondered why we had so often lacked your esteemed company at the Palace.”

From the Captain-General’s face, Sirna knew his patience was strained nearly to the breaking point.

“I must admit, Your Sanctity, that I much prefer the cries of honest passion in this house to the constant uproar at the Palace. No offense meant, of course. Let Styphon’s Will Be Done!”

Roxthar’s face paled. “Do not presume, Captain-General, or you may yet find yourself enjoying the hospitality of my Investigators.”

“They might find a soldier too much work, after so many women and children.”

Roxthar’s gray eyes turned into steel ball bearings. “Enough of this babble. We have the God of Gods to serve today. The Daemon Kalvan has fled, with the remnants of his host. The land he left behind is tainted with the evil he wrought, and the servants of his demons lurk everywhere. Let the Investigation of Styphon finish its work, then we can attend to lesser duties.”

It was just as well Roxthar didn’t smile. If he had, Sirna knew she would have laughed out loud, hoping to wake up on the other side of the abyss between her and the sane reality of Home Time-Line, where people didn’t blow up castles in wars over non-existent gods. Instead she bit her lip and unwound the last strip of bandage, then stood up to take the sterilized fresh dressing from the soldier holding the basin.

The movement drew Roxthar’s eyes. Sirna felt their hard, unclean gaze on her all the time she was binding on the dressing, emptying the water into the slop bucket, and putting the old bandages into the empty basin to be returned to the cauldrons boiling in the kitchen. She was proud that her hands didn’t tremble once.

At last there was nothing more to do except stand up and face the Investigator. He was now smiling, an expression to which his gaunt features hardly lent themselves. Sirna decided that she much preferred him expressionless.

“Those bandages have been boiled to drive out the fester-demons, have they not?”

“That is so, Your Sanctity.” Sirna was relieved that she’d kept all traces of a tremor out of her voice.

“That is knowledge given by the servant of demons, Kalvan, you know.”

You’re not afraid of death anymore, Sirna reminded herself. Besides, Roxthar won’t spare a heretic even if she goes down on the floor and kisses his feet. Do as you please and at least you can hope to go out with dignity, like Ptosphes.

“That is so, Your Sanctity. Yet the new compounding of fireseed was also brought by Kalvan. With the blessing of Styphon’s holy priests, the new fireseed has been used in the guns of Styphon’s Grand Host, to smite Styphon’s enemies. Is it not possible that the knowledge of smiting the fester-demons may also be used to aid Styphon’s cause?”

Roxthar’s vices did not include being at a loss for words. “This may be so. Yet I see no priests of Styphon’s House here, to bless your work so that it may drive out demons instead of letting them in. Also, it is too soon to tell what may come of this day’s work. Not all demons leap forth at the wave of their servants’ hands. Some bide their time.”

If it weren’t that her life was at stake, Sirna would have believed this conversation about demons and their servants totally absurd. “In your own words, Your Sanctity—that may be so. Yet I have been healing the men of the Iron Band since the siege began. In all of them, the wounds are cleaner than they would have been without my work. Ask the Captain-General or the men themselves!

“As for there being no priest here—today there were many wounded and few hands to heal them. Should I have let men who shed their blood for Styphon die, their wounds stinking and festering, because there is no priest to bless work that I know is wholesome and good? If I did that, then you would have good cause to bring me before the Investigation. I think what I have done is good service to the God of Gods, and I will pray for his blessing, and also for his mercy on you if you falsely accuse me.”

She knew that the last sentences must have been audible on the streets outside, from the way the door guards were looking behind them. Roxthar’s smile froze, then he shrugged.

“As Styphon wills it. I only know what I must do in his service, and also pray for his mercy if I misjudge what that is. You must come with us before the Investigation, and hope that witnesses may be found in your behalf.”

Sirna knew that her last moment was close at hand, and also that she was going to spend it as a woman of this time-line rather than as a scholar of First Level. Her right hand was at waist level, closing around the hilt of a non-existent dagger, and she’d shifted her footing to open the distance between her and Roxthar. One of the Red Hands stepped forward—

—and stopped a yard from Sirna, as a dozen mercenaries drew entirely real swords and daggers. Two more armed with half-pikes appeared on the stairway and a third in the door to the hall, with a pistol.

“Archpriest Roxthar,” Phidestros said, in a tone that reminded Sirna of a baron she’d once heard sentencing a poacher. “There is nothing but the truth in what this woman says. This I swear, by Styphon God of Gods and Galzar Wolfshead, by Yirtta Allmother and by Tranth who blesses the hands of the craftsman. My men will swear the same.”

“How many of them?”

“As many as needed to make it unlawful for this woman to go before the Investigation, and ten more besides. The Iron Band knows good healing when it sees it.”

One of the Red Hands started to draw his pistol at Phidestros’s tone. An imperative and slightly frantic gesture from Roxthar stopped him. The Archpriest’s good sense clearly extended to recognizing when he saw it a situation where one false move would leave him and his guards dead on the floor and the Investigation of Styphon’s enemies in chaos.

“We value your judgment and honor you for your good work in the Holy Investigation,” Phidestros went on, as big a lie as Sirna had ever heard anyone deliver with a straight face. “Therefore we will also swear to watch this woman day and night, and bring word to the Investigation of any evil effects from her healing.”

Phidestros paused, then fired his final shot. “And is not one of Styphon’s own signs of his presence among us his gift of healing?”

Roxthar’s head jerked, but to Sirna’s relief he stopped short of smiling. “As you wish, Captain-General. Clearly Styphon’s favor is with you today, but this may not always be so. I shall return tomorrow, to see those wounded who have been healed in days past and to take the oaths you have promised.”

The Investigator whirled and strode out so fast that the Guardsmen had to scurry to catch up with him. A chorus of harsh laughter and obscene remarks about why the Guardsmen had unbattered armor after a battle like this hurried their departure. Sirna also heard a few bawdy remarks, about who would have the job of watching her by night.

Sirna was told afterward that she didn’t faint. She certainly remembered nothing until she found herself in a chair, her head pushed down between her knees and Menandra and Banner-Captain Geblon chafing her wrists so vigorously that they felt ready to catch fire. She kept her head down and let the chafing go on until the giddiness and the urge to vomit on an empty stomach passed.

“Sirna–”

“Get back down on that pallet, Captain-General!”

“I need to talk–”

“When you’re down on the pallet. Not a word until then!”

Sitting cross-legged by Phidestros’s pallet, Sirna could hear him without anyone else being able to eavesdrop. Geblon made sure of that, with help from Menandra.

“I’m sorry if I put you in danger,” she began. “But I couldn’t–”

“And you didn’t, and there’s no need to apologize,” Phidestros interrupted, with a grin. “We are the Iron Band, and we can do nicely without temple-rats chittering in our ears in our own quarters. You, on the other hand…”

Phidestros reached over and put a hand on her knee. “You’ve got a petty-captain’s share of pay for this past campaign coming, and more if Styphon’s House pays any of the victory gift they’ve promised. That’s enough to be a good dowry for you, or buy you a horse and cart with traveling rations and servants to take you home—if you have any home left.”

“Or you could stay here and buy into a partnership with me,” Menandra put in. “I’m not as young as I once was. Somebody I could leave the place to would be a comfort to me now.”

Phidestros gave Sirna a smile that showed what he thought of the Gull’s Nest’s prospects after the Grand Host departed.

“A partnership–” Sirna began, then pressed her palms into her eyes until the pain and the swimming red fire killed the desire to laugh. She owed Menandra too much to ridicule the idea of staying in Hostigos Town and becoming assistant madam of a bordello!

“I don’t advise any of those,” Phidestros went on. “Roxthar can’t try anything with us—or at least anything the rest of the Inner Circle or Grand Master Soton won’t stop, as long as I’m Captain-General of the Grand Host of Styphon. Soton and Anaxthenes know good mercenaries are valuable, as long as Kalvan’s still on the loose.

“You, on the other hand, he’ll snap up like a weasel grabbing a new-hatched chick the moment you’re out of our protection. You’ve humiliated him before men he distrusts. He’ll forgive that the day Queen Rylla begs on her knees for a pardon from Styphon’s House.”

Phidestros was making sense—too much sense—but not telling her what to do. Or perhaps he assumed she already knew, and was waiting for her to offer it freely.

“I… I suppose I could ride with the Iron Band, that is, if you’ve a place for a healer. I’d like to train some of your men to help me, if that could be arranged, because I really can’t do it all myself–”

Phidestros was kissing her eyelids and cheeks as well as her lips. Sirna wasn’t quite ready to kiss him back, but she didn’t stop him, either. She managed to be deaf to the new chorus of cheers and bawdy remarks around her.

“Some of my girls may want to come with you,” Menandra added. “Hostigos Town may not be the most comfortable place for a while. I’ve three or four who’ve earned out their time and may want to travel on. If you could train them too—

It’s insane! Here she was, planning to live as the healer to a band of Fourth Level mercenaries and madam to their field brothel. Not to mention, probably, mistress to their Captain-General—an idea that now left her feeling curious rather than degraded. Although please, let the contraceptive implants not run out before I find a way home!

It was insane—and it would keep her alive. If Roxthar’s Investigators had to fight the Iron Band to reach her, they probably would give her up as not worth the trouble. If she had to sleep with Phidestros to keep his favor, she would at least be sleeping with an interesting man—and not interesting in a purely academic sense, either…

She would go with Phidestros and his men. She would do what they wanted her to do, and they would keep her alive until Great King Kalvan returned and took vengeance for this day and all the other crimes of Styphon’s House.

Sirna was sure that day would come. It would be worth enduring much to be there to see it, and maybe, Dralm willing, help bring it about.

V

Tortha Karf, former Paratime Police Chief and now a Paratime Commissioner, ploughed his way through the guards and secretaries into Chief Verkan’s office. He found his successor sitting behind his horseshoe desk, face buried in his hands. Verkan’s face reminded Tortha of his fieldhands’ wives, back on Fifth Level Sicily. When the master announced he was forsaking his retirement, the women acted as if half the tribe’s men had just died in battle!

“What’s the matter, Vall? Has Dalla decided on another divorce?’’

Verkan looked up, startled as if he hadn’t known he had a visitor. “Oh, Tortha. It’s just wool-gathering. My friend Kalvan’s lost damned near everything. I just finished reviewing the tape on the fall of Tarr-Hostigos.

“Instead of leaving anything for the Styphoni, Ptosphes blew up the castle, the whole Styphoni storming party, and himself. Roxthar has turned his Investigators loose, and they’re busy murdering, torturing, or harassing any Hostigi who didn’t flee with Kalvan.”

“Sounds as if Ptosphes made the best of a bad job. Nothing sad about taking that big an escort with you. As for the other Hostigi—they’re just getting now what they’ve already had on all the other Styphon’s House time-lines where they didn’t have a Lord Kalvan to save them.”

The Commissioner leaned over the desk and quietly continued. “Vall, you’re a realist and a historian as well as a Paracop. You know all this. What’s really bothering you?”

Verkan winced as if he’d been slapped, then laughed. “You really know how to go to the heart of things. Maybe I will too, if I sit at this desk another century or so.”

Not much chance of that if he keeps taking every friend’s bad luck so personally, thought Tortha. A shame, really, because apart from his Kalvan problem Verkan showed every sign of being an above-average Chief for the Paracops.

“Now, once again. What’s eating you this way?”

“I let a good friend down, a friend who was counting on me. Here I’ve got all this power and I can’t do a Dralm-damned thing to help without upsetting some bureaucrat or breaking some Paratime regulation.”

“You’re not making sense. You’re falling into outtime guilt and loyalty patterns. If you weren’t Chief I’d suggest you make a short visit to our Bureau of PsychHygiene clinic.”

“I’d rather be in the hands of Roxthar’s Investigation!”

“That’s where you might be right now, if you’d been at Ardros Field. There, or just one more corpse in a mass grave. What good would either have done Kalvan? He’s alive and so are you, and I think you can do him a lot more good that way. Where is he now, by the way?”

“They’ve crossed the border of the Trygath—Hos-Rathon, it’s called now.”

“That’s the Seventh Kingdom Kalvan sponsored, isn’t it?”

“Yes. None of the other Great Kingdoms have recognized it.”

“Then Great King–”

“Nestros.”

“Great King Nestros should be a good friend to Kalvan. He must know he’s next on Styphon’s House’s list.”

“He probably is, but it’s going to be a while.” Verkan seemed more at ease now; his analysis of the situation began to flow with his usual fluency. “Ptosphes inflicted heavy casualties on the Grand Host and gave their morale a nasty jar. They’re probably not fit for a long pursuit into hostile country now.

“Besides, the victors will be dividing the spoils. Probably falling out over them, sooner or later. This much land hasn’t changed hands since the Zarthani Knights broke the Great River Confederation. Then there was only one real claimant, too. Now there are about six arguing over the pie.”

“Then Kalvan should have a while to figure out what to do next,” Tortha added. “In his place, I’d build a power base so that I could be a valuable ally to anyone who felt he didn’t get his share of the pie.”

“He could do that, selling his services in the Middle Kingdoms as a mercenary leader. Everybody’s going to need soldiers, until the barbarians are beaten back. The only thing holding the Middle Kingdoms to Styphon’s House was the fireseed secret, and that’s blown away. King Theovacar might even find Kalvan useful against his own barons, if there aren’t enough barbarians to fight.”

“Vail, I think you’ve just described your own next opportunity. Theovacar knows Verkan the Trader. He also knows that you’re a Baron of Hos-Hostigos. Who knows, you might lead him to make you one of his negotiators with his new royal guest, King Kalvan.”

“Of course! It’s going to take some planning and all the supplies I can beg, borrow, or steal on a few next-door time-lines, but–” Verkan frowned, then laughed out loud, a sound that made Tortha Karf want to do the same. He held his tongue, as Verkan tried to glare at him, then laughed again.

“You sly old dog! You planned this all along. Well, the penalty is going to be taking me and Dalla out to dinner at the Constellation House. We can finish roughing out the plans there.”

Verkan started to swivel his chair, then stopped. “Just as a suggestion, why don’t we sit on the fact that I’ve recovered. The rumors that I’m sitting staring at the wall have already brought out into the open a few mice who think the cat’s out to lunch. If we keep the rumors going a few more days, we may find a few more mice.”

“You’re not thinking of hiding it from Dalla, I hope?”

“If I did that, I would belong in the clinic!” Verkan said with a laugh. He swiveled his chair, and the rest of the world might have vanished in mist as Verkan started punching requests for data into his computer keyboard. Tortha Karf found a comfortable chair and leaned back with a contented sigh. The Verkan Vall he’d known for fifty years was back—and on the hunt again.

Science Fiction

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm by John C. Wright

The Corroding Empire 1: Corrosion by Johan Kalsi

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

Alien Game by Rod Walker

Young Man's War by Rod Walker

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

Fantasy

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 1: Swan Knight's Son by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 2: Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 3: Swan Knight's Sword by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 4: Daughter of Danger by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 5: City of Corpses by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 6: Tithe to Tartarus by John C. Wright

Arts of Dark and Light 0: Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

Arts of Dark and Light 1: A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

Arts of Dark and Light 2: A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Vox Day

The World in Shadow by Vox Day

The Wrath of Angels by Vox Day

Military Science Fiction

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VI ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VII ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. VIII ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Plague Wars 0: The Eden Plague by David VanDyke

Plague Wars 1: Reaper's Run by David VanDyke

Plague Wars 2: Skull's Shadows by David VanDyke

Galactic Liberation 1: Starship Liberator by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson

Galactic Liberation 2: Battleship Indomitable by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Fiction

An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney

Hitler in Hell by Martin van Creveld

Loki's Child by Fenris Wulf

The Ames Archives 1: Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

The Ames Archives 2: Rocky Mountain Retribution by Peter Grant

The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

Non-Fiction

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Clio & Me: An Intellectual Autobiography by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again by Mike Cernovich

The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne

Appendix N: A Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons by Jeffro Johnson

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

Push the Zone: The Good Guide to Growing Tropical Plants Beyond the Tropics by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police by Vox Day

Collected Columns, Vol. I: Innocence & Intellect, 2001—2005 by Vox Day

Collected Columns, Vol. II: Conceit & Crisis, 2006—2009 by Vox Day

Collected Columns, Vol. III: Failure & Freedom, 2010—2012 by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day

Do We Need God To Be Good? by C.R. Hallpike

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon by Moira Greyland Peat

The LawDog Files by LawDog

The LawDog Files: African Adventures by LawDog

There Will Be War
Volume IX

Edited by Jerry Pournelle

Copyright

There Will Be War
Volume IX
Edited by Jerry Pournelle

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

Copyright © 1990, 2016 by Jerry Pournelle
All rights reserved

Technical Editor: Eric Pobirs
Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen
Version: 001

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

AFTER ARMAGEDDON Copyright © 1990 by Jerry Pournelle

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

The editors gratefully acknowledge that research for some of the nonfiction essays in the book, including “After Armageddon: New Beginnings,” was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation. Responsibility for opinions expressed in this work remains solely with the authors.

The stories contained herein are copyrighted as follows:

AFTER ARMAGEDDON: NEW BEGINNINGS by J.E. Pournelle first appeared in Destinies Magazine in the Nov./ Dec. issue of 1978. The version that appears here has been revised for its appearance in this book. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Agency. Copyright © 1978 and 1989 by J. E. Pournelle & Associates.

KENYONS TO THE KEEP! by Jerry Pournelle appears here for the first time. It appears here by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Agency. Copyright © 1989 by J. E. Pournelle & Associates.

HOLO-CAUSTIC by Peter Dillingham is published here for the first time. It appears by permission of the author. Copyright © 1989 by Peter Dillingham.

COLLECTOR’S PIECE by Edward P. Hughes marks its first publication in this volume. It was written especially for this book by the author and appears with his permission. Copyright © 1989.

HALF THE BATTLE by Harry Turtledove appears here in its first publication by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1989.

ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE by F. G. Wyllis makes its first appearance in this book. Copyright © 1989 by F. G. Wyllis.

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ZEPPELIN TEMPEST by J. P. Boyd appears here for the first time. Copyright © 1989 by J. P. Boyd.

THE FUTURE OF THE GREAT POWERS by Alan Brown is published here for the first time and appears by permission of the author. Copyright © 1989 by Alan Brown.

THE VOICE OF THE COCKROACH by Leslie Fish was written especially for this book and appears here for the first time. Copyright © 1989 by Leslie Fish.

SONG OF THE RED WAR-BOAT by Rudyard Kipling is in the public domain.

PRIMUM NON NOCERE by Paul Edwards finds its first publication in this book. Copyright © 1989 by Paul Clinco.

HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE by Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, is in the public domain.

FEAR AND SURVIVAL by Reginald Bretnor was first published in the February 1986 issue of Survival Tomorrow. It appears here by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1986 by R. Bretnor.

THE BERENDT CONVERSION by John Brunner first appeared in 1980 in the collection Foreign Constellations. Copyright © 1980 by Brunner Fact & Fiction.

THE CONTRACT by Don Hawthorne was written for this book and appears here for the first time by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1989 by Donald Hawthorne.

THE BODYGUARD by Vernon W. Glasser was first published in the August 1951 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Copyright © 1951 by Street & Smith Publications. Copyright © 1989 by Vernon W. Glasser.

THE PALACE AT MIDNIGHT by Robert Silverberg first appeared in Omni Magazine in 1981. It appears here by permission of the author. Copyright © 1981 by Agberg, Ltd.

WINTERGATE II: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by Russell Seitz is published here for the first time by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1989 by Russell Seitz.

TORCH by Christopher Anvil was first published in the April 1957 Issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Copyright © 1957 by Street & Smith Publications.

BRINGING HOME THE BACON by Eric Oppen is published here for the first time anywhere. Copyright © 1989 by Eric Oppen.

JOURNALS OF THE PLAGUE YEARS by Norman Spinrad appeared for the first time in the anthology Full Spectrum. Copyright © 1988 by Bantam Books; copyright © 1988 by Norman Spinrad.

AFTERWORD by J. E. Pournelle copyright © 1989 by J. E. Pournelle.

Table of Contents

After Armageddon: New Beginnings, Jerry Pournelle

Preface to the 2016 Edition, Jerry Pournelle
Kenyons to the Keep!, Jerry Pournelle
Holo-Caustic, Peter Dillingham
Collector’s Piece, Edward P. Hughes
Half the Battle, Harry Turtledove
Only the Strong Survive, F. G. Wyllis

The Last Cruise of the Zeppelin Tempest, J.P. Boyd

The Future of the Great Powers, Alan Brown
The Voice of the Cockroach, Leslie Fish
Song of the Red War-boat, Rudyard Kipling
Primum Non Nocere, Paul Edwards

Horatius at the Bridge, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay

Fear and Survival, Reginald Bretnor
The Berendt Conversion, John Brunner
The Contract, Don Hawthorne
The Bodyguard, Vernon W. Glasser
The Palace at Midnight, Robert Silverberg

Wintergate II: The War of the Worlds, Russell Seitz

Torch, Christopher Anvil
Bringing Home the Bacon, Eric Oppen
Journals of the Plague Years, Norman Spinrad
Afterword, Jerry Pournelle

After Armageddon: New Beginnings
by Jerry Pournelle

Have you ever wished your house would burn down? I have. Not really, of course; but there could be advantages. We’d get to start over. All that furniture: it’s okay, but it isn’t what we really want, and we can’t change over to a new style because of all the older stuff that wouldn’t match. The machinery, adequate but obsolete: not old enough to scrap, but you can get appliances that are so much better now.

It would be tough going for a while if we had to start over, but it might be worth it…

Our house of state has a number of national problems. Trash and sewage: our waste management systems were designed to dispose of them, not treat them as valuable resources, and now we have this huge investment in the wrong philosophy. City plans, where they exist at all, were framed when energy (particularly gasoline for cars) was cheap. Office buildings and factories were designed with the assumption of cheap and inexhaustible energy supply. Now there’s so much sunk investment involved that we can’t start over, although we have a much better idea of the crucial factors we ought to consider.

How might we design America if we had a clean slate, given what we know now? After all, it’s obvious that the United States has better technology than industry. One of the less obvious advantages of World War II was that it smashed up Europe’s obsolete industries, forcing them to rebuild from scratch—thus making them vastly more efficient.

Suppose we in the United States had such an opportunity. We would begin by designing collection systems to make use of “wastes” so that sewage and garbage and much of the cellulose could be fermented into methanes and fertilizers. Metals could be collected for re-refining, while the low-grade combustibles would become an energy source for processing these “urban mineral resources.” The result would be to reduce the volumes to a manageable size, cut down on the transportation costs, and very greatly reduce the land costs involved in creating “sanitary landfills.”

All this would save something like five percent of our national energy budget—not the Earth, but certainly worth striving for—and make waste management a source of profit to cities, rather than another burden on taxpayers.

We could revise building codes and tax assessment rules to require that residences be built with sufficient insulation and elementary solar heating. The combination could save as much as forty percent of the energy now used in space heating—and space heating is one of the major components of our energy budget. We’d avoid taking high-grade energy, such as coal and natural gas and electricity, and turning it into low-grade energy (warm air in habitations) as we presently do.

Sure, that’s possible for new structures now. But consider the vast number of present dwellings and office buildings and factories; they were designed in such a way that just altering the piping to shunt the hot-water intake across a simple flat plate collector on the roof would generally cost more than the total hot-water bills for many years. If we could just start over, though—redesign—solar preheaters and solar room heaters could be put in at break-even prices for the buyer, with consequent benefits to the national balance of payments.

We could design cities with industries around the power plants, thus making use of high-grade steam as steam, rather than turning much of it into electricity (with losses in generation), transporting it across country (more losses in the transmission lines), and finally turning it back into steam and heat at the other end. With proper design of industrial parks and residential areas would come real rapid transit—not something forced on people against their will (the major problem with present-day transit schemes), but a system actually more convenient than automobiles—again with consequent savings in energy.

Doing that would have enormous effects; after all, space heating and transportation are two of the largest chunks of our energy budget, and transportation consumes a very great part of the imported oil. (I know, I know: usually I give the exact numbers, rather than speaking in broad generalities. Give me time, and have a care for the newcomers who don’t know how painlessly I can insert numbers into these discussions.)

Somehow I have trouble getting interested in this scenario…

An alternative would be to suppose Earth were struck by a giant comet. With any luck there’s no one out there who hasn’t at least heard of Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (Fawcett, 1978). The results were described in our book, and it could be fascinating to assume you have nothing left but electricity while facing the depleted resource-base of Earth: a sort of Challenge of Man’s Future (Harrison Brown, circa 1950) from the 1978 viewpoint.

Brown’s Challenge, for those not familiar with it, made the point that the easily exploited resources are gone; the near-surface oil, the shallow-mine coal, even the forests; thus, once we lose technology (Brown was concerned about war, but a natural disaster would do the job as well) we can never regain it. It takes a high-technology society to exploit deeply-buried energy and mineral resources; without high technology, you can’t get enough high-energy sources to construct your power sources.

However, Brown wrote in the ’50s; could things have changed since then? Not really; you do need a high-energy technology in order to construct a high-energy technology when starting with a depleted resource base. However, given electricity—in Hammer there is at least a chance that a 2000-megawatt nuclear plant could survive, giving the survivors somewhat more electrical energy than the entire United States had prior to 1940—something might be done after all. The how of it could be fascinating and certainly would make a good essay…

Except that I can’t get interested in that one either.

No: I am not going to go on for five thousand words on what I can’t do. I’m about done with that. But I do want to say something about why I have trouble playing the “new beginnings” game.

It’s too deadly serious. In some ways it is terrifying. Not in the obvious one. I have spent a great deal of my professional life “thinking about the unthinkable,” and I have no real difficulty with intellectual exercises that assume fifty to seventy percent of the Earth’s population is dead, most of the industry destroyed, etc., etc. Nor am I concerned about “becoming callous to disaster,” or any of those other old saws; in my judgment the cruelest people are those who take no thought for the morrow, and who act without a shred of prudence and forethought, no matter how noble their intentions.

No, the frightening part about universal disaster is its attractiveness.

It would make things so easy. Clear off the deadwood, chop down the surplus population in one sweeping tragedy. The result would be horrible, but a billion dead is not a billion times more tragic than a single death: and we could build such a beautiful world on the ashes!

Think of it: a world with few comforts and luxuries, to be sure, but one in which all work is meaningful; a world without rat-races and monkey-motions, a world of hard work simply for the sake of survival, but one close to nature, with really magnificent goals for the future; a world with few regulations and rules and paperwork and all the other frustrations that make us psychoneurotic.

Look at the other effects. The genetic pool would be (by definition) composed of survivors. If there’s any truth to the cliche that what’s good for individuals en masse is bad for the species, then the bigger the disaster (up to the point of extinction of the race) the better. And if the disaster were a war which largely employed neutron bombs so that the destruction of physical resources was minimal…

It is morbidly attractive. Not that we’d choose it, of course (well, a few who are really far into “ecology” might), but still, we could live with it, and it does have advantages over the present, and we could be so kind to the Earth while rebuilding…

That’s what’s so terrifying: when I find myself thinking that way; because if I, with all my commitment to technology and man’s vast future, can get into a mood in which the only way out seems to be through destruction of some large fraction of the human race, then there must be very many more out there who see no hope for the future at all.

And that’s senseless.

Anything we can do after a disaster can be done now. Can’t it? Given the resources left over from an unprecedented disaster wiping out a very large part of humanity, we can certainly accomplish more with our total resource base—and yet it is easier in many ways to imagine starting from scratch.

Why is that? How have we got ourselves into such a box that disaster looks attractive?

Well, we haven’t. We’ve got the resources and capabilities not for mere survival, but “survival with style,” as I put it in another essay: to build a world in which Western civilization is not an island of wealth in the midst of a vast sea of poverty; in which all the world has access to at least the wealth we enjoyed in the ’50s; and to sustain that level of wealth practically forever. We need only exploit what’s available to us; to abandon the notion of “Only One Earth” and realize that we live in a system of nine planets, thirty-six moons, a million asteroids, a billion comets, and a very large and benign thermonuclear generator we call “the Sun.”

Yet—we aren’t doing it. As I write this, the Shuttle program is limping along in the wake of the Challenger disaster. Certainly the Shuttle was not an optimum design; certainly it was justified on the basis of missions which could be performed more cheaply by unmanned boosters (we’ll never recover the cost of the Shuttle program through salvage and repair of satellites, or even through the “cheap” launch of dozens, yea hundreds, of “black box” satellites). But the Shuttle is the only game in town: it is our access to the space environment, the truck we can use to begin real exploitation of space—and without it, we have nothing.

Well—since I wrote those words we have come up with new hopes. The SSX, Spaceship Experimental, has been proposed to the Vice President and the Space Council. But it’s not funded; so it’s still true that without the Shuttle, we have nothing.

Instead of an energy program, we have a taxation system; instead of research and development, we have a myriad of rules and regulations, while the R&D budgets are pared to the bone. We play about with windmills, but neglect solar power satellites; we dither about conservation, learn that everyone is in favor of it so long as somebody else does the conserving—and neglect new energy sources.

We have an aging work force and a bankrupt Social Security system. Social Security always depended on growth: the younger workers taxed to support the retired. Now, with low birth rates, the work force decreases relative to the number of retired people, and therefore we must increase productivity per worker to avoid disaster. (You can’t much increase the work force for the next twenty years even if you begin breeding the workers now—and expanding population is probably not an optimum method anyway.) We can only get increased productivity by providing more energy per worker; to do that requires more power plants; and we aren’t building them.

Two options open: coal and nuclear; and neither can be constructed. The U.S. nuclear energy industry is dismantling itself; it turned out to be a marvelous way to produce power (during the Great Freezes, the only power sources operating in much of the nation were nuclear) but a better way to subsidize lawyers. As to coal, it’s just great. There are only two things you can’t do with coal: mine it or burn it.

Item: the “Natural Resources Defense Council” has “won” a judgment against the U.S. Department of the Interior that provides, among other things, for no new coal leases for about three years; and restricts the United States to release of lands approved by the NRDC. The NRDC is a private organization of “concerned” people.

The interesting part is who the Carter administration chose as U.S. attorneys to defend the Department of the Interior: John Leshly, who a year before had been employed by NRDC to prepare NRDC’s case against the government; and Deputy Assistant Attorney General J. Moorman, whose previous employment was as Executive Director of the Sierra Club’s Legal Defense Fund.

And after (surprise!) the United States lost the case came an even more remarkable development: on February 25, 1978, the U.S. Dept. of Interior signed away its right to appeal the case.

You may draw from that any conclusions you want, but surely we will have some difficulties developing new coal resources.

Item: as I write this, they’re laying off scientists and engineers from the fusion research program; delaying construction of electron-beam fusion research devices; stretching out studies of the ocean-thermal system; chopping more out of the space budget; ignoring the potential of geo-pressurized zones (superheated water deposits supersaturated with methane, about three kilometers below Louisiana and Texas, with estimated energy potential greater than the entire known U.S. coal reserves); refusing to deregulate the price of natural gas; and doing nothing about simplifying the present tangle of sixty-four permits required to build nuclear fission power plants.

The U.S. of A., home of “know-how” and “Yankee ingenuity,” inventor of most of the technology being deployed in the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, has firmly backed away from government-sponsored research and development, while keeping a tax structure that makes it nigh impossible for private R&D to work on big projects such as space and fusion.

Why?

The usual answer is that we can’t afford big R&D programs. That, of course, is nonsense. When your energy system is to pay $50 billion a year to the Arabs; when you rack up in a single year a trade deficit larger than the cumulative deficit balance of payments from George Washington through and including Richard Nixon; when you’re selling the nation on the installment plan to Japan and the Sheik of Araby—when that’s your system, you can afford any alternative.

You don’t even have to worry about whether the alternatives have a high chance of payoff: given what we’re doing now, it makes sense to pursue a number of alternatives simultaneously.

Moreover, we have the money. Item: the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has consumed about $4 billion in direct costs since its inception, and the total cost of OSHA has been in excess of $14 billion. Maybe that would be worth it, but in fact the accident rates at present are not measurably different from what they were before OSHA began. There’s a large part of the Apollo program right there.

At its largest, NASA took about two cents from each tax dollar. Few would argue that we haven’t been repaid many times over for the investment. Not in Teflon frying pans, but in new technology: carbon-filament materials, weather forecasting, communications, Landsat and Earthsat data for prospecting, crop management, ecological and environmental data available only from space; management techniques, firefighting techniques, medical technology, food processing, automated checkout procedures, quality control systems—the list of benefits from space research is nearly endless.

It would only take about two percent of the national budget to bring about what Harry Stine has called “The Third Industrial Revolution”: to usher in an era of plenty; to make it possible to be really concerned about pollution and damage to the environment; to put the really messy industrial processes into space; and to ensure plenty of raw material for ourselves and our posterity for at least 50,000 years.

The argument that we can’t afford space and energy research just won’t hold water. We can’t afford not to have vigorous research in those areas.

Item: on November 11, 1977, prominent physicists from the USA, USSR, Canada, France, and Japan issued a statement from their meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, noting that the world’s living standards and the size of “disadvantaged populations” would continue to rise throughout this century. Thus, they said, demand for resources would continue to increase, and “failure to meet this demand will result in extensive evils such as poverty, starvation, unrest, epidemics, riots, and wars.” What’s the cost of a small war compared to a decent R&D program? A lot more than two percent of the national budget, anyway.

At that same conference Nicholai Basov, Soviet Nobel Prize winner, announced several breakthroughs in laser-stimulated fusion, and gave the technical details in an unclassified briefing.

The U.S. promptly classified his data. From whom is the government keeping it secret? Nor was this the first time: when Leonid Rudakov (Soviet electron beam expert) came over to the U.S. to tell of his experiments in fusion, U.S. officers put a blanket over his blackboard! (See Science, Oct. 8, 1976, p. 166.)

What is going on here? The U.S. is acting as if we are deliberately rejecting technology; it almost seems as if we are determined to try Rousseau’s return to nature—a suicidal policy indeed.

The Soviets offer cooperation—they need energy resources as much as we do—and we turn them down. The British, French, and Japanese use U.S.-developed technology to build breeder reactors, while we stubbornly dismantle our nuclear industry.

No wonder that a “new beginning” can be superficially attractive.

There is another type of new beginning: one that starts with our present situation and moves ahead.

It should begin with a revolution in our social science. Nearly every major political philosophy was generated at a time when our “understanding” of the universe was scarcely worth the name, and at a time when scarcity was seen to be an inevitable fact of life. The latest of the most influential political philosophies was Marxism, which attempted to integrate the industrial revolution into political thought; and Marx wrote before the airplane and automobile, before electronics or radio or the telephone; before the real effects of the First Industrial Revolution (steam) could be seen.

There has been at least one major industrial revolution since Marx: call it electronics, or servomechanisms, or feedback, or cybernetics. The effects have been at least as profound as was the steam engine.

But Marxism, outdated as it is, is the latest of the political philosophies. Most political theories were familiar to Aristotle; indeed, graduate students in political “science” literally read Aristotle—as primary source material.

True, there have been a few attempts to deal intellectually with the modern world. Peter Drucker, Herman Kahn, Galbraith, Prehoda, Possony and myself, a few others, have tried to investigate the effects of modern technology on political and social theory; but there has been little real impact. In the grade schools and high schools, in undergraduate colleges, indeed in graduate schools, the academic community still teaches social theory based on a very false picture of the physical world—theories derived from a world without electricity, a world in which agriculture was primitive, transportation was limited by the speed of the horse and wind-driven ships, law was an arcane science because most of the population would never learn to read—and, most importantly, in which the “goods of fortune” (Aristotle’s phrase) were necessarily limited; a world in which wealth-for-all was not possible even in theory.

We don’t live in such a universe any longer.

The United States annually produces about 400 million tons of metals each year: 1.7 x 10^15 grams of metal. Assume ore at three percent and a density of 3.5 gm/cm^3, and we find that in 1977 the USA processed ores equivalent to a sphere a little over three kilometers in diameter.

That’s in the United States. Suppose, though, that we want the world to be wealthy; one measure of wealth is usable metal. U.S. population, about 250 million; world population, about 4 billion. Thus the U.S. had some 6.8 million grams of metal per capita to play with; multiply by the 4 billion world population and we need a total of 2.7 x 10^16 grams of metal to make everyone as rich as we are.

Once again assume three percent ore and that’s a sphere some eight kilometers in diameter.

There are 40,000 asteroids larger than five kilometers in diameter, and 3.5 percent ore is probably a severe underestimate of their useful metal content: the random samples from the Moon ran eight percent. Asteroids are now thought to be fragments of larger bodies, many of them large enough to have been differentiated (heavier elements such as metals sinking to the core), after which they were battered over the eons, with the rocky outer layers knocked off to leave the metal-rich core exposed. It is thus possible that many asteroids will run fifty percent and above useful ore.

Note the potential: Even with a population of 30 billion on Earth there is enough raw material to keep everyone rich for millennia.

About that population: is it not obvious that through history there has been one and only one effective means of limiting population? Not war, of course: birth rates rise in wartime. But wealth has always lowered birth rates. Catholic or Protestant or Shinto or Buddhist, it makes no difference: when nations get wealthy, their populations stabilize.

Wealth requires only raw materials and energy. Raw materials are available in plenty.

So is energy. Solar power satellites (SPS), as an example, could furnish the world far more energy per capita than is presently consumed in the USA—and do it forever. Now it may be that SPS is not the best way to go. It may be that fusion will do it cheaper and more conveniently. Who cares? My point is that the energy is there, that we know how to get it, that we have the technology to do it, and we have the investment resources right now. If fusion doesn’t work, SPS will.

Isn’t that expensive? Not compared to $50 billion paid for Arab oil, it isn’t. A full SPS program couldn’t possibly cost what we’re already paying for energy.

Given energy, we can take care of pollution; if need be we can take pollution products apart to their constituent elements. Given energy, we have solved the food production problem: on Abu Dhabi, a desert island, they grow in greenhouses a fantastic crop per acre, and all they have to work with is sand and sea-water—and energy, of course. Given energy we can make the world wealthy.

Given energy and space mining we could, if that became desirable, turn the Earth into a park; vastly increase the wilderness areas; put all the contaminating industries out there where—were we to devote the gross world product and vaporize the Earth in the bargain—we couldn’t manage to “pollute outer space” for more than a few decades.

That’s my idea of a New Beginning: a political philosophy that recognizes the vast potential of mankind; that recognizes that if there are limits to growth, they are so far beyond our comprehension that they may as well be infinite; that recognizes Godel’s theorem (the number of mathematical theorems is essentially infinite: i.e., there is no limit to the potential growth of knowledge).

The major political and social philosophies were generated in a time when mankind didn’t even know how many stars there are.

It is a time for such a New Beginning.

Aye. And past time.

Preface to the 2016 Edition
by Jerry Pournelle

When the original edition of this book was being assembled, it was fairly obvious that the Soviet Union would not win the Cold War. Khrushchev, who threatened to bury the West, was alive but in disgrace. Gorbachev was trying to reform Communism, give it a human face and achieve glasnost—openness—and at least some aspects of a stable regime that relied upon the consent of the larger part of the governed; to end the rule of the Nomenklatura and create a more responsive Party and governing structure. He was not popular; he could probably have more easily been elected President of the United States than of Russia or the Soviet Union. And by the time this book was made ready for publication, there had already been other developments.

It was clear that International Communism was in trouble. That said, the USSR still possessed at least 25,000 nuclear warheads, and a formidable arsenal of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles—ICBMs. It was not at all clear that the USSR would lose graciously. It was capable of bringing down civilization everywhere in its death spasms, and many thought there was a very good chance that it would do so.

The Survivalist Movement underwent a partial collapse during the decline of the USSR in the late 80’s, but it picked up again as the end of Soviet communism came nearer. There are still many who believe that nuclear Armageddon was a very near-run thing. For example, we learned years later that there was a stash of nuclear warheads hidden in one of the former Soviet states. An International Arms Control group heard rumors about it and sent a team to investigate. They found the arsenal, intact, guarded by a single sergeant of the Soviet Army. His officers had deserted over a year previously, and neither he nor his men had been paid for many months. His last enlisted man had deserted three months before. He was being fed by the villagers, mostly bread and onions. When the Commission officers relieved him and asked why he had stayed on duty, he told them that he thought it important for someone to guard the weapons.

That is only one of many similar stories that have emerged from the fall of the USSR.

Meanwhile, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federative Socialist Soviet Republic, advocated democratic reforms. He was besieged in the RFSSR Capitol, the White Palace, by the Guards unit, the last army units which still obeyed the Kremlin and the USSR; their colonel became convinced that he served the wrong side, and one afternoon the tanks of the Guards regiment, which had faced the White Palace to besiege it, turned 180 degrees, facing away from the palace, thus guarding it. Yeltsin had won their allegiance. The USSR was doomed from that day.

There was still the danger of nuclear war, but it eased over the years, and the Survivalist movement essentially vanished. A protégé of Boris Yeltsin, a former Lt. Colonel of the State Security Committee—the KGB—was appointed Yeltsin’s successor and was later elected President of the newly established Russian Federation.

Those events had not yet taken place when this book was originally published. Vladimir Putin was still an officer of the KGB. Soviet Missiles were still aimed at US cities and missile silo farms. Soviet Submarines still tracked American boomer subs as they left their bases at Holy Loch and elsewhere. Armageddon was still a possibility.

Today the USSR is gone, and Russia is perhaps not our greatest threat, despite our having provoked them by taking the anti-Slavic side in a Balkan war in which it was hard to discern the US interest. North Korea is known to have nuclear weapons and might yet sell them to our enemies. It can only be a matter of time before Iran, who holds daily two-minute-hate sessions against the Great Satan, acquires nuclear weapons of its own. Armageddon once again threatens, perhaps not so directly as when this book was first published, but the threat is nevertheless there. Regrettably, it appears a book on the theme of After Armageddon is still relevant.

Jerry Pournelle

Studio City

February, 2016

Editor’s Introduction to:
Kenyons to the Keep!
By Jerry Pournelle

I began this story about fifteen years ago when I was hikemaster for a troop of local Boy Scouts. Los Angeles is a unique environment for a city in that within its borders it encompasses beach, desert, and wilderness. We hiked through a lot of different terrain in and around Los Angeles; it wasn’t hard on some of our trips to imagine all that passes for modern civilization wiped clean away.

From these hikes came the inspiration for several works, including Lucifer’s Hammer and “Kenyons to the Keep!” When the retreat from civilization begins, it can be as hard to stop as erosion on a mountain top—one of several lessons Ross Kenyon learns in this story.

Kenyons to the Keep!
by Jerry Pournelle

I

The legends said Man had once walked on the moon.

Ross Kenyon didn’t believe it, but the Moon rising full and blood red over Griffith Castle seemed close enough to touch. He knew that Sierra tribesmen flew. They soared like the great condors. Ross had heard of other aircraft that could lift themselves from the ground, although he had never seen one. If men could fly, surely they could go to the Moon? Perhaps when it was only rising, not so high above and far away…

The Sun had fallen into the Pacific, but dusky twilight hung across the great battlements of Kenyon Keep. Out ahead, directly in front of Ross, torches and campfires dotted the San Fernando Valley. They stretched north, then ended abruptly. Ross could not see the ruins that marked the northern boundary of Kenyon lands, but he had seen them often enough to know where each stood.

For three hundred years the northern San Fernando and the Newhall Valley beyond had been battlefields in an endless multi-sided war. The Highland and Sierra clans of the mountains, the Oxnard outreaches of Santa Barbara, desert nomads, Ekofreak and Greenpeace, all contended with the divided forces of the Civilized Lands of the South, and none could hold the valleys. The Kenyons had pushed farther than most, but even they had been driven back. From the day of his birth Ross had been at war.

Ross hated it. The Kenyons held the northern keep of Civilization, and always they tried to push forward, to take and hold the San Fernando and Newhall Valleys. Ross Kenyon was fifteen; when he was ten his father had laid Kenyon boundary stones westward past Topanga. When Ross became El Señor Kenyon it would be his turn, and in his lifetime he might take five more miles. Five more miles for a lifetime probably cut short. It did not seem a fair exchange.

The Valleys were good land; but were they worth endless war? Ross imagined them in the darkness. Valleys covered with ruins, except where the nomad tribes had leveled them. If those lands were cleared they could be held with a new keep at the top of the Newhall Pass, a lesser keep to guard the Big Tujunga canyon; two strong places, and the Valleys could be held. Ross had designs for the keeps, and there would be plenty of stone for building. The Valleys were covered with stone.

Fallen buildings, ash heaps, flat stone in slabs, white stone roads, black stone, all remains of what the Ancients had built. How? Ross had never understood how the Ancients could waste such good land, covering it with stone and trees that bore no fruit. If the Ancients could waste the best land for miles, then perhaps the old legends were true. Only the fabulously powerful could conjure food from a valley of stone.

The Moon rose steadily, and now there were blue witchlights on Mount Wilson to the east. Sorcerers lived there on the mountain towering high above the Dead Lands. They had built a great stone palace, larger and stronger than Kenyon Keep, stronger even than the Mayor’s Palace in Los Angeles. The sorcerers had neither lands nor religion nor army, but their fortress had stood for five hundred years, since before the Burning and the Plagues—or so they said, and who could dispute it? They lived in uneasy peace with the Sierra Highlanders who held the Angeles Mountains. They had little enough contact, demanding nothing from the lowlands, but farmers often took them tribute, and sometimes received gifts, or heard the Oracle tell them of the weather to come, and the proper time for planting. The sorcerers lived well.

Yet they were only men. They could not fly, not even as well as the Sierra. They knew things that others did not; sometimes of events that happened far away, or the coming rains long before anyone in the City or the Hills or the Valley could see any cloud; but they were only men. They could be killed, and had been, when the tribesmen penetrated into the Valley and the Civilized lands beyond… and the tribesmen were coming again.

They knew much, these witchmen, but they seldom spoke to anyone not their own. Sometimes their stewards, led by officers with strange titles—Grad, and Postdoc—came to the lowlands to trade. Sometimes they bought women. Young girls, orphans of good family, whose ancestry was known. “Not slaves,” the Postdoc had told Ross’s father. “Never slaves. The girls will marry.” Flintridge Kenyon had made the Postdoc swear…

Ross Kenyon’s private reverie was interrupted by galloping hooves. Three horsemen, riding fast up the winding road from the Valley to the ramparts of the Keep. Kenyon touched the thick walls with reverence. Ten feet thick, built of stone quarried from the ruins below, they circled the brow of the hill, enclosing a large horseshoe-shaped ridge. The central courts were large, more than ample to hold the Kenyons and their retainers and their flocks. There were enormous cisterns, kept always full from rainfall and water carried from the Los Angeles River below. There were the long cannon, with a range of over three miles, and the smaller guns which could fire grape and canister. The fortress had been started by other families, driven out so long ago their names were forgotten; but since Ross Kenyon’s great-great-grandfather had taken the hill and strengthened the walls, it had killed every army that marched against it. Highlander, Eko-freak, Sierra, Santa Paula, Berdoo, Greenpeace, Apache, the Mayor of Los Angeles himself; all had tried, and still the Kenyons held. Three horsemen were no danger.

Ross heard the shouted challenge from the gates, and the response; the creaking gates, just shut for sundown, now opened again; and hooves clattered on the cobblestones of the outer courtyard. Now there were other sounds: running men climbing the great stone stairways to the high rampart tower where Ross stood. Five men at least. Two carried torches.

The flickering light showed two of the Kenyon household guard, dull reflection from the links of their mail armor, crimson sash of the officer of the watch. He was not much older than Ross: John Stephenson, a cousin. When they were younger John had been a good friend. Now the differences between the heir and a relative came between them. Behind the officer ran two vaqueros. Ross recognized Wenceslas, vaquero jefe of the Kenyon herds and another in the blue and gold Kenyon livery. The fifth man wore dark robes with no flash or ornament.

“Don Ross,” Wenceslas shouted. He spoke rapidly in the San Diego patois, part Spanish, part Mexican, part ancient English and part nothing ever heard before the Burning. The Kenyon family had never spoken anything but Anglic until Ross’s father had, in his youth, gone on a diplomatic mission to the Alcalde of Escondido and returned with the daughter of the house. The Alcalde had insisted that his daughter should go to the North in a way fitting to her ancestry, and sent fifty vaqueros and their families as her dowry. Now the Kenyon house was bilingual. Ross could not remember a time when he did not speak both Anglic and Sandiegan.

“A message from your father,” Wenceslas was saying. “A message from Don Flintridge. Padre Guitierrez has brought it, hijo de mi patrón.”

Ross interrupted the rapid flow of words. “And what is so urgent that you have brought Padre Guitierrez to me before offering him the hospitality of Kenyon Keep?” he demanded. “You have brought him with the dust of the road on his feet and in his throat.”

“It is urgent, Don Ross,” Guitierrez said. The voice was younger than the man. Guitierrez seemed withered, bent with age, although some of his weariness would be from the ten-mile ride from the Abbey San Francisco de Chatsworth to Kenyon Keep. Ross had never seen Guitierrez without robe and cowl, not even in the heat of the day, and often wondered if the clothing concealed deformities. There were monsters in the world, and some of them grew to be men, and the Church was a natural refuge for them. Celibacy kept them from breeding more monsters… Ross became aware that Guitierrez was silent.

“Prepare rooms and dinner for the Padre,” Ross ordered. “And ask my uncle and my mother to join me in the Library.” He said the word proudly. There were few great families who collected books, and the Kenyon collection was magnificent, almost five hundred volumes.

Ross waved dismissal to his retainers. John Stephenson hung back for a moment, eager to hear the news, but he caught the displeasure in Ross’s eye and went with the others. Ross regretted sending him. John was a loyal officer, not eager to grasp more than should come to him, and probably could be trusted with any news; but it was too late. Stephenson had turned angrily away.

A vaquero put his torch into a niche on the rampart, where it added its smoke to the soot of countless torches that had burned there before. The high ramparts were a place of meditation for five generations of Kenyons. When all had left, Ross said, “My father is well?”

“Don Flintridge lives,” Guitierrez said.

Ross kept his face impassive. “That is good news, but you would not come to tell me only that.”

“He is badly injured. An arrow, and he fell from his horse. He is now in the Great Keep at Ramona. The Alcalde is with him.”

“I will go immediately.”

“You cannot, Don Ross. You could not enter. The Mexicali forces, with many mercenaries, have the Keep under siege. It was while cutting his way in to aid his father-in-law that Don Flintridge was wounded.”

Padre Guitierrez did not say that Ross would be unable to take more than a tenth of the forces that his father had led south. He didn’t have to. Kenyon Keep was stripped of its professional soldiers. Flintridge Kenyon took his family obligations seriously, and had ridden immediately to the Alcalde’s aid; if his household guards had a difficult time entering the Ramona Keep, the vaqueros and other mobile troops available to Ross would have no chance at all.

“The Abbot has ordered perpetual prayer for Don Flintridge,” Guitierrez said.

Ross kept his face in shadow, careful to show no emotion in his eyes. “You’re a Kenyon!” his father had thundered. Countless times: when Ross had fallen from his horse; when his brother had died; when the mamacita of his infancy lay with blackened tongue and the bursting pustules of plague; when the tribesman’s arrow had pierced his shoulder; and when a favorite pony had broken a foreleg and Ross himself had to take the loaded musket to the stable… “You’re a Kenyon. We command, and command shows no fears.”

But his father was hurt, besieged more than a hundred miles to the south. In these times men lived and died quickly, and Flintridge Kenyon had lived more than his share of years; but Ross was only fifteen. His feeling for his father was a mixture, love and duty and fear and respect; and always there was the knowledge that when Flint Kenyon was laid with his fathers in the vault below Kenyon Chapel, Ross would be El Señor Kenyon, Master of Encino, responsible for a thousand families…

“There is worse news, Don Ross.”

“What can be worse?”

“The tribes are gathering in the Mojave. Yesterday they held a Great Council at the Palmdale Stone Field. Chiefs of the Sierra were there. Among them the Mahons of Solamint. The Sierra Chiefs returned safely to their mountains.”

And that said it all, Ross thought. If the Mojave tribesmen sat at Council with the mountain clansmen and the clansmen went home alive… then the way from the Mojave into the Newhall and San Fernando Valleys was no longer closed to the tribesmen. “How do you know this?”

Guitierrez shrugged. “The Church has her miracles.”

Ross nodded. On Mount Wilson they called it sorcery. The Church said miracles. Master Yorumma, Ross’s tutor, called it “science” and said that certain Ancient devices had survived. Some of the books in the Kenyon Library said the same thing, but there was no point in discussing it. Who would listen? Certainly not Guitierrez; the Church had not since time out of mind let anyone who knew the secret of the farspeakers go outside heavily defended walls.

However they did it, everyone knew that some of the monasteries and episcopal palaces—but not all of them—learned of distant events long before messengers could ride with news. But although the Church could know, this message might not be true. His Most Holy Excellency Don Jaime O’Riley Cardinal Diego, Archbishop of Western Noramerica and secular prince of San Diego, had his own political plans. Abbey San Fernando de Chatsworth was strongly allied with the Kenyons and wouldn’t deliberately lie, but the message was no more reliable than those who had sent it.

But to what purpose? Ross wondered. “Does the Mayor know?”

Guitierrez shrugged again. “Not from us. My instructions were to inform you. I have done so.”

And to the devil with the Protestant Mayor and his Council and people, Ross thought. The padre’s attitude was natural. More than one Mayor of Los Angeles had led armies against the Abbey before Ross’s mother brought it under Kenyon protection, and the Church in the City proper had been despoiled, reduced to a tiny diplomatic mission existing within the Mayor’s palace, not even granted its own quarters.

“But you have no objection if I tell His Honor?” Ross asked.

“I repeat my instructions, Don Ross. Dom Julian sent me to inform Don Ross Kenyon. I have done so. And now, if I may, I will accept the hospitality you have offered.”

“Yes. Certainly. Thank you, Padre. I will show you to the dining hall. If you wish anything else, you have only to ask.” Automatically Ross led Padre Guitierrez to the lesser hall, not the Great Hall; for although the Church was always welcome, and Padre Guitierrez had ridden hard to carry his message to Kenyon Station, there were, after all, proprieties to be observed, and Guitierrez was only a priest—and probably hunchbacked at that.

II

The Library was a hard room, as hard as the men who had held Kenyon Keep for generations. It was stone, with an oak council table, and the books which stood behind locked glass doors could not soften the effect of massive granite and splintered concrete blocks. Even the tapestries with their battle scenes looked hard.

Doña Estella Almoravez Kenyon had borne nine children and buried four of them. There were deep lines in her face, lines that all the expensive creams and ointments Flintridge Kenyon bought couldn’t erase. She had grown thin with age, so that she seemed very tiny in the enormous chair at the end of the great council table, dark blue gown and black shawl with silver trim; her eyes peered brightly from the lace folds. She waited expectantly for Ross to speak.

“Father is alive,” Ross said. “But–”

“How badly?” Ross’s mother asked.

“There was no word. An arrow, and a fall from his horse. And now he is besieged in the Great Keep at Ramona, with Grandfather. Dom Julian had ordered perpetual prayer.”

She sat very still for a moment, then held up her arms, and Ross ran to her. He knelt beside her and she drew his head to her chest. He blinked back tears, then sniffed loudly.

“We must both be brave,” his mother said. “But the walls will not fall if we cry, a little, before your uncle comes…” She held him, and whispered in the border language of her childhood, and then they were both very quiet for a while. “And now you take your place at the head of the council,” she said. “You must not shame your father.”

“We can’t hold them.” Jeremiah Weigley, Colonel of Cavalry in the service of the City of Los Angeles, drained his wine glass and stared moodily into it. “Most of the City’s army has gone east, to Berdoo. We’ve sent riders, but it will be three days before much of our strength gets here. We all know what the raiders could do in that time.”

They all nodded. Everyone at the council table had seen the results of nomad raids. Women taken into slavery, if they survived. Men thrown into the blazing wreckage of their houses, or dismembered alive, buried under the works of man…

Ross traced the route to Berdoo with his finger. Hand-drawn, his chart was a copy of a copy; the original lay in a keg in the donjon of Kenyon Keep. The scribe who had copied the ancient road map had worked well. He had left off a hundred roads that time had ground into dust, and added new symbols. The map showed a peculiar patchwork, of lands dotted with fields and irrigation ditches and ranches; great stoneyard areas, the ruins of Ancient cities; and the great highways that stitched across the land like seams on a garment made from scraps of cloth. The highway to Berdoo was broken in many places. “Why did the Mayor take the City troops to Berdoo?” Ross demanded.

Before Weigley could answer, a smooth voice interrupted. “A hurried call for help, Don Ross.” Councilman Letterman’s voice was reassuring. A politician, who kept his seat through the favor of the Mayor, not because he had the support of any powerful family. “There were reports of tribal invasion through Cajon Pass. Better to stop them at Cajon than to allow them into civilized lands. And there wasn’t time to call a Council meeting.”

Ross said nothing, but he looked down the table and saw his own anger reflected in the face of his uncle, Colonel Amos Yaegher. The Kenyons owned two seats on the City Council, and it was one point of dispute that Mayor Dortmund more and more acted without the Council’s advice. He hadn’t called a meeting for six months. One day there would be trouble over that, but City politics could wait. There was a more immediate danger.

“They’ll be here tomorrow. Day after at the latest.” Amos Yaegher’s voice fit the hard room. It was a voice that could be heard in the thickest battles. Ross thought sometimes that Amos Yaegher could bring down the high rafters with their banners and trophies if ever he shouted; he seemed to shake the walls when he only spoke.

Yaegher didn’t need the map. He had it memorized. Certainly he had risen to his post as Colonel of the Kenyon forces through influence: he had married Flintridge Kenyon’s only sister. Even so, he was respected as a fighting man, a soldier who spoke bluntly and shared rations with his troops; the men would follow him. “They’ll be here, and what do we have to stop them?”

“Household troops,” Weigley said. “City Council guardsmen. Bits and pieces. Not a proper regiment in the lot. We will call up the militia, but you’ve got the best troops right here.”

“The hell we have.”

“Amos.” Estella’s voice was soft, almost inaudible, but it brought silence to the room and a blush to Amos Yaegher’s face. She was the daughter of the House of Escondido, and two hundred years of command was in her manner. She did not need to raise her voice to be obeyed in her own house.

“Your pardon, Doña Estella. Colonel, you know that most of the Kenyon troops are south. There are plenty of other households in the city that can stand in the way of the tribesmen–”

“We’re sending for them,” Weigley said.

“The City has enemies,” Councilman Letterman added. “You face barbarians on this frontier. The southern families must keep guard against Civilized armies–”

“Bah.” Amos Yaegher didn’t try to hide his contempt. “They fight mercenary troops. Pitched battles, and nobody killed—unless they fall off their horses! Big men in big armor riding in circles all day, and when it’s over a few dozen prisoners are ransomed, and you call it war! If you want the problems of the south taken care of, send us. We’ll show them war.”

“Which is what Don Flintridge has gone south to do now,” Letterman said. “And meanwhile, the southern landholders must stand guard. We will send for them, Colonel Yaegher, but it will take time to summon the City militia—and as you have said, the tribesmen will be here tomorrow.”

“Amos, we are Masters of Encino,” Ross’s mother said.

“Aye.” Amos Yaegher’s booming voice fell low—a soldier’s trick, to speak so low that everyone had to listen carefully. “The last time the tribes gained free access to the Valley we took the field,” Amos said. “We blunted them. Ross wouldn’t remember.”

Not remember? I was only six years old, Ross thought, but you do not forget a day such as that…

“We went out to meet them,” Yaegher said. “The first Ross Kenyon, young Ross’s grandfather. He was Master then. The tribes came into the Valley and we met them at that big stone field in the east Valley. I’ll never forget that. Ruins everywhere around, and those long stone strips on the ground. The plainsmen’s horses didn’t like it. Shod horses are always better on stone.

“We beat them, damned well we beat them, but a regiment rode north out of Kenyon Keep that morning, and we brought a corporal’s guard back. I say we don’t do that again. I say we pull into the Keep, and hold Laurel Canyon, and let the Mayor’s troops hold the Cahuenga Pass.”

“But the Master of Encino guards all the passes from the Valley,” Ross’s mother said. “And there are settlements north of the Cahuenga.”

“Not ours.”

“Civilized people,” Councilman Letterman said.

“It’s your job,” Colonel Weigley said. “You hold here as officers of the City.”

“No!” Amos Yaegher’s voice thundered to the captured banners hung high above the table. “The Kenyons are Masters of Encino because we hold Kenyon Keep! We took our lands and we hold them. We owe no lands to the City.”

“Pride.” Colonel Weigley stared into the fire. “Pride. The Ancients were here no more than two hundred years ago, no more than that, and they built Civilization across all of Nor-america. In five hundred years since the Burning we have not been able to reunite Los Angeles. And we won’t for a thousand, because of pride. Amos, I’m a soldier. Like you. Can you hold your forces in this Keep and look out on slaughter? And do nothing?”

“If I have to. What is it you’re asking for?”

“March with us. With what I have of the City Guard. Stop the tribesmen north of the Los Angeles River, before they can reach City lands and houses—and people.”

“And if we lose? Who holds the Keep?”

“Your guns will hold,” Weigley said. “Councilman Letterman. You are in charge for the Mayor. Will you send gunpowder for Kenyon Keep?”

Letterman looked distressed. “I don’t have the authority–”

“Then by God we won’t march,” Amos Yaegher said. “We’ll not risk the Keep–”

“The Mayor would have my head,” Letterman said. “That powder costs—The cost is unbelievable. And we have so little.”

The room fell silent. Not silent, though, Ross thought. Outside were the sounds of frantic activity. Vaqueros driving the stock into the Keep. Outlying detachments of Kenyon retainers and landholders riding in. The armed ranchers assembling at the walls, as they had done at Kenyon summons for a hundred years and more.

“We’re ranchers and farmers,” Ross said quietly. “You’re asking us to fight your battles for you, but you won’t pay the costs. If we had our own powder mills–” He fell silent at the look of alarm Letterman showed. The Mayor didn’t want the Kenyons getting into industry. Los Angeles and her Guilds had an effective monopoly on ironworks, with the rich mines opened in what had been refuse heaps for the Ancients; but even more precious was the monopoly on gunpowder. It was through the powder supplies that the Mayor kept even a loose hold on the great families who owed allegiance to Los Angeles.

“I’ll do it,” Letterman said. “Twenty—All right. Thirty tons. By noon tomorrow.”

“And if you do not ride with us, you will have much blood on your soul, Don Ross,” Colonel Weigley said. “You’ve seen what the tribesmen do. They kill for sport, worse, for religion, and they do not let their victims die easily. Your pardon, Doña Estella, but these things must be said.”

“We will consider.” Ross got up from the table and went to a crimson cord at the wall. He pulled it, and two officers came into the room. “Please entertain Councilman Letterman and Colonel Weigley,” Ross said.

Once again the room fell quiet except for the sounds that came in from the outside. A bell tolled: the timekeeper guildsman was striking the twenty-third hour. Ross imagined the crippled old man and his crippled apprentices, turning sand glasses and filling water clocks.

“We have defended the north borders of civilization for a hundred years, Amos,” Estella Kenyon said.

“Yes, Estella, and while we held off the barbarians the Mayors have played politics,” Yaegher said. “Instead of building more keeps as he ought to do, our present mayor pulls down the ones we have. Tears down keeps so that no bossman can resist him. The Mayor would rather the tribesmen burned out half the City than give up one ounce of power! Unification, Mayor Dortmund calls it. I can think of better words. And Weigley has the infernal gall to accuse us of pride!”

“But we do have pride, Amos,” Estella Kenyon said. “It is our conceit that since the Kenyons have been Masters of Encino, no tribesmen have passed without war to the death. We have never taken bribes to look the other way while they ride into the City. We are the outpost of civilization.”

“So Ross’s grandfather said,” Amos thundered. “I carried him off the Field of Stone myself. I lashed him onto his horse and watched him bleed to death while we rode for the Keep. That’s pride and honor for you.”

“Do you think I am anxious to send my only remaining son into battle?” Estella demanded. “Ross, you must decide. Your father left you master here. I do not think he would wish you to forget the duty of this house. Duty to God and to civilization.”

III

Trumpets sounded in the dawn light. Trumpets and drums, the bandsmen of Kenyon Keep, sending men to battle; and as always there were the women, silent on the walls and along the winding road down into the Valley. They had said their farewells, and now there was nothing more but silent prayer.

The Kenyon troops rode proudly, but there were not many of them. A hundred men in armor, half of them regulars, and others armed landholders. Another three hundred men with leather jackets and helmets, muskets and sabers. The vaqueros with their short horn-backed bows waited below, falling in with the other cavalry as they rode past. There were also infantrymen, none of them regular soldiers. The Kenyons crossed the river on the great stone bridge, a relic of Ancient days. The other bridges across the Los Angeles River had been torn down to make the line more easily defended.

The City troops waited on the other side. They fell in with the Kenyons.

“Look sharp there,” Sergeant Major Highbee growled. “Show the City bastards what real troopers look like. Number five, Loris, get that lance higher! Line up the banner!”

“He doesn’t look retired,” Ross said. He nodded toward Highbee.

“A good man,” Colonel Yaegher said. “But it’s still a fool’s errand. One we’ll regret.”

“You don’t have to come,” Ross said.

“Nephew, I’ll forget you said that,” Amos Yaegher said. He didn’t say that Ross could stay behind. When the regular guardsmen rode out they might be led by any of their officers, but when the Kenyons summoned the vaqueros and relatives and friends and tenants they were always led by a Kenyon.

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Ross said. He got a curt nod in answer. I’m scared, Ross thought. Does everyone feel this way? They can’t. They wouldn’t be going.

But you are, he told himself.

The troops nearest him were a personal guard. Five vaqueros, led by Guillermo, oldest son of the vaquero jefe. Guillermo was nearly thirty, and had been in danger most of his life; the vaqueros held the northern reaches of the Kenyon lands and were often sent into the desert as scouts. Behind Guillermo was Sergeant Keeler, another old regular guard, long past time when he should be retired to the walls, and the five regulars who rode with him were not much younger—except for Harry Benton, trumpeter, barely twelve years old.

Tension showed in their faces, and in the easy remarks they made to each other. They felt something too. Premonition? Ross wondered. The Old Woman at the Keep had no Sight, or at least none that she admitted to. That was an evil omen, to be kept secret, but soldiers find these things out.

A wave from Yaegher sent Wenceslas and thirty vaqueros galloping ahead, fanning out as scouts. The desert tribes had been known to send in advance parties in the night, but the vaqueros were as good at ambuscado as the tribesmen.

The rest of the Civilized force, Kenyons and City Guard, rode straight up the San Fernando Valley. At first there were many stone ranch houses, homes of hardy families who dared live in the Valley because they had faith in the Kenyons—and, Ross admitted to himself, in the hostility of the mountain clansmen who usually kept the passes into the Mojave sealed.

Usually, but not always. The mountain clans were not allies of Civilization, but they did live in uneasy truce with the City dwellers. They stayed to their mountains, and the City stayed to the plains, and the tribes stayed in their high desert—until, suddenly, the tribes would make common cause and burst into the hills, and the clan chiefs would let them through the passes rather than endure the raids themselves.

But every effort to cooperate with the clan chiefs ended in disaster and distrust. The Highlanders did not have the feral hatred of Civilization that drove the desert tribes, but they had no love for its cities and politics.

The ranchlands ended abruptly. Beyond were the ruins: twisted hulks of Ancient buildings, crumbling bridges over nothing at all, vast fields covered with black stone, flat and level and useless. No one could protect this land. The Highlanders came down to salvage the ruins, and war parties of nomads burst through the passes—but that was not why the land was never reclaimed. The Kenyons would never allow anyone else to fortify the north Valley—and the Mayor wanted no expansion of Kenyon lands and power. For a generation and more that stalemate had kept the ruins intact, with no one to profit from it.

The ruins ended a mile after they began. Beyond them was the strange area cleared by Ekofreak and Greenpeace tribesmen in the years when they held the north Valley. The land was broken by mounds and hills, and the remains of the underground dwellings the tribesmen built themselves. There was no other sign of human activity. It was the tribal religion, to remove Man’s defilements from their Mother Earth, and they did the work well. They broke up walls, removed the remains of burned buildings, pried up the stones from the roads, and heaped them into mounds which they covered with earth and sod. They planted trees and vines, creating artificial laurel thickets and cane patches. No one knew what they would do if they held the entire basin. Their ecologists and lesser leaders did not disclose their plans.

The Kenyon forces rode on, northwards, hoofs pounding. Ross held his head high. He wanted to run, to go back to the keep, but he sat proudly and rode north.

Ross Kenyon wasn’t a warrior by nature. His father had been, and his grandfather as well. The Kenyons had always been warriors, although there had been something else as well, a strain of builder and administrator, and, sometimes, even a dreamer. Rumor had it that three generations before a Kenyon had gone up to the fortress atop Mount Wilson, sent his servant back with the message that he was well, and was never heard from again. But mostly the Kenyons made war.

Perhaps it was Doña Estella’s influence, but Ross could admire the deeds of his ancestors without wanting to duplicate them. Fighting and killing, eternal war and battle held no glory for him. They were necessary, and he would do what had to be done, but he took no joy in it. Let the others sing war songs. Ross would rather read books. Few books had survived the Burning, of course, but there was one on building and another on agriculture, copies of copies, with words he did not understand, but he worked at them patiently anyway. He learned the skills of a warrior because he had to; but he studied what little was known about growing crops and breeding cattle because those were skills he wanted.

But they were no use now, as he rode north through the Valley, into fields that his family had coveted for generations, and the hot California sun beat down on helmet and armor.

They halted at noon, with the Sun high overhead. The Valley was clear, the morning haze all burned away. Up ahead was a small cloud of dust—the scouts returning—but their message was already known.

The tribesmen were coming over the San Fernando Pass. They threw up no betraying dust cloud, because they stayed on the splendid roads the Ancients had thrown through the Pass. Their vanguard was in sight, then over and down into the Valley, and behind them an endless column of light cavalry.

“Mount up,” Yaegher called. It would be an hour before the battle. No more.

Condors and vultures wheeled high above the Valley. Do they know? Ross wondered. They should. When men ride in large numbers, there is always food for the vultures.

And for vultures of another kind. High up on the hills ringing the Valley was another warrior host—the Sierra tribesmen. Ross looked for the telltale triangles in the sky, the flying men of the Sierra, but there were none there. Not yet. But up above, on Mendenhall Peak, on the ridges to the east, there were flashes of bright color: Sierra clansmen. On foot, as always. They seldom rode. They did not hold the Angeles Mountains, and all the highlands north to the High Sierra itself, with horses. Cavalry for the valleys, mules for the highlands, both for the desert. And other creatures, camels, in the Mojave. They hadn’t brought camels with them on this raid; at least Ross hadn’t seen any.

Weigley and Yaegher clustered around him. “With your permission, Nephew,” Yaegher said, “here’s the battle plan. Kenyon regiment will take the right wing and press forward. The City forces will cover our left flank and hold back a few hundred yards. When there’s enough of the tribe force committed we’ll roll down toward the City troops with the vaqueros to cover our right. We’ll blood them, and fall back toward the River. That might be enough.”

It might be. The tribesmen were a superstitious lot. They believed in their luck. Medicine, some tribes called it. Luck. Fortune. Ross didn’t know much about the nomads. No one did. They never met Civilized people in peace. All that Ross knew came through the Highlanders, who sometimes made truce with the City, and sometimes made truce with the Mojave tribes.

But everyone knew the tribes didn’t take defeat well. Inflict losses on them early, and their chiefs—what did they call them? Ecologists—their ecologists might take an early defeat as a sign of disfavor from whatever gods the tribes worshiped, and then the whole horde would run back to their desert and cast their spells…

But the Old Woman had no vision, no sight, and it all came down to the decision of a fifteen-year-old boy who had never before in his life seen two thousand enemies gathered together.

Yaegher was Colonel—but a Kenyon commanded. Always.

“What else might we do?” Ross asked.

“Nephew, we could hit and run. Fall back toward the River line. But somewhere we have to make a stand, and better up ahead where the ground’s clear than here among the ruins. Open ground favors heavy cavalry…” Yaegher’s voice trailed off. This was no classroom, and no time to teach Ross something the boy had learned years before. “At your orders, Nephew.”

Weigley was listening silently. Ross looked into the City colonel’s eyes, trying to understand what he saw there. Something. Fear? But it seemed to be more, and Weigley wouldn’t meet his gaze. Do we trust this man? Ross wanted to ask, but it was too late; he couldn’t ask that while Weigley listened. That would certainly make him an enemy.

And the plan made sense. Part of the City force was infantry. Crossbowmen, good at defense. They could hold the north edge of the ruins. With cover like that to shoot from they could hurt the tribes, while the Kenyon cavalry rolled through them, breaking them—

And whatever we do, we must do it now, Ross thought. He looked up at the wheeling vultures, looking for a sign, but there was none. “Forward. Uncle, command the regiment.”

“Sir.”

“Where do you want me, Uncle?”

“With the vaqueros on the right wing, Nephew. You understand them better than me. Better than any of us.” And, Yaegher didn’t add but could have, they are only loyal to your mother, and thus to you; not to the Kenyon name, but to Estella Trujillo Kenyon, infanta of the house of the Alcalde de Escondido. “It won’t be the safest place in the battle. You’ll have to move fast, to cover our right when we wheel west and south. God go with you.”

“And with you, Uncle.” Ross waved to his guards and cantered off to join the returning vaquero scouts. The dust of the valley stuck in his throat, and he felt the knot of fear tearing at his stomach. At least it will soon be over, he thought. Soon. One way or another.

IV

The battle was a screaming confusion of dust and trumpet calls, the bark of musketry and the clatter of horses. It was the smell of blood, the moans of dying men, lamed horses thrashing in the dirt. It was half-naked men charging with lance and bow, to be met by armored riders with lance and musket and saber. It was men firing their muskets and holstering them to draw thirsty sabers because there’d never be enough time to reload. And through it all it was trumpets and the smell of blood.

It was John Stephenson, only two years older than Ross, leading an insane charge into the thick of screaming savages, lance shattered and then saber flashing until his horse was down, and still Ross’s cousin fought, screaming his defiance and rallying the shattered remnants of the score of men he’d led. It was Hyman Silverberg, tenant on Stephenson land, swinging a great axe and rushing to his young officer’s defense. It was heads severed by Silverberg’s axe until an arrow grew between his shoulder blades and the giant yeoman went to his knees with a puzzled expression in his eyes, dying without knowing he was dead.

It was Ross Kenyon leading his vaqueros to aid his cousin. It was a blond man with long hair and painted shield charging Ross, and Ross spurring his stallion forward, lance cocked as he’d been taught in a hundred mock battles, and the lance piercing the leather shield and ramming home in the nomad’s throat, and the man’s weight hanging horribly on the lance, bright blood spurting, and the lance coming free but too late, and Guillermo coming from nowhere to fling a javelin and rescue his master.

It was Ross coming to his cousin’s aid and seeing the white ropes of intestines trailing in the dust, and the bright blood, and John Stephenson screaming for his mother before falling to the ground with a dozen hostiles in leather breeches rushing to count coup before he died, and the trumpets sounding again, commanding the vaqueros forward and to the left to aid the faltering right wing of the Kenyon forces, leaving Ross no time to recover his cousin’s body. It was Guillermo, at a nod from Ross, throwing one more dart, straight and true into Stephenson’s heart, then Ross and his guard with sabers cutting through a new wave of tribesmen to answer the trumpet’s imperious call.

It was two hours of madness, and it was disaster.

“Retreat,” the trumpets sang. “Kenyons to the Keep!” Ross had never heard that call sounded except for practice. “Kenyons to the Keep!”

“But who?” Ross demanded. “Who?”

He reined in, gathered his guardsmen around him. They were a small island of calm for a moment. Dust lay thick across the Valley. Ross stared south at the hills in wonder. There, above the battlements of Kenyon Keep, flew the Red Ball. It was the most urgent summons known. The Keep was in danger! Yet—yet they were miles from the Keep, and the tribesmen had not broken through, couldn’t have broken through.

“Retreat,” sang the trumpets. “Kenyons to the Keep!”

“Who?” Ross demanded again. Guillermo and Keeler gave him only blank stares. “Ride, then. To the Keep.”

The horses were exhausted. The left-wheeling maneuver had carried Ross and his vaqueros far to the west, beyond the old highway and far toward the Santa Susanna hills. The horses could never gallop all the way to the Keep.

And as they rode, the Red Ball fell, and then, incredibly, the blue and gold Kenyon banner wavered, and fluttered down from the high battlements a lifetime away across the Valley. There was an eternity of time, then another banner climbed in triumph to stand out proudly in the wind above Kenyon Keep.

“Green and gold,” Keeler growled. “Green and gold.”

“The Mayor,” Ross screamed. “But–”

There was no time to say more. Another knot of nomads, white men, brown men, black men, all on the small unshod horses of the desert; screaming men with blood lust in their voices. They charged, and Ross’s tiny command was surrounded, their horses too exhausted to fight on, but they fought. Keeler was down, his left arm severed by an axe blow meant for Ross, and then trumpeter Benton, who wouldn’t live to see his thirteenth birthday.

He woke in darkness. There were the sounds of activity around him. He lay with his eyes half open, not daring to move, not even to test whether his hands were bound. Captured! He had only one thought, to gather his strength and find a weapon, to die fighting before the tribesmen could give him to their gods.

But slowly the voices around him began to make sense. Anglic and Sandiegan. Not the gutturals of the Mojave dialects.

“Don Ross. Don Ross.”

No tribesman would call him by that name. Ross opened his eyes.

Darkness, with flickering firelight. Rough homespun wool cowl hovering above him. The crinkled face of Padre Guitierrez, and from somewhere nearby Guillermo endlessly repeating his name.

“You are awake?” Guitierrez asked.

His head swam in confusion. Ross struggled to move. His hands were not bound. He was free. “Where–” he croaked.

“You are in the Abbey.” Ross heard without comprehension. A hand lifted his head, another put a cup to his lips. Cool water trickled into his mouth. He swallowed eagerly.

“More–”

“In a moment.”

Slowly the memories came back. The Red Ball. And–”The Keep! To the Keep!” Ross shouted.

“No. It is too late.” The voice held both sadness and finality. It had come from beyond Padre Guitierrez, and it took moments for Ross to recognize it. Dom Julian, Abbot. “The Keep is in the hands of the Mayor.”

Ross tried to speak again, but the cup was put to his lips. The taste was bitter. Herbs of some kind, steeped in water and wine. The oddly bitter taste was pleasant. Ross drank, and again felt the world reeling, and sank back into darkness.

It was daylight when he woke again. Padre Guitierrez still sat beside him.

Ross struggled to sit up. He was in a small room, no more than a cell. Bright sunlight streamed in through a narrow window. Again the memories came, and Padre Guitierrez saw terror in his eyes.

“How?” Ross demanded.

“After you have eaten. You have much to do before dark. Come. I’ll help you walk.”

The monks cleaned him and fed him, but they would not answer his questions. He was given new clothing: rough wool clothing, no fine fabrics, and none of it with the Kenyon colors. Still they would not talk to him. Finally he was led into the Abbot’s study.

Dom Julian sat at a large desk. He motioned Ross to a chair nearby. “You have eaten?”

“Yes, Dom Julian.”

“And you look well.”

“I am all right.”

“A miracle. I have seen the dent the war hammer put in your helmet.”

“What happened, Dom Julian?” Ross demanded. “How–”

The Abbot’s lips were tightly pressed together. “I scarcely know how to begin. The Mayor holds Kenyon Keep–”

“I saw the banner hoisted. It was nearly the last thing I ever saw. For that I thank God, that my last sight was not–”

The Abbot held up his hand. “Be careful. God has spared you for some great purpose. You should be dead. The Mayor has placed an enormous price on your head.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“He had dared. Your retainers are scattered or dead, Don Ross.”

“Mother. What has–”

There was pain in the Abbot’s eyes. He looked away, then back at Ross. “Dead also,” he said bluntly. “The Mayor’s troops despoiled her chapel. She died defending the altar. Defending the Faith.”

It was too much. His home lost, his mother dead—“You’re a Kenyon! Command shows no fears!” His father’s voice rang in his head. Ross sat tight-lipped, his hands clinched into fists, the nails digging into his palms. He spoke carefully. “That is war. The Alcalde–”

“Your grandfather is in no position to send aid,” Dom Julian said. “Escondido is under siege. This is no ordinary rising. Guillermo brought in arrows and other signs. At least five tribes, a dozen septs here, and as many more have risen in the south.”

“But they were also raiding San Berdoo–”

The Abbot shook his head slowly. “No. That is what Mayor Dortmund said. But he did not ride to Berdoo. He kept his troops much closer, and when you rode out into the Valley they stormed the Keep. There is more. The tribesmen plundered Kenyon lands freely. Then they turned and went back. They are camped at the head of the Valley now.”

“And they never raided the City at all,” Ross said wonder-ingly. “Was it planned all along? The Mayor and the tribesmen together–”

“We think so,” Dom Julian said.

“But why? Why would the tribesmen aid the Mayor?”

“Perhaps they are less in fear of Kenyon Keep held by the Mayor than by Kenyons,” Dom Julian said. “I would be. The advantages to Dortmund are obvious, and he is too proud to believe the tribes might deceive him.” The Abbot looked uncomfortable. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you ask for sanctuary, we will give it. I want that understood,” Dom Julian said.

“But you don’t want me to ask.”

“Frankly, with you here we might not be able to hold the Abbey. I do not think Mayor Dortmund will storm this place soon. It has held too often, and the Highlanders around us would not care to see the Mayor in possession here. It would be a dangerous game for the Mayor, one he will not play unless he has a powerful motive. You would be such a motive.”

Ross said nothing.

“So long as you are alive, you are witness to his treachery,” Dom Julian said. “I do not know what stories Dortmund will tell. He will need powerful lies to justify himself. Other Masters and bossmen will not be pleased to hear that Kenyon Keep has fallen into the Mayor’s hands. But with no one to deny his tales…”

“He will expect me to go to Escondido,” Ross said.

“Yes. You may be certain he will be watching the roads.”

“I can’t stay here and I can’t go to Escondido. Where?”

“I point out that you will be safer if I do not know,” Dom Julian said. “More: if I do not know, you cannot suspect the Church of aiding the Mayor if–”

“If he finds me, I won’t be able to suspect anything,” Ross said.

“Even so, I would not care to have my name in your dying curses,” Dom Julian said.

“Your miracles,” Ross said. “Can you get word to Escondido? I need instructions from my father.”

Before Dom Julian spoke, Ross knew the final horror to come. Don Flintridge was dead, and the remains of his guard besieged in Escondido. Ross was El Señor Kenyon, the last of the Kenyons, but he was not Master of Encino. He was utterly alone.

But a Kenyon. Now and forever.

Editor’s Introduction to:
Holo-Caustic
by Peter Dillingham

In the There Will Be War series we have published as much poetry as any other non-poetry anthology in science fiction. There are several good reasons for this: one is that we receive a lot of excellent poetry submissions, another is that it gives us the excuse to publish some of the best war poetry ever written. Another reason is Peter Dillingham: we believe that Peter writes some of the best poetry published today—whether it’s called science fiction or mainstream.

Not only does Peter’s poetry contain arresting imagery, but often it is visually moving as well. Such as this poem, “Holo-Caustic,” which we present here for the very first time.

Holo-Caustic
by Peter Dillingham

Left Hemisphere

“It was visible by day
like Venus;”
Yang Wei-te
Chief Computer of the Calendar
told the Emperor
in July, 1054;
“pointed rays
shout out from it
on all sides
the color was reddish-white…”

In November 1572, Tycho Brahe,
Astronomer of Florence,
“saw
with inexpressible astonishment,
near the zenith,
in Cassiopea,
a radiant star
of extraordinary magnitude.”

Right Hemisphere

The cell reacts
a glorious
sacrificial blossoming
at 10,000 km/sec
phagocytic…
triggered by
contagion’s spread
a malignant thrusting forth
of virulent sentience
from long containment
the cell reacts
a glorious
sacrificial blossoming
at 10,000 km/sec
phagocytic…
triggered by
contagion’s spread
a malignant thrusting forth
of virulent sentience

Editor’s Introduction to:
Collector’s Piece
by Edward P. Hughes

No society could endure if, as is sometimes implicitly assumed, its members became hostile to it by reason of and in proportion to their lowly status within it. Should you so plan a society as to establish and maintain equality in every respect you can think of, there would naturally be a restoration of scarce, desirable positions, by nature attainable only by a minority. You can allot equal time to each member of an Assembly: but you cannot ensure that all will command equal attention. You can chase unequal (more or less log-normal) distributions out of one field after another: they will reappear in new fields. Nor are men so base as to be disaffected from any order in which they are low-placed: they are indeed lavish in the precedence they afford to those who excel in performances they value. What exasperates them is a system of qualifying values which seems to them scandalous, a social scaling which jars with their scoring cards.

—The Pure Theory of Politics, Bertrand de Jouvenal

Civilization is a fragile thing; once gone, it is not easy to rebuild. Harrison Brown long ago showed that if our civilization falls far enough, it will be exceedingly difficult to rebuild. Social structures are delicate.

The late H. Beam Piper postulated two different ways for societies to “de-civilize”: attack by “barbarians” from within and attack by Barbarians from without. It has happened enough in our own history: the fall of Athens after the Peloponnesian War, the fall of the Macedonian Empire after Alexander’s death, and in more recent times the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Social institutions, work skills, knowledge, and culture—far too often taken for granted—once lost can take untold generations, if ever, to reinvent.

In the small world of Barley Cross children are no longer being born; not in small towns, not in cities, not anywhere. All know the magnitude of the disaster; it has brought most of what we know as civilization crashing down everywhere on Earth. To men without hope there is no future and the present can be of little or no value.

Commerce and industry have come to a halt in the large cities, but life is closer to normal in the small hamlets and villages, where change of any kind has always been slow. Yet, even in the hinterlands, marauders and bandits make the roads dangerous to travel and bring trade to a standstill.

For all that, the inhabitants of Barley Cross are determined that life shall remain normal—no matter what the cost. In their quest for order, they have decided to follow Patrick O’Meara, onetime sergeant of Her Majesty’s Forces, now Master of the Fist. As Lord of Barley Cross the O’Meara has taken it upon himself to lead the town militia in raids to recover aspirin, antibiotics, and other vital supplies.

In past volumes of There Will Be War we have chronicled the adventures of Barley Cross and its Masters; now many of these fine stories—and some new ones—have been collected together into Masters of the Fist (Baen Books, 1989) by Edward P. Hughes. We encourage all of you who enjoy this latest episode in the ongoing saga of Barley Cross to purchase a copy.

Collector’s Piece
by Edward P. Hughes

The lord of Barley Cross prowled the echoing chambers of his future home, pondered the naked floors and peeling walls, and wondered if someone was making a fool of him. The place was supposed to have been furnished and decorated. Beside him, General Larry Desmond waxed eloquent on the advantages of O’Flaherty strongholds.

Patrick O’Meara spoke, tight-lipped. “I thought it was furnished.”

“Och, so did I,” admitted his general. “Thim Higgins folk must have moved their stuif out while me back was turned.”

Patrick O’Meara examined a blotchy ceiling. “And it leaks.”

“True,” conceded the general. “ ’Tis probably the roof. I heard thim Higgins put on new tiles. But the pitch ain’t very steep. And there’s a gully behind the battlements that traps the rain. And, no doubt, the boyos have been stealing your lead flashing.”

“No doubt,” agreed his lord. “But it’s not my lead flashing yet. I’m quite content with Mooney’s place.”

The general registered alarm. “Och, me lord!” he protested. “Ye can’t remain there. Ye have a position to uphold. We have a castle, and the villagers will expect ye to live in it. Haven’t they already christened this place ‘O’Meara’s Fist’? And didn’t I hear ye say yerself that ye intended to make a real stronghold of it—where yer people could take refuge in times of trouble?”

A shrewd blow. Patrick O’Meara raised a suspicious eyebrow. “You trying to con anyone, Larry?”

Larry Desmond shut his eyes for a moment, a gesture meant to give his lord the impression that he sought strength from a divine source. Then he produced a smile, wide and guileless. “In no way, Pat. Why worry about a leak? Seamus Murray can knock a bit o’ fresh lead over any holes he finds up there…”

Patrick O’Meara envisaged the height of the O’Flaherty tower, then counted floors in his head. “If the leak is in the roof, there’s at least three ceilings marked,” he pointed out.

“I’ll get the lads in,” promised the general. “We’ll have the whole place cleaned up, replastered and painted for you. Ye won’t know it.”

“Will you now?” murmured the O’Meara. “And the broken windows? And the lock you forced to get in?”

“ ’Twill all be fixed, Pat. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“And how about furniture? Don’t I get a few chairs? Something to sleep on?”

Larry Desmond grew cautious. Pat O’Meara might be joshing, but finding furniture could be a problem. Many shops in Galway—a city rapidly being wrecked by gang warfare—were already burned out. And, anyway, who cared to shop with bullets flying about their ears! The general of Barley Cross’s Volunteer Militia commanded a pool of labour. As unofficial Minister of Economics he could probably talk someone into providing lead, paint, glass and plaster. But furniture? No doubt Tom O’Connor was skilled enough carpenter to build what they needed. But it would take time. And General Desmond wanted his lord up the hill as soon as possible.

“Some of the villagers might be persuaded to part with a few bits and pieces, me lord,” he murmured. “Would ye settle for second-hand stuff?”

Patrick O’Meara, who had abandoned a truckle bed in a Belfast barracks for the hard interior of a Chieftain tank, and currently inhabited a cramped apartment above Fechin Mooney’s taproom, decided to go easy on his general. “I’ll settle for anything softer than the floor of my tank,” he grinned.

Larry Desmond inflated his chest with relief. “Leave it to me, me lord. I’ll have ye up here, snug as a bug in a rug, in no time at all.”

Patrick O’Meara wasn’t listening. He rapped the newel post at the bottom of the staircase, peering closely at it. “No woodworm, Larry?”

General Desmond jumped in with both feet. “ ’Tis sound in wind and limb, me lord. Thim Higginses took out a set of stone steps to put in these stairs. Sure, they only need a lick of paint.”

Patrick O’Meara decided he had been soft enough for one morning. He eyed his general amiably. “Let’s have the woodwork sanded down, stained and revarnished, Larry.”

Larry Desmond eyed this man who had put fire in the bellies of Barley Cross’s citizens. Who had frightened off the most persistent of the rogues who regarded the village as their legitimate prey. The general sensed a certain lack of respect for the opinions of the village’s more influential citizens. Was the new Lord of Barley Cross going to be difficult? He sighed inwardly. No doubt, a drop of stain and varnish wouldn’t be hard to find. And if it got the fellow installed in this draughty hole a wee bit sooner, it would be worth the bother. “Leave it to me, me lord,” he mumbled. “I’ll put it on me list.”

Later that morning, over a glass of the black stuff in Mooney’s bar, the Chief of Barley Cross’s Armed Forces confided his troubles to the village doctor.

“I’m having a divil of a job getting him up there, Dinny. The whole place has gone to rack and ruin since the Higginses left. There’s not a full pane of glass left in the windies, nor a decent lock on the front door. And right now, that felly is poking about upstairs, looking for more work for me lads.”

Doctor Denny Mallon smiled. “Sure that’s why we’ve renamed them a Temporary Service Unit. Every one of those lads has agreed to do whatever he can to make our new Lord and Master comfortable.”

General Desmond choked on his stout, spilling a drop—a near tragedy, since Fechin Mooney had warned his clientele that they were drinking the last barrel, and couldn’t expect to see further deliveries of the darlin’ stuff. The general coughed and snuffled. “I’d been hoping to get me gutters repainted while the lads were willing…”

The doctor studied the ceiling. “I didn’t hear that last remark, Larry.” Then he smiled. “But if your gutters change colour, I don’t think I’d notice.”

It was doubtful whether the general appreciated the doctor’s duplicity. He continued. “Trouble is, when he’s not finding work for them, he’s got ’em out on exercises—learning ’em to shoot, and take cover and the like.”

“Very commendable, too,” commented the doctor, who didn’t always share the general’s prejudices. “Especially in these dangerous times.”

Larry Desmond peered gloomily into the depths of his glass. “I fear we may have got ourselves a tiger by the tail, Dinny.”

“But a friendly tiger,” Denny Mallon reminded his friend. “Just think—we’ve not had a single attack on the village since Patrick O’Meara took over.”

“That’s true,” mused the general. “Give the divil his due.”

“He’s no devil,” said the doctor sharply. “And don’t forget—he’s carrying fertile genes. We’re lucky to get a trained soldier, as well as fecund male, to rule the village.”

The general clapped a hand to his forehead. “There ye go, Dinny, using fancy college words to confuse an old soldier.”

The doctor cocked an eyebrow. “An old copper, you mean. You served with the gardai in Limerick. You’ve never worn a military uniform.”

The general drained his glass, then crooked a finger at the bartender. “Ye’ve the memory of an elephant, Dinny–”

“And while we’re on the subject of the law,” interrupted the doctor, “there’s a character in your cooler you should take a look at.”

Among his various hats, Larry Desmond wore that of Justice of the Peace. Normally policed from Galway City, Barley Cross had seen neither sight nor sound of the gardai for months; and until Patrick O’Meara’s arrival, Larry Desmond, by virtue of his gardai service, had been regarded as the law’s representative in Barley Cross.

“What’s he done?” he demanded.

Denny Mallon waited until the bartender had placed two pints of stout on the table. “I’ll be asleep all afternoon after drinking this,” he complained, sipping the dark liquid. “The fellow’s a vagrant. I had Seamus Gallagher lock him up in your greenhouse.”

Larry Desmond’s wife had been a keen gardener. Since her death, her flowers had also died, and her greenhouse had become a handy place for holding suspects, criminals, and characters of ill repute until the law had time to examine them. In many ways it made an ideal jail, being warm, isolated, and allowing constant scrutiny of its tenants.

The general raised the fresh glass to his lips. “Och, I’ll get round to him,” he said. “Did he made a statement?”

“Only that he wasn’t going to make no trouble.”

The general wiped his lips. “Just as well. That’s my conservatory he’s enjoying.”

Later, after being persuaded that the bar was positively shut, the general made his way home, recalling belatedly that he hadn’t asked Denny Mallon if he knew of anyone with furniture to spare.

A small crowd had gathered at his gate, their eyes on the exhibit in his garden.

Larry Desmond recalled his duties. He waved a hand, while searching his pockets for a key. “Into the courtroom with ye all,” he commanded. “I’ll pick a jury inside if we need one.”

Unlike that of the cooler, the Desmond front door was never locked. While his audience trooped in, the general opened the lockup.

The prisoner was thirtyish, undersized and dirty, his clothes torn and travel-stained. He cowered under the Desmond glare.

“Out ye come!” ordered the general. “Into me house… where those people are going. I want a word with you.”

Most of the audience had found seats in his front room. The latecomers propped themselves against the wall behind the settee. The general’s coffee table had been pulled in front of an armchair awaiting his posterior. The Barley Crossers knew how to set up a court.

The general pushed his prisoner into the centre of the room. “Stand there while we look at you.”

He took his seat, seized a poker from the fireplace. “The court will come to order,” he intoned, rapping the table with the poker.

When the outbreak of coughing had ceased, the general addressed the prisoner. “Your name?”

“Michael Terence Dooley, yer honour.”

“No kin of mine,” snapped Claire Dooley promptly from the settee.

Larry Desmond noted the prisoner’s form of address, and recognised an old lag. “Where are you from?”

“I was born in Drogheda, yer honour—the town Cromwell burned to the ground.”

“Man, ye’ve a long memory!” called a voice from the wall.

“Silence!” roared Barley Cross’s Justice of the Peace. “If ye want to crack jokes, go outside.” He addressed the prisoner. “I didn’t mean ‘where were ye born,’ I meant ‘where have ye come from?’”

“Westport, yer honour,” responded the prisoner.

“And what did ye do in Westport?”

The prisoner grimaced, looked quickly round the room as though seeking a familiar face, then said, “I worked for a gang of criminals, yer honour.”

The audience ceased fidgeting, and paid attention. Larry Desmond’s eyebrows alerted Maggie Pearce. Maggie acted as clerk of the court when the general wanted notes taken. Maggie got out a stub of pencil and the notebook she used for bread orders.

Larry Desmond resumed his interrogation. “Which criminals did ye work for?”

The prisoner responded without hesitation. “A gang working for a felly called Garvey. They’ve took over Westport. They threw the gardai in the Carrowbeg—tied up first so they couldn’t swim.”

Maggie Pearce tutted, and wrote rapidly.

“Get it all down, Maggie!” crowed a voice.

The general turned on the culprit. “If ye think ye can do it better–?” he warned.

All eyes swivelled towards Jemmy Boyle. Jemmy was a Volunteer, and presumably could be disciplined for smart aleckry.

Jemmy shrank. “Apologies for interruptin’, gineral.”

Larry Desmond returned to the prisoner. “So, ye are a criminal?”

The man seemed surprised. “No, yer honour. I only worked for them.”

Larry Desmond frowned. “There’s a difference? What was yer job?”

The little man put his hands behind his back. “I was cook.”

The general gnawed a thumb. It was a moot point. Shouldn’t cooking for criminals make the cook a criminal too? Larry Desmond sighed. Sometimes he regretted the lack of a decent law book. He decided to ignore the question for the moment. “And why did ye leave these criminals?”

The little man shrugged. “I’d had enough of grafting for ingrates what didn’t appreciate decent cooking.”

“Ye didn’t mind consorting with criminals?”

The prisoner shrugged again. “Ach, yer honour—if ye’re going to fret about mixing with villains these days, ye’d best seek a monastery.”

“But ye came to Barley Cross instead?”

“I had to go somewhere, didn’t I? If ye come through the mountains, there’s only Leenane before ye get to here.”

“Less of yer lip,” growled the general. “What happened at Leenane?”

The prisoner lowered his eyes. “They shot at me, yer honour.”

Larry Desmond thumped the table to still the laughter. “The looks of you, I’m not surprised.” He turned his head. “Where’s the Volunteer who locked this felly up?”

“ ’Twas Seamus Gallagher,” said a voice. “He’s still on duty.”

The general’s eyes pinpointed Jemmy Boyle. “Off ye go, Jemmy. Take over from Seamus. Tell him I want him in here.”

Volunteer Boyle departed at a run.

The general returned to the prisoner. “Let me see yer soles!”

“Me soul?” queried the prisoner.

“Of yer shoes, ye fool!” snapped the general. “I want to see their underneaths.”

The prisoner turned his back on the general, and raised first one foot, then the other. Holes in each shoe revealed dirty flesh. “I’ve holes in me pockets, too,” he volunteered.

“With shoes in that state, ye could have walked from Westport,” conceded his interrogator, ignoring the prisoner’s red herring. “Ah, Seamus!”

The door opened, and Volunteer Gallagher entered.

“Why did ye lock this felly up?”

Seamus Gallagher scowled at the prisoner. “Didn’t I catch him hanging around the Gleasons’ chickens in a suspicious manner?”

“Ah!” said the general.

“I was hungry,” whined the suspect. “I’d had nothing to eat since I left Westport.”

“That’s a good thirty miles,” whispered Claire Dooley to Molly Larkin.

“And ye proposed to steal a chicken?”

“Or an egg or two. I’d have paid for them if I’d had the money.”

“And have ye no money?”

Unprompted, the prisoner turned out his empty pockets.

Larry Desmond rubbed his jaw. He was not a hard man, and found it difficult to ignore the pricks of his conscience. But vagrants were bums. And Barley Cross was no Tom Tiddler’s ground. He said, “I’ll tell ye what, man—I haven’t a deal of time for vagrants. Especially them as consort with criminals. But”—the Desmond eyes grew imperceptibly less like pebbles—“I’m also the Receiver of Wrecks for Barley Cross. And if ever I saw a wreck, I’m looking at one right now. So I propose to find you a dacent pair of boots from somewhere, give you a couple of punt out of Mooney’s swear box—which is collected for charity as we all know”—the general glared defiantly round the room as he spoke—“so ye can buy yerself a bite to eat at Ryan’s, and then get on yer way.”

“Hold it, Larry!” The Lord of Barley Cross had stood unnoticed in the doorway for some minutes. Hearing his voice, several members of the audience made as if to rise, but Patrick O’Meara stayed them with a gesture. Waving a list of his castle’s defects at the prisoner, he demanded, “Did you pass any empty houses on your way here?”

The prisoner’s lips twitched. “Sure, I did no harm, sor. I had to sleep somewhere.”

Patrick O’Meara sensed pay dirt. “Where did you sleep?”

The prisoner pondered, fingering his lips. “I stayed one night at a house near Mambridge—but there wasn’t a scrap of food in the place, nor a pair of shoes to fit me.”

Mambridge was no more than five miles from Barley Cross. “Were you hoping to steal a pair of shoes?”

The prisoner lowered his head. “Can ye steal from the dead, sor? They surely have no use for footwear.”

The audience grew silent, considering the question.

“How do you know anybody was dead?”

“There was only an old man there, sor. He looked as though mebbe he’d starved to death. His ribs stood out like a picket fence.”

“That’d be old Pete Carley,” whispered an awed voice.

“So what did you steal?” asked Patrick O’Meara. There must have been unlimited opportunities for theft in an empty house.

“Not a thing, sor.” The prisoner looked hurt. “I said a prayer for the old felly’s immortal soul, then dug a grave for his corpse in the garden.” The prisoner spread his palms in appeal. “Haven’t we an obligation to bury the dead?”

Silence fell as those present reviewed the Corporal Works of Mercy remembered from childhood catechisms. Someone murmured, “There’s an obligation to feed the hungry, I recall.”

“And to clothe the naked,” added another voice.

Larry Desmond’s face turned red. He peeped guiltily at his lord. “I’ve promised him food and a pair of boots…”

Patrick O’Meara’s eyes were on the prisoner. The fellow was either a saint or a fool. “Have you anything else to commend yourself besides an ability to quote Christian obligations?”

The prisoner displayed crooked teeth. “Sure, I can turn me hand to most jobs, sor.”

Patrick O’Meara scrutinised the man’s palms. They were weathered and callused, no strangers to manual employment.

“Like plastering? And painting? Or a bit of joinery?”

The prisoner shrugged. “I once plastered for a builder, sor.” The Lord of Barley Cross considered. This vagrant might have picked up much useful intelligence on his travels. And news from outside was scarce in Barley Cross. The man’s report on Pete Carley’s demise could possibly solve the Fist furnishing problem. Could you steal from the dead? Patrick O’Meara made up his mind. “Put him on the strength, Larry. Find him somewhere to stay. He can start work at the Fist tomorrow.”

Larry Desmond nodded, mind in a turmoil. Didn’t they teach old lags trades like plastering and joinery in Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail…?

Taking the air at Mooney’s front door the following morning, Patrick O’Meara heard the tramp of feet and the squeal of an unoiled axle. Down the road marched General Desmond and his Temporary Service Unit. Bringing up the rear in blue coveralls and new boots, the ex-prisoner pushed a cart laden with sacks of plaster and an assortment of buckets and tools.

The general waved a greeting to his lord.

The Lord of Barley Cross waved back. He wanted speech with the Volunteer marching beside the general. Andy McGrath had seen service in the Irish army, and knew one end of a rifle from the other—a rare trait in the Barley Cross Militia. He had also driven the tank back from the Tuam raid. Patrick O’Meara was in need of a tank driver.

“Could you spare Andy for half an hour?” he called.

General Desmond waved acknowledgment. “Fall out, McGrath!” he roared.

Andy McGrath surrendered a shovel to his next in column, and fell out.

The Lord of Barley Cross watched his army march away before turning to the waiting soldier. “How about learning to drive a buttoned-up tank, Andy?”

Many of Patrick O’Meara’s men were still unsure how to address him. Until a few days ago he had been their Military Adviser, fighting the village’s enemies alongside them. Now he was their lord, and presumably above such dangerous diversions.

“If ye think I can manage it, sir… me lord,” stumbled Andy McGrath.

Patrick O’Meara studied his man. “Would I ask you if I didn’t?”

Andy McGrath looked pleased. Tank driving had panache. “Doesn’t General Desmond want the job, sir?”

The O’Meara shook his head. “You couldn’t persuade the general into that machine for a pension. I drove it because my gunner couldn’t.”

It was a private joke. Celia Larkin had been Patrick O’Meara’s gunner. The schoolmistress had renounced military service when Patrick O’Meara was appointed Barley Cross’s Military Adviser.

Andy McGrath had heard of their exploits. The combination of Larkin and O’Meara had been the first successful opposition to the local gangs of terrorists.

“Are ye giving up driving, sir?” he asked.

“Only so I can sit in the commander’s seat, and fire the gun,” grinned his lord.

Andy McGrath was not deceived. He came to attention. “I’ll have a bash at it, sir.”

The O’Meara gripped his arm. “Come on, then,” he urged. “Let’s see how you shape with the lid down.”

The O’Meara’s tank was kept in the village schoolyard. In the school, Celia Larkin pinned up wall charts, and tried to keep her mind on scholarly matters. There were no children in Barley Cross—perhaps not even in all Ireland—so she had no class to teach. Instead she prepared a lecture for the adults that evening. But her thoughts wandered. Just a week ago they had acclaimed Patrick O’Meara Lord of Barley Cross. The achievement, she believed, justified the plotting which had brought it about. If Patrick were the only man in Ireland capable of replacing the village’s children, they had given him the chance to do it. And any private misery was a price she was happy to pay. Just the same, Celia Larkin hadn’t been able to face Patrick O’Meara since his elevation.

She had grown used to seeing his tank parked in her schoolyard. Barley Cross was proud of its armoured fighting vehicle. But the monster filled the main street, leaving little room for traffic. And from the schoolyard its big gun still commanded the Clifden road.

Finding concentration difficult, the schoolmistress decided to go home. As she locked the schoolhouse door behind her, she noticed two men in conversation near the tank. She lowered her head, and hurried for the gap in the railings.

Patrick O’Meara heard the tap of heels on tarmac. He turned, and saw his ex-gunner. He clapped Andy McGrath on the shoulder. “Get in, and give her a run round the yard, Andy. Get the feel of her. I have to talk to someone.”

He hurried after her. “Larkin!”

She halted, and waited, pulse pounding. She made her voice light. “Hi, my lord.”

He drew near, head cocked to one side, brow furrowed. “Knock off the ‘my lord’ nonsense,” he told her bluntly. “And tell me why you are avoiding me.”

She flushed. She had forgotten his tank commander brusque-ness. “Very well… sergeant,” she said primly. “Who said I’m avoiding you? What are you doing here?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m teaching Andy McGrath to drive our tank. Now, come on, Larkin—have I got the plague or something?”

She studied his open face, on which a smile alternated with a frown. He was still her O’Meara. And she was hurting him.

She sought for words. “You—you don’t belong to me any more. You belong to Barley Cross now.”

He said gently, “Come on, Larkin! I don’t belong to anyone.”

She shivered at the use of her surname. On his lips, it had become an endearment. She controlled a quaver in her voice. “But, Pat, if you’re going to father the future children in Barley Cross, you have to stay unmarried. The women here won’t accept a married adulterer. They won’t cheat on another woman.”

Unconvinced, he said, “How do you know that?”

She met his gaze. “Because I’m a woman. And I know. They’ll tolerate your droit du seigneur. But this is not the twelfth century. They won’t put up with it from someone’s husband.”

His face grew stern. “I’ve never asked you to marry me.”

Her mouth opened, then closed. Colour flushed into her cheeks.

“But I’m ready to if you want me to,” he added.

The colour went away. She stood, mute.

“You regretting any decisions, Larkin?” he asked. “Because I am.” He scowled. “Why put a crummy village before our happiness?”

She shrugged. “What do you mean by happiness?”

He made a helpless gesture. “I mean… we could get married—start a family…”

She glared at him. “And the other folk here? Would you want your children to grow up alone? No playmates?”

“Look–” he began. He sought for the words. “It’s not my fault that men aren’t fertile any more. If you like, I could perform secretly…?”

Her mouth set in a firm, uncompromising line. “Over my dead body, Mister O’Meara. No husband of mine gets to play around!”

He gazed at her, bewildered.

She said, “If you don’t marry me, you can do as you please. I’ll be content with what we’ve had. And with a bit of luck, we’ll soon have a village full of children.”

He shook his head, incredulous. “Don’t you want kids of your own?”

She swallowed a pang. “I’ll educate those you have by other women.”

His face was incredulous. “And you’ll settle for that?”

“I don’t want to marry you,” she lied firmly.

He gave up. “Then we’ll have to manage without marriage.”

“Oh?”

Somewhere in the distance a Chieftain tank clanked.

Had she talked him round? She said, hesitant, “What do you mean?”

He grasped her arms. “What I say. If I can’t have you as my wife, then I’ll have you as my mistress.”

“Pat”—she pushed him away—“you’re the lord of the village and I’m the schoolteacher. We should be setting an example.”

He pulled her towards him. “We will—a good example!”

His jacket felt rough on her cheek. She mumbled faintly, “But, Pat—only Doctor Denny knows about us. No one else must find out. We daren’t–”

He rocked her gently in his arms. “Oh, but we do dare, Larkin!”

She lay limp against him. “How? People will see us!”

He stroked her hair. “We’ll meet only when it’s dark.”

She hesitated. There was no way she could refuse him. “But where? I couldn’t come to Mooney’s.”

He put a finger under her chin, and lifted her head. “Your place then?”

“With my brother and my niece on watch?”

He laughed. “Okay, then. Until my place is ready—what about the Chieftain? We could manage.”

She smiled at the thought. They both knew what could be managed in a Chieftain. “After my evening class,” she agreed. “When it’s dark.”

He hugged her. “Tonight, Larkin?”

She squeezed him back. “Tonight, sergeant.”

She began to giggle.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

She said, “It occurred to me—you’ll be the only man in Ireland taking precautions tonight!”

Patrick O’Meara called on Doctor Denny Mallon the following morning. The doctor was packing a lunchbox.

“Come with us, Pat,” he urged. “I’ve closed the surgery till tonight. Tessie will cut more sandwiches. A day’s fishing will do you good.”

“Us?”

“Kevin is coming. We’re putting a boat out on Comb.” The doctor rubbed his hands. “Brown trout for supper!”

Patrick O’Meara grimaced. Kevin Murphy was not a man he’d want to gaze at all day.

“Sorry,” he apologised. “I have to check the cupola MG. The feed is sticking.”

Denny Mallon blinked, mystified.

Patrick O’Meara didn’t enlighten him. Celia Larkin could have told him what a cupola MG was—she had fired one.

“I’m thinking of running out to Mambridge for a recce on Pete Carley’s house,” he continued. “There might be a chair or two there worth liberating.” He looked warily at the doctor, seeking approval. Liberating ownerless property was an old military custom. Doctor Denny Mallon might have civilian principles.

The doctor had not been present at Larry Desmond’s interrogation of the vagrant, but he had received a full report. He refrained from any comment on the morality of robbing the dead. “I don’t think you should go,” he grunted. “You’ve upset the local villains. They all know about you and your tank. Some of them would love to trap you in an ambush.” He wedged a thermos flask beside a plastic box. “Who knows you’ll be looking for furniture?”

The O’Meara shrugged. Larry Desmond had claimed ignorance about the unfurnished state of the castle, but that was probably eyewash. He was willing to bet that the villagers had helped themselves to the missing furniture. So they would know he was looking for substitutes. Some of them still made trips to Oughterard. Outsiders occasionally visited the Cross. There would be gossip. Who knows what would be retailed about the Master’s activities?

“Anyone wanting to knock me off could do it on Corrib as easy as at Mambridge,” he objected.

“You wouldn’t clank on Corrib,” snapped the doctor. “Boats don’t advertise their presence so plainly.”

“Look–” said the Lord of Barley Cross patiently, “I only came to ask you if it’s safe to sleep in Pete Carley’s bed. I don’t know what the old fellow died of–”

“Ha!” Denny Mallon emitted a harsh laugh. “Starvation’s not catching. But if you’re worried, I’ll disinfect anything you bring back. You fetched enough prophylactics from Tuam to sanitise all Iar Connaught.” He raised his eyebrows. “Or, alternatively, I can inject you for everything from measles to morning sickness?”

Patrick O’Meara gave the doctor a jaundiced look. “That shouldn’t be necessary. As long as you assure me I’ll not be bringing anything malignant back to the village.”

Denny Mallon slammed the lid down on his lunch. “Dammit, Pat, I’m not clairvoyant. Old Carley probably died of old age compounded by insufficient food. If you’re worried, get yourself a wife who’ll cook you regular meals and maybe give you children to keep you young–”

The doctor paused, suddenly aware of what he had said.

Patrick O’Meara’s face whitened. He said stiffly, “I thought we’d agreed that I should stay single.”

The doctor’s eyes were pleading. “I’m sorry, Pat. My tongue ran off with me.”

The O’Meara drew a deep breath. Sometimes he wondered if these people knew what they had demanded of him. “Forget it, Denny,” he said. “Though I’ll bear in mind your advice about regular meals.”

Denny Mallon was crestfallen. “I should watch my big mouth. After what you’ve done for us–”

Patrick O’Meara smiled. You couldn’t upset a Grenadier Guards sergeant with mere words. Denny Mallon was probably sweating now in case his new lord took umbrage, and maybe changed his mind about being their stud. Denny Mallon didn’t realise that Pat O’Meara valued the crazy sanity of Barley Cross just as highly as Barley Cross valued his genes. He took the doctor by the shoulders, and shook him gently. “I said ‘forget it,’ Denny.”

Denny Mallon swallowed a lump of anxiety. “Thanks, Pat. You sure you won’t come with us?”

The O’Meara shook his head. “I told you. I’ve got to look at a machine gun. Then I’m going fishing—for information.”

When he had cleared the ammunition feed of the Chieftain’s ranging machine gun, the Lord of Barley Cross climbed Barra Hill. The temporary service unit was busy at his future residence. Tom O’Connor knelt by the front door, replacing the lock broken by Larry Desmond. Patrick O’Meara caught the reek of varnish from within.

“They’re doing your stairs, me lord,” the carpenter explained. “I fitted a couple of new rails in the banister. The wood don’t quite match, but the ones I took out were too rotten to leave in.”

“Good man,” approved his master. “Don’t want to risk falling downstairs. How’s the new man doing?”

Tom O’Connor paused, mallet hovering over chisel. “I think Dooley is upstairs, plastering a bedroom.”

“I’ll pop up and speak to him,” said the O’Meara.

Pallet in one hand, float in the other, the new man was smoothing plaster below a window. When the O’Meara entered the room, he stopped work. “Good day, me lord.”

So the fellow had learned how to address him!

“God bless the work,” responded the O’Meara. “Are they treating you well?”

“Everything’s fine, me lord. I’m pleased I got meself arrested in your village.”

“Don’t make a habit of it,” cautioned the O’Meara. “We’re not always so charitable with strangers.”

The visitor looked sheepish. “I’d like to stay on, if I might. General Desmond says as how it’s up to you.”

Patrick O’Meara nodded. “The general is right. Barley Cross is a free and independent community, and what I say goes.”

Dooley nodded, seeing an application for citizenship congealing in the air.

“Tell me more about the Clancy house you slept in,” invited the O’Meara. “Is there any decent furniture there?”

Dooley patted the plaster on his pallet. “ ’Tis a bit old-fashioned, me lord. Well-worn. But decent enough. There’s a whole houseful.”

“I was thinking of running up there and picking out a few bits for this place,” mused his lord.

“In yer tank, me lord?”

“So you know I have a tank?”

“Sure, the lads have told me about you.”

“Why did they shoot at you in Leenane?”

Patrick O’Meara’s victim blinked. The change of subject seemed to unsettle him. He hesitated a moment, mouth twitching. “There’s another gang at Leenane, me lord. They don’t get on with Garvey’s men. There’s been fighting between them.”

“And you’re a Garvey man?”

Dooley flushed. “Sor! I was. I have admitted that.”

“And whose man are you now?” pursued the O’Meara. “Or have you not yet made up your mind?”

Eyes squeezed shut, the plasterer hesitated, thinking hard. He made a decision. Face twisted with anguish, he blurted, “Don’t go up to Mambridge for that furniture, me lord. ’Tis a trap. That Garvey felly is after you. He’s not been able to loot in Barley Cross since ye took over. He wants ye dead!”

The last bit wasn’t news, anyway. Garvey probably didn’t enjoy being barred from Barley Cross any more than Moran Healey and his gang. “And how does he know I’m looking for furniture?”

“One of his men was in grocer Gleason’s in Oughterard. He heard them talking about yer move into this place. Garvey sent me here to lay the bait.”

“And now you’ve laid it?”

Dooley studied his boots. “I’m terrible ashamed of meself.”

The Lord of Barley Cross hid a smile. “That’s something, anyway. How did you know I would ask you about the Carley house?”

The penitent looked up. “I didn’t, me lord.”

“We might have sent you on your way without a question.”

“I expected ye to do that.” Dooley’s mouth twisted in a smile. “I’d have told someone about the place before I left.”

“So? You’re a thoroughly accomplished villain–”

The penitent lowered his head. “Beggin’ yer pardon, no, me lord. I was butler to a rich Westport family before Garvey and his gang took over.”

Patrick O’Meara blinked. If all the little plasterer claimed was true, it would be a pity to waste him on a gang of villains. He said, “And what did Garvey expect you to do after you’d laid the bait?”

“I was to get back to Westport as fast as I could to let him know.”

“And then?”

“They intend to lie in wait for you near the Carley house.”

The Lord of Barley Cross smiled. “It would be a pity to disappoint them. Let’s say you obey orders, and get off to Westport right away?”

Aghast, Dooley almost dropped his pallet. “I couldn’t do that, me lord!”

“Why not?”

“If ye go after that furniture, ye’ll be kilt.”

Patrick O’Meara shook his head. “In my tank? I don’t think so.”

“Me lord”—the plasterer waved his float helplessly—“there’s some clever fellers from Belfast has hitched up with Garvey. They know tricks with weedkiller and sugar that could upset yer tank.”

Patrick O’Meara was not unacquainted with homemade bombs. Perhaps this one-time butler had a point. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he promised. He grew brisk. “Tomorrow morning then I want to see the back of you.”

The man’s features drooped. “Are ye throwing me out?”

The Lord of Barley Cross nodded. “I’m sending you back to your old boss to tell him the bait is laid. He can get his ambush ready. I’ll be going up to Mambridge in a couple of days.”

“But, me lord–”

“And then you can come back to Barley Cross. I think I can find another job for you.”

Ex-Grenadier guardsman Patrick O’Meara stood in the commander’s cupola of his Chieftain tank, senses alert. Inside the turret, his gunner, newly-promoted Lance-corporal O’Malley, peered through the optical sight, glad that the commander could override his control of the big gun if the need arose. Behind him loader Flinty Hagan waited, hand resting on the shell rack. Outside, an open hatch in the glacis revealed the black locks of Sergeant-driver McGrath.

Over the intercom, the commander said, “Let’s stop a minute, Andy.”

The tank came to a halt.

Behind them, Brendan MacCarthy’s largest van, driven by Tom Burke, also came to a halt.

The silence was almost palpable, apart from the low rumble of the Chieftain’s engine, and the panting of the van motor. Patrick O’Meara heard a lark trilling. He became aware of a gurgling river ahead.

He rotated the cupola, field glasses to his eyes. To the right lay the western reach of Corrib, dotted with islands. On the left, barren slopes climbed towards the Maamturk Mountains. Ahead, the road narrowed approaching a bridge. Across the bridge rose other mountains. No sign of lurking villains. Scant cover for an ambush.

Pete O’Malley’s head emerged from the hatch beside the cupola, leads dangling from the padded phones over his ears. He raised one doughnut. “This is Mambridge, sir.” He pointed lakewards. “There’s the ruins of Hen’s Castle on that island.”

“They say it was built by a witch for the O’Flahertie,” volunteered Flinty Hagan, eavesdropping.

“Rubbish!” interpolated Sergeant McGrath. “ ’Twas built by the sons of Rory O’Connor, the last king of Ireland.”

“Cut the chat, lads,” ordered their commander. “There are bandits about, somewhere…”

Where were Garvey’s villains? Had his little messenger let him down? Patrick O’Meara was almost sure the plasterer’s penitence had been genuine. The Carley house was just beyond the bridge. Would they try an ambush there?

Patrick O’Meara felt uneasy. Instinct warned him off the bridge. Bridges were always a risk. And the tank was his only trump card. Bridges restricted manoeuvrability. Bridges could be blown when you were halfway over. He recalled the plasterer’s warning about compounds of weedkiller and sugar. He swore. “That bloody bridge is mined!”

He heard McGrath’s sceptical sniff. “I doubt it, sir. The villains need it for raiding the Cross.”

Pete O’Malley and Flinty Hagan stayed quiet out of respect for professional opinion.

Patrick O’Meara tucked away his binoculars. “Something’s fishy. Cover me, Peter” he ordered. “I’m going to recce the bridge.”

He braced his arms on the rim of the cupola, preparing to heave himself out.

He heard a shout. “Go back, sor! The road is mined!”

He recognised the voice. Then a gun cracked.

He dropped back into the turret. “Button up! Get us off the road, Andy!”

The motor whined. The Chieftain swivelled on one track, and lumbered into the scrub on their left. Corporal O’Malley rotated the turret, holding the bridge in his gunsight. Behind them, the van began to advance. Flinty Hagan grabbed his commander’s leg. “Tom Burke is moving, sir!”

“Jasus!” Patrick O’Meara pushed open the cupola hatch. He stood erect to wave back the van. A figure rose from concealment near the bridge. A burst of machine gun fire tracked up the front of the van. A headlight sprayed glass. The windshield shattered. Tom Burke slumped. The van halted.

Patrick O’Meara swung the cupola gun. He sprayed bullets around the bridge. “Forward slow, Andy,” he ordered. “Keep off the road. We’ll try to enfilade them.”

Why had they stopped the van? Angrily, Patrick O’Meara loosed off another burst at the bridge. He knew why. They weren’t after the van. Even he wasn’t the target. The tank was the prize! A tank-less O’Meara would be a nobody. And, tank gone, Barley Cross’s clodhopping militia would revert to being easy meat for Connemara’s bandits.

He sent another hail of steel bridgewards.

Pitching and sliding along the verge, the tank approached the bridge. The Failmore River came into sight. Figures sprouted from concealment. Handguns spitting, they scrambled up the bank. Heads down, they scuttled across the bridge. Patrick O’Meara chased them with the cupola machine gun, chipping flints from the parapet.

“Only three of them,” commented Corporal O’Malley, disgust in his voice.

“Enough to cope with a disabled tank,” pointed out Andy McGrath.

The villains had taken cover behind the parapet at the far end of the bridge. Sporadic sparkles revealed their positions. Patrick O’Meara ducked into the turret. “See if you can dislodge them, corporal,” he ordered his gunner. “Try to leave the bridge standing.”

Pete O’Malley had a round of AP ready up the spout. The range was point blank. With the far end of the parapet in his sights, he squeezed the trigger.

The turret bucked. The end of the parapet bloomed like an opening flower. Something struck the distant hillside, sending up a spout of dirt and splintered rock. Three figures scuttled from cover.

Pete O’Malley knocked them over with a burst from the ranging MG. “That’s for Tom Burke,” he muttered, forgetting his microphone.

The O’Meara concealed his surprise. Clodhoppers apparently learned fast. “Keep an eye peeled while I check the road,” he ordered.

Heaving himself out of the turret, he dropped down to the verge. There was a mine concealed under the road somewhere. Ten yards away, beneath scattered gravel, the tarmac had been disturbed. He crossed, keeping well clear of the broken surface. On the other side of the road, a pair of wires emerged from the dirt. He followed the leads to a quarryman’s detonator on the ground beneath the bridge. He heard a groan as he unscrewed the wires from the box. Further down the slope, a body lay with both legs in the river. Patrick O’Meara recognised the old police jacket which had no longer fitted Larry Desmond.

Gently he turned his little plasterer over.

The wounded man opened his eyes, and grimaced. “They didn’t like me shouting that warning, sor.”

“Lie still,” said the O’Meara unnecessarily. “I’ll get something to carry you on.”

An army greatcoat and two long-handled spades from in the van made a serviceable stretcher. They carried the wounded man up to the road.

Tom Burke, his face bloody with glass cuts but far from dead, said, “We could certainly use a bed now, me lord.”

Andy McGrath manoeuvred the tank back onto the road. They fastened a tow rope to the van’s front axle, and standing well back, watched Andy drive the Chieftain across the bridge, dragging the unmanned van after him.

The vehicle passed over the disturbed patch in the road without incident to reach the bridge unharmed. Patrick O’Meara exhaled. “We haven’t time to be digging up mines,” he told his men. “Maybe another day…”

The rest of the operation was a cakewalk. No one interfered as they ransacked the Carley residence. They stacked the loot in MacCarthy’s van. Flinty Hagan, despite his nickname, had a soft heart. He jerked a thumb at a wooden cross in the garden. “What about them fellers on the road, me lord?”

Patrick O’Meara concealed his feelings. “I have a policy for dead dogs,” he said. “I leave ’em for the crows.”

Flinty Hagan flinched. When he told the young widow he was courting about the day’s events, he would have to skip some bits.

At Barley Cross, Patrick O’Meara sent his furniture up the hill, and took his casualties to Doctor Mallon.

The doctor stretched out the worst casualty on his kitchen table, and prepared for butchery. The wounded man took no notice. He had conveniently lost consciousness.

The O’Meara watched in silence as Tessie Mallon snipped away bloody cloth, carried in steaming basins, and held dripping instruments. The MalIons had evidently done this sort of thing before.

Twenty minutes later, he heard the clink of a bullet in a bowl.

“He’ll live,” said Denny Mallon, brow dripping perspiration, “even if I says it as shouldn’t. Bind him up, woman. I’ll take a look at Tom.”

Patrick O’Meara breathed easier.

Magnifying glass and forceps in hand, Denny Mallon bent over Tom Burke’s face. He nodded at the unconscious Dooley. “Can you put him somewhere else? We eat off that table.”

The O’Meara grinned. “He can go back to Ryan’s for a week or so. He had a room there while he was working at the Fist.”

“Tell them to give him plenty of steak,” advised the doctor. “The littler bugger’s undernourished.”

“Strange,” mused Tessie Mallon. “I heard he was a cook for some villains at Westport.”

The O’Meara shook his head in regret. “So he was. But he wasn’t a very good villain.”

The wounded man’s convalescence lasted two weeks. Patrick O’Meara’s preparations took the same length of time. Two floors of the Fist were furnished with Clancy loot. Celia Larkin had provided, and hung, drapes at the unarmoured windows. A carpet loaned by Father Con covered most of the parlour floor. A battered settee donated by Brendan MacCarthy helped ameliorate the seating shortage. Patrick O’Meara was grateful for all the help. Nothing like a housewarming to break the ice, he enthused. He smiled at his guests, trying to fit names to faces. He would get to know them all in time.

General Desmond shared Brendan MacCarthy’s settee with the MacCarthy himself, Kevin Murphy, and a bottle of poteen. Celia Larkin had brought a stool from school. She perched on it primly, sipping tay to which had been added a drop of the craythur. In the depths of an armchair on the other side of the fire, Denny Mallon nursed a half-filled glass, his wizened face thoughtful. Flourishing a sandwich, Tessie Mallon chatted with the young widow Neary, who had arrived on Flinty Hagan’s arm. Sausage roll forgotten, Andy McGrath was making heavy weather over a theological point with Father Con—who, somewhat surprisingly, clutched a tumbler of poteen. Over plates of ham, Tom Burke and Peggy, his sister, had their heads together with the McGlones who ran the creamery next door to their butcher’s shop. The plump girl sitting next to Pete O’Malley must be Nelly Dolan, his current passion. Tom O’Connor’s fiancée Brigit Cullen swung dainty feet from a Clancy chair, and lectured Willie Flanagan, whose wife farmed while he poached. Willie was almost unrecognisable in a suit.

Patrick O’Meara gave it up trying to put names to them all. So many of them. And so many single girls he had heard spoken of by the Volunteers. Would that be coincidence? Tessie Mallon had made out the guest list. Was she privy to the plot to regenerate the population of Barley Cross? Letting all the marriageable girls take a squint at their new lord before the reality of his droits du seigneur had to be faced? Patrick O’Meara grimaced. That was a problem he had yet to tackle. He hoped Tessie had left off nobody who should have been invited—like McGuire the miller, who also distilled hooch, and Mooney the publican, who sold it, and poor Eamon Toomey, who couldn’t hold it! None of them had arrived yet.

The Lord of Barley Cross dabbed his brow. Thank goodness the furniture was salvage. When they started jiving to Franky Finnegan’s fiddle, the place would be a shambles! Still, they had all accepted his hospitality. That was a good start to his stewardship. Would they expect him to make a speech?

Larry Desmond caught his eye. The general waved an empty bottle. “ ’Tis a dry time we’re having, me lord!”

That man and his thirst! Patrick O’Meara tugged at the bell rope behind him. A smallish man opened the door. He carried a tray in one hand, a folded napkin in the other. His green baize apron failed to hide the burn holes in his waistcoat, nor the shine on well-worn pin-stripe trousers.

The O’Meara eyed him critically. Despite Denny Mallon’s old clothes the fellow might just be mistaken for a butler. No sign that two weeks previous, bleeding from a bullet wound, he had lain, executed and abandoned, half in and half out of the Fail-more River.

Patrick O’Meara addressed the man who claimed to have buttled for the cream of Westport society. “Would ye bring us another bottle, Michael?”

Michael Terence Dooley permitted himself a glimmer of a smile. It might be a bit of a comedown from the old days—but he fancied he had at last got himself a job with a future.

He bowed to the man who styled himself Lord of Barley Cross. Voice betraying no whit of condescension, he murmured, “Very good, me lord.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
Half the Battle
by Harry Turtledove

For over a thousand years the glory that was Rome towered over the Middle Ages: even the fabled Renaissance was but one more attempt to recreate the classical culture of Greece and Rome. It was only after the Age of Enlightenment that mankind began to conceive of what we know as “progress” and the startling new idea that the future could actually be better than the past.

Throughout most of history men have lived beneath the shadows cast by the ruins of past glory; the future was seen only as a continuation of the present, different only in details and personages. The idea that man could improve his lot in life, that of his children, and even the world around him is a very modern concept: a primary reason why most medieval and Renaissance paintings of Biblical scenes were done in then-current fashions—incidentally, now the major source of most of our present knowledge on medieval dress and fashion.

If the fortresses and buildings of ancient Rome cast a thousand-year shade over the future, what shadow might the towers of our great civilization cast over the future After Armageddon…

Half the Battle
by Harry Turtledove

“A gun that spits bullets one after another? I don’t believe such a thing is possible.” King Bryon of Canoga frowned on his throne. The guards who flanked it carried matchlocks.

Pedro the scribe bowed to his overlord. “Truly, sir, I believe it is. In searching through the fragments of the ancient books, I’ve found many references to what they call a Gatling.”

“All kinds of wild things are in the ancient books,” King Bryon said, rolling his eyes. He kept blinking at Pedro—the sun was in his face. His palace had been a church two centuries ago, before the Burning. Even in Ellay’s mild climate, though, only bits of stained glass remained in the windows.

“One of my assistants has found what he thinks is a picture, my lord.”

“A picture? Hmm.” Bryon rubbed his chin. That put a different light on things. Everyone knew the strangest imaginings in the pre-Burning books came from the ones without illustrations. Words were more seductive by themselves.

Pedro pressed his advantage. “The master armorer thinks he can build the thing, my lord. The ancients had them. We know that, truly we do, and knowing something can be done is half the battle. Remember the lathe? That was new in your father’s time, recovered from the old records.”

“So it was,” Bryon admitted. “Aye, we bring in many dols with our fine woodwork. And Duke Rico of Pacoim has more soldiers than we do, and more muskets. If your gun works, it may give us the edge we need to hold the old freeway line. Go ahead, Pedro, see what you and the armorer can do.”

“Demons curse it, how did they make their damned engine so light and so powerful at the same time?” Jenk the engineer glowered at the torn, yellowed sheet in front of him. “I think your equivalents for these dimensions are wrong.”

“They are not,” Dorland the librarian said positively. “Of course the ancients knew more tricks than we do. But the numbers, those few we’ve recovered for this engine, are accurate. The powers-of-ten batch and the other crazy system they used both give the same results.”

“But those are impossible!” Jenk said. “This thing weighs no more than a ground-wagon engine, but puts out four times the power.”

“It has to, to propel a flying machine of useful size. We have no petrol to fuel it with, of course, but alcohol will serve.”

“Not as much energy,” Jenk reminded him.

“Close, though: enough to carry a pilot and mount Gatlings on the wings. I don’t suppose I have to tell you his majesty’s father thought Gatlings couldn’t exist.”

“His majesty’s father was a robber chieflet, no matter that he called himself king.” Jenk and Dorland were old friends and alone, or the engineer would never have dared say that out loud. “King Burger rules all of SoCal. If anyone can reunite us, he’s the one.”

“I agree with you, but he needs the arms to do it. Vegas wants revenge for the last war, and we have to have airpower to stop them. Come on, Jenk, give it your best try. They knew how to make this engine work before the Burning; surely you can match them.”

“I’ll keep at it,” Jenk sighed. “I don’t think I’ll end up with a”—he looked down at the paper again—“Messerschmitt, though, whatever a Messerschmitt was.”

The sonic boom from the descending shuttle came down on the desert landing strip like a god’s fist. King Burger’s eyes glowed as he spotted the spacecraft gliding toward touchdown. He was an old man now, but the head archivist’s shoulder ached from the strength of his grasp.

“I never thought I’d live to see it, Jorj,” he said softly, “but we’re approaching the pre-Burning days at last! We couldn’t have done it without your team.”

“That book we found in the Zona ruins was the key, sir,” the archivist said. “Once we knew just what the parameters of the thing were, the hardware was a lot easier to design.”

The Space Minister slammed his fist down on the desk. “It can’t be done, I tell you!”

“Oh, but it can, Billi.” Grinning like a man with an ace up his sleeve, the Commandant of the Technology Recovery Section dropped the photocopies of his unit’s latest find on the minister’s blotter.

Billi went through them a page at a time, quite slowly. “Where on earth did you come up with these, Claud?” he asked at last.

“Not on it—under it,” the commandant replied. “You know the biggest problem we have with pre-Burning texts, especially the late ones that are of most interest to us, is the bad paper the ancients used. Exposed to air, it oxidizes fast. This book was buried so deep, it was sealed away from all that. I’d be surprised if another copy exists anywhere anymore.”

“I should say not!” the Space Minister exclaimed. “All the previous ancient claims of FTL travel have been shown to be fiction. But this–”

“Yes. Here we have detailed engineering drawings of a starship. Of several classes of starship, in fact.”

“Not as detailed as I’d like. They don’t show a great deal about the engines.”

“You’re nitpicking, Billi.” The Space Minister flushed; he knew Claud was right. The commandant sank the barb deeper by pointing out the obvious: “They didn’t have much more to go on in my grandfather’s time, when they built the first shuttle. Oh, sure, it’ll take time to find the tough spots and work them all out, but remember, knowing it’s possible–”

“–is half the battle,” Billi finished sourly. Really, the commandant was going too far. Everyone in the Namerican Empire knew the Technology Recovery Section’s motto.

The captain of the starship Claud pressed a button on the communications panel at his station. “Engineering here,” came a tiny voice.

“Are we ready to travel, Gomery?”

“That we are, sir. I only wish Claud himself could have lived to see the day.”

“And I. He’s in the lap of the gods now, though, cheering us on. Give me warp factor three, Gomery—we won’t go too boldly at first.”

“Aye, sir. Warp factor three it is.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
Only the Strong Survive
by F. G. Wyllis

Despite the allure of new beginnings, life After Armageddon is not going to be the romantic picture painted by most writers and survivalists: first, few survivors will be properly prepared, including many who believe otherwise; secondly, the conditions of everyday life are going to be far more nasty, brutish, and short than most of us can imagine; finally, not many of us are psychologically prepared for the breakdown of everything which we accept as normal living—from the mundane aspects of cleaning our own kills to the changes in the nature of friendship and family.

In “Only the Strong Survive” we get a frightening glimpse at the price some might pay in the years following the aftermath; once again proving that the best way to survive After Armageddon is not to have one in the first place.

Only the Strong Survive
by F. G. Wyllis

Tod braced his feet and pulled on a board using all of his weight and straining every muscle until the nails came out and the board popped free from the twisted pile of lumber that had once been a home. The Johnsons had lived here, an old couple, both of them short and fat with pure white hair. They had been real friendly to the Littles, always giving them homemade jam and stuff. That was in the good old days before the war. They were gone now.

His hands were numb with cold as he stacked the board on the old milk cart. He faced away from the wind that seemed to be constantly scouring the earth and that felt like sandpaper when it cut across his face. He cupped his hands over his mouth, blew into them, rubbed them together for a minute and stuffed them into his coat pockets. His little brother, Danny, still struggled with a piece of wood too big for him.

“That’s enough,” Tod shouted. “We’ll never get this cart home the way it is.”

The boys began pushing the milk cart down the hill to the public road. The cart rolled easily on large metal-rimmed wheels, but it was so big and heavy it took all their strength to control it. They turned onto the public road and started toward their house a half a mile away. There was ice and snow mixed with the gravel of the road and the steel-rimmed wheels of the cart would slip and slide in the old ruts worn in the road surface by cars long ago.

Tod pushed the cart from behind so he could watch for boards falling off. Danny pulled the cart with the draw bar, pretending to be a draft animal. They had to go over a small hill that lay between them and home. It didn’t seem like much of a hill when they were riding their bikes, but hauling wood was different. The cart got heavier with every step they took.

Near the top of the hill Danny’s worn leather shoes slipped on the snow and he went to his knees. The draw bar fell, spearing the ground. The cart sloped with a jerk, piling Tod into the load of wood. He fell and another button came off his coat. He screamed at Danny to be more careful as he felt around in the cold, icy gravel with numb fingers for the button. His mother might be able to sew it back on, though he really needed a new coat. He had outgrown all of his clothes in the past year and he didn’t dare hope for new ones.

The sky kept getting darker as they neared home: light and dark gray, swirling clouds forever trying to get mixed smooth, but never making it. There was something about the clouds and their constant turbulence that was really scary. Tod’s mother had told him that all living things needed light to grow and they weren’t getting it, so everything was dying. They hadn’t seen the sunshine since they came out of their house after the all-day war, and that was over a year ago.

By the time they got home, it was almost dark enough for a fire. Their dad didn’t want chimney smoke attracting prowlers in the daytime, but a fire at night was OK. Even though you could smell the wood smoke for a mile, it was too dark at night to find your hand in front of your face, let alone a house half buried in the earth.

They turned off the public road into their yard and followed a long driveway right into the garage. They unloaded the cart and broke up the wood with an axe into smaller pieces that would fit in their stove. They piled the scrap wood on a piece of canvas and dragged it to the house.

Their father had built his house in the side of a hill so the earth would insulate it from the elements. Only the upstairs windows looked out over the earthen bank, and earth had been cut away to expose the front door.

Tod knocked on the door with his special knock and watched the peephole. He couldn’t see through it, but it sort of clouded over when someone looked out from the inside. Then there was a rattling of chains and the door opened. Heather Little, his mother, stood in the doorway, a smile filling her hollow cheeks and her blond hair poking out from under a black stocking cap. She wore a big bulky sweater with a coat over it to ward off the perpetual cold that seemed to seep into your body until you ached all over. Hanging down below the coat was the holster that held a .44 magnum she carried for protection.

The boys brought the wood in and piled it by the stove. It took them six trips.

“Oh good,” she said. “You’ve got enough wood there to last all night. I’m really proud of my little men.”

The boys went with their mother to the basement and helped her pick mushrooms. Tod hated mushrooms. He looked longingly at the boxes of dried food stacked against one wall. He knew they were rationing it. They had to make it last till they could grow crops again, and they didn’t know how long that would be. It might be “years and years,” his mom had told him, before the sun came out.

“Are we going to have to eat these plain?” Danny whined.

“I suppose we could have something with them. Which would you like: onions or garlic?”

“Onions!”

She picked out a plastic bag of dried onions, then added a bag of dried beans and even a bag of dried apricots and a tin of flour. Tod’s eyes got big with excitement.

“We’re having a special dinner tomorrow,” she explained. “A banquet. We’ll have beans and apricot bread to celebrate the lights. Your father and Mr. Bradford got the generator working. It won’t be long before we have a garden. Then we can eat fresh vegetables every day.”

They came back upstairs, the boys bounding ahead of their mother. They had found new energy in the expectation of beans and apricot bread. She let Tod start the fire in the stove and light the lamps. The lamps were old jars filled with tallow, with strings for wicks. They had a sickening smell when they burned. By the time the fire got going good, there was a knock on the door. Danny raced to the door and opened it without taking the chains off. He looked out through the gap.

“It’s Fred and Teach,” he announced.

“You mean it’s your father and Mr. Bradford,” Heather corrected.

Danny closed the door and unhooked the chains, then opened the door again and the men came in.

Fred was a big man in his mid-thirties with long black hair and a full beard to match. He looked like an old-fashioned farmer dressed in a plaid shirt and bib overalls, laced boots that came halfway to his knees, and a heavy, fur-trimmed parka.

Mr. Bradford, or “Teach,” as the boys liked to call him, was not as big and much older. His hair was almost all gray. He didn’t have big muscles like their father, but the muscles he did have had grown hard. He had lost a lot of weight in the past year, so that skin hung in folds on his face. He had been a high school physics teacher and he tutored the boys in math, but his real reason for being there was to help Fred build a wind generator and hook up lights in the old barn. That’s why Fred had taken him in a month ago.

The men were excited because they had the lights working and all they had to do now was start planting vegetables. All through supper they talked about how the manure decomposing in the barn and heat from the lights would keep the plants from freezing unless it got real cold, and how if the wind died down and the lights went off, the plants would think it was night and just go to sleep till the lights came back on again. All they had to worry about was that their seeds were all a year or more old. They weren’t sure how many would germinate.

After supper Fred paced restlessly. “Well, I can’t sit still. I think I’ll go out and start preparing the seed bed.”

“Want some help?” Mr. Bradford asked.

“No thanks. You stay here and give the kids their lesson. I can handle it.”

Heather cleared the dishes from the table so the boys could do their lessons in a warm room. Tod got the box with the paper and pencils in it. He picked the biggest pencil in the box and a piece of paper with writing on only one side, then handed the box to Danny. In the beginning they had burned scrap paper in the stove to start fires. Now that they didn’t have much left, he wished he had saved it.

Teach made up some math problems for the boys to work on—fractions. The boys hated them.

“Why do we have to learn all this stuff?” Danny whined.

“If you’re going to be a survivor, you have to learn all you can about everything,” Teach explained.

“What’s a survivor?” Danny asked.

“That’s someone who doesn’t give up when the going gets tough,” Teach said. “It’s a person who’s prepared for a catastrophe and looks at it as a challenge rather than the end of the world.”

“Why doesn’t everyone think like that?”

“It’s a long story, son.”

“Aw c’mon, tell us.”

“Well, to begin with, all animals adapt to their environments. The giraffe has a long neck so it can eat leaves from high in the trees where other animals can’t reach. The anteater has a long sticky tongue so it can lick up ants. Can either of you boys tell me how man adapts to his environment?”

The boys shook their heads.

Teach tapped his forehead with a finger. “His brain,” he said.

“How does your brain help you?”

“Let’s take an example. Back before the war, everything was sunshiny and warm. No one had a care in the world. If you had asked people how they felt about the world they lived in, you would have gotten a lot of different answers. Some people thought that there would never be a war. Others thought there would be a war, but no one would survive. Still, a few thought there would be a war and if they were prepared, they could survive, so they prepared themselves. They built houses, like this one, that would retain their heat. They put in wood stoves that could burn trash. They stored food. They pretty much made themselves independent of the outside world.”

“My dad did that,” Tod said wistfully.

“Yes, I know. The bombs only killed about ten percent of the people. Most died from starvation caused by the forever winter. Then, there was a breakdown of social organization when people turned against one another and tried to steal what they couldn’t grow.”

“You mean like the prowlers?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Bradford’s eyes kept following Heather. The room was warm from the fire and she had taken off her coat and pushed up her sleeves as she worked, punching and poking at her bread dough. The smell of onions that lingered from supper was joined by the smell of yeast and apricots.

His eyes studied her faded jeans, which had been washed so many times they were almost white and had shrunk a little bit more with each washing until she could hardly squeeze into them. The holster with its gun covered her abdomen, the barrel pointing to the gap between her legs and slapping lightly with her movements.

“But,” he added, “people have used their brains to adapt to living in every part of the world in a thousand different lifestyles, so it was impossible to wipe them all out in any one catastrophe. The ones who survive today have three things in common: like us, they’re tough, self-reliant and they don’t trust people.”

“Anybody?”

“Nobody! Not if you want to grow up, not if you want to be part of the new race of man.” The old man’s blue eyes twinkled.

“What will the new men look like?”

“Go look in the mirror,” Teach laughed. “I mean the people who survive the forever winter will be different than the people who lived before. They will have evolved just like the giraffe and the anteater. All the soft trusting souls will be gone. The survivors will be solitary animals. They won’t trust people, so they won’t work together and form societies, not for a thousand years.”

The laughter slowly dissolved from Mr. Bradford’s face until it became a sardonic grin. He stared at the flame of the lamp. His face clouded over and Tod sensed dark thoughts forming behind those powerful—knowing—gray eyes. Tod couldn’t concentrate on his made-up problem. He sat transfixed watching Mr. Bradford’s face growing meaner and meaner.

Suddenly Teach sprang from his chair and grabbed Heather around the neck with one hand and her gun with the other. A bread pan went flying from her hands and landed in a pile of dishes in the sink. There was the sound of broken glass and then dead silence. He held her in a choke hold and pointed the gun at her face, the barrel almost touching her eye.

“As long as we’re on the subject, I wonder what kind of a surprise your old man is cooking up for me out in the barn.”

Heather didn’t say anything, but her face turned as white as her flour-covered hands.

Tod saw his mother was frightened and he wanted to help her, but he was petrified, afraid even to breathe.

“I’ve been doing a little math of my own and I don’t like the way it adds up,” Mr. Bradford said. “The project’s over, the generator’s working, and Fred isn’t the kind to keep someone around his table if he doesn’t have to. And he isn’t dumb enough to send me packing now that I know the layout of this place. So we’re going to walk out to the barn and surprise him before he surprises me.”

They left the house, Heather obediently leading the way. Tod and Danny ran to the window and looked out, but it was too dark to see anything except the strange iridescent glow that filtered through thin spots in the clouds. What his mom called a nuclear rainbow.

The barn door opened and he could see his mother and Mr. Bradford silhouetted in a square of light. Then they disappeared inside. The door swung shut for a minute and he thought he heard a shot. Long painful moments later the door opened again and he recognized his mother’s figure framed in light as she came out. Tod ran to the door and threw it open. Heather crossed the yard, walking rapidly towards him. He started towards her. Danny raced past him and threw his arms around her, crying unashamedly.

“What happened?” Tod stammered.

“Don’t worry. Your father’s all right. Let’s go inside and close the door before we lose all of our heat.”

“What happened to Teach?” Tod asked.

“Mr. Bradford isn’t with us anymore.”

“Where did he go? What happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

They went inside and closed and chained the door. Heather sat down quickly in a chair as if she was dizzy.

“What’s dad doing? Is he going to bury him?”

“No. Your father’s cutting him up so his body will freeze easier. That way the meat won’t spoil.” She spoke softly as if she were tired and covered her mouth with her hands. She looked like she might be sick and then her eyes clouded like she was getting ready to cry real loud, but nothing came out.

“We’re not going to have to eat him, are we?” Danny pleaded.

“No! Of course not.” She put her arm around Danny and squeezed him tight. “We’re going to have a garden, remember.” Heather had regained her composure. She hated to tell the boys certain things, they were so young, but she couldn’t lie to them. She had to tell them the truth. They would be growing up in this world and they would have to be prepared for the reality of it. “We’ll need oil for our lamps, though.”

That night Tod lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. It seemed every time he was ready to fall asleep, he would think of something that would make him wide awake again. He was glad Fred hadn’t been killed. Fred was the third father he’d had in the past year. He didn’t like getting new fathers all the time. The other two had died just the way Teach said. They trusted people. When he got big, he wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting anyone.

There was something else Teach had said that bothered him. How long would Fred keep him around if he didn’t need him?

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Last Cruise of the Zeppelin Tempest
by J.P. Boyd

An all-out nuclear war is not the only way to Armageddon. Sometimes a conventional war that drags on too long can be as decisive in its effects as a shorter, more devastating war. Athens and Sparta learned this during the Peloponnesian war, which Athens officially won but never recovered from, both in its economic effects and its erosion of Athenian democratic principles. For a while afterwards Athens still wore the mantle of empire, but really it was just holding it for an upstart Macedonian named Alexander.

On the planet Eahonua, a former Earth colony, the two major powers are engaged in a prolonged conflict that threatens to grind both nations down to dust. A few can see this and have the courage to speak out.

In any society it is the soldier’s job to uphold the principles of his country—be they just or unjust. In free societies many intellectuals believe it is their job to uphold civilized values—be it peacetime or war. When these two forces collide in the arena of war, there can be only one winner.

The Last Cruise of the Zeppelin Tempest
by J.P. Boyd

John Markham, the flotilla commodore, walked along the beach between the bay and the zeppelin hangars. He was a very tall man, and even though he leaned on his cane, the elderly gray-haired intelligence officer beside him had trouble matching his stride.

Over most of the planet Eahonua, the Archipelagan War had staggered into its sixth year. Ground armies contested the Isle du Haul while fleets of zeppelins took turns hurling bombs across the ocean. And yet here, on the northern coast of the demi-continent of Grasse, none of them had so much as seen a Karlan in over a year. The ocean waves broke as softly, as gently, as they had for all the thousands of years since the starship from that now-mythical world, the Earth, had fallen like a meteor and broken its back. And the blue-green sky, two dozen times denser than that of man’s now-forgotten home, was empty and peaceful except for a handful of fluffy clouds.

“ ‘A pocket carrier raid within three months. Perhaps the Karlan has weighed off already.’ That was my message, Commodore. But what do I tell the Admiral?”

Instead of answering, the tall man, who was not yet thirty, stopped and looked sadly at his aching, shattered leg.

“Pain, Commodore?”

Markham looked down at the intelligence officer, an ex-professor old enough to be his father or his teacher, and nodded. “Use it or lose it, the medics said.” It hurt damnably, but his three-times-a-day walks had made it stronger.

“But I do owe you an answer, Lieutenant. While you were still sleeping, I had a brief staff meeting and gave my orders. If the Karlan swings north to the ice line to escape the patrols from Vzygny Island, as I-Branch thinks, then we’ll have to stand out far to sea, and make much longer patrols than my ships were designed for.”

The old scholar nodded. In the five years since he was drafted, he had only worked his way up to the two rings of a lieutenant, but he could read performance specs as well as any admiral.

“Yes. They know about the coastal watch. The decoded radio traffic and the reports from our laborer in the shipyard indicate–”

“–the carrier zeppelin will stay far at sea, and launch its Heavier-Than-Airs from maximum range. Yes, Lieutenant.”

The commodore continued, “Tempest is the only one of the four zeppelins under my command with sufficient endurance to take the first watch. The other three–”

“That old woolback?” said the lieutenant incredulously, using the service slang for a canvas-hulled airship.

Markham shifted his cane and resumed walking. “She’s all I have. And I’m going to go cloud-walking myself. No one has regularly flown airships on such long missions. Tempest’s captain is a pimple-faced young man who would still be in college, perhaps hearing you lecture, if it hadn’t been for the war. He’s good, but I have to see for myself.”

“And the rest?”

“The Flag Wheel-King–” He stopped, embarrassed at the slang, and went on. “The Flotilla Engineer, to give him his proper title, will supervise the modifications. One ship on patrol, one on ten-minute standby, one in the hangar under the welding torches. He’ll add additional fuel tanks and storage.”

“But how will you weigh-off?”

“We won’t. We’ll have to use the runway.” Markham saw the older man’s face blanch and smiled. “I know. But we don’t have any choice.”

“And Tempest?”

“He’ll stay as he is. There are rumors he’ll be recalled to training branch soon, if he lasts. He’s one of the five oldest zeppelins in Fleet Aero.”

“Commodore, this coast has been stripped of flack guns to supply the embattled cities in the south. If a raid comes, a handful of incendiaries could put Old Town to the torch and roast thousands of civilians, and H.E. on the ball-bearing factory on the Inland Waterway could halve our aircraft production for months. But if the carrier planes turn on one of your reccos–”

“I know, Lieutenant. My four zeppelins will become three.”

On that gloomy note, their conversation ceased. They walked on in silence for a few more minutes and had turned back from the fern that was Markham’s current limit of endurance, when the serenity of the waves and sea-breeze was broken by a shout.

“John!” A voice hailed them from behind the sand dunes. The lined face of the I-Branch officer wrinkled with anger. It was galling to salute men thirty years his junior, but to hear a subordinate call the commodore by his first name—

A short, stocky figure appeared at the top of the sand. His uniform was half-buttoned, his hair wild and uncombed, and he staggered down the slope unsteadily.

Markham leaned on his cane and said, “Korvette-Captain Talin, Deputy Commodore. Lieutenant–”

“Why the hell wasn’t I awakened? You had a staff meeting before breakfast?”

Talin’s alcohol-sodden breath almost made the old man retch.

Commodore Markham ignored the interruption and the powerful, muscular arms waving in his face and said mildly, “Yes, Brain. And training is more important than ever. I didn’t need to wake you up to tell you your job. Loading Tempest is taking longer than I hoped. You have time to go flying.”

The deputy commodore nodded, blinked, and looked at the ground as if dazed. Then he murmured some indecipherable pleasantry toward the I-Branch lieutenant and staggered back over the dune.

“Sir, that man is drunk! He was insubordinate and intoxicated and–”

Markham waved one arm while balancing on his cane with the other. “Patience, patience, Lieutenant! He’s a good man when he’s on wing. He’s coming cloudwalking, too.”

“The two senior officers both on a single ship?”

Markham nodded. “Something’s been eating him up from within like a cancer. Over a year. I haven’t been able to find it, but maybe if we’re both on the zep—I don’t know what else to do. Unfortunately, he’s a Heavier-Than-Air pilot like me. We both need to see firsthand what it takes to push an airship—and its crew—beyond their normal limits. There’s nothing in the ops manual about a two-week patrol.”

The lieutenant shut up, but as they walked back towards the administration hut, Markham began moving slower and slower. When he finally could go no farther, the I-Branch officer helped him to sit on the sand and then knelt in front of him.

“You mustn’t push yourself so hard. If you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir, I think the reason that both you and the Deputy Commodore were transferred here, where it’s as quiet as a training base, is because General Staff thought you were both finished.”

Markham rubbed his aching leg. “General Staff is probably right. But the war isn’t finished, Lieutenant, and until it is, the two of us are going ’walking.”

Korvette-Captain Bram Talin banked his obsolete Piradot fighter and tried to ignore the dull ache of his hangover. Five hundred meters beneath him, a flight of clumsy, two-seat Pelican scouts dove towards the clear waters of the bay. Ahead on the narrow peninsula that housed the airship base, the target crew flashed a green signal lamp. Talin dove after his charges, carefully watching their technique as they leveled off just above the waves and made their firing passes, one by one.

In the dense air, infantry rifles had a useful range of less than one hundred meters, so aerodynes and zeppelins dueled with rockets. The Pelicans’ wing-root cannon flung little rounds only twice the thickness of a man’s thumb, but the shells could wreck a truck or a half-track. Aurelle, the senior pilot of Tempest’s reconnaissance flight, opened fire, and thin plumes of smoke, stained with bright red dye as a tracer, reached out towards the huge paper squares.

When the four planes had rolled up and away towards the zeppelin hangars, Talin’s radio crackled, “I have the scores, Deputy Commodore.” He listened intently for a moment, then slammed his fist against the side of the cockpit in frustration.

The throbbing in his head flared up, and he waited a moment to calm himself, then touched his chin mike. “Take your flock to the barn, Piotr. We don’t want to miss our ride.”

As he turned back over the airship hangars, he saw that the woolback Tempest was already out on the field, loading extra food, avgas, and oil. Two of her four planes would be left behind; the other pair would hook on only after the zeppelin was airborne. And John Markham, who was to blame for all this, including the hangover, was watching from the grass, braced on his cane.

“To shield the coast, our zeppelins are going to have to break the patrol duration record,” the flotilla commodore had told him after the I-Branch lieutenant had delivered his bad news. “One ship on long patrol while the new ships are modified, then two ships thereafter. I-Branch is being cautious, but their best guess is that the raid won’t come until the southern rainy season begins.”

Talin had been against making Tempest the guinea pig right from the beginning. “His two senior officers are barely out of their teens, John. Seth Arden should be stringing for a newspaper, not commanding an airship. And Cal Corliss would still be in college if it weren’t for the war.” But instead he was the Wheel-King, the chief engineer, for an airship so old its diesels were no longer made.

“Nevertheless, I have four zeppelin crews who are torn up with guilt because men are dying by the thousands in the south, and they haven’t even seen a Karlan on this coast since before either of us was assigned here. We not only need to protect Old Town and the factories scattered along the coast, but we also need something to give this base some pride. To help them live with the guilt.”

And then Markham had told him that both of them were going along, not as pilots but as supercargo, and Talin had flown drunk for the first time since that disastrous wheels-up prang at Kirin. He had been drinking long before that crash, of course, but only when the field was socked in or he couldn’t fly. Then, after he had been put out to pasture, he had been in a haze for weeks until his old friend Markham, too badly wounded to fly again, had been sent here as commodore.

“Ah, John!” Talin muttered as he banked in a lazy spiral over the field, remembering. They had first met while teenagers, working odd jobs around the aerodrome in exchange for lessons. Markham, who had been a training instructor during the height of the Firsten campaign, knew how much he loved to fly and encouraged him.

“They’re all so green, Bram. You know how risky the first five missions are. If a rookie survives those, his odds rise faster than sunlight. We have to give them our experience. I can only teach down here, but you can take them up in groups, fly four or five times a day if you have to, and teach them to survive. Dogfighting, ground attack—then we’ll weigh-off the zeps and have the planes and airships duel each other.”

And so it was. When he was flying, Talin was happy, and mostly sober. It astounded him how much he enjoyed training the pilots, the shop talk with them and Markham in the officers’ mess. But when the rains came, or avgas was low, his drinking became uncontrollable again. And so Markham was going to dry him out in a great raddled hulk of an airship, and Talin had drunk himself to sleep last night because he could not bear it.

After he had landed and collected his duffel bag, he found Markham still watching the old woolback swell with gas from the hydrogen vans. But his leg must have pained him, for an airman had brought a stool.

Markham looked somberly at the elderly airship. “If we’re ready when the carrier comes, the kids will stop feeling so guilty. If they survive.”

Talin swung the bag down from his shoulder and squatted on his haunches. “Sometimes, John, survivors feel even more–” But the freckle-faced Wheel-King had climbed down from the keelway to interrupt, motioning them to come, and Talin never finished his sentence.

Seth Arden was nervous, unconsciously stroking the white cap that he alone wore as the traditional emblem of zeppelin command. Farther back in the control gondola, Commodore Markham had awkwardly folded his very long legs under the chart table and parked his own cap, blue but gold-trimmed, on top of a map. He understood the young captain’s tension. In the first place, Arden’s flag officer was aboard, and in the second, the youth knew only too well that his boss was inexperienced in airship operations.

Markham had heard the grumbling. “You’re a wingfoot, John, a Heavier-Than-Air pilot just like me,” Talin had told him. “The cloudwalkers expected that another line officer would be assigned, not a semi-invalid.” Markham, who had been badly wounded—and lost his mothership—during that debacle now known as the Second Battle of Corlino, had in fact spent a major part of the war aloft in zeppelins, but the wingfoots were only passengers, and the cloudwalkers did the driving. Now Markham would have to become a cloudwalker, too.

Lt. Arden’s other worry was that this flight would be Tempest’s first dynamic takeoff in a decade. Even with the planes and pilots, one mechanic, and the cook left behind, the extra supplies made the zeppelin too heavy to simply drop ballast and weigh-off. Instead, the airship would have to run up to speed like an aerodyne and then raise the nose to generate enough lift to unstick.

Kallen, the wizened coxswain, stood with his hands on his wheel and grinned at his captain. “The tinhulls take off dynamically all the time,” he said, as if it were a treat.

Lt. Arden, who would never reprimand a good man, made a rumbling noise in his throat and scowled at the keelway overhead. Markham could barely suppress his mirth as Arden yelled up the ladder. “Hurry up! Get it lashed down. Takeoff in three minutes!”

Moments later, he looked down at the weight list and shook his head. “A zeppelin hull is not a very efficient airfoil.” He glanced at the commodore. “But it’s the only wing we have.”

Markham merely nodded. On a large ship, the executive officer would oversee the ship’s trim, but on a small vessel like this with only three officers and two dozen crew, excluding the HTA’s, Arden served as his own ballast-master.

Cal Corliss, the freckled chief engineer, climbed down the ladder from the keelway, bareheaded. Like the ship’s captain, the chief engineer by long tradition wore a cap of unique color—black—to symbolize his special authority, but by equally long tradition, the cap was parked on a nail as long as the zeppelin was in the air.

Smoothing his unruly, wind-blown mop, the redhead grinned. “The engines are as good as the day they came from the factory, Captain. We stripped each one and reground the cylinders, and they’re all humming like fine watches. Ready to weigh-off, sir.”

Markham hid a smile. Lt. Arden had watched the engine rehabs from afar during the weeks when Corliss and his black gang were rejuvenating the elderly diesels. Nonetheless, tradition demanded that line officers should feign ignorance of life in the motor gondolas, and that the engineers and mechanics in turn socialize only among themselves.

Divided like cloudwalkers and wingfoots, he thought. The Navy has too damn many cliques.

While he was finishing his reflections, Arden reached for the logbook and made the mandatory entry as ballast officer, then had the redhead sign. He nodded at the coxswain. “Engines to full power. Signal ground crew to prepare to release chocks.”

The Wheel-King sprinted up the ladder as the ensign called out the readings from the engine repeaters. “Revolutions increasing, sir. Passing eighty percent. Ninety percent. A hundred percent. Full war emergency, sir.”

“Release chocks!” Arden dropped into his chair. “Hold him down as long as you can–” But by then the airship was already moving.

Tempest’s bulky, sixty-meter length accelerated slowly. When he reached sixty kilometers an hour, as fast as he had ever traveled even in the air, Arden shouted, “Elevators hard up! Hold him at six degrees—maximum dynamic lift!”

They were rapidly running out of macadam, but as the sea came closer and closer, the nose lifted, sluggishly. Arden cursed under his breath and said out loud, “He’s so damned heavy!” Then the inclinometer showed that the up angle had increased to maximum lift and Arden shouted, “Release the trollies!”

As the heavy undercarriage frames dropped away, the nose pitched up. For one awful moment, it appeared that the nose-up would continue until the hull would stall like an airplane wing. Then the elevator man corrected, and slowly, ponderously, the bow came down a handful of meters. As one trolley jackknifed over the restraining barrier and came to rest upside down, half awash in the sea, the airship cleared the wooden fence by a couple of meters.

Markham watched the waves skipping by underneath him, astonishingly close, and shook his head in wonder. He had never watched a takeoff from the control gondola in half a thousand zeppelin flights.

The young lieutenant waited until the tail was fifty meters up and then let out a deep breath. “We made it, Commodore.”

“We did indeed.” And then Markham sighed, for he had suddenly realized how very boring the next two weeks were going to be.

Kvt.-Capt. Talin became morose and withdrawn. He spent most of his spare time reading the trashy, escapist novels he had brought with him or obtained by trades with other airmen. When reading bored him, he stood on the top of the hull with the bow lookout, feeling the wind on his face as the airship slowly pushed through the thick, blue-green sky under the power of just one of its four wheels.

Lt. Arden was disturbed by this alteration in the usual routine of his ship. “My man can’t be too comfortable with a three-stripe Korvette-Captain looking over his shoulder.”

Markham merely smiled. “The Deputy Commodore is far-sighted, the best pair of eyes I ever knew. That’s why he was the best.” And so Talin was left alone.

The real incidents of the first ten days of the patrol were the predictable crises of a long airship flight. Number 3 wheel lost a main bearing, and the mechanics had to strip the whole engine. A modern, duraluminum-clad zeppelin wore an insulating layer of helium just inside the hull to reduce the risk of fire from the hydrogen in the inner cells. Tempest had been one of the first ships with the double lining, but her engines were still slung in gondolas beneath the hull in the old style instead of in fire-walled capsules within it. The mechanics had to haul parts up and down the open ladders, cursing like dock laborers. Arden let his command drift with the wind until the job was done, and then restarted but a single engine.

The scout planes had hooked onto the airship’s trapezes almost as soon as Tempest had reached its cruising altitude of a thousand meters. Dropped from the overhead monorail that ran the length of the hangar, retrieved by pulling the nose up sharply until the plane’s hook struck and locked onto the metal bar of the trapeze, the aerodynes flew alternating missions, one in the morning and one in the evening, until they had burned off enough fuel to lighten the badly overloaded zeppelin. When the avgas ran low, however, Arden ordered the flights suspended until two days before mission end when the airship would again be close to land.

Piotr Aurelle was decidedly unhappy. The senior HTA pilot wore two stripes like Arden himself. “The airplanes are the eyes of the airship! We can search great swaths of territory to either side of the ship’s path, covering as much ground as Tempest himself could watch in a whole day. What is the point–?”

Arden, who was sitting at the chart table in the control gondola, shrugged helplessly. “We can only carry so much fuel.”

Up in the keelway, which was a triangular passage framed by three large beams that ran the length of the ship, Talin whispered to Markham, “No wonder we wingfoots are so unpopular!”

It was the first time the deputy commodore had smiled in a month. At dinner that evening, Ensign Ishikawa was officer-of-the-watch, so Arden and Corliss were crowded around the small table with their superiors.

For several days, they had eaten in almost complete silence.

Markham would ask a few routine questions about the families and background of the two young officers, and then run out of small talk. Lt. Arden and his redheaded, freckled lord of the engines were too intimidated to initiate conversation on their own. Tonight, the commodore tried a different tack.

“You two remind me very much of Bram and I when we were younger. You, Captain, are like me. Very responsible. When I was given my first flight, I was so damn serious about looking after the young ones that I flew more than a hundred missions before I scored my first air-to-air victory. I had been pulled back from the front in disgrace and given a training squadron.”

Talin looked up from his corned beef and said, “A Wyndan, wasn’t it? A four-engined flying boat?”

Markham nodded. “Yes. It was scouting for a zeppelin raid. I took a big torpedo-plane out, alone, to look for it in fog and rain. I had already turned for home when I found it.”

A half-smile crossed Talin’s face. “Yes. It always amused me that after such a long famine, you broke your maiden in such a big way. Four engines!”

Markham looked at the awe in the eyes of the two youngsters and almost laughed. “Actually, the sheer size of the Wyndan made it simpler. I didn’t have to dogfight. Just line up and shoot. And I was always a good shot.”

Arden found his voice. “Captain Talin, how did you break your maiden?”

Talin stirred his potatoes with his fork and smiled. “I was still flying ground attack. Four hundred sorties before I was transferred to fighters. Our escort was up topside, tangling with a flock of Karlans, and as the swarm broke up, this bandit dove down out of the melee and leveled off a few hundred meters below me. Afterwards, my squadron leader chewed my tail off. ‘A Stormdragon is not a fighter, Sublieutenant Talin. Your mission is to attack tanks and strafe ground troops, Sublieutenant Talin.’ But it was the best bounce I ever had.”

He held his hand high, palm down, and then brought it down in a parody of a dive. As he flattened his hand parallel to the table, he imitated the sounds of rocket shells whooshing from their launchers. “Right on his tail. Later, I bagged two more, the worthy and late Lieutenant-Captain Pines notwithstanding. Then it was decided my true talents lay in other directions than ground attack.”

He suddenly laid down his fork. “It’s queer how little I remember them, my first squadron-mates. Bombing 14, attached to the mothballed-but-technically-still-active zeppelin Hurlant.” Then he began eating vigorously, with his head almost on his chest.

Markham said softly, “Why not?”

Talin put his fork down again and looked at the commodore. “Because they’re all dead, John. Twenty-three of us when the war broke out. You were a college boy in the reserves, flying for fun on weekends, but we were all regulars. Professionals. And I’m the only one who’s left. There might be a gunner in a nursing hospice, one or two. But all the pilots are dead except one. And he would have joined them if he weren’t such a yellowbelly.”

Abruptly, Talin pushed away from the table and bolted. For a few seconds, there was shocked silence, and then Markham picked up his knife and fork and resumed eating. Eventually, the two youngsters followed suit. The redheaded engineer said timidly, “He was very heavily decorated, wasn’t he?”

Markham sighed. “Yes. The Golden Star with three bars. The Black Cross with Oak Leaves. He shot down 27 aerodynes, burned a small aerostat, and destroyed heaven-knows-how-many tanks. He flew more than six hundred sorties.”

Arden paused, as if screwing up his courage, and asked, “Why was he assigned to a non-flying post?”

“He pranged a plane by landing with the wheels up. Ground-looped another. Although he was usually more or less sober for missions, he was soused whenever the field was socked in, or there was a lull. After his leave, he just wasn’t effective anymore. And he had become a danger to his squadron-mates.”

The two young officers suddenly were very quiet. Markham waited until they were almost finished, and then said softly, “War’s not a very romantic business, and sometimes even the survivors, the bravest of the brave, are casualties. But you’ll do fine when your time comes. And Bram will someday be himself again. I’m sure of it.”

But that night, Talin awakened half the ship when he began howling in the middle of a nightmare. Markham closed his eyes, turned on his side, and tried to forget.

The following afternoon, Kvt.-Capt. Talin was back at his usual spot in the lookout cockpit on the top of the bow. When the zeppelin was moving at full speed, the slipstream was as powerful as a fast-moving river, and the lookout hid within a glass-sided canopy faired smoothly into the hull. At low speed, however, one could open the canopy and stand up for a better view.

Talin wasn’t pleased with his nocturnal moaning, but after half a dozen years of war and a few months of heavy drinking, he seemed to have lost his capacity for being embarrassed. As he scanned the horizon with his binoculars, the emotional numbness he felt was what he had once sought in liquor. Now, he had not taken a drink in almost two weeks, and he felt—himself.

When his legs tired, he sat down, but the lookouts stood throughout their whole watch. “Your legs are younger than mine, Nieland.”

“Yessir.” But there was doubt in the boy’s eyes, and Talin realized why: for all his rank and experience, the deputy commodore was only twenty-five.

When Talin rose into the slipstream again, he slowly panned the horizon—and stopped. “Aircraft. Bearing two points to port.”

The teenage lookout strained his eyes, but saw nothing. “Sorry, sir. I don’t–”

“Control room.” Cupping his ear to the intercom, Talin waited for a reply. “Multiple aircraft. Friendlies in the area?”

Down below, he knew Lt. Arden was poring through flimsies of routine traffic in the radio room while Markham consulted the advisories from C-in-C, North Grasse.

A sputter and then a backfire told him that the three idle engines were starting up. Talin sat down and tugged at the airman until he had done the same, then pulled the canopy over them. After a minute of cursing the sunlight glinting off the curved glass, he made the boy raise the canopy a few centimeters so that he could poke his binoculars through the crack.

The zeppelin turned to run away from the Karlans, but after a couple of minutes, it was clear that the airship had been seen, and was slowly being overtaken. In the dense air, the economical cruising speed of an aircraft was only moderately greater than that of a modern, metal-hulled zeppelin. The airship had the advantage of a higher ratio of volume (and horsepower) to skin area. “A battleship is as squat as a tramp coal-barge, but it sails as fast as a destroyer,” a lieutenant-captain in the sea navy had once told him. But Tempest’s tired engines and oft-patched linen hull, which sometimes showed little sand ripples at high speed, were even bigger handicaps.

Six Kutara dive bombers and six Starspray fighters. He was close enough to see them clearly now. No doubt the original target had been land installations, but Tempest had already radioed a warning to the mainland. With surprise lost, a zeppelin would be a much worthier and safer prize.

Talin rested the binoculars in his lap for a moment, and thought of the irony. So many hours in planes, and now he, the last of Bombing 14, would die in the final, fiery fall of a burning zeppelin. So helpless, and yet what a spectacular finish to all their dreams!

Beneath him, he felt the slight rumble as the airship’s two remaining aerodynes, two-seat Pelican reccos poorly suited to dogfighting, were towed to the end of the monorail and dropped off. A little lighter, the zeppelin gained a couple more kilometers per hour. His escorts flew the same course, but rising, trading speed for height.

The Karlans were gaining altitude, too, albeit more sluggishly.

“Why are they climbing?” the boy demanded, eyes glued to his lenses.

Talin put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “The bandits have a little problem. The Kutaras are dive bombers. Instead of carrying armor-piercing rockets like a zep-destroyer, they’re armed with free-fall bombs.”

“Bombs?”

“Why waste a rocket motor on a bridge?”

The youth smiled, and Talin decided it was time he stopped feeling sorry for himself and went to war.

Down in the control room, the mood was very somber. Markham nodded as Talin jumped the last three rungs of the ladder and turned around.

“We’ve flashed the mainland, Bram, and the standby ship is already in the air. Wrathful is offloading reccos in favor of fighters, and fueling. She’ll weigh-off in half an hour. The coastal aerodrome has sent two flights of fighters, but they’re at least an hour and a half away.”

Talin nodded. The commodore was a cautious and systematic man, and one zeppelin was always kept on ten-minute notice, even in the quiet theater of Grasse, but Tempest was too far at sea.

“In short, it’s up to Piotr and Harry.”

Markham nodded.

The junior officer, Ishikawa, called out, “Our planes have turned back! They’re getting in position!”

So they were, but many minutes passed before the Pelicans made their pass. Then, far above the Karlans, the two scouts fell like thunderbolts.

Staring through his binoculars, Talin muttered, “Get close, Piotr, get close!” Only a split second before the two tiny dark dots collided with the higher of the two flocks, flashes of flame erupted from the wingfoots.

A Karlan Starspray rolled over and shed a wing as the two Sylvans shot through the flight of fighters. “My God, Harry almost hit him,” said Arden, as the more distant recco zoomed over a banking fighter, and just missed the rising wingtip. Then the heavy reconnaissance planes, still diving, bore down on the bombers. When the Pelicans leveled off, above and behind so as to have overlapping targets, big flashes of flame appeared under their wings.

“The ’Bolts!” muttered Lt. Arden, using the service slang for the ten-kilogram rockets that the reccos carried on quadruple racks under each wing.

A split second later, huge flashes appeared against the blue-green sky. One Kutara was hit in the tail and port wing, and disintegrated. Another rocket took a second bomber in the engine, and the aircraft fell seaward as a giant ball of flame. Then one scout dove cleanly through the wreckage, but the other Pelican flew into a storm of debris, and fell tumbling towards the sea.

Even now, as Lt. Aurelle made a broad, sweeping turn to get the sun behind him, the fighters were re-forming.

Talin brought his binoculars to his chest. “Piotr won’t last long now.”

Markham nodded. “But it was magnificent for their first fight. You were a very good teacher, Bram.”

“The interesting question is, what will the bombers do?”

Seth Arden, who had commanded his ship calmly in spite of his youth, suddenly lost his temper. It was one thing to die, his feelings told him, but another to listen to a fool. “Climb above and let go! What do you think they’ll do? Sir.”

The coxswain said, “Not all of them, sir.”

In a moment, the others understood what he meant. One bomber was not climbing, but had turned away towards the horizon and its distant mothership.

“Shrapnel from a ’Bolt or a shell from their wing cannon. Maybe even friendly fire. The bomber gunners must have cut loose when the rockets ripped through.” Talin paused. “Only three left. This is beginning to have possibilities.”

Markham spoke sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Look, we have half a dozen turrets of anti-aerodyne cannon plus our main armament. The bombers can’t simply match course and speed and drift in close. Our shells would cut them to pieces. They’ll start their runs a couple of kilometers up, tip over, and dive on us. That’s what they’re trained to do!”

“But we’re not a stationary target.”

“No. Seaships zigzag like crazy when they’re being bombed, and sometimes a whole stick will miss. We’re faster and more maneuverable than anything in the wetbottoms.”

Also wider, but Markham forbore to say so.

“The critical moment is when they’ve committed to the dive. It’s very difficult for even a veteran pilot to change the angle once they’ve pushed over.”

Markham put his lenses to his eyes for a few moments, thinking.

“Bram, you have the best eyes, and the experience as an attack pilot. At the right moment–”

Talin nodded.

Lt. Arden added, “I’ll order the men to act directly on your command, sir. One word. Motor crews, too.”

The four propellers were mounted on gimbaled outriggers so that they could be rotated forwards, backwards, or down to give fine control for landing. In a pinch, however, the wheels could also be spun to turn Tempest in his own length.

As Talin sprinted up the ladder into the hull, the commodore turned to his young captain and said, “Before they dive, let’s see what we can do to spoil their aim, Seth.” And the airship began to twist and turn at random, climbing and diving, using his full three-dimensional freedom to confuse the bombers.

Tempest’s hull was built on three triangular keelways, themselves forming a triangle, and the upper port and starboard keel-ways anchored two turrets of 12cm rocket guns and four smaller mounts of paired 30mm cannon. At the bow and stern, the keel-ways shrank into single beams that curved together and merged, and provided the foundation for two more light cannon pairs. A moment after the zeppelin began to dodge, her main armament began to fling heavy rockets skyward.

Talin was banked and buffeted by the zigzags as he climbed up to the lookout station, but the gunners had it worse.

The lookout cursed and said, “Our shells are way off, sir.” The time-fused rockets seemed to be bursting at the right altitude, but the ship was jinking so erratically that the smoke puffs were as much as three hundred meters wide.

The Karlan dive bombers were at least a kilometer above them, but still climbing in a broad, lazy spiral. “We’re not a bloody bridge,” Talin muttered to himself. One shouldn’t attack a moving target from the same great height that was appropriate for a foundry or a roundhouse, and in some perverse way, the Karlans’ stupidity bothered him.

He had little hope for the big rockets. In the heavy atmosphere, projectile weapons were useless beyond a hundred meters, and only ground troops carried them. All longer-range shells had to be pushed along through the dense air by rocket exhaust. But even the heavy 12cm rounds traveled so slowly that they could be easily dodged at long range.

For what seemed an eternity, the planes and zeppelin continued their mad dance. Climbing, always climbing, the bombers mimicked the airship’s course changes with disdainful nimble-ness. When they broke the spiral, Talin gripped his binoculars harder. Simultaneously, each plane reversed in a split-S, snapped out of the half-roll, and pushed over.

He had only a moment to decide. “Port!” The zeppelin slewed violently under the combined push of full rudder and the four pivoted wheels, but the bombers were falling like stones.

The light guns opened up as the planes fell within a kilometer, and thin plumes of red-dyed smoke crisscrossed his field of view. The bombers sideslipped, adjusting, and kept coming. The ack-ack plumes slewed as the airship turned, and then swung—too slowly—back towards the planes.

“Up! Stand him on his tail!”

Tempest’s nose pitched up under full elevator, and the propellers were pivoted again. The bombers had been forced to flatten their dives as the zeppelin turned away from them. Now, suddenly, it rose before them like a whale sounding from the sea.

The planes abruptly rolled away. Fingers of smoke erupted as they turned—the tail gunners trying their luck—and a few shells ripped through Tempest’s outer cover.

Talin grinned at the white-faced lookout, who was clinging to an exposed corrugated beam as the airship stood on its nose. “An aerodyne would have stalled at a steep angle like this, but a zep is buoyant. We can climb vertically if we must!”

The intercom crackled. “Commodore to Deputy. We’ll make a cloudwalker of you yet.”

“Sir. They’re coming back!” Tempest was already pitching down, but nose-up, it was a stationary target, and the bombers had reversed quickly even at the price of diving at a much shallower angle than in a conventional attack. Talin mentally compared the rate of pitch and the speed of the oncoming Karlans and muttered, “Not quite yet, you bastards!”

And then Tempest leveled off and turned, spoiling the aim of the shallow-diving aircraft. Again they rolled away to the left and right without releasing their bombs. And the dance continued.

For ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, the three bombers and the zeppelin traced a three-dimensional minuet in the blue-green sky. Four times, the Karlans bluffed a run; three times, they closed near enough for their gunners to rip more holes in Tempest’s rubberized linen. The airship was leaking helium, but unlike a blimp where the lifting gas was pressurized to stiffen the limp outer cover and maintain its teardrop shape, the cells in a rigid were paper-thin, and connected to spring-loaded valves.

Nieland knew this, but was still worried about loss of lift.

Talin sighed, still peering through his binoculars. The Karlans were circling, as if their baffled flight leader was hoping for inspiration. “The valves pop open if the over-pressure is even a single millimeter of mercury. The helium isn’t hissing out; it’s diffusing. Don’t worry.”

The intercom crackled. “Bram, their mothership is coming, and this dance has brought us no closer to land. We have to end it.”

Talin listened carefully and acknowledged the message.

The whole ship had heard, but Nieland was puzzled. “Sir, are we really–?” The ship lurched into a tight turn and held it, spinning round and round in its own length as if its helm had jammed hard over. After ten dizzying revolutions, the zeppelin straightened out and ran for the coast.

For perhaps half a minute, the baffled Karlans hung in the sky, waiting, and then they dove.

Talin watched the heavy rockets of Tempest’s main turrets etch the blue-green air with thin lines of red-and-black smoke and the great black time-bursts. In the background, he saw that three fighters had returned to fly top cover. Pity. He had liked Piotr Aurelle, even with his rages.

In the dense atmosphere, the air bursts were rattling the Karlans like depth charges shaking a submarine, but the gunnery ensign had fired more live rounds today than in all his previous service. So late in the war, ammunition was too precious to waste on training. The dive bombers continued on a steady course.

Talin waited, willing his eyes to concentrate on the bomb bay doors of the lead plane. When he saw a sudden flash of black, he shouted, “Starboard!” Yet he was still surprised by the abrupt sideways acceleration.

Six black bombs hurling downward like winged raindrops. Slender as pencils to cut through the thick mixture of argon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Live by the bomb, die by the bomb, even if he had flown twenty dozens of sorties in a fighter.

The iron darts flashed past. For one heart-stopping moment, Talin waited for an explosion, and then relaxed. He was puzzled by the ugly plumes of smoke trailing sideways from the bow, but—He froze. On the port side, almost hidden by the curvature of the hull, was a crater a meter in diameter.

“John, we’ve been hit! Portside! How bad–?”

Astonishingly, he heard laughter. When it subsided, Markham explained, “The bomb ripped right through the wool and the bags, missing the framework. The time fuse detonated it a few meters below us and it blew in a couple of windows in the stern motor car.”

Talin laughed, turned around in his seat, and let his head slump back against the glass.

“Thank God for woolbacks.” And then he laughed again, clapped a very confused Nieland on the back, and climbed down to the control car.

Talin looked at Markham and smiled. “They were very green, John. Real pros wouldn’t have been bounced by a couple of clumsy Pelicans, or made so many dummy passes, or–”

“Or been fooled by our wholly imaginary rudder problem. Too true. A virgin air group, sent to get experience on a milk run. That’s my guess.”

Talin nodded. “How the hell did we turn so fast?”

“I had Ishikawa unscrew the warheads on a couple of rounds and brace them against the bow frame with a firing line running down to the control car. It was tough while we were zigzagging, but the riggers did it.”

Talin shook his head and mentally amended his earlier prayer: And thank God for Markham’s two years at the university before he was called up.

“It’s good to see you smiling, Bram.”

“It’ll be even better to have solid ground under my feet again.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait a little longer. With most of our fuel and supplies gone and no more aircraft, we’re still buoyant even with the gas we lost. We’re going to continue the patrol until we’ve set the record.”

Wrathful scout planes spotted the pocket carrier just as it launched a second strike. A land-based squadron was vectored to intercept while the strike was still far from land, and half a dozen Karlans tumbled flaming into the ocean. The carrier itself, however, stayed well at sea and escaped.

The evening after the battle, Markham’s aching leg and the excitement kept him from sleep. He found Talin in the auxiliary control post built into the lower tail fin, weeping.

When he bumped into Talin, the tears had stopped, but the big streaks still wet his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Bram. I was on my feet too much today, and my leg–”

“Don’t apologize. I couldn’t sleep either.”

“I’m glad you were with us. You saved us, Bram. But I’m sorry I put you through all this.”

Talin looked down at the moonlight glinting off the waves. The control position was cramped, just a window with a rudder wheel directly under the glass and the elevator wheel to the left. He had wedged himself awkwardly between a couple of beams. Then he shook his head.

“No, no. You don’t understand. It’s not the drinking. It’s the dead.”

He got to his feet and rubbed his head, almost hitting Markham in the process. The little station was too cramped to pace, so he looked up at Markham and went on, “This was the first time I ever cried. In the whole war. The first. Maybe that was what I needed.”

He fingered the inclinometer. “The others in Bombing 14. They had wives and girlfriends and mothers who cried for them. Maybe even over them if the bodies were recovered. But they weren’t there. They could never understand what it was like. Civilians can’t understand us, John. What we dream about. The camaraderie in a squadron or a zep.”

He looked up at his friend. “Maybe what was missing was someone to mourn for them. Maybe that’s what the last survivor was supposed to do for his wing-mates.”

Markham leaned back against a beam and let his hands and his good leg take his weight. It was difficult to concentrate while his leg ached, but he thought he understood.

“ ‘Why me?’ Is that what you couldn’t answer?”

“I think so, John. Why I alone survived. I’m not more virtuous. I don’t have more children. There were a dozen pilots with more reason to live than I had. I couldn’t live with the unfairness.”

Markham let out a deep breath. Survivor guilt, a medical officer had once told him, was pinned over the heart with every non-posthumous medal.

“We all have to handle it, Bram. I suppose my way was to become the good shepherd. The flight leader who never lost a rookie. Who worked his training squadron to death. You got into that same mode when you were in the air, but on the ground–”

“I’m a dumb fighter jock, John. I– In the air, I was always happy, but when I was on the ground, nothing in this bloody world made sense.”

They talked a few more minutes until Talin seemed himself again. He was still in the auxiliary control station, asleep, when an airman on rounds found him the following morning. But his last question troubled Markham, and left him wondering if Talin would relapse.

“Why me? What am I still here for?”

But near nightfall, as if in answer to a prayer, Talin saw Aurelle and his gunner drifting on the sea, even as he had been drifting.

For all of them, it was time for deliverance. He opened the intercom and set the rescue in motion.

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Future of the Great Powers
by Alan Brown

We live in an age of specialists, particularly in the academic disciplines of history and political science. Most scholars today are better at cataloging details than at charting the grand sweep of history. Yet occasionally a book comes along that blows the cobwebs right out of the dusty halls of academia; The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is one such book. I do not agree with all of Mr. Kennedy’s conclusions, but his book is thought-provoking and raises a number of important questions, much as Edward Luttwak’s book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire did. A fitting companion to both is Paul Johnson’s Modern Times. The three taken together give one much to think on.

Here Alan Brown provides us with a welcome introduction to The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

The Future of the Great Powers
by Alan Brown

Occasionally, a book comes along which offers a Revolutionary view of the world and its future, yet also is immediately and widely recognized as valid and authoritative. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Professor Paul Kennedy, is such a book. At a time when most historians seem obsessed with minutiae, and political scientists limit themselves with deterministic mathematical formulas, Kennedy has delivered a work which looks at the broad sweep of history and makes a number of insightful observations based on this analysis. As with any book which stands out from the crowd, however, Kennedy’s has generated a storm of controversy that has spread far beyond the cloistered world of academics. In this article I will show how Kennedy has addressed the past, present, and near future. I will also attempt to put some of his ideas in context with those of his critics. I will then look at what impact Kennedy’s book could have on the field of science fiction, and what guesses we can make about the future using the principles he identifies. First, as an introduction for those who haven’t read it, and as a recap for those who have, I will review the main points of Kennedy’s book.

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Despite the fact that most of the attention given to the book concerns its analysis of present events and speculation on future ones, Professor Kennedy’s work is first and foremost a study of history. It is framed within the “Great Power” system that emerged during the Renaissance, where individual nation-states have vied for power within an ever more limited world. It is a dual history, looking at both the economic and military histories of these Great Powers. By doing so, it reveals the interdependence of these two areas, and points out the huge impact that economic conditions have had on military conflict.

Kennedy’s book presents a view of history from a different perspective than most history books. Most historians, especially military historians, concentrate on rulers, treaties and battles, and follow in the tradition of the venerable English historian Sir Edward Creasy, considering battles to be the turning points of both wars and history. Kennedy, on the other hand, concentrates on strength and composition of forces, logistics, and fiscal policies, and sees the outcome of individual clashes being less important than the broader forces of economic strength. This focus on lesser-known facts can make Kennedy’s book a difficult read in places, especially when the reader is unfamiliar with the portion of history being covered. Yet when the reader reaches sections of the book discussing a period of history that is more familiar, the different perspective gives a new appreciation for the factors which other history books overlook. The Napoleonic Wars, with their attendant economic clashes, their blockades and embargos, appear quite different when the economic underpinnings of military strength are examined along with the military history itself. The Battle of Waterloo, often seen as the decisive end of those wars, is seen as a less important coda to a war that had been decided long before. The rapid expansion of Hitler’s Third Reich, long seen as a reflection of his insane ambitions, instead is seen as a desperate race to fuel the artificially imposed economic recovery of Germany with the raw materials and wealth the nation lacked.

Kennedy’s conclusions from his analysis seem rather obvious when presented at the end of the massive discourse that supports them. His first conclusion is that the relative strength of Great Powers is not static, and rises and falls due to changes in economics, technology, and political and other factors. The second is that these changes in strength, and the economic competition before Great Power wars begin, are the deciding factor in the outcome of those wars. The normally cautious Kennedy goes so far as to state that in the major Great Power wars “…victory has always gone to the side with the greatest material resources.” Whether you agree with this position or not, Kennedy’s analysis makes it clear that economic factors have played a huge role in the history of warfare, a fact many military historians tend to downplay or overlook. A last point is the identification of what Kennedy calls “imperial overstretch.” This is the almost-human tendency of Great Powers to ignore the erosion of their strength, rather like the aging prizefighter who continues to fight long after he should have retired. As Kennedy has pointed out, however, since the erosion is often relative to other powers rather than in real terms, it is difficult to perceive without the benefit of hindsight. Kennedy implies that it is the cost of maintaining empires or hegemonic dominance that is the force which eventually brings the dominant Great Powers down.

As I have said before, the attention to Kennedy’s book has been focused not on his historic research, or even on the conclusions he draws from it. Instead, the controversy has centered mostly on what he says about the present and near future in the book’s final chapter. When he speaks about the inevitable rise and fall of Great Powers in the past, the reader tends to nod along in complacent agreement. But then he applies those same lessons of history to the current world, and that same reader begins to feel uncomfortable. What we are willing to accept in conjunction with others becomes chilling when Kennedy shows how it relates to us, how the United States has seen its peak and is now following the path of relative decline, like the other dominant Great Powers before it. Kennedy goes to great lengths to show the decline of America’s economic and strategic position since its height in World War II. While he takes pains to point out that this decline is only relative at this point, the analysis still stings. The other preeminent power in the current “bipolar” world, the Soviet Union, fares no better; in fact, Kennedy’s prognosis for them is even bleaker. Instead of the current balance of power where two states dominate the world strategically, Kennedy sees a return to a world where a larger number of Great Powers jockey for position. He shies away from specific predictions, but does point out that for a number of reasons it appears that Asian powers, notably Japan, appear poised to take a much greater role in the world, due to their increasing economic strength. One other potential power he points out is the European Community. Due to its diversity of governments, languages, and cultures, however, he does not see its coalescing into a single power bloc as being too likely.

Kennedy sees the challenge to modern politicians being a threefold one involving the provision of military security, the satisfaction of socio-economic needs of their peoples, and the encouragement of sustained growth. Without the first two the nation will suffer in the short term. Without the third, however, he points out that there is no long-term strength or security.

Kennedy and His Critics

Kennedy’s work, in addition to being extremely popular, also triggered widespread debate. He became typecast as the leading proponent of what was branded as “declinist” literature, and his work was widely quoted by persons of all political persuasions. With the 1988 presidential election race at its peak, the book and its ideas had become the focus of much of the introspection and reexamination that invariably accompanies an election year.

Kennedy’s points cut counter to the campaign rhetoric of Republicans, eager to convince the electorate that the course steered during the Reagan era was the right one. When viewed from Kennedy’s viewpoint, the huge Reagan buildup in military strength, bought as it was through a huge surge in the national debt, could be seen as an attempt to regain past glories at the expense of future strength. It is not so much the military expenditures themselves that hurt, it is the way they were purchased.

Yet the Democrats, who embraced Kennedy’s seeming condemnation of defense spending with open arms, also fell short. Their answer was not to spend less, but to transfer monies cut from defense into social programs. It is clear that in campaign promises, the true crisis went unaddressed or glossed over by both sides. This is the need to encourage the long-term strength and growth of the U.S. economy. No one said that it was time to tighten our belts, to cease the deficit spending that both parties share the blame for, to cease covering up reverses in the economy by mortgaging the future. It may be that this is one of the signs of “overstretch,” this unwillingness to pay the price of continuing to build our strength as a nation.

As I have said before, Kennedy’s application of his “lessons of history” to the present Great Powers has generated much discussion and debate. While the general press, publications like Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The New Republic, generally praised the book, the reaction from Kennedy’s peers, especially more conservative ones, was not as positive. One of the most persuasive (and scathing) rebuttals to Kennedy came from historian W.W. Rostow in an essay printed in the Spring 1988 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Rostow points out that unlike the hegemonic powers before it, the U.S. has not attempted to conquer the world, only to lead it. Since Rostow believes that the sapping of strength of past powers came from attempts to maintain empires created at others’ expense, he does not see the U.S. following them in a similar decline. He also feels that Kennedy is much too deterministic in his analysis, and that we have much more control over our destiny than Kennedy would lead us to believe. In this point I think he has uncovered one flaw in Kennedy’s analysis. I think Kennedy is right in his assertion that the U.S. is not blessed with a permanent dominance of world affairs. But I think it is too soon to tell whether the trends of the relatively short period since World War II are indications of a permanent decline, or merely a temporary reversal of fortunes. While I think we must heed Kennedy’s warnings on the perils of taking long-term strength for granted, I would prefer to see leaders making decisions based on optimism rather than pessimism.

A more balanced rebuttal to Kennedy’s work, which also appeared in Foreign Affairs, came from Professor Samuel P. Huntington, director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. As with other critics, Huntington focuses on Kennedy’s assertion that the U.S. is in decline. He points out that, contrary to Kennedy’s views, the current problems which the U.S. faces are not systemic or inevitable, and thus will be easier to contend with. Huntington claims that it is not so much excessive military spending as it is consumerism and overindulgence that threaten long-term U.S. economic strength. This is a common counterargument to Kennedy, which I believe is more a byproduct of his intent to focus on the interplay between economic and military matters, than it is an indication of academic oversight. But in the end, Huntington has a compliment for Kennedy and those of his ilk. Huntington sees Kennedy as providing a valuable service: “The more Americans worry about the health of their society, the healthier they are.” He sees the introspection and critical self-examination Kennedy has inspired as being a valuable force against the very decline Kennedy predicted.

Kennedy Himself

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview Professor Kennedy in October of 1988. Kennedy is a Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The campus there is beautiful, but with the shabby, rundown elegance of old money. Somehow the surroundings seem appropriate for meeting a man whose name, for better or for worse, has become associated with the idea of a declining America. The door of his small office off a quiet courtyard is decorated with cartoons and notes to students. He came to the interview in the de rigueur blazer and sweater of academia; a slight, gracious man with a neatly trimmed beard. His voice has a definite accent that instantly betrays his British origin.

At the time of the interview, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers had been out for almost a year. The book, which had received an initial printing of 9,000 copies, was approaching sales of over 200,000 copies. Kennedy had been interviewed extensively, had lectured on his work, debated it, and even testified on his ideas before Congress. He was not, however, prepared for all this, and seemed rather bemused, and even a little intimidated, by all the attention. He was most amused by those who called his book, and its release in the election year, “well timed.” The book had been in the works for years, and had actually been planned for completion much sooner. Kennedy had not expected his work to receive general attention, but instead thought it would be of interest primarily to social scientists and his fellow historians, who he felt might comment on his “rashness.”

A student of noted British strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Kennedy is no stranger to military and diplomatic history. He has a number of quite excellent history books to his credit. In fact, one of his previous works, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, a study of the fortunes of the British Empire and the naval power that built it, foreshadowed his most recent book, albeit on a smaller scale. He is an extremely intelligent man, and has a broad grasp of many subjects. During the interview, he displayed an ability to give insightful and extended answers that would put many people’s prepared speeches to shame.

After speaking about his surprise at the book’s reception, we spoke about the controversial contents of his final chapter. Kennedy pointed out that the final chapter was, in his mind, rather tentative. He pointed out that his conclusions were what the relative positions of the Great Powers of today could be, if present trends continued over the next twenty years or so. He felt that those who attempted to apply these conclusions to today’s situation, and to say, for example, that the U.S. is currently in a state of “imperial overstretch,” had not appreciated this point. He pointed out the danger of simply extrapolating trends, and expecting the future to cooperate with your predictions.

With that in mind, we went over his views on each of the Great Powers of today. At my request, we focused on Japan, a nation many feel has the potential to significantly change its present status, due to its burgeoning economic power. Kennedy again stressed that while present trends seem to point to the upswing of Japan, there are also many factors that could stifle that trend. He also pointed out that while economic power is an important factor in national strength, it does not necessarily translate into military and political power.

He sees three major challenges from Japan which the U.S. must consider. The first is our increasing financial dependence on Japan, a fact brought about by our fiscal and trade deficits. The second challenge is in high-tech manufacturing and research. The U.S. owes much of its current leadership in the world economy to our expertise in these areas, so the improvement of Japan’s position does not help ours. The third challenge is in the area of political and military power. Even with their current military spending capped at one percent of GNP, Japan still has huge funds to spend on military power. And their status as a leading creditor nation gives them huge power, which they have so far been hesitant to use. So while Kennedy shies away from firm projections, he sees Japan as a power to reckon with in the future.

Despite the claims of his critics, Kennedy does not think that the U.S. is going downhill to the point where it will lose its current Great Power status. His concern is more what might happen if the wrong political and economic decisions are made in the coming years. He is concerned especially with the erosion of our financial position, our manufacturing base, and our educational system. By no means, though, does he believe that the U.S. is likely to fall into the second rank of lesser powers.

For those who feel threatened by our archrival since World War II, the Soviet Union, Kennedy offers some hope. For although the position of the U.S. is eroding on a relative basis, the Soviet position is slipping even more swiftly. While Kennedy sees some hope that Gorbachev’s reforms will lead to a healthier and less militaristic Soviet state, he does not seem too optimistic about Gorbachev’s chances of success.

The other major power blocs, China and the European Community, Kennedy sees as question marks. While both have huge potentials, they both must contend with factors that would limit this potential. Europe must first answer the question of unity and cohesiveness, while China must reconcile its capitalist potential with its Marxist ideology.

After covering the current Great Powers, we spoke of military and naval history. Kennedy is one of the foremost historians in this field in America today and has a wealth of anecdotes to reinforce his points. It became clear that what Kennedy feels most strongly about is the neglect of economic power as a component of military strength, or of what Kennedy referred to in a more recent lecture at the Naval War College as the “Sinews of War.” He has serious concerns that attempts to amass too much military power in peacetime at the expense of growth and financial stability may actually result in a sapping of strength in the long run. In my opinion, his feelings on this topic are what motivated him to write The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

One area Kennedy also feels quite strongly on is academic freedom. He has come under criticism for stating opinions many conservatives feel are dangerous or damaging to our national strength. Yet as he pointed out in a letter to me, “nothing is more conservative than buttressing a nation’s long-term strength.” And in the interview he pointed out (quite correctly, I think) that nations can handle the “fog of war” better when it comes, if critics and other “awkward people” are allowed to speak in disagreement with current policies, and if defensive strategies are challenged and debated.

Kennedy and the Future

To look at Kennedy’s views and what they say about the future, we must look beyond what he says and instead look at what the conclusions he stated imply. While not going as far as constructing models and using them for forecasting, Kennedy has come closer to a more rigorous mathematical approach than one would expect from a historian. Kennedy extended his view to the opening decades of the 21st Century—again, unusual coming from a man who is first and foremost a historian. It is the long-term implication of what Kennedy says, and the applicability of his principles to the period beyond that he describes, that have attracted me not only as a student of strategy, but as a reader and writer of science fiction.

Science fiction authors have always been influenced by works of social science. Utopian authors like Huxley and Orwell owe inspiration to Plato’s Republic. Isaac Asimov has credited Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as being an inspiration for his Foundation Trilogy. British historian Arnold Toynbee has gained many adherents in the field of science fiction since his Study of History was finished in the ‘50s. Poul Anderson, H. Beam Piper and Jerry Pournelle, in the design of their respective “future histories,” all show Toynbee’s influence to some degree.

Kennedy’s work has been compared many times since it came out with the work of Toynbee. This is an accurate comparison, since both have looked at the changing fortunes of nations and empires over the sweep of centuries. Yet where Toynbee looked at the classical or ancient world, Kennedy focuses on the modem system of competing nation-states that arose from the Middle Ages. Some, who think that Toynbee’s theories of rising and falling empires will continue to apply in the long run, will see Kennedy’s theories as a corollary of the other man’s. Others, who see these nation-states as establishing a new pattern of development, may see Kennedy as supplanting Toynbee and being more applicable to the future. Still others may feel that both are outmoded, and that new forces in our societies will shape the future.

Another way of putting Toynbee and Kennedy in context is to consider them in the framework outlined by Alvin Toffler in his book The Third Wave. In that book Toffler outlines three phases, or waves, of human civilization. The first of these waves is agricultural society. The second is industrial society. The third, which Toffler says is behind most of the changes our society is experiencing now, is the information society. In this context, Toynbee would be seen as a historian of the first wave, and Kennedy of the second. The question is then, what elements of the first two waves will we see repeated in the third? If we look at what is common to the first two waves, we see a continuing cycle of nations overreaching themselves in pursuit of hegemony, only to meet with eventual failure. While we can hope that the information society, by drawing the world closer together, will arrest, or at least slow, this vicious cycle, it appears unlikely that this will occur. It seems more likely that the struggle to dominate human society will continue, despite the indications that society is actively resistant to attempts to unify it.

And what does Kennedy’s work imply in particular about the far future and the world of science fiction? First, he believes that even if Great Power wars should come again, a world-ending nuclear war will be avoided. He sees the Great Power system as being stable for a long time to come, even though the balance of power between individual nations may shift. Since he sees a weakening of the Soviet Union and the United States relative to other powers, a situation neither one wants to face, perhaps in a more cynical moment he would not be surprised to see an alliance between the two, or “CoDominium,” come into being, like that predicted by Jerry Pournelle.

One extension of Kennedy’s work, which I am not even sure he has thought of himself, is the potential impact the development of space could have on the world’s balance of power in the future. Those who want an accurate and clear description of the impact of the opening of the New World on the European powers need look no further than Kennedy’s book. The power this expansion gave to those nations who exploited it properly was immense. With the Soviet tortoise now pulling ahead of the American hare, and other nations, notably the European Community, entering the race for space, this is a factor which could have a tremendous impact on the future balance of power.

It may be, however, as Isaac Asimov now believes, that the exploration of space is too large an undertaking to be the effort of single, uncooperative nations. In that case the model for the exploration of space would not be that of the opening of the New World, but would follow some other course. This type of speculation is an example of the power of Kennedy’s work. Once the reader finishes, it is virtually impossible not to feel the pulse of the forces of history, and wonder about the shape of human society as we move into the future.

Science fiction takes a long view. The “future histories” writers map out often cover centuries. Thus, to really offer the kind of analysis that is helpful in determining these long-term views, a scholar needs to take a broad, sweeping approach that cuts across many disciplines. As a result, a long time passes between works that have an impact on what we see as the shape of societies in the future. Contemporary works, like Toynbee’s Study of History, are few and far between. Other contemporary non-fiction writers who have had an impact on the field of science fiction include Alvin Toffler, whose Future Shock and The Third Wave inspired a spate of stories dealing with the ever-increasing pace of technological change, and The Club of Rome, whose Limits to Growth study inspired numerous stories of an earth reaching the end of its available resources. With the success and strength of Kennedy’s work, it seems likely that he will do the same. It may be a while before we see it—after all, future histories are not written in a few days—but it looks like Professor Kennedy will leave an impact on the field of science fiction for years to come.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, U.S. Coast Guard, or Department of Transportation.

Bibliography

- Asimov, Isaac. “The Tail Wags the Dog.” Introduction to The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky by John Barnes. New York: Worldwide Books, 1988.

- Creasy, Sir Edward S. Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. Harrisburg: The Telegraph Press, 1957.

- Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Bigelow & Co., Inc. (date not shown).

- Huntington, Samuel P. “The U.S.—Decline or Renewal?” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1988, pp. 76-96.

- Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. London: The Ashfield Press, 1986.

- Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Random House, 1987.

- Letter from Paul M. Kennedy to Alan L. Brown, August 31, 1988.

- Interview with Paul Kennedy, Dilworth Professor of History, Yale University, New Haven, CT: October 21, 1988.

- Kennedy, Paul. “The Sinews of War.” Lecture given at the Naval War College, Newport, RI, on February 16, 1989.

- Meadows, Donella H., et al. The Limits to Growth. New York: Signet, 1972.

- Rostow, W.W. “Beware of Historians Bearing False Analogies.” Foreign Affairs, Spring 1988, pp. 863-868.

- Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam Books, 1971.

- Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.

- Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. As abridged by Somervell, D.C. London: Oxford University Press, 1956 (Vol. I) and 1957 (Vol. II).

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Voice of the Cockroach
by Leslie Fish

I was once an editor of Survive Magazine. This was in the ’70s, when things looked considerably more bleak than they do now: in those days you could hardly open a book or magazine, or turn on the TV, without being told that Western civilization was doomed. Those were the days of President Jimmy Carter’s “national malaise”; when the President of the United States wasn’t sure that the people who had elected him were moral enough to warrant the favor of heaven; when much of the intellectual class was sure we weren’t.

Not only was Armageddon coming, but it served us right.

I wrote this back in those days to show that a few of us thought differently:

Rogue River is a fine place, as are many of the small towns recommended by and for serious survivalists: but what, if anything, can we big-city dwellers do? How will we get past that day?

First: As I have said before, the best way to survive a nuclear war is not to have one. Once they start throwing atom bombs around, there’s no telling where the destruction will stop. You can have a deep shelter with lots of food, everything thought out in advance, and still find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The wind shifts, or an ICBM goes off course (probably assisted by an anti-missile)—and there you are.

There are several ways not to have a war. One is bribery: Pay the other guy off, and maybe he’ll leave you alone. Kipling knew the difficulty with that one:

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation
To puff and look important and to say:—
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Danegeld:
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Danegeld,
You never get rid of the Dane.

Paying the Danegeld is not likely to appeal to readers of this anthology, so I won’t belabor the point.

The other way to avoid war is as old as time, and was perhaps best put by Appius Claudius the Blind in a speech to the Senate of Rome in 280 b.c.: “If you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war.”

The problem is that the United States is not prepared for war. To be precise: There is no war that the United States could win against the Soviet Union. None. To make it worse, there are many U.S. “leaders”—some of them highly placed military officers—who would understand that sentence to mean something as inane as “there are no winners in a nuclear war.”

That is not what I mean. It is not what the Soviet marshals mean. They think there will be future wars, and that they will win them; while we not only have not prepared for war, until recently we very deliberately told everyone that we were not prepared and would never be prepared.

We dismantled what little civil defense system we once had. We signed a treaty that allowed us to defend missiles, but explicitly said that we would not defend our people. Then we adopted a doctrine of “wait it out.” Now tell me: If we really do allow the Soviet Union a free ride, a full first strike, what do you think the remaining U.S. forces can do? The remnant force won’t have much coordination—if any. Our Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3-I) system will be crippled. We won’t even be able to choose the targets.

What targets will we shoot at? Soviet cities? Which ones? Kharkov and Kiev? Warsaw? East Berlin? Well, no. Moscow? Why? It wasn’t the people of Moscow who declared war on us. Or don’t we believe our own propaganda?

How, then, should we prepare for war?

Well, first we have to recognize who the enemy is; and it is not Russia, or even the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; it is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically it is the leadership of the party: a few tens of thousands of people known as the Nomenklatura, the top bosses and the up-and-coming party members. It is the group that controls the Soviet Union; it is this group that has declared war on Western civilization; and it is this group that must be made afraid of what war can do.

Killing a lot of Poles and Czechs and East Germans won’t faze them a bit. Killing Ukrainians won’t do it. And although most of the Nomenklatura are ethnic Great Russians, killing random Russians won’t do it either. Hannah Arendt (author of Origins of Totalitarianism and one of the foremost authorities on 20th century politics) put it best: “The totalitarian rules as a foreign prince in his own country.” The Nomenklatura doesn’t much care what happens to its subjects as long as the Party stays in power; after all, in a war with the United States, the prize is literally mastery of the world.

Next a bit of data: When the space shuttle Columbia was first in orbit, there was some concern about whether she had lost heat-absorbing tiles in crucial places. Those tiles are small, no more than a few inches long. And miracle of miracles, the Air Force was able to see that none were critically damaged. Mind you, they didn’t admit that we have optics capable of looking at Columbia tiles from Earth, but it’s safe to assume we have. It’s also safe to assume that we have similar optics in orbit looking down.

And wouldn’t it be nice to publish a target list that included the dachas of the major Party figures, with high-resolution satellite photographs…

If Party leaders believe truly that they won’t survive a war; if they know that we consider them—and not their populations—our enemies; if they know that we will target their communications systems, fallout shelters, homes and resorts; if the one certain fact about nuclear war is that they won’t survive it—well, you can draw your own conclusions. But can we accomplish this?

To some extent, but not very well right now, because we haven’t been thinking in terms of war-fighting capability. Our whole doctrine has been deterrence through Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD if you like, which deliberately puts our population hostage and threatens the Soviet population but not its leaders. Indeed, there has been strong sentiment for deliberately sparing Soviet leaders so there will be someone to negotiate with. The rigid logic of MAD knows no limits.

Let us suppose, then, a new kind of strategic doctrine; one that emphasizes war-fighting capability, and makes it clear that we intend to destroy the other side’s leadership class, the Nomenklatura, the instant that war begins. Suppose that we buy our weapons accordingly—which means that we must retain our C3-I capabilities even in the face of nuclear attack; that we have a presence in space, and work on making it survivable; and that we develop credible warning systems that can’t be knocked out without operations that are themselves a war warning. Suppose all that, and it’s very unlikely that we’ll have a war. There might be some other crisis to get through, but fallout won’t be among the hazards of survival…

That was then. In 1980, the country had had enough of Carter’s national malaise, and elected Ronald Reagan; and an hour after the Old Cowboy took office, the Iranians released our hostages. There was probably a connection.

One of Reagan’s innovations was “The Transition Team”: people who would not be taking public office, but who assisted in the transition between Carter’s administration and Reagan’s. One of those teams was headed by General Bernard Schriever, USAF (Ret.); it analyzed national space policy, both civil and military. A group of experts convened in Southern California to write reports for General Schriever, and through an odd chain of circumstances I ended up as its chairman. Thus was born the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy, a group which continues to this day.

One policy we recommended was that the U.S. abandon the goal of Mutual Assured Destruction and adopt a doctrine of Assured Survival: to structure our military force to ensure the survival of the United States and its citizens. We thought we had the technical means to do that; and as the Council pointed out, it was certainly more in line with the Constitutional requirement to “uphold and defend the Constitution” than was Assured Destruction.

On March 23, 1983, President Reagan challenged the science and technology community to do just that: to provide a defense that defends.

The result was intolerable pressure on the Soviet Union. Whether or not they could build weapons to penetrate strategic defenses, it was certain that they didn’t have such weapons; whether or not the U.S. could make all ICBMs “impotent and obsolete,” it was certain that we could make nugatory the weapons the Soviet Union already had. The U.S.S.R. was nearly broke from the cost of building the force they had; they’d never be able to afford a whole new missile establishment.

That, at least, was the strategy; and it appears to be working. There appears to be a new regime in the Soviet Union, new leaders more concerned with economic stability than accumulating weapons.

How long that will last we can’t say. Certainly it won’t last past the day when the United States takes the pressure off. Events in China have shown that the Old Guard doesn’t give up easily; and the peace of the grave that has descended over Tiananmen Square could as easily fall onto Red Square. The Nomenklatura are not finished yet.

Suppose, then, we haven’t learned; that we return to MAD as our primary defense, and the unthinkable happens. Leslie Fish, onetime member of the IWW, shows us one possible outcome…

The Voice of the Cockroach
by Leslie Fish

There had been a battle here, and no more than a day ago, to judge from the squabbling eagerness of the coyotes and the buzzards.

Welcome to the Hardware Store, said The Voice.

Ryder low-geared his ancient Jeep Apache and rolled slowly down the slope, eyes tracking rapidly over the narrow desert valley, trying to take in the whole scene at once, checking for any movement besides the busy scavengers. A few rags flapped here and there, a small mirage shimmered on the cracked white road, a cloud of flies rose as another buzzard landed on a tangled wreck…

And was that a pool of spilled oil or gasoline gleaming on the asphalt?

Jesus, fuel!

Ryder reined back the spurt of hope and crept forward carefully.

Joy juice. Oh, hallelujah! The Voice snickered.

He ignored it.

There were the remains of three cars, one pickup, maybe half a dozen cycles: pieces and scraps strewn all over the baked road, some of them ragged plates of jerry-built armor. Rusty smears showed where pieces of bodies had been, too, before the coyotes had carried them off. Guessing from the scraps, smears and tire-marks, the battle had centered around a low concrete drum-shape to the left of the road. Why there? What was it? Ryder steered toward the oddity, buzzards flapping resentfully out of his way.

It was a well. The cover had been wrenched off its hinges, then carefully replaced. He guessed that the water-level would be within reach of the nearby bucket on a rusty chain. Behind the far well-curb lay a fallen skeletal tower with its windmill still attached. So, the pump was down, but there was still enough water to fight over. Ryder almost smiled as he pulled up beside the well. Of course road-gangs would fight for water, out here in the Mojave: on this stretch of the asphalt, it was probably worth more than fuel.

So drink, then get the gas, The Voice in his head nagged.

Patience! Ryder snapped back without thinking.

Nice to hear you answer for a change. Jiminy Cricket got more attention.

Ryder ground his teeth. Shouldn’t have answered, shouldn’t answer now. You’re Jiminy Cockroach, the X-rated version, he couldn’t resist saying. More a plague than a conscience, probably the result of radiation damage. Get out of my head!

After World War Three, you expect the Disney version? The Voice stopped sneering, turned flatly serious. Cockroaches survive anything, remember? You’re stuck with me.

Ryder took a deep breath, mentally turned his back on The Voice and concentrated on the simple steps: look around, cut the engine, check pistol, open door, slide out, swing radiation-counter for background check.

You can’t lose me, Ryder, The Voice whispered, dwindling away.

He waited until it was safely gone before taking another step. No distractions now; even the animals could be dangerous. No more of this craziness, this thinking at himself, or soon enough he’d be talking out loud to himself, then hallucinating full-out, and then dead.

Despite everything, he didn’t really want to be dead.

Therefore: proper steps, proper caution, walk slowly to the well.

The coyotes, losing their fear of man these days, snarled and held their ground until they saw that he wasn’t interested in the meat.

Indeed, he wasn’t; the pickup had rolled a few times before settling on its side, the cab was thoroughly crushed, and nothing left therein could be of any use to him. After a day or so in this heat the bodies stank loud; luckily the air was still and the smell faded after a few yards. Ryder kept as far as he could from the cab and its scavengers, went to check the gas tank. It held a good two gallons, reachable with a siphon. He loaded a jerrican and moved on to the next wreck.

This one—a former mid-sized two-door car—was still on its wheels. There were no coyotes poking about, and that was odd enough for caution. Ryder circled the wreck carefully, taking advantage of what little cover there was amid the scattered scrap, finally spotted a buzzard-picked coyote carcass lying near the barely-open offside door. He scratched a sweat-itch caught under his patched body-armor, and inched closer for a better look.

Some kind of fairly heavy bullet had caught the coyote just under the jaw, taking out the throat and ripping the head halfway off. Judging from the position of the carcass, the shot had come from low inside that door. Maybe a booby-trap: maybe someone still alive and shooting.

Ryder crouched lower, crawled around to the front of the car and ducked below the rough-armored radiator grille. He checked his .45 auto one more time, took a deep breath, sprang to his feet and fired three shots fast through the windshield, then ducked down again.

Some nearby buzzards flapped for the safety of the air, circled awhile, then settled again. The other coyotes darted for cover, paused, then poked their noses out to watch. Nothing else happened: no other motion or sound.

Ryder stood up carefully, peered at the shattered windshield, noted the pattern and shrugged. Nobody alive in there now, anyway. Booby-traps were still possible. He climbed onto the wreck’s scarred hood, beat out the rest of the windshield with his gun-butt, and crawled through the resulting gap.

It had been a booby-trap, all right: set by the last driver or his departed friends. It hadn’t helped the driver any; he’d been dead for several hours, and the ants were already busy at his badly-bandaged and noticeably-swollen leg. That explained why he’d stayed when the rest left. A worn-looking Mossberg carbine was tied across the steering wheel, aimed toward the door. Its trigger was gone, replaced by a string that looped back around the steering wheel before stretching out to the door’s handle. Very neat, very nasty.

Ryder brushed ants away, cut the string and poked through the tattered interior of the car for anything worth taking. The carbine first: useless in itself, half rusted out, lucky it had even worked on the coyote—but the ammo was .357 Magnum and would fit his other gun. Further hunting through the corpse’s patched denim-and-leather rags harvested two boxes of reloaded .357 shells, maybe three-fourths of them reliable, an old K-Bar knife desperately in need of sharpening, and several ant-bites. The glove compartment yielded part of a torn road map, some rad-counter batteries, a couple wrenches and a few other small items. He took them all, stuffed the loot into his Jeep and returned to the wreck’s gas tank. Exquisitely thorough siphoning yielded only a quart of gas. The oil and spark plugs were possibly worth taking. There was nothing else: absolutely no food. Damn.

Ryder was coming back to his Jeep with the second load when he saw the newcomer. It was a lone car, apparently idling on the road at the far end of the valley, watching him. He could make out none of its details through the shimmering heat-waves, but its rough-squared outline suggested armor.

Ryder hurried to his Jeep, thrust the salvage inside, crouched behind the open door and waited to see what that watcher would do.

The distant car rolled slowly into the valley and stopped midway to the nearest wreck—idling, wasting fuel—plainly looking to see where he’d gone and what he was doing. Ryder could see now that it was a big car—the lines suggested a Thunderbird—armored with neatly welded or bolted metal plates. Even the windows and windshield were covered with what looked like thick metal Venetian blinds, and the wheels sported armored hubcaps that extended out over most of the tires. There was something odd, shiny and box-like on the roof. He couldn’t see any gun-ports, and no weapons were visible, but Ryder didn’t doubt that the car’s occupants were armed. Everybody was, out here.

For long, hot, crawling minutes, nobody moved. Even the buzzards waited.

Ryder rubbed sweat off his neck, considered the odds of heatstroke, and guessed that the stranger wasn’t about to attack—at least, not right away. He slid into the Jeep’s driver’s seat, still watching the other car, which still didn’t move. He turned on the engine. The stranger did nothing.

Well, are you going to dance around all day? Jiminy Cockroach needled.

Ryder ignored him, judging the odds good that if he simply turned around and drove away, the other car would let him go without trouble. Very likely, the stranger only wanted the water.

And the gas. And the salvage, Cockroach added. Let’s have a salvage party.

No, he couldn’t leave. That other car might have plenty of fuel, considering how it could afford to wait with its engine running, but he didn’t. He was almost out of food, and matches, and very low on ammo for his Colt. He couldn’t abandon the salvage, not until he’d gone through the lot.

I’ll fight you for it, he decided, steering toward the next wreck. Sweat crawled down his back under the armor, making him squirm. A fight with a well-armored car, unknown number of people, unknown weapons: bad odds. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that. Maybe he could bluff them off.

Maybe you could negotiate, Jiminy Cockroach suggested.

Ryder ignored him, watching the watcher.

But the waiting car did nothing whatever while Ryder drove to the wreck, braked beside it, opened his near door and cautiously slid out behind its cover. Perhaps the other driver was alone, timid, didn’t want to take any risks. Fine. To hell with him. Ryder turned deliberately away from the waiting car and poked into the wreck.

The gas tank was ruptured, and had spilled empty hours ago. The oil pan looked much the same. The rest of the vehicle’s guts were shot to pieces and strewn over several square yards of sand. The driver’s corpse was likewise in pieces, most of which had been dragged away by the coyotes, the rest buzzard-picked and shimmering with a cloud of bluebottle flies. There was nothing to salvage here but a tire or two, a few plugs, another wrench and a screwdriver. Ryder hauled out what he could, and turned another glance on the waiting car.

It had sneaked closer while he was busy. Now it stood only a dozen yards away, engine still running. Through the louvered window-armor he could make out two—no, three—silhouettes, none of them showing hands or weapons. Sunlight glinted off the curious glassy tent-shape on the roof. There were no outside weapons visible. And still the car idled, wasting fuel. What the hell did these people want?

In any case, they were within shooting range. Ryder pulled out his Colt .45 auto and dropped to a menacing crouch behind the door. He didn’t know if his slugs could get through those screened windows. He didn’t know if the car’s inhabitants knew that.

The car stayed put, engine purring quietly. Nobody got out. Nobody moved.

They’re peaceful, you fool, The Voice volunteered. Can’t you read the signs? An attacker wouldn’t act like that.

Sneaky maybe… Ryder countered, but the argument sounded thin even to himself. It occurred to him that there weren’t many ways to signal peaceful intentions without actually stepping out of a vehicle, and thereby being dangerously exposed.

And you’ve done your best to look dangerous, haven’t you? Jiminy Cockroach reminded him.

Hell, Ryder grudgingly admitted, hating to do it, they probably just want the water.

He backed away slowly, bolstered his gun and climbed into his jeep. The people in the other car still did nothing. He shrugged, started the jeep and steered off to the right in a wide circle—toward the farthest wreck and away from the well. If the mysterious visitors wanted only the water, they had a clear road to it now.

Sure enough, the thick-armored car rolled down the littered road and turned toward the concrete well-head. Ryder sighed in relief, braked beside the wreck—this one a mangled heavy cycle—and let himself concentrate on business.

Damn, this was a total ruin: smashed, drained, burned out, even the tires shredded and burned. There was nothing to take but the metal itself, and he couldn’t make any use of that.

At least there was a reasonably-intact corpse not too far away, still wearing a loaded tool/weapons belt that might contain some usable goodies. Ryder went to it, wrinkling his nose at the growing stink, kicked sand at a buzzard that didn’t give way fast enough, and knelt down to examine that tool belt. Yes, there was a good hatchet, a not-bad small crossbow and several belt-loops full of homemade but serviceable bolts for it. Not a bad haul. What else was there? He rolled the corpse over.

The face was gone. So was the throat and much of the belly, leaving the whole front of the body soaked with rotting blood and covered with ants. The chest was intact only because of two hammered-metal armor plates—no, cups—bound on with chains, forming a sort of exotic brassiere. The biker had been a woman.

Ryder flinched away and kicked the corpse back over on its belly. No, nothing more here. Let the buzzards and coyotes take the rest. He tucked the hatchet in his belt, stuffed most of the bolts in his jacket pockets and loaded one of them into the crossbow. Then he remembered the other car, and turned to check on what its crew were doing.

The car was pulled up between the well and the wrecked pickup, and all three occupants were outside. There was a tall muscular-looking man in mixed body-armor, holstered pistol on his right hip, probing the wreck with wrench and hacksaw: at his feet lay a collection of metal tubing, wires, assorted odd bits, all made of copper or brass. Around the corner of the wreck came a tall, rangy woman in a cycle-helmet and homemade chain-and-plate armor, two revolvers on her gunbelt: she had a rad-detector in one hand and a sack of similar copper and brass pieces in the other. At the well stood a young boy—no, girl (blond hair cut punker-short, almost no shape, wearing thick studded-leather armor, sex hard to tell)—pouring water into a clutch of plastic gallon jugs. A small shaggy dog darted back and forth among the three, sniffing at wrecks, barking bravely at coyote-tracks.

Despite their weapons, armor and tasks, they looked jarringly like a normal family.

Ryder shivered and looked away. Sure, an ordinary family on an ordinary Sunday outing: Mom, Dad, kid and dog, out for a drive and a picnic. They just happened to stop and loot the wreckage of a battlefield. Normal. Sure.

As normal as you’re ever likely to see, Jiminy Cockroach nattered in his head. Enjoy the sight while you can.

Ryder carefully ignored The Voice, and went back to his Jeep. Load and loot, climb into the seat, and where next?

Damn. The next untouched wreck was back toward the well, and the busy family. Best to move slowly, not scare them. He clutched into first gear and rolled toward the wreck in a wide, slow, nonthreatening circle.

The others paused to watch where he went, then turned back to their respective tasks. No, they weren’t afraid of him.

Ryder pondered that as he picked over the remains of another cycle. Not threatening, not afraid, not after food or fuel. Puzzling.

Look closer, The Voice prodded. They may be good people, and useful.

Shut up! Ryder snapped back. Closer, like hell. Nonetheless, it was a good idea to keep a more watchful eye, and ear, on the strangers…

“Just take the copper,” the woman was saying. “Leave the rest until the Fleet comes in.”

Copper? Ryder wondered. Fleet?

“And the brass,” the man added. “There’s plenty here. Quite a haul.”

The punk-styled girl came hurrying back to the car with her water-cartons, glancing nervously around at the scenery. Ryder could see now that she wore a revolver in a heavy gunbelt, and was dripping with assorted knives.

“Figure two hours or so,” the woman said, loading the collected pieces in her sack. “Not much risk.”

She looked up at Ryder, smiled pleasantly, nodded hello, and went back to her task.

Downright friendly, Jiminy Cockroach noted.

Ryder only gulped, trying to understand that. Nobody was friendly out here, not in the Mojave, not in these burning days. Everyone was an enemy now: weaker, and they ran from you; stronger, and you ran from them; equal, and you fought or both backed off. Neutral was the rare best one could hope for. Friendly? No, impossible.

Try it, or have you forgotten how? The Voice jeered. Just keep your hands in plain sight, stroll up and say howdy. Remember?

Too risky! Got to be a trap, Ryder insisted, knowing it wasn’t. He rubbed a boot-toe in the sand, disturbed a scorpion, stepped on it.

Trap? With their kid right there, and everybody busy working? Sure!

Hell, that made sense. It wouldn’t hurt to go and look, maybe even say hello, negotiate for food. Maybe try to find out why these people were so… damn laid-back and confident and actually friendly right here in the middle of hell.

Ryder placed his hands carefully on his belt—near the buckle, not the holsters—and edged closer.

He noted now that the plate-armored car was carrying what looked like a plastic greenhouse on its roof, fogged with steam and trickles of clear liquid, with a shallow square tank beneath it and a tube running down into the car’s trunk. A solar still, maybe? For water? Never mind. Another few steps closer. Try to look peaceable. Try to remember how to smile without looking crazed. Careful, careful…

The man was closest now, busy detaching the pickup’s battery. He glanced up, smiled, hauled the battery free and set it down. “Hello,” he said, rubbing grease off his hands, making no move toward a weapon.

Answer, you fool! Jiminy Cockroach snapped. Forgotten how to talk, too?

“Uh…” Ryder hunted frantically for something to say. “The fuel. You don’t mind?” God, how weird his voice sounded! How long had it been since he’d used it?

“Huh?” The man blinked at him.

“Gas. You don’t want it?”

“Oh, right.” The man laughed, understanding. “No, you can take it. We’ve no use for it. We make our own.”

“Make…?” Ryder repeated, feeling like an idiot. He could hear the Cockroach chuckling.

“Fuel alcohol.” The man pointed to the greenhouse on top of his car. “That’s a solar still—very useful around here. There’s a small cook-still in the trunk if we need it, and a brewing-tank too. We’ve got a yeast that makes good fuel-grade alcohol out of any kind of cellulose: grass, sawdust, sagebrush choppings, whatever. All our cars’re adapted for it. No, we don’t need gasoline. Take it all.”

“Fuel-grade alcohol. Right.” Ryder looked at the still, impressed by the elegant simplicity of the whole idea. Homemade fuel: total independence, go anywhere, not just hunt from one dwindling supply to another. And “all our cars,” he’d said, which implied more of them out there—that “fleet,” no doubt. An alkie-powered community. Damn!

Stick around, The Voice nagged. Be friendly. Be helpful. Make yourself useful, and maybe they’ll share the tech with you.

Ryder only shook his head. He’d forgotten how to deal with people—not that he’d ever really been that good at it—and now he didn’t know how to begin, or what to say.

“Name’s Jack Lomax,” said the big man, sticking out his hand. “Yours?”

“Uh, Ryder.” He hadn’t quite forgotten how to shake hands. “You from around here?”

“No, we’re scouts for the Merchant Fleet, heading back from Boulder City. They’re a couple hours behind us, maybe less. Where’re you from?”

Merchant Fleet? “Uh, from around here. What’s Boulder City like?” He’d thought of going there, more than once. His sister’s family might still be there. If the dam still held they’d have electricity, good farming along the lower Colorado: not a bad place to live, probably. Somehow he’d never got around to going there…

“Forget it.” Lomax made a race. “All the refugees from Las Vegas headed for the river, right after Black Thanksgiving–”

Ryder flinched automatically at the name.

“–And I mean all the refugees: the government, the cops, what was left of the local troops—and of course the Mafia boys. They took over everything from Lake Mead down to Bullhead City, at least on the Nevada side, and they run it like a goddam feudal estate. It was pure hell trying to trade with them; they give a whole new meaning to the name Robber Baron. No, you don’t want to go there.”

Ryder shrugged. It had only been an idle dream, anyway. “What about the Arizona side?”

Lomax chuckled. “The Sunbirds’re doing well enough, but they won’t let anyone cross the river from Nevada-side, and they don’t want much to do with anyone from Southern California, either. They’ve got long memories about the old water-wars.”

So much for that. “Anything left to the north?”

“Oh hell, yes!” Lomax laughed. “Lots of trade, inland—as long as you know the territory.”

“Which, I take it, you don’t,” a new voice cut in.

Ryder turned to see that the woman had come up on them. So, she could move silently if she wanted to. How long had she been standing there, anyway? There was something vaguely familiar about her face… He wondered what her hair looked like, under that mail-draped helmet.

“Have you always lived around here?” she asked. There was something naggingly familiar about her voice, too.

“Pretty much.” Ryder looked away, squelching the silent questions from Jiminy Cockroach. No, he didn’t want to meet anyone from the old days. That whole age of the world was gone, and best forgotten.

“Not much to live on in the Mojave.” She sounded sympathetic, maybe curious. “I’ll bet you’re hungry. Want some lunch?”

Right on cue, Ryder’s stomach growled.

The other two laughed. Ryder’s internal Voice sniggered. He blushed in the heat. “Come on,” said Lomax, slapping a good-natured hand to Ryder’s shoulder. “We’ve plenty to spare.”

Ryder followed them without questions. The offer of free food was almost too good to believe.

*Not exactly “Dejeuner sur I’herbe,” Jiminy Cockroach commented on the dining arrangements. Not precisely “alfresco,” either. Luncheon à la Tarpaulin? Picnic in the Wreckage? Mind your manners; we’re, suppering with an elegant crowd.*

Shut up, Ryder replied, vividly picturing his booted foot stomping on a Disney-cartoon-style cockroach in a ragged tuxedo and top hat. The Voice gave an indignant snort and shut up, leaving him free to study the bizarre scene.

He had to admit this was the best meal he’d had in all these nightmare months (how many of them now? A year? More?), even if the setting was weird and left him distinctly off-balance. The others had pulled up their car close beside the pickup, spread a tarpaulin on the ground between the two cars, stretched and quick-tied another overhead to form an open tent. Outside the shaded cloth and metal tunnel blazed the desert full of wreckage, where coyotes and buzzards pecked at rotting corpses—and in here was a little oasis of polite kindness and plenty.

To Ryder’s right sat Lomax, calmly shoveling down an oversized sandwich of smoked ham slabs on thick homemade bread. To his left the woman, introduced as Lena, shake-stirred a thermos full of lemonade. The shy punker-girl—Spooky, they called her—kept her distance, gnawing on a cold chicken leg while she stalked in ragged sentry-circles around the encamped picnic. The dog, Yappy, alternately chased after her and raced back to the luncheon-spread to beg food. In the center of the spread tarpaulin perched a now-empty freezer-chest surrounded by plastic bowls of ham, bread, chicken, dried fruit and even a bottle of homemade berry wine. The drinks were served in aluminum camper’s cups, and the plates came out of high-quality backpacker’s messkits. There were even clean bandannas for napkins.

Goddammit, I don’t belong here, Ryder thought, squirming. They’re too… normal. Or maybe “decent” was the better word, given what “normal” meant nowadays. He felt like a tramp who’d stumbled into a church picnic, and cringed at how dirty he looked. Grease and road-dust covered his boots, worn breeches and scarred leather jacket—at least covering the holes where his badge and patches had once been. Under the leather, metal-patched kevlar and sweat-soaked cloth, his skin stank strongly enough that he could smell it himself. Why had he so rarely thought of washing, even when he had enough water? He wished he could sit downwind from the others, but there was no wind anywhere.

And they treated him like a proper guest, an equal.

Ryder shook the confusion out of his head and concentrated on the food, which tasted good enough to make his bones ache. He nibbled his way from dish to dish, trying not to grab, not to look as hungry as he really was, wondering where these people came by such wealth, such confidence, such troubling generosity for a stranger.

“What’s the Merchant Fleet?” he asked.

“A whole bunch of us…” Lomax finished off the last of his sandwich and took a gulp of lemonade. “Assorted weirdos, survivors from the cities, folks who lived further out in the country—basically, a lot of people who were halfway prepared for the One-Day War or something like it, and got out alive.”

“Not to mention, set up the Settlement,” Lena added over a cup of wine.

“I’m getting to that.” Lomax tossed his food-scraps out onto the burning sand, where Yappy pounced on them, and set his plate by the freezer-chest. “You know there were always dozens, maybe hundreds, of odd little experimental communities up in the hills…”

Only a Californian would call them hills, Jiminy Cockroach noted. And only where the Coastals, the Sierras and the Rockies are close enough for comparison.

Shut up, thought Ryder again. He hated it when that damned Voice showed off its damned education, dredging up details from dull old schooldays that he’d mercifully forgotten. It had been more important to be street-smart then…

“Well, ours at least had enough people—with wide enough knowledge—to be in pretty good shape afterwards. When the first wave of refugees passed, we had a secure enough base to send out some explorers. Naturally, we used alkie-fueled cars, armed and armored ’em, got working CBs for everybody, supplies, all that. The first fleet only went out to explore, expecting marauders and road-rats and trouble. They found that, all right, but they also found plenty of other survivors who wanted communications and trade.”

“Ready-made market.” Lena shrugged, casting an eye out across the desert. “The rest came naturally.”

“So, now there’s the Merchant Fleet: a big armored caravan that makes regular rounds among the towns we know, and goes looking for others. Most people are glad to see us. The ones that aren’t, well, we can deal with them.”

“This is only our second circuit through the Mojave,” said Lena, giving Ryder a puzzled look. “Have we met before? Where’s your settlement?”

“Don’t have one.” Ryder looked away, hunting something else, anything else, to fix his eyes and attention on.

“You’re nomad, then?” Lomax asked, giving him an odd look. “Solitary?”

“Uh, yeah.” Solitary. Right. The damned Voice didn’t count. His eye fell on the girl, Spooky, roaming several yards out among the wrecks. “Hey, your daughter’s wandering pretty far afield. Better call her back.”

“Hmm, she’s not too far,” said Lomax, peering out into the blazing daylight. “Anyway, Yappy’s with her.”

Lena was looking thoughtfully at Ryder. “Spooky’s not our daughter,” she said. “She’s a road-orphan. We found her off Route 40, in the Clipper Mountains.”

Ryder knew that territory. “What was she doing there?” he asked, trying to imagine a lone girl, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, surviving in those howling barrens.

“We fought and beat a gang of road-pirates.” Lomax sighed, flicking a glance at Lena. “We found their camp afterward, and she was in it.”

“How’d she survive–” Ryder stopped right there, wishing he could call the half-formed question back. He could guess what the answer was.

“How do you think?” Lomax growled, squinting out at the wrecks. “She had scars and VD in damn-near every orifice. So did the other kids.”

Ryder lowered his head and shuddered. Oh yes, he could see it, and it hurt. And there, his defenses were down for once: actually sympathizing with someone else, a wide-open target for Jiminy Cockroach to snipe at, and why didn’t the damned Voice come and say it, tell him what he already knew?

“The Fleet took them in, of course.” Lomax was still talking, apparently not noticing Ryder’s reaction. “Spooky wanted to come with the scouts, so we let her. She does know the land around here, and if she wants to look for some revenge along the way, well, hell, she deserves it.”

“Yeah,” Ryder whispered, knowing that he hadn’t done any fraction as much good, nothing really to help anyone, he who’d once taken oath…

“So, we went out by Route 40, and now we’re coming back by the side-roads,” Lena took up, unfastening her helmet. “You’ve been around here? Do you know where the next water is? Or any halfway-decent settlements?”

She pulled the helmet completely off, and scratched vigorously at the back of her head. Thick mahogany-red hair cascaded down to her shoulders.

Ryder stared at her, his cup falling out of his numb fingers. Dark red hair: mahogany-red, manzanita-bark-red, almost wine-red in the twilight. He remembered her now.

The redhead in the Jaguar. On Route 14. On the curve beyond the Soledad Pass. Sundown, on Black Thanksgiving.

He closed his eyes, felt the darkness reaching for him, braced himself fast on his arms and pulled a deep breath.

“You all right?” Lomax asked, gripping his shoulder. “Heat getting to you?”

Ryder shook his head, scrambling for a fast excuse and escape. “N-no. ’M alright.” He struggled to his feet. “Medicine,” he said, pointing jerkily. “My car…”

Now out and away, back to the Jeep, fast, oh fast.

He could feel their eyes on him all the way.

And he almost forgot the booby-trap on his own door-latch. Age-long seconds passed before he got the damned thing disarmed, opened the door and stumbled in. He pulled the door shut, lay down and curled up on the seat, shivering in long and heavy spasms.

Out of all this burned-up world, after all these months and miles, why her?

The heat was like an oven, like hellfire.

“Be sure your sin will find you out.”

He didn’t know or care if that was the Cockroach’s thought or his own. The pain beat on him like the hammering sunlight, and all he could do was shut off the memory and endure.

After measureless time, he heard the dog yapping. At buzzards probably. He pulled his eyes open and sat up. Yes, breathing steady, eyes clear. Time to go.

Buzzard-man, Jiminy Cockroach jeered. Running again? Scavenged enough? Take the hospitality and run?

Ryder didn’t answer, only started the engine, clutched, geared and rolled out.

Idiot! The Voice raged at him. They’re the best chance you’ve seen in more than a year, better than you’re ever likely to see again. You’re ruining yourself!

I’m already ruined, long since, Ryder snapped back, aiming for the road. Lucky she didn’t recognize me. Would have, if I’d stayed longer.

That’s worse than what you’re going to?

The Jeep’s wheels grabbed the pavement. Ryder steered onto the solid center of the road and geared up for long running, setting his eyes on the horizon, tightening his concentration.

Consider the fuel, Jiminy Cockroach nagged, voice growing fainter in the rising wind of passage. Consider the food. How often have you eaten coyote, or rattlesnake? Think of what they have. Consider safety. Who guards your back when you sleep? Consider…

Ryder watched the distant rise of the far pass flowing toward him, gleaming chalk-yellow in the hard sunlight, hearing—at last—no sound but the rushing air and his wheels singing on the road. He breathed easier and leaned back in the seat. He’d forget now, safely forget the whole incident, go on to the next water, the next food, next fuel, next campsite and next scavenging. Tomorrow would be no different from yesterday, and he could deal with that.

The pass rolled under his wheels, bare rock-cuts whipping past to either side, and the next valley opened before him: empty yellow desert with the white road running through it.

Except that the road wasn’t empty.

Cycles, big ones, maybe six or seven, glittered and roared in the hot, still air, filling the two lanes of cracked pavement in a rough chevron formation. They were almost halfway across the valley, and coming this way.

Ryder slammed on his brakes, geared down, scrabbled on the seat for his cracked binoculars. He peered through the one workable eyepiece at the oncoming crowd, wondering if they’d already seen him topping the pass.

“Shit!” he whispered aloud, hearing Jiminy Cockroach echo him.

No harmless bikers.

They wore mixed armor—leather, chain-mail, odd plate—but all of it decorated with bones and teeth. They were half covered with hand-weapons—mostly clubs, axes, chain-maces, a few crossbows. Their cycles carried more than a few long guns-some shotguns, the rest homemade, maybe bangalore-torps—wired to the handlebars. The fork of every bike was decorated with a skull, all of them human, not all of them completely fleshless.

Ryder dropped the binocs on the seat, swung the Jeep around in a fast, tight U-turn, and raced back into the valley with the well.

Which way now? Back down the road or off into the desert? If he could get to one of the near hills fast enough, pull behind it or into a gully before the bikers topped the rise and saw him, they wouldn’t bother hunting for him. They probably wouldn’t even look for his tire-tracks turning off into the dirt once they caught sight of the wrecks, the loot…

And those people. The Voice was totally cold and grim. You have to warn them. A coyote would do as much.

Ryder chewed his lip, sweated, and kept his Jeep on the road.

The three scouts had finished their picnic and were back at scavenging when Ryder pulled up by their car. The red-haired woman was closest, and Ryder winced as he shoved the door open and leaned out to yell at her: “Pack up and run! Road-pirates coming, maybe five minutes away. They’ll stop for the water and the wrecks. Run for it!”

“How many?” she shot back. “How well armed?”

“Half-dozen, maybe more. Shotguns, axes—nothing really long-range. Go fast, get away clean.” In the outside mirror he could see Spooky and the dog running toward their car, Lomax hurrying close. “Move now, dammit!”

“But that’ll put them between us and the Fleet!” Lomax panted. “Besides, we can’t just leave all this to them.”

“Die, then!” Ryder slammed the door shut, geared into reverse and backed out fast. As he turned toward the road he saw the girl jump into the armored car, Yappy right behind her, and slam the door. He hoped she’d have the sense-to start the car and get out of there. The other two (fools! damned fools!) were scrambling, guns drawn, to take up positions between the car and the wrecked pickup.

Hell, they might survive anyway. Ryder double-clutched and fled away down the open road. Not his problem anymore. The pavement began to sing under his speeding wheels, and the far rise beckoned. With any luck, the bikers wouldn’t come after him.

He was almost to the rise when the sound of unmuffled cycle engines clattered out of the pass behind him and echoed through the valley. Ryder automatically stepped harder on the gas, feeling sweat crawl down his neck. The bikers might see him, might prefer live prey to the motionless wrecks after all. They could always come back for the scrap at their leisure. He fixed his eyes on the rising slope ahead, wondering how much lead he’d have when he crested it, how long he’d be out of the bikers’ sight afterward, whether he could get far enough off-road to hide the Jeep before they came into view again.

The crack of gunfire rattled off the road behind him.

Startled, Ryder spared a glance for the rearview mirror. In it he saw a cycle and body go tumbling, knocking a second bike into a skidding fall before the others could steer around it.

The scouts. Nice shot, Jiminy Cockroach commented, especially at that distance.

Ryder turned his eyes back to the road, corrected a brief drift, then couldn’t resist another look in the mirror.

The bike-mob was turning, spreading out, wheeling toward the well and its defenders that they couldn’t yet see, already firing a few of their cycle-mounted guns. Others, smarter, were reaching for hand-weapons. The skid-victim had stumbled to his feet and was limping toward a tail-end bike that slowed to pick him up.

The cycle-marauders had definitely lost interest in the rest of the road and anyone on it.

I’m free! Ryder eased his foot off the gas. He could save fuel from here on out.

The scouts got the road-scum off your ass, the Cockroach noted. Nice of them. They could have just sat tight and let the bikers come after you.

Shut up! Ryder pounded his fist on the steering wheel. The road was rising ahead of him, the hillcrest only a hundred yards away. Just shut up, JC!

Not this time, and not hereafter, Jiminy Cockroach promised, as cold as Ryder had ever heard him. Not by waking and not in your dreams. Not if you run or hide or cut your own throat. You’ll never be free of me if you run away now.

Ryder slid on the brake, eased on the clutch, with feet gone cold, hands cold, grave-deep chill crawling over his skin. The open road swam in the heat before his wide eyes. “What do you want?” he whispered. “What the hell do you always want from me?”

Remember your oath, and turn back.

Ryder pulled a long, shaky breath. Yes, he knew which oath The Voice meant, could remember repeating the words at his swearing-in: a dusty formality, a dull starched-shirt ceremony, threadbare, unbelievable, and he’d been insulted at how hard he’d had to work to take it seriously, even then. And now? Now there was no law to uphold, and he was one of the guilty himself, and where in this world of ashes was there anyone innocent?

Back there at the well. You saw them. You heard them. You know what they are, and what they’re worth.

“What’s my life worth, if I turn back and take on those bikers?”

What’s it worth if you run?

Another biker was down in the dirt, tangled with his cycle, blood and oil pooling together. The rest were circling roughly, trying to find paths through the assorted wrecks to get a clear shot at the big car’s defenders. That was no light task, for the wreckage provided more driving-hazard than cover.

The scouts had taken down the tarpaulin awning, leaving room to climb on top of the dead pickup—which Lomax had done. He crouched atop the wreck with a good clear shot at everything not blocked by his own car. Spooky hid in the car and shot from between the metal slats of the window-screens, not aiming very well, firing in blasts that tended to empty her gun quickly, followed by longer stretches of reloading. Lena darted back and forth through the corridor between vehicles and shot at any cycles passing; she took more time to aim, used much less ammunition, and hit close enough to keep the cycles moving fast and safely distant.

The mess of wreckage kept anyone from coming too close, at any combat speed, from the west or southwest. The well and its fallen tower blocked close approach from the east. The north and south approaches were cluttered with enough rubble to at least slow wheel-traffic. The cycle-pirates circled the whole tight little junk-fortress at a safe thirty to forty yards out, trying to find some fairly fast way in through the maze of wreckage and rubble, possibly hoping to use up the defenders’ ammo—and so far having little luck at either.

Siege, stalemate for the moment, Ryder considered, as he came rolling down the road and into the fight, windows open, .45 auto in hand, speed as high as he could safely steer. Time to change the odds.

The cycles were wheeling clockwise, and Ryder swung to his right to turn widdershins and meet them head-on. Shooting right-handed out his left window wouldn’t be easy, but he could manage if he braced his wrist on his steering-arm. He had some idea of catching the bike-bandits in a shrinking circle between himself and the junk-fort, maybe pushing them into the wrecks so they’d spill and skid out. If it came to that, his Jeep could ride over rubble and wreckage better than their bikes could.

The nearest cycle roared toward him. The driver, intent on picking his way between one small wreck and the rubble of a larger while searching for attack-lanes, didn’t hear or see the oncoming Jeep until it was barely fifteen yards away. Then he looked up, a downright shocked look on his face, and tried to pull hard to his right. The necessity of steering around a deep pothole delayed him just long enough.

Ryder braced his right arm on his straight left, aimed out the window, and shot the man neatly off his bike.

Three down. How many to go? The rest won’t be as easy.

Ryder steered into the passage the downed cycle had just rolled out of, jolting through an unavoidable pothole, looking for the next target.

It came, forewarned. The biker made a tight turn around the tower and well, firing his cycle-mounted shotgun at the Jeep’s front and barely missing. Ryder took a shot at the man just as his wheel hit another rough spot in the road, and missed too. In an instant, they’d passed.

At about that time the little knot of defenders spotted Ryder’s Jeep and cheered. Lomax took a shot at the passing biker as he wove between two wrecked cars and a mess of rubble, and managed to blow out the rear tire. The cycle caromed off one of the ruined cars, losing parts, but the biker jumped clear.

Watch for that one! He’s on foot but got cover now… Ryder tried to keep the man’s position in mind as he swung around the well and its fallen tower, looking for another moving cycle.

Ah, shit, there it was: turning tight between the fallen windmill’s end and some patches of rubble, going straight for the armored car and its knot of defenders, straight toward where Lena crouched in the slot between the car and the pickup—and the driver was fiddling with the damned bangalore-torp on the front of his bike.

Swearing desperately, Ryder squeezed off wild shots at the biker—none of which hit.

The torp fired with an amazing flare and smoke-burst. Splinters of armor flew from the back of the scouts’ car. Lomax, bellowing with fury, pumped four shots into the biker before he could peel out, and knocked him rolling into the sand.

Gone. But did he get Lena? Ryder crushed a brief guilty hope, and tried to peer between the car and the wreck as he came around them. No, there she was, pulling herself up off the ground, looking unhurt. She must have thrown herself flat just before the biker fired. Lomax paused to wave at Ryder’s Jeep, then went back to reloading.

Six bikes… Is that it? Are they gone? Except for the one on foot… As Ryder pulled wide around the next mass of rubble he tried to tally up the attackers. No, there was one left unaccounted for; another cycle, carrying double. Maybe the two survivors would see, or had already seen, that the odds were hopeless, would take off, get away clean while they could. Maybe not, if they were desperate for the water. And there was still that one on foot. Ryder slowed and peered through the maze of wrecks, looking for motion.

There! Coming up the alley between a wrecked car and cycle, carrying double, heading straight for the car-fort: the last cycle, firing its shotgun, rear rider firing too—enough to keep Lomax and Lena pinned down for the moment, and at the wrong angle for Spooky to hit.

Ryder tried to keep the bike in sight as he circled; there was no way he could follow it through that narrow alley between wrecks. Damn! He slowed further, looking for a target, saw Lena firing while lying flat and Lomax on top of the tumbled pickup doing the same.

And there: the cycle appeared again, going flat-out for the scout-car’s front, apparently bent on suicidal ramming or one hell of a close shot, still firing that shotgun—it had to be an auto-loader, and how big a clip?

It carried only one rider now.

Where’s the other one?!

Quick look down the cycle’s track: only one answer. The second man had jumped off somewhere near that wrecked car to the left, and was working his way closer on foot. Cursing between his teeth, Ryder pulled the Jeep into a tire-screeching hairpin turn and slowed beside the wreck. Where was the bastard? He could be hiding anywhere in that tangle of twisted metal, crawling closer to the car-fort every second.

Get out? Search on foot?

Ahead, wheels screeched. Ryder looked there and saw that the shotgun-carrying bike was still rolling. It had peeled out to the left at the last second, the driver firing a long handgun or short crossbow over his shoulder. He was crossing dead ahead.

Ryder didn’t dare take his hand off the wheel to switch his pistol to his left hand and fire out the window—not on ground this rough.

No choice, and no time left.

He floored the pedal, shot the Jeep forward, and rammed into the heavy cycle.

The impact slammed him into the steering wheel, hard enough to stun him half-blind despite his body-armor. The screaming crunch of metal warned him that the Jeep had taken damage—maybe just the radiator gone, maybe worse. He stamped his foot on the brake and dizzily remembered to hit the clutch as well. As the Jeep jolted to a stop, his vision cleared enough to show that the cycle he’d hit was still rolling, in several pieces. So was the rider.

Leaves two. On foot. So am I.

Ryder fumbled the gears down and the engine off, remembered to pick up his revolver too, and half-fell out of the Jeep. Now where was the other road-pirate? Still in the wreck off to his right and behind him? A quick look showed no movement, but that meant nothing. He crept around the left side of the Jeep, searching.

Rising engine-noise and shots ahead jerked his attention back to the junk-and-car fortress. Lomax, and presumably Lena, were firing at another cycle that was just swinging widdershins around the well and tower. The biker on it was shooting back, some kind of heavy handgun, keeping them busy. Where the hell had that one come from? Ryder remembered the man he’d left on foot, back in the southward tangle of rubble. He must have found one of the downed bikes still workable, got it up and running. The bastard would be around this side in another minute…

Then Ryder saw something move beside the armored scout-car, something out of Lomax and Lena’s sight. The missing cycle-pirate had made it to the fort. He crouched beside the car’s right door, trying to pry it open with a crowbar. Inside, Spooky was screeching and firing ineffectively through the window, at the wrong angle, missing.

Ryder got up and ran toward the car, hoping to get a clear shot.

The roar in his ears drew his attention back to the oncoming cycle—an instant too late.

He saw the muzzle-flash just as the impact caught him high and left, picked him up and threw him backwards. He had a split second to wonder if the slug had gone through his patched and ancient armor, and then the earth came up and slammed him into black silence.

You can’t stay here!

Ryder couldn’t breathe enough to groan, nor think enough to squelch the image of Jiminy Cockroach kicking him in the face.

Get up, buzzard-man! Still danger, still the one at the car. The girl–

And there was still the noise of shots, of a single unmuffled cycle-engine circling. The last two pirates were still in the game. Yes, get up.

Ryder pulled his eyes open, tried to feel out his body. He could see, at least: endless miles of burning blue sky. He could move: right arm, right leg, left leg, couldn’t tell about the left arm, left side of his body one solid pounding ache, breathing not too good—ragged panting, not enough air. Lung-shot?

You’ll live. Move!

Still the sounds of engine and gunfire. Yes, move. Roll over. God, but it hurt!

Where are your guns?

He turned his head, pain stabbing his neck, trying to see where he’d fallen, where he’d been when the shot hit him, and all the ground between. Damn, he’d flown a good ten feet. Where were the guns? Where, in all that rubble-strewn sand? He slid, crawled on his right side, toward the spot where he’d been standing, looking frantically to left and right, pawing torn earth with his good hand. At least he couldn’t see any blood on the ground under him; maybe the shot hadn’t gone through. But the pain was getting worse, shock numbness wearing off… Ignore it. Reach farther.

Raw bone-ends sandpapered together, pain squeezing his vision down almost to black. He fought it off, panting, knowing that through-shot or no, he had a couple broken ribs, maybe worse.

Where? Gun. Where?

There: a shiny lump ahead. He pawed at it, couldn’t quite reach. Jesus, to move forward just those few inches…

High-screeched string of curses and a burst of shots, too many, too close together, from the fort ahead. Spooky, losing nerve and sense. Invader getting too close, maybe prying the door open right now.

Ryder burrowed his good arm under him, arched up on its support, lurched, fell the last few inches.

Pain and buzzing black.

Somewhere ahead, desperate screaming in a high, thin voice.

Get up!

One eyelid pulled up, slow and heavy as a rusted portcullis. The shiny lump gleamed in front of him. He reached for it, clumsy hand crawling forward like a dying tarantula, dragging the unwilling arm after it. Touched. There. Smooth, familiar metal. The revolver.

Heavy as a boulder, so damned hard to lift out of the sand. Pull it up, point it. Look toward the car, the screams.

The screams had stopped.

Ryder looked, saw, couldn’t bear to believe it and couldn’t look away.

The bike-pirate had opened the door, was dragging the girl out of it by her short yellow hair. She hadn’t shot him: maybe gun jammed, maybe out of ammo and no time to reload—and something wrong with her right arm, maybe he’d broken it with a lucky shot or a blow with the iron—but she hadn’t shot him and couldn’t now, and he’d have her out in another few seconds.

But her left arm was bent and moving, close under her chin. A red seam opened there, widening, following her hand. As it reached her ear, her hand pulled free, something red glinting in it.

Just as the road-bandit got her free of the door, her hand fell limp. A knife dropped out of it, and a bright red flood spilled out on the sand.

Oh Jesus–

Ryder sank all his mind into raising the shaky revolver, trying to line up front sight, back sight, target. Arm too damned weak. Rest the butt on the ground, concentrate on the front sight…

The man got Spooky’s body clear of the door, out on the ground. He stared for a moment, then slammed a furious fist into her leached face.

Hold the front sight steady!

The bandit shrugged, making the bone-decorations on his armor leap and shake, then kicked the corpse’s sprawled legs apart and began unfastening his pants. Clearly he’d hoped for a live, wriggling and protesting body, but even a still-warm one would do.

What kind of lunatic stops for a cheap corpse-fuck in the middle of a battle?!

As if the question had cleared his head, Ryder’s arm steadied for an instant. The front sight aligned with the man’s head.

A target.

Ryder squeezed the trigger.

The recoil threw his arm back, tore the gun from his hand and dropped it out of reach.

The biker’s head burst apart in a red-and-gray rain. He jerked, flopped, sprawled beside the girl’s body.

Done. Ryder’s eye fell closed. He scarcely felt his hand hit the ground. But if only I’d been a few seconds sooner!

From the distance came a wild screech of tires, sounds of tearing metal, the distinct crack of shattering bones. The last biker, gone.

Silence.

Hot darkness swallowed him up.

…not by waking and not in your dreams…

The curtain peeled away, and he was back on the road. Route 14, on the curve beyond Soledad Pass, just before sundown. His patrol car sat parked on the shoulder some ten yards back, its radio chattering like an ignored conscience. He was standing beside a little green Jaguar XKE, pulled up to his full height, feet apart, doing his best Smokey the Bear pose, trying to get the driver to step out of the car.

The woman wasn’t buying his act, wasn’t acting like a Properly Respectful Good Citizen. “This road is posted for sixty-five,” she was saying. “That is exactly what I was doing. I was certainly not speeding, and I will argue that in court.”

Damn, how he hated these legalistic types who Knew Their Rights and made a big point of it. And why did she have to be wearing that bulky sheepskin jacket (all right, it was dyed the same russet-red as her hair, very nice) that hid her tits?

“Lady, I clocked you at over the speed limit.” He used his best Imposing Voice; it usually made civilians cringe and turn pale, but dammit, not her.

“Oh? Do you have a radar unit in your car?” she came back. “May I see its printout, please?”

“To do that, ma’am, you’ll have to step out of the car.” Goddammit, if she’d get out and stand up he could get a look at her legs, probably her ass too in those nice tight jeans. Maybe he could used the search-for-a-gun excuse to get her jacket open, get a good look at those tits, maybe a grope too.

And damn, she must have guessed. “Why are you so anxious to get me out of my car?”

Come up with a reason! “Because I’m going to give you a drunk-driving test, that’s why. Now get out of the car.”

He set both hands on the edge of the door, as if he’d pull it open himself in another minute, and leaned over her so she’d have to twist her neck at an odd angle to look up at him. That usually worked too. Instead, she looked straight at his badge, as if memorizing the numbers. All he could see was the top of her red-haired head.

And right then, the whole landscape lit up in an orange-white glare, as if struck by lightning. He could feel the heat on his back.

“What the hell?!” He jumped away from the car, spun to look, saw a flare of light—not directly behind him, no, but covering the mountain-edged horizon to the south, and already sinking back down the cloudless sky. The yattering of his car radio blurred out into a roar of static.

The woman screamed—a hard, short, shocked sound. Whatever was happening, she knew what it was.

Then came the thunder—too long, too loud, too deep to come from any natural storm. He could feel it shaking the pavement, rattling his bones. It shivered the earth, but it came from the sky—from that flare of light beyond the mountains. Not even an earthquake.

“What is it?” He could barely hear himself shouting, even as the sound slacked off. “What is it?!”

Behind him the redhead was wailing, keening, high and shrill enough to be heard past the ringing in his ears. The sound quavered and broke into understandable words.

“Oh my god, it’s Los Angeles!”

For just one blessed second he didn’t understand. Then a single connection of thought, like the tick of a clock-gear, and he knew what it had to be. All that crap on the last week’s news, all the “Current Political Crisis” everyone was so used to by now, all the war-scare noise on TV about the Oil Ultimatum—no, it still couldn’t be real. No, that was just the generations-old bogeyman, a knee-jerk fear that scared kids and peaceniks, not something that would really happen. Nobody would be that crazy, really go that far, really hit the button, really turn loose hell…

Then came the blast-wind. He could see it knocking boulders loose up on the skyline’s mountains, driving strips of cloud impossibly fast across the sky, bending the tall pines as if they were grass in a field, and he knew that even this was just what had made it over several ridges of mountains. He threw himself flat just before its leading edge reached him, and the wind dragged him skidding down the pavement anyway, snapped off the tops of trees, whipped leaves and dirt and pebbles into a sideways hailstorm, and its roar filled the world.

It’s got to pass, it’s got to pass sometime, it can’t last forever–

And it did pass, and worse followed.

The wind had just slacked enough that he dared to raise his head, look around him to see torn trees and part of the littered road in the headlights. Then he looked to the south, numbly expecting to see that classic mushroom-cloud. What he saw instead was another glow across the horizon—flame-orange this time, the color of a city on fire, outlining the mountains against a suddenly dark and starless, sky. The slackening wind grew thick with ashes, with the taste of smoke, and through it he could hear himself screaming incoherent curses.

And then the final note: a faint shivering and a deep rumbling in the ground, like a heavy truck passing, except that there was no truck and the rumbling grew louder, the shaking heavier, and suddenly all the ground was quivering like the skin of a horse shaking off a fly, and the thunder climbed now from earth to sky, like a responsive reading in hell. Earthquake: the old California nightmare, abused nature striking back in blind rage. Ryder hugged the cracked pavement and cried, the sound lost, like everything else.

Even that passed. The next sound he heard was off behind him, the Jaguar’s engine starting up. He looked dully over his shoulder, saw the woman scrabbling among the gears of her now-colorless car, shifting, rolling away. She was still alive, at least. So was he. Ryder struggled to his hands and knees, crawled to his own car, which was now partway across the littered road. There, the door: and there, the radio—blank now, silent and empty, no matter how he worked the knobs or cried questions to it. He was alone, and World War Three had come to Los Angeles.

…and Samantha and Jennifer and Vicky, gone to Mom’s for Thanksgiving…

But the car worked. He pulled it around in a tire-howling U-turn and rolled back up toward the pass at the best speed he could manage. Over the pass and south. West at the bypass around Acton—all the lights down, but plenty of fire in the distance, plenty of wrecks on the road shoulders, various cars and trucks howling up the road toward him, past him, running north for the safety of the hills and the empty country. Then southwest through the arm of the Los Padres Forest—trees down, trees burning, the first pattering of rain on the windshield, rain black with ashes, sky and air black with smoke and ashes, headlights at full power barely cutting twenty feet ahead and he had to slow down just to keep on the road. Then west on the Saugus shortcut—fire visible above the mountain ridge-tops, the black rain falling in sheets and still the fire glowing, air smoke-thick, past crawling traffic on the slick dark road, and God help any who stalled and stopped, for the other traffic would push them out of the way, right up into the scorched and toppled pines or down into the gaping canyons, no mercy, just clear the road. And then south on the 1-5—eight lanes of traffic heading north through the rain like black mud, every vehicle smoke-stained black, the shoulders thick with wrecks that had dared to halt the flow, pieces of shredded tires and car parts and nameless things all over the road, no sound of horns, only the steady rumble of grim engines and voices coughing through improvised smoke-masks and the occasional crack of gunfire, and he had to pick his way along the sharp slope above the shoulder, going against the tide. Finally to Valencia…

Smoke, ashes, and thick black rain.

Streets choked with fleeing cars, abandoned cars, wrecks, pedestrians stumbling under bundles or pushing or dragging wheelbarrows, lawn carts, shopping carts. Too many buildings down, and bodies like bags of dirty laundry scattered everywhere. Lights out and wires down, phone cables like dead black snakes in the street. Ryder drove across yards churned to black mud, across barely-visible sidewalks, going by memory, landmarks gone, all changed—back to his own block, his own house.

Half the house was down, windows blown out, broken front door lying on the steps. He pulled up in the yard, scrambled across the slick ground, crawled in through the shattered front window and stumbled through warped dark rooms littered with broken furniture, thick with smoke and silence, even the intact battery-powered radio silent and dead.

No one was there.

Of course there wouldn’t be: not one chance in a hundred that Samantha had stopped, changed her mind, come back before sundown with the girls. She was still down there, with the kids, and Mom, and all the rest of the family, in the old house just off the Santa Monica Freeway, at Thanksgiving dinner…

He couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t shape a picture of the hopeless reality, couldn’t see anything but the whole family sitting down to dinner at the big table with the white-on-white embroidered tablecloth and the old silver candlesticks and the huge brown-toasted turkey on the wide silver platter, just as it had always been.

Common sense didn’t enter into it, nor even much of self-preservation. He took the guns, loaded plastic cartons with everything drinkable that he could salvage from the toppled refrigerator, siphoned the last gas out of his patrol car and put everything in the old Jeep Apache, knowing he’d be off-road much of the time. Common sense was a lost voice wailing ignored warnings as he drove out, parallel to the highway, south along 1-5 through the slackening rain, into still-thick smoke and air that was almost solid ashes, nose and mouth covered with a wetted bandanna and still struggling for air, past more lines of refugees and dead cars and bodies, more and more of them along the road, many of them burned to skeletons, up the long pass through the edge of the Santa Susanna Range, up to the rise where he could look down and see for miles into the wide flat land that had once held Los Angeles and its hundred suburbs, look down through the charcoal-gray dawn and see what was left.

A plain of ashes, bordered by distant low cliffs that had never been there before, lit by slow-walking columns of fire. Firestorms, fire-tornadoes, the nearest maybe half a mile high, lighting the tangled black plain where nothing stood and nothing lived. The landscape of an alien world: barren, deadly, and dead.

He sat on the ridgetop and watched the fire-columns stroll across the black land, watched for measureless time, one corner of his mind noting that he was probably soaking himself in fallout, would die in a few hours or days if he stayed here, but not caring, not thinking of anything, noticing after awhile that he was mumbling the words to an old rock song over and over again.

“‘…Only the good die young…’”

Seen enough?

That was the first time he’d ever heard The Voice. It sounded so clear, so very different from himself, that he’d actually turned to see if there was a real person sitting on the seat beside him. Of course, there wasn’t.

Get your ass in gear, fool! it went on. Nothing you can do here. Turn around and go someplace where you can be useful.

He ignored it, of course. Hearing invisible voices was bad enough; actually listening to them was total lunacy. Still, maybe it was best to get out of there. The Voice might fade if he drove away.

So he did drive away: back up the 1-5, northeast on 14 where a stop at an empty, quake-toppled Red Cross center provided him with a rad-counter, food and water, medkit, batteries. Then the shortcut through Ravenna to loot some gas from an abandoned garage he knew of. Then east on 18, and into the first of the road-pirates, and he knew there’d be more of them, so best avoid 1-15 and go north by 395. And then on into the Mojave, into all that nice, safe, empty desert…

Into the wilderness, with your sins upon your head.

Ryder whimpered with pain and crawled back into the silent dark.

A different pain slammed across the blackness and drove him up to blazing sunlight. Someone was rolling him over, then pulling him upright by his good arm. His broken rib-ends brushed together, ever so lightly, and he howled in agony.

“Easy, easy,” murmured a half-familiar voice. “We’ll fix you up soon. Just a few yards. Hang in there.”

Ryder groaned and wrestled his eyes open. They wouldn’t stay open; he could see only in blinks, like a series of still photos. Lomax was beside him, half-carrying, half-dragging him toward the armored car. The buzzards were coming back, dozens of them, in a flapping cloud. Coyotes were crawling out from under wrecks to pick over the new food. The air stank of blood, black powder, cordite, spilled oil and gasoline. The dog sat by the car-fender, whining and licking at a plainly-broken foreleg. The armored car’s radio crackled with reports and questions.

Near the car’s right side Lena stood up, holding Spooky’s dripping corpse in her arms. She walked away slowly under the limp burden, her face frozen in a tragedy mask.

Memory snapped into place. “The girl…” Ryder whispered. “She cut… own throat… saw it.”

“Yes,” said Lomax, very quietly. “One of the few things she ever said was that she’d rather die than be caught by those bastards again.”

Ryder shook his head, trying to clear it. His strength had run out like water, leaving him nothing to fight off the memories, the pain, the stark awareness of his sins. “If I’d fired… ten seconds… sooner… could’ve saved her.”

“No,” Lomax sighed. “I saw. The blood trail started inside the car. He must’ve hit her with the crowbar when she ran out of ammo, stopped to reload. He reached in to haul her out, and she started cutting right then. You couldn’t have got him, and couldn’t have stopped her. The miracle is that you stayed conscious to fire at all. Your bullet-proof vest is shot to hell, and you took enough damage under it.”

Ryder didn’t answer. No point trying to explain that this wasn’t the first time he’d failed, other times with less excuse, too many times willingly. Bad cop. Dirty CHiP. Pig, plagued by a cockroach…

They reached the car and Lomax eased him down, left him sitting with his back braced against the front wheel. “Just a minute, while I report to the Fleet,” he said, climbing into the car.

The radio crackled again and Ryder bit his lip, stabbed by memories. He looked to his right and saw the biker’s headless corpse sprawled in its pool of drying blood, warty genitals sagging out of opened pants, a buzzard poking at them.

So I shot some road-rats. Ryder closed his eyes. Big deal. Too little, too late. Story of my life. He wondered why Jiminy Cockroach wasn’t kicking him, now that he was down and defenseless, a perfect target.

Lomax slid back out of the car. “They’ll be here in less than an hour,” he said. “Now let’s get you patched up.” He took hold of Ryder’s good arm and pulled him to his feet.

This time, Ryder couldn’t drag in enough air to scream. Buzzing blackness danced teasingly across his vision, but the pain wouldn’t let him sink mercifully into it. He could feel his feet dragging on the sand, ribs sandpapering in his broken side, the shift of pressure as Lomax set him down carefully on something soft, then hands pulling away his punctured jacket, unfastening the ruined kevlar armor. He wished to God he could faint.

When the careful hands began probing for the shot-broken ribs, making the pain soar to white blindness, his prayer was granted.

Coming back took long, slow time. Awareness moved in cautious stages: feel of something soft under his back, feel of only mild heat, smell of water on cloth, sound of brief and distant CB noise. There was no stink of rancid sweat and blood, and no pain. In fact, he was surprisingly comfortable, lying in quiet shadow, on softness, not even hot or hungry or thirsty.

Where…?

His eyes opened easily this time, and he looked up at the tarpaulin ceiling stretched between the scouts’ car and the wrecked pickup. Someone had wetted down the cloth, which accounted for the coolness under it. Ryder found himself lying on a foam-rubber camper’s bed-pad, with a small bedroll tucked under his head. He felt slightly vague and dizzy, maybe from some sort of painkillers, maybe leftover wound-shock. He was stripped to the waist, and barefoot. He’d been washed, and his hair was still damp. A loose sling supported his left arm. His ribs were taped, but beyond the bandage he could see the edges of a huge purple bruise that stretched almost from his shoulder to his waist. It looked as if he’d been kicked by a mule.

But still, no pain. He felt indecently good, in fact. He hadn’t slept in a real bed, nor on anything softer than desert ground, since Black Thanksgiving. This comfort was downright seductive, and surely more than he deserved.

A soft whine drew his attention to the other side of the tent. The dog lay there, curled up on a folded bedroll, its foreleg splinted and bandaged. The small beast regarded him with sad brown eyes, plainly grieving for the girl it hadn’t been able to save. Ryder knew exactly how the dog felt.

He looked away, and saw Lena sitting at the front of the make-shift tent. She was gazing off into the pale-orange desert, her mahogany hair tumbled down about her shoulders. From somewhere out in the glaring sunlight came the methodical sound of a shovel digging into the hard sand-clay soil. Digging Spooky’s grave.

Ryder squeezed his eyes shut. So they’d taken him in—and how could he get out? Maybe crawl out the back of the tent?

He tried to roll over and get his good arm under him, but he hadn’t the strength to sit up, and his bound ribs ached enough to drop him back, panting, on the foam-rubber pad. Out, out, how to get out before the woman came back here, got a good look, finally recognized him? He had no idea.

But Jiminy Cockroach might.

Ryder pulled as deep a breath as he could, and braced himself for whatever would follow. He’d never tried to summon The Voice before, always the opposite. What would happen if he called it willingly, let it walk into his waking mind and settle there unhindered? Maybe it would take over completely, take his body for itself and squeeze him out into forever-dark, blot him out as if he’d never existed.

And maybe that would be just as well. He’d done damned little good for the world, for himself, in this beat-up flesh. Maybe JC could do better with it.

Cockroach, he called to it. JC, where are you? Then held his breath, waiting.

Here. The Voice sounded very calm and somber. It wasn’t coming from the back of his skull this time, but from lower down, down below the bandage.

With a jolt of horror, Ryder realized that the thing had burrowed its way into his heart. Now that he knew, he could feel it there: a deep, fist-sized ache. The Voice didn’t want to eat his mind at all; it wanted something else.

And he still had to ask its advice. Damn you, Cockroach, how do I get away from here?

You don’t, said the implacable Voice. You stay here, and you deal with these people. They’ve taken you in, given you a place with them, and now you start earning your keep.

No! No! Ryder rolled his head back and forth on the makeshift pillow. Not with them! The redhead—Any time now, she’ll take a good look at me, and remember, and start asking questions—and what then?

Then you answer, and you pay for your sins—in whatever coin they ask. Jiminy Cockroach paused to let him think that over, then chuckled—somehow without his former sneer. Besides, she may have guessed already. Have you thought of that?

Ryder bit his lip, choking back a sob of despair and cold fear. What if it was true? What if she did remember, knew what he was, meant to make him pay for it? How? Torture? Slavery? He could imagine a dozen horrors, knew he deserved any or all of them, and for far more than the woman knew about. The Cockroach knew it all. Is this why you brought me here? To make me pay?

No. The Voice sighed. You never would understand, would you? I just want you to be a decent human being, so I can go home.

Home? Ryder clawed vainly at the skin over his inhabited heart.

I’m part of you, you fool, Jiminy Cockroach explained tiredly. I’m the part you shut up, shoved away, tried to cut out of yourself—since long before Black Thanksgiving. We’re supposed to be a unity, one creature. It was you that made us separate, and I damn well resent it!

Ryder tried to imagine that, picture whatever was inside the thing that had gnawed at him, hounded him, kicked him back and forth across this desert for a year and more. He couldn’t do it. The thing was just too alien, too knowing, too farsighted, too concerned with the whole damned world to be any part of himself.

…No, no part of James Currin Ryder, the one smart kid in a family of dull, pious, good little victims who’d been so pleased when he got his badge, thinking he did it to protect nice little victims like themselves, never seeing that he hated the thought of being like them, that he’d done it because the Highway Patrol paid well and gave him considerable power in a world where good obedient civilians had none, gave him power to play with, enjoy, get caught with…

And so he’d lived when they’d all died, gone to heaven in a flash of light, right enough, charred to instant ashes while they sat around the Thanksgiving dinner table, no doubt thanking the ever-silent Lord for their blessings, the blessings of being bullied around by even bigger power-suckers than he was, and he was out on the road beyond the mountains conniving to get a look at the redhead’s tits.

No, no, you bastard! You’ll only get me killed like them! That’s all you ever wanted. No!

And what’s your life worth?

No answer to that. Not now, not an hour ago, not in a long, long time.

He could feel his ribs rise and fall as Jiminy Cockroach sighed in disgust. Fool, The Voice whispered. You never would look beyond your next meal or screw, would you ? Now, by all that’s holy, I’ll make you look.

The thing bit him.

He could almost see it: the cartoon Cockroach in the tattered tuxedo, ragged antennae drooping like a shabby bandido moustache, grabbing a fold of the dark-red throbbing wall of his heart and taking a healthy bite of it.

Out of the sudden hole burst a flood, vast and fierce as the Colorado breaking Glen Canyon Dam, not his heart’s blood but pain, years’ and years’ worth, varied in all the colors of a dark rainbow: outrage and betrayal, the horrors of a world gone mad, grief as deep and wide as the blackened Pacific, and shame. Oh, that above all, that worse than the rest: shame running beneath all his memories like an earthquake fault under the ground.

I didn’t just break my oath; I never believed it in the first place.

Whom had he served or protected? He’d seen from childhood that the laws were made by the powerful, who made themselves rich, and the rich who bought power, made for their own usage, made to serve themselves first and last with maybe an occasional trickling down of the goodies to all the good, obedient, powerless civilians. He’d seen three divisions in the world: the official power-suckers—ranged from beat-cop to president—who made the laws; the unofficial power-grabbers—street-crook to crime/ industry boss—who broke or bought the laws; and all the good little victims who paid and obeyed them both. Hounds, wolves and sheep—and all he’d cared about was not being a sheep. Of the three, he’d despised the sheep most.

And yet those sheep, victims, good little citizens—they included his own family: Mom and Papa and Samantha and the kids and his brothers and sister and more… Everyone he’d loved, everyone he’d ever cared about—they were all good little victims, and he’d despised them for it.

That was what had earned him this life in a world full of wolves. Seeing that was pain enough to leave him writhing like a half-crushed snake, weeping like a child. The bullet had hurt less.

“Hush. Lie still,” said another voice. “The Fleet will be here soon. They’ll have some decent painkillers. Try to lie still.”

Through the blinding flood, Ryder felt hands pinning his shoulders down. He looked up, blinked his blurred eyes clear and saw Lena looking down at him. There was nothing in her face but concerned gentleness.

If she’d despised him, he could have endured it. Her kindness was enough to break him. It meant that she couldn’t know the truth.

If he told her, she just might be angry enough to kill him—and anything was better than this.

“I remember… you,” he squeezed out, past ragged gulps of air. “I was… the cop… stopped you… Black Thanksgiving.”

“I know.” She smiled. “I recognized you when you walked in this morning.”

“You knew?” Ryder gaped at her, momentarily shocked clear of the pain.

“It’d be hard to forget that evening.” Lena sat back on her heels. “You probably saved my life, you know.”

Ryder shook his head, understanding nothing.

“What, don’t you see it? You stopped me—and you were standing between me and the flash when the bombs hit Los Angeles.” She rubbed her eyes thoughtfully. “If I’d been driving then, I would’ve been flash-blinded—at over sixty miles an hour, on a mountain highway, with the wind and impact and earthquake coming close after. What do you think my chances would have been?”

Ryder slowly rolled his head back and forth in numb denial. He’d done good by pure accident, while trying to do wrong. “I didn’t…stop you… because you were speeding. I was bored… and you were pretty… and I wanted to look at your tits.”

Lena burst out laughing.

Ryder bit back a sob of misery; she didn’t understand, and he’d have to crawl on with his confession, on and on until she saw the whole pattern. “Afterward… I just ran home. Nevermind duty. Never thought of it. Just looked for… my family…”

“Who didn’t?” Lena cut in. “Radio down, phones gone, total chaos, how could you even find any other cops? What could you have done, anyway? All the so-called Emergency Services were straws in the wind by then.”

“God, you don’t understand.” He could feel Jiminy Cockroach grinning with his mouth full, chewing on the raw chunk of his heart. “I was a dirty cop—and that’s what saved me!”

Lena raised a mahogany eyebrow at him. “You didn’t nudge me for my wallet,” she said.

“No… not corrupt for money. Worse. Dirty for… power. Bullying. God, I liked making civilians crawl! Leaning on them, scaring them, making them cringe… knocking them around, even, when I thought I could get away with it.”

Lena sat very still, hands flat on her thighs. “I noticed,” she murmured, “when you came swaggering up to my car: you had the Cop Waddle down pat. It was almost funny. You could have done it on stage and made a bundle… That’s what put my back up, made me argue with you.”

For a jarring instant Ryder wondered if that wasn’t one of the reasons he’d done it, looking for that one civilian in a hundred who wouldn’t cringe, wouldn’t back down, would break the pattern, be something more than a sheep. But no, he’d especially hated the ones who did that, argued with him, tried to prove him wrong, upset the natural order of the world.

“Christ, do you know… why I was out there… patrolling that damn-near empty highway… on Thanksgiving evening? Punishment detail!”

“Punishment? For what?”

“Roughing up civilians.” Ryder closed his eyes, feeling a breath of wind on his damp face. “Maybe one in a hundred ever complained. I thought I was safe…” He made himself look at her again. “Before you… I caught an earful of Guardian Angels going on patrol… shook ’em down, gave ’em hell… said they could maybe… get away with playing vigilante in the LA gutters… but I’d personally grind their butts… if they tried it in a decent neighborhood. Jesus, I had fun saying that! Hated civilians who got uppity. God…”

“Uppity niggers, uppity women,” Lena murmured. “Old, old game.”

Yes, she was beginning to see it. “But they did complain. Squawked to Internal Aflairs, and the civilian review board, and the papers, and a couple of councilmen… Hell, they squawked, and it caught up with me. Chief gave me hell. Two weeks’ suspension, no pay—then work on the holidays.” He would have worked Christmas too, and New Year’s Eve, but there had been no Christmas, and not a new year but a new dark age. The Age of the Wolf: no more hounds or sheep. But then, where did these people fit in? What manner of beast were they?

“You got off lightly. So?”

Pain, blinding shame again: couldn’t she see just how lightly? “So I was safe in the mountains when millions died! My city, my whole family, everyone and everything I ever cared about—I was saved because of my sins! Not my… my virtues, if I ever had any. All those innocent people died, and I was dirty so I lived, and none of it makes any sense…”

And that was the core of the pain. That was why he’d run off to the empty desert, the simple and straightforward hell of nature—because nothing else made any sense. If the world was hell, where only power and killing-skill mattered, then why did Jiminy Cockroach exist? Why had JC nagged him off that fallout-drenched ridge, driven him away to safety, saved his worthless life? Why did people like Lena survive and succeed? A world of evil he could understand and live with, but not a world of madness.

JC, say something! Save me!

“Bullshit,” Lena answered calmly. “You survived by pure, blind luck. Your boss could just have easily have sent you patrolling the freeways of Los Angeles on Black Thanksgiving. Did you ever think of that?”

No, he hadn’t. Ryder turned the idea over and over, like a baffled ant with a cigarette butt, trying to understand it. Yes, of course plenty of wolves and hounds had died, too, in the One-Day War. He might have been among them. But then, why…

“Others survived by foresight,” Lena went on. “I was heading for the Settlement, up in the hills, when you stopped me.

Some survived by paranoia; they’d cut out when the political trouble started heating up, weeks or even months earlier. Some survived by claustrophobia, moving out to empty country years before, just to get away from too many neighbors. There must be a million reasons for survival. Nature isn’t choosy; she takes a scattergun approach.”

Crazy, crazy… “…By luck and my sins?” Ryder struggled to keep up with the idea. It was an answer, and it did make a perverse kind of sense. Maybe there was, had always been, still another kind of people besides the three he knew. Remember the mammals who survived, small and quick and unnoticed, through the Age of Reptiles—then came out and flourished when the dinosaurs were dead. And what manner of beast was this?

He looked up at Lena, noting how her thick manzanita-red hair draped her face like folded wings. Wings: a new breed of bird. Eagle? Or perhaps the legendary phoenix, that was born in fire…

Imagine a world much wider and freer than he’d ever been taught, ever seen, ever believed: a world where almost anything could kill or save him. Not chaos, no: he could glimpse emerging patterns in it, much more complicated than he’d ever thought. There might even be a place in those half-seen webs for a ruined hound, a poor mangled son of a bitch like himself.

You’re finally learning, Jiminy Cockroach smiled.

“Tell me something,” Lena cut in on the silence. “Why did you turn around and come back to help us? Was it just to get another look at my tits?”

Ryder winced. “No, nothing like that. I… had no choice. You were good people. I hadn’t known there were any left, any that could live. I…” The Cockroach threatened—“I would have gone crazy if I’d left you to die.”

Yes, The Voice whispered. You need something to believe in, or you can’t live. That’s why I’m here.

Lena brushed hair out of her eyes and gazed out at the waiting desert. “You know, you do have a conscience,” she said. “Times past, maybe you ignored it or overrode it or excused your way around it—but you’ve still got it.”

Ryder bit his lip to hold back a spurt of crazed laughter. His fingers clawed briefly at the fading ache in his heart. Oh yes, he knew.

“Yes, you’ve done your share of sins—but you know they were sins, and it hurts you. That alone puts you in a different league from the road-rats, the bandidos, the dirty little feudal lord-lings—all the garbage we’ve seen on our expeditions.”

She turned and flashed a smile at him.

“You’re in our league, Ryder. We need people like you, and you need people like us.”

Ryder closed his eyes, terrified of where this was leading. A new age, a new people, a whole new order to the world—and he just might fit in if he could change enough, find something of value in himself to build on.

Cockroach, he called once more. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Go back to my old job, but this time do it right. Right? Dust off that oath, maybe recast it, believe in it this time. Protect the innocent, apprehend the guilty, uphold the law… whatever law they have. Law of Nature, maybe. But I don’t understand it. I understand so little, and the world’s turned so vast and strange, and I so badly need to believe in something… I’m scared sick, Cockroach… Cockroach?

No answer. No further orders. Nothing but a faint ripple of memory where the pain had been: memory of how good it once was, just to have someone to care about. Much better than the greasy taste of power, of having someone to look down on.

So simple.

That was where I chose wrong, years before the bombs fell. I chose pride before love. The sin of arrogance.

And now he had a chance to choose again.

“Yes,” he said, sinking back onto the bedroll. “Take me in.”

“All right.” Lena patted his good shoulder, then turned to look out again at the desert. The radio chattered again, noticeably louder. “They’ll be here soon,” she said. “Just rest.”

Ryder let his eyes wander up to the cloth tent-ceiling, imagining the infinite flame-blue sky beyond it. Rest, when he had so much to think about? He had a whole new age of the world to deal with, a new stage of evolution to fit himself into. How in hell could he do it? All he had, as Lena had told him, was that one little pro-survival mutation: a conscience. And maybe some common sense: he wasn’t too stupid, or he couldn’t have survived this long. Maybe those would be enough to live on, despite all the garbage he carried with him, left over from the age of the dinosaurs. Could he keep those survival traits and shed the rest? Maybe, if he regretted his failings enough.

Oh, repent thine evil ways! As simple as that? Hardly, but a start…

“Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” he whispered.

“Aren’t we all,” Lena murmured. “Thank whatever gods there be for second chances.”

A god in a cartoon cockroach, Ryder thought, hearing the distant sound of approaching engines, probably just clearing the far pass. The future was rolling toward him on a rush of wheels, booze-powered vehicles, machines for the new age. What new gods rolled in with them? Deus ex machina?

You could do a lot worse, Jiminy Cockroach commented. Hell, you could be a lot worse.

Ryder smiled at the tarpaulin ceiling and waited for the Fleet to come in.

Editor’s Introduction to:
Song of the Red War-Boat
by Rudyard Kipling

In addition to writing stories, Leslie Fish is a well-known performer. Her unique voice is known to nearly every attendee at science fiction conventions.

Two of her best-known works are collections of Kipling poems that she has set to music. The two volumes are called The Undertaker’s Horse and Cold Iron. Kipling fans will recognize that these are titles of two Kipling poems; each of the tapes has a dozen songs. They’re distributed by Off Centaur, the science fiction song publisher, and available at most SF conventions.

One of the songs included in Cold Iron is the “Song of the Red War-Boat”; a tale of loyalty that’s appropriate at any time: A man must stand by his master, when once he has pledged his word.

Song of the Red War-Boat
(a.d. 683)
“The Conversion of St. Wilfrid”—Rewards and Fairies
by Rudyard Kipling

Shove off from the wharf-edge! Steady!
Watch for a smooth! Give way!
If she feels the lop already
She’ll stand on her head in the bay.
It’s ebb—it’s dusk—it’s blowing—
The shoals are a mile of white,
But (snatch her along!) we’re going
To find our master to-night.
For we hold that in all disaster
Of shipwreck, storm, or sword,
A Man must stand by his Master
When once he has pledged his word.

Raging seas have we rowed in
But we seldom saw them thus,
Our master is angry with Odin—
Odin is angry with us!
Heavy odds we have taken,
But never before such odds.
The Gods know they are forsaken.
We must risk the wrath of the Gods!

Over the crest she flies from,
Into its hollow she drops,
Cringes and clears her eyes from
The wind-torn breaker-tops,
Ere out on the shrieking shoulder
Of a hill-high surge she drives.
Meet her! Meet her and hold her!
Pull for your scoundrel lives!

The thunders bellow and clamour
The harm that they mean to do!
There goes Thor’s own Hammer
Cracking the dark in two!
Close! But the blow has missed her,
Here comes the wind of the blow!
Row or the squall’ll twist her
Broadside on to it!—Row!

Heark’ee, Thor of the Thunder!
We are not here for a jest—
For wager, warfare, or plunder,
Or to put your power to test.
This work is none of our wishing—
We would house at home if we might—
But our master is wrecked out fishing.
We go to find him to-night.

For we hold that in all disaster—
As the Gods Themselves have said—
A Man must stand by his Master
Till one of the two is dead.

That is our way of thinking,
Now you can do as you will,
While we try to save her from sinking
And hold her head to it still.
Bale her and keep her moving,
Or she’ll break her back in the trough.
Who said the weather’s improving,
Or the swells are taking off?

Sodden, and chafed and aching,
Gone in the loins and knees—
No matter—the day is breaking,
And there’s far less weight to the seas!
Up mast, and finish baling—
In oars, and out with the mead—
The rest will be two-reef sailing…
That was a night indeed!

But we hold that in all disaster
(And faith, we have found it true!)
If only you stand by your Master,
The Gods will stand by you!

Editor’s Introduction to:
Primum Non Nocere
by Paul Edwards

“Mass poverty, malnutrition and deterioration of the planet’s water and atmosphere resources—that’s the bleak government prediction that says civilization has perhaps twenty years to head off such a world-wide disaster.”

Thus began a typical story reporting Global 2000, a study commissioned by President Jimmy Carter. More than one million copies of Global 2000: Report to the President were distributed. Before the report was completed, President Carter used its conclusion as the basis for discussions with other world leaders. The disaster was rushing upon us; something had to be done.

There were even news stories with headlines like “We have to get poor quick.”

We don’t hear much about Global 2000 anymore; but it’s still out there, still used by government agencies as a basis for predictions. The AAAS meetings in 1984 featured a panel called “Knock Down Drag Out on the Global Future.” The idea was to have optimists face pessimists; the pessimists in general accept the conclusions of Global 2000.

The Resourceful Earth (Basil Blackwell, 1984) was edited by Julian Simon and Herman Kahn just before Kahn’s untimely death.

The book is a collection of essays whose central thesis is simple: Global 2000 is dead wrong. Where Global 2000 sees dead-end problems, The Resourceful Earth see challenges and opportunities. Julian Simon is an economist; and though economics is known as “the dismal science,” there is nothing gloomy about his views of our potential future.

As an example: when England was denuded of forests, many predicted doom and poverty. Instead, England turned to coal, and entered a period of prosperity unequaled in human history. We now call that “the Industrial Revolution.”

We stand at such a crossroads again. We have the resources, we have the science, we have the technology; do we have the will to solve global problems? Or must we despair and die?

From population to pollution, crops, water, energy, and minerals, The Resourceful Earth presents an alternative to doomsday. The era of limits and the time of national malaise are over. The only limit to man’s vast future is nerve.

In the event the unthinkable happens and we do have a nuclear or biological war, the pessimists will fall to the ground, gnash their teeth, pull their hair out, and soon fall still. Meanwhile, men like Doctor Mallin will see the disaster as a new beginning; an opportunity to do it right this time…

Primum Non Nocere
by Paul Edwards

Doctor Jeffrey Mallin dismounted and knelt by the white globe, pushing the rocky dirt away with his bare hands. There was no danger; none of the sand of black glass such as covered the Tucson and Phoenix regions, sharp little particles that worked their way into your skin and wiped out your marrow. It was a skull, probably a young adult. Most of the teeth were present… might be valuable to the Dental College someday, if it ever got started. There was even a gold filling, which gave him a tremor of avarice, quickly suppressed by thoughts of the Second World War, an ancient horror. He lifted the smooth white bone and turned back to the horse, thinking, “Alas, poor Yorick.” Somebody somewhere had to have a copy of Hamlet.

There was plenty of room in his pack next to the treasure from Brownie Johnson’s mill. The trip from Quartzite to Blythe, the capital of California, didn’t take more than a few days, and he was almost there. With a heave and a grunt he swung his leg over the saddle and eased himself down, scanning a full circle for danger: a survival habit from days of the Dark. But there was no danger now, years after the war, except for radiation, and that was easy enough to avoid by staying away from the bomb sites. In the desert, no one could sneak up on a survivor. An intact skull probably belonged to someone who had starved to death during the miniature ice age that followed the bombs. Just as the Doc was about to thump his heels into the tired mare’s flanks, his far-sighted eye caught the flapping of a tiny red flag in the distance to the north.

He sagged. It meant spending the night out here, but the Oath was the Oath and he couldn’t ignore what he had seen. He had enough water. He pulled the reins and headed off.

It was always good to come calling; people were always pleased to have what help they could get. Small and medium-sized children came running down the road with the universal sound of merriment and took Doc’s reins and led him in. Ray Smith, the paterfamilias, greeted him with a beefy handshake.

“Good to see you, Doc, good to see you! New horse?”

“It’s Brownie Johnson’s. You know he’s the only one in Quartzite who could afford to loan anybody a mount.”

“Let me get you a drink,” Ray said, and before he could turn, a young woman handed Doc a plastic drinking glass with no chips in it, filled with pale green water.

“It’s real mint,” she said. “It grows real good up here.” She smiled, and her teeth were perfect.

Mallin smiled back, thinking about the other set of good teeth in his bag. Maybe I should have been a dentist, he thought. He shrugged his musings off and turned to Ray. “Where’s the patient?”

“My wife, Marylou. Jeannie’s with her.”

Ray led him into the back. It was very cozy: a combination of unmortared rock, mesquite beams, and automotive sheet metal. These people were doing well for themselves. In a small bedroom, a woman huddled on her pallet, clutching her stomach and moaning, while a ten-year-old girl next to her wiped her face with a damp rag.

“Marylou, I got the Doc. Doc Mallin’s here.”

She looked up and focused on Mallin with an effort. “My belly’s killin’ me, Doc! Please give me somethin’ for the pain! Please, Doc!” Her head fell back on clean, neatly folded rags. Mallin knew exactly what he would feel before he put his hands on her belly, but the rituals had to be done so that the onlookers would know that he was a Real Healer. Wearing the automatic expression of intense concern and cerebration, he mused on the old days, when he would have gotten X-ray, and CBC, and U/A, and a second opinion to protect him from malpractice claims. What I really need, he thought, is a drum and some rattles. And poppies.

Her belly was stiff as a board. “Marylou, you’re going to be all right. I’m going to have to do a little work on you, but it’ll be all right.” He stood up and told the pretty girl, “Bring her to the largest room in the house, boil at least three gallons of water, and if there’s anything fermented to drink, bring that, too.” He squinted at her. “You’re Cindy, aren’t you?”

He’d fixed an intimate little problem which she might have gotten from her boyfriend. It was shortly after the sun had come out. There could be no such thing as “the benefit of the doubt” when the sparse, stunted food they grew barely sufficed for the people you could be certain of. Doc remembered her stony ambivalence at the hanging of Typhoid Casanova, but of course, that was a quick mercy next to turning him out to starve, and safer than risking his turning thief or killer for food. And here she was, pretty, almost mature, and carrying that confidence which all the survivors of the Dark had about them.

“Yes, Doc.” She looked down, embarrassed. “Ray took me in when my folks died.” She turned away and began hollering at the children to help her move Marylou.

The soap they had was strong, with too much lye left in it, but Mallin had scrubbed with worse. He looked straight at Ray. “If it’s her appendix, it’s probably ruptured already. If so, she’ll probably die. If it’s an ovary, she’ll do fine, and if it’s something from the Dark, all bets are off. I’ll do what I can, but you know …”

“Sure, Doc. We’re all glad you’re here. We know she’d be dead for sure if you didn’t come.” “Can you hit her?”

“You mean knock her out? God, I don’t know…”

“I’ll take care of it.”

The whole conversation depressed him because it reminded him of all the drugs he used to depend on: all gone, never to be replaced, while he was practicing at least. The herbalism of the Southwest was just beginning to be rediscovered; if there were any medicine men left, they could hardly be expected to share such knowledge with the race which had burned their lands beyond the capacity of any spirits to heal.

He always took all his tools with him wherever he went. His pride and joy was a prewar tissue forceps that worked perfectly, its little teeth matching exactly. It sat in a tray next to his delicately hand-made instruments in an inch of ’shine.

The cloth lay over Marylou’s face.

“Okay, honey, now hold real still.” He had measured the sand precisely into the little sack, and knew exactly where to strike: the result of the neurosurgeons’ research. This grotesque parody of anesthesia frightened him almost to trembling, but nothing could budge the mask of confidence he wore for the family. There was a groan and Marylou sagged.

For an old man, Mallin could move when he wanted to. As he screamed at Ray to start blowing air into her mouth and to hold her jaw the way he’d explained over and over, he cut in one stroke to the muscle, through thin sprays of blood. In five seconds he had the gut exposed, and the stink of pus filled the room. It depressed Mallin to have his gloomy predictions verified, and it terrified and nauseated the family, but he kept yelling for this and that while pulling the bowel up into the wound, and finally he saw the source of all the trouble, and, sure enough, it was the appendix, black and ragged. In moments, he had tied the boiled threads around blood vessels and around the stump, and then Marylou began to wake up. Mallin, yearning for the succinyl choline he’d never use again, reached over and smacked the side of her head, and she stopped pushing her guts into the room. In a few minutes, he had the stitches in the fascia. The skin and the fat he left open and put a freshly boiled dressing on. Then he got the rubber tube.

“I’ll be coming back to get this, and it better be in good shape! Now watch closely!” He lifted up one of Marylou’s legs and shoved the thin tube into her rectum as far as it would go.

“You only use fresh meat, and boil it for at least three hours. Then let it cool to just a little warmer than room temperature. Drip it in through the tube around the clock until she farts, then let her have sips and cut the drip to half a day per day, until her bowels start to work. Then you can take it out. And make sure she’s taking deep breaths all the time. Understand?” And that’s modern surgery, Mallin thought. Someone’s just got to learn how to make ether.

Dinner was rabbit and mint salad, and not bad.

“I hear ol’ Brownie’s really got his mill going,” said Ray, passing the water jug. “Got four or five people working for him, doesn’t he?”

Mallin forced politeness through his exhaustion. “Once he got the lathe working, he got some perfectly smooth rollers turned pretty quickly. His sheets are as smooth as silk.”

He glanced around the table, feeling guilty for mentioning silk, an unreclaimable sweetness from Before. “This salad is really good.”

“Will you be able to stay tomorrow?” Cindy asked.

“I’ll have to be going in the morning. This is the first real medical conference since the Dark. After all the talk about the medical school, they’re finally going to do it.” She couldn’t hide the sad look. “I have to be there.” He looked down at his plate and selected a small bone to gnaw.

Ray made a signal to conclude the meal, which made Doc grateful that he wouldn’t have to put out any more chitchat. The children led him to his room as Ray and Cindy began a whispered argument that wasn’t quiet enough.

The bed was firm and comfortable, and the oldest child brought heated water to wash with. From the look on his face, he’d thought of this little touch himself. Mallin wasn’t used to treating himself so decadently, but he could hardly refuse the youngster. He made some hopeful lies about Marylou, and sent him out. His next visitor was, of course, no surprise.

Cindy had washed, and brushed her hair. She entered after a knock but without waiting for an answer, and found Mallin under the thin blanket. She knelt beside him.

“I just… I just wanted to thank you,” she began lamely, “You’ve always been a hero to me.” It sounded ridiculous and she knew it.

“If you want to seduce someone, make them feel sexy and make them feel you absolutely have to have them. Don’t offer sex out of gratitude. It makes people feel like you’re doing them a favor.”

She rocked back on her heels, tears filling her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean to–” and she tried to go. Mallin’s hand caught her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. You know, it couldn’t happen. You’ve been my patient. It’s the Oath.”

“But that was so long ago! And everybody knows you live alone, and that isn’t good, especially now–”

“I’m just used to being a widower, that’s all.”

“Does that mean I can’t do something nice for you? Roll over.”

What the hell. He let her put firm healing hands on his back, and didn’t object as her massage became more extensive. Such decadence. Minutes passed and Mallin heard the silence of the household sleeping, and felt himself slipping away as his muscles finally gave up their tension and relaxed. He almost missed the hesitation in her voice.

“Doc?” she said.

“Hmm?”

“Ray’s got something you might want to see.”

“Let him show me in the morning.”

“Maybe I ought to get it now.”

“Whatever.” Suddenly there were no hands on him and no presence near him, and then he was being rolled over out of a sound sleep and a book was put into his hands.

A book. He blinked his eyes at it. The front cover had been ripped off, and a dog had chewed one end, but there it was, all the line drawings and garish colors he remembered from his medical student days. He hadn’t seen Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy since before the Dark. Wiry fingers trembled as they gently turned the shiny pages.

“Where did you get this?”

“I don’t know. Ray got it somewhere. It’s worth a lot.”

Cindy, you have no idea. “Are there any other books hidden away out here?”

“I don’t know.” She looked down at it, touched it with her forefinger as though it were a relic of power. “He told me not to tell you about it.”

“Why not?”

“So he could sell it, I guess. He keeps talking about mining, you know, they used to do mining right around here Before. But just living is so hard, and you have to have people working for you to get anything going. He talks about Brownie Johnson all the time. Sometimes he gets… kind of scary. He’ll be madder than hell about this, I know.”

“So greed and envy get started again, before we’ve barely gotten back on our feet.” He looked at her raised eyebrows. “Philosophy,” he said. “Occupational hazard.” He looked at the open book, and the dissected layers of the muscles of the shoulder looked back. “The medical school needs this. Must have it. Understand?”

She nodded. She was ready to steal it, had been ready for some time. Mallin looked closely at her and tried to see what was between her and Ray. Her face was a proud mask; she didn’t want to discuss it, and the truth was, neither did he. Besides, it might lead toward talk about how she had survived the Dark. That was taboo: a topic not even a doctor would discuss.

But he didn’t want to violate Ray’s trust. Since the Dark, travel was possible only because the mutual obligations between host and guest were held sacred. A guest did not steal from his host.

And there was the Oath. “Into whatever house I enter, I enter to heal the sick, and will abstain from the seduction of man or woman, bond or free” and all other assorted vices.

But what about all the effort to get the country back on its feet? Wasn’t every human being responsible for the rebuilding? Especially this little niche of it, the reclaiming of lost books, lost knowledge? What right had Ray Smith to hoard this priceless thing, of no value to him, save as it might give his cocka-mamie schemes a brief breath of life before going belly up? And especially a medical book, now that a real medical school was getting started?

A real medical school without medicines, whose main value would be to transmit the knowledge of the past into a future where it wouldn’t have to be rediscovered when the technical end of the matter had gotten itself back together—

Books. He missed Hamlet, and especially Lear. But if there were a Europe to get them from… but there had been no word from Europe or Asia or Africa since the Dark. The stories of horror from Mexico City when the sun went out, tens of millions dead in the barbaric chaos of rioting and fire—

Blythe might be the only living city in the world. If the rest of the world were thriving but had chosen to cast the U.S.A. out of the community of civilized peoples, it could not be worse. They were all beyond the reach of help. Except for what they could give each other.

“You’ve put me in an impossible situation. You know this book belongs in the Library at Blythe. So does Ray.”

“Take it, Doc! Take it!”

The temptation was great: a priceless relic, and a young, pretty wife for the asking. Can she really be attracted to me, or am I just a ticket out of here?

Slowly he shook his head. Robbing his host, no matter how noble the reason, would cost him his reputation in the community, regardless of the fact that he was one of the precious few doctors left. And since medical science had been bombed back to ancient Greece, he couldn’t take care of the sick without his reputation. And the sick had to come first, even before the School.

“Go see how Marylou’s doing. Come and get me any time if there’s a problem—check to make sure she’s getting that fluid poured into her. She could still die from this, you know.”

“Oh, Doc!” She gave him a big hug, but spared him the necessity of refusing a kiss. “I could love you, I really could. I’ll make Ray give you the book in the morning.”

She left before Mallin’s resolve collapsed.

The sight of that saddle made Mallin’s butt ache, but he heaved himself into it without assistance. Cindy had carefully packed his bag and his case of freshly washed instruments, more proof of the kind of doctor’s wife she would make. That Marylou was still alive ought to have been cause for rejoicing, instead of the silence of Mallin’s leave-taking.

“Her fever’s down a bit, Ray; a good sign. She’s not out of the woods but there’s nothing I can do that you can’t. I’ll stop by on my way back to Quartzite. Shouldn’t be more than a few days.”

“Thank you, Doctor Mallin. Have a good trip.” Ray didn’t offer his hand.

“You’re making a big mistake. Let me take that book to Blythe. I’ll donate it in your name. For generosity like that, you could probably get volunteers to come out here and work your mine for food alone.”

“ ‘Probably’!” Ray spat. “I’ve had it up to here with ‘probablies.’ There aren’t a whole lot of chances left in the world, Doc, and if there’s one left for me and my family, I’m going to take it.” He couldn’t keep up the tough pose. “There is silver out here. Think of it, Doc, getting a real money economy started again, and I hear there’s some people in Blythe who are actually getting electricity started. They’ll need silver! This is important work, Doc, and I need this chance!”

As if you could do anything with silver ore even if you found any. “Have it your way, Ray. Since you’ve been hearing things from all over, have you heard that it’s customary to gift the doctor who’s worked to save your wife’s life?”

“She’s not saved yet! You said so yourself!”

“Ray, without me she would be dead, no question about it. With me, her chances are fifty-fifty. There’s no guarantees, and you know that.”

“I’ll let you know how she does. Why don’t you take Cindy? She’s a nice prize. Very loyal, too.”

“The way I was brought up, human beings can’t be given as gifts.” He picked up the reins. “So long, Ray.”

Cindy came down the path from the house to where Mallin was getting ready to leave as Ray stalked back up and through the gate, not meeting her eyes.

She came up close to him. “Marylou’s sleeping now. She’s really been sweating a lot.”

“Then pour more broth in her! And for God’s sake don’t let her lie there like a lump! You’ve got to get her breathing and coughing, and it’ll hurt, but do it anyway.” All his barking wasn’t going to faze those bright eyes. Maybe I’m not just a passport. “You let me know if he so much as touches you.”

“You’ll have to stand in line. Bend down. I want to whisper something.” Her kiss was gentle, and gave Mallin the startling discovery that he had hoped for it. “Come and visit after Marylou’s better, okay?”

“Cindy, how could I resist?”

“Easily,” she said, and smiled her perfect smile again.

Cleaning up in the kitchen, Cindy felt Ray’s presence behind her, felt him calculating the difference between the satisfactions of beating her and the inevitable sequelae when it became widely known. He kept his hands to himself.

“That bastard,” he said quietly. “I’d rather burn the damn book than let him have it for nothing.”

It always made Mallin smile when Blythe came into view: medieval barbicans, Roman walls, Egyptian agriculture, and Sumerian solitude. The Thames, Tiber, Nile, Euphrates, or Colorado—it was all the same. And fools said the bombs would send us back to the Stone Age.

Inside what seemed like miles of high, thick rubblestone walls, Mallin could barely remember the appearance of prewar Main Street, the home of Every Franchise Known To Man. Not one relic of the age of electricity had survived. It was easy to find California Hall, the largest building in Blythe constructed since the war. There were defunct movie houses larger than California Hall, but just to be inside the huge fieldstone chamber gave a person the confidence that there really would be a future worth having.

The proceedings stopped as soon as he was recognized.

“It’s Jeff!” several people shouted at once. Mallin almost looked around; nobody called him by his first name anymore.

“Hello friends. Did I miss anything important?”

Barbara Hovic, one of the two obstetricians, took him by the arm, and whispered in his ear. “It’s worse than Before. The surgeons want to throw the psychiatrist out.”

“Figures.” He pulled his pack off his shoulders. “Got a present from one of our ‘prominent citizens.’” He was about to show her when Herb Gold, the cardiologist who’d been elected chairman, rapped for attention.

“Good to see you, Jeff. That’s everybody, so far as I know, in the entire Southwest valley. Twenty-two doctors in the entire known world. If we die, that’s it, unless we all start training successors at once. Now, there’s been a couple of proposals on how to do it. One is for each of us to take at least one apprentice–”

Jake Engrand, a surgeon, interrupted. “Are we supposed to feed the snot-noses while they wander around with us, getting in the way? And if so, with what?”

“Apprentices have always worked for their living,” Gold shot back. “You should be able to find all kinds of useful things for an extra pair of hands to do, without abusing them in the process.”

“That’ll go over big with these so-called apprentices. And where does the food come from?”

“We’ll have to bring that up with the whole City. When we built the walls, the framers didn’t resent feeding the rest of us. As for the apprentices’ attitudes, I’m not worried. Life is different now for everybody. Children are less spoiled now. Less than you are, for example.”

The guffaws stopped when Jake jumped up to shout: “Your university days are over, Gold! Have you actually done anything for any of your patients lately? Medicine is a joke! Look at our ‘medical library’ over there.” He pointed to a small bench on which rested the first sixty pages of an old Merck manual, a well-worn copy of the Lange pocket edition of Medical Practice, and the volume of Hippocrates from the Great Books of the Western World. “What good are drug-treatment protocols when there aren’t any drugs? Fluid-and-electrolytes when there aren’t any I.V.’s?”

“God, Jake, don’t you think we all know that? But if we keep what we know alive, maybe the time to get back to where we were will be shorter…”

“And how long is that?”

Ken Wong stood up. He was the oldest, almost seventy. “Jake, your frustration doesn’t matter. We need students for three reasons: because we need to keep medicine alive in our heads as well as for the future, because young people are starting to ask us about it, and because our patients will have stronger faith in us if we have a medical school behind us. Doctor Gold, please continue.” He sat down, the only one comfortable in the silence.

Mallin whispered to Barbara, “Has it been like this all along?”

She shook her head. “Jake’s been heading this way a long time. Everybody’s had a lot of deaths. He’s taking it personally.”

“–apprentices, but only after a core curriculum,” Gold continued. “This means a lot more work for everybody. Does anybody here have an eidetic memory? Anybody? I thought not. Recovering our medical school days and memorizing them could be a lifetime job.”

“Mr. Chairman?”

“Jeff? What is it?”

Mallin brought his pack up to the podium. “The recovery part might be hard, but some of you younger guys can work on that. I’ve brought a present from a man in Quartzite to the Medical Society, if that’s what we are.” He reached in and brought out the skull first, and got a round of laughter. “No, that isn’t it. I found that on the road; thought the dentists might want to get in on this act. Look at this.” He brought out a gleaming white rectangular block and reached up to set it on the chairman’s table. “Two hundred sheets of brand-new paper!”

Everybody crowded forward to touch the smooth, faintly toothy surface, and possibilities exploded in every imagination.

“This is a gift, and if we want more, he’s not unreasonable. We can make copies of the books and atlas, and record what we know, and build a real medical library out of what’s in our heads.”

Engrand turned to Mallin. “Did you say ‘atlas’?”

Conversation stopped. Herb Gold came over. “Atlas of what, Jeff?”

Mallin thought of Ray Smith’s arrogant face. Well, the patient didn’t tell him. It wasn’t under the seal of confidentiality. “I discovered a copy of Grant’s Atlas last night. It’s not mine. It belongs to the husband of a woman I took care of last night, on my way here.”

“So where is it?”

“Stop frothing at the mouth, Herb. He wouldn’t give it up. He wants to sell it.” Angry noises burst all around him. “I explained everything. He has plans and he thinks that this is the only–”

Two of the younger doctors came forward. “Where does he live, Jeff?”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

“We’ve committed ourselves to busting our asses for our community, our world, and this selfish–”

“It would be a tremendous leg up to have anatomy already recorded instead of having to do all those dissections over and over again–”

“Damned ingrate! Maybe we ought to get the constables to go over there and–”

“Just boycott him, wait till he needs–”

“Why didn’t you just bargain with him: you take care of his wife, he gives you the book?”

“HOLD IT!” Mallin jumped up on the podium and stared into all the angry faces. “What in hell do you think you’re doing? We need that book and it doesn’t belong to us! That’s it! You know, Jake’s right. This isn’t the university anymore. Why don’t you take a look in that copy of Hippocrates instead of sneering at it? Outside of describing illness, draining pus, reducing dislocations, and holding hands, there isn’t a whole lot we can do right now. So what else have we got but the Oath? Not much.

“There’s a woman dying with an acute abdomen. What do you do? Haggle with her husband? Is that how you expect people to learn to respect us? We aren’t miracle workers anymore. Let’s face it, hand-holding is what we do best.

“We all made it through the Dark. But our profession didn’t make it at all. We have to use what we can remember from the past, or we’re fools. And the Oath is one of the best parts of that. And even if you don’t believe it, it’s still good policy.” He looked around, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to make a speech,” he said, and jumped down.

The murmuring began slowly but didn’t get very far before Mallin heard Herb Gold’s voice: “–adjourn till tomorrow. We’d all better think about what Jeff Mallin’s said today–” turning his remarks into internal politics. He was exhausted. Barbara Hovic came up and took his arm.

“You can sleep at my place,” she said, and led him out.

It was another fabulous sunset, which brought memories of Frederic Remington paintings and the bombs over San Diego all mixed together. “It doesn’t make a difference,” Jeff mumbled.

“I don’t know,” said Barbara. “I think you turned a few heads around in there.”

The riders had gone east through the main gate; Barbara told him hours later, when he finally awoke. They’re not idiots, Mallin reflected. Surely they’ve figured out who owns the book. He hated to go—his buttocks were just beginning to feel like a part of him again—but it wasn’t more than a half a day to Ray Smith’s place.

Cindy was grim and determined, and the oldest boy was white-faced as they dug the hole. No jolly children had come running down the path.

“They told us you weren’t to blame,” Cindy said. “Ray came out with a gun. He didn’t like their offer and started shooting.”

“What did they bring?”

“A six-pound steel pick and a bolt of cloth.” Steady rhythm of shovel into rocky soil. “They took it.”

“How’s Marylou?”

“Worse. She has no idea Ray’s dead.”

“It’s true. I didn’t mean to mention the Atlas, it just slipped out. But I never said who owned it. When it got ugly, I talked to them.”

“Philosophy.”

“They might have just come in shooting and taken it.”

She stopped, leaned on her shovel, and looked straight at him. “I really want to believe all that, Doc. I really do.”

He came forward, almost afraid to come close to her. But he couldn’t keep his hands from reaching out and touching her shoulders. “I really want you to believe it, too.”

A man dead, children deprived of a father, survival even more precarious than usual for half a dozen people. All because of a slip of the tongue.

He felt his heart pounding as he waited for her judgment, suddenly knowing that he wanted his loneliness to be over, wanted to share his secrets with her, wanted her to be with him, to be the doctor’s wife she wanted to be. How foolish, he thought to himself. She’s young enough to be my daughter. But it was no laughing matter.

When she spoke, the edge was out of her voice. “Get a shovel,” she said, and he knew that he had found a partner for his sudden family and all the hard work ahead.

Editor’s Introduction to:
Horatius at the Bridge
by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay

Unusual for anthologies, the There Will Be War series generates a large amount of reader correspondence, all of which we try to answer. (Any letters of comment can either be sent to us care of the publisher or to Jerry Pournelle, 3960 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Suite #372, Studio City, CA 91604.) Sometimes our readers direct us to favorite stories, or as in this case, poems that we have overlooked.

Dear Sir,

…Many of the stories and articles from [There Will Be War] Volume I through VII have been read and re-read, as they’ve been passed among my friends.

Your poetry selections for the series have not yet included one of my favorite poems, which depicts the role that the Soldierly Virtues had in founding the Republic of Rome. I have enclosed a copy of the text to “Horatius” from Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. The version I know by heart is from “One Hundred and One Poems.” …There is also some material from the preface of the novel Perchance to Dream written by your friend, the late Mack Reynolds.

I’m certain there is a more comprehensive version of the poem available somewhere. By now it’s probably all in the public domain, since Lord Macaulay died in 1859 and the only version I know was published in 1958. In the meantime I have incorporated the passages from the preface to Mack Reynolds’s story, along with some text of my own to provide continuity…

Alas, the version he sent was missing many of its verses. Fortunately I didn’t have to use it. Horatius was one of the lessons in my sixth grade reader from Capleville Consolidated. In those days we had two grades per room, and thirty pupils per grade. The teachers had only two-year normal-school degrees; but we all learned to read, and we read great literature. I still have a copy of my sixth-year reader, and I still remember having to memorize portions of Horatius: “…spake brave Horatius,/The Captain of the Gate:/ ‘To every man upon this earth/Death cometh soon or late./And how can man die better/Than facing fearful odds/ For the ashes of his fathers/And the temples of his gods…’”

Our modern schools no longer have two grades per room, but they seem more interested in the inane activities of Dick and Jane and their idiot dog Spot than in the West’s heroic past. Indeed, I suspect that a good half our present-day teachers, despite having four-year college degrees, have never even heard of Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay…

Rome had seven kings. The first was Romulus, the Founder; but later Rome fell under the rule of the Etruscans, and their last king was Tarquin the Proud. His son, Sextus, attempted seduction of a Roman matron of good family. When Sextus was rebuffed, he and his father had the lady killed; whereupon the Romans rose up and threw out both father and son, replacing the king with Consuls elected for one year terms.

Tarquin fled to his relatives, and enlisted the aid of Lars Porsena, King of Clusium, and a number of other heroes and allies, who marched on Rome.

Incidentally, the tradition was that the hero who led the uprising against the Tarquins was an ancestor of Brutus, whose family was thereafter particularly watchful lest any Roman try to become king; which is why, a few hundred years later, the historical Brutus turned on Julius Caesar.

They used to teach those things in public schools, at least in the rural South…

Horatius at the Bridge
by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay

Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.

East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan
Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.

The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain
From many a stately market place;
From many a fruitful plain;
From many a lonely hamlet,
Which hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest
Of purple Apennine.

The harvests of Arretium,
This year old men shall reap;
This year, young boys in Umbro
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
And in the vats of Luna,
This year, the must shall foam
Round the white feet of laughing girls
Whose sires have marched to Rome.

There be thirty chosen prophets,
The wisest of the land,
Who always by Lars Porsena
Both morn and evening stand.
Evening and morn the Thirty
Have turned the verses o’er,
Traced from the right on linen white
By mighty seers of yore.

And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given:
“Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
Go, and return in glory
To Clusium’s royal dome;
And hang round Nurscia’s altars
The golden shields of Rome.”

And now hath every city
Sent up her tale of men;
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.
Before the gates of Sutrium
Is met the great array.
A proud man was Lars Porsena
Upon the trysting day.

But by the yellow Tiber
Was tumult and affright:
From all the spacious champaign
To Rome men took their flight.
A mile around the city,
The throng stopped up the ways;
A fearful sight it was to see
Through two long nights and days.

And droves of mules and asses
Laden with skins of wine,
And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
And endless herds of kine,
And endless trains of wagons
That creaked beneath the weight
Of corn sacks and of household goods,
Choked every roaring gate.

Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.
The Fathers of the City,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some horseman came
With tidings of dismay.

To eastward and to westward
Have spread the Tuscan bands;
Nor house nor fence nor dovecote
In Crustumerium stands.
Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain;
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.

I wish, in all the Senate,
There was no heart so bold,
But sore it ached, and fast it beat,
When that ill news was told.
Forthwith up rose the Consul,
Up rose the fathers all;
In haste they girded up their gowns,
And hied them to the wall.

They held a council standing
Before the River Gate.
Short time was there, ye well may guess,
For musing or debate.
Out spake the Consul roundly:
“The bridge must straight go down;
For, since Janiculum is lost,
Naught else can save the town.”

Just then a scout came flying,
All wild with haste and fear;
“To arms! to arms! Sir Consul,
Lars Porsena is here.”
On the low hills to westward
The Consul fixed his eye,
And saw the swarthy storm of dust
Rise fast along the sky.

And nearer fast and nearer
Doth the red whirlwind come;
And louder still and still more loud,
From underneath that rolling cloud,
Is heard the trumpet’s war note proud,
The trampling and the hum.
And plainly and more plainly
Now through the gloom appears,
Far to left and far to right,
In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,
The long array of spears.

Fast by the royal standard,
O’erlooking all the war,
Lars Porsena of Clusium
Sat in his ivory car.
By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name;
And by the left false Sextus,
That wrought the deed of shame.

But when the face of Sextus
Was seen among the foes,
A yell that rent the firmament
From all the town arose.
On the housetops was no woman
But spat towards him and hissed;
No child but screamed out curses,
And shook its little first.

But the Consul’s brow was sad,
And the Consul’s speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
And darkly at the foe.
“Their van will be upon us
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
What hope to save the town?”

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods,

“And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?

“Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now, who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?”

Then out spake Spurius Lartius,
A Ramnian proud was he:
“Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee.”
And out spake strong Herminius,
Of Titian blood was he:
“I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee.”

“Horatius,” quoth the Consul,
“As thou sayest, so let it be.”
And straight against that great array
Went forth the dauntless three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrels
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.

Now while the Three were tightening
Their harness on their backs,
The Consul was the foremost man
To take in hand an ax;
And Fathers, mixed with Commons,
Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
And smote upon the planks above,
And loosed the props below.

Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
Right glorious to behold,
Came flashing back the noonday light;
Rank behind rank, like surges bright
Of a broad sea of gold.
Four hundred trumpets sounded
A peal of warlike glee,
As that great host, with measured tread,
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly towards the bridge’s head,
Where stood the dauntless Three.

The Three stood calm and silent,
And looked upon the foes,
And a great shout of laughter
From all the vanguard rose;
And forth three chiefs came spurring
Before that deep array;
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,
And lifted high their shields, and flew
To win the narrow way.

Aunus from green Tifernum,
Lord of the Hill of Vines;
And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
Sicken in Ilva’s mines;
And Picus, long to Clusium
Vassal in peace and war,
Who led to fight his Umbrian powers
From that gray crag where, girt with towers,
The fortress of Nequinum lowers
O’er the pale waves of Nar.

Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
Into the stream beneath;
Herminius struck at Seius,
And clove him to the teeth;
At Picus, brave Horatius
Darted one fiery thrust,
And the proud Umbrian’s gilded arms
Clashed in the bloody dust.

Then Oenus of Falerii
Rushed on the Roman Three;
And Lausulus of Urgo,
The rover of the sea;
And Aruns of Volsinium,
Who slew the great wild boar,
The great wild boar that had his den
Amidst the reeds of Cosa’s fen,
And wasted fields and slaughtered men,
Along Albinia’s shore.

Herminius smote down Aruns;
Lartius laid Ocnus low;
Right to the heart of Lausulus
Horatius sent a blow.
“Lie there,” he cried, “fell pirate!
No more, aghast and pale,
From Ostia’s walls the crowd shall mark
The track of thy destroying bark.
No more Campania’s hinds shall fly
To woods and caverns when they spy
Thy thrice-accursed sail.”

But now no sound of laughter
Was heard among the foes.
A wild and wrathful clamor
From all the vanguard rose.
Six spears’ lengths from the entrance
Halted that deep array,
And for a space no man came forth
To win the narrow way.

But hark! the cry is Astur;
And lo! the ranks divide;
And the great lord of Luna
Comes with his stately stride.
Upon his ample shoulders
Clangs loud the fourfold shield,
And in his hand he shakes the brand
Which none but he can wield.

He smiled on those bold Romans,
A smile serene and high;
He eyed the flinching Tuscans,
And scorn was in his eye.
Quoth he, “The she-wolf’s litter
Stands savagely at bay;
But will ye dare to follow
If Astur clears the way?”

Then, whirling up his broadsword
With both hands to the height,
He rushed against Horatius
And smote with all his might.
With shield and blade Horatius
Right deftly turned the blow.
The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh;
It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh.
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
To see the red blood flow.

He reeled, and on Herminius
He leaned one breathing space;
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds,
Sprang right at Astur’s face.
Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,
So fierce a thrust he sped,
The good sword stood a handbreadth out
Behind the Tuscan’s head.

And the great Lord of Luna
Fell at that deadly stroke,
As falls on Mount Alvernus
A thunder-smitten oak;
Far o’er the crashing forest
The giant arms lie spread;
And the pale augurs, muttering low,
Gaze on the blasted head.

On Astur’s throat Horatius
Right firmly pressed his heel,
And thrice and four times tugged amain,
Ere he wrenched out the steel.
“And see,” he cried, “the welcome,
Fair guests, that waits you here!
What noble Lucumo comes next
To taste our Roman cheer?”

But at his haughty challenge
A sullen murmur ran,
Mingled of wrath and shame and dread,
Along that glittering van.
There lacked not men of prowess,
Nor men of lordly race;
For all Etruria’s noblest
Were round the fatal place.

But all Etruria’s noblest
Felt their hearts sink to see
On the earth the bloody corpses,
In the path the dauntless Three.
And from the ghastly entrance
Where those bold Romans stood,
All shrank, like boys, who unaware,
Ranging the woods to start a hare,
Come to the mouth of the dark lair
Where, growling low, a fierce old bear
Lies amidst bones and blood.

Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried “Forward!”
And those before cried “Back!”
And backward now and forward
Wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel,
To and fro the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet peal
Dies fitfully away.

Yet one man for one moment
Stood out before the crowd;
Well known was he to all the Three
And they gave him greeting loud,
“Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
Now welcome to thy home!
Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome.”

Thrice looked he at the city;
Thrice looked he at the dead;
And thrice came on in fury,
And thrice turned back in dread;
And, white with fear and hatred,
Scowled at the narrow way
Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
The bravest Tuscans lay.

But meanwhile ax and lever
Have manfully been plied;
And now the bridge hangs tottering
Above the boiling tide.
“Come back, come back, Horatius!”
Loud cried the Fathers all.
“Back, Lartius! back, Herminius!
Back, ere the ruin fall!”

Back darted Spurius Lartius;
Herminius darted back;
And, as they passed, beneath their feet
They felt the timbers crack.
But when they turned their faces,
And on the farther shore
Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
They would have crossed once more.

But with a crash like thunder
Fell every loosened beam,
And, like a dam, the mighty wreck
Lay right athwart the stream;
And a long shout of triumph
Rose from the walls of Rome,
As to the highest turret tops
Was splashed the yellow foam.

And like a horse unbroken,
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb, and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free;
And whirling down in fierce career,
Battlement, and plank, and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea.

Alone stood brave Horatius;
But constant still in mind,
Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
And the broad flood behind.
“Down with him!” cried false Sextus,
With a smile on his pale face.
“Now yield thee,” cried Lars Porsena,
“Now yield thee to our grace.”

Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see;
Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,
To Sextus naught spake he;
But he saw on Palatinus
The white porch of his home;
And he spake to the noble river
That rolls by the towers of Rome.

“O Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,
Take thou in charge this day!”
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And with his harness on his back
Plunged headlong in the tide.

No sound of joy or sorrow
Was heard from either bank;
But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
With parted lips and straining eyes,
Stood gazing where he sank.
And when above the surges
They saw his crest appear,
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
And even the ranks of Tuscany
Could scarce forbear to cheer.

But fiercely ran the current,
Swollen high by months of rain;
And fast his blood was flowing,
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
And spent with changing blows.
And oft they thought him sinking;
But still again he rose.

“Curse on him!” quoth false Sextus;
“Will not the villain drown?
But for this stay, ere close of day,
We should have sacked the town!”
“Heaven help him!” quoth Lars Porsena,
“And bring him safe to shore;
For such a gallant feat of arms
Was never seen before.”

And now he feels the bottom;
Now on dry earth he stands;
Now round him throng the Fathers
To press his gory hands;
And now, with shouts and clapping,
And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River Gate,
Borne by the joyous crowd.

They gave him of the corn land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen
Could plow from morn till night;
And they made a molten image,
And set it up on high,
And there it stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.

It stands in the Comitium,
Plain for all folk to see;
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knee;
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

And still his name sounds stirring
Unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet blast that cries to them
To charge the Volscian home;
And wives still pray to Juno
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.

And in the nights of winter,
When the cold north winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest’s din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;

When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;

When the goodman mends his armor,
And trims his helmet’s plume;
When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;—
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

Editor’s Introduction to:
Fear and Survival
by Reginald Bretnor

In past volumes of There Will Be War we have published a number of fine essays by Reginald Bretnor, the author of Decisive Warfare. Reg Bretnor, who lives in Oregon, is also a survivalist of some note. In this piece he gives us a plan for surviving Armageddon.

Fear and Survival
by Reginald Bretnor

We live in a world in which it is wise to be afraid—but where it is extremely unwise to be afraid without understanding the meaning and the function of fear, something many of us have never been taught, and have to learn—if we ever do learn it—for ourselves. How many of us, for example, can remember scolding voices saying, “Johnny, you mustn’t be afraid. Big boys like you aren’t afraid. They’re brave!” As though fear were an abnormality which could simply be outgrown or else suppressed by a firm act of will instead of being understood and rationally reacted to—which paradoxically is the only effective way to exorcise it.

Primitive fear is a simple thing. It causes adrenalin to shoot into the system so that you can run away or, alternatively, fight more desperately. Your senses—or your imagination—tell you there’s danger. Instantly, psychosomatically, you feel fear. At that point, if you cannot evaluate rationally and practically, you can end up doing such silly things as running from a gopher snake, or trying to swat the wasp in your car at seventy-five mph, or spending half your waking life learning how to break bricks in two with karate chops, or any one of a myriad other things inappropriate to the danger in question. Fear has become your master, rather than your useful servant.

Today’s World: Safer and More Dangerous

In many ways, the world is safer than it ever has been. Science and technology have virtually eliminated a great many of the natural perils which have beset man throughout history—those of childbirth, those of many once-prevalent, once-deadly diseases, those caused by vagaries of climate; and even in the case of those that have not been eliminated, we now have the know-how to cope more successfully. Powerless though we may be against earthquakes, tornadoes, tidal waves, and new strains of bacteria or viruses, we can recover from them, and repair damage done, much more effectively than could our ancestors.

For all this there has been a price to pay!

Because we live in a cleaner, safer world, we tend to forget how dangerous it can be;

And because we have become so dependent on the immensely complicated, interlocking systems of research, production, supply and communication which maintain the safety we enjoy, few of us retain the skills and the resourcefulness to cope, even marginally, with the dangers we have half forgotten, to say nothing of the new, unprecedented, and often even more deadly dangers to which our sciences and technologies have given birth, super-weapons of all sorts, environmental pollutions of every kind, previously unknown mutations of insect species and disease organisms.

The greater the danger, or potential danger, the greater the dependency—and the greater, too, the subconscious awareness of danger, that awareness which fear inhibits most of us from confronting and analyzing. (A very good example is that muddy thinking—aided by hostile propagandists—with which so many people have reacted to a perfectly legitimate fear of nuclear weapons. The “reasoning” goes something like this: nuclear weapons are awesome and dangerous; nuclear power plants operate on the same principles; therefore nuclear power plants are as frightening as the weaponry. And so we have campaigns against nuclear power—but always against American nuclear power, never against Russian, never against Japanese or Pakistani or whatever.)

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” said Winston Churchill, addressing a Great Britain faced by the seemingly overwhelming power of the enemy. Today, perhaps, we should restate the truth of this: “We have nothing more to fear than fear itself,” for fear suppressed generates a feedback, an amplification, a constant crippling tension, often to the point where the original peril—real enough in itself—is lost sight of, and the practical reactions demanded by it forgotten.

Survival Models

Our present psychological climate is generating some strange models for those of us who are determined to survive and who cannot quite believe that our personal and family survival can be entrusted entirely to government. Foremost, or at least most visible, of these we can perhaps term the Sylvester Stallone Model, in which our hero performs prodigies, not only of valor, but of ferocity, thereby demolishing an enemy whom, in real life, we unhappily did not defeat. This is an easy one to fall for, for once we fall for it we can largely forget such practicalities as organization, supply, coolness of judgment, and our own vulnerability. (I am reminded of a story in one of the national news magazines in which, at one of their training camps, the PLO demonstrated their ferocity—and presumably their military effectiveness—by tearing live chickens and rabbits apart with their teeth. Had the rabbits been armed with Galils and trained to use them, this would indeed have been impressive. As it was—well, it did demonstrate vividly the difference between raw, purposeless violence and controlled force. Another example might be the difference between the thoroughly frightened soldier with his eyes closed spraying the landscape with full automatic fire and the rifleman, or machine-gunner or whatever, so well trained and with such self-confidence that he can go into a firefight with his eyes open, and open in every sense of the word.)

I hope I have conveyed the idea that, in my opinion, the gung-ho ferocity model—while it probably has its place in the training of certain special troops—is not an optimum ideal for the survivalist. Therefore let us consider one which I think is.

The Swiss Model

I recently read a book by John McPhee entitled La Place de la Concorde Suisse.[1] (No, it is not in French, but takes its title from the historic meadow where, almost seven hundred years ago, the first three Swiss cantons declared their unity and their independence—something which has been maintained, often against terrible odds, ever since.) McPhee is an excellent writer, and much of the book originally was published in The New Yorker, which occasionally comes up with something really refreshing. (They once printed an exhaustive study of why, in To-kugawa Japan after the Shogunate sealed the country off from the rest of the world, the samurai almost completely abandoned firearms, which had attained an unprecedented ascendancy, for the sword.)

McPhee went to Switzerland and, with the cooperation of Swiss military authorities, took part in a Swiss army exercise. He met the soldiery of Switzerland who—like the militia in the days of Washington and Jefferson—literally are the people. In a nation of less than seven million, six hundred and fifty thousand men can be mobilized in less than forty-eight hours, fully armed, trained, equipped. (If we could do the same, we could field about twenty million.) Weapons are kept at home; so is a ready supply of ammunition. Every pass, every railroad bridge, every mountain highway is mined; every point vulnerable to invasion is covered by artillery ready and waiting; jet fighters, their pilots adept at close mountain flying, lurk in hidden caverns behind otherwise useless airstrips. Supplies are stockpiled against every conceivable contingency. And an impressive degree of protection against nuclear attack has been prepared, not just for the army, but for everyone, in every village, every city.

As for a regular army—yes, Switzerland has one. It numbers one-half of one percent of the armed forces, almost all technicians and instructors. The officer corps in general is not “regular,” and consequently there is not, in Switzerland, the tremendous psychological and social gap between the professional military and the mass of conscripts that has existed in most major European nations, which so disturbed our Founding Fathers, and which has led to some damned odd ways of thinking. (For instance, why was it that the Italian General Giulio Douhet believed civilian morale would collapse almost immediately under mass bombardment? And why did he formulate an entire doctrine of air warfare based on this? And why was it so long believed—against all the evidence of London and Canterbury, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo? Incidentally, this has not been true of Europe only. Contempt for the citizen soldier, and especially for the citizen officer, has only too often been obvious in our own press, again against the evidence of war—there must be quite a number of newsmen who never heard of King’s Mountain, or the 442nd Combat Team, or Nathan Bedford Forrest.)

The Swiss are an immensely practical people. They do not, for instance, believe in “mutual deterrence.” In deterrence, yes, very definitely. They are determined to deter anyone from invading Switzerland, and so they have adopted the Porcupine Principle. You roll yourself into a ball and show your quills.[2] And their quills are by no means half-sharpened substitutes simply because they are a militia. Like the Israeli army, which took them for its model, they may not be full-time soldiers, but they are fully competent. Like the Israelis, who have done very nicely against enemies who outnumber them enormously, the Swiss are certain to make life very uncomfortable for any invader.

To the Swiss, survival is a way of life.

Joseph Stalin hated them.

The Lesson of Switzerland

I wish every survivalist would read John McPhee’s book. It is not long. It is beautifully clear. In it, you come to understand the soldiers of Switzerland and their officers. You learn how Swiss industry and business support the army and those who belong to it, and of the positive, healthy role the army plays in the life of the country. And you realize, of course, that the Swiss are afraid of war, because of its destructiveness, because of the agonies it brings in its wake, and because of the threat it would be to their ancient freedom, their democracy, their civilization.

They are afraid as any sane people would be afraid—but they are not panicked by fear, stunned by fear, or whipped by fear into reliance on ferocity and displays of violence.

There are many lessons we can learn from the Swiss and Switzerland:

The most important, to my mind, is that, ideally, the entire nation should be dedicated to survival, not just certain official elements, nor yet a minority of far-seeing citizens. We would have been strengthened immeasurably had we never fallen for the hollow promise of “mutual deterrence” and “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) and dismantled what little beginning we had made in building a civil defense system. Again, we would be strengthened immeasurably if we could develop a much closer relationship between the regular armed forces and National Guard and the citizenry as a whole, a relationship more closely resembling that which pertained in the days before the federalization of the Guard, when the states were more directly responsible for their militias. Just as the Swiss nation-in-arms is a guarantee against chaos and collapse in the event of a worst-case situation, so could our armed forces be were we to rebuild and strengthen our militias. Not only would we be better prepared against all-out attack, but we also would be far better off where natural disasters are concerned-something our sciences and technologies still cannot protect us against.

The main argument against such a reconstruction of our state and local militias would, of course, be a financial one. Where the hell are we going to get that much money? We are so used to everything military being hideously expensive that we cannot even entertain the idea of possibly making do—that a lot of obsolete weapons are still highly effective, and definitely better than none, and that the same goes for tools, transport, communications. Again, we have become used to the idea that men will not fight well unless they are well and promptly paid. That is not true. Some of the finest, bravest fighting men the world has ever seen have fought for next to nothing, for their families, their neighbors, their nations, for abstract causes, or just for the hell of it. The men of the Swiss army are paid almost nothing by our standards, but their corporate employers are sensible enough and patriotic enough to continue their salaries when they are on active duty.

Certainly it is late in the day for us to be considering any such fundamental changes in our society, but consider them we should, for if we fail to do so we may find ourselves with no society at all or one changed out of all recognition by our enemies.

Consider Switzerland. Basically, most Swiss are French or German speakers; some speak Italian as their basic tongue; a very few, a Latin dialect called Romansch. Yet they are a united country, and in that lies much of their strength, for there is strength in unity and in disunity nothing but the seeds of disaster. In the United States today, we have active among us men and forces whose primary purpose is to divide us against each other—and whose primary weapon is unreasoning fear—and I would not hesitate to gamble that somewhere behind each of them, no matter what doctrine they profess, there is Communist connivance and Russian money. As an example, let us take two nations which, not many years ago, were known as the Switzerland of the Near East and the Switzerland of South America: Lebanon and Uruguay. Lebanon fell into chaos, with a dozen feuding sects and parties killing each other, mostly with Iron Curtain weapons. Uruguay was forced into repression and tyranny by deliberate and persistent terrorist action seeking to destroy the sound democracy which had existed there. Do any of us, survivalists or not, want to see the United States follow in their footsteps?

We should, of course, be concerned for the survival of ourselves and our families, but like the Swiss we should also be concerned with the survival of our towns and cities, our states and our nation, our institutions and our freedoms.

Who knows what persuasion and patient effort might still accomplish on the local level?

1. John McPhee, La Place de la Concorde Suisse, Farrar/Straus/Giroux, New York, 1984. Return

2. General Daniel Graham’s “High Frontier” defense system could do something similar for us by drastically reducing our vulnerability to nuclear attack. Return

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Berendt Conversion
by John Brunner

While you are reading these words four people will have died from starvation, most of them children.

—Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb

Thus opens Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb.

“It seems to me, then, that by 2000 A.D. or possibly earlier, man’s social structure will have utterly collapsed, and that in the chaos that will result as many as three billion people will die. Nor is there likely to be a chance of recovery thereafter…”

Thus closes a popular article by Dr. Isaac Asimov, perhaps the best-known science writer in America.

It would not be hard to multiply examples of doom-crying among science fiction writers, or, for that matter, the American intelligentsia. There are scores of stories and articles describing life in these United States after the year 2000 as poor, nasty, brutish, and short—although hardly solitary as Hobbes would have it.

Much of this doomsaying springs from four original sources which are endlessly requoted: Global 2000: Report to the President, Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, and two outputs from MIT: World Dynamics and The Limits to Growth. All are essentially mathematical trend projections, with the MIT studies employing complex and highly detailed computer models.

Strangely, intellectuals, including science fiction writers, have a lot of confidence in these economic models, although they offer us very little in the ability of social or physical scientists to save us. It’s almost impossible to overestimate the influence of these books even twenty years after most of them were written. Writers make predictions based upon them; teachers quote them endlessly, or worse, quote secondary and tertiary sources which draw their ideas from them.

The result is that these works and the view they represent have become “conventional wisdom” for the young. Doom is “in the air,” so to speak; a great part of our younger generation is convinced that no matter what we do, no matter how much we discover or learn, we are finally and inevitably doomed. If Isaac Asimov says we are finished, then what hope have we?

Yet—are we doomed? Surely the works which generated that view deserve analysis. Let’s look at the models of doom. Back in March, 1972, Dennis and Donella Meadows published The Limits to Growth. This highly influential book grew out of research sponsored in 1970 by a group of wealthy industrialists and academics who called themselves “The Club of Rome.” In contrast to the notion of progress, a view of history that had dominated Western intellectual thought throughout the previous 150 years, The Limits to Growth predicted an unending and probably unavoidable series of disasters: vast upswings in population punctuated with massive die-offs as we either ran out of resources, polluted ourselves to death, or otherwise ruined the planet.

Moreover, according to this view, there wasn’t much we could do about the situation. Efforts to stave off one kind of a crisis would generally succeed only partially—and would create an even worse, and totally unavoidable, crisis of another kind.

Limits triggered a series of books and studies. It also inspired political movements based on the philosophy of “an era of limits.” Phrases such as “appropriate technology” (those who wondered just who was for inappropriate technology were ignored), “limits,” “soft paths,” and “ecology” became widely known and were symbols of power. The Limits to Growth was probably very influential in the election of Jimmy Carter as President; certainly the enthusiasts of the Club of Rome view of history believed that was true, just as they happily believed in his notion of a “national malaise.”

The Limits to Growth was largely based on a single “systems dynamics world mode”: a computer simulation developed at MIT by Professor Jay Forrester. This model is presented in considerable detail in Forrester’s book World Dynamics (Wright-Allen Press, 1971, 2nd Ed., 1973). The world model consists of some 45 interconnected subsystems: typical subsystems are NRUR (Natural-resource-usage rate), DR (Death rate), POL (Pollution), CID (Capital investment discard), BR (Birth rate), etc., all of which are interactively connected: that is, agricultural investment increases agricultural output, which increases birth rate but also pollution; pollution decreases agricultural output; etc. The simulation output includes such things as total world population, total pollution, and something called Quality of Life (which, incidentally, peaked in 1940 according to the “standard” model).

By today’s standards the world dynamics model may not be so impressive, but in 1970 it certainly was. It looked highly plausible, and furthermore, in those days there was a natural awe and respect for COMPUTERS; and perhaps even more for those who could persuade computers to do something useful. World Dynamics and more especially The Limits to Growth captured the imaginations of many respected social thinkers.

There were counter-arguments. I made some of them in a book called A Step Farther Out (Ace Books; it’s still in print). Members of the faculty of the University of Sussex analyzed The Limits to Growth in a scholarly counterblast called Model of Doom. Herman Kahn’s Hudson Institute published The Next 200 Years with a picture of the future nothing like what you found in Limits. However, in most academic institutions there was strong support for the conclusions and recommendations in Limits.

One thing was lacking in this debate: most of those doing the discussing, whether for or against The Limits to Growth, had no means of doing simulations of their own. Computers large enough to handle models of this complexity weren’t all that widespread, and time on computers of any size wasn’t easy to get. While (to Forrester’s great credit) World Dynamics presents a thorough mathematical description of the world model, it doesn’t’give source code (other than in the language DYNAMO); and in those days few social scientists had means for producing computer programs in DYNAMO or any other language, even if they had access to suitable machines and compilers. Most of the analyses of Limits and World Dynamics models on which the book was based had to be done in words and on paper.

By 1978 that wasn’t so true. By then it was possible to get source code in basic for the World Dynamics models. I wrote one myself. Running that program demonstrated quite dramatically just how sensitive the World Dynamics model was to a key pair of assumptions: that NR (National resources) was monotonically dwindling and did so at a rate proportional to Cl (Capital investment); and that birth rate does not fall with increasing wealth.

Moreover, the model had no provision whatever for “resource substitution”: although history shows that when a resource becomes scarce the price rises, and some other resource—often one not previously thought useful—is substituted. (The classic example is the use of coal after Britain’s timber resources had been exhausted.)

What about The Population Bomb? First: the blurb that opens Ehrlich’s book is clearly wrong. My copy was published in 1969, a year in which about 53 million people died from all causes. It takes four seconds to read the blurb, so for one person to die each second, 31.5 million—about sixty percent of all deaths-would have had to be from starvation.

Taking the UN cause-of-death statistics and being as fair as possible by including as “starvation” any cause related to nutrition—diphtheria, typhus, parasitical diseases, etc.—we get about a million, or some five and a half percent. Clearly Dr. Ehrlich is off by a factor of ten.

Actually, world agriculture is keeping up with population. At the Mexico City meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975, Dr. H. A. B. Parpia, the senior professional of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, told me that just about every country raises more than enough food to be self-sufficient. The food is grown, but sometimes not harvested; or if harvested, spoils before it can be eaten. In many countries vermin get more of the crop than the people; insects outeat people almost everywhere. The pity is that the technology to harvest and preserve enough for everyone exists right now.

I’m not saying there’s any excuse for relaxing and saying hunger is a myth. It isn’t. But simple food storage technologies, and research into non-damaging pesticides and pest-control methodologies, could stop famine in most of those parts of the world where that horseman still stalks the land. Other simple technologies—even mylar linings for traditional dung-smeared grain storage pits—would save lives.

We know how to do it; but we won’t unless we’re willing to try. We won’t get anywhere sitting around crying “Doom!”

Yet according to Dr. Ehrlich’s book, “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Obviously that didn’t happen; but the doomsayers’ viewpoint—which did not stop agro-engineers from making efforts, despite the flat prediction that their efforts were useless—did invade our schools so successfully that a new generation of students believes in Doom as thoroughly as ever did a Crusader in the holiness of his cause.

The other side of the coin was expressed in the Hudson Institute’s The Year 2000, which points out that the levels of rice yield per acre in India has not yet equaled what the Japanese could do in the twelfth century. Another analyst, Colin Clark, has shown that if the Indian farmer could reach the production levels of South Italian peasants, there would be no danger of starvation in India for a good time to come.

In other words, it doesn’t even take Miracle Rice, fertilizers, and a high-energy civilization to hold off utter disaster in the developing countries. It only takes adding technology to traditional peasant skills—indeed, the kind of thing advocated by E. F. Schumacher in his Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. Showing people how to use mylar and simple non-persistent fungicides for food storage along with peasant agricultural methodology will hold the line against famine—for a while.

Moreover, we have new technologies. There are means for increasing protein production. More protein in childhood would cut back infant diseases like kwashiorkor and “red baby”; those diseases have the effect of permanently lowering adult IQ by about twenty points. What if the next generation of a developing country were “twenty IQ points” more intelligent? For many of the ignorant of the world are not stupid, but they may be stunted.

But the doomsters, like the following story, have an answer. If we help those people feed themselves, they’ll only breed to famine again. Worse, they’ll demand industry. They’ll strip-mine phosphates and poison the seas (as shown by Cousteau in one of his films). What’s the point of helping them? Doom is still around the corner.

The Berendt Conversion
by John Brunner

Under the cloud-dark sky that promised rain by sunset: the noise of an approaching engine. Heads were turned. The soup-tanker was of course what everybody was looking forward to, but it couldn’t possibly be here for at least another hour and would be later still if the crew had to beat off an attempted hijack. Anyhow, what was coming was a helicopter and those had been reserved since spring for moving people, not goods.

It was a bad time for the unexpected. Five wars were in progress over food.

Therefore soldiers’ knuckles paled on the hands that held their guns. Many of them had seen service during hunger riots last year and the year before. Workers trudging down from the hills with burdens of miscellaneous vegetation reflexively glanced around in search of cover. In the supermarket carpark the non-working refugees reacted also, bar the handful who were too weak. But those were mostly children. This operation had an admirable record. Some days nobody died here at all.

The youngest of the five policemen whose job it was to keep order among the inhabitants of the car-park was proud of his contribution to this exceptional achievement. Before permitting himself to look up he took time to survey his charges. Most were sheltered by abandoned cars and delivery trucks; even the least fortunate were protected from wind and rain, if not from cold, by tents improvised out of plastic sheet and aluminium pipe. Now and then someone in a tent noticed that someone in a more substantial home was weakening and took advantage of the police’s backs being turned to kick out the luckier neighbours. Once there had been an epidemic of such attacks and for a week more fatalities were due to murder than to hunger.

Not presently, however. And the young policeman had no opinion, private or public, concerning the latrine rumour which claimed that the protein content of the soup had been cut to increase fatigue and forestall another similar outbreak.

As soon as they realised the chopper was neither shooting nor being shot at, the refugees and workers slumped back in time to where they had been a moment earlier: the latter because payout was as distant as usual, the former—it could be read in their hostile eyes—because they feared more mouths were being brought, more empty bellies.

The soldiers would have done likewise but that the sergeant in charge of the assessment detail ordered them to stand to. The earliest-returning of the workers were coming up to the perimeter gate with their day’s forages, demanding to be let pass along the barbed wire corridor into the supermarket, that horrible echoing cavern of a place where the only light came from holes blasted in the walls and meshed over against thieves, or cold refugees jealous that the soldiers and police should sleep under such solid cover.

The young policeman had often wondered what it was like to run that gauntlet at the end of a hard day: to face the scales, then the sonic testers employed to determine how much usable greenery, how much woody matter, and how much dirt and gravel made up the weight of each bag and basket, then let his hand be stamped with a code indicating what food he was to be allotted when the tanker pulled in with its loaf-nets sagging on either side.

Funny… As the summer wore to its end more and more of the workers seemed to be losing touch with reality, trying to deceive the assessors by hiding pebbles among the leaves and roots they could legitimately gain credit for, even though they must surely by now be aware that all such trickery was certain to be found out. Yesterday indeed a man who should have known better, being father of five children including a recent baby, had been fool enough to alter the 1 stamped on his hand to a 4 and in accordance with regulations had been refused any food at all.

It wasn’t fair on the kids for him to have done that.

His eyes strayed to the hillside. To left, to right and also at his back, the slopes were littered with what had been handsome expensive homes before the ghetto-ghouls began their rampage through this valley. He tried to picture it as it had been five years earlier; failed, because as a kid he had never lived in nor even visited such a wealthy suburb; then tried not to visualise it as it inevitably would be after the winter and failed again. But for the frequent rain this land would already be shedding dust this fall as once it had shed leaves.

The helicopter settled on the patch where the soup-tanker ordinarily drew up, the most defensible spot. Alerted by radio, the commanding colonel and his adjutant were on hand. An armed private with the professionally paranoid air of a bodyguard jumped out, only condescending to salute after he had swept the vicinity with his suspicious gaze. Then an important passenger climbed down, encumbered with a bulging paunch, and shook the colonel’s hand and marched off with him to the supermarket.

Among the refugees there had grown up a ritual to be performed on catching sight of anybody fat. Behind the wire a defiant old man demonstrated it, being himself as scrawny as a beanpole; he spat on the ground, trod on the spittle, turned his back with an over-shoulder scowl. To this the young policeman was directed to reply with a gesture towards his gun and a threatening glare, rehearsed again and again to render it maximally convincing and save the ammunition that would be wasted were he to have to shoot.

But the landing of the chopper had saved him from—from something. He had been on the edge of—of—of… It wouldn’t come clear. He could, though, sense it would have been disastrous. (Maybe he himself would in a fit of craziness have spat on seeing how fat the visitor was?)

He did not even drop his hand to his holster. He simply stood and shivered, more from the narrowness of his escape from—from whatever it was he had escaped, than from the chill that harbingered the rain.

Who was this person, anyhow, who rated a slow, expensive, wasteful mode of transport like a chopper in times of planetary dearth? The machine’s pilot, a lean man with a close-trimmed dark beard, had got out and stood a few feet away, stretching himself limb by limb as he looked the scene over. The young policeman attempted to utter a greeting, pose a question… and abruptly couldn’t. His mouth was watering incredibly. He had caught a scent so indescribably delicious it dizzied him. It awoke hunger that seemed to cry out from his very cells.

Hideously embarrassed, he gulped and gulped, hoping the bearded man would not notice. Seemingly he was more interested in the workers returning with their loads of greenstuff and the armed men lined up to receive them.

After a few moments he said, “Get much trouble with thieves, do you?”

The salivation was coming under control. (What could have triggered it?) “Not twice,” the policeman managed to quote.

The pilot glanced at him as though surprised. “Hmm! It’s long since I heard that crack! Must have been when the cows went on their involuntary seven-year diet… Still, I guess granary guards are much alike wherever and whenever.”

The policeman let that pass without bothering about its meaning. Now that he could speak normally again, he preferred to put the question he had originally intended about the passenger.

“Government food chemist,” the pilot answered.

The policeman essayed a joke. “Looks as though he tests his products on himself, doesn’t it?”

A merely polite smile. “If you knew him you couldn’t picture him being his own guinea pig… Oh-oh. Here it comes!”

Like stabbing needles the first drops of rain. In the car-park the refugees ducked under cover; workers lining up to be shepherded into the supermarket made what use they could of their bundled twigs and leaves.

“Inside, quickly!”

The policeman started. The pilot had scrambled back into his seat; now he was patting the place next to him, which had been occupied by the bodyguard. There were two more seats in back. One, the passenger’s, was empty. In the other dozed a top sergeant, a man heavy-set without being fat, on whom the refugees would not have expended spittle, with great pouches under his eyes and sagging empty jowls that testified to his having lost much poundage since—since whenever. He snored occasionally.

“Come on!” the pilot urged. “The rain’s doing half your work for you, isn’t it?”

True, true. It dampened spirits as it wet the ground. He climbed three wide-spaced rungs and sat, pulling the door to behind him. At once his mouth flooded again. The same scent was in the air, far stronger.

“It’s no fit way for a human being to end the day’s work,” the pilot muttered. He was staring as the workers formed a tidy line between the spikes of barbed wire and of bayonets. “To sweat from dawn to dusk, creep homeward folded double by your load, be told there’s too much dirt and grit in it, half rations for your family tonight… And it’s making more desert when we need less.”

The policeman had heard that sort of talk before. But when people were starving by the tens of millions it was no time for fancy fits of conscience. Just so long as they were kept alive.

“You got a patch of dirt on your face,” the pilot said after a pause. “Right cheekbone.”

The policeman almost raised his hand to rub before he remembered. “Oh, that. No, it isn’t dirt. I guess I bruised it somehow.”

“Ah-hah?” The pilot scrutinised him. “Bruise easily, do you? Yes? Do your joints hurt?”

“Sometimes. Seems to be a thing going around.”

“Be damned,” the pilot said softly. “I knew the refugees were getting it, but I thought at least the guards… Here, boy.” He reached under the instrument panel and produced a lunchbox previously hidden in shadow. The instant he opened it the delicious scent became unbearable.

“Boy?” the policeman bridled.

“Hell, if you’re old enough to vote I’ll personally eat the shit you’ve passed since your birthday…” Taking from the box something brown and white, something pink, something round and red. Also a knife.

“Should give you an orange or a lemon,” the pilot said musingly. “Don’t have any by me, though… What’s ‘going around,’ as you call it, is something we’ve known the cure for since about the eighteenth century—scurvy. I recall at Alexandria it made the soldiers so listless they paid no attention when the enemy approached. Bad stuff. Here, eat this. Best be quick and not let any of the refugees see you with it.” He held out a swiftly-fashioned sandwich of bread and ham, and also a tomato.

“Are they real?” the young policeman breathed.

“I should live so long and grow so rich! Hell, no. These are berendtised.”

“All made out of—of…?” With a gesture at the workers’ forage.

“Sure, but don’t be put off. It’s not rat-meat I’m giving you. That’s officer-grade food, four hundred fifty bucks’ worth of power to every pound. You won’t taste the same again in a hurry… Mark you, when there’s nothing else even rat-meat can be tasty.”

Taking the sandwich gingerly the policeman said, “I never got that far down. Seen plenty that did, of course. Uh—where were you reduced to rats?”

“Oh, there’s nothing very special about rats. After the cats and dogs are all gone… In Paris, though: that was something else. We had some very strange meats when we cleared out the Zoo—elephant, giraffe, even python… Say, eat up, will you, instead of staring? It’s not poisoned!”

The policeman opened his mouth and crammed it in, trying to savour each crumb and morsel, failing because his hunger was so deep, so keen.

“Oh, God,” he said at length, and ran his tongue hopefully around his lips to trap a last elusive drop of tomato juice. In back, the sleeping sergeant shifted but didn’t open his eyes.

The pilot closed the lunchbox and carefully put it away. There was a little silence, but for the sound of rain. At last the policeman said, “I heard a story about Berendt. Is it true he killed himself by jumping into his own food-converter?”

“It’s true he killed himself. Whether he did it in that precise way is just about impossible to find out. They prefer people not to know they killed him.”

“What? You just said he killed himself and now–”

“Did you never wonder what decided him?”

“Ah… Well, sure. It seems kind of odd he did it just when he’d succeeded in his life’s ambition, right?”

“Ambition,” the pilot repeated thoughtfully. “Obsession may have been more like it. The story goes he never talked or thought about anything except his plan to save the world from famine.”

“What—what drove him, do you think?”

“Heaven knows. Some people say his father had been eaten. Things like that did happen. It was a vicious winter. Of course it was just a Little Hunger, and at that it was in wartime. The Big Hunger hadn’t more than started.”

“Where was that?”

“Leningrad.”

There was another pause. Now dusk and denser rain had almost veiled the late-returning workers. The soldiers, as wet and cold as their charges, were beginning to raise their voices and threaten to cuff with gun-butts.

“For whatever reason,” the pilot resumed unexpectedly, “Yakov Berendt made the food converter his personal crusade. He had no scientific talent, so the first thing he had to do was make a fortune so he could hire top chemists and engineers and dietitians. It cost every penny he had just to build one pilot model. But when he had that, he had proof it could be done. He was able to borrow. Altogether he borrowed over twenty million. Produced the machine he’d always dreamed of. Drop in any kind of vegetation, even the poisonous kind, even the useless kind like straw and twigs, fit the right master-tape, and out would come good nourishing food. How could there be any more starvation when there was one of his machines in every village?”

“But there isn’t,” the policeman said, settling back comfortably in his seat and folding his hands on his stomach. It was amazing how full and sleepy that one sandwich had made him.

“Right. There isn’t. With the Big Hunger looming larger by the day, the people who had loaned him the money to develop the converter branded him a crank and a lunatic and had him voted off his own company’s board. Once they were in control they made sure the price of a Berendt converter was the highest the market could bear. No, there are not converters in every village. But there are in every smart restaurant and hotel. And some private homes, come to that. This guy I’m ferrying around: he has one.” The pilot scowled into the gathering dark.

“But in any case,” he added, “he was completely wrong to think his machine could save us.”

“How’s that again?” The policeman’s eyes threatened to drift shut; he forced the lids apart and forced himself to concentrate on what the pilot was saying.

“Proof is all about us. Like I said, this project and those like it are making more desert when we need less. There’s nothing wonderful about being a villager, you know—what reason is there to think peasants would behave any differently from townsfolk? Just as your rich family in the big city buys dirt-cheap rubbish for the converter and puts on an expensive tape and eats the haute cuisine, so villagers would have been content to chuck in leaves and grass and the hell with actually planting anything. Who wants to break his back for corn and cabbages? Food from the converter is better than most of what you get from the ground; they choose only the very finest models to make up tapes from. Why, they’ve got to the stage now where they can duplicate vintage wines. The experts say they’re more consistent than the original.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the policeman muttered. “Never tasted wine… Say, you didn’t finish telling me why Berendt committed suicide.”

“It could have been because of what his partners planned to do with the converter; could equally have been because he suddenly realised his idea was stupid from the start. By the time he got the machine working it was already far too late. We were set for our population crash, one of the classic two-thirds degree. No point in arguing with laws of nature.”

“Now wait a minute. Nature doesn’t always rule us. We’ve changed the face of nature for a start. First time we ploughed a field, wasn’t that going against nature?”

“If it was, it likely didn’t work. Things like that succeed when you’re working with nature, not against. Heard the news today?”

“Been on duty since dawn. No.”

“There’s civil war in Brazil. The people who accepted land grants in rain-forest areas and cleared them without realising that when you expose the ground it turns to a rock-hard crust which won’t grow anything: they lost patience and took out after the bastards who sold them this bill of goods. A grenade killed the provincial governor and his senior aide last night; today the country’s under martial law.” The pilot stabbed the air with his forefinger. “What happened to those Brazilian farms: that’s what I mean when I talk about going against nature. You have to coax her, never drive her. And we’re still animals for all our cleverness. Animals that outstrip their food supply suffer a population crash, and the rate is almost always two out of three. Rabbits. Lemmings. All kinds of animals. And us. And it’s such a horrible state to be reduced to… I remember in India, where they had fourteen famines in ninety years. As the famine increased, men abandoned towns and villages and wandered helplessly. It was easy to recognise their condition: eyes sunk deep in the head; lips pale and covered with slime; the skin hard, with the bones showing through; the belly nothing but a pouch hanging down empty; knuckles and kneecaps showing prominently. One would cry and howl for hunger, while another lay on the ground dying in misery. Wherever you went, you saw nothing but corpses.”

The policeman shivered, though the cabin was snug and wind-tight.

“And it was bad in Skibbereen, too. That’s Ireland. One village called South Reen seemed to be deserted when we went there with supplies of bread. So we looked in some of the houses—hovels, really. In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horse-cloth, and their wretched legs hanging about naked above the knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive. They were in fever—four children, a woman, and what had once been a man…

“In another case my clothes were nearly torn off in my endeavours to escape from a throng of pestilence around, when my neck-cloth was seized from behind by a grip which compelled me to turn. I found myself grasped by a woman with an infant just born in her arms, and the remains of a filthy sack across her loins—the sole covering of herself and babe. The same morning the police opened a house on the adjoining lands which was observed shut for many days, and two frozen corpses were found lying upon the mud floor, half devoured by the rats…

“A mother, herself in fever, was seen the same day to drag out the corpse of her child, a girl of about twelve, perfectly naked, and leave it half covered with stones. In another house within 500 yards of the cavalry station at Skibbereen the dispensary doctor found seven wretches lying, unable to move, under the same cloak—one had been dead many hours, but the others were unable to move themselves or the corpse.”

“Well, if it’s really a law of nature…”the policeman said, staring appalled at the pilot’s calm face.

“Oh, I believe in the law all right. It doesn’t say the two-thirds we’re going to lose can’t be the right two-thirds.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Starting with people who starve others out of megalomania and greed. They’d be no loss. This guy, this food chemist I’m nursemaiding: he’s like that. Reminds me a lot of John of Leyden. Real name was Bockelson but he preferred the short form. More like a king’s name, I guess.

“And that was how he saw himself. Somehow he conned a gang of people in Münster into setting up a fantasy kingdom with him and his sidekicks at the top. Well, the Empire wasn’t going to put up with that, so they set siege to the place and starved the defenders out. The self-styled king requisitioned all the food in the city and had all the horses killed. At all times the royal court ate well and had sufficient stocks of meat, corn, wine and beer for half a year. The rest were not so lucky. Every animal—dog, cat, mouse, rat, hedgehog—was killed and eaten and people began to consume grass and moss, old shoes and the whitewash on the walls, the bodies of the dead.”

“Whitewash?” the policeman said incredulously.

“Oh, sure. People have been known to eat dirt; haven’t you seen them? Even short of that, people put some funny things in their bellies. I remember on Guernsey they drank stuff made from parsnips and fruit leaves instead of tea. Smoked some peculiar things too. Made cigarettes out of dried potato peel-bramble leaves—rose-petals… even plain grass. Anything to stave off the pangs. Coming back from Moscow we boiled our boots and the leather harness left over after we’d eaten the horses, brewed something warm with the illusion of nourishment.”

“I heard about people boiling boots,” the policeman said. “Thought it was a joke.”

“Not so funny when it happens to you,” said the pilot. “Like I say, we’d finished the horses. Deprived of fodder and constantly exposed, they died in great numbers. Often men did not wait until the horses had fallen to devour them… A stray horse was instantly killed and dismembered almost living: unlucky animal who moved a few steps away from his master… A lot of fights got started over who was to have what bit.”

Cold—unspeakable terrible cold—seemed to reach into the chopper. It was so completely numbing, one could not even shiver.

Eventually the policeman was able to say, “I get the feeling we here are—well, you’d have to call us lucky, I guess.”

“Sure. You’re very lucky. Only thing apt to delay your daily rations is a bunch of people half out of their minds and armed with shotguns they have no more shells for. While in Africa… You said you didn’t hear the news today?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, they had to ground the UN relief flights. Seems Zaire got paranoid. Decided they aren’t getting enough relief and all their neighbours are getting so much they’re planning to trade it to Europe and buy arms in order to invade. So they dusted off their ground-to-air missiles—they got these good ones made in Switzerland—and started shooting down the UN planes. Pilots won’t fly the missions any more, and do you blame ’em?”

“That’s terrible!”

“Not so much terrible as typical. In L.A., you know, they’d put up a rick of oranges and apples, put gasoline over it and set fire to them. Vegetables were being destroyed and everything. To keep the price up. But there were great queues of guys in soup lines. Nobody had a dime.” The pilot shook his head. “It’s the ‘I-don’t-want-it-you-can’t-have-it’ syndrome. See it all the time in spoiled kids.”

“I guess maybe it’s as well Berendt did away with himself,” the policeman said. “Whether he jumped into his converter or not. If he was alive he’d be the world’s most disappointed man.”

He hesitated. “Funny, you know. Talking to you makes me think about him as a person for the first time. Always before I’ve had this impression of him as—well, close to a saint. Spent his whole life for the sake of others and it isn’t his fault his dream never came true.”

From the back of the cabin, a snorting noise. They looked behind and found the sergeant was awake.

“I’ve been listening to you, Jacobson,” he said, pushing his blocky torso upright. “Spinning these crazy lies to someone who’s no more than a kid—it’s disgusting. Hear me? What you said about Ireland: it’s not true. I got family in Ireland and they just wrote me and said you can buy butter without a ration card. Natural butter! Can’t do that here, can you? Does that sound like starvation?” Aside to the policeman. “And I just saw this TV report about Paris, too. And they are not burning food in L.A.—lies, all of it!”

The pilot winked sidelong at the policeman, who was bewildered.

“As for Berendt!” The sergeant leaned forward, hands on the back of the pilot’s seat and clenching tight as though he would rather have gripped the other’s throat. “Berendt did not jump into his own machine and there is not a little of him in everything that comes out of a converter and it’s a load of blasphemous nonsense. I wish you weren’t civilian personnel—I’d like to sort you out the way you deserve.”

With a final glare he slumped back and concluded, “Out with you, boy. You’ve had enough of this bastard’s yarn-spinning.”

Confused, the policeman opened the door to the rain and jumped down. Approaching were a group of men under an umbrella: the food chemist, an escorting officer and the bodyguard.

“They’re coming back!” he called to the pilot, who also clambered down.

And said very softly, almost without moving his lips but contriving to make himself heard perfectly: “So maybe Yakov Berendt didn’t wind up in a food-converter. But I’ll tell you who did. The guy I used to fly around before this one. And soon’s I get the chance he’ll be the next.” With ever so slight an inclination of the head. “Like I said, we need to make sure it’s the right two-thirds of mankind we dispose of. Thanks to Berendt we have the means to make them useful for a change. Tell people that. Tell people you can trust.”

He clapped the younger man on the shoulder, then went on loudly, “Did everything go off all right, sir?”

“Perfectly, thank you, Joseph,” said the important passenger. “Though it took longer than I expected. I hope you weren’t too bored.”

“Not at all, sir,” said the pilot. “Not at all.” And made to help the fat man up the ladder.

For several minutes after the chopper had taken off the policeman was in a kind of daze. Extraordinary images kept flashing through his mind: some ludicrous, like a pan full of boots being boiled, and others ghastly, like an emaciated child licking a whitewashed wall.

And that parting remark. To be taken seriously? Surely it must be some sort of sick joke!

He was recalled to the present by the roaring noise of the soup-tanker as it ground to a halt among cheers from refugees and soldiers alike. It was a tradition to signal its arrival in that fashion. Automatically the young policeman started to join in.

And checked.

He looked at the bulky tanker with the loaf-nets dangling from it, thought of the grass and leaves and twigs and roots it would carry in those nets when it left here and returned to its base in the nearest city.

Thought of what would happen to that greenstuff. Thought of tomato juice on his chin, bread, ham… and then of the greyish quarter-loaf he would receive at supper, gritty in texture, under its sour crust more hole than crumb. That, and a bowl of the invariable watery broth in which floated a few anonymous vegetables. It was a common game to make bets on their identity. There was never meat, of course. It cost too much.

After a while he started wondering whom he could trust enough to tell about the Berendt conversion.

Editor’s Afterword

But is doom around the corner, even without a marvel to turn weeds and stubble into nourishing food?

The best answer is that historically people haven’t done it. When nations reach a high level of technology—and of infant survival—the fertility rate falls. The U.S. appeared to be an exception to that with the World War II “baby boom,” but now that swiggle in the fertility rate has passed. The girls born in 1944 are 45 now, through their child-bearing period, and the number of girls born per fertile girl in the U.S. has fallen to an all-time low, despite the success of films like Baby Boom and Three Men and a Baby. So low has it dropped that now one occasionally hears economists advocate bonuses for larger families! The same is true of other industrialized nations, regardless of religion or socio-economic system. Populations of wealthy nations do not rise without limit.

Yet—in our schools and colleges and universities straight and unadulterated Malthusianism is taught and learned and has become “conventional wisdom.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Contract
by Don Hawthorne

Previously in these pages we have presented exploits of “The Iron Angel,” a giant Russian steam locomotive pressed into service during the last days of the next war.

The Soviet Union, after a disastrous attempt to gain mastery over Western Europe and the Middle East through military conquest, has been defeated by a coalition of nations in the bloodiest and most costly war in human history. Denied its tremendous nuclear advantage by a vigorous and effective Strategic Defense Shield, the U.S.S.R. was prepared for yet another of the vicious wars of attrition that no other nation but she could survive and win.

Alas, the very faction which brought this war upon the Soviet people, a reactionary Committee for State Security dissatisfied with the performance of the Defense Forces, unleashed an extremely effective biological weapon: Vo-Devvatnatsat, binary biological agent “A-19,” or as it has become known to the rest of the world, the Gas Bug.

The Gas Bug is an organism which metabolizes petroleum-derived fuels. Such a tailored organism is already under extensive testing by several of the world’s major oil companies as an aid to combating oil spills, such as occurred on the Exxon Valdez.

The designers of the Gas Bug had a far different purpose in mind: An invading army (whatever its motives or justifications for them), utterly dependent upon petroleum-derivative fuels for its advances, would be stopped dead in its tracks should those fuel stocks be destroyed. The defenders, on the other hand, prepared for the use of such an organism and with access to immunizers against its effects, would be free to operate mechanized units with freedom in an otherwise infantry-only combat environment.

The perfect plan—unless the organism mutates to metabolize crude oil, as well.

With the loss of virtually the entire world’s stocks of fuel, the major industrialized nations of the earth suffered the transportation equivalent of a stroke. Overnight entire economies ground to a halt; the world began to slip into a long night.

Such a chain of events, violent as they are, are no less likely because of perestroika, glasnost, or the less well publicized demokratizatsiya now chipping away at the monolithic facade of Soviet Communism. Indeed, resistance and resentment of these vital programs may make such a scenario more likely than any sane person would like to ponder.

In the April 10th, 1989, issue of Time magazine, the editor of Ogonyok magazine, Vitali Korotich, presented this grim prophecy for the Soviet Union should glasnost end: “It will be destroyed, and we will be left a hungry, stupid, terrible country with a big army—a very dangerous country.”

One lesson of history is that the noblest causes have the most intractably evil opponents. Glasnost is no exception, suffering all the more since its strongest detractors are not external foes of the nation, but committed patriots, convinced that their motherland stands on the brink of ruin because of the perceived excesses of perestroika and glasnost.

It is very dangerous to be standing close to anyone, or anything, on a precipice. The men of the Red Army Combat Engineers who commandeered the “Iron Angel” have done so in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between themselves and those of their countrymen who, rather than pull their nation back from that abyss by working together, are instead rushing headlong into it.

However, these Combat Engineers of the Red Army have been at war for a long time, and not all the lessons they have learned have been bloody ones.

The Contract
by Don Hawthorne

Here, in the waves and the troughs of the plains
Where the healing stillness lies,
And the vast, benignant sky restrains
And the long days make wise—
Bless to our use the rain and the sun
And the blind seed in its bed,
That we may repair the wrong that was done
To the living and the dead!

—Rudyard Kipling, “The Settler”

“Don’t leave me, Lyosha.”

Chilled, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch Rostov pulled the covers tighter about his shoulders. He and Lilia were in their compartment aboard the Krasnaya Strela, the overnight express train from Moscow to Leningrad. They were both junior officers in the Soviet Army, so their coinciding leaves had been sheer good fortune, but this private sleeper cabin on the “Red Arrow” had been a wedding present from Rostov’s commanding officer, Colonel Ivan Podgorny.

“Nyet, Lilia,” he murmured, reaching for her in the darkness. “Don’t talk foolishness; I will never leave you.” But instead of her warmth his hand met the wall of the tiny bunk they had fallen into the night before, both of them full of laughter, vodka and hopes. He turned and, despite an odd apprehension at the idea, tried to open his eyes. Where was Lilia? Was that her, standing by the samovar, next to the window?

“It wouldn’t be right, Lyosha,” she continued. Her pet name for him made him smile, as always, but her next words replaced it with a frown of puzzlement: “Suschenko is everywhere, now.”

“Suschenko?” he said aloud, his voice still thick with sleep. That was a place, he knew; a place he had been to recently. But it wasn’t on the Red Arrow’s route. They were going straight to Leningrad, for their honeymoon.

Despite that strange conviction that he should stay where he was—sleeping, safe and happy—Rostov found himself standing by the samovar. What is a samovar doing in our cabin?

“Lilia?” He suddenly noticed that the room itself was much larger than he remembered, and now even the darkness could not conceal its lavish fittings: a liquor cabinet, a large desk, bookshelves, a sofa; even a water closet…

And finally, at last awake, he found himself listening to the rhythmic pounding of the wheels as they struck the parallel joins of the rails beneath. There was a warm wetness spreading down his arm, and with it a dull ache that nearly matched the one in his heart.

Yes, I have been to Suschenko recently. He took a napkin from the setting by the samovar and pressed it to the freshly opened bullet wound in his arm, watching the linen go from ghostly white to the blackness of blood in the dark. And I am on a train, but we are not going to Leningrad.

Rostov sat down on the desk and looked out the window into the backlit indigo of a pre-dawn sky. The room was stifling hot, and his tears disappeared into the tracks of sweat from his brow.

And Lilia was never here…

The radiotelephone on his desk began warbling, its power light a red eye winking in time. As he reached for it, the bloody napkin fell unnoticed to the floor. “Rostov here.”

“Izvinite, Kapitan.” Trainman Gyrich, rescued from the KGB in Moscow and now de facto leader of the conscript locomotive engineers who kept the train running, had to shout over the background noise of the engine cab; the radiotelephone, an excellent copy of a West German design, sometimes worked too well.

“Sorry if I woke you, Captain.”

“That’s all right, Comrade Trainman; something wrong?” Rostov’s voice was as dead as his optimism. There was nearly always something wrong with this train.

“No, Captain, a town; we should be coming to it in another twenty minutes.”

Rostov was instantly awake, fully alert. “Spaceeba, Comrade Gyrich, thank you. Stop us, please. I’ll have some of my men move out ahead of us and reconnoiter.”

Rostov entered the duty station number for Sergeant Dyatlov in the forward passenger cars, where the on-duty squad was posted. The sergeant had his men out and moving up the tracks in good time, a few waving at Rostov through the windows of the command car as they passed.

They crave the action, he thought, watching them move by in the quickening gray autumn dawn. They need to be busy. Running seems to suit them no better than it does me.

Two weeks ago, he and Colonel Podgorny had conceived the theft of this train to escape to Alliance lines in the West with all their men and their stocks of Immunizer against the Gas Bug, the biologic that metabolized petroleum fuels. They had an American intelligence officer in tow who would act as their liaison, and were themselves remnants of a crack unit of the Soviet Army, the Fifth Guards Armored Engineers. It was a dangerous plan, but it held more hope for their future than remaining in the Soviet Union. To do so was to live at the whim of the KGB, which had seized the reins of power on the collapse of the government, and begun the summary liquidation or annexation of all regular Army units.

Two weeks. Can it really have been only two weeks? Rostov found the thought hard to credit, for in that time, nearly every aspect of their plans had gone horribly wrong. Podgorny was dead, killed in the escape from Moscow, along with more than a dozen of their men. They were reduced to running this diesel-fired steam locomotive on a bastardized wood alcohol mixture which was already giving them difficulties. Worst of all, a KGB patrol had caught them back at Suschenko and nearly blown them off the tracks. The light tanks of the Committee for State Security had been beaten off or destroyed, but not before tearing up their planned escape route in the process, and forcing them to take so many switchbacks to avoid other ruined lines that they were now deeper into Old Soviet territory than ever. They had yet to find a single trace of the Alliance forces that had invaded the U.S.S.R. in retribution for the “Global War of Liberation,” and there was now no telling when, or even if, they would ever escape the twenty-two-million-square-kilometer graveyard that had once been the Soviet Union.

Rostov was seized with a conviction so strong he almost cried out; the conviction that he was tired of running, tired, and something else.

Ashamed.

But they must not know that, he thought as he watched the last of the patrol disappear into the morning fog, and the first of the train’s perimeter guards take up their positions. I gave my word, to them and to Colonel Podgorny, that I would get them to safety in the West. Those were my orders, and my conscience does not enter into the matter.

He put on his uniform, and sat at the desk to await Dyatlov’s report.

An hour after full dawn, Rostov had the reconnaissance report. He was still at his desk in the command car, and with him were the five men he was coming to think of as his “staff”: Lieutenant Zorin, formerly a Senior Sergeant but, like Rostov, promoted by a grateful reservist Colonel back in Suschenko; Blaustein, the unit’s medical officer; Trainman Gyrich and his own assistant, the Lithuanian conscript named Pilkanis; and the American Naval Intelligence officer, Captain Martin Wrenn. The six men stared at the object on the desk while Dyatlov finished his report.

“How many of these”—Rostov indicated the thing that looked like a wreath of dried apricots—“have you and your men found, Sergeant?”

“Several dozen, sir. Most are nailed up on lampposts or doorways.” Dyatlov’s voice was low. Like most Russians, mutilation horrified him. It was not so much the act they found abhorrent as its implication of the stain of nekulturny on the part of the culprit. A lack of culture was the personal dread of every Russian. “Plus the ones the old fellow was–” He couldn’t finish.

Rostov held up a hand in reassurance. “And you say he is the only person left alive there?”

“Da, Kapitan, just the old man. And he is incoherent. I wanted to bring him back for Comrade Blaustein to treat, but he won’t leave.” Dyatlov licked his lips, slightly sick. “Kapitan Rostov, do you think soldiers did this?”

Rostov flashed a look to the American, Wrenn, then back to Dyatlov. “No, Sergeant, I don’t.”

Dyatlov’s eyes widened in horror. “Nyet, Kapitan Rostov! Polkovnik Wrenn”—Dyatlov used the formal Russian Naval rank—“please forgive me. I did not mean to imply–” He turned back to Rostov. “Sir, I was thinking of the KGB.”

The tension eased, and Rostov considered that. Was it possible? Could they do that to their own countrymen? He almost smiled. What am I saying? he thought bitterly. Haven’t they had enough practice?

“First let’s talk to this old man. The rails into town are intact?”

Dyatlov nodded.

“Good. Take Surgeon Blaustein with you and stay with this fellow, try to calm him down.”

“At once, sir.” Dyatlov saluted and went to the door where he turned back before leaving. “I am sorry I could not find out more, Kapitan,” he said, then went out and down to the stairs to the railbed.

Dyatlov’s souvenir from the town lay on the sack he had brought it in, and Rostov used a pen to pull the bag closer. Since the war had slowly ground to a halt, the conditions of life in the ruins of the Soviet Union had deteriorated very quickly, he knew. But even so…

“Some crazy bastards in this world, Aleksei,” Zorin said quietly. “But even the KGB doesn’t usually stoop to this sort of thing.”

Rostov looked up briefly from the string of human ears lying on the table. Even allowing for dehydration, it was obvious to everyone that many of the ears were very, very small. Don’t they, Mikhail? he thought.

“What was it Dyatlov said? That he was sorry he couldn’t find out more?” Rostov shook his head, sweeping the sack and its grisly souvenir into a wastebasket which he would later bum entirely.

“I am not sorry at all.”

There were over a hundred armed men on the train Rostov had led out of the battle-torn ruins of Moscow. All were veterans of at least two years of war. Some, like Zorin, had been fighting since the beginning. Most of them were thus convinced that there was very little left in the world that could shock, or offend, or even surprise them. They were wrong.

The great locomotive moved slowly into the town, troops advancing before it in a skirmish line, carefully picking their way among the debris. What buildings remained standing bore gaping holes, fire-blackened walls, or great smears of rusty brown that no one could mistake for rust.

Rostov stood in the hatch of the locomotive’s celestory roof alongside their American intelligence officer “guest,” and inspected the destruction with the practiced eye of the combat veteran.

There was ample evidence of small arms fire, and what looked like damage from grenade shrapnel, but not enough of either to explain the obvious slaughter that had occurred here.

“The blood,” Wrenn said. “It looks like they gathered buckets of it and threw them against the walls.”

Rostov nodded. “This was not a battle; it was butchery. And it was meant to be seen as such.”

They left the engine and headed for the relatively intact building where Comrade Surgeon Blaustein would be examining the old man Dyatlov had found this morning. Along the way they saw bodies, but it was not until they had gone several dozen meters into the town that they saw the tableaux. Nothing in Dyatlov’s report had prepared them for those.

Corpses were everywhere, every age and both sexes; men, women and children simply cut down where they stood. Wrenn knelt to examine one of them; the mutilation that had resulted in the “necklace” found by Dyatlov had been thorough, but Wrenn’s attention had been drawn by something else. Along the back of one body—the father, likely, as the other two were a woman and child—a great wound had parted the spine and cracked one shoulder blade. He looked up at Rostov. “Pretty obviously an edged weapon; I’d say a cavalry saber, maybe something even heavier.”

“Christus.” Rostov shook his head. Having been shown, he began to look more closely at the other dead, and saw that very few had been shot. Most were cruelly hacked. “What the devil did they use here? Axes, swords, knives…”

“Looks like a spear over here, Captain.” One of the men tried to call out, but his voice faltered.

Then Rostov saw the hoofprints.

God save us, it’s like something out of the history books. His mind reeled at the implication of mounted cavalry slaughtering a town.

Butchery indeed, Rostov thought, seeing some new atrocity with every step deeper into this place. An isolated town, horsemen, the slaughter of innocent civilians; it reminded him of something he had heard once, but, not entirely to his regret, he could not place it.

Many of the dead had been hung from poles, or were hanging upside down in doorways where they had been nailed by their heels. The worst were on the steps of the local Political Committee headquarters. Here a dozen decapitated corpses had been placed sitting up with each other’s heads nestled in their laps. One of the men abruptly vomited into the gutter, and Rostov envied him the release. For himself, the horror could not be purged so easily; each new sight of the atrocities that had been visited upon this town burned itself into his brain beside the image of the last.

He turned away from the steps. “That’s enough. I want to see this old man.” He went directly to the building opposite, where Leytenant Mikhail Zorin waited for him, standing guard.

“You are all right, Aleksei?” The big man’s voice was quiet, gentle, steady.

Rostov nodded. “He is in there?”

“Yes. Blaustein managed to get a sedative into him.” Zorin grabbed Rostov’s arm as the younger man began to move by him. “Aleksei, don’t be harsh with him. He is an old man. He used to be the Chief Political Administrator of this entire district. I think he is not sane anymore.”

Rostov looked back over his shoulder, once. “I believe you.”

He was sitting by a stove where Comrade Surgeon Blaustein had started a fire. It did little to warm the drafty room, but the old man in shirtsleeves did not seem to notice. Looking at him, Rostov remembered something Podgorny had told him once: No matter how bad you thought things were, they could always get worse. The old man was wearing half a dozen necklaces of human ears. He was staring at the floor between his feet where a smear of moisture darkened the wood.

Tears, Rostov realized. The old man’s eyes poured them forth in a steady stream of grief.

“Captain Rostov.” Blaustein rose and spoke to him in a low voice. “This is Sergei Josefovitch; I couldn’t get his last name out of him.”

“What in the name of all that’s holy are those things doing around his neck?” Rostov could barely keep from shouting in rage.

“He won’t let me touch them.” Blaustein gestured to the open doorway and the scene beyond. “He seems to think that whoever did that will come back and kill the rest of the townspeople if they find out he’s not wearing them as he was ordered to.”

“Ordered to?” Then it hit him: “The rest of the townspeople? But…”

Blaustein shook his head. “His mind is gone, Captain. He is convinced that there are still survivors out there.”

“You are sure there are not?”

“You haven’t been to the other side of the town, I take it.”

Rostov shook his head, and Blaustein finished: “It is even worse there.”

The old man had become aware of Rostov’s presence, and now he was staring at the gleaming white shoulder boards of a Captain of Engineers. “You are an officer.” He said it simply, sounded almost satisfied; it was a pronouncement, not an observation. “You will take care of this business now.”

Rostov crossed the floor to the old man and sat down next to him. “What business is that, Sergei Josefovitch?”

“This, all this. We surrendered our weapons, just as you ordered us to, all our weapons and ammunition. The invaders of the Rodina are defeated, that is what you said; their fuel has been destroyed by a triumph of Soviet Military Science. We have no need for self-defense weapons now, the government is firmly back in control of the situation, you will provide security for the rebuilding of the State.”

Rostov and Blaustein shared a look; both of them knew KGB rhetoric when they heard it. “How long ago, Sergei Josefovitch?” Rostov pressed gently. “How long ago were your weapons collected?”

Sergei Josefovitch shook his head, seemingly in pain. “Ah; a week? Yes, one week before–” His tears, which had nearly subsided as he began speaking, now resumed, accompanied by two brief, wracking sobs. “Before the bandits came. They demanded food, but you had commandeered all of our surplus. Then they demanded weapons and ammunition, but we had already… We gave it all up, of course.”

He looked at Rostov in utter bewilderment. “They killed.” He might have said “It rained” for as much effect as the words seemed to have upon him. But suddenly his face cleared, and he seemed lucid, almost cheerful as he resumed in a brisk, down-to-business tone. “But then they stopped killing, only a few, those few who resisted; an example had to be made, they said. And now you are here, and you will provide us the security you promised.” He reached into his back pocket and from it drew a crumpled sheet of paper which he flourished before Rostov.

The young Russian officer took the note and unfolded it, smoothing the wrinkles to read the typed words. There were spots of dried blood across one corner, but none of the wording was obscured. It was a written notification that the forces of State Security, under the regional command of Political Recovery Group Four, would provide all security and protection for the town of Iamskoy—the name of the town had been written into a space left blank for it—for which consideration said town would provide all necessary supplies as determined by the commander of said Political Recovery Group, Captain Boris Yablomov, KGB.

“It is a contract,” Sergei Josefovitch said, and the simple faith in his old man’s voice sent a chill through Rostov on hearing it. “It is legal and binding, your Captain Yablomov assured us so.”

“My Captain–” Rostov began, choking back a sob of his own, but the old man didn’t hear. He had stood and shuffled to the window, blind to the carpet of unburied dead outside.

“Now that you are here, the rest of the citizens of Iamskoy can come out of hiding.”

And before Blaustein or Rostov could stop him, he threw the window open and began shouting into the streets for the citizens to assemble. “Everyone, everyone can come out now! The army is here, and they will protect us.” He slipped through the door and went past Zorin into the middle of the street, oblivious to the bodies he stepped on or over as he went. “It is safe, now. Only a few of us have died, just those two or three, just…”

Each time he approached one of Rostov’s men, they jumped back as from an adder. But once the madman had moved on, the soldier would turn away to hide his own tears. One or two simply sat down on the spot and wept, or cursed, or walked away from the square, trying to find some place that was not filled with the sight or the smell of the madness that had happened here.

The old man was suddenly alone in the middle of the square, waving his arms, shouting joyously; spittle flew from his lips as he exhorted his fellow citizens to greet their protectors, their deliverers. With a sudden snarl, he tore the wreaths of ears from his shoulders, sending petals of flesh flying everywhere. Soldiers who had seen and lived through years of the most brutal combat cowered at the prospect of being hit by the things.

“Come out, citizens! We are safe now; the forces of progress are intact, the socialist millennium is here! We are safe now.” Sergei Josefovitch fell to his knees atop a body, lost his balance and dropped to one side in the bloody dust. “Safe…”

Zorin had rushed over to help the old man up, but when he reached him he only looked back at Rostov. “He is dead, Aleksei.”

Rostov stood in the doorway, holding the contract the KGB had given the old man. He folded it carefully and put it into his pocket.

“Let us get the hell out of here.”

Iamskoy changed everything for the men of the Iron Angel. Forward patrols, previously dispatched only when a town was indicated on the maps, now became the order of the day. Zorin and Rostov prepared duty rosters for the rotation of patrols, releasing a few light vehicles and the immunized fuel they would require for the job of reconnoitering, protecting the locomotive’s flanks and confirming the condition of the tracks ahead.

During the briefing for the first patrol, Rostov told Sergeants Aliyev and Dyatlov to be sure to end with sweeps to the rear as they returned, in case any pursuit might be catching up with them.

“Or in case any of those bandit pricks get sloppy,” Aliyev amended quietly.

Dyatlov smiled like a wolf and added: “So we can send back some ‘volunteers’ for a little party.”

Rostov had pretended not to hear the comment, but inwardly his heart leapt. Iamskoy did more than sicken them; it outraged them, as much as it did me… Well, and why not? Until that moment, he had not realized that the thoughts and doubts which had come to bedevil him might also be worrying at the minds of his men. Thoughts of defecting, thoughts of leaving his country and countrymen to the always inept care of the KGB and the tender mercies of the bandits that now ravaged both at will; thoughts of running away, while still in the uniform of the defenders of the Rodina…

Second thoughts.

It was the fourth day away from the butchery at Iamskoy, and Rostov was in the command car with Lieutenant Zorin, Surgeon Blaustein, and the American Captain Wrenn. The latter two played chess at the corner table while Zorin and Rostov continued the seemingly endless task of picking an intact route through the dense maze of the old Soviet rail network.

“The last patrol reports that all these lines to the south”—Zorin indicated an arabesque of light blue with a brief wave of his hand—“are intact.” He looked up at Rostov with a rueful smile. “As Polkovnik Wrenn says, ‘That is the good news.’ The bad news is that, according to Trainman Gyrich, none of those lines can bear the weight of this locomotive. The safety margins are not even close.”

“Then what might be clear running to Alliance lines in the south is denied us,” Rostov said, “at least here.” Despite himself, he could not keep a thin tone of relief—or was it a crazy sort of satisfaction?—out of his voice. He sighed heavily to imply a disappointment he could not bring himself to feel, and turned the map for a better view.

Tracing their route since leaving Moscow, he came to Suschenko, passed through it to Iamskoy and on to their present position. According to the map, a switchyard was up ahead; they were waiting for Aliyev’s report on its condition now. Turning, not south from the switchyard, but northeast, Rostov’s eye followed the line of the tracks, continuing a roughly circular path established by the curve of their route thus far. It ended back at Suschenko, having passed through almost two dozen towns and enclosing an area holding at least that many more, all of those on spur lines from the main track. He did not trace this route with his fingers, but Zorin had not been watching his hands.

“What are you thinking, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch?” the big man asked in a quiet voice.

Rostov blinked and smiled. “Hm? Ah, nothing, Mischa. Well, perhaps nothing.”

Perhaps everything, he added to himself. The radiotelephone was going off, and Rostov found himself answering with less annoyance than usual; it would likely be Aliyev, and with this plan taking shape in his mind, Rostov was eager for the reconnaissance reports of the patrols.

“Rostov here.” He activated the desk speaker as he answered.

“Aliyev, Captain. The switchyard is intact; no damage to the lines, but there are quite a few empty cars that might be in the way.”

“Gyrich will be able to confirm that,” Blaustein said without looking up from the game before him; his bishop was exposed to exploit a possible weakness regarding Wrenn’s left flank.

Rostov nodded, thinking that they might even want to take on an extra car or two; several of theirs had been lost during their escape from Moscow and the firefight at Suschenko, and the ones remaining were crammed to their roofs full of supplies or Rostov’s men. “Anything else, Sergeant?”

“Da, Kapitan. “ Aliyev sounded uncomfortable. “There are people here, sir. Farmers.”

Rostov frowned. “Refugees?”

“No, sir. They have brought a large part of their grain harvest here. Captain Rostov, they yoked themselves to carts like oxen and dragged it here.” Aliyev paused long enough that for a moment Rostov thought the connection had been broken, until the sergeant added: “They say that they have been waiting here two days for transport.”

Rostov turned to look at his companions. The burly lieutenant’s face was impassive, Blaustein’s eyebrows were marching up to where his hairline had once been, but Wrenn simply looked over his shoulder once and turned back to the chess board before him.

“What should I tell them, Captain Rostov?” Rostov kept his tone light, despite his excitement. “Tell them they are in luck. We should be there in”—he checked the map again, unnecessarily—“one hour. Rostov out.”

Blaustein made a sound of disgust, and Rostov went to inspect the game. Wrenn had sprung a trap, and the surgeon’s lines lay in ruin.

“I should resign this game,” Blaustein muttered, checking his watch. “We’d still have time for another.”

Wrenn looked up at Rostov, and his eyes said that his question had nothing to do with chess: “Is that what you think, Captain?”

The American knows, Rostov thought. Not that it was hard to reason it out. But will he help? Can I trust him? And deeper, in that most Russian part of his soul, the old unwanted question: Can I afford to trust him?

“No,” Rostov answered after a moment. “Comrade Surgeon Blaustein should castle.”

Wrenn considered the board for a moment. “Perhaps you’re right. It does open up a few possibilities. But it leaves him a very slim chance of actually winning, or even forcing a draw. There is such a thing as knowing when to quit.”

“That depends on the game,” Rostov corrected him. “But it’s not exactly what soldiers are paid for.”

Rostov collected a slightly perplexed Zorin and left the command car. First things first: Gyrich would need to know about the switchyard, and Rostov wanted to be in the locomotive’s roof hatch when they got there. He sent Zorin off with orders to deploy the men to fighting stations along the length of the train, then went on alone to the engine. As he passed along the outside catwalk, the frigid morning air cut through his uniform. He made a mental note to break out winter greatcoats from the stocks they had captured along with this train—and found himself wishing for an early, heavy snow.

Committed to his plan, he now sought anything which might delay their leaving Russia. The longer they stayed, the greater his idea’s chances for success.

Staying, after all, was the whole idea.

The switchyard lay under a light morning fog. Stark outlines against a dawn sky of icy gray, dozens of boxcars stood silently on tracks and sidings in a Stonehenge of rolling stock.

Rostov had read about Stonehenge in school. They drank blood there, once… Which brought his mind back, inevitably, to Iamskoy.

He called down to Gyrich in the cab below: “Stoy, Comrade Trainman Gyrich. This is close enough, spaceeba.”

Rostov looked at the tracks surrounding them; Aliyev and his men had formed a semicircle with the train at their backs. Before them, in groups of three and four and scattered throughout the yard, stood the farmers Aliyev had reported.

“Gospodi pomilui,” Rostov whispered. “ ‘Farmers,’ Aliyev said.” These men belonged in the fields, all right; but they would have looked less out of place hanging from poles to frighten away the crows than they would working the land. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, every one of them seemed to be looking right at him. But their gazes were not accusing, only weary; those eyes had seen more than Rostov could ever hope to surprise them with. They were the eyes of brutalized children, ready for the next betrayal, resigned to the next inevitable blow.

You don’t get that look from invaders, Rostov thought bitterly. That kind of disappointment starts very much closer to home. It was in the way they looked, not at him, but at his uniform.

It suddenly struck him that these emaciated survivors yet had a surplus of grain; these were people who could at least make some living off the land, and yet they still looked weeks beyond their last decent meal. He wondered what the survivors in the cities must look like, and the thought rose up, impossible to avoid: I suppose it would depend on what they have been eating…

He went quickly down the ladder into the engine cab, where Zorin stood, putting his arm through the sling of an assault rifle with the grace of a man putting on a favorite coat. “Mischa, what is our food situation like?”

“Several months’ rations for the men, plus that lot of stuff we got from Suschenko.”

“Enough to spare some for these farmers, then.”

Zorin paused, then: “Da, Aleksei, I am sure there is more than enough to share with them. And with the next group of civilians we run into, and perhaps the next group after them. Beyond that, and I am not joking”—he raised a ringer at Rostov’s widening smile—“beyond that we will have difficulty.”

“Good. See that they get some of it. Am I that obvious, by the way?”

“Lyosha,” Zorin said in a low voice, and Rostov’s smile died, “we have known each other for four years, now. When I was a Starshi Serzhant and you were still my Leytenant, it was my job to anticipate your needs. I did not lose that ability when we received these field promotions from that old reservist in Suschenko.”

“I see. And what is it you think I need now, old friend?”

Zorin buttoned his coat and set his helmet at a jaunty angle, lightening the moment. “I think you need a drink, Aleksei; it looks to me like you have already found a purpose.”

“Don’t you think it’s a purpose we could all embrace? Even you?”

Zorin produced one of his trademark papirosi, went to Gyrich’s hotplate, and lifted the teapot, leaning forward to light the cigarette. When he looked back up at Rostov, his eyes were half-lidded against the smoke. “I don’t know yet, Aleksei. Purposes, causes: these are dangerous things to embrace. When it comes to letting you go, they are worse than women.”

“Let’s not talk about them, then. Let’s talk about feeding these people, and any others we run into.”

“You’d better start taking food in trade as well, then,” Zorin said offhandedly, “like you did at Suschenko. We’re not a bottomless bowl, after all.”

“Splendid idea, Mischa.” Rostov sounded so pleased that Zorin sensed he had been trapped, but he was not sure exactly how until Aleksei came over and clapped a hand against his shoulder. “We can trade our materials and food for those of towns along our way, and carry their surplus on ahead for them, as well. I will be sure to let the men know it was your idea.” He turned to the trainmen, who, their backs turned and their eyes intent on their instruments, still, he knew, had ears.

“Comrade Gyrich, you might want to have your people check out the lay of this switchyard. We’ll probably need to shunt some of those cars about and hitch up one or two of them, and none of my men have any idea how to go about it. But take as many of them as you require if you need help.”

Gyrich nodded, and Rostov headed for the door.

Zorin waited a moment before following, watching his young commander descend the steps to the railbed.

A week ago I’d have said what you needed was your wife back, Aleksei, but I’m not sure that is true any longer. The thought troubled Zorin, but he could not have said why, and in a moment he left the engine cab.

Behind them the two senior trainmen, Gyrich and Pilkanis, shared a look.

“Now what, do you suppose?” Pilkanis asked the older man quietly. “I thought this was to be a three-day dash to freedom in the West. It’s two weeks now, and I can’t see as how we’re much better off than we were when running this monster for the KGB.”

Gyrich did not look up. “You are alive to complain about it, eh?”

Pilkanis’ eyes narrowed behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. “Yes. So far. I still am not convinced that we haven’t traded one master for another.”

Gyrich kept his back to the younger man, hiding his humorless, knowing smile. What did you expect, boychik? This is Russia…

The farmers came from the collective of Volodyin, which Rostov recognized as one of the names on the route he had traced earlier. Their headman was a wiry, hunger-aged fellow named Semenov, who met Rostov at the foot of the ladder and traded introductions with more than a trace of suspicion in his voice.

“So,” Semenov began, rubbing his hands together against the chill, “we have come according to instructions.” He produced a manifest and handed it to Rostov. “Seventeen tonnes of grain for State economic purposes, plus three of flour and grain for the transporting troops, to be transported by your unit.” He looked over Rostov’s shoulder at the behemoth P-38 as it sat, softly hissing, on the tracks. “Probably a bit larger than we need,” Semenov finished quietly.

“Your pardon, Comrade Semenov.” Rostov spoke without looking at the manifest. “But there are one or two irregularities to be dealt with.”

“Of course,” Semenov said simply. Aren’t there always?

“For one, I do not think that our train is the one you were expecting.”

Semenov’s look of suspicion turned to one of disappointment that Rostov had not come up with something more original. “I see. Then what is required to convince your train to carry our grain?”

“Where is it supposed to go?”

At that question, so casually asked, Semenov’s suspicion returned. What was this? Was this KGB lackey a fool, or far smarter than he appeared? Is this all an act to add some new outrage to these bitter contracts they shove down our throats and call it an “amendment”?

“Volodyin’s grain supplies the livestock collective of Almanikan,” Semenov said as he would to a man with an empty vodka bottle and a loaded gun. “Upon arrival of this shipment, Almanikan will release compensation in the form of beef cattle and several draft animals—mules, most likely—to Volodyin so that we can work our fields again in the spring.”

“How did you work the fields for this harvest?” Rostov asked.

“We had vehicles, plenty, and good ones. And plenty of fuel. Then one day the tractors stopped running, right in the middle of the fields. The gauges read “full,” but we thought they must be broken, so we took petrol out to refuel them, and when we did, out came stuff that looked like pond scum and smelled like shit.” Semenov spat onto the gravel of the railbed, seeing blood in his sputum for the second time today; he wondered if he had not ruptured something vital by towing that cart. “Anyway, a week or so later, a truckload of KGB came tearing through, telling us all the war was over, that Soviet military science had defeated the invaders with a weapon that stopped their tanks dead in their tracks. That was how we learned about the Gas Bug: when they came through and issued us our contract.”

The moment he’d mentioned the contract, Semenov regretted it; the young officer’s eyes narrowed and he thrust out his hand. “You have this contract with you? Let me see it.”

Semenov produced the paper and watched while Rostov compared it to a similar document from his own pocket. He did not appear to be pleased.

“Comrade Semenov, my men will be inspecting the rails now; setting switches, shunting these idle cars and connecting others, that sort of thing. You and your men can get some hot food from our mess. When we’ve finished we’ll load your grain.” Semenov reached for the contract, but Rostov held it back. “I’m keeping this,” he said.

Keeping, Semenov thought. And not “for a while”; just “keeping.” “Excuse me, Captain, but you said there were other ‘irregularities’?”

“What? Oh, yes. Regarding your manifest, the quantities set aside for us.” He handed Semenov the manifest back. “There’s twice as much there as we need. Take the rest back or pass it on to Almanikan as you wish. Leytenant Zorin will show you to the mess car.”

Now utterly mystified, Semenov simply went with the big lieutenant to gather up the rest of the Volodyin kolkhozniki and get some hot food.

Rostov walked through the switchyard, thinking. The sun was above the horizon and slipping behind an overcast sky of hammered lead; for now the morning light shone on ground fog, too weakly to burn it off, illuminating it instead.

This will be the test, Rostov thought as he moved among the cars. The fog hid the tracks and ties from view, but he took no special care in choosing his path. Indeed, he was hardly aware of the danger. I will need to see how the men feel. Helping the people of Suschenko was not a problem, that town was along the way. But this; this requires a commitment.

He took the two contracts from his pocket and compared them: Captain Boris Yablomov, Political Recovery Group Four-whatever the hell that was. Rostov wondered if the people of Volodyin had also been required to surrender their weapons, and if whatever bandits had struck Iamskoy were even now on their way there. If so, then this KGB fellow Yablomov had a great deal to answer for.

He thrust the papers into his pocket and hurried back toward the train.

They all do.

The men had formed up into three rough groupings that might generously be called “platoons,” there being at least a sergeant front right in the ranks of each. Before them and to one side were Surgeon Blaustein and Captain Wrenn, along with Trainmen Gyrich, Pilkanis, and three of their assistants. Rostov and Zorin were up on a flatcar, facing the assembly.

The day had gone suddenly, bitterly cold, and Rostov had seen to it that the men were issued the heavy winter greatcoats from the stocks seized with the train. They were not the right service branch, of course; engineer’s insignia for the field were trimmed in black, with white shoulder boards for officers, and these coats bore the bright red shoulder boards of two-year conscripts, along with the gold Cyrillic initials “CA,” for “Soviet Army.” Hardly the flashy cut Rostov’s men were used to. They were, after all, remnants of a crack unit of combat engineers.

So, in the end, socialism has proven to be the great leveler, after all, Rostov thought. Socialism and winter, for the coats were very warm, and Rostov was only too happy to be wearing one himself.

He was surprised at his own feelings about the address he had summoned the men to hear. He had expected to be apprehensive, even fearful, and for one moment as he looked down at them, he very nearly was. Then, unsure himself of what he intended to say, he opened his mouth and began with a phrase that he doubted was even his own. Although it sounded oddly familiar, he could not think of where he had heard it.

“Soldiers of the Rodina,” he had begun, and then the words came out: “Suschenko is everywhere, now.”

The men watching him were quiet, attentive. A glance at the American showed none of the wariness Rostov had expected. Perhaps he is with me on this after all, he thought, although there was not a very great deal the American could do about it if he was not.

“Since leaving Moscow, our original purpose has been frustrated time and again. By ruined track, or track which will not bear the weight of our locomotive. But also by enemy action. Not the enemy fought so long and so hard against, not an enemy from outside our borders, but our own countrymen, serving under command of the KGB.”

No low murmur went through the men; this was no mob, after all, but the survivors of an elite military unit. But their eyes told Rostov that they were in grim agreement with him.

“These are the enemy now. There is no invading Alliance any longer, and if there is still any such group of soldiers out there, surely they are struggling for survival even as we are. They cannot have any fuel or other supplies to spare for attacking. This is no more than what we have all known in our hearts for more than a year: The War is over.”

And at that there was a reaction from the men; a clearing of brows, a shifting of feet in the cinders of the switchyard. Upon hearing an officer speak those previously treasonous words, they became Truth. More, in the minds of men who had grown up in the blindly reactionary Soviet Union of the last twenty years, the words became Safe, a concept always far more important to Russians than mere Truth.

“But the fighting has not stopped,” Rostov said, and the eyes before him said they knew this was so. And they asked a question: What are you going to do about it? Well, he was about to tell them.

“It has not stopped, comrades. One hour in Iamskoy told us that. One hour in the ruins of a town that could never have seen the face of a single Alliance soldier, so deep was it in friendly territory.” He let the word hang in the air like a curse: friendly.

“And besides, what was done there was not the work of soldiers.” He added a grim fighting man’s jest that pleased the men without amusing them: “Not even Turkish soldiers.

“No,” Rostov continued, “only bandits could have done such a thing. And only Russian bandits at that. Only we are capable of treating our people that way, and we all know it. Butchery, mutilation, families cut down together: these are things that terrify us, that disgust us, that every civilized citizen abhors. They are our greatest terrors, and only we know them well enough to use them against one another. Even the Fascists could not do so well what was done there. They were brutal and efficient; the history books tell us so. But no history book will ever tell what happened in Iamskoy.

“Only we will know. Only we will remember what was done, and by whom.”

Rostov sat on his haunches and laced his fingers before him, looking over the men as he went on; not one did not have a look that said he was remembering Iamskoy. “So. You have all heard about the ‘contract’ we took from the old man there. KGB promises of protection, and the conditions to be met to ensure that protection. Well, we who know the KGB would have expected no better protection than Iamskoy got.” Here a few men did laugh, but it was a hollow sound, bitter. Rostov acknowledged it and went on.

“Just so. But now we find these farmers from the Volodyin collective, a kolkhoz not far from here. Comrades, these men dragged twenty tonnes of grain here, from Volodyin, yoked to their carts like animals. Over a century of advancement, and what have we come to in the end? The people who work the land do not even rate as peasants, but as beasts of burden. Their only ‘protection’ comes not from the Army, but must be bought from petty apparatchiks strutting about as if they deserved the uniforms they wear, and that promise of protection a hollow lie.” Rostov felt Wrenn’s eyes on him, and met the American’s gaze; it was an encouraging smile he saw there.

“Comrades, I am sorry. But this is not why I put on this uniform.”

The men were utterly still now, and Rostov felt himself close to a thinner edge than the side of the flatcar. In the next ten seconds, they would either tear him limb from limb, or… well, it was the or that drove him on to the finish.

“We helped the people of Suschenko. We might have helped those of Iamskoy. I believe we should help those of Volodyin, and yes, of Almanikan, and of the hundreds of other towns and villages we might reach with this locomotive. I am staying in Russia, comrades. This train can carry you all on to the West, and although we are still a military unit, if that is your wish, I understand, but–”

But he was not heard; the men had sent up a cheer that drowned him out.

While it was going on, he looked back to Wrenn. The American very nearly astonished him with a thin smile; for a moment, Rostov almost expected him to wink, but the moment passed as the shouting died down.

As he looked back at them, he saw to his surprise that, to a man, they seemed elated at the news, and he wondered for a moment how he could have missed all the signs of the last two weeks. They, like he, had not been leaving because they wished to, but because no other place could be any worse. They, like he, had forgotten that, when things were at their worst, their countrymen needed them most.

“All right, then,” he told them. “Comrades, I do not know when, if ever, we will find our way out of these ruins to safety. But I want us to be home when we do. Now let’s get this grain loaded. Dismissed.”

Loading the grain was warm work, but the greatcoats stayed on. The day was turning colder, and half the men in the unit predicted snow before dark.

The grain went into one of the empty boxcars which Gyrich and Pilkanis had salvaged from the switchyard, linked together and coupled forward of the engine. The reconnaissance squad moved out ahead on motorcycles, only this time they were also accompanied by the unit’s single remaining armored car, a battered BRDM-11 which their chief mechanic, Senior Sergeant Myakov, had seemingly resurrected from the dead. Rostov watched the turret pass by the window of the command car as he sat at the desk, talking with Semenov.

“You really aren’t with the KGB, then?” Semenov had lost none of his suspicion; his questions were now aimed at discerning just what Rostov’s game really was.

Rostov shook his head. “No, Gospodin Semenov, we are not.” His use of the pre-socialist honorific in place of “comrade” was a habit of his when dealing with the elderly. “And we are not bandits. We are Soviet Army Combat Engineers.”

“Hm. I see.” Semenov sipped at the tea Rostov had produced from the samovar. “You live well for soldiers.”

“We’ve been fortunate enough to remain alive at all.” Rostov thought about Colonel Podgorny, who had died giving his men a chance to escape the ruins of the Soviet Union. Am I betraying him? Or might he have chosen this path himself, in the same circumstances? Podgorny after all had not seen Iamskoy.

Dimly, Rostov listened to the sounds of men working: hammers on metal, arc welders, shouted commands. Even as the train was getting underway, the men were continuing to fortify her, building defensive positions for machine guns, armored firing pits for snipers. Even the unit’s only remaining tank, lashed securely to a flatcar, was idling, charging the batteries that ran its turret and fire control systems. This train had been caught unawares once. The next time they were attacked, Rostov thought, she would provide a nasty surprise for someone.

“Zhelezniy Angel,” Semenov said abruptly.

“Eh? What was that?”

“Iron Angel,” the kolkhoznik repeated. “I saw it written on the sides of the locomotive. What is it supposed to mean?”

Rostov smiled, thinking of the huge red and gold words painted up there in letters almost three meters high. “It was a name given to us by an old woman in Suschenko. A christening, if you will.”

“And the men’s names underneath it?” Semenov watched the smile drift off the younger man’s face.

“Casualties. The men who have died since we took—took over this assignment.”

Semenov noticed the hesitation, and began to form his own ideas about this Rostov and his men and their train, so conveniently filled with all manner of military supplies. “There’s a box painted around the names,” he added.

“Yes, I know.” Rostov frowned, puzzled. “What about it?”

Semenov shrugged. “It just seems odd. But I suppose it’s good to be able to paint a box around the names of your dead. As if you won’t have to add to the list.”

The words chilled Rostov: As if.

“Tell me, Gospodin Semenov, what were some of the other conditions of this ‘contract’ Captain Yablomov gave you?”

“Nothing special, really. This Yablomov was in command of something called a ‘political recovery group.’ Pretty obvious what that is supposed to do. Anyway, they’re supposed to provide security and protection for the area, so–” Semenov caught himself; he had not intended to tell this part, but Rostov finished it for him.

“So, perhaps to avoid any ‘accidental confrontations’ or ‘misunderstandings,’ you had to surrender any weapons you had in the town.”

Semenov nodded, suddenly afraid; the lives of everyone in Volodyin now depended on this soldier’s decency. It was a condition Semenov had never felt comfortable counting on.

But the young man simply turned and looked out the window; the train had started to move at last. “We have a great deal of surplus weaponry aboard this train. Leytenant Zorin will see to it that the weapons you lost are replaced.”

“I don’t understand.”

Rostov turned back to him, and Semenov was struck by the haunted look on this young man’s face. “You heard me mention Iamskoy when I spoke to my men earlier?”

“Yes. I know Iamskoy; some of our people have relatives there.”

“I am sorry, Gospodin Semenov. I have something to tell you about Iamskoy.”

Rostov spoke as gently as possible. The headman for the Volodyin kolkhoz was silent for a long time after he finished.

The truth was that Semenov did not trust himself to speak without sobbing. By the time he did, the train had picked up speed; he stared out the window as he spoke, watching the meaningless landscape flow by outside. There was no craft in his tone now, no irony. He trusted Rostov, finally. Trusted him with the absolute faith of utter despair. “How did we come to this?”

“Sir?”

Semenov continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I remember watching the Cosmonauts step out onto the surface of Mars, and plant the Banner of Heroes for the two missions that were lost before them. And these were our Cosmonauts, Russians. Not Americans, none of those tag-alongs from the Liberated Zones, nor even Cubans, or those treacherous East German parasites.” Semenov’s hands shook so badly that the teacup rattled when he put it down.

“Now look at us,” he went on in a whisper. “The mightiest nation on earth, a fucking ruin. How did we come to this?”

Rostov thought he knew, but he could not bring himself to tell Semenov. We did it the same way we established those Liberated Zones; once known as “Western Europe.” The same way we went to Mars; alone among nations, we were willing to pay the price to put men there. We did it the same way we have done everything, even Iamskoy: one body at a time.

No, he could not say that to Semenov. Not because it was cruel, only because it was the truth. A harmless lie to hold it back, a merciful pokazuka.

After a while, Semenov left to rejoin his fellow kolkhozniki in the passenger car that had been set aside for them. Rostov remained in the command car, alone, looking out the window and thinking about the Cosmonauts.

Almanikan was several hours away when Rostov called the meeting in the command car. The night had passed without event; as usual, they had stopped, the patrols unable to guarantee the safety of the track in the dark. With first light they had resumed speed, and the meeting began shortly after.

Wrenn and Blaustein were seated back at the chess table, but no game was in progress; Rostov had noticed that Blaustein’s king lay on its side from the last game. Evidently castling had not helped after all, but Rostov did not believe in omens. Across the desk from Rostov were Trainmen Gyrich and Pilkanis, and seated by the door was Lieutenant Zorin.

“I know how the men feel about this,” Rostov began without preamble, “but I want to know how all of you feel as well.” He looked at Gyrich and Pilkanis in turn. “Particularly you, Comrade Trainmen.” He glanced at the American. “And you, Polkavnik Wrenn.”

The American raised an eyebrow. “Technically speaking, Captain Rostov, I am a prisoner of war. And if you want to be really cold about this, recall that my original arrangement was with your commanding officer, Colonel Podgorny, who is now dead. So what I think doesn’t actually count for a whole hell of a lot.”

Rostov nodded. “That may be true, but let us come back to it. Comrade Trainmen, I want to use this train to help as many civilians as possible, but I have no delusions about our ability to use it without your cooperation.”

Pilkanis almost laughed. “I feel much the same way about my neck, Captain.”

Gyrich turned to the younger man with a scowl. “That’s enough of that, Marik. If we were still with that KGB lunatic Serafimov, by now we’d be a week dead.” He turned back to Rostov. “We’re not stupid enough to consider sabotage, Captain Rostov; but some of the crew have been wondering if you ever intended to go to the West at all.”

The words seemed to fit into an empty notch in Rostov’s mind; hadn’t he wondered the same thing himself, lying awake at night, dreaming of Lilia? “That was Colonel Podgorny’s intention for us, Comrade, but he died in the battle to take this train from the KGB. I have until now had every intention of following through with his wishes to get us to safety in the West.”

“ ‘Until now,’ “ Blaustein put in. “You mean until Iamskoy.”

“Perhaps even before, at Suschenko. Because there we saw that ‘safety’ is a relative term. Is the West any safer than here? I do not think so. In any case, there is a more important consideration. Has it occurred to anyone here that we have a certain responsibility to the people of these towns? Not just those of us in uniform, but you, Comrade Surgeon, a doctor. You, Comrade Trainmen; in a world where everything is falling apart, you are men who can keep trains running. Even you, Captain Wrenn.”

Wrenn frowned. “How’s that again?”

Rostov’s smile was warm. “A ‘prisoner of war,’ you said. True enough, but the war is over. An enemy once, but an enemy of the State, not of the people. The very worst arm of that State now rules those people. You yourself said that the aim of the Alliance was to prevent that very thing from happening. Could you really do that from the West? Once there, would you even care to try?”

“Perhaps I would just like to go home, Captain Rostov,” Wrenn answered quietly. “As you said, the war is over.”

“You are forgetting something, Captain Rostov.” Pilkanis cut in with a voice like ice. “Comrade Trainman Gyrich was drafted into the Ukrainian Nationalist Brigades. I am not Ukrainian. I am Lithuanian. And I was a volunteer.”

There was a long silence before Rostov asked: “And do you really hate us that much?”

“In point of fact, Captain Rostov, I do. Not your men, very much, nor you, at all. But I saw things very much like Iamskoy in my own homeland before being captured, and as such I have very little concern for preventing such things from happening to Russians. Sorry, but that is how it goes.”

Rostov nodded. “I see. Then do you wish to leave us now, and take your own chances, or will you stay with us until we reach more neutral ground?”

Pilkanis shook his head with a wintry smile. “I am a patriot, Captain Rostov. I am not a fool. Besides, it may be that we will never reach neutral ground. Either through mishap, or design.”

Rostov turned to the other Trainman. “Comrade Gyrich; a draftee? Then where do you stand?”

“Pfah! ‘Free Ukrainian Republic,’ they said. What does that mean? That land was bought with the blood of my fathers, and their fathers and their fathers before them. It was ours, whoever said they ruled us, what did we care? I am a Trainman, by God. The trains are what I always loved, all I ever wanted. Some men take to the sea, some to the land.” He looked out the window, suddenly embarrassed at his emotionalism. “This was my calling.”

They all turned at the sound of a short, easy laugh from Wrenn. “ ‘McAndrews’ Hymn,’ ” he said, then raised a hand in deference. “Sorry. A poem by Rudyard Kipling. I guess the chief apologist for the British Empire wouldn’t exactly be required reading in Soviet schools.” He looked around at them and quoted: “ ‘Lord, Thou has made this world below the shadow of a dream—’ ”

“ ‘An’ taught by time, I tak’ it so—exceptin’ always Steam.’ ” Gyrich finished quietly with a fair Scots burr, bizarre in its embrace of his Russian words. “I know the poem, Captain Wrenn. It is a favorite of mine.”

Wrenn nodded, chastised. “I should have known. Kipling is a poet of soldiers and working men the world over, after all.”

“Trainman Pilkanis,” Rostov said, “you may leave us at any time you feel it is convenient for you, or safe. We will provide you with any equipment you might need and as much food as you can carry. Agreed?” Pilkanis nodded, once, and Rostov finished: “The same applies to all of you.”

Rostov turned back to Wrenn. “Although, Captain Wrenn, I hope you will stay to put in a good word for us should we contact any of your countrymen who are unaware that the war is over. Comrade Surgeon Blaustein, I know I speak for the entire unit when I say it is my sincere wish that you remain with us.”

“I am a Russian, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch,” Blaustein said simply. “I am already home.”

The meeting broke up, Gyrich and Pilkanis returning to the engine, Blaustein to the car where he was overseeing the construction of a permanent medical facility. Wrenn waited to speak to Rostov and Zorin.

“Do you know what you’re getting into?” he asked as Rostov poured tea for the three of them. He pulled Rostov’s maps forward and began reading off town names. “Suschenko, Iamskoy, Volodyin, Almanikan.” Visualizing the same curve Rostov had, he continued. “After that Opustoschenia, Leninakan—only a few hundred thousand of those in Russia, I guess—Byiero… looks like about two dozen before we come back to Suschenko.”

“Your point, Captain Wrenn?” Rostov asked politely.

“You’ll be visiting these places, getting to know the people in them, working with those people, for those people. You will be, in a word, responsible for them.”

“What is wrong with that?”

“You have a train, Captain Rostov. And all those towns to link in trade, and tap for resources. Some will have manufacturing capabilities; that means spare parts for your equipment, consumer goods for your men. You have the dominant, maybe the only, unit of heavy transport for hundreds of kilometers, in an environment where the internal combustion engine is as dead as the dinosaur. You’re in better shape than half of the world’s major nations—including Russia—were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. You have a cadre of well-trained, well-armed, motivated combat veterans who can pass on much of that training to qualified civilians, and who, by the way, in addition to being first-rate fighters, also just happen to be as widely skilled in civil engineering as they are in the combat variety. In short, you have Roman legionnaires.”

Rostov laughed out loud. “Well, and why not? We Russians always thought of our country as the third Rome, after Constantinople; our society is descended, not from the Western European heritage, but the Byzantine.”

Wrenn nodded, smiling too. “You’re talking about the past. I’m talking about the future. Empires have been built with very little more resources than you have right now. More often than not, even less. I’m just curious as to just exactly what sort of empire you intend to build.”

Rostov’s face held its wide grin. “Is that all you Americans ever think about, Captain Wrenn?”

Wrenn made a staying gesture. “Be careful, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch. You are going to get an empire whether you like it or not. But how long it lasts will depend on how well it functions; and the basic function of this sort of empire, an empire linked by transport, is going to be what is transported, and how. Face it, Rostov.” Wrenn folded his arms on the desk before him. “You are going to have to become a rail baron, and that means a good capitalist.” And for that conversation, at least, Wrenn had the last word.

The Iron Angel moved at a leisurely pace through a thickening snowfall. Almanikan was only an hour away, and Rostov wanted to be there before dark, especially after hearing the reconnaissance report. It had been Dyatlov’s turn again, and he had, so to speak, hit the jackpot. The rails into Almanikan were intact, there were people moving about the buildings, the livestock were in holding pens where Semenov had said to look for them.

And there was a KGB light reconnaissance vehicle and three men with green shoulder boards in the town as well. Dyatlov had made out all the details through his field glasses, then brought the report back to Rostov personally. And based on his description of them to Semenov, one of the men was Yablomov.

Rostov had sent Dyatlov’s and Aliyev’s squads out to flank the town, keeping Zorin and the main force aboard the train, then given the order to move in.

He felt it odd that there was no excitement, no apprehension at capturing and confronting this Yablomov; only curiosity.

He simply could not imagine what the man would have to say for himself.

Boris Yablomov pulled the blanket over his head to shut out the noise of someone pounding on his door. These stupid peasants thought they could wake him at any hour of their choosing to air grievances that couldn’t be helped anyway. He had spent the morning trying to raise Political Recovery Group One with no success, the afternoon finding a decent place to spend the night, and the early part of the evening moving out the belongings of the family from whom he’d commandeered this wretched hut. Now, only an hour after dark, he had barely got to sleep when the pounding began.

Groping in the dark for his sidearm, he finally found the belt and put it on—he was sleeping fully clothed against the cold-then opened the door a crack to keep the chill out.

The moment the bolt was thrown, the door crashed in, propelled by the biggest, meanest-looking conscript Yablomov had ever seen. Yablomov was sent reeling back to sit down, hard, on the floor. By the time he rose again, four strangers in uniform were in his room, all wearing conscripts’ greatcoats, and all armed.

“What’s going on?” Yablomov asked in a tight voice; he was smart enough to put his hand nowhere near his holster. “Those are conscript shoulder boards; they’re obsolete. What branch are you men?”

One of them, a fair-haired young man with the bearing of an officer, gestured for Yablomov to sit down. “You are Boris Yablomov, Political Recovery Group Four?” he asked reasonably.

Yablomov relaxed, but only a little. These men must be the transport unit from Volodyin. Strange that he had not heard their trucks. “Yes, I am Captain Yablomov. You are late.”

The young officer shared a look with the big man who’d shoved the door open. “Ah. I thought we’d got here just in time. No matter. We were held up at Iamskoy.”

“Iamskoy? What the devil were you doing there? The only thing to pick up there is vulture bait.”

“You know about Iamskoy, then?”

“I know it took those stupid bandits five days to get there instead of two, as they’d promised, and six hours to do the work that a single Special Section squad could do in one.” Yablomov had been gathering his things from around the room and stuffing them into a rucksack as he spoke. “I’d given up getting out of this place before dawn, but with your trucks, we–” Yablomov felt himself gripped by the hair and lifted up and back, then slammed into the wall. For a moment he thought the big man had gone crazy, but when he twisted his head around he saw that it was the younger fellow with the fair hair who had him. “Christus! You crazy bastard, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Instinctively, his hand went for his pistol, but his captor was faster, removing the Makarov from its holster with his left hand, wincing as he did so.

“You are telling me that you left Iamskoy to be protected by bandits!” Rostov was shouting now, livid with rage. “Didn’t you know what could happen, what would happen?”

“Protected?” Yablomov tried to free himself, to no avail. “What are you talking about? Iamskoy was to be pacified, as an object lesson; why the devil do you think we confiscated their weapons?”

And Rostov let him go. He took a step back from the KGB man, staring at him, open-mouthed as much in wonder as in shock. “Streltsy,” he said after a moment. “That’s what Iamskoy reminded me of, but I couldn’t remember then…”

“Of course, ‘Streltsy,’” Yablomov said. “That’s the project code name. Weren’t you briefed before you left Novaya Moskva!”

“Aleksei,” Zorin asked quietly, “what does ‘Streltsy’ mean?”

Rostov spoke as if he were sleepwalking. “The Streltsy were raiders, hand-picked by Ivan the Terrible; they roved the land, sacking villages at random, at will. Wherever they went, they left only corpses.”

“What? In God’s name, why?” Zorin had killed more men in combat than years he’d lived, but this was something beyond even his experience.

“To keep order, Comrade, that’s why.” Yablomov went back to gathering his things, keeping a close watch on Rostov as he did so. “State Security cannot be everywhere. The bandits can’t either, but the fear they instill can. With fear comes dependency on a protector, and with dependency comes loyalty. That is how Russia has functioned for centuries.”

Rostov simply stared at him. Yablomov was no older than he, perhaps younger. He spoke without a trace of cruelty or even coldness; his manner was so prosaic as to seem almost bored. All that had happened to Iamskoy, and God alone knew how many other towns and villages, was to him not an outrage, but only a tactic.

“Once that loyalty is firmly rooted in the populace again”-Yablomov zipped the rucksack closed with a flourish, and put on a pair of glasses—“State Security can begin the rebuilding of the Soviet in earnest.” He looked at Rostov a moment, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I can imagine what you must have thought at first, but don’t worry about it. It’s necessary, and it’s for the best if an example of a few can serve a multitude.”

Rostov nodded. “Yes. I do see. And of course, there are always more peasants.”

“Well, ‘peasants’ is a bourgeois concept, but yes, that’s essentially it.” He blinked, looking around the room at them. “Well? Something else?”

Rostov produced the Iamskoy contract and held it out for Yablomov to see.

The KGB man blinked again, looking at the form. “You found that in Iamskoy?”

“Yes. It says that State Security will provide protection for the citizens of Iamskoy; it’s a contract.”

“What of it?” Yablomov’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see any reason to have subordinates questioning State Security operations. Or assaulting me. I think we’ll take this up with PRG One the next time we check in.” He held his hand out. “I’ll take my pistol back, now.”

Rostov raised the weapon and pointed it at the KGB man’s face.

Yablomov was ready to swear he had seen artillery pieces with smaller-bore diameters, when he suddenly realized his mistake. “You are not KGB.”

“Christus,” Zorin said, reclaiming his personal favorite expression of exasperation, “this apparatchik’s a regular rocket scientist.”

A light seemed to go on behind Yablomov’s eyes, and he almost smiled. “Of course; you’re in with another Streltsy unit. I should have guessed. You gave me quite a start for a moment there. Sorry if I–”

Rostov was shaking his head.

Yablomov felt every ounce of strength go out of his legs; part of him thought it miraculous that he was still standing at all. He tried to swallow and found he could not. “Then who–”

“Bring them in,” Rostov said.

Zorin opened the door, and Dyatlov came in with Semenov and the headman of the Almanikan collective. “Did you hear?” Rostov asked them.

“Everything,” Semenov said simply; the other man spat in disgust.

“Comrades,” Yablomov began, “this is a grave error. You are not qualified to judge State policies. You are civilians, and as such–”

Rostov cut him off again. “But we are not civilians, Captain Yablomov.” He opened the greatcoat with his free hand, exposing the collar tabs of an Army Combat Engineer. “And while you in the KGB have very little interest in the welfare of the people, we take it very seriously, indeed.”

Rostov lowered the pistol and crossed the room to Semenov and the Almanikan kolkhoznik. “Whatever you gentlemen think is best, Gospodin Semenov.”

The older man squinted in concentration. “I’m not trying to dodge the responsibility, Captain, but shouldn’t this be handled according to military law or something?”

Rostov looked back at Yablomov, who was being quietly relieved of his rucksack and other equipment by the two troopers who’d entered with him and Zorin. “Those rules only apply to soldiers, Gospodin. This man is not one of us.”

“You are renegades.” Yablomov had suddenly found his voice. “You are walking dead men, you know that. All armed forces personnel who have not reported for induction into KGB Ground Forces are declared criminals. You and all your men are Enemies of the State.”

Rostov looked at Yablomov a last time. Here was the creature they had planned to leave Russia to. These were the inheritors: people who could murder whole armies of their own men and women, kill husbands and wives, butcher towns, leave their countrymen to bandits, and sanction murder and mutilation. People who could cut the ears off children. They were the inheritors of the earth.

Better to leave it to the roaches than to men who could do all this and not be horrified by their own horror. It struck him that only the most well-meaning individual could commit such unspeakable atrocities. Soldiers might be brutal, even savage, but they lived in a black and white world of kill or be killed. Rostov was not a terribly sophisticated man, but neither was he a stupid one. He could see that only politicians and civilians with power, only people who truly loved their fellow man, only they made the Iamskoys of the world possible.

“An Enemy of the State,” Rostov repeated. “I am grateful, at least, for that.” He went out the door and into the swirling clouds of snow.

By morning, Almanikan had her grain, the men of Volodyin had their livestock, and the Rodina had six inches of fresh snowfall. This was the second of the year, and this one would not melt; the air had the brittle feeling of true winter as they made ready to return Semenov and his men, along with their livestock, to Volodyin.

The Almanikan collective had presented the men of the Iron Angel with six sides of beef—less than a third of the KGB’s usual “requirement,” they told Rostov. Not to be outdone, Semenov had insisted Rostov’s men keep the extra tons of flour and meal originally reserved for the KGB. The men were already planning a feast; field rations aboard the Iron Angel were plentiful, but getting dull. There was an official election gearing up to find a full-time cook for the unit.

Gyrich had shown the men of this morning’s patrol how to check for track integrity under half a foot of snow; one of his assistants had gone with the patrol this morning as an advisor.

My men are learning their first trick of the Trainman’s trade, Rostov realized. In time they will have to learn them all, I suppose. He was unable to suppress a smile of pride. My men, he had thought.

The patrol had moved out half an hour ago; now it was the Iron Angel’s turn. Rostov stood on the railbed looking up at the garish letters on the locomotive’s sides. They should have been almost comical up there, a bright red and gold target, a six-meter-long bull’s-eye for an enemy, an invitation to attack by KGB troops or their bandit lackeys. They should have been comical, but they were not. Rostov had yet to put a name to all the emotions those words stirred in him, but he did know that amusement was not among them.

And anyway, that’s not entirely correct. Those words are not an invitation to attack. They are a challenge to battle, and that is a very different thing.

He climbed up the ladder into the engine, then up into the celestory roof hatch of the cab. He loved this seat, despite the cold. There was plenty of warmth from the cabin below, and he still wore the conscript greatcoat with its thick winter lining. He would need both; it had started snowing again.

And he loved it for the view. Or rather, at the moment, in spite of the view. Fifteen feet away, silhouetted against the white winter morning sky, were three dangling scarecrows that until last night had been Yablomov and his two aides. Their steam-powered field car was now on a flatcar, lashed securely alongside one of the Engineers’ original vehicles. Spoils of war.

Rostov tried to feel some pity for the KGB men, some sense of regret. But he had no room in his heart for compassion for them. It was too full of Iamskoy.

The headman of the Almanikan kolkhoz had arrived on the platform to see them off, and he waved up at Rostov with a grin. “Godspeed, Kapitan Rostov,” he shouted, his other hand gripping the shoulder strap of an AK-90 assault rifle. “We’ll keep the track in repair over the winter.”

“Spaceeba, Comrade. We’ll try to be back before spring.”

“I want to believe you, Kapitan,” the man said with a wide smile, “but I’d feel better if I knew we had a contract.”

Rostov remembered the outrage he’d felt at those worthless, even treacherous pieces of paper foisted on these people by Yablomov, and doubtless by others like him, probably all over Russia. He suddenly smiled, and taking one of his shoulder boards between thumb and forefinger, he lifted it and leaned forward so the man on the platform could see the bright red bar with the large gold letters “CA,” the Cyrillic characters for the words “Soviet Army.”

“We do,” he said, then gave a brief signal to Gyrich.

The Iron Angel moved out into the light snowfall, and was soon lost from sight.

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Bodyguard
by Vernon W. Glasser

It is possible that we’ll muddle through without a world war. It’s also possible that we won’t; which leads us to the question: What can city dwellers do to be prepared for That Day?

First: Whether things come apart from war or economic collapse with consequent riots, it’s pretty clear that we can’t stay in our cities. There’s some chance of it, of course: It’s not necessarily the case that the Soviets will strike all our major cities, and some neighborhoods can be defended against looters and rioters; but the likelihood is high that most of us will have to abandon the city to go live elsewhere.

And thus we have two problems: where to go, and what to do when we get there.

Where to go? Some small place that can sustain itself; a small town, probably in the middle of ranching and/or agricultural country. That’s been discussed many times before.

What will we do there?

That gets more complex. Much of what I’ve seen in print seems to imply that if you’re a “survivalist,” you’ll somehow be different—and more welcome—than a “locust” or a looter; and clearly that isn’t necessarily so. How are survivalists different from random looters? They may be willing to do their share. But how will anyone know that?

What sets survivalists, or survivors, apart must be what they bring with them.

And what’s that?

Possibly trade goods. Although the late Mel Tappen used to come down hard on “gadget collector” survivalists, it is at least theoretically possible to accumulate items that will become scarce and in demand After Armageddon, and to use them to secure oneself a place to stay. Certainly one ought to be prepared.

Still, it’s also possible to do everything right and yet lose the trade goods. Sure, part of what is accumulated will be weapons; but a strong man armed is not necessarily safe. There can be stronger men who are better-armed and more skillful. I’ve heard a lot of fairly tough dudes say things like “you collect gold, I’ll collect guns, and guess which one of us will end up with both the gold and the guns…”

One response to that is to become part of a survival company; but even if you’re part of a well-organized group, you’ve still got to have something to trade. Why would a survival company want you?

There is something valuable that can’t be stolen: skills. Not just skill with weapons. Sure, it’s nice to be a crack shot and be able to draw that weapon fast, but most of us are never going to be champions in combat-pistol competition, and anyway, I don’t have to tell you to learn how to use any weapons you collect. I was thinking of skills useful before and after That Day.

Take communications as an example. Whatever the mechanism of collapse, there are going to be a lot of electronics floating around, and every community is going to need some kind of communications system. If you know how to cobble up two-way communications from what’s likely to be left after the Fall, you have a very salable skill. Moreover, you’re not threatening anyone.

It won’t hurt to be able to invent, fix and install burglar alarms and other security equipment. In general, the more you know about electronics, the more welcome you’re likely to be wherever you go. But note that I’m talking about hands-on practical work, technician-level stuff, not engineering.

Transportation will also be important. Time was, every kid had a jalopy that he understood perfectly, having taken it down to its constituent parts and put it back together again. That doesn’t happen now. Maybe it would make sense to buy your teenager something he can keep running—and to learn a lot of it yourself. Not just how to change spark plugs (which, I must admit, takes a lot of skill when you’re dealing with some of the new cars), but how to replace a broken axle, and how to make do with ill-fitting parts cannibalized from a wreck. This can lead to learning metalwork and machining in general, abilities that will certainly be useful after things come apart.

There are many such skills: chemistry, pharmacology, medicine. Or become an expert on food preservation: canning, salting, drying, smoking…

The point is to learn something useful now that will also earn you a place among the survivors. And the interesting part is that the city dweller has a much better chance of learning such skills.

Cities have the libraries and bookstores, to begin with. It’s much easier to acquire the tools of your new trade in a city with a lot of specialty stores. Mostly, though, the best schools are also likely to be in cities. Los Angeles has a dozen community colleges with excellent night schools, as well as centers like Everywoman’s Village. There’s almost nothing you can’t learn from highly qualified instructors, and at reasonable costs—and if you choose your “survival” skill carefully enough, it will be useful to you even if things don’t come apart. Look at the money you can save if you really know cars, or electronics.

Even better: If enough of us go out and learn how to keep things working, maybe they won’t come apart at all…

The Bodyguard
by Vernon W. Glasser

I got into this because of that business with the Atom Master, who turned out to be nothing more than a crazy old man living in the Ruins. He thought he was one of the Old Men, and called himself the Atom Master, and claimed he could blow everyone up. Of course, he could do no such thing. I went into the Ruins and brought him out, just a crazy sick old man. It got me some notoriety, because the other boys of the Bodyguard weren’t too anxious to poke around in the Ruins and maybe catch a case of radiation.

I’ve been a Bodyguard for five years. Not that I like the work so much, but it’s a good living. We’re the only organized group this side of the mountains, almost two hundred of us, and without us the Chief wouldn’t last very long. That’s why we’re called the Bodyguard, and we are all guarding the same body, the Chief’s.

So one day a couple of months after that Atom Master affair, I got a summons from the Chief himself. I’d met him personally only once before, when I was hired, though naturally I’d seen him often in parades, and once had been part of the horseback squad that pulled his car.

You don’t waste any time when the Chief sends for you. I put on my best deerskin shirt with the fancy fringes, and went directly to the Fort. This is an old stone building, pretty well crumbled, and I believe the Old Men had used it for a military purpose. The Chief lives there with his wives, and also uses it as a headquarters. Although it is not in the best repair, it is strong enough to repel almost any kind of attack.

Some of the other Bodyguards were lounging around the outside stairs, and I said hello to them. Then I went in, and up another set of stone stairs, to the Official. The Official was supposed to have only one door, though I’d heard some of the boys hint that there was a secret exit from inside. A guard with a hatchet was standing before the door, and I recognized him. It was Billy Garth. I didn’t like him much.

“The Chief wants to see me,” I said.

“Well, if it isn’t the Atom Master,” he said. “The tough boy. You got a mark?”

I showed him my summons, the usual hunk of clay stamped with a seal.

“Go ahead,” he said, “and leave your gun behind. I’ll hold it for you.”

“Nothing doing,” I told him. “My gun is one of the twelve or fifteen left in the whole Valley, and maybe in the world for all I know. If I ever let it out of my hands, I’d never get it back.” We looked at each other for a minute, and I could see his hand getting tight on the hatchet. I said, “Don’t be a fool, Billy. I may give you trouble.”

“All right, tough guy,” he said uglily. “Get going.”

I opened the door, looking as casual as I could but being careful not to turn my back to Billy, and stepped into the Official.

The Chief is a man of about fifty, big, with gray hair and a very watchful look. He has a gun, too, of a different make than mine, and he lets the word get around that he possesses several boxes of bullets. He was wearing a real cloth shirt, and a cap with a shiny visor. Sitting on the arm of his chair was Norma, one of his wives, a short dark woman with a lot of jewelry. They both looked up when I came in.

“I know you,” said the Chief. “Tom Hunter. I never forget a name.”

“You wanted to see me, Chief?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Norma, this is the boy who went into the Ruins after that crazy madman.”

She smiled sulkily but said nothing, and I guess she wasn’t supposed to answer, because the Chief went right on without waiting for her to say a word.

“I got a job for you, Tom,” he said. “A big job that pays good—if you bring it off all right.”

“I’m working for you,” I said.

“Can you read, Tom?” he asked.

“No.”

“I can’t either,” he returned heartily. “That makes us both the same kind of man. I can’t read, and I never saw the reason why I should, either.”

I knew that was a lie. The Chief could read, all right, but he preferred to keep it quiet. As for myself, I have nothing against reading. My father could read, and offered to teach me when I was a boy, but I guess I was too busy learning the other things that a man needs if he is going to stay alive.

“Reading can be dangerous, Tom,” the Chief went on, acting as if he were the best friend I had in the world. “A lot of trouble comes from reading. Here in Sacramento we’ve got a fine country, with a thriving town and satisfied farmers. Never any trouble, except from agitators. And when we catch an agitator, what do we find? Why, every time, he’s some fool who’s been secretly reading a book he dug up out of a hole. Ain’t that right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“How do you feel about these trouble-makers, Tom, and their holler about learning how to make machinery and stuff?”

“Look,” I said, “I told you before, I’m working for you. You furnish my keep, and I’ve got no complaint with the quality of it. So I don’t have to have any opinions. Tell me the job and I’ll do it.”

Norma smirked, and leaned down to whisper in the Chief’s ear. He listened intently, his shrewd eyes never leaving me. “All right, Tom,” he said at last. “I want you to find a man, and bring him back to me if possible. But I want him alive. He has to be alive. If he dies, you do too.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“His name is Johnson. He’s another one of these agitators I’ve been telling you about. A slim redheaded guy with a squint.”

That reminded me. I’d heard about Johnson. He was a farmer in the southwest border, not too far from the Ruins. He had been making a nuisance of himself by urging everyone to learn reading, and had also been trying to organize some of the other farmers against the Chief. Of course, that is rebellion, and cannot be overlooked; so I hadn’t been too surprised to hear, one fine day, that Johnson disappeared. However, these things took place a good year ago, and I never suspected that the redhead might still be alive.

“I thought he was dead,” I said.

“Did you?” said the Chief. “Must be somebody else you’re thinking about. This Johnson is alive, all right. I believe he went into the Ruins. He’s working there, plotting against me, and that means against you, too. Now you know what you have to do.”

If the Ruins do not frighten me as much as they do others, it’s because I’m not superstitious. My father brought me up to believe only what I tested myself, and consequently I have no faith in mysterious radiations in the air, which can’t be seen or felt, but nevertheless cause death. And if I keep quiet about that opinion, it’s because I have learned that it does not pay to oppose the beliefs of other men unless there is a definite, practical reason for it. I felt no qualms, therefore, about going into the Ruins, but at the same time I knew that finding a man in that maze of broken buildings was not an easy task.

“How much time have I got?” I asked him.

“Whatever you need.”

I figured I’d better get going right away. The Chief always tries to sound very generous about everything, but I knew he’d want results quickly. If I didn’t produce, someone else would. He hadn’t told me what the payoff would be, and I knew better than to ask him, but in a thing like this the reward if any is determined by the way you do your job.

When I left the room, Norma was whispering in the Chief’s ear again, her eyes on me, and he was listening carefully and nodding. Sooner or later I’d be able to guess what she was telling him.

I went to the stables and got my best horse, a gray, named Nick because one ear had been nicked by an arrow in a tax brush with the whisky distillers. The blacksmith was pounding at his anvil nearby, and stopped to wave at me.

“Got me a lot of new iron, Tom,” he called.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Dug up some machinery near the Old Men’s highway. Plenty knives and horseshoes soon.”

I told him to save some for me, because I might be needing new equipment when I came back. I put a bedroll on Nick, and a good spear in the saddle socket. My gun was in the shoulder holster, and I had a very fine knife almost eighteen inches long in the blade. I don’t carry a bow, because I’m a poor shot, and I prefer to stick to weapons I can handle better than other men, not worse. Then I started off at a canter to the southwest.

It was my intention to start my search at the old Johnson place, which I understood had been abandoned since shortly after the redhead disappeared. It seemed to me that he’d had a family, but I had no idea what may have happened to them. Because I had assumed his disappearance was due to the action of the Chief, it was natural to assume also that his family had been murdered. That’s the way the Chief works; he tries to take no chances.

Riding through the countryside, I noticed that the burned areas were getting harder to spot. Nature was coming back, like my father always said it would. Even when I was a boy the burned areas were already green during the rains, and now the shrubbery, and young trees, were beginning. The Wars of the Old Men took place when my grandfather was a boy and I am told that, at that time, the skies were dark with smoke for months in a row.

It is not possible to doubt that the Old Men had wonderful things. Their relics are everywhere, like the Chief’s car which once supposedly could travel under its own power. Then, take the buildings; many are faced in part with stone which simply is unobtainable anywhere around here. It must have been transported from a quarry in the mountains, and the nearest source of good stone for building is at least a two-days’ ride. My father, who was a very keen man and also, of course, had learned much from his father, said that the Old Men were highly skilled in the making of vehicles which propelled themselves. They also had flying machines, and a form of communication over great distances.

The agitators, as the Chief calls them, claim that we could have such things again if everyone learned to read the old books. That may be so. However, I don’t feel that it’s any of my business.

When my father died he gave me two good things. One was the gun, which he had received from his father, and which he told me would ensure my independence so long as I used it only as a last resort, and carefully hoarded the thirty-three bullets remaining. I have used the gun four times in six years, and have twenty-nine bullets left. It marks me as a man apart, a man who carries potential death.

The other thing he gave me was advice. He said that I lived in a world of animals, and must govern myself accordingly. He said that animals could be either friends or enemies, and that even a friendly animal might turn on one suddenly. He said that I must try to make myself more than an animal, so that I would not be governed by passion alone. He said that a man could always control an animal, because a man thought and an animal only felt.

He gave me this advice because he was afraid for me, and wished no harm to come to me. I was a grown man when he died, but even to the end he would worry about any little scratch I received, or pat my shoulder as though I were still a little boy.

The old Johnson place is near the low range of hills which protects the Valley from the area of the Ruins, all around the Bay. It was late the next day that I got there, though I rode fairly steadily. A farmer in the vicinity pointed the place out to me, keeping his distance pretty well when he noticed my Bodyguard badge.

I dismounted a good distance away and, taking advantage of whatever cover there was, circled the house cautiously. It wasn’t deserted. There was smoke coming from the chimney, and a saddled horse was standing in the yard. I moved closer, got inside the rickety fence, edged over to the window, and looked in.

I knew what Norma had been whispering to the Chief. She’d told him to send someone else along, to check on me. Billy Garth, whom I’d last seen standing guard before the Chief’s door, was inside now. Also, there was a red-haired girl about twenty years old, kind of skinny but still good-looking enough. Billy had the girl tied up in a chair. The smoke was coming from the chimney because Billy was heating his knife, and I knew what he intended to do to the girl with it.

I figured I could take a chance on a bullet. Taking my gun out of the holster, I leaned it on the window sill. “Don’t bother heating that any more,” I said.

The girl jerked her head around and looked at me. She wasn’t gagged, but she didn’t say anything. There was a big red mark across her face, and I figured she’d been slapped around some.

Billy turned slowly to look at me, the red-hot knife in his hand. “Well, look who’s here,” he said. “The tough kid. Took your time getting here, didn’t you.”

“Put the knife away,” I said. “You might burn yourself.” I watched him closely, because I don’t trust Billy.

He just kept looking at me with his little red eyes. “You can’t hit anything with that gun,” he said.

“Sure not,” I said. “Drop the knife, Billy.”

He waited a little longer, and then sullenly dropped it point down into the floor, the wood smoldering at the contact. “You’re safe,” he snorted. “Got the nerve to come in now?”

I came in through the window, watching him. When I was inside, I put my gun back in the holster. “The Chief send you?” I asked.

“He thought maybe you needed some help.”

“Why did you come here straight, instead of meeting me on the road?”

Billy picked up his knife and walked over to the corner where a bucket of water stood. He plunged the blade in the water several times, to cool it. “Never occurred to me,” he said. “Were you lonesome?”

I wasn’t going to get anything out of him. I turned my attention to the girl tied in the chair. “Who are you?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything, just looked at me with eyes that almost scorched my jacket. However, the red hair made it obvious; she was one of Johnson’s family, maybe his daughter. I took out my knife, went over, and cut the cords that tied her. It didn’t change her expression; she just rubbed her wrists and ankles, and let her eyes spit hate at me.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” I said. “Seems to me you owe me a favor.”

“I don’t owe a Bodyguard anything,” she whispered.

Billy laughed. His knife was cool, and he stuck it back in its scabbard. “You should ha’ come a little later,” he said. “She’d tell me where the old man is, all right, after she crawled around on her wrists and ankles for a while.”

“You hear him,” I said to the girl. “You want me to turn you over to him again, or will you tell us where Johnson is?”

She was scared. She seemed to draw up into herself. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know where he is.”

“You’re his daughter, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been living in the woods,” she explained rapidly. “Pa’s been gone a year now, nobody knows where he is. I came back to look around kind of, and see if it was safe to live here again.”

“Whereabouts in the woods you been living?”

“Just around.”

“Your father’s hiding out in the Ruins, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

I turned to Billy. “How’d you find her?” I asked.

He grunted. “I came down here to look the place over, same as you did. The old man is probably right around the neighborhood, living with one of these farmers. Anyhow, I see this girl sneakin’ around in the house, so I grabbed her. Does that give you any ideas, bright boy?”

“You think Johnson’s hiding out near here?” I asked him.

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“A smart kid like you should be able to figure it out himself. Where else would he go?”

“For one thing,” I said, watching the girl closely, “he might go into the Ruins. He believed in reading, so he’d go some place where there were a lot of books. He’d do that because he’d figure the books would show him how to get rid of the Chief.”

It seemed to me the girl was trying too hard to look indifferent. I thought perhaps I was on the right track. We talked some more but got nowhere, except that I found out her name was Molly. She calmed down considerably after she was sure no one was going to burn her hands and feet off, but she stuck to her story about not knowing where Johnson was.

As it was getting late, I went out to get my horse, and stabled him in the old barn. I guess only Molly got much sleep that night, because both Billy and I were lying awake listening to each other’s breathing. Maybe the Chief thought Norma’d given him a good idea, sending Billy to watch me, but it didn’t seem so smart to me.

In the morning I brought down a couple of rabbits with my slingshot, and we had a good breakfast. There is no shortage of game in the Sacramento Territory. In the hills of the east, where I was raised, a good man with a spear can bring down a buck almost for the asking.

Then I put Molly on my horse behind me, and we started out for the Ruins. Billy Garth was sulky, but he came along; I could see that he was afraid of radiations. I kept watching Molly for signs of the same fear, but, as she showed none, I concluded that she really had been living in the Ruins with her father, and living there had learned the radiations were only superstition.

When you get to the top of the hills just this side of the Bay, you can see the beginnings of the Ruins. It is a breathtaking sight; thousands and thousands of houses, all of them just shells. I could see that Billy was sweating, so I took a lot of pleasure in riding forward steadily.

From the crest of the ridge there is a steady slope down to the Bay. We could see the brightly shining waters, and across them the site of San Francisco, another of the cities of the Old Men. We could even see where the bridges had once jutted out from the shore. I said to the girl, “What was the name of this place, just below us?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Won’t hurt you any to tell me,” I answered. “I’d just like to know.”

She paused. Though skinny, as I have said, she was somehow attractive. Her eyes were greenish and her skin was fair. “It was called Berkeley,” she said. “That’s what I was told. The Old Men had a lot of wonderful things here.”

“For instance?”

“Books,” she hesitated. “My f– People I know said there were just thousands of books buried here.”

“Can you read?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said challengingly. “I don’t care who knows it, either.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “It’s no skin off my back if you can read. Whereabouts did you say these books were buried?”

She saw where I was leading, then, and with a furious look turned her face away.

I heard a loud laugh from Billy Garth, who had been riding a little behind. “She’s smarter’n you,” he jeered. “How about it, tough guy? Ain’t you tired yet, or do I heat up my knife and do it my way?”

I didn’t answer. Billy suddenly spurred his horse alongside and laid hold of the bridle. “O.K., Hunter,” he said. “You’re so smart. You figure on poking around in these Ruins forever, looking for an old fool who only has to duck behind a wall to hide?”

“Get your hand off,” I said.

“I’ve gone as far into this death trap as I’m going!” he snarled. “We’ve got the answer right here in this girl. We don’t have to look for her old man. We just string her up by the thumbs in a nice prominent place, and let her holler a while, and he’ll come to us. If you had half the nerve–”

I struck his hand off the bridle. He roared and lunged at me, clawing for his hatchet. I caught his wrist and twisted the hatchet out of his grasp. It fell on my horse; I could see the blood gush as the beast screamed and shot forward. All three of us, Molly, Billy and I, fell to the ground in a heap. Something hit my head and that was all I knew for some time.

I woke up not wanting to. From the way it hurt to breathe, I knew I must have a couple of cracked ribs. And when I raised my hand to my face, it came away sticky with blood. With a good deal of effort, I managed to sit up and prop myself against a tree bole. My head was buzzing, and it was a few minutes before my eyes could focus.

What puzzled me was, that I was still alive. When the fall knocked me out, Billy doubtless had given me a going-over, but why hadn’t he killed me? He had taken my gun, but my knife was still in its sheath. I had to get up and move; I knew if I just lay there I would soon be too stiff and weak to help myself.

After a couple of failures, I got to my feet, and my head cleared. I examined the tracks on the ground, and got a better idea of what had happened. Billy had been scuffling with Molly, she had broken away, run, and he had followed her. He had just been too busy to kill me, or perhaps had thought me already dead.

With my knife, I cut strips off my deerskin jacket, and bound my chest as well as I could. It helped some. Then, since my horse was gone, I started off on foot down the slope and into the Ruins, following the tracks.

By the position of the sun, I judged I had been unconscious for about two hours. Since Billy was mounted and I was not, I had no hope of overtaking him quickly, but I figured I would do it eventually.

The Ruins were beginning in earnest, now, and I lost Billy’s tracks on the hard surface of an old road. It seemed to me that he would not go much farther down the slope, for fear of Radiations. I determined therefore to wait for developments, since Billy would have to make his presence known in some way if he intended to use Molly as bait for her father.

It was late afternoon by now. I ate some strips of the morning’s rabbit, which I had shoved into a pocket. Then I climbed to the shattered roof of a small building nearby, and lay down behind the low parapet which surrounded the roof. From this position I had a fairly good view of the surrounding territory, merely by raising my head. It felt good to lie down and rest; my chest hurt with every breath, and my head throbbed.

With the coming of twilight, I began to watch very carefully. At last I saw the first flicker of a fire about half a mile south. I got going the best I could, sliding off the road and racing toward the south as fast as my painful chest would let me. I had to get there first.

The remains of a tower stood in a clearing. There were no building ruins within at least one hundred yards. Rubble from the tower itself made it very easy to climb to the highest point, about twenty feet above ground. Here, at the top, Billy Garth had built a huge fire. Sprawled at his feet, but plainly visible, was Molly. Her hands and feet were bound.

I found a good point of vantage, and settled down comfortably to wait. It wasn’t long before I saw definite signs that someone was moving about in the perimeter of the Ruins. I advanced quickly, but at that I was almost too late.

“Hello!” came a voice out of the shadowy buildings. “What do you want, you up there with the fire?”

Billy Garth roared back, “I got something to trade!” He bent, seized Molly by the hair, and dragged her erect. “Look!” he boomed. “I got a redheaded girl named Molly. She’s been beat up some. Maybe she’ll get beat up some more!”

There was a pause, and then the newcomer’s voice came again, hoarse and strained. “What do you want?”

“A trade!” shouted Billy gleefully. “One redheaded girl, in reasonable good shape, breathing anyhow, to trade for a redheaded dog named Johnson!”

I had rounded the last building now, scrambling in my haste, and saw the stranger at last. It was Johnson all right; there was no doubt of it.

“Let the girl go,” Johnson was saying. “Let me see her walk away, and I’ll give up.”

“You don’t make no deals with me,” said Billy. “I make the deals. See?” He swung his hand heavily against the girl, knocking her down. “You got nothing to make deals about, Johnson. The Chief wants you. If you give up now, or not, we’ll get you. But if you don’t show in a hurry, I start kicking your girl’s ribs into a busted basket!”

“I’ll come,” sobbed Johnson.

I moved forward quickly. Before Johnson had a chance to step out of the shadows, I was on him. The weight of my body knocked him flat on his face, stunning him. I whipped a cord around his wrists. Then I lifted him to his feet, and he stood groggily, facing me. He was a tall man, thin, not so young anymore, and he looked as though he hadn’t eaten well for a while.

“Tricked!” he said thickly, as soon as he could talk. “You Bodyguards–”

“Keep quiet and you won’t get hurt,” I told him. I took out my knife and put it in his ribs. “Now move out into the light, and stop when I tell you to.”

He walked, or rather staggered, a few steps into the flickering light thrown by the fire. I walked close behind him, my knife point ready. I saw Billy Garth make a gesture of surprise when he recognized me, and draw my gun out of his belt.

The girl saw us too, and struggled to her knees. “Go back, Pa!” she wailed. “Run! Run!”

I halted Johnson, and called up to where the others were. “You’re through, Billy,” I said. “I’ve got Johnson. I’ll kill him before I’ll let you have him, and the Chief wants him alive. Throw down my gun, Billy.”

He swore at me.

I said, “It’s no use, Billy. You never shot a gun in your life. You can’t possibly hit me. Throw down the gun.”

“You haven’t got the nerve to kill him,” he said.

I grabbed Johnson by the hair and pulled his head back. I put my knife across his throat. “Throw down the gun,” I said.

Billy hesitated and then, with a curse, hurled the gun to the foot of the broken tower. He scrambled down the slope of rubble and vanished into the dark at a dead run. A moment later I heard the hoofbeats of his horse.

Johnson was almost fainting. I got my gun, then climbed to the tower and cut the girl loose. She was in bad shape. I helped her down to the ground and she stumbled to her father, holding on to him and kissing him.

“You wouldn’t have killed him, would you?” she said to me.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“He’s a Bodyguard,” rasped Johnson. “What are you going to do with Molly? That other one offered to trade her for me.”

“He was kidding,” I said. “You didn’t really believe him, did you?”

“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I thought… if there was a chance–”

The girl wept. She looked homely with tears running down her face, and her eyes and cheeks puffy with bruises. “You should have stayed away, Pa,” she said. “You never should have come.”

Johnson turned to me again. “What are you going to do with us?” he said.

“I have orders,” I told him. “I work for the Chief, and I carry out orders. He told me to bring you back to him alive, and that’s just what I’m going to do. But he didn’t say anything about the girl. As soon as I figure it’s safe, she can go. I don’t care where she goes, and I’ll see that she has a chance to get clear.”

They stared at me. “You mean that?” asked Johnson slowly.

“Of course I mean it,” I said irritably.

They didn’t say any more, but only clung to each other. Then Johnson showed us where we could find fresh water, and we made a camp. He led us to food, too, the canned food of the Old Men, which was plentiful in the Ruins. All together, he was as little troublesome a prisoner as I ever took.

“Aren’t you afraid to eat this food?” he asked me, when I had opened several cans with my knife.

Why?”

“Radiations.”

I smiled. “I don’t believe in radiations,” I said.

He shook his head gravely. “They’re real. Very terribly real.”

“Then you shouldn’t be alive,” I pointed out. “You’ve been living here for a year.”

“This area,” said Johnson, “and most of the other outlying districts as well, were destroyed by ordinary bombs. If you can use a word like ‘ordinary’ for bombs that do so much mischief. So the radiations are not present everywhere. Over there”—he pointed out towards the Bay—“on the other side of the water, where the main city stood, the radiations are probably still present, though nowhere near as bad as they used to be. People no longer really understand what radiations are, what they do. So they keep away from all ruins, superstitiously. And that’s a pity, because there is so much to be learned here.”

“Books?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What can you learn from them?”

“Everything. How to make buildings like these, how to live like the Old Men lived, do as they did–”

“Not interested,” I said.

“Don’t you want to have those things again?”

I got impatient. “I never had them, so I don’t miss them. My father said never to want anything I couldn’t have. And now I’m going to get some sleep.”

Molly came over. Without saying a word, she began to rebandage my chest. She did a good job, and I felt much better. Then, “What’s your name?”

“Tom Hunter.”

“All right, Tom. You’re a hard man and a Bodyguard. But you helped me twice, even though you intend to turn my father over to the Chief. I won’t ask you why you helped me, or why you have to take Pa to die.”

“My father said–”

“I know. Your father said. Now your chest should feel better, if you give it some rest.”

Though we all had apparently come to friendly terms, I did not neglect to tie up both of them securely for the night. I wanted to sleep without listening for hostile movements.

In the morning we started the long walk to Sacramento. I was stiff and sore, but the mild exercise and the warm sun combined to loosen my bruised muscles. We walked together, more like three friends than anything else, and Johnson talked very frankly to me.

He told me that he had known how to read since he was a boy. Living close to the Ruins, he had explored them for a long time, and had stumbled on a huge collection of books in a place near to the broken tower where I captured him. The things he read in these books inflamed his desire to know more, to dispose of our corrupt Chief, and to set the community on a track which would bring it back some day to the achievements of the Old Men. There was actually, he said, a secret organization among the farmers of Sacramento Territory; the Chief knew it quite well, but dared not try to punish all involved because the disaffection was so widespread.

I, too, knew, of course, that the Chief was far from popular. That was why the Bodyguards existed. The news of a secret organization explained why the Chief was so concerned about Johnson, and why he wanted him alive.

Johnson said also that Molly had been working with him, to the extent of acting as liaison between the farmers and himself. She had been on one of her periodic trips into the Territory when Billy Garth found her.

“You shouldn’t tell me this,” I said.

“I think I should.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re on the wrong side in this struggle, Tom Hunter, and I believe you’ll realize it soon.”

I shrugged. “Your side may be wrong, too. You want to bring back the Old Men. You’re like that crazy old man who called himself the Atom Master. What did the Old Men do that was so good? They built things and then smashed them. My grandfather was a little boy then. The sky was black and fires shot out of the earth like fountains. They learned how to do that from the books. What good are the books if that was the final use for them?”

Johnson protested that I didn’t understand. Maybe I don’t. I never read the books, I don’t know what they say. Maybe there are books that tell people how to be good to each other, too.

It was on the morning of our third day of travel that I saw the horsemen approaching over the meadows. From their formation and the way they rode, I knew them to be Bodyguards. I was worried for Molly. She should have left long ago, but insisted on coming along as far as possible. I looked for a place where she might hide, but it was too late. Farmhouses were visible but distant, and the fringe of trees that marked the Big River was half a mile away.

There were five horsemen, and they reined in before us. I recognized the leader, big Joe Wentworth.

“Don’t reach for anything, Hunter,” said Joe. “You’re covered.”

I hadn’t made a motion. “Why should I reach?” I said “What’s up?”

“This Johnson?” asked Joe.

“Yes. What’s the trouble?”

“I got my orders, Hunter. The Chief sent me to bring you in, and Johnson, too, if he was with you.” He looked at me levelly for a moment. “I might as well tell you, Tom. The Chief wants this guy Johnson alive, but he told me to finish you off if you make any trouble.”

The picture was plain. Too plain. Billy Garth had returned, and told some interesting story.

“You won’t have any trouble,” I said. “What kind of a story did Billy tell?”

“Beats me. It’s none of my business. Now, Tom, I’ll have to ask you for your gun. We’ll get it from you one way or the other, and it’s better this way. You know me, and I promise I’ll return it to you.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Joe,” I said. Bitterly, I took the gun out of its holster and handed it to him. I gave him my knife, also.

He took both, and turned to Molly. “This girl,” he said. “Who is she?”

“Never saw her before,” I said. “She lives in that house over there, she says.” I waved my hand toward a distant farmhouse. “We just came across her a few minutes ago.”

Joe Wentworth looked at her. “She’s got red hair,” he said. “Like Johnson.”

“Lots of people have red hair,” I said.

“How about it, Johnson?” asked Joe. “You know this girl?”

“No,” said Johnson.

“I think you guys are both liars,” said Joe. “But the Chief didn’t say anything about a girl. He said you and Johnson. And I got you and Johnson. That should be enough blood to drink for one day. All right, let’s get going!”

Johnson and I were swung up, each behind one of the riders, and we galloped off. I turned my head and saw Molly stand watching us for a moment, then turn and run in the direction of the farmhouse.

Walking had been easier on my ribs than riding. By the time we got to the Fort, I was badly shaken up. I expected to be taken in to the Chief, but instead I was thrown into one of the strongrooms of the cellar, with Johnson. I made no fuss about it; there’s no use complaining about something you can’t help.

I sat there for two days with Johnson. He tried to thank me for not giving Molly away, but I cut him off short. I wasn’t too sure why I’d done it. And I suspected that, by that impulse, I might have put a noose around my neck. “That’s your trouble,” I told myself. “You’re too squeamish. You should have killed Billy Garth when you first put a gun on him through the window of the old Johnson place.”

Finally they came for us and marched us upstairs, into the Official. I got the feeling that something was wrong. The men who brought us looked as though they had been fighting recently. One had a bandaged arm. They were surly and silent, not what I would have expected. I asked them what the trouble was, but they said nothing. They brought us into the Official and stood by the door, inside.

The Chief sat behind his desk, looking sour. Norma was on the arm of his chair, as though she hadn’t even moved since last I saw her. Joe Wentworth leaned against the wall, his face dark, and I wasn’t at all surprised to see Billy Garth, who stood near the Chief with one hand on the hatchet in his belt. He was grinning slyly.

The Chief examined us critically, while Norma whispered in his ear like a black bird perched on his shoulder. “So you two men been working together,” he said at last. “No wonder you didn’t mind going into the Ruins after the Atom Master, Hunter. You had friends there, eh?”

I didn’t answer.

“Then when I sent you for Johnson, that was right up your tree. Only you didn’t intend to get him. You just figured on warning him.”

“Ask Joe Wentworth,” I said. “Ask him where I was going when he arrested me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the Chief. “You might have been going anywhere. Besides, I think maybe Joe is a liar, too.” He darted an angry glance at Wentworth, who looked blacker than ever. “Because you had a girl with you, and Joe let her go. Didn’t you, Joe.”

“You didn’t say nothing about a girl,” responded Joe sturdily.

The Chief leaned back and was whispered to some more. Then, “That was Johnson’s daughter. You didn’t know that, did you? The hell you didn’t. You let her get away to stir up these fool farmers.”

I said, “He didn’t know it was Johnson’s daughter. I knew, but I told him it wasn’t.”

I was standing before his desk. The Chief is a big man, but he moved faster than I have ever seen anyone move. In a single motion he rose from his chair, plucked his gun from his belt, and hit me across the face with the barrel. I didn’t even have time to duck. I landed on the floor, blood streaming from a face still puffy since my encounter with Billy Garth near the Ruins. Even with the pain, I couldn’t help noticing Norma’s malicious smile.

I climbed to my feet and let the blood drip. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “Now, watch out for me.”

“You!” said the Chief. “Watch out for you! You renegade!” He was white with rage. “You let the girl go, and now every blasted farmer in the Valley has ridden into town yelling for Johnson!”

Norma grabbed his arm, as though to stop him from saying too much. He shook her off. “Thirty Bodyguards dead!” he bellowed. “I shouldn’t ha’ done that to you, hey? Spying for this redheaded bookworm, and you tell me to watch out for you!”

Johnson spoke up. “This man found me for you, but he found me too late. Whether or not you kill me now doesn’t matter. The date for this action was set a month ago. You’re through, Chief.”

The Chief sat down and looked at him coldly. Norma perched on the arm of the chair again, and put her hand on his shoulder. She bent and whispered to him.

“Since you think you know so much about it,” said the Chief, “I’ll tell you something you don’t know. We’re going to wipe out your whole lousy crew. I’m going to fix you up right now, both of you, just as pretty as I can make you. Then I’ll hang what’s left of you outside the window, for your friends to see.”

It got very quiet in there. I began to understand what was happening. Some kind of revolt had started, all right, and the Chief was hard-pressed. He might yet even be beaten. I felt a little hope. There could be a way out. I looked around at the room, at the Chief, at Billy, at Joe Wentworth, at the two guards standing by the door. Joe had my gun in his belt, and only the Chief had another.

“Well, Joe,” I said, “seems to me you got something you promised to return to me.”

The Chief leaned forward. “We’ll start now,” he said. I felt my elbows clamped from behind by one of the guards. Johnson was held the same way.

“All right, Billy,” said the Chief. “You can start in on your friend Hunter. Joe, I want you to muss up Johnson.”

I heard noises outside, and shouting. I figured that if I could stay alive for a few minutes more, I might have a chance. Billy approached me, grinning all over. He was going to like this. I kicked back hard and twisted forward at the same time, feeling my broken ribs stab me like knives. I got one arm loose just in time to deflect Billy’s first punch, which glanced oif the side of my head but hurt me anyhow. I got my other arm loose and shook off the guard just in time to receive another blow full in the face. It knocked me sprawling into the corner.

I saw Billy coming at me, and tried to get up in time to avoid his feet. I wasn’t sure I’d manage. Then something flew through the air and landed against my chest with a thump. It was my gun!

“I near forgot to return it,” said Joe calmly.

With a cry of fear, Billy Garth snatched at his hatchet. He didn’t draw it. I shot him through the head, and he fell in a heap before me.

Too much happened, too fast. The Chief missed with his first shot, and never had a chance to try again. Joe Wentworth and I, together, beat him to death. I put a bullet through Norma myself, while she ran screaming for the door. I forgot about the two guards until I noticed that Johnson was holding them off, very nicely, with the Chief’s own gun. Then, when it was over, when my head cleared and I could see the blood and bodies, I was sick, while big Joe Wentworth watched me solemnly.

So that was the end of the big revolt. There was no more fighting after Joe and I dragged the bodies downstairs, out in the front of the Fort, and nailed them to the door. That was Johnson’s idea; he said it would give notice, and it did.

The Chief was dead, and so the Bodyguards had no leader; but Johnson was alive, and he had all the farmers Molly had gathered. The result was easy to see.

It was two weeks later that I stood in the Official again. The blood had been washed off the floor, but it seemed to me that I could still smell it. The room was different in another way, too, because now Johnson sat in the big chair, and Molly stood beside him.

“I wish you’d change your mind, Tom,” said Johnson.

“I’m going,” I said.

“We could use you.”

“You’ve got Joe Wentworth,” I said. “He’s better than I am. You’ve got a gun now, too.” I pointed at the Chief’s gun, which he was wearing.

“But you could help, Tom,” said Johnson. “We can get a new world started here. We’re not the only people left alive in this continent. There must be other groups, many groups, across the mountains to the east. We can join them all together, get a Nation like the Old Men had.”

“Let him alone, Pa,” said Molly. She came over and put her hands on my shoulders. Her face wasn’t bruised anymore, and she was very good-looking, though she was skinny as ever. “Your chest feel all right now, Tom?”

“Sure,” I said. “I can travel fine.”

“What’s the trouble, Tom?” said Johnson. “You know how much we’d like your help in this. We’ve got a lot to do. Set up schools, set up proper authority, see that sound laws are made, explore the Ruins–”

“Look,” I said, “I quit being a Bodyguard when the Chief swiped me across the face with a gun barrel. By any other name, it’s still Bodyguarding you want me for. I’ve got nothing against you, Johnson. You won’t order any killings just for the fun of it. But I don’t go for your ideas.”

“What ideas?”

“You think we had trouble because we had bad government. You think good government will make people better. I don’t see it that way. The trouble is not bad government, but just government itself. With the wrong kind of people, no government can do any good. With the right kind of people, you don’t need government at all.

“You think you can get the right kind of people by starting from the government end, and telling them to go to school, and putting out Bodyguards to walk the fields and keep people straight. I think you’ve got to start from the other end, forget the Old Men and the way they worked things, forget about organizations and just start raising people right. Like my father wanted to raise me, to be a man and not an animal.

“Johnson, you want to bring back the days of the Old Men, but I’m glad the Old Men are gone, and I hope they never come back. I had enough killing right here, in this room. I’m not interested in any more, for any purpose.”

I ripped my gun out of its holster and threw it on the table before Johnson. “Here,” I said, “keep this one until the books teach you to make some more.”

“I’m sorry,” said Johnson. “I’m really sorry.”

I turned around and went out, down the stairs and into the sunshine. The air smelled good. I saw that Molly had followed me.

“That’s the longest speech I ever heard you make,” she said.

“The last, too.”

“Where are you going now?”

“East. To the mountains. Where I used to live with my father.”

“You got a wife there, maybe?”

“No. You got somebody?”

“No.”

We looked at each other, and then we both began to laugh.

Editor’s Introduction to:
The Palace at Midnight
by Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg has been at the forefront of science fiction writers during a long and distinguished career. In this excellent story he shows us an After Armageddon setting that is typical of—and could happen only in—California…

The Palace at Midnight
by Robert Silverberg

The foreign minister of the Empire of San Francisco was trying to sleep late. Last night had been a long one, a wild if not particularly gratifying party at the baths, too much to drink, too much to smoke, and he had seen the dawn come up like thunder out of Oakland ’crost the bay. Now the telephone was ringing. He integrated the first couple of rings nicely into his dream, but the next one began to undermine his slumber, and the one after that woke him up. He groped for the receiver and, eyes still closed, managed to croak, “Christensen here.”

“Tom, are you awake? You don’t sound awake. It’s Morty.” The undersecretary for external affairs. Christensen sat up, rubbed his eyes, ran his tongue around his lips. Daylight was streaming into the room. His cats were glaring at him from the doorway. The little Siamese pawed daintily at her empty bowl and looked up expectantly.

“Tom?”

“I’m up, I’m up! What is it, Morty?”

“I didn’t mean to wake you. How was I supposed to know, one in the afternoon–”

“What is it, Morty?”

“We got a call from Monterey. There’s an ambassador on the way up and you’ve got to meet with her.”

The foreign minister worked hard at clearing the fog from his brain. He was thirty-nine years old and all-night parties took more out of him than they once had.

“You do it, Morty.”

“You know I would, Tom. But I can’t. You’ve got to handle this one yourself. It’s prime.”

“Prime? What kind of prime? Like a great dope deal? Or are they declaring war on us?”

“How would I know the details? The call came in and they said it was prime, Ms. Sawyer must confer with Mr. Christensen. It wouldn’t involve dope, Tom. And it can’t be war, either. Shit, why would Monterey want to make war on us? They’ve only got but ten soldiers, I bet, unless they’re drafting the Chicanos out of the Salinas calabozo, and–”

“All right.” Christensen’s head was buzzing. “Go easy on the chatter, okay? Where am I supposed to meet her?”

“Berkeley.”

“You’re kidding.”

“She won’t come into the city. She thinks it’s too dangerous over here.”

“What do we do, kill ambassadors and barbecue them? She’ll be safe here and she knows it.”

“I talked to her. She thinks the city’s too crazy. She’ll go as far as Berkeley, but that’s it.”

“Tell her to go to hell.”

“Tom, Tom-”

Christensen sighed. “Where in Berkeley will she be?”

“The Claremont, at half past four.”

“Jesus,” Christensen said. “How did you get me into this? All the way across to the East Bay to meet a lousy ambassador from Monterey! Let her come to San Francisco. This is the Empire, isn’t it? They’re only a stinking republic. Am I supposed to swim over to Oakland every time an envoy shows up and wiggles a finger? Some bozo from Fresno says boo and I have to haul my ass out to the valley, eh? Where does it stop? What kind of clout do I have, anyway?”

“Tom–”

“I’m sorry, Morty. I don’t feel like a goddamned diplomat this morning.”

“It isn’t morning anymore, Tom. But I’d do it for you if I could.”

“All right. All right. I didn’t mean to yell at you. You make the ferry arrangements?”

“Ferry leaves at three-thirty. Chauffeur will pick you up at your place at three, okay?”

“Okay,” Christensen said. “See if you can find out any more about all this and have somebody call me back in an hour with a briefing, will you?”

He fed the cats, showered, shaved, took a couple of pills, brewed some coffee. At half past two the ministry called. Nobody had any idea what the ambassador might want. Relations between San Francisco and the Republic of Monterey were cordial just now. Ms. Sawyer lived in Pacific Grove and was a member of the Monterey Senate and that was all that was known about her. Some briefing, Christensen thought. He went downstairs to wait for his chauffeur. It was a late autumn day, bright and clear and cool. The rains hadn’t begun yet and the streets looked dusty. The foreign minister lived on Frederick Street just off Cole, in an old white Victorian with a small front porch. He settled in on the steps, feeling wide awake but surly, and a few minutes before three his car came putt-putting up, a venerable gray Chevrolet with the arms of imperial San Francisco on its doors. The driver was Vietnamese or maybe Thai. Christensen got in without a word, and off they went at an imperial velocity through the practically empty streets, down to Haight, eastward for a while, then onto Oak, up Van Ness past the palace, where at this moment the Emperor Norton VII was probably taking his imperial nap, and along Geary through downtown to the ferry slip. The stump of the Bay Bridge glittered magically against the sharp blue sky. A small power cruiser was waiting for him. Christensen was silent during the slow dull voyage. A chill wind cut through the Golden Gate and made him huddle into himself. He stared broodingly at the low rounded East Bay hills, dry and brown from a long summer of drought, and thought about the permutations of fate that had transformed an adequate architect into the barely competent foreign minister of this barely competent little nation. The Empire of San Francisco, one of the early emperors had said, is the only country in history that was decadent from the day it was founded.

At the Berkeley marina Christensen told the ferry skipper, “I don’t know what time I’ll be coming back, so no sense waiting. I’ll phone in when I’m ready to go.”

Another imperial car took him up the hillside to the sprawling nineteenth-century splendor of the Hotel Claremont, that vast antiquated survivor of all the cataclysms. It was seedy now, the grounds a jungle, ivy almost to the tops of the palm trees, and yet it still looked fit to be a palace, hundreds of rooms, magnificent banquet halls. Christensen wondered how often it had guests. There wasn’t much tourism these days.

In the parking plaza outside the entrance was a single car, a black-and-white California Highway Patrol job that had been decorated with the insignia of the Republic of Monterey, a contorted cypress tree and a sea otter. A uniformed driver lounged against it. “I’m Christensen,” he told the man.

“You the foreign minister?”

“I’m not the Emperor Norton.”

“Come on. She’s waiting in the bar.”

Ms. Sawyer stood up as he entered—a slender dark-haired woman of about thirty, with cool green eyes—and he flashed her a quick, professionally cordial smile, which she returned just as professionally. He did not feel at all cordial.

“Senator Sawyer,” he said. “I’m Tom Christensen.”

“Glad to know you.” She pivoted and gestured toward the huge picture window that ran the length of the bar. “I just got here. I’ve been admiring the view. It’s been years since I’ve been in the Bay Area.”

He nodded. From the cocktail lounge one could see the slopes of Berkeley, the bay, the ruined bridges, the still imposing San Francisco skyline. Very nice. They took seats by the window and he beckoned to a waiter, who brought them drinks.

“How was your drive up?” Christensen asked.

“No problems. We got stopped for speeding in San Jose, but I got out of it. They could see it was an official car and they stopped us anyway.”

“The bastards. They love to look important.”

“Things haven’t been good between Monterey and San Jose all year. They’re spoiling for trouble.”

“I hadn’t heard,” Christensen said.

“We think they want to annex Santa Cruz. Naturally we can’t put up with that. Santa Cruz is our buffer.”

He said sharply, “Is that what you came here for, to ask our help against San Jose?”

She stared at him in surprise. “Are you in a hurry, Mr. Christensen?”

“Not particularly.”

“You sound awfully impatient. We’re still making preliminary conversation, having a drink, two diplomats playing the diplomatic game. Isn’t that so?”

“Well?”

“I was telling you what happened to me on the way north. In response to your question. Then I was filling you in on current political developments. I didn’t expect you to snap at me like that.”

“Did I snap?”

“It sounded like snapping to me,” she said.

Christensen took a deep pull of his bourbon and water and gave her a long steady look. She met his gaze imperturbably. She looked annoyed, amused and very, very tough. After a time, when some of the red haze of irrational anger and fatigue had cleared from his mind, he said quietly, “I had about four hours sleep last night and I wasn’t expecting an envoy from Monterey today. I’m tired and edgy, and if I sounded impatient or harsh or snappish, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

“Another bourbon or two and I’ll be properly unwound.” He held his empty glass toward the hovering waiter. “A refill for you, too?” he asked her.

“Yes. Please.” In a formal tone she said, “Is the Emperor in good health?”

“Not bad. He hasn’t really been well for a couple of years, but he’s holding his own. And President Morgan?”

“Fine,” she said. “Hunting wild boar in Big Sur this week.”

“A nice life it must be, President of Monterey. I’ve always liked Monterey. So much quieter and cleaner and more sensible down there than in San Francisco.”

“Too quiet sometimes. I envy you the excitement here.”

“Yes. The rapes, the muggings, the arson, the mass meetings, the race wars, the—

“Please,” she said gently.

He realized he had begun to rant. There was a throbbing behind his eyes. He worked to gain control of himself.

“Did my voice get too loud?”

“You must be terribly tired. Look, we can confer in the morning if you’d prefer. It isn’t that urgent. Suppose we have dinner and not talk politics at all and get rooms here, and tomorrow after breakfast we can–”

“No,” Christensen said. “My nerves are a little ragged, that’s all. But I’ll try to be more civil. And I’d rather not wait until tomorrow to find out what this is all about. Suppose you give me a precis of it now, and if it sounds too complicated, I’ll sleep on it and we can discuss it in detail tomorrow. Yes?”

“All right.” She put her drink down and sat quite still, as if arranging her thoughts. At length she said, “The Republic of Monterey maintains close ties with the Free State of Mendocino. I understand that Mendocino and the Empire broke off relations a little while back.”

“A fishing dispute, nothing major.”

“But you have no direct contact with them right now. Therefore this should come as news to you. The Mendocino people have learned, and have communicated to our representative there, that an invasion of San Francisco is imminent.”

Christen blinked twice. “By whom?”

“The Realm of Wicca,” she said.

“Flying down from Oregon on their broomsticks?”

“Please. I’m being serious.”

“Unless things have changed up there,” Christensen said, “the Realm of Wicca is nonviolent, like all the neopagan states. As I understand it, they tend their farms and practice their little pagan rituals and do a lot of dancing around the maypole and chanting and screwing, and that’s it. You expect me to believe that a bunch of gentle goofy witches is going to make war on the Empire?”

She said, “Not war. But definitely an invasion.”

“Explain.”

“One of their high priests has proclaimed San Francisco a holy place and has instructed them to come down here and build a Stonehenge in Golden Gate Park in time for proper celebration of the winter solstice. There are at least a quarter of a million neopagans in the Willamette Valley and more than half of them are expected to take part. According to our Mendocino man, the migration has already begun, and thousands of Wiccans are spread out between Mount Shasta and Ukiah right now. The solstice is only seven weeks away. The Wiccans may be gentle, but you’re going to have a hundred fifty thousand of them in San Francisco by the end of the month, pitching tents all over town.”

“Holy Jesus,” Christensen muttered, and closed his eyes. “Can you feed that many strangers? Can you find room for them? Are the people of San Francisco going to meet them with open arms? Is it going to be a festival of love?”

“It’ll be a fucking massacre,” Christensen said tonelessly.

“Yes. And the witches may be nonviolent but they know how to practice self-defense. Once they’re attacked, there’ll be rivers of blood in the city, and it won’t all be Wiccan blood.”

Christensen’s head was pounding again. She was absolutely right—chaos, strife, bloodshed. And a merry Christmas to all. He rubbed his aching forehead, turned away from her and stared out at the deepening twilight and the sparkling lights of the city on the other side of the bay. A bleak bitter depression was taking hold of his spirit. He signaled for another round of drinks. Then he said slowly, “They can’t be allowed to enter the city. We’ll need to close the imperial frontier and turn them back before they get as far as Santa Rosa. Let them build their goddamned Stonehenge in Sacramento if they like.” His eyes flickered. He started to assemble ideas. “The Empire might just have enough troops to contain the Wiccans by itself, but I think this is best handled as a regional problem. We’ll call in forces from our allies as far out as Petaluma and Napa and Palo Alto. I don’t imagine we can expect much help from the Free State or from San Jose. And of course Monterey isn’t much of a military power, but still–”

“We are willing to help you,” Ms. Sawyer said.

“To what extent?”

“We aren’t set up for much actual warfare, no, but we have access to our own alliances from Salinas down to Paso Robles, and we could call up, say, five thousand troops all told.”

“That would be very helpful,” said Christensen.

“It shouldn’t be necessary for there to be any combat. With the imperial border sealed and troops posted along the line from Guerneville to Sacramento, the Wiccans won’t force the issue. They’ll revise their revelation and celebrate the solstice somewhere else.”

“Yes,” he said. “I think you’re right.” He leaned toward her and said, “Why is Monterey willing to help us?”

“We have problems of our own brewing—with San Jose. If we are seen making a conspicuous gesture of solidarity with the Empire, it might discourage San Jose from proceeding with its notion of annexing Santa Cruz, don’t you think? That amounts to an act of war against us. Surely San Jose isn’t interested in making any moves that will bring the Empire down on its back.”

“I see,” said Christensen. She wasn’t subtle, but she was effective. Quid pro quo, we help you keep the witches out, you help us keep San Jose in line, and all remains well without a shot being fired. These goddamned little nations, he thought, these absurd jerkwater sovereignties, with their wars and alliances and shifting confederations—it was like a game, it was like playground politics. Except that it was real. What had fallen apart was not going to be put back together, not for a long while, and this miniaturized Weltpolitik was the realest reality there was just now. At least things were saner in Northern California than they were down south where Los Angeles was gobbling everything, but there were rumors that Pasadena had the bomb. Nobody had to contend with that up here. Christensen said, “I’ll have to propose all this to the defense ministry, of course. And get the Emperor’s approval. But basically I’m in agreement with your thinking.”

“I’m so pleased.”

“And I’m very glad that you took the trouble to travel up from Monterey to make these matters clear to us.”

“Enlightened self-interest,” Ms. Sawyer said.

“Mmm. Yes.” He found himself studying the sharp planes of her cheekbones, the delicate arch of her eyebrows. Not only was she cool and competent, Christensen thought, but now that the business part of their meeting was over, he was coming to notice that she was a very attractive woman and that he was not as tired as he had thought he was. Did international politics allow room for a little recreational hanky-panky? Metternich hadn’t jumped into bed with Talleyrand, nor Kissinger with Indira Gandhi, but times had changed, after all, and—no. No. He choked off that entire line of thought. In these shabby days they might all be children playing at being grownups, but nevertheless, international politics still had its code, and this was a meeting of diplomats, not a blind date or a singles-bar pickup. You will sleep in your own bed tonight, he told himself, and you will sleep alone.

All the same he said, “It’s past six o’clock. Shall we have dinner together before I go back to the city?”

“I’d love to.”

“I don’t know much about Berkeley restaurants. We’re probably better off eating right here.”

“I think that’s best,” she said.

They were the only ones in the hotel’s enormous dining room. A staff of three waited on them as though they were the most important people who had ever dined there. And dinner turned out to be quite decent, he thought—seafood, calamari and abalone and sand dabs and grilled thresher shark, washed down by a dazzling bottle of Napa chardonnay. Even though the world had ended, it remained possible to eat very well in the Bay Area, and the breakdown of society not only had reduced maritime pollution but also had made local seafood much more readily available for local consumption. There wasn’t much of an export trade possible with eleven national boundaries and eleven sets of customs barriers between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Dinner conversation was light, relaxed—diplomatic chitchat, gossip about events in remote territories, reports about the Voodoo principality expanding out of New Orleans and the Sioux conquests in Wyoming and the Prohibition War now going on in what used to be Kentucky. There was a bison herd again on the Great Plains, she said, close to a million head. He told her what he had heard about the Suicide People who ruled between San Diego and Tijuana and about King Barnum & Bailey III who governed in northern Florida with the aid of a court of circus freaks. She smiled and said, “How can they tell the freaks from the ordinary people? The whole world’s a circus now, isn’t it?” He shook his head and replied, “No, a zoo,” and beckoned the waiter for more wine. He did not ask her about internal matters in Monterey, and she tactfully stayed away from the domestic problems of the Empire of San Francisco. He was feeling easy, buoyant, a little drunk, more than a little drunk; to have to answer questions now about the little rebellion that had been suppressed in Sausalito or the secessionist thing in Walnut Creek would only be a bringdown, and bad for the digestion besides.

About half past eight he said, “You aren’t going back to Monterey tonight, are you?”

“God, no! It’s a five-hour drive, assuming no more troubles with the San Jose highway patrol. And the road’s so bad below Watsonville that only a lunatic would drive it at night. I’ll stay at the Claremont.”

“Good. Let me put it on the imperial account.”

“That isn’t necessary. We–”

“The hotel is always glad to oblige the government. Please accept their hospitality.”

Ms. Sawyer shrugged. “Very well. Which we’ll reciprocate when you come to Monterey.”

“Fine.”

And then her manner suddenly changed. She shifted in her seat and fidgeted and played with her silverware, looking awkward and ill at ease. Some new and big topic was obviously about to be introduced, and Christensen guessed that she was going to ask him to spend the night with her. In a fraction of a second he ran through all the possible merits and demerits of that and came out on the plus side, and had his answer ready when she said, “Tom, can I ask a big favor?”

Which threw him completely off balance. Whatever was coming, it certainly wasn’t what he was expecting.

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’d like an audience with the Emperor.”

“What?”

“Not on official business. I know the Emperor talks business only with his ministers and privy councillors. But I want to see him, that’s all.” Color came to her cheeks. “Doesn’t it sound silly? But it’s something I’ve always dreamed of, a kind of adolescent fantasy. To be in San Francisco, to be shown into the imperial throne-room, to kiss his ring, all that pomp and circumstance—I want it, Tom. Just to be there, to see him—do you think you could manage that?”

He was astounded. The facade of cool, tough competence had dropped away from her, revealing unanticipated absurdity. He did not know what to answer.

She said, “Monterey’s such a poky little place. It’s just a town. We call ourselves a republic, but we aren’t much of anything. And I call myself a senator and a diplomat, but I’ve never really been anywhere—San Francisco two or three times when I was a girl, San Jose a few times. My mother was in Los Angeles once, but I haven’t been anywhere. And to go home saying that I had seen the Emperor–” Her eyes sparkled. “You’re really taken aback, aren’t you? You thought I was all ice and microprocessors, and instead I’m only a hick, right? But you’re being very nice. You aren’t even laughing at me. Will you get me an audience with the Emperor for tomorrow or the day after?”

“I thought you were afraid to go into San Francisco.”

She looked abashed. “That was just a ploy. To make you come over here, to get you to take me seriously and put yourself out a little. The diplomatic wiles. I’m sorry about that. The word was that you were snotty, that you had to be met with strength or you’d be impossible to deal with. But you aren’t like that at all. Tom, I want to see the Emperor. He does give audiences, doesn’t he?”

“In a manner of speaking. I suppose it could be done.”

“Oh, would you! Tomorrow?”

“Why wait for tomorrow? Why not tonight?”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Not at all,” Christensen said. “This is San Francisco. The Emperor keeps weird hours just like the rest of us. I’ll phone over there and see if we can be received.” He hesitated. “It won’t be what you’re expecting.”

“In what way?”

“The pomp, the circumstance—you’re going to be disappointed. You may be better off not meeting him, actually. Stick to your fantasy of imperial majesty. Seriously. I’ll get you an audience if you insist, but I don’t think it’s a great idea.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“No.”

“I still want to see him. Regardless.”

“Let me make some phone calls, then.”

He left the dining room and, with misgivings, began arranging things. The telephone system was working sluggishly that evening and it took him fifteen minutes to set the whole thing up, but there were no serious obstacles. He returned to her and said, “The ferry will pick us up at the marina in about an hour. There’ll be a car waiting on the San Francisco side. The Emperor will be available for viewing around midnight. I tell you that you’re not going to enjoy this. The Emperor is old and he’s been sick and he—he isn’t a very interesting person to meet.”

“All the same,” she said. “The one thing I wanted, when I volunteered to be the envoy, was an imperial audience. Please don’t discourage me.”

“As you wish. Shall we have another drink?”

“How about these instead?” She produced an enameled cigarette case. “Humboldt County’s finest. Gift of the Free State.”

He smiled and nodded and took the joint from her. It was elegantly manufactured, fine cockleshell paper, gold monogram, igniter cap, even a filter. Everything else has come apart, he thought, but the technology of marijuana is at its highest point in history. He flicked the cap, took a deep drag, passed it to her. The effect was instantaneous, a new high cutting through the wooze of bourbon and wine and brandy already in his brain, clearing it, expanding his limp and sagging soul. When they were finished with it, they floated out of the hotel. His driver and hers were still waiting in the parking lot. Christensen dismissed his, and they took the Republic of Monterey car down the slopes of Berkeley to the marina. The boat from San Francisco was late. They stood around shivering at the ferry slip for twenty minutes, peering bleakly across at the glittering lights of the far-off city. Neither of them was dressed for the nighttime chill, and he was tempted to pull her close and hold her in his arms, but he did not do it. There was a boundary he was not yet willing to cross. Hell, he thought, I don’t even know her first name.

It was nearly eleven by the time they reached San Francisco.

An official car was parked at the pier. The driver hopped out, saluting, bustling about—one of those preposterous little civil-service types, doubtless keenly honored to be taxiing bigwigs around late at night. He wore the red-and-gold uniform of the imperial dragoons, a little frayed at one elbow. The car coughed and sputtered and reluctantly lurched into life, up Market Street to Van Ness and then north to the palace. Ms. Sawyer’s eyes were wide and she stared at the ancient high-rises along Market as though they were cathedrals. When they came to the Civic Center area she gasped, obviously overwhelmed by the majesty of everything, the shattered hulk of Symphony Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the great domed enormity of the City Hall, the Hall of Justice and the Imperial Palace itself, awesome, imposing, a splendid many-columned building that long ago had been the War Memorial Opera House. A bunch of imperial cars were parked outside. With the envoy from the Republic of Monterey at his elbow, Christensen marched up the steps of the palace and through the center doors into the lobby, where a great many of the ranking ministers and plenipotentiaries of the Empire were assembled. “How absolutely marvelous,” Ms. Sawyer murmured. Smiling graciously, bowing, nodding, Christensen pointed out the notables, the defense minister, the minister of finance, the minister of suburban affairs, the chief justice, the minister of transportation, and all the rest. At midnight precisely there was a grand flourish of trumpets and the door to the throne room opened. Christensen offered Ms. Sawyer his arm; together they made the long journey down the center aisle and up the ramp to the stage, where the imperial throne, a resplendent thing of rhinestones and foil, glittered brilliantly under the spotlights. Ms. Sawyer was wonderstruck. She pointed toward the six gigantic portraits suspended high over the stage and whispered a question, and Christensen replied, “The first six emperors. And here comes the seventh one.”

“Oh,” she gasped—but was it awe, surprise, or disgust? He was in his full regalia, the scarlet robe, the bright green tunic with ermine trim, the gold chains. But he was wobbly and tottering, a clumsy staggering figure, gray-faced and feeble, supported on one side by Mike Schiff, the imperial chamberlain, and on the other by the grand sergeant-at-arms, Terry Coleman. He was not so much leaning on them as being dragged by them. Bringing up the rear of the procession were two sleek, pretty boys, one black and one Chinese, carrying the orb, the scepter and the massive crown. Ms. Sawyer’s fingers tightened on Christensen’s forearm and he heard her catch her breath as the Emperor, in the process of being lowered into his throne, went boneless and nearly spilled to the floor. Somehow the imperial chamberlain and the grand sergeant-at-arms settled him properly in place, balanced the crown on his head, stuffed the orb and scepter into his trembling hands. “His Imperial Majesty, Norton the Seventh of San Francisco!” cried Mike Schiif in a magnificent voice that went booming up into the highest balcony. The Emperor giggled.

“Come on,” Christensen whispered, and led her forward.

The old man was really in terrible shape. It was weeks since Christensen last had seen him, and by now he looked like something dragged from the crypt, slack-jawed, drooling, vacant-eyed, utterly burned out. The envoy from Monterey seemed to draw back, tense and rigid, repelled, unable or unwilling to go closer, but Christensen persisted, urging her onward until she was no more than a dozen feet from the throne. A sickly-sweet odor emanated from the old man.

“What do I do?” she asked in a panicky voice.

“When I introduce you, go forward, curtsy if you know how, touch the orb. Then step back. That’s all.”

She nodded.

Christensen said, “Your Majesty, the ambassador from the Republic of Monterey, Senator Sawyer, to pay her respects.”

Trembling, she went to him, curtsied, touched the orb. As she backed away, she nearly fell, but Christensen came smoothly forward and steadied her. The Emperor giggled again, a shrill horrific cackle. Slowly, carefully, Christensen guided the shaken and numbed Ms. Sawyer from the stage.

“How long has he been like that?” she asked.

“Two years, three, maybe more. Completely insane. Not even housebroken anymore. You could probably tell. I’m sorry. I told you you’d be better off skipping this. I’m enormously sorry, Ms.– Ms.– what’s your first name, anyway?”

“Elaine.”

“Elaine. Let’s get out of here, Elaine. Yes?”

“Yes. Please.”

She was shivering. He walked her up the side aisle. A few of the other courtiers were clambering up onto the stage now, one with a guitar, one with a juggler’s clubs. The imperial giggle pierced the air again and again, becoming shrill and rasping and wild. The royal levee would probably go on half the night. Emperor Norton VII was one of San Francisco’s most popular amusements.

“Now you know,” Christensen said.

“How does the Empire function, if the Emperor is crazy?”

“We manage. We do our best without him. The Romans managed it with Caligula. Norton’s not half as bad as Caligula. Not a tenth. Will you tell everyone in Monterey?”

“I think not. We believe in the power of the Empire and in the grandeur of the Emperor. Best not to disturb that faith.”

“Quite right,” said Christensen.

They emerged into the dark clear cold night.

Christensen said, “I’ll ride back to the ferry slip with you, before I go home.”

“Where do you live?”

“The other way. Out near Golden Gate Park.”

She looked up at him and moistened her lips. “I don’t want to ride across the bay in the dark alone at this hour of the night. Is it all right if I come home with you?”

“Sure,” he said.

She managed a jaunty smile. “You’re straight, aren’t you?”

“Sure. Most of the time, anyway.”

“I thought you were. Good.”

They got into the car. “Frederick Street,” he told the driver, “between Belvedere and Cole.”

The trip took twenty minutes. Neither of them spoke. He knew what she was thinking about—the crazy Emperor, dribbling and babbling under the bright spotlights. The mighty Norton VII, ruler of everything from San Rafael to San Mateo, from Half Moon Bay to Walnut Creek. Such is pomp and circumstance in imperial San Francisco in these latter days of Western civilization. Christensen sent the driver away and they went upstairs. The cats were hungry again.

“It’s a lovely apartment,” she told him.

“Three rooms, bath, hot and cold running water. Not bad for a mere foreign minister. Some of the boys have suites at the palace, but I like it better here.” He opened the door to the deck and stepped outside. Somehow, now that he was home, the night was not so cold. He thought about the Realm of Wicca, far off up there in green, happy Oregon, sending a hundred fifty thousand kindly Goddess-worshiping neopagans down here to celebrate the rebirth of the sun. A nuisance, a mess, a headache. Tomorrow he’d have to call a meeting of the cabinet, when everybody had sobered up, and start the wheels turning, and probably he’d have to make trips to places like Petaluma and Palo Alto to get the alliance flanged together. Damn. Damn. But it was his job, wasn’t it? Someone had to carry the load.

He slipped his arm around the slender woman from Monterey.

“The poor Emperor,” she said softly.

“Yes. The poor Emperor. Poor everybody.”

He looked toward the east. In a few hours the sun would be coming up over that hill, out of the place that used to be the United States of America and now was a thousand thousand crazy fractured fragmented entities. Christensen shook his head. The Grand Duchy of Chicago, he thought. The Holy Carolina Confederation. The Three Kingdoms of New York. The Empire of San Francisco. No use getting upset—much too late for getting upset. You played the hand that was dealt you and you did your best and you carved little islands of safety out of the night. Turning to her he said, “I’m glad you came home with me tonight.” He brushed his lips lightly against hers. “Come. Let’s go inside.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
Wintergate II: The War of the Worlds
by Russell Seitz

During a talk with Russell Seitz, an old friend who has spent the last five years doing much to de-mythologize nuclear winter, I mentioned we were doing a book on After Armageddon. When I asked him to do a piece on the myth of nuclear winter for the book, he responded: “I’ll do better than that; I’ll recommend a story too. ‘Torch’ by Christopher Anvil, the first published work—fiction or non-fiction—to describe a nuclear winter.”

Herewith is Russell to tell you all about it himself:

Wintergate II: The War of the Worlds
by Russell Seitz

We live on images; five seasons ago we saw on television the dark dawning of a new apocalypse on prime time: “Nuclear Winter.” It seemed to combine the glint of hard science with the gloom of Icelandic saga.

Last fall, a chilling Time essay, “Cloudy Crystal Balls,” reminded us that “Climatologists regularly issue confident warnings about impending atmospheric disasters. The secret of their wizardry: sophisticated computer models…” In 1983 a group of scientists (known as TTAPS) modeled “what would happen if the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought a nuclear war. Their conclusion: the dust and smoke… would blot out enough sunlight to plunge the land into a ‘nuclear winter.’”

“It is the Halloween preceding 1984, and I deeply wish that what I am about to tell you were only a ghost story, only something invented to frighten children for a day. But, unfortunately, it is not just a story.” “After more than two months, minimum temperatures of fifty-three degrees below zero are reached—temperatures characteristic of the surface of Mars.” “…named after and consecrated to the Lord of the Dead. The original Halloween combines the three essential elements of the TTAPS scenario: fires, winter and death.”

Just days after Carl Sagan recited these grim lines, Canadian listeners were startled to tune into a voice coldly intoning, “Of course, the people who are not directly affected by the war in the tropical area are now freezing to death in large numbers… We are beginning to get reports of starvation and a great deal of thirst because the surface waters are frozen almost everywhere.” It wasn’t Vincent Price, just Sagan’s sidekick Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich doing a little consciousness-(and hair-)raising on CBC Radio. But these words on the eve of 1984 have proven Orwellian.

For, as Time relates, Sagan’s one-dimensional model “ignored such key factors as winds, oceans and seasons. When [National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Scientists] Stephen Schneider and Starley Thompson ran [a] three-dimensional computer model, they found that the winter would be more like a ‘nuclear autumn.’” Since his “war” scenario kills hundreds of millions outright, one must agree with Schneider: this briefer “nuclear autumn is not going to be a nice picnic… watching the leaves change color.” But where are the snows of yesteryear?

Long before NCAR exorcised the Dark Emperor’s new shroud, Sagan asked, “What else have we overlooked?” A curious answer has emerged, stripping “nuclear winter” of its most urgent claim to our attention: its very novelty. Sagan says, “For me it began in 1971 with the exploration of the planet Mars.” He noted when a “dust storm stirred that cold and darkness were spreading over the planet.” Yet for some, it began when Contact’s author was a teenage science fiction fan.

Back in 1954, cooling of the Earth by a dusty thermonuclear war was analyzed in Senate testimony by the father of computer science, John von Neumann, who presciently pegged that threat’s magnitude to be roughly one degree of cooling. Smoke was studied too, but the media focused on the fatal fallout far downwind—remember On the Beach? The Geiger counters’ ominous clicks drowned out all talk of twilight at noon. The von Neumann effect just wasn’t ready for prime time.

But in 1957, Christopher Anvil published a Walpurgis Night’s tale entitled “Torch” in Astounding Science Fiction. The story begins with a bang-up Russian May Day celebration, as a monstrous H-bomb test shatters an enormous Siberian oil field, igniting a smoky inferno. Anvil uses the old War of the Worlds broadcast’s format. His “wire service” sound bites relate “the Cold War”:

St. Paul, Minn., May 10th—A light powdering of black flecks has been reported in snow that has fallen.

Washington, May 15th:—The Senate Committee on the May Bomb met today… Senator Keeler: “Gentlemen, what’s going on over there?” General Maxwell… “The air is full of soot… There’s a severe cold wave in the north.”

Tokyo, July 2nd—The Smog Belt is reported extending itself southward… the unseasonable cold will swell the mounting casualty list still further.

Moscow, December 3rd—Winter… seems to be taking hold with a vengeance. Temperatures of a hundred degrees below zero are being reported from many regions.

Washington, December 10th—…Bundled in heavy overcoats, the senators listened: “The smaller particles remain aloft and screen out part of the sun’s radiation. It’s a good deal as if we’d moved the Arctic Circle down.”

Science fiction writers often wade in where (to their mutual credit) scientists fear to tread. But as science progresses and facts accumulate, good models tend to drive the bad out of circulation. Stephen Schneider observed that “Carl’s idea was brilliant—he proposed an invasion from Mars.” And so he did—on Halloween. The very day that Orson Welles’s 1938 broadcast struck fear into the credulous hearts of his lawful prey.

But what of today’s computerized warnings of ozone depletion and the Greenhouse Effect? Whatever its cause, the Antarctic ozone hole is neither a media event nor a mirage in a machine. It is not chagrin over the antics of “nuclear winter’s” advocates that is making scientists in Antarctica look a bit red in the face, but more ultraviolet light than is healthy. This is no model; there really is something new under the baleful midnight sun: sunburned penguins.

Many and subtle are the Spirits of the Air, hard to summon, harder still to exorcise. So when the Wizards of NCAR conjure us to keep a genuine Imp named Chlorine securely bottled, we should take heed. For theirs is no astounding tale of the Lord of Darkness’s looming shadow. But a fair warning against the day when searing ultraviolet rays can bleach through the tattered sky and fall earthward like bright Lucifer in his pride. That is their lesson to us this winter, and this time they are not just crying wolf on All Hallows’ Eve. For we have already unleashed on the fragile stratosphere things that go bump in the light.

Torch
by Christopher Anvil

Moscow, April 28th—official sources here have revealed that the firing of a huge intercontinental ballistic missile is scheduled for the annual Soviet May Day celebration.

New York, May 1st—Seismologists report violent tremors occurring shortly after 8:00 a.m. G.M.T. this morning.

Washington, May 1st—The Soviet May Day missile is suspected here to have been the first of the new “groundhog” type, capable of penetrating underground shelters. But no one here will comment on certain rumored “strange characteristics” of the blast.

New York, May 2nd—Seismologists report repeated tremors, apparently from the site of the blast of May 1st. One noted seismologist states that this is “most unusual if the result of a bomb explosion.”

Moscow, May 2nd—There is still no word here on the May Day blast. All questions are answered, “No comment.”

New York, May 3rd—Seismologists report tremors of extraordinary violence, occurring shortly after 1:00 a.m., 1:35 a.m., and 1:55 a.m., G.M.T. this morning.

Washington, May 3rd—The Atomic Energy Commission this morning assured reporters there is no danger of the world “taking fire” from recent Soviet blasts.

Chicago, May 3rd—The world may already be on fire. That is the opinion of an atomic scientist reached here late this evening—“if the initial blast took place in the presence of sufficient deposits of light or very heavy metals.”

Los Angeles, May 3rd—The world will end by fire on May 7th, predicts the leader of a religious sect here. The end will come “by the spreading of fiery fingers, traveling at the speed of light from the wound in the flesh of the Earth.”

Tokyo, May 4th—A radioactive drizzle came down on the west coast of Honshu, the main Japanese island, last night. Teams of scientists are being rushed to the area.

New York, May 4th—Stocks fell sharply here this morning.

Paris, May 4th—A correspondent recently arrived here from the Soviet Union reports that rumors are rife in Moscow of tremendous flames raging out of control in Soviet Siberia. According to these reports the hospitals are flooded with burned workers, and citizens east of the Urals are being recruited by the tens of thousands to form “flame legions” to fight the disaster.

London, May 5th—The British Government today offered “all possible assistance” to Moscow, in the event reports of a great atomic disaster are true.

New York, May 5th—Seismologists report repeated tremors, from the site of the shocks of May 1st and 3rd.

Tokyo, May 6th—A heavy deposit of slightly radioactive soot fell on Honshu and Hokkaido last night.

Moscow, May 6th—There is no comment yet on the May Bomb or on British, French and Italian offers of aid.

New York, May 7th—Seismologists here report tremors of extraordinary violence, occurring shortly after 8:00 p.m. G.M.T. last night.

Washington, May 7th—A special Senate committee, formed to consider the atomic danger in the U.S.S.R., announced this morning that it favors “all reasonable aid to the Russians.” The committee chairman stated to reporters, “It’s all one world. If it blows up on them, it blows up on us, too.”

Washington, May 7th—The Atomic Energy Commission repeated its claim that the earth could not have caught fire from the recent Russian explosions.

Tokyo, May 8th—Japanese fishermen to the northeast of Hokkaido report the waters in large areas black with a layer of radioactive soot.

New York, May 8th—Seismologists report repeated tremors from the region of the severe shocks of May 1st, 3rd, and 7th.

Washington, May 9th—The United States has offered special assistance to Soviet Russia, but the latest word here is that no reply has been received.

Washington, May 9th—Responsible officials here indicate that if no word is received from Moscow within eighteen hours, and if these shocks continue, a special mission will be sent to Russia by the fastest military transportation available. “We are not,” said one official, “going to stand around with our hands in our mouths while the world disintegrates under our feet.”

Seoul, May 9th—It is reported here that the radioactive soot that plastered Japan and adjacent areas has fallen even more heavily in North Korea. The Communist Government is reportedly trying to pass the soot off as the work of “Capitalist spies and saboteurs.”

Washington, May 9th—The United States government has reiterated its offer to the Soviet Union of “prompt and sympathetic consideration” of any requests for aid.

New York, May 10th—Seismologists here report repeated tremors from the region of the earlier shocks.

Moscow, May 10th—It has been impossible to reach any responsible official here for comment on Western offers of assistance.

London, May 10th—The British Government today urgently recommended that the Soviet Union seriously consider Western offers of assistance.

Washington, May 10th—No word having been received here from Moscow, an experimental Hellblast bomber sprang from her launching rack bearing a nine-man mission to Moscow. Word of the mission’s departure is being sent the Russians by all channels of communication. But it is said here that if no permission to land is given, the Hellblast will attempt to smash through to Moscow anyway.

Tokyo, May 10th—Another load of soot has been dumped on Japan today. This batch is only slightly radioactive, but scientists are not happy because they do not know what to make of it.

Seoul, May 10th—Riots are reported in Communist North Korea as the “black death” continues to rain down from the skies. It is not known whether the soot has caused actual death or merely panic.

St. Paul, Minn., May 10th—A light powdering of black flecks has been reported in snow that has fallen near here in the last twenty-four hours.

Moscow, May llth—A United States Hellblast bomber roared out of the dawn here today bearing a nine-man mission. The mission was greeted at the airfield by a small group of worn and tired Russian officials.

Minneapolis, May llth—Scientists report only a trace of radioactivity in the “tainted snow” that fell near here yesterday. The scientists reiterate that the radioactivity is not present in dangerous amounts.

Tokyo, May llth—Considerable deposits of radioactive soot and ash landed on Japan yesterday and last night. Japanese scientists have issued warnings to all persons in the affected areas. The Japanese Government has delivered a severe protest to the Soviet embassy.

Hong Kong, May llth—Reports here indicate the Chinese Communist Government is making representations to Moscow about the soot-fall following the Russian May Day blast. According to these reports, the North Korean Government is being overwhelmed with the people’s angry demands that the Russians cease “dumping their waste on their allies.”

New York, May 12th—The American mission that arrived here yesterday has disappeared into the Kremlin and has not been seen or heard from since.

Washington, May 12th—The United States Government reports that it is now in close contact with the Soviet Government on the situation in Siberia.

Seoul, May 13th—It is reported here that the government of Communist North Korea has issued a twelve-hour ultimatum to the Soviet Union. If the dumping of fission products continues beyond that time, North Korea threatens to break off relations and take “whatever other measures prove to be necessary.”

Paris, May 13th—Repeated efforts by the French Government have failed to produce any response from Moscow. French atom scientists have offered to travel to the Soviet Union in a body if their services can be of any use.

Washington, May 14th—A Soviet request for American aid was received here early this morning. Reportedly, the Russians asked for ten thousand of the largest available bulldozers or other earth-moving vehicles, equipped with special high-efficiency filters for the air-intake mechanisms.

London, May 14th—The British Government reports receiving a request for large numbers of specially-equipped earth-moving vehicles. Red tape is being cut as fast as possible, and the first consignment is expected to leave tomorrow. However, there is still no explanation of what is going on in the Soviet Union.

Washington, May 14th—A special meeting of the Senate committee investigating the May Bomb is scheduled for tomorrow, when the American mission is expected to return.

New York, May 15th—Repeated tremors are reported here from the region of the severe shocks of May 1st, 3rd, and 7th.

Washington, May 15th—The Senate Committee on the May Bomb met today, and questioned members of the American mission that had just returned:

Senator Keeler: Gentlemen, what’s going on over there?

Mr. Brainerd: They’re in a mess, Senator. And so are we.

Senator Keeler: Could you be more specific? Is the… is the earth on fire?

Mr. Brainerd: No. It’s not that, at least.

Senator Keeler: Then there’s no danger—

Mr. Brainerd: The earth won’t burn up under us, no. This thing was set off atomically, but it goes on by itself.

Senator Keeler: What happened?

Mr. Brainerd: They tried out their groundhog missile on May Day. They had a giant underground shelter built, and they wanted to show what the groundhog would do to it. The idea was to show there was no use anyone building shelters, because the Russian groundhog could dig right down to them.

Senator Keeler: Did it?

Mr. Brainerd: It did. It blew up in the shelter and heated it white hot.

Senator Keeler: I see. But why should that cause trouble?

Mr. Brainerd: Because, unknown to them or anyone else, Senator, there were deep deposits of oil underground, beneath the shelter. The explosion cracked the surrounding rock. The oil burst up through the cracks, shot out into the white-hot remains of the underground chambers, and vaporized. At least that’s the explanation the Russians and Dr. Dentner here have for what happened. All anybody can see is a tremendous black column rising up.

Senator Keeler: Do you have anything to add to that, Dr. Dentner?

Dr. Dentner: No, that about covers it.

Senator Keeler: Well, then, do any of my colleagues have any questions? Senator Daley?

Senator Daley: Yes, I’ve got some questions. Dr. Dentner, what’s that black stuff made of?

Dr. Dentner: Quite a number of compounds: carbon monoxide; carbon dioxide; water vapor; saturated and un-saturated gaseous hydrocarbons; the vapors of saturated and unsaturated non-gaseous hydrocarbons. But the chief constituent seems to be finely-divided carbon—in other words, soot.

Senator Daley: The world isn’t on fire?

Dr. Dentner: No.

Senator Daley: The oil fire can’t spread to here?

Dr. Dentner: No. Not by any process I can imagine.

Senator Daley: All right, then, I’ve got a crude idea. Why not let them stew in their own juice? They started this. They were going to scare the world with it. O.K., let them worry about it. It’ll give them something to do. Keep them out of everybody’s hair for a while.

Senator Keeler: The idea has its attractions, at that. What about it, Doctor?

Dr. Dentner: The fire won’t spread to here, but—Well, General Maxwell has already considered the idea and given it up.

Senator Daley: Why’s that?

General Maxwell: Set up an oil furnace in the cloakroom and run the flue in here through that wall over there. Then light the furnace. That’s why.

Senator Daley: The stuffs going to come down on us?

Dr. Dentner: It seems probable. There have already been several light falls in the midwest.

Senator Daley: I thought it was too good to work. O.K. then, we’ve got to put it out. How?

Dr. Dentner: They’ve already made attempts to blow it out with H-bombs. But the temperature in the underground chambers is apparently so high that the fire reignites. The present plan is to push a mass of earth in on top of it and choke out the flame.

Senator Daley: Don’t they have enough bulldozers? I mean, if it’s that simple, why don’t they have it out?

Dr. Dentner: It’s on a large scale, and that produces complications.

General Maxwell: For instance: the air is full of soot. The soot gets in the engines. Men choke on it.

Mr. Brainerd: The general effect is like trying to do a day’s work inside a chimney.

General Maxwell: And the damned thing sits across their lines of communications, dumping heaps of soot on the roads and railroad tracks, and strangling anyone that tries to get past. The trains spin their wheels, and that’s the end of that. It’s a question of going way around to the north or way around to the south. There’s a severe cold wave in the north, so that’s out. They’re laying track to the south at a terrific pace, but there’s a long way to go. What it amounts to is, they’re cut in half.

Senator Daley: It seems to me we ought to be able to make a buck out of this.

Mr. Brainerd: It’s a temptation; but I hate to kick a man when he’s down.

Senator Daley: ARE they down?

Mr. Brainerd: Yes, they’re down. The thing is banging their head on the floor. They’re still fighting it, but it’s like fighting a boa constrictor. Where do you take hold to hurt it?

Senator Daley: Just back of the head.

Mr. Brainerd: That’s the part they can’t get at. Meanwhile, it crushes the life out of them.

General Maxwell: The idea is, to fight the main enemy. If they don’t beat it, we’ll have to. And it will be a lot harder for us to get at it than it is for them. The idea is, to pour the supplies to them while they’re still alive to use them. Otherwise, that volcano keeps pumping soot into the air and we get it in the neck, too.

Dr. Dentner: There’s one more point here.

Senator Daley: What’s that?

Dr. Dentner: Neither their scientists nor I could understand why a stray spark hasn’t ignited the soot. It must be an explosive mixture.

General Maxwell: If that happens, it will make World War II look like a garden party.

Mr. Brainerd: Like a grain-elevator explosion a thousand miles across.

Senator Daley: Well—All right, that does it. What do they need?

Mr. Brainerd: We’ve got a list here as long as your arm for a starter.

Senator Daley: Then let’s get started.

Senator Keeler: Let’s see the list. And I’m not sure the rest of this shouldn’t be secret for the time being.

Senator Daley: Right. Let’s see what they want first.

New York, June 8th—The first ten shiploads of gangtracks, bores, sappers, and hogger mauls raced out of New York harbor today on converted liners, bound for Murmansk. A similar tonnage is reported leaving San Francisco for Vladivostok tonight.

Tokyo, June 14th—The evacuation of another one hundred square miles of Honshu Island was completed early today.

Hong Kong, June 27th—Reports reaching here from Red China indicate that the Chinese Communist Government is moving its capital south from Beijing to Nanking. Relations between Red China and the Soviet Union are reported extremely bad.

New York, June 28th—According to the U.N. Disaster Committee meeting here this morning, over three billion dollars worth of supplies has thus far been poured into the U.S.S.R. in Operation Torch.

Tokyo, July 2nd—The Smog Belt is reported extending itself southward. Officials here fear that this, combined with the unseasonable cold, will swell the mounting casualty list still further.

Seoul, July 9th—Severe fighting is reported between the North Korean People’s Army and Russian troops defending the border region south of Vladivostok.

New York, July 18th—Three specially-built high-speed dual-hull transports left here this morning bearing three Super-Hoggers of the Mountain-Mover class.

London, July 23rd—The furnaces of Britain’s yards and factories are blazing as they have not in three generations, to finish the last four sections of the huge Manchester Snake, which will be shipped in sections to France and assembled for its overland trip to the Soviet Union. Work has been aided somewhat here by the unusually cool summer weather.

Skagway, Alaska, August 2nd—The Pittsburgh Mammoth rolled north past here at 2:00 a.m. this morning.

Nome, August 5th—The Bering Bridge is almost complete.

Moscow, August 6th—The 20th, 21st, and 40th Divisions of the Soviet 2nd Red Banner Flame Army marched in review through Red Square today before entraining for the East.

Nome, August 8th—The Pittsburgh Mammoth crushed past here at dawn this morning. Crowds from up and down the coast, their faces hidden behind gas masks and soot shields, were on hand to see the Mammoth roll north toward the Bering Bridge. Tank trucks in relays refueled the giant.

Headquarters, Supreme High Command of the Soviet Red Banner Flame Legions, September 21st—Final Communique: The campaign against the enemy has ended in victory. Nothing remains to mark the site save a towering monument to the bravery of the Soviet citizen, to the supreme organization of the wareffort by the high officials of the Soviet Government, and to the magnificent output of Soviet industry. Help also was received from countries desiring to participate in the great Soviet effort, which has resulted in this great victory. Work now must be begun with unhesitating energy to return the many brave workers to their peacetime stations.

London, September 22nd—The consensus here seems to be that naturally we cannot expect credit, but it is at least a relief to know the thing is over.

Washington, September 22nd—After talking with a number of high officials here, the general feeling seems to be: After this, we are to go back to the Cold War?

Moscow, December 3rd—Winter here seems to be taking hold with a vengeance. Temperatures of a hundred degrees below zero are being reported from many regions that normally do not record even remotely comparable readings till the middle of January. It looks by far the severest winter on record. Coming after all the trouble this spring and summer, this is a heavy blow.

Ottawa, Canada, December 8th—The cold here in Canada is unusually severe for this time of year.

Washington, December 10th—The Senate Committee on the Russian May Bomb explosion reconvened briefly to hear expert testimony today. Bundled in heavy overcoats, the senators listened to testimony that may be summed up briefly in this comment by a meteorologist:

“No, Senator, we don’t know when these fine particles will settle. The heavier particles of relatively large diameter settle out unless the air currents sweep them back up again, and then we have these ‘soot showers.’ But the smaller particles remain aloft and screen out part of the sun’s radiation. Presumably they’ll settle eventually; but in the meantime it’s a good deal as if we’d moved the Arctic Circle down to about the fifty-fifth degree of latitude.”

When asked what might be done about this immediately, the experts suggested government aid to supply fuel to people in the coldest locations, and it was urged that fuel stockpiles be built up now, as unexpected transportation difficulties may arise in the depths of winter.

Underground Moscow, December 17th—The Soviet Government is reported making tremendous efforts to house millions of its people underground. Much of the equipment used in fighting the Torch is fitted for this work, but deep snow and the severe cold have hamstrung the transportation system.

New York, January 15th—National Headquarters of the Adopt-A-Russian Drive has announced that their drive “went over the top at 7:00 tonight, just five hours before deadline.”

Prince Rupert, Canada, January 22nd—Three polar bears were reported seen near here last Friday.

Washington, February 3rd—Scientists concluded today that things will get worse before they get better. Settling of the particles is slow, they say, and meanwhile the oceans—“the great regulator”—will become colder.

New York, March 10th—Heavily dressed delegates of the former “Communist” and “Capitalist” blocs met here today to solemnly commemorate the ending of the so-called “cold war”—the former ideological phrase—in the strength of unity. The delegates agreed unanimously on many measures, one of them the solemn pledge to “Remain united as one people under God, and to persevere in our efforts together till and even beyond the time when the Cold War shall end.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
Bringing Home the Bacon
by Eric Oppen

On the surface, anyway, we appear to be entering a new phase of rapprochement with the Soviet Union—if Mikhail Gorbachev’s words are to be believed. As I write this the headline of The Christian Science Monitor reads “In March to the Polls, Soviets Tread on Taboos.” This is not the first time a Soviet premier has promised more than he intended to deliver—remember détente…

At the International Institute for Strategic Studies annual conference, the Right Honourable George Younger, Secretary of State for Defence of Great Britain, had some important words to say about the current state of relations between East and West:

The Western Alliance has itself seen many changes and borne many strains since 1958. In the late 1950s the United States’ nuclear capability so far surpassed that of the Soviet Union that the “tripwire” strategy could form the basis of Western deterrence. But the continual development of the Soviet Union’s military capability meant that the strategy had to change, particularly to ensure that the American nuclear “umbrella”—so vital a guarantee for the nations of Western Europe—could continue to be relied upon. This it did, and “Flexible Response,” which now underpins our strategy, has served the Alliance since 1967.

The internal cohesion of NATO, and its consistent and unmistakable determination to act firmly to protect its security interests, have been major strengths in facing the Soviet threat. Ever since its formation, NATO has been faced by a potential adversary which has maintained a military establishment far greater than the need for its defense, armed and organized for swift, offensive operations, and which, by its actions, has shown it has no compunction about using force to achieve its political ends. It has constantly maneuvered to undermine the unity of NATO and to encourage a decoupling of the United States from Europe. For many years, while building up its own military might, it sought to promote campaigns by groups in the West which would have weakened NATO’s military posture.

Yet, now the Soviet Union says that it no longer requires military superiority, and that its forces will adopt a defensive rather than an offensive posture. It says that it accepts the need for asymmetrical cuts in force levels to reflect existing imbalances, and it says that it does not seek to drive wedges between the members of NATO. Has the leopard changed its spots?

I am reminded of a story about Prince Metternich at the Congress of Vienna. He was woken by his valet in the middle of the night. The valet said: “Sir, the Russian Ambassador has died in his sleep.” Metternich pondered for a moment and said: “I wonder what was his motive for doing that.”

I know a number of people accuse NATO of displaying the same attitude as Metternich to the changes now taking place in the Soviet Union. Let me make our position clear. We welcome these changes, and we wish Mr. Gorbachev every success. But common prudence dictates that we do not allow ourselves to be seduced into a premature sense of optimism about what the future may bring. Our experience of dealing with the Soviet Union over many years entitles us to suspect its motives. After nearly ten years of bluff, bluster and obstruction in the INF negotiations—tactics intended to maintain its superiority in this class of weapon—the U.S.S.R. at last signed an agreement on terms very similar to those proposed by the United States in 1981.

We hope that the INF Agreement will pave the way for further agreements which will enhance the security of Europe. The achievement of fifty-percent reductions in the strategic arsenals of the two super-powers, the elimination of disparities in conventional forces in Europe, and a complete ban on chemical weapons—which have caused such carnage in the Gulf War—are our goals. But the overwhelming Soviet superiority in the conventional and chemical areas remains a major barrier to enhanced stability in Europe. Until the current imbalances in conventional forces have been redressed and a ban on chemical weapons achieved, it would be inappropriate to turn again to negotiations on further reductions in nuclear weapons in Europe. We hope that the Soviet Union, by its actions, can convince us that the changes flowing from glasnost and perestroika will be far-reaching and permanent. But so far we have seen no evidence of any significant changes in Soviet military posture or a reduction in the resources devoted to military spending. In the absence of firm evidence about the future development of the Soviet Union, we must base our responses on our experience so far. The lessons we draw from our experience of dealing with the Soviet Union since the end of World War II are that negotiation is more likely to bear fruit if it is backed up with firmness, and that effective arms control is the product of painstaking and patient negotiations, not quick and extravagant declarations.

Bringing Home the Bacon
by Eric Oppen

Tom Peterson stuck his head out of his sleeping bag and a cold drizzle stung his cheeks. In the first dim light of dawn, not much could be seen. Squirming regretfully out of his warm sleeping bag, he scratched his ribs, wondering absently how a hot shower would feel. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he slipped on his boots. When the Soviets had invaded, he had fled to the hills with a pair of worn-out tennis shoes on his feet. When the soles finally fell off, he had scrounged a “new” pair of boots from a dead Soviet paratroop officer. The same officer had also “donated” the warm sleeping bag he was regretfully rolling up.

Shivering and yawning, Tom wandered over to a small fire, where several shadowy figures were patiently coaxing the coals back to life. Their breath left streamers in the cold air. A small radio was quietly playing music, as the rest of the partisans were awakening.

“–That was ‘Polovtsian Dances’ from Prince Igor, by Aleksandr Borodin. Now, the latest news.

“Soviet liberation forces in the State of Kansas report unprecedented success in extirpating the counter-revolutionary bandit groups found resisting the People’s Government of the United States. The people of Kansas spontaneously demonstrated in gratitude to the Soviet liberation forces.

“From the front, the People’s Army command has released a bulletin stating that reactionary forces sustained a crushing defeat near the site of Albuquerque. Several enemy armored units were reported destroyed by the People’s Army of the United States, the Mexican Liberation Army, and elements of the glorious Soviet armed forces.

“The People’s Government of the United States regrets to announce that the promised increase in rations will not take place, due to the necessity of disciplinary action against the reactionary elite of Iowa and Illinois. Exploiters, know that the workers demand bread, not excuses! The toilers’ just wrath cannot be held off forever!”

“Sounds bad for the folks in Iowa and Illinois,” grunted Tom. Snapping the radio off, he walked over to the fireside, rubbing his hands over the flames. “Speaking of rations, what’s for breakfast?”

“One pan of squirrel stew.” Tom became aware of the aching hunger that was his constant companion. It was so familiar that he had almost ceased to notice it.

Bill Rockwell, the leader of the partisan band, looked around. “Andy, Christine, go get Crow and Jill. Crow’s up the north path with the Hunter’s Ear and Jill’s on the south path with those night-vision goggles. Tell them to get back here. We’re moving out today, back to the National Forest. The fog and drizzle should cover us. Tom, we’ll meet you by the Big Rock.”

“You want me to go hunting?”

“Yeah. Take Jane along. She’s the best shot we’ve got.”

“Now, just a minute!” Tom stood up angrily. “Jane may be a good sniper, but she’s too damn bloodthirsty for this! Remember the time she almost got us caught because she couldn’t resist the temptation to kill just one more Russian? On this kind of trip, I want someone who’s able to understand that we aren’t out looking for a fight!”

Jane Cole stood up, afire with indignation. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you, Tom? One little mistake, and a person’s no good! I have all the self-control I need!”

The look in her eyes made Tom step back. “Look at yourself. You’re fingering that rifle of yours as if you’d like to use it on me right now!”

Jane gave Tom a startled look, hefting the sniper rifle as though she were only then aware of it. She sighed, and the indignation seemed to run out of her. “You have a point. Maybe I am over-enthusiastic. I also know you’re in charge of hunting. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll promise to do just what you tell me. Friends?” She smiled tentatively.

“Friends. Be ready to leave in an hour. Bring your rifle, too, but only in case we run into Ivans. I’m going to use my crossbow and hunting slingshot.”

An hour later, Tom and Jane were alone on the path. The rest of the guerrillas had disappeared into the gloom a few minutes ago, laden with their weapons and gear. Jane waited silently, her bow over her shoulder and rifle in hand.

Tom cocked an eyebrow sardonically. “Don’t we look like regular ragpicker’s children?”

Jane looked at him, then down at herself. The sight of their ragged, mud-stained combinations of American civilian and Soviet military clothes forced her to grin. Before the invasion, she had always dressed as well as her parents could afford.

“Don’t think the rabbits will think any the worse of us because we don’t dress well.”

Tom was pleased to see a twinkle in her eye. Hefting his crossbow, he set off into the mist, Jane at his heels.

An hour later, Tom and Jane were resting in some bushes at the top of a ridge. In the distance, the town of Franklin, Colorado was just visible through the persistent mist and drizzle.

Jane looked disconsolately into her game bag, as though she hoped the two scrawny rabbits had multiplied. Tom wished aloud that the ranchers had let the partisans know that the Soviets were confiscating most of their livestock.

“Don’t blame the ranchers, Tom. We insisted that they not contact us, for their own safety. Ours, too. What they don’t know, they can’t spill.”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t take the knot out of my gut like a nice, juicy steak or lambchop would.”

In the distance, a helicopter’s thuttering could be heard. Tom and Jane instinctively drew farther back into the bushes. In the Occupied Zone, there were no friendly choppers.

Shortly, the helicopter dropped out of the low-lying clouds. From his vantage point in the bushes, Tom watched as it followed the railroad right-of-way into the valley below the ridge.

As the noise faded in the distance, Tom heard another sound, one that puzzled him. He glanced at Jane, to meet an equally puzzled look.

“It sounds like–” Curiosity overwhelming him, Tom wormed forward under the bushes to the lip of the ridge, where he could see the railroad tracks.

Up the rails came a huge flock of sheep. Baaing and bleating, they straggled up the railroad right-of-way. Jane squirmed her way to Tom’s side, getting out her binoculars.

“Looks like the Russkies have some help to herd their stolen sheep.” Behind the herd walked several green-uniformed figures. Their baggy clothes and the hats they wore made it impossible to determine sexes and ages, but their red armbands marked them for what they were.

“The Red Militia!” Jane snarled. Soon after the Soviet armies had landed, they had started to recruit the idlers, petty crooks and juvenile delinquents of the areas they held. Under the leadership of the few pro-Soviet Americans to be found, the Red Militia had speedily earned a foul reputation.

Jane raised her rifle, aiming it at the Militiamen. Tom grabbed her shoulder. “You damned fool, do you want to let the world know we’re here? I know the Red Militia raped you, but this isn’t the right time to take them. Let’s see where they’re taking those sheep. Now!”

Jane didn’t dispute Tom’s decision. Keeping out of sight of the railroad, they started through the bush in the direction the sheep had gone.

“God damn it!” cursed Jane, picking herself up after a loose stone sent her sprawling. Once she was back on her feet, she carefully checked her rifle to make sure that it hadn’t been damaged by her fall.

At last, the two partisans heard the bleating of sheep ahead. Keeping under cover, they crept silently through the bushes and trees to the edge of a meadow. In the pasture, a huge flock of sheep were milling around.

The helicopter was lifting off, and Tom could see the old Colorado National Guard markings on the sides, under the clumsy paint job. As it passed them, heading for the Red Militia base in Franklin, Tom and Jane shrank back into the bushes.

As soon as the helicopter left, the Red Militia began opening boxes. Tom whistled softly under his breath and passed Jane the binoculars.

“Look at those steaks! The Reds sure aren’t hurting for food like the people in Franklin! When was the last time you ate steak?”

“Too long ago. My God, they’ve got more beer there than at the last fraternity kegger I went to!”

“What do you expect, Tom? With the kind of recruits they get in the Red Militia, you should be expecting this sort of thing. On the other hand, I’ve got a good mind to write to the Soviet governor in Denver and report this bunch of layabouts!”

Tom was surprised. Jane’s sense of humor was sporadic at best, and was usually much darker. The only time since the Invasion he had seen her laugh out loud was when she had been amused by the antics of an East German soldier who had drunk a bottle of vodka heavily laced with strychnine.

The Red Militia stuffed themselves with steaks, washed down with liberal amounts of beer. When the food was gone, they kept drinking, until they staggered around, throwing mud at each other.

One Red Militiaman didn’t participate in the party. He watched disapprovingly as his comrades grew drunker and drunker. He cradled an M-16 across his knees.

“Damn,” Jane whispered in Tom’s ear. “There’s one in every crowd, isn’t there? That guy’s one of the true believers. The son-of-a-bitch! This job’d be so easy if he weren’t along!”

Before too long, the Red Militiamen were stretched out on the grass, snoring. One lay in a puddle of his own vomit, sleeping peacefully. Only the zealot still stood, trying futilely to sober them up.

Tom made a decision. “Jane, I’m going down there and poach some sheep. If we had the band here, I’d want to kill those traitors and steal the herd. For now, I’d be satisfied just to get some real meat.” Before Jane could reply, Tom moved down toward the edge of the herd. Over his shoulder, he said: “Sight in on Dudley Do-wrong there, and if he makes one false move, waste him.”

A fine fat ewe was grazing on the edge of the herd. Tom’s broad-bladed hunting quarrel thunked into her neck, knocking her down soundlessly. There was little bleating from the other sheep, so Tom reloaded his crossbow and sighted in on his next target.

Three kills later, the sheep were aware that something was wrong. The smell of blood in the air was making them nervous. They were milling around, baaing and shying away from Tom’s kills.

“KA-RACK, KA-RACK, KA-RACK,” came from behind Tom. He looked up, to see the one sober Red Militiaman coming at him, fumbling to load his M-16 as he came. Abandoning his cover, Tom rose, aiming his crossbow at the traitor’s chest. The quarrel sang out, hit dead on target, and bounced off.

Frozen with horror, Tom stared openmouthed as the Red Militiaman raised his rusty M-16. In one part of his mind, he coolly noted: He’s got a goddamn bulletproof vest on, that’s why Jane couldn’t take him out. Meanwhile, his hands were automatically reloading his crossbow. The Red Militiaman smiled nastily and squeezed the trigger of his rifle. Nothing happened.

For a second, they stared at each other unbelievingly. Tom snapped out of it first, throwing away his useless crossbow and running toward the Militiaman, tackling him around the waist.

Coming to grips with his enemy, Tom quickly realized, had been a mistake. The Militiaman was much better fed than he was, and much stronger. Tom’s only assets were his greater skill and desperation. While the Militiaman clawed at his face and rained wild, ineffective blows on his body, Tom concentrated on getting his fingers around the bastard’s throat.

As they rolled in the mud, cursing and straining, Tom heard the Militiaman’s voice, hissing: “Fascist bastard! You won’t get away with this, you–” Tom’s fingers found his throat, squeezing frantically.

Finally, the Militiaman’s face turned an odd color, his eyes rolled and bulged, and he ceased struggling. For a few seconds, Tom continued throttling him, unwilling to trust the obvious.

“Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!” hissed Jane, coming out of the bushes with her rifle over one shoulder. “Well, are you just going to stand there? Let’s get these sheep under cover, butcher them, and take care of these traitors! They might awaken any minute!”

Jane pulled out her hunting knife. Tom blanched at the look in her eyes.

“Why not let me take care of the traitors? Buck fever’s no disgrace, but you need time to get over it. Besides, you’re a lot better at field-butchering animals than I am. You butcher those sheep, and I’ll do the rest.”

Tom had hidden the dead sheep under the brush and was gutting one expertly when Jane reappeared. She had a contented look in her eyes and was meditatively wiping blood off her knife.

“Here, Jane, bear a hand. Be sure to trim so that we carry only the best meat back. By the way, did you see that rifle?” Tom jerked a thumb at the Red Militiaman’s M-16. “Crud in the chamber, more crud in the barrel, and springs rusted clear through. I was going to smash it, but we can cannibalize it later.”

Hours later, they were a few miles from the Big Rock, loaded with mutton, when a horribly familiar muttering noise surrounded them.

For a moment, the two partisans couldn’t figure out just where the chopper was coming from. The mountains around them reflected sound so bewilderingly that there was no way to tell where the chopper was. Tom looked up to see if he could locate it. No such luck.

Stumbling under the weight of their packs of meat and weapons, Tom and Jane abandoned the game trail. They scrambled downslope toward a large grove of trees, arriving in the middle of a mini-avalanche of loose pebbles.

Over a ridge came the same helicopter they had seen before. The bubble canopy was transparent enough that Tom could see the two men inside as they scanned the ground.

Jane had her rifle up, and was trying to sight on the helicopter.

Tom hissed: “You damn fool, what do you think you’re doing? They’ll spot us!” The helicopter abandoned the trail and swung over sideways to take a closer look at the grove.

A gun muzzle poked out of the helicopter. A puif of smoke and the roar of a shotgun announced that the danger of being spotted was real. Pellets spattered against the trees, to the left of Tom and Jane’s position.

Jane’s rifle bucked and roared. The co-pilot dropped his shotgun and screamed, throwing himself across the pilot’s lap. Startled, the pilot jerked the helicopter away from the grove, then lost control. Slipping farther and farther sideways, the helicopter drifted helplessly toward the side of a mountain.

Emerging from their hiding place, Tom and Jane watched in fascination. “Always said those things weren’t safe,” commented Jane, deadpan.

“Trouble with using amateur talent,” Tom answered.

A rending crash and explosion echoed from across the valley. Jane grinned. “Ding, dong, the no-good Reds are dead.”

Tom smiled back. “Come on, those sheep won’t just sit there until we get back. Besides, our buddies’re hungry.”

As the sun was setting behind the clouds, Tom and Jane arrived at the Big Rock. Tom glanced around as he unstrapped his pack. Jane’s sister Christine was sewing a patch on a ragged pair of camouflage pants. Andy Sanders and “Crow” Lawrence were cleaning a Kalashnikov. Bill Rockwell was clipping his whiskers with a pair of scissors, and Jill O’Hara was poring over a demolition manual. The radio was tuned to the same Soviet propaganda station as it had been that morning. Tom basked for a moment in the quiet domesticity of the camp.

“Hey, everybody!” Jane called out. “We brought home the bacon, or in this case, mutton. There’s lots more, but we’ll need help to get it.”

Jill O’Hara tore herself away from her demolition manual with an effort. “You two were gone a long time. Anything unusual happen?”

Tom and Jane exchanged looks. “Nothing unusual, Jill.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
Journals of the Plague Years
by Norman Spinrad

In many ways Norman Spinrad’s “Journals of the Plague Years” is the most frightening story in this collection—thanks to our public health officials’ neglect of the most dangerous disease since the Bubonic Plague. At least the medieval city fathers faced with the Black Death had the excuse of ignorance of disease and germ theory. What excuse do our public safety officials have? No excuses really, just fear of offending political voting blocs, which keep them from exercising even the most trivial duties of their office—such as tracking secondary contacts. God forbid they carry out their office; the possibility of quarantine sets them quivering under their desks.

Thus, here we stand with our collective heads in the sand while this terrible pestilence has time to incubate and mutate into perhaps more virulent forms—ones that could possibly be carried by mosquitoes or other insects, or even contaminate the air we breathe. That’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible; no more unlikely than other disasters we do prepare for.

Herewith the new Journals of the Plague Years…

Journals of the Plague Years
by Norman Spinrad

Introduction

It was the worst of times, and it was the saddest of times, so what we must remember if we are to keep our perspective as we read these journals of the Plague Years is that the people who wrote them, indeed the entire population of what was then the United States of America and most of the world, were, by our standards, all quite mad.

The Plague virus, apparently originating somewhere in Africa, had spread first to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users. Inevitably it moved via bisexual contact into the population at large. A vaccine was developed and for a moment the Plague seemed defeated. But the organism mutated under this evolutionary pressure and a new strain swept the world. A new vaccine was developed, but the virus mutated again. Eventually the succession of vaccines selected for mutability itself, and the Plague virus proliferated into dozens of strains.

Palliative treatments were developed—victims might survive for a decade or more—but there was no cure, and no vaccine that offered protection for long.

For twenty years, sex and death were inextricably entwined. For twenty years, men and women were constrained to deny themselves the ordinary pleasures of straightforward, unencumbered sex, or to succumb to the natural desires of the flesh and pay the awful price. For twenty years, the species faced its own extinction. For twenty years, Africa and most of Asia and Latin America were quarantined by the armed forces of America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union. For twenty years, the people of the world stewed in their own frustrated sexual juices.

Small wonder then that the Plague Years were years of madness. Small wonder that the authors of these journals seem, from our happier perspective, driven creatures, and quite insane.

That each of them found somewhere the courage to carry on, that through their tormented and imperfect instrumentalities the long night was finally to see our dawn, that is the wonder, that is the triumph of the human spirit, the spirit that unites the era of the Plague Years with our own.

—Mustapha Kelly

Luna City, 2143

John David

I was gunfoddering in Baja when the marks began to appear again. The first time I saw the marks, they gave me six years if I could afford it, ten if I joined up and got myself the best.

Well what was a poor boy to do? Take my black card, let them stick me in a Quarantine Zone, and take my chances? Go underground and try to dodge the Sex Police until the Plague got me? Hell no, this poor boy did what about two million other poor boys did—he signed up for life in the American Foreign Legion, aka the Army of the Living Dead, while he was still in good enough shape to be accepted.

Now you hear a lot of bad stuff about the Legion. The wages suck. The food ain’t much. We’re a bunch of bloodthirsty killers too bugfuck to be allowed back in the United States fighting an endless imperialistic war against the whole Third World, and our combat life expectancy is about three years. Junkies. Dopers. Drooling sex maniacs. The scum of the universe.

For sure, all that is true. But unless you’re a millionaire or supercrook, the Legion is the best deal you can do when they paint your blue card black and tell you you’ve Got It.

The deal is you get the latest that medical science has to offer and you get it free. The deal is you can do anything you want to the gorks as long as you don’t screw up combat orders. The deal is that the Army of the Living Dead is coed and omnisexual and every last one of us has already Got It. We’ve all got our black cards already, we’re under sentence of death, so we might as well enjoy one another on the way out. The deal is that the Legion is all the willing meat-sex you can handle, and plenty that you can’t, you better believe it!

Like the recruiting slogan says, “A Short Life but a Happy One.” We were the last free red-blooded American boys and girls. “Join the Army and Fuck the World,” says the graffiti they scrawl on the walls about us.

Well that too, and so what?

Take the Baja campaign. The last census showed that the black card population of California was entitled to enlarged Quarantine Zones. Catalina and San Francisco were bursting at the seams and the state legislature couldn’t agree on a convenient piece of territory. So it got booted up to the Federal Quarantine Agency.

Old Walter T., he looks at the map, and he sees you could maintain a Quarantine line across the top of the Baja Peninsula with maybe two thousand SP troops. Real convenient. Annex the mother to California and solve the problem.

So in we go, and down the length of Baja we cakewalk. No sweat. Two weeks of saturation air strikes to soften up the Mexes, a heavy armored division and two wings of gunships at the point, followed by fifteen thousand of us zombies to nail things down. What you call a fun campaign, a far cry from the mess we got into in Cuba or that balls-up in Venezuela, let me tell you. Mexico was something like fifty percent Got It, their armed forces had been wiped out of existence in the Chihuahua campaign, and so it was just a matter of three weeks of leisurely pillage, rape, and plunder.

The Mexes? They got a sweet deal, considering. Those who were still alive by the time we had secured Baja down to La Paz could choose between deportation to what was left of Mexico or becoming black card citizens of the state of California, Americans like thee and me, brothers and sisters. Any one of them who had survived had Gotten It in every available orifice about 150 times by us zombies by then anyway.

Wanna moralize about it? Okay, then moralize this one, meat-fucker:

The damn Plague started in Africa, didn’t it? That’s the Third World, ain’t it? Africa, Latin America, Asia, except for China, Japan, and Iran, they’re over 50 percent Got It, ain’t they? And the It they Got keeps mutating like crazy in all that filth. And they keep trying to get through with infiltrators to give us the latest strain, don’t they?

The Chinese and the Iranians, they kill their black-carders, don’t they? The Japs, they deport them to Korea. And the Russians, they nuked themselves a cordon sanitaire all the way from the Caspian to the Chinese border.

Was I old Walter T., I’d say nuke the whole cesspit of infection out of existence. Use nerve gas. Fry the Third World clean from orbit. Whatever. They gave us the damn Plague, didn’t they? Way we see it in the Army of the Living Dead, anything we do after that is only a little piece of what the gorks got coming!

Believe me, this poor boy wasn’t shedding any tears for what we had done to the Mexes when the marks starting coming out just before the sack of Ensenada. Less still when they couldn’t come up with a combo of pallies that worked anymore, and they shrugged and finally told me it looked like I had reached Condition Terminal in the ruins of La Paz. Like I said, when I first Got It, they gave me six years, ten in the Army of the Living Dead.

Now they gave me six months.

I shot up with about a hundred milligrams of liquid crystal, chugalugged a quart of tequila, and butt-fucked every gork I could find. Think I blew about ten of them away afterward, but by then, brothers and sisters, who the hell was counting?

Walter T. Bigelow

Oh yes, I knew what they say about me behind my back, even on a cabinet level. Old Walter T., he was a virgin when he married Elaine, and he’s never even had meat with his own pure Christian wife. Old Walter T., he’s never even stuck it in a sex machine. Old Walter T., he’s never even missed the pleasures of the flesh. Old Walter T., he’d still be the same sexless eunuch even if there had never been a Plague. Old Walter T., he’s got holy water for blood.

How little they know of my torments.

How little they know of what it was like for me in high school. In the locker room. With all those naked male bodies. All the little tricks I had to learn to hide my erections. Knowing what I was. Knowing it was a sin. Unable to look my own father squarely in the eye.

Walter Bigelow found Christ at the age of seventeen and was Born Again, that’s what the official biography says. Alas, it was only partly true. Oh yes, I dedicated my life to Jesus when I was seventeen. But it was a cold, logical decision. It seemed the only means of controlling my unwholesome urges, the only way I could avoid damnation.

I hated God then. I hated Him for making me what I was and condemning me to hellfire should I succumb to the temptations of my own God-given nature. I believed in God, but I hated Him. I believed in Jesus, but how could I believe that Jesus believed in me?

I was not granted Grace until I was twenty.

My college roommate Gus was a torment. He flaunted his naked body in what seemed like total innocence. He masturbated under the bedclothes at night while I longed to be there with him.

One morning he walked into the bathroom while I was toweling myself down after a shower. He was nude, with an enormous erection. I could not keep my flesh from responding in kind. He confessed his lust for me. I let him touch me. I found myself reaching for his manhood.

He offered to do anything. My powers of resistance were at a low point. We indulged in mutual masturbation. I would go no further.

For months we engaged in this onanistic act, Gus offering me every fleshly delight I had ever fantasized, I calling on Christ to save me.

Finally, a moment came when I could resist no longer. Gus knelt on the floor before me, running his hands over my body, cupping my buttocks. I was lost. His mouth reached out for me—

And at that moment God at last granted me His Grace.

As his head lowered, I saw the Devil’s mark upon the back of his neck, small as yet, but unmistakable—Karposi’s sarcoma.

Gus had the Plague.

He was about to give it to me.

I leaped backward. Gus was an instrument of the Devil sent to damn my flesh to the Plague and my soul to everlasting torment.

And at last I understood. I saw that it was the Devil, not God, who had tormented me with these unwholesome urges. And God had let me suffer them as a test and a preparation. A test of my worthiness and a preparation for this moment of revelation of His Divine Mercy. For had He not chosen to show me the Sign that saved me from my own sinful nature at this eleventh hour?

That was when I was granted true Grace.

I sank to my knees and gave thanks to God. That was when I was Born Again. That was when I became a true Christian. That too was when I was shown my true calling, when the vision opened up before me.

God had allowed the Devil to inflict the Plague on man to test us, even as I had been tested, for to succumb to the temptations of the flesh was to succumb to the Plague and be dragged, rotting and screaming, to Hell.

This was the fate that Jesus had saved me from, for only the Sign He had shown me had preserved me from death and eternal damnation. My life, therefore, was truly His, and what I must use it for was to protect mankind from this Plague and its carriers, to save those I could as Jesus had saved me.

And He spoke to me in my heart. “Become a leader of men,” Jesus told me. “Save them from themselves. Do My work in the world.”

I promised Him that I would. I would do it in the only way I could conceive of, through politics.

I became a prelaw major. I entered law school. I graduated with honors. I found, courted, and married a pure Christian virgin, and soon thereafter impregnated Elaine with Billy, ran for the Virginia State Assembly, and was elected.

The rest of my life is, as they say, history.

Linda Lewin

I was just another horny spoiled little brat until I Got It, just like all my horny spoiled little friends in Berkeley. Upper-middle-class family with an upper-middle-class house in the hills. My own car for my sixteenth birthday, along with the latest model sex interface.

Oh yes, they did! My mom and dad were no Unholy Rollers, they were educated intellectual liberal Democrats, they read all the literature, they had been children of the Sexy Seventies, they were realists, they knew the score.

These are terrible times, they told me. We know you’ll be tempted to have meat. You might get away with it for years. Or you might Get It the first time out. Don’t risk it, Linda. We know how you feel, we remember when everyone did meat. We know this is unnatural. But we know the consequences, and so do you.

And they dragged me out on the porch and made me look out across the Bay at San Francisco. The Bay Bridge with its blown-out center span. The pig boats patrolling the shoreline. The gun-ships buzzing about the periphery like angry horseflies.

Meat City. That’s where you’d end up, Linda. Nothing’s worth that, now is it?

I nodded. But even then, I wondered.

I had grown up with the vision of the shining city across the Bay. Oh yes, I had also grown up knowing that the lovely hills and graceful buildings and sparkling night lights masked a charnel house of the Plague, black-carders all, 100 percent. We were told horror stories about it in sex hygiene classes starting in kindergarten.

But from about the fifth grade on, we told ourselves our own stories too. We whispered them in the ladies’ room. We uploaded them onto bulletin boards. We downloaded them, printed them out, wiped them from memory so our parents wouldn’t see them, masturbated over the printouts.

As porn went, it was crude, amateurish stuff. What could you expect from teenage virgins? And it was all the same. A teenager Gets It. And runs away to San Francisco. Or disappears into the underground. And, sentenced to death already, sets out to enjoy all the pleasures of the meat on the way out, in crude, lurid, sensational detail. And of course, the porn sheets all ended long before Condition Terminal was reached.

But I was a good little girl and I was a smart little girl and the sex interface my parents gave me was the best money could buy, not some cheap one-way hooker’s model. It had everything. The vaginal insert was certified to five atmospheres, but it was only fifty microns thick, heated to blood temperature, and totally flexible. It had a neat little clit-hood programmed for five varieties of electric stimulation and six vibratory patterns. I could wear the thing under my jeans, finger the controls, and never fail to come, even in the dullest math class.

The guys said that the interior lining was the max, tight and soft and wet, the stim programs the best there were. But what did they know? Who among them had ever felt real meat?

Oh yes, it was a wonderful sex interface my parents gave me to protect me from the temptations of the meat.

And of course I hated the damned thing.

Worse still when the guy I was balling with it insisted on wearing his interface too. Yech! His penile sheath in my vaginal insert. Like two sex machines doing it to each other. I remember an awful thing I did to one wimp who really pissed me off. I took off my interface, made him take off his, inserted his penile sheath in my vaginal insert, activated both interfaces, and made him sit there with me watching the two things go at each other without us for a solid hour.

And then there came Rex.

What can I say about Rex? I was eighteen. He was a year younger. He was beautiful. We never made it through two interfaces. I’d wear mine or he’d wear his and we’d go at it for hours. It was wonderful. We swore eternal love. We took to telling each other meatporn stories as we did it. This was it, I knew it was, we were soul mates for life. Rex swore up and down that he had never done meat and so did I. So why not…

Finally we did.

We took off our interfaces and did meat together. We tried out everything in those meatporn stories and then some. Every orifice. Every variation. Every day for two months.

Well, to make the usual long sad story short and nasty, I had been telling the truth, but Rex hadn’t. And I had to learn about it from my parents.

Your boyfriend Rex’s Got It, they told me one bright sunny morning. He’s been black-carded and they’ve dropped him in San Francisco. You and he never… you didn’t… because if you did, we’re going to have to turn you in, you know that, don’t you?

Well of course I freaked. But it was a cold slow-motion freak, with everything running through my head too fast for me to panic. I had a whole month till my next ID exam. I knew damn well my card would come up black. What should I do? Let them drop me in San Francisco and go out in a blaze of meatfucking glory with Rex? Yeah, sure, with the lying son of a bitch who had killed me!

I thought fast. I lied up and down. I threw an outraged temper tantrum when my parents suggested maybe I should go in for an early check. I convinced them. Or maybe I just let them convince themselves.

I found myself an underground doc and checked myself out. Got It. I drifted into the Berkeley underground, not as difficult as you might think for a girl who was willing to give meat to the secret Living Dead for a few dollars and a few more connections. I learned about how they kept ahead of the Sex Police. I learned about the phony blue cards. And I made my plans.

When I had hooked enough to score one, I got myself a primo counterfeit. As long as I found myself a wizard every three months to update the data strip, it would show blue. I could stay free until I died, unless of course I got picked up by the SP and got my card run against the national data bank, in which case I would turn up null and it would all be over.

I hooked like crazy, three, four, five tricks a day. I piled up a bankroll and kept it in bills. The day before I was to report for my ID update, I got in my car to go to school, said the usual goodbye to my parents, and took off, headed south.

South to Santa Cruz. South to L.A. South to anywhere. Out along the broad highway to see what there was to see of California, of what was left of America, out along the broad highway toward the eventual inevitable—crazed, confused, terror-stricken, brave with fatal knowledge, determined only to have a long hot run till my time ran out.

Dr. Richard Bruno

They used to call it midlife crisis, male menopause, the seven-year itch, back when it wasn’t a condition to which you were condemned for life at birth.

I was just about to turn forty. I had dim teenage memories of quite a meaty little sex life back at the beginning of the Ugly Eighties, before the Plague, before I married Marge. Oh yes, I had been quite a hot little cocksman before it all fell apart, a child of the last half-generation of the Sexual Revolution.

When I was Tod’s age, fifteen, I had already had more real meat than the poor frustrated little guy was likely to get in his whole life. Now I had to watch my own son sneaking around to sleazy sex parlors to stick it into sex machines, and don’t think I was above it myself from time to time.

Marge, well…

Marge was five years younger than I. Just young enough to never have known what the real thing was like, young enough to remember nothing but condoms and vaginal dams and the early interfaces. Oh yes, we had meat together in the early years, before it finally resulted in Tod. Poor Marge was terrified the whole time, unable to come. After Tod was born, she got herself an interface, and never made love again without it.

Marge still loved me, I think, and I still loved her, but the Plague Years had dried her up sexually, turned her prudish and sour. She wouldn’t even let me buy Tod an interface so he could get it from a real girl, if only secondhand. His sixteenth birthday is more than time enough, she insisted shrilly every time we fought about it, which was frequently.

Naturally, or perhaps more accurately unnaturally, all my libidinal energies had long since been channeled into my work. It was the perfect sublimation.

I was a genetic synthesizer for the Sutcliffe Corporation in Palo Alto. I had already designed five different Plague vaccines for Sutcliffe that made them hundreds of millions each before the virus mutated into immunity. I was the fair-haired boy. I got many bonuses. I had my own private lab with little restraint on my budget. For a scientist, it should have been heaven.

It wasn’t.

It was maddening. A new Plague strain would appear and rise to dominance. I’d strip off the antigen coat, clone it, insert its genome in a bacterium, and Sutcliffe would market a vaccine to those who could afford it, make hundreds of millions in six months. Then the next immune strain would appear, and it would be back to square one. I felt like a scientific Sisyphus, rolling the dead weight of the Plague uphill, only to have it roll back and crush my hopes every six months.

Was I taking my work a bit too personally? Of course I was. My “personal life” consisted of the occasional interface sex with Marge, which I had long since come to loathe, watching my son sneaking around to sex machine parlors, and the occasional trip there myself. My “personal life” had been stolen from me by the Plague, by the Enemy, so of course I took my work personally.

I was obsessed. My work was my personal life. And I had a vision.

Cassette vaccines had been around for decades. Strip down a benign virus, plug in sets of antigens off several target organisms, and hey, presto, antibodies to several diseases conferred in a single shot.

Why not apply the same technique to the Plague? Strip one strain down to the core, hang it with antigen coats from four or five strains at once, and confer multistrain immunity. Certainly not to every mutation, but if I could develop an algorithm that could predict mutations, if I could develop cassette vaccines that stayed ahead of the viral mutations, might I not somehow be able eventually to force the Plague to mutate out?

Oh yes, I took the battle personally, or so I admitted to myself at the time. Little did I know just how personal it was about to become.

John David

No sooner had we finished mopping up in La Paz than my unit was airlifted up to the former Mexican border as part of the force that would keep it sealed until the SPs could set up their cordon. Through the luck of the draw, we got the sweetest billet, holding the line between Tijuana and San Diego.

They kept us zombies south of the former border, you better believe they didn’t want us in Dago, no way they would let us set foot on real American soil, but meatfucker, you wouldn’t believe the scene in TJ!

Back before the Plague, the place had been one big whorehouse and drug supermarket anyway. For fifteen years it had been a haven for underground black-carders, Latino would-be infiltrators, black pally docs, dealers in every contraband item that existed, getting poorer and more desperate as the cordon around Mexico tightened.

Now TJ found itself in the process of becoming an American Quarantine Zone, and it was Bugfuck City. Mexicans trying to get into Dago on false passports and blue cards. Wanted Americans trying to get out to anywhere. False IDs going for outrageous prices. Pussy and ass and drugs and uncertified Pharmaceuticals and armaments going for whatever the poor bastards left holding them could get.

And the law, such as it was, until the SPs could replace the Legion, was us, brothers and sisters. Unbelievable! We could buy anything—drugs, phony blue cards, six-year-old virgins, you name it—or just have what we wanted at gunpoint. And money hand over fist, I mean we looted everything with no law but us to stop us, and did heavy traffic in government arms on top of it.

Loaded with money, we stayed stoned and drunk and turned that town into our twenty-four-hour pigpen, you better believe it! No one more so than me, brothers and sisters, with those marks coming out, knowing this could be my last big night to party.

I scored half-a-dozen phony blue cards and corroborating papers to match. I stuffed my pockets with money. I shot up with every half-baked pally TJ had to peddle, and they had everything from Russian biologicals to ground-up nun’s tits in holy water. If this was my Condition Terminal, I was determined to take as much of the world with me as I could before I went out. I meat-fucked myself deaf, dumb, and blind and must’ve Given It to five hundred Mexes in the bargain.

Then they started phasing in the Sex Police. Well, as you might imagine, there was no love lost between the Army of the Living Dead and the SPs. Those uptight Unholy Rollers took any opportunity to snuff us. Looters were shot. Meatfuckers caught in the act were executed. And of course, brothers and sisters, the Army of the Living Dead gave as good as we got and then some.

We’d kill any of the bastards we caught on what remained of our shrinking turf. We’d get up kamikaze packs and go into their turf after them. When we were really loaded, we’d catch ourselves some SP assholes and gang-bang them senseless. Needless to say, we weren’t into using interfaces.

Things got so out of hand that the Pentagon brought in regular airborne troops to round us up. That little action took more casualties in two days than the whole Baja campaign had in three weeks.

When they started dropping napalm from close-support fighters, it finally dawned on those of us still around that the meat-fuckers had no intention of rounding us up and shipping us to the next theater. They were out to kill us all, and they were probably working themselves up to tactical nukes to do it.

Well, we weren’t the Army of the Living Dead for nothing. I don’t know where it started or who started it. It just seemed to happen all at once. Somehow all of us that were left stuffed our loot in our packs, armed ourselves with whatever we could lay hands on, and suddenly there was a human wave assault on the border.

It was the bloodiest ragged combat any of us ever saw, crazed zombies against gunships, fighters, and tanks. How many of the bastards did we get on the way? More than you might imagine, better believe it, we were stoned, drunk, in a berserker rage, and we were now the Living Dead twice over, with Double Nothing to lose, triple so for yours truly.

How many of us got through? A thousand? Five hundred? Something to keep you from oversleeping, citizens. Hundreds of us zombies, our packs stuffed with money, false IDs and ordnance, over the border into San Diego, hunted, dying, betrayed by even the Army, with nothing left for kicks but to take our vengeance on you, meatfuckers!

And I was one of them. The meanest and the craziest, it pleases me to believe. Betrayed, facing Condition Terminal, with nothing left to do with what little was left of my life but bop till I dropped and take as many of you as I could with me.

Linda Lewin

I drove aimlessly around California for months, down 101 or the Coast Highway to Los Angeles, down 5 to San Diego, up to L.A. again, up 5 to the Bay Area, back around again, like a squirrel in a cage, like one of those circuit-riding preachers in an old Western.

I Had It. My days were numbered. I needed cash—for gas, for food, for a flop in a motel, for what pallies I could score, for updating the data strip on my phony blue card. I hooked wherever I could, using my interface always, for I swore to myself that I would never do to anyone what Rex had done to me. I didn’t want to go to Condition Terminal with that mark on my soul.

Bit by bit, inch by inch, I drifted into the underground. You’d be surprised how many black-carders there were surviving outside the Quarantine Zones on phony IDs, a secret America within America, hiding within plain sight of the SPs, living by our wits and our own code.

We found one another by some kind of second sight impossible to explain. Pally pushers. ID wizards. Hookers just like me.

And not like me.

There were bars where we met to trade in pallies and IDs and information. You met all kinds. Pally dealers and drug dealers. ID wizards. Hookers like me, male and female, selling interface sex to the solid citizens. And hookers of the other kind.

Hookers selling meat.

It was amazing how many blue-carders were willing to risk death for the real thing. It was amazing how innocent some of them were willing to be. At first I refused to believe the stories the meat whores told in the bars, cackling evilly all the time. I refused to believe that they were knowingly spreading the Plague and laughing about it. I refused to believe that blue-carders could be so stupid.

But they were and they could. And after a while, I understood.

There were people who would pay fantastic prices for meatsex with another certified blue-carder. There were clandestine meat-bars where they hung out, bars with ID readers. Pick up one of these fools, pop your phony card in a reader, and watch their eyes light up as the strip read out blue, no line to the national data banks here, not with the SPs raiding any such bar they could get a line on. And you got paid more for a quick meatfuck than you could earn in a week of interface hooking.

Sure I was tempted. There was more to it than the money. Didn’t I long for meat myself? Wasn’t that how I had Gotten It in the first place? Didn’t these damn blue-card assholes deserve what they got?

Who knows, I might have ended up doing it in the end if I hadn’t met Saint Max, Our Lady of the Flowers.

Saint Max was a black-carder. He carried his own ID reader around and he didn’t worry about phony cards reading out blue.

Saint Max would give meat only to certified black-carders, and he would never refuse anyone, even the most rotted-out Terminals.

I was in an underground bar in Santa Monica when Saint Max walked in, and half-a-dozen people told me his story before I ever heard it from his lips. Saint Max was a legend of the California underground. The only real hero we had.

Max was a bisexual, male or female, it didn’t matter to him, and he never took money. People fed him, bought him drinks, gave him the latest pallies, found him free flop, sent him on his way. “I am dependent on the kindness of strangers,” Max used to say. And in return, any black-carder stranger could depend on kindness from him.

Max was old; in terms of how long he had survived with God knew how many Plague strains inside him, he was ancient. He had lived in the San Francisco Quarantine Zone before it was a Quarantine Zone. And he was a man with a mission. He had this crazy theory.

I heard it from him that night after I had bought him a meal and about half-a-dozen drinks.

“I’m a living reservoir of every Plague strain extant, my dear,” he told me. “And I do my best to keep up with the latest mutations.”

Max believed that all black-carders had a moral obligation to have as much meatsex with one another as possible. So as to speed the pace of evolution. In a large enough pool of cross-infected Plague victims the virus might mutate out into something benign. Or a multiimmunity might evolve and spread quickly. A pathogen that killed its host was, after all, a mal-adapted organism, and as long as it was killing us, so were we.

“Natural selection, my dear. In the long run, it’s our species’ only hope. In the long run, everyone is going to Get It, and it’s going to get most of us. But if out of the billions who will die, evolution eventually selects for multiimmunity, or a benign Plague variant, the human race will survive. And for as long as all these pallies keep me going, I intend to serve the process.”

It seemed crazy to me, and I told him so, exposing yourself to every Plague strain you could. Didn’t that mean Condition Terminal would just come quicker?

Saint Max shrugged. “Here I am,” he said. “No one’s been exposed to as many Plague variants as me. Maybe it’s already happened. Maybe I’ve got multiimmunity. Maybe I’m a mutant. Maybe there’s already a benign strain inside me.”

He smiled sadly. “We’re all under sentence of death the moment we’re born anyway, now aren’t we, my dear? Even the poor blue-carders. It’s only a matter of how, and when, and in the pursuit of what. And like old John Henry, I intend to die with my hammer in my hand. Think about it, Linda.”

And I did. I offered Max a ride up the coast and he accepted and we ended up traveling one full slow cycle of my circuit together. I watched Max giving meat freely to one and all, to kids like me new to the underground, to thieves, and whores, and horrible Terminals on the way out. No one took Saint Max’s crazy theory seriously. Everyone loved him.

And so did I. I paid my way with the usual interface sex, and Max let it be until we were finally back in Santa Monica and it was time to say goodbye. “You’re young, Linda,” he told me. “With good enough pallies, you have years ahead of you. Me, I know I’m reaching die end of the line. You’ve got the heart for it, my dear. This old faggot would go out a lot happier knowing that there was someone like you to carry on. Think about it, my dear, ‘A Short Life but a Happy One,’ as they say in the Army of the Living Dead. And don’t think we’re all not in it.”

I thought about it. I thought about it for a long time. But I didn’t do anything about it till I saw Max again, till Max lay dying.

Walter T. Bigelow

After two terms in the Virginia Assembly, I ran for Congress and was elected. Capitol Hill was in a state of uproar over the Plague. National policy was nonexistent. Some states were quarantining Plague victims, others were doing nothing. Some states were testing people at their borders, others were calling this a violation of the Constitution. Some representatives were calling for a national health identity card, others considered this a civil rights outrage. Christian groups were calling for a national quarantine policy. Plague victims’ rights groups were calling for an end to all restrictions on their free movements. Dozens of test cases were moving ponderously toward the Supreme Court.

After two terms watching this congressional paralysis, God inspired me to conceive of the National Quarantine Amendment. I ran for the Senate on it, received the support of Christians and Plague victims alike, and was elected by a huge majority.

The amendment nationalized Plague policy. Each state was required to set up Quarantine Zones proportional in area and economic base to the percentage of victims in its territory, said division to be updated every two years. Every citizen outside a Zone must carry an updated blue card. In return for this, Plague victims were guaranteed full civil and voting rights within their Quarantine Zones, and free commerce in nonbiological products was assured.

It was fair. It was just. It was inspired by God. Under my leadership it sailed through Congress and was accepted by three-quarters of the states within two years after I led a strenuous nationwide campaign to pass it.

I was a national hero. It was a presidential year. I was told that I was assured my party’s nomination, that my election to the presidency was all but certain.

Linda Lewin

Saint Max had suddenly collapsed into late Condition Terminal. Indeed he was at the point of death when I finally followed the trail of the sad story to a cabin on a seacliff not far from Big Sur. There he lay, skeletal, emaciated, his body covered with sarcomas, semicomatose.

But his eyes opened up when I walked in. “I’ve been waiting for you, my dear,” he said. “I wasn’t about to leave without saying goodbye to Our Lady.”

“Our Lady? That’s you, Max.”

“Was, my dear.”

“Oh, Max…” I cried, and burst into tears. “What can I do?”

“Nothing, my dear… Or everything.” His eyes were hard and pitiless then, yet also somehow soft and imploring.

“Max…”

He nodded. “You could give me one last meatfuck goodbye,” he told me. He smiled. “I would have preferred a boy, of course, but at least it would please my old mother to know that I mended my ways on my deathbed.”

I looked at his feverish, disease-ravaged body. “You don’t know what you’re asking!” I cried.

“Oh yes I do, my dear. I’m asking you to do the bravest thing you’ve ever done in your life. I’m asking you to believe in the faith of a dying madman. On the other hand, I’m asking for nothing at all, since you’ve already Got It.”

How could I not? Either way, he was right. The Plague would kill me sooner or later no matter what I did now. I would never even know by how much this act of kindness would shorten my life span. Or if it would at all. And Max was dying. He had lived his life bravely in the service of humanity, at least as he saw it. And I loved him more in that moment than I had ever loved anyone in my life. And what if he was right? What other hope did humanity have? How could I refuse him?

I couldn’t.

I didn’t.

Afterward, as I held him, he spoke to me one last time. “Now for my last wish,” he said.

“Haven’t I just given it to you?”

“You know you haven’t.”

“What then?”

“You know, my dear.”

So I did. I had accepted it when I took his ravaged manhood inside my unprotected body. I knew that now. I knew that I had known it all along.

“Will you take up this torch from me?” he said, holding out his hand.

“Yes, Max, I will,” I promised and reached for the phantom object.

“Then this old faggot can go out happy,” he said. And died in my arms with a smile on his lips.

And I became Our Lady. Our Lady of the Living Dead, as they were to call me.

John David

San Diego was crawling with SPs, and they probably would have sent in commando units to hunt us down, if they weren’t so terrified of what would happen if the citizens were to find out that hundreds of us zombies were loose and on the warpath in the good old US of A.

And we were, meatfuckers, better believe it! Wouldn’t you? Sooner or later they were going to get us all, and if they didn’t, the Plague would, and in my case, sooner than later. So we scattered. I don’t know what the others did, but me, I stayed drunk and stoned, and meatfucked as many of the treacherous blue-carders as I could lay my hands on. And tracked down all the pally pushers I could find. I don’t even know what half the stuff I shot up was, but something in the mix, or maybe the mix itself, seemed to slow the Plague. I didn’t get any better, but I seemed to stabilize.

But the situation in Dago didn’t, brothers and sisters. It became one close call after another. Finally I got caught by a couple of stupid SPs. Well, those Unholy Rollers were no match for a zombie with my combat smarts. While they were running one of my phony cards through the national data bank and coming up null, I managed to kill the meatfuckers.

I picked my IDs off the corpses, but now the national data bank had me marked as a zombie on the run, and when they found these stiffs, they’d fax my photo to every SP station in the fifty states. The Sex Police took a real dim view of SP killers, and nailing me would be priority one.

I had only one chance, not that it was max probability. I had to disappear into a Quarantine Zone. San Francisco was the biggest, hence the safest. Also the tastiest, or so I was told.

So I snatched a car and headed north. How I would break into a Zone, I’d have to figure out later. If, by some chance, I managed to avoid the SPs long enough to get there.

Walter T. Bigelow

Congress set up the Federal Quarantine Agency to administer the National Quarantine Amendment. It would have enormous power and enormous responsibility. It was the wisdom of Congress, with which I heartily concurred, that it be entirely insulated from party politics. The director would be chosen in the manner of Supreme Court justices—nominated by the president, approved by the Senate, serving for life, removable only by impeachment.

After the president signed the bill, he called me into his office and pleaded with me to accept the appointment. It was my amendment. I was the only political figure who had the confidence of both Plague victims and blue-carders.

All that, I knew, was true. What was also true was that many insiders blanched at the thought of a Bigelow presidency. This was the perfect political solution.

It was the most important decision of my life and the most difficult. Elaine had had her heart set on being First Lady. “You just can’t let them take the presidency away from you like this,” she insisted. Ministers and black-carder groups and politicians of my own party, some sincere, some otherwise, begged me to accept the lifetime directorship of the FQA. For weeks, they all badgered me while I procrastinated and prayed.

It seemed as if the voices of God and the Devil were speaking to me through my wife, party leaders, men of God, men of power, saints and sinners, battling for possession of my soul. But which was the voice of God and which the voice of Satan? Which way did my true duty lie? What did God want me to do?

Finally, I went on a solitary retreat into the Utah desert, into Zion National Park. I fasted. I prayed. I called on Jesus to speak to me.

And at length a voice did speak to me, in a vision. “You are the Moses I have chosen to lead My people out of the wilderness,” it told me. “Have I not commanded you to become a leader of men? Those who would deny you power are the agents of the Adversary.”

But then another stronger and sweeter voice spoke out of a great white light and I knew that this was truly Jesus and whose the first voice had really been.

“I saved you from the Plague and your own sinful desire in your hour of need,” He told me. “I raised you up from the pit so that you might do God’s will on Earth. As I gave up My life to save Man from sin, so must you give up worldly power to save the people from their dark natures. As God chose Me for My Calvary, so do I choose you for yours.”

I returned from the desert to Washington and I obeyed. I put the thought of worldly glory behind me. There were those who snickered when I accepted this appointment. There were those who laughed when I told the nation that I had done it at the bidding of Jesus.

Even my wife told me I was a fool, and a breach was opened between us that I knew no way to heal. We became strangers to each other sharing the same marriage bed.

Oh yes, I paid dearly for my obedience to God’s will. But while I may have lost my chance at worldly power and hardened my wife’s heart against me, I remained steadfast and strong.

For God had saved me in that dormitory room with Gus and granted me Grace and salvation. And Jesus spoke truth to me in the desert in the presence of the Adversary and saved me again. And so in my heart I knew I had done right.

Dr. Richard Bruno

How could I have done such a thing? How could I, of all people, have been naive enough to Get It from a meatwhore? As the ancient saying has it, a stiff dick knows no conscience, and they don’t call a fool a stupid prick for nothing.

For my fortieth birthday, I got royally drunk and righteously stoned, and I demanded a special birthday present from Marge. Was it really too much to ask from one’s own wife on the night of the rite de passage of my midlife crisis? Tender loving meat for my Fateful Fortieth? We were both blue-carders. Marge had hardly any sex life at all. The only times I had been unfaithful to her were with radiation-sterilized sex machines.

I was loaded and raving, but she was entirely irrational. She refused. When I attempted to get physical, she locked herself in the bedroom and told me to go stick it in one of my goddamn sex machines.

I reeled out into the streets, stoned out of my mind, aching with despair, with a raging fortieth-birthday hard-on. But I didn’t slink off to the usual sex machine parlor, oh no; that was what Marge had told me to do, wasn’t it?

Instead, I found myself one of those clandestine meatbars. To make the old long story modern and short, I picked up a whore. We inserted our cards in the bar’s reader and of course they both came up blue. Off I went to her room and did every kind of meat I could think of and some that seemed to be her own inventions.

I staggered home, still loaded, and passed out on the couch. The Morning After…

Oh my God!

Beyond the inevitable horrid hangover and conjugal recriminations, I awoke to the full awfulness of what I had done. In my present sober and thoroughly detumescent state, I knew all too well how many phony blue cards were floating around the meat-bars. Had I…?

I ran the standard tests on myself in my own lab for six days. On the sixth day, they came up black. When I cultured the bastard, it turned out to be a Plague variant I had not yet seen.

By this time I had prepared myself for the inevitable. I had made my plans. As fortune would have it, I had ten weeks before my next ID update, ten weeks to achieve what medical science had failed to achieve in twenty years and more of trying.

But I had motivation. If I failed, in ten weeks I would lose my blue card, my job, my mission in life, my wife, my family, and with no one to blame but myself. At this point, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that I was under sentence of eventual death. What would happen in ten weeks was more than disaster enough to keep me working twenty hours a day, or so at least it seemed.

And, crazed creature that I was, I had a crazy idea, one that, in retrospect, I saw I had been moving toward all along.

My work on cassette vaccines was already well advanced, so might it not be possible to push it one step further, and synthesize an automatic self-programming cassette vaccine? It might be pushing the edge of the scientific possible, but it was my only hope. A crazy idea, yes, but was not madness just over the edge from inspiration?

I stripped a Plague virus down to the harmless core in the usual manner. But I didn’t start hanging on the usual series of antigen coat variants. I started crafting a series of nanomanipulators out of RNA fragments, molecular “tentacles.”

What I was after was an organism that would infect the same cells as the Plague. That would seize any strain of Plague virus it found, destroy the core, and wrap the empty antigen coat around itself, much as a hermit crab crawls inside a discarded seashell in order to protect its nakedness from the world.

In effect, a killed-virus vaccine that could still reproduce as an organism, an organism continually reprogramming its antigen coat to mimic lethal invaders, that would use the corpses of the Enemy to stimulate the production of antibodies to it, a living, self-programming cassette vaccine factory within my own body.

The theory was simple, cunning, and elegant. Actually synthesizing such a molecular dreadnaught was something else again…

Linda Lewin

The story of what happened on Saint Max’s deathbed became a legend of the underground. And whereas Max had been old and had long since outlived any rational expectations of survival, I was young, I appeared healthy, and so what I was risking was readily apparent.

Like Saint Max, Our Lady gave the comfort of her meat to anyone who asked her. I gave freely of my body to young black-carders like myself, to rotting Terminals, to every underground black-carder between.

Perhaps because I was young, perhaps because I was the first convert to Saint Max’s vision daring enough to put it into practice, perhaps because I was so much more naïvely earnest about it than he had been, perhaps because I appeared to be in such robust health, there were those who believed in it now, who believed in me, in the Faith of Our Lady. If Saint Max had been our Jesus, and I was our Paul, now there were disciples to spread the Faith, no more than scores, maybe, but at least more than Christianity’s original twelve.

Spreading the Faith of Saint Max and Our Lady. Gaining converts with our hope and our bodies as we wandered up and down California. The Plague strains would spread faster now. Millions might die sooner who might have lingered longer. But were we not all under sentence of death anyway, blue-carders and black-carders alike?

Millions of lives might be shortened, but out of all that death, the species might survive. We would challenge the Plague head-on, in the only way we could—love against despair, sex against death. We would force the pace of evolution and/or die trying.

And while we lived, we would at least live free, we would live, and love, and fight for our species’ survival as natural men and women. Better in fire than in ice.

Walter T. Bigelow

I had done as God commanded, I was doing His work, but the Devil continued to torment me. Elaine remained distant and cold, the Plague continued to spread despite my best efforts, and then, at length, Satan, not content with this, reached out and put his hand upon my Billy.

Billy, the son I had raised so carefully, the son who to my joy had Found the Light at the age of fourteen, began to act strangely, moping in his room at night, locking himself in the bathroom for suspiciously long intervals. I didn’t need to be the director of the Federal Quarantine Agency to suspect what was happening; any good Christian father could read the signs.

I was prepared to find pornography when I searched his room one morning after he had left for school, but nothing could have prepared me for the vile nature of the filth I found. Photographs of men having meatsex with each other. With young boys. Photographs of naked young boys in the lewdest of poses. And, worse still, hideous cartoons of boys and girls having the most impossible and revolting intercourse with sex machines, automated monstrosities with grotesque vulvas, immense penile organs, done up to simulate animals, robots, tentacled aliens from outer space.

I reeled. My skin crawled. My stomach went cold. Worst of all, the Devil caused my weak flesh to become loathsomely aroused as all those terrible and tantalizing memories of Gus came rushing back between my legs to haunt me.

Revolted, appalled, shaking with outrage and confusion, I was forced to wait until the evening to confront him, and the Devil struck me a second blow in the office, for that was the day when the first reports of the Satanic cult of Our Lady of the Living Dead appeared in my electronic mailbox.

Of course I was aware that there were hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of black-carders living underground outside the Quarantine Zones on bogus blue cards, and spreading their filth among the innocent. We caught hundreds of them every week.

But this… this… this was Satan’s masterstroke!

Out there in California was a woman, or perhaps several women, known as Our Lady of the Living Dead, clearly possessed by the Adversary and doing his work quite consciously, recruiting others into her Satanic cult, spreading his lies and the Plague in ever-wider circles.

Black-carders were openly offering their meat to their fellow black-carders, spreading multiple strains of Plague virus throughout the underground. Interrogations seemed to indicate that these slaves of Satan actually believed that they were the saviors of the species, that in some mystical manner they were speeding the course of evolution, that somehow out of their unholy and deadly couplings a strain of humanity would evolve that was immune to the Plague.

He is not the Prince of Liars for nothing. He had apparently quite convinced these poor doomed creatures of this one, cunningly using their despair-maddened lust and turning it against us all, giving them a truly devilish excuse to wallow in it until they died in the conviction that they were doing God’s Work in the process.

And laughing at them and at me by causing his servant to wrap himself in the cognomen of the Mother of Jesus!

I gave the necessary orders. The stamping out of the cult of Our Lady was to be the SP’s number one priority. Arrest these people. If any resisted, shoot to kill. Close as many meatbars as possible. And do it all as conspicuously as could be managed. Spread the fear of God’s wrath and that of the SP among the denizens of the underground.

After a day like that, I was constrained to return home and confront Billy. There was denial, sobbing confession, promises of repentance, and strong penances set. I had done my patriotic duty and my fatherly duty. It had been hard, but I had done God’s will and was as at peace as one could be under the terrible circumstances.

But Satan was still not finished with me. He seized Elaine, my good Christian wife, and caused her to launch into the most appalling tirade. “How can you be so hard-hearted?” she demanded. “Aren’t things bad enough for young people growing up these days? At least you shouldn’t try to keep Billy from a little safe masturbation.”

“It’s against God’s law! Besides, you saw that revolting, unnatural–”

“Of course it’s unnatural, Walter! What else can you expect when the most natural thing in the world is the one thing none of us can do anymore!”

“Elaine–”

“If you were a real man, Walter T. Bigelow, if you were a real Christian, if you were a real loving father, you’d take the poor boy to a sex machine parlor and show him how to get some harmless release!”

I could hardly believe my ears for a long moment. This could not be Elaine! But then I understood. This insinuating blasphemy was coming from her lips, but my poor wife was only an instrument. The voice saying these awful things through her had identified itself by the very act of causing a good Christian woman to mouth them.

“I know you…” I muttered.

“No you don’t, Walter Bigelow, you don’t know me at all!”

“Get thee behind me–”

“Have it your own way!” she shouted. And she locked herself in the bedroom, leaving me to spend a sleepless night in the living room, praying to Jesus, demanding to know why He had so forsaken me in the presence of the Enemy.

John David

I made my way up the coast toward San Francisco real slowly, spending nearly a month in Los Angeles, which was big, and sprawling, and a hell of a town for a zombie to party in. There were plenty of meatbars, my latest batch of pallies seemed to be holding up real well, I was lookin’ good, I had umpteen phony blue cards, and I was able to meatfuck myself near to exhaustion. It was almost too easy.

And then one night I found out why.

I let myself get picked up on the street by this sexy space case who told me she’d give me free meat if I was a black-carder, if you can believe that one. Well, she was beautiful, I was real stoned and in a kind of funny mood, so I shoved her into an alley, Gave It to her, and then announced my wonderful secret identity as a black-card-carrying zombie of the Army of the Living Dead, expecting to get my jollies watching her freak.

Only she didn’t. She smiled at me. She fuckin’ kissed me, and she told me I was doin’ the Work of Our Lady whether I knew it or not.

Say what? Say who?

And she told me.

She told me that whether I knew it or not, I was a soldier in a different army now, an army called the Lovers of Our Lady. Whose mission it was to have meat with as many people as possible in order to save the species, if you can believe that one, brothers and sisters! That somehow by all of us Giving as many strains of It to each other as we could, we might end up with multi-immune humans.

Believe it when they tell you L.A. is full of all kinds of weirdos, brothers and sisters!

But soon the weirdness began getting ominous. All of a sudden the SPs were swarming all over the meatbars like flies on horseshit, running every last customer they caught through the national data bank no matter how long it took. The underground safe houses were no longer so safe. They were grabbing people at random on the streets and blowing away anyone who showed any resistance. I mean, suddenly the Sex Police were real agitated.

I never did find out whether they were hot after me and my fellow zombies or what, I mean after a few close calls, there was clearly no percentage in sticking around to find out. Especially since the pallies were starting to wear off once more and I was getting to lookin’ obvious and ragged. San Francisco was beginning to look like my best bet again after all.

I snatched me another car and headed north again, staying away from the population centers, meatfucking my way slowly up the center of California, following a kind of secret underground circuit.

It was real easy, once I got the hang of it and picked up on the stories. That weirdo back in L.A. had given me a good steer. All I had to tell these assholes was that I was doin’ the Work of Our Lady and they’d do me anything.

Dr. Richard Bruno

It was arduous, but my little dreadnaught was ready with five days to spare, and it was even more elegant than my original concept. Like the Plague itself, it infected via the usual sexual or intravenous vectors, colonizing semen, blood, and mucous membrane. Unlike the Plague, however, it did not interfere with T-cell activity or production. Lacking an antigen coat, it was “invisible” to the host immune system.

As a retrovirus, it would write itself into host genomes, so that when it expressed itself during cellular reproduction, it would invade two more cells, a process that would continue until all suitable host cells were infected.

If an invading retrovirus should be encountered during the expression phase, it would destroy the active core and wrap itself in the “dead” antigen coat. If the host already had antibodies to these antigens, that variant would die. If not, it would eventually write itself back into a host genome, shedding the antigen “shell” in the process.

Thus, when a retrovirus invaded the host, the host bloodstream would become saturated with empty invader antigen coats, to which the host immune system would eventually form antibodies, conferring immunity to the invader precisely in the manner of a “killed virus” vaccine.

It not only conferred immunity to all strains of the Plague virus, it would automatically immunize the host against all retro-viruses. And, like the Plague, it would spread via sexual contact.

That was what my molecular analysis predicted. It remained only to test the dreadnaught. But there was a stringent law against introducing into human hosts a live, genetically tailored organism capable of reproduction outside the lab, even for test purposes. It would take congressional legislation to allow me to begin human tests, and even then it could be years before the dreadnaught received FDA certification.

And I had only five days. In five days, I was up for ID card updating. If I tested out black, which I would, I would lose my job and be dumped unceremoniously into the San Francisco Quarantine Zone, and all would be lost.

I had only one chance to keep my blue card long enough to see the whole process through. I myself would have to be my first test subject. If it didn’t work, all was lost anyway. If it did—and I was convinced it would—no one ever need know that I had violated the FDA regulations.

So I injected myself with the dreadnaught culture. Three days later, my body was free of the Plague. I took some of my blood and exposed it to other Plague strains as well as a variety of other retroviruses. My dreadnaught killed them all.

I called Harlow Prinz, the president of Sutcliffe, and asked for a special meeting of the board of directors, at which I promised to present the greatest advance in medicine in the last fifty years and then some. I could all but hear him drooling.

The Nobel for medicine seemed a certainty.

And, seeing as how the dreadnaught would spread itself by sexual contact without the need for economically prohibitive mass inoculation, it could eliminate the Plague from the festering Third World as well, so a second Nobel, this one for peace, might not be beyond the bounds of possibility.

Walter T. Bigelow

Elaine refused to have interface sex with me at all. She refused to sleep in the same bedroom with me. She took to disparaging my manhood. Meals were undercooked, overcooked, slovenly prepared. Her housekeeping deteriorated. She kept insisting that I introduce Billy to the sex machine parlors and called my righteous refusal “un-Christian.”

I no longer knew the woman I lived with. Elaine was now acting like a woman with a secret life, indeed like a woman hiding an adulterous relationship. Was it possible? How long had it been going on? Had she been making a fool of me all these years?

Of course I had the necessary resources to find out. I had her followed. But what die reports revealed was no human lover.

There were written accounts. There were still photos. There was even an ingeniously obtained clandestine video.

Elaine was a sex machine addict.

Almost every day when I was away at work, she visited one of several sex machine parlors, and stayed for at least an hour, engaging in machine sex perversions of which I had previously been unaware, which I had not even previously believed possible.

When I confronted her with the evidence, she defiantly admitted that she had been doing it secretly for years. “You just haven’t been satisfying me, Walter.”

“Adulteress!”

“Adulteress? Just the opposite! I’ve been doing it to keep from becoming an adulteress!”

“It’s against God’s law!”

“Show me anything in the scriptures against it!”

“It’s the sin of Onan!”

“Good Lord, Walter, it’s the Plague, can’t you see that?”

“Of course I can see that! God is testing us, and you’ve failed Him.”

“I’ve failed Him? Or has He failed us?”

“Blasphemy!”

“Is it?” she insinuated. “Can it be Jesus’s God of Love who has taken natural love itself away from us and forced us into all these perversions? Look what’s happened to us! Look what’s happened to Billy! Where is God’s Love in all that?”

“It’s the Devil tormenting us, not God, Elaine!”

“That’s what I’m telling you, Walter Bigelow! The Plague is the work of the Devil, not God. So anything that helps us survive Satan’s torment—the interfaces, the sex machines—must be God’s mercy. Jesus loves us, doesn’t He? He can’t want us to suffer any more than we have to!”

And then I knew for certain.

Not the Prince of Liars for nothing.

My Elaine had neither the evilness of spirit nor the cunning of mind to say these things to me. She was clearly possessed by the Devil.

Christian and husbandly duty coincided.

I placed Elaine under clandestine house arrest.

And began consulting exorcists.

Dr. Richard Bruno

They were all there—Harlow Prinz, the president of Sutcliffe, Warren Feinstein, the chairman of the board, and the entire board of directors. They all had dollar signs in their eyes as I began my presentation. They listened with rapt silence as I proceeded, a silence that grew rather ominous and eerie as I went on.

And the conclusion of my presentation fell into a deathly graveyard hush that seemed to go on forever. I finally had to break it myself.

“Uh… any questions?”

“This, ah, dreadnaught virus is a self-replicating organism? It will reproduce by itself outside the lab?”

“That’s right.”

“And it spreads like the Plague?”

“It can easily enough be made pandemic.”

“Who has had access to this information?”

“Why, no one outside this room,” I told them. “I did this one on my own.”

Like a crystal suddenly dissolving back into solution, the hushed atmosphere shattered into a series of whispered Cross-conversations. After a few minutes of this, Pririz snapped orders into his intercom.

“Security to lab twelve! Seal it off. No one in or out except on my personal orders. Get a decontamination team down there and execute Code Black procedures.”

“Code Black?” I cried. “There’s no Code Black in my lab! No pathogen release! No–”

“Shut up, Bruno! Haven’t you done enough already?” Prinz shouted at me. “You’ve created an artificial human parasite, you imbecile! The FDA will crucify us!”

“If we report it…” Feinstein said slowly.

“Yes…” Prinz said.

“What are you going to do, Harlow?”

“I’ve already done it. We’ll follow maximum Code Black procedure. Incinerate the contents of lab twelve, then pump it full of molten glass. We’ll keep this an internal matter. It never happened.”

“But what about him?”

“Indeed…” Prinz said slowly. “Security to the boardroom!” he snapped into his intercom.

“What the hell is going on?” I finally managed to demand.

“You’ve committed a very serious breach of FDA regulations, Dr. Bruno,” Feinstein told me. “One that could have grave consequences for the company.”

“But it’s a monumental breakthrough!” I cried. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? It’s a cure for all possible Plague variants! It’ll save the country from–”

“It would destroy Sutcliffe, you cretin!” Prinz shouted. “Fifty-two percent of our gross derives from Plague vaccines, and another twenty-one percent from the sale of palliatives! And your damned dreadnaught is a venereal disease, man—it wouldn’t even be a marketable product!”

“But surely the national interest–”

“I’m afraid you haven’t considered the national interest at all, Dr. Bruno,” Feinstein said much more smoothly. “The medical industry’s share of GNP has been twenty-five percent for years, and the Plague is hard-wired into our economy; your dreadnaught would have precipitated a massive depression.”

“And destroyed the whole raison d’ètre of our policy vis-avis the Third World.”

“Thereby shattering the Soviet-Chinese-American-Japanese entente and rekindling the Cold War.”

“Leading to a nuclear Armageddon and the destruction of our entire species!”

What monstrous sophistry! What sheer insanity! What loathsome utterly self-interested bullshit! They couldn’t be serious!

But just then two armed guards entered the boardroom, and their presence suddenly forced me to realize just how serious the board really was. They were already destroying the organism. From their own outrageously cold point of view, their hideous logic was quite correct. The dreadnaught virus would reduce the medical industry to an economic shadow of its former self. Sutcliffe would fold. And their jobs and their fortunes would be gone…

“Dr. Bruno is not to be allowed to leave the premises or to communicate with the outside,” Prinz told the guards. They crossed the room to flank my chair with pistols at the ready.

“What are we going to do with him?”

How far would they really go to protect their own interests?

“Perhaps Dr. Bruno has met with an unfortunate accident in the lab…” Prinz said slowly.

My God, were they deadly serious?

“Surely you’re not suggesting…?” Feinstein exclaimed, quite aghast.

“The organism is being destroyed, we can wipe his research notes from the data banks, no one else knows, we can hardly afford to leave loose ends dangling,” Prinz said. “You have any better ideas, Warren?”

“But–”

Did I panic? Did I become one of them? Was I acting out of ruthless self-interest myself, or following a higher imperative? Or all four? Who can say? All I knew then was that my life was on the line, that I had to talk my way out of that room, and the words came pouring out of me before I even thought them, or so it seemed.

“One million dollars a year,” I blurted.

“What?”

“That’s my price for silence. I want my salary raised to one million a year.”

“That’s preposterous!”

“Is it? You’ve said yourself that the survival of Sutcliffe is at stake. Cheap at twice the price!”

“Cheaper and safer to eliminate the problem permanently,” Prinz said.

“Ye Gods, Harlow, you’re talking about murder!” Feinstein cried. “Dr. Bruno’s suggestion is much more… rational. He’d hardly be about to talk while we’re paying him a million a year for his silence!” “He’s right, Harlow!”

“The other’s too risky.”

“I don’t like it, we can’t trust–”

“He’ll have to agree to accept an appointment to the board,” Feinstein said. “Meaning that he knowingly accepts legal responsibility for our actions. Besides, we’re destroying the organism, aren’t we? Who would believe him anyway?”

“Will you agree to Warren’s terms?” Prinz asked me. I nodded silently. In that moment, I would have agreed to anything that would let me get out of the building alive.

Only later, driving home, did I ponder the consequences of what I had agreed to, did I consider what on Earth I was going to do next. What could I possibly tell Marge and Tod? How could I explain our sudden enormous riches?

And what about my mission, my Hippocratic oath, my duty to suffering humanity? Those imperatives still existed, and the decision was still in my hands. For what the board fortunately did not know was that the dreadnaught virus had not been completely destroyed. The sovereign cure for the Plague was still alive and replicating in my body. I was immune to all possible Plague variants.

And that immunity was infectious.

John David

I made my way up the coast to the Bay Area, and there I was stymied, brothers and sisters. I kept on the move—San Jose, Oakland, Marin County, and back again in tight little circles. The SPs were everywhere, they were really paranoid, they were rounding up people at random on the street, and it wasn’t only the likes of me they were after.

The Word had come down from the usual somewhere to put the heat on. The SPs around the meatbars were tighter than a ten-year-old’s asshole. Everyone they rousted got their cards run through the national data bank, I mean there were roadblocks and traffic jams ten miles long. People were disappearing wholesale. And the poop in the underground was that they were doing all this to come down as hard as they knew how on anyone “doing the work of Our Lady.”

And that was me, brothers and sisters. I mean, I was determined to meatfuck anything I could anyway, and calling myself a “Lover of Our Lady” was not only the best come-on line anyone had ever invented, it was ready access to the safe houses that were opening up everywhere in response to the heat, to cheap and even free pallies, to the whole black-carder underground. For sure, I’m not saying that I bought any of that bullshit about sacred duty to evolve immunity into the species, but I sure dished plenty of it out when it made life easy.

But why did I stick around the Bay Area in the middle of the worst Sex Police action in the country when sooner or later I figured to get caught in a sweep? When I did, and my phony blue card came up null, they’d run a make on my prints and come up with my Legion record, and then they’d for sure flush me down their toilet bowl, you better believe it!

Well, for one thing, the marks were coming out again, I was beginning to get moldy and obvious, and here at least I had some chance of disappearing into the underground. And for another, I was getting weak and feverish and maybe not thinking too clearly.

And there was San Francisco, clearly visible across the Bay. Where the SPs never went. The only safe place for a wanted zombie like me. The only place I could bop till I dropped. Sitting there staring me in the face. Somehow, getting there had become a goal in itself, something I just had to do before I went under. What else was left?

But there was an impenetrable line of razor wire and laser traps and crack SP troops across the Peninsula behind it and a bay full of pig boats patrolling its coastline and enough gunships buzzing around it day and night to take Brazil. All designed to keep the meatfuckers inside. But just as effective in keeping the likes of me out.

No one ever got out of San Francisco. And there was only one way in. Your card came up black, and the SPs loaded you into a chopper and dumped you inside from five feet up. But if the SP ever got its meathooks on me, they’d punch my ticket for sure, and not for San Francisco, you better believe it!

The only other way in was a loner kamikaze run on the blockade, and that was even more certain death. Oh yeah, I knew I was deep into Condition Terminal now, but that spaced out yet, I wasn’t!

Dr. Richard Bruno

What I did, for the time being, was nothing. I banked my new riches in a separate account and told Marge nothing. I showed up at the lab every day and puttered around doing nothing.

I staggered around in a trance like a moral zombie, hating myself every waking moment of every awful day. I had successfully performed my life’s mission. I had conquered the Enemy. I could have been the Savior of mankind. I should have been the Savior of mankind.

Instead, all I could do was hide the secret from my wife and collect my blood money.

Would I have done it on my own? Would morality finally have been enough? Would I have ultimately been faithful to the oath of Hippocrates? I would never know.

My son Tod took the decision out of my hands.

One night the Sex Police showed up at our house with Tod in custody. He had been caught in a raid on a meatbar. His card had come up blue against the national data bank and he had passed a spot genome test that I had never heard of before, so they really had nothing to hold him for.

But they read Marge and myself the riot act. This kid was caught peddling his ass in a meatbar, we don’t know how long he’s been doing it, he claims it was his first time. He’s blue now, but you know what the odds are. Get the horny little bastard an interface and scare the shit out of him, or he’s gonna end up as Condition Terminal in San Francisco.

While Marge broke down and wept, I had my awkward man-to-man with Tod, poor little guy. “Do you realize what you’ve been risking?” I demanded.

He nodded miserably. “Yeah,” he said, “but… but isn’t it worth it?”

“Worth it!”

“Oh, Dad, you knew what it was like, flesh on flesh without all this damned metal and rubber! How could you expect me to live my whole life without ever having that?”

“It’s your life we’re talking about, Tod!”

“So what!” he cried defiantly. “We’re all gonna die sooner or later anyway! I’d rather live a real life while I can than die an old coward without ever knowing anything but interfaces and sex machines! I’d rather take my chances and be a man! I’d rather die brave than live like… like… like a pussy! Wouldn’t you?”

What could I possibly say to that? What would he say if he knew my wonderful and awful secret? How could I even look my own son in the eye, let alone continue this lying lecture? What could I possibly do now?

Only one thing.

If I was still too much of a cowering creature to save the world at the expense of my own life, at least I could contrive to save my son, and without alerting the powers at Sutcliffe in the process. And at least covertly pass this awful burden off to someone else.

Tod’s plight had shown me the way and given me the courage to act.

A stiff dick might ordinarily know no conscience. But mine was the exception that proved the rule. It was my conscience now. Use me, it demanded. Use me and let a Plague of life loose in the world.

Linda Lewin

“I may be a meatwhore, but I’m not a monster!” I told him indignantly. “What you’re asking me to do is the most loathsome thing I’ve ever heard!”

He had approached me in a meatbar in Palo Alto.

I had been spending a lot of time in such places lately, for here the Work of Our Lady was doubly important. For here bitter and twisted black-carders came with their phony blue cards to take sexual vengeance on foolish blue-carders. Every time I could persuade one of these wretches to take their comfort in me, I saved someone from the Plague. And every time I could persuade him afterward to do the Work of Our Lady instead of infecting more blue-carders, the ranks of the Lovers of Our Lady grew.

But Richard, as he called himself, was something different, the lowest creature I had ever encountered even in a place like this.

He wanted me to have meat with him, and then, a week later, to have meat with his own teenage son! And I could name my own price.

“What’s so terrible about that?” he said ingenuously. “Your card will come up blue, won’t it?” But his sickly twisted grin told me all too well that he knew the truth. Or part of it.

I knew what a chance I was taking. He could be undercover SP. He could be anything. But if I just refused and walked away, he’d only find another meatwhore with a phony blue card more than willing to take his money to do this terrible thing.

“I’m her,” I told him. “I’m Our Lady of the Living Dead.”

He didn’t even know who Our Lady was or the nature of the Work we were doing. So I told him.

“And that’s why I won’t do what you ask. I only have sex with black-carders. I’ve Got It. And I’ll give the Plague to you and your son. And so would any meatwhore you’re likely to find. Don’t you really know that?”

“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “How could you? You can’t give me the Plague, no one can. I’m immune.”

“You’re what!”

And he told me the most outrageous story. He told me that he was Dr. Richard Bruno of the Sutcliffe Corporation, that he had developed an organism that conferred immunity to all Plague variants. That he could infect me with it and make me a carrier. That’s why he wanted me to have meat with his son, to pass this so-called dreadnaught virus to him.

“You really expect a girl to believe a line like that?”

“You don’t have to believe anything now,” he told me. “Just have meat with me now; you’ve already Got It, so you have nothing to lose. A week later, meet me here, and I’ll take you to a doctor. We’ll do a full workup. If you test out blue, you’ll know I’m telling the truth. I’ll give you fifty thousand right now, and another fifty thousand after you’ve had meat with Tod. Even if I’m lying, you’re still a hundred thousand richer, and you’ve lost nothing.”

“But if you’re lying to me, I’ll have given you the Plague!” I told him. “I won’t risk that.”

“Why not? I’m the one taking the risk, not you.”

“But–”

“You do know what I’ll do if you refuse, don’t you?” he said, leering at me. “I’ll just offer someone with less scruples the same deal. Even if I’m just a lying lunatic, you won’t have saved anyone from anything.”

He had me there. I shrugged.

“I’ve got a room just around the corner,” I told him.

Dr. Richard Bruno

It was the best sexual experience I’ve ever had in my life, or at any rate since my teenage years, back before the Plague. Flesh on flesh with no intervening interface or rubber, and with no fear of infection either, the pure simple naked act as it was meant to be. And while some part of me knew that it was adultery, an act of disloyalty to Marge, a better and higher part of me knew that it was an act of loyalty to a higher moral imperative—to Tod, to suffering humanity—and that only sharpened my pleasure.

But I did feel shame afterward and not for the adultery. For this, this pure simple act of what was once quite ordinary and natural pleasure, was what I had the power to bring back into the world, not just for me and for her and for Tod, but for everyone everywhere. This was my victory over the Enemy. And what was I doing with it?

Nothing. I was taking a million dollars a year’s blood money to hold my silence and, admittedly, to preserve my own life.

But now that I had already taken the first step upon it, a way opened up before me. I could hold my silence and keep taking the money, but I could spread the dreadnaught virus far and wide, via this cult of Our Lady and my own clandestine action.

The moral imperatives of the oath of Hippocrates and the fondest desire of any man coincided. It was my duty to have meat with as many women as I could as quickly as possible.

Linda Lewin

I hadn’t even dared to let myself want to believe it, but oh God, it was true!

The underground doctor to whom Richard Bruno had taken me ran antibody tests and viral protein tests and examined blood, mucus, and tissue samples through an electron microscope.

There was no doubt about it. I was free of all strains of the Plague. Indeed, there was not a retrovirus of any kind in my body.

“Do you know what this means?” I cried ecstatically on the street outside.

“Indeed I do. The long nightmare of the Plague Years is coming to an end. We’re carriers of life–”

“And it’s our duty to spread it!”

“First to my son. Then to as many others as quickly as possible. We need to infect as many vectors as we can before… in case… so that no matter what happens to us…”

I hugged him. I kissed him. In a way, in that moment, I think I began to love him.

“When?” I asked him breathlessly.

“Tonight. I’ll bring him to your room.”

Dr. Richard Bruno

Tod was all hot sweaty excitement when I told him I was taking him to a real human whore. “Oh Dad, Dad, thank you…”he cried. But then he hesitated. “This girl… I mean, you’re sure she’s… you know…”

NowI hesitated. Between telling him the easy lie that I had found him a real blue-carder or telling him the whole improbable truth. I sighed. I screwed up my courage. I had lived too long with deception.

“It’s really true?” Tod said when I had finished. “The dread-naught virus? What they did at Sutcliffe? All that money?”

I nodded. “Do you believe me, Tod?”

“Well yeah… I mean I want to, but… but why haven’t you told Mom? Why haven’t you… you know, given it to her?”

“Would she have trusted me?”

“I dunno… I guess not…”

“Do you trust me?”

“I want to… I mean…”He looked into my eyes for long moments. “I guess I trust you enough to take the chance,” he finally said. “I’m the one that did all the talking about being brave, huh, Dad…”

I hugged my son to me. And I took him to Linda Lewin’s room. He entered tremulously but he stayed almost two hours.

Linda Lewin

I longed to shout the glorious truth from the rooftops, but when Richard told me the whole horrible story of what had happened at Sutcliffe, I had to agree that I should continue the Work of Our Lady as before, spread the dreadnaught virus as far and wide as possible among the unknowing before those who would stop us could find out what was happening. It was hard to believe that such greedy evil was possible, but the fact that I was cured and the world knew nothing about the dreadnaught proved the sad truth that it was.

Richard swore Tod to secrecy too, and together and separately the three of us began to spread the joyful infection around Palo Alto, telling no one.

Why did I stay in Palo Alto for two weeks instead of resuming my usual rounds up and down California, when in fact spreading the cure around the state as quickly as possible would have probably been wiser and more effective?

Perhaps I felt the need to be near the only two people who shared the glorious secret and the deadly danger of discovery. Perhaps I had fallen in love in a strange way with Richard, with this tormented, fearful, but oh so brave man.

More likely that I knew even then in my heart of hearts that this couldn’t last, that sooner or later Sutcliffe would get wind of it and we would have to run. And when that happened, Richard and Tod would be helpless naifs without me. Only Our Lady would have the connections and road wisdom to even have a chance to keep them one step ahead of our pursuers.

Dr. Richard Bruno

Once again, what could I possibly tell Marge? The whole story, including the fact that my Hippocratic oath required me to have meat with as many anonymous women as I could? That I had our son similarly doing his duty to the species?

Obviously I had been inexorably forced step by step into such extreme levels of marital deception that there was no way I could now get her to believe the truth, let alone accept its tomcatting moral imperative.

Yet, tormented as I was by the monstrous series of deceptions I was forced to inflict upon my wife, I had to admit that I was enjoying it.

After all, no other men in all the world had the possibility of enjoying sex as Tod and I did. Meat on meat as it was meant to be, and not only free of fear of the Plague, but knowing that we were granting a great secret boon with our favors, that we were serving the highest good of our species in the bargain.

And I was cementing a unique relationship with my son. Tod and I became confidants on a level that few fathers and sons achieve. Swapping tales of our sexual exploits, but sharing the problem of how to recruit Marge to the cause too.

Or, at the very least, infect her with the dreadnaught. But Marge would never have meat with me. Nor would she willingly abandon monogamy. Sexually, psychologically, Marge was a child of the Plague Years, and even if she were to be convinced of the whole truth, she would never condone the need for my profuse infidelities, let alone agree to spread the dreadnaught in the meatbars herself.

In retrospect, of course, it was quite obvious that things could not really go on like this for long. They didn’t.

Tod got caught in an SP raid on a meatbar again. But they didn’t drag him home this time. Instead, the news came on the telephone, and it was Marge who chanced to take the call. Tod was being held at the Palo Alto SP headquarters. Other detainees had told the SP that he had been a regular. Black-carders had admitted having meat with him. He was undergoing testing now and his card was sure to come up black.

“Don’t worry,” I told her when she relayed this information in a state of numb, teary panic, “they’ll have to let him go. He’ll test out blue, I promise.”

“You’re crazy, Richard, that’s plain impossible! You’re out of your mind!”

“If you think I’m crazy now,” I said, pouring her a big drink, “wait till I get drunk enough to tell you why!”

I gulped down two quick ones myself before I found the courage to begin, and kept drinking as I babbled out the whole story.

“Now let me give the dreadnaught to you,” I woozed when I was finished, reaching out for her in a state of sloppy inebriation.

She shrieked, pulled away from me, ran around the living room screaming, “You animal! You’re crazy! You’ve killed our son! Stay away from me! Stay away from me!”

How can I explain or excuse what happened next? I was drunk out of my mind, but another part of me was running on coldly logical automatic. If there could be such a thing as loving rape, now was the time for it. Marge was certain that I was a sinkhole of the Plague, and there was only one way I could ever convince her of the truth. I had to infect her with the dreadnaught, and I couldn’t take no for an answer.

The short and nasty of it was that I meatraped my own wife, knowing I was doing the right thing even as she fought with all her strength against me, convinced that she was fighting to keep herself from certain infection with the Plague. It was brutal and horrible and I loathed myself for what I was doing even as I knew full well that it was ultimately right.

And left her there sobbing while I reeled off into the night to retrieve Tod from the SP.

I was in a drunken fury, I was a medical heavyweight, I demanded that they run a full battery of tests on Tod and myself, and I browbeat the tired SP timeserver who ran them unmercifully. When they all turned out blue, I threatened lawsuits and dire political recriminations if Tod were not released to my custody at once, and succeeded thereby in deflecting his attention from the “anomalous organism” he had noticed in our bloodstreams long enough to get us out the door.

But the “anomalous organism” would be noted in his report. And Sutcliffe would be keeping close tabs on my data file, and there were certainly people on their end who would put one and one and one together. It was only a question of how much time it would take.

And we couldn’t stay around to find out. We had to run. Tod, myself, Linda, and Marge. But where? And how?

We drove to Linda’s and had to wait outside for half an hour till the man she was with left.

Linda Lewin

“There’s only one place we can go,” I told Tod and Richard. “Only one place we can hide where the SP can’t come after us…”

“The San Francisco Quarantine Zone?” Richard stammered.

I nodded. “The SP won’t go into San Francisco. There isn’t a Fuck-Q alive who’d be willing to do it.”

“But… San Francisco…?”

“Remember, we have nothing to fear from the Plague,” I told them. “Besides… can you think of anywhere where what we three have is more needed?”

“But how can we even get inside the Zone?”

I had to think about that one for a good long while. I had never even heard of anyone trying to get past the SP into San Francisco. On the other hand, neither had the SP…

“Our best bet would be by boat from Sausalito. We wait for a good foggy night, then cross the Golden Gate through the fogbank in a wooden rowboat, no motor noise, no radar profile. The patrol boats stick in close to San Francisco and they’re watching the coastline, not the Bay. The helicopters won’t be able to see us through the fog even if they are flying…”

“Sounds like risky business,” Richard said dubiously.

“Any better ideas?”

Richard shrugged. “Let’s go collect Marge,” he said.

Dr. Richard Bruno

The three of us piled into Linda’s car—they’d be looking for mine once they were looking for anything—and drove back to our house.

Marge was still in a state of shock when we got there. Even when she saw Tod, even when he and Linda backed up my story, she still couldn’t quite believe me. She started to come around a bit when I showed her the enormous balance in my secret account.

But when I told her we had to flee to San Francisco, she fell apart all over again. There was no time for further persuasion. Richard, Linda, and I were forced to wrestle her into the car by brute force, with my hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her from screaming.

We drove around the rim of the bay to Sausalito, bought a rowboat, rented motel rooms, and waited.

The fog didn’t roll in good and thick until two nights later. During these two days, with Tod and Linda and myself talking to her almost nonstop, Marge slowly came to believe the truth.

But accepting the fact that all of us had a moral duty to spread the dreadnaught in the only way possible was a bit more than she could swallow. She could accept it intellectually, but she remained emotionally shattered.

“I believe you, Richard, truly I do,” she admitted as the sun went down on our last day in Sausalito. “I can even admit that what you’re doing is probably the right thing. But me, I just can’t…”

“I know,” I told her, hugging her to me. “It’s hard for me too…” and I made tender love to her, meat on meat as it was meant to be, for what was to prove to be the last time.

That night a big bank of fog rolled in through the gap in the Golden Gate Bridge, a tall one too, that kept the gunships high above the San Francisco shoreline. It was now or never. Tod hesitated on the pier. “Scared?” He nodded. “Me too, Tod.”

He clasped my hand. “I’m scared, Dad,” he said softly. “I mean, I know we don’t have much of a chance of making it… But if anything happens… I want you to know that I wouldn’t have it any other way… We had to do what we did. I love you, Dad. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known.”

“And I’m proud to have you for a son,” I said with tears in my eyes. “I only wish…”

“Don’t say it, Dad.”

I hugged him to me, and then we all piled into the boat, and Tod and I began to row.

The currents were tricky and kept pushing us east and the going was tougher than I had anticipated, but we steered for the lights of the city and made dogged progress.

We couldn’t have been more than five hundred yards from the shore when a spotlight beam suddenly pinned us in a dazzling circle of pearly light. “Rowboat heave to! Rowboat heave to!” So near and yet so far! If the SP caught us, we were finished. We had no choice but to row for it.

We pulled out of the spotlight and zigged and zagged toward the shore while a motor roared back and forth behind us and the spotlight flitted randomly over the flat waters. The fog was quite thick, and they had trouble picking us up again.

When they finally did we were within two hundred yards of the shore. And then they opened up with some kind of heavy machine-gun.

“We’re sitting ducks in this boat!” Tod shouted. “Got to swim for it!” And he dived overboard and down into the darkness of the waters under a hail of bullets.

Everything seemed to happen at once. The boat tipped as Tod dived, Linda rolled over the side, Marge panicked and fell overboard, the boat turned turtle—

And we were all in the cold water, swimming as far as we could under water before surfacing for air, catching quick breaths, swimming for our lives beneath a random fusillade of bullets and a skittery searchlight beam.

There was no room for thought or even fear as I swam for my life with aching lungs, no time or space to feel the horror of what was happening. Until, gasping for air, exhausted and freezing, I clawed my way up a rocky beach.

Out across the dark waters, the searchlight still roamed and the machine-gun fire still flashed and chattered. Linda Lewin crawled up beside me, panting and coughing. We lay there, not moving, not talking, not thinking, for a long time, until the gunboat finally gave up and disappeared into the fog.

Then we got up and searched the beach for at least an hour.

Tod and Marge were nowhere to be found.

“Maybe they made it farther up the beach,” Linda suggested wanly.

But I knew better. I could feel the void in my heart. They were gone. They were gone, and I had killed them as surely as if the hand on the machine-gun trigger had been mine.

“Richard–”

I pulled away from her comforting embrace.

“Richard–”

I turned away from her and let a cold black despair roll like a fog bank into my mind, erasing all thought, and filling me with itself, wondering whether it would ever roll out again.

And hoping in that endless bleak moment that it never would.

John David

I suppose I knew it had to happen sooner or later, brothers and sisters, but at least I thought I’d be able to go down fighting and take some of the meatfuckers with me.

It didn’t happen that way. They got me while I was asleep, would you believe it!

I was going downhill fast, I was feverish, weak, and I wasn’t really thinking, I mean I was wandering the streets like an obvious zombie for real. I got picked up by some people whose faces I don’t even remember who took me to an Our Lady safe house in Berkeley, where I passed out as soon as I hit the mattress.

Some meatfuckin’ safe house!

I got woke up in the middle of the night by a gun butt in the back of the neck and another in my belly. They rounded everyone in the joint up and hauled us to the SP station. They ran everyone’s cards against the national data bank.

Everyone but me. Me, they didn’t have to bother, seeing as I was an obvious Condition Terminal and they had caught me with about a dozen assorted phony blue cards in my kit. Me, they just took my finger and retina prints and faxed ’em to Washington.

“Well, well, well,” the SP lieutenant purred after no more than half an hour. “John David recently of the Legion, wanted for about ten thousand counts of murder, meatrape, and ID forgery, not to mention robbery, insurrection, border crashing, and treason. You’re a bad boy, aren’t you, John? But I’m real pleased to meet you. I get the feeling you’re gonna get me a nice promotion. Tell you what, if you do, the night before they do you, your last meal’s on me.”

Walter T. Bigelow

Not content with possessing my wife, Satan pursued me to my office. First the blasphemous cult of Our Lady and then a series of anomalies in the San Francisco Bay Area that seemed to indicate that the national data bank had somehow been compromised.

It was common enough for phony blue cards to come up black against the national data bank. But it was unheard of for anyone caught with a forged blue card not to prove out black upon actual testing for the Plague, for of course it made absolutely no sense for someone with a valid blue card to use a forged one.

But it was happening around the Bay Area. There were almost a dozen cases.

And now this truly bizarre incident last night in the same locale. Four people in a rowboat had actually tried to run the Quarantine blockade into San Francisco! Two of them seemed to have actually made it.

When the bodies of the other two were fished out of the Bay, they proved to be Tod and Marge Bruno, the son and daughter of one Dr. Richard Bruno, a prominent genetic synthesizer with the Sutcliffe Corporation.

The local SP commandant was due for a promotion or at least a commendation.

He had run all three names through the national data bank. Tod Bruno had been caught in a meatbar sweep three days previously. Although many witnesses claimed he was an habitué, he had come out blue under a full spectrum of tests. The commandant had had the wit to dig deeper and found that some “anomalous organism” had been noted in the actual report.

Instinct had caused him to order the bodies of Tod and Marge Bruno to be given a thorough and complete autopsy down to the molecular level. And it was that report that put me on a plane for San Jose.

There was a strange “pseudovirus” written into both of their genomes. It shared many sequences with the Plague virus but resembled no known or extrapolated variant, and it had other sequences that could not have evolved naturally. The bodies had been dead too long to try to culture it.

An unknown “pseudovirus” in the bodies of the family of a prominent genetic synthesizer… It could only be one thing—an unreported Condition Black incident at Sutcliffe. And the ultimate handiwork of the Devil had been released—some kind of horrible artificial human parasite, a manmade Plague variant. We had two corpses that had been infected with it, and I was virtually certain that Bruno at least was also infected, and was alive somewhere in San Francisco.

What might happen in that cesspit of Satan was none of my affair, but Tod Bruno had been infected when he was picked up in a meatbar outside the Quarantine Zone, and he had passed through a full battery of tests and come out blue.

Meaning that this monstrous thing was invisible to all our standard Plague tests. What had the Devil wrought at the Sutcliffe Corporation?

As I flew westward, I had the unshakable conviction that I was flying toward some climactic confrontation with the Adversary, that the battle of Armageddon had already begun.

Linda Lewin

San Francisco was not what I had expected. I’m not sure what I had really expected, a foul Sodom of ruins and rotting zombies, maybe, but this was not it.

The streets were clean and the quaint buildings lovingly cared for. The famous old cable cars were still running and so were the buses. The restaurants were open, the bars were crowded, and there were cabarets and theaters. There were even friendly cops walking beats.

Food and various necessities were allowed in through the Daly City Quarantine Line and sterilized products allowed out, so the city did have an economy connected to the outside world. The place was poor, of course, but the people inside it held together to see themselves through. Food was expensive in the restaurants but artificially cheap in the markets. Housing was crowded, but the rents were kept low, and the indigent or homeless were put up in public buildings and abandoned BART stations.

Oh yes, there were many horrible Condition Terminals walking around, but many more people who could have easily melted into the underground life outside. And there was something quite touching about how all the temporarily healthy deferred to and showed such tender regard for die obvious Living Dead, something that reminded me of dear old Max.

Indeed his spirit seemed to hover over this doomed but fatalistically gay-spirited city. Of necessity, everyone was forced to be a Saint Max here, and although the Lovers of Our Lady did not exist as such, everyone here seemed to be doing the Work. No one here had to worry about Getting It, or being carded, or picked up by the SP. All of that had already happened to all of them. So, while there were more open gays here than I had ever thought to see in my life, stranger still to say, there was less… perversion in San Francisco than anywhere else I had ever been.

No meatbars as such, for every bar was a meatbar. Hardly any sex machine parlors, for the people of San Francisco, already all under sentence of death, could give one another love freely, like what natural men and women must once have been. Even the obviously terminal had their needs tenderly cared for. No place I had ever been seemed more like home.

Only the pall of Plague that hung over the city marred the sweetness of the atmosphere, and that seemed softened by the fogs, pinkened by the sunsets, lightened by the deathhouse gaiety and wistful philosophic melancholy with which the citizens confronted it. “Everyone’s born under a death sentence anyway,” went the popular saying. “Here at least we all know it. There is no tomorrow sooner or later, so why not live and love today?”

Uncertain of what to do next, I began doing the Work of Our Lady in the usual manner, offering myself to anyone and everyone, spreading the dreadnaught slowly, but unsure as to whether or when to spread the glorious news.

I would have been happy there—indeed the truth of it was that I was happy—even while I sorrowed for poor Richard.

Richard, though, was like a little child whom I had to lead around like a creature in a daze. All his energy and motivation seemed to have vanished with his wife and son. I could understand his grief and guilt, but this couldn’t last forever.

“We’ve got work to do, Richard, glorious and important work,” I kept telling him. “We’ve got to spread the dreadnaught among these people.”

Mostly, he stared at me blankly. Sometimes he managed a feeble, “You do it.”

After a few days of this, I decided that I could no longer wait for Richard to come around. I had to make the fateful decision on my own.

This spreading the dreadnaught by myself clandestinely was just too slow. If there were evil men out there intent on stopping the dreadnaught, they’d be tracking us down. I needed to infect thousands, tens of thousands, before they could act, and the only way that could happen would be if the people of San Francisco knew what they were spreading and set out to do it systematically.

First I began revealing myself as Our Lady to my lovers and in the bars, and there were enough people in San Francisco who had once done the Work on the outside—even some I had once known in my circuit-riding days—so that my claim gained credibility.

In one sense, the people of San Francisco had always been doing the Work of Our Lady, of Saint Max, but in another sense, the legend had never been central here. In San Francisco, the people did the Work of Our Lady to please one another and themselves, not because they believed they were serving the species’ only hope.

But then I began recruiting an army of Lovers of Our Lady and I did it by proclaiming the glorious truth.

That the shattered man I sheltered in my rooms was a great scientist and an even greater hero. That he had developed the dreadnaught organism. That through him I had been infected with the gift of life. That I could infect anyone I had meat with with the cure, that anyone I had meat with would also become infectious. That the Plague Years, through Richard Bruno’s instrumentality and at horrible personal cost to himself, were now coming to an end.

That all we had to do was what we were doing already—love one another.

There were more skeptics than believers at first, of course. “Bring me your Terminals,” I told them. “Let them have meat with Our Lady. When they’re cured, the whole city will see I’m telling the truth.”

Walter T. Bigelow

Satan himself seemed to be speaking through Harlow Prinz when I confronted him, laughing his final laugh, for what the president of Sutcliffe finally admitted under extreme duress was worse, far worse, than what I had originally feared.

Bruno had been working on some sort of Plague-killer virus. But he had been building it around a Plague variant and something went wrong. He had created instead a Plague variant that mutated randomly every time it reproduced. That was invisible not only to all current tests short of full-scale molecular analysis, but would remain so to anything that could be devised.

There had been a Condition Black, but only inside the lab, and there were plenty of reports to prove that Sutcliffe had followed proper procedure, as well as a mountain of legal briefs supporting the position that such internally contained Condition Blacks need not be reported to the SP.

“We had no idea Bruno was infected,” Prinz claimed. “Isn’t that right, Warren?”

Warren Feinstein, Sutcliffe’s chairman, who had sat there silently all the while with the most peculiar expression on his face, fidgeted nervously. “No… I mean yes… I mean how can we be so sure he was infected…?”

“The man’s wife and son were infected, now weren’t they, Warren?” Prinz snapped. “You heard the director. Extreme measures must be taken at once to contain this thing!”

“But–”

“Wait a minute!” I cried. “Surely you’re not suggesting the man… had meatsex with his wife and… and his son knowing he was infected?”

“Let’s hope so,” Prinz said. “At any rate, we have no choice but to act on that assumption.”

“What?”

“Because if he didn’t…” Prinz shuddered. “If he didn’t, then we may all be doomed. Because if Tod and Marge Bruno weren’t infected sexually, then this new virus has to be what we’ve always feared most—a Plague variant that doesn’t need sexual or intravenous vectors, an ambient version that spreads through the air like the common cold.”

“Oh my God.”

“You have no alternative, Mr. Director,” Prinz went on relentlessly. “You must obtain the necessary authority from the president and have San Francisco sterilized at once.”

“Sterilized?”

“Nuked. Condition Black procedure, admittedly on a rather extreme scale.”

“That’s monstrous, Harlow!” Feinstein shouted. “This is going too far! We’ve got to–”

“Shut up, Warren!” Prinz snapped. “Consider the alternative!”

Feinstein slumped over in his chair.

“If this thing is ambient, we’re all doomed anyway, so what’s the difference?” Prinz said in Satan’s cold, insinuating voice. “But if it isn’t, and if Bruno’s spreading it in San Francisco…”

“You can’t just kill a million people on the supposition that–”

“Shut up, Warren!” Prinz snapped. “You can’t afford to listen to this sentimental fool, Mr. Director. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to do your duty.”

My duty? But where did that lie? If I had the San Francisco Quarantine Zone sterilized by a thermonuclear explosion, Bruno would be vaporized. And I had to have Bruno live for interrogation before I did any such thing, I realized. I had to know whether he had had meatsex with his wife and son. For if he had, then I would know the virus wasn’t ambient, that there was hope. Then and only then could I have San Francisco sterilized with a clear conscience.

Then and only then would such an awful decision serve God and not the Devil.

I had to find someone willing to go into San Francisco and bring Bruno out. But where was I going to find someone crazy or self-sacrificing enough to do that?

John David

I was feeling pretty punk when two SPs dragged me into an interrogation room, handcuffed me to a chair bolted to the floor, and then split.

But I came around fast, you better believe it, when old Walter T. himself walked into the room and shut the door behind him!

The old meatfucker came right to the point.

“I’ve been looking for someone very special, and the computer spit your name out,” he told me. “I’ve got a job for you. Interested?”

“You gotta be kidding…”

“We’re going to drop you in San Francisco. I want you to bring a man out.”

“Say what?” Well shit, brothers and sisters, I could hardly believe my ears. I mean, even in my present Condition Terminal, my ears pricked up at that one. And old Walter T., he sure didn’t miss it.

“Interested, aren’t you? Here’s the deal…”

And he told me. An SP helicopter would drop me into San Francisco, where I was to snatch and hold this guy Richard Bruno. Every afternoon at three o’clock they’d have a chopper circle Golden Gate Park for an hour. When I had Bruno, I’d shoot off a Very pistol, and they’d pick me up.

“What do you want this guy for?” I demanded.

“You have no need to know,” he told me.

I eyed him dubiously. “What makes you think I’ll want to come out?” I mean, this dumb meatfucker was gonna throw me into my briar patch, but what could possibly make him believe I’d do his dirty work for him and deliver some poor bastard to the SP? Could he really be as stupid as he seemed? It didn’t seem real likely.

“Because upon delivery of Bruno you’ll be given a full pardon for all your capital crimes.”

“Hey, look at me, man, I’ve got maybe a month left anyway.”

“You can go back into the Legion. As a captain.”

“As a captain?” I snorted. “Shit, why not a bird colonel?”

“Why not indeed?”

“You’re really serious, aren’t you?” Jeez, what a tasty run I could have as a fuckin’ brigade commander. But… “But I’m a goner anyway. What difference is it gonna make?”

“The Legion is going into Brazil again even as we speak,” he told me. “We can pump you up with the best military pallies and all the coke and speed you can handle. And drop you into Brazil with colonel’s wings at the head of a brigade twelve hours after you deliver Bruno. A short life, but a happy one.”

“Terrific,” I said, studying old Walter T. carefully. This still didn’t quite add up. He was holding something back, and I had a feeling I wasn’t gonna like it. “But what makes you so sure I wouldn’t prefer to spend that short happy life in San Francisco?”

Now it was Walter T.’s turn to study me carefully, then shrug. “Because unless you bring Bruno out, that could be a lot shorter than you think.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going to drop you into San Francisco anyway, so I might as well tell you the truth,” Bigelow said. “I get the feeling nothing else is really going to motivate you, but this surely will.”

He told me, and it did.

Bruno was some kind of genetic synthesizer. He had screwed up real bad and created a new Plague variant that was invisible to all the standard tests and just might be able to spread through the air.

“So we need to know whether Bruno is infected with something that could be spreading around San Francisco right now, something that we can only hope to stop by… shall we say, measures of the maximum extremity.”

Well, brothers and sisters, I didn’t need any promotion to bird colonel to figure out what he meant by that. “You mean nuke San Francisco, don’t you?”

“Unless we have Bruno to examine and unless that examination reassures us that he hasn’t been spreading this thing, we really have no alternative… I’ll give you two weeks. After that, well…”

“You nuke San Francisco with me inside it!”

Bigelow nodded. “I think I can trust you to do your honest best, now, can’t I?” he said.

Well, what could I say to that? Only one thing, brothers and sisters. What I told old Walter T. next.

“I want the coke and the speed and the pallies right now. All I can carry.”

“Very well,” he said. “Why not? Anything you need.”

“I don’t have any choice, now, do I?”

“None whatever.”

If I hadn’t been cuffed to the chair, I would have ripped off the old meatfucker’s arm and beaten him to death with it. But even then, I had to admire his style, if you know what I mean. Turn the bastard’s card black, and old Walter T. would have been right at home with us, fellow zombies.

Linda Lewin

After the marks started to fade from terminal cases and black-carders started proving out blue on the simple tests the underground docs put together, the word began to spread faster, and so did the dreadnaught, and the Lovers of Our Lady began to spread the good news on their own in the streets and bars of San Francisco.

One day a delegation came to me and took me to a rambling old house high on a hill above Buena Vista Park that they called the House of Our Lady of Love Reborn. They installed me in quarters on the third floor and they brought Richard with me.

There I was surrounded by the Lovers of Our Lady. And so was Richard. He was surrounded by people who cared for him, who loved him, who knew what heroic deeds he had done, and at what terrible cost. Slowly, far too slowly, he began to react to his surroundings, to mutter haltingly of his guilt and despair.

But he still refused to join in the Work, for he found the mere thought of sex loathsome, no matter who offered themselves to him, including myself.

And the Work itself, though proceeding apace, was going far too slowly. How long did we have before the outside world learned the truth? Months? Weeks? Days? And what would happen then? Indeed, might it be in the process of happening already?

What I needed to do was infect all of San Francisco with the dreadnaught, so that when the outside world finally intruded, it would be presented with the truth and its massive proof as a glorious fait accompli—an entire city, a Quarantine Zone once completely black, now entirely free of the Plague.

Once, long before most of the people here were born, San Francisco had experienced a magical few months that was called the Summer of Love, a legend that still lived in the myth of the city.

So I conceived the notion of a Week of Love, a celebration of the dreadnaught and a means of quickly spreading it to all, a carnival of sex, a citywide orgy, a festival of Our Lady of Love Reborn.

And perhaps via such a manifestation and celebration of what he had brought back into the world, Richard too might be reborn back into it…

John David

The pallies they shot me up with before they dropped me in San Francisco didn’t seem to do much good, but the speed and coke sure did, brothers and sisters. I might look like Condition Terminal on its last legs, but I was riding high and burning bright on the way out, you better believe it!

I expected San Francisco to be weird and wild, something like TJ before the SP moved in on us, but this was something else again, weird for sure, but not exactly this zombie’s idea of wild.

The city was like something out of an old movie—clean, and neat, and like you know quaint, like some picture postcard of itself, and I found I could have just about any kind of meat with anyone I wanted to just by asking for it, even looking like I did.

There were plenty of terminal zombies like me walking around and plenty more outrageous faggots, but these people were like so damned sweet and kind and nicey-nice to us on the way out it made me want to puke. I mean all this peace and sympathy sex and love pissed me off so bad I just about wanted to see Wimp City nuked, if you know what I mean.

But not, of course, with me in it!

Bigelow had it covered. I had no choice at all. I had to get my crumbling ass in gear and get my mitts on Bruno, on my only ticket out.

Dr. Richard Bruno

I can hardly remember what it was like inside that place of darkness or even precisely how and when I began to emerge from it. First there was a soft warm light in my cold blackness, and then I slowly began to take notice of my surroundings.

I was living in an ancient Victorian house high on a hill in San Francisco, a place that was known as the House of Our Lady of Love Reborn. Linda Lewin was living there with me, and I knew that she had been caring for me through my long dark night. As had many others. For this was a house of love and hope. It was a kind of a brothel, and a kind of church, and what was being spread here was my dreadnaught virus. And all those who came and went here loved me.

“Dr. Feelgood,” they all called me. Not the creature who had brought his wife and son to death, but the man who had brought love back into the world.

“You’ve grieved long enough, Richard; Marge and Tod are gone, and they deserve your grief,” Linda told me. “But you’ve also done a wonderful thing, and that deserves your joy. Come join the party now. See what they died for. See what you’ve brought back into the world! This is the Festival of Our Lady of Love Reborn, but it’s the Festival of Dr. Feelgood, too.”

And she and the Lovers of Our Lady took me on a tour of San Francisco, on a tour of the carnival, on a tour through an erotic wonderland out of long-lost dreams.

The whole city was partying—in the bars and the parks and the streets. It was Mardi Gras, it was the feast of Dionysus, it was the Summer of Love, it was beautiful madness. Everyone was drunk and stoned and deliriously happy, and people were making love, sharing meat, openly everywhere—in apartments, in bars, right out on the streets.

They were celebrating Love Reborn in the very act of creating it. They were celebrating the end of the Plague Years as they brought it to an end with their joyful flesh.

“Do you understand, Richard?” Linda asked later, back at the House of Our Lady of Love Reborn. “Marge and Tod are dead and they never lived to see what they died for, and that’s a sad thing, and you’re right to mourn. But they didn’t die in vain, they died to help you bring love back into the world, and if they’re watching from somewhere, you can know they’re smiling down on you. And if they’re not, if there’s no God or Heaven, well then, we’re all we’ve got, and we can only take shelter in the living. Do you understand?”

“I’m not sure, Linda…” I murmured.

“Then let me help you to begin now,” she said, holding me in her arms. “Come take shelter in me.”

And, hesitantly at first, but with a growing strange peace in my heart, a warrior’s peace, a peace that had become determination by the time we had finished our lovemaking, I did.

And afterward, I understood. Marge and Tod were gone and nothing I could do would bring them back, and that was a terrible thing. The Plague Years had in one way or another made monsters and madmen of us all, we had all been trapped into grievous mistakes, fearful, and frustrated, and loathsome acts, and nothing we did now could change that either. We had all been victims, and perhaps the lives of all of us who lived through the Plague Years could never be made whole.

But that dark night was ending and a new day was dawning, and we, and I, had to act to give it birth and protect it into its full maturity. My personal life had died back there in San Francisco Bay with Marge and Tod and I had nothing left but my duty to the Hippocratic oath.

And vengeance.

Nothing I could do would ever bring my family back or entirely erase my guilt in their deaths. But I could take my vengeance on Prinz, on Feinstein, on the Sutcliffe board, I could do my part in seeing to it that their worst fears were realized, that the dreadnaught virus they had sought to destroy spread far and wide, saving suffering humanity while it destroyed the Sutcliife Corporation in the process.

Thus would my part in the twisted nightmare of the Plague Years end with the ultimate perverse yet joyful irony:

Just and loving vengeance.

So tomorrow I will go forth into San Francisco and join the Week of Love. And tonight I am sitting here in the House of Our Lady and writing my story in this journal, which is now concluding. When it is finished, it will be sent to the president, to the head of the Federal Quarantine Agency, to the news services, to the television networks. Before you let them act against us or tell you that this is all an evil lie, demand that they go in and test the populace or at least a good sample for Plague. That’s all I ask. Know the truth for yourself. Tell others.

And I promise it will set all of you free.

John David

I had good photos of Bruno, but you ever try tracking down one guy in a city of a million? Especially in a city that seemed to have gone completely apeshit. Everyone seemed to be drunk or stoned. People were having meat everywhere right out in the open, in the streets, in the parks, in alleys. Half-dead as I was, they were still shoving their meat even at the likes of me, babbling a lot of crazy stuff about how they were saving me from the Plague, as if anything could help me now!

I was goin’ out fast, I was a mess of sarcomas and secondary infections, weak, and feverish, and half out on my feet, taking enormous doses of speed and coke just to keep going. But, fast as I was going, I still knew that this city was gonna go faster, and with me in it, unless I could deliver Bruno to the SP. I mean, one way I had maybe three weeks left, the other only ten days.

An extra eleven days of life may not seem like such a big deal to you, brothers and sisters, but it sure as shit would if you were the one who knew that was the best you had left!

Anyway, it was enough to keep me focused on finding Bruno, even spaced and stoned and dying and staggering around in the biggest orgy the world had ever seen. And I started grilling random people on the street and being none too gentle about it.

I was so far gone I must have beaten the crap out of half-a-dozen of them before it got through to me that the “Dr. Feelgood” the whole damn city was babbling about was the very guy I was looking for. Dr. Richard Bruno, the son of a bitch who had maybe let loose the worst Plague variant ever and who for sure was gonna get all these assholes vaporized, and me with them; and they were somehow convinced the bastard was some kind of hero!

Well, after I copped to that, it wasn’t much sweat tracking the famous Dr. Feelgood down. All I had to do was follow my nose and all the talk about him through the bars and streets until I ran into someone who told me he was partying in a certain bar in North Beach right now.

I got there just as he was walking out with a good-looking momma on his arm and a dreamy smile on his lips. As soon as I saw him, I went into motion, no time or energy left for tactics or thought.

“Okay, Bruno, you son of a bitch, you’re comin’ with me!” I shouted, grabbing him by his right arm and whipping it behind his back into a half-nelson bring-along.

Half-a-dozen guys started to move in, but, far gone as I was, I still had that covered. I already had my mini-auto out and waving in their faces.

“This guy’s comin’ with me, assholes!” I screamed. “Anyone tries to stop me gets blown away!”

Then everything seemed to happen at once.

Some jerk got brave and slammed into my knees from behind.

I kicked blindly backward, fighting for balance.

Bruno yanked himself out of the half-nelson.

A circle of angry meat closed in.

I started firing without caring at what, whipping the mini-auto in fanning fire at full rock and roll.

“Dr. Feelgood” got himself neatly stitched up the back from ass to shoulder by high-velocity slugs.

Bruno folded as everyone else came down on me like a ton of bricks.

Next thing I knew, I had had the shit thoroughly beaten out of me, and two guys were holding me up by the shoulders, and Bruno was down there on the sidewalk croaking and looking up at me.

“Why?” he whispered with blood drooling out of his mouth.

“Don’t die, you stupid meatfucker!” I screamed at him. “You’re my only ticket out of here!”

“Kill the bastard!”

“Tear him apart!”

I laughed and laughed and laughed. I mean, what else was there to do? “Go ahead and kill me, suckers!” I told them all. “I’m dead already and so are you, gonna nuke you till you glow blue!”

“Cut his heart out!”

Bruno looked up at me from the sidewalk with this weird sad little grin, almost peaceful, kind of, as his light went out.

“No…”he said. “No more… just and loving vengeance, don’t you see… Marge… Tod… it’s nobody’s fault… take him… take him…”

His voice started to fade. He coughed up more blood.

“Take him where, Richard?” a woman said, leaning over him.

“Take him to Our Lady…” Bruno whispered. “Let him take shelter in… in…”

His lips moved but no more sound came out. And that was the end of that.

Bruno was dead.

So was I.

And in ten days, so was San Francisco.

Linda Lewin

They brought Richard’s body back to the House of Our Lady of Love Reborn and laid him out on a couch. Half-a-dozen Lovers of Our Lady were restraining a wild-eyed young terminal case and being none too gentle about it.

And they told me what had happened. And Richard’s dying words.

Only then did I really look at his murderer. His body was a mass of sarcomas. His frame was skeletal. His eyes were red and wild.

“Why?” I asked him in a strange imploring voice that surprised even me.

“My ticket out of here before they drop the Big One Lady but it’s all over now ain’t it do your damnedest we’re all dead zombies anyway brothers and sisters…”

He wasn’t making sense, nor would he, I knew then. This poor creature was no more responsible for his actions than Richard had been when Marge and Tod died. I had heard of this sort of thing before. Condition Terminals turning berserker on the way out, taking as many as they could with them. He too was a victim of the Plague, as were we all.

And I understood Richard’s last words now too, perhaps better even than he had in the saying of them. His life had been in a sense over already, and all this poor creature had done was set his tormented soul free. I understood why he had forgiven his assassin, for in that act of forgiving, he had at last found forgiveness for himself for the deaths on his own hands, or so at least I prayed to whatever gods there be.

“What should we do with the bastard?”

“Kill him!”

“Tear his damn heart out!”

“No!” I found myself saying. “I’ll do it for you, Richard,” I whispered, and I took his murderer’s hand. “He forgave you, and so must I.”

“Go ahead and kill me, don’t want your forgiveness, it don’t mean shit, I’m a dead man already and so are you!”

“No, you’re not,” I told him gently. “Let me take you upstairs and give you the good news.”

John David

And she did, though of course I didn’t believe a word of it at the time, not even after Our Lady gave my disgusting dying flesh the gift of her meat. Not that I was exactly in any mental condition for deep conversation anyway.

But days later, when the sarcomas began to disappear and my head cleared, I knew that the whole damn story that Linda had told me over and over again was all true.

I mean, I had sure done my share of evil, but what those meatfuckers at Sutcliffe had done was enough to make a combat medic puke! I never had no use for Walter T. Bigelow—and less so after the number he had run on me—but I was willing to bet that the old meatfucker had believed what he told me about poor Bruno. Those Sutcliffe creeps must have fed him their line about Bruno to get him to nuke the evidence of what they had done out of existence. And the dreadnaught virus along with it! Just to line their own pockets and save their own worthless asses! And oh shit, Bigelow still believed it! “What day is this?” I asked Linda when my head was finally clear enough to realize what all this meant and what was about to happen.

It was two days till the Big Flash.

“You’ve given me the good news, now I’ve gotta give you the bad news,” I told her. And I did.

I had never seen Our Lady break down and cry before, but now she did. “Then poor Richard died for nothing… And everyone here is doomed… And no one will even know… And the Plague will go on and on and on…”

While she was moaning and sobbing, I did some fast thinking. I still had the Very pistol, and that SP chopper was going to circle Golden Gate Park at three for two more days. I had the means to bring it down, and if I could take it… “You gotta find me a guy who can fly a helicopter,” I said. Our Lady stared at me blankly. I shook her by the shoulders. “Hey, you gotta snap out of it, Linda, and listen to me! I got a way to get us out of here before they drop the Big One!” That brought her around, and I laid it out for her. It was simple, really. We’d dress the helicopter pilot up in a trench coat and a slouch hat or something so no one could see he wasn’t Bruno until I got us aboard the SP chopper.

“I’ll take care of the rest,” I promised. “Probably be just a pilot and a copilot, piece of cake. Then you come aboard, and we take off like a big-assed bird for the Marin side, ditch the chopper, and disappear. You saved my life, now I’ll save yours.”

Linda Lewin

“But what about San Francisco?” I said. “We can’t just…”

John shrugged. “San Francisco is gonna be nuked out of existence anyway,” he said. “Nothing we can do about that, our asses is all we can save.” “But all these people… and the dreadnaught virus …”

“Look at it this way—at least there’ll be you and me left to spread it….” He leered at me wolfishly. “I’ll do my part to spread it far and wide, you better believe it, sister!”

“We just can’t leave a whole city to die!”

“You got any better ideas?”

I stared at this poor savage creature, at this killing machine, at this ultimate victim of the Plague, and I thought and thought and thought, and finally I did.

“We’ll capture the SP helicopter,” I told him. “But we won’t just escape. We’ll fly down to Sutclifle–”

“And do what?”

“Capture Harlow Prinz and Warren Feinstein. Take them to Bigelow.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you see? When they tell Bigelow the truth–”

“Why the hell would they do that?”

I did my best to imitate John David’s own fiercest leer. “I think I can leave that one up to you, now can’t I?” I said.

He stared at me as his face slowly twisted into the mirror image of my own. “Yeah…” he said slowly. “I think I could enjoy that…”

He frowned. “Only this is getting mighty dicey, sister. I mean, grabbing the chopper should be no sweat, and if all we was doing was putting it down in Marin and disappearing on foot, our chances would be pretty good. But faking the radio traffic long enough to fly the thing to Palo Alto and snatching the Sutcliffe creeps and getting them to Bigelow… Hey, the SP ain’t the Legion, but they ain’t that far out to lunch either…”

“We’ve got to try it!”

“We wouldn’t have a chance!”

“What if we had a diversion?” I blurted. “A big one…”

“A diversion?”

My blood ran cold as I said it. It was monstrous. Thousands might die. But the alternative was a million dead for no good cause. And monstrous as it was as a tactic, it was still the only just thing to do. Morally or practically, there really was no choice. It was the only chance we had to save the city, and the people had the right to know.

“What do you think would happen if everyone in San Francisco knew what you’ve just told me?” I said.

“That they were all going to be nuked in two days? Are you kidding? They’d go apeshit! They’d–”

“Storm the Quarantine Line en masse? Swarm out into the Bay in hundreds of small boats? Try to get across the gaps in the bridges?”

“Jeez, it’d be just like TJ, only a thousand times bigger, the SP would have its hands full, we just might be able to…”

He studied me with new eyes. “Hey, beneath all that sweetness and light, you’re pretty hard-core, you know that, sister? I mean, using a whole city as a diversion…”

“These people have a right to know what’s going to happen anyway, don’t they, John?” I told him. “Wouldn’t you want to know? This way, even if we fail, they get to go out fighting for something and knowing why. Better in fire than in ice.”

Walter T. Bigelow

Satan held me on the rack as I waited fruitlessly for David to extract Richard Bruno from San Francisco. Three and four times a day Harlow Prinz called me to demand in shriller and shriller tones that I have the city nuked. Was this the voice of God or the voice of the Devil? What did Jesus want me to do?

And then Satan put my back to the final wall.

Reports started coming in to the Daly City SP station, where I had ensconced myself, that a huge ragtag flotilla of small boats was leaving the San Francisco shoreline. Fighting had broken out all along the landward Quarantine Line.

It was becoming all too apparent that I could procrastinate no longer.

Mobs with bridging equipment were swarming onto the San Francisco ends of the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay bridges. The whole city was trying to break out of the Quarantine Zone, and they couldn’t all be stopped by conventional means. Only a thermonuclear strike could prevent the new and far deadlier Plague strain from entering the general populace now.

I was forced to put in my long-delayed fateful call to the President of the United States…

John David

I had wanted the Big Breakout to start sharply at three to make damn sure the SP chopper wasn’t scared off, but Linda had told too many people, and the Lovers of Our Lady were out in the streets whipping things up for hours beforehand, and the action began to come down raggedly an hour early.

But the fighting was going on at the borders, not the center, and Golden Gate Park was just about empty. The SP chopper pilot must’ve been over the city already, or maybe he was the sort of righteous asshole who followed the last order no matter what.

For even with half the city already throwing itself against the Quarantine Line, the chopper appeared over the park right on the money at three sharp.

I fired off the Very pistol, and down it came. I stuck my mini-auto conspicuously in our pilot’s back and frog-marched him to the open chopper door.

As I had figured, there were only a pilot and a copilot in the cockpit. The moment we were inside, I jammed the muzzle of my piece into the back of the pilot’s neck.

“Outside, assholes!” I ordered. “But strip first! One word out of either of you and I blow you away!”

“Hey-”

“What the-”

“I told you, no lip! Out of those uniforms! Move your asses!”

They took one look at the mini-auto and another at me, and stripped down to boxer shorts and T-shirts muy pronto, you better believe it!

“Out, assholes. Better run till you drop, and don’t look back!”

I booted them out of the chopper and fired a long burst over their heads as Linda climbed aboard, and they ran for the nearest bushes.

Then me and our pilot put on their uniforms, which I figured would come in mighty handy if we ever made it to Sutcliffe, and off we went.

The skies were empty as we headed south over the city at about three thousand feet, but things started getting hairy as we approached the Quarantine Line.

I could see ragged mobs of people moving toward the SP positions below, the SP troops were using heavy machine-guns and some light artillery, and the air beneath us was thick with gunpowder smoke, through which I could see sparkles, laser-straight tracers, occasional explosions.

All hell was breaking loose on the ground, and the airspace below us was full of helicopter gunships making low, slow strafing runs with cannon and rockets.

But all the thunder and lightning and confusion made it easier for us in the end, seeing as we were one chopper out of many.

“Bravo five three seven Charlie, what the hell are you doing up there?” a voice screeched at us over the radio.

“Don’t answer!” I told our pilot. “Take her down into the traffic!”

When we had dropped down into the cloud of gunships, I screamed into my microphone, “Motherfucking black-carder faggot bastards!” And fired off a few rockets.

“Hey, those are our people down there!”

“And our asses up here!” You just fly this thing, and let me worry about tactics, okay!” And I fired off a couple more blind shots into the confusion.

It worked like a charm. Every time we got static on the radio, I cursed and screamed like a good combat animal and fired a few random rockets at the ground and nobody challenged us as we threaded our way south over the combat zone.

Once we were well clear, we went back up to three thousand feet, and the only traffic we saw between Daly City and Palo Alto was a few more gunships heading north into the mess far below who probably didn’t even see us.

We landed inside the Sutcliffe compound right in front of the administration building and sat there with our rotor whumping as company rent-a-cops poured raggedly out of the building and finally managed to get us surrounded.

“Stay here, and fer chrissakes keep the engine running,” I told Linda and the pilot. And climbed out of the chopper to make like a modern major general.

“National Emergency!” I barked at the bozo in charge of the rent-a-cops. “Direct orders from Walter T. Bigelow, director of the Federal Quarantine Agency. He wants Harlow Prinz and Warren Feinstein in his headquarters half an hour ago, and we’re here to get ’em!”

“Hey, I got no orders to–”

“Argue with Bigelow if you want to!” I snapped. I gave the sucker a comradely shrug. “But I don’t advise it. I mean, there’s already been some kind of screw-up over this with all the heat going on, and he ain’t exactly being reasonable just now, if you get me.”

“I don’t take my orders from the SP!”

“Your funeral, pal,” I told him, nodding toward the chopper. “I got orders to blow the shit out of this place if I meet any resistance, and there’s five more gunships orbiting just over the ridgeline in case you got any dumb notions…”

“Hey, hey, don’t get your balls in an uproar,” the head rent-a-cop soothed much more politely, and trotted off into the building.

I waited there outside the chopper surrounded by rent-a-cops for what seemed like ten thousand sweaty years but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes by the clock.

Finally the head rent-a-cop appeared with two middle-aged bozos. One of them seemed to be staggering toward me in a daze, but the other was the sort of arrogant in-charge son of a bitch you want to kill on sight.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he screamed in my face. “I’m Harlow Prinz, I’m the president of this company, and I don’t–”

“And I’m just Walter Bigelow’s errand boy, but I don’t take shit either,” I told him. “Except of course from the boss man, and I got enough of that for being late already! So do us both a big favor and get into this chopper.” I waved my mini-auto.

“ ’Cause if you don’t, shit is about to flow downhill, if you get my meaning.”

The wimpy type, who had to be Warren Feinstein, started to climb aboard, but that murdering meatfucker Prinz stood there with his hands on his hips looking suspicious. He took a good long look at my badly fitting uniform. “Let’s see your papers,” he said.

I brought up the muzzle of my piece and pointed it at his belly button. “You’re lookin’ right at ’em,” I said.

“Harlow, for chissakes, he means it!” Feinstein said, and hustled his ass into the copter.

Prinz moved slowly past me to the door and reluctantly started to board the chopper, but he must’ve spotted Linda when he peered inside and put it all together.

‘Cause he suddenly aimed a sloppy kick at my nuts that missed the target but knocked me off balance, yelled, “Shoot! Shoot!” at his rent-a-cops, and broke and ran. Furious as I was, I didn’t blow my combat cool. I leaped through the door, scattering the rent-a-cops with a long fanning burst as our pilot lifted the chopper, and flipped myself into the copilot’s seat.

By this time we were about a hundred feet in the air, and heading straight up into the wild blue yonder. “Hold it right here a minute!” I told the pilot. The rent-a-cops were scattering for cover. Only a few of ’em had the balls to fire a few useless shots up over their shoulders and they plinked harmlessly off the chopper’s armored belly.

Prinz was running for the administration building. I smiled. I lined the bastard up in my sights and savored it just for a moment. This, after all, was the son of a bitch who was willing to let the Plague take us all to line his own pockets. I had wasted more citizens than I could count, but this was going to be special. This was going to be primo.

“Thanks ever so much for making my day,” I told Harlow Prinz as he reached the stairs leading up to the entrance. And I fired a single rocket.

A perfect shot. It hit him right in the base of the spine and blew him to dogmeat.

I went aft, where Feinstein was cowering against a bulkhead. I grabbed him by the neck with my left hand, squeezed his jaws open, and jammed the muzzle of my piece down his throat.

“You saw what I did to your buddy,” I told him. “And knowing what I know about you sons of bitches and what you’ve done, you better believe I enjoyed it just as much as I’ll enjoy wasting you if you don’t do exactly what you’re told. Get the message, meatfucker?”

Feinstein nodded and I pulled the gun barrel out of his mouth. And when I tossed his worthless ass onto the deck, he just lay there blubbering. “I told Harlow he was going too far, it’s not my fault, it wasn’t my idea. Bigelow will believe me, won’t he, I swear I’ll tell him the truth, I never thought, I never knew…”

“He better believe you, meatfucker, or a lot of asses are gonna be grass,” I told him. “And you better believe that you’re gonna go first!”

Water T. Bigelow

The station was in an uproar. The situation was growing graver by the minute. The mob had bridged the gap in the Golden Gate and fighting was raging on the Marin side of the span. Our gunboats were sinking scores of small craft loaded to the gunwales with black-carders, but all was chaos on the Bay; they couldn’t establish or hold a line. The landward Quarantine Line was crumbling under human wave onslaughts.

There was no alternative. When I got the President on the line I was going to have to ask him to authorize an immediate nuclear strike against San Francisco.

But while I was waiting for my call to the White House to get through, there was a commotion in my outer office, and a moment later an SP captain burst inside.

“Warren Feinstein’s outside, Mr. Director,” he stammered. “There’s… there’s a girl with him who says she’s Our Lady of Love Reborn… and there’s a man holding him at gunpoint. Says he’s gonna blow his head off if we make a move and–”

There was a further commotion in the outer office and then Feinstein was rudely thrown through the doorway by a man who held the barrel of a mini-auto at the back of his neck, followed by a young girl, and half-a-dozen SP men with drawn pistols.

The man with the mini-auto was John David, whom I had sent into San Francisco after Richard Bruno. And he was wearing an SP uniform.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded. “This isn’t Bruno! How did you–”

“No shit!” David snarled, prodding Feinstein with his gun barrel. “Go ahead, tell the man, or I’ll blow your worthless head off!”

Tears poured from the eyes of Sutcliffe’s chairman as he blubbered out the most incredible and chilling story.

“Harlow lied to you, Bruno’s virus wasn’t an ambient Plague variant, it was a cure for all Plague variants, an artificial venereal disease–”

“A cure? But then why–”

“–that conferred total immunity–”

“If it was a cure, then why on Earth did you suppress it?” I shouted at him. “Why did you tell me–”

“It’s a venereal disease!” Feinstein babbled. “Spreads by itself, nothing for us to market, it would have bankrupted Sutcliffe, brought on an economic depression, Harlow insisted–”

I could not believe my ears. I could not be hearing this. “You suppressed a total cure for the Plague to preserve your own profits? My God, Prinz kept trying to get me to nuke San Francisco just to keep Sutcliffe solvent?”

Feinstein shook his head. “By then it was too late, don’t you see?” he moaned. “The whole thing had gone too far. I warned him, I swear I did, but he insisted that San Francisco had to be nuked to cover up what we’d done…”

Feinstein seemed to pull himself together with an enormous effort. “But you can’t do that now,” he said much more coherently. “You won’t do that now. I’m willing to take my medicine, even if it means spending the rest of my life in jail. Harlow was wrong, monstrously wrong, and I was weak, horribly weak. You can’t nuke San Francisco. You can’t kill millions of people. You can’t destroy the dreadnaught virus.”

Was this the truth, or was it Satan’s greatest lie? Feinstein was, after all, speaking with a gun at his throat. And he was a self-admitted liar.

If this was the Devil speaking through him, and I believed Satan’s greatest lie, I would infect the nation with a deadly new Plague variant that might destroy all human life.

But if God had chosen this unlikely instrument to reveal His truth at the eleventh hour and I didn’t believe it, I would not only be responsible for the deaths of a million people, I would be responsible for destroying God’s own cure for the Plague.

What was I to do? What could I believe? Whatever the truth was, Satan could not have devised for me a more perfect moral dilemma.

“The President on the line…” said a voice on my intercom.

No man should be forced to make such a decision. But I was. And I had to do it now. But I could not. There was only one thing that I could do.

There, in front of Feinstein, and David, and my own men, and with the President of the United States waiting on the telephone, I sank unashamedly to my knees and prayed aloud.

“Please, Jesus, I know that this cup cannot pass from me,” I prayed. “But grant me at least one mercy. Send me a Sign. Show me Your Countenance.”

And God, in His infinite wisdom, answered my prayer, through the most unlikely of instruments.

The young girl stepped forward. “Let me help you,” she said softly. She took my hand in hers and raised me to my feet. “Let me be your Sign,” she said.

“You? You’re–”

“Our Lady of Love Reborn–”

“–the blasphemous mouthpiece of Satan!”

“No, I’m not. Nothing speaks through me but the truth in an ordinary girl’s heart, and I’m very much afraid,” she said with the strangest gentleness. “But I know that this man is speaking the truth, and there’s no one else. So I have to be your Sign, now don’t I? In the only way I can.”

“How?” I asked softly, wanting very much, in that moment, to believe. In Jesus. In God’s Grace. In anything that would show me the truth.

Even in she whom I had believed to be my nemesis, even in Our Lady of Love Reborn, if she could make me.

“By placing my life in your hands,” she said.

I locked eyes with Our Lady of Love Reborn. They were young and they were fearful, but there was a strength in them too that seemed timeless. She smiled the Madonna’s smile at me. Or was this only what I was longing to see?

“There’s a helicopter waiting outside. I’m going to go to it and fly back to San Francisco. If the city dies at your hand, so will I. Would Satan’s mouthpiece do that, Walter Bigelow?”

“The President on the line…”

“You would do that?” I said. “You’d really do that?”

She nibbled nervously at her bottom lip. She nodded demurely. “You’ll have to kill me right now to stop me,” she said, letting go of my hand, and turning to confront the men blocking the doorway. “Will you tell these men to shoot me, Mr. Bigelow? Or will you let me pass?”

“Hey, Linda, you can’t do that, we’re safe here, don’t be crazy!” I said, grabbing her by the arm.

The SP guards trained their pistols on us, looking to Bigelow for orders. I brought up my mini-auto, flipped it to full rock and roll as conspicuously as I could, just daring the mothers to try it.

“I can, John, I must,” Linda told me, and took two steps forward with me hanging on to her.

I turned to confront Bigelow. I could see that he wanted to believe. Wouldn’t you?

What can I tell you, brothers and sisters? Maybe I figured Bigelow needed a final push. Anyway, how could I let her do this thing all alone? A short life, but a happy one, as we say in the Army of the Living Dead.

“Not without me, you don’t,” I said, taking her hand.

“The President on the line…”

I whipped the mini-auto around and pointed it right at Bigelow’s head. “I could blow you away right now,” I told him. “And don’t think I wouldn’t enjoy it, meatfucker!”

Walter T. Bigelow looked straight into my eyes and didn’t flinch. The bastard had balls, you had to give him that.

“But I won’t,” I told him. “ ’Cause this old zombie believes her. And you’ve gotta believe her too.”

“Make me,” Walter T. Bigelow said softly. “I truly pray that you can.”

“Then try this,” I said. I smiled, I shrugged, and I threw the mini-auto on the floor in front of him. “We’re gonna walk out of here to that helicopter, and we’re gonna fly back to San Francisco. You can clock us on radar.”

I turned to face the pistols of the SPs. “Or you can have these bozos fill us full of holes—your choice, Bigelow,” I said over my shoulder. “Of course then you’ll never know, now will you?”

And hand in hand we walked toward the armed men blocking the doorway.

The guards’ fingers tightened against their triggers.

The moment hung in the air.

“Let them pass,” Walter T. Bigelow said behind us. “Praise the mysterious workings of the Lord.”

Walter T. Bigelow

And the two of them walked out of the room hand in hand toward the helicopter, toward San Francisco, toward their faith in the wisdom and mercy of God, which no true Christian, in that moment, could justly deny.

In all my life, no one had placed greater trust in me than this young girl and this savage young man.

A nimbus of clear white light seemed to surround them as they walked out the door, and there were tears in my eyes as I watched them go.

God could not have granted me a clearer Sign.

I sank once more to my knees and gave thanks for His infinite wisdom, His infinite mercy, for His presence.in that room, in that moment, in my heart, for the Sign He had granted me in my ultimate hour of need.

The rest is, as they say, history, and this is the end of the story of my part in it.

I did not ask the President for a nuclear strike. Instead I told him what Feinstein had told me. And I issued an order for my troops to cease firing, to let those seeking to leave San Francisco pass as well.

There was much confusion afterward as hundreds of thousands of people poured out of the San Francisco Quarantine Zone. Congress called for my impeachment. I offered up my resignation. It was refused. Proceedings began in the House.

But as the hearings began, hundreds of escapees from San Francisco were rounded up, and all of them tested out blue. And the dreadnaught virus was found in all of their bodies.

So did the Plague Years end. And so too my public life. I became a national hero once more, and though there was no further need for a Federal Quarantine Agency or its director, I could no doubt have been elected to any office in the land.

But I chose instead to retire. And write this memoir. And go off on a long retreat into the desert with my family to try to understand the mysterious ways of God. And to reconcile with my wife.

And God granted us an easy reconciliation, for Satan had gone from her, if he had ever really possessed her, and she believed in me again.

“It was a true Christian act, Walter, and a brave one,” she told me the night she took me once more into her arms. “God works in mysterious ways.”

So He does. And perhaps the true wisdom is that that is all we can ever really know of the workings of His Will.

Did Satan send the Plague to torment us? Or did God send the Plague to chastise and test us?

If so, it was a terrible chastisement and a cruel testing. But so was the Great Flood, and the Ten Plagues, and the Forty Years in the Wilderness, and of course Jesus’s own martyrdom on the Cross.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Jesus told us, and was crucified for it.

How could that be the Will of a God of Love?

How could the Plague Years be the Will of God either?

I don’t know. I don’t think I ever will.

And yet my faith is still strong. For God spoke to me in my greatest hour of need through the unlikely instrumentalities of a young girl whom I had believed to be Satan’s daughter and a vicious creature who had certainly spent most of his life doing the Devil’s work on Earth.

Such a God I will never understand.

In such a God I can only believe.

Such a God I can only love.

Afterword
Jerry Pournelle

Every now and then I get to write a diatribe. It’s one of my perks for doing this series. That’s just as well, because I feel a speech coming on.

I’m sitting at the high table in the great hall of the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. This is the room often referred to as the UN’s “Independence Hall,” since it was here that nearly half the UN membership was granted independence from mandates or colonial supervision. I’m about to make a speech. Meanwhile, two seats down from me, a Nobel Laureate is making his own speech, and it’s about to drive me up the wall.

I suppose I’d better explain?

We got here by flying all night from Flagstaff, Arizona, where I was attending a meeting of the Board of Advisors of the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill. We were whisked away from discussing the future of the institution that discovered the galactic red shift and the planet Pluto to the Flagstaff airport, thence by Twin Otter to Phoenix. Then came the redeye to Newark. It was a harrowing trip, and I am not in the mood to listen to a Nobel physicist cackle with absolute glee that cold fusion is impossible, “Fleischmann and Pons are idiots,” and anyone who thinks they aren’t idiots just doesn’t know anything about science. Alas, that’s just what I am hearing. Apparently my physicist colleague just can’t stand the notion that a pair of chemists—chemists!—may have done something he thought impossible. It’s all right, though. He doesn’t think anyone in the United States knows anything about science.

As to why we’re in the United Nations building, it was all arranged by Dr. Hans Janitschek, President of the United Nations Society of Writers. There are two panels this afternoon. The first was entitled “Earth My Beautiful Home: The Role of the Artist in Shaping the Environmental Future of Our Planet,” and it was finished half an hour ago. The second, “Which Tomorrow: The Role of the Scientist in Choosing the Future,” is just starting. The whole program was sponsored by Bridge Publications as part of the awards ceremony of their Writers of the Future contest, and no, I haven’t the foggiest notion how they managed to get the UN Society of Writers to set this up for them.

I do know I’m listening to a speech that’s got my teeth on edge. The only way to contain myself is to make these notes, and keep remembering that I get to speak last.

The earlier panel was depressing enough. A panel of artists, chaired by Dr. Charles Sheffield, who is both artist and scientist, seems pretty well convinced that we’re bent on both mucking up the Earth and uglifying it, and if we’ve done very much good in the past twenty years, no one seemed eager to talk about it.

Now this speech. Our distinguished colleague has entitled his talk “The End of Science Fiction.” What he’s really hinting at is the end of science. The great discoveries have all been made. From here on in we’ll only fill in details. And no, we’re not going to the stars, nor even to the planets; that’s all hogwash and wishful thinking. The reality is that here on Earth things are going from bad to worse.

My, he’s eloquent. Our children don’t know any science. They don’t even know any history. In fact, they don’t seem to know anything at all. Our politicians don’t know anything either. We have no long-term goals, and we’re incapable of having any. Our undergraduates are stupid, and so are our graduate students, whose places in our deteriorating schools are increasingly being taken by foreigners anyway. One wonders why the best and the brightest of the foreign students come here?

Thank heaven that’s over. Now we hear Ed Gibson, astronaut, and Yoji Kondo, NASA scientist. Both seem a bit subdued by what they’ve just heard. Dr. Kondo, in his usual quiet and reasonable way, pleads that there is indeed much we can do, and much we are doing; and the world is hardly a worse place now than when we were children. I can see why he would think that way. Yoji grew up in Japan during World War II. His wife Ursula grew up in Germany at the same time. They are now citizens of the United States, and they don’t think the country is coming apart.

And it’s shortly going to be my turn. What do I say?

The problem is that much of the depressing litany of condemnation was all true. We don’t do a very good job of teaching science, at least not to the great majority of our students; and we do leap on many scientific frills and frauds with great joy. We are busily spending our children’s inheritance on ourselves, and we invest precious little of it in anything that will have a long-term payoff for them.

Still in all, there’s no situation so gloomy and depressing that, if looked at in just the right way, can’t be made even gloomier and more depressing; which is what I’ve just heard, and now it’s my turn.

We hear a lot about the coming global disaster. There’s the “greenhouse effect,” which may be warming the planet enough to melt the polar icecaps; if that happens the seas will rise from a few feet to, at the extremes, over a hundred feet. Even a small rise would finish off Venice and a number of coastal areas. All this from burning fossil fuels, which dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. CO2 lets in short-wave, high-energy radiation—the ultraviolet end of the spectrum—but traps the re-radiation of long-wave infrared, otherwise known as heat. This isn’t how a real greenhouse works, but it is a major reason the planet Venus got to be boiling hot. Clearly it’s something to worry about—

Except that we don’t really know. While global warming and the greenhouse effect are all the rage this year, I can recall not twenty years ago when the big concern was that the Earth was cooling off, and indeed there were some wondering if we weren’t headed for another Ice Age. Incidentally, lest we get too complacent about that, it’s now known that the last Ice Age came on rather suddenly: in fewer than forty years England went from being inhabited to under several feet of snow and ice.

Meanwhile, all the coal and wood we burn puts smoke particles into the atmosphere. They make the atmosphere more reflective. This cuts down on the heat coming in. I’ve heard quite distinguished climatologists argue that it’s only the smoke up there that keeps the Earth as cool as it is…

We really don’t know. But we’d better find out. More than that, once we do know, we’d better have the means to do something about it. It wouldn’t take a great deal to do that, provided we invest now.

Next question. Is the global disaster required? And again we know the answer. Clearly it’s not, so long as we act sensibly.

What’s sensible?

Let me give an example of something that isn’t sensible: a few weeks ago there was a spate of pronouncements from Stanford and Berkeley professors about the possible effects of cold fusion: to wit, it would be the worst thing that could happen to the world. Clean cheap energy would be a disaster. It would utterly wreck the “quality of life”—which, incidentally, has been going steadily down for the past forty years.

To which the only possible answer is, quality of life for whom? I suspect that many of those whose nations achieved independence, whose representatives now sit in the United Nations, do not believe their quality of life has been steadily falling. The millions who for the first time in history have discovered that you don’t have to have ten children in order for two or three to survive; who have discovered that you don’t have to die of malaria, or smallpox; the millions of children who don’t have cavities because we now know about fluorides: I suspect they don’t think quality of life is falling. I know they wouldn’t think cheap clean energy was the worst thing that could happen.

The fact is that cold fusion doesn’t matter. We can hope it’s all true, but even if it isn’t, there are other energy sources. They aren’t free, but even the expensive ones are cheap compared to the billions we waste.

We know how to solve most of the world’s problems. We’ve known for some time. We’re not running out of energy, and we’ll never run out of natural resources.

Ninety percent of the resources easily available to mankind are not on this planet; but they are available, as soon as we decide to go get them.

So what? We don’t look like we’re going after them. Last summer marked the twentieth anniversary of Apollo, and it’s been a long time since we lit a fire on the Moon.

What man has done, man can aspire to.

The problem with the doomsayers is that their horizons are too small. It may be that the United States has lost its goals and dreams. It may be that we’re determined to spend our children’s inheritance on ourselves and invest none of it. It may be that, having come so far, we’ll quit. But we’re not the whole human race.

Who chooses the future? Those who dream the future choose the future.

You can’t predict the future, but you can invent it.

We have it in our power to survive the end of the Earth, even the end of the solar system. We have the power to do whatever needs doing to ensure the survival of the human species. We know how to do it, and it will be done.

By someone.

They may not speak English. They may not even speak Japanese, or Russian. Perhaps a nation which didn’t exist until given independence right here in this hall.

We know the way. We have the designs. We can have the first of the new generation of spacecraft in under four years, and for less than we spend each year on tobacco subsidies. We can, or someone else can.

If we don’t need the resources of the solar system, someone will. I’d like it to be us, of course. I think the best remedy to our education problem is to give the kids new hopes and new dreams; to stop talking about insoluble problems and talk instead of opportunities. If we’ve someplace exciting to go, we won’t have much trouble getting kids to tool up to go there. And what could possibly be more exciting than the first steps toward a billion year future? America or another, someone will lead the way.

MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

NON-FICTION

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

SCIENCE FICTION

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

FANTASY

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

CASTALIA CLASSICS

The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

AUDIOBOOKS

A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

TRANSLATIONS

Särjetty taika

QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravedad Mata

Una Estrella Brillante para Guiarlos

QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal

Uma Magia Perdida

Mantra yang Rusak

La Moneta dal Mercenario

I Ragazzoni non Piangono

QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти

QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand

Grosse Jungs weinen nicht

New Release Newsletter

The Castalia House New Release newsletter is sent out to subscribers when a new book is officially released. It often contains offers for free bonus books. We do not spam our subscribers’ email addresses nor do we sell them to anyone. We average about one new release per month.

Click here to subscribe to the Castalia House New Release newsletter or visit castaliahouse.com and enter your email address in the right sidebar, then click “Subscribe”.

Copyright

There Will Be War
Volume X
Edited by Jerry Pournelle

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

Copyright © 2015 by Jerry Pournelle
All rights reserved

Assistant Editor: Vox Day
Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen
Version: 002

The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE by Gregory Benford was previously published in Cosmos (August 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Gregory Benford.

SEVEN KILL TIGER by Charles W. Shao is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 by Charles W. Shao.

THE 4GW COUNTERFORCE by William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele was previously published in The 4GW Handbook, Castalia House, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele.

BATTLE STATION by Ben Bova was previously published in Battle Station, Tor Books, 1990. Copyright © 1990 by Ben Bova.

THE WAR MEMORIAL by Allen M. Steele was previously published in Asimov's September 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Allen M. Steele.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT by Michael F. Flynn was previously published in Analog March 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Michael F. Flynn.

WAR AND MIGRATION by Martin van Creveld is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 by Martin van Creveld.

THE LAST SHOW by Matthew Joseph Harrington is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 by Matthew Joseph Harrington.

FLASHPOINT: TITAN by Cheah Kai Wai is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 by Cheah Kai Wai.

WAR AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT by Douglas Beason was previously published in The E-Bomb: How America's New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought. Copyright © 2006 by Doug Beason.

BOOMER by John DeChancie was previously published in Space Cadets, SCIFI, Inc, 2006. Copyright © 2006 by John DeChancie.

THE DEADLY FUTURE OF LITTORAL SEA CONTROL by Commander Phillip E. Pournelle, USN was previously published in the July 2015 issue of Proceedings Magazine. It is reprinted here by permission of the author and the United States Naval Institute. Copyright © 2015 by Phillip E. Pournelle.

THE FOURTH FLEET by Russell Newquist was previously published in Make Death Proud to Take Us, Silver Empire, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Russell Newquist.

CANNY by Brian J. Noggle is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 by Brian J. Noggle.

WHAT PRICE HUMANITY? by David VanDyke is published by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 by David VanDyke.

FLUSH-AND-FFE by Guy R. Hooper and Michael L. McDaniel was previously published as “Fighting with Fires” in the Winter 2000-01 issue of Joint Forces Quarterly. It appears here by arrangement with the authors. Copyright © 2000 by Guy R. Hooper and Michael L. McDaniel.

AMONG THIEVES by Poul Anderson was previously published in Astounding Stories June 1957. Copyright © 1957 by Poul Anderson.

“FLY-BY-NIGHT” by Larry Niven was previously published in Man-Kzin Wars XI, Baen Books, 2002. Copyright © 2002 by Larry Niven.

There Will Be War

Volume X

Edited by Jerry Pournelle

Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction to Volume X by Jerry Pournelle
The Man Who Wasn’t There by Gregory Benford
Seven Kill Tiger by Charles W. Shao

The 4GW Counterforce by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

Battle Station by Ben Bova
The War Memorial by Allen M. Steele
Rules of Engagement by Michael Flynn
War and Migration by Martin van Creveld
The Last Show by Matthew Joseph Harrington
Flashpoint: Titan by Cheah Kai Wai

War At The Speed Of Light by Col Douglas Beason, USAF, ret.

Boomer by John DeChancie

The Deadly Future of Littoral Sea Control by CDR Phillip E. Pournelle, USN

The Fourth Fleet by Russell Newquist
Canny by Brian J. Noggle
What Price Humanity? by David VanDyke

Flush-and-FFE by Lt Col Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret. and Michael L. McDaniel

Among Thieves by Poul Anderson

“Fly-By-Night” by Larry Niven

There Will Be War

Riding the Red Horse
Castalia House
New Releases

Editor’s Introduction to:
THERE WILL BE WAR
Volume X

When the There Will Be War series began, the Cold War was on with a vengeance. Twenty-six thousand nuclear warheads were aimed at the United States. Marxism had faded within the Communist Party, but Marxist/Leninist doctrine remained the official ruling principle; and it held that the worldwide establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat—Communist rule—was inevitable. Détente was possible, but never peace; class war always continued. Most of the Nomenklatura—the inner ruling circle of the Communist Party—might be skeptical, but all of them had compulsorily taken many hours of Marxist theory in University, as well as the usual doctrines taught in grade and high school, and all claimed to believe in the scientific truth of Marxism.

The United States had endured the long and divisive Cold War. Korea, then Viet Nam, claimed American lives, but neither ended in victory parades or peace. The Cold War continued, and both sides kept ready-alert nuclear forces, with bomber crews ready to man their B-52’s, and young men, then young men and women, spent much time deep underground, waiting for the sound of the klaxon and the dread words: “EWO. EWO. Emergency War Orders. Emergency War Orders. I have a message in five parts. Message begins. Tango. X-ray. Papa. Kilo….”

The protracted conflict came to an end in 1990, and then the Soviet Union itself dissolved. The series, There Will Be War, ended shortly thereafter, and the United States stood down in anticipation of a well-earned era of peace. The Strategic Air Command, the elite force which had existed to fight a world nuclear war, was disbanded, along with Systems Command, whose mission was to design and build the weapons of a future war that would never come. The blitzkrieg of the First Gulf War did little to dispel that illusion. There would be brush fires, world police activities, but the future was clear. The history of war had come to an end. One popular book even proclaimed “The End of History”; it would take time, but it was now inevitable that history would progress to its natural conclusion, a peaceful coalition of liberal democracies.

That belief vanished on the morning of September 11, 2001. Well before the rubble of what had once been the tallest buildings in America was cleared, the United States had already embarked on what has proven to be the longest war in her history. The armed forces responded splendidly. But what would have been glorious victory in another era became the prelude to endless nightmares as the civilian leadership tried vainly to build liberal democracy in lands that wanted no part of it; asymmetric war in the form of terror spread from Iraq to Syria to Paris to San Bernardino. A new power, dedicated to world peace through world submission, arose from the ashes of Iraq and continues to steadily grow.

History has not ended. The world has not united in peace and liberal democracy. This series has been revived to again offer stories and essays on the challenges of the future; in a time when There Will Be War. Herewith Volume Ten.

Jerry Pournelle

Studio City, 2015

Editor’s Introduction to:
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE
by Gregory Benford

I have known Professor Greg Benford for a long time. He participated in the studies that generated the Strategic Defense Initiative, both in the Council I chaired to advise the incoming Reagan Administration in 1980 and many other venues, and he is well known for his non-fiction.

He is also a well-known science fiction writer. His latest works have been collaborations with Larry Niven on stories of the far future, but he has also paid attention to the news.

Given the events in Paris last month, this story is timely; but in fact it was one of the first chosen for this book and was accepted well before the Paris massacre. High tech versus low tech in defending the security of Western Civilization; another battle in a war that has gone on since before Charles Martel turned the tide at Tours in 732 A.D. But tides ebb and flow, and still the war continues.

THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE
Gregory Benford

The security ’bots zoomed around the looming mosque like supersonic butterflies in the cold air. Jean watched them with his infrared eyes as their tiny plumes darted over the bare zone, blazing high tech fireflies. They patrolled silently over the wide stone plaza, watching for movement up and down the spectral bands.

Sentinels of Islam in a suburb of Paris. Around the butterfly buzz hung a weekday midnight silence. Incense flavored the air with a pungent reek.

“Merde du jour,” he muttered. The Islamic Front could afford the butterflies. They fed on endless money from the Saudis, part of the campaign to restore Islam to Europe after the regrettable Christian Era.

Not restored by the sword, of course—they were hopeless on a battlefield. But now, in softened consumerist Europe, their shopworn push-pull strategies of terror and political demand still worked. Islamic Front had plenty of followers in the immigrant masses. Their code of strict secrecy—talk and you die, unpleasantly—made them potent. Against them the French government deployed lawyers. Thinking of them, he spat on the floor of the apartment he had rented.

“Ready, Ajax?” He got a coded blip in answer—OK.

Time to move. Nobody knew where the Front would strike next with bombs, kidnappings, violent protests. Plus the usual rhetoric about being repressed. Very effective.

They had made such claims back in Lyon, after a street brawl on Montclair Boulevard. That was years ago, just as the Front started to use advanced technologies. All cameras, videos, and other recording systems near Montclair Boulevard had been blank, so the Front could claim that the fighting and the car bomb that followed were the work of others. So it had gone now for years, an arms race of technologies.

Unless, of course, the plans of the Islamic Front could be tapped. But that meant getting in fast, silent, deadly. Tonight.

Inside the shadowy compound ahead, the Head was at work. Under the shield of the looming mosque, he sent agents forth. He hid behind some holy name, but French Intelligence had pinpointed the Head’s movements, and now was the time to strike. Remembering Montclair Boulevard.

Jean said softly, “Take out the microwaves.”

Silently, the side teams did.

The details registered in his left eye, fed from his wearable computer. The Front was using the minarets at the square’s corners to mount their detectors. Jean could see their snouts peeking out of the corbelled designs that wrapped around each artfully curved dome atop the minarets. The surveillance cameras were the usual IR motion-sensing type. But they were all connected to a central security center—the usual control-freak arrangement. They could be defeated by intersecting their microwave links, saturating them, blowing the electronics down the line.

Jean ordered the teams to open up. Soundless beams lanced instantly into the broad square of the compound. They were aimed at receivers, jamming the link back to the security center that squatted down on the mosque’s roof.

Simple, really—flood them with a high-powered noise-spectrum signal. Their cameras looked in all directions, their sensors wide open in the winter dark—so they could be attacked from any direction, jammed from any angle. Thank God—whichever version you liked, Jean thought—the Front hadn’t thought to use laser links—easier to find, but far harder to block or saturate.

“Their links are cut,” came a whispered comm message from a nearby apartment, diagonally across the square.

“Now the security ’bots.”

Microwave pulses transfixed each of the fireflies darting around the mosque square. Short bursts of microwaves flooded their diodes. The butterflies abruptly tumbled to the cobblestones.

He rasped in a short breath and beeped Ajax into action. “Send in the silver,” Jean said. His buddy Ajax was in a silver suit, though why it got that name Jean never knew.

He switched to another spectrum, far beyond the visible, and searched for Ajax. Silver suits were layers of optical fibers and sensors, ever-watchful in all directions. There—

Ajax was a shifting blob of shimmering blue light in Jean’s UV goggles, well beyond what ordinary cameras could capture. Each square centimeter of the silver suit took incoming light and routed it through chips, moving the image—say, of a wall—around the body, on its way to the directly opposite side of the suit. There another optical fiber emitted the same image in the same direction. It was as though the ray had passed through Ajax’s body. Any guard looking toward the suit saw only the wall, as though nothing stood between them.

The silver suit gave Ajax invisibility. Jean watched as the blob flexed and moved across the Islamic Front’s broad open plaza, toward the shadowy, looming mosque. He reached the first barrier, a cluster of concrete blocks, and just walked around them. Up in the minarets Jean could see shifting shadows. The guards had noticed that their gear was down.

“Here comes the glare,” he sent on comm.

Searing light swept the compound. Spotlights on the minarets and the main mosque sent blaring beams into every corner.

Good coverage, Jean noted. Not that it would do them any good.

Because Ajax was inside by now. “I got it,” Ajax’s voice whispered in his ears.

Meaning that he had used the tap-and-read gear strapped to his wrist. It sent an electric charge wave through a lock and used the rebound signal to figure out the lock’s codes. The information was buried in the door, so it had to be user-reachable. Almost like a dog waiting for the right signal from its master to go fetch a ball.

Well, Jean thought, the ball was in play now. “Follow on,” he sent, and two more silver suits started across the compound’s square. They came in from the sides. He could see them moving fast, wrinkled UV ghosts.

The guards up in the minarets had their hands full, scanning the square and seeing nothing. Not even their motion-sensing cameras could see anything through the smoky frequencies.

Shouts echoed across the square. Getting the reserve house guard up from their beds.

Time to get serious. “Blow their electrical.”

Microwave bursts curled through the chill air. They were vectored in on the mosque’s power source, where their standard external current hookup met their in-house generator. Throw the diodes there into confusion, blowing most of them with thirty kilowatts of bursty microwaves, and kiss your amperes goodbye.

The spotlight glare vanished. The minor mosque lamps went too. Louder shouts.

Jean was already running out of the apartment building. His IR took in the sputtering of random gunfire from the minarets. They were shooting blind, chunking rounds into the cobblestones. It was easy to avoid their sweeps.

But that gave his side all the excuse they needed. Snipers in nearby buildings took out the men in the minarets within seconds.

Halfway to the mosque, all fell silent. He could hear his own whooshing breath, it was that still.

The main gate was still locked but the side door yawned. He went through into utter blackness, dark even to him in IR.

In his left eye he received Ajax’s map of the interior. It was made by a satellite, integrating the GPS feedback from Ajax and figuring out the implied mosque geometry.

Here—down a corridor and around a small high-roofed room like a chapel. Two men milled around in the room, shouting to each other. One fumbled to turn on a flashlight and Jean punched a button on his right wrist. It sent a skreeee he heard in the microwave spectrum. That caused flash-over of the filaments in flashlight bulbs. Sure enough, the tall, swarthy man could not get the flash to light up. Jean slipped by him.

They were saying something in French but Jean didn’t bother to figure out their panicked sentences as they flung their arms about. He skirted around them and down a hallway. More men there, armed but blind. The place reeked of sour sweat and fear.

Ajax had left bootprints that showed up in crimson in his high-UV spectrum. He followed them through a room crammed with computers, all dead, and down a long corridor lined with AK-47s in steel wall racks.

Jean had his automatic out in his right hand but didn’t intend to use it. The flash would give the enemy momentary light.

“Found the Head,” Ajax sent.

“How is he?”

“Holed up in a safe room, looks like.”

“Blow it.”

“Already set up to. Punched a hole through at the top, wide enough for the percussion grenade.”

“Go.”

The boom rocked down the hallway and slapped Jean in the face. As he ran up to it he could see the massive door was skewed on its hinges. Ajax was a shimmer in Jean’s goggles, planting a second charge. They wedged it into place at the top hinge.

Angry shouts came from behind them. Another silversuit came up, firing backward with a silenced pistol. The shouts stopped.

They all trotted down the corridor and Ajax hit his hand-held trigger. The blast was deafening. Fragments slammed into his carbon-fiber body armor.

Jean stepped through the yawning frame, a smell of something burnt curling up into his nostrils. Six bodies were slammed against the walls, clad in kaftans. Blood trickled from their ears. He had to check three before he was sure that they had the Head. The leathery face was contorted, gray foam oozed at the mouth, and Jean reflected that this did not look like someone who had ordered the deaths of thousands. Now it was just a shriveled little man.

The third silversuit was a surgeon, his ID patch glowing in the UV. Jean pointed and the surgeon knelt beside the Head.

“Pretty bad,” the surgeon said.

“Dead?”

“Not yet, but he may have injected himself.” Up came the sleeves of the kaftan and there was a plain needle mark. “Damn.”

“How long have we got?” Jean asked.

“Maybe ten minutes.”

Out came the tool kit and quick hands started to work.

It took only five minutes. Jean stared at the Head’s face and thought about Montclair Boulevard. Then they started out, carrying the body in a sling.

There was fighting outside but it died down. He monitored the operation on a screen in his left eye lens, watching the support troops come in from all sides. Green motes circled and lit on the mosque grounds—choppers and ultralights. Some automatic weapons fire rose to greet them. The return fire lanced down, computer-directed by juddering robot guns in mini-aircraft.

It had been easy enough to take out the Islamic Front guards. Just attacking was simple, but experience showed that you got very little information that way. Jean had learned from their battles in Lyon, where the Front had many tendrils. Yet they had few ways to trace the Byzantine network that decades of immigrant communities had established.

A sour truth emerged from those years. The Front had learned that they could keep no database without risking its loss, so the only systematic memory was carried around in a few leaders’ heads, encoded and rote-memorized. So there was only one way to get it.

They hauled the body out on a stretcher. Halfway out the one thing they could not defend against struck Ajax—low tech.

Ajax had the lead. A small bomb’s sharp thump cut through him. It may have been triggered by his passage, armed sometime in the last few minutes. Acrid fumes filled the passageway.

Jean knelt in the iron scent of spilled blood. The charge had slammed down from the ceiling, punching in from above. The head was all blood and shattered white bone.

He could see Ajax was gone. A sour cough erupted from his throat, anguish throttled down. No time to rage, not now. We came to kidnap a mind and Ajax lost his head for it.

He used hand signs to get them moving again. He put Ajax out of his mind for the moment, a habit he had learned since his brother’s death.

Army troops were securing the rest of the mosque, small arms rattling far down the hallways. There were still no lights and everyone was operating in the infrared, moving carefully.

The chopper waited just outside, squatting on the square with its ultra-rotors purring. Jean went with the surgeon. There was a lot of medical gear in the chopper bay and the specialists got the body into it while they lifted off. Jean looked out across the square at the maze of running men and bodies, the scene moving in an eerie hush except for the working machines.

Half an hour later he got to see the results. They had the entire top floor of a hospital. Jean went into the bare white clean room wearing whites and stood at the end of the operating theatre. They were all quiet here, too.

The Head was talking, in its way. The body lay spread out, heart machine chugging, the lungs heaving to the steady stroke of a breather-driver. The Head was certainly dead but the cowl of leads blossoming from his shaved skull was working. There were subtle ways to drive post-mortem synapses and force a memory to make its connections.

On the screens around the operating theatre the data flowed like syrup. Images, faces, cross-correlations like thickets of yellow-green vines. The entire Islamic Front was there, layered and bunched in cords and streams.

“This guy was a real savant,” a specialist said nearby. “Look how his memory was organized—like a multi-layered filing cabinet.”

“Too bad he used it to store such merde,” Jean said. He saw flicker across the screen a scene retrieved from the Head’s recollections, the farmer’s market in Lyon. Off to the left were the maple trees of Montclair Boulevard, where Jean’s brother had been torn to shreds by the car bomb.

Swimming up from cloudy, static-filled memory came the scene before the explosion, too, frozen in dead memory. The car, moving forward into the crowd, seconds before the detonation. The point of view swiveled and there in the room were the faces of the plotters, three bearded ones. Their lips were thin and pale with compressed anger, their eyes sharp.

Jean memorized them in a moment. He turned and walked out, getting ready for the next attack, knowing now who to look for and thinking again of Montclair Boulevard.

Editor’s Introduction to:
SEVEN KILL TIGER
by Charles W. Shao

Technology can be created on demand, as Stefan Possony and I showed in The Strategy of Technology. This does not mean that all technologies should be created, merely that once something is possible, it is only a matter of time before it becomes real. There will be war; there will also be technologies that can only be deterred, not defended against.

SEVEN KILL TIGER
by Charles W. Shao

Zhang Zedong stared at his screen in disbelief. The monthly production numbers had fallen again, down from the previous quarter’s low that had already led to one alarmingly polite video call from the Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission. General Xu was not technically in his formal chain of command, but as the largest individual shareholder in the China African Industries Group, the general’s opinion was of considerably more concern to Zhang than that of his immediate superior, the Executive Vice-President for East Africa.

The damned hei ren were going to get him replaced, he thought bitterly. If he was fortunate. In the event General Xu decided that the growing gap between the region’s quarterly objectives and the actual results achieved was the consequence of excessive greed rather than Zhang‘s inability to make the natives work, his family would be receiving a bill for the price of the bullet used to execute him before long.

But he hadn’t diverted any significant resources into his own pockets, not any more than was expected of an executive in his position. He didn’t have more than eleven or twelve million dollars safely stashed away in his American bank accounts, and if his son was studying at the University of California, Berkeley, so were fifty other children of high-ranking Party members. Still, it would be enough to see him shot if the general was looking for an excuse.

What he needed was more reliable workers. What he needed was more Han people. In Zambia alone, there were now 750,000 Chinese living in what amounted to a small colonial city, but they lived in walled enclaves almost under siege from the thieves, robbers, and rapists who preyed upon them daily despite the best efforts of CAIG’s security forces to protect them. The police were useless, worse than useless, actually, as they were often among the worst thieves and sexual predators of all.

He sighed. Africa would be a glorious place were it not for the Africans. He’d been warned before coming to Lusaka that ninety percent of the hei ren were thieves, but he discounted that warning as the customary Han superiority complex. After seven years of futility in attempting to turn CAIG’s $35 billion investment in the country into something resembling a reasonable return, he was beginning to wonder if that estimate had been on the low side.

Lusaka had always been known for its crime, but of late the criminal gangs were getting bolder. Just last week, ten young hei ren armed with AK-47s shot dead the two African security guards outside a gated Chinese complex, raped four young Chinese girls, and kidnapped two mining company executives. The company had paid the ransoms, which were trivial, and gotten its executives back, but the fear and outrage in the business community was palpable. Then, to make matters even worse, one of the girls committed suicide in shame at having been violated by hóuzi, and now the hunger for revenge in the expat community was threatening to get out of control.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the local police proved unable to identify the perpetrators, let alone arrest them. As far as Zhang could tell, they genuinely had no idea which of the eight gangs actively operating in the city might have been responsible.

If only the National People’s Congress had followed through on its original plan to send 100 million colonists to Africa! But that plan had met with intense international criticism, and it wouldn’t necessarily be enough anyhow; the problem wasn’t limited to the dearth of Han labor. Bringing in more proper workers would solve the production problem, but it wouldn’t solve the crime problem or the growing fraternization problem either. Far too many Chinese girls had fallen for the blandishments of persistent African suitors, failing to understand why the locals had so much time to pursue them or realize that the liaisons were unlikely to go anywhere in the long term. Even on the rare occasions a marriage did come to pass, what resulted was seldom what the average Chinese girl understood to be marriage.

African men thought of themselves as lions, and they lived like kings of beasts, entirely content to lounge about living off the labor of one or more of his lionesses. And the girls who succumbed to their exotic appeal could not return to China, not those who bore half-African bastards anyway. It was a growing problem, and even if it wasn’t Zhang’s responsibility, as CAIG’s Senior Vice-President and Director for Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Tanzania, there were many looking to him to find a solution. But what was he supposed to do, ban interracial relations? Temporarily sterilize every Chinese woman between the ages of 10 and 40? Forbid Chinese firms to hire locals for even the most menial jobs? Any action that might make a substantive difference would generate a hailstorm of international protest that would focus very unwanted attention on him from General Xu, and perhaps even the Central Commission.

What he needed, he decided, was new ideas. Everything he had tried to date had failed. Positive incentives, negative incentives, threats, bribes, and shouting, everything had failed. The Americans had a curious phrase he’d heard once on a visit to California, the “Come to Jesus” meeting. He didn’t quite grasp what it meant, exactly, but he decided it would serve as his inspiration for the staff meeting he intended to call tomorrow morning. Because if they didn’t come up with something that at least had the potential to lead the way out of this utter debacle, he fully intended to rain fire and brimstone down upon them all.

He might not be able to avoid going down himself, but he could damn well ensure that he didn’t go down alone.

***

Philip Thompson was reading a report of a small measles outbreak in Ecuador when a knock on the open door to his office disturbed him. He looked up and saw it was Scott Berens, one of his junior analysts, standing in the doorway.

“You heard about Ecuador, Dr. Thompson?” the younger man asked.

“Reading about it now. Looks as if the government has it under control.”

“They caught it early enough. It’s the Tungurahua province again. That’s been a problem area for the Ministry of Health since 1996. The vaccination program misses too many of the indigenous children.”

“Understandable.” Thompson put the report down on his desk. “What’s on your mind, Scott?”

“Do you remember that unknown outbreak in northern Zambia we started tracking six months ago?”

“I thought that was a false alarm.”

“It was, insofar as we were able to determine that it wasn’t Ebola, which was the initial concern. And there were only 142 cases and 26 deaths before it burned itself out, so we didn’t even bother sending anyone over to investigate.”

Thompson clicked his tongue against his lower lip, wondering where Berens was going with this. The young man was a bright young doctor and had graduated in the top ten percent of his class from Johns Hopkins, so he assumed Berens must have a good reason for bringing such an obscure incident to his attention.

“Are you saying we should have?”

“No, it’s just that I was reading over the statistics, as part of a paper I was thinking about writing on east Africa, when I noticed an anomaly.”

“What’s that?”

“The population of the nearest town. It’s mostly Chinese. I think they have a big mining camp up there.”

Thompson shrugged and spread his hands. “It’s hardly a secret that China has been moving into Africa in a big way for the last two decades. They have hundreds of such towns.”

“True, but that only explains why the Chinese were there. It doesn’t explain why most of the cases, and all of the deaths, were African. Only five Chinese were affected and all five recovered. Beyond the basic statistical odds involved, you would think the native population would be more resistant to whatever virus makes its way out of the jungle, not more susceptible to it.”

Thompson frowned. Berens was right. It was an anomaly. And if there was one thing he had learned after 22 years at the Center for Disease Control, it was to pay particular attention to anomalies.

“Good catch, Scott. Dig into it and see if it’s really just a mining town or if the PLA happens to have any laboratories or science facilities in the area. Not necessarily where the outbreak took place, but anywhere in the surrounding area. They went dark on the bio-war front a few years ago, and it may be that some of their test facilities were moved from Xi’an to Africa. This just might give us some insight as to where they went.”

“Do you think someone got careless and a bio-weapon escaped the lab, Dr. Thompson?” There was an eager glint in the younger man’s eyes that made Thompson smile despite himself. Such a discovery, even if it was never published in any of the public journals, could be the making of Berens's career, and both of them knew it.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Scott. Go and see what you can find about this mining town, what is it called?”

“Mpolokoso.”

“Right.” He didn’t even bother trying to pronounce it. “Look into what the Chinese are doing there and we’ll see if it could have any connection to this mysterious outbreak. Write it up and email it to me; I’ll call you when I’ve had a chance to read it and think it over.”

“Will do, Dr. Thompson!” Berens made a mock salute with the paper and disappeared from the doorway.

Thompson leaned back in his chair, reflecting on the unwelcome news. Unlike his young subordinate, he already knew they weren’t likely to find any evidence of laboratories, research facilities, an escaped bio-weapon, or even anything that was conventionally considered to be a bio-weapon. Conventional bio-weapons didn’t discriminate between Asian and Sub-Saharan haplogroups. Genetic weapons, on the other hand, were designed to do just that. And he very much doubted that whatever it was had been released accidentally.

After consulting his contact list, he tapped in the number for Fort Detrick. A young enlisted woman answered the phone.

“US-AMRIID. How may I direct your call?”

“This is Dr. Phil Thompson of the CDC. Get me Colonel Hill, please.”

“Right away, sir.” She paused. “The CDC… is this urgent, sir?”

He smiled grimly. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to determine.”

***

It was the massacre that convinced Zhang to take action. After a Chinese entrepreneur’s young daughter in Kapiri Mposhi was raped and killed by a pair of copper miners, the man took his vengeance by tracking the perpetrators down and shooting them dead at the New Kapira Mphoshi railway station. The shootings were caught on closed-circuit television, and before Zhang or anyone in Lusaka even knew about the incident, the images had spread all over Zambia and Tanzania, inflaming the African community, and in particular, the Nyanja-Chewa tribe to which the two miners belonged.

Within a week, all 87 Chinese residents of Kapiri Mposhi were dead. Some had been shot, some had been necklaced, but most had fallen to the knives of the Nyau, a masked secret society known for black magic and channeling the spirits of the dead. The pictures had been horrific. Zhang stared at them for a long time.

Black magic. I will show them black magic. I will show them their worst nightmares!

The Kapiri Mposhi massacre had been six months ago. Now the time to unleash the spirits of righteous vengeance had very nearly come, Zhang thought, as a tall young scientist entered his office. Gao Xing was humble and diffident. Despite his height, he could have walked down the street in Weinan or Xi’an without anyone taking notice of him. Only his eyes gave any sign that he might be unusual. They were coldly arrogant, and conveyed little in the way of warmth or humanity. He was in his middle twenties, and his pale skin indicated that he spent very little time outside under the Zambian sun.

The perfect scientist, Zhang thought wryly. The poor kid had probably never had a girlfriend. But the young girl in Kapiri Mposhi, the very first one to die, had been his cousin. He might not know how to love, but assuredly, he knew how to hate.

“They tell me your most recent test of Huáng Hu was successful.”

“Yes, Director. The terminal rate is now in excess of 80 percent. Based on the most conservative spread models, the pseudo-epidemic will cross the Angolan border within two weeks. Within nine months, the continent is expected to be clear of all undesirable populations. The task of disposal will obviously be enormous, and will create considerable additional health hazards, but I would expect that it would be safe to begin the settlement programs within 18 months of zero day.”

“Zero day?”

“The date upon which any opposing forces will be unable to stop the virus from going terminal in the target population. The estimates vary, but the average indicates zero day is D-day plus 28.”

“Is there any way to reduce the time to zero day?”

“Increase the number of transmission vectors, preferably in a manner scattered widely across the continent.”

Zhang nodded. “I will think on that.”

“If I may offer a suggestion, Director?”

“Please do.”

“There is an American foundation that has malaria vaccination campaigns running in every country in Africa. If a way could be found to substitute the substances injected, zero day could be reduced to a matter of two weeks or less.”

“Wouldn’t that increase the risk of detection?”

“Certainly.” The young scientist’s dark eyes were unperturbed. “But in light of how the vaccination campaigns are already regarded with a significant amount of local suspicion, detection would likely sow sufficient confusion to inhibit any effective response. Especially because the NGOs tasked with the response would be widely regarded as the guilty parties.”

“And combined with cutting the potential response time in half, it’s almost surely worth the risk as long as the substitutions can be made undetected.”

“I cannot speak to that, Director. It is outside my competence.”

Zhang thought a moment. “It’s too risky to interfere with the Americans. We don’t know their protocols. But Sinovac has a polio vaccine that’s already been prequalified by the World Health Organization and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has endorsed it as a substitute for their primary oral vaccine. It would be much easier to substitute that. We can even arrange to have the vaccines shipped in through Dar es Salaam.”

“As you say, Director.”

Zhang couldn’t help but smile. The young scientist could not have made his indifference to anything but the technical aspects related to his specialty any more clear. “The potential consequences do not trouble you, Dr. Gao?”

“Not in the slightest, Director Zhang. To the contrary, you have my deepest admiration. What you propose to accomplish will make the Great Leap Forward appear little more than a precursor to the true advancement. What began as a Cultural Revolution has become a Scientific Revolution. Soon China will stand astride the globe as the master of two continents, and the nations of the world will bow before her!”

Zhang found himself mildly appalled by the young man’s fanaticism. Did Mao ever feel similarly alarmed by the enthusiasm of his own Red Guards? But the sentiments Gao expressed were sound enough. Africa was wasted on the Africans. China had spent 50 million Chinese lives to become a 20th-century power, how could she hesitate to spend twenty times that many more African lives to assume her rightful place as the one true 21st-century superpower?

“Thank you, Dr. Gao.”

“Director.” The young man bowed and left his office.

Zhang reflected on Gao’s words. A Scientific Revolution. A Greater Leap Forward! The young scientist’s confidence in the project quelled any remaining doubts that it was time to move forward and let the Central Military Commission know about his plans for the Dark Continent. But one question still remained: to release Huáng Hu before or after General Xu’s scheduled visit?

It would be a shame, after all, if he were to be executed before releasing the spirits to seek their revenge.

***

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the prequalification of a Chinese-made vaccine for polio. The new WHO pre-qualified vaccine is produced by Sinovac Biotech Ltd, and is an inactive-virus vaccine that is considered to be safer than the live-virus vaccines now widely used across Asia and Africa.

“WHO prequalification of the Sinovac vaccine is another feather in the cap of China’s growing vaccine manufacturing industry,” said Dr. Bernhard Schwartländer, WHO Representative in China.

“This is also very good news for the millions of children in low- and middle-income countries which cannot afford to manufacture or purchase their inactive-virus vaccines. WHO prequalification of Sinovac’s vaccine will add to the worldwide arsenal of anti-polio vaccines, assisting the global campaign to eradicate the disease. In doing so, it will help to save lives,” Dr Schwartländer said.

Sinovac’s polio vaccine is the second vaccine made in China to achieve WHO prequalification, following prequalification of a Japanese-made encephalitis vaccine in 2013 and Hualan Biological’s influenza vaccine in 2015.

Philip Thompson shook his head as he returned the printout to Scott Berens. “You don’t seriously imagine that the Chinese would use a weaponized vaccine as a vehicle for genetic warfare, do you? They could maybe get one hot lot into the distribution system, two at most, and I can’t imagine that could possibly be worth permanently trashing their ability to access the export markets!”

“No, of course not.” His subordinate shrugged. “You told me to dig up anything that might be related to possible launch vectors. This is the only one I found that could conceivably be connected to Chinese corporate activity in the last two years.”

“I’d use bird flu myself,” Thompson mused.

“What’s that?”

“If you’re going to weaponize something, an aerosol vector is the most effective. And the world is accustomed to bird flu coming out of China every few years. That’s what that vaccine from Hualan was, it was an H1N1 vaccine. You could even combine the two, put the bomb in the flu virus itself, then trigger it with the vaccine.”

“Now who is imagining things, Doctor?”

Thompson smiled. “Well, perhaps it’s nothing after all. There haven’t been any further outbreaks in the last six months, so I suppose it was simply another unknown jungle disease. Here is hoping we’ve seen the last of it.”

***

General Xu stood staring motionless at the image of the continent of Africa on the screen, his hands clasped behind his back, his square face impassive and unreadable. Zhang watched the man closely, looking for some sign of approval, of anger, of anything that would give him some indication of his fate. Finally, the general turned to face him, and something in the soldier’s eyes seemed to indicate that he was feeling powerful emotion.

To Zhang’s utter astonishment, the general bowed to him, so deeply that his torso was nearly parallel to the floor. Zhang didn’t know what to do; he just stood there respectfully and hoped that the general’s action was a good sign.

“You are a man of rare vision and a great tribute to our race,” General Xu said hoarsely. “Not since da duo shou himself has China been blessed with a man of such insight! You have broken the power of the gun that has kept us chained since the yingguo ren arrived! You have abolished war with science!”

“The General is not displeased?”

The general indicated the screen. “Far from it. Your proposal is promising, extremely promising, Director. I will go to Beijing immediately and consult with the Chairman. How soon can you begin?”

“Three weeks. The next shipment from Sinovac will arrive in ten days. I am told it will take four days to replace the vaccines and reseal the vials. Then we will need to distribute them to the aid offices. We will start the flu-based vector in Mozambique two weeks prior to the first inoculations. Even if the Americans or the Europeans somehow manage to react quickly to one attack, the very effort required to do so will inhibit their ability to respond to the other.”

“Remarkable!” The general shook his head admiringly. “Director, surely you were inspired by your ancestors! What led you to conceive such a vision?”

“Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.”

“Well said. What is the name of this miracle?”

“Huáng Hu.”

General Xu was an educated man. He smiled. “How very appropriate, Director. I shall inform you of the Chairman’s decision before the end of the week. You will launch the initial phase on his command.”

Zhang bowed, feeling both triumph and relief. It seemed he would survive the day. And the restless ghosts of Kapiri Mposhi would be avenged, a thousandfold and more. “Thank you, General.”

***

As his Prius moved silently through the Georgia night, Philip Thompson thought about what he’d learned from his conversation earlier that day with Colonel Hill. He didn’t know how to feel about the information he was trying to process. Far from being unthinkable, it was apparent to anyone capable of reading between the lines that the U.S. Army had already developed genetic weapons very similar to those he’d adduced the Chinese were developing. Moreover, the Russian Army and the IDF were well along the process of doing the same.

It was madness. Sheer madness. The world’s militaries were quite literally preparing—prepared—to undo everything that Man’s most dedicated warriors against the dread Rider on the White Horse had ever accomplished. The painstaking labor of decades could be undone in a matter of hours, and with a genocidal precision that had hitherto been literally unimaginable. Even though he’d known the United States could not permit itself to fall behind in such an important technological aspect of war, it was shattering to know, to actually have it confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt, that his own government was preparing to exterminate entire populations. It was possible. There was no defense, as such. There was only deterrence. Or, perhaps, revenge.

How are we any better than them? The thought of warring genocides sickened him, all the more so knowing that he and all of his colleagues would be the first to be drafted and put on the front lines—the front labs—if any such genetic war should erupt. He was a doctor, he was a scientist, he was a healer. He had gone into medicine, and after that, science, in order to help people, not to kill them on an industrial scale!

And the worst thing was that he could not unburden his soul to anyone; the colonel had let him know, in no uncertain terms, that if he so much breathed a word of what he had learned to anyone else at the CDC, let alone the press, he would be prosecuted for violating national security.

The garage door recognized his license plate and opened automatically as he approached. He parked the car, took his briefcase from the passenger seat, and walked through the parking garage to the elevator. His apartment was on the fifth floor, and there was an audible snick as the door’s face-scanner recognized him and unlocked the door. But he stopped in the doorway after opening the door: there was a soft glow from the living room indicating that one of the lights was on.

That was strange. He worked late so often that he was always careful to make sure the lights were all out before he left in the morning, so as not to waste electricity. Then he shrugged and closed the door behind him. He’d had a lot on his mind recently and must have forgotten to turn one of them off.

But when he walked down the hallway and turned the corner, he froze. An Asian man dressed all in black was sitting in his recliner, legs crossed, casually perusing the previous month’s issue of Nature.

“Good evening. Have a seat, Dr. Thompson.” The intruder indicated the couch to his right. He spoke perfect, unaccented English.

Dumbfounded and frightened, Philip obeyed. What are you doing here, he wanted to demand, but he was afraid that he already knew the answer. Did the man have a gun? He probably did. Was it worth trying to make a break for one of the knives in the kitchen? No, almost certainly not.

“You needn’t be alarmed, Dr. Thompson. I realize this is unsettling, but please understand that I’m not here to harm you.”

Philip swallowed hard, then couldn’t help exhaling heavily with sudden relief. He hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath.

“Why… why are you here?”

The intruder smiled, flashing straight white teeth. Probably not Japanese. Chinese-American? “I am here to encourage you to take that vacation in Hawaii. According to your calendar, it begins tomorrow. Fourteen days on Maui, at the Grand Wailea. It’s about time you used up some of that vacation time you’ve been hoarding, after all.”

“Hawaii? I don’t have a vacation–”

“Ah, but you do!” The Asian man produced a folder and withdrew airplane tickets and an itinerary before sliding them across the coffee table to Philip. “If you check your emails, you’ll see that you requested a vacation three months ago and it was approved by Deputy Director Sansom back in May.”

“You hacked the CDC computers?”

“Dr. Thompson, with all due respect, we’ve been privy to all of your communications with Colonel Hill and everyone else at AMRIID for months. Making a few modifications to your email server is about as difficult as changing an undergraduate’s grades at Georgia Tech.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Take the vacation. And then, when they fly you to Frederick, do your job. Analyze the virus and tell them the truth about it.”

“The truth. What is that?”

“The fact that the virus is no threat at all to 98 percent of the American population. Aside from some recent immigrants, most of whom are not American citizens anyway, your people will be entirely unaffected.”

Philip sat back, his mind racing, rapidly putting together the various facts at his disposal. It was obvious that the man was a Chinese intelligence agent. Then he gasped. “Dear God! Is your government intending to murder the entire sub-Saharan population? That’s over one billion people!”

“I have no idea, Dr. Thompson. We can speculate if you like, but I imagine you probably know more about it than I do. My part in this ends tonight, whereas you still have a very important role to play. In fact, one might go so far as to say the fate of the entire human race is in your hands. That’s why I am here speaking to you now. It is possible that you will be all that stands in the way of a third world war.”

Still reeling from the horrific conclusion he’d reached, Philip could only shake his head. Mass murder? The human race in his hands? World War III?

“When the news of the virus breaks, there will be widespread fear throughout your government hierarchy. Even panic. It is very important that someone with sufficient stature and the ability to understand exactly what is happening will be in a position to tell your President, and his generals, that there is no serious threat to America. My superiors do not wish to see a necessary evil transformed into an unnecessary apocalypse. Neither a genetic war nor a nuclear war between China and the United States will serve anyone’s interests, as I’m sure you will admit.”

“Retaliation,” Philip murmured. “You want me to tell them not to retaliate.”

“I expect you to tell them that retaliation would be tantamount to mutual suicide,” the agent corrected. “As is, in fact, the case. As I said, we simply want you to enjoy your vacation, then do your job and tell them the truth. Nothing more than the truth. It is well within your competence.”

“I assume that if I don’t keep my mouth shut about what you are intending, you will kill me.”

The agent smiled regretfully and gave a slight nod. “We are, of course, monitoring you very closely. If you attempt to communicate with anyone—anyone—then I fear it is very likely that a disgruntled former employee will return to the CDC with a pair of inexpensive handguns and kill a number of people there, yourself included, before committing suicide.”

He withdrew another piece of paper from his folder and slid it across to Philip. It was a color printout with ten photographs, driver’s licenses by the looks of them, and each one was familiar to Philip. Two former girlfriends, two more casual liaisons, and six of the nine other members of his fantasy football league. All of them were friends, all of them were people he cared about.

Philip snorted bitterly and shook his head. The ruthless bastards certainly did their homework. He’d all but forgotten about the weekend fling with Caitlin five years ago. She was married to a banker now, with a baby at home and another on the way.

“You cannot prevent what is about to happen, Dr. Thompson. But you can stop an even greater horror from taking place. You cannot save the Africans, but you can save the rest of the human race.”

The Chinese agent extended the folder in his gloved hand. Philip took it, then returned the sheet with the pictures on it, but retained the tickets.

“Very wise, Dr. Thompson.”

“Can I ask you one question?”

For the first time, the agent looked surprised, but he nodded.

“How on Earth do you people sleep at night?”

The agent laughed, genuinely amused.

“Soundly, in the knowledge that we are serving our nation, Doctor. We sleep very soundly indeed.”

***

The message from the Chairman of the Central Military Commission was a short one that consisted of only four ideographs. It seemed the Chairman, too, was an educated man. Zhang nodded solemnly to Dr. Gao, who peered at the screen in confusion.

“This means we are to proceed? ‘Heaven births ten thousand things’? I don’t understand. What does it mean, Director?”

“It means we are ordered to release Huáng Hu,” Zhang said calmly. “, Dr. Gao, release the Yellow Tiger.”

Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man.

Man has nothing good with which to recompense Heaven.

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Editor’s Introduction to:
THE 4GW COUNTERFORCE
by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

In general, the most effective armies have been armies of combined arms, but there have been periods of ascendency for many different kinds of arms. Historically, the decisive arm has usually been heavy infantry, but the colorful feudal era was for a long time dominated by heavy cavalry—mailed, mounted knights armed with lances, swords, and banners. Infantry is called the Queen of Battles, but in truth, infantry and artillery contested the title of the battlefield’s decisive arm for a century. Then came motorized forces, armor, armored cavalry, aircraft, and ballistic missiles.

We now live in an era of irregulars and special forces, and technological weapons of previously unimagined power.

But the following statement by a contributor to the second volume of There Will Be War remains true all the same:

You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did—by putting your soldiers in the mud.

–T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War

THE 4GW COUNTERFORCE
by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

The History of Light Infantry

Due to different meanings of the word “light,” light infantry has been understood in diverse ways around the world. These interpretations can be grouped into two different points of view. The present American concept of light infantry is related to weight, specifically weight of equipment, while Europeans understand “light” as relating to agility or operational versatility. They see light infantry as a flexible force capable of operating in austere conditions with few logistical requirements and employing tactics unlike those of line or mechanized infantry.

The distinction between regular or line infantry and light infantry goes back to ancient Greece. At that time, the regular infantry was the phalanx, a linear formation that based its power on mass and shock. Their tactics consisted of evolutions performed by the phalanx as a whole, in which each warrior adhered to carefully executed drills.

In contrast, classic light infantry did not fight in fixed formations, nor did it adhere to any type of prescribed methods. Its primary mission was to provide flank protection to the phalanx. Widely dispersed throughout a large area, its soldiers lacked the heavy bronze armor worn by hoplites. The survivability of the light infantry depended on speed and the use of bows, slings, and hand-thrown weapons. Light infantry tactics consisted mainly of individual actions or simple, loosely coordinated group maneuvers that were generally limited to advancing or withdrawing. The Romans applied the Greek concept to their legions, using light auxiliary infantry to support the heavily armored cohorts of their regular infantry.

After the medieval era, when cavalry ruled the battlefield, the Spanish tercios of the 16th and 17th centuries signaled the return of the infantry’s dominance. The development of light infantry in Europe followed in the 18th century. The French chasseurs, the Prussian Jaegers, and the Austrian Grenzer regiments followed the ancient Greek concept; in contrast to the rigid maneuvers of their line infantries, the light units were fast, agile, and expected to adapt their tactics to the terrain and the situation.

Much as their predecessors had been in the past, the Napoleonic light infantry was employed in a decentralized manner to protect the flanks of larger forces, and to execute raids and ambushes in restricted terrain. As before, the light infantry was always careful to avoid frontal engagements with the enemy. When it was wisely employed, light infantry could sometimes prevail over the enemy’s regular infantry thanks to its adaptability and reliance on creative tactics rather than drilled battlefield order. These capabilities were achieved by selecting high-quality troops to serve in the light infantry, often professional hunters or foresters.

In spite of the proven utility of light infantry units, they were not established as permanent formations in European militaries. Light infantry units only prospered during wartime, and they were usually dissolved when the conflict ended. The catastrophic defeat in 1755 in Pennsylvania of the British forces under General Edward Braddock by a small force of Indians and French light infantry that employed ambush tactics and took advantage of terrain, agility, and loose formations convinced the British to create Roger’s Rangers and the Royal American Regiment, both of which eventually became famous light infantry units during the French and Indian War. Typically, both were dissolved when the war ended.

Light infantry reappeared in Europe during the wars surrounding the French Revolution. The light infantry ceased to be regarded as an “undisciplined group of irregulars” and were transformed into trained professional units, able to maneuver in a decentralized, but fast and organized manner. Between 1790 and 1815, light forces proliferated, even evolving into light artillery and light cavalry units. They also assumed a more significant role on the battlefield. Yet their basic role remained no different than that of their ancient Greek predecessors, as the European light infantrymen covered the regular infantry’s advances and withdrawals, and harassed the enemy by executing ambushes deep in its rear.

The appearance of the breech-loading rifle and the machine gun gradually reshaped regular infantry tactics, which began to resemble more closely those of light infantry. However, true light infantry retained advantages in agility, operational versatility, capability for living off the land, and decentralized command and control. The Boers of the Transvaal Republic; the Jaeger battalions, mountain units and Sturmtruppen of the German army of World War I; General Wingate’s Chindits; and the paratroop units of the Israeli Defense Forces and the British army are examples of true modern light infantry.

The Light Infantry Mentality

The appearance of semi-automatic and automatic weapons narrowed the tactical distance between light infantry and regular infantry. However, the essential difference between them remains. It is not easily observed because it is an intangible factor: the mentality of the light infantryman.

The light infantryman is characterized by his mental resourcefulness and physical toughness. Light infantry’s inborn self-reliance, reinforced by hard training, convinces the light infantryman that he is capable of overcoming the most difficult situations that combat presents. Light infantrymen do not feel defeated when surrounded, isolated or confronted by superior forces. They are able to continue performing their duties and pursue their objectives for long periods of time without any type of comfort or logistical support, usually obtaining what they require from the land or the enemy. They are neither physically nor psychologically tied to the rear by a need to maintain open lines of communication. Their tactics do not depend on supporting arms. This attitude of self-confidence and self-reliance provides light infantry with a psychological advantage over its opponents.

Thanks to its decentralized command philosophy, light infantry operates at a high tempo. An ambush mentality, a preference for unpredictability, and a reluctance to follow rigidly specified methods are the essence of light infantry tactics. The ambush mentality generates other secondary light infantry characteristics. One is the speed with which light infantry adapts to the terrain. Far from resisting adverse environmental conditions, light infantry exploits them by turning rough terrain to its advantage, using the terrain as a shield, a weapon, and a source of supplies.

As a result, light infantry has an incomparable superiority in those terrains that restrict most regular infantry operations (especially mechanized forces), usually allowing the light infantry to face and defeat larger and better-equipped enemy forces whenever it encounters them. This advantage gives the light infantry its distinctive operational versatility, as it is able to operate alone in restricted terrain or in a symbiotic relationship with friendly units.

Light infantry is readily adaptable to a broad range of missions, and it faces the natural evolution of technology and tactics that always takes place in wartime with no need to substantially modify the way it operates. It should now be easy to see that the correct meaning for the term “light” is not the American notion of weight, but the European concept of agility and operational versatility.

Light Infantry Tactics

Light infantry tactics are offensive in character, even during defensive operations. Light infantrymen do not hold a line. Light infantry tactics follow the principles of maneuver warfare, attacking by infiltration and defending by ambush. It uses ambushes on the offensive as well, by ambushing withdrawing or reinforcing enemy units, sometimes deep in the enemy’s rear. Light infantry applies an ambush mentality to both planning and execution.

A good way to understand light infantry tactics is to think of them as similar to those often used by “aggressors” or the “red team” during training exercises. Lacking the means to execute their missions in textbook fashion, they fight by deceiving, stalking, infiltrating, dispersing, looking for vulnerabilities, ambushing and raiding. They often prove highly effective against larger “blue” forces.

Light infantry operations often follow a cycle that can be divided into four steps: Dispersion, Orientation, Concentration, and Action (DOCA). Dispersion provides light infantry with its main tool for survivability. Units remain hidden, taking advantage of the terrain, using camouflage and fieldcraft to evade detection. Orientation includes shaping actions that “set up” the enemy and permit rapid concentration. This step requires an aggressive use of reconnaissance to identify enemy vulnerabilities the light infantry can exploit.

Concentration allows light infantry to transform the small combat power of many dispersed elements into one or more powerful thrusts. Action is led by reconnaissance elements, which focus available forces and target a specified enemy weakness. Finally, a new and rapid dispersion ends the cycle, protecting the light infantry from enemy counteraction.

Light infantry offensive tactics usually use infiltration to avoid casualties. Infiltration allows light forces to surprise the enemy and engage him at short distances. In close, light infantry can exploit its small arms skills while denying the enemy effective employment of his superior firepower. Light infantry hugs the enemy and forces him to fight at short ranges on its terms.

Defensive Tactics and “Force Protection”

Light infantry defenses are dispersed and granular, which prevents the enemy from determining the exact location of the defense’s front, flank, or rear areas. This protects light infantry from concentrated firepower. The light infantry commander assigns sectors to each of his subordinates, areas where they plan and execute successive, independent ambushes on advancing enemy formations. The “baited ambush” is a common technique, where a unit will feign retreat or even rout to draw enemy units into a new ambush. Defenses run parallel to, not across, enemy thrust lines. Light infantry often focuses its efforts against follow-on enemy units rather than spearheads.

When threatened, light infantry units break contact and move to alternate positions, setting up a new array of interconnected ambushes. Light infantry never fights a defensive battle from fixed positions or strong points. From the light infantry perspective, a good defensive position is one that surprises the enemy from a short distance, but at the same time enables the defender to move fast and under cover to a new position unknown to the enemy.

Since light infantry lives mostly off the land, its success depends heavily on the support of the local population. This dependence on local support means light infantry operations always need to avoid a negative impact on the inhabitants and the local economy, as well as rigorously observe local customs and culture. This ties in directly with requirements for success in Fourth Generation wars.

Light Infantry vs. Fourth Generation Opponents

Most Fourth Generation forces are light infantry, some quite good, for example, Hezbollah and the Pashtuns. How does state light infantry defeat them? By being better light infantry than they are.

Fourth Generation war light infantry is likely to have some advantages over state light infantry. It will usually know the terrain better. It is likely to start out with stronger support among the local population, especially if the state forces on the other side are foreign. That support will mean a superior information network, among other benefits.

But at the tactical level, a state light infantry should usually be the more skillful force. State light infantrymen are full-time soldiers, while most Fourth Generation fighters will be part-time militiamen. State forces have more resources for training, better equipment, better logistics, and they can employ supporting arms when the opportunity arises, although they do not depend on them. State light infantry should be more skilled at techniques, including marksmanship and tactical employment of machine guns and mortars. Assuming they can at least match their Fourth Generation enemies in tactical creativity, the state light infantry’s superiority in techniques should usually be decisive.

The superiority of state light infantry does depend on their being employed correctly. If they are compelled to defend static positions, given detailed, controlling orders, overburdened with weight (they should seldom if ever wear body armor or helmets; the soldier’s load should not exceed 45 pounds), or tied to supporting arms or to communications “networks” that require constant input, they will lose the advantage they should have over non-state light infantry. Requiring cats to hunt like dogs will benefit only the mice.

For those interested in further reading on the subject of the use of light infantry in 4th Generation War, “The 4GW Counterforce” is a selection from The 4th Generation War Handbook, Castalia House, 2015.

Editor’s Introduction to:
BATTLE STATION
by Ben Bova

Establishment of world government is an old theme in science fiction, and of course the first question is always the age-old question asked by Juvenal in the First Century AD: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who will watch the watchers? And if no one does, what then?

In December 1980 I chaired a committee tasked with writing space policy for the transition team coming to Washington with Ronald Reagan. Part of that paper discussed missile defense. We advocated Strategic Defense and a policy of Assured Survival as opposed to the then-prevalent policy of Mutual Assured Destruction as the primary means for deterring a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. At that time the Soviet Union had some 20,000 nuclear weapons aimed at the United States. Mutual Assured Destruction—MAD—basically said, if you kill us, we will kill you back. To that end we hardened the ICBM force to assure the survival of missiles; “boomer” nuclear submarines were always on patrol; and manned bombers and their required tankers were on ready alert at Air Force bases in the U.S. and abroad. Looking Glass, a KC-135 with a general officer and staff aboard, was in the air 24 hours a day to provide command and control. Looking Glass didn’t approach its landing field until another aircraft with a general officer was in the air and gone far enough that it would survive a nuclear attack on its base. We took MAD seriously.

The policy advocated to the Reagan Team was to add Strategic Defense to this mix; that the Constitution had as its purpose “to provide for the common defense”, not for the common destruction. The policy was adopted by the Reagan administration. Senator Ted Kennedy called it “Star Wars” and the appellation stuck; but it became the Strategic Defense Initiative, and even if the Soviet missile force could have been revised to defeat some of the SDI proposals, the economic costs were prohibitive. The Cold War effectively ended in 1990, and the Soviet Union ceased to be shortly after.

After World War II there were numerous world government proposals. Herman Kahn thought that something of the sort would be inevitable after any nuclear exchange. The alternative was Cold War and MAD. A number of science fiction stories explored the concept. The problem was simple: to keep the world safe from nuclear weapons required someone to enforce that ban. Custodians.

But quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

BATTLE STATION
by Ben Bova

Author’s Introduction to “Battle Station”

“Where do you get your crazy ideas?”

Every science fiction writer has heard that question, over and over again. Sometimes the questioner is kind enough to leave out the word “crazy.” But the question still is asked whenever I give a lecture to any audience that includes people who do not regularly read science fiction.

Some science fiction writers, bored by that same old question (and sometimes miffed at the implications behind that word “crazy”), have taken to answering: “Schenectady!” There’s even a mythology about it that claims members of the Science Fiction Writers of America subscribe to the Crazy Idea Service of Schenectady, New York, and receive in the mail one crazy idea each month—wrapped in plain brown paper, of course.

Yet the question deserves an answer. People are obviously fascinated with the process of creativity. Nearly everyone has a deep curiosity about how a writer comes up with the ideas that generate fresh stories.

For most of the stories and novels I have written over the years, the ideation period is so long and complex that I could not begin to explain—even to myself—where the ideas originally came from.

With “Battle Station,” happily, I can trace the evolution of the story from original idea to final draft.

“Battle Station” has its roots in actual scientific research and technological development. In the mid-1960s I was employed at the research laboratory where the first high-power laser was invented. I helped to arrange the first briefing in the Pentagon to inform the Department of Defense that lasers of virtually any power desired could now be developed.

That was the first step on the road to what came to be called the Strategic Defense Initiative.

My 1976 novel Millennium examined, as only science fiction can, the human and social consequences of using lasers in satellites to defend against nuclear missiles. By 1983 the real world had caught up to the idea and President Reagan initiated the “Star Wars” program. In 1984 I published a nonfiction book on the subject, Assured Survival. In 1986 a second edition of that book, retitled Star Peace, brought the swiftly-developing story up to date.

Meanwhile, from the mid-1960s to this present day, thinkers such as Maxwell W. Hunter have been studying the problems and possibilities of an orbital defense system. While most academic critics (and consequently, most of the media) have simply declared such a defense system impossible, undesirable, and too expensive, Max Hunter spent his time examining how such a system might work, and what it might mean for the world political situation.

I am indebted to Max Hunter for sharing his ideas with me; particularly for the concept of “active armor.” I have done violence to his ideas, I know, shaping them to the needs of the story. Such is the way of fiction.

Another concept that is important to this story came from the often-stormy letters column of Analog magazine more than twenty years ago. Before the first astronauts and cosmonauts went into space, the readers of Analog debated, vigorously, who would make the best candidates for duty aboard orbiting space stations. One of the ideas they kicked around was that submariners—men accustomed to cramped quarters, high tensions, and long periods away from home base—would be ideal for crewing a military space station.

So I “built” a space battle station that controls laser-armed satellites, and placed at its helm Commander J. W. Hazard, U.S. Navy (ret.), a former submarine skipper.

I gave him an international crew, in keeping with the conclusions I arrived at in Star Peace: Assured Survival, that the new technology of strategic defense satellites will lead to an International Peacekeeping Force (IPF) — a global police power dedicated to preventing war.

Once these ideas were in place, the natural thing was to test them. Suppose someone tried to subvert the IPF and seize the satellite system for his own nefarious purposes? Okay, make that not merely a political problem, but a personal problem for the story’s protagonist: Hazard’s son is part of a cabal to overthrow the IPF and set up a world dictatorship.

Now I had a story. All I had to do was start writing and allow the characters to “do their thing.”

The ideas were the easiest part of the task. As you can see, the ideas were all around me, for more than twenty years. There are millions of good ideas floating through the air all the time. Every day of your life brings a fresh supply of ideas. Every person you know is a walking novel. Every news event contains a dozen ideas for stories.

The really difficult part is turning those ideas into good stories. To bring together the ideas and the characters and let them weave a story — that is the real work of the writer. Very few people ask about that, yet that is the actual process of creativity. It’s not tough to find straw. Spinning straw into gold — that’s the great magical trick!

BATTLE STATION
by Ben Bova

We should avoid a dependence on satellites for wartime purposes that is out of proportion to our ability to protect them. If we make ourselves dependent upon vulnerable spacecraft for military support, we will have built an Achilles heel into our forces.

–Dr. Ashton Carter, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 1984

The key issue then becomes, is our defense capable of defending itself.

–Maxwell W. Hunter II, Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. Inc., February 26, 1979

The first laser beam caught them unaware, slicing through the station’s thin aluminum skin exactly where the main power trunk and air lines fed into the bridge.

A sputtering fizz of sparks, a moment of heart-wrenching darkness, and then the emergency dims came on. The electronics consoles switched to their internal batteries with barely a microsecond’s hesitation, but the air fans sighed to a stop and fell silent.

The four men and two women on duty in the bridge had about one second to realize they were under attack. Just enough time for the breath to catch in your throat, for the sudden terror to hollow out your guts.

The second laser hit was a high-energy pulse deliberately aimed at the bridge’s observation port. It cracked the impact-resistant plastic as easily as a hammer smashes an egg; the air pressure inside the bridge blew the port open. The six men and women became six exploding bodies spewing blood. There was not even time enough to scream.

The station was named Hunter, although only a handful of its crew knew why. It was not one of the missile-killing satellites, nor one of the sensor-laden observation birds. It was a command-and-control station, manned by a crew of twenty, orbiting some one thousand kilometers high, below the densest radiation zone of the inner Van Allen belt. It circled the Earth in about 105 minutes. By design, the station was not hardened against laser attack. The attackers knew this perfectly well.

Commander Hazard was almost asleep when the bridge was destroyed. He had just finished his daily inspection of the battle station. Satisfied that the youngsters of his crew were reasonably sharp, he had returned to his coffin-sized personal cabin and wormed out of his sweaty fatigues. He was angry with himself.

Two months aboard the station and he still felt the nausea and unease of space adaptation syndrome. It was like the captain of an ocean vessel having seasickness all the time. Hazard fumed inwardly as he stuck another timed-release medication plaster on his neck, slightly behind his left ear. The old one had fallen off. Not that they did much good. His neck was faintly spotted with the rings left by the medication patches. Still his stomach felt fluttery, his palms slippery with perspiration.

Clinging grimly to a handgrip, he pushed his weightless body from the mirrored sink to the mesh sleep cocoon fastened against the opposite wall of his cubicle. He zipped himself into the bag and slipped the terry-cloth restraint across his forehead.

Hazard was a bulky, dour man with iron-gray hair still cropped Academy-close, a weather-beaten squarish face built around a thrusting spadelike nose, a thin slash of a mouth that seldom smiled, and eyes the color of a stormy sea. Those eyes seemed suspicious of everyone and everything, probing, inquisitory. A closer look showed that they were weary, disappointed with the world and the people in it. Disappointed most of all with himself.

He was just dozing off when the emergency klaxon started hooting. For a disoriented moment he thought he was back in a submarine and something had gone wrong with a dive. He felt his arms pinned by the mesh sleeping bag, as if he had been bound by unknown enemies. He almost panicked as he heard hatches slamming automatically and the terrifying wailing of the alarms. The communications unit on the wall added its urgent shrill to the clamor.

The comm unit’s piercing whistle snapped him to full awareness. He stopped struggling against the mesh and unzippered it with a single swift motion, slipping out of the head restraint at the same time.

Hazard slapped at the wall comm’s switch. “Commander here,” he snapped. “Report.”

“Varshni, sir. CIC. The bridge is out. Apparently destroyed.”

“Destroyed?”

“All life-support functions down. Air pressure zero. No communications,” replied the Indian in a rush. His slightly singsong Oxford accent was trembling with fear. “It exploded, sir. They are all dead in there.”

Hazard felt the old terror clutching at his heart, the physical weakness, the giddiness of sudden fear. Forcing his voice to remain steady, he commanded, “Full alert status. Ask Mr. Feeney and Miss Yang to meet me at the CIC at once. I’ll be down there in sixty seconds or less.”

The Hunter was one of nine orbiting battle stations that made up the command-and-control function of the newly created International Peacekeeping Force’s strategic defense network. In lower orbits, 135 unmanned ABM satellites armed with multimegawatt lasers and hypervelocity missiles crisscrossed the Earth’s surface. In theory, these satellites could destroy thousands of ballistic missiles within five minutes of their launch, no matter where on Earth they rose from.

In theory, each battle station controlled fifteen of the ABM satellites, but never the same fifteen for very long. The battle stations’ higher orbits were deliberately picked so that the unmanned satellites passed through their field of view as they hurried by in their lower orbits. At the insistence of the fearful politicians of a hundred nations, no ABM satellites were under the permanent control of any one particular battle station.

In theory, each battle station patrolled one ninth of the Earth’s surface as it circled the globe. The sworn duty of its carefully chosen international crew was to make certain that any missiles launched from that part of the Earth would be swiftly and efficiently destroyed.

In theory.

The IPF was new, untried except for computerized simulations and war games. It had been created in the wake of the Middle East Holocaust, when the superpowers finally realized that there were people willing to use nuclear weapons. It had taken the destruction of four ancient cities and more than 3 million lives before the superpowers stepped in and forced peace on the belligerents.

To make certain that nuclear devastation would never threaten humankind again, the International Peacekeeping Force was created. The Peacekeepers had the power and the authority to prevent a nuclear strike from reaching its targets. Their authority extended completely across the Earth, even to the superpowers themselves.

In theory.

Pulling aside the privacy curtain of his cubicle, Hazard launched himself down the narrow passageway with a push of his meaty hands against the cool metal of the bulkheads. His stomach lurched at the sudden motion and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

The Combat Information Center was buried deep in the middle of the station, protected by four levels of living and working areas plus the station’s storage magazines for water, food, air, fuel for the maneuvering thrusters, power generators, and other equipment.

Hazard fought down the queasy fluttering of his stomach as he glided along the passageway toward the CIC. At least he did not suffer the claustrophobia that affected some of the station’s younger crew members. To a man who had spent most of his career aboard nuclear submarines, the station was roomy, almost luxurious.

He had to yank open four airtight hatches along the short way. Each clanged shut automatically behind him.

At last Hazard floated into the dimly lit combat center. It was a tiny, womblike circular chamber, its walls studded with display screens that glowed a sickly green in the otherwise darkened compartment. No desks or chairs in zero gravity; the CIC’s work surfaces were chest-high consoles, most of them covered with keyboards.

Varshni and the Norwegian woman, Stromsen, were on duty. The little Indian, slim and dark, was wide-eyed with anxiety. His face shone with perspiration and his fatigues were dark at the armpits and between his shoulders. In the greenish glow from the display screens he looked positively ill. Stromsen looked tense, her strong jaw clenched, her ice-blue eyes fastened on Hazard, waiting for him to tell her what to do.

“What happened?” Hazard demanded.

“It simply blew out,” said Varshni. “I had just spoken with Michaels and D’Argencour when…when…”

His voice choked off.

“The screens went blank.” Stromsen pointed to the status displays. “Everything suddenly zeroed out.”

She was controlling herself carefully, Hazard saw, every nerve taut to the point of snapping.

“The rest of the station?” Hazard asked.

She gestured again toward the displays. “No other damage.”

“Everybody on full alert?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Feeney ducked through the hatch, his eyes immediately drawn to the row of burning red malfunction lights where the bridge displays should have been.

“Mother of Mercy, what’s happened?”

Before anyone could reply, Susan Yang, the chief communications officer, pushed through the hatch and almost bumped into Feeney. She saw the displays and immediately concluded, “We’re under attack!”

“That is impossible!” Varshni blurted.

Hazard studied their faces for a swift moment. They all knew what had happened; only Yang had the guts to say it aloud. She seemed cool and in control of herself. Oriental inscrutability? Hazard wondered. He knew she was third-generation Californian. Feeney’s pinched, narrow-eyed face failed to hide the fear that they all felt, but the Irishman held himself well and returned Hazard’s gaze without a tremor.

The only sound in the CIC was the hum of the electrical equipment and the soft sighing of the air fans. Hazard felt uncomfortably warm with the five of them crowding the cramped little chamber. Perspiration trickled down his ribs. They were all staring at him, waiting for him to tell them what must be done, to bring order out of the numbing fear and uncertainty that swirled around them. Four youngsters from four different nations, wearing the blue-gray fatigues of the IPF, with colored patches denoting their technical specialties on their left shoulders and the flag of their national origin on their right shoulders.

Hazard said, “We’ll have to control the station from here. Mr. Feeney, you are now my Number One; Michaels was on duty in the bridge. Mr. Varshni, get a damage-control party to the bridge. Full suits.”

“No one’s left alive in there,” Varshni whispered.

“Yes, but their bodies must be recovered. We owe them that. And their families.” He glanced toward Yang. “And we’ve got to determine what caused the blowout.”

Varshni’s face twisted unhappily at the thought of the mangled bodies.

“I want a status report from each section of the station,” Hazard went on, knowing that activity was the key to maintaining discipline. “Start with…”

A beeping sound made all five of them turn toward the communications console. Its orange demand light blinked for attention in time with the angry beeps. Hazard reached for a handgrip to steady himself as he swung toward the comm console. He noted how easily the youngsters handled themselves in zero gee. For him it still took a conscious, gut-wrenching effort.

Stromsen touched the keyboard with a slender finger. A man’s unsmiling face appeared on the screen: light brown hair clipped as close as Hazard’s gray, lips pressed together in an uncompromising line. He wore the blue-gray of the IPF with a commander’s silver star on his collar.

“This is Buckbee, commander of station Graham. I want to speak to Commander Hazard.”

Sliding in front of the screen, Hazard grasped the console’s edge with both white-knuckled hands. He knew Buckbee only by reputation, a former U.S. Air Force colonel, from the Space Command until it had been disbanded, but before that he had put in a dozen years with SAC.

“This is Hazard.”

Buckbee’s lips moved slightly in what might have been a smile, but his eyes remained cold. “Hazard, you’ve just lost your bridge.”

“And six lives.”

Unmoved, Buckbee continued as if reading from a prepared script, “We offer you a chance to save the lives of the rest of your crew. Surrender the Hunter to us.”

“Us?”

Buckbee nodded, a small economical movement. “We will bring order and greatness out of this farce called the IPF.”

A wave of loathing so intense that it almost made him vomit swept through Hazard. He realized that he had known all along, with a certainty that had not needed conscious verification, that his bridge had been destroyed by deliberate attack, not by accident.

“You killed six kids,” he said, his voice so low that he barely heard it himself. It was not a whisper but a growl.

“We had to prove that we mean business, Hazard. Now surrender your station or we’ll blow you all to hell. Any further deaths will be on your head, not ours.”

Jonathan Wilson Hazard, captain, U.S. Navy (ret.). Marital status: divorced. Two children: Jonathan, Jr., twenty-six; Virginia Elizabeth, twenty. Served twenty-eight years in U.S. Navy, mostly in submarines. Commanded fleet ballistic-missile submarines Ohio, Corpus Christi, and Utah. later served as technical advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as naval liaison to NATO headquarters in Brussels. Retired from the Navy after hostage crisis in Brussels. Joined the International Peacekeeping Force and appointed commander of orbital battle station Hunter.

“I can’t just hand this station over to a face on a screen,” Hazard replied, stalling, desperately trying to think his way through the situation. “I don’t know what you’re up to, what your intentions are, who you really are.”

“You’re in no position to bargain, Hazard,” said Buckbee, his voice flat and hard. “We want control of your station. Either you give it to us or we’ll eliminate you completely.”

“Who the Hell is ‘we’?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“The Hell it doesn’t! I want to know who you are and what you’re up to.”

Buckbee frowned. His eyes shifted away slightly, as if looking to someone standing out of range of the video camera.

“We don’t have time to go into that now,” he said at last.

Hazard recognized the crack in Buckbee’s armor. It was not much, but he pressed it. “Well, you goddamned well better make time, mister. I’m not handing this station over to you or anybody else until I know what in hell is going on.”

Turning to Feeney, he ordered, “Sound general quarters. ABM satellites on full automatic. Miss Yang, contact IPF headquarters and give them a full report of our situation.”

“We’ll destroy your station before those idiots in Geneva can decide what to do!” Buckbee snapped.

“Maybe,” said Hazard. “But that’ll take time, won’t it? And we won’t go down easy, I guarantee you. Maybe we’ll take you down with us.” Buckbee’s face went white with fury. His eyes glared angrily.

“Listen,” Hazard said more reasonably, “you can’t expect me to just turn this station over to a face on a screen. Six of my people have been killed. I want to know why, and who’s behind all this. I won’t deal until I know who I’m dealing with and what your intentions are.”

Buckbee growled, “You’ve just signed the death warrant for yourself and your entire crew.”

The comm screen went blank.

For a moment Hazard hung weightlessly before the dead screen, struggling to keep the fear inside him from showing. Putting a hand out to the edge of the console to steady himself, he turned slowly to his young officers. Their eyes were riveted on him, waiting for him to tell them what to do, waiting for him to decide between life and death.

Quietly, but with steel in his voice, Hazard commanded, “I said general quarters, Mr. Feeney. Now!”

Feeney flinched as if suddenly awakened from a dream. He pushed himself to the command console, unlatched the red cover over the “general quarters” button, and banged it eagerly with his fist. The action sent him recoiling upward and he had to put up a hand against the overhead to push himself back down to the deck. The alarm light began blinking red and they could hear its hooting even through the airtight hatches outside the CIC.

“Geneva, Miss Yang,” Hazard said sternly, over the howl of the alarm. “Feeney, see that the crew is at their battle stations. I want the satellites under our control on full automatic, prepared to shoot down anything that moves if it isn’t in our precleared data bank. And Mr. Varshni, has that damage-control party gotten underway yet?”

The two young men rushed toward the hatch, bumping each other in their eagerness to follow their commander’s orders. Hazard almost smiled at the Laurel-and-Hardy aspect of it. Lieutenant Yang pushed herself to the comm console and anchored her softboots on the Velcro strip fastened to the deck there.

“Miss Stromsen, you are the duty officer. I am depending on you to keep me informed of the status of all systems.”

“Yes, sir!”

Keep them busy, Hazard told himself. Make them concentrate on doing their jobs and they won’t have time to be frightened.

“Encountering interference, sir,” reported Yang, her eyes on the comm displays. “Switching to emergency frequency.”

Jamming, thought Hazard.

“Main comm antenna overheating,” Stromsen said. She glanced down at her console keyboard, then up at the displays again. “I think they’re attacking the antennas with lasers, sir. Main antenna out. Secondaries…” She shrugged and gestured toward the baleful red lights strung across her keyboard. “They’re all out, sir.”

“Set up a laser link,” Hazard commanded. “They can’t jam that. We’ve got to let Geneva know what’s happening.”

“Sir,” said Yang, “Geneva will not be within our horizon for another forty-three minutes.”

“Try signaling the commsats. Topmost priority.”

“Yes, sir.”

Got to let Geneva know, Hazard repeated to himself. If anybody can help us, they can. If Buckbee’s pals haven’t put one of their own people into the comm center down there. Or staged a coup. Or already knocked out the commsats. They’ve been planning this for a long time. They’ve got it all timed down to the microsecond.

He remembered the dinner, a month earlier, the night before he left to take command of the Hunter. I’ve known about it since then, Hazard said to himself. Known about it but didn’t want to believe it. Known about it and done nothing. Buckbee was right. I killed those six kids. I should have seen that the bastards would strike without warning.

It had been in the equatorial city of Belém, where the Brazilians had set up their space launching facility. The IPF was obligated to spread its launches among all its space-capable member nations, so Hazard had been ordered to assemble his crew at Belém for their lift into orbit.

The night before they left, Hazard had been invited to dinner by an old Navy acquaintance who had already put in three months of orbital duty with the Peacekeepers and was on Earthside leave.

His name was Cardillo. Hazard had known him, somewhat distantly, as a fellow submariner, commander of attack boats rather than the missile carriers Hazard himself had captained. Vincent Cardillo had a reputation for being a hard nose who ran an efficient boat, if not a particularly happy one. He had never been really close to Hazard: their chemistries were too different. But this specific sweltering evening in a poorly air-conditioned restaurant in downtown Belém, Cardillo acted as if they shared some old fraternal secret between them.

Hazard had worn his IPF summerweight uniform: pale blue with gold insignia bordered by space black. Cardillo came in casual civilian slacks and a beautifully tailored Italian silk jacket. Through drinks and the first part of the dinner their conversation was light, inconsequential. Mostly reminiscences by two gray-haired submariners about men they had known, women they had chased, sea tales that grew with each retelling. But then:

“Damn shame,” Cardillo muttered, halfway through his entrée of grilled eel.

The restaurant, one of the hundreds that had sprung up in Belém since the Brazilians had made the city their major spaceport, was on the waterfront. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the muddy Parã River widened into the huge bay that eventually fed into the Atlantic. Hazard had spent his last day on Earth touring around the tropical jungle on a riverboat.

The makeshift shanties that stood on stilts along the twisting mud-brown creeks were giving way to industrial parks and cinderblock housing developments. Air-conditioning was transforming the region from rubber plantations to computerized information services. The smell of cement dust blotted out the fragrance of tropical flowers. Bulldozers clattered in raw clearings slashed from the forest where stark steel frameworks of new buildings rose above the jungle growth. Children who had splashed naked in the brown jungle streams were being rounded up and sent to air-conditioned schools.

“What’s a shame?” Hazard asked. “Seems to me these people are starting to do all right for the first time in their lives. The space business is making a lot of jobs around here.”

Cardillo took a forkful of eel from his plate. It never got to his mouth.

“I don’t mean them, Johnny. I mean us. It’s a damn shame about us.”

Hazard had never liked being called “Johnny.” His family had addressed him as “Jon.” His Navy associates knew him as “Hazard” and nothing else. A few very close friends used “J.W.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. His own plate was already wiped clean. The fish and its dark spicy sauce had been marvelous. So had the crisp-crusted bread.

“Don’t you feel nervous about this whole IPF thing?” Cardillo asked, trying to look earnest. “I mean, I can see Washington deciding to put boomers like your boats in mothballs, and the silo missiles, too. But the attack subs? Decommission our conventional weapons systems? Leave us disarmed?”

Hazard had not been in command of a missile submarine in more than three years. He had been allowed, even encouraged, to resign his commission after the hostage mess in Brussels.

“If you’re not in favor of what the American government is doing, then why did you agree to serve in the Peacekeepers?”

Cardillo shrugged and smiled slightly. It was not a pleasant smile. He had a thin, almost triangular face with a low, creased brow tapering down to a pointed chin. His once-dark hair, now peppered with gray, was thick and wavy. He had allowed it to grow down to his collar. His deep-brown eyes were always narrowed, crafty, focused so intently he seemed to be trying to penetrate through you. There was no joy in his face, even though he was smiling; no pleasure. It was the smile of a gambler, a con artist, a used-car salesman.

“Well,” he said slowly, putting his fork back down on the plate and leaning back in his chair, “you know the old saying, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’”

Hazard nodded, although he felt puzzled. He groped for Cardillo’s meaning. “Yeah, I guess playing space cadet up there will be better than rusting away on the beach.”

“Playing?” Cardillo’s dark brows rose slightly. “We’re not playing, Johnny. We’re in this for keeps.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t take my duty to the IPF seriously,” Hazard answered.

For an instant Cardillo seemed stunned with surprise. Then he threw his head back and burst into laughter. “Jesus Christ, Johnny,” he gasped. “You’re so straight-arrow it’s hysterical.”

Hazard frowned but said nothing. Cardillo guffawed and banged the table with one hand. Some of the diners glanced their way. They seemed to be mostly Americans or Europeans, a few Asians. Some Brazilians, too, Hazard noticed as he waited for Cardillo’s amusement to subside. Probably from the capital or Rio.

“Let me in on the joke,” Hazard said at last.

Cardillo wiped at his eyes. Then, leaning forward across the table, his grin fading into an intense, penetrating stare, he whispered harshly, “I already told you, Johnny. If we can’t avoid being members of the IPF — if Washington’s so fucking weak that we’ve got to disband practically all our defenses — then what we’ve got to do is take over the Peacekeepers ourselves.”

“Take over the Peacekeepers?” Hazard felt stunned at the thought of it.

“Damn right! Men like you and me, Johnny. It’s our duty to our country.”

“Our country,” Hazard reminded him, “has decided to join the International Peacekeeping Force and has encouraged its military officers to obtain commissions in it.”

Cardillo shook his head. “That’s our stupid goddamn government, Johnny. Not the country. Not the people who really want to defend America instead of selling her out to a bunch of fucking foreigners.”

“That government,” Hazard reminded him, “won a big majority last November.”

Cardillo made a sour face. “Ahh, the people. What the fuck do they know?”

Hazard said nothing.

“I’m telling you, Johnny, the only way to do it is to take over the IPF.”

“That’s crazy.”

“You mean if and when the time comes, you won’t go along with us?”

“I mean,” Hazard said, forcing his voice to remain calm, “that I took an oath to be loyal to the IPF. So did you.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. And what about the oath we took way back when — the one to preserve and protect the United States of America?”

“The United States of America wants us to serve in the Peacekeepers,” Hazard insisted.

Cardillo shook his head again, mournfully. Not a trace of anger. Not even disappointment. As if he had expected this reaction from Hazard. His expression was that of a salesman who could not convince his stubborn customer of the bargain he was offering.

“Your son doesn’t feel the same way you do,” Cardillo said.

Hazard immediately clamped down on the rush of emotions that surged through him. Instead of reaching across the table and dragging Cardillo to his feet and punching in his smirking face, Hazard forced a thin smile and kept his fists clenched on his lap.

“Jon Jr. is a grown man. He has the right to make his own decisions.”

“He’s serving under me, you know.” Cardillo’s eyes searched Hazard’s face intently, probing for weakness.

“Yes,” Hazard said tightly. “He told me.”

Which was an outright lie.

“Missiles approaching, sir!”

Stromsen’s tense warning snapped Hazard out of his reverie. He riveted his attention to the main CIC display screen. Six angry red dots were working their way from the periphery of the screen toward the center, which marked the location of the Hunter.

“Now we’ll see if the ABM satellites are working or not,” Hazard muttered.

“Links with the ABM sats are still good, sir,” Yang reported from her station, a shoulder’s width away from Stromsen. “The integral antennas weren’t knocked out when they hit the comm dishes.”

Hazard gave her a nod of acknowledgment. The two young women could not have looked more different: Yang was small, wiry, dark, her straight black hair cut like a military helmet; Stromsen was willowy yet broad in the beam and deep in the bosom, as blonde as butter.

“Lasers on 324 and 325 firing,” the Norwegian reported.

Hazard saw the display lights. On the main screen the six red dots flickered orange momentarily, then winked out altogether.

Stromsen pecked at her keyboard. Alphanumerics sprang up on a side screen. “Got them all while they were still in first-stage burn. They’ll never reach us.” She smiled with relief. “They’re tumbling into the atmosphere. Burn-up within seven minutes.”

Hazard allowed himself a small grin. “Don’t break out the champagne yet. That’s just their first salvo. They’re testing to see if we actually have control of the lasers.”

It’s all a question of time, Hazard knew. But how much time? What are they planning? How long before they start slicing us up with laser beams? We don’t have the shielding to protect against lasers. The stupid politicians wouldn’t allow us to armor these stations. We’re like a sitting duck up here.

“What are they trying to accomplish, sir?” asked Yang. “Why are they doing this?”

“They want to take over the whole defense network. They want to seize control of the entire IPF.”

“That’s impossible!” Stromsen blurted.

“The Russians won’t allow them to do that,” Yang said. “The Chinese and the other members of the IPF will stop them.”

“Maybe,” said Hazard. “Maybe.” He felt a slight hint of nausea ripple in his stomach. Reaching up, he touched the slippery plastic of the medicine patch behind his ear.

“Do you think they could succeed?” Stromsen asked.

“What’s important is, do they think they can succeed? There are still hundreds of ballistic missiles on Earth. Thousands of hydrogen warheads. Buckbee and his cohorts apparently believe that if they can take control of a portion of the ABM network, they can threaten a nuclear strike against the nations that don’t go along with them.”

“But the other nations will strike back and order their people in the IPF not to intercept their strikes,” said Yang.

“It will be nuclear war,” Stromsen said. “Just as if the IPF never existed.”

“Worse,” Yang pointed out, “because first there’ll be a shoot-out on each one of these battle stations.”

“That’s madness!” said Stromsen.

“That’s what we’ve got to prevent,” Hazard said grimly.

The orange light began to blink again on the comm console. Yang snapped her attention to it. “Incoming message from the Graham, sir.”

Hazard nodded. “Put it on the main screen.”

Cardillo’s crafty features appeared on the screen. He should have been still on leave back on Earth, but instead he was smiling crookedly at Hazard.

“Well, Johnny, I guess by now you’ve figured out that we mean business.”

“And so do we. Give it up, Vince. It’s not going to work.”

With a small shake of his head Cardillo answered, “It’s already working, Johnny boy. Two of the Russian battle stations are with us. So’s the Wood. The Chinks and Indians are holding out but the European station is going along with us.”

Hazard said, “So you’ve got six of the nine stations.”

“So far.”

“Then you don’t really need Hunter. You can leave us alone.”

Pursing his lips for a moment, Cardillo replied, “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Johnny. We want Hunter. We can’t afford to have you rolling around like a loose cannon. You’re either with us or against us.”

“I’m not with you,” Hazard said flatly.

Cardillo sighed theatrically. “John, there are twenty other officers and crew on your station…”

“Fourteen now,” Hazard corrected.

“Don’t you think you ought to give them a chance to make a decision about their own lives?”

Despite himself, Hazard broke into a malicious grin. “Am I hearing you straight, Vince? You’re asking the commander of a vessel to take a vote?”

Grinning back at him, Cardillo admitted, “I guess that was kind of dumb. But you do have their lives in your hands, Johnny.”

“We’re not knuckling under, Vince. And you’ve got twenty-some lives aboard the Graham, you know. Including your own. Better think about that.”

“We already have, Johnny. One of those lives is Jonathan Hazard, Jr. He’s right here on the bridge with me. A fine officer, Johnny. You should be proud of him.”

A hostage, Hazard realized. They’re using Jon Jr. as a hostage.

“Do you want to talk with him?” Cardillo asked.

Hazard nodded.

Cardillo slid out of view and a younger man’s face appeared on the screen. Jon Jr. looked tense, strained. This isn’t any easier for him than it is for me, Hazard thought. He studied his son’s face. Youthful, clear-eyed, a square-jawed honest face. Hazard was startled to realize that he had seen that face before, in his own Academy graduation photo.

“How are you, son?”

“I’m fine, Dad. And you?”

“Are we really on opposite sides of this?”

Jon Jr.’s eyes flicked away for a moment, then turned back to look squarely at his father’s. “I’m afraid so, Dad.”

“But why?” Hazard felt genuinely bewildered that his son did not see things the way he did.

“The IPF is dangerous,” Jon Jr. said. “It’s the first step toward a world government. The Third World nations want to bleed the industrialized nations dry. They want to grab all our wealth for themselves. The first step is to disarm us, under the pretense of preventing nuclear war. Then, once we’re disarmed, they’re going to take over everything — using the IPF as their armed forces.”

“That’s what they’ve told you,” Hazard said.

“That’s what I know, Dad. It’s true. I know it is.”

“And your answer is to take over the IPF and use it as your armed forces to control the rest of the world, is that it?”

“Better us than them.”

Hazard shook his head. “They’re using you, son. Cardillo and Buckbee and the rest of those maniacs; you’re in with a bunch of would-be Napoleons.”

Jon Jr. smiled pityingly at his father. “I knew you’d say something like that.”

Hazard put up a beefy hand. “I don’t want to argue with you, son. But I can’t go along with you.”

“You’re going to force us to attack your station.”

“I’ll fight back.”

His son’s smile turned sardonic. “Like you did in Brussels?”

Hazard felt it like a punch in his gut. He grunted with the pain of it. Wordlessly he reached out and clicked off the comm screen.

Brussels.

They had thought it was just another one of those endless Easter Sunday demonstrations. A peace march. The Greens, the Nuclear Winter freaks, the Neutralists, peaceniks of one stripe or another. Swarms of little old ladies in their Easter frocks, limping old war veterans, kids of all ages. Teenagers, lots of them. In blue jeans and denim jackets. Young women in shorts and tight T-shirts.

The guards in front of NATO’s headquarters complex took no particular note of the older youths and women mixed in with the teens. They failed to detect the hard, calculating eyes and the snub-nosed guns and grenades hidden under jackets and sweaters.

Suddenly the peaceful parade dissolved into a mass of screaming wild people. The guards were cut down mercilessly and the cadre of terrorists fought their way into the main building of NATO headquarters. They forced dozens of peaceful marchers to go in with them, as shields and hostages.

Captain J. W. Hazard, USN, was not on duty that Sunday, but he was in his office nevertheless, attending to some paperwork that he wanted out of the way before the start of business on Monday morning.

Unarmed, he was swiftly captured by the terrorists, beaten bloody for the fun of it, and then locked in a toilet. When the terrorists realized that he was the highest-ranking officer in the building, Hazard was dragged out and commanded to open the security vault where the most sensitive NATO documents were stored.

Hazard refused. The terrorists began shooting hostages. After the second murder Hazard opened the vault for them. Top-secret battle plans, maps showing locations of nuclear weapons, and hundreds of other documents were taken by the terrorists and never found, even after an American-led strike force retook the building in a bloody battle that killed all but four of the hostages.

Hazard stood before the blank comm screen for a moment, his softbooted feet not quite touching the deck, his mind racing.

They’ve even figured that angle, he said to himself. They know I caved in at Brussels and they expect me to cave in here. Some sonofabitch has grabbed my psych records and come to the conclusion that I’ll react the same way now as I did then. Some sonofabitch. And they got my son to stick the knife in me.

The sound of the hatch clattering open stirred Hazard. Feeney floated through the hatch and grabbed an overhead handgrip.

“The crew’s at battle stations, sir,” he said, slightly breathless. “Standing by for further orders.”

It struck Hazard that only a few minutes had passed since he himself had entered the CIC.

“Very good. Mr. Feeney,” he said. “With the bridge out, we’re going to have to control the station from here. Feeney, take the con. Miss Stromsen, how much time before we can make direct contact with Geneva?”

“Forty minutes, sir,” she sang out, then corrected, “Actually, thirty-nine fifty.”

Feeney was worming his softboots against the Velcro strip in front of the propulsion-and-control console.

“Take her down, Mr. Feeney.”

The Irishman’s eyes widened with surprise. “Down, sir?”

Hazard made himself smile. “Down. To the altitude of the ABM satellites. Now.”

“Yes, sir.” Feeney began carefully pecking out commands on the keyboard before him.

“I’m not just reacting like an old submariner,” Hazard reassured his young officers. “I want to get us to a lower altitude so we won’t be such a good target for so many of their lasers. Shrink our horizon. We’re a sitting duck up here.”

Yang grinned back at him. “I didn’t think you expected to outmaneuver a laser beam, sir.”

“No, but we can take ourselves out of range of most of their satellites.”

Most, Hazard knew, but not all.

“Miss Stromsen, will you set up a simulation for me? I want to know how many unfriendly satellites can attack us at various altitudes, and what their positions would be compared to our own. I want a solution that tells me where we’ll be safest.”

“Right away, sir,” Stromsen said. “What minimum altitude shall I plug in?”

“Go right down to the deck,” Hazard said. “Low enough to boil the paint off.”

“The station isn’t built for reentry into the atmosphere, sir!”

“I know. But see how low we can get.”

The old submariner’s instinct: run silent, run deep. So the bastards think I’ll fold up, just like I did at Brussels, Hazard fumed inwardly. Two big differences, Cardillo and friends. Two very big differences. In Brussels the hostages were civilians, not military men and women. And in Brussels I didn’t have any weapons to fight back with.

He knew the micropuffs of thrust from the maneuvering rockets were hardly strong enough to be felt, yet Hazard’s stomach lurched and heaved suddenly.

“We have retro burn,” Feeney said. “Altitude decreasing.”

My damned stomach’s more sensitive than his instruments, Hazard grumbled to himself.

“Incoming message from Graham, sir,” said Yang.

“Ignore it.”

“Sir,” Yang said, turning slightly toward him, “I’ve been thinking about the minimum altitude we can achieve. Although the station is not equipped for atmospheric reentry, we do carry the four emergency evacuation spacecraft and they do have heat shields.”

“Are you suggesting we abandon the station?”

“Oh, no, sir! But perhaps we could move the spacecraft to a position where they would be between us and the atmosphere. Let their heat shields protect us — sort of like riding a surfboard.”

Feeney laughed. “Trust a California girl to come up with a solution like that!”

“It might be a workable idea,” Hazard said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“We’re being illuminated by a laser beam,” Stromsen said tensely. “Low power — so far.”

“They’re tracking us.”

Hazard ordered, “Yang, take over the simulation problem. Stromsen, give me a wide radar sweep. I want to see if they’re moving any of their ABM satellites to counter our maneuver.”

“I have been sweeping, sir. No satellite activity yet.”

Hazard grunted. Yet. She knows that all they have to do is maneuver a few of their satellites to higher orbits and they’ll have us in their sights.

To Yang he called, “Any response from the commsats?”

“No, sir,” she replied immediately. “Either their laser receptors are not functioning or the satellites themselves are inoperative.”

They couldn’t have knocked out the commsats altogether, Hazard told himself. How would they communicate with one another? Cardillo claims the Wood and two of the Soviet stations are on their side. And the Europeans. He put a finger to his lips unconsciously, trying to remember Cardillo’s exact words. The Europeans are going along with us. That’s what he said. Maybe they’re not actively involved in this. Maybe they’re playing a wait-and-see game.

Either way, we’re alone. They’ve got four, maybe five, out of the nine battle stations. We can’t contact the Chinese or Indians. We don’t know which Russian satellite hasn’t joined in with them. It’ll be more than a half hour before we can contact Geneva, and even then what the hell can they do?

Alone. Well, it won’t be for the first time. Submariners are accustomed to being on their own.

“Sir,” Yang reported, the Graham is still trying to reach us. Very urgent, they’re saying.

“Tell them I’m not available but you will record their message and personally give it to me.” Turning to the Norwegian lieutenant, “Miss Stromsen, I want all crew members in their pressure suits. And levels one and two of the station are to be abandoned. No one above level three except the damage-control team. We’re going to take some hits and I want everyone protected as much as possible.”

She nodded and glanced at the others. All three of them looked tense, but not afraid. The fear was there, of course, underneath. But they were in control of themselves. Their eyes were clear, their hands steady.

“Should I have the air pumped out of levels one and two — after they’re cleared of personnel?”

“No,” Hazard said. “Let them outgas when they’re hit. Might fool the bastards into thinking they’re doing more damage than they really are.”

Feeney smiled weakly. “Sounds like the boxer who threatened to bleed all over his opponent.”

Hazard glared at him. Stromsen took up the headset from her console and began issuing orders into the pin-sized microphone.

“The computer simulation is finished, sir,” said Yang.

“Put it on my screen here.”

He studied the graphics for a moment, sensing Feeney peering over his shoulder. Their safest altitude was the lowest, where only six ABM satellites could “see” them. The fifteen laser-armed satellites under their own control would surround them like a cavalry escort.

“There it is, Mr. Feeney. Plug that into your navigation program. That’s where we want to be.”

“Aye, sir.”

The CIC shuddered. The screens dimmed for a moment, then came back to their full brightness.

“We’ve been hit!” Stromsen called out.

“Where? How bad?”

“Just aft of the main power generator. Outer hull ruptured. Storage area eight—medical, dental, and food-supplement supplies.”

“So they got the Band-Aids and vitamin pills,” Yang joked shakily.

“But they’re going after the power generator,” said Hazard. “Any casualties?”

“No, sir,” reported Stromsen. “No personnel stationed there during general quarters.”

He grasped Feeney’s thin shoulder. “Turn us over, man. Get that generator away from their beams!”

Feeney nodded hurriedly and flicked his stubby fingers across his keyboard. Hazard knew it was all in his imagination, but his stomach rolled sickeningly as the station rotated.

Hanging grimly to a handgrip, he said, “I want each of you to get into your pressure suits, starting with you, Miss Stromsen. Yang, take over her console until she…”

The chamber shook again. Another hit.

“Can’t we strike back at them?” Stromsen cried.

Hazard asked, “How many satellites are firing at us?”

She glanced at her display screens. “It seems to be only one — so far.”

“Hit it.”

Her lips curled slightly in a Valkyrie’s smile. She tapped out commands on her console and then leaned on the final button hard enough to lift her boots off the Velcro.

“Got him!” Stromsen exulted. “That’s one laser that won’t bother us again.”

Yang and Feeney were grinning. Hazard asked the communications officer, “Let me hear what the Graham has been saying.”

It was Buckbee’s voice on the recording. “Hazard, you are not to attempt to change your orbital altitude. If you don’t return to your original altitude immediately, we will fire on you.”

“Well, they know by now that we’re not paying attention to them,” Hazard said to his three young officers. “If I know them, they’re going to take a few minutes to think things over, especially now that we’ve shown them we’re ready to hit back. Stromsen, get into your suit. Feeney, you’re next, then Yang. Move!”

It took fifteen minutes before the three of them were back in the CIC inside the bulky space suits, flexing gloved fingers, glancing about from inside the helmets. They all kept their visors up, and Hazard said nothing about it. Difficult enough to work inside the damned suits, he thought. They can snap the visors down fast enough if it comes to that.

The compact CIC became even more crowded. Despite decades of research and development, the space suits still bulked nearly twice as large as an unsuited person.

Suddenly Hazard felt an overpowering urge to get away from the CIC, away from the tension he saw in their young faces, away from the sweaty odor of fear, away from the responsibility for their lives.

“I’m going for my suit,” he said, “and then a fast inspection tour of the station. Think you three can handle things on your own for a few minutes?”

Three heads bobbed inside their helmets. Three voices chorused, “Yes, sir.”

“Fire on any satellite that fires at us,” he commanded. “Tape all incoming messages. If there’s any change in their tune, call me on the intercom.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Feeney, how long until we reach our final altitude?”

“More than an hour, sir.”

“No way to move her faster?”

“I could get outside and push, I suppose.”

Hazard grinned at him. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Feeney.” Not yet, he added silently.

Pushing through the hatch into the passageway, Hazard saw that there was one pressure suit hanging on its rack in the locker just outside the CIC hatch. He passed it and went to his personal locker and his own suit. It’s good to leave them on their own for a while, he told himself. Build up their confidence. But he knew that he had to get away from them, even if only for a few minutes.

His personal space suit smelled of untainted plastic and fresh rubber, like a new car. As Hazard squirmed into it, its joints felt stiff — or maybe it’s me, he thought. The helmet slipped from his gloved hands and went spinning away from him, floating off like a severed head. Hazard retrieved it and pulled it on. Like the youngsters, he kept the visor open.

His first stop was the bridge. Varshni was hovering in the companionway just outside the airtight hatch that sealed off the devastated area. Two other space-suited men were zippering an unrecognizably mangled body into a long black-plastic bag. Three other bags floated alongside them, already filled and sealed.

Even inside a pressure suit, the Indian seemed small, frail, like a skinny child. He was huddled next to the body bags, bent over almost into a fetal position. There were tears in his eyes. “These are all we could find. The two others must have been blown out of the station completely.”

Hazard put a gloved hand on the shoulder of his suit.

“They were my friends,” Varshni said.

“It must have been painless,” Hazard heard himself say. It sounded stupid.

“I wish I could believe that.”

“There’s more damage to inspect, over by the power generator area. Is your team nearly finished here?”

“Another few minutes, I think. We must make certain that all the wiring and air lines have been properly sealed off.”

“They can handle that themselves. Come on, you and I will check it out together.”

“Yes, sir,” Varshni spoke into his helmet microphone briefly, then straightened up and tried to smile. “I am ready, sir.”

The two men glided up a passageway that led to the outermost level of the station, Hazard wondering what would happen if a laser attack hit the area while they were in it. Takes a second or two to slice the hull open, he thought. Enough time to flip your visor down and grab on to something before the air blowout sucks you out of the station.

Still, he slid his visor down and ordered Varshni to do the same. He was only mildly surprised when the Indian replied that he already had.

Wish the station were shielded. Wish they had designed it to withstand attack. Then he grumbled inwardly, wishes are for losers; winners use what they have. But the thought nagged at him. What genius put the power generator next to the unarmored hull? Damned politicians wouldn’t allow shielding; they wanted the stations to be vulnerable. A sign of goodwill, as far as they’re concerned. They thought nobody would attack an unshielded station because the attacker’s station is also unshielded. We’re all in this together, try to hurt me and I’ll hurt you. A hangover from the old mutual-destruction kind of dogma. Absolute bullshit.

There ought to be some way to protect ourselves from lasers. They shouldn’t put people up here like sacrificial lambs.

Hazard glanced at Varshni, whose face was hidden behind his helmet visor. He thought of his son. Sheila had ten years to poison his mind against me. Ten years. He wanted to hate her for that, but he found that he could not. He had been a poor husband and a worse father. Jon Jr. had every right to loathe his father. But dammit, this is more important than family arguments! Why can’t the boy see what’s at stake here? Just because he’s sore at his father doesn’t mean he has to take total leave of his senses.

They approached a hatch where the red warning light was blinking balefully. They checked the hatch behind them, made certain it was airtight, then used the wall-mounted keyboard to start the pumps that would evacuate that section of the passageway, turning it into an elongated air lock.

Finally they could open the farther hatch and glide into the wrecked storage magazine.

Hazard grabbed a handhold. “Better use tethers here,” he said.

Varshni had already unwound the tether from his waist and clipped it to a hold.

It was a small magazine, little more than a closet. In the light from their helmet lamps, they saw cartons of pharmaceuticals securely anchored to the shelves with toothed plastic straps. A gash had been torn in the hull, and through it Hazard could see the darkness of space. The laser beam had penetrated into the cartons and shelving, slicing a neat burned-edge slash through everything it touched.

Varshni floated upward toward the rent. It was as smooth as a surgeon’s incision, and curled back slightly where the air pressure had pushed the thin metal outward in its rush to escape to vacuum.

“No wiring here,” Varshni’s voice said in Hazard’s helmet earphones. “No plumbing either. We were fortunate.”

“They were aiming for the power generator.”

The Indian pushed himself back down toward Hazard. His face was hidden behind the visor. “Ah, yes, that is an important target. We were very fortunate that they missed.”

“They’ll try again,” Hazard said.

“Yes, of course.”

“Commander Hazard!” Yang’s voice sounded urgent. “I think you should hear the latest message from Graham, sir.”

Nodding unconsciously inside his helmet, Hazard said, “Patch it through.”

He heard a click, then Buckbee’s voice. “Hazard, we’ve been very patient with you. We’re finished playing games. You bring the Hunter back to its normal altitude and surrender the station to us or we’ll slice you to pieces. You’ve got five minutes to answer.”

The voice shut off so abruptly that Hazard could picture Buckbee slamming his fist against the Off key.

“How long ago did this come through?”

“Transmission terminated thirty seconds ago, sir,” said Yang.

Hazard looked down at Varshni’s slight form. He knew that Varshni had heard the ultimatum just as he had. He could not see the Indian’s face, but the slump of his shoulders told him how Varshni felt.

Yang asked, “Sir, do you want me to set up a link with Graham?”

“No,” said Hazard.

“I don’t think they intend to call again, sir,” Yang said. “They expect you to call them.”

“Not yet,” he said. He turned to the wavering form beside him. “Better straighten up, Mr. Varshni. There’s going to be a lot of work for you and your damage-control team to do. We’re in for a rough time.”

Ordering Varshni back to his team at the ruins of the bridge, Hazard made his way toward the CIC. He spoke into his helmet mike as he pulled himself along the passageways, hand over hand, as fast as he could go:

“Mr. Feeney, you are to fire at any satellites that fire on us. And at any ABM satellites that begin maneuvering to gain altitude so they can look down on us. Understand?”

“Understood, sir!”

“Miss Stromsen, I believe the fire-control panel is part of your responsibility. You will take your orders from Mr. Feeney.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miss Yang, I want that simulation of our position and altitude updated to show exactly which ABM satellites under hostile control are in a position to fire upon us.”

“I already have that in the program, sir.”

“Good. I want our four lifeboats detached from the station and placed in positions where their heat shields can intercept incoming laser beams.”

For the first time, Yang’s voice sounded uncertain. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, sir.”

Hazard was sweating and panting with the exertion of hauling himself along the passageway. This suit won’t smell new anymore, he thought.

To Yang he explained, “We can use the lifeboats’ heat shields as armor to absorb or deflect incoming laser beams. Not just shielding, but active armor. We can move the boats to protect the most likely areas for laser beams to come from.”

“Like the goalie in a hockey game!” Feeney chirped. “Cutting down the angles.”

“Exactly.”

By the time he reached the CIC they were already working the problems. Hazard saw that Stromsen had the heaviest work load: all the station systems’ status displays, fire control for the laser-armed ABM satellites, and control of the lifeboats now hovering dozens of meters away from the station.

“Miss Stromsen, please transfer the fire-control responsibility to Mr. Feeney.”

The expression on her strong-jawed face, half hidden inside her helmet, was pure stubborn indignation.

Jabbing a gloved thumb toward the lightning-slash insignia on the shoulder of Feeney’s suit, Hazard said, “He is a weapons specialist, after all.”

Stromsen’s lips twitched slightly and she tapped at the keyboard to her left; the fire-control displays disappeared from the screens above it, only to spring up on screens in front of Feeney’s position.

Hazard nodded as he lifted his own visor. “Okay, now. Feeney, you’re the offense. Stromsen, you’re the defense. Miss Yang, your job is to keep Miss Stromsen continuously advised as to where the best placement of the lifeboats will be.”

Yang nodded, her dark eyes sparkling with the challenge. “Sir, you can’t possibly expect us to predict all the possible paths a beam might take and get a lifeboat’s heat shield in place soon enough…”

“I expect — as Lord Nelson once said — each of you to do your best. Now get Buckbee or Cardillo or whoever on the horn. I’m ready to talk to them.”

It took a few moments for the communications laser to lock onto the distant Graham, but when Buckbee’s face finally appeared on the screen, he was smiling — almost gloating.

“You’ve still got a minute and a half, Hazard. I’m glad you’ve come to your senses before we had to open fire on you.”

“I’m only calling to warn you: any satellite that fires on us will be destroyed. Any satellite that maneuvers to put its lasers in a better position to hit us will also be destroyed.”

Buckbee’s jaw dropped open. His eyes widened.

“I’ve got fifteen ABM satellites under my control,” Hazard continued, “and I’m going to use them.”

“You can’t threaten us!” Buckbee sputtered. “We’ll wipe you out!”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I intend to fight until the very last breath.”

“You’re crazy, Hazard!”

“Am I? Your game is to take over the whole defense system and threaten a nuclear missile strike against any nation that doesn’t go along with you. Well, if your satellites are exhausted or destroyed, you won’t be much of a threat to anybody, will you? Try impressing the Chinese with a beat-up network. They’ve got enough missiles to wipe out Europe and North America, and they’ll use them. If you don’t have enough left to stop those missiles, then who’s threatening whom?”

“You can’t…”

“Listen!” Hazard snapped. “How many of your satellites will be left by the time you overcome us? How much of a hole will we rip in your plans? Geneva will be able to blow you out of the sky with ground-launched missiles by the time you’re finished with us.”

“They’d never do such a thing.”

“Are you sure?”

Buckbee looked away from Hazard, toward someone off-camera. He moved off, and Cardillo slid into view. He was no longer smiling.

“Nice try, Johnny, but you’re bluffing and we both know it. Give up now or we’re going to have to wipe you out.”

“You can try, Vince. But you won’t win.”

“If we go, your son goes with us,” Cardillo said.

Hazard forced his voice to remain level. “There’s nothing I can do about that. He’s a grown man. He’s made his choice.”

Cardillo huffed out a long, impatient sigh. “All right, Johnny. It was nice knowing you.”

Hazard grimaced. Another lie, he thought. The man must be categorically unable to speak the truth.

The comm screen blanked.

“Are the lifeboats in place?” he asked.

“As good as we can get them,” Yang said, her voice doubtful. “Not too far from the station,” Hazard warned. “I don’t want them to show up as separate blips on their radar.”

“Yes, sir, we know.”

He nodded at them. Good kids, he thought. Ready to fight it out on my say-so. How far will they go before they crack? How much damage can we take before they scream to surrender?

They waited. Not a sound in the womb-shaped chamber, except for the hum of the electrical equipment and the whisper of air circulation. Hazard glided to a position slightly behind the two women. Feeney can handle the counterattack, he said to himself. That’s simple enough. It’s the defense that’s going to win or lose for us.

On the display screens he saw the positions of the station and the hostile ABM satellites. Eleven of them in range. Eleven lines straight as laser beams converged on the station. Small orange blips representing the four lifeboats hovered around the central pulsing yellow dot that represented the station. The orange blips blocked nine of the converging lines. Two others passed between the lifeboat positions and reached the station itself.

“Miss Stromsen,” Hazard said softly.

She jerked as if a hot needle had been stuck into her flesh.

“Easy now,” Hazard said. “All I want to tell you is that you should be prepared to move the lifeboats to intercept any beams that are getting through.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

Speaking as soothingly as he could, Hazard went on, “I doubt that they’ll fire all eleven lasers at us at once. And as our altitude decreases, there will be fewer and fewer of their satellites in range of us. We have a good chance of getting through this without too much damage.”

Stromsen turned her whole space-suited body so that she could look at him from inside her helmet. “It’s good of you to say so, sir. I know you’re trying to cheer us up, and I’m certain we all appreciate it. But you are taking my attention away from the screens.”

Yang giggled, whether out of tension or actual humor at Stromsen’s retort, Hazard could not tell.

Feeney sang out, “I’ve got a satellite climbing on us!”

Before Hazard could speak, Feeney’s hands were moving on his console keyboard. “Our beasties are now programmed for automatic, but I’m tapping in a backup manually, just in — ah! Got her! Scratch one enemy.”

Smiles all around. But behind his grin, Hazard wondered, Can they gin up decoys? Something that gives the same radar signature as an ABM satellite but really isn’t? I don’t think so — but I don’t know for sure.

“Laser beam…two of them,” called Stromsen.

Hazard saw the display screen light up. Both beams were hitting the same lifeboat. Then a third beam from the opposite direction lanced out.

The station shuddered momentarily as Stromsen’s fingers flew over her keyboard and one of the orange dots shifted slightly to block the third beam.

“Where’d it hit?” he asked the Norwegian as the beams winked off.

“Just aft of the emergency oxygen tanks, sir.”

Christ, Hazard thought, if they hit the tanks, enough oxygen will blow out of here to start us spinning like a top.

“Vent the emergency oxygen.”

“Vent it, sir?”

“Now!”

Stromsen pecked angrily at the keyboard to her left. “Venting. Sir.”

“I don’t want that gas spurting out and acting like a rocket thruster,” Hazard explained to her back. “Besides, it’s an old submariner’s trick to let the attacker think he’s caused real damage by jettisoning junk.”

If any of them had reservations about getting rid of their emergency oxygen, they kept them quiet.

There was plenty of junk to jettison, over the next quarter of an hour. Laser beams struck the station repeatedly, although Stromsen was able to block most of the beams with the heat-shielded lifeboats. Still, despite the mobile shields, the station was being slashed apart, bit by bit. Chunks of the outer hull ripped away, clouds of air blowing out of the upper level to form a brief fog around the station before dissipating into the vacuum of space. Cartons of supplies, pieces of equipment, even spare space suits, went spiraling out, pushed by air pressure as the compartments in which they had been housed were ripped apart by the probing incessant beams of energy.

Feeney struck back at the ABM satellites, but for every one he hit, another maneuvered into range to replace it.

“I’m running low on fuel for the lasers,” he reported.

“So must they,” said Hazard, trying to sound calm. “Aye, but they’ve got a few more than fifteen to play with.”

“Stay with it, Mr. Feeney. You’re doing fine.” Hazard patted the shoulder of the Irishman’s bulky suit. Glancing at Stromsen’s status displays, he saw rows of red lights glowering like accusing eyes. They’re taking the station apart, piece by piece. It’s only a matter of time before we’re finished.

Aloud, he announced, “I’m going to check with the damage-control party. Call me if anything unusual happens.”

Yang quipped, “How do you define ‘unusual,’ sir?” Stromsen and Feeney laughed. Hazard wished he could, too. He made do with flashing a brief grin the Chinese-American, thinking, at least their morale hasn’t cracked. Not yet.

The damage-control party was working on level three, reconnecting a secondary power line that ran along the overhead through the main passageway. A laser beam had burned through the deck of the second level and severed the line, cutting power to the station’s main computer. A shaft of brilliant sunlight lanced down from the outer hull through two levels of the station and onto the deck of level three.

One space-suited figure was dangling upside-down halfway through the hole in the overhead, splicing cable carefully with gloved hands, while a second hovered nearby with a small welding torch. Two more were working farther down the passageway, where a larger hole had been burned halfway down the bulkhead.

Through that jagged rip Hazard could see clear out to space and the rim of the Earth, glaring bright with swirls of white clouds.

He recognized Varshni by his small size even before he could see the Indian flag on his shoulder or read the name stenciled on the front of his suit.

“Mr. Varshni, I want you and your crew to leave level three. It’s getting too dangerous here.”

“But, sir,” Varshni protested, “our duty is to repair damage.”

“There’ll be damage on level four soon enough.”

“But the computer requires power.”

“It can run on its internal batteries.”

“But for how long?”

“Long enough,” said Hazard grimly.

Varshni refused to be placated. “I am not risking lives unnecessarily, sir.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I am operating on sound principles,” the Indian insisted, “exactly as required in the book of regulations.”

“I’m not faulting you, man. You and your crew have done a fine job.”

The others had stopped their work. They were watching the exchange between their superior and the station commander.

“I have operated on the principle that lightning does not strike twice in the same place. In old-fashioned naval parlance this is referred to, I believe, as ‘chasing salvos.’”

Hazard stared at the diminutive Indian. Even inside the visored space suit, Varshni appeared stiff with anger. Chasing salvos — that’s what a little ship does when it’s under attack by a bigger ship: run to where the last shells splashed, because it’s pretty certain that the next salvo won’t hit there. I’ve insulted his abilities, Hazard realized. And in front of his team. Damned fool!

“Mr. Varshni,” Hazard explained slowly, “this battle will be decided, one way or the other, in the next twenty minutes or so. You and your team have done an excellent job of keeping damage to a minimum. Without you, we would have been forced to surrender.”

Varshni seemed to relax a little. Hazard could sense his chin rising a notch inside his helmet.

“But the battle is entering a new phase,” Hazard went on. “Level three is now vulnerable to direct laser damage. I can’t afford to lose you and your team at this critical stage. Moreover, the computer and the rest of the most sensitive equipment are on level four and in the Combat Information Center. Those are the areas that need our protection and those are the areas where I want you to operate. Is that understood?”

A heartbeat’s hesitation. Then Varshni said, “Yes, of course, sir. I understand. Thank you for explaining it to me.”

“Okay. Now finish your work here and then get down to level four.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shaking his head inside his helmet, Hazard turned and pushed himself toward the ladderway that led down to level four and the CIC.

A blinding glare lit the passageway and he heard screams of agony behind him. Blinking against the burning afterimage, Hazard turned to see Varshni’s figure almost sliced in half. A dark burn line slashed diagonally across the torso of his space suit. Tiny globules of blood floated out from it. The metal overhead was blackened and curled now. A woman was screaming. She was up by the overhead, thrashing wildly with pain, her backpack ablaze. The other technician was nowhere to be seen.

Hazard rushed to the Indian while the other two members of the damage-control team raced to their partner and sprayed extinguisher foam on her backpack.

Over the woman’s screams he heard Varshni’s gagging whisper. “It’s no use, sir…no use…”

“You did fine, son.” Hazard held the dying little man in his arms. “You did fine.”

He felt the life slip away. Lightning does strike in the same place twice, Hazard thought. You’ve chased your last salvo, son.

Both the man and the woman who had been working on the power cable had been wounded by the laser beam. The man’s right arm had been sliced off at the elbow, the woman badly burned on her back when her life-support pack exploded. Hazard and the two remaining damage-control men carried them to the sick bay, where the station’s one doctor was already working over three other casualties.

The sick bay was on the third level. Hazard realized how vulnerable that was. He made his way down to the CIC, at the heart of the station, knowing that it was protected not only by layers of metal but by human flesh as well. The station rocked again and Hazard heard the ominous groaning of tortured metal as he pushed weightlessly along the ladderway.

He felt bone-weary as he opened the hatch and floated into the CIC. One look at the haggard faces of his three young officers told him that they were on the edge of defeat as well. Stromsen’s status display board was studded with glowering red lights.

“This station is starting to resemble a piece of Swiss cheese,” Hazard quipped lamely as he lifted the visor of his helmet.

No one laughed. Or even smiled.

“Varshni bought it,” he said, taking up his post between Stromsen and Feeney.

“We heard it,” said Yang.

Hazard looked around the CIC. It felt stifling hot, dank with the smell of fear.

“Mr. Feeney,” he said, “discontinue all offensive operations.”

“Sir?” The Irishman’s voice squeaked with surprise.

“Don’t fire back at the sonsofbitches,” Hazard snapped. “Is that clear enough?”

Feeney raised his hands up above his shoulders, like a croupier showing that he was not influencing the roulette wheel.

“Miss Stromsen, when the next laser beam is fired at us, shut down the main power generator. Miss Yang, issue instructions over the intercom that all personnel are to place themselves on level four—except for the sick bay. No one is to use the intercom. That is an order.”

Stromsen asked, “The power generator?”

“We’ll run on the backup fuel cells and batteries. They don’t make so much heat.”

There were more questions in Stromsen’s eyes, but she turned back to her consoles silently.

Hazard explained, “We are going to run silent. Buckbee, Cardillo, and company have been pounding the hell out of us for about half an hour. They have inflicted considerable damage. However, they don’t know that we’ve been able to shield ourselves with the lifeboats. They think they’ve hurt us much more than they actually have.”

“You want them to think that they’ve finished us off, then?” asked Feeney.

“That’s right. But, Mr. Feeney, let me ask you a hypothetical question…”

The chamber shook again and the screens dimmed, then came back to their normal brightness.

Stromsen punched a key on her console. “Main generator shut down, sir.”

Hazard knew it was his imagination, but the screens seemed to become slightly dimmer.

“Miss Yang?” he asked.

“All personnel have been instructed to move down to level four and stay off the intercom.”

Hazard nodded, satisfied. Turning back to Feeney, he resumed, “Suppose, Mr. Feeney, that you are in command of Graham. How would you know that you’ve knocked out Hunter?”

Feeney absently started to stroke his chin and bumped his fingertips against the rim of his helmet instead. “I suppose…if Hunter stopped shooting back, and I couldn’t detect any radio emissions from her…”

“And infrared!” Yang added. “With the power generator out, our infrared signature goes way down.”

“We appear to be dead in the water,” said Stromsen.

“Right.”

“But what does it gain us?” Yang asked.

“Time,” answered Stromsen. “In another ten minutes or so we’ll be within contact range of Geneva.”

Hazard patted the top of her helmet. “Exactly. But more than that. We get them to stop shooting at us. We save the wounded up in the sick bay.”

“And ourselves,” said Feeney.

“Yes,” Hazard admitted. “And ourselves.” For long moments they hung weightlessly, silent, waiting, hoping.

“Sir,” said Yang, “a query from Graham, asking if we surrender.”

“No reply,” Hazard ordered. “Maintain complete silence.”

The minutes stretched. Hazard glided to Yang’s comm console and taped a message for Geneva, swiftly outlining what had happened.

“I want that tape compressed into a couple of milliseconds and burped by the tightest laser beam we have down to Geneva.”

Yang nodded. “I suppose the energy surge for a low-power communications laser won’t be enough for them to detect.”

“Probably not, but it’s a chance we’ll have to take. Beam it at irregular intervals as long as Geneva is in view.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir!” Feeney called out. “Looks like Graham’s detached a lifeboat.”

“Trajectory analysis?”

Feeney tapped at his navigation console. “Heading for us,” he reported.

Hazard smiled grimly.

“They’re coming over to make sure. Cardillo’s an old submariner; he knows all about running silent. They’re sending over an armed party to make sure we’re finished.”

“And to take control of our satellites,” Yang suggested.

Hazard brightened. “Right! There’re only two ways to control the ABM satellites — either from the station on patrol or from Geneva.” He spread his arms happily. “That means they’re not in control of Geneva! We’ve got a good chance to pull their cork!”

But there was no response from Geneva when they beamed their data-compressed message to IPF headquarters. Hunter glided past in its unusually low orbit, a tattered wreck desperately calling for help. No answer reached them.

And the lifeboat from Graham moved inexorably closer.

The gloom in the CIC was thick enough to stuff a mattress as Geneva disappeared over the horizon and the boat from Graham came toward them. Hazard watched the boat on one of Stromsen’s screens: it was bright and shining in the sunlight, not blackened by scorching laser beams, unsullied by splashes of human blood.

We could zap it into dust, he thought. One word from me and Feeney could focus half a dozen lasers on it. The men aboard her must be volunteers, willing to risk their necks to make certain that we’re finished. He felt a grim admiration for them. Then he wondered, is Jon on board with them?

“Mr. Feeney, what kind of weapons do you think they’re carrying?”

Feeney’s brows rose toward his scalp. “Weapons, sir? You mean, like sidearms?”

Hazard nodded.

“Personal weapons are not allowed aboard station, sir. Regulations forbid it.”

“I know. But what do you bet they’ve got pistols, at least. Maybe some submachine guns.”

“Damned dangerous stuff for a space station,” said Feeney.

Hazard smiled tightly at the Irishman. “Are you afraid they’ll put a few more holes in our hull?”

Yang saw what he was driving at. “Sir, there are no weapons aboard Hunter—unless you want to count kitchen knives.”

“They’ll be coming aboard with guns, just to make sure,” Hazard said. “I want to capture them alive and use them as hostages. That’s our last remaining card. If we can’t do that, we’ve got to surrender.”

“They’ll be in full suits.” said Stromsen. “Each on his own individual life-support system.”

“How can we capture them? Or even fight them?” Yang wondered aloud.

Hazard detected no hint of defeat in their voices. The despair of a half hour earlier was gone now. A new excitement had hold of them. He was holding a glimmer of hope for them, and they were reaching for it.

“There can’t be more than six of them aboard that boat,” Feeney mused.

I wonder if Cardillo has the guts to lead the boarding party in person, Hazard asked himself.

“We don’t have any useful weapons,” said Yang.

“But we have some tools,” Stromsen pointed out. “Maybe…”

“What do the lifeboat engines use for propellant?” Hazard asked rhetorically.

“Methane and oh-eff-two,” Feeney replied, looking puzzled.

Hazard nodded. “Miss Stromsen, which of our supply magazines are still intact — if any?”

It took them several minutes to understand what he was driving at, but when they finally saw the light, the three young officers went speedily to work. Together with the four unwounded members of the crew, they prepared a welcome for the boarders from Graham.

Finally, Hazard watched on Stromsen’s display screens as the Graham’s boat sniffed around the battered station. Strict silence was in force aboard Hunter. Even in the CIC, deep at the heart of the battle station, they spoke in tense whispers.

“I hope the bastards like what they see,” Hazard muttered.

“They know that we used the lifeboats for shields,” said Yang.

“Active armor,” Hazard said. “Did you know the idea was invented by the man this station’s named after?”

“They’re looking for a docking port,” Stromsen pointed out.

“Only one left,” said Feeney.

They could hang their boat almost anywhere and walk in through the holes they’ve put in us, Hazard said to himself. But they won’t. They’ll go by the book and find an intact docking port. They’ve got to! Everything depends on that.

He felt his palms getting slippery with nervous perspiration as the lifeboat slowly, slowly moved around Hunter toward the Earth-facing side, where the only usable port was located. Hazard had seen to it that all the other ports had been disabled.

“They’re buying it!” Stromsen’s whisper held a note of triumph.

“Sir!” Yang hissed urgently. “A message just came in — laser beam, ultracompressed.”

“From where?”

“Computer’s decrypting,” she replied, her snub-nosed face wrinkled with concentration. “Coming up on my center screen, sir.”

Hazard slid over toward her. The words on the screen read:

From: IPF Regional HQ, Lagos.

To: Commander, battle station Hunter.

Message begins. Coup attempt in Geneva a failure, thanks in large part to your refusal to surrender your command. Situation still unclear, however. Imperative you retain control of Hunter, at all costs. Message ends.

He read it aloud, in a guttural whisper, so that Feeney and Stromsen understood what was at stake.

“We’re not alone,” Hazard told them. “They know what’s happening, and help is on the way.”

That was stretching the facts, he knew. And he knew they knew. But it was reassuring to think that someone, somewhere, was preparing to help them.

Hazard watched them grinning to one another. In his mind, though, he kept repeating the phrase, “Imperative you retain control of Hunter, at all costs.”

At all costs, Hazard said to himself, closing his eyes wearily, seeing Varshni dying in his arms and the others maimed. At all costs.

The bastards, Hazard seethed inwardly. The dirty, power-grabbing, murdering bastards. Once they set foot inside my station, I’ll kill them like the poisonous snakes they are. I’ll squash them flat. I’ll cut them open just like they’ve slashed my kids.

He stopped abruptly and forced himself to take a deep breath. Yeah, sure. Go for personal revenge. That’ll make the world a better place to live in, won’t it?

“Sir, are you all right?”

Hazard opened his eyes and saw Stromsen staring at him. “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“They’ve docked, sir,” said the Norwegian.

“They’re debarking and coming up passageway C, just as you planned.”

Looking past her to the screens, Hazard saw that there were six of them, all in space suits, visors down. And pistols in their gloved hands.

“Nothing bigger than pistols?”

“No, sir. Not that we can see, at least.”

Turning to Feeney. “Ready with the aerosols?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All crew members evacuated from the area?”

“They’re all back on level four, except for the sick bay.”

Hazard never took his eyes from the screens. The six space-suited boarders were floating down the passageway that led to the lower levels of the station, which were still pressurized and held breathable air. They stopped at the air lock, saw that it was functional. The leader of their group started working the wall unit that controlled the lock.

“Can we hear them?” he asked Yang.

Wordlessly, she touched a stud on her keyboard.

“…use the next section of the passageway as an air lock,” someone was saying. “Standard procedure. Then we’ll pump the air back into it once we’re inside.”

“But we stay in the suits until we check out the whole station. That’s an order,” said another voice.

Buckbee? Hazard’s spirits soared. Buckbee will make a nice hostage, he thought. Not as good as Cardillo, but good enough.

Just as he had hoped, the six boarders went through the airtight hatch, closed it behind them, and started the pump that filled the next section of passageway with air once again.

“Something funny here, sir,” said one of the space-suited figures.

“Yeah, the air’s kind of misty.”

“Never saw anything like this before. Christ, it’s like Mexico City air.”

“Stay in your suits!” It was Buckbee’s voice, Hazard was certain of it. “Their life-support systems must have been damaged in our bombardment. They’re probably all dead.”

You wish, Hazard thought. He gave the order to Feeney. “Seal that hatch.”

Feeney pecked at a button on his console.

“And the next one.”

“Already done, sir.”

Hazard waited, watching Stromsen’s main screen as the six boarders shuffled weightlessly to the next hatch and found that it would not respond to the control unit on the bulkhead.

“Damn! We’ll have to double back and find another route.”

“Miss Yang, I’m ready to hold converse with our guests,” said Hazard.

She flashed a brilliant smile and touched the appropriate keys, then pointed at him. “You’re on the air!”

“Buckbee, this is Hazard.”

All six of the boarders froze for an instant, then spun weightlessly in midair, trying to locate the source of the new voice.

“You are trapped in that section of corridor,” Hazard said. “The mist that you see in the air is diluted oxygen difluoride from our lifeboat propellant tanks. Very volatile stuff. Don’t strike any matches.”

“What the hell are you saying, Hazard?”

“You’re locked in that passageway, Buckbee. If you try to fire those popguns you’re carrying, you’ll blow yourselves to pieces.”

“And you too!”

“We’re already dead, you prick. Taking you with us is the only joy I’m going to get out of this.”

“You’re bluffing!”

Hazard snapped, “Then show me how brave you are, Buckbee. Take a shot at the hatch.”

The six boarders hovered in the misty passageway like figures in a surrealistic painting. Seconds ticked by, each one stretching excruciatingly. Hazard felt a pain in his jaws and realized he was clenching his teeth hard enough to chip them.

He took his eyes from the screen momentarily to glance at his three youngsters. They were just as tense as he was. They knew how long the odds of their gamble were. The passageway was filled with nothing more than aerosol mists from every spray can the crew could locate in the supply magazines.

“What do you want, Hazard?” Buckbee said at last, his voice sullen, like a spoiled little boy who had been denied a cookie.

Hazard let out his breath. Then, as cheerfully as he could manage, “I’ve got what I want. Six hostages. How much air do your suits carry? Twelve hours?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got twelve hours to convince Cardillo and the rest of your pals to surrender.”

“You’re crazy, Hazard.”

“I’ve had a tough day, Buckbee. I don’t need your insults. Call me when you’re ready to deal.”

“You’ll be killing your son!”

Hazard had half expected it, but still it hit him like a blow. “Jonnie, are you there?”

“Yes I am, Dad.”

Hazard strained forward, peering hard at the display screen, trying to determine which one of the space-suited figures was his son.

“Well, this is a helluva fix, isn’t it?” he said softly.

“Dad, you don’t have to wait twelve hours.”

“Shut your mouth!” Buckbee snapped.

“Fuck you,” snarled Jon Jr. “I’m not going to get myself killed for nothing.”

“I’ll shoot you!” Hazard saw Buckbee level his gun at Jon Jr.

“And kill yourself? You haven’t got the guts,” Jonnie sneered. Hazard almost smiled. How many times had his son used that tone on him.

Buckbee’s hand wavered. He let the gun slip from his gloved fingers. It drifted slowly, weightlessly, away from him.

Hazard swallowed. Hard.

“Dad, in another hour or two the game will be over. Cardillo lied to you. The Russians never came in with us. Half a dozen ships full of troops are lifting off from IPF centers all over the globe.”

“Is that the truth, son?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Our only hope was to grab control of your satellites. Once the coup attempt in Geneva flopped, Cardillo knew that if he could control three or four sets of ABM satellites, he could at least force a stalemate. But all he’s got is Graham and Wood. Nobody else.”

“You damned little traitor!” Buckbee screeched.

Jon Jr. laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’m going to be a live traitor. I’m not dying for the likes of you.”

Hazard thought swiftly. Jon Jr. might defy his father, might argue with him, even revile him, but he had never known the lad to lie to him.

“Buckbee, the game’s over,” he said slowly. “You’d better get the word to Cardillo before there’s more bloodshed.”

***

It took another six hours before it was all sorted out. A shuttle filled with armed troops and an entire replacement crew finally arrived at the battered hulk of Hunter. The relieving commander, a stubby, compactly built black man from New Jersey who had been a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, made a grim tour of inspection with Hazard.

From inside his space suit he whistled in amazement at the battle damage.

“Shee-it, you don’t need a new crew, you need a new station!”

“It’s still functional,” Hazard said quietly, then added proudly, “and so is my crew, or what’s left of them. They ran this station and kept control of the satellites.”

“The stuff legends are made of, my man,” said the new commander.

Hazard and his crew filed tiredly into the waiting shuttle, thirteen grimy, exhausted men and women in the pale-blue fatigues of the IPF. Three of them were wrapped in mesh cocoons and attended by medical personnel. Two others were bandaged but ambulatory.

He shook hands with each and every one of them as they stepped from the station’s only functional air lock into the shuttle’s passenger compartment. Hovering there weightlessly, his creased, craggy face unsmiling, to each of his crew members he said, “Thank you. We couldn’t have succeeded without your effort.”

The last three through the hatch were Feeney, Stromsen, and Yang. The Irishman looked embarrassed as Hazard shook his hand.

“I’m recommending you for promotion. You were damned cool under fire.”

“Frozen stiff with fear, you mean.”

To Stromsen, “You, too, Miss Stromsen. You’ve earned a promotion.”

“Thank you, sir,” was all she could say.

“And you, little lady,” he said to Yang. “You were outstanding.”

She started to say something, then flung her arms around Hazard’s neck and squeezed tight. “I was so frightened!” she whispered in his ear. “You kept me from cracking up.”

Hazard held her around the waist for a moment. As they disengaged he felt his face turning flame red. He turned away from the hatch, not wanting to see the expressions on the rest of his crew members.

Buckbee was coming through the air lock. Behind him were his five men. Including Jon Jr.

They passed Hazard in absolute silence, Buckbee’s face as cold and angry as an Antarctic storm.

Jon Jr. was the last in line. None of the would-be boarders was in handcuffs, but they all had the hangdog look of prisoners. All except Hazard’s son.

He stopped before his father and met the older man’s gaze. Jon Jr.’s gray eyes were level with his father’s, unswerving, unafraid.

He made a bitter little smile. “I still don’t agree with you,” he said without preamble. “I don’t think the IPF is workable — and it’s certainly not in the best interests of the United States.”

“But you threw your lot in with us when it counted,” Hazard said.

“The hell I did!” Jon Jr. looked genuinely aggrieved. “I just didn’t see any sense in dying for a lost cause.”

“Really?”

“Cardillo and Buckbee and the rest of them were a bunch of idiots. If I had known how stupid they are I wouldn’t…”

He stopped himself, grinned ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders. “This isn’t over, you know. You won the battle, but the war’s not ended yet.”

“I’ll do what I can to get them to lighten your sentence,” Hazard said.

“Don’t stick your neck out for me! I’m still dead-set against you on this.”

Hazard smiled wanly at the youngster. “And you’re still my son.”

Jon Jr. blinked, looked away, then ducked through the hatch and made for a seat in the shuttle.

Hazard formally turned the station over to its new commander, saluted one last time, then went into the shuttle’s passenger compartment. He hung there weightlessly a moment as the hatch behind him was swung shut and sealed.

Most of the seats were already filled. There was an empty one beside Yang, but after their little scene at the hatch Hazard was hesitant about sitting next to her. He glided down the aisle and picked a seat that had no one next to it. Not one of his crew. Not Jon Jr.

There’s a certain amount of loneliness involved in command, he told himself. It’s not wise to get too familiar with people you have to order into battle.

He felt, rather than heard, a thump as the shuttle disengaged from the station’s air lock. He sensed the winged hypersonic spaceplane turning and angling its nose for reentry into the atmosphere.

Back to…Hazard realized that home, for him, was no longer on Earth. For almost all of his adult life, home had been where his command was. Now his home was in space. The time he spent on Earth would be merely waiting time, suspended animation until his new command was ready.

“Sir, may I intrude?”

He looked up and saw Stromsen floating in the aisle by his seat.

“What is it, Miss Stromsen?”

She pulled herself down into the seat next to him but did not bother to latch the safety harness. From a breast pocket in her sweat-stained fatigues she pulled a tiny flat tin. It was marked with a red cross and some printing, hidden by her thumb.

Stromsen opened the tin. “You lost your medication patch,” she said. “I thought you might want a fresh one.” She was smiling at him, shyly, almost like a daughter might.

Hazard reached up and felt behind his left ear. She was right, the patch was gone.

“I wonder how long ago…”

“It’s been hours, at least,” said Stromsen.

“Never noticed.”

Her smile brightened. “Perhaps you don’t need it anymore.”

He smiled back at her. “Miss Stromsen, I think you’re absolutely right. My stomach feels fine. I believe I have finally become adapted to weightlessness.”

“It’s rather a shame that we’re on our way back to Earth. You’ll have to adapt all over again the next time out.”

Hazard nodded. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be much of a problem for me anymore.”

He let his head sink back into the seat cushion and closed his eyes, enjoying for the first time the exhilarating floating sensation of weightlessness.

Editor’s Introduction to:
THE WAR MEMORIAL
by Allen M. Steele

“IT IS WELL that war is so terrible! Otherwise we should grow too fond of it!” Robert E. Lee is said to have told General James Longstreet as he watched the Union forces, banners waving, advance to engage Lee’s well-prepared army in the Union disaster at Fredericksburg. Allen Steele tells us of another battle that emphasizes the lesson.

THE WAR MEMORIAL
by Allen M. Steele

The first-wave assault is jinxed from the very beginning.

Even before the dropship touches down, its pilot shouts over the comlink that a Pax missile battery seven klicks away has locked in on their position, despite the ECM buffer set up by the lunarsats. So it’s going to be a dust-off; the pilot has done his job by getting the men down to the surface, and he doesn’t want to be splattered across Mare Tranquillitatis.

It doesn’t matter anyway. Baker Company has been deployed for less than two minutes before the Pax heatseekers pummel the ground around them and take out the dropship even as it begins its ascent.

Giordano hears the pilot scream one last obscenity before his ugly spacecraft is reduced to metal rain, then something slams against his back and everything within the suit goes black. For an instant he believes he’s dead, that he’s been nailed by one of the heatseekers, but it’s just debris from the dropship. The half-ton ceramic-polymer shell of the Mark III Valkyrie Combat Armor Suit has absorbed the brunt of the impact.

When the lights flicker back on within his soft cocoon and the flatscreen directly in front of his face stops fuzzing, he sees that not everyone has been so lucky. A few dozen meters away at three o’clock, there’s a new crater that used to be Robinson. The only thing left of Baker Company’s resident card cheat is the severed rifle arm of his CAS.

He doesn’t have time to contemplate Robinson’s fate. He’s in the midst of battle. Sgt. Boyle’s voice comes through the comlink, shouting orders. Traveling overwatch, due west, head for Marker One-Eight-Five. Kemp, take Robinson’s position. Cortez, you’re point. Stop staring, Giordano (yes sir). Move, move, move…

So they move, seven soldiers in semi-robotic heavy armor, bounding across the flat silver-gray landscape. Tin men trying to outrun the missiles plummeting down around them, the soundless explosions they make when they hit. For several kilometers around them, everywhere they look, there are scores of other tin men doing the same, each trying to survive a silent hell called the Sea of Tranquillity.

Giordano is sweating hard, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He tells himself that if he can just make Marker One-Eight-Five—crater Arago, or so the map overlay tells him—then everything will be okay. The crater walls will protect them. Once Baker Company sets up its guns and erects a new ECM buffer, they can dig in nice and tight and wait it out; the beachhead will have been established by then and the hard part of Operation Monkey Wrench will be over.

But the crater is five-and-a-half klicks away, across plains as flat and wide-open as Missouri pasture, and between here and there a lot of shitfire is coming down. The Pax Astra guns in the foothills of the lunar highlands due west of their position can see them coming; the enemy has the high ground, and they’re throwing everything they can at the invading force.

Sgt. Boyle knows his platoon is in trouble. He orders everyone to use their jumpjets. Screw formation; it’s time to run like hell.

Giordano couldn’t agree more whole-heartedly. He tells the Valkyrie to engage the twin miniature rockets mounted on the back of his carapace.

Nothing happens.

Once again, he tells the voice-activated computer mounted against the back of his neck to fire the jumpjets. When there’s still no response, he goes to manual, using the tiny controls nestled within the palm of his right hand inside the suit’s artificial arm.

At that instant, everything goes dark again, just like it did when the shrapnel from the dropship hit the back of his suit.

This time, though, it stays dark.

A red LCD lights above his forehead, telling him that there’s been a total system crash.

Cursing, he finds the manual override button and stabs it with his little finger. As anticipated, it causes the computer to completely reboot itself; he hears servomotors grind within the carapace as its limbs move into neutral position, until his boots are planted firmly on the ground and his arms are next to his sides, his rifle pointed uselessly at the ground.

There is a dull click from somewhere deep within the armor, then silence.

Except for the red LCD, everything remains dark.

He stabs frantically at the palm buttons, but there’s no power to any of the suit’s major subsystems. He tries to move his arms and legs, but finds them frozen in place.

Limbs, jumpjets, weapons, ECM, comlink … nothing works.

Now he’s sweating more than ever. The impact of that little bit of debris from the dropship must have been worse than he thought. Something must have shorted out, badly, within the Valkyrie’s onboard computer.

He twists his head to the left so he can gaze through the eyepiece of the optical periscope, the only instrument within the suit that isn’t dependent upon computer control. What he sees, terrifies him: the rest of his platoon jumpjetting for the security of the distant crater, while missiles continue to explode all around him.

Abandoning him. Leaving him behind.

He screams at the top of his lungs, yelling for Boyle and Kemp and Cortez and the rest, calling them foul names, demanding that they wait or come back for them, knowing that it’s futile. They can’t hear him. For whatever reason, they’ve already determined that he’s out of action; they cannot afford to risk their lives by coming back to lug an inert CAS across a battlefield.

He tries again to move his legs, but it’s pointless. Without direct interface from the main computer, the limbs of his suit are immobile. He might as well be wearing a concrete block.

The suit contains three hours of oxygen, fed through pumps controlled by another computer tucked against his belly, along with rest of its life-support systems. So at least he won’t suffocate or fry…

For the next three hours, at any rate.

Probably less. The digital chronometer and life-support gauge are dead, so there’s no way of knowing for sure.

As he watches, even the red coal of the LCD warning lamp grows dim until it finally goes cold, leaving him in the dark.

He has become a living statue. Fully erect, boots firmly placed upon the dusty regolith, arms held rigid at his sides, he is in absolute stasis.

For three hours. Certainly less.

For all intents and purposes, he is dead.

In the smothering darkness of his suit, Giordano prays to a god in which he has never really believed. Then, for lack of anything else to do, he raises his eyes to the periscope eyepiece and watches as the battle rages on around him.

He fully expects—and, after a time, even hopes—for a Pax missile to relieve him of his ordeal, but this small mercy never occurs. Without an active infrared or electromagnetic target to lock in upon, the heatseekers miss the small spot of ground he occupies, instead decimating everything around him.

Giordano becomes a mute witness to the horror of the worst conflict of the Moon War, what historians will later call the Battle of Mare Tranquillitatis. Loyalty, duty, honor, patriotism … all the things in which he once believed are soon rendered null and void as he watches countless lives being lost.

Dropships touch down near and distant, depositing soldiers in suits similar to his own. Some don’t even make it to the ground before they become miniature supernovas.

Bodies fly apart, blown to pieces even as they charge across the wasteland for the deceptive security of distant craters and rills.

An assault rover bearing three lightsuited soldiers rushes past him, only to be hit by fire from the hills. It is thrown upside down, crushing two of the soldiers beneath it. The third man, his legs broken and his suit punctured, manages to crawl from the wreckage. He dies at Giordano’s feet, his arms reaching out to him.

He has no idea whether Baker Company has survived, but he suspects it hasn’t, since he soon sees a bright flash from the general direction of the crater it was supposed to occupy and hold.

In the confines of his suit, he weeps and screams and howls against the madness erupting around him. In the end, he goes mad himself, cursing the same god to whom he prayed earlier for the role to which he has been damned.

If God cares, it doesn’t matter. By then, the last of Giordano’s oxygen reserves have been exhausted; he asphyxiates long before his three hours are up, his body still held upright by the Mark III Valkyrie Combat Armor Suit.

When he is finally found, sixty-eight hours later, by a patrol from the victorious Pax Astra Free Militia, they are astonished that anything was left standing on the killing ground. This sole combat suit, damaged only by a small steel pipe wedged into its CPU housing, with a dead man inexplicably sealed inside, is the only thing left intact. All else has been reduced to scorched dust and shredded metal.

So they leave him standing.

They do not remove the CAS from its place, nor do they attempt to pry the man from his armor. Instead, they erect a circle of stones around the Valkyrie. Later, when peace has been negotiated and lunar independence has been achieved, a small plaque is placed at his feet.

The marker bears no name. Because so many lives were lost during the battle, no one can be certain of who was wearing that particular CAS on that particular day.

An eternal flame might have been placed at his feet, but it wasn’t. Nothing burns on the Moon.

Editor’s Introduction to:
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
by Michael Flynn

Mike Flynn is a polymath. He is known as a hard science SF writer who is also a storyteller, but he is also a quality control engineer who uses advanced probability theory in his work, a medieval history expert, and an accomplished writer on the history and philosophy of science. He is co-author, with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, of Fallen Angels.

When veterans get together they often tell war stories. Here we have war stories told with a decided twist.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
by Michael Flynn

Winter having locked the passes with snow and ice, the brass parceled out long-deferred leaves and junior officers scattered across the country. Some descended on their hometowns to rest in the bosoms of their families. Some came to the City to rest in other sorts of bosoms. That was the last winter before the big offensive, when I still had the flat in Chelsea. Jimmy Topeka dropped in to see me, all somber as always. He seemed to have something on his mind, but he talked around it six ways from Sunday the way he always does and hadn’t gotten to the nub of it before Angel Osborne clumped his way up the stairs. I hadn’t seen Angel in almost three years, though he and Jimmy had crossed paths during the Red River campaign. I went how we lacked only Lyle “the Style” Guzman to make the old gang complete; and the Angel ups and beeps him over the Lynx and, wouldn’t you know it, Lyle was in the City, too. So before long we were all together, just like old times, drinking and shooting the shit and waiting for the sun to come up. Those were wild years, and we were still young enough to be immortal.

I hadn’t much in the way of furniture; and once Angel had occupied two-thirds of the sofa, there was less of it to go around. Lyle, being slightly built, perched himself on the table, while Jimmy raided my kitchen and passed out bottles of Skull Mountain before squatting cross-legged on the floor. We all said what a coincidence and long time no see and what’ve you been up to.

It wasn’t quite like old times. A few years had gone by between us. They were long years; it didn’t seem possible they’d held only three-hundred-odd days each. The four of us had been different places, seen different sights; and so we had become different men than the ones who had known each other at camp. But also there was a curtain between me and the three of them. Every now and then, in the midst of some tale or other, they would share a look; or they would fall silent and they’d say, well, you had to be there. You see, they’d been Inside and I hadn’t, and that marks a man.

Angel had served with the 82nd against the Snakes; and Lyle had seen action against both the Crips and the Yoopers. Jimmy allowed as he’d tangoed in the high country, where the bandits had secret refuges among the twisting canyons; but he said very little else. Only he drank two beers for every one the others put down, and Jimmy had never been a drinking man.

They asked politely what I’d been up to and pretended great interest in my stories and news dispatches. They swore they read all of my pieces on the ©-Net, and maybe they did.

They didn’t blame me for it. They knew I’d as soon be Inside with them, suited-up and popping Joeys. The four of us had been commissioned power suit lieutenants together; had gone through the grueling training side by side. I still had the bars. I still looked at them some nights when the hurt wasn’t so bad, when I could think about what might have been.

Talk detoured through the winter crop of Hollywood morphies and whether American could take Congress from Liberty next year and how the Air Cav had collared El Muerte down in the panhandle and have you seen Chica Domosan’s latest virtcheo. Angel and Lyle practically drooled when I told them I had the uncensored seedy; and they insisted on viewing it right then and there. I only had the one virtch hat, so they had to take turns watching. With the stereo earphones and the wrap-around goggs enclosing your head it was just like she was dancing and singing and peeling right there in front of you.

Afterwards, we talked Grand Strategy, shifting troops all over the continent, free of all political constraints and certain we would never hash it the way the Pentagon had. Doubt flowers from seeds that spend decades germinating; confidence is a weed that springs up overnight. And so youth gains in certitude what it lacks in prudence. It was no different back then; only, the stakes were higher.

Eventually, we spoke of our own personal plans. Lyle went how he was angling for an assignment down in the Frontera—“because that’s where the next big yee-haw’s going to be”—and Angel wanted nothing more than to hunt Joeys up in the Nations. White teeth split his broad, dark face. The rest of us counted the Nations a nest of traitors and secessionists; but with Angel it was personal. Then Jimmy said, in that quiet voice of his, that he’d put in for a hoofer. We grinned and waited for the punch line and when it didn’t come our smiles slowly faded. “I’m serious,” he said. “I won’t go Inside again.”

Angel looked shocked and Lyle’s face stiffened in disapproval; but I was the one who spoke up. “How can you say that, Jimmy? After what we went through together in camp? You’re a suit lieutenant, God damn it!” Dismay pried me from the chair behind my cluttered workstation; or rather, it tried to. My legs betrayed me and I nearly cracked my head on the edge of the desk as I toppled.

The others were all around me. I swatted Jimmy’s hand away and let the Angel bear me up and set me back in my accustomed place. “Why’d you do that, man?” Lyle asked as he fussed the blanket around my waist. “You shouldn’t oughta do that.” Jimmy wouldn’t meet my eyes. We’d just gotten our bars, we were celebrating, and that hog of Jimmy’s looked phatter and stoopider the more I drank. Jimmy always blamed himself, but it was my idea; so what the hell. That was then.

“I get around all right,” I said to excuse myself. I could function. Most days, I could even walk. “Sometimes, the spasms—You know.”

They all said they knew; but how could they? You dream and you train for months and months and then in one drunken moment you throw it all away for a God-damned motorcycle ride. Power suits amplify the suit louie’s every move. A man can’t wear it if he suffers unpredictable seizures. As if to underscore my thoughts, my left leg began to twitch. If I’d been suited up, my walker would have toppled. Stress, the doctors all said. It was stress that brought it on; but what did they know?

I was barred by circumstance; but Jimmy planned to walk away. That made no sense. Who would give up a power suit if he didn’t have to? Angel was puzzled, too; and Lyle said, “Sometimes a guy gets syndrome and he just can’t take being Inside no more.” He was so damned understanding that Jimmy flushed and said how it wasn’t that at all; or at least, not exactly.

“You know how things stand up in the mountains,” Jimmy said. “I don’t suppose it’s much different with the Yoopers or the others, except maybe the terrain’s rougher. Straight up or down as often as not, and canyons pinched as tight as a preacher’s wife on Sunday. Officially, the whole area’s pacified; only someone forgot to tell the militias.”

“They are not ‘militias,’ suit lieutenant,” said Angel in a mock-official voice. “They are ‘bandits’.”

“I know that,” Jimmy told him. “We only call ’em ‘militias.’ Like you say ‘gangs’ when you pull urban duty.” He swigged his Skull and sat with the bottle dangling by its neck between his knees while he scowled at nothing. “The war’s platoon-size up there,” he said at last. “The regiment’s scattered in firebases all across God’s Country—only God ain’t home. The only time I ever saw my colonel was over the Lynx. We got our orders—when we got any orders at all—from the twenty-four. Otherwise, we were on our own.” He shook his head. “Pacified…”

“Who was your colonel,” Lyle asked.

“Mandlebrot. He was a sumbitch. Worried more about the cost of patrolling than whether Joey walked the line. When I took the platoon out, I used to sling the word off the twenty-four, then put my dish tech on arrest so I could say I never got the bounceback telling me to stay put.”

Angel laughed. “That’s good. That’s bean. Wish I’d thought of that.”

That was the sort of hack Jimmy used to pull. Always by the book, but sometimes he wrote notes in the margins. “How long did you fool him?” I asked.

“Oh, not long,” Jimmy admitted. “I said he was a sumbitch. Never said he was stupid. So sometimes I would go out unofficial-like with the reg’lar militia—the sheriff’s posse. They had their own ATVs. Horses, too. Some places hooves’ll take you where tires won’t go. They were locals, and knew the country just as well as the bandits. I mean they knew it close up, like you know your girl-friend, not just from the up-and-down.”

“You were too far north for the twenty-fours?” asked Angel.

Jimmy shrugged. “Nah, but the twenty-fours can’t give you terrain detail the way an up-and-down in LEO can. Sometimes a little sliver between canyon walls was all the sky we could dish. There’s always something up there but you have to code dance, depending on what sat’ your dish can catch. Well, that sheriff was a clever pud. Didn’t need an eye in the sky, because he had eyes and ears all over ground level—and kept his county in pretty good law ’n’ order, considering. But he knew when he needed extra weenie, so he was happy enough when I tagged along. Not happy, you understand; but happy enough. The irregulars don’t much like us; but they hate the bandits worse—’cause it’s their brothers and cousins and all getting kneecapped and necklaced.”

“An’ half the time,” said Angel, “it’s their brothers and cousins and all that’re doing the kneecaps and necklaces.”

“Word up,” said Lyle. “Neighbors huntin’ neighbors. No wonder they ain’t happy campers.”

“Folks back here don’t always draw a line between bandits and friendlies,” I said, thinking about my ©-Net story, “The Loyalist.” “So your possemen feel they have to prove their loyalty.”

“Righteous beans,” said Angel. “Hey. You hear what happened to the 7th down in the live oak country? ‘Rooster’ McGregor—you ever meet ’im? Skinny guy with teeth out to here?—he was doing just what you were, Jimmy. Riding with the posse when he couldn’t take his platoon out. Only it turns out the possemen were the bandits. Deputy Dawgs by day; camos and piano wire by night. Rooster, he got his ticket stripped over it, but he accidentally hung the sheriff before the court martial took his bars.”

Jimmy hadn’t been listening. “They don’t respect us,” he said. “Never understood that ’til the last time I was Inside. Now…” He voice trailed off and his eyes took on a distant look. I traded glances with Lyle and Angel, and waited.

“We called him ‘Wild Bob’,” Jimmy said finally. “I suppose he had his own name for himself and some mumbo-jumbo, self-important rank. Generalissimo. Grand Kleagle. Lord High Naff-naff. Maybe he called himself The Bald Eagle, cause he sure as shit had no hair; but he could’ve called himself Winnie the Pooh, for all I cared. ’Cause what he was was a murderer and a rapist and an armed robber, and he probably picked his nose in public. What he’d do every now and then—just to let us know he was still around—he’d send a body floating down the river from the high country. One of our agents or a friendly or maybe just someone looked at him cross-eyed. Or he’d throw a roadblock up and collect ‘tolls’ from everybody passing through. Or he’d yee-haw a firebase and pick off a freshie or two.

“Yeah, he was a piece of work, all right,” Jimmy said. “And he knew to the corpse just how far he could push it before the higher-ups would scratch their balls and wonder how ‘pacified’ the area really was. So Badger Stoltz—that was the sheriff—he developed a keen interest in learning Wild Bob’s whereabouts.

“One day, word came in that Bob was holed up in an old mining town, name of Spruce Creek. The silver gave out way back when, but no one had the heart to close it up. I seen the place, and I can’t say I blame ’em. It’s a spot worth stayin’ in, just to open your eyes to it in the morning. It sets in a high, isolated meadow, with peaks on every side and four passes leading out. A spruce forest surrounds it and climbs halfway up the mountain flanks before giving way to krummholz and bare, gray rocks. The state road follows the creek through the center of town; but the Joeys have watchtowers on both east and west passes and it wouldn’t take ‘em more’n ten minutes to turn either one into a deathtrap if anybody tried to come in that way. The townies either support Wild Bob or they’re too scared not to. Or both. Hell, like I said, even the friendlies don’t much like us. And I can’t say they weren’t given cause in the old days.”

“Don’t mean nothin’,” Angel said. “Don’t excuse what they done. Don’t excuse collaborating, neither.”

Jimmy just shook his head. “It’s a damn shame what things have come to. Gimme another Skull, would you.”

Lyle handed him the bottle. “So what about this Wild Bob?”

“I’m comin’ to it.” He popped the cap and tipped the neck toward us in salute. “In and Out,” he said.

“Yeah.” That was Lyle. “Except you want Out.”

Jimmy darkened. “I said I was comin’ to that. I just gotta give you the topo. There’s another road. A county road. Packed dirt and gravel, mostly. Comes in from the south, gives the townies something they can call an intersection, and meanders out over the north pass. At that point whoever put the road in, must’ve figgered out there wasn’t any place to go over on the other side; so it just fizzles out in the rocks and tundra. The Joeys keep an eye on the south pass, but don’t pay much mind to the north.”

Angel spoke. “I sense a plan,” he said clapping his hands together. “A strategy!”

“Four suit louies,” I said. “Two to keep ’em interested in the state road; one to block their retreat over the south pass; and one to sneak in through the bathroom window.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy, “except I didn’t have no four suit louies at the firebase. Just me and Maria Serena—and one of us had to stay Out if the other went In, in case Joey yee-hawed the firebase. Wild Bob had maybe twenty, twenty-five bandits with him—he ran the town like a damn safe house, and every terrorist in three states could put up there for a week or two. I had the sheriff’s posse—Badger Stoltz and ten whipcord guys who took their tin stars serious—and I had my power suit. So I figured the odds at better’n even. Plan was, the sheriff would waltz with our boy on the county road, draw ’em south a ways, while I took the walker in from the north.”

“Couldn’t use a floater, then?” Angel asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “Too steep. Ground effect don’t work too good when the ground is vertical. I’d have to do finger-and-toe climbing the last stretch. There’s a reason that road don’t go nowhere. Sheriff sent one of his guys with me—a cute little bit named Natalie who just happened to be his daughter—to show me the way. I had the photos from the up-and-down, but like I said, things can look real different on the ground. Me and Stoltz worked it out and didn’t say beans to nobody until the day I went In—’cause, you know, someone might have a cousin or talk in his sleep or something. So the day comes and Stoltz rides his ten guys south—they got the most ground to cover before they get in position—and Natalie waits while I go into the teep room and wriggle into my power suit–”

“Duck into a phone booth!” said Lyle. “Put on your cape and Spandex!”

“Superman!” said Angel. “Ta da-daah!”

“–fiber ops and hydros hooked up–”

“–leap tall buildings–”

“–set my virtch hat–”

“–faster than a speeding bullet–”

“–power up the suit and–”

“Oh, man, I know that feeling–”

“– ain’t nothing like it–”

They bubbled, their words tumbling one atop the other, a glow spreading across their faces. I remained quiet and stared into my beer. I could remember what it felt like. Infinite power. You could dribble the world and shoot hoops. My fingers cramped into a sudden ball and I hid the rebellious limb under the desk.

“I took the walker out to the firebase perimeter and leaped over the wall right beside Natalie.”

“Yee-haw!” said Lyle.

“It scared her. She hadn’t been expecting it, and her horse reared up and near threw her. I told her I was ready-Freddy; and she just looks in my optics and says, let’s not waste any more time, and she yanks on her bridle and heads off toward Spruce Creek.” Jimmy drained his bottle and tossed it to Angel, who placed it carefully in the growing architectural wonder our empties were creating.

“The town wasn’t too far, as the bullet flies; but you couldn’t rightly get there going straight. Still, her dad and the others needed time to get in position, so Natalie set off at an easy canter with me loping along beside her. You know what it’s like in those walkers. You want to leap and soar. And of course it’s scaled about twice the human body, so you have to get used to the difference in stride and reach and squeeze. So I’d stretch my arms and the walker’s manipulators would reach out and tear a limb off a cottonwood. Or I’d take a couple giant steps, just for the hell of it; then wait for Natalie to catch up. Third or fourth time I did that, she told me I was scaring her horse and please stop; so I had to plod the rest of the way. It was like being hamstrung.”

“Hang a handicap sign on your back,” Lyle agreed. “Get prime parking.”

“Tell it, Brother Lyle!” said Angel. They tossed the thoughtless jape from one to the other.

“Satellite recon is a wonderful thing; but even the up-and-down can’t see through trees or overhangs or pick fine details from a shadow-black canyon. Natalie led me the last part of the way. Took me down game paths, along a creek bed, through stands of Douglas fir that looked like they’d been there since God spread his tarp. She knew her horses, that Natalie. Couldn’t have been more’n nineteen, twenty; but she sat in the saddle like she’d been born there. Well, in that country, maybe she had. She never said more’n two dozen words to me the whole trip; and those were mostly ‘this way’ or ‘over there.’

“Finally, we come to the base of a sheer cliff. There was three canyons cut into it. No, not even canyons. More like cracks. Recon barely showed ’em, but Badger Stoltz and his daughter swore there was one of ’em led to the top. Natalie rode along the base of the mountain and ducked a little ways into each. Then she come out and said, ‘The right one. It slopes up real sharp, then goes vertical into a chimney that opens out on the high tundra. From there, your GPS should show you the way.’”

“Wasn’t she going with you?” asked Angel.

I snorted. “Weren’t you listening? Take a horse up a fissure like that?”

Jimmy rubbed his palms together. “I said, ‘Wish me luck?’ and she just yanked on her horse’s reins. ‘You don’t need luck when you’ve got that,’ she said. I knew she meant the walker, so I come back and said, ‘I ain’t no Imperial Storm Trooper and Wild Bob ain’t the Rebel Alliance. I’m on your side. We’re the good guys.’

“‘The good guys,’ she said. And, oh, she was pissed. Angry and afraid all at once. ‘Was your government ragged on folks until bandits like your Wild Bob could play the hero. And now my daddy has to ride out and maybe take a splash of fléchettes in his belly, ’steada ticketing speeders along the state road.’

“‘He ain’t my Wild Bob,’ I said. ‘I come to take him down.’

“Her lips curled. Full, soft lips. Oh, they were lips for kissing. And here I was a young suit louie going off to do battle. I deserved a kiss. But I was suited up, teeping a walker, and there was more than telemetry and digital screens between us. Instead of a kiss, I got a kiss off. ‘You come to take him down?’ she said, and she leaned forward over her horse’s head and pointed a finger into my optics. ‘You listen to me, mister “suit louie.” If my daddy even gets wounded bad, you’ll have one more militia in the high country to worry about, and that’ll be me!’

“Hoo!” said Angel. “And she’d be a bad ’un, too.”

“She was just worried about her Pa,” I suggested. Jimmy looked at me, then shrugged.

“Maybe. I couldn’t let it bother me, though. I had a job to do; and if I didn’t get up that cut, her daddy probably would take a slug. Without me, the possemen were outnumbered and outgunned.”

“So how’d you do it?” Lyle asked. “Sounds like you’d be out of line o’ sight in that fissure.”

“Oh, I had an aerostat hovering at the relay point, and Lieutenant Serena kept it on station. But you’re right. Inside that chimney, the microwave beam would be blocked. So I asked Natalie to handle the little dish. You know, stake a repeater at the entrance, then crawl after me with the parabolic until I got up to where I could bounce sky again.”

“Helluva thing to ask a girl,” said Angel.

“Did you trust her?” I asked.

“You don’t get it, Angel,” Jimmy said. “She was a posseman, not just the Badger’s daughter. She packed a nine and a railgun and there was a street sweeper in her saddle scabbard. Oh, mano a mano, any one of us could have taken her down; but we’d be walking funny for a long time after.

“Well, I took that walker into the cleft and it was like someone drew a window shade, you know what I mean? All the I/O was juiced into the walker’s receptors by that little, hand-held parabolic that Natalie Stoltz held. All she had to do was toss it aside, or even drop it accidentally, and that walker would be nothing but a pile of armor and circuitry stuck inside some rocks.

“I can’t say I didn’t think about that while I climbed that chimney; and what the colonel would say if I got stuck while I was on an unofficial outing. What I didn’t think about until later was Natalie. My walker depended on the power beam she was aiming, and the farther up the cleft I climbed, the harder it was to keep the beam targeted. She had to stand right underneath the walker and aim straight up. So if anything happened, that’d be a couple tons of composite armor and metalocene plastic come tumbling down on her head.”

“Takes balls,” Angel agreed. “I wouldn’t care to do it.”

“Almost made me wish the walker was self-powered.”

Lyle hooted. “Yeah, right. Carry a honking fuel cell around.”

“Said ‘almost’,” Jimmy told him. “The climb was the sort of work-around any good suit louie could pull off. Maybe a little closer to the edge, is all. Took me maybe half an hour to reach the top. I looked down over the edge to maybe wave Natalie my thanks, but all I seen was her riding off a-horseback without so much as a glance back.”

“Not very grateful for your help, was she?” Angel said.

“Found out later she went ’round the long way to hook up with her dad. Can’t fault her—her place was with him. Got there too late for the action, but then old Badger might’ve had that in mind when he assigned her to guide me.”

“That must have been some climb,” I said, “teep shadow, and all.” I tried to keep my voice professional; but some of the envy must have come through, because Jimmy winced and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Yeah, some climb,” he said, and gave no more details.

Lyle leaned forward. “But once you were out of the cleft, you could bounce…”

“Yeah. Got my bearings from the GPS, shook hands again with the aerostat, checked in with Serena and Stoltz. Gauged the distance and told Stoltz I’d call him when it was time to open the dance. Serena said there was no movement on the up-and-down; but hell, those bandits know how to get around without smiling for the sat’-cams. Anything worth noticing would have been under trees or camo overhangs or down in the bunkers. You know how it is.”

Lyle and Angel said they knew how it was. I chimed in, too; but for me it was a theoretical knowledge, cadged from recon photos, official briefings, or picking the brains of Insiders. I’d written about it in “The Ambush.” People tell me how my stories make everything come alive for them—a funny expression to use about stories of combat—but only I knew how dead the words felt under my fingertips.

“There was this one building, though, seemed to have a lot of in-and-out. The Artificial Stupid thought it was either a headquarters, an entrance to the bunker system, a whorehouse, or a public library.”

Angel shook his head. “Jesus. No wonder they call ’em Stupids–”

“You put up any bumblebees?” asked Lyle.

“About two hives, all slaved into the aerostat relay. Gave me a good, close-in aerial of the town, so I knew right where the action was. I figured folks’d come pouring out of that building when the Badger opened the dance, and I wanted to know if they came out waving Kalashnikovs or library cards.”

“Shoot ’em if they have the cards,” said Lyle. “It’s the shit they read drives ’em to it.”

“You don’t believe that, Lyle,” I said.

He stuck his chin out. “You’re the writer,” he said. “Either you move people or you don’t. And if you don’t, why bother writing? Maybe there’d be fewer murdering rebel scumbags if we’d put some of those books and websites off-limits.”

“No,” said Jimmy. “I’d rather shoot a man dead because he’s a murdering rebel scumbag than treat him and everyone else like children who’re told what they can read or listen to.”

Lyle was unconvinced. “Yeah? What do you owe Joey Sixpack?”

Jimmy said, “I’m coming to that part.” He leaned forward and rubbed his palms against his lap. We had run out of beer already—not unusual when the four of us gathered in those days—but no one volunteered to make a run, which was unusual.

“I walked my machine to a low ridge overlooking the town and scanned the target with my high-rezz ’nocs. It was just like the Badger figured. No one was watching the north. Just to be on the safe side, though, I turned on my pixelflage.”

“Me,” said Angel, “I just boogie right on up.”

I didn’t think there was any imputation of cowardice in what Angel said, but I pointed out that pixelflage could help the suit louie round up more Joeys because the bandits wouldn’t know how close he actually was. “Yeah, I read that story,” Angel said. “‘Invisible Avenger.’ Pretty good, ’cept it’s not like you’re really invisible.”

And there it was again. That curtain. “I know that,” I growled. “I juice it a little for the civilians, is all.”

“All it does is duplicate the landscape on your pixel array, so–”

My right arm twitched and knocked over an empty bottle. “I said, I know that. I went through the training with you. Got higher scores, too. If it hadn’t been for the accident–”

Lyle looked at me. “An’ we know that. Sure, you woulda been good. You woulda been hell on wheels. You woulda been the next Lieutenant Bellcampo, with medals down to your crotch, if you hadn’t spilled on Jimmy’s bike that night. But you did; so you’re not; and it’s over. We love you, man. You know that. We’re the ‘Fantastic Four,’ right? But you can’t change what happened. You just got to go on from where you are.”

Jimmy reached out and touched me on the arm. “It’s over for me, too,” he said, but I jerked my arm away. Blame it on a spasm.

“I still don’t understand that,” I said.

Jimmy and I locked eyes for a moment. “I don’t know if I can explain,” he told me quietly, “if you never been Inside.” I looked away and he touched my arm again. This time, I did not pull back. “No diss, man,” he said. “Just word. I really don’t know if I can make you feel what I felt.” He looked at the others. “Don’t know if I can make them feel it, either.”

“Try us,” said Lyle. “But the beer’s gone; so–”

Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah. We’re just swapping Inside stories, right? No big deal.” He made a fist of his right hand and rubbed it with his left. “Okay, so it goes down like this.

“I get as far as the spruce on the north edge of town, just where it gives way to open meadow around the creek. That puts me three jumps from the center of town and one jump from a herd of cows. There’s a cowboy out with them. Don’t know if he was a bandit or one of the regular townfolk. Never did find out, and it didn’t matter in the end. You lie down with dogs; you wake up with fleas.

“I put the walker on stand-by, so nothing moves. The pixels is all green and brown and black, so I blend into the forest behind me. The cowboy looks my way once or twice, puzzled-like, like he ain’t sure he’s seen something or not. Me, I got my ’nocs locked in on the big building, waiting for Badger to call the dance.

“I didn’t have long to wait before I hear gunshots over my channel to Stoltz. Maybe they were loud enough to carry by air, because my cowboy, he frowns and peers south. Wild Bob’s pickets call in for help and my Artificial Stupid locks in on their freq. Can’t make heads or tails of the traffic, though, because it’s all black…”

“Shoulda kept that kind of encryption illegal,” Lyle said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Illegal. That would have stopped the likes of Wild Bob. Codes don’t make conspiracies; conspirators do. Besides, PGE and other black codes were all over the Net. Might as well’ve made the wind illegal.”

“And besides,” Angel said, “the big corporations didn’t like the idea of the government holding keys to all their codes. And they’re the ones that call the shots.”

Jimmy looked at him. “Yeah? That’s what Wild Bob always said. Big corporations, Wall Street, the Jews. Besides, what do I care what Joey’s saying, coded or not? It wasn’t more’n fifteen seconds after Badger started the music that they come pouring out of that big building. They all have ’sault rifles and bags full of bananas. Two of ’em are lugging a mortar and some shells. I give Badger a heads-up over the aerostat relay and tell him what’s coming his way.

“The cowboy decides either to join the fun or to head for home. He spurs his horse and goes galloping across the meadow. I take that as my cue and go into leaper mode. Anyone hears a noise, they look over and see that cowboy easier than they can see me. That gives me maybe another jump or two before the balloon goes up. Last jump put me right in front of the main building. The bandits usually don’t post guards—they own the town’s soul—but all the shooting has got them nervous. So there’s a Joey standing around the front door with one thumb on his rifle’s safety and the other’n up his ass. When I come down on the street behind him, he jumps like Old Shaq’ in his glory days, and I chop him up before he even hits ground.”

“What’d you use,” Lyle asked. “Finger gun?”

Jimmy ignored him. “I bust through the front door and bounce from office to office, leaving little calling cards in each. The radio was in the third room. Some old bat was on the horn, hollering. When she sees me, she reaches in her desk drawer and pulls a .38. I don’t have time for that crap, so I give her a spray and then shred the radio set.”

“Think she got the warning out?”

“I know she did. But a suit louie never figures to go unnoticed when he’s Inside. I work my way through the building—and pop a few more Joeys who want to field-test their ammo. By the time I bust out the back wall, my little presents start going off and pretty soon the whole building’s in flames. So you see, what did I care about the radio? I was the one sending the message. If she hadn’t gone for the gun, she could’ve run with the others.”

“Generous,” said Lyle.

“Those were the Rules of Engagement, Style. Remember, the area was officially ‘pacified.’ I could shoot whoever came at me armed; but anyone else, I had to tranq, smoke, strobe, or leave alone.”

“And decide which is which on a moment’s notice,” Angel commented bitterly. “All Joey has to do is not go for his gun and he’s a peaceable citizen.”

“So I guess I lucked out, because I don’t think there were more’n two dozen folks there who weren’t potting at me. Some heavy rounds. Armor piercing. One cholo had ramjet rounds. You know, with the discarding sabot and the jet core through its middle? They hit with a couple of Mach. My walker took some damage; and the blowback…”

“Oh, yeah,” said Lyle, rubbing his arm. “The blowback.”

“I had bruises for a week where the walker got knocked around. I mean, I know you gotta have feedback through your suit pads, otherwise you got no ‘touch,’ but I wish the dampers would react faster than the blowback from impacts.”

“Better’n being hit by a round direct,” I said.

Angel went, “Word up. Sprained my wrist one time when a mortar shell wrenched the manipulator arm on my floater.”

“It’s like having a spasm.” Lyle looked at me. “You remember what it was like during live-round training. Must be a lot like what you got now, right?”

I went “right” and didn’t try to fine-tune his opinion. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway. People have a need to reduce things to what they think they understand.

“I wiped that town’s butt good,” Jimmy went on. “Pretty soon, though, Wild Bob figures out that the possemen were just a decoy so’s I could yee-haw, and the ‘away team’ come streaming back from the south pass on their ATVs and dirt bikes. Well, I’d already gotten the range for a couple of landmarks along the county road, and my submunitions were already in place. I watch my heads-up until the column reaches the right point, then I trigger my subs and let loose. Ducks in a barrel. I couldn’t have done better if they’d all held still and said ‘cheese’.”

Angel pumped his fist and went yee-haw.

“Pretty,” said Lyle. Jimmy shook his head.

“It’s never pretty. I went in to break them; so of course that’s what I did. But it was a dirty business and I hate those sumbitches for making me do it. Wild Bob himself, he was still functional. He’d been bringing up the rear, in case Badger tried following him to town, and he hadn’t taken a hit. My sensors spotted his bald dome flashing in the afternoon sun and I high-leaped right over to him. I bet that was one day in his life when he wished he had all his hair back. He sees me land and his face twists into a sneer. He’s got a grenade launcher in his hands and the devil in his eyes.

“Now, he knows the Rules of Engagement like he wrote ’em his own self. And who knows? They way they tie us in knots, maybe he did have a hand in the drafting. So he knows if he drops the grenade launcher, I got to switch to non-lethal.”

Angel shrugged. “Me, I got slow reflexes.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t matter, ’cause he didn’t drop nothing except another grenade in the chamber. I opened a channel and give him his chance, saying, ‘Bob, I come to take you in.’ But he just curls his lip and goes how I ain’t come anywhere and lobs a grenade at my optics.”

“Hell,” said Lyle, “that ain’t nothing to swat away. Artificial Stupid can handle it on automatic.”

“Sure, but the arm swing puts you off balance for a second because it’s automatic; and that’s the second when Wild Bob melts into the rocks. That forces me to run the instant replay so I can see where he went and follow him.

“We played peek-a-boo all across those rocks. He’d pop up and try another round, always going for the optics or the ee-em arrays. Oh, he knew power suits and where the weak points were. Then he’d scurry off to some new position.” Jimmy shook his head and he looked at the wall, except he wasn’t seeing the wall. “I’ll give old Bob this much. He had sand. Not many folks’d buck a suit louie that way. Deep down, he believed in his cause. Had to, to do the things he did. He knew all along this day would come and he sort of looked forward to it, if you know what I mean. Maybe he even welcomed it. I thought about saving the county the expense of a trial—I had some HE in reserve and could have made some mighty fine rubble out of those rocks; but, strictly speaking, this was a police action, not military, and Badger hankered for a trial. He wanted the public to know how Bob wasn’t some damned Robin Hood, but a murdering, thieving traitor. Last thing he wanted was a martyr and a folk-song.

“So Bob and me, we play cat and banjo for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes; and the more Bob backs away from me, the closer he gets to Badger and his posse. I thought maybe he didn’t realize that because a firefight concentrates your attention, you know what I mean? But he knew exactly what he was doing. I call on him once more to surrender, and he goes, ‘not to the likes of you.’ And then, I swear, he hollered for Badger.

“‘What do you want, Bob?’ Badger asks him from behind the next rim; and he says, ‘I want it to be you, not him,’ and Badger goes, ‘You sure you want it that way?’ and Bob said he was sure. ‘If a man gotta go down, it oughta be to another man. And Badger, you may suck the gummint tit; but you are, by God, man enough to come for me your own self.’

“So Badger he tells Bob to step out where he can be seen and hold his hands up. Maybe ten, fifteen seconds go by; then Wild Bob steps out from behind a finger of rock—which surprised me, because I had him pegged a couple meters the other way. He’s still holding that grenade launcher. Badger—I can see him now, skylined on the rimrock twenty meters past Bob—he’s got the high ground and a ’sault rifle. He says, ‘Bob, throw down the launcher,’ and Bob says, ‘Now, Badger, you know I can’t do that,’ and the sheriff goes, ‘Throw it down now, Bob!’ and Bob doesn’t say anything except he works the pump to chamber another round. Badger goes, ‘I don’t want it to end this way,’ and Bob goes, ‘Only way it could. Tell Ma and Natalie good-bye.’ Then he raises the launcher to his shoulder and Badger sprays him with a cloud of fléchettes, which rip him up something bad, so I think he was dead before he knew it.”

Lyle the Style shook his head and said, “Jesus.” Angel crossed himself. Jimmy ground his fist into his palm, like a mortar and pestle, and didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, I spoke.

“They were brothers, Wild Bob and the Badger?” Oh, what a story that would make! If I could only find the right words to tell it. Duty versus fanaticism—with love ground to powder in the middle.

“I leaped on over,” Jimmy said, “and grounded next to Badger where he stooped over Wild Bob. Badger looks up at me and says, ‘It was empty.’”

“What was?” asked Angel.

“The grenade launcher,” I said. “That’s right, Jimmy, isn’t it? Bob’s weapon was empty.”

Jimmy nodded. “I told Badger I’d carry the body back to town if he wanted. You know those walkers; they can carry a lot in their cradles. A single body wouldn’t be much. But Badger just gives me a look and says if I want so bad to carry the body, I could damn well come up to Spruce Creek and pick it up my own self.”

“Oh, man,” said Angel. “Diss.”

“What did you say to him?” I asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “I didn’t say nothing. I yanked off my virtch hat and threw it to the floor. Lieutenant Serena asked me what I was doing, but I didn’t pay her no mind. I just stared at the walls of the teep room, thinking.”

“Thinking,” said Lyle. “That’s always a mistake.”

Jimmy gave him a look, as if he were a stranger. “I left the teep room and checked an ATV from the motor pool. I know I left the walker out there untended—and the colonel chewed me a new asshole over that later on—but I had to go to Spruce Creek. Not just be telepresent. You understand? I had to be there myself.”

“Dumb move,” said Angel. “It’s telepresent fighting waldoes helps keep down body-bag expenses.”

“Our body bags,” I pointed out.

Lyle shrugged. “Those are the only ones that matter to me.”

Jimmy shook his head. “You’re right, Angel. It was a dumb move. By the time I reached Spruce Creek, they were all gone. Badger and his posse. The bandits. Most of the townfolk. Shit, most of the town was gone. Even the walker. Lt. Serena had teeped it after I went Outside. So I got out of the ATV and retraced the path of the firefight, walking from rock to rim. I had cornered Wild Bob there. He fired his last grenade there. Badger shot him there. The rocks were all splashed red; there were shell casings and sabots all over. I don’t know how long I crouched where Badger had crouched. If any of Wild Bob’s friends had still been around, I would’ve been easy pickings. Finally, a squall blew up and I hiked back to my vehicle and pulled up the clamshell. I sat there for a while listening to the high country wind. After a while, I drove back down to the firebase.”

“And after that,” I said, “you put in your papers.”

Jimmy nodded.

“For the ATV/horse cavalry.”

Another nod.

Angel said, “I still don’t get why.”

I leaned forward in my chair. My arms on the armrests barely trembled. “It’s because it wasn’t a fair fight.”

Lyle grunted. “It wasn’t supposed to be.”

Jimmy raised his head and looked at me. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?” I asked.

Lyle laughed. “It’s because he wants the respect of that hick sheriff. Or his daughter.”

Jimmy rose from the floor. “I didn’t think you’d understand.” He looked at me. “Though I hoped you would.”

We locked eyes for a moment. Then he turned to go. When he got to the door, I blurted out. “Oh, Jesus. It’s Wild Bob’s respect you want.”

Angel scowled. “That hemorrhoid? What’s his respect worth?”

Jimmy paused with his hand over the doorplate. “What he believed in was all wrong and twisted,” he said. “But he was willing to die for it. If what we’re fighting for is right, shouldn’t we be willing to risk something besides equipment damage and feedback bruises?”

When he had gone, there was silence in the room. Lyle and Angel and I looked at one another. Finally, Angel said, “He’s nuts. You don’t fight snakes by wriggling in the dirt and trying to bite ’em first. That doesn’t make you brave, just stupid. You stand back and blow ’em away with a sweeper. Only one way to end this fighting: Stomp hard and stomp fast.”

Lyle shook his head and said, “He’ll get over it. It’s just syndrome.”

“Well,” said Angel, “he’ll find out there’s a hell of a difference between teep fighting and fighting in person.”

“Maybe,” I said, “he already found that out.”

* * *

That was the last I saw any of them until after the big offensive. Angel and I shared a platform at a bond rally, but that was near the end, when Angel was the Hero of Boise. We’d both heard how Lyle—and half his firebase—got scragged by the Sacramento car bomb and after the ceremonies we emptied a couple of Skull Mountains for him. That’s when Angel told me that Jimmy Topeka lost an arm in a firefight in the Bitterroots. He’s married now and living in the high country.

I managed to etch a half-dozen stories out of that one day’s bull session. “The Brothers.” “Rules of Engagement.” You’ve read them. They were compiled on ©-Net at <The Insiders> website.

The funny thing—and it must be just a coincidence—is that ever since then my seizures haven’t bothered me so much.

Editor’s Introduction to:
WAR AND MIGRATION
by Martin van Creveld

Martin van Creveld is arguably the world’s most pre-eminent military historian. Here he presents us with an analysis of war and migration, and reaches the inevitable conclusion: war is often indistinguishable from migration, although sometimes it takes longer. The Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, himself an assimilated child of immigrants, says that migration without the intent of assimilation is invasion; an act of war.

It is often said that the United States is a nation of immigrants. This is true enough, but it is a nation created by “the Melting Pot”, by assimilated immigrants, who entered legally and came to be Americans, or at least were not openly opposed to the idea. As Bill Buckley said, one could study to become an American in a way that one could not become Swiss, or a Swede. Assimilation was not always easy, and for freed slaves it was difficult; but it was generally the goal. The story of America and migration is as old as America.

The more recent migrants do not all accept assimilation as a goal; they seek to preserve their diversity. E Pluribus Unum is not the goal of the Caliphate; open rejection of toleration without dhimmitude is proclaimed.

The United States faces numerous decisions about migration, immigration, and assimilation. Dr. Van Creveld gives us crucial information on the history of migration, from the times before the Trojan War to the present.

WAR AND MIGRATION
by Martin van Creveld

War and migration have always been closely related. The relationship was recorded as early as 1300 BC, when we are informed the Israelites followed Moses out of Egypt to embark upon the enterprise that ultimately led them to the Promised Land of Canaan. As you will no doubt recall, they promptly conquered it. And since that time, for over 3,315 years, the link between war and the large-scale movement of people from one place to another has never been broken. Yet despite the way these mass movements of peoples have had a profound effect on human history, there has never been a systematic effort to explore the ways in which the two great phenomena, war and migration, interact. This essay is a preliminary attempt to rectify the situation.

1. From the Exodus to the Great Trek

The Old Testament tells the famous story of the Israelites, which begins sometime around 1800 BC when Canaan was visited by famine. This caused the patriarch Jacob and his extended family to travel to Egypt, where they and their offspring were initially welcomed, but later enslaved.

Four centuries later, having multiplied considerably, a leader by the name of Moses arose. Under his divinely-inspired command, they left Egypt. After crossing the Red Sea, they marched into the Sinai Desert where God, who was waiting for them, gave them the Pentateuch. From the desert they proceeded, very slowly, to what is known today as the Kingdom of Jordan. It is said that Moses must have been the first general staff officer, for who else would have required forty years to cross what is actually a very small desert? And after finally arriving on the threshold of the holy land four decades later, he died. His successor Joshua, who subsequently proved to be a formidable military commander, buried Moses, then led the Israelites across the river and into Canaan proper. These intrepid immigrants swiftly conquered the land and settled it after killing or enslaving most of the inhabitants.

Whether or not the tale of the Conquest of Canaan is historical has been debated for generations. In particular, scholars have questioned whether the Israelites could realistically have fielded a 600,000-man army, not counting the women and children. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, fancied himself a Biblical scholar and considered 6,000 to be a more acceptable figure. His view brought him into immediate conflict with Israel’s orthodox rabbis, who consider literally every word in the Old Testament to be Gospel truth.

But for our purposes, it does not really matter whether the story is historical or symbolic. Still less do the details concern us. What is important is that after all these years, this story of geographic relocation and conquest is still commemorated by all Jews around the world.

In other words, migration was war. In fact, insofar as ancient war frequently involved not only soldiers and armies, but entire nations who left their homeland “mit man und Ross und wagen” (with man and horse and wagon), as the Germans say, war was migration. The Exodus was far from the only episode of its kind. For example, the Dorians are believed to have entered Greece from the north in the years around 1100 BC. As with the Conquest of Canaan, the question of whether the Dorian migration really took place or not has been much disputed. Thucydides has the following to say about the topic in the introduction to his book on the Peloponnesian War:

The country now called Hellas had no settled population in ancient times; instead there was a series of migrations, as the various tribes, being under the constant pressure of invaders who were stronger than they were, were always prepared to abandon their own territory… In the belief that the day-to-day necessities of life could be secured just as well in one place as in another, they showed no reluctance in moving from their homes, and therefore built no cities of any size or strength, nor acquired any important resources. Where the soil was most fertile there were the most frequent changes of population, as in what is now called Thessaly, in Boeotia, in most of the Peloponnese (except Arcadia), and in others of the richest parts of Hellas. For in these fertile districts it was easier for individuals to secure greater powers than their neighbors: this led to disunity, which often caused the collapse of these states, which in any case were more likely than others to attract the attention of foreign invaders. It is interesting to observe that Attica, which, because of the poverty of her soil, was remarkably free from political disunity, has always been inhabited by the same race of people. Indeed, this is an important example of my theory that it was because of migrations that there was uneven development elsewhere; for when people were driven out from other parts of Greece by war or by disturbances, the most powerful of them took refuge in Athens, as being a stable society; they then became citizens, and soon made the city even more populous than it had been before, with the result that later Attica became too small for her inhabitants and colonies were sent forth to Ionia.

There are other examples besides the Israelites and the Dorians. The Etruscans migrated from Armenia to central Italy, around 850 BC according to a recent study. The Gaels launched numerous attacks on the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Balkans and Asia Minor in the third and second centuries BC, although they were ultimately repulsed. And in 58 BC, as Caesar tells us, the Helvetii wished to migrate from their homeland in southern Germany to southeastern Gaul and asked him, the newly-established pro-consul of Gaul, for permission to cross Roman-occupied territory on the way. After he refused to grant it, they fought him, were badly beaten, and were forced to turn back. That failed migration triggered a whole series of wars which ended in the Roman conquest of the entirety of Gaul within six years.

The nomadic Arabs who occupied much of the territory of the Byzantine Empire in the seventh and eighth centuries provide another informative example. So do the Magyars, whose original home was in the southern Ukraine and who reached what is Hungary today in the tenth century AD. Their westward migration was halted in 955, when they were defeated at the Battle of Lechfeld, near present-day Augsburg. The Mongol and Manchurian conquests of China (1205-79 and 1618-44 respectively) also led to large-scale migrations as various peoples retreated to the west, displacing other nations in turn.

The largest and most famous migratory episode, if that is the correct label for a process that stretched out over several centuries, was the so-called Völkerwanderung, “the migration of peoples.” It entirely transformed Europe from about the middle of the second century AD to the middle of the sixth century, destroying countless old polities and creating an equally large number of new ones. Driven out of the east by their more formidable neighbors, wave after wave of barbarian tribes crashed into Central and Western Europe. Some bypassed the Roman Empire to the north, whereas others crossed its frontiers and entered its territory to wage war on the inhabitants. The Saxons reached England, the Visigoths southwestern France, Spain and Portugal. The Vandals invaded North Africa, the Burgundians (whose original home was in Poland) traveled to the land that is now named after them, Burgundy. The Huns, whose original habitat was the Caucasus and Central Asia, traveled west, slaying and conquering everyone and everything on their way until a coalition of Romans and Visigoths finally stopped them at Chalon in 451. But the defeat of Attila did not by any means put an end to the series of migrations. The Huns were followed by the Lombards, the Lombards by the Bulgars, and between them they changed the maps, and the very placenames, of Europe.

All these migrating peoples, as well as many others that could be mentioned, were relatively simple tribal societies. In terms of organization, technology, material civilization, literature, the arts, and the like, they could not match the settled, more civilized, societies they encountered and often conquered. The book of Joshua describes Canaan as a land bristling with fortified cities, and yet they were quickly defeated by the nomadic Israelites. At a time when Roman power, encompassing practically all the lands around the Mediterranean, was approaching its zenith, Rome’s enemies in Germany and Gaul consisted of endlessly shifting tribes who lived in wooden huts. Four centuries later, the Germanic Visigoths sacked Rome.

The Huns, Ammianus Marcellinus says, were “a race savage beyond all parallel.” He describes them in distinctly unfavorable terms:

They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, and are so hardy that they require neither fire nor well-flavored food, but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses. They never shelter themselves under roofed houses… Nor is there even to be found among them a cabin thatched with reeds; but they wander about, roaming over the mountains and the woods, and accustom themselves to bear frost and hunger and thirst from their very cradles….

The anonymous Roman author of de rebus bellicis, writing early in the fifth century AD, speaks of other migratory tribes as “baying barbarians.” Baying may have been all these barbarians were capable of, but they did so with sword in hand. Although the process might take time, such as the 514 years that separated the Cimbrian War from the Sack of Rome, very often the barbarians eventually managed to defeat their more developed opponents and take over their lands. There are two cardinal factors that explain the frequent victory of the simple and less civilized migrants over their more sophisticated stationary opponents. First, while the settled societies enjoyed technological superiority in terms of joules of energy available per capita, the primary sources of mechanical energy were stationary devices such as windmills and water-mills. When it came to war and battle, which are intrinsically mobile, both the civilized soldiers and their barbarian enemies depended entirely upon the muscles of men and beasts. As a result, most of the technological advantage enjoyed by the civilized societies was irrelevant because it could not be brought to bear on the battlefield.

Second, the migrations were usually long, drawn-out processes. Though armed invasions and battles were frequent, there were also long periods of peace. Therefore, there was plenty of time for both sides to take each other’s measure and to learn from each other. Renegades and captives taken in war often played a large role. This exchange of information almost invariably worked to the benefit of the less civilized parties. For example, the Mongol armies which conquered China and came close to overrunning Europe in the mid-thirteenth century included many specialists who utilized technologies learned from the Chinese, including various types of siege engines. Two hundred years later, the Ottoman Turks did the same in their westward drive towards Constantinople and beyond.

The migratory phenomenon was not solely a Eurasian one. Africa also abounds with stories of armed migrations, some historical, others mythological. 3,000 years are said to have passed since the Bantu tribes began expanding out of their original homelands in what are today Cameroon and Nigeria, and now they can be found all over the central and southern parts of the continent. The Zulu established KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, after migrating southward along Africa’s east coast. Many of these migrations bear strong resemblances to the Exodus described in the Pentateuch. In every case, the movement was said to have been initiated by one or more gods. On their way, the migrants witnessed many different miracles which confirmed that they were, in fact, doing the right thing. One of the best-known African migration tales is that of the Ashanti, a martial tribe that migrated westward from Ghana into the Ivory Coast, who on their way received Sika ’dwa, the Golden Stool, a royal and divine throne believed to house the spirit of the Ashanti people.

One of the last, and most peculiar, African migrations was the Great Trek of the Boers. The Boers were European settlers, of Dutch and Huguenot descent, who left Cape Province in order to remain independent in the face of a growing British presence there. The Trek lasted from 1835 to 1846 and was unusual in the sense that the Boers set out to settle in lands inhabited by less civilized and less technologically advanced “kaffirs,” mostly Bantu and Hottentot tribes, thus reversing the usual pattern of migratory conflict. But like their less-civilized antecedents, the Boers never hesitated to use their superior arms against anyone who stood in their way. The Trek also resembled other previous migrations in the sense that the migrants were strict Calvinists who believed they acted under divine guidance. Visiting the region around Pretoria back in late 1994, I saw the famous monument to the Voortrekkers. It must be said, to the credit of the African National Congress who took over South Africa after apartheid, the region’s new rulers have not demolished it. Yet.

So migration was war and war was migration. Aside from relatively equal situations in Africa and North America when tribal societies fought each other, militarized migrations were chiefly a matter of less developed mobile societies attacking more developed, settled civilizations. That likely explains why, in the more technologically advanced parts of the world, migration-wars came to an end in the fifteenth century. As the history of the American West illustrates, once tribal warriors were able to lay their hands on modern weapons—particularly firearms—they quickly learned to use them just as well as their opponents. But what they could not do was produce the weapons and required ammunition for themselves. The development of firearms was a decisive shift in the balance of power towards more technologically advanced societies, particularly those of the West. How long this advantage will last is an open question, but there are indications that it is already on the wane.

2. Ethnic Cleansing

Thucydides illustrated how the process works in both directions: migration usually leads to war, but war can also lead to migration. For after war takes place, one of the common consequences is the forced migration that is currently known as ethnic cleansing. Some of the earliest migrations of this kind are recorded in the Old Testament. The Assyrian kings had an established policy of exiling half the population from the lands they conquered, one they followed after conquering the kingdom of Israel. A century later the Babylonians sent part of the population of Judea into exile after subjugating that kingdom. The small quasi-Jewish communities in Kurdistan, as well as the larger, pre-1948 ones in Iraq, are said to consist of the descendants of the Israelites forced to leave Israel by the Assyrians. Both empires made a habit of bringing in other peoples to take the place of those they had exiled. Thus the Samaritans, a small community of under a thousand people who currently live in Israel and the West Bank, are believed to be descended from settlers brought to the region by its Assyrian conquerors during the seventh and sixth centuries BC.

The spectacular reliefs at the British Museum that originally decorated the palace of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 705-681 BC) at Nineveh provide us with some idea of what an Assyrian ethnic cleansing operation may have looked like. The subject of the reliefs is the siege of Lachish, a city in the Judean Plain, in 701 BC. In addition to the military operations, they also show us what happened to the prisoners and deserters who left the city. Men were decapitated—there are lots of headless corpses lying around—or impaled. Women and children were left more or less unharmed and were taken away by the victors, accompanied by wagons laden with loot. Since Lachish was never rebuilt, the captives presumably went to places from whence they never returned. This suggests that women and children represented the majority of those who went into exile, although accounts from the Old Testament suggest that on at least some occasions, men were spared to share their fate.

The Romans preferred not to exile those they defeated, but to subjugate, rule, and levy taxes on them. Cicero calls such taxes “a perpetual penalty for defeat”. However, during the period between 200 BC and 120 AD, they regularly took enormous numbers of prisoners. These prisoners, men, women and children, were then transported to the slave markets, especially the famous ones of Rhodes and Delos, and sold there. Entire communities, including great cities such as Corinth and Carthage, were left almost devoid of inhabitants. This conquest-based slave trade brought a wide variety of different tribes, cultures and religions together and transformed Rome, the greatest slave market of all, into a new Babylon. The men who followed Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator who led the great slave revolt against Rome in 73-71 BC, came from many different lands. Spartacus’s goal was for them to all return to their countries of origin, but his men refused, preferring to stay in Italy where they could kill, pillage and rape. They were eventually defeated at Brundisium by eight legions led by Marcus Licinius Crassus, and hundreds were crucified along the Appian Way. Spartacus himself is believed to have been killed in the battle, but his body was never found.

In 66-70 AD, and again in 135-37 AD, the Jews of Palestine rose against their Roman conquerors. The Romans suppressed both rebellions and responded by engaging in extensive ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of people were driven out, and to use an expression coined nearly two thousand years later, Jerusalem was made Judenfrei. Jews were prohibited from living in the city or even entering it. Such episodes are by no means rare in history; the reason so many Jewish examples exist is that despite the forced migrations they experienced, they managed to preserve their religion and their ethnic identity. Other peoples forced to leave their homelands were either less fortunate or less determined. That does not necessarily mean that the Jews kept their race pure, however, for as modern genetic studies show, Jews settled in different countries tend to genetically resemble the host populations more than they do each other.

Not all forced migrations were the result of war. For example, throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period Jews were regularly expelled from many countries but this had little to do with war. During the century and a half after the Reformation, there were reciprocal expulsions of Catholics by Protestants and of Protestants by Catholics throughout Europe. The most famous example of these forced migrations was Louis XIV’s decision to revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which resulted in 400,000 Huguenots being exiled from France. Even in Switzerland, the cantons were divided on the basis of being Catholic or Protestant and much smaller forced migrations took place.

Large-scale ethnic cleansing again raised its ugly head during the early years of the twentieth century. The Balkan Wars led to the expulsions of Muslims from the Balkan states that broke free of the Ottoman Empire. Soon after the outbreak of World War I, the Turks, fearing lest the Christian Armenians might aid and abet the Russian enemy, enacted the first modern genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Armenian men were massacred; the rest of the population was expelled and driven to the Syrian Desert where they were left to die. The Turks also expelled the Jews of southern Palestine and drove them north, although some were taken to Alexandria, Egypt, by American ships. No sooner had the Great War ended than the Turks again initiated a massive ethnic cleansing campaign, this time against the Greeks of Western Anatolia. This region had been home to important Greek communities for over three millennia, but barely 5,000 Greeks remain there today.

The period 1919-21 also witnessed the expulsion of Hungarians from Romania, and of Germans from what had been West Prussia and Silesia, but was claimed by Poland after the war. Twenty years later, the jackboot was on the other foot. Having defeated the Poles, Hitler expelled masses of them from Western Poland and replaced them with Germans. He also expelled the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, driving them into France, after which they were subsequently re-expelled to the gas chambers in Eastern Europe.

As these events touch upon one of history’s most infamous crimes, it is important to note that the series of complicated campaigns of expulsion, directed primarily against Europe’s Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs, that ended in the murder of millions, could never have taken place had it not been for the cover provided by war. In Hitler’s mind, the war and the Endlösung der Judenfrage, or Final Solution of the Jewish Question were linked. Speaking to intimates in August 1941, the Führer of the Third Reich claimed the fact that so many Germans had lost their homes after World War I justified the “humane” expulsion of Germany’s Jews. Five months later, at the Wannsee Conference, the policies that lay the foundation for the Holocaust were worked out in detail.

There were more forced migrations to the east. After being unexpectedly attacked by his ally Hitler in violation of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin ordered the evacuation of the Tatars from the Crimea. His rationale was the same as many others before him; he feared the Tatars might join the advancing Germans. But the expulsion of the Tatars was nothing compared to the huge migrations that took place from 1944 to 1946. As the Soviet Red Army marched west towards Berlin, it was often joined by local militias in the Eastern European countries it occupied. 12 million Germans were driven out of their homelands in Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia (Slovenia and Croatia), Czechoslovakia, Poland, West Prussia, East Prussia, and Silesia, and about one-sixth of them died in the process. As the war came to an end, tens of millions of people were on the move across the continent. Refugees, slave workers, former concentration-camp prisoners, prisoners of war… almost all had nothing but rags to their name and were trying to either escape the advancing Russians or simply return home.

The forced migrations and ethnic cleansing did not end in 1945. The 1947 Indo-Pakistani War divided British India into two different countries and caused millions of people, terrified by the interreligious violence, to cross the newly established frontier between India and Paksistan in both directions. Triggered by the flight of ten million Bengali refugees from what was then known as East Pakistan, the Third Indo-Pakistani War, which broke out in 1971, brought about the creation of an independent Bangladesh. After the Pakistani surrender, the refugees returned and a smaller, though still considerable, number of Pakistanis were driven out of Bangladesh into West Pakistan. The end of the Vietnam War led to the expulsion of 250,000 ethnic Chinese Hoa from that country, as well as the migration of the two million Vietnamese “boat people”, over half of whom ultimately settled in the United States. The 1980 Russian invasion of Afghanistan caused as many as a million Afghanis to cross the border into Pakistan’s northwestern provinces. Despite being settled in refugee camps there, they eventually came to jeopardize their hosts’ control over the region—a problem, that may very well present itself in other parts of the world in the future.

Some of the wars that have taken place in Africa since the 1970s, particularly those in the Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Uganda, Rawanda-Burundi, the Congo, Liberia, Angola, and Mozambique also led to enforced migration on a massive scale.

And after a forty-two year hiatus, ethnic cleansing returned to Europe when, following the death of longtime dictator Tito, Yugoslavia broke up. When Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose population is predominantly Muslim, declared independence from Belgrade, the Serb minority in the province embarked on an all-out effort to avoid coming under Muslim rule. Their efforts were supported by the Serbian government under Slobodan Milosevič, which provided its kinsmen with men, weapons, and money.

The Bosnian war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, witnessed widespread ethnic cleansing. The war was brought to an end by NATO aircraft launching airstrikes at the stronger Serbian forces. It later turned out that there was little difference between the two sides, both of whom committed atrocities, including mass executions. The number of people who were displaced by the war has been estimated at 2.2 million, including 250,000 Serbs who were driven out of the Krajina. That fact did not prevent the world, with President Clinton at its head, from pointing to the Serbs as the culprits and condemning them by every available means.

The current wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other countries in Asia and Africa are also creating large numbers of migrants. Often they are prepared to do almost anything to escape the fighting even though life as a refugee is a perilous endeavor. Women are in particular danger, as they run the risk of being kidnapped and sold as prostitutes. According to the New York Times, there are currently 60 million people who have been forced to leave their homes. That represents just under one percent of the entire global population. Of the 60 million homeless, one-third are refugees who are presently living abroad. The remaining 40 million have been displaced by civil war but remain inside their own countries. Since the figures include millions of children who were born to refugees—even second generation refugees—or displaced people after they fled, it is possible that they are inflated. That is especially true in the case of the Palestinians, whose number the Palestinian Authority puts at a literally incredible six million. However, there is every sign that the number of displaced people is only going to grow and increase the size of the global mass migration in coming years.

For example, Israel’s War of Independence, which the Palestinians call the naqba (catastrophe), actually led to the expulsion of about 600,000 people. The June 1967 War created, at most, another 300,000 refugees. Nevertheless, the refugee camps near Jericho have become ghost towns and have largely remained so to the present day. As of 2015 large numbers of Palestinian refugees are scattered in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, while others have joined the ongoing Muslim migration to Europe and the United States.

Because Israel’s Arab neighbors find it useful and have no intention of permitting it to go away, the plight of the displaced Palestinians is both the most persistent refugee situation as well as the one that has attracted the most sustained international attention. Unfortunately, the future does not bode well, since the possibility that Jordan will eventually fall to Daesh (ISIS) is all too real. Should that come to pass, it is not inconceivable that the government in Jerusalem would deem it necessary, for reasons of national security, to drive out the two million Palestinians remaining in the West Bank as well.

3. Voluntary War-Related Migration

Though the use of force is war’s outstanding characteristic, not all war-related migrations are carried out by force. Very often, people decide to leave a war-torn region out of their own free will. One reason for doing so, which played an important role during the nineteenth century, is the desire to avoid conscription. In the decades following the development of the French Revolutionary Army, conscription became common throughout Europe and was rigidly enforced. Many of those wishing to evade forced military service went to the U.S.A., the British colonies, and Latin America.

Today, Eritrea is the country that produces the largest number of refugees trying to avoid national service, military or other. The country is governed by a despot named Isaias Afwerki. Freedom and human rights are unknown. Men and unmarried women are conscripted, often for life. This has caused thousands of Eritreans, particularly young men, to flee to Ethiopia. From there they usually continue on towards any other country they can enter, legally or illegally.

War also leads to migration in another way. From the earliest days of war, victorious soldiers have been besieged by the women of the defeated in search of safety, food, and, not least, sheer masculine force. That still remains the case. Armies often prohibit fraternization, as the Allied ones did in Germany after World War II. Some states even forbade marriages between their troops and women from the occupied population. Usually these efforts are to no avail. In World War II, American soldiers, “overpaid, oversexed, and over here,” as their British allies described them, often had the time of their lives after the war’s end. Most of them eventually returned home alone. But an estimated 60,000 American soldiers brought back a signorina or a Fräulein as a wartime souvenir. The Korean War is known to have produced an even larger migration, most likely because the ban on marrying Japanese women—Japan served as the principal U.S. base during the Korean war—was lifted. From 1942 to 1952, the number of GIs who married foreign women was around one million.

The wars in Southeast Asia from 1965 to 1975 that involved about 2.5 million American troops generated another crop of war brides. But although the phenomenon is not entirely unknown in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is much less common. The difference is that Muslims are extremely jealous of their women and segregate them as much as possible. Hence the U.S. military, in the hope of not further inflaming the occupied populations, has done its best to discourage the troops from fraternizing with the local women.

Much more important than either of these forms of post-war migration is the kind which is driven by the hope of a safer, more orderly, and more prosperous life abroad. This describes the majority of modern migrations. Their destinations are primarily the rich countries of the West, as well as Australia. Migrants with a Christian background are normally absorbed without too many problems, especially if they are white, as refugees from the former Yugoslavia are. However, the Lebanese Christian diaspora has shown that even those from Arab backgrounds can adapt to the West. Hindus and Buddhists also tend to do well.

By contrast, most Muslim migrants are fanatically opposed to any kind of cultural assimilation. Using their mosques as community centers and accepting religious imams as their leaders, they actively resist any attempt to integrate them. Some even begin proselytizing for their way of life, as they have every right to do in a democratic country. Their objective is to spread their views on what the late Samuel Huntington used to call identity. Identity, as Huntington describes it, includes “the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy.” It also includes general relations between the sexes as well as the rights of homosexuals, as well as many of the rights many Westerners hold dear in both their private lives and in the socio-political arena.

As of 2015, Muslims form about eight percent of the population of the European Union. In large cities, especially wealthy ones situated on important communication lines or featuring seaports, the percentage of Muslims tends to be much higher. In some cities, entire neighborhoods have been taken over and reshaped in accordance with the migrants’ preferences. These neighborhoods, such as Tower Hamlets in east London and the Kuregem district of Brussels, have assumed a decidedly Mohammedan character, complete with mosques, veiled women, and muezzins calling the faithful to prayer. Most of these neighborhoods are slums where the inhabitants tend to be unskilled, under-educated, and unemployed. Many of the residents cannot even speak the language of their hosts. Further complicating the situation, the newcomers lose their accustomed control over wives and children who tend to be more amenable to integration; this ongoing intra-family conflict not infrequently leads to domestic violence. Muslim immigrants often feel underprivileged and discriminated against, even though they are living off the largesse—one might even say the tribute—of the people whose lands they are occupying.

It is true that only a small percentage of the immigrants in question turn to violence, let alone politically motivated violence. But it is also true that in all the countries to which they have immigrated, Muslim immigrants are committing crimes at a rate that far exceeds the native population. A portion of this crime represents the continuation of politics that is indistinguishable from terrorism and will inevitably lead to harsh countermeasures, and eventually, reprisals. The present situation is more than a little reminescent of past migration-inspired wars and bodes ill for the future; it is estimated that as many as 5 million of France’s Muslims already live in zones urbaines sensibles where the French police and government have relatively little control.

The modern form of economic migration is not caused by war but it is threatening to turn into a cause of war, as has happened many times before. An informative example of how a minority-majority conflict can lead to violence can be seen in sixteenth-century France. For thirty years following John Calvin’s break from the Roman Church in 1530, Catholics and Huguenots looked at each other with increasing mistrust. This mistrust occasionally sparked sporadic violence, and over time, the violence gradually escalated. In 1562, with the Huguenots numbering 12.5 percent of the French population, full-scale war finally broke out. The religious issues were intertwined with political differences, and foreign powers, such as England, Spain, the Low Countries, various German princes, and even the Papacy, were drawn into the struggle. By the time Henry IV was finally able to put an end to the eight Wars of Religion in 1598 by issuing the Edict of Nantes, more Frenchmen had been killed than in any other conflict prior to World War I, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.

4. Conclusions

War is far from the only cause of migration. Other reasons, primarily economic, have always played an important role in encouraging people to leave their native lands. As the examples of the Puritans and the Huguenots show, religious motives can also be a factor. Yet even when these other reasons were the cause, war and migration have been closely linked in various and complex ways.

At some times, war and migration were essentially the same, as in the great migration of peoples during the first few centuries after Christ, the Arab expansion after 632 AD, the Magyar invasion of Europe, the Mongol invasions of China, and the movements of many African tribes from one part of the continent to another. At other times, the relationships between the two phenomena were more complicated, such as ethnic cleansings that rendered war unnecessary or took place after war’s end, mass avoidance of conscription, or soldiers bringing home concubines and war brides. All these various forms have often intermingled, all appear regularly in the annals of human history, and all will doubtless continue to do so in the future. The only thing that changes is their relative importance at any given point in time.

As far as the West is concerned, the most significant migration today is the massive influx of Muslims. The reason is that, unlike the people of the secularized West, Muslims take their religion, and the way of life it prescribes, seriously. As a consequence, they are much harder to integrate than other, more malleable immigrants.

For the present, it would be going too far to say that the refugees, as well as those who are responsible for their plight back in their homelands, are actively waging war against the West. They lack the leadership and organization required for the effective, large-scale violence that war entails. However, it must be recognized that more than a few in their midst are not averse to using violence in order to achieve their aims. They have, after all, invaded numerous countries without regard for the will of the people of those countries, and their presence is no less likely to spark resistance than the armed invasions of the past. Since war, as Clausewitz teaches, has a built-in tendency to escalate, the resistance can be expected to graduate into all-out armed conflict over time. Especially, as seems likely, if the influx continues and all the valiant efforts at integration prove futile.

From Berlin to Jerusalem, let those with ears to listen, listen!

Editor’s Introduction to:
THE LAST SHOW
by Matthew Joseph Harrington

It is often said of the Society for Creative Anachronism, it isn’t the way it was, but it’s the way it ought to have been. The same could be said of this story.

THE LAST SHOW
by Matthew Joseph Harrington

The 700-odd prisoners were moved to the new compound at the Sagan POW camp on April 1st, 1943. As was often the case during such a large operation, there was an amount of confusion among the Germans guarding them, and some escapes were attempted. They failed. The X Committee was subsequently established to improve their chances the next time.

“X”, of course, stood for “escape”.

More prisoners kept showing up as flyers were captured. One of the earliest additions was an American named Eric White, who’d joined the RAF at the end of ’39 and was a squadron leader by the time he was finally shot down. He was a short fellow who shaved his head, wore a thick handlebar mustache worthy of a melodrama villain, and kept his body hard as brick. He’d arrived on April 2nd, and spent a couple of days ambling around the camp sightseeing.

Early on the morning of the 5th, he went to the X headquarters hut and asked to speak with the head of the escape committee.

The very existence of the X committee was being kept secret from most of the prisoners. He was hustled inside, where Squadron Leader Bushell— big X— demanded, “Who the devil’s been talking out of turn?” He could be intimidating as Hell when he chose, and he chose.

“I wouldn’t know,” White replied mildly. “I’ve been watching movements. Every time an escape attempt fails, one of six men makes a beeline for this hut.”

“Oh, Hell,” said Junior Clark, who was in charge of security.

“The goons haven’t noticed yet,” said White. “I’ve been watching them too.”

“Ill wind,” Bushell remarked, relieved. “Here about a plan, then, are you?”

“Yes, but it needs a lot of help. And I don’t see how to get everybody out before the end of September.”

Interested, Bushell said, “Just how many men do you mean to get out?”

White gave him a blank look. “I just said. Everybody.”

There was a long moment of silence.

It was never certain just how many men broke it with the words, “Mad as a hatter,” but it was at least three.

Bushell was not among them. He waved for silence, gradually got it, and said, “There’s more than seven hundred men here.”

“I figure by then it’ll be closer to nine hundred,” White said, nodding. “We’ll need some kind of printing press for forged documents. I can carve blanks for casting type. Oh, and here.” He got out and passed over a small camera. “I’m afraid about half the film is used up, I was taking pictures of the route here from Saarbrücken. You’ll need to get more from the guards when you bribe them for developer.”

“You just happened to have brought along a camera?” Clark said.

“No, of course not, it would have been confiscated. I stole it when they photographed me. Oh, and you’ll need these.” He held out a child’s balloon, uninflated, that seemed to have fine gravel tied in the end. “Diamonds. To bribe the guards.”

“How in the world—” said Clark, who stopped and looked at the balloon in his palm with visible misgivings.

“It’s all right, that’s a clean one. I started with twelve, one outside the next. Washed the outer one off and threw it away whenever I got them back. Good thing they don’t feed prisoners much, they took their time getting me here. There’s only three layers left. The texture was starting to be noticeable.”

Bushell broke the ensuing silence with, “Where did you get so many diamonds?”

“Bought ’em in ’27 when the German banks crashed. Had a bad accident the year before, made me start thinking hard about the future. Turned out handy later.”

Clark looked him over suspiciously. “Just how old are you?”

White grinned. “As old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth. I beat the physical by shaving my head and using misdirection. I’m good at misdirection. Do you want to hear my plan?”

“I think we do,” said Bushell.

White told them. It took several minutes.

There followed another minute or so of dead silence. Clark finally said, “It’s impossible.”

“I hope the Germans think so,” said White.

“Do you have any idea how much of that damned yellow sand we’d have to hide?” Clark demanded.

“Something close to a thousand tons,” White said, and smiled. “I doubt anyone will be looking at much of it too closely.”

And there was the heart of the matter. Slowly, smiles appeared on faces to match his own.

White had brought with him a remarkable collection of seeds in cellophane bags, along with a couple of books on gardening and nutrition, respectively. He had been permitted to keep these, possibly due to his practice of avidly proselytizing any German who couldn’t get away quickly enough on the subject of vegetarianism. (Hitler being a vegetarian, they could hardly just tell him to shut up.) White spoke German quite badly, at least when there were Germans about. This was ostensibly the reason it was left to Group Captain Massey, who was senior British officer, to make an appointment to see the camp commandant with some odd but fairly reasonable requests.

Colonel Von Lindeiner, who was an old-school Prussian and considered himself a fair man, was deeply suspicious of the idea of letting prisoners collect firewood in the surrounding forest, but had to acknowledge that without it most of the rest of the requests would be pointless. Besides, no RAF prisoner had ever broken his parole once given; and the huge vegetable gardens that were being planned would keep a lot of prisoners very busy indeed.

It completely overshadowed any suspicions he might have had about increasing the size of the theater to allow the whole camp to attend.

The tunnel between the camp theater and hut 119 was being started even as the requests were being approved. The conspicuous yellow sand that underlay the feeble gray topsoil of the compound was packed into the generous space under the sloping floor of the original theater. Boards were taken from hut bunks to provide shoring for the sides and roof of the tunnel.

White said that was temporary. The work of expansion covered the constant movement back and forth between the theater and all the huts nicely. An avid watch was kept on tools and lumber, but White had offered to flense the calluses off the feet of any man who stole so much as a nail. Nobody ever took him up on it.

The goons were less than pleased to learn the purpose of all the buckets. However, human sewage couldn’t be safely used as fertilizer without being sterilized, and that could hardly be done indoors. There wasn’t time or room to compost it, so it had to be brought to a boil to sterilize it, mixed with dirt, and buried in the garden plots. The resulting soil was acidic, which meant that a good deal of chalk was needed to neutralize it. Since that cut the stink, the Germans were more than pleased to supply it.

It was exceedingly fertile, and the amount of weeds that came up with the first vegetable shoots was not to be believed. The gardens took even more tending than the commandant had imagined. Some of the chalk was burned to make whitewash, which was applied to the sides of each hut, to reflect sunlight onto the gardens. Linseed oil was painted over the whitewash to keep it from being rinsed away in the rain. Nets of string were strung over the gardens to trap birds, most of which were killed and cleaned to make pots of soup. Trapped pigeons were kept alive in cages of wire netting to fatten and eat. Low fences were put around the gardens to block rodents, and gaps were left in the fences to keep them from simply gnawing through. The gaps held snares of string and wire, killing rats, mice, and even an occasional rabbit. These were skinned, cleaned, and stewed to feed the pigeons. Once all the cages were full, which was soon, fattened pigeons were roasted and replaced as fast as new ones were caught. After the sunflowers began to blossom, a couple of pigeons a day per hut wasn’t unusual.

It never once occurred to any of the Germans to wonder what happened to the skins and feathers. White was a pilferer of extraordinary talent, and had acquired considerable equipment from various parts of the camp. This included far more wire than anyone had supposed was available. The proteins of the feathers were broken down by electrolysis in brine, then the lye was neutralized with the acid that had been produced, leaving a brackish slush that was rendered into gelatin for a mimeograph. Once there was more gelatin than was needed by the forgers, the acid was used to break down potatoes into slush, which was dried and saved, as was the alkaline gel. White demonstrated that it was possible to live on about a pound of the combined powders a day, which when added to a quart or so of water made a nourishing if salty self-heating soup. However, not even he claimed to like the stuff.

The skins were scraped clean and cured by boiling in distilled vinegar— all the plant matter that wasn’t eaten was more than happy to participate in the production of vinegar on its own, let alone with encouragement— and stitched together into undergarments. The clothing situation being what it was, this was a Godsend even if nothing else came of it.

Meanwhile most of the chalk was being put to a much better use than gardening.

A shaft had been started straight down in every hut. These were shored with bed slats at first, and the yellow sand went under the theater. More sand was rinsed, dried, and put into cans with a little chalk, to about a third full. Men were assigned to shake cans of the mix until it stopped rattling, which meant the sand had ground up the chalk. The mix was roasted inside the stoves every hut had, then cooled and shaken up again. When wetted and pushed into rectangular casting frames it dried to a pretty good cement brick.

The tunnel from 104 out into the forest was twenty-five feet deep at its ceiling, and big enough for two men to work side by side, standing up, at the tunnel face. An arched framework made from bed slats would be pounded in at the start of each shift, and sand dug out around it to insert bricks to make a cement archway. Then the sand within the framework was dug out and moved, and the framework would be driven forward again. It was ridiculously fast.

Men in each hut tunneled sideways from the shafts to connect to adjacent huts. The wooden shaft liners were replaced with bricks, and the wood used to shore the tunnels until bricks could be moved in. Once the tunnels were finished, the wood was used to smoke pigeon meat for carrying later.

Escape attempts were made throughout the whole procedure, giving the Germans something to pay attention to. That was in addition to the extra attention they were paying to the gardens, trying to find yellow sand. None was going in— it all went under the theater. Bushell took White aside after a while and asked him, “Not that I object to the extra food, but what was the purpose of all the gardens if not to put the sand there?”

“Misdirection, for one thing,” said White.

“Misdirected us too, you think there’s an informer?” Bushell wasn’t sure whether to be offended or worried.

“Hardly, but the best actor is one who really believes in the part. Also, the men are putting on some weight and getting more sun. They’re not going to look so much like prisoners once they get out. More misdirection, later on.”

“They’re still not going to be out for long. We won’t be able to provide documents for more than a quarter of them.”

“They may be out longer than you think,” White said.

“Why d’you say that?”

White looked at him over that walrus mustache. “How good an actor are you?”

“Pretty bloody good.”

“Good enough to hide being in a ridiculously good mood for six more weeks?”

Bushell studied him for a long moment, then said, “Maybe not.”

White wasn’t spending all his time walking about and doing his ferocious course of exercise. (He’d offered to hold wrestling matches for entertainment, but nobody ever took him up on it twice.) In addition to being the best scrounger and all-around thief in the prisoner population, he turned out to be an excellent forger, a superlative tailor, and an extraordinary toolmaker. Just for example, he came up with a method of magnetizing compass needles that was far better than anybody could have reasonably hoped: bunch steel needles together, wrap them in a steel strap (hammered out of a bullybeef tin and baked with soot to add carbon to the wrought-iron), heat them red-hot with a torch (he made town gas for it by blowing steam over charcoal heated in a tin, and anybody who had to do welding or soldering blessed him daily), slip a densely-wrapped coil of electrical wire around it, and run current through until the metal had cooled. You had to be terribly careful undoing the strap, because the needles would fly apart at the first opportunity. They were a sight more powerful than Wehrmacht field-issue.

He also consulted on other escape attempts. More misdirection, yes, but some of them worked. The most wildly successful involved two dozen men escorted out the gate in a delousing party by two other prisoners dressed as guards. Six of them made it all the way to Spain, where they arrived from their separate routes at the British Consulate on the same day.

White was also in charge of the language classes. He spoke German and French himself, both with a hilarious New York accent; his inspiration was to get all the men in each hut to learn the same language, and to speak nothing else while in the hut, a la Berlitz, but with more homework— they were learning to read and write it too. Men who were planning to use a different language for their escape identities were required to swap with someone else learning the hut language. There were a few who were hopeless cases, and they were sent to fill up spare bunks in any hut that didn’t have a full set of students, and partnered with men who were quick studies, to cover for them.

Traffic back and forth to the theater didn’t let up much, since White had also organized rehearsals and set production for half a dozen plays he’d learned off by heart. Von Lindeiner was conspicuously magnanimous about using the office mimeograph to make multiple copies of the scripts White had laboriously done in large print. It came to an awful lot of pages for each one. White produced bleach with the feather-dissolving works and took the lettering off about half the scripts. (Massey had asked for just as many as they needed, and then kept coming back with damaged scripts for replacements, until von Lindeiner printed up far more than necessary, on better paper. From then on the forger team had all the material to work with that they wanted.)

Of course the goons watched the theater traffic, but of course nobody was getting rid of sand above ground anymore.

The forgers, tailors, and tinkers worked down in the main tunnel, which White dubbed “Philip Morris,” on the grounds that the use of those words would arouse absolutely no suspicion among the goons. He gave Tim Walenn Hell for calling the forging operation “Dean and Dawson,” after the travel agency; he said it gave the show away the instant any German who’d done any traveling abroad heard it, and before the War a lot of them had done. White renamed it “Betty Grable,” and Massey was able to talk von Lindeiner into having a lot of copies of a rather famous picture of her printed up. These were posted in every room in every hut. Any reference to “Betty Grable” was instantly covered. (They did something for morale, too.)

The diamonds traded to the guards— no more than one each, and they certainly didn’t compare notes about the subject— paid for all manner of useful little trinkets, including equipment to develop film, more film, and an extraordinary selection of pens, indelible inks, and document-quality paper. It also got them quite a lot of razor blades, which would see a lot of use on the night of the breakout.

Light for the work was provided by batteries White had worked out. They were just iron tins with brine in them, with copper wire wrapped in blotting paper stuck into one and leading to the outside of the next. A man could get a bad jolt from several put together in a row, and they produced enough power to keep the work well-lit. He arranged to recharge them at night, when the electricity was on.

Walenn kept training more forgers, giving the new ones basic stuff to do while his experts did the precision work, until it was getting to be quite a factory below ground. Other men were kept going back and forth between huts from time to time on a scheduled, irregular basis, so the goons wouldn’t notice any reduction in the population or get suspicious of a pattern. There wasn’t one to notice.

They ended up putting together thousands of the little bits of paper that Germans and their subjects had to have about their persons at all times. They also mimeographed maps, with compass roses and directions on them.

Massey was able to talk von Lindeiner into giving the camp material for patching and for making clothes to replace ruined uniforms. It was bright red, indelibly dyed, making it useless for putting together a disguise for an escaped prisoner. It never occurred to von Lindeiner to wonder about what happened to the clothing it replaced, but every man in camp learned to sew a good seam, very quickly.

The main drag of the tunnel was finished September 20th, with a roofed ramp leading up to about five feet from the surface. There were sturdy ladders in place, and the end was calculated to be about fifty yards into the woods— White wasn’t satisfied with its length until they’d had to cut through the taproot of at least one tree. Breakout was scheduled for the 28th, 29th, or 30th of September. They were days in the middle of the week, so the train timetables were regular, and there would be plenty of passengers for the escapees to mix with.

Some men weren’t informed until the evening of the 28th. There was a mad scramble all round to get dressed after lights-out, then get down into each hut’s tunnel to the main shaft. A lot of men had had no idea of the scope of the digging, but herders had been appointed for each hut to keep the gaping and astounded moving along.

The tunnel was well-lighted, light bulbs being top priority on the list of things to steal. Men were assembled in it in a column, two by two, and had a certain amount of room at that. Muller and Macintosh had hand-wound little motors, each one different according to what scraps they’d had on hand at the moment, and they were attached to fan blades that were now mounted in each hut. These were used to draw air out of the branches of a cement pipe that ran parallel to the electric wire along the tunnel roof. When they were all running, there was a faint but noticeable breeze running down the shaft toward the exit.

Massey took Bushell aside and said White ought to be the first man out. Bushell said he would be staying behind.

“For Christ’s sake, why?” Massey demanded in a voice of almost normal volume.

Bushell told him.

“Mother of God,” Massey said softly. “I never noticed.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Bushell said. “I didn’t until he told me. Why do you imagine he worked so hard not to let von Lindeiner get a good look at him? The Kommandant has done some traveling, and White’s done a sight more.”

“Jesus,” Massey said, and it was reverent. “Jesus,” he repeated.

When the signal was given to open the end, the men on the ladders pulled boards out of the roof, then backed off and threaded together the handles Travis had made for their scoops and started digging the roof out. There was a lot of sand from that, then a sudden cave-in, then a breeze from above. They were through. Men passed buckets down the line to scoop out the sand, and as they were passed back each man took out a little handful and dropped it by the wall. There was plenty of room for it, and when a man got an empty bucket he handed it to the man next to him to pass forward again. The men with the scoops widened the hole and smoothed the sides to prevent another big fall, and when they were done clearing the sand they passed their scoops back. Longer ladders were passed forward, they set them up, and Wally Floody, master tunneler, was the first to poke his head out. “It’s clear,” he said quietly. “I can barely see the lights from the far towers, and I don’t see the road at all.”

“Well get out of the way, then,” said Johnny Dodge, and Floody got.

They were all out in an hour, scattering like rats dumped out of a sack, with Bushell being the last to go. He shook White’s hand and said, “I hope it bloody works the way you expect. If not you’re probably going to be skinned alive.”

“No worries,” said White, who had been housed with Aussies for the past six months. “I’ve seen pictures. Amazing it hasn’t happened already. Now get going.”

Bushell nodded, then gave one of his rare grins. “I almost want to stay to see their faces.”

“‘Almost’,” said White, and grinned back. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shave.”

With that, he strolled back up the tunnel, took the branch to his hut, went to his room, shaved off his mustache, and went to bed.

At Appell the next morning, he showed up without a shirt.

Alone.

The goons charged into all the huts and found all the tunnel openings, unclosed, right away. Oberfeldwebel Glemnitz, chief of camp security, screamed abuse at White in German until von Lindeiner arrived, having been informed by a hysterical guard that the prisoners had left through fifteen separate tunnels. Glemnitz shut up then, and von Lindeiner came up to White and asked him where the prisoners had gone.

“Everywhere,” said White, and smiled as von Lindeiner studied his face, frowning.

“I know you,” von Lindeiner said presently.

“I get around,” said White, nodding.

Guards kept coming over and delivering deeply impassioned reports about the tunnels, and finally one shouted something lengthy and almost inarticulate from outside the fence. Von Lindeiner went gray and said, “You realize that this will create a hysterical response. Possibly the only thing I can do to salvage my own career is to shoot you at once.”

“You might wait until you get word from Berlin,” White suggested. “By all means, do mention my name.”

Von Lindeiner studied him again, then put a hand to his chest. “Mein Gott.”

White was taken to von Lindeiner’s office. When Glemnitz asked if he should be put in irons, von Lindeiner laughed so long his men began looking concerned. “No,” said the Kommandant at last, “I see no point in that.”

“Are you all right?” White said.

“As well as a man can be who expects to be shot,” said von Lindeiner.

“Don’t make any hasty assumptions about that right now,” White said.

“What do you mean?”

“I doubt I can explain and be believed right away. —I’m afraid I didn’t get breakfast,” White said.

“Feed him,” said von Lindeiner. “Plenty. He has been working very hard for this.”

Word was sent to Berlin at once, of course. A series of conflicting instructions was sent back for about an hour. They ended with a notice that the Fuehrer was indisposed at present, and further instructions would be forthcoming shortly.

When the sole remaining prisoner heard this, he said, “I don’t expect to hear from him again. Apoplexy. Between his rages and the signs of illness I’ve seen in pictures, he’s probably already dead, and the dispute over the succession will take up everyone’s attention. Whoever wins is going to be ready to talk terms about ending this war. You know,” he added thoughtfully, “if someone had thought of breaking off relations with Japan after Pearl Harbor, stopping all advance, and using the Kriegsmarine to escort neutral ships, you might not have brought America into the European conflict for a couple more years. Maybe ever.”

“You got yourself captured deliberately, didn’t you?” von Lindeiner realized aloud. “It was to do this. Nothing else.”

“You suspect me of deception? I’m shocked! As you can see, I ain’t got nothing up my sleeves,” said Houdini.

This story is respectfully dedicated to Paul Brickhill; to the Fifty; and to the incomparable Erich Weiss.

Editor’s Introduction to:
FLASHPOINT: TITAN
by Cheah Kai Wai

Arthur C. Clarke said that if the human race is to survive, for most of its history the word ship will mean space ship. I will add to that the obvious implication that Navy will soon mean Space Navy. The Space Navy will certainly keep many of the traditions and practices of the wet navies, for the same reasons that they developed in the first place.

Navy stories are as old as going to sea in ships. The heroines of those stories are often ships as well as their crews. Here a story of a heroic ship and her crew.

FLASHPOINT: TITAN
by Cheah Kai Wai

Something was wrong. Somewhere in the sea of data before him, there was a shark swimming amidst a school of fish. Commander Hoshi Tenzen of the Japanese Space Self Defense Force narrowed his eyes, studying his ship’s combined sensor take on his console.

The console displayed the data as a three-dimensional hologram. In the center of the display, Takao was a blue triangle pointing towards a bright yellow mass. That was Titan, the largest moon in the Saturnian system, ten thousand kilometers away. Other yellow dots indicated satellites, orbital structures and shuttles with Titanian registration. White tracks indicated civilian space traffic. A number of small green dots orbited Titan, each representing American orbital patrol ships. Each contact carried a unique tag, displaying vector, velocity, name and other critical information.

There was too much data. He was drowning in it. Leaning back, he studied the big picture, looking for patterns of activity. Ships came to Titan, dropped off cargo, picked up other cargo, and left. It was their purpose in coming here.

But there were ships that did not fit this pattern.

Four of them. Their beacons claimed they were merchant ships registered to Clementine Space Transport Services, headquartered in Ceres. They were burning at five milligees, their vectors pointed at deep space.

But there was nothing of interest beyond Titan. The only other significant human activity past the moon was the gas mines at Uranus, which were almost completely automated.

So why were these ships accelerating?

Hoshi opened a new window, studying the radar track history. For the past week, the quartet had plodded steadily towards Titan on deceleration burns. They arrived three hours ago, entering the ten thousand kilometer orbit at a velocity of two klicks per second. An hour later, they flipped around and burned their engines. And they hadn’t stopped since.

His console chirped. Prometheus, the largest colony on Titan, was hailing Takao on the laser communications array. They had a message for Takao’s ears only.

He accepted the hail on his implants. A broad Midwestern accent flooded his skull. “Takao, this is Prometheus Control. Welcome to Titan. I wish I could greet you under more auspicious circumstances, but we need your help.”

“Copy, Prometheus Control,” Hoshi replied in English. “What kind of help do you need?”

“Takao, I want to draw your attention to Cloud Nine, Summer Squall, Autumn Lightning and Blue Jasper. They just pinged the laser launch array, the space elevator and the colony with lidar. They claim they are testing their instruments, but I’ve never heard of merchies that need military-grade lidar. We think they’re up to something.”

Hoshi looked for the ships. They were the same four ships he had flagged. Takao had designated them S-547 through S-550. They had formed a box, each ship separated by two hundred and fifty kilometers. He’d never known civilian freighters to take up such a formation in orbit.

But he knew warships did prior to a bombing run.

“Prometheus Control, understood. If these are Q-ships, we are ready to provide assistance. Be advised, we are carrying a full war load.”

Q-ships were warships disguised as merchant vessels. They couldn’t match the performance of real warships, but they could remain concealed until they released their weapons, making them the favorite of pirates and terrorists.

“Thank you kindly, Takao. We’re going to run an emergency drill, clear the airspace, and launch the alert squadron. Our plan is to lock down the ships and board ’em for surprise inspections. Give us a half hour and we’ll be in place.”

“Roger, Prometheus Control. If the suspect ships attempt to resist or escape, we will provide fire support.”

“Much obliged, Takao. Let’s do this.”

Hoshi typed a command on his console. Throughout the ship, a klaxon sounded. He keyed the ship-wide intercom and said, “All hands, sentou youii. All hands, sentou youii.”

The crew rushed to assume their battle stations. Around him, the duty personnel in the Combat Information Center tensed. Other spacers streamed in, taking their places.

Hoshi buckled himself into his seat and summoned a window that tracked the ship’s status. One by one, the boxes representing each deck and department turned green. He patted down his blue skinsuit, checking for holes. Two minutes later, the ship was at maximum readiness.

Lieutenant Kamishiro Takeshi, whose place as Executive Officer was in the astrogation deck above Hoshi, called him. “Sir, the ship is battle ready.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Hoshi turned off the klaxon, brought his officers into a conference call, and briefed them.

“Gentlemen, this is no longer a shakedown cruise,” he concluded. “Remember: everyone back home is watching. Do not screw up.”

Only Kamishiro had the courage to snicker over the line. “Ryoukai!” Roger! “We won’t let you down.”

No one was watching him, so Hoshi allowed himself a momentary smile. “Sensors, extend telescopes and track the bogies. If they pull in their radiators, inform us immediately. Intelligence, assume the bogies are Q-ships and develop a threat profile. Weapons, create a solution for long-range engagement. Astrogation, plot an interdiction vector at full thrust.”

Hoshi and his Astrogation head, Lieutenant Sato Koichi, went back and forth until they were satisfied. Then Ensign Tanaka Michi, the Engineering officer, got on the intercom.

“All hands, accelerating, accelerating.”

The Japanese Space Self Defense Force called Takao a multimission patrol ship, the first of her class. But that was a misleading misnomer. Takao was truly a torch ship.

Mobilizing her gyroscopes,Takao rotated in place. Once vector-aligned, the fusion drive roared, accelerating the ship at one-third gravity, faster than any warship ever built. As Takao ate up the distance to Titan, Ensign Subaru Ryuto, the Weapons chief, hailed Hoshi.

“Sir, I have a solution.”

Subaru’s solution called for engaging the threats with Takao’s main laser from standoff range, then finishing them with missiles. Her point defense lasers and railguns would handle counterfire.

“Very good, Subaru. But while use of the laser is as per doctrine, there are Chinese forces a week out from Titan, and the Americans don’t need to know our capabilities. Set the lasers to ultraviolet-A. Then launch two sunrays and program them for the same frequency. Boost the sunrays to a deep space vector that enables us to make broadside shots against the bogies.”

Lieutenant Junior Grade Nakamura Makoto was next in line, ready with the threat profile. “Captain, the ships are registered as independent merchant vessels, displacement of twelve hundred tons each. They have deuterium-tritium drives, maximum acceleration of five milligees. They have a payload of five hundred tons each, mounted on external cargo pods. They claim to be carrying a shipment of ice from Ceres. Assuming these are Q-ships, I expect the pods to be filled with missiles and possibly drones.”

“Nakamura, did you say five milligees?”

“Yes sir. The reactor is either pretty small or pretty underpowered.” Nakamura hesitated. “Or they are concealing their actual acceleration profile.”

“Let’s assume the latter,” Hoshi said. “If they are Q-ships, they must suspect something by now. Titanian airspace is being cleared, the orbital patrol is converging on them, and our drive capabilities are as plain as day. Why haven’t they attacked yet?”

Nakamura took a moment to think it through. “Sir, they must be waiting for all their targets to enter their engagement envelope. That means the orbital patrol squadron, the laser launch array…and us.”

Hoshi’s blood chilled. Maybe they pinged the colony and pulled a burn so that everybody would come running into their sights. If Takao closed with an enemy too fast, she would be setting herself up for a point-blank missile swarm—one even she could not dodge in time.

“Thank you, Nakamura. Tanaka, halt acceleration.”

The drive cut off. Hoshi contacted Prometheus Control and passed on his men’s thoughts.

“Thank you very much, Takao,” Control said. “We’re moving slow too. We don’t want to spook them into doing something stupid. Way I figure, they will want to wait until we launch the alert squadron before striking.”

“Roger. What’s the plan for Q-ships?”

“Our priority will be to protect the Elevator, the colony, and the laser launch array, in that order. We will aim for impactors first, drones second, missiles third, and the Q-ships last.”

“Copy. We will target the Q-ships, drones and missiles in order of decreasing importance. We will also try to trash enemy weapons, but we don’t want to splash you by mistake.”

“Much obliged, Takao. If you don’t mind, let us handle impactors. That should prevent friendly fire. Also, let us know if you have to fire kinetics and I’ll get my birds out of your way.”

“Roger that, Prometheus Control.”

Subaru contacted Hoshi as soon as he closed the connection. “Sir, sunrays are good to go.”

Hoshi checked the solution and nodded. “Thank you, Subaru. Stand by.”

Hoshi brought up the radio controls, tuning it to the guard channel. “Attention all stations, attention all stations. This is JS Takao. We will be launching laser-propelled probes shortly. Please maintain separation of one hundred kilometers from my vector.”

Space warships launched probes so often that nobody would think twice about the announcement. Hoshi repeated the announcement three times, then said, “Launch sunrays.”

Powerful gas generators kicked the two Type 99 missiles into space. Takao trained a point defense laser bank on the nozzles of both missiles. Each of her lasers housed two independent turrets. The turrets picked a sunray each, and ignited the solid propellant in the missiles’ nozzles. Subaru’s solution would place the sunrays just over a thousand kilometers from the suspect ships when the operation was slated to begin.

Hoshi called up the telescope feed. Ensign Mori Arata, the Sensors officer sharing the CIC with Hoshi, was tracking the four-ship formation with his telescopes. The ships were still making steady burns, barely deviating from their predicted paths.

White dots bloomed from Titan’s surface. The Americans were launching on schedule. The rest of the orbital patrol closed in on the bogies.

Hoshi tapped his fingers against the console. If the bogies continued to behave themselves, all would be well. Yes, Hoshi would have to explain expending two Type 99 mirrors, but they were replaceable. On the other hand, if the bogies…

“Sir, Sierras 547 to 550 are retracting their radiators!” Mori called.

Radiators, being the primary means of shedding heat in space, were the most vulnerable and critical component of a ship. Ships only ever retracted them to prevent them from being harmed—or shot off. Over a colonized world, pulling in radiators was tantamount to a declaration of war.

He hailed the ships on the guard channel. “Attention, attention. This is JS Takao. You are in orbit over an inhabited surface. Retracting your radiators is against international law. Extend your radiators or you will be fired upon. This is your only warning.”

“Sir, we’re being pinged by multiple lidar sources,” Mori said. “They’re from the bogies.”

“Subaru, what’s the status of the main laser?”

“Captain, the capacitors are fully charged and the firing solution is ready.”

Clusters of cylindrical objects decoupled from each of the spaceships and fired tiny chemical rockets, burning towards the moon.

“Sir, bogies have ejected cargo pods,” Mori reported. “They are increasing acceleration to fifty milligees and are taking an escape vector.”

With fifty milligees of acceleration they could outrun most ships. But to Takao, they were slower than slugs.

“Subaru, initiate solution.”

“Initiating solution, ryoukai.”

Takao sent an encoded laser pulse to the sunrays. Their boosters kicked out their payloads, and the smaller projectiles inflated their smart-matter mirrors. The mirror modules discharged their onboard capacitors, energizing the lenses to alter their shape and molecular structure to reflect UV-A beams. Takao unshuttered her main laser, situated in her nose, and unleashed a stream of pulses. Bouncing off the mirror, the invisible pulses drilled into Sierra 547.

The two main laser turrets alternated their fire, pausing just long enough to recharge their ultracapacitors. The lasers burned through the Q-ship’s engine. A ball of hot plasma erupted from the target’s rear. Secondary explosions followed, then tertiary explosions, and the ship broke apart.

Hoshi blinked. Ships do not blow up like that, not unless the laser punched all the way into the reactor. Takao’s laser couldn’t do that, not at this angle of attack.

But that didn’t matter now. He had a fight to win.

Prometheus Control sent lasers snapping skywards, destroying as many pods as they could. The orbital patrol ships launched volleys of missiles, then closed into laser range. But there were too many pods and they could not get them all. The pods split open, dispersing their payloads.

In Hoshi’s display, huge numbers of red triangles popped into existence around the Q-ships, clustered so thick they formed a scarlet blanket. An alarm sounded.

“Captain, threat radar!” Mori called. “Ninety-eight strikers and twenty buzzards are locked on to us!”

“Chikusho!” Hoshi swore. “All hands, full guard, full guard!”

At the call, the entire crew snapped into action, following pre-established protocols. All non-essential systems and compartments shut down. Sato plotted the safest vector. Subaru directed his men to activate the point defenses. Nakamura activated the electronic warfare suite. Mori fed data to everybody as needed.

Powered by miniature nuclear reactor engines, ninety-eight missiles sped in at a quarter gravity. As they closed in, Tanaka yelled, “All hands, side kick! Side kick!”

Takao spun her gyroscopes, pointing her skywards. Her chemical maneuvering rockets fired, adding velocity to the turn, then fired again to cancel her momentum. The ship accelerated, burning for a higher orbit.

The missiles turned, trying to keep up. But the real threat was the twenty incoming drones. Fitted with nuclear gas-core rockets, they screamed in at one gravity, turning faster than Takao could, and fired barrages of smaller missiles from their coilguns.

“Sir!” Nakamura called. “Buzzards match profile of Tiannu drones!”

The Tiannu drone was an armed drone employed by the Chinese Space Forces. It was also obsoleted a few years ago, and its sensors were vulnerable to modern electronic warfare.

Some of the drones went berserk, firing blindly into empty space and chasing phantom targets. The point defense lasers burned down the rest. Takao continued spinning, giving her lasers a chance to cool off and recharge. The lasers fired low-powered pulses, melting sensors, electronics and payloads, sacrificing power for rate of fire. Many of the struck missiles detonated prematurely. More missiles spiraled away, confounded by the white noise in the air.

But dozens of threats survived to enter Takao’s kinetic engagement envelope.

“Subaru! Snap shot bursters, snap shot guns! Tanaka, retract radiators!”

The ship rumbled. Twenty-four Type 82 missiles leapt from her missile banks. Scorching towards the threats, the warheads detonated into sprays of tungsten cubes, each striking with the force of a small bomb.

Then Takao’s 60mm railguns fired. The guns churned out a barrage of fragmentation shells, placing an ocean of steel between Takao and the threats. The unguided flechettes disintegrated. The missiles tried to dodge. At this range, if the shells forced the missiles off a threat vector, it was as good as a kill.

But it was not enough. There were still too many missiles.

Takao still had reserves. If he launched them Hoshi was certain Takao would survive. Unscathed, even. But he had his orders, and his duty was absolute. The weapons could only be fired under exceptional circumstances, and a counter-piracy mission was, by definition, not exceptional. He could not use them, even if it meant the death of his ship and his crew.

He would not use them even to save his own life.

“Sir!” Subaru called. “Lasers have overheated!”

“Tanaka, divert all available coolant to point defense! All hands, brace for impact!”

Even as he spoke, twelve missiles survived to engagement range and detonated.

The lasers shut down completely. The railguns continued firing. They drew power from explosively pumped generators and had a separate coolant store, but were far less accurate than the lasers. Hoshi clenched his fists, watching tens of arrows close in on his ship.

Long seconds later, the lasers returned to life. Together with the railguns, they plucked the darts from the sky. Tanaka pulled one last trick, firing the engine and maneuvering rockets. The superheated exhaust consumed every flechette that entered the plumes.

But it was not enough.

The lasers dropped their shutters. The guns got off a final barrage. Then dozens of flechettes crashed into the ship. Tortured metal screamed. The blasts slammed Hoshi into his seat. Sirens went off. Alerts popped up on his console.

“Kamishiro,” Hoshi said, “damage report.”

The XO took a moment to check his boards. “Whipple shields compromised, no hull breaches. Forward missile cells damaged. Point Defense Laser Two reports damaged shutters, but not the turrets. No crew casualties.”

Hoshi heaved a sigh of relief. The enemy had loaded up with general-purpose flechettes. Hundreds could fit inside a warhead, but they lacked the punch to penetrate Takao’s armor.

He checked the display. The red blanket was rapidly dispersing. At some point, Sierra 549 had died in the hail of fire; she was now little more than debris and plasma. But the orbital patrol had been obliterated too, and so had the sunrays. And Sierra 548 and 550 were about to leave Titan orbit.

Hoshi wanted answers. At this angle, Takao’s lasers could punch through the enemies’ engines and into their reactors. But even civilian-grade compartment bulkheads would stop hypervelocity munitions.

“Tanaka, extend radiators. Subaru, target the enemy ships’ engines with muskets.”

Takao launched eight Type 83 missiles. These were fitted with anti-ship warheads, not the light flechettes Takao had endured. Her point defense lasers sent them soaring at the threats at three-quarters of a gravity.

The Q-ships couldn’t hope to outrun the missiles. But they had one last surprise. Hidden panels retracted, revealing automatic railguns. Two per ship.

“Nani?” Hoshi muttered. What?

Even as he spoke, the leading ship rained heavy metal down on the colony, while the other blasted at Takao and her missiles.

“Tanaka, evasive maneuvers. Subaru, snipe the railguns with lasers,” Hoshi said. “Prioritize the ones firing on Prometheus.”

Takao’s main laser discharged. Four shots later, the railguns blew apart. Then the point defense lasers kicked in, destroying the shells threatening Takao.

Prometheus didn’t take the insult lightly either. A lance of light carved through the heart of Sierra 548. Another speared Sierra 550. Shortly after, the four surviving muskets fired their payloads, spewing clusters of segmented-rod penetrators optimized for defeating armor.

The threats tried to turn their drives on the incoming flechettes, but they were too slow. The darts slammed into their engines, blowing them out.

Mori said, “Sir, bandits have ceased acceleration. No escape pods. No further targets. We have a grand—”

The telescopes blanked out.

“—slam?” Mori finished. “What the hell?”

The telescopes cleared. Sierras 548 and 550 were now rapidly expanding balls of plasma.

“Nakamura? What the hell happened?” Hoshi demanded.

“Looks like a reactor failure, sir. Mori, what’s in the vapor?”

“Lieutenant, laser spectroscope is picking up deuterium, tritium and heavy metals. Definitely a catastrophic reactor failure.”

“How likely is that to be from combat damage?” Hoshi asked.

“Our penetrators shouldn’t have damaged the reactor deck,” Subaru said. “Maybe the Americans?”

“Negative,” Mori said. “Spectroscope did not pick up fusion fuels following the laser strikes.”

“Suicide trigger then?” Nakamura wondered. “But that doesn’t make sense. Pirates aren’t suicidal. Even most terrorists aren’t that crazy these days. They’d rather surrender if they can’t maneuver.”

Hoshi thought again of Sierra 547. The secondary explosions were plausible, if the laser had struck a capacitor bank. But tertiaries? Ships were compartmented to prevent just that. It shouldn’t be possible, unless someone, or something, deliberately induced a reactor failure.

But now wasn’t the time and place to ponder such things.

“Gentlemen,” Hoshi said, “I’m sure we have plenty of questions. For now, we will secure from battle stations and clean up the skies.”

He had a very strong suspicion that this was not over. Not by a long shot.

***

Takao spent the next two days trawling Titan orbit, recovering expended missile boosters and sweeping up orbital debris. Each piece of debris could smash other objects in orbit and create even more debris. Known as Kessler Syndrome, a collision cascade could deny the orbits, and with them access to space. Having created the mess, the responsibility fell to Takao to clean up after herself.

Now she was berthed at the space port attached to the Titan Space Elevator, undergoing resupply and repair. Most of Hoshi’s men were enjoying surface liberty, with a skeleton crew to look after Takao and oversee the civilian workers. Hoshi had other business to attend to.

Inside the port’s habitat module, he made his way to the Last Call, some strange combination of bar, restaurant and cafe. A Westerner waited at the entrance, wearing the khaki skinsuit of the US Space Force.

“Commander Hoshi?” he asked. “Major Robert O’Neil. Glad to meet ’cha.”

Hoshi shook hands, trying to place the man’s voice. “Were you on the radio during the attack?”

“Yup. Soon as the radar crew picked up the acceleration I decided to run things myself.”

“A wise choice.”

“Thank you. Good thing you were carrying a full combat load during your shakedown cruise, huh?”

Japan had announced that Takao’s maiden cruise would take her to Titan and beyond. If Takao could reach the outer solar system in weeks, it would usher in a second golden age of space travel. Tokyo wasn’t lying; they just weren’t telling the whole truth.

All Hoshi could do was shrug lamely at the American's obvious skepticism. “Standard operating procedure,” he replied.

“Welp, your SOP certainly saved our asses. That makes you a good guy in our books.”

O’Neil led Hoshi into the cafe. There was a private room in a corner. Inside, the American pulled out his terminal, waving it around. Hoshi realized the modular pad had been fitted with a bug detector.

“I believe we are not simply having a cup of coffee,” Hoshi said.

“Got that right. But first, drinks.”

O’Neil ordered a cup of coffee from the desktop assembler. Hoshi selected a green tea. The American insisted on paying, so Hoshi accepted, reluctantly.

“Good thing the bastards missed the Elevator,” O’Neil said, sipping at his cup.

“Indeed. Striking the Elevator would be unthinkable.”

“Exactly. And you know something? I think they deliberately avoided targeting the Elevator.”

“Oh?”

“They aimed their weapons at you, the orbital patrol and the laser array. None of them could have hit the Elevator or the colony. And the array is so remote, a miss wouldn’t hit anything important.”

“Did they issue demands?”

“No. They never said a word.”

“A terrorist bombing, then?”

“Terrorists would have targeted the Elevator. With so many impactors, they could have overwhelmed the lasers, wiped out the Elevator, and let the debris kill the colony.”

“Masaka…” It can’t be. “It doesn’t make sense to spend so much ordnance to destroy the lasers alone. Maybe they wanted to take out your defenses and force you to pay a ransom.”

“My Espatiers boarded the wrecks. The enemy had expended all of their munitions. They wouldn’t do that if they couldn’t back up a threat.”

Laser launch arrays were composed of hundreds of smaller lasers arranged in a grid. Individual lasers could be rapidly repaired or replaced, even under fire. A pirate who threatened to bombard a world but did not follow through would soon be blown out of the sky.

“They didn’t have anti-ship missiles. Maybe they…” Hoshi shook his head. “No. If they thought they had to expend their entire payload to kill Takao they wouldn’t have initiated.”

“Exactly. It seems they were just trying to knock out our defenses. Damn near did, too. Lasers are down to fifty percent. Without you, well, we wouldn’t be here.”

“No problem. I think they would only have attacked if they were expecting a second wave.”

“Yup. I’ve declared a no-fly zone around Titan. Only military and medical ships are allowed around our orbits. Everybody else is being rerouted to Saturn. But I can’t maintain the no-fly zone forever. My boss is gonna bitch.”

Hoshi sympathized. Most civilian spaceships operated under the assumption that they could resupply regularly. They carried just enough fuel, supplies and propellant to reach their destinations. They simply did not have enough delta-vee, the impulse needed to perform a maneuver, for anything but the gravest of emergencies.

“I mean, he’s complaining about all the billions of dollars a no-fly zone is gonna cost,” O’Neil continued. “Since this morning he’s been yapping about how Titan is the heart of the interplanetary economy.”

Titan had seas of hydrocarbons hundreds of times greater than Earth’s oil and gas reserves. Prometheus also provided a base for industrial-scale helium-three gas mining at Saturn and Uranus. With helium-three the primary driver of fusion power, Prometheus was practically the cornerstone of modern civilization.

“Can people stay at Saturn?”

O’Neil sighed, shaking his head. “There’re only robots and resupply depots over there. Not much in the way of consumables for humans. The ships’ owners will be losing money for every second they’re not on the move to Titan, and some of ’em won’t have the delta-vee to turn around and go home. No-fly zone or no, they can’t stay there for long.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I’ll keep ’em there for a week. It’ll take that long to bring what’s left of my lasers back online. Then I’ll re-open the skies, but we’ll inspect all ships before they so much as stick their noses into my orbits.”

“You’re going to need help with that.”

“The Chinese said they’ll arrive at Titan in five days and are eager to help.”

“How very fortunate that their nearest task element just happens to have two assault carriers filled with Space Marines. On exercises. Or so they say.”

“They have three guard ships as escorts as well.”

“Such a task element would be perfect for invading Titan. But it would be the height of paranoia to suggest that, yes?”

“’Course not. After all, they just wanna ‘assist local forces to secure Titan in the wake of this tragedy’.” O’Neil shook his head. “The Chinese Space Forces are conducting their largest-ever fleetwide ‘exercise’ across the Solar system, and suddenly everyone else just happens to be ‘exercising’ right alongside them. Mars, Mercury, Venus, practically everywhere in the Solar system. The smallest provocation’s gonna lead to an interplanetary war, and that would be a disaster for everyone.”

“You don’t sound convinced that the Chinese have our best interests at heart.”

“We’ve recovered bodies from Cloud Nine, the one ship that didn’t blow up. They were all Chinese in their twenties. Fit, strong, even for spacers. Two or three were older, in their thirties or forties. It was a skeleton crew barely large enough to man a vessel of that size. Looked to me like they were military spacers flyin’ incognito.”

“Any survivors?”

“None. Not that it would have mattered. They were all sterile.”

Hoshi wasn’t familiar with the Americanism. “Sterile?”

“They had nothing that could ID them. No personal effects, nothing that could be traced. All they had were passports, but we’re drawing a blank on ’em.”

“They sound like special forces. Or intelligence.”

“Either way, it doesn’t matter. Point is somebody didn’t want anyone to find out who they were. Pirates are never sterile; they usually carry multiple IDs. You noticed the other ships self-destructed?”

“Yes. And they blew up too quickly for humans to have manually engaged the self-destruct. Perhaps their computers would automatically trigger the self-destruct if, say, the ship suffered irreparable engine damage.”

“And that, my friend, is something only a space military is paranoid enough to implement.”

“Do you think the CSF has something to do with this?”

“Damned if I know. Won’t be surprised if they were. All the same, the US Space Force has eight ships trailing the Chinese formation by a week. The Chinese have five days to try something.”

“You sound confident that the Chinese want to take Titan.”

“Among the major space powers, China is ranked near the bottom. In the past decade they’ve been embarking on modernization programs, but they’ve been consistently over-budget. Their premier isn’t pleased, but the hawks in the CSF insist that the programs are vital, even if they are taking money that could go into, say, education or healthcare.”

“And so, to secure their place in the hierarchy, the hawks must present a triumph. Like Titan.”

“Yup. You could say they’ve had their sights set on Titan for a long time.”

“He who controls Titan controls the gas giants. He who controls the gas giants controls the Solar system.” Hoshi smiled gently. “I imagine the hawks would also prefer not to see you Americans control Titan.”

“Hey, buddy, we’re all about spreading the wealth. That’s why Prometheus is an international colony, ya?”

The Americans might have founded the colony along with several other anchor nations, but only they had a permanent garrison on Titan. It would also be impolite to point that out. Instead, Hoshi simply nodded and sipped at his tea.

“How do you think the Chinese will invade Titan?” Hoshi asked.

“They’ll launch a coordinated space and ground offensive. They’ll land troops beyond the horizon, where the lasers can’t reach ’em, and execute a ground assault against the laser array. The guard ships will provide fire support and secure the orbits. With the lasers out of the way, and ships dominating the sky, nothing can touch them.”

“How many forces do you have?”

“Groundside, just a company of Espatiers. Only way they can fight the Chinese with those numbers is to force a battle inside Prometheus proper. And so long as the Chinese can put ships in orbit, they can simply blow the hell out of the colony. I mean, they don’t even need Prometheus, you know? If things get too troublesome they’ll just drop rocks on us from orbit, then build their own colony later.”

“That’s a war crime.”

“When did the Chinese care about war crimes? And, more importantly, who’s going to punish them?”

Hoshi couldn’t reply. Throughout human history, war criminals only had to fear a victor’s justice. Even today, it was simply too expensive to enforce international law against nation-states across interplanetary distances.

“Aside from the lasers, what do you have for orbital defense?” Hoshi asked.

O’Neil exhaled sharply. “I’ve got a wing of orbital patrol ships left, but…look, they are meant to fight pirates, smugglers and the odd bit of space junk. Warships outrange and outgun them any day of the week. There’s no point sending them up there. It’ll be a slaughter.”

“Takao can defend Titan.”

“Against five ships? That’s suicide.”

Hoshi thought of the secret payload sleeping in Takao’s hull. No, it probably wasn’t suicide, but the American didn’t need to know. Yet.

“There is no one else.”

“There is. Buddy, we’ve got an eight-ship task element behind the Chinese, remember? They won’t be stupid enough to attack Titan now. Not unless they want boots up their asses. The hawks might have plans to capture Titan someday, but it won’t be anytime soon.”

“Sou ka?” Then a thought struck Hoshi. “They might invade us anyway.”

“They can’t be stupid enough to—”

“Yes they can. Think about it. They cannot capture Titan by subterfuge now. But if they do so by force, they can present it as a…a…fate…”

“Fait accompli?”

“Yes. Either the nations of Earth accept that the Chinese own Titan, or they will be forced to fight over every inhabited world. No matter who wins, a war will cause Kessler Syndrome across the Solar system, and shut off humanity from space forever.”

“C’mon, man, the Space Force element I told you about can blow ’em to kingdom come.”

“Yes, but they will need days to catch up. In that time, Beijing could order their fleet to keep destroying interplanetary infrastructure everywhere else until your ships turn around. It may start a war the Chinese can’t win, but they can make sure nobody else does.”

O’Neil paled. “My God. Who would be crazy enough to do that?”

“Are the hawks madmen?”

“No. But…I think they’re gambling that nobody would risk Kessler Syndrome on that scale. The threat alone would make anyone blink.”

“The interplanetary economy is dependent on helium-three. The gas must flow.” Hoshi shook his head. “My government would rather give in than risk the helium-three shipping. And yours?”

O’Neil looked away, his face contorted in frustration. “Same. If they can reach a settlement without spending months and billions of dollars to mount a military expedition, they will. And everybody else…I don’t think they care who sells ’em helium-three, so long as it keeps flowing.” He sighed. “Goddammit.”

“What can we do?”

“We can send our suspicions back home, but we both know nobody’s gonna act without proof. The stakes are just too high.”

“We must probe the Chinese into revealing their intentions without starting a space war ourselves.”

“How?”

Hoshi finished his tea and straightened his back.

“If they attack Takao, even the most hardheaded bureaucrat back on Earth must listen to you.”

“My God… Are you crazy?”

“Do we have any other choice?”

“No. I don’t see that we do.”

***

Hoshi proposed taking Takao to patrol the orbits of Saturn, claiming that the Americans had asked him to watch over the civilian spacecraft there. Wonder of wonders, Tokyo approved.

The spaceport patched up Takao’s wounds and topped off her fuel, propellant, ice and other consumables. Without charge.

The orbital patrol was equally generous. The Japanese munitions were license-produced versions of American designs. The Americans replaced the damaged missile cells and reloaded her magazines, the Japanese changed the language settings and ran compatibility tests, and Takao was pronounced fit for service.

Thus rearmed and resupplied, on the sixth day after the attack on Titan, Takao burned for Saturn.

And the Chinese followed.

“Captain, the Chinese have altered their vector,” Kamishiro reported. “They are making an emergency burn towards Saturn at six hundred milligees. They have not stated the reason for doing so.”

The Chinese were going all out, augmenting their main engines with chemical maneuvering rockets. A six hundred-milligee burn was not sustainable. It was used only to make a sudden vector change in the direst of circumstances: racing to a resupply depot before life support failed, scrambling to aid a stranded spacer, clearing out of a no-fly zone before the orbital patrol arrived.

Or intercepting a target.

“Interesting,” Hoshi said. “Nakamura, do you think they will make it to Saturn?”

“They could, if they expend their chemical propellant reserves. They are committed to the vector and there is no turning back.”

Spaceships do not simply alter course mid-mission. Every vector change imposed a delta-vee cost above and beyond existing propellant expenditure, and there was only so much propellant a ship could store before losing performance. It was especially important for military spaceships: the more propellant a ship carried, the fewer weapons, ammo and supplies she could carry.

Military spaceships usually budgeted just enough delta-vee for their missions, with a reserve for engagements. The Chinese in particular exercised strict control of their fleet from Earth. A Chinese spaceship commander who wanted to make a course correction during a mission had to seek permission from Beijing. This far away, it would take at least three hours to receive a response. The only thing that could have prompted the Chinese to alter course so suddenly was Takao’s own flight.

Which meant the Chinese were after Takao.

Hoshi composed a report for his superiors, then summoned his officers to an unused compartment in the crew deck. As the men tethered themselves to safety moorings, Hoshi discussed the situation and dispensed intelligence files. If the Chinese were truly friendly, it would make good practice for combat. If the Chinese had designs on Takao, they would be ready. Probably.

“Nakamura, what do we know about the Chinese ships?” he asked.

Nakamura cleared his throat. “Captain, the task element is composed of two assault carriers and three guard ships. The assault carriers are named Zhejiang and Guangdong. The escorts are Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. The escorts are in the lead, forming a triangle with a separation of eight hundred kilometers. The assault carriers are trailing them by five hundred kilometers, and are arranged side-by-side with a separation of four hundred kilometers.

“The assault carriers have a displacement of forty thousand tons. They have helium-three-deuterium drives, combat acceleration of twenty milligees. Cargo capacity of ten thousand tons each. That’s enough for a battalion of Space Marines, landing craft, and twenty drones. Eight point defense lasers, effective range of one thousand kilometers.

“The guard ships have a displacement of ten thousand tons. They also have helium-three-deuterium engines, combat acceleration of fifty milligees. Weapons payload of five thousand tons each. Main weapon is a three-hundred-millimeter spinal railgun. Secondary armament are multiple missile banks, two hundred and eighty missiles total. Six point defense lasers, effective range of one thousand kilometers.”

“Thank you,” Hoshi said. “We are presently eleven hours from Saturn orbit, and the Chinese will arrive a day later. Our mission is to draw out the Chinese intentions without starting a war. Suggestions?”

“Captain, if the Chinese have any more Q-ships, they’ll deploy them against us,” Kamishiro said. “If the Q-ships defeat us the Chinese have an excuse to take over the Saturnian system. If the Q-ships lose, the Chinese will have an excuse to approach us to assist with ‘law enforcement’ and put us within their railguns’ engagement envelope.”

“Excellent thought,” Hoshi said. “Now, how do we solve this?”

“Let’s take an orbit that would put us in standoff range of civilian traffic,” Sato said.

“Lieutenant Sato, Saturn’s orbits are cluttered,” Mori said. “We’ve got civilian traffic intermixed with robot miners. There’s no one entity performing global traffic control at Saturn. We should take up station in high orbit and direct the civilians to the lower orbits.”

“And that is when a Q-ship would strike to cause maximum havoc,” Subaru said. “I suggest we put mirrors parallel to our vectors to let us control the orbits.”

Kamishiro nodded. “Let’s take up orbit at an altitude of twenty thousand kilometers, and have the civilians form a convoy at an altitude of fifteen thousand klicks and fifteen hundred klicks forward relative to our position. If anyone starts trouble, we can shoot down at their engines, radiators and reactors.”

“I foresee the civilians complaining about it,” Sato remarked.

“If they are willing to eat our exhaust, they are very welcome,” Tanaka said.

The men shared a chuckle.

“I’m more concerned about the Chinese complaining,” Hoshi said. “They will accuse us of ‘unlawfully seizing control of Saturn orbit’.”

“Or they may praise us for our initiative and volunteer to help out,” Kamishiro said.

“If they do the latter, I will tell them that we have the situation under control, and they should move on to Titan,” Hoshi said. “If their intentions are benign, they will be needed there to inspect the ships already in Titan orbit.”

“What if they are not benign? Captain, what do you think they will do?”

“They will make excuses to maintain their current vector. I am confident they will not make a burn for Titan. They won’t want to risk being shot in the back.”

“And if they want to give battle around Saturn?”

“We give them all the fight they want.”

“Captain, may I express the general sentiment of the crew?” Kamishiro said formally.

“Carry on,” Hoshi said.

“Captain, the Chinese have twenty-two times our mass. If we have to fight…” Kamishiro sucked in air between his teeth. “I must strongly recommend against a prolonged engagement.”

Hoshi nodded. The crew were neither cowards nor mutineers. But they were as cognizant as he was of the odds against Takao.

He thought of his family. Hana understood a spacer’s life, recognized that the iron laws of duty dictated that he had to be absent from home for months at a time, and return home for visits that sometimes lasted mere weeks. But Kikyo was only three years old, and she was not old enough to understand. He desperately wanted to make it home to them.

But not at the price of an Earth dominated by a Chinese space empire.

“What if we have no choice, Kamishiro?”

“We will do our duty, Captain.”

“Yes, we shall.”

***

The Chinese exhausted their chemical rocket propellant the moment they had locked in a vector for Saturn. When Hoshi arrived, the Chinese were 2.4 light seconds from the planet.

Takao restocked fuel and propellant from an orbital depot. Then, Subaru boosted four sunrays into Saturn orbit, while Kamishiro had the unenviable task of herding the civilians into a single large convoy. The civilians complained, whined and argued, but Takao had the biggest guns—actually, the only guns—around the planet.

Over the space of hours, the civilians formed a long ragged line orbiting the planet. No Q-ships emerged to wreak havoc, for which Hoshi was grateful. When the Chinese closed to one light-second, Hoshi hailed them on the radio in English.

“Attention CSF formation, this is JS Takao. Welcome to Saturn. May I speak to your commander, please?”

“Takao, this is Guangdong. Thank you for your greeting. Please identify yourself and state the nature of your business.”

“Guangdong, as mentioned, this is JS Takao. We are conducting civilian escort mission until Titan lifts no-fly zone.”

Hoshi was deliberately being obtuse. He was also tempted to confuse his ‘l’s and ‘r’s, but that would be going overboard.

“Takao, Guangdong. I meant to say, please state your rank and name. We are on a patrol to the Saturnian system. We saw your engagement with the pirates at Titan and are willing to assist.”

“Takao copies. Pirates beaten. Local authorities say no need of assistance. Thanks for offer. Also, what you need rank and name for, over?”

“I’d like to know who I’m talking to.”

“You first, please.”

It took a full minute before he replied. “This is Captain Huang Wei. Now your rank and name, please.”

“Nakamura, look up a Captain Huang Wei,” Hoshi ordered. Returning to the radio, he said, “Thank you, Captain Huang. I’m Commander Kano Makoto. Please to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Commander. We are glad to learn that the pirates have been beaten, but we still need to resupply at Saturn.”

“Roger that. We are taking up patrol at angels twenty. When you arrive at Saturn, please maintain separation of five thousand kilometers from my ship.”

“Acknowledged, Commander Kano. I look forward to meeting you.”

Hoshi cycled out of his duty shift and retreated to his cabin to catch up on paperwork. Nothing would happen for hours. Takao had to keep watching the Chinese, and pounce when they revealed their intent.

Four hours after his request, Nakamura called him.

“Commander, response from Earth. No records of a Captain Huang Wei in known personnel records of the Chinese Space Forces.”

Japanese knowledge of Chinese records was incomplete. The captain could simply be a nobody, and utterly expendable if he failed. Or else he had lied.

No matter. Hoshi needed to be fresh to face the Chinese. He exercised with his men, took a shower, had a meal, sent mail back home, and took a nap.

Kamishiro shook him awake.

“Sir, the Chinese want to speak with you.”

Hoshi dragged himself to the CIC and took stock of the situation. The Chinese had now closed to seventy thousand kilometers. Both carriers were discharging smaller craft. Sensors identified the latter as Houyi drones, the current-generation Chinese military drone.

“Commander Kano,” Huang said. “I have received new orders. Our mission is to assist the local forces in securing Saturn. The Titanian authorities have agreed to lift the no-fly zone for ships that have been inspected. We have two battalions of space marines ready for inspection duties. We would like to work with you to assist the Titanian authorities.”

It sounded reasonable, but there were the matter of the drones. Also, the Chinese were using laser communications. They didn’t want the civilians listening in.

“Captain Huang, I look forward to working with you. I see you have launched Houyi drones. Please to explain this launch?”

“There are a large number of ships in Saturn orbit. The drones will help monitor the situation and provide assistance where necessary.”

“Very well, Captain Huang. Please to put them on vector ahead of my ship to prevent collision.”

“Commander Kano, roger that. We will do so at the soonest possible moment.”

Hoshi could not accuse the Chinese commander of perfidy, not openly, but they had launched way outside typical Chinese engagement ranges. Why?

Hoshi typed up his observation report and sent it off to Earth. When he looked back up, the drones were burning in at three gravities, adopting an attack vector aimed at Takao.

Hoshi briefed his intelligence officer and asked, “Nakamura, what do you think about Captain Huang’s explanation?”

“Captain, it is bullshit. Saturn’s escape velocity is thirty-five and a half klicks per second. The drones are making fifty, and they are burning straight at us. If they are headed for orbital injection they should be decelerating by now.”

“Unless they are setting up kinetic shots at our flanks.”

“Yes sir. We cannot let them cross five thousand klicks. Past that and their missiles will be flying faster than our point defenses can track them.”

The textbook insisted that he should pull in his radiators and call home. But home was one and a half hours away. By the time a response arrived, the situation would be over—and Takao would have cooked in her juices. Also, the Chinese would see it as a hostile act, and would be justified in firing first.

At the same time, if he kept his radiators out, the Chinese drones would have a clean line of fire at them. If they fired first, they could end Takao.

He needed to buy time.

“Captain Huang, we are pleased to see you are sending drones to help us,” he radioed on the guard channel. “However, they are flying too fast for orbital injection and are still on a collision course with us. We advise to decelerate and adjust vector.”

“Commander Kano, roger that and thank you for your concern. Our Houyis have expanded propellant tanks. They will be able to make the trip. They will also adjust their vector at the appropriate time.”

“Please to adjust vectors to avoid collision, or we will take necessary actions.”

“Rest assured, Commander, we are simply taking the fastest vector possible. We will endeavor to avoid a collision.”

Bullshit. Hoshi typed up his observations, attached recordings of the exchange, and sent them on to Tokyo. It would arrive too late, but he needed to keep a paper trail.

“Subaru, launch four sunrays. Boost them to angels twenty-five.”

When the sunrays reached an orbital altitude of twenty-five thousand kilometers, Hoshi placed them on a track parallel to Takao’s. Then he ordered, “Mori, ping the drones with lidar.”

In military terms, this was the equivalent of saying, What the hell are you doing? And sure enough, Guangdong hailed Takao on the guard channel.

“Commander Kano, please refrain from pinging our drones with active sensors. Our drones are loaded with live ammunition and are on AI control. They may fire upon ships that paint them without warning. We would like to avoid misunderstandings.”

“Captain Huang, your drones are still on an intercept vector with my ship.”

“We have no hostile intentions towards your ship, but we cannot prevent our AIs from following their programming.”

The game had to end here.

“Be advised, Captain, my lasers are on automated point defense mode. If your drones close to within five thousand kilometers, they will be assumed hostile and fired upon.”

“Roger, Commander. Do not fret. We wish you no harm.”

Hoshi muttered darkly under his breath and hit the ship-wide intercom.

“All hands, sentou youii. All hands, sentou youii.”

Klaxons sounded. The crew rushed to their places with alacrity. Moments later, Kamishiro announced, “Sir, the ship is battle ready.”

“Very good.” Addressing his officers, Hoshi said, “We will draw our line in the sand here. The moment the drones cross six thousand klicks, prepare targeting solutions with passive sensors only. If they cross the five thousand kilometer mark, or if they fire, retract radiators and destroy the drones.”

“Sir, won’t this start a war?” Sato asked.

“Drones are expendable,” Hoshi said. “Destroying drones is not as severe as destroying ships. I believe they mean to intimidate us out of the system. Before the drones reach their engagement envelope, I think Huang will claim that he has received orders from Beijing and ‘request’ that we leave, or he will be forced to shoot.”

“It’s unlikely they want to be seen as the bad guys, sir,” Tanaka said. “If they fire first, they risk starting a war.”

“Not if they use drones,” Kamishiro said. “They accused us on the guard channel of targeting their drones, and said their drones’ artificial intelligence allows them to fire without men in the loop. If their drones fire, they can simply claim self-defense.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Keep an eye out for suspicious Chinese activity, and be prepared to broadcast our side of the story over the radio. The Chinese will use deception, so we will use the truth. We must have witnesses on our side.”

The minutes sped past. Hoshi grew restless. The ship was turning, trying to present as small a target to the drones as possible. The Chinese drones had finally cut their acceleration, but showed no signs of altering their course.

At sixty-five hundred kilometers out, Mori yelled, “Threat lidar!”

Arrows streaked from the drones. Eight of them.

“Tanaka, defensive maneuvers! Subaru—”

A string of flashes played across the feed.

“Nani?!”

“Side kick! Side kick!” Tanaka yelled belatedly.

Her maneuvering rockets fired. Takao turned faster, bringing her nose to face the threats. Hoshi glanced at the display.

The ship reported no damage.

But the sunrays were destroyed.

“Commander Kano, this is Captain Huang. Our drones reported being pinged by active sensors, and fired upon your mirrors. As a sign of good faith we prevented them from targeting your ship directly. Please exit the Saturnian system to avoid further misunderstandings.”

The maneuvering thrusters fired again, canceling the ship’s momentum. Hoshi ignored the Chinese officer, instead addressing his officers.

“Tanaka, retract radiators. Nakamura, Mori, what the hell was that?”

“Sir, flashes were consistent with nuclear weapon initiations,” Mori replied. “Estimated yield of five hundred kilotons.”

“A nuke couldn’t harm anything at this range. What the hell did they use?”

“Mori,” Nakamura said, “Did we pick up anything from the flashes?”

“Negative. But the fireball took the shape of a cone. Indicative of a directed nuclear charge.”

“Sa…” Nakamura said. “Captain, I think it’s a Tianlei. It’s a bomb-pumped x-ray laser. It’s a classified experimental project. We have no data on it. But Chinese doctrine encourages the use of lasers the moment a target enters their maximum effective range. Perhaps the Tianlei has a max known effective range of sixty-five hundred klicks.”

Hoshi shook his head. This was a show of force, one step away from outright aggression. But they didn’t know what Takao had.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Designate the Chinese ships as hostile and prepare for immediate action.”

On the display, the Chinese ships turned red. Hoshi returned to the radio and broadcast his reply on the guard frequency. “Captain Huang, you fired upon us with nuclear bomb-pumped lasers. We will not tolerate this act of aggression. You are in violation of international law. Withdraw your drones immediately.”

On his display, four red columns, five deep, marched towards Takao.

“Negative, Takao. They are committed. They do not have the delta-vee to withdraw.”

All of humanity could see that the drones were on an intercept vector with Takao, and that the drones could accelerate much faster than Takao could. And the Chinese did not deny using nuclear weapons.

He was now free to act.

“Subaru, initiate defensive solution! Dial lasers to UV-C!”

“Initiate defensive solution, dial lasers to UV-C, ryoukai!”

The eight laser turrets facing the threats fired at will, taking one target each. A quarter of the enemy formation vaporized. Five more blew apart, then the survivors began launching missiles. But before the missiles reached minimum standoff distance every last threat flashed into rapidly-expanding plasma. In the space of a breath, everything that could pose a threat to Takao was gone.

“Sir, we have a grand slam,” Mori reported.

This was Takao’s first secret. A UV-C beam would remain coherent far beyond a UV-A laser’s effective range. Takao could deliver more megawatts per square centimeter than any vessel smaller than a capital ship.

Hoshi returned to the radio. “Captain Huang, we were fired upon by your drones and acted in self-defense. Take an exit vector immediately, or we will take every necessary action to safeguard our ship and the Saturnian system.”

The Chinese could not depart, of course. They did not have the acceleration to make such a radical vector change, not without making an orbital injection and turning slowly, very, very slowly, with their gyroscopes to align the vector. Hoshi was simply covering his ass.

“Takao, we do not have the delta-vee and acceleration regime to do so. We recommend you leave the system to avoid future mishaps.”

“Guangdong, we cannot. The civil authorities have requested us to ensure the security of the Saturnian system. We have every right to be here, but we have not received confirmation that the civil authorities have requested your presence. Depart the system immediately or we will carry out our orders.”

The next response came on a laser narrowcast.

“Commander Hoshi, today is not a good day to die. You are outnumbered, outmassed and outgunned. Fighting us is suicide. Your crew have families. You have a family. Please, think of Hana and Kikyo. They are waiting for you in Osaka. Please don’t throw your life away. Just make a burn for Earth and you can see them again.”

Hoshi was unsurprised to learn that Huang had known who he had been all along. But indignant fury exploded in his chest all the same. How dare they try to use his family against him!

“Kamishiro. Rebroadcast that last message to Titan, Tokyo, and the civilians around us. Let them know that the Chinese have fired upon us with nuclear weapons and are now personally threatening our families. Tanaka, extend radiators. Sato, plot an attack vector towards Chongqing. Subaru, boost four sunrays.”

As the sunrays blasted off on beams of black light, the Chinese ships cut acceleration and skewed around to aim their weapons. They, too, were on an attack vector, and they were committed. There was no turning back, no diverting, nothing but death or glory.

“Commander Hoshi, that was a mistake. We will send flowers to your family at the funeral.”

Hoshi knew his next words would be recorded for posterity. And he knew he should be very, very careful with them. Instead, he threw caution to the winds.

“You do not threaten me, Captain. You do not threaten my crew. You do not threaten my family. Kusokute shine, Chankoro! Kuroso zo!”

Eat shit and die, Chink! I will kill you!

Takao could run. She had the delta-vee to exit Saturn and avoid this fight, or head to Titan and make a last stand there with the Americans.

But he would not shirk this battle. Unlike Takao, Titan could not dodge. The Chinese could bombard Prometheus with their railguns even as they lined up for an approach. Hoshi wasn’t afraid of a hit; he was afraid of a miss, of a stray shot striking the space elevator. At least here the civilians could evade stray kinetics. If he had to fight, it had to be around Saturn.

Also, he had promised to kill Huang, and he always kept his promises.

Kamishiro called Hoshi. “Captain, we have been attacked by Chinese nuclear weapons. I believe this fulfills the special conditions in our rules of engagement.”

“The Chinese destroyed our mirrors. They could argue they didn’t attack us directly.”

“They can’t. Those drones were launching missiles at us. They had to be Tianleis too. If those had gone off, we’d all be dead. We have to release our special weapons.”

“I…” Hoshi shook his head. This was not a time to hesitate. For the third time in history, Japan had been attacked by a nuclear power. But this time, Japan could strike back. This time, Japan would strike back!

“Ensign Mori,” he said. “In your professional opinion, have we been attacked by nuclear weapons?”

“Hai! The enemy drones launched missiles on attack vectors. Laser spectroscope shows significant amounts of fusion material in the vapor and debris clouds.”

“The Chinese drones use nuclear gas-core engines. Is there any possibility of contamination?”

When this was over, the court-martial would pore over the ship’s black box. He needed Mori to state what he had seen on the record.

“No sir. Nuclear gas-core rockets use uranium hexafluoride fuel. The debris clouds contain concentrated amounts of deuterium, tritium and lithium. This is consistent with materials used in Chinese nuclear fusion warheads.”

“Very well.” Clearing his throat, Hoshi hit the intercom. “Attention all hands. We have been attacked by nuclear weapons. As per our rules of engagement, we will now release our special munitions.”

“Release special munitions, ryoukai,” Kamishiro acknowledged.

Hoshi pressed his palm against a sensor-embedded corner of his desk. A green light lit up, and a translucent guard box sprung open, exposing a keyhole. He opened a breast pocket and produced a tiny key.

“Insert keys,” Hoshi ordered.

“Insert keys,” Kamishiro echoed.

Hoshi inserted the key.

“On my mark, rotate key,” Hoshi said.

“On your mark, rotate key.”

“Three. Two. One. Mark.”

Hoshi turned the key.

A new window popped up, displaying Takao’s secret arsenal: sixteen Type 82 missiles. Visually indistinguishable from the other Type 82s in the missile banks, they were the reason Takao carried a full war load.

They were also experimental weapons, originally slated for testing at the edges of the Solar system. Hoshi hoped they worked as designed.

“Nakamura, how will the Chinese fight us?”

“Sir, they know what our lasers can do. They will deploy drones and laser-propelled missiles to overwhelm our lasers and destroy us at standoff range. They will also use their railguns to shape the battlespace.”

Hoshi smiled. “No, Nakamura, they only think they know what our lasers can do. Subaru, charge the ultracapacitors.”

The Chinese continued to turn. Their hulls were long and vulnerable, but still too far away for Takao to target accurately. When the guard ships stopped turning, they fired their railguns. Projectiles sped towards Takao at twenty klicks per second relative to her velocity. They were guided shells, firing rockets to take them on an intercept course with Takao.

“It’s harassing fire,” Nakamura said. “They want us to expend delta-vee to dodge them, maybe even force us out of the Saturnian system. At this range, those have got to be flechette shells.”

“Very good. Nakamura, Sato, Tanaka, Subaru: develop a vector that will take us towards Chongqing and minimize acceleration and delta-vee expenditure. Priority is to set up a laser solution at standoff range. What flechettes we can’t dodge, we trash.”

The Chinese shells approached. Takao adjusted her vector just so, occasionally firing her maneuvering thrusters to jink sideways. The shells followed, but their fuel reserves were limited, and when they burst into flechettes, Subaru only needed to destroy four darts to ensure Takao’s safety.

The following waves of shells weren’t aimed at Takao. They went for the mirrors. Hoshi ordered the shells destroyed before they could wreck the mirrors. It told the Chinese how Hoshi intended to strike them, but not where or when.

The Chinese kept their formation tight, staying within each other’s point defense envelopes. The guard ships were specialized in counter-missile and counter-drone defense. Hoshi needed to blow a hole in their formation before he could employ his special weapons. He glued his eyes to the display. The opportunity would come soon enough. Either Takao would get close enough or…

At the forty-thousand-kilometer mark, the guard ships separated. Shanghai and Nanjing made tight turns, as tight as their gyroscopes would allow. Chongqing swept through a massive arc. The assault carriers hung back. They would coordinate their drone launches with the guard ships.

The Chinese guard ships were setting up velocity-augmented shots. They would burn in on an attack vector, then turn and fire their weapons, using their own velocity to further accelerate their projectiles. Shanghai and Nanjing would deploy their railguns, Chongqing her missiles. The Chinese were gambling that they could overwhelm Takao and form up again before she could respond.

But there was something the Chinese did not know.

“Subaru, snipe Chongqing’s radiators.”

Chongqing’s liquid droplet radiators were tiny targets at this distance, but with the sunrays extending their effective range the UV-C lasers only needed one good hit to blow off a radiator. Takao wove a massive buckshot pattern of black light. Flashes erupted around the ship, spewing streaks of rapidly-freezing coolant.

“Hit!” Mori called. “Radiators have broken off. Chongqing is heat-killed.”

Hoshi nodded. “Good work, Subaru.”

The other Chinese ships pulled in their radiators. Against the perfect cold of space, only Takao’s radiators still blazed. That would stress the Chinese commanders, showing everyone that Takao could shoot but not them. Also, spinal railguns generated huge amounts of heat. Hoshi figured the guard ships would save their coolant for their point defense lasers and missiles instead.

As for Chongqing, she would melt—

“Sir! Chongqing is launching an alpha strike!” Mori called.

Hoshi swore. Chongqing was dead already, but her artificial intelligence sought to take Takao with her.

Hundreds of missiles burst out into the void. Railgun shells followed. The surviving guard ships launched their own missiles and altered their vectors, trying to close the hole in their flank.

“Full guard!” Hoshi ordered. “Tanaka, keep radiators extended until strikers cross seven thousand kilometers. Subaru, deploy bursters and starbursts against incoming strikers.”

The officers snapped into action. Railguns and lasers unleashed a torrent of fire. Takao launched every burster in her arsenal. Hoshi’s console chimed, and one by one, all eight starbursts left their cells.

With the last of the missiles away, Subaru said, “Sir, I have an engagement solution for Guangdong. I can bounce beams into her reactors.”

That was tempting. But if he killed Guangdong now, the lasers would have to cool down and recharge, giving the enemy missiles time to close the distance.

“Save the solution. For now, engage incoming threats. Tanaka, orient ship to face the strikers. Employ side kick.”

Hoshi braced himself and rode out the chemical impulses. As she turned, Takao lashed the swarm with beams of black light. The drones died first, but got off a volley of missiles. As the Chinese missiles melted down, Takao’s electronic warfare suite forced a few more off course.

Chongqing disintegrated in a flash of actinic light. She was finally dead. But her missiles were still coming.

Takao’s bursters arrived, finding a target-rich environment. Exploding amongst the threat missiles, they eliminated thirty-eight. The Chinese had employed bursters of their own among the swarm, and as they went off their shrapnel scored own goals.

The starbursts arrived next. Spreading out into a gigantic net, they closed in the swarm. Three hundred kilometers out from the threats, the starbursts split open. Ten warheads jetted forth from each missile. All eighty warheads fired chemical thrusters, dispersing themselves for optimum coverage. And exploded.

These were nuclear warheads. Shaped nuclear warheads. Each blast converted a giant alloy plate into millions of pellets, and every pellet had a velocity of five hundred kilometers per second. On the display, the pellets spread out in dense cones thousands of kilometers long, each cloud engulfing dozens of missiles at once.

But there weren’t enough starbursts. The shrapnel fog dissipated, and enemy missiles sneaked through. Ten, twenty, thirty, more. Takao’s lasers went back online and picked off more missiles. Then the railgun shells arrived, picking off a few threats, and the point defense lasers fired again, bouncing off the mirrors and taking out more missiles.

At eight thousand kilometers away, four missiles remained on threat vectors.

And separated into sixteen warheads.

Hoshi exhaled. “Kuso.”

They exploded.

Explosions rocked Takao. Hoshi slammed against his harness, driving the breath out of him. The lights went out. Secondary blasts went off, deafening Hoshi. Holes opened in the CIC. Hot metal sprayed through, slashing through the compartment. Air rushed out.

The hull breach alarm sounded.

Hoshi exhaled sharply and reached under his seat, pulling out his helmet. As his vision faded, he mated the helmet to his suit’s seals, checked that the emergency air bottle was in place, and twisted the valve open. Breathing mix flooded the helmet. He took a few energizing breaths and took stock of the situation.

He was alive, apparently unscathed, and his skinsuit was intact. But a few of his CIC team were slumped over their seats, bleeding. Moments later, the damage-control party entered the compartment. Two crewmen rushed to patch the holes. The others administered what aid they could and carried the casualties out. Hoshi’s console had shut down in the chaos, and he switched it back on.

The lights went back on. Life support resumed. Detecting fresh air outside, the helmet opened its breathing port and politely informed Hoshi to turn off the gas valve. He did so, then massaged his battered chest. When he felt he could speak again, and the ringing in his ears subsided, he returned to the conference call.

“Kamishiro, damage report.”

No response.

“Kamishiro? Are you still alive?”

Silence.

Hoshi’s console rebooted. He called up the damage report and beheld the butcher’s bill.

Kamishiro was dead. So were Sato, Nakamura, and half of Takao’s crew. Entire decks were open to space. Railguns Two and Three were ruined. The gyroscopes were destroyed. Point Defense Lasers One and Two were knocked out. The main laser had lost a turret. The forward missile banks were shattered, multiple ultracapacitors and laser engines had blown, and even the fuel tank was holed.

And the radiators were gone.

Hoshi sighed. The Chinese had outplayed him. They had detonated their small Tianlei missiles at sixty-five hundred kilometers, letting him think that that was their maximum effective range. He also hadn’t considered the possibility that multiple Tianlei warheads could also be mated to a conventional missile chassis. And Takao had paid the price.

“All hands, initiate Ohka Protocol,” Hoshi said.

“Engineering. Overriding heat and reactor safety limits.”

“Weapons. Solutions ready.”

“Sensors. Targets locked.”

“Minna, domo arigato gozaimasu.” Everyone, thank you very much. “It has been an honor serving with you. All non-essential personnel, abandon ship.”

The damage-control party evacuated the CIC with the rest of the wounded. Hacking and coughing, Hoshi checked his special munitions window. Four special weapons had survived. He needed at least one per guard ship, two per assault carrier. He was short of two.

There was only one solution.

“Subaru.”

“Sir?”

“Kill Guangdong with lasers.”

“Kill Guangdong with lasers, ryoukai.”

Takao launched her two remaining sunrays and dedicated every last watt she had to the remaining lasers. They pounded Guangdong, smashing through her defenses and biting into her hull. The ship rotated, spreading out the damage, but she was too slow. The guard ships launched more missiles, but they were too slow. Spears of black light drilled into the Guangdong’s core, blowing out pillars of vapor, generating secondary explosions.

“Sir!” Tanaka called. “Heat load has reached critical levels!”

Hoshi was sweating. The air grew thick and stale. But he didn’t care. Guangdong had to die.

“Acknowledged. Subaru, keep firing.”

The lasers kept firing, pounding the reactor deck. The ship bulged. Plumes of white-hot plasma roared through the holes in the hull. Molten metal sprayed in all directions. The blast broke the back of the ship, reducing her to scrap.

“Sir!” Mori called. “Guangdong is evacuating!”

Escape pods broke away from Guangdong. Dropships punched out of the mass driver. There would be hundreds of survivors, but they would not have the delta-vee to reach Titan. Not before the Americans arrived.

“And that was for Hana and Kikyo,” Hoshi muttered.

Minor eruptions rocked Takao. The ultracapacitors melted. Circuits blew.

“Sir, heat sinks are boiling!” Tanaka reported. “Recommend we abandon ship!”

“In a moment, Tanaka. Subaru, alpha strike. Launch all meteors, anti-ship configuration.”

Takao rumbled. Her four meteors surged into the void, turning for the flanks of the Chinese ships.

“Captain, reactor failure imminent!” Tanaka warned. “We must evacuate now!”

Hoshi wanted dearly to watch the Chinese die, but he wanted to see Hana and Kikyo more. He keyed the intercom and said, “All remaining personnel, abandon ship.”

Hoshi followed his crew down the ladders to the escape pods, avoiding sprays of sparks, jets of steam, and holes into space. By tradition, Hoshi was the last to board the final pod, and forced himself in next to Mori. Moments later, the crowded pod blasted off.

When they were safely clear of the dying ship, Hoshi keyed the pod’s radio. “All crew of the JS Takao, this is Commander Hoshi. You did your duty today. I commend you all. We will regroup in Saturn orbit. Make for angels fifteen and activate your SOS beacons. Also, be informed you may have been exposed to ionizing radiation. As a precaution, everyone will take one dose of anti-radiation medicine.”

As Mori worked the pod’s controls, a crewman opened the first-aid box and distributed syringes of anti-radiation drugs. Hoshi injected himself with one, then pulled up the feed from the pod’s sensors on the pod’s holographic display.

The meteors closed. The Chinese turned to face their threats, but their gyroscopes were too sluggish. They fired more missiles instead, but it was too late, and the ones they had in flight were still too far away.

The missiles separated, deploying fifteen warheads each. They maneuvered to form a loose net, bracketing their targets. And then they initiated.

In the fury of a nuclear blast, each meteor forged a penetrator with a velocity that reached one percent of the speed of light. The penetrators flew so fast the Chinese could not track them. Anti-missiles were fired uselessly into the dark. Point defense lasers, those that were lucky or fast enough, emitted a single pulse each, far from enough to break the assault.

The penetrators struck. Set to anti-ship mode, they arrived in threes. The first cratered a section of the target’s armor. The second passed through the hole and wrecked the compartment beyond. The third punched into the heart of the ship.

Zhejiang was the first to go, breaking apart in a storm of superheated plasma. Shanghai’s engine disappeared in a great cloud of gas and twisted metal. And Nanjing…it was as though an oni had carved her up with a serrated knife. Escape pods blossomed from the ships, but very few before explosions rendered escape impossible.

At last came the inevitable. Like a lightbulb popping, Takao vanished in an ephemeral star as bright as a thousand suns.

Mori cleared his throat. He did not wipe away the tears streaking his face. “Takao is the finest ship in the fleet, na?”

“So yo,” Hoshi said firmly. “The finest.”

Editor’s Introduction to:
WAR AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
by Col Douglas Beason, USAF, ret.

Doug Beason is an old friend. I first met him when he was on the faculty at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, but for most of his career he has been a scientist of war. He is the former Chief Scientist of Space Command, and has commanded many of the Air Force’s weapons laboratories. He also writes science fact and fiction. The Cadet tells the story of the formation of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

“War at the Speed of Light” looks at the future weapons of war from the view of one of their creators.

WAR AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
by Col Douglas Beason, USAF, Ret.

The date is late fall, 2027, and a cacophony of sound reverberates through the city— sounds of cars honking, animals braying, police whistles blowing. The air is dense, humid and heavy with the smell of dung, car fumes and urine. Beggars crowd the street, fighting for rupees given in embarrassed sorrow by widows, visiting dignitaries and students who now stare agape at the world’s most extreme poverty.

The place is New Delhi, India, home of the world’s largest democracy and unwavering friend to the United States. Until now.

An unruly crowd surges through the trash-laden streets, picking up stragglers as the mob grows in frenzy. Women and children slip around corners and cover their faces, trying to hide, but they are swept along with the roiling crowd. Shouts erupt, rocks are thrown. Within minutes, the growing riot approaches the iron gates of the American Embassy.

A glass bottle filled with gasoline and stuffed with a burning rag is hurled over the gate. Burning liquid from the Molotov cocktail splatters across the ground. Someone shoots a gun. In a panic, with the unpredictable mentality of a mob, the crowd surges forward.

Stoic U.S. Marines guarding the entry points fall back into position, drawing their automatic weapons. Having learned from the debacle of the Iranian hostage situation 50 years before, the Marines are under unwavering orders not to give up the Embassy, no matter what.

Their orders are ‘shoot to kill’.

Their actions could set back diplomatic relations with India for decades.

Behind them, hundreds of American and Indian Embassy staff members are hastily ushered into basement ‘safe’ areas. The situation is rapidly escalating out of control.

Women and children in the crowd are roughly grabbed, to be used as human shields to prevent the Americans from stopping them. The rioters know the Marines won’t kill innocent women and children, and they use their hostages to advance toward the embassy. The insurgents boldly shove their innocent shields in front of them as they advance.

The crowd surges forward. The guards must act.

The political balance with one of America’s greatest democratic allies now hinges on the split-second decisions made by the gun-toting Marines, young men who are brave, but barely out of high school. They are well-trained, but they are soldiers, not diplomats. Visions of their predecessors being overrun at Fallujah and Mogadishu swirl through their heads. They are all too aware of what happened in Tehran and at Benghazi.

These young warriors are faced with immense pressure to react, to defend this small vestige of American soil … but they also know their commander has provided them with an ace in the hole.

Their predecessors only had options: to shout at the insurgents, ordering them to stop— or to shoot them. A simple binary decision: shout or shoot.

Today, however, there is a third option.

As the Marines raise their rifles, a deep humming sound envelops the compound. Without warning, the rioters feel intense heat, as if a giant, invisible oven has suddenly opened in front of them. Within seconds the pain is unbearable. They cannot think, they cannot reason—they can only react.

They turn and flee, trying to escape as far as they can from the invisible heat. Screaming in pain, the rioters drop their weapons as they sprint away. No one looks back as they scramble to flee.

Curiously, none of the women or children in the mob are affected. As if divided by a Maxwellian Devil who can distinguish between hostile intent and innocence, only those people who had been carrying weapons had felt the intense, excruciating pain—a heat like that from a supercharged oven. The mysterious weapon defending the embassy is that accurate, that precise.

In less than a minute the streets are clear, the compound is eerily quiet. Warily, the women and children disperse, unharmed.

As the Marines lower their weapons, the only noise in the Embassy is the low mechanical thrumming that comes from a geodesic sphere, inconspicuously located on top of the sprawling building. Inside the sphere is a phased-array dipole antenna that directed the millimetre waves from the world’s first non-lethal Directed Energy Weapon: Active Denial.

Science Fiction? No … Active Denial is being tested today. And if funding had not been cut at the turn of the century, it could have been used to quell the urban warfare in Baghdad, in Fallujah and in other cities where allied warfighters have been stationed.

And countless lives might have been saved.

Technology Wins Wars

The size of the army matters, but it’s the technology that wins wars. At the height of the Roman Empire, Roman legions armed with arrows, longstaffs and shields used precise, steadfast formations to devastate the more numerous, but ill-equipped, barbarian hordes.

The invention of the stirrup in the sixth century gave horsemen the ability to use their mount as a lethal weapon for the first time—an astonishing transformation from the centuries-old use of transportation or ploughing, allowing warriors to combine their horse’s mass and speed with their devastating thrust of a spear.

In 1232 during the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled Mongol invaders with the first known use of rudimentary rockets powered by gunpowder, called ‘arrows of flying fire’.

On 9 August 1945, a lone B-29 bomber flew over Nagasaki, Japan, and dropped a single atomic bomb that ended World War Two.

And in February 1991, precision-guided ‘smart’ bombs, ground-hugging cruise missiles and invisible stealth fighters forced the massively equipped and much more numerous Iraqi army to its knees.

In 2003, the war in Iraq just missed seeing the introduction of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry, a new type of weapon based not on missiles, bombs or bullets … nor on anything you can hold in your hands. This weapon is made of ordinary light utilizing the same spectrum of energy found in your microwave, your light bulb or in your TV remote control. It’s called Directed Energy (DE).

Science Fiction?

The date is just before the end of the decade. The place is Osan Air Force Base, home of 7th Air Force and the 51st Fighter Wing, located just 48 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, the DMZ. Negotiations have broken down again and the tensions between North and South Korea have never been higher.

45,000 American troops are still stationed on the 55-year-old DMZ, along the 38th parallel. They are on highest alert as 500,000 South Korean soldiers back them up. But facing them across the border are over 1.5 million North Korean regulars … armed with an unknown number of Taepodong-3 ballistic missiles, now believed to be tipped with nuclear warheads.

And all can reach the western United States within 45 minutes of launch.

Home to the last oppressive, totalitarian government in the world, little is known about the North Korean capabilities, or its motivations. All that is certain is that the world sits at the brink of war.

Suddenly, seven sleek missiles roar from silos deep in the valleys of North Korea. Three rockets streak to the south, arrowing toward Seoul and its five million inhabitants. The other four missiles veer east; they are heading towards San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego.

Within seconds the missiles break through the cloud layer. In another two minutes they will exhaust the fuel in their upper stages and will soar unfettered to their targets in an arcing, parabolic trajectory. Officials estimate that 10 to 50 million deaths will occur over the next few days. Nothing can be done. Most observers believe the situation is hopeless.

But that is far from the case.

Orbiting at 65,000 feet above ground in a ‘racetrack’ pattern, 100km south of the DMZ, two high-altitude UAVs fly safely well away from enemy fire. Infrared seekers onboard the UAVs pick up the bright rocket plumes as the Taepodong-3 missiles break through the cloud layer.

In milliseconds—mere thousandths of a second—low-power targeting and tracking lasers lock onto the missiles. On-board computers calculate trajectories and, in the nose of the UAVs, concave mirrors five feet across swing toward the still-rising missiles. Inside each giant drone, a megawatt-class electric laser is activated. At the front of the UAV, deformable mirrors shaped by hundreds of actuators, embedded behind each mirror’s highly-polished surface, change the mirror’s surface hundreds of times a second.

This is adaptive optics, invented by the military and now used by every major astronomical telescope in the world. Adaptive optics make a perfect laser beam as the deformities in the atmosphere are taken out of the laser, even before the beam leaves the vehicle.

Thirty seconds after the Taepodong-3 missiles break cloud layer, nearly a million watts of invisible laser energy streak from each of the UAVs at the speed of light. The UAVs hold their beams with ruthless precision against the missiles, heating their metal skin with enough power to cause the missile’s fuel tanks to explode from internal pressure within seconds.

One by one, like shotguns shattering clay pigeons at a skeet-shooting range, infrared beams from the two AirBorne Lasers target and destroy one missile after another. Exploding debris falls on enemy territory, leaving both South Korea and the United States unharmed.

Is this science fiction? No. The Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed was first test-fired in flight at an airborne target in 2007. In February 2010, it successfully destroyed two test missiles. While the program was canceled and YAL-1A was grounded in 2012, the Missile Defense Agency began working on deploying lasers on high-altitude UAVs in 2015.

New Technology, New Thinking

Directed Energy (DE) weapons such as lasers and high-power microwaves have come of age. Over the past two decades, DE power has increased by nine orders of magnitude—over a billion times— from milliwatt to megawatt. This is like supercharging your laser pointer used for highlighting PowerPoint slides to shoot down ballistic missiles a hundred kilometres away.

DE is making revolutionary, world-changing advances in warfighting and battling terrorism. And it’s doing so today. It’s happening so fast, it’s the equivalent of a military Future Shock. The first DE weapons have already been developed, their successors are being refined, and in the next decades, when they are deployed on the battlefield, they may prove to be more revolutionary than the longbow, machine guns, stealth airplanes, cruise missiles, nuclear submarines, or even the atomic bomb.

The wars in Ukraine and Syria may be among the last to not make use of DE weapons.

The reason Directed Energy is likely to prove so revolutionary is that national leaders will soon have the ability to respond to threats anywhere in the world and instantly deter them with infinite precision at the speed of light.

The profound change these capabilities will make to international relations will reverberate throughout society. It will transform our way of life. This is because Directed Energy is not just about winning wars; it’s more than just a new weapon in the warrior’s arsenal. It is the basis for a completely new way of thinking, a new way of employing force from the strategic to the non-lethal levels and interacting with the international community.

The large, industrial allied defence establishment that served so well throughout the Cold War will be transformed into a lighter, more agile, and information-centric force, which will shift hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars from the government to the commercial marketplace.

Over the next decade, this shift will result in the most profound change to the U.S. Defense Department since World War II. Just as tourism was revolutionised by the jet engine, and communication was forever changed by the transistor, the next societal change will be fueled by Directed Energy in the form of DE weapons.

The Next Big Thing

But does everyone share this view? And if DEWs are so revolutionary, then why aren’t they being championed as ‘the next big thing’?

DEWs have many critics, and societies such as the world’s premier organisation of physicists, the American Physical Society (APS), have sponsored several politically-charged studies as the critics are skeptical of the benefits and capabilities of DE‘s military applications. The first APS study was conducted in 1986 in response to President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

The criticism is not limited to strategic uses of laser weapons; High Power Microwaves have their foes as well. Human rights advocates are up in arms both about the unknown long-term effects of Active Denial, as well as the possibility of civilians receiving eye damage from airborne lasers as the light glints off ballistic missiles.

Other criticisms face DEWs as they make their way to the battlefield: what happens when they proliferate? What will happen when, not if, gangs and criminals who could disrupt our way of life manage to obtain them? Or even worse, what if terrorists obtain DEWs? And are there any long-term effects that might occur when exposed to DE? How many remember American soldiers marching and flying into atomic fallout clouds in the 1950s, or US citizens being used as unsuspecting LSD and bio-warfare test subjects?

Apart from its potential, Directed Energy’s future is ridden with political and societal uncertainty. So the question is: will politicians ever allow it to be used under fear of these possible long-term effects? Well, they’d better decide fast, because DE is not science fiction. DEWs are real weapons being tested in real scenarios, today. DE is maturing on a daily basis, and advances in technology are accelerating its use.

The only reason these major DEW systems were not used in the last war with Iraq is that they were still being tested, and were not yet ready for the battlefield. Largely shrouded in a highly classified environment, DEW research is conducted by a cadre of closed-mouthed technical wizards. The government labs that worked on revolutions of military affairs in the past—nuclear weapons, stealth airplanes and precision-guided weapons—have now turned their talents toward what they hope is their next ace in the hole: DEW. And they’re on a path to move them to the battlefield. What they’re betting on is that before the world knows it, DEW will break into the headlines as it provides an overwhelming, asymmetrical advantage in war.

And those nations that are not prepared to exploit Directed Energy will stagnate … or, even better for us, lose by clinging to outmoded, traditional forms of warfare. They will fall behind in the same manner as civilisations that clung to the bow-and-arrow lost to the rifle … just as bullets and bombs will fall to DEW.

Cheaper, Faster, Better

When the laser was invented on 6 July 1960, everyone from military strategists to science fiction writers predicted that DE would soon be used as weapons. But people were quickly disappointed when lasers didn’t cause a ‘Buck Rogers’ blow-it-up effect, like you’d see in a Star Wars movie. Tests showed that the most sophisticated lasers in the early sixties only produced a low-power, although intensely brilliant, point of light. The reason was that the technology for producing the laser was relatively immature.

In the early 1960s, laser power levels were measured in thousandths of a watt. Typical laser pointers today, available for a few dollars at any office store, produce unwavering low-power beams on the order of 5 milliwatts (or 5 thousandths of a watt), a hundred thousand times less power than the light bulb shining in your hallway.

Laser weapons require a billion times more power. But, because of investments in science and technology over the last 40 years, DEWs are now poised to be a cheaper, faster and better method of winning wars and saving lives.

Despite DE’s obvious advantages, what about good old ‘bombs and bullets’, the stuff that won wars for years? One problem with them is that bullets and bombs have reached the limits of their capabilities. Military authorities state that in World War II it took approximately 5000 bombs to destroy one target. In Vietnam, the addition of laser-guided technology dropped that number to around 500, an increase of a factor of 10. Precision-aiming technology advanced, and by 1991 in the Iraq war it took approximately 15 bombs to destroy a target; in Kosovo, then Afghanistan, that number dropped from 10 to five bombs. Even more precise weapons were used in the 2003 war with Iraq, and ratios began to approach one target killed for every weapon dispensed.

However, with the ultimate limit of one bomb being used to destroy one target, warriors can’t do any better: they will be limited by the number of bombs they can carry, even if they use a weapon system such as the B-2, which can hit dozens of targets per flight.

Another drawback is that bombs and bullets reach their target by following the law of gravity. This means that they travel in trajectories constrained by ballistics, and thus take a finite time, sometimes measured in minutes, to reach their target. This is where DEWs can radically change the nature of warfare, and why national and military leaders are so excited about its use: not only because it ignores the law of gravity or because it is incredibly precise, but because it can engage a target near-instantaneously, thousands of times faster than any conventional weapon.

Speed of Engagement

Directed Energy travels at the speed of light—186,000 miles a second. This velocity may be incomprehensible to anyone who is used to the normal world where people jog at 3 miles an hour, cars zip down the Interstate at 65 miles an hour, and the fastest airliners traverse the Atlantic at speeds approaching 600 miles an hour. Even the world’s absolute speed record, held by astronaut General Tom Stafford, commander of Apollo X, when his spacecraft returned from orbiting the Moon, stands at only 28,547 miles per hour, 8 miles a second, or 0.002 percent the speed of light, which marks the world’s all-time speed record for a human being.

Light, be it produced from the sun or from a light bulb hanging in your hallway, travels fast enough to circle the Earth over 7 times in a second. That means that DE—light that is in the form of lasers or microwaves—can reach its target in less than the blink of an eye.

Another way to view this is by comparing the equivalent muzzle velocities as a way of measuring military effectiveness. A bullet’s muzzle velocity may be as high as 6,000 feet a second, but DE’s ‘muzzle velocity’ is greater than 982,000,000 feet a second, which is over 160,000 times faster than a typical bullet.

Another advantage to DE is that it can flood areas, allowing one DEW to defeat hundreds or even thousands of targets, as opposed to the best, absolute limit of one bomb killing one target. This gives the military the ability to carry a ‘deep magazine’, and thus shorten the so-called ‘logistics tail’ of ferrying a crate of bullets or bombs from the factory to the war zone to the fighter.

The Impetus for the Next Revolution

World-changing events are fuelled by revolutions in military affairs, and they are brought about by inventions of disruptive technologies so profound that they forever change the nature of society. DEWs are so different from traditional weapons that they will be the impetus for the next revolution. As such, DE will change strategy, national policy and ultimately, affect billions of dollars in funding for the military services.

Despite the dissimilarities of lasers and HPM, both are DEWs and their similarities far outweigh their perceived differences. That’s because lasers and HPMs both:

- Exploit different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

- Travel at the speed of light.

- Are impervious to the effects of gravity or ballistic motion.

- Are ultra-precise, allowing for enormous amounts of energy to be applied exactly where the warfighter wants. This is in contrast with precision weapons using kinetic energy, which, although accurate, have devastating unintended collateral effects due to blast and fragments.

Such an ultra-precise weapon, capable of striking around the globe near-instantaneously, provides the technological advantage needed to defeat the next generation of adversaries. And that advantage is only provided by DEWs capable of engaging the enemy at the speed of light, exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum.

Editor’s Introduction to:
BOOMER
by John DeChancie

John DeChancie is a versatile writer, as his science fiction Skyway series and the Castle Perilous fantasy series bear witness. He is currently collaborating with me on a near future novel about asteroid mining and artificial intelligence.

BOOMER
by John DeChancie

He knew he had led his platoon into a classic L-shaped ambush when a Soviet RPD opened up with the sound of a jackhammer on a New York street, 7.62x54R rounds splintering trees all around him, chipping through eight-inch trunks like they were toothpicks, powerful slugs, and one of them had torn through his side, he was sure, when his hand brought away wetness and a warm, funny feeling started crawling up his ribs, a feeling he’d never felt before, and he knew something was terribly wrong; he’d been hit maybe with the first round as they entered the woods, where the bastards were waiting, NVA all lined up classically alongside the trail with the goddamned machine gun on the trail wedged between two trees just off to the side, angled to rake the whole area, and wham, they opened up, not even a chance to yell, not even to draw his damn .45, shit, shit….

Funny colors in the trees, what the hell kind of trees… no pain yet… funny no pain… just that creepy feeling creeping… wet… I don’t want to look at my hand…

Jackhammers, that’s what the fucking thing sounds like, jackhammers, whacking away at the pavement, half a dozen guys hammering, tearing the shit out of the street for no goddamn good reason; they used to do that a lot, those street guys in NY, always ripping up the place and you’d think why did they have to do it here, blocking the bus route, now I’ll have to take the subway and I’ll be late for the piano lesson—maybe someday I’ll have a show on Broadway, which they’ll probably tear up next week, to the sound of hammers blasting away…

His mind suddenly focused and he wondered about Ramirez, the radio man, and he thought Ramirez had probably taken a slug, too, right off the bat, just like him, because Ramirez wasn’t anywhere around.

“Ramirez!”

No answer, just the jackhammer.

“Ramirez! Radio man! Where the fuck are you?”

Ramirez wasn’t answering and things were getting worse by the second because he didn’t hear any answering fire, didn’t hear any crack of M-16s to answer the braying chatter of the Soviet weapon and he knew it was a heavy machine gun, not an SKS or AK, but he couldn’t help but wonder why he wasn’t hearing the sharp ear-piercing thwack of M-16s so he knew his platoon was at least shooting back at the fuckers, popping away with rifles, if not the—

“McCluskey, where’s your grenade-thrower?” he yelled toward the rear where he thought McCluskey, the M79 carrier, would be. But no word from McCluskey.

“Harrison! Harrison?”

Christ, no grenade launcher, no M-60 fire to answer the RPD. Could they both have been taken out, first thing? That would be the way to take out a whole platoon. Start with the heavy fire power first. And the radio man.

“Ramirez!”

He knew it wasn’t any good. Ramirez was probably dead.

Funny-colors in the leaves. What? Odd green, funny-looking trees.

He looked at his hand.

No blood! Right! OK, something had hit him, but he didn’t know what. Or was he hit someplace other than his side. Must’ve grazed his noggin, must be some reason he wasn’t thinking straight.

Sun blazing through the trees, harsh sun, hot sun, and a hot breeze passed over his body as he lay in the undergrowth. He had trouble moving, joints were achy… he could barely move.

Gotta call Battalion. Gotta find Ramirez or the radio, and he inched to the side thinking to discover Ramirez’s body but all he found was more funny grass, and the spotted sunlight was molten on his back as it came through the thin, funny trees, trees that hid the enemy but didn’t provide cover, and you’d think what was sauce for the goose… Shit. He wasn’t thinking straight.

“Ramirez?”

Forget him. He was gone, off the side of the trail, lying there, dead.

Why was he hearing Bob Dylan in his head? Used to lie in bed and listen to Dylan records with many a girlfriend… OK, not many, not bragging, come on, give me a break, but he loved Dylan and his music, not the folksy stuff all that much but when he started playing with The Band, and the floodgates opened and all the Sixties shit bubbled up while he tried to find Ramirez, because he must’ve taken a damn slug to the head and something was screwy because he just wasn’t thinking straight, why the hell couldn’t he think, find Ramirez, find that radio, call in air support; he had seen at least three Cobras in the area, and they were there to back up the operation, at his beck and call, even if he couldn’t reach battalion headquarters, he could always throw a smoke marker and call in that Cobra to spray the area with 20mm cannon, and that ought to take care of the son of a bitch NVA bastards, but he couldn’t find Ramirez or the radio and he wasn’t feeling very good, maybe he was hit, but goddamn no pain, no pain yet, so he didn’t know what was wrong, but something was terribly wrong…

WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP…

Helicopters! Not firing yet. Maybe they could see the machine gun position, but no, they couldn’t, he’d have to lob a yellow smoke grenade to show them where to fire. He looked up through the trees.

All he saw were birds. Big, skinny, funny-looking birds, what was with that? Abstract expressionist birds, nothing was looking normal, not the vegetation, not the birds, not anything that looked normal for the Central Highlands, but what did he know about local fauna, they didn’t teach you that at OCS, they just make you into a 90-day wonder leader of men, men like Corporal Ramirez, who was dead because the Second Lieutenant platoon leader wasn’t a very goddamn good leader of men, were you, Lieutenant, sir, you asshole, sir?

“Ramirez?”

He just wanted an answer now, he didn’t expect Ramirez to do anything. Maybe Ramirez had been hit by mortar. But there was no explosions, just boom boom coming from all around, but not near. Other battles nearby? Other units pinned down? The whole operation was a snafu, maybe he wasn’t to blame.

“Ramirez, if you can hear me, call battalion headquarters, call in air cover.”

Ramirez wasn’t around. Maybe Ramirez never existed, and all of a sudden strange things got into his head, like the time he put on his mother’s nylon stockings, but that didn’t mean anything, didn’t mean he was queer or anything, just meant he was curious about feminine things, because he liked girls, always had. But he had these strange feminine memories. He felt guilty about holding back with the Army psychiatrist. Routine exam, he’d kept his mouth shut, the doc didn’t press, and that was that. Who would know?

What the hell is going on? Now he was hearing the thump of mortars hitting somewhere off in the distance.

He rolled over onto his stomach and there still was no pain, only pain in his ears from the incessant roar of the machine gun, and sweat stinging his eyes. Otherwise, he was all right. But he couldn’t move. He tried to get to his knees and could not.

Smoke grenade. He needed one. He rifled his pants pockets. No smoke grenade. He wasn’t carrying any. Jesus Christ, had he forgotten to take any? What was the Lieutenant thinking, sir? You shithead.

Splinters were still flying, slugs cutting into wood like it was cheese.

Well, he was checking out. He was out of the battle. It could rage, he was somewhere else, back in the early 60s in high school watching Dick van Dyke and his lovely Laura in her capris pants and flip hairdo, and the Beaver and Eddie Haskell—there was a Haskell Avenue in LA when he lived out there, in the Valley somewhere.

He reached for his service .45, Colt 1911 A-1, and brought it up to look at. It looked strange. What the hell had happened to it? It didn’t look right.

His eyes dimmed, everything dimmed, he was blacking out… and back in the Fifties there was Milton Berle and Martin and Lewis and Sid Caesar, Your Show of Shows, and God was that funny, and even when he didn’t understand the sketches, they were still funny, like when they parodied Japanese films, Kirosawa, The Seven Samurai, you were a kid and didn’t even know the Japanese made movies, for God’s sake, you still laughed at Howie Morris wrapping a kimono or whatever around Sid Caesar, prancing around him and chattering doubletalk Japanese, was that racist, I guess it was racist, but it was hilarious and you laughed, and then there was The Twilight Zone, with cigarette-puffing Rod Serling standing there with a one-way ticket to infinity, submitted for your approval.

Ramirez! McCluskey?

“Where’s that M-60?” he screamed. “Somebody shoot the fuck back!”

Why wasn’t anybody firing? Where was the answering fire. Don’t tell me they’re all hit, for Christ’s sake, don’t tell me that! All thirty of them? Can’t be!

Darkness visible again, dimming light through the trees in waning shafts, spots of blue-green through the rustling leaves, funny leaves, and back we go to the Fifties, Saturday morning lineup of kiddie shows, spending all morning in front of the TV watching cartoons, live action, Fury, Sky King, Johnny Jupiter, Kookla, Fran, and Ollie, Lassie, Space Patrol… Tom Corbett, Space Cadet! Documentary footage of V-2s lifting off, rocketships, space cadets, rays guns, blasters, robots, aliens…

He was hearing more mortar fire now, boom… boom… boom… maybe it was a cannon. No, it had to be mortar fire.

Mighty Mouse, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger… ! Disney on Sunday nights, old Walt… and on weekend afternoons, Mickey Mouse Club—forever let us hold our banners high…

Something had hit his side. It was getting numb. There was something, but all he could bring away with his hand was sweat. He was soaked in sweat. He angled his head and looked down at his body. What the fuck. He was going out of his head. What he saw didn’t make sense.

No, don’t look. You’re screwy. You got hit, you’re bleeding to death… God, I’m bleeding to death here, and he was woozy and not really there, he was elsewhere, somewhere back in his childhood in the nineteen-fifties decoding Captain Midnight’s messages on the Secret Decoder Ring—what was that you said, Captain? Drink Ovaltine, that’s what the captain sent encrypted. Drink Ovaltine he did, every morning and sometimes before his mom tucked him into bed.

Oh, his favorites were the space shows. Always liked Space Patrol, and Tom Corbett and Captain Video—done live from New York, pretty sure, that must’ve been something. He didn’t remember any plots, any stories, just the doc footage of World War II German vengeance-weapons lifting off their pads, doubling for rockets into space. Space travel was simpler then, no fussing with Delta V or… Delta V? Or quantum fluctuation. Or… ? TV kid shows? Quantum fluctuation? String-theory spatiometrics? Stray memories, bits of dialogue from those shows. Decoder rings. Space cadets, silly crap. But he remembered he loved those shows and now they were really going to the moon, the Apollo guys.

String-theory spatiometrics? Where did that come from?

“Lieutenant Ramirez, are you there?”

A voice, somewhere off to the left. Ramirez! Maybe.

“Lieutenant? Come in, this is Rescue Three.”

What the hell was “Rescue Three”? We need a Cobra gunship, buddy. Where was the voice coming from? It sounded like someone was speaking right next to him, not like a field radio, but like high-end audio on a classical channel. Clear fidelity. What?

Inching in the direction of the voice, parting the odd-colored grasses off the trail while the Soviet gun still hammered away, spreading deadly fire at the edge of the woods, and still that booming and the whup whup whup of helicopters, strange sounds, filtered and changed through whatever was happening to him inside his head, something screwy, something that was the result of getting hit, but he can’t figure out where he was hit. He chances to sit up, like a fool, and hunches over, but he must be out of the line of fire because no slugs find him, and he pulls his shirt out of his uniform pants and looks at his bare side.

His side has a swelling of some sort, a lump topped with a tiny red dot. Not big enough to be an entry wound. He doesn’t know what it is.

And he doesn’t know what those swellings are on his chest. Something is definitely screwy.

“Lieutenant? Rescue Three to Lieutenant Ramirez. We lost you, there. Are you all right?”

He stretched out again and lay his head near where he thought the voice was coming from. Then he found it. But it wasn’t the PRC-25 field radio. It was some tiny little hand-held thing, black, with no antenna, and it was squawking.

“Lieutenant Ramirez? Are you there? You were just talking to us a while ago. Did something happen?”

He grabbed the unfamiliar object and spoke into the tiny metal mesh grate. “What is this thing? Are you a Cobra, come in? This is McElroy, Joshua T., Second Lieutenant commanding Third Platoon, Alpha Company. Need a Cobra for air support, any Cobra in the area, will mark target with yellow smoke. Can you read, over?”

A short silence.

“Lieutenant Ramirez? Is that you?”

“Ramirez is dead! This is Lieutenant McElroy! NVA unit pinning down my platoon! Need air support! Can you assist?”

Another silence preceding: “Lieutenant, I think you are in need of medical assistance. Don’t worry, we will be down to take you out of there very shortly. Stand by.” It was a calm voice, authoritative, soothing.

What in the hell are they talking about? “No! No, no, no! Need air support before medical evacuation! We are pinned down by heavy NVA machine gun fire! Need air support, any helicopter gunship in the vicinity. Come in! Do you read me?”

No answer.

“Don’t send the Huey. Need a Cobra, now! Need concentrated fire on my marker.”

But he had no marker! What was he going to do? Nobody was answering. Was he completely alone? Did they all vamoose back to the clearing as soon as the RPD had opened up? Maybe Hueys were coming to take them out and here he was, still on his back in the woods, being shot at.

But it got dark again and he was in Saigon at Lee’s and the bar girls were sidling up to him and the sound system was blaring the Doors and he was sipping a beer watching the busy thoroughfare through the window, people in dark pajamas pedaling bicycles up and down the street; he really hates it here, hates the war, but he got drafted and he is no peacenik and wanted to do the right thing but he has doubts, he thinks the war may be a mistake, but he has no say in the matter, so he takes the Officer Qualifying Test and scores big, because he has his BA and Army tests are a snap for any college grad, and lo and behold, he is an officer leading men into battle…

The machine gun stops. What is going on? He still hears the thud and boom of mortar explosions. But the machine gun has stopped chattering. He hears something humming.

Two figures, shadows at the edge of the woods now, backlighted by sun, and why aren’t they getting hit? Silence now. Strange silence. As if…

“Lieutenant Ramirez?”

They are standing over him, looking at him through goggles.

“Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me?”

“He’s crazy.”

“Take another look, Corporal.”

“Oh. She’s crazy. The hair fooled me.”

“Cadet Lieutenant Patricia Ramirez, meet Planetary Guardsman Anselm Reilly. ‘Ansy’ is what he’s called, usually. Right, Ansy?”

“Who are you guys?”

“We’re here to help. Cadet Ramirez, you have passed your Survival Training Field Exam. I see something has bitten you, here on the side. Puncture mark, swelling. You’re pretty well envenomed, but I recognize the single puncture. I have the appropriate antivenin right here, but we’ll have to get you up to the cruiser pronto.”

“Don’t you guys realize there’s this huge unit of North Vietnamese regulars around here? This is a big operation. What the hell are you doing in those space suits?”

“Take it easy, Lieutenant. Lie back down. I want to give you an injection. Never mind about the North Vietnamese. What we have to worry about is an anaphylactic reaction to the critter that bit you.”

Reilly edged closer. “And she passed the exam?”

“Sure, she stayed alive well past the pick-up time. Then a pesky little local poisonous slug bit her, and there’s obviously been some hallucinating.”

“What was she chattering about? North who?”

“Tom Corbett! Are you guys space cadets?”

“No, but you are, Cadet Lieutenant. I have no idea, Corporal. Sounds like twentieth-century historical and cultural references. You familiar with the period?”

“Me? Hell, sir, I don’t know anything about Earth. Who cares?”

“Right. I’ve seen this before. Rare, but it happens. It’s those historical war simulations, and the deep social and cultural immersion cadet gamers undergo. It’s very specialized neuralware to give an extra dimension to the simulation. They take on historical personae complete with life histories, memories, the whole panoply of cultural baggage, so as to better understand how the war in question was fought.”

“And when she got bit, she starts hallucinating the last simulation she was in?”

“They do quite a lot of military gaming at the Academy.”

“Didn’t she say she was some guy named McElroy and that Ramirez was dead?”

“One of her avatars, most likely. I don’t think women took part in actual combat in that historical period. But she obviously remembered that ‘Ramirez’ was around here somewhere. She’ll come around as soon as this stuff gets working. There. Cadet, can you walk?”

“She doesn’t look like it.”

“Get the gurney, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m a space cadet!”

“Whoa, is she going to be all right?”

“Perfectly. After all, that’s what she is. Ancient term for it, but she is one.”

“What the hell are those noises, if you don’t mind my asking, sir?”

“I know this planet. That chattering sounds like an Uzi bird.”

“Bird?”

“Actually, a tree-dwelling reptile.”

“Sounds like an automatic weapon! And what’s that booming sound?”

“The locals call them ‘boomers.’”

“Huh. And those birds up there. Sounds like a war zone.”

“I don’t know what they’re called. Maybe all this racket triggered the hallucinations.”

“I’m sure you’re correct, sir. I’ll be right back.”

“Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me?”

“Uh-oh, that antivenin might take a little longer than I thought.”

The ship lifts and the jungle rolls below. It’s not a helicopter, hardly makes a sound. Could it be one of ours, or are these guys little green men? Where are they taking me?

My breasts seem part of me now. I am a woman. I’ve got my commission! I’m Patricia Ramirez, Second Lieutenant, Terran High Guard. And she closes her eyes and her head lolls toward the window and the ship hums and throbs around her.

As she opens her eyes again, the jungle falls away. Why is the horizon curving like that?

…Forever let us hold our banners high—High! High! High!

Editor’s Introduction to:
THE DEADLY FUTURE OF LITTORAL SEA CONTROL
by Commander Phillip E. Pournelle, U.S. Navy

The United States has always been a maritime power, and freedom of the seas has been our policy since the founding of the Republic. We have known since President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute to the Barbary Coast pirates that blockade might not be enough. Sometime you must control the coastal areas and send the Marines to the shores of Tripoli.

The control of littoral areas generates different fleet requirements than controlling the high seas. Commander Phillip Pournelle has been involved with the future of naval requirements, including fleet structure, for years. This article was recently published by the United States Naval Institute and is reprinted here by permission of the institute. The opinions in the article are, of course, his own. There is a lively debate about the future of the Navy, and how the Fleet should be structured, in Naval circles. Those interested in it should consult the Naval Institute Proceedings, where the various features of the force, including submarines, carriers, surface vessels, information warfare, and the Marines, are discussed. This essay concentrates on an important part of the debate.

When I was in the aerospace industry, I used to say that “the opinions expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of the Aerospace Corporation or the United States Air Force, and I think that’s a damn shame.” The opinions expressed here are those of Commander Pournelle, and not necessarily those of the United States Navy.

And I think that’s a damn shame.

THE DEADLY FUTURE OF LITTORAL SEA CONTROL
Commander Phillip E. Pournelle, U.S. Navy

This article is reprinted here with the permission of the United States Naval Institute

In an age of precision-strike weapon proliferation, a big-ship navy equals a brittle fleet. What is needed is a revamped force structure based on smaller surface combatants.

The U.S. Navy is building a fleet that is not adapted to either the future mission set or rising threats. It is being built centered around aircraft carriers and submarines. Surface ships are being constructed either as escorts for the carriers or as ballistic-missile-defense platforms. While the littoral combat ship (LCS) was originally intended for sea-control operations in the littoral environment, its current design is best employed as a mother ship for other platforms to enter the littorals. The result of all this is a brittle—and thus risk-adverse—fleet that will not give us influence, may increase the likelihood of conflict, and will reduce the range of mission options available to the national command authority.

This trend is not unique to the Navy. Like other services, it has been operating since the end of the Cold War in unchallenged environments. For the last 12 years in particular, the United States has been operating against opponents who do not have the means to seriously challenge it in multiple arenas such as the air, sea, cyber, space, and other domains. However, due to the proliferation of precision-strike-regime (PSR) weapons and sensors, these domains are increasingly being contested, and the sea, particularly in the littorals, may become one of the most threatened of all these domains.

Sea control is the raison d’être for a navy. The littorals have become, and will increasingly be, critical to the global economy and joint operations. To be relevant a fleet must have the ability to secure the littorals, dispute them, or just as importantly, exercise in them, in the face of an enemy who will contest them. Different platforms perform each of these tasks, some more effectively than others, which should drive fleet architectures. As the proliferation of weapons changes the littoral environment, the U.S. Navy will be forced to reexamine fleet architectures and make some significant changes to remain viable. This is due to the poor staying power of surface vessels in relation to their signature in the face of these rising threats. This new deadly environment will have tactical, operational, and strategic implications for the fleet, and will require significant changes if the fleet wishes to remain effective.

Sir Julian’s Three Elements

What is sea control? As the Royal Navy puts it, it is “the condition in which one has freedom of action to use the sea for one’s own purposes in specified areas and for specified periods of time and, where necessary, to deny or limit its use to the enemy. Sea control includes the airspace above the surface and the water volume and seabed below.”[1]

Without sea control, all other attributions and capabilities for a fleet are irrelevant. As noted by the classic naval strategist Sir Julian Corbett, control (he used the word “command”) of the sea is fleeting and “the only positive value which the high seas have for national life is as a means of communication.”[2] Given the fleeting status of command/control then, accomplishing it must be in support of further goals. Corbett breaks down his concept of control of the sea into three distinct areas: securing command, disputing command, and exercising command. Where securing enables exercising command, disputing may deny, or at least reduce, the ability of an opponent to use the sea for his own purposes.[3]

So it would appear a navy unable to accomplish Corbett’s three elements is unbalanced, particularly if it cannot do so in the critical littorals. Execution of Corbett’s three areas can roughly be translated into three current mission areas: scouting, maritime-interception operations (MIO), and destruction. Enemy forces, and merchant ships, must be located through scouting. While ships and merchants could be simply swept from the sea, more often than not there is a need to be present to shape events and conduct visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) or MIO in support of sanctions, proliferation reduction, or other operations short of unrestricted warfare. VBSS/MIO is critical when there is a need to confirm the identity or contents of a vessel.

The characteristics of different platforms drive their strengths and weaknesses within these three mission areas. In the past, aircraft carriers were the best platforms to secure command of the sea. That role is being contested in anti-access/area-denial environments created by competitors. The air wing provided excellent scouting capabilities, but the U.S. Navy has determined land-based maritime-patrol aircraft (MPA) are best capable of searching large volumes of water, as long as the airspace is not being contested. The carrier is an inefficient vessel for VBSS. It is only used in the most extreme circumstances and limited in capacity. Further, because so many other mission capacities are tied up in one platform, using the carrier for VBSS (or humanitarian aid/disaster relief, for that matter) denies these capabilities to other missions during the duration of the operation. The carrier air wing is currently the best platform for destruction thanks to the volume of fire it can produce, and the mobility of the carrier as a home base, though it can be argued surface ships could be more cost-effective in this role. MPA can be effective in destruction but are limited by the fixed operating location of their airfield.

Submarines are poor scouting platforms with limited perception of the area around them, but they can enter anti-access areas often denied to surface ships and carriers. While they are poor VBSS/MIO platforms and have not been used in that role, submarines have an oversized impact on destruction. Their weapon of choice, as seen in the Falklands War, can be extremely deadly, and the psychological shock of an unlocated submarine can neutralize an enemy fleet.

Surface ships are good scouting platforms, particularly if equipped with helicopters and/or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They are good platforms for destruction if armed with appropriate weapons. The U.S. Navy has long vacillated back and forth regarding arming them with Harpoon or other antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) mostly because of target-identification challenges. Surface ships are the best platform for conducting VBSS/MIO, if there are sufficient numbers of ships. Today Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are conducting VBSS/MIO off the coast of Africa and other locations. Given the cost and other mission capabilities, does it really make sense for these air-defense destroyers or other large capital ships to conduct VBSS/MIO?

The U.S. Navy appears to be building a fleet to secure and dispute command of the sea, but not to exercise it. A fleet centered around aircraft carriers and submarines with few surface ships mostly defending the carrier will lack the ability to exercise command, and this can greatly limit strategy and policy. More important, such a force will find it difficult to be present to shape events in the future environment.

Tomorrow’s Lethal Threat

The maritime arena is rapidly changing and in the near future will be quite deadly. ASCMs are rapidly proliferating as is the threat of mines.[4] While mines pose their own pernicious dangers, their area of effect is relatively limited. ASCMs on mobile launchers pose an ever-expanding threat. Hezbollah’s 2006 surprise attack against an Israeli corvette was only the beginning. The weapon employed by Hezbollah was designed by the Chinese and exported by Iran.[5] We should expect those who wish to challenge the current power structure to proliferate such weapons to proxies, both government and nongoverning organizations. As the precision-strike regime (PSR), ironically created by the United States, propagates around the world, ASCMs and other threats to surface ships will expand. The speed of this proliferation may accelerate as new low-footprint manufacturing capabilities spread.[6]

This will greatly change the security environment, particularly in the littorals, as it will greatly increase the lethality of smaller vessels and shore batteries.[7] This will in turn profoundly alter the security landscape. The Tamil Sea Tigers tied the Sri Lankan navy in knots through the use of small attack boats and suicide explosive vessels.[8] Had they possessed ASCMs they could possibly have won. Similar challenges may arise in an ally’s conflict with irregular forces such as Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines’ archipelagic environment. Closer to home could be the arming of semisubmersible platforms with ASCMs or other PSR weapons. The greatest threat will be to amphibious operations into places with conditions like Lebanon’s.[9]

In the face of these challenges, warships have poor staying power. They are not capable of taking hits in proportion to their size (and, by proxy, cost). Multiple studies show the ability of a ship to take damage grows only at the cube root of its displacement; ships with a displacement of around 2,000 metric tons (such as the LCS) only require a single hit from an ASCM to be rendered out of action.[10] Others are even more pessimistic about the ability of modern ships to take damage from modern weapons, particularly those with large internal volume such as a mission bay.[11]

A ship’s vulnerability to ASCMs is disproportionate to her staying power. The probability of a ship being detected and hit by an ASCM is increased by her radar cross section (RCS). As a ship’s designed displacement grows, her RCS grows much more rapidly than her staying power.[12] This can be ameliorated by the use of expensive stealth approaches in the shaping and coating of ships. The use of hardkill systems such as Aegis comes at the expense of creating a high profile with a unique signature giving away the ship’s position. The greater efficiency of fitting such weapon systems into larger ships is part of how the U.S. Navy arrived where it is today, with a dwindling number of expensive ships.

Since it has spent the last several decades operating in an uncontested environment, the Navy has designed its fleet accordingly. However, the combination of an increasingly threatening world with fewer ships will have significant tactical, operational, and strategic implications.

The tactical implications of a PSR weapons-proliferated environment are significant. The 2012 conflict between Israel and Hamas demonstrated how critical scouting capabilities are in the face of such threats, and also that there is never enough to meet the challenge. In the cluttered littoral environment, even in the midst of an active conflict, reaction times are short, hard-kill missiles have not historically worked, and ships cannot constantly operate electronic warfare systems or deploy short-lived decoys. Ships will be lost in the confusing and confined littoral region.[13] The question is what proportion of the U.S. Navy’s capabilities will be lost when those losses occur. Numbers matter, and having a large signature is a good way to get hit.

Wanted: A Balanced Fleet

The key is balance. Rather than continuing our current trend of an all-large-ship navy, or eliminating all the large ships for smaller ones, a balanced force and a ship designed to fight in the littorals are both required. This dangerous environment was foreseen, and alternatives (including the Streetfighter concept) were forwarded as a potential solution.[14] However, the LCS was delivered instead. In an effort to advance the Navy’s future capabilities in the dangerous littorals, it is important to identify existing alternatives within the U.S. inventory for rapid alteration and experimentation. There are at least two existing platforms that could be employed to meet our needs: the U.S. Coast Guard’s Sentinel-class fast-response cutter (FRC) and the Mk-VI patrol boat.

The FRC has a far smaller signature than an LCS. It has endurance and operating range slightly shorter than an LCS’s, but sufficient to transit the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans on its own. While they would lose some of their adaptability, an up-armed FRC could carry four ASCMs, a SeaRAM self-defense system, and decoys in addition to its current complement of a 25-mm auto-cannon and small arms. These patrol craft can operate in large numbers and maintain littoral sea control with far greater fidelity than larger platforms. For the cost of owning and operating an LCS and two MH-60 helicopters, between 14 and 28 FRCs can be owned and operated, depending on how they are modified and armed.[15]

The new Navy Mk-VI patrol boat could be modified to carry two ASCMs and decoy systems. It has a very low profile and an operating range of 600 nautical miles, which would require a mother ship to transport and sustain it. For the total ownership cost of a single LCS and two helicopters, 14 Mk-VIs and one mother ship based on the T-AKE design can be acquired and operated.[16]

Ironically, smaller ships require the expenditure of more ASCMs to kill them than do larger vessels. While the smaller ships given as alternatives would be destroyed by a single hit, the probability of hitting them is much smaller due to their smaller signature. Thus an enemy commander must launch more missiles to have confidence in the destruction of one of these smaller platforms than the larger one. To gain an 80 percent confidence in destruction against the Mk-VI, the enemy commander would have to launch more than three ASCMs, while the FRC and the LCS would require more than two ASCMs.[17] But instead of just one LCS, the enemy commander would be faced with the prospect of at least 14 platforms to track and target. While he could employ smaller weapons effectively against each platform, it will require a significantly larger investment to achieve the same confidence (140 ASCMs for the FRC flotilla, more for the Mk-VIs) than the prospect of a single lucky hit against a single ship.

The LCS is not designed to fight in the littorals. It is too large and lacks offensive punch with any reach. Claims that it has a reduced signature are simply not supported by the evidence. Both LCS designs have large internal volumes above the waterline and lack any sign of low-observable shaping that would change the results of the RCS prediction models.[18] However, the LCS is an effective launch platform for other systems such as helicopters, unmanned air systems, and unmanned surface vessels, which are potentially effective for combat in the littorals.

The dangers posed by shore batteries can be used to our own advantage. By reviving the Marine Corps Defense Battalions (or revising the Marine expeditionary unit mission set to include this historic mission) combined with Navy Expeditionary Combat Command teams and/or supporting allies’ employment of shore-based ASCMs, land-based UAVs, and flotillas of Mk-VIs or FRCs to seize and/or create littoral outposts, we can project our own anti-access/area-denial capabilities against enemy aggression.[19] (Reviving this mission would return the Marine Corps to its roots.) Shore batteries and support facilities can employ denial-and-deception techniques to hide in the clutter on land or employ hardened facilities. However, these littoral outposts, employing combined arms, require doctrine and diplomacy with our regional allies in advance; they cannot be effective in an ad hoc manner.

Big Ship = Big Risk

There are significant operational and strategic implications with a small number of large-signature ships in a PSR-proliferated environment. The situation creates a brittle fleet, raises the stakes in a crisis, and increases the need to use force in a blockade operation. All of these decrease the options available to commanders and national command authority. On the other hand, a fleet that can be reinforced rapidly in a conflict can be a significant deterrent to an enemy looking for a rapid win.

The foremost operational effect is a brittleness of the fleet. The tactical impact detailed earlier has influenced U.S. Navy operations today. The deployment of advanced ASCMs to Syria posed an increased threat to ships should they have been off the coast. Commanders will increasingly be reticent to deploy small numbers of large-signature ships in this deadly environment for fear of potentially losing a significant amount of firepower in the loss of a single ship.

From that follows a loss of influence. With smaller numbers of ships, the United States will lack the ability to simply be present to shape events. Faced with a growing hidden threat, commanders will be reluctant to place large-signature ships in the littorals for extended periods of time. However, this is the exact area where they will be the most needed if the United States wishes to shape events and prevent conflict.[20]

A fleet conducting embargo or blockade operations is more effective and less likely to use force if it has more ships. While some argue a blockade employing offshore control is an effective strategy because it decreases the pace of escalation, that is only true if force is not routinely required to enforce it. Any selective embargoes/blockades focused on particular commodities or “contraband” will be platform-intensive, requiring multiple VBSS missions per day.[21] Ships conducting interception and boarding on one ship are not available against another, particularly given the immense size of many cargo vessels plying the ocean trade today. If a fleet’s numbers, and therefore boarding capacities, drop below an effective number, a general embargo/blockade will be required. This will be less intensive but still require numbers, particularly if we wish to retain the capacity to employ VBSS techniques to stop those who would attempt to run the blockade without general destruction. If a fleet’s numbers drop below the ability to board sufficient ships willing to risk running a blockade, then force will be required. An example will need to be made. It will be necessary to sink some merchant ships to demonstrate to the rest the blockade is “real and effective.” This will of course have significant impact on the social and maritime environment with the sight of sinking merchant ships, oil leaks, etc.

In the case of rising tensions with a near-peer competitor, we face the significant possibility of miscalculation. The offensive-dominant environment created by ASCMs presents opposing commanders with the “use-’em-or-lose-’em” dilemma when there is a potential of spending most, if not all, of his force in a preemptive strike. Distributing firepower among more numerous, lower-profile ships can shift this environment back into our favor and reduce the impact of miscalculation.

All three of these examples illustrate the narrowing of options to commanders and national command authority as the size of a surface fleet decreases and their capabilities become concentrated on fewer, but larger platforms.

Changing the fleet architecture to incorporate more numerous and smaller vessels can increase our strategic depth. In the event of a conflict with a near-peer competitor, there is a significant possibility of loss to the forces on both sides when combat begins. The current fleet design employs ships that take years to build. While this timeline could be accelerated in the event of war, it would still take months to construct limited numbers of ships in the finite shipyards we have capable of building them. A fleet that includes a greater proportion of smaller vessels at the ready would be able to make use of a wider array of shipyards, some nowhere near the coastline, to build large numbers of replacement ships. This capability would be a strong deterrent against an enemy looking for an “assassin’s mace” or knockout blow in the opening of a conflict.

A New Fleet Architecture

The U.S. Navy must reexamine its fleet architecture to remain relevant. Sea control consists of more than scouting and destruction. Exercising it is manpower-intensive, requiring large numbers of surface ships. A fleet focused on aircraft carriers and submarines is not balanced and will be limited in its capability to scouting and destruction. Employing multibillion-dollar air-defense platforms to conduct VBSS/MIO operations is not a cost-effective strategy. For a relatively small price, a large number of small ships can be employed to balance the fleet and enhance its ability to operate in the dangerous littoral environment.

The age of uncontested seas is coming to an end, and ASCMs are sounding its death-knell. The proliferation of such PSR weapons will continue and accelerate either through the distribution of such weapons by those who wish to contest U.S. dominance or through the spreading of additive manufacturing techniques. The lethality and reach of smaller vessels and obscured shore batteries will continue to increase. This will have a significant impact on the effectiveness of the U.S. fleet and the options it can afford its commanders and national leadership. Concentration of capabilities within a few large-signature ships creates a brittle fleet and the increased potential of miscalculation in a crisis. The smaller the number of surface ships available to conduct presence and other missions, the fewer options will be available, resulting in an increase in the requirement to use force to conduct operations such as an embargo or blockade.

Fortunately, the U.S. Navy has access to ship designs that can easily be modified to be cost- and combat-effective in this deadly environment. Bolstered by the revival of the Marine Corps’ historic missions and the development of littoral outposts, the Navy can gain the upper hand in the littorals. This will require embracing more numerous and smaller-profile surface ships and a review of doctrine within the Navy and with our allies. The U.S. Navy must adapt to this new reality—or face potential failure in a conflict for which it is not prepared.

Editor’s Introduction to:
THE FOURTH FLEET
by Russell Newquist

We’re going. Exactly when and how isn’t clear, but we’re going. First the asteroids, then the outer planets. The language doesn’t have to be English. It might be Russian. Perhaps more probably Chinese. Perhaps Hindi. And maybe, just maybe, all of the above and then some.

And there will be war.

THE FOURTH FLEET
Russell Newquist

You haven’t felt fear until you’ve been left to die in a giant tin can, one point two billion kilometers from home. The last thing we heard from the pirates was their laughter as they slammed the hatch shut. Then we watched out the tiny windows in terror as they flew away.

We did a thorough inventory of everything they’d left us. It wasn’t much. Our batteries would last us a day or two—and we could probably extend that to a week if we powered down everything non-essential. But they hadn’t left us any fuel to get anywhere, and they’d taken most of the oxygen, too. We weren’t sure yet how much they’d left us. Our harvest—hydrogen- and helium rich gases we’d mined out of Neptune’s upper atmosphere—was by far the most valuable thing we’d had on board. They’d taken it first.

They hadn’t left much beyond that, either. Not that we’d had a whole lot to start with. Every ounce of weight was extra money. Lots of extra money, when you shipped it all the way out to Neptunian space. Our little gas mining vessel didn’t have a lot of extra niceties. Just enough to keep me and my two brothers alive for our two year contract.

We had about a day’s worth of food in the crew stores. My brother John had a handful of meal bars that he’d brought on at our last resupply. We’d mocked him at the time for spending most of his per diem trying to put back on all the weight that a tightly rationed space diet had finally helped him shed. Now we wished he’d bought more. A couple of flashlights, the clothes on our backs, two rolls of spacer tape, and a smattering of random tools that hadn’t been properly put away fleshed out our meager belongings.

We did what we could anyway. We powered down most of our systems, instituted emergency food rationing, and limited our activity to preserve the little water and air we had left. We even deployed the solar panels for extra juice, although they wouldn’t do us very much good this far into the outer solar system. We’d take anything we could get. But we didn’t really have any hope. Without any propulsion, we weren’t going anywhere.

Everything changed when Simon tried to power down the harvester.

- From “Stranded in Space” by Matthew Holt

The Fourth Fleet ceased its deceleration burn some distance away in order to facilitate maneuvering. Most of the fleet initiated a 180-degree rotation pass to reposition their main engines behind them, where they would safely face away from enemy vessels. But SCVN-26, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, didn’t need to perform this little dance. The engineers who designed her had duplicated the five massive fusion rockets from her stern on her bow as well. Not only could she accelerate or decelerate in either direction, but her engines themselves doubled as the ship’s most devastating weapon.

The giant rotating core made her one of only a dozen or so ships capable of generating her own gravity. Well, a gravity-like sensation. It wasn’t true gravity and didn’t quite feel the same—besides being only about one half of Earth’s gravity. Something about it just wasn’t quite the same. Even so, its crew members could make very long space voyages without the health issues that came with zero gravity.

Like all United States Space Navy carrier vessels, she’d been named after a former President. The former Rough Rider served as a particularly apt moniker for the latest generation of carriers. Ushering in a new wave of technology, the Roosevelt and her sister ships were the largest vessels ever built by humanity.

As she approached Ganymede, the Roosevelt unleashed a swarm of drones. Some were sensor drones, sent out to gather information and beam it back to both their sisters and the mothership. Others were fighter drones, loaded with chain guns, lasers and missiles. All were independently controlled by remote operators on board the Roosevelt herself, yet they were capable of a great deal of automation should they lose contact with their control signals.

The Roosevelt made an impressive sight all on her own. At fifteen hundred feet long and eighty thousand tons of displacement, she carried four hundred twenty-four drones, eight large and twelve smaller railguns, forty-two laser banks, two hundred ship-to-ship missiles, and eleven hundred crew members. If you pressed the ship’s crew—pressed them really hard, you might just get them to admit that the newest ship in the Roosevelt class, the USS Warren G. Harding, with almost a decade worth of newer technology, actually carried more firepower. Maybe. But no ship in any other class could touch it.

The rest of the Fourth Fleet may not have been so modern or large but they were quite impressive on their own. Even the newest of the bunch, the USS Atlanta, dated back to the war. But like every other ship in the formation, save the Roosevelt herself, it had seen plenty of action against the Chinese fleet and carried an impressive combat pedigree. Even without the carrier it would have been an impressive fleet. With it, it was one of the three most destructive combat forces ever assembled by humanity, rivaled only by the First and Ninth carrier fleets.

And all of that power was useless. Commodore Seamus MacGregor, captain of the Roosevelt and commander of the Fourth Fleet, already knew that his quarry was not here. The pirates he chased had launched another attack five hours previously, near one of the moons of Saturn. Which, due to their respective orbital periods, was currently almost perfectly aligned on the other side of the sun from his fleet, almost fifteen astronomical units away as the light shines and probably four times that via the shortest orbital path he could take.

Nine months, he did the estimate in his head. If we’re lucky. Probably more like eleven or twelve. And by then they’ll be long gone. For the fifth time since he’d received the news he pounded his fist on his chair. It didn’t accomplish any more than it had the first four times. It didn’t even relieve any of his frustration.

He tuned out the bridge chatter as thoroughly as the crew tuned out his outburst. The mood was sullen, but crisp. Every bit as frustrated as their commander, they nevertheless carried out their duties professionally.

There was plenty of work to do, pirates or no pirates. They had just set a new record for the fastest trip from Mars to Jupiter. Now they set about performing orbital maneuvers and docking preparations as they approached Galileo Station. Built over a fifteen-year period from prefabricated components lugged in by deep-space haulers, the station was considerably smaller than the Roosevelt herself.

The once heavily armed station occupied a halo orbit around the Jupiter-Ganymede L2 position. Due to its key strategic position it had faced multiple attacks during the war, but fended them all off. These days, however, the station served more of a support role for the civilians living and working in the Jovian sector. Much of the space once dedicated to storing munitions had been converted to hydroponics and fuel processing.

The great fleets that had once been stationed here had long since been downsized to a handful of patrol craft that tended not to stray too far. Had there still been even a single battle cruiser patrolling Jovian space, it’s unlikely the pirates would have attacked in the first place. But most of the smaller cruisers were occupied with controlling smaller-scale conflicts around Mars and the larger asteroids.

For the next few hours docking procedures and a stack of paperwork on his desk demanded his attention. Presently he found himself so busy that he completely missed the actual moment of docking altogether. He left his paperwork with his assistant and quickly changed into his dress uniform and left to join the docking ceremony.

Captain Edward Stevens was an academy classmate of his and an old friend. After the formalities were done, they greeted each other warmly and Stevens took the Commodore on a personal tour of the small station. Finally the ended up in Stevens’ office, getting down to business.

“How long are you sticking around, Mac?”

“We’re not.” Stevens feigned surprise, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. “Don’t look so hurt. We’ve got some supplies to drop off for you—quite a bit, actually—and then we’re going to make a loop or three around the planet to show the colors. And then we’re off.”

“Pirate hunting?”

“You know I can’t say.”

“We really need more to work with out here. These attacks are getting out of hand—and we don’t have the resources to deal with it. With the Roosevelt around they wouldn’t even dare to attack–”

“Fleet wouldn’t keep the Roosevelt here and you know it, Ed. There are only three of her kind in service and the solar system is a big place. And piracy isn’t the only threat out there, not by a long shot. The Russians are acting paranoid over something, but when aren’t they? The lunar colonies are restless and threatening to secede. And some kook on Deimos just went and declared himself Caliph. The pirates matter—a lot—but…”

“Yeah, I know. They’re not the only thing that matters. And we’re not all that important all the way out here. I’m sure you have other things to get up to back in the inner system.”

“We’re not headed back to the inner system.”

“Oh?” Stevens was genuinely surprised this time. “Where to?”

“Saturn—and that’s highly classified. The crews don’t even know yet, not even the officers. Only the captains have been told.”

“You are going hunting.”

“I didn’t say that.” MacGregor’s poker face was considerably better than his friend’s.

“Right.”

“We’re not leaving you empty-handed. I’ve got three dozen nav satellites to launch while we’re here.”

“Wait, three dozen? We only need a few to get good nav around Ganymede.”

“Not Ganymede. Jupiter. We’re jumpstarting a whole nav constellation here, for all of near-Jovian space. And there’s more. We’ve got some upgrades for your defense systems, computers, and an entire new solar array to deploy. It’ll triple your available power, which should give you plenty of room to grow—even after we attach the new module we brought for the station.”

“You brought an entire module out here? And kept it secret?”

“Our cargo bays are a bit bigger than advertised.” The commodore winked at his friend.

“I’ll say. And your towing capacity, too!”

“Fully expanded and in place, it should increase your usable interior space by about twenty percent.”

“Why’s Tranquility Base so interested in Jupiter all of a sudden?”

“It’s not Tranquility Base. These orders come straight from the President. The going theory is that coming into power over half of the Earth and two thirds of man’s space colonies has only whet the appetite of his ambition.”

“What, a man who killed his own father to get the job hasn’t given up his ambition?” Stevens almost laughed.

“Be careful where you say that, Ed,” MacGregor cautioned him. “Some people might take that as treason.”

“Going to turn me in, are you Mac?” Stevens did laugh this time.

“No, of course not. But there are plenty of others out there looking to curry favor.” Stevens paused, lost in thought for a moment.

“You’ve met this guy.”

“Once or twice, yeah.”

“Is he as hot-headed as they make him out to be?” This time the commodore paused before answering.

“No, I don’t think he is at all. Between you and me, I think it’s all an act.” Stevens nodded.

“That’s my take, too. But it’s hard to be sure this far away from everything.”

“Well, shrewd or not, he’s got one more gift for you—and you’ll like this one.”

“Oh? Is it Christmas already?”

We process the harvested atmosphere right there on the ship. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than shipping a bunch of extra material all the way back to Earth, right? But even more importantly, it means we don’t have to ship fuel all the way out there. And Neptune’s atmosphere has really high concentrations of hydrogen, so it’s just right there for the taking.

That’s probably why we were their first target. Most individual ships like ours wouldn’t have even been on their list. But we had enough processed already to refuel their entire fleet four or five times over. We helped set them up logistically for their future plans.

But they missed something. In fairness to them, we missed it too, at first. The harvesting system works in a multistage process. First, it collects the gasses into a gigantic holding tank. Then, once we have sufficient pressure, it pushes it through the refinement chambers that separate out the mixture into its component gasses, which go into multiple tank.

The thing is, in the middle—during the processing, that is—it has to be stored somewhere. They took everything from our main harvesting tank, and they took everything from the separated gasses tanks. But they didn’t think to check the processing tank itself. We didn’t either, at first. But then Simon was powering everything down and he got an alert. The computer was worried the chamber would lose integrity without power.

He almost shut it down anyway, “knowing” that it was empty. But then he checked it. And it was full to the brim. We’d topped off everything we could possibly carry before we pulled out of the atmosphere, to get maximum haul. And the pirates had left us that tank.

We powered the harvester back up and processed it. Nearly destroyed the pumps, because there was no pressure at all in the input tanks—and that came back to haunt us later. But it worked. And the stuff we’d harvested was eighty-percent hydrogen, see? So that one tank was ninety-percent fuel. And that’s how we made it back to the Triton station.

- From “An Interview with John Holt” in Mars Today

The Fourth Fleet saluted the cruiser as they lit their engines and started the burn that would take them to Saturn. The USS Pennsylvania was staying behind to augment security in Jovian space. Stevens had been thrilled, and so had the civilians. Everyone seemed to think that the pirates would be less bold with a ship of the line nearby.

Even so, Commodore MacGregor had smiled when the new orders came in. If he’d been in his office instead of on the bridge he might have even cheered. But commodores don’t do that in front of their crews. Instead he’d calmly given his helmsman and navigator new orders and watched as they were faithfully carried out. He could tell that his crew had wanted to cheer, too.

The number crunchers on Earth had traced the pirates’ last known trajectory when they’d cloaked and predicted that they were making a push for the asteroid belt next—specifically, they thought the pirates were heading toward Neptune.

They’d barely broken orbit from Jupiter when the signal came, which meant that they hadn’t lost too much time heading in the wrong direction. Even better, with Saturn on the far side of the sun and Neptune on the same side as Jupiter, there was no way for the pirates to beat the Roosevelt to their target.

MacGregor had given the orders and the entire crew had waited over three long months of anticipation. All except for one, that is—a young enlisted man who had scowled every time the conversation came up. Something about it struck the commodore as odd, so he’d tracked the man down.

The petty officer who had looked up at him couldn’t have been more than twenty. His uniform insignia indicated that he was in sensors. Tall, lanky and bespectacled, he had certainly looked the part. He had looked alert but very nervous.

“Petty officer… Ramsden,” the commodore read his name off of his uniform. “Mind telling me what’s bothering you?”

“It’s not my place, sir.”

“I’m making it your place.” The young man was visibly nervous.

“They’re not going to Neptune, sir.”

“You’re telling me that all of the techs on Earth and Luna have got it wrong and you’ve got it right?”

“Yes sir. The orbit’s wrong, sir. They couldn’t have done it without a massive burn. Earth and Luna are assuming that their stealth system is hiding it. OK, fine… their stealth system is that good.” He’d said it like he didn’t truly believe it. “But where would they get the fuel? The numbers don’t add up, sir.”

MacGregor had frowned and noted it, but that was that. Tranquility Base had sent them to Neptune so that’s where they were headed. Besides, it was one kid against the entire analyst section at HQ. He couldn’t possibly have been right.

Except that now they were halfway to Neptune and the pirates had struck again—at Ceres, in the asteroid belt, completely in the other direction. The commodore had fumed. For a moment he’d even lost his cool and shouted at the bridge crew, before he withdrew to his office to calm down.

They’d been played. Even worse, for the time being he was out of the game. The pirates had hit Neptune before, one of their first targets, and command wanted to beef up the system there. The Fourth Fleet was to continue out to Neptune and reinforce the station there with a similar constellation of nav satellites and defense upgrades—but no new station modules. There was nowhere to stop to pick up another one, and the Roosevelt’s cargo bay wasn’t that big.

It was important—MacGregor could see that. But he didn’t have to like it.

It wasn’t very much fuel. The processing tanks themselves aren’t particularly big. They’re meant for short-term storage. And we had to redo the piping so that we could use some of the spare oxygen for breathing to oxidize the fuel. They’d taken most of our tools, too, so we had to get pretty creative. But at the end of the day we got thrust. The nav computer worked out a course to get us back and we prayed that we wouldn’t starve before we got there.

It was a close thing, too. I can’t speak for my brothers, but I know that they were starting to look mighty tasty to me. Two weeks on about a day’s worth of food is pretty brutal. We stretched those food bars about as far as you possibly can, you know? My brothers used to harass me about keeping so many around, but now all three of us stash them away everywhere we can hide them. Once you’ve known hunger like that, you never, ever want to do it again. Honestly, we didn’t think we’d make it.

In those days, Neptunian space was a real frontier, you know? Supply and fuel stations and a science station orbiting Triton and a dozen or so mining ships like ours. Back then they didn’t even have nav satellites yet. The fleet brought those in while they were hunting pirates. We were on the wrong side of the planet when the pirate caught us, and orbiting nearly in sync with Triton.

We knew right away that it wasn’t enough fuel to get there. So we tried another plan, and set course for another orbit. And then we waited. We sat there in the dim light telling each other stories, reading, watching the vids, whatever we could do to pass the time and keep our spirits up. We read the bible a lot. Alone and together. It became our fallback, when we couldn’t find anything else to do. And we prayed. Man oh man did we pray.

- Simon Holt, speaking to the US Space Navy Academy

Captain Nelson of the Pennsylvania stepped out of the airlock and boarded the Roosevelt. A small collection of officers stood at attention to greet him. He snapped a salute to Commodore MacGregor which was promptly returned. After a small boarding ceremony of the type that hadn’t changed all that much since the days when a distant family member had fought a famous battle at Trafalgar, the pair made for MacGregor’s office. Small talk filled their conversation during the walk but the topic turned deadly serious once they closed the door.

“What happened, Bill?” MacGregor asked the young captain.

“I don’t know how they did it, Commodore. Even though Intel said they were headed to Saturn, we kept an eye out. But somehow they snuck in right underneath us. They hit a mining operation on Amalthea while we were on the other side of the planet—and in completely the wrong orbit. It took us eighteen hours to change orbit and get there, and by then they were already gone.”

“Eighteen hours isn’t a big head start. Why didn’t you follow?”

“There was nothing to follow, Commodore. They disappeared.”

“Where were they headed this time?”

“That’s just the thing. None of our observation stations caught their burn, and by the time we got to Amalthea they’d activated that damned stealth tech of theirs. We have no idea where they went.”

“Fleet couldn’t give you a heading?”

“Nobody saw the burn, sir. Fleet had nothing.”

“Nothing at all?” MacGregor was stunned.

“Not then, sir. I had all the techs comb through all of our data, down to the raw, unprocessed stuff. Looking for anything.”

“You found something?” MacGregor’s tone changed into excited anticipation.

“Well… we don’t know. Maybe. There are a couple of blips in the data that don’t make any sense. The software filtered it out as noise, but our techs don’t think so. They think maybe it’s some artifact caused by the pirates’ stealth tech, but they can’t make heads or tails out of it.”

“Forward the data to Tranquility Base. Make sure their people are on it.”

“Sent it months ago, sir, before the fleet started the trip back here. I talked to them this morning. They still have nothing—or at least that’s what they’re telling me.”

MacGregor frowned and pursed his lips in thought for a moment. Then he hit the intercom on his desk.

“Bradley!” he barked.

“Sir?” came the response.

“Get Ramsden in here, now.”

“Yes, s–” the Commodore released the button, cutting off his aide mid-word.

Nelson raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’ve got a real bright Petty Officer who’s been looking at a lot of the sensor data. He says something’s bugging him about it all, but he doesn’t know what. Made himself real obnoxious. But his lieutenant says he’s the brightest kid he’s ever seen, and the other techs all say the same. They’ve been giving him everything on this, and he’s got some giant simulation he’s cooked up.”

“Fleet has better people. And better computers and simulations.”

“Better computers, for sure. Better simulations… maybe, but I’m not so sure. Better people? You haven’t met this kid. Mark my words, as soon as they find out about him they’re going to snatch him away from us.”

“That sharp?”

He never got his answer. A rapping sound came from the door, followed momentarily by the creak of hinges as Lieutenant Bradley escorted Petty Officer Ramsden into the office. He stopped before the officers and snapped up a smart salute. They returned it.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“At ease, Mr. Ramsden.” The young man relaxed. “This is Captain Nelson, from the Pennsylvania. His men have some raw data recordings from the last pirate attack, and they noticed some anomalies. I’d like you to put another pair of eyes on it. See what you can make of it.”

“Aye aye, sir!” The response and the salute came out smart and quick as required, but the young Petty Officer couldn’t hide his excitement—or suppress his giant grin.

We used up most of our fuel in that first burn, and all of the rest in the second. We knew this was our only chance, and if we screwed it up we were toast. That was it, we had nothing left. And then, when we finally got there, the timing. Oh, the timing. We had about an hour and a half to do everything perfectly and that was it. After that our orbit would decay too much and we wouldn’t have the fuel to pull out of Neptune’s gravity again. And the pumps weren’t working at anything close to capacity after the stunt we’d pulled with them earlier, so we didn’t even know if we could do it.

But we’d rehearsed everything about three dozen times in the days it took us to get into place. We’d written everything down into a perfectly choreographed schedule. We figured that if we did it all right we’d have about ten minutes to spare. But not much more.

Because our orbit was total crap. We didn’t have enough fuel to set up for a proper mining orbit. Instead we were on a course that would take us far too deep into the atmosphere. The only way we were getting out of it was to get enough fuel processed before it was too late to fire off another burn and stabilize our orbit. But it was tight. Really, really tight.

Hell yeah, I was scared. I mean, no pressure, right? But here’s the thing. I was there with my brothers. And we all knew what we were about. And we’d been through about ten rehearsals now where we’d done everything flawlessly. We’d scripted the whole thing down to who is pushing what button when and for how long and in what order.

We were waiting at our positions as we coasted into range. And as soon as we crossed the line, we all started at once. I’d like to tell you that we made some great quips. That guy who played me in the vid had some wonderful ones that I really wish I’d said. But the truth is, we were pretty quiet. We were all too afraid of screwing it up.

- From “An Interview with John Holt” in Mars Today

“Petty Officer Ramsden is here to see you, Commodore.”

“After the briefing, Lieutenant Bradley.”

“He says it can’t wait, sir.”

Commodore McGregor scowled at the younger officer.

“Fine, send him in.” He waited impatiently at his desk as the sensor analyst marched in.

“What is this about, Ramsden? I have a conference with the fleet captains in ten minutes.” He read the name off of the young man’s chest.

“You’ll want to see this first, Commodore, I promise.” the petty officer assured him. “May I use your display, sir?” Ramsden carried a small computer in his hand. At McGregor’s nod he connected it to the holodisplay in the middle of the briefing room. He worked the controls to pull up a three-dimensional map of the solar system. As it loaded, he talked.

“Sir, I’ve been examining the reports from the pirate attacks. Looking for patterns, trying to figure out how they’re getting the drop on everybody.”

“The best analysts in the fleet have been over this, Ramsden. They can’t crack the stealth systems the pirates are using.” He didn’t even try to hide his annoyance.

“Exactly, sir. And they never will.” The younger man tried hard to contain his excitement. He didn’t quite succeed. Commodore McGregor frowned at him.

“Would you mind explaining to me why this is so exciting?” The young spaceman managed to calm down.

“Sorry, sir. Here, let me show you.” He worked the controls and a series of points glowed within the map.

“This is every known attack by the pirate fleet.” He worked the controls again and a series of lines connected them. “Here we have them all connected, in order, showing time between attacks.” His hands moved and the display shifted one more time. “And here, I’ve computed the orbital mechanics necessary to move their fleet from target to target in the time allotted.”

“Here.” The commodore pointed. “Why is there a break in the pattern?”

“Because at this point, sir, they either didn’t have enough fuel or didn’t have enough time. Here, let me show you.” His hands moved and the display refocused around the two points that didn’t connect. Here,” Ramsden pointed at the first point, “is where they attacked a mining vessel leaving Io. And here, this second point is where they attacked a convoy transferring orbits near Ceres, two hundred eleven days eight hours and seventeen minutes later. It’s where they screwed up, sir.”

“Screwed up? Screwed up how?” the Commodore was paying attention now.

“Yes, sir. They attacked thirty-four minutes early.” The Commodore’s brow furrowed as he brought his palms together and pressed his fingers to his lips.

“I don’t understand, petty officer. Tranquility Base processed these numbers and said that the fleet could have made the trip in two hundred eleven days.”

“Yes sir, I read the report. The original report. The official summary left off a detail. The quants who did the math came up with the same answer I did—two hundred eleven days, eight hours and forty-one minutes. But they assumed that their calculations were off, given such a small margin of error.”

“That sounds like a safe assumption to me, son. That’s off by… what? Zero point zero two percent?”

“Zero point one nine seven two percent, sir. And it would be a safe assumption on its own. They based their calculations off of the maximum fuel capacity of the ships in the pirate fleet, which at that point were all pretty standard models and well-known. But look at this.” He moved the controls and an image came up.

“This is a Lockheed-Boeing 6748 freighter. The pirates commandeered it in their first attack, near Iapetus. This image was taken from footage found on one of the recovered ships in the Io attack.” He moved again and a second, nearly identical image came up next to the first. “This is an image of the ship taken from the Ceres attack, two hundred eleven days later.”

“Son of a bitch.” McGregor shook his head and lifted the comm device from his desk. “Bradley, get Tranquility Base on the horn. Maximum encryption, level A priority.” He put the phone down and turned back to Petty Officer Ramsden.

“Command is going to want more to go on than this. Do you have it?”

“Yes sir.”

The Good Lord was with us that day, I have no question about that. My brothers and I have always been good at what we do. That’s why we wanted to go out together in the first place. We trusted each other. But I’d never seen them move like that before. I’d never seen myself move like that before. It was like the most beautiful dance you’d ever seen. Or maybe it just felt that way because my life was on the line and everything was going perfectly. Whatever, I don’t care. We pulled that maneuver off flawlessly and it was awesome. That part of the vid they nailed perfectly.

- From “Stranded in Space” by Matthew Holt

“You have more than just the one image, don’t you?” Admiral Barnes was polite but pointed.

The video screens around the walls of his office showed several men, all clean-cut and wearing crisp uniforms. To civilians they might have all just looked like high-ranking naval officers. A trained eye, however, could easily pick out the seven captains of the Fourth Fleet from the Admiral back on Luna. The deference of the fleet captains was one clue. The way their uniforms hung—or rather, failed to hang—in microgravity was a bigger one.

“Yes sir. I’ve crossed-checked every image available from every attack.” Petty Officer Ramsden keyed in a command and a series of images flashed up on the screen. “As best as I can tell, they started off with two groups. But they’ve been expanding as they captured ships on each run, and it looks like they’re up to four individual fleets now.”

“Damn. And the cloaking device?” asked Captain Morelli from the Arizona.

“Doesn’t exist, sir. Never did. It was sleight of hand all along. One group attacks, conquers its target, squawks off a challenge loud and clear, and then maneuvers itself into one of the fleet’s blind zones, and then disappears. Later on—barely enough time for their fleet to have maneuvered itself there—a second group attacks somewhere else.”

“You’d need a lot of coordination to pull this off,” chimed Captain Schafer from the Farragut.

“And patience,” added Captain Clark from the Dallas.

“Not to mention money,” Morelli finished. “Just getting the initial two fleets going would cost a fortune. Then you’d have to fuel it and prep it and ensure they had some kind of home base—two of them, actually. Somebody with considerable resources at their disposal set this up. It would take some serious doing for the USSF to pull this off, much less anybody else.”

“You’d better believe we’ll be chasing that down on our end,” Barnes replied.

“What about our end, Admiral?” MacGregor cut to the point.

“I’m glad you asked, Commodore,” a new voice cut in. MacGregor watched the general confusion on his screens, but he and Barnes, at least, recognized the voice and snapped to attention. A new vid feed joined the others on his screens and confirmed the identification.

President Harrison Trajan Covington no longer wore the uniform but he still carried himself like the general and war hero that he’d been. His dark hair was longer than typical military fashion, more in the style of the special operations forces he’d been a part of. But he was still in fighting shape, still stood ramrod-straight, and still possessed a stare that could make a drill sergeant cry. Rumor was that it had, and more than once.

“I’ve been monitoring this conversation. Good work, Petty Officer. Very good work indeed. If you’re interested in a new challenge, I have another interesting problem you might be able to help me with.”

“I’m always interested in a challenge, Mr. President.”

President Covington nodded curtly.

“You’ll be receiving your new orders shortly, then. My apologies, Commodore, for stealing one of your finest. I assure you he’ll be well used.”

“Of course, Mr. President.”

“Now, about those pirates…”

Once we’d gotten our orbit straightened out, we had the time to mine as much fuel as our hearts desired. Well, all the time our stomachs desired. We were all pretty damn hungry at that point. But with a stable orbit and fuel coming on board, we had plenty of power. And although we were hungry, we didn’t want to get stranded on Triton Station, either. So we brought on enough fuel to get us there, enough to get us back, and enough to sell for food and other supplies when we got there.

It took us the better part of two days to collect it all and process it and get it transferred to the ship’s fuel tanks. Neptune’s atmosphere is pretty thin at that altitude. But we did it, under protest from our bellies the whole time.

This time, though, we weren’t worried about saving fuel. We’d done the math—it was a lot faster to collect more fuel and waste it than it was to save it on the way back. And we didn’t care about the money at this point. We were too hungry.

When we got to Triton Station they hadn’t even known what happened, but they broke out the quickest meal they could make us—black beans and rice. And then we just put our noses right back to the grindstone and went to work.

But I’ll tell you what—I’ve never had a better meal in my life than those black beans and rice.

- Simon Holt, speaking to the Virginia Entrepreneur’s Club

The press conference set off shock waves across Earth and the colonies. When asked where they had found the resources for their construction, President Covington evaded. When asked how they had kept the whole operation secret he flat-out refused to answer. After he wowed them with the presentation, the reporters weren’t terribly interested in pressing the point anyway.

The massive colony ships dwarfed even the Roosevelt-class carriers that had been assembled to ensure their safety—all four ships assembled at once around the formerly secret construction facility in the asteroid belt. Together the fleet became both the largest colonization effort ever organized by man and the greatest gathering of destructive force in history.

Until, that is, the fleet began its mission. One by one the carrier ships escorted their larger sisters to Earth, Mars, and Luna. They met massive legions of volunteers, spurred by generous grants of land and government investments to start new lives in the outer systems. Each ship staffed up and crewed up, and then one by one the colony ships set off for their final destinations: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. And one by one, as they passed out of easy reach of the Chinese, Indian and Caliphate fleets, their carrier escorts broke off, with great fanfare, headed for alternate destinations.

The departures were carefully choreographed for maximum publicity. The news outlets buzzed with the calculations that had been done so carefully to ensure that the ships all arrived at their destinations simultaneously. The entire effort was scripted to ensure that the publicity came back on as the colonists arrived, and the commentators spent some time talking about the President’s gift for public relations.

The entire operation was highly publicized. The press was there every step of the way, the vid feeds on every channel. President Covington led the publicity campaign, even flying out to the asteroid belt himself to see the first batch of colonists off. It was the furthest from Earth a sitting president had ever journeyed, and the most watched video of all time.

Naturally, it was all a lie.

It’s funny how much work it takes to be an “overnight success.” Believe it or not, we still pulled a profit off the mission. And I’m not talking about book deals or speaking fees, either. That didn’t come until later. We didn’t even know we were famous until years later, when we finally came home.

No, we’d mined some extra fuel to ensure that Triton Station wasn’t our final resting place instead of a low orbit over Neptune. We all wanted to make it back, but we knew the station didn’t have enough fuel to send us home. And we weren’t sure they had enough extra fuel to send us back out again. The worst part was, they relied on us for all of their spare. So if we came back completely empty-handed, they didn’t have anything to help us with.

We over-estimated what we needed on purpose. As hungry as we were, we knew we could survive that. But we wouldn’t make it if we didn’t have enough fuel. So we toughed it out and mined a bit of extra, and then a bit of extra on top of that for a margin of error.

We didn’t make a fortune—it was barely a profit. But we had enough to restock the ship without a loan, and just barely enough fuel to get back down to a mining orbit. Ordinarily we wouldn’t have gone out again like that, with no room for error. But we knew we could do it this time. We pared our stocks down to a minimum, floated down there, and sucked up every bit of that exotic atmosphere that we could. And then we did it again.

A year or three later the colony ships arrived. And they all needed fuel—fuel for everything. Construction, maneuvering, transport, maintenance: you name it, they needed fuel for it. And for a while we were the only game in town. And that’s when we got totally, obscenely rich.

- Matthew Holt, at the twentieth Holt Energy Industries annual shareholders meeting

The Chinese were the first to detect that something was amiss, sending ripples up and down their space command. Their space observation array was top notch, perhaps even the best there was. It certainly gave the Americans and the Indians a run for their money. Like the Americans, they tracked everything. And the numbers didn’t add up.

It started with a technician explaining masses, burn ratios and thermodynamics to his Major. The American colonization ships simply hadn’t put out enough thrust to accelerate the way they did. The Major explained it to his Colonel who explained it to his General. To nobody’s surprise, the information was quickly given maximum security classification.

Chinese high command scrambled its engineers with one directive: figure out the new drive system that the Americans were using. Clearly they had a new thrust advantage, and that could not be allowed to stand. In the event of another space war, such an advantage would be devastating.

The Indian observers took longer to figure it out. Strangely, the Indian government learned about the discrepancy via a well-placed spy in the Chinese observation program several days before their own observation team made the connection. They already had spies in the Chinese research program, but they took steps to get better intelligence from the Americans. They, too, designated the information with a maximum security classification.

The Caliphate, operating with sub-standard observation systems and having recent difficulty with its intelligence departments, never made the connection at all. If they had, they very well might have leaked it to a certain group of freelance space scavengers that they sometimes leaked information to. Due to some dirty tricks of their own, that group would have very quickly figured out exactly what the Americans were up to and had months to prepare—plenty of time to flee the oncoming assault.

Even the amateurs noticed the unusual deceleration burns, but this came days after President Covington’s very public announcement that the colony ships would each be taking a scenic approach to their destinations. The vessels were set to fly a wide sweep around, giving each of the colonists an expansive view of the planetary space they would soon be inhabiting. Some of the spectacular views as they passed moons, planets, and asteroids were livecast back to near-Earth space, and quickly became some of the most popular footage on the news nets.

Well aware that nearly all of humanity was watching, Commodore MacGregor ordered the Roosevelt to shed the camouflage shell it had hidden within on the route to Neptune. He could feel their eyes on him as he ordered the space-based bombardment of the hidden pirate moon base on the moon Thalassa. He knew that billions of people could see perfect, high-resolution video of his drone fighters blowing the pirates straight to hell.

Nearly four billion miles away the Harding instituted an almost identical assault in Uranian space. Almost simultaneously, their sister ships rained down death and destruction around Saturn and Jupiter. Four billion human beings watched as the United States Space Navy massacred the most notorious pirates in history down to the last man.

When the slaughter was over Commodore MacGregor retired to his quarters, where he retrieved a very special bottle of Scotch that had chilled in his personal storage for years. The small bottle had cost him a fortune, and he knew that he’d be back on the firing line soon. But it was the most satisfying drink he’d ever had.

My fellow Americans,

For years our citizens, and indeed all of humanity, have been dealing with vicious pirate attacks in deep space. These brutal outlaws have been murdering and ravaging their way through the outer solar system, taking what they want and leaving death and destruction in their wake. This band of pirates seemed to exhibit some unknown form of stealth transportation that allowed them to move undetected from target to target. They always appeared to be one step ahead of us.

However, we recently learned that this stealth propulsion system was nothing more than a clever ruse. There was not just one band of pirates, but rather four distinct groups. Using an elaborate series of maneuvers and a system of expertly hidden bases, they were able to convince us that they were constantly on the move. In fact, each band has been operating out of a specific area of the solar system.

Earlier this afternoon, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the USS William Howard Taft, the USS Woodrow Wilson and the USS Warren G. Harding, utterly and completely demolished these operating bases. We have eliminated their forces entirely. There were no survivors, and we have taken no prisoners. The piracy threat to our citizens has been eliminated.

To carry out this unprecedented operation, we disguised the carriers as colony ships using inflatable hulls coated in a special reflecting paint to fool scans by radar, lidar and other active sensors. A similar ruse was used to portray derelict freighters as the elite carrier groups we sent into deep space…

- President Harrison Trajan Covington, video address to the American People

The monstrous vessel drifted through space on a Hohman transfer orbit, leaving Deimos to enter a light orbit around Mars. The ship still broadcast a bogus identification code erroneously identifying it as the USS Theodore Roosevelt. A well-armed Chinese strike group circled Mars as well, on an orbit that would soon bring it within attack range. The remainder of the Fourth Fleet escorted the misidentified ship, but without a carrier in the center the fleet would have little chance against the oncoming attack.

Onboard the vessel’s bridge, Commodore Reynolds and his crew stood at rigid attention. President Covington’s calm figure filled the large main forward display. The men listened, still and silent.

“Your crew has carried out the deception flawlessly, Commodore. Your secrecy, discipline and professionalism is well noted—and will serve you well in the next phase.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Are your men ready for the attack?”

“Yes, Mr. President. We are ready.” He hesitated a moment. “Are we certain that it’s coming?”

“We have the communications intercepts. The Chinese fleet received their attack orders several hours ago. We’re expecting similar attacks against your sister ships. As expected, moving all of our carriers out to deep space proved too tempting a target for them.”

“And the Indians, sir?”

“They appear to be sitting this one out, Commodore. But we’ll see what happens over the next few hours.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Then I will leave you to your battle, Commodore. Godspeed.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Oh, and one more thing.” Covington paused. “I believe it’s time to fix that little transponder issue. There’s no reason to hide your true identity anymore.”

Commodore Reynolds smiled.

“Yes, Mr. President.” The screen went blank. Reynolds barked a few orders and his men immediately returned to stations. Frenetic activity commenced across the bridge.

Amateur trackers across Mars noticed the change immediately. Forums across the networks lit up, first with a trickle and then an explosion of activity. A Chinese fleet had launched an attack on the bogus carrier in orbit. The Chinese and the Americans were once again at war. But that was no surprise. Given the realities of orbital mechanics, the amateurs had known the battle was coming for hours. The real shock came when the Americans finally updated the transponder code on their carrier.

As the Chinese attack fleet came into range and began their assault, Commodore Reynolds stood on the bridge of the USS Harry Truman and ordered his drone fighters launched. The newest of the Roosevelt-class carriers, it had been built in secret with its three sister ships in preparation for this exact moment. The most powerful warship ever built by man advanced into the oncoming storm and opened fire.

Editor’s Introduction to:
CANNY
by Brian J. Noggle

Rudyard Kipling wrote a whole volume of barracks room ballads, all worth reading. One of the better known is “Tommy”, about Tommy Atkins, the common British squaddie.

I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ’e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ’adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!

Brian Noggle gives us a grimmer version for the future. A nation that does not love her soldiers gets the soldiers she deserves.

CANNY
by Brian J. Noggle

On Darus IV, we cleared the countryside of Sauran tanks.
In Nask, the shopmen closed their commerce sites to us in thanks.
They watched with narrow eyes until we boarded outbound ships
And only then exhaled relieved through whitened purséd lips.

But it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny; canny, get your gun.”
Then it’s back to sleep, the cryobunk, when battle’s lost or won.
When battle’s lost or won, my boys, when battle’s lost or won.
Then it’s back to sleep, the cyrobunk, when battle’s lost or won.

On Kush, we watered jungle vines with rebel worker blood
But couldn’t linger to observe the Goran flowers bud.
The trooper ships were system out before the day could close.
But when the Kushies call again, they’ll beg us to impose.

But it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny; canny, be our friend.”
And when the violence arises, they waken us again.
They waken us again, my boys, they waken us again.
And when the violence arises, they waken us again.

They bottle breed us for our quickness, mold our minds to fight
To keep the civvies’ hands all clean and keep their conscience light.
Unlike the Outer Worlders, cannies aren’t the worst they find.
We’re best beloved or least disliked when out of sight and out of mind.

But it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny;” then packed away for years.
Forgotten and foresworn until another crisis nears.
Until another crisis nears, my boys, until another crisis nears.
Forgotten and foresworn until another crisis nears.

No children women born will serve as soldiers to defend
Without the praise or citizenship at the service end
They say the cannies lack all ethics, blood-warm heart, and head
Beyond the safety of the squad, the tactics, and the bed.

But it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny; canny, you’re the best.”
But when the ceasefire silence falls, it’s “Canny, take a rest.”
It’s “Canny, take a rest,” my boys, it’s “Canny take a rest.”
But when the ceasefire silence falls, it’s “Canny, take a rest.”

We wouldn’t mind a country or a planet of our own
A home to watch the seasons change, to reap what we have sown.
But corporate’s got us patented, marked and titled like a herd.
Our souls are static noise; our fair concerns are never heard.

So it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny; canny, nothing more.”
Another bottle troop to die upon a distant shore.
For as it is and as it was, forever so it seems,
But know, and fear: when canny sleeps, the canny plots in dreams.

Editor’s Introduction to:
WHAT PRICE HUMANITY?
by David VanDyke

David VanDyke is a former U.S. Army Airborne soldier and USAF officer who has rapidly become one of the leading military science fiction authors. Here is a tale of future space war that seems as if it’s going to follow a familiar pattern. Be warned. It doesn’t.

WHAT PRICE HUMANITY?
By David VanDyke

With their vast, intelligently designed living ships, the hostile aliens we call Meme employ superior strategic mobility in the outer Solar System. They are able to operate with few bases and no resupply more advanced than the nearest collection of asteroids and cometary nuclei. They lurk within the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, losing themselves among millions of objects across incredible distances, consuming ices, metals and silicates to refuel, replenish and reproduce.

While gathering strength, they raid, attacking our outposts and asteroid acquisition operations, our transiting cargo ships and task forces, looking for easy victories, forcing us to expend more resources than they. In accordance with their conservative—the misinformed might say cowardly—nature, they hit and run, always with the aim of preserving themselves while damaging us.

In return, we employ heavy sweeps of areas where we suspect their presence. When we meet them, we defeat them if they stand; thus, they seldom give battle. Screened by clouds of living hypervelocity missiles, they flee faster than we can pursue until we retire again to the orbit of Jupiter, the true edge of human territory.

Thus, for a time, we fight the classic asymmetric war. Our machines, our discipline and our locally superior firepower are mismatched by the Meme ability to strike with little warning, inflict damage, and withdraw with impunity.

That is until, every decade or two, reinforcements arrive from beyond the Solar System.

Each time, the Meme gather to conduct a massive assault, hoping to penetrate our defenses and damage our single, fragile home planet. Each time, we have beaten them back with great losses, heroic sacrifices. Each time, their remnants withdraw to the outer reaches to continue their guerrilla warfare and await the next push.

And each time, they come closer to wiping us out.

We are losing this war, not because we are getting weaker, but because they grow stronger more rapidly than we are. And they can afford to lose, whereas we must win, every single time.

To continue to win, I believe humanity has no choice but to consider inhumane solutions to inhuman threats, to fight fire with fire.

And yet, if we ignite this conflagration, might we not burn down our own house?

—Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2109 A.D.

***

“Do you know who you are?”

The woman’s warm, professional voice soothed him. “Sure. I’m Vango Markis. Captain Vincent Markis, EarthFleet, Aerospace branch, I mean. What happened? Did I get hurt?”

“Nothing we can’t fix. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m blind. Why can’t I see?”

“You don’t have use of your eyes.”

“Why can’t I feel anything? Will I fly again?”

“We’ll explain all that soon, Captain Markis. For now, we need to re-baseline your cognitive profile while we work on your body.”

“Call me Vango. It’s my call sign. You’re a doctor?”

“I am.”

“How bad is it, doc?”

“You’re not dead. You’re thinking clearly enough to converse.”

“But will I fly again?”

“Yes, Captain Markis. You’ll fly.”

Vango detected a false note behind her calm and wondered what she wasn’t telling him. How bad could it be? Between the Eden Plague’s healing and the reconstructive nanotech, if the brain made it back alive and undamaged, the body could eventually be regenerated, cell by cell, good as new.

That must be it. He couldn’t remember, but he must have been hit bad, really bad, worse than he’d ever been. He wondered about the other fliers in his squadron. Did they make it back?

Make it back from what, though? He couldn’t remember.

“Doc, what happened?”

“What’s the last thing you recall? Tell me your last memory of anything at all.”

“I’ll rack my brain.” He tried to laugh, but felt no muscles respond. How was he speaking? It must be a low-level neural link, audio only.

“Was that supposed to be humorous? Humor’s a good sign. Now please answer the question, Captain Markis.”

“You can call me Vango. Really. I remember…I remember heading back to Earth from Callisto, sealing into the coldsleep cocoon. Hate those things, the slime and everything. Don’t trust captured Meme biotech.”

“Do you remember waking up?”

“No.”

“Do you remember anything after that? A mission, perhaps?”

Vango mulled this over, trying to strain out the most recent memory among the many sorties he’d flown against the Meme, but everything seemed to muddle together. “I’m not sure. I remember a lot of missions. Last one I’m sure of is when we beat the Destroyer.”

“That’s all right. Confusion is to be expected.”

“Why aren’t I in full VR link? Is my visual cortex damaged?”

“We’re taking it slow, working from the ground up. We’ve already done as much as we could while you were unconscious. Now we have to ask you a battery of questions. Please bear with us.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please let me know when you’re ready.”

“What’s your name, doc?”

“My name’s Sue, Captain Markis. What’s yours?”

If he had eyes to roll, he would have, and didn’t bother to insist a third time she call him Vango. “Humor’s a good sign.”

“Humor’s a good sign.”

“Okay, fire away.”

“Is there a fire?”

“No…go ahead and ask, I mean.”

Although the doctor’s voice rang with tones of purest English, Vango couldn’t precisely identify her accent. Still, he thought it sounded a bit unnatural. A translation program, then, for someone speaking another language. Software often stumbled over idioms or translated varying phrases exactly the same.

“Where are you from, doc?”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts. How about you?”

Interesting. His guess about Sue as a non-native speaker of English seemed to be wrong. “I’m from Carletonville, South Africa, as you should know.”

“Why should I know?”

Awkwardly, Vango struggled for words as he always did when confronted with the fact that his father, Daniel Markis, was the Chairman of the Council of Earth, the man most people thought of as humanity’s political leader. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

“We need to move on, Captain Markis. I have many patients to attend,” Sue said. “We’re going to start with maths. What’s five plus eight?”

“Thirteen.”

“Twelve times three?”

“Thirty-six.”

“The value of pi?”

“To how many decimal places?”

The questions went on like this for hours, becoming rapidly more complex and covering language, history, science and more. Vango found himself happy to exercise his mind and felt little fatigue, experienced no difficulty.

“How’d I do?”

“Very well, Captain Markis. Tomorrow we’ll run some more sophisticated tests.”

“Tomorrow? What’ll I do until then?”

“Sleep. Pleasant dreams, Captain Markis.”

“Dammit, I’m not–”

Vango awoke with no sensation of drifting or lethargy, nor did he remember dreaming. It was as if someone threw a switch and he came whole unto consciousness.

“Good morning, Captain Markis. Did you sleep well?”

“I think so. Can I see something today?”

“Auditory tests will be conducted today.”

“I can hear you just fine, Sue.”

“We still have to run the tests.”

Vango sighed mentally and compartmentalized, telling himself it was just another hurdle to be jumped, another step toward getting back into the cockpit.

The day dragged, and at the end of it he was almost glad to be put to sleep.

“Good morning, Captain Markis. Did you sleep well?”

“You can ditch the script, Sue. Just talk to me like a normal person. English isn’t your first language, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“But you said you were from Massachusetts.”

“That’s true.”

“It’s true that you said it, or what you said is true?”

“Both are true.”

“What’s your first language, anyway?”

There came a perceptible pause. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to discuss anything further about myself at this time, Captain Markis.”

“At this time? Why?”

“We don’t want to skew the tests. You and I must remain emotionally detached.”

“Who said?”

“That’s another thing I can’t discuss. You’ll understand in time.”

“Maybe I want to understand it now. Maybe I’m sick of your damn tests and won’t take any more until I get some information.” He wasn’t fed up—not quite—but perhaps as a negotiating ploy…

“Your readings do not indicate sufficient agitation to refuse. Besides, you’re a military man. You raised your hand and swore to uphold Earth’s constitution and obey the lawful orders of the officers appointed over you.”

“Are you an officer appointed over me?”

“No, but I’m relaying the instructions of those who are.”

“Then I demand to know who’s giving the orders.”

“These orders come from Admiral Huen.”

“Not from my father?”

“Chairman Markis and the Council of Earth have delegated authority to Admiral Huen in these matters. You know how the chain of command works.”

“Does he know what’s happened to me?”

“To which ‘he’ do you refer?”

“My father.”

“Your father has been briefed.”

“Why can’t I talk to him?”

“You must complete the program first. Now, Captain Markis, we must proceed with the testing regimen.”

Vango sighed, or tried to, though he felt no lungs, no air. “Sue, you’re one hardass bitch.”

“You’re not the first to say so. We will now continue with the testing regimen.”

“Then for the love of God, please tell me I get to see something today.”

“Yes, a bit later. Touch and smell baselining will take a couple of hours. Afterward, you will see.”

He steeled himself for more tedium. “Okay, let’s get moving.”

The first visual Vango received was of a blank plain, a whiteness broken only by the hint of a horizon at an indeterminate distance. He looked down and saw his feet, his legs and his torso, and when he moved them into view, his hands. They lacked the exquisite detail of the real thing, though, identifying this as a VR sim, a virtuality not so different from what he saw when he linked in to the computer network in a fighter, though of lower resolution.

“Is that better?” Sue said.

“Hugely. You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck inside your own head with no one to talk to.”

“You might be surprised.” The horizon clarified, and the plain took on a texture like carpet. “Walk, please.”

Vango walked. Shapes appeared, resolving themselves into three-dimensional geometric representations—cubes, pyramids, spheres—then into more complex objects such as chairs and tables, houses and cars, airplanes and Fleet spacecraft. Each time he was asked to identify and interact with the items.

“Look, I’m acing these tests. Obviously I’m not impaired, right?”

“Not significantly. Your cognition is running above ninety-seven percent of normal.”

“Then please, may I see something real? Link me into the grid. Give me full VR with people in here. I’m sick of playing your games.”

“These are not games, Captain Markis. They are evaluations designed to identify flaws.”

“Flaws in what?”

“Your ability to perform to specifications.”

“You make me sound like a part in a machine.”

“What is a pilot but the most important piece of his craft?”

“Like you’re the most important piece of the mechanism of modern medicine?”

“Of course.”

“Doc, are you even human?” Vango meant it as a joke, but the question had an unexpected effect, bringing on an extended pause, and then he felt himself losing consciousness.

When he came to, no Sue spoke in greeting. Instead, he woke up in a dimly lit, nondescript chamber bereft of windows.

Not his bed and not his room. Not a bunk in an officer’s shipboard stateroom. Someplace dirtside, then. He felt about one G of pull, which meant he was likely on Earth in some kind of medical facility.

Swinging his legs out of bed, he stood in loose-fitting pajamas and bare feet on a warm, carpeted floor. The motion evidently triggered the lights, showing a small desk with a chair, a wall locker and nothing else.

All this confirmed his suspicions. He occupied a high-class simulation. His body must still be undergoing reconstruction in a nanotank. He’d never been injured badly enough to need one for more than a day, but a full rebuild would take months. He resigned himself to a stretch inside the virtuality, and afterward the inevitable VR-addiction detox, the bane of those who spent too much time in the link.

Opening the room’s locker, he found a flight suit with his name and rank on it and pulled it on, along with socks and boots. Better to obey the rules of this virtuality than override them, if that was even allowed. As an experiment he tried to call a lit cigarette into being, and then a cup of coffee, but failed. So, no freebies.

Suitably attired, he squared his shoulders and opened the door, finding a hallway that could have come from any Aerospace-branch barracks, with the usual art on the walls showing fighters, bombers, attack and transport craft from eras stretching back to the Wright Brothers.

“Token!” Vango felt a greater flood of relief than he’d expected as he spotted his tall, ebony-skinned wingman stepping into the hall, similarly attired.

“Hey, Vango. You getting rebuilt too?”

“I guess. They haven’t told me much for sure. Nothing since the tests.”

“Yeah, me neither. And they didn’t let me contact anyone.”

“Maybe we’re on slow time. That way it won’t feel like months.”

“All the more reason to let us talk to someone.”

Vango looked up at the ceiling, a common habit when addressing a ship’s computer or a sim’s controller. “Sue, you there? Anyone?”

No answer came.

“Maybe this is more testing,” Token said. “Maybe we’re supposed to figure things out for ourselves as a way of keeping us occupied.”

“I don’t appreciate being played games with. I don’t usually like to drop the Markis name, but I hope someone’s listening when I say I doubt my father will be pleased when he hears we’ve been poorly treated.”

Token waited a moment, eyes also lifted as if to see whether that declaration would bring a response, and then he shrugged. “You know how doctors are. Petty gods. They’ll claim medical necessity.”

“We’ll see.” Vango strode down the hall, banging on doors until more than two dozen people stood in the hallway, all of varying degrees of familiarity, but none unknown. He had the odd feeling that some of them were out of place, as if they didn’t quite match with his recollections, or with each other.

That was it. He was certain they hadn’t all served together at the same time. And one of them…

“Stevie?”

The short, blonde lieutenant as usual crackled with energy and filled out her flight suit in a way that made him ache with powerful nostalgia, though oddly, not the lust he expected. Before, when they’d been involved, she’d been his wildest fling, full of fiery chemistry.

“Hey, Vee.” Her strong Southern-U.S. accent brought back a flood of memories. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Vango seized her in a crushing hug, drawing catcalls and whistles from the others as he kissed her tentatively, she more enthusiastically. “Stevie, I don’t understand,” he said into her bobbed hair. “You’re dead. I saw you die.”

“Guess not, old son.” She slapped him on the butt and pushed him to arm’s length, continuing in a Mark Twain drawl, “It seems reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Vivid memories flooded into him, of the medics carrying her cold, dead body out of her quarters on a stretcher, the rubber hose of her speedball addiction still wrapped around her arm. Nobody came back from that, Eden Plague or nanotech notwithstanding…right? “What’s your last memory?”

Stevie’s face turned cagey. “I remember dumping a plate of gumbo on your head in a restaurant in the Quarter.”

“That’s it? The very last memory? Come on, Stevie, this is important.”

“I remember going to the infirmary.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Bitch cut me on the street. It was pretty bad. Bad enough they stuck me in an autodoc tube all day.”

Something made Vango ask, “Did they put you under? General anesthesia?”

“I guess. That’s the last thing I remember.”

Vango turned to Token. “What’s your final memory before waking up here?”

“Getting on the transport back to Earth after we beat the Destroyer. Getting in the cocoon.”

“Me too.” He pointed at Lock, a slim, no-nonsense female senior transport pilot well known for getting out of extreme scrapes. “What about you?”

“The same. Coldsleep. After the Destroyer.”

“Wild Bill?”

The calm, taciturn man said, “After. Coldsleep, too.”

“Does anyone have a final memory of anything except going into coldsleep or an autodoc?”

All of those present shook their heads or muttered negatives.

Token said, “Is it possible we were all damaged in the cocoons? Maybe our bodies didn’t come out of coldsleep properly, but they were able to salvage our brains.”

“So,” Stevie cocked a hip and raised a finger, “we’re disembodied brains? Like in some old pulp movie?”

“Until they rebuild our bodies,” Vango replied. “Nothing to worry about.”

“But what about the autodoc?” Token asked.

Vango rubbed his jaw. “I think it’s not about coldsleep, but getting put under. Something went wrong. Something new and unexpected.”

Wild Bill sniffed. “Then why haven’t they simply told us what’s going on? We’re not children. We can handle a little bad news. Hell, it’s just a vacation in VR. We’ve all been here before. Where’s the sun and the surf, the ski slopes, the mountain meadows? We should all be hang-gliding by day and clubbing by night. Instead, we’re in this,” he gestured, “this institution. Something’s not right.”

Vango growled deep in his throat and slammed the heel of his hand into the nearest wall, then again, and again. He could feel pain and a sensation of injury, so the virtuality was sophisticated and accurate, almost flawless. “Sue!” he yelled. “Someone talk to us, or we’ll…”

Stevie turned, shrugged in apology and kicked Wild Bill in the crotch. “Sorry, dude,” she said as he rolled in agony on the floor. “Try to remember it’s just VR.” She put a booted foot into his ribs with enthusiasm, and then reared back for a stomp, until three others grabbed her and pulled her back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lock said, taking a fistful of Stevie’s flight suit near the neckline and shaking the smaller woman.

“Trying to get the warden’s attention.”

Everyone paused for a moment, waiting, but nothing happened.

“It was worth a try,” Vango said, standing over Wild Bill, “but no more of that. We might not be hurt physically, but with pain feedback enabled we can be mentally damaged.”

“Psycho bitch!” Wild Bill gasped, holding his genitals.

“Pussy,” Stevie replied. “I’ve taken worse beatings,” She struggled in Lock’s grip. “Now let go of me unless you want some too.”

“Everybody throttle down,” Vango said. “Is this all it takes to set us at each others’ throats?”

They had the decency to look sheepish.

“So what’s the plan, Vango?” Token asked.

Everyone was staring at him, even the others of similar rank. He wasn’t sure who was technically senior. Apparently the Markis name was the tiebreaker. People expected him to lead. No big deal. He was used to it.

“First, no more brawling. We’re EarthFleet officers, not a bunch of street punks.” He glared at Stevie, who merely grinned at him. “Second, it seems like we have two choices. We can wait, or we can do something. Anyone here the waiting type?”

Voices raised in denial until Vango waved them down. “Good. Half of you go that way with Token, the other half come with me this way.” He pointed emphatically down the hall to match the directions as he spoke, and then took off.

When both Stevie and Wild Bill followed him, Vango stopped and said, “Bill, you better go with Token.”

Wild Bill shot Stevie a poisonous glance and then sneered. “Fine. Keep thinking with your prick.” He turned to stalk off.

Vango sighed. He’d sent Wild Bill off because he didn’t trust anyone else to handle Stevie, not because he was lusting after her. Until the situation clarified, he would keep an eye on her, keep her under control.

Not that he’d done very well at that the last time around. She’d died, after all, because he hadn’t been able to compete with a needle and a packet of white powder. Like every day since, he wondered what that said about him.

At the end of the hall in the direction he’d chosen, Vango found a room full of old Mark III flight simulators. Those with him crowded past and ran their hands over the machines, checking them for function and status. Stevie jumped into one and reached for the link wire, plugging it into her skull before he could object.

That made Vango reach up to touch the socket in his own skull. “Does anyone else think it’s weird that we’re inside a VR sim looking at flight simulators that have been obsolete for years?”

Lock nodded. “Yeah, and pointless. Why bother with representations of simulators anyway? Usually we just request a revision of the virtuality and suddenly we’re flying. This seems…primitive.”

“Walking before we run?” said Butler, a tall male warrant officer. “Still evaluating our responses?”

Vango frowned. “I suspect you’re right. Stevie, can you hear me?

“Yeah.”

“What do you see?”

Stevie had begun manipulating the manual controls, standard backups even though all functions on modern craft were handled via link. “Only one program, labeled XM-58. Extremely high maneuverability and acceleration. Whatever ship I’m flying, it’s shit-hot, hotter than anything I’ve ever tried before. Can’t find the weapons, though.”

“Probably not available until later,” Lock said.

Vango ran his hand over the simulator’s shell. “Until later…why?”

Lock gave him a stare as if he were dense. “They obviously want us to use these things. Look at this room. No doors. Even the one we came in disappeared. Eleven of us, eleven simulators. We’re in VR, remember? They can control our environment in detail and they’re not telling us anything, so obviously they want us to play along. The others are probably experiencing the same thing.”

Vango remembered Lock was always a thinker, even smarter and more driven than the usual elite pilot. “Fine. Let’s play.” He hopped into one of the chairs and reached for the link.

The others followed suit.

Like Stevie reported, the program put him inside the cockpit of the fastest, most maneuverable ship he’d ever driven. Sure, it might be an imaginary craft, something never built, but what point to simulate a phantom?

And the vehicle obeyed the laws of physics. It had limits, though those limits were extraordinary, and he felt nothing of the body—no G forces, no vibrations, no feedback.

Forgetting about his situation within the greater virtuality, he lost himself in the joy of flight, launching from and landing on moons and planets, ships small as frigates and large as carriers and everything in between, zooming within cruising fleets, buzzing his way past near-collisions in trajectories far too dangerous for reality.

At no time was he able to see the craft itself, though, neither interior nor exterior, even reflected in shiny surfaces. He had the impression it was cylindrical, like a fuselage, although that may have been an artifact of the sim.

After several subjective hours, just as he felt he had achieved basic mastery of the thing—building on his extensive experience with less capable craft, of course—a new section appeared on his avionics display: a standard sensor panel. It cued him to an incoming Meme hypervelocity missile.

He easily avoided the missile, and it vanished. Two came next, and then four, then more, doubling in number each wave. Eventually he was brought down by one of thirty-two, at which point the count stabilized until he passed that level. Then it doubled again until he couldn’t dodge them all no matter how he improved.

This exercise presaged a run of combat scenarios of ever-increasing complexity. He encountered squadrons of Meme stingship fighters, corvettes, frigates and cruisers, all the way up to Destroyers, those massive, kilometers-wide living battleships, firing at him with missiles small and large, with fusors, even with the less-common biolasers and scatterguns.

Never was his ship provided with weapons, though he was allowed to self-destruct using his internal suicide fusion bomb, or ram when all hope of escape was lost, exploding that selfsame warhead on contact. Not an advisable tactic, usually, but something every pilot no doubt contemplated in his or her heart of hearts. Better to go out in a blaze of glory and take one of the hated enemy along.

Fatigue began to set in. A check of the sim chrono told him he’d been at it for ten hours straight, but he pushed himself for a couple more, hungry to complete whatever process this was, to see the end of it and, he hoped, regain the real world and his freedom.

He was still at it when he lost consciousness.

Once more Vango woke up in the featureless room with its nondescript furnishings. This time, when he stepped into the corridor, his comrades awaited him. Vango prevented his own door from closing. “Can you go back into your rooms?”

A couple of people opened doors. “Seems like it,” one called. “Why?”

“I’m trying to find out how much they’re going to push us to do what they want. So today, we’re not playing in their sims.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Stevie said, stepping up to him and grabbing him around the waist.

“Exactly,” Vango replied with a slight blush. “We’re going to do anything but play along. Have sex, talk, play word games, whatever you like. Just don’t go to the simulators. Let’s see what happens.”

“Ooh, I like this plan already,” Stevie said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into his room to the hoots and hollers of the others. Inside, his dead former girlfriend—or whoever she was—stripped out of her flight suit to stand naked in front of him, posing like a short, buxom pinup model. “Like what you see?”

“Of course,” Vango said, his voice even. “Only one problem.” He stepped out of his own flight suit and spread his arms. “Not working.”

Stevie stared at Vango’s lack of erection. “That never happened before.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Let’s try a little harder, then.” Stevie pushed him onto his bunk and soon both were doing their best to bring about the desired result.

“Damn,” she said after a few minutes. “These bastards turned off the fun parts.”

“I was afraid of that. They’re not going to make it easy to entertain ourselves.”

“I never heard of a sim like this. Even in training, there’s rules, right, Vee? They’re supposed to treat us the same in or out of the virtuality. That’s the law.”

Vango stroked Stevie’s hair absently as they lay naked on the bed. “Yeah, that’s the law. The fact that they’re not following it means something.”

“What if there was a coup? Somebody else took over when we were lying injured. Hell, it could be years later than we remember.”

“If we’d all boarded the same ship and had the same last memories, I might believe that, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. And you were dead, believe me.”

“I’m not jonesing either.” Stevie slapped the inside of her elbow as if to raise a vein. “I mean, I kinda want it, but mostly because I’m bored.”

“Bored with me here?”

Stevie laughed and rolled onto an elbow. “It’s that small-town insecurity that makes you so edible.”

Vango sighed. “Not today, it seems. Speaking of edible, have you felt hungry or thirsty yet?

“Nope. Haven’t even had to pee.”

“That settles that, then.”

“Why us, though?” Stevie asked. “Why these twenty-four people?”

“Well, I served with all of you one time or another.”

“Really?” Stevie jumped out of bed and pulled on her flight suit. “I don’t know most of these people, but you do? Maybe you’re the nexus. Come on, let’s go find out.”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He dressed quickly and started pounding on doors, rousting everyone into the hallway again. “I presume you all got the same negative results we did?”

A few raunchy jokes floated his way, but all eventually agreed that sex simply hadn’t been allowed to work.

“Stevie pointed out something I missed,” Vango said. “I’ve served with every single one of you at some time, but she hasn’t. Is there anyone here who knows everyone from before, like me?”

No one raised a hand.

“So for some reason, I’m the center of all this. It makes me wonder if you’re all real, or just sims within the virtuality.”

That started them buzzing. Wild Bill, now seemingly fully recovered, stepped forward. “I feel like myself. I remember my life. I can describe it in detail if you want.”

“Proves nothing,” Stevie retorted. “Vango says I died. I don’t remember that. But from his point of view, we could be programmed to say or do anything.”

“How can we be sure any of us are real?” Lock said.

“We can’t,” Vango replied. “But we seem to be consistent. If we had writing instruments, we could probably construct a time line and some matrixes showing when and where we served, what our last memories were, what all our relationships were. But we don’t even have that. Our rights are being violated. Earth law and EarthFleet regs regarding VR says nothing can be done inside a virtuality without our consent, and that we can leave at any time.”

“Except in case of medical necessity,” Lock pointed out.

“That covers keeping us here, but not failing to provide information, forcing us to do all those tests, giving us nothing to do except what they want…”

Token spoke. “It might be operational necessity.”

“How do you mean?” Vango said.

“What if what we’re doing is vital to the war effort?”

“Then why not tell us that? We’ve all dedicated our lives to fighting the Meme. What’s the point of keeping us in the dark?”

A hand went up in the crowd, attached to a big man called Canyon. “What if it’s not friendlies that have us?”

“Come again?”

“What if we’re not under EarthFleet control? What if we’ve been captured by the Meme and they’re, I don’t know, studying us?”

The pilots’ faces all reflected varying expressions—shock, skepticism, disgust, thoughtfulness—as that idea percolated through their minds. Conversation began, turning to chatter and argument.

“I don’t believe that,” Vango said, raising his voice to cut through the noise. “Remember, the Meme can blend with prisoners. They can take over their bodies and suck all the knowledge out of them. Their biological and genetic sciences are far superior to ours. That’s why we use reverse-engineered Meme tech in our coldsleep cocoons and other devices. So, there’s absolutely no need to study us in VR. They already know all there is to know about the human race, and if the Meme had captured us, they’d already have blended with us against our wills.”

“How do we know they haven’t?” Lock said, looking around.

“I guess we don’t,” Vango replied. “Stuck in VR like this, we don’t know a damn thing except what the controllers want to tell us. So I guess the question is, do we play along with what might be some unfair and extralegal crap on the assumption it’s all necessary, or do we assume this is all bullshit and resist as best we can?”

“Is this a democracy?” said Lock, giving him a hard look.

Vango nodded to her in thanks for reminding those here of their military discipline. He realized she was probably the oldest, longest-serving among them. If she hadn’t been happy to remain a chief warrant officer, she’d no doubt outrank everyone here.

“Yeah, what do you say, Markis?” Canyon said. “You’re in charge.”

“Everyone agree to that?” Vango asked. “Some of you O-3s might have dates of rank earlier than mine, so if you want the job, say so now. Otherwise, I’m it and you’ll follow my orders from now on.”

He looked around, searching for disagreement and finding none. “Then we’re going to play their game for now. We haven’t been abused, and this thing feels to me like some kind of extended psychological test combined with training. It might be meant to keep us occupied or it might genuinely be teaching us how to fly a new vehicle. And that’s what we do, people. We fly. So follow me, and let’s fly.”

At the same end of the hall as yesterday, he opened the door to the simulator room and waved everyone in. Twenty-four modules awaited them in the room, and the chamber seemed larger, confirming Vango’s suspicion that it didn’t matter that they’d split up the first time. All roads led to these simulators.

Vango’s first surprise came when the simulator activated an IFF-Blue Force module that kept track of friendlies. Even before he launched from the asteroid he found himself on, he saw twenty-three other contacts designated friendly, each with appropriate personal call sign.

Experimentally, he spoke. “This is Vango. Anyone read?”

Chaos immediately broke out in the audio link.

“Pipe down, people,” he said. “Looks like they gave us a common net, so use standard protocols and keep the chatter to a minimum.”

“Token here. What are we supposed to do?”

As if in response, a mission brief appeared in Vango’s HUD window. It directed him to lead his formation along certain routes, avoid threats, and to come within fifty meters of the designated targets. Those targets turned out to be Meme Destroyers, the enemy’s largest ship class, living spheres two to three thousand meters in diameter and massing billions of tons.

Fifty meters might as well be ramming.

“Do you all have the mission brief?” Vango asked.

Terse affirmatives told him they saw it. “What’s the point?” asked Stevie. “Get close to Destroyers?”

“Obviously there’s a program of increasingly difficult missions, like a tutorial. Since this is the first one where we can see and talk to each other in the VR field, let’s cooperate and graduate to the next one and I’m sure we’ll see. That’s the point.”

No one grumbled further, which heartened Vango. This might all be a game, but it felt like mission prep. As he’d taken the reins of leadership, he’d do the best he could.

He wondered briefly if this whole thing was a leadership test for him alone, using simulacra of people he’d known. If so, he resolved to pass with flying colors.

“All right, everyone report go for launch.” When they’d done so, Vango gave a three-count and kicked his ship up off the asteroid. He swiveled his point of view backward and saw an ejection tube flush with the surface. All around him rose other craft like unadorned missiles.

Zooming his viewpoint in close, something that came naturally when fighting in VR space, he saw his comrades’ ships still appeared as blank cylinders, tapered at the nose and blunt at the tail. No weapons, sensors or other fittings could be seen. A suggestion of fusion exhaust showed near their sterns, but when they adjusted course, no jets of any kind spurted. It was as if the sim controllers were deliberately suppressing any clue as to the real nature of these attack craft.

On the fly, Vango assigned each of his pilots roles and positions within a hierarchy, based on his memories of the people involved, dividing the twenty-four into six four-ships. He took Stevie, Token and Lock with him.

He told each flight to make its own way toward the objectives. They didn’t get far. By halfway in, everyone had been destroyed. As the pilots died, they respawned back in the launch tubes, but were not allowed to begin again until everyone else had returned and Vango gave the word.

“How are we supposed to get there with no weapons to defend ourselves?” Stevie complained. “This is bullshit!”

“We have to figure out a way to at least get one ship into the objective zone,” said Token. “We’ll need to assign interceptors and decoys to sacrifice their ships. We have our suicide bombs.”

“That’s bullshit too,” Stevie said. “That’s not the way we’d really fight. Highly trained pilots don’t throw themselves away.”

Vango said, “They do if it’s important enough. Besides, this is a low-grade sim. If they wanted us to treat it as real, they’d make it realistic in all aspects. Instead, this is like a kid’s game where the goal is simply to beat the level and advance to the next. So we go with Token’s idea. This next iteration, our objective is for one of us to complete the mission. After that, we can work on getting more there.”

It took nine attempts, but with a series of wild maneuvers, eventually Vango made it through to break the fifty-meter range. Everyone else got knocked out, but they all still cheered. He felt as if he’d used them up as they decoyed and intercepted threats for him, but knowing it was a game, he was able to think like a football team captain rather than a flight leader. His only objective was to get the ball to the goal, and the ball was himself.

Vango said, “Great job, team. Now you see it can be beaten. This time let’s get more people across the line.”

His confidence quickly faded, however, as the next mission ramped up its difficulty. He abandoned all thought of multiple wins and settled for trying to get himself there again. This time it took five attempts, and he ended up ramming the Destroyer and killing his ship.

But he won, according to the simulator.

“This really is a game,” Vango said to his people. “I didn’t notice at first, but now I realize the success parameters didn’t say anyone had to survive. We only have to cross the fifty-meter line, and that’s a whole lot easier if we ram them at the end.”

“Then I bet we can get several through,” Token replied. The others agreed, and as it became clear there was no penalty for dying in the process, they waxed enthusiastic, proposing new and unconventional tactics to “win the game.”

They won the game. In fact, three rammed the objective. Crossing the fifty-meter line seemed incidental.

“We’re getting good at this,” Stevie cried.

But hazards increased once more.

“They aren’t letting us taste the fruits of our victory,” Vango announced, “but we’re improving by leaps and bounds. At some point there will be a new kind of challenge, not merely a harder one. Keep at it.”

The day ended before the objective changed, though the difficulty increased four more levels. Every time Vango thought they had it licked and they got most of the ships across the goal line, it became tougher.

In what turned out to be the day’s final run, Vango’s consciousness faded as he alone crossed the fifty-meter mark.

This morning, Vango felt something had changed. As he opened his eyes, he noticed the ceiling seemed grainy, with much greater detail than before. He followed the join where it met the wall and noticed a smudge, and then a cobweb.

Rolling abruptly out of bed, he stared at the imperfection as if it were the world’s most wonderful sight. Tearing his eyes away, he examined the room and found many such details, though the basic layout remained the same, with the addition of a door.

Opening it, he found a bathroom, with toilet, shower, soap and other supplies. He suddenly he realized he had to pee. The relief was nearly overwhelming, both psychological and physical. Had he finally been released from the virtuality?

He examined his hands, then the rest of his body, finding real, variable flesh, skin and hair, where before it had been minimalist and plastic, like a mannequin. Finding tweezers in a drawer, he stabbed himself in the forearm and drew blood from the tiny wound, blood which glistened for a moment before he smeared it to clotting. Then he sucked on his finger, smelling and tasting the iron.

Real. It was real.

Or a high-resolution sim, he told himself. Don’t get your hopes up too high. This may be simply one more test.

Showering and dressing hurriedly, he found others in the hallway already talking earnestly. Some slapped back and spoke joyously, loudly. Others seemed intent on examining everything up close. He saw Token take down one of the pictures on the wall and look behind it, touching the hook that had held it there.

Arms grabbed his waist from behind and he turned to find Stevie wrapping herself around him. And this time, the missing desire surged inside him.

“Is that a pickle in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?” she said.

Vango grinned. “Very glad to see you.” He leaned down to kiss her, hard.

“Break it up, you two,” Lock said from behind them. “How do we know this is real?”

“Aren’t you the buzz kill,” Butler said, coming up to bump the tall woman with his shoulder. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters,” she snapped.

“Why?”

“Because…” Lock trailed off. “It just does.”

Vango disengaged from Stevie. “How can we know?”

Lock frowned. “We can test the limits of this virtuality, if there is one. If we find things that make no sense in the real world, we know we’re still inside.”

“And if not, we’re still not sure.” Vango shrugged and raised his voice. “Listen up, people. Spread out and try doors. Find windows or exits or…something, anything that proves we are—or aren’t—still inside a simulation.”

Five minutes of exploration were all it took to return the verdict: not real. No windows had appeared in their rooms. No exits could be found. And the room at the end of the hallway that had until now contained the flight simulators…

“Not what I expected,” Vango said as the others ushered him into a room grown large, a hall now overflowing with the trappings of a feast. High ceilings supported chandeliers, and a banquet had appeared on one long heavy polished wooden table. Linen tablecloths and napkins set off silver flatware, crystal goblets and porcelain plates. Bottles of wine, beer and liquor vied for space with whole roast fowl, haunches of beef, pork and lamb, and mounds of side dishes. Off to the side he saw a dance floor outfitted with a music system. A robotic bar stood nearby.

“It’s a party!” Stevie said. “And look what I found!”

Vango turned and saw that she was now dressed in a hot red number that showed a lot of skin and seemed to be supported by sheer willpower. Matching heels and clutch, plus a diamond necklace and bracelet combo, completed the outfit. “Very nice.”

He noticed others had abruptly changed their clothing as well. Either they had found the unlikely civvies in their rooms, or…. Experimentally, he tried to conjure a lit cigar, a common VR trick for programs that allowed it.

The stogie appeared in his hand.

He willed it away, worried. “What the hell does this mean?” he said to Lock.

The tall woman surveyed the scene, and Vango followed suit. Many of the group were sampling food and drink. Canyon had taken a seat and begun eating as if he feared the banquet would disappear. Stevie had a highball glass in one hand and a bottle of Scotch in the other and had cranked up the music. Now she swayed, her eyes closed, dancing alone.

“It could be a graduation party…or our last meal,” Lock said. “A transition of some kind.”

Token stepped nearer with narrowed eyes. “Or a reward, like Pavlov’s dogs. Maybe they decided to spare some processing power, give us a night of fun, and tomorrow we’ll be back to the training regimen.”

“No matter what, I suppose we should enjoy it. But it makes me uneasy,” Vango said.

Lock and Token nodded.

“Go play along,” Vango ordered. “Don’t spoil it for the others. We’re dancing to their tune in here, so let’s make the best of it.” With mixed emotions, he walked over to Stevie and took her in his arms.

Later, they lay in Vango’s bed, entangled and exhausted.

“Not bad for a dead woman,” Stevie said.

“Yeah, we’ve been ignoring that, but…how do we explain it?”

Stevie shrugged. “Who cares?”

“I care. It’s an anomaly, and it must mean something. I feel as if I could only figure that out, I’d have a big piece of the puzzle.”

“Oh, Vee, why can’t you just live in the moment? Enjoy life as it comes and quit thinkin’ so much.”

“I’m not built that way, Stevie.”

“Well, I am, and I’m not tired. Let’s go back and get plastered.”

“What if the sim is so good we’re hung over in the morning?”

“All part of the fun.”

“You’re a lunatic.”

“Like I ain’t heard that before. Come on.” She leaped up, tugging on his hand.

“No, you go on. I need to think for a while.”

Later, Vango dressed and looked in on the party. He didn’t see Stevie, only about half of his people in various states of debauchery, depending on their inclinations. Token was nowhere in evidence, which didn’t surprise him. The man was happily married and Vango had never seen him drunk or out of control, despite the high-pressure lifestyle of an aerospace pilot.

Well, good on him.

Knocking on the door to Stevie’s room brought no answer, but a memory and a premonition made him ease the door open—they had no locks—and let the light from the hallway spill onto her bunk. Though it didn’t surprise him, he felt his heart clench anew as he saw the lighter, the spoon and the needle still clutched in her hand.

They—whoever they were—had allowed the full range of human vices, it seemed. Vango found it still hurt that he wasn’t enough for her, but not as much as the first time around. And, at least in this incarnation, she wasn’t being carried out on a stretcher.

Suddenly afraid, he stepped over to put a finger on her neck. Thankfully, her pulse beat strongly. Would they let her die? Probably not.

The limits of the virtuality dragged at him, frustrated him with his own helplessness. The only place he felt freedom and power was within the flight sim, which was undoubtedly what they wished. Already he felt a Pavlovian urge to find a simulator and lose himself in flight.

Instead, he shut the door and went to bed. For the first time in what seemed like days, sleep eluded him. Eventually, though, he caught it.

When he awoke, the lack of detail and the flatness of affect within him told Vango that they’d withdrawn the brief grant of near-normalcy, restoring the sensation of inhabiting a plastic simulacrum again. Well, at least now he didn’t need to eat, drink, or pee. He sighed and rolled out of bed.

When he led his assembled comrades into the room full of simulators, it took him a moment to identify the difference in the room.

Then it hit him. The shield, Earth and orbiting warship of EarthFleet hung on all four walls, along with the flags of the nations of all the pilots present. Vango’s eyes teared up with the display, calling forth a surge of patriotic and martial pride that threatened to overwhelm him. The others seemed to be sharing the experience.

The cynical part of him wondered if they weren’t being manipulated even beyond the obvious. Would the controllers insert such emotions into their minds, despite all law and regulation to the contrary?

But what could he do about it except try to maintain his bearing and dispassion, and to help the rest do the same?

“All right, people, snap out of it,” he said with a voice like a whip. “Maybe the controllers thought we needed some extra motivation today, and that’s all very nice, but none of us are cadets, saluting flags and singing songs. We’re professionals, and we know why we fly. I have to believe what we’re doing here is critical to our fight against the Meme. So let’s play their games again, and by God we’ll show them that no matter what they throw in our way, we’ll win. Good luck, and good hunting.”

With that, he climbed into the simulator and plugged in his link, feeling the expansion of the senses that came with it. His vision now extended millions of kilometers and encompassed thousands of objects—rocky asteroids, icy comet bodies, the moons of nearby Jupiter, Meme ships and the friendly task force from which he prepared to launch.

This time he was in a tube on a missile cruiser. The ship was composed of a spindle and an attached series of expendable box launchers, little more than a transport boat for the wingless cylinders. Was this a new way of deploying fighters? Vango searched his HUD for weapons, but still, the game gave him only a highly maneuverable fuselage, sensors and communications.

The comms linked him with his comrades, but no amount of trying would raise the Fleet net or any other entity. So, they were still on their own, except for the mission brief display, which changed with the objective.

This latest scenario showed a monstrous incoming Meme fleet, at least sixty Destroyers plus attendant smaller craft, speeding directly toward Earth, though still out beyond Saturn’s orbit. The EarthFleet task force was already maneuvering to interpose itself.

“Everybody see that?” he said, marking the enemy with a caret. “That’s what we’ll be flying against.”

A series of double clicks came back, shorthand for acknowledgement. “Looks ugly,” Token said, no doubt voicing the thoughts of many.

“Ain’t nothin’ but a thang,” Stevie chimed in, and her boundless confidence cheered him. “We score high enough and maybe we get another party tonight.”

Vango couldn’t fault her logic. “The primary objective’s a little different this time,” he pointed out. “Token, me, Lock and Stevie are directed to get within five thousand meters of Destroyers, separately. The rest of you get to run interference.”

“Five thousand meters? Easy peasy,” Stevie said.

“Don’t get cocky,” Lock said. “Nothing’s been easy so far. There must be other factors that make it harder.”

“Good thinking. Everyone stay on your toes.”

“Hey,” said Token, “You guys notice they upped the simulator resolution? Everything looks full standard now, like it’s real.”

Vango checked his. “Now I see. Maybe that’s the point of this mission, to get us used to the real thing again.”

A moment of quiet passed. “Any chance this is real?” Lock asked. “I mean, real real, as in happening IRL?”

“If it is,” Vango said, “why wouldn’t they give us any weapons? And there’s no way our bodies could take the Gs these things pull, even with gravplate compensation. We can’t be inside real ships.”

“Could we be in remote control, and these are missiles? Maybe they’re using our minds and skills while our bodies are in regen.”

Token spoke up. “Nope. It’s been tried. We’re operating light-seconds away from the cruisers. The delay is too great for anything but close-in work. That’s why all EarthFleet missiles have the best self-guiding algorithms possible, including true random evasion generators. Although…now that you mention it, these birds do seem more like missiles than anything.”

Vango experimented with his time sense and found that he could control it. In fact, it appeared he was in charge of everyone’s temporal speed, so he sped things up tenfold in order to make the inevitable maneuver-to-contact phase pass faster. When the cruiser carrying his squadron—that was how he thought of them now—entered the proper envelope, it kicked him out of the tube with a blast of fusion gases.

Lock spoke into the calm. “Look at your mission brief. Notice anything different about it?”

Vango did as she suggested. It took him a moment. “There’s a date. August 11, 2109.”

“Decades in the future,” Token said. “Wonder why?”

“More head games,” Stevie replied. “Just quit wonderin’ and fly, boys and girls.”

Vango said, “Good advice. Fly now, speculate later. We’re coming up on the merge. Dropping to temp standard.”

Now each pilot could control his or her own time sense, allowing for maximum effectiveness as they approached the engagement zone. Vango slowed the world by a factor of more than 100 as a flock of stingships closed in.

These were semi-intelligent sharks of the void whose sole purpose was to screen the larger ships against missiles and small craft. They used short-range biolasers and tiny countermissiles to thin out their enemies.

Normally the stingships died in droves when faced with sophisticated EarthFleet fighters, but they were cheap, they absorbed firepower, and now and then they killed something, especially missiles. And they never hesitated to collide with their targets, kamikaze fashion.

Faced with thousands of them in a broad cloud, Vango directed four of his twenty-four to sacrifice themselves, detonating their powerful suicide fusion bombs to clear a path through the mass.

The remaining twenty drove through, and the stingships couldn’t follow fast enough, not with these new hot birds.

On the other side a picket wall of a dozen living frigates waited, each slim Zeppelin shape crewed by a trium of Meme. These ships launched sprays of tiny countermissiles. When the human craft dodged them easily, they opened up with their fusors, incandescent blasts of superheated plasma, like flamethrowers in space, reaching tens of kilometers before dissipating.

These caught two, and then they were eighteen.

“Not bad,” Vango said over the net.

“We’re kickin’ ass!” cried Stevie.

Lock said, “They won’t make it that easy. Something’s going to spring.”

“She’s right. Stay frosty,” Vango said.

Token marked ships ahead on their HUDs. “Cruisers coming up.”

“Bypass them,” Vango ordered. “The mission objective specifies only Destroyers get us the win, and only us four.”

“Yeah, and I want to win,” Stevie replied.

She wants to earn another rendezvous with her vices, Vango thought. At least we’re in VR, so she can’t O.D.…and one of those vices is me. But what about when we’re done? They’ll have to put her in rehab or something. Obviously they know about her addiction. I don’t want to lose her again.

The cognitive dissonance of that thought, the nonsense of Stevie being alive when he knew she was dead, threatened to undo him.

“Vango, pay attention!” Lock snapped, and Vango threw his craft into a violent spiral to avoid an incoming trio of hypers. “Get your head in the game!”

“Thanks,” Vango said. “Sorry.”

He analyzed the cruiser pattern and decided to do something different this time, something he’d thought about but hadn’t tried. “Canyon, you and Slapshot suicide on the center cruiser. We’re punching straight through before he recovers. We’ll lose fewer that way than everyone running the gaps.”

“Right, boss,” Canyon said, and led his wingman on a mad spiral path toward the midsized ship. He was picked off by a fusor ten klicks out, but Slapshot made it to impact.

The result was spectacular, far greater than Vango expected. The simulated suicide charge must be set to at least a hundred megatons, and the cruiser crumpled and died in a fusion fireball.

“Woohoo!” yelled Stevie. “Destroyers, here we come!”

Sixteen pilots and their suicide craft dove for the hole in the line, easily outracing the ships that tried to slide over and fill the gap. Beyond, the Destroyers came on in a compact mass, at least forty of them.

“That’s insane,” Vango muttered. “Too many in too small a space. They’ll blanket each other with defensive fire. We can’t dodge all those fusors.”

“That’s the twist,” Lock said matter-of-factly. “Last I remember, it took everything we had to take down one Destroyer. How can anyone fight so many?”

“We don’t have to fight so many,” said Token. “This is a game, remember? All we have to do is get us each of us four to within five thousand meters of a Destroyer.”

Vango grunted. “Token’s right. We can do that.”

“Still gonna be hard,” said Wild Bill from up ahead. “We should perform a rolling detonation to white out their sensors. These uprated suicide charges should pump out a hell of a lot of interference, assuming the sim takes that into account.”

“Good idea. Give me a minute and I’ll set it up.” Vango further slowed the world outside himself, yielding enough time to run 3D calculations and issue instructions to his twelve sacrificial lambs. “See you all back at the barracks,” he said as he sent the data packets. “Drinks are on me.”

Clouds of countermissiles issued forth from the Destroyer mass and closed in on the EarthFleet squadron. One by one, Vango’s people detonated their ships to clear the way through and provide enormous electromagnetic pulses, blizzards of jamming that blinded the enemy. They tended to blind his people as well, but all they had to do was fly their courses toward the huge targets.

Belatedly, those targets began to maneuver. If this were real, Vango would have laughed at the idea that ships two kilometers in diameter, with armor five hundred meters thick, would run from a few fighters, even armed with hundred-megaton fusion warheads. An explosion of that size would still need to be nearly in contact to do significant damage, because the vacuum of space provided no medium to carry a blast wave.

Good thing it wasn’t real.

When the last of twelve detonations dissipated, Vango found himself and his remaining four-ship in superb position, spread fifteen klicks apart, each pointed at a frantically accelerating Destroyer. The big ships weren’t nearly fast enough, though, even spreading out in all directions.

Fusors vomited into space, reaching for him, but with his accelerated time senses they seemed to move in slow motion, and he easily anticipated their paths. Maneuvering to avoid the white-hot zones, he closed toward his target like a gazelle in a dispersed herd of buffalo.

Stevie blasted at maximum and was the first to cross the five-thousand-meter line. Vango expected the usual notation to appear in the mission tracking module, but it didn’t, this time. Closer and closer she flew, until a fusor blast seemed to reach for her. Vango wondered why the sim was waiting to record her score.

Then his sensors fuzzed and he lost all HUD cohesion for a long moment. When his viewing capability returned, he saw an expanding zone of annihilation ten kilometers wide. Stevie and the Destroyer were simply…gone. Another Destroyer on the edge of the sphere of death spun slowly, severely injured.

“Mother of God,” he breathed. “What in hell was that?”

“Mother for sure,” Lock replied. “The mother of all suicide bombs, a thousand times as big as anything I’ve ever seen.”

“More like ten thousand times as large,” Token said, ever the human calculator. “Remember the square-cube law. Double the blast radius needs eight-ish times the power.”

Vango laughed, but grim. “Then let’s go out in a blaze of glory. See you on the dance floor.”

Token crossed his line, and then Lock. Vango felt no trepidation as he crossed the line and awaited detonation, only satisfaction at completing the mission combined with anticipation of another night with Stevie.

***

“These new semi-organic control modules are a pain in the ass,” said Missile Tech First Class Pedro Weinauer as he fitted the half-meter black box into the last of the flight of twenty-four XM-58 capital missiles.

The cylindrical bodies, huge for weapons but small compared to even a one-man fighter, sat lined up on the flight deck of the assault carrier Peterborough. A line of cones kept the hustle and bustle of operations away from the delicate devices.

Warrant Officer Hudson stared flatly at Weinauer. “Shut up and finish. I’m initiating the integration program.” She input a code into the Vango module—the master—and closed the access panel. “Network looks good. Everyone take an hour. Get some chow or some rack time. We start on the next set as soon as these are movable.”

Weinauer nodded. “Thanks, boss,” he said, leading the half-dozen missile techs waiting nearby toward the enlisted mess.

Hudson checked her secure control pad and stared at the hard cables snaking across the deck, connecting the brains into a network. After launch, they would go wireless, using microwave and laser comms.

But until then, would take that hour until the modules achieved full integration, more or less. Something about the variability in the Meme-derived bioprocessors made the exact time uncertain. Then, the grabships would load the weapons into the cruisers’ missile boxes and they’d be sent into battle together.

Hudson shrugged. Finicky or not, these things were taking down Meme warships. It didn’t matter much what weird shit they put inside to make them work. In fact, she didn’t really want to know.

She shivered. Sometimes she felt like the boxes were alive and looking at her.

***

Use of human engrams to guide missiles must be viewed as a mixed success. Their performance exceeded that of our best digital control systems, but the expense in time, resources, and particularly the moral cost to those who knew, the knowledge that our finest minds were being replicated, trained and deliberately sent to inevitable death, caused me to wonder whether it was worth it.

I must reluctantly conclude it was. During the Meme’s most recent assault, use of our most skilled and dedicated officers’ engrams brought us within a hair’s breadth of victory. To quote Wellington, it was a damn near-run thing, and the fact that the Meme finally achieved their goal of smashing Earth with two kamikaze Destroyers in no way detracts from the efforts and heroic sacrifices of the virtual replicants.

Without them, we would have lost the entire Solar System. At least now we have a chance to rebuild. The Mars colony is robust, and Jupiter’s moons contain the bulk of our spaceborne industry. While we hold those, hope remains.

—Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2109 A.D.

Editor’s Introduction to:
FLUSH-AND-FFE
by Lt Col Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret. and Michael L. McDaniel

The nature of war changes. Sometimes it is a straightforward matter of winning large battles, of bringing everything you have to bear on the enemy’s forces to win both the campaign and the war in a single engagement. Alexander effectively ended the Persian Empire at Arbela. Otto the Great ended nearly a century of Magyar raids into Europe at the Lechfeld. Sometimes wars seem to go on forever, with no decisive battles ever fought. The stronger side always looks for ways to bring the opponent to battle and defeat him once and for all. But sometimes that leads to disaster, as with the French at Dien Bien Phu.

Sun Tzu advises us to take what the enemy holds dear. The implication is that if you hold it strongly, the enemy will then break his teeth on your defenses, for defense always has the advantage; or if your defenses are too strong, he must negotiate and be amenable to your will. This principle has been long known, but like most principles of war, it is not always easy to put into practice. Clausewitz warns us that in war everything is very simple, but the simplest things are very difficult. And as von Moltke the Elder said, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Guy Hooper and Michael McDaniel address the problem for modern powers in an age of asymmetric warfare, and illustrate the complexity of modern military operations planning, as we seek to bring irregular forces to decisive battle.

FLUSH-AND-FFE
by Lt Col Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret. and Michael L. McDaniel

Modern precision firepower does not determine combat against either an entrenched enemy willing to accept losses or one skilled in camouflage, concealment, and deception. In Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Kosovo, liberal use of expensive precision weapons produced important results but still left the national leadership the unpalatable choice of accepting the terms of bombing alone or running up a butcher’s bill by sending in troops to root out an enemy.

The time is right for a new operational concept that blends proven strategic principles of the past with the tactical revolution advanced by precision weapons and mobility. This idea involves forcing enemies from foxholes by seizing politically and materially vital areas, thus confronting them with a choice of their own—do nothing and lose, or engage superior precision firepower.

The time has come to fight with new combination tactics. This concept combines maneuver and fire warfare. Maneuver warfare puts boots on the ground to seize or threaten centers of gravity in the rear, then precision fires destroy enemy forces during the inevitable counterattack. The destabilizing effect of invasion acts as a forcing function. An enemy is compelled to react against an immediate threat to political control, yet it is exactly this reaction that exposes it to destruction from precisely targeted fire. Critical to strategists, the Flush-and-Fire-For-Effect (Flush-and-FFE) tactic answers the basic question of whose side time is on.

Harnessing the Revolution

Operational fires, attacking targets deep inside enemy territory with airpower, missiles, and long-range artillery to support theater-wide campaign objectives, have revolutionized modern war. A century ago, battlefields were a few acres in size, and forces not engaged eye-to-eye exerted little direct influence. Today the area can be thousands of square miles, and it is routine to attempt to win not just battles, but campaigns, by striking targets deep within an enemy’s rear.

The revolution in operational fire has not led to a revolution in operational art. Operational fires have proven deadly against troops and vehicles in the open but have been nearly worthless against entrenched forces. Artillery barrages on the Somme, B-17 pickle-barrel bombing in World War II, B-52 strikes in Vietnam, and cruise missile attacks in Kosovo did not win the war against dug-in or concealed troops. Operational fires have only been slightly more effective against mobile or time-sensitive targets.

Somewhat paradoxically—and in the face of contrary evidence—operational art has raised the bar for precision firepower, expecting it to compel a political result by the efficient reduction of a carefully tuned not-too-hot, not-too-cold target list. Air strikes may cut off reinforcements, and rocket barrages may keep enemy heads down, but ultimately the United States counts on firepower to break the morale of enemy populations, who theoretically, and somewhat vaguely, are expected to spontaneously rise up and depose their own leadership to settle the conflict.

This has not occurred since World War I. Instead, populations tend to dig in and endure. Thus the Army believes, with justification, that ground forces ultimately settle conflicts by territorial battles. In its view, humble infantrymen are far from obsolete.

The proponents of landpower are generally correct, but unfortunately are afflicted by specific challenges. Ground forces have poor strategic mobility. Light infantry can be moved readily, but any sort of mechanized forces involve shipping large numbers of heavy armored vehicles, a sluggish process at best. More critically, ground assaults entail a high price because soldiers can’t execute bloodless warfare. Policymakers fearful of losses and the possible collapse of public support are unwilling to rely on ground attacks as their first option.

Future challengers to the United States will know how to counter its strength and exploit weaknesses inherent in large-scale deployment of heavy forces or precision weapons. Mobility, the humble spade, and the well-constructed decoy may have proven enough of a match for high-tech weapons to convince an enemy that it can hope to survive combat against the U.S. military.

Asymmetric Responses

The fleet-in-being principle has been adopted by small nations in confrontations with great powers. The idea of such a fleet is simple: keep a viable fighting force together and occupy enemy assets with the threat of a sortie. Since this force can choose the time and place of attack, its enemy must keep an equal or superior force in battle position continually as a counterweight. Considering the need to rest and refit this masking force, an enemy can tie up a force twice its size. This has made the fleet-in-being a favorite strategy of weak naval forces for centuries.

Recently this classic naval stratagem has been adapted to conflict on land. Enemies have learned that Americans are strong on bombing and weak in mobile logistics and the willingness to absorb casualties. They have come to realize that by avoiding bombs and preserving their assets, the United States will take months to transport strong ground forces to the theater and may never work up the will to commit that force to battle.

Countering this strategy is not easy, but it can be achieved. The weakness of the fleet-in-being is that minor fleets cannot control the seas. A nation that needs to use the seas must fight whenever it is challenged. And it is this fact, suitably transposed to the land environment, that is key. Flush-and-FFE is based on the simple proposition of taking control of a location the enemy can’t afford to lose, then annihilating its forces with operational fires when it tries to reclaim it.

Naval strategists have long acknowledged that winning control of the seas and exercising day-to-day control demand different types of ships. Winning control involves either defeating or threatening to defeat an enemy in a pitched battle. This demands large, powerful vessels—ships of the line, battleships, and carriers. On the other hand, exercising control demands smaller, more numerous forces, such as frigates and cruisers—ships able to both stop enemy shipping and defeat opposing commerce raiders, but not intended to take part in a fleet action.

The same principles apply to warfare on land. Historically, heavy units such as infantry, cavalry, and artillery fight and win battles. But it is light, small units that exercise control over conquered territory: a troop of light cavalry on horseback, a regiment of light fighters, or even an infantry squad in a fighting vehicle. The petit guerre for exercising control remains the same.

Thus the concept of Flush-and-FFE calls for deploying a ground force powerful enough to exercise control over land that an enemy cannot concede, yet far enough way that an enemy cannot simply turn around in its foxholes and fight, but must instead redeploy its forces. When an enemy comes out and begins advancing toward the ground force, it is intercepted and defeated in detail.

Limits and Limitations

It is worth mentioning what Flush-and-FFE is not. First, it is not a recipe for dumping ground forces into the midst of an enemy army. The concept calls for inserting a force into an area with light defenses, with a good killing zone between the ground element and enemy main body.

Like frigates in the age of sail, the Flush-and-FFE ground force is not put in place to fight major battles. And like frigates, its primary job is taking the objective in a swift operation. It must be equipped to conduct a seizure operation, but it cannot be expected to fight an extended pitched battle in the process. But unlike frigates, the Flush force is the equivalent of a ship-of-the-line in formation. With adequate communications, precision fires can be targeted at a numerically superior enemy during an unexpected encounter.

Second, Flush-and-FFE is not close air support operating under a different name. The latter provides air strikes on the battlefield to support ground forces engaged in a pitched battle.

The aim of the Flush-and-FFE tactic is to wipe out an enemy before it closes with the land force with sufficient forces to dislodge it. This is a distinction that may be reduced in practice. The ground commander may be best placed to direct fires, so the result may use a concept similar to close air support. However, it is more likely that a covering force will protect inserted troops while massive fire is directed by the joint force air component commander against the main enemy responses.

Third, Flush-and-FFE is not an interdiction tactic. Classical interdiction strategy calls for taking out bridges and other transportation chokepoints to isolate the battlefield and prevent an enemy from bringing up reinforcements. Flush-and-FFE may use interdiction to channel the foe onto the killing ground, but the intent is to cut the enemy down, not to cut an enemy off. With this approach, chokepoints are places to find targets rather than targets in themselves. However, interdiction could be achieved as a byproduct of the main operation.

Concepts and Criteria

One key to Flush-and-FFE is selecting the correct ground targets. Most nations have a handful of major cities, each of which is a high-value political and industrial target. Over the centuries laying siege to capitals has proved one of the best ways to compel an enemy to fight or yield. Other potential targets for seizure are moderate-value, low-population areas, especially areas disaffected from central governments. Seizing high-traffic chokepoints is also useful. Blocking key mountain passes, stretches of rivers, or road networks might lead to economic collapse. Finally, there is the potential for flushing an enemy out into the open not by seizing any particular objective, but simply through placing a presence in his rear. It has long been acknowledged that movement creates doubt for one’s enemies and opportunities for oneself.

No new operational art evolves without force structure implications. Several aspects of combined arms warfare for a Flush-and-FFE approach warrant consideration. The concept will not work without a ground element. A coalition approach offers one solution. Instead of using American troops, forces of local allies, or even an internal opposition movement can be employed to seize and hold ground while the United States provides the operational fires that destroy enemy combat forces, though for maximum flexibility the U.S. forces should maintain their own ground insertion capability.

Flush-and-FFE also has consequences for research, development, and procurement. Major requirements include:

Lighter ground forces. Some progress has been made in this arena over the last few years, but much of the focus has been on trying to equip rapidly deployed American troops to fight in urban environments. Opponents of lighter forces have noted that while light infantry equipped with light armored vehicles may be fine for peacekeeping or counterinsurgency, they will not last long against armored forces. The number one priority must be to find the right balance between organic firepower and mobility for ground forces.

All-weather operational fire capability. The United States can deliver operational fires at night or in poor weather. But the challenge is introducing this capability across the joint force.

Saturation reconnaissance capabilities. Flush-and-FFE requires that an enemy is detected and destroyed before it can engage friendly ground forces. This implies reconnaissance systems with a genuine saturation capability. Continuous support is essential. Systems like the RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV can provide such coverage and will be needed in future operations.

Fire management. Flush demands not only fast reconnaissance, but flexible operational firepower. And this depends on fire management, the ability to put ordnance on the right target at the precise moment that an attack will achieve maximum effect. The U.S. military has the capability to send mobile target locations to strike aircraft in flight, and tests show that imagery can be sent with target coordinates. Unmanned weapons such as Tactical Tomahawk will have a similar real-time update capability in the near future.

Target management. Solving this problem is the greatest need and hinges on eliminating intelligence stovepipes and ensuring real-time retasking of operational fire assets. Current procedures involve extensive imagery analysis to support strike planning cells for the joint force air component commander, which plugs targets into the air tasking order for the next day. Such a process is not sufficiently responsive for new operational concepts. A new system is needed in which imagery (by saturation reconnaissance) is fed to fire controllers, who can quickly call on ready operational fires. Future campaigns will demand artillery-like timelines for operational fire support.

High-speed logistics. Rapid insertion of a ground force will demand a lot of logistical support, preferably not shackled to airfields. This may require special transport. Perhaps the true answer is an amphibious transport aircraft, capable of exploiting rivers and lakes as runways to deliver equipment where it is most needed.

Overload suppression of enemy air defense and electronic warfare capability. Logistics are quite likely to be conducted over an air bridge. The supply effort must be resilient in the face of enemy air defenses. In Kosovo, the Serbs adopted a fleet-in-being strategy with an air defense net, never turning the whole thing on at one time and thus preserving their assets to fight another day. It worked, so the U.S. military is likely to see this approach again. As a counter, an air and electronic blockade capability is needed. Instead of launching a handful of planes to fly defense suppression and jamming missions for the few minutes of an air strike, a joint task force will need platforms that can loiter over the battlefield until enemy defenses either turn radars on or fire surface-to-air missiles—and then instantly reply with jamming, antiradiation weapons, and fire missions. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles are likely to be part of this solution.

Air supremacy. Logistic and firepower support must not be vulnerable to air intercept. The future airspace is going to be hostile with sensitive netted defenses and highly lethal fighters. Flush-and-FFE puts a premium on dominating the skies.

Non-lethal weapons. Various non-lethal capabilities will be required to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties. This will allow commanders to focus on military forces and reduce concerns over the civilian populace.

Redundant secure communications. To the Flush-and-FFE force, physical encirclement is far less threatening than interdicting communication. Without communications, timings will be disrupted and operations will become extremely high-risk.

Extraction. The Flush-and-FFE force must be able to disengage and withdraw as effectively as it is inserted. Under no circumstances can the force be left behind and susceptible to enemy capture.

Joint concept of operations. Ground forces can come from the Army or Marine Corps, depending on the circumstances. Firepower can be delivered by any service. Communications, terminology, and fire procedures must be transparent. Jointness is essential. No single service can be expected to provide all the capabilities to ensure effective employment. Not only is a multiservice approach crucial, but the integration of systems will have to be fully operational from the opening moment of the campaign.

Precision warfare is an inadequate basis for the future. Simply dropping more bombs will not solve the problem. Flush-and-FFE provides a new operational dimension that can stymie potential asymmetric responses such as the adapted fleet-in-being strategy. But to realize this concept, the U.S. military must make investments to place a more agile and lethal force on the battlefield.

Editor’s Introduction to:
AMONG THIEVES
by Poul Anderson

I first read Poul Anderson in Astounding Science Fiction when I was in my last year of high school. I was, and still am, enormously impressed, and I continued to read him until, in 1962, the annual World Science Fiction Convention—WorldCon—was held in Seattle. I had never been to a WorldCon, but Poul Anderson and Robert Heinlein, my two favorite SF authors in all this world, were going to be there, and I might have a chance to meet them. I was then in an aerospace engineer/system analyst with the Boeing Company and I was involved with the space program, so I thought I might have something to say that one or both of them might be interested in. In those days, WorldCons were much smaller—there were about 300 attending that year—and Poul was not attending as Guest of Honor, so it was comparatively easy to meet him, and I ended up at a party with him stretching long into the night.

We became fast friends, and were until his death. We went sailing in the Straits of Juan de Fuca and the California Channel Islands together, went to conferences and AAAS meetings, and sang the old songs at numerous SF Conventions. He was one of the best friends I have ever had.

Poul’s stories hold up well despite the enormous changes in technology since they were written. The nature of war has not changed, and Poul understood its essence very well indeed. I first read Among Thieves when it came out in 1957, and I have remembered it ever since.

AMONG THIEVES
by Poul Anderson

His Excellency M’Katze Unduma, Ambassador of the Terrestrial Federation to the Double Kingdom, was not accustomed to being kept waiting. But as the minutes dragged into an hour, anger faded before a chill deduction.

In this bleakly clock-bound society a short delay was bad manners, even if it were unintentional. But if you kept a man of rank cooling his heels for an entire sixty minutes, you offered him an unforgivable insult. Rusch was a barbarian, but he was too canny to humiliate Earth’s representative without reason.

Which bore out everything that Terrestrial Intelligence had discovered. From a drunken junior officer, weeping in his cups because Old Earth, Civilization, was going to be attacked and the campus where he had once learned and loved would be scorched to ruin by his fire guns—to the battle plans and annotations thereon, which six men had died to smuggle out of the Royal War College—and now, this degradation of the ambassador himself—everything fitted.

The Margrave of Drakenstane had sold out Civilization.

Unduma shuddered, beneath the iridescent cloak, embroidered robe, and ostrich-plume headdress of his rank. He swept the antechamber with the eyes of a trapped animal.

This castle was ancient, dating back some eight hundred years to the first settlement of Norstad. The grim square massiveness of it, fused stone piled into a turreted mountain, was not much relieved by modern fittings. Tableservs, loungers, drapes, jewel mosaics, and biomurals only clashed with those fortress walls and ringing flagstones; fluorosheets did not light up all the dark corners, there was perpetual dusk up among the rafters where the old battle banners hung.

A dozen guards were posted around the room, in breastplate and plumed helmet but with very modern blast rifles. They were identical seven-foot blonds, and none of them moved at all, you couldn’t even see them breathe. It was an unnerving sight for a Civilized man.

Unduma snubbed out his cigar, swore miserably to himself, and wished he had at least brought along a book.

The inner door opened on noiseless hinges and a shavepate officer emerged. He clicked his heels and bowed at Unduma. “His Lordship will be honored to receive you now, Excellency.”

The ambassador throttled his anger, nodded, and stood up. He was a tall thin man, the relatively light skin and sharp features of Bantu stock predominant in him. Earth’s emissaries were normally chosen to approximate a local ideal of beauty—hard to do for some of those weird little cultures scattered through the galaxy—and Norstad-Ostarik had been settled by a rather extreme Caucasoid type which had almost entirely emigrated from the home planet.

The aide showed him through the door and disappeared. Hans von Thoma Rusch, Margrave of Drakenstane, Lawman of the Western Folkmote, Hereditary Guardian of the White River Gates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, sat waiting behind a desk at the end of an enormous black-and-red tile floor. He had a book in his hands, and didn’t close it till Unduma, sandals whispering on the great chessboard squares, had come near. Then he stood up and made a short ironic bow.

“How do you do, your excellency,” he said. “I am sorry to be so late. Please sit.” Such curtness was no apology at all, and both of them knew it.

Unduma lowered himself to a chair in front of the desk. He would not show temper, he thought, he was here for a greater purpose. His teeth clamped together.

“Thank you, Your Lordship,” he said tonelessly. “I hope you will have time to talk with me in some detail. I have come on a matter of grave importance.”

Rusch’s right eyebrow tilted up, so that the archaic monocle he affected beneath it seemed in danger of falling out. He was a big man, stiffly and solidly built, yellow hair cropped to a wiry brush around the long skull, a scar puckering his left cheek. He wore Army uniform, the gray high-collared tunic and old-fashioned breeches and shiny boots of his planet; the trident and suns of a primary general; a sidearm, its handle worn smooth from much use. If ever the iron barbarian with the iron brain had an epitome, thought Unduma, here he sat!

“Well, your excellency,” murmured Rusch—though the harsh Norron language did not lend itself to murmurs—“of course I’ll be glad to hear you out. But after all, I’ve no standing in the Ministry, except as unofficial advisor, and–”

“Please.” Unduma lifted a hand. “Must we keep up the fable? You not only speak for all the landed warlords—and the Nor-Samurai are still the most powerful single class in the Double Kingdom—but you have the General Staff in your pouch and, ah, you are well thought of by the royal family. I think I can talk directly to you.”

Rusch did not smile, but neither did he trouble to deny what everyone knew, that he was the leader of the fighting aristocracy, lover of the widowed Queen Regent, virtual step-father of her eight-year-old son King Hjalmar—in a word, that he was the dictator. If he preferred to keep a small title and not have his name unnecessarily before the public, what difference did that make?

“I’ll be glad to pass on whatever you wish to say to the proper authorities,” he answered slowly. “Pipe.” That was an order to his chair, which produced a lit briar for him.

Unduma felt appalled. This series of informalities was like one savage blow after another. Till now, in the three-hundred-year history of relations between Earth and the Double Kingdom, the Terrestrial ambassador had ranked everyone but God and the royal family.

No human planet, no matter how long sundered from the mainstream, no matter what strange ways it had wandered, failed to remember that Earth was Earth, the home of man and the heart of Civilization. No human planet—had Norstad-Ostarik, then, gone the way of Kolresh?

Biologically, no, thought Unduma with an inward shudder. Nor culturally—yet. But it shrieked at him, from every insolent movement and twist of words, that Rusch had made a political deal.

“Well?” said the Margrave.

Unduma cleared his throat, desperately, and leaned forward. “Your Lordship,” he said, “my embassy cannot help taking notice of certain public statements, as well as certain military preparations and other matters of common knowledge–”

“And items your spies have dug up,” drawled Rusch.

Unduma started. “My lord!”

“My good ambassador,” grinned Rusch, “it was you who suggested a straight-forward talk. I know Earth has spies here. In any event, it’s impossible to hide so large a business as the mobilization of two planets for war.”

Unduma felt sweat trickle down his ribs.

“There is…you…your Ministry has only announced it is a…a defense measure,” he stammered. “I had hoped…frankly, yes, till the last minute I hoped you…your people might see fit to join us against Kolresh.”

There was a moment’s quiet. So quiet, thought Unduma. A redness crept up Rusch’s cheeks, the scar stood livid and his pale eyes were the coldest thing Unduma had ever seen.

Then, slowly, the Margrave got it out through his teeth:

“For a number of centuries, your excellency, our people hoped Earth might join them.”

“What do you mean?” Unduma forgot all polished inanities. Rusch didn’t seem to notice. He stood up and went to the window.

“Come here,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

The window was a modern inset of clear, invisible plastic, a broad sheet high in the castle’s infamous Witch Tower. It looked out on a black sky, the sun was down and the glacial forty-hour darkness of northern Norstad was crawling toward midnight.

Stars glittered mercilessly keen in an emptiness which seemed like crystal, which seemed about to ring thinly in contracting anguish under the cold. Ostarik, the companion planet, stood low to the south, a gibbous moon of steely blue; it never moved in that sky, the two worlds forever faced each other, the windy white peaks of one glaring at the warm lazy seas of the other. Northward, a great curtain of aurora flapped halfway around the cragged horizon.

From this dizzy height, Unduma could see little of the town Drakenstane: a few high-peaked roofs and small glowing windows, lamps lonesome above frozen streets. There wasn’t much to see anyhow—no big cities on either planet, only the small towns which had grown from scattered thorps, each clustered humbly about the manor of its lord. Beyond lay winter fields, climbing up the valley walls to the hard green blink of glaciers. It must be blowing out there, he saw snow-devils chase ghostly across the blue-tinged desolation.

Rusch spoke roughly: “Not much of a planet we’ve got here, is it? Out on the far end of nowhere, a thousand light-years from your precious Earth, and right in the middle of a glacial epoch. Have you ever wondered why we don’t set up weather-control stations and give this world a decent climate?”

“Well,” began Unduma, “of course, the exigencies of–”

“Of war.” Rusch sent his hand upward in a chopping motion, to sweep around the alien constellations. Among them burned Polaris, less than thirty parsecs away, huge and cruelly bright. “We never had a chance. Every time we thought we could begin, there would be war, usually with Kolresh, and the labor and materials would have to go for that. Once, about two centuries back, we did actually get stations established, it was even beginning to warm up a little. Kolresh blasted them off the map.

“Norstad was settled eight hundred years ago. For seven of those centuries, we’ve had Kolresh at our throats. Do you wonder if we’ve grown tired?”

“My lord, I…I can sympathize,” said Unduma awkwardly. “I am not ignorant of your heroic history. But it would seem to me…after all, Earth has also fought–”

“At a range of a thousand light-years!” jeered Rusch. “The forgotten war. A few underpaid patrolmen in obsolete rustbucket ships to defend unimportant outposts from sporadic Kolreshite raids. We live on their borders!”

“It would certainly appear, Your Lordship, that Kolresh is your natural enemy,” said Unduma. “As indeed it is of all Civilization, of Homo sapiens himself. What I cannot credit are the, ah, the rumors of an, er, alliance–”

“And why shouldn’t we?” snarled Rusch. “For seven hundred years we’ve held them at bay, while your precious so-called Civilization grew fat behind a wall of our dead young men. The temptation to recoup some of our losses by helping Kolresh conquer Earth is very strong!”

“You don’t mean it!” The breath rushed from Unduma’s lungs.

The other man’s face was like carved bone. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he answered. “I merely point out that from our side there’s a good deal to be said for such a policy. Now if Earth is prepared to make a different policy worth our while—do you understand? Nothing is going to happen in the immediate future. You have time to think about it.”

“I would have to. . .communicate with my government,” whispered Unduma.

“Of course,” said Rusch. His bootheels clacked on the floor as he went back to his desk. “I’ve had a memorandum prepared for you, an unofficial informal sort of protocol, points which his majesty’s government would like to make the basis of negotiations with the Terrestrial Federation. Ah, here!” He picked up a bulky folio. “I suggest you take a leave of absence, your excellency, go home and show your superiors this, ah–”

“Ultimatum,” said Unduma in a sick voice.

Rusch shrugged. “Call it what you will.” His tone was empty and remote, as if he had already cut himself and his people out of Civilization.

As he accepted the folio, Unduma noticed the book beside it, the one Rusch had been reading: a local edition of Schakspier, badly printed on sleazy paper, but in the original Old Anglic. Odd thing for a barbarian dictator to read. But then, Rusch was a bit of an historical scholar, as well as an enthusiastic kayak racer, meteor polo player, chess champion, mountain climber, and…an all-around scoundrel!

***

Norstad lay in the grip of a ten-thousand-year winter, while Ostarik was a heaven of blue seas breaking on warm island sands. Nevertheless, because Ostarik harbored a peculiarly nasty plague virus, it remained an unattainable paradise in the sky till a bare two hundred fifty years ago. Then a research team from Earth got to work, found an effective vaccine, and saw a mountain carved into their likeness by the Norron folk.

It was through such means—and the sheer weight of example, the liberty and wealth and happiness of its people—that the Civilization centered on Earth had been propagating itself among colonies isolated for centuries. There were none which lacked reverence for Earth the Mother, Earth the Wise, Earth the Kindly: none but Kolresh, which had long ceased to be human.

Rusch’s private speedster whipped him from the icicle walls of Festning Drakenstane to the rose gardens of Sorgenlos in an hour of hell-bat haste across vacuum. But it was several hours more until he and the queen could get away from their courtiers and be alone.

They walked through geometric beds of smoldering blooms, under songbirds and fronded trees, while the copper spires of the little palace reached up to the evening star and the hours-long sunset of Ostarik blazed gold across great quiet waters. The island was no more than a royal retreat, but lately it had known agonies.

Queen Ingra stooped over a mutant rose, tiger-striped and a foot across; she plucked the petals from it and said, close to weeping: “But I liked Unduma. I don’t want him to hate us.”

“He’s not a bad sort,” agreed Rusch. He stood behind her in a black dress uniform with silver insignia, like a formal version of death.

“He’s more than that, Hans. He stands for decency—Norstad froze our souls, and Ostarik hasn’t thawed them. I thought Earth might–” Her voice trailed off. She was slender and dark, still young, and her folk came from the rainy dales of Norstad’s equator, a farm race with gentler ways than the miners and fishermen and hunters of the red-haired ice ape who had bred Rusch. In her throat, the Norron language softened to a burring music; the Drakenstane men spat their words out rough-edged.

“Earth might what?” Rusch turned a moody gaze to the west. “Lavish more gifts on us? We were always proud of paying our own way.”

“Oh, no,” said Ingra wearily. “After all, we could trade with them, furs and minerals and so on, if ninety per cent of our production didn’t have to go into defense. I only thought they might teach us how to be human.”

“I had assumed we were still classified Homo sapiens,” said Rusch in a parched tone.

“Oh, you know what I mean!” She turned on him, violet eyes suddenly aflare. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re human, Margrave Hans von Thoma Rusch. I mean free, free to be something more than a robot, free to raise children knowing they won’t have their lungs shoved out their mouths when a Kolreshite cruiser hulls one of our spaceships. What is our whole culture, Hans? A layer of brutalized farmhands and factory workers—serfs! A top crust of heel-clattering aristocrats who live for nothing but war. A little folk art, folk music, folk saga, full of blood and treachery. Where are our symphonies, novels, cathedrals, research laboratories…where are people who can say what they wish and make what they will of their lives and be happy?”

Rusch didn’t answer for a moment. He looked at her, unblinking behind his monocle, till she dropped her gaze and twisted her hands together. Then he said only: “You exaggerate.”

“Perhaps. It’s still the basic truth.” Rebellion rode in her voice. “It’s what all the other worlds think of us.”

“Even if the democratic assumption—that the eternal verities can be discovered by counting enough noses—were true,” said Rusch, “you cannot repeal eight hundred years of history by decree.”

“No. But you could work toward it,” she said. “I think you’re wrong in despising the common man, Hans…when was he ever given a chance, in this kingdom? We could make a beginning now, and Earth could send psychotechnic advisors, and in two or three generations–”

“What would Kolresh be doing while we experimented with forms of government?” he laughed.

“Always Kolresh.” Her shoulders, slim behind the burning-red cloak, slumped. “Kolresh turned a hundred hopeful towns into radioactive craters and left the gnawed bones of children in the fields. If Kolresh killed my husband, like a score of kings before him, Kolresh blasted your family to ash, Hans, and scarred your face and your soul–” She whirled back on him, fists aloft, and almost screamed: “Do you want to make an ally of Kolresh?”

The Margrave took out his pipe and began filling it. The saffron sundown, reflected off the ocean to his face, gave him a metallic look.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve been at peace with them for all of ten years now. Almost a record.”

“Can’t we find allies? Real ones? I’m sick of being a figurehead! I’d befriend Ahuramazda, New Mars, Lagrange—We could raise a crusade against Kolresh, wipe every last filthy one of them out of the universe!”

“Now who’s a heel-clattering aristocrat?” grinned Rusch.

He lit his pipe and strolled toward the beach. She stood for an angry moment, then sighed and followed him.

“Do you think it hasn’t been tried?” he said patiently. “For generations we’ve tried to build up a permanent alliance directed at Kolresh. What temporary ones we achieved have always fallen apart. Nobody loves us enough—and, since we’ve always taken the heaviest blows, nobody hates Kolresh enough.”

He found a bench on the glistening edge of the strand, and sat down and looked across a steady march of surf, turned to molten gold by the low sun and the incandescent western clouds. Ingra joined him.

“I can’t really blame the others for not liking us,” she said in a small voice. “We are overmechanized and undercultured, arrogant, tactless, undemocratic, hardboiled…oh, yes. But their own self-interest–”

“They don’t imagine it can happen to them,” replied Rusch contemptuously. “And there are even pro-Kolresh elements, here and there.” He raised his voice an octave: “Oh, my dear sir, my dear Margrave, what are you saying? Why, of course Kolresh would never attack us! They made a treaty never to attack us!”

Ingra sighed, forlornly. Rusch laid an arm across her shoulders. They sat for a while without speaking.

“Anyway,” said the man finally, “Kolresh is too strong for any combination of powers in this part of the galaxy. We and they are the only ones with a military strength worth mentioning. Even Earth would have a hard time defeating them, and Earth, of course, will lean backward before undertaking a major war. She has too much to lose; it’s so much more comfortable to regard the Kolreshite raids as mere piracies, and the skirmishes as ‘police actions.’ She just plain will not pay the stiff price of an army and a navy able to whip Kolresh and occupy the Kolreshite planets.”

“And so it is to be war again.” Ingra looked out in desolation across the sea.

“Maybe not,” said Rusch. “Maybe a different kind of war, at least—no more black ships coming out of our sky.”

He blew smoke for a while, as if gathering courage, then spoke in a quick, impersonal manner: “Look here. We Norrons are not a naval power. It’s not in our tradition. Our navy has always been inadequate and always will be. But we can breed the toughest soldiers in the known galaxy, in unlimited numbers; we can condition them into fighting machines, and equip them with the most lethal weapons living flesh can wield.

“Kolresh, of course, is just the opposite. Space nomads, small population; they are able to destroy anything their guns can reach, but they can't dig in and hold it against us. For seven hundred years, we and they have been the Elephant and the Whale. Neither could ever win a real victory over the other; war became the normal state of affairs, peace a breathing spell. Because of the mutation, there will always be war, as long as one single Kolreshite lives. We can’t kill them, we can’t befriend them—all we can do is be bled white to stop them.”

A wind sighed over the slow thunder on the beach. A line of sea birds crossed the sky, thin and black against glowing bronze.

“I know,” said Ingra. “I know the history, and I know what you’re leading up to. Kolresh will furnish transportation and naval escort; Norstad-Ostarik will furnish men. Between us, we may be able to take Earth.”

“We will,” said Rusch flatly. “Earth has grown plump and lazy. She can’t possibly rearm enough in a few months to stop such a combination.”

“And the entire galaxy will spit on our name.”

“All the galaxy will lie open to conquest, once Earth has fallen.”

“How long do you think we would last, riding the Kolresh tiger?”

“I have no illusions about them, my dear. But neither can I see any way to break this eternal deadlock. In a fluid situation, such as the collapse of Earth would produce, we might be able to create a navy as good as theirs. They’ve never yet given us a chance to build one, but perhaps—”

“Perhaps not! I doubt very much it was a meteor which wrecked my husband’s ship, five years ago. I think Kolresh knew of his hopes, of the shipyard he wanted to start, and murdered him.”

“It’s probable,” said Rusch.

“And you would league us with them.” Ingra turned a colorless face on him. “I’m still the queen. I forbid any further consideration of this…this obscene alliance!”

Rusch sighed. “I was afraid of that, your highness.”

For a moment he looked gray, tired. “You have a veto power, of course. But I don’t think the Ministry would continue in office a regent who used it against the best interests of–”

She leaped to her feet. “You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, you’d not be harmed,” said Rusch with a crooked smile. “Not even deposed. You’d be in protective custody, shall we say. Of course, his majesty, your son, would have to be educated elsewhere, but if you wish–”

Her palm cracked on his face; he did not move or respond. “I…won’t veto–” Ingra shook her head. Then her back grew stiff. “Your ship will be ready to take you home, my lord. I do not think we shall require your presence here again.”

“As you will, your highness,” murmured the dictator of the Double Kingdom.

***

Though he returned with a bitter word in his mouth, Unduma felt the joy, the biological rightness of being home, rise warm within him. He sat on a terrace under the mild sky of Earth, with the dear bright flow of the Zambezi River at his feet and the slim towers of Capital City rearing as far as he could see, each gracious, in its own green park. The people on the clean quiet streets wore airy blouses and colorful kilts—not the trousers for men, ankle-length skirts for women, which muffled the sad folk of Norstad. And there was educated conversation in the gentle Tierrans language, music from an open window, laughter on the verandas and children playing in the parks: freedom, law, and leisure.

The thought that this might be rubbed out of history, that the robots of Norstad and the snake-souled monsters of Kolresh might tramp between broken spires where starved Earthmen hid, was a tearing in Unduma.

He managed to lift his drink and lean back with the proper casual elegance. “No, sir,” he said, “they are not bluffing.”

Ngu Chilongo, Premier of the Federation Parliament, blinked unhappy eyes. He was a small grizzled man, and a wise man, but this lay beyond everything he had known in a long lifetime and he was slow to grasp it.

“But surely…” he began. “Surely this…this Rusch person is not insane. He cannot think that his two planets, with a population of, what is it, perhaps one billion, can overcome four billion Terrestrials!”

“There would also be several million Kolreshites to help him,” reminded Unduma. “However, they would handle the naval end of it entirely and their navy is considerably stronger than ours. The Norron forces would be the ones which actually landed, to fight the air and ground battles. And out of those paltry one billion, Rusch can raise approximately one hundred million soldiers.”

Chilongo’s glass crashed to the terrace. “What!”

“It’s true, sir.” The third man present, Mustafa Lefarge, Minister of Defense, spoke in a miserable tone. “It’s a question of every able-bodied citizen, male and female, being a trained member of the armed forces. In time of war, virtually everyone not in actual combat is directly contributing to some phase of the effort—a civilian economy virtually ceases to exist. They’re used to getting along for years at a stretch with no comforts and a bare minimum of necessities.” His voice grew sardonic. “By necessities, they mean things like food and ammunition—not, say, entertainment or cultural activity, as we assume.”

“A hundred million,” whispered Chilongo. He stared at his hands. “Why, that’s ten times our total forces!”

“Which are ill-trained, ill-equipped, and ill-regarded by our own civilians,” pointed out Lefarge bitterly.

“In short, sir,” said Unduma, “while we could defeat either Kolresh or Norstad-Ostarik in all-out war—though with considerable difficulty—between them they can defeat us.”

Chilongo shivered. Unduma felt a certain pity for him.

You had to get used to it in small doses, this fact which Civilization screened from Earth: that the depths of hell are found in the human soul. That no law of nature guards the upright innocent from malice.

“But they wouldn’t dare!” protested the Premier. “Our friends…everywhere–”

“All the human-colonized galaxy will wring its hands and send stiff notes of protest,” said Lefarge. “Then they’ll pull the blankets back over their heads and assure themselves that now the big bad aggressor has been sated.”

“This note of Rusch’s.” Chilongo seemed to be grabbing out after support while the world dropped from beneath his feet. Sweat glistened on his wrinkled brown forehead. “Their terms…surely we can make some agreement?”

“Their terms are impossible, as you’ll see for yourself when you read,” said Unduma flatly. “They want us to declare war on Kolresh, accept a joint command under Norron leadership, foot the bill and—no!”

“But if we have to fight anyway,” began Chilongo, “it would seem better to have at least one ally.”

“Has Earth changed that much since I was gone?” asked Unduma in astonishment. “Would our people really consent to this…this extortion…letting those hairy barbarians write our foreign policy for us—why, jumping into war, making the first declaration ourselves, it’s unconstitutional! It’s un-Civilized!’”

Chilongo seemed to shrink a little. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t mean that. Of course it’s impossible; better to be honestly defeated in battle. I only thought, perhaps we could bargain–”

“We can try,” said Unduma skeptically, “but I never heard of Hans Rusch yielding an ångström without a pistol at his head.”

Lefarge struck a cigar, inhaled deeply, and took another sip from his glass. “I hardly imagine an alliance with Kolresh would please his own people,” he mused.

“Scarcely!” said Unduma. “But they’ll accept it if they must.”

“Oh? No chance for us to have him overthrown—assassinated, even?”

“Not to speak of. Let me explain. He’s only a petty aristocrat by birth, but during the last war with Kolresh he gained high rank and a personal following of fanatically loyal young officers. For the past few years, since the king died, he’s been the dictator. He’s filled the key posts with his men: hard, able, and unquestioning. Everyone else is either admiring or cowed. Give him credit, he’s no megalomaniac—he shuns publicity— but that simply divorces his power all the more from any responsibility. You can measure it by pointing out that everyone knows he will probably ally with Kolresh, and everyone has a nearly physical loathing of the idea—but there is not a word of criticism for Rusch himself. When he orders it, they will embark on Kolreshite ships to ruin the Earth they love.”

“It could almost make you believe in the old myths,” whispered Chilongo. “About the Devil incarnate.”

“Well,” said Unduma, “this sort of thing has happened before, you know.”

“Hm-m-m?” Lefarge sat up.

Unduma smiled sadly. “Historical examples,” he said. “They’re of no practical value today, except for giving the cold consolation that we’re not uniquely betrayed.”

“What do you mean?” asked Chilongo.

“Well,” said Unduma, “consider the astropolitics of the situation. Around Polaris and beyond lies Kolresh territory, where for a long time they sharpened their teeth preying on backward autochthones. At last they started expanding toward the richer human-settled planets. Norstad happened to lie directly on their path, so Norstad took the first blow—and stopped them.

“Since then, it’s been seven hundred years of stalemated war. Oh, naturally Kolresh outflanks Norstad from time to time, seizes this planet in the galactic west and raids that one to the north, fights a war with one to the south and makes an alliance with one to the east. But it has never amounted to anything important. It can’t, with Norstad astride the most direct line between the heart of Kolresh and the heart of Civilization. If Kolresh made a serious effort to bypass Norstad, the Norrons could—and would—disrupt everything with an attack in the rear.

“In short, despite the fact that interstellar space is three-dimensional and enormous, Norstad guards the northern marches of Civilization.”

He paused for another sip. It was cool and subtle on his tongue, a benediction after the outworld rotgut.

“Hmmm, I never thought of it just that way,” said Lefarge. “I assumed it was just a matter of barbarians fighting each other for the usual barbarian reasons.”

“Oh, it is, I imagine,” said Unduma, “but the result is that Norstad acts as the shield of Earth.

“Now if you examine early Terrestrial history—and Rusch, who has a remarkable knowledge of it, stimulated me to do so—you’ll find that this is a common thing. A small semi-civilized state, out on the marches, holds off the enemy while the true civilization prospers behind it. Assyria warded Mesopotamia, Rome defended Greece, the Welsh border lords kept England safe, the Transoxanian Tartars were the shield of Persia, Prussia blocked the approaches to western Europe…oh, l could add a good many examples. In every instance, a somewhat backward people on the distant frontier of a civilization, receive the worst hammer-blows of the really alien races beyond, the wild men who would leave nothing standing if they could get at the protected cities of the inner society.”

He paused for breath. “And so?” asked Chilongo.

“Well, of course suffering isn’t good for people,” shrugged Unduma. “It tends to make them rather nasty. The marchmen react to incessant war by becoming a warrior race, uncouth peasants with an absolute government of ruthless militarists. Nobody loves them, neither the outer savages nor the inner polite nations.

“And in the end, they’re all too apt to turn inward. Their military skill and vigor need a more promising outlet than this grim business of always fighting off an enemy who always comes back and who has even less to steal than the sentry culture.

“So Assyria sacks Babylon; Rome conquers Greece; Percy rises against King Henry; Tamerlane overthrows Bajazet; Prussia clanks into France–”

“And Norstad-Ostarik falls on Earth,” finished Lefarge.

“Exactly,” said Unduma. “It’s not even unprecedented for the border state to join hands with the very tribes it fought so long. Percy and Owen Glendower, for instance…though in that case, I imagine both parties were considerably more attractive than Hans Rusch or Klerak Belug.”

“What are we going to do?” Chilongo whispered it toward the blue sky of Earth, from which no bombs had fallen for a thousand years.

Then he shook himself, jumped to his feet, and faced the other two. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. This has taken me rather by surprise, and I’ll naturally require time to look at this Norron protocol and evaluate the other data. But if it turns out you’re right”—he bowed urbanely—“as I’m sure it will–”

“Yes?” said Unduma in a tautening voice.

“Why, then, we appear to have some months, at least, before anything drastic happens. We can try to gain more time by negotiation. We do have the largest industrial complex in the known universe, and four billion people who have surely not had all their courage bred out of them. We’ll build up our armed forces, and if those barbarians attack, we’ll whip them back into their own kennels and kick them through the rear walls thereof!”

“I hoped you’d say that,” breathed Unduma.

“I hope we’ll be granted time,” Lefarge scowled. “I assume Rusch is not a fool. We cannot rearm in anything less than a glare of publicity. When he learns of it, what’s to prevent him from cementing the Kolresh alliance and attacking at once, before we’re ready?”

“Their mutual suspiciousness ought to help,” said Unduma. “I’ll go back there, of course, and do what I can to stir up trouble between them.”

He sat still for a moment, then added as if to himself: “Until we finish preparing, we have no resource but hope.”

***

The Kolreshite mutation was a subtle thing. It did not show on the surface: physically, they were a handsome people, running to white skin and orange hair. Over the centuries, thousands of Norron spies had infiltrated them, and frequently gotten back alive; what made such work unusually difficult was not the normal hazards of impersonation, but an ingrained reluctance to practice cannibalism and worse.

The mutation was a psychic twist, probably originating in some obscure gene related to the endocrine system. It was extraordinarily hard to describe—every categorical statement about it had the usual quota of exceptions and qualifications. But one might, to a first approximation, call it extreme xenophobia. It is normal for Homo sapiens to be somewhat wary of outsiders till he has established their bona fides; it was normal for Homo Kolreshi to hate all outsiders, from first glimpse to final destruction.

Naturally, such an instinct produced a tendency to inbreeding, which lowered fertility, but systematic execution of the unfit had so far kept the stock vigorous. The instinct also led to strongarm rule within the nation; to nomadism, where a planet was only a base like the oasis of the ancient Bedouin, essential to life but rarely seen; to a cult of secrecy and cruelty, a religion of abominations; to an ultimate goal of conquering the accessible universe and wiping out all other races.

Of course, it was not so simple, not so blatant. Among themselves, the Kolreshites doubtless found a degree of tenderness and fidelity. Visiting on neutral planets—planets which it was not yet expedient to attack—they were very courteous and presented an account of defending themselves against one unprovoked aggression after another, which some found plausible. Even their enemies stood in awe of their personal heroism.

Nevertheless, few in the galaxy would have wept if the Kolreshites all died one rainy night.

Hans von Thoma Rusch brought his speedster to the great whaleback of the battleship. It lay a light-year from his sun, hidden by cold emptiness; the co-ordinates had been given him secretly, together with an invitation which was more like a summons.

He glided into the landing cradle, under the turrets of guns that could pound a moon apart, and let the mechanism suck him down below decks. When he stepped out into the high, coldly lit debarkation chamber, an honor guard in red presented arms and pipes twittered for him.

He walked slowly forward, a big man in black and silver, to meet his counterpart, Klerak Belug, the Overman of Kolresh, who waited rigid in a blood-colored tunic. The cabin bristled around him with secret police and guns.

Rusch clicked heels. “Good day, Your Dominance,” he said. A faint echo followed his voice. For some unknown reason, this folk liked echoes and always built walls to resonate.

Belug, an aging giant who topped him by a head, raised shaggy brows. “Are you alone, Your Lordship?” he asked in atrociously accented Norron. “It was understood that you could bring a personal bodyguard.”

Rusch shrugged. “I would have needed a personal dreadnought to be quite safe,” he replied in fluent Kolra, “so I decided to trust your safe conduct. I assume you realize that any harm done to me means instant war with my kingdom.”

The broad, winkled lion-face before him split into a grin. “My representatives did not misjudge you, Your Lordship. I think we can indeed do business. Come.”

The Overman turned and led the way down a ramp toward the guts of the ship. Rusch followed, enclosed by guards and bayonets. He kept a hand on his own sidearm—not that it would do him much good, if matters came to that.

Events were approaching their climax, he thought in a cold layer of his brain. For more than a year now, negotiations had dragged on, hemmed in by the requirement of secrecy, weighted down by mutual suspicion. There were only two points of disagreement remaining, but discussion had been so thoroughly snagged on those that the two absolute rulers must meet to settle it personally. It was Belug who had issued the contemptuous invitation.

And he, Rusch, had come. Tonight, the old kings of Norstad wept worms in their graves.

The party entered a small, luxuriously chaired room.

There were the usual robots, for transcription and reference purposes, and there were guards, but Overman and Margrave were essentially alone.

Belug wheezed his bulk into a seat. “Smoke? Drink?”

“I have my own, thank you.” Rusch took out his pipe and a hip flask.

“That is scarcely diplomatic,” rumbled Belug.

Rusch laughed. “I’d always understood that Your Dominance had no use for the mannerisms of Civilization. I daresay we’d both like to finish our business as quickly as possible.”

The Overman snapped his fingers. Someone glided up with wine in a glass. He sipped for a while before answering: “Yes. By all means. Let us reach an executive agreement now and wait for our hirelings to draw up a formal treaty. But it seems odd, sir, that after all these months of delay, you are suddenly so eager to complete the work.”

“Not odd,” said Rusch. “Earth is rearming at a considerable rate. She’s had almost a year now. We can still whip her, but in another six months we’ll no longer be able to; give her automated factories half a year beyond that, and she’ll destroy us!”

“It must have been clear to you, sir, that after the Earth Ambassador—what’s his name, Unduma—after he returned to your planets last year, he was doing all he could to gain time.”

“Oh, yes,” said Rusch. “Making offers to me, and then haggling over them, brewing trouble elsewhere to divert our attention; it was a gallant effort. But it didn’t work. Frankly, Your Dominance, you’ve only yourself to blame for the delays. For example, your insistence that Earth be administered as Kolreshite territory–”

“My dear sir!” exploded Belug. “It was a talking point. Only a talking point. Any diplomatist would have understood. But you took six weeks to study it, then offered that preposterous counter-proposal that everything should revert to you, loot and territory both—why, if you had been truly willing to cooperate, we could have settled the terms in a month!”

“As you like, Your Dominance,” said Rusch carelessly.

“It’s all past now. There are only these questions of troop transport and prisoners, then we’re in total agreement.”

Klerak Belug narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin with one outsize hand. “I do not comprehend,” he said, “and neither do my naval officers. We have regular transports for your men, nothing extraordinary in the way of comfort, to be sure, but infinitely more suitable for so long a voyage than…than the naval units you insist we use. Don’t you understand? A transport is for carrying men or cargo; a ship of the line is to fight or convoy. You do not mix the functions!”

“I do, Your Dominance,” said Rusch. “As many of my soldiers as possible are going to travel on regular warships furnished by Kolresh, and there are going to be Double Kingdom naval personnel with them for liaison.”

“But–” Belug’s fist closed on his wineglass as if to splinter it. “Why?” he roared.

“My representatives have explained it a hundred times,” said Rusch wearily. “To put it bluntly, I don’t trust you. If…oh, let us say there should be disagreement between us while the armada is en route…well, a transport ship is easily replaced, after its convoy vessels have blown it up. The fighting craft of Kolresh are a better hostage for your good behavior.” He struck a light to his pipe. “Naturally, you can’t take our whole fifty-million-man expeditionary force on your battle wagons; but I want soldiers on every warship as well as in the transports.”

Belug shook his ginger head. “No.”

“Come now,” said Rusch. “Your spies have been active enough on Norstad and Ostarik. Have you found any reason to doubt my intentions? Bearing in mind that an army the size of ours cannot be mobilized for a given operation without a great many people knowing it.”

“Yes, yes,” grumbled Belug. “Granted.” He smiled, a sharp flash of teeth. “But the upper hand is mine, Your Lordship. I can wait indefinitely to attack Earth. You can’t.”

“Eh?” Rusch drew hard on his pipe.

“In the last analysis, even dictators rely on popular support. My Intelligence tells me you are rapidly losing yours. The queen has not spoken to you for a year, has she? And there are many Norrons whose first loyalty is to the Crown. As the thought of war with Earth seeps in, as men have time to comprehend how little they like the idea, time to see through your present anti-Terrestrial propaganda—they grow angry. Already they mutter about you in the beer halls and the officers’ clubs, they whisper in ministry cloakrooms. My agents have heard.

“Your personal cadre of young key officers are the only ones left with unquestioning loyalty to you. Let discontent grow just a little more, let open revolt break out, and your followers will be hanged from the lamp posts.

“You can’t delay much longer.”

Rusch made no reply for a while. Then he sat up, his monocle glittering like a cold round window on winter.

“I can always call off this plan and resume the normal state of affairs,” he snapped.

Belug flushed red. “War with Kolresh again? It would take you too long to shift gears—to reorganize.”

“It would not. Our war college has prepared war plans for all foreseeable combinations of circumstances. If I cannot come to terms with you, another war plan goes into effect. And obviously, it will have popular enthusiasm behind it!”

He fixed the Overman with a fish-pale eye and continued in icy tones: “After all, Your Dominance, I would prefer to fight you. The only thing I would enjoy more would be to hunt you with hounds. Seven hundred years have shown that to be impossible. I opened negotiations to make the best of an evil bargain—since you cannot be conquered, it will pay better to join with you on a course of mutually profitable imperialism.

“But if your stubbornness prevents an agreement, I will declare war on you in the usual manner and be no worse off than I was. The choice is, therefore, yours.”

Belug swallowed. Even his guards lost some of their blankness. One does not speak in that fashion across the negotiators’ table.

Finally, only his lips stirring, he said: “Your frankness is appreciated, my lord. Some day I would like to discuss that aspect further. As for now, though…yes, I can see your point. I am prepared to admit some of your troops to our ships of the line.” After another moment, still sitting like a stone idol, he added: “But this question of returning prisoners of war. We have never done it. I do not propose to begin.”

“I do not propose to let the poor devils of Norrons rot any longer in your camps,” said Rusch. “I have a pretty good idea of what goes on there. If we’re to be allies, I’ll want back such of my countrymen as are still alive.”

“Not many are still sane,” Belug told him deliberately. Rusch puffed smoke and made no reply.

“If I give in on the one item,” said Belug, “I have a right to test your sincerity by the other. We keep our prisoners.”

Rusch’s own face had gone quite pale. The room grew altogether silent.

“Very well,” he said after a long time. “Let it be so.”

***

Without a word, Major Othkar Graaborg led his company into the black cruiser. The words came from the spaceport, where police held off a hooting, hissing, rock-throwing mob. It was the first time in history that Norron folk had stoned their own soldiers.

His men tramped stolidly behind him, up the gangway and through the corridors. Among the helmets and packs and weapons, racketing boots and clashing body armor, their faces were lost, they were an army without faces.

Graaborg followed a Kolreshite ensign, who kept looking back nervously at these hereditary foes, till they reached the bunkroom. It had been hastily converted from a storage hold, and was scant cramped comfort for a thousand men.

“All right, boys,” he said when the door had closed on his guide. “Make yourselves at home.”

They got busy, opening packs, spreading bedrolls on bunks. Immediately thereafter, they started to assemble heavy machine guns, howitzers, even a nuclear blaster.

“You, there!” The accented voice squawked indignantly from a loudspeaker in the wall. “I see that. I got video. You not put guns together here.”

Graaborg looked up from his inspection of a live fission shell. “Obscenity you,” he said pleasantly. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I executive officer. I tell captain.”

“Go right ahead. My orders say that according to treaty, as long as we stay in our assigned part of the ship, we’re under our own discipline. If your captain doesn’t like it, let him come down here and talk to us.” Graaborg ran a thumb along the edge of his bayonet. A wolfish chorus from his men underlined the invitation.

No one pressed the point. The cruiser lumbered into space, rendezvoused with her task force, and went into nonspatial drive. For several days, the Norron army contingent remained in its den, more patient with such stinking quarters than the Kolreshites could imagine anyone being. Nevertheless, no spaceman ventured in there; meals were fetched at the galley by Norron squads.

Graaborg alone wandered freely about the ship. He was joined by Commander von Brecca of Ostarik, the head of the Double Kingdom’s naval liaison on this ship: a small band of officers and ratings, housed elsewhere. They conferred with the Kolreshite officers as the necessity arose, on routine problems, rehearsal of various operations to be performed when Earth was reached a month hence—but they did not mingle socially. This suited their hosts.

The fact is, the Kolreshites were rather frightened of them. A spaceman does not lack courage, but he is a gentleman among warriors. His ship either functions well, keeping him clean and comfortable, or it does not function at all and he dies quickly and mercifully. He fights with machines, at enormous ranges.

The ground soldier, muscle in mud, whose ultimate weapon is whetted steel in bare hands, has a different kind of toughness.

Two weeks after departure, Graaborg’s wrist chronometer showed a certain hour. He was drilling his men in full combat rig, as he had been doing every “day” in spite of the narrow quarters.

“Ten-SHUN!” The order flowed through captains, lieutenants, and sergeants; the bulky mass of men crashed to stillness.

Major Graaborg put a small pocket amplifier to his lips. “All right, lads,” he said casually, “assume gas masks, radiation shields, all gun squads to weapons. Now let’s clean up this ship.”

He himself blew down the wall with a grenade.

Being perhaps the most thoroughly trained soldiers in the universe, the Norron men paused for only one amazed second. Then they cheered, with death and Hell in their voices, and crowded at his heels.

Little resistance was met until Graaborg picked up von Brecca’s naval command, the crucial ones, who could sail and fight the ship. The Kolreshites were too dumfounded. Thereafter the nomads rallied and fought gamely. Graaborg was handicapped by not having been able to give his men a battle plan. He split up his forces and trusted to the intelligence of the noncoms.

His faith was not misplaced, though the ship was in poor condition by the time the last Kolreshite had been machine-gunned.

Graaborg himself had used a bayonet, with vast satisfaction.

***

M’Katze Unduma entered the office in the Witch Tower. “You sent for me, Your Lordship?” he asked. His voice was as cold and bitter as the gale outside.

“Yes. Please be seated.” Margrave Hans von Thoma Rusch looked tired. “I have some news for you.”

“What news? You declared war on Earth two weeks ago. Your army can’t have reached her yet.” Unduma leaned over the desk. “Is it that you’ve found transportation to send me home?”

“Somewhat better news, your excellency.” Rusch leaned over and tuned a telescreen. A background of clattering robots and frantically busy junior officers came into view.

Then a face entered the screen, young, and with more life in it than Unduma had ever before seen on this sullen planet. “Central Data headquarters—oh, yes, Your Lordship.” Boyishly, against all rules: “We’ve got her! The Bheoka just called in…she’s ours!”

“Hmm-mm-mmm. Good.” Rusch glanced at Unduma. “Bheoka is the super-dreadnought accompanying Task Force Two. Carry on with the news.”

“Yes, sir. She’s already reducing the units we failed to capture. Admiral Sorrens estimates he’ll control Force Two entirely in another hour. Bulletin just came in from Force Three. Admiral Gundrup was killed in the fighting, but Vice Admiral Smitt has assumed command and reports three-fourths of the ships are in our hands. He’s delaying fire until he sees how it goes aboard the rest. Also–”

“Never mind,” said Rusch. “I’ll get the comprehensive report later. Remind Staff that for the next few hours all command decisions had better be made by officers on the spot. After that, when we see what we’ve got, broader tactics can be prepared. If some extreme emergency doesn’t arise, it’ll be a few hours before I can get over to HQ.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, I…may I say–” So might the young Norron have addressed a god.

“All right, son, you’ve said it.” Rusch turned off the screen and looked at Unduma. “Do you realize what‘s happening?”

The ambassador sat down; his knees seemed all at once to have melted. “What have you done?” It was like a stranger speaking.

“What I planned quite a few years ago,” said the Margrave.

He reached into his desk and brought forth a bottle. “Here, your excellency. I think we could both use a swig. Authentic Terrestrial Scotch. I’ve saved it for this day.”

But there was no glory leaping in him. It is often thus: you reach a dream and you only feel how tired you are.

Unduma let the liquid fire slide down his throat.

“You understand, don’t you?” said Rusch. “For seven centuries, the Elephant and the Whale fought, without being able to get at each other’s vitals. I made this alliance against Earth solely to get our men aboard their ships. But a really large operation like that can’t be faked. It has to be genuine—the agreements, the preparations, the propaganda, everything. Only a handful of officers, men who could be trusted to…to infinity”—his voice cracked, and Unduma thought of the war prisoners sacrificed, of the hideous casualties in the steel corridors of spaceships, of Norron gunners destroying Kolreshite vessels and the survivors of the Norron detachments that failed to capture them—“only a few could be told, and then only at the last instant. For the rest, I relied on the quality of our troops. They’re good lads, every one of them, and therefore adaptable. They’re especially adaptable when suddenly told to fall on the men they’d most like to kill.”

He tilted the bottle afresh. “It’s proving expensive,” he said in a slurred, hurried tone. “It will cost us as many casualties, no doubt, as ten years of ordinary war. But if I hadn’t done it, there could have easily been another seven hundred years of war. Couldn’t there? Couldn’t there have been? As it is, we’ve already broken the spine of the Kolreshite fleet. She has plenty of ships yet, to be sure, she is still a menace, but she's crippled. I hope Earth will see fit to join us. Between them, Earth and Norstad-Ostarik can finish off Kolresh in a hurry. And after all, Kolresh did declare war on you, had every intention of destroying you. If you won’t help, well, we can end it by ourselves, now that the fleet is broken. But I hope you’ll join us.”

“I don’t know,” said Unduma. He was still wobbling in a new cosmos. “We’re not a…a hard people.”

“You ought to be,” said Rusch. “Hard enough, anyway, to win a voice for yourselves in what’s going to happen around Polaris. Important frontier, Polaris.”

“Yes,” said Unduma slowly. “There is that. It won’t cause any hosannahs in our streets, but…yes, I think we will continue the war, as your allies, if only to prevent you from massacring the Kolreshites. They can be rehabilitated, you know.”

“I doubt that,” grunted Rusch. “But it’s a detail. At the very least, they’ll never be allowed weapons again.” He raised a sardonic brow. “I suppose we, too, can be rehabilitated, once you get your peace groups and psychotechs out here. No doubt you’ll manage to demilitarize us and turn us into good plump democrats. All right, Unduma, send your Civilizing missionaries. But permit me to give thanks that I won’t live to see their work completed!”

The Earthman nodded, rather coldly. You couldn’t blame Rusch for treachery, callousness, and arrogance—he was what his history had made him—but he remained unpleasant company for a Civilized man. “I shall communicate with my government at once, Your Lordship, and recommend a provisional alliance, the terms to be settled later,” he said. “I will report back to you as soon as…ah, where will you be?”

“How should I know?” Rusch got out of his chair.

The winter night howled at his back. “I have to convene the Ministry, and make a public telecast, and get over to Staff, and—no. The devil with it! If you need me inside the next few hours, I’ll be at Sorgenlos on Ostarik. But the matter had better be urgent!”

AMONG THIEVES BACKSTORY
by Karen Anderson

Poul was a fan as well as a pro in the early years. He had been active in the Minneapolis Fantasy Society for some years before 1947 and his first sale, and on moving to Berkeley in 1953 for our marriage he naturally followed me into the Elves’, Gnomes’, and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder and Marching Society. (I’d come a few months earlier from Maryland myself and was active in the Washington Science Fiction Association.) We both threw ourselves into everything they did, including committee membership for the 1954 Worldcon and 1956 Westercon.

Poul had been so popular in the MFS that several members followed him to Berkeley; notably the Larsons and the Rostomilys. Their games were what started me on poker. We were very broke and we played for match-sticks at a tenth of a cent: I remember one lucky night when I won all of fourteen cents. That was when a copy of ASF could be had for a quarter.

But it was luck. I hadn’t developed the skills, especially while drinking, that came later in the Eastbay poker circle that included Rog and Honey Phillips, Mick McComas, Reg Bretnor, and notably Tony Boucher. And I certainly hadn’t learned by the convention when Poul and I were in that game with Hans . . .

What convention? Since the story that arose ran in ASF in 1957, I’d guess it was the ’56 Westercon, at the Leamington in Oakland. At any rate, one night we’d gone drinking late from one fan party to another until we reached one where a small group including Hans were playing penny-ante poker amongst a lot of talking. I don’t know how we first met Hans. Poul may have known him from past days, they might have struck up a correspondence through a magazine, or we may have met him first at this convention.

Penny-ante . . . we could stand that. We sat in. Besides playing, Poul and Hans did a lot of talking. Eventually I ran out of change and didn’t want to break into a dollar, and Poul thought it was time for bed. The other players, including Hans, wanted us to stay. He wanted to give me something to go on with, but Poul demurred. So Hans offered us an exchange. “Put my name in a story,” he said, “and I’ll stake Karen to a dollar’s worth of pennies.”

And so it was agreed:

Poul was to write a story with him as a lead character who was a thoroughgoing villain. Moreover, his name was to be given in full: Hans von Thoma Rusch.

Hence Poul’s idea of a villainous character.

Editor’s Introduction to:
“FLY-BY-NIGHT”
by Larry Niven

Larry Niven has been building the Known Space universe for fifty years. He started when science fiction was in a phase known as New Wave, concentrating on character development over story. Niven wrote imaginative hard science fiction, and his stories restored that to favor, largely with stories of Known Space. When our friend, editor, and publisher Jim Baen suggested that Larry open up Known Space for others to write stories in, he initially declined, then thought it over and allowed contributions to one period—the Man/Kzin Wars.

The Kzinti were already known to readers, and in fact had inspired the tiger warrior Kilrathi in the Wing Commander universe; the series took off, and a number of well known writers contributed to it. The series continues to this day.

The first of the Man/Kzin wars took place in a universe in which neither race had learned faster than light travel, and continued long after both Kzinti and humanity learned how to travel faster than light. There were four wars, each deadly, and each of which threatened the existence of the human race. This story takes place after the wars ended in a complicated treaty called the Covenant, but could start again at any time.

Most Kzinti owe allegiance to the Patriarchy. They have many customs. One is that they must earn a name; otherwise they have only designations. Fly-By-Night belongs to a very unusual group of Kzinti with a different history, but he is Kzin.

Human customs have also changed, as we developed near immortality and star drives. The galaxy is a big place, and there may even be ways to get outside it. The universe is very large. The Covenant allows Man and Kzin to live in peace.

The Covenant may not last forever. Perhaps there will be war.

“FLY-BY-NIGHT”
by Larry Niven

The windows in Odysseus had been skylights. The doors had become hatches. I ran down the corridor looking at numbers. Seven days we’d been waiting for aliens to appear in the ship’s lobby, and nothing!

Nothing until now. I felt good. Excited. I ran full tilt, not from urgency but because I could. I’d expected to reach Home as frozen meat in one of these Ice Class cargo modules.

I reached 36, stooped and punched the steward’s bell. Just as the door swung down, I remembered not to grin.

A nightmare answered.

It looked like an octopus underwater, except for the vest. At the roots of five eel’s-tail segments each four feet long, eyes looked up at me. We never see Jotoki often enough to get used to them. The limbs clung to a ladder that would cross the cabin ceiling when the gravity generators were on.

I said, “Legal Entity Paradoxical, I have urgent business with Legal Entity Fly-By-Night.”

The Jotok started to say, “Business with my master—” when its master appeared below it on the ladder.

This was the nightmare I’d been expecting: five to six hundred pounds of orange and sienna fur, sienna commas marking the face, needle teeth just showing points, looking up at me out of a pit. Fly-By-Night wore a kind of rope vest, pockets all over it, and buttons or corks on the points of all ten of its finger claws.

“—is easily conducted in virtual fashion,” the Jotok concluded.

What I’d been about to say went clean out of my head. I asked, “Why the buttons?”

Lips pulled back over a forest of carnivore teeth, LE Fly-By-Night demanded, “Who are you to question me?”

“Martin Wallace Graynor,” I said. Conditioned reflex.

The reading I’d done suggested that a killing snarl would leave a Kzin mute, able to express himself only by violence. Indeed, his lips wanted to retract, and it turned his Interworld speech mushy. “LE Graynor, by what authority do you interrogate me?”

My antic humor ran away with me. I patted my pockets elaborately.“Got it somewhere–”

“Shall we look for it?”

“I–”

“Written on your liver?”

“I have an idea. I could stop asking impertinent questions?”

“A neat solution.” Silently the door swung up.

Ring.

The Jotok may well have been posing himself between me and his enraged master, who was still wearing buttons on his claws, and smiling. I said, “Don’t kill me. The Captain has dire need of you and wishes that you will come to the main workstation in all haste.”

The Kzin leapt straight up with a half turn to get past the Jotok and pulled himself into the corridor. I did a pretty good backward jump myself.

Fly-By-Night asked, “Do you know why the Captain might make such a request?”

“I can guess. Haste is appropriate.”

“Had you considered using the intercom, or virtual mail?”

“Captain Preiss may be afraid they can listen to our electronics.”

“They?”

“Kzinti spacecraft. The Captain hopes you can identify them and help negotiate.”

He stripped off the corks and dropped them in a pocket. His lips were all right now. “This main workstation, would it be a control room or bridge?”

“I’ll guide you.”

***

The Kzin was twisted over by some old injury. His balance was just a bit off. His furless pink tail lashed back and forth, for balance or for rage. The tip knocked both walls, toc toc toc. I’d be whipped bloody if I tried to walk beside him. I stayed ahead.

The Jotok trailed us well back from the tail. It wore a five-armhole vest with pockets. It used four limbs as legs. One it held stiff. I pictured a crippled Kzin buying a crippled Jotok…but Paradoxical had been agile enough climbing the ladder. I must have missed something.

The file on Jotoki said to call it they, but that just felt wrong.

“Piracy,” the Kzin said, “would explain why everything is on its side.”

“Yah. They burned out our thruster. The Captain had to spin us up with attitude jets.”

“I don’t know that weapon. Speak of the ship,” he said. “One? Kzinti?”

“One ship popped up behind us and fired on us as it went past. It’s a little smaller than Odysseus. Then a Kzin called us. Act of war, he said. Get the Captain to play that for you. He spoke Interworld. . . not as well as you.” Fly-By-Night talked like he’d grown up around humans. Maybe he was from Fafnir. “The ship stopped twenty million miles distant and sent a boat. That’s on its way here now. Our telescopes pick up markings in the Heroes’ Tongue. We can’t read them.”

He said, “If we were traveling faster than light, we could not be intercepted. Did your Captain consider that?”

“Better you should ask, why are we out of hyperdrive? LE Fly-By-Night, there is an extensive star-building region between Fafnir and Home. Going through the Tao Gap in Einstein space is easier than going around and gives us a wonderful view, but we’re in it now. Stuck. We can’t send a hyperwave help call, we can’t jump to hyperdrive, because there’s too much mass around us.”

“Odysseus has no weapons,” the Kzin said.

“I don’t have actual rank aboard Odysseus. I don’t know what weapons we have.” And I wouldn’t tell a Kzin.

He said, “I learned that before I boarded. Odysseus is a modular cargo ship. Some of the modules are passenger cabins. Outbound Enterprises could mount weapons modules, but they never have. None of their other commuter ships are any better. The other ship, how is it armed?”

“Looks like an archaic Kzinti warship, disarmed. Gun ports slagged and polished flat. We haven’t had a close look, but ships like that are all over known space since before I was born. Armed Kzinti wouldn’t be allowed to land. Whatever took out our gravity motors isn’t showing. It must be on the boat.”

“Why is this corridor so long?”

Odysseus was a fat disk with motors and tanks in the center, a corridor around the rim, slots outboard to moor staterooms and cargo modules. That shape makes it easy to spin up if something goes wrong with the motors…which was still common enough a century ago, when Odysseus was built.

In the ship’s map display I’d seen stateroom modules widely separated, so I’d hacked the passenger manifest. That led me to read up on Kzinti and Jotoki. The first secret to tourism is, read everything.

I said, “Some LE may have decided not to put a Kzin too close to human passengers. They put you two in a four-passenger suite and mounted it all the way around clockwise. My single and two doubles and the crew quarters and an autodoc are all widdershins.” That put the aliens’ module right next to the lobby, not far apart at all, but the same fool must have sealed off access from the aliens’ suite. Despite the Covenants, some people don’t like giving civil rights to Kzinti.

I’d best not say that. “We’re the only other live passengers. The modules between are cargo, so these,” I stamped on a door, “don’t currently open on anything.”

“If you are not a ship’s officer,” the Kzin asked, “what is your place on the bridge?”

I said, “Outbound Enterprises was getting ready to freeze me. Shashter cops pulled me out. They had questions regarding a murder.”

“Have you killed?” His ears flicked out like little pink fans. I had his interest.

“I didn’t kill Ander Smittarasheed. He took some cops down with him, and he’d killed an ARM agent. ARMs are—”

“United Nations police and war arm, Sol system, but their influence spreads throughout human space.”

“Well, they couldn’t question Smittarasheed, and I’d eaten dinner with him a few days earlier. I told them we met in Pacifica City at a water war game…anyway, I satisfied the law, they let me loose. I was just in time to board, and way too late to get myself frozen and into a cargo module. Outbound Enterprises upgraded me. Very generous.

“So Milcenta and Jenna—my mate and child are frozen in one of these,” I stamped on a door, “and I’m up here, flying First Class at Ice Class expense. My cabin’s a closet, so we must be expected to spend most of our time in the lobby. In here.” I pushed through.

***

This trip there were two human crew, five human passengers and the aliens. The lobby would have been roomy for thrice that. Whorls of couches and tables covered a floor with considerable space above it for free fall dancing. That feature didn’t generally get much use.

An observation dome exposed half the sky. It opened now on a tremendous view of the Nursery Nebula.

Under spin gravity, several booths and the workstations had rolled up a wall. There was a big airlock. The workstations were two desk-and-couch modules in the middle.

Hans and Hilde Van Zild were in one of the booths. Homers coming back from Fafnir, they held hands tightly and didn’t talk. Recent events had them extremely twitchy. They were both over two hundred years old. I’ve known people in whom that didn’t show, but in these it did.

Their kids were hovering around the workstations watching the Captain and First Officer at work, asking questions that weren’t being answered.

We’d been given vac packs. More were distributed around the lobby and along the corridor. Most ships carry them. You wear it as a bulky fanny pack. If you pull a tab, or if it’s armed and pressure drops to zero, it blows up into a refuge. Then you hope you can get into it and zip it shut before your blood boils.

Heidi Van Zild looked around. “Oh, good! You brought them!” The little girl snatched up two more vac packs, ran two steps toward us and froze.

The listing said Heidi was near forty. Her brother Nicolaus was thirty; the trip was his birthday present. Their parents must have had their development arrested. They looked the same age, ten years old or younger, bright smiles and sparkling eyes, hair cut identically in a golden cockatoo crest.

It’s an attitude, a lifestyle. You put off children until that second century is running out. Now they’re precious. They’ll live forever. Let them take their time growing up. Keep them awhile longer. Keep them pure. Give them a real education. Any mistake you make as a parent, there will be time to correct that too. When you reverse the procedure and allow them to reach puberty they’ll be better at it.

I know people who do that to kittens.

Some of a child’s rash courage is ignorance. By thirty it’s gone. The little girl’s smile was a rictus. Aliens were here for her entertainment; she would not willingly miss any part of the adventure; but she just couldn’t make herself approach the Kzin or his octopus servant. The boy hadn’t even tried.

First Officer Quickpony finished what she’d been doing. She stood in haste, took the vacuum packs from Heidi and handed them to the aliens. “Fly-By-Night, thank you for coming. Thank you, Mart. You’d be Paradoxical?”

The woman’s body language invited a handshake, but the Jotok didn’t. “Yes, we are Paradoxical, greatly pleased to meet you.”

The Kzin snarled a question in the Heroes’ Tongue. Everybody’s translators murmured in chorus, “Is this the bridge?”

Quickpony said, “Bridge and lobby, they’re the same space. You didn’t know? We wondered why you never came around.”

“I was not told of this option. There is merit in the posture that one species should not see another eat or mate or use the recycle port. But, LE Quickpony, your security is a joke! Bridge and passengers and no barrier? When did you begin building ships this way?”

Captain Preiss looked up. He said, “Software flies us. I can override, but I can disable the override. Hijackers can’t affect that.”

“What of your current problem? Did you record the Kzin’s demand?”

The Captain spoke a command.

A ghostly head and shoulders popped up on the holostage, pale orange but for two narrow, lofty black eyebrows. “I am Mee-rowreet. Call me Envoy. I speak for the Longest War.”

My translator murmured, “Mee-rowreet, profession, manages livestock in a hunting park. Longest War, Kzin term for evolution.”

The recording spoke Interworld, but with a strong accent and flat grammar. “We seek a fugitive. We have destroyed your gravity motors. We will board you following the Covenants sworn at Shasht at twenty-five naught five your dating. Obey, never interfere,” the ghost head and voice grew blurred, “give us what we demand. You will all survive.”

“The signal was fuzzed out by distance,” Captain Preiss said. “The ship came up from behind and passed us at two hundred KPS relative, twenty minutes after we dropped out of hyperdrive. It’s ahead of us by two light minutes, decelerated to match our speed.”

I said, speaking low, “Please madam,” alerting my pocket computer, “seek interstellar law, document Covenants of Shasht date twenty-five-oh-five. Run it.”

Fly-By-Night looked up into the dome. “Your intruder?”

We were deep into the Nursery Nebula. All around were walls of tenuous interstellar dust lit from within. In murky secrecy, intersecting shock waves from old supernovae were collapsing the interstellar murk into hot whirlpools that would one day be stars and solar systems. Out of view below us, light pressure from something bright was blowing columns and streams of dust past us. It all took place in an environment tens of light years across. Furious action seemed frozen in time.

We had played at viewing the red whorl overhead. In IR you saw only the suns, paired protostars lit by gravitational collapse and the tritium flash, that had barely begun to burn. UV and X-ray showed violent flashes and plumes where planetesimals impacted, building planets. Neutrino radar showed structure forming within the new solar system.

We could not yet make out the point mass that would bend our course into the Tao Gap and out into free space. Turnpoint Star was a neutron star a few miles across, the core left by a supernova. But stare long enough and you could make out an arc on the sky, the shock wave from that same stellar explosion, broken by dust clouds collapsing into stars.

My seek system chimed. I listened to my wrist computer:

At the end of the Fourth Man-Kzin War, the Human Space Trade Alliance annexed Shasht and renamed the planet Fafnir, though the long, rocky, barren continent kept its Heroes’ Tongue name. The Covenants of Shasht were negotiated then. We were to refrain from booting Kzinti citizens off Fafnir. An easy choice: they prefer the continent, whereas humans prefer the coral islands. They were already expanding an interstellar seafood industry into Patriarchy space.

In return, and having little choice, the Patriarch barred himself, his clan and all habitats under his command, all others to be considered outlaw, from various acts. Eating of human meat…willful destruction of habitats…biological weapons of certain types…killing of Legal Entities, that word defined by a long list of exclusions, a narrower definition than in most human laws.

Futz, I wasn’t a Legal Entity! Or I wouldn’t be if they learned who I was.

***

Quickpony projected a virtual lens on the dome. I’d finish listening later. The Kzinti ship and its boat, vastly magnified, showed black with the red whorl behind them. There was enough incident light to pick out some detail.

For a bare instant we had seen the intruder coming up behind us, just as our drive juddered and died and left us floating. After it slowed to a relative stop, a boat had detached. The approaching boat blocked off part of the ship. Gamma rays impacting their magnetic shields made two arcs of soft white glow. Ship and boat bore the same glowing markings.

The ship was moving just as we were, its drive off, falling through luminous murk toward Turnpoint Star at a tenth of lightspeed.

First Officer Helm said, “Odysseus’s security systems can deal with hijackers, but they’re just not much use against an armed warship. Is that what we’re seeing?”

“I see a small warship designed for espionage and hunting. I don’t know the make. My knowledge is too old. The name reads Sraff-zisht.” My translator said, “Stealthy mating.”

Fly-By-Night continued, “Captain, I can’t see, are there magnetic moorings on Sraff-zisht?”

“No need. Those big magnets on the boat would lock to the ship’s gamma ray shielding.”

“The boat is armed, the ship is not? There is no bay for the boat? Understood. Leave the boat in hiding among asteroids. Land an unarmed converted cargo ship on any civilized world. Yes?”

“Speculative,” Preiss said.

“Do you recognize the weapon?”

“No. I assume it’s what burned out our thrusters…our gravity motors.”

I sat and dialed a cappuccino. The Kzin joined me, dwarfing the booth. I dialed another with double milk, thinking he ought to try it.

The other passengers shrank back a little and waited. Any human being knows how to fear a Kzin.

I said, speaking low, “Pleasemadam, seek Heroes’ Tongue references, stealthy mating, literal, no reference to rape.” There had to be a way to narrow that further. I guessed: “Seek biological references only. Run it.”

Fly-By-Night tasted the cappuccino.

Captain Preiss said, “Why would they be interested in us?”

“In me. The boat is close.” Fly-By-Night sipped again. “Do you know of the Angel’s Pencil?”

The Kzin was speaking Interworld as smoothly as if he’d grown up with the language. Some of us gaped. But his first words to me had been Interworld, after I startled and angered him…and he liked cappuccino.

Fly-By-Night said, “Angel’s Pencil was a slowboat, one of Sol system’s slower-than-light colony craft. Four hundred years ago, Angel’s Pencil sent word of our coming. Sol system was given years to prepare. My ancestor Shadow contrived to board Pencil after allying himself with a human captive, Selena Guthlac. He and she joined their crew.”

“That must have been one futz of a makeup job,” Nicolaus Van Zild said.

“He had to stoop and keep his ears folded, and depilate! Whose story is this, boy?” Nicolaus grinned. The Kzin said, “Angel’s Pencil’s crew had already destroyed Tracker. They later destroyed Gutting Claw, the first and second kills of the First War, not bad for a ship with no intended armaments.

“Pencil was forced to pass through Patriarchy space before they found a world to settle. None of those ramscoop ships were easy to turn, and none were built for more than one voyage. We were ninety light years from Earth. One hundred and six years had passed on Earth.”

I asked, “We?”

“Gutting Claw’s Telepath, later named Shadow, is our first sire. Pencil rescued six females from the Admiral’s harem. Our species have lived together on Sheathclaws for three hundred years. We remained cut off. Any message laser aimed at human space would pass through the Patriarchy. We spoke with no sapient species, we did not even know of faster-than-light travel, until….” Fly-By-Night looked up.

Stealthy-Mating’s boat had arrived. We were looking directly into an obtrusively large electromagnetic weapon.

Nicolaus asked, “Can you read minds?”

“No, child. Some of us are good at guessing, but we don’t have the drug. Where was I?” Fly-By-Night said, “They told me in the hospital after my first failed name quest. The universe had opened up—” He cut himself off as a furry face popped into hologram space in the workstation.

“I am Envoy. I speak for the Longest War. Terminate your spin. Open the airlock.”

Captain Preiss nodded to Quickpony. Reaction motors whispered, slowing us.

Fly-By-Night spoke more rapidly. “Boarding seems imminent. You cannot protect me. Give me to them. If you live long enough to speak to your people, tell them that three grown males left Sheathclaws on our name quests. Half our genes derive from Shadow, from a telepath. The Patriarch needs telepaths. Now he will learn of a world peopled by Gutting Claw’s telepath, none of whom has felt the addiction to sthondat lymph in three hundred years.”

Gravity eased away until sideways thrust was all there was, and then that was gone too. Odysseus’s outer airlock door opened.

The boat thumped into place against our hull. The older Van Zilds and I had our seat webs in place. The children floated, clinging to the arms of couches.

“They will have my genes. They will find Sheathclaws,” Fly-By-Night concluded. “You will face my children in the next war, if they have their way.”

Two big pressure-suit shapes left the boat on jet packs. One entered the lock. We heard it cycle. The other waited on the hull, to shoot the dome out if he saw resistance.

The inner door opened. The armored Kzin entered in a leap, up and into the dome where his companions could see him, a half turn to keep us in view. In his hand was a light that he aimed like a weapon. He was graceful as a fish.

I squinted to save my vision. The light played over every part of the lobby and workstation. What he saw must have been reassuring.

Envoy said, “We have demands. The Covenants will be followed where possible. All losses will be paid. Give us your passenger. He is in violation of our law. Fly-By-Night, is this Jotok your slave?”

“Yes.”

“Fly-By-Night, Jotok, you must enter your vacuum packs. Fly-By-Night, give your w’tsai to Packer.”

“W’tsai?” Fly-By-Night asked. “This? My knife?”

“Carefully.”

Giving up his w’tsai was the ultimate surrender. If I knew that from my reading, surely a Kzin knew it. Three hundred years among humans…. Had they lost the tradition?

But Fly-By-Night was offering a silver knife-prong-spoon ten inches long and dark with tarnish.

A spoony? We ate with those! They matched several shapes of digits and were oversized for human hands. Odysseus’s kitchen melted the silver to kill bacteria, then squirted it into molds for the next meal.

Packer took it, stared at it, then showed it to Envoy’s hologram. Envoy snarled in the Heroes’ Tongue. He wasn’t buying it.

Our passenger answered in Interworld. “Yes, mine! See, here is my symbol,” the sign of Outbound Enterprises, a winged craft black against a crescent world. “Fly by night!”

A laugh would be bad. I looked at the children. They looked solemn.

Of Packer’s weapon I saw only a glare of light. But he held it on Fly-By-Night as if it had to fire something deadly, and he snarled a command and lashed out with his tail. Under the minor impact Fly-By-Night spun slowly so that Packer could examine him for more weapons.

He snarled again. Fly-By-Night and Paradoxical pulled tabs on vacuum packs. The packs popped into double-walled spheres. Held open by higher pressure, the collar on each refuge inflated like a pair of fat lips.

Fly-By-Night had trouble wriggling through the collar. Once inside he had room. These vacuum refuges would have held the whole Van Zild family. Paradoxical looked quite lost in his.

Envoy spoke. “Captain, you carry human passengers frozen in three cargo modules. Release these modules.”

The world went gray.

I began to breath deep and hard, to hyperoxygenate, because I dared not faint.

Captain Preiss’s hands hadn’t moved. That was brave, but it wouldn’t save anyone.

The elder Van Zilds buried their faces in each other’s shoulders. The children were horrified and fascinated. They watched everything. Once I caught them looking at their parents in utter contempt.

Like them, I had been half enjoying the situation.

This would have been my last interstellar flight. Chance had me riding not as frozen cargo, but as a passenger, aware and entertained.

Flying the ship would have been more fun, of course.

Quickpony had suggested joining our cabins, as we were the obvious unpaired pair. I showed Quickpony videos displayed by the circuitry in my ring. Our lockstep ceremony. Jenna/Jeena just a year old. Sharrol/Milcenta not yet pregnant again; I should have updated while I could. We are lockstepped, see, here is our ring. Quickpony admired and dropped the subject.

And that left what for entertainment?

Kzinti hijackers!

I’d treated it like a game until Stealthy-Mating claimed my family. Bound into my couch by a crash web, I let my hand rest on the release while I considered what weapons I might have at hand.

Lips drawn back, fangs showing, Envoy’s speech was turning mushy. “Examine the Covenants, Captain Preiss. They were never altered. We take only hostages. They will be returned unharmed when our needs are satisfied. Compensation will be paid for every cost incurred.”

“What crime do you claim against Fly-By-Night?” Quickpony asked.

“His ancestor committed treason against his officers and the Patriarch. Penalties hold against his blood line forever. We may claim his life, but we will not. We value his blood line.”

“Has Fly-By-Night committed a crime?”

“False identity. Purchase of a Jotok without entitlement. Trivia.”

Dumb and happy Mart Graynor wasn’t the type to carry weapons aboard a spacecraft. The recorded Covenant of 2505 might be the only weapon I had. I let it play in one ear. The old diplomatic language was murky….

Here it was. Hostages are to be returned in health if all conditions met, conditions not to be altered…costs to be assessed in time of peace at earliest….

Was I supposed to bet lives on this?

Heidi asked, “Do you eat human meat?”

Packer and the hologram both turned to the girl. Envoy said, “Hostages. I have said. The Covenants say. Kitten, we consider human meat to be…whasht-meery…unsafe. Captain Preiss, the modules we want are all addressed to Outbound on Home, yes? We will deliver them. Else we would face all the navies of human space.”

Preiss said, “I have no such confidence.”

Packer kicked down from the dome. He set his huge hands on the girl’s waist and looked into her face. He still hadn’t spoken.

Nicolaus screamed and leapt. As he came at the armored Kzin, Packer reached out and wrapped both children against his armored chest. They looked up through the bubble helmet into a Kzin’s smile.

Nicolaus bared his teeth.

Envoy said, “Pause, Packer! Captain Preiss, think! Without gravity generators you must still fall around Turnpoint Star and into flat space. Hyperdrive will take you to the edge of Home system. Call for help to tow you the rest of the way. What other path have we? We might smash your hyperdrive and hyperwave and leave you to die here, silenced, but your absence at Home will set the law seeking us.

“This is the better risk, to violate no law unless we must. We take hostages. You must not call your authorities until you arrive near Home. We will transport our prisoner, then deliver your passengers.”

Packer’s arms were full of children: hampered. Preiss and Quickpony were on a hair trigger. I was unarmed, but if they moved, I would.

“Wait,” Envoy said. Preiss still hadn’t moved. “You carry stock from Shasht? Sea life?”

“Yes.”

“I must speak with my leader. Lightspeed gap is two minutes each way. Do nothing threatening.”

We heard Envoy yowling into his communicator. Then nothing.

My pocket computer dinged.

Everyone twitched, yelped or looked around. Heidi floated to the rim of my booth and listened over my shoulder.

Sea lions around the Earth’s poles live in large communities built around one alpha male, many females and their pups, and several beta males that live around the edges of the herd. When the alpha male is otherwise occupied, an exile may rush in and mate hurriedly with a female and escape. Several species of Earth’s mammals have adapted such a breeding strategy, as have life forms on Kzin and even many Kzinti clans. Biologists, particularly reproductive biologists, call them sneaky-fuckers.

I said, “Maybe there’s a more polite term for the journals. Anyway, good name for a spy ship. Pleasemadam, seek Longest War plus Kzinti plus piracy, run it.”

We waited.

When Hans Van Hild couldn’t stand the silence any more, he said, “Heidi, Nicolaus, I’m sorry. We should have let you grow up.”

“Hans!”

“Yes, Hilde, there was all the time in the world. Hilde, there’s never time. Never a way to know.”

Envoy spoke. “Release one of the modules for Outbound Enterprises and two addressed to Neptune’s Empire. The passengers will be returned. Neptune’s Empire will be recompensed for their stock.”

Fish?

Captain Preiss’s fingertips danced. Three cargo modules slowly rose out of the rim. I felt utterly helpless.

Packer left the children floating. He pushed Fly-By-Night’s balloon toward the airlock.

I said, “Wait.”

The armored Kzin turned. I squinted against the glare of his weapon. “We do not permit slavery aboard Odysseus,” I said. “Odysseus belongs to the Human Space Trade Alliance. The Jotok stays.”

“Who are you? Where derives your authority?” Envoy demanded.

“Martin Wallace Graynor. No authority, but the law—”

“Fly-By-Night purchased a Jotok and holds him as property. We hold Fly-By-Night as property. Local law crawls before interspecies covenants. The Jotok comes. Are you concerned for the well-being of the Jotok?”

I said, “Yes.”

“You shall observe if he is mistreated. Enter a vacuum refuge now.”

I caught Quickpony’s horror. She spun around to search her screen display of the Covenants for some way to stop this. Packer pulled Fly-By-Night toward the airlock. He wasn’t waiting.

Neither did I. I launched myself gently toward the refuge that held the Jotok.

It would not have occurred to me to hug the only available little girl before I disappeared into the Nursery Nebula. I launched, Heidi launched, and she was in my path, arms spread, bawling. I hugged her, let our momentum turn us, whispered something reassuring and let go. She drifted toward a wall, I toward the Jotok’s bubble.

She’d put something bulky in my zip pocket.

I crawled through the collar into the Jotok’s vacuum refuge and zipped the lips closed.

Packer pushed Fly-By-Night into the airlock, closed it, cycled it. His armored companion on the hull pulled the bubble into space. Packer came back for us and cycled us through.

***

Two bubbles floated outside Odysseus, slowly rotating, slowly diverging. Packer was still in Odysseus.

The boat jerked into motion. We watched as it maneuvered above one of the brick-shaped cargo modules attached to Odysseus. A pressure-armored Kzin stood below, guiding.

Nobody was coming after us.

The Jotok asked, “Martin, was that sane? What were you thinking?”

I said, “Pleasemadam, seek interspecies diplomacy plus Kzinti plus Longest War. Run it. Paradoxical, I was thinking of a rescue. I tried to bust you loose. You know more about Fly-By-Night than I could ever learn. I need what you can tell me.”

“You have no authority to question us,” the Jotok said, “unless you hold ARM authority.”

I laughed harder than he would have expected. “I’m not an ARM. No authority at all. Do you want Fly-By-Night freed? Do you want your own freedom?”

“We had that! LE Graynor, when Fly-By-Night bought us from the orange underground market on Shasht, he swore to free us. On Sheathclaws chains of lakes run from mountains to sea. We would have bred in their lakes. All of the Jotoki populace of Sheathclaws would be our descendants. We have been robbed of our destiny!”

I asked, “Did Fly-By-Night take more slaves than just you?”

“No.”

“Then who did you expect to mate with?”

“We are five! Jotoki grow like your eels, not sapient. Reach first maturity, seek each other, cluster in fives. Brains grow links. Reach second maturity, seek a lake, divide, breed and die, like your salmon. LE Mart, you yourselves are two minds joined by a structure called corpus callosum. Join is denser in Kzinti, that species has less redundancy, but still brain is two lobes. We are five lobes, narrow joins. Almost individuals cooperate, Par-Rad-Doc-Sic-Cal, Doc talks, Par walks, Cal for fine scale coordination. Almost five-lobe mind, sometimes lock in indecision. In trauma or in fresh water we may divide again. May join again to cluster differently, different person. You perceive?”

Futz, it was an interesting picture, but I’d never grasp what it was like to be Jotok. The point was that Paradoxical was a breeding population.

I asked, “Are you hungry? What do you eat?”

“Privately.”

“Didn’t Fly-By-Night see you eat?”

“Only once.”

I’d put a handmeal in my pocket, but I wouldn’t eat in front of Paradoxical after that. “Orange market?”

“An extensive market exists among the Shasht Kzinti. They trade intelligence, electronics, stolen goods and slaves. Shasht the continent is nearly lifeless. They seeded several lakes for our breeding and confinement, but without maintenance they die off. The trade could be stopped. Our lakes must show a different color from orbit. I surmise the law has no interest.”

“You once held an interstellar empire—”

“My master tells me so. The slavers don’t teach us. Properly speaking, they do not hold slaves at all. They hold fish ponds. When a purchaser wants a Jotok, five swimming forms are allowed to assemble. Our master is the first thing we see.”

“Who chose your name?”

“My master. I am free and slave, many and one, land and sea dweller, a paradox.”

“He really does think in Interworld, doesn’t he? They must teach kzinti as a second language.”

A magnetic grapple locked in place, and the first module came free.

My pocket computer dinged. We listened:

Longest War, a political entity never named until after the Second War With Men, has since been claimed by many Kzinti groups. It may appear in connection with piracy, disappearing LEs or disappearing ships, but never an action against planets or a major offensive. Claim has been made, never proved, that Longest War are any Patriarch’s servants whom the Patriarch must disclaim. We surmise also that the Longest War names any group who hope for the eye of the Patriarch. Events include 2399 Serpent Swarm, 2410 Kdat—

***

Fly-By-Night had drifted so far that he was hard to find, just a twinkle of lensed light as starfog glow passed behind his vac refuge. Why didn’t they retrieve him? Was it really Fly-By-Night they wanted, or something else?

I watched Stealthy-Mating’s boat retrieve a second cargo module. They weren’t being careful. Two of those boxes held only Fafnir’s thousand varieties of fish, but the other…was in a quantum state. It held and did not hold Sharrol/Milcenta and Jenna/Jeena, until some observer could open the module.

In all the years I’d flown for Nakamura Lines, I had never seen a vac pack used. Light years from any world, miles from any ship, with nothing but clear plastic skin between me and the ravenous vacuum…it seemed a good time to look it over.

This wasn’t the brand we’d carried. It was newer, or else a more expensive model.

Loops of tough ribbon hung everywhere: handholds. Air tank. A tube two liters in volume had popped out. Inner zip, outer zip: an airlock. We could be fed through that, or get rid of wastes…a matter I would not raise with Paradoxical just yet.

A light. A sleeve and glove taped against the wall, placed to reach the outer zip. Here was a valve…hmm…a valve ending in a little cone outside. Inside, a handle to aim it.

To any refugee there might come a moment when a jet is more important than breathing-air.

Not yet.

“Why would you want to rescue my master?” Paradoxical asked.

“They have my wife and daughter and unborn, one chance out of three. Two out of three they’re still safe aboard Odysseus. Would you bet?”

“No Jotok knows his parent. Might you find another mate and generate more children?”

I didn’t answer.

“How do you like your battle plan so far?”

I couldn’t hear sarcasm, but I inferred it. I said, “I have a spare vac pack. So does Fly-By-Night. Did you see what he did? He triggered a pack on the wall. Kept his own. And Heidi passed me something.”

“What did the girl give you?”

“Might be some kind of toy.”

The Jotok said, “Mee-rowreet means make slaves and beasts go where can be killed. Not Envoy. Whasht-meery means infested or diseased, too rotted or parasitical for even a starving predator. Prey that dies too easily, opponent who exposes belly too soon, is suspect whasht-meery.”

I waited for our spin to hide me from Stealthy-Mating’s telescopes before I pulled Heidi’s gift free.

It was foam plastic, light and bulky. A toy needle gun. If this was real, her parents…. Wait, now, Heidi was almost forty years old!

They wouldn’t think quite like human adults, these children, but their brains were as big as they were going to get. Their parents might want them able to protect themselves….and if not, she and her brother had spent decades learning how to manipulate their parents.

I couldn’t test it.

“Needle gun. Anaesthetic crystals,” I told Paradoxical. “They won’t get through armor. One wouldn’t knock out a Kzin anyway. Better than nothing, though. Where is Fly-By-Night’s w’tsai?”

“You saw.”

“Paradoxical, we are in too much trouble to be playing children’s games.”

Paradoxical said nothing.

Stealthy-Mating’s boat locked on to the third cargo module.

I said, “That was fun to watch, though. Giving Packer silverware!”

Paradoxical rotated to show me his mouth.

I saw a star of tentacles around a circle of lip enclosing five circles of tiny teeth in a pentagon. Something emerged from one circle of teeth. Paradoxical vomited up a long, narrow, padded mailing bag. I pulled it free, unzipped it, and had a yard of blade and handle.

The blade looked like dark steel. The light caught a minute ripple effect…but it was all wrong. To my fingertip’s touch the ripple was just a picture. The blade weighed almost nothing. The weight was all in the handle.

In the end of the hilt was a small black enamel bat. Bats exist only on Earth and in the zoo on Jinx, but that ancient Batman symbol has gone to every human world. Fly by night.

Futz, I had to try it on something.

My lockstep ring had a silver case. That’s a soft metal, but the blade only scratched it. I tested my thumb on the edge, gingerly. Blunt.

Customs change. A weapon can be purely ceremonial…but why make the handle so heavy? Why was Paradoxical watching me?

Because it was a puzzle.

Push the enamel bat. Nothing.

Wiggle the blade. Push it in, risk my fingers, feel it give. A Kzin could push harder. Nothing? Pull out, and my fingertips felt a hum. The look of the blade didn’t change. Carefully now, don’t touch the edge—

It sliced neatly through my lockstep ring, with a moment’s white sputter as circuitry burned out. The cut edges of the classic silver band shone like little mirrors. There should have been some resistance.

A variable-knife is violently illegal: hair-fine wire in a magnetic field, all edge and no blade, thin enough to slice through walls and machinery. Often enough it hurts the wielder. When it’s off it’s all handle, and the handle is heavy: it holds the coiled wire and the mag generator.

This toy was similar, but with a blade of fixed length, harder to hide. More sporting. A groove around the edge housed the wire until magnets raised it for action.

The onyx bat was recessed now. I pushed and it popped out. The vibration stopped.

We had a weapon.

What was keeping Packer? They had the telepath, they had hostages, they had two modules of Fafnir seafood. What was left to do in there? Get on with it. I had a weapon!

“Wait before you use it. I know my master,” the Jotok said. “He will take command of the boat. The larger ship is weaponless against it.”

“Paradoxical, he’d be fighting at least three warriors trained in free fall. Don’t forget the pilots. Four if we get as far as the ship.”

“Whasht-meery may currently be on autopilot or remote. Possession of armor does not imply training. Fly-By-Night was a champion wrestler before he was injured. We fear you’re right. But we must try!”

“Wrestler?”

“He tells me they fight with capped claws on Sheathclaws.”

Somehow I was not reassured.

***

Packer emerged.

He and his companion jetted toward Fly-By-Night’s bubble. They pulled Fly-By-Night toward the boat. Clamshell doors opened around the snout of the solenoid weapon. The three disappeared inside.

I safed and wrapped the w’tsai and gave it to the Jotok. He swallowed it, and the needler after it. He must have a straight gut…five straight guts, I thought, like fish or worms all merged at the head.

The two armored Kzinti came for us. They towed us toward the boat.

The boat was a thick lens, like Odysseus but smaller. The modules were anchored against one side. The other side was two transparent clamshell doors with the hollow solenoid sticking out between them.

The doors closed over us.

The interior had been arrayed around the solenoid weapon. There were lockers. Hatch in the floor, a smaller airlock. A kitchen wall big enough for a cruise ship, with a gaping intake hopper. A big box, detachable, with a door in it. I took that for a shower/washroom. I didn’t see a hologram stage or a mass pointer.

Mechanisms fed into the base of the main weapon. A feed for projectiles? The thing didn’t just burn out electronics, it was a linear accelerator too, a cannon.

Fly-By-Night’s vacuum refuge had been wedged between the cannon and the wall. He watched us.

The doors came down and now our balloon was wedged next to his. Gravity came on. Stealthy-Mating’s crew anchored us with a spray of glue, while a third Kzin watched from the horseshoe of a workstation. The two took their places beside him.

Four chairs; three Kzinti all in pressure suit armor. There was no separate cabin because they might have to work the cannon. It could have been worse.

They talked for a bit, mobile mouths snarling at each other inside fishbowl helmets. They fiddled with the controls. A sound of tigers fighting blasted from Paradoxical’s backpack vest. My translator murmured, “So, Telepath! Welcome back to the Patriarch’s service.”

Two or three seconds of silence followed. In that moment Odysseus abruptly shrank to a toy and was gone. Disturbing eddies played through our bodies. The boat must be making twenty or thirty gravities, but it had good shielding. This was a warcraft.

Their prisoner decided to answer. “You honor me. You may call me LE Fly-By-Night.”

“Honored you should be, Telepath, but your credit as a Legal Entity is forged, a telepath has no name, and Fly-By-Night is only a description, and in Interworld, too! Still you will command a harem before we do. We should envy you.” That voice was Envoy’s.

“Call me Fly-By-Night if I am expected to answer. Does the Patriarch still make addicts of any who show the talent?”

“You have hibernated for three centuries? We use advanced medical techniques in this age. Chemical mimic of sthondat lymph, six syllable name, more powerful, few side effects, diet additives to minimize those.”

A second Kzin voice said, “You need not taste the drug yourself, Telepath, by my alpha officer’s word.”

“Only my poor kits, then. But how well do Kzinti keep each other’s promises? I know that Odysseus was disabled despite all reassurance.”

What? Fly-By-Night had no way to know that. I was only guessing, and his vac refuge had floated further from Odysseus than our own.

But Envoy said, “All follows the Covenants sworn with men at Shasht. That was my assurance, and it is good.”

“Do those allow you to maroon a Legal Entity ship in deep space?”

“Summon them. Read them.”

“My servant carries my computer and disk library.”

The pilot tapped; we heard a click, then silence.

Paradoxical turned off his talker. “We can use this to speak to my master, but they may listen. What can you say that those oversized intestinal parasites may hear too?”

“Right now, nothing. Thrusters were yours first, weren’t they? Called the gravity planer?”

“Jotoki created gravity planers, yes. Kzinti enslaved us and stole the design. Your folk stole it from Kzinti invaders.”

“Is there anything you know about thrusters that they don’t? Something that might help?”

“No. Idiot. What we learned of gravity motors, we learned from Kzinti!”

“Futz—”

“I had thought,” Paradoxical said carefully, “that they would not keep their control room in vacuum.”

“Their hostages are all frozen. Can’t fight. Can’t escape. Maybe they like that? Anything we try now would leave us dying in vacuum. How long can a Jotok stand vacuum?”

“A few seconds, then death.”

“Humans can take a few minutes.” Humans had, and survived. It was rare. “I might go blind first. Do you mind if I think out loud for a bit?”

“Do you talk to yourself to move messages across that narrow structure in your brain, the corpus callosum?”

“I have no idea.” So I talked across my corpus callosum. “This is bad, but it could be worse. We might have been in a separate cargo hold, still in vacuum and locked out of a flight cabin.”

“Rejoice.”

“I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about Odysseus. The ship’s on a free fall course around Turnpoint Star, through the Gap and into free space. They still had hyperdrive and hyperwave and the attitude jets, last I saw. Attitude jets are just fusion reaction motors. That won’t take them anywhere. Hyperdrive only works in flat space, so it won’t get them into a solar system. They could still cross to Home system, call for help and get a tow. Two weeks?”

“Envoy said all of that to Captain Preiss. Wait—but—stop—didn’t Envoy confess otherwise?”

“I heard. Futz.” Fly-By-Night had done that very cleverly. But Envoy hadn’t confessed; he had only insisted that he had not violated the Covenants.

“We’d better assume Packer shot up the control board. That would leave Odysseus as an inert box of hostages. Leave them falling. Retrieve them later.”

Paradoxical said nothing.

“Next problem. Fly-By-Night can’t get out of his refuge.”

“Surely—”

“No, look, he can’t slash his way out. He’s got only his claws. He can zip it open. All the air spews out, and now he can try to get through the opening. He’s too big. He’d die in vacuum while he was trying to wiggle free with those three laughing at him.”

“Yes. Less than flexible, human and Kzinti. Are you small enough to get through the collar?”

“Yes.” I was pretty sure. “Now, we can’t warn Fly-By-Night. Any fighting, I’ll have to start it. You’re dead if I slash the refuge open, so I don’t. I unzip it. Air pressure blows me out, poof. You zip it behind me quick so the refuge re-inflates. I’m in vacuum. I slash Fly-By-Night’s refuge wide open and hand him the w’tsai. We’re both fighting in vacuum against three Kzinti in pressure armor. How does it sound?”

“Beyond madness.”

“There’s no point anyway. If we could take the boat, we still couldn’t break lightspeed, because the hyperdrive motor is on the ship. We’d die of old age here in the Nursery Nebula.”

“You don’t have a plan?”

I was still feeling it out. “The only way out has us waiting for these bandits to berth the boat to Stealthy-Mating. Maybe it’s a good thing Fly-By-Night doesn’t have his w’tsai. Kzinti self control is…there’s a word—”

“Oxymoron. But my master integrates selves well.”

“They’ll have to move the cargo modules inside the ship. Can’t leave them where they are, they’re blocking the magnets, the docking points. Where does that leave us? Whatever we do, we want the ship and the boat. After they berth the boat, likely enough they’ll still leave the cabin in vacuum and us in these bubbles.”

“My kind can survive six days without food. Two without water.”

***

Two of the Kzinti crew might have been asleep. The third wasn’t doing much.

One presently stirred—Envoy, by his suit markings—got up and disappeared into the big box with a door in it. Fifteen minutes later he was back.

Wouldn’t a shower or a toilet have to be under pressure?

I watched my alien companions and my alien enemies. I watched the magnificent pageant of stars being born. I thought and I read.

Read everything.

Covenants of 2505. Commentary, then and recent. Kzinti sociology. Revisions: what constitutes torture…loss of limbs and organs…sensory deprivation. Violations. The right to a speedy trial, to speedy execution, not to be evaded. What is a Legal Entity….

Male Kzinti were LEs. A computer program was not. Heidi and Nicolaus were not, poor kids, but Kzin kittens weren’t either; it was a matter of maturity as an evolved being. Jotoki and Kdat were LEs unless legitimately enslaved. Entities with forged identities were not. Ice Class passengers were LEs. Good! Was there a rule against lying to hostages? Of course not, but I looked.

Paradoxical produced a computer from his backpack and went to work. I didn’t ask what he might be learning.

I did not see Fly-By-Night tearing at his prison. When I caught his eye, I clawed at my own bubble. Our captors might be reassured if they saw some sign of hysterics, of despair.

He didn’t take the hint.

Maybe I had him all wrong.

A telepath born among the Kzinti will be found as a kzitten, conscripted, and addicted to chemicals to bring out his ability. Telepaths detect spies and traitors; they assist in jurisprudence; they gradually go crazy. Alien minds drive them crazy much faster.

If a telepath feels an opponent’s pain, he can’t easily fight for mates. For generations the Patriarchy discouraged their telepaths from breeding. Then, battling an alien enemy during the Man-Kzin Wars, they burned them out.

Probably Envoy had spoken truth: what the Kzinti wanted from Fly-By-Night was more telepaths.

They’d get the location of Sheathclaws out of him. After they had what they wanted, they’d give him a harem. They’d imprison him in luxury. Envoy had said they wouldn’t force the drug on him; it might be true.

A Kzin might settle for that.

I could come blasting out of my plastic bottle, screaming my air away, w’tsai swinging…cut him loose, and find myself fighting alone while he blew up another bubble for himself.

Fly-By-Night floated quite still, very relaxed, ears folded. He might have been asleep. He might have been watching his three captors guide the boat toward Stealthy-Mating.

I watched their ears. Ears must make it hard for a Kzin to lie. Lying to a hologram might be easier…and they wouldn’t have called him Envoy for nothing.

Flick-flick of ears, bass meeping, a touch on the controls. We were flying through a lethal intensity of gamma rays.

The Jotok’s armtips rippled over his keyboard. His computer was a narrow strip of something stiff; he’d glued or velcroed it to the bubble wall. The keyboard and holoscreen were projections. I knew the make—“Paradoxical? Isn’t that a Gates Quintillian?”

“Yes. Human-built computers are superior to Patriarchy makes.”

“Oh, that explains the corks! Fly-By-Night’s fingers are too big for the keyboard, so he puts corks on his nails!”

The Jotok said, “You are Beowulf Shaeffer.”

I spasmed like an electrocuted frog, then turned to gawk at him. “How can you possibly…?”

How can you possibly think that a seven-foot-tall albino has lost fourteen inches of height and got himself curly black hair and a tan?

Hair dye and tannin secretion pills, and futz that, we had real trouble. I asked, “Have you spent three hours researching me?”

“You are the only ally at hand. I need to understand you better. You are wanted by the ARM for conspiracy abduction, four counts.”

“Four?”

“Sharrol Janss, Carlos Wu, and two children. Feather Filip is your suspect co-conspirator. ARM interest seems to lie in the lost genes of Carlos Wu, but Sharrol Janss is alleged to be a flat phobe, hence would never have left Earth willingly.”

“We all ran away together.”

“My interest lies in your abilities, not your crimes. You were a civilian spacecraft pilot. Were you trained for agility in free fall?”

“Yes. Any emergency in a spacecraft, gravity is the first thing that goes.”

“You’re agile if you’ve escaped the ARM thus far. What has your reading gained you?”

“We have to live. We have to win.”

“These would be good ideas—”

“No, you don’t get it.” The Jotok had to understand. “The Covenants of 2505 permit taking of hostages. They only put restrictions on their treatment. I’ve played those futzy documents three times through. Odysseus is hostages-in-a-box, live and frozen. They won’t starve. Envoy can take Fly-By-Night anywhere he likes, however long it takes, then come back and release Odysseus. It’s all in the Covenants.”

“If anything goes wrong,” Paradoxical said, “they would never come.”

“No, it’s worse than that! If everything goes right for them, there’s no good reason to go back unless it’s to fill the food lockers! The Covenants only apply when you’re caught. My family is one hundred percent dead if we can’t change that.”

“Envoy’s word may be good. No! Bad gamble. We should study the pot odds. Beowulf, have you evolved a plan?”

“I don’t know enough.”

The three crew were awake now, watching us as we watched them, though mostly they watched Fly-By-Night.

Paradoxical’s talker burst to life. My translator said, “Tell us of the fight that injured you.”

Fly-By-Night was slow to answer. “Sheathclaws folk are fond of hang gliding. We make much bigger hang gliders for Kzinti, and not so many of us fly. I was near grown, seeking a name. My intent was to fly from Blood Park to Touchdown, three hundred klicks along rocky shore and then inland, at night. Land in Offcentral Park. Startle humans into fits.”

Packer snarled, “Startling humans is no fit way to earn a name!” and the unnamed Kzin asked, “Wouldn’t the thermals be different at night?”

Fly-By-Night said, “Very different.”

“Your second naming quest brought you here,” Envoy stated.

“Yes. I hoped that a scarred Kzin might pass among other Kzinti. Challenge would be less likely. Any lapse in knowledge might be due to head injury. I might pass more easily on a world part Kzin and part human, like Shasht-Fafnir.”

“You dance lightly over an important matter. Who lifted you from your world?”

“Where would be my honor if I told you that?”

“Smugglers? Bandits? What species? You will give us that too, Nameless.” We heard the click: communication severed.

One of the Kzinti stood up. Another slashed the vacuum, a mere wrist gesture, but the first sat down again. The stars wheeled…and something that was not a star came into view, brilliant in pure laser colors: Stealthy-Mating’s riding lights.

I said, “We’re about to dock. If anything happens, you keep the needle sprayer, I want the blade. Closing the zipper turns on the air, so don’t lose that.”

“No fear,” said Paradoxical.

Gravity went away. We floated. The ships danced about each other. I would have docked less recklessly. I’m not a Kzin.

“They know too much about us,” I said.

Paradoxical asked, “In what context?”

“They knew our manifest. They knew our position—”

“Finding another ship in interstellar space is not a thing they could plan, Beowulf.”

“LE Graynor to you. Look at it this way,” I said. “The only way to get here, falling through the Tao Gap in Einstein space, is to be going from Fafnir to Home. Stealthy-Mating got our route somehow. They started later with a faster ship. They might catch us approaching Home during deceleration…track our graviton wake…or snatch you and Fly-By-Night after you got through Customs. They could not possibly have expected to find Odysseus here. Catching us here was a fluke, an opportunity. They grabbed it.”

“As you say.”

“I like it.”

Paradoxical stared. “Do you? Why?”

“Clients, overlords, allies, any kind of support would have to be told that Stealthy-Mating is on route to Home. Any rendezvous with Stealthy-Mating is at Home. When could they change that? They’re still headed for Home!”

“Very speculative.”

“I know.”

***

Stealthy-Mating’s cargo bay was bigger than the boat’s, under doors that opened like wings.

The boat released the cargo modules. Two Kzinti went out and began moving them. Envoy stayed behind. He watched the action in space, ignoring us.

“Not yet,” Paradoxical said. I nodded. Fly-By-Night floated half curled up. He seemed to be asleep, but his ears kept flicking open like little fans.

I ate my handmeal. Paradoxical averted its eyes.

Packer and the nameless third crewperson set the modules moving one by one, and juggled them as they approached Stealthy-Mating. Waldo arms reached up to pull them into the bay and lock them. It seemed to take forever, but I’d have moved those masses one at a time. They were in a hurry. Rounding a point mass would scatter this loose stuff all across the sky.

Turnpoint Star must be near.

The cargo doors closed. Stealthy-Mating rotated, and the boat was pulled down against the hull. Now we were all one mass.

The hatch in the floor opened. Three Kzinti came through in pressure suits to join Envoy. The newcomer’s chest and back showed a Kzinti snarl done in gaudy orange dots-and-commas. He spared a glance for me and Paradoxical, then turned to Fly-By-Night.

My translator said, “I am Meebrlee-Ritt.”

“Futz!” Fly-By-Night exclaimed in Interworld.

“Your concern is noted. Yes, I am of the Patriarch’s line. Your First Sire was Gutting Claw’s Telepath, who betrayed the Patriarch Rrowrreet-Ritt and showed prey how to destroy his own ship!”

“And he never even went back for the ears. Then again, they were inside a hot plasma,” Fly-By-Night said.

To Envoy Meebrlee-Ritt said, “This one was to be tamed.”

Envoy cringed, ears flat. Even I could hear the change in his voice, the whine. “Dominant One, this fool crippled himself for a failed joke, and that joke was his name quest! A lesser male he must be, never mated. His arrogance is bluff or insanity, or else life among humans has made him quite alien! But let Tech give us air pressure, release the telepath, and the stench of your rage will cow him soon enough!”

“Let us expend less effort than that.” Meebrlee-Ritt turned back to Fly-By-Night. “Telepath, your life may be taken by any who happen upon you.”

“Did you need my consent for this?”

“No!”

“Or my First Sire’s confession? That may be summoned by any Sheathclaws school program. Then what shall we discuss? Tell us how you gained your name.”

“I was born to it, of course. Let us discuss your future.”

“I have a future?”

“Your blood line may be forgiven. You may keep your slaves, such as they are, and a harem of my choosing—”

“Yours? Dominant One, forgive my interruption, please continue.”

Even if he was familiar with human sarcasm, it wasn’t likely Meebrlee-Ritt had been getting it from Kzinti! I’d read that Kzinti telepaths were flighty, not terribly bright. Meebrlee-Ritt spoke more slowly. “Yes, my choosing! You may live your life in honor and luxury, or you may die shredded by my hands.”

“Meebrlee-Ritt, you would not expect me to leap into so difficult a decision. Will you bargain for the lives of your hostages?”

“Submissive and unarmed Humans.” Meebrlee-Ritt sneezed his contempt. “But what would you bargain with? Your world?”

“Only my genes. Consider,” said Fly-By-Night. In the Heroes’ Tongue his speech was a long snarl, but the translation sounded placid enough. “He who is obeyed, who fights best, who mates is the alpha, the dominant one. You command that I mate? How will you persuade me that I am dominant? Submit to this one easy demand. Rescue my erstwhile hosts. Release them at Home.”

“Why would I want you in rut? There are no females aboard Sraff-zisht. Packer, Envoy, you remain. Leave the gravity off. Tech, with me. Turnpoint Star is near.”

Two Kzinti went through the hatch. Two took their seats. Their hands were idle. Now the boat rode Stealthy-Mating like a parasite.

I asked, “Can you see Turnpoint Star?”

“At point six kilometers across? You flatter me. I surmise it may be centered in that curdle,” said Paradoxical.

Curdle? The tight little knot of glowing gas? I watched, watched… A red point blew up into a blue-white sun and I fell into it. The stars wheeled. The balloons that housed us rippled as if batted by invisible children. My body rippled too.

I’d been through this once, but much worse. I clutched the ribbon handholds in a death grip. I howled.

It only lasted seconds, but the terror remained. One of the Kzinti pointed at me and both laughed with their teeth showing.

Packer made his way to the shower/toilet. The other, Envoy, stayed at the board to look for tidal damage.

Fly-By-Night took handholds, subtly braced, ears spread wide. His eye caught mine. I said, “Paradoxical, now.”

Paradoxical splayed itself like a starfish across the wall of the refuge, just next to the opening. It disgorged the handle of the w’tsai.

I pulled the wrapped blade from its gullet and stripped off the casing. Clutched the blade against me, exhaled hard, opened the zipper all in one sweep, smooth as silk. Pressure popped me out into the cabin, straight toward Envoy’s back, screaming to empty my lungs before they exploded.

Push the blade in, pull out, feel the vibration.

I had thought to recoil off a wall and slice Fly-By-Night free. That wasn’t going to work. The Kzin diplomat saw my shadow and spun around. I slashed, aiming to behead him, and shifted the blade to catch the cat-quick sweep of his arm.

He swept his arm through the blade and whacked me under the jaw.

That was a powerful blow. I spun dizzily away. His arm spun too, cut along a diagonal plane, spraying blood. Attached, it would have ripped my head off.

I caught myself against a wall and leapt.

The seat web still held Envoy. His right arm and sleeve sprayed blood and air. Envoy smashed left-handed at the controls, then hit the seat web and leapt out of my path. I got his foot! The knife was hellishly sharp. My ears were roaring, my sight was going, but vacuum tore at him too as his arm and ankle jetted blood and air. His balance was all off as he recoiled from the dome and came at me. He kicked. My angle was wrong and he grazed me.

Spinning, spinning, I starfished out so that the wall caught my momentum and killed my spin. I tried to find him.

The roar continued. My sight was foggy…no. The cabin was thick with fog. Fly-By-Night clawed his refuge wall, which had gone slack. We had air!

I still didn’t have time to free Fly-By-Night because—there he was! Envoy was back at the controls. I was braced to leap when a white glare blazed from his hand.

He had the gun.

I changed my jump. It took me behind the cannon. Two projectiles punched into the wall behind me. I swiped the w’tsai in a wide slash across Fly-By-Night’s vacuum refuge, and continued falling toward the shower/toilet. Packer couldn’t ignore Ragnarok forever.

The door opened in my face and I chopped vertically. Packer was naked. His left hand was on the doorlock so I changed the cut, right to catch his free hand, his claws and the iron w’tsai he’d been holding. He whacked me hard but the blow was blunt. I spun once and crashed into Envoy and slashed.

Glimpsed Paradoxical behind him, braced myself and slashed. Paradoxical was firing anaesthetic needles. The Kzin wasn’t fighting back. I didn’t see the implication so I kept slashing.

“Mart! LE Mart! Beowulf!”

I screamed, “What?” Disturbing me now could…what? Before me was a drifting cloud of blood and butchered meat. Paradoxical had stopped firing needles into it. Behind me, Fly-By-Night was on Packer’s back, gnawing Packer’s ear and fending off the hand that still had claws. Packer beat him with the blunted hand. They both looked trapped. Packer couldn’t reach Fly-By-Night, but Fly-By-Night dared not let go.

I approached with care. Packer’s arms were busy so he kicked to disembowel me. I chopped off what I could reach. Kick/slash, kick/slash. When he slowed down I killed him.

***

The air was thick with blood globules and red fog. We were breathing that futz. I got a cloth across my face. Fly-By-Night was snorting and sneezing. Paradoxical had placed meteor patches where Envoy had fired at me, but now he floated limp, maybe dying. I put him into the refuge and got him to zip it.

Fly-By-Night went to the controls. Minutes later we had gravity. All the scarlet goo settled to the floor and we could breathe.

I had gone berserk. Never happened before. My mind was slow coming back. Why was there air?

Air. Think now: I slashed Envoy’s suit open. He pressurized the cabin to save his life. Paradoxical must have come out then. The Jotok’s needles knocked Envoy out despite pressure armor…why? Because Paradoxical was putting needles into flesh wherever I’d slashed away the Kzin’s armor. And of course I hadn’t got around to releasing Fly-By-Night until late—

I safed the blade. “Fly-By-Night? I believe this is yours.”

He took it gingerly. “No witness would have guessed that,” he said, and handed it back. “Clean it in the waterfall.”

Kzinti custom: never borrow a w’tsai. If you do, return it clean. Waterfall?

He meant the big box. The word was a joke. I found a big blanket made of sponge, a tube attached. When I wrapped it around the w’tsai, it left the blade clean. I tried it on myself. The blanket flooded me with soapy water, then clean water, then sucked me dry. Weird sensation, but I came out clean.

The toilet looked like an oval box of sand with foot- and handholds around it, though the sand stayed put. Later.

A pressure suit was splayed like a pelt against the wall for easy access.

There was a status display. I couldn’t read the glowing dots-and-commas, but the display must have told Packer there was air outside, and he’d come charging out—

I was starting to shake.

I emerged from the waterfall box into a howling gale. The blood was all gone. I couldn’t even smell it. Fly-By-Night and Paradoxical were at the kitchen wall feeding butchered meat into the hopper.

“This kind of thing must be normal on Patriarchy spacecraft,” Fly-By-Night said cheerfully. “Holes in walls and machinery, blood and corpses everywhere, no problem. This hopper would hold a Great Dane…a big dog, Mart. The cleanup subsystem is running smooth as a human’s arse.” He saw my shivering. “You have killed. You should feed. Must your meat be cooked? I don’t know that we have a heat source.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I must. I’m hungry!” Fly-By-Night smiled widely. “You wouldn’t like me hungry, would you?”

“Futz, no!” A Sheathclaws local joke? I tried to laugh. Shivering.

Paradoxical was crawling over one of the control panels. “This kitchen was mounted separately. It is of Shashter manufacture, perhaps connected to the orange underground. It will feed slaves.” It tapped at a surface, and foamy green stuff spilled into a plastic bag. Pond scum? It tapped again and the wall generated a joint of bloody meat. Again: it hummed and disgorged a layered brick.

A handmeal. While Paradoxical sucked at his bag of pond scum and Fly-By-Night devoured hot raw meat, I ate three handmeal bricks. They never tasted that good again.

Fly-By-Night had kept Packer’s ears, one intact and one chewed to a nub, and Envoy’s, both intact. These last he offered to me. “Your kill. Mart, I can dispose of—”

I took them. My kill.

* * *

We had taken the boat. Now what?

Fly-By-Night said, “The hard part will be persuading Meebrlee-Ritt that all is well here.” His voice changed. “Dominant One, all runs as planned but for the Telepath’s behavior. Cowed by fear, he has soiled his refuge. Shall we clean him? It might be a trick—”

Funny stuff. I was still shivering. “That’s very good, I can’t tell the difference, but Meebrlee-Ritt or Tech might.”

“Guide me.”

“I can’t find the hologram stage.”

Fly-By-Night touched something. This whole side of the main weapon became a window, floor to dome, a gaudy panorama across orange veldt into a city of massive towers. We’d been prisoned on the other side of it.

I said, “Tanj! He’ll see every hair follicle. All right, I’m still thrashing around here. We’ve got Packer’s pressure suit. The orders were to leave the, ah, prisoners in vacuum and falling. Try this—

“Whenever Meebrlee-Ritt calls, Packer is in the waterfall room.” We hadn’t heard enough of Packer’s speech to imitate Packer. “LE Fly-By-Night, you’re Envoy. You’re in the pressure suit, we’re in the vac refuges. We’ll have to change the markings on the suit. I’d say Envoy’s move is to wait patiently for his Alpha Officer to call.” I didn’t like the taste of this. “He could catch us by surprise.”

“I should find an excuse to call him.”

“Anything goes wrong, you give us air instantly. Paradoxical, have you found an emergency air switch?”

“Here, then here.”

“Stet. Envoy, what’s wrong with your voice?”

“Nothing,” said Fly-By-Night.

“Well, there had better be.”

“Stet,” the Kzin said. “And we don’t really want vacuum, do we? Let’s try this instead. I’m calling because we’re not in vacuum, and my voice—”

And his tale was better than mine, so we worked on that.

We spent some time looking those controls over, trying a few things. We found air pressure, air mix, emergency pressure, cabin gravity, thrust. Weapons would be harder to test. There were controls you could hit by accident without killing anyone, and that was done with virtual control panels. Weapons and defenses were hardwired buttons and switches, a few of them under locked cages, all stiff enough but big enough that I could turn them on or off by jabbing with the heel of my hand. Paradoxical couldn’t move those at all.

The hologram wall was the telescope screen too. Paradoxical got us a magnificent view back into the Nursery Nebula, all curdles and whorls of colored light. It found Odysseus a light hour behind us, under spin and falling free with no sign of motive power, only a chain of corridor lights and the brighter glow of the lobby. That didn’t tell us if they still had hyperdrive. They couldn’t use it yet.

Ahead was nothing but distant stars. We had to be approaching flat space, where Stealthy-Mating could jump to hyperdrive.

Fly-By-Night was wearing Envoy’s pressure suit. The markings were right. He would keep the right sleeve hidden. We had cut off part of the helmet, raggedly, to obscure his features. Now Fly-By-Night tapped at the kitchen wall. It disgorged a soft, squishy dark red organ that might have been a misshapen human liver. He smeared blood over his face and chest, then into the exposed ear.

My shivering became a violent shudder. Fly-By-Night looked at me in consternation. “LE Mart? What’s wrong?”

“Too much killing.”

“Two enemies is too much? Get out of camera view, then. Are we ready?”

“Go.”

***

Meebrlee-Ritt snarled, “Envoy, this had best be of great interest. We prepare for hyperdrive.”

“Dominant One, the timing was not of my choosing,” Fly-By-Night bellowed into the oversized face. “The human attacked while Packer was visiting the waterfall. I have killed the telepath’s slave—”

“The Jotok is dead?”

Fly-By-Night cringed. “No, Dominant One, no! Only the man. The Jotok lives. Telepath lives.”

“The man is nothing. Telepath did not purchase the man! Is Packer functional, and are you?”

“Packer is well. I have nosebleeds, lost lung function, lost hearing. The man had a projectile weapon, a toy, but he damaged my helmet. I managed to put the cabin under pressure. Packer keeps watch on Telepath. Shall I return the cabin to vacuum? One of us would have to remain in the waterfall.”

“Set Packer at the controls. What can he ruin while there is nothing to fly? Maintain free fall. You and Packer trained for free fall, our prisoner did not. You, Envoy, talk to Telepath. Learn what he desires, what he fears.”

Cringe. “Dominant One, I shall.”

Again we faced an electromagnetic cannon. I said, “Good. Really good.”

Space around me winked like an eye. I caught it happening and looked at the floor. Fly-By-Night looked up, and blinked at the distortion. “Mart, I don’t think…Mart? I’m blind.”

Paradoxical was in a knot, his arms covering all of his eyes. I said, “Maybe you’d better take Paradoxical into the waterfall and stay there.”

“Lost! Confused! Blind! How do you survive this?” the Jotok demanded. “How does any LE?”

“They’ll close off the windows on Stealthy-Mating. I don’t see how to do that in here. I guess they leave the boat empty if they can. Fly-By-Night, lower your head. Look at the floor. See the floor? Hold that pose.”

“Stet.”

I got under Paradoxical and he wrapped himself around me, sixty pounds of dry-skinned octopus. I eased him onto Fly-By-Night’s shoulders until he clung. “Gravity’s on, right? Just crawl on around to the waterfall. Don’t look up.”

***

In hyperdrive something unmeasurable happens to electromagnetic phenomena, or else to organs that perceive them: eyes, optic nerves, brains. A view of hyperspace is like being born sightless. The Blind Spot, we call it.

In the waterfall room we straightened up and stretched. Fly-By-Night said, “None of us can fly—”

“No. We’re passengers. Stowaways. Relax and let them do the flying.”

Paradoxical asked, “How can any mind guide a ship through this?”

I said, “There are species that can’t tolerate it. Jotoki can’t. Maybe puppeteers can’t; most of them never leave their home system. Humans can use a mass pointer, a psionics device to find our way through hyperspace, as long as we don’t look into the Blind Spot directly. But that’s…well, part of a psionics device is the operator’s mind. Computers don’t see anything. Kzinti don’t either. There are just a few freaky Kzinti who can steer through the Blind Spot directly.”

“It is the Patriarch’s blood line,” Paradoxical said. “After the first War with Men, when Kzinti acquired hyperdrive, they learned that most cannot astrogate through hyperspace. Some few can. The Patriarch paid with names and worlds to add their sisters and daughters to his harem. Today the -Ritts can fly hyperspace.”

Fly-By-Night said, “Really?”

“It happened long after your folk were cut off. LE Graynor, I did research on more than just you. Of course you see the implications? Meebrlee-Ritt must fly Stealthy-Mating. He will be under some strain, possibly at the edge of his sanity. Tech must see him in that embarrassing state. Envoy and Packer need not, and no prisoner should.”

“He won’t call?” I made it a question.

“He would not expect answer. Packer and Envoy would be hiding in the Waterfall,” Paradoxical said.

That satisfied us. We were tired.

***

For three days we lived in the waterfall room.

One Kzin would have crowded the waterfall. With a man and a Jotok it was just that much more crowded. The smell of an angry Kzin made me jumpy. I couldn’t sleep that way, so a high wind was kept blowing at all times.

We used the sandpatch in full view of each other. There were ribald comments. The Jotok was very neat. Fly-By-Night covered his dung using gloved feet and expected me to do the same, but it wasn’t needed. The magnetized “sand” churned and swallowed it to the recycler.

Somebody had to come out for food. It developed that nobody could do that but me.

Our talk ranged widely.

Fly-By-Night never told us how he had reached Fafnir, nor even how he had passed through Customs. He did tell us something about the two who had come with him on their name quests. “I left Nazi Killer still collecting computer games and I set out to buy a Jotok—”

“What kind of name is ‘Nazi Killer’?”

“It’s an illicit game. Our First Sires’ children found it among exercise programs in Angel’s Pencil. Nazi Killer is very good at it. On Shasht he bought improved games and modern computers and waldo gloves for Kzinti hands, thinking these would earn his name.”

“Go on.”

“Maybe he’s already home. Maybe the Longest War caught him. He would not have survived that. As for me, I wasted time searching out medical techniques to heal my broken bones. Such practice has only evolved for Humans! Kzinti still keep their scars. Customs differ.

“But Grass Burner got what he wanted. Kittens!”

“Kittens?”

“Yes, six unrelated, a breeding set. On Sheathclaws there are only photos and holos of cats, and a library of tales of fantasy cats, and children who offer a Kzin kit a ball of yarn just because it makes their parents angry, nobody remembers why. Cats will get Grass Burner his name. But we remember Jotoks too. Paradoxical, if two species are smarter than one, three should be smarter yet. You will earn my name, if we can reach Sheathclaws.”

***

I snapped out of a nightmare calling, “What was its name? Stealthy-Mating?”

“We were asleep,” Paradoxical complained. “We love sleeping in free fall. Back in the lake. But we wake and are still a self.”

“Sorry.” I almost remembered the dream. A lake of boiling blood, Kzinti patrolling the shores, wonderfully desirable human women in the shadows beyond. I was trying to swim. The pain was stunning, but I was afraid to come out.

Broken blood vessels were everywhere on my body. It hurt enough to ruin my sleep.

It was our fourth morning in hyperdrive.

“Sraff-zisht,” said Paradoxical.

“Pleasemadam, seek interstellar spacecraft local to Fafnir, Kzinti crew, Heroes’ Tongue name Sraff-zisht. Run it.”

Fly-By-Night woke. He said, “Make a meat run, Mart.”

When I went out for food, we detached the shower blanket so I could use it as a shield. Meebrlee-Ritt had ordered us to keep the boat in free fall. No way could we be really sure he wouldn’t call. I had to use handholds. I’d made a net for the food.

My computer dinged while we were eating. We listened:

Sraff-zisht was known to the Shasht markets, and to Wunderland too. The ship carried red meat to Fafnir and lifted seafood. At Wunderland, the reverse. Crew turnover was high. They usually stayed awhile. This trip they’d lifted light and early.

“Sraff-zisht is not armed,” I said. I’d hoped it was true, but now I knew it. “Wunderland customs is careful. If they never found weapons or mounts for weapons, they’re not there. We have the only gun!”

“Yes!” Fly-By-Night’s fully extended claws could stop a man’s heart without touching him.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “There has to be a way to close that window strip. A Kzinti crew couldn’t hide out in here! They’d tear each other to pieces!”

“I knew that. It’s too small,” Fly-By-Night said. “I just didn’t want to go out there. Must we?”

***

We three crawled out with the shower blanket over us, Paradoxical riding the Kzin’s shoulders. We stayed under the blanket while we worked the controls. I felt like a child working my flatscreen under the covers after being sent to bed.

There was a physical switch under a little cage with a code lock. None of us had the code. The switch wasn’t a self-destruct. We knew where that was. When we ran out of options I sliced the cage away with the w’tsai, and flipped the switch.

From under the blanket we saw the shadows changing. I peeked out. Lost my vision, lost even my memory of vision…saw the edge of a shield crawling across the last edge of window.

If Meebrlee-Ritt had called earlier, he would have seen us flying hyperspace with windows open. Some mistakes you don’t pay for.

“I think you’d better spend a lot of time in disguise and out here,” I told Fly-By-Night. I saw his look: better not push that. “The next few days should be safe, but we should practice getting a disguise on you. Meebrlee-Ritt will call when he drops us out, and he will expect an answer, and he will not expect you to be still covered with blood and half hidden in ripped-up armor. Home is an eighteen-to-twenty-day trip, they said. Ten to go, call it three in hyperspace.”

The Kzin was tearing into a joint of something big. “Keep talking.”

“We need to paint you. Envoy had a smooth face, no markings except for what looked like black eyebrows swept way up.”

“What would you use for paint?”

“The kitchens on some of the Nakamura Lines ships offered dyes for Easter eggs. Then again, they went bankrupt. What have we got? Let’s check out the kitchen wall.”

***

Choices aboard Sraff-Zisht’s boat were sparse. One variety of handmeal. Paradoxical’s green sludge. Twenty settings for meat… “Fly-By-Night, what are these?”

“Ersatz prey for Kzin, I expect. Not bad, just strange.”

They weren’t all meat. We had two flavors of blood, and a milky fluid. “Artificial milk with diet supplements,” Fly-By-Night told us, “to treat injuries and disease. Adults wouldn’t normally use it.”

Three kinds of fluids. Hot blood—“Is one of these human?”

“I wouldn’t know, and that’s one damn rude question to ask someone you have to live with—”

“I’m sorry. What I—”

“—for the next nine to ten days. If I get through this they’ll have to give me a name.”

“I just want to know if it coagulates.”

Silence. Then, “Intelligent question. I’ve been on edge, Mart.”

I didn’t say that Kzinti are born that way. “Ease up on the cappuccino.”

“We should thicken this. Mix it with something floury. Mush up a handmeal?”

The handmeals would pull apart. We worked with the layers: a meatlike pâté, a vegetable pâté, something cheesy, shells of hard bread. The bread stayed too lumpy: no good. Cheese thickened the blood. One kind of blood did coagulate. We got a thick fluid that could be spread into a Kzin’s fur, then would get thicker. Milk lightened it enough, but then it stayed too liquid. More cheese?

We covered Fly-By-Night in patches everywhere, except his face, which we didn’t want to mess up yet. This latest batch looked good where we’d spread it on his belly. I gave him a crossed fingers sign and worked it into his face.

Not bad.

We tried undiluted blood for the eyebrows. Too pale. Work on that later. I stood back and asked, “Paradoxical?”

“The marks weren’t symmetrical,” Paradoxical said. “You tend to want him to look too human. They’re not eyebrows. Trail that right one almost straight up—”

“You’d better do it.”

He worked. Presently he asked, “Mart?”

“Good!”

That was all Fly-By-Night needed. He set us spinning as he jumped for the waterfall room. We gave him an hour to dry off, because the shower blanket didn’t suck up all the water, and another to calm down. Then we started over.

We couldn’t get the eyebrows dark enough.

Finally we opened up a heating element in the kitchen wall, hoping we wouldn’t ruin anything, and used it to char one of Envoy’s ears. We used the carbon black to darken Fly-By-Night’s “eyebrows”. We bandaged one ear (“exploded by vacuum”.)

Then we made him wait, and talk.

“Sraff-Zisht drops back into Einstein space. There’s an alarm. Do we get a few minutes? Does Meebrlee-Ritt clean himself up before he shows himself? Does he want a nap?”

“I was not raised among the children of the Patriarch.”

“He’s dropped us out in the inner comets. That’s a huge volume. He’s not worried about any stray ship that happens along, but he might want to check on us. He still has to worry that the big bad telepath has murdered his crew. Fly-By-Night? Massacres are routine?”

“Duels, I think, and riots. Mart, the cleanup routines are very simple. Any surviving crew with a surviving fingertip could set them going.”

“Meebrlee-Ritt calls. Right away?”

“He will set a course into Home system. Then he will make himself gorgeous. Let the lesser Kzinti wait. Count on forty minutes after we enter Einstein space.”

“Stet. He calls. Envoy’s all cleaned up. Big bandage on his ear. What is Envoy’s attitude?”

Fly-By-Night let his claws show. Kzinti do sweat, but we’d cooled the cabin. His makeup was holding. “Half mad from sensory deprivation, still he must cringe before his alpha officer. Repress rage. Meebrlee-Ritt might enjoy that. Change orders just to shake up Envoy.”

“Cringe,” I said.

Fly-By-Night pulled himself lower in his chair. His ear flattened, his lips were tight together.

“Good. Envoy wouldn’t eat in front of Meebrlee-Ritt—?”

“No!”

“Our makeup wouldn’t stand up to that.”

“No, and I promise not to eat the makeup!”

We kept him talking. I wanted to see how long the makeup would last. I wanted to see if he’d go berserk. A little berserk wouldn’t hurt, in a Kzin who had been trapped in sensory deprivation for many days, but he had to remember his lines.

Three hours later…he didn’t crack, but the makeup started to. We sent him off to get clean.

***

Morning of the ninth day. I couldn’t stop chattering.

“We’ll drop out of hyperspace at the edge of Home system. We almost know when. There is only one speed in hyperdrive—” though Quantum Two hyperdrive is hugely faster and belongs to another species. “If Sraff-Zisht has been traveling straight toward Home at three days to the light year, we’ll drop out in….”

“Four hours and ten minutes,” Paradoxical said.

“The jigger factor is, where does Meebrlee-Ritt drop us out? Hyperdrive takes “flat” space. If there are masses around to distort space, the ship’s gone. Pilots are very careful not to get too close to their target sun. Really cautious types aim past a target system. Just what kind of pilot is Meebrlee-Ritt?”

“Your pronunciation is terrible,” said Fly-By-Night.

“Yah?”

“Crazy Kzin. Dive straight in. Cut the hyperdrive ten ce’meters short of death. Let our intrinsic velocity carry us straight into the system. Mart, that is the only decent bet.”

“Where is Packer? Still in the waterfall?”

“I will think of something.”

“I want you in makeup two hours early.”

“No.”

“H—”

“Yes, he might drop out short! But he might circle! He might enter Home system at an angle. Our window of opportunity has to slop over on either side.” Fly-By-Night’s speech was turning mushy again, lips pulling far back, lots of gleaming white teeth. Even Envoy didn’t look like that. Sheathclaws must have good dental hygiene.

“We know that he will not show himself to Envoy and Packer after nine days of letting the Blind Spot drive him crazy and ruin his hairdo. You’ll have forty minutes to make me beautiful.”

“Stet. What next? Decelerate for a week. Drop the boat somewhere, maybe in the asteroids, without changing course. The Home asteroid belt is fairly narrow. Still plenty of room to hide.

“They’ll bring you aboard ship just before they drop the boat. Because you’re dangerous. Thanks.” He’d dialed me up a handmeal. “You’re dangerous, so they’ll keep you in free fall until the last minute. If we’re wrong about that, we could get caught by surprise.”

“Bring me aboard? How does that work? Order Envoy and Packer to stun me and pull me through the small lock? We can’t do that. They’re dead!”

“Lure the technology officer in here.”

“How?”

“Don’t know. Make up a story. Let’s just get through dropout without getting caught.”

***

A recording spoke. A computer whined, “Dominant Ones, we have returned to the universe. Be patient for star positions.”

Paradoxical started the curtain retracting. Stars emerged. I went to the kitchen wall and dialed up what we needed.

The recording reeled off a location based on some easy-to-find stars and clusters. Paradoxical listened intently. “Home system,” he said. “We will use the telescope to find better data. Can you do that alone?”

“Yah.” We’d practiced. In free fall we were still a bit awkward, but I mixed the basic makeup, then added char to a smaller batch. A bit more? All? Ready. “You do the eyebrows, Doc.”

“First I will finish this task.”

Fly-By-Night held still while I rubbed the food mixture into his facial fur.

Paradoxical said, “Graviton wake indicates a second ship.”

“Damn!” Fly-By-Night snarled. I flung myself backward; my seat web caught me.

Paradoxical said, “We find nothing in visible light.”

“Don’t move your mouth. Aw, Fly-By-Night!” He was in an all-out snarl, trying to talk and failing. Drool made a darker runnel. “If Meebrlee-Ritt saw that he wouldn’t care who you are. Lose the teeth!”

Fly-By-Night relaxed his mouth. “Your extra week is down the toilet, Mart. They’re making pickup here and now.”

The makeup had stayed liquid. “Paradoxical, give him eyebrows.” I brushed out the drool, then settled myself out of camera range. They’d given me the flight controls. Paradoxical on astrogation, Fly-By-Night on weapons.

Paradoxical finished his makeup work and moved out of camera range, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. I asked, “Shall we talk? Is this second ship just an escort?”

“No. Why make Sraff-Zisht conspicuous? Transfer the telepath, then move on to Home. This new ship runs to some outer world, or to Kzin itself—”

Meebrlee-Ritt popped up bigger than life and fourteen minutes early. He demanded, “Envoy, is the telepath well?”

Fly-By-Night flinched, then cringed. “The telepath is healthy, Dominant One. I judge that he is not in his right mind.”

“The Jotok? Yourself? Where is Packer?”

“The Jotok amuses themself with a computer. I will welcome medical attention. Packer…Dominant One…Packer looked on hyperspace.”

“He knew better!”

“Envoy” recoiled, then visibly pulled himself together. “Soon or late, Dominant One, every Hero looks. Wealth and a name and the infinite future, if he has sisters and daughters, if he can stay sane. Packer did not. He hides in the waterfall when I let him. Set him in a hunting park soon or he will die.”

“That will not be our task. Leap For Life will be here soon. Transfer the boat to Leap For Life. Haste! No need to take Telepath out of his vacuum refuge. You will be relieved aboard Leap For Life.”

“Yes, Dominant One!”

“Packer must guard the telepath. The telepath will attack now if ever.”

“Yes—”

Meebrlee-Ritt was gone.

“We have it!” Paradoxical projected what he was seeing against the cannon casing.

Still distant, backlit by Apollo, Home’s sun, a sphere nestled in a glowing arc of gamma ray shield, its black skin broken by holes and projections and tiny windows. Dots-and-commas script glowed brilliant orange. “We find heavy graviton wake. That ship is decelerating hard.”

“Built in this century,” Fly-By-Night said.

Sraff-Zisht dropped us free.

This was not much of a puzzle. I spun the boat, aimed at Leap For Life and said, “Shoot.”

My hair stirred. Fly-By-Night’s fur stood up and rippled. He said, “Done. Doc?”

“The graviton wake is gone. You burned out its thrusters.”

I boosted us to put Sraff-Zisht between us andLeap For Life. Leap For Life had the weapons, after all. I set our gun on Sraff-Zisht and said, “Again.”

“Done. I burned out something.”

“Graviton flare,” Paradoxical said, just as Sraff-Zisht vanished.

“Meebrlee-Ritt must have tried to return to hyperspace,” Fly-By-Night said. “We burned out the hyperdrive. But he still has thrusters!”

I rotated the boat to focus the gun on the immobilized Leap For Life. “Projectiles. Shoot it to bits.”

Fly-By-Night punched something. We heard the weapon adjusting, but he didn’t shoot. “Why?”

I screamed, “They’ve got all the weapons, our shield has flown away —”

“Stet.” The boat’s lone weapon roared. It was right in the middle of the cabin/cargo hold. The noise was amazing. The boat recoiled; cabin gravity lurched to compensate. Leap For Life jittered and came apart in shreds.

“—And they don’t have the hostages! And now it’s one less tanj thing to worry about.”

“Stet, stet, I understand!”

Paradoxical said, “We win.”

We looked at the Jotok. He said, “We may report all that has happened, now, via laser broadcast to Home. We fly the boat to Home with our proofs. The law of Home can arrange to retrieve Odysseus. With his hyperdrive burned out, Meebrlee-Ritt is trapped in Home system. In the full glare of publicity he must follow the Covenants. He may trade his hostages for some other consideration such as amnesty, but they must be returned. Stet?”

“He’s still got my family! But I think we can turn on the cabin futzy gravity now, if you don’t mind—” I stopped because Meebrlee-Ritt, greatly magnified, was facing Fly-By-Night.

“Some such consideration,” he mimicked us. “You look stupid, Telepath, covered with food. Only one consideration can capture my interest! Read my mind if you doubt me. Release my entourage and surrender! The hostages for yourself!”

Fly-By-Night’s claw moved. No result showed except for Meebrlee-Ritt’s widening eyes, but Fly-By-Night had given him a contracted view. He was seeing all of us.

“Lies! You killed my Heroes? Eeeeerg!” A hair-lifting snarl as Fly-By-Night lifted Packer’s ear into view.

It seemed the right moment. I showed Envoy’s surviving ear. “We had to use the other.”

“Martin Wallace Graynor, you may buy back your hostages and your life by putting the telepath into my hands!”

It began to seem that Meebrlee-Ritt was mad. I asked, “Must I subdue him first?”

A killing gape was my answer. I asked, “And where would you take him then, with no hyperdrive?”

“Not your concern.”

“We’re going to call for help now. Over the next few hours all of Home system is going to know you’re here. A civilized solar system seethes with telescopes. If you have allies in the asteroids, you can’t go to them. You’d only point them out to the Home Rule.”

“What if you never make that broadcast, LE Graynor? And I can…thaw…sss.” He’d had a notion. He stepped out of range. Ducked back and fisheyed the view to show his whole cabin. The other Kzin, Tech, was at his workstation, watching.

A wall slid away. Through an aperture ten yards wide I could see a much bigger cargo hold and all of Odysseus’ cargo modules. Meebrlee-Ritt moved to one of them, opened a small panel and worked.

Back he came. “I can reset the temperature on these machines. I thought you might wonder, but soon I will show you thawed fish. You cannot do to me what you did to Leap For Life without killing my hostages too. If you broadcast any message at all, I will set the third module thawing, and then I will show you thawed dead hostages.”

I was sweating.

The Kzin aristocrat said, “Telepath…Fly-By-Night. I will give you a better name. Your prowess has earned a name even as an enemy. What is it we ask of you? Take a harem. Raise your sons. See your daughters grow up in the Patriarch’s household. A life in luxury buys survival for sixty-four Human citizens.

“Think, then. I can wait. A boat’s life support is not the match for an interstellar spacecraft. Or else—”

The mass of an interstellar spacecraft jumped into our faces. Meebrlee-Ritt was tiny in its window, huge in the hologram stage. He threw his head back, a prolonged screech, mouth gaping as wide as my head. Forced his mouth to close so he could ask, “Graynor, have you ever flown a spacecraft? Do you think you have the skill to keep me from ramming you?”

I said, “Yes. Space is roomy, and the telepath is our hostage. Doc, can you give me a deep-radar view of yon privateer?”

Paradoxical guessed what I meant. The mass outside our dome went transparent.

I looked it over. Fuel…more fuel…a bulky hyperdrive design from the last century. Gravity and reaction motors were also big and bulky. Skimpy cargo space, smaller cabin, and that tiny box shape must be a waterfall room just like ours.

I spun the boat. “You say I can’t shoot?”

Meebrlee-Ritt looked up. He must have been looking right into our gun. “Pitiful! Are all Humans natural liars?”

Fine-tuning my aim, I said, “There is a thing you should know about us. If you eat prey that is infested…whasht-meery…you may be very sick, but it doesn’t kill off your whole blood line. Shoot,” I said to Fly-By-Night.

The gun roared. Meebrlee-Ritt’s image whirled around. The boat recoiled: gravity imbalances swirled through my belly. In our deep-radar view the waterfall room became a smudge.

Then Sraff-Zisht was gone.

“We track him,” Paradoxical said. “Gravitons, heavily accelerating, there.”

A green circle on the sky marked nothing but stars, but I spun the boat to put cross hairs on it. “Electromagnetic,” I shouted.

“Am I a fool?” The gun grumbled, shifting from projectile mode.

“Graviton wake has stopped.”

Fly-By-Night cried, “I have not fired!”

I said, “He’s got no hyperdrive—”

Paradoxical said, “Gravitons again. He will ram.”

The room wobbled, my hair stood on end, Fly-By-Night fluffed out into a great orange puffball. “Graviton wake is gone,” Paradoxical said.

I moved us, thirty gee lateral, in case his aim was good.

Sraff-Zisht, falling free, shot past us by two miles. I chased it down. Whim made me zip in alongside the ship’s main window. Grinning like a Kzin, I screamed, “Now wait us out!”

In the hologram stage Meebrlee-Ritt hugged a stack of meteor patches while he pulled on the waterfall door. Vacuum inside would be holding the door shut. We could see Tech working his way into a pressure suit, but Meebrlee-Ritt hadn’t thought of that yet. He turned to look at the camera, at us.

He cringed. Down on his belly, face against the floor.

***

Paradoxical set our com laser on Home. The lightspeed lag was several hours, so I just recorded a help call and sent it. Then, as we’d have to anyway, we three began recording the whole story. That too would arrive before we could—

Tech stood above Meebrlee-Ritt, watching us. When Fly-By-Night looked at him he cringed, a formal crouch. “Dominant One, what must we do?”

Fly-By-Night said, “Tend your cargo until you can be towed to Home. Meebrlee-Ritt also I place in your charge. Set your screamer and riding lights so you can be found. You may dream of betrayal but do not act on it. You know what I am. I know who you are. Your hostages’ lives will buy back your blood line.”

He’d said he couldn’t read minds. I still think he was bluffing.

***

A century ago the new settlers had towed a moonlet from elsewhere into geosynchronous orbit around Home. Home Base was where incoming ships arrived, and where they thawed incoming Ice Class passengers.

The law had business with hijackers and kidnappers; we were their witnesses. We were the system’s ongoing news item. Media and the law were waiting.

I rapidly judged that anchorpersons and lawyers were my fate. The only way to hide myself was to sign with Home Information Megacorp and talk my head off until my public grew bored.

If Carlos Wu tried to call me they’d be all over him too. I hoped he’d wait it out.

Sraff-Zisht we had left falling free through Home system. Home Rule had to round up ships to bring it back. It took two of their own, four Belters acting for the bounty, and one shared by a media consortium, all added to the several they sent after Odysseus. It took them ten days to fetch Sraff-Zisht.

For eight days I was questioned by Home and ARM law and by LE Wilyama Warbelow, the anchor from Home Information Megacorp. Wilyama was wired for multisensory recording. What she experienced became immortal.

They’d wanted to do that to me too.

The last two days were a lull: I was able to more or less relax, and even see a bit of the captured asteroid. Then Sraff-Zisht descended on tethers to Home Base, and everybody wanted Mart Graynor.

The Covenant against sensory deprivation as torture has long since been interpreted as the right to immediate trial, not just for Kzinti but throughout human space, a right not to be evaded. I was to submit to questioning by Meebrlee-Ritt and Tech, by their lawyer and everyone else’s, while two hundred Ice Class passengers were being thawed elsewhere.

I screamed my head off. Cameras were on me. The law bent. When they thawed the hostages from Sraff-Zisht, I was there to watch.

My wife and child weren’t there.

And we all trooped off to use the holo wall in the Outbound Enterprises Boardroom.

***

The prisoners watched us from an unknown site. It didn’t seem likely they’d burst through the holo wall and rip us apart. Meebrlee-Ritt’s eyes glittered. Tech only watched.

The court had restricted the factions to one advocate each. All I had for company was Sirhan, a police commissioner from Home Rule; Judge Anita Dee; Handel, an ARM lawyer; Barrister, a runty Kzin assigned as advocate to the prisoners; a hugely impressive peach-colored Kzin, Rasht-Myowr, representing the Patriarch; and anchorperson Wilyama Warbelow.

Judge Dee told the prisoners, “You are each and together accused of violations of local law in two systems, and of the Covenants of 2505 at Fafnir. A jury will observe and decide your fate.”

LE Barrister spoke quickly. “You may not be compelled to speak nor to answer questions, and I advise against it. I am to speak for you. Your trial will take at least two days, as we must wait for other witnesses, but no more than four.”

Meebrlee-Ritt spoke in Interworld. “We have followed the Covenants. Where are my accusers?”

They all looked at me. I said, “Gone.”

“Gone?”

“Fly-By-Night and Paradoxical and I signed an exclusive contract with Home Information Megacorp for our stories. I got a room here at Home Base. They’ll thaw my family here, after all.” If they lived. “We gave LE Warbelow,” I nodded; the anchor bowed, “an hour’s interview, presumed to be the first of many. Fly-By-Night and Paradoxical transferred to a shuttle. The Patriarch’s representative missed them by just under two hours. They disappeared on the way down.”

I’ve never doubted their destination. Fly-By-Night had come to Home for a reason, and he never told anyone who had arranged their transport to Fafnir.

The law raised hell, as if it were my fault they were gone. Warbelow was more sensible. She paid for my room, a major expense that wasn’t in our contract. With the aliens gone, I had become the only game in town.

They got their money’s worth. Mart Graynor emerged as a braggart with a Fafnir accent I’d practiced for two years. I played the same tune while various lawyers and law programs questioned me. I hoped nobody would see a resemblance to documentaries once made by Beowulf Shaeffer.

Barrister reacted theatrically. “Gone! Then who is witness against my clients?”

“We have LE Graynor, Your Honor,” Sirhan said, speaking for Home Rule, “and the crew and passengers of Odysseus will be called. Odysseus had to be chased down in the Kuiper belt, the inner comets, and towed in. They’ll be arriving tomorrow. Any of the passengers might press claims against the defendants.”

The judge said, “LE Handel?”

The ARM rep said, “The Longest War threatens all of human space. We need what these Kzinti can tell us. They’ve violated the Covenants. There was clear intent to store humans as reserves of meat—”

“This was a local act against Homer citizens!” Sirhan said.

Judge Dee gestured at the big peach-colored Kzin, who said, “The Patriarch’s claim is that Meebrlee-Ritt is no relative of his and has no claim to his name. I am to take possession—”

Meebrlee-Ritt leapt at us, bounced back from the wall—or from a projection screen—and screamed something prolonged. “I flew outside the universe!” said my translator. “Who can do that? Only the -Ritt! In cowardice does the Patriarch disclaim my part in the Long War!” He changed to Interworld: “LE Graynor knows! Nine days through hyperspace, accurately to my rendezvous!”

“I am to take possession and return him for trial, and his Heroes too. I must have Envoy’s ear, Graynor, unless you can establish a kill. Nameless One, Kzinti elsewhere can fly hyperspace. Females of your line may have reached the -Ritt harem. What of it?”

“My line descends from the Patriarch! I violated no Covenants!”

The runty Kzin who was his advocate caught the judge’s eye. He too spoke Interworld. “To properly represent the prisoners I must speak with them alone and encrypted to learn their wishes. I expect we will fight extradition. Rasht-Myowr,” a prolonged howl in the Heroes’ Tongue. The Patriarch’s designate was trying to loom over him. My translator buzzed static. The runty Kzin waited, staring him down, until the big one stepped back and sheathed his claws.

Barrister said, “Violation of the Covenants would hold my clients here in any case, but none of these claims has any force until we can interview the victims. Odysseus‘s crew and passengers will reach Home Base tomorrow. We have only LE Graynor’s word for any of this.”

“He’s telling the truth, though,” I said.

Meebrlee-Ritt barked his triumph. The ARM man said, “Futz, Graynor!”

Judge Dee asked, “LE Graynor, are you familiar with the Covenants of 2505?”

“As much as any law program. I’ve examined them half to death.”

“Did you see violations?”

“No. I thought I had. I thought Packer must have shot out Odysseus’s hyperdrive and hyperwave, putting Odysseus at unacceptable risk, but it’s clear he didn’t. Hyperdrive got Odysseus into the Home comets, and they called ahead via hyperwave as soon as they were out of the Nursery Nebula.”

Rasht-Myowr’s tail slashed across and back. “Your other claims fail! The false lord is mine, and his remaining Hero too!”

I said, “Whatever these two learned about Fly-By-Night and his companions, taking them back to Kzin for trial gives that to the Patriarch. On that basis I’d keep them, if I was an ARM.”

“But you’re testifying,” the ARM said bitterly, “that they didn’t violate the Covenants.”

“Yah.”

“Mine! And Envoy’s ear,” Rasht-Myowr said. “His one ear. Did you kill him?”

“I killed them both. Do you need details? Fly-By-Night was trapped in his vac refuge. We’d just rounded Turnpoint Star and Envoy was flying the ship. Difficult work, took his full attention. Back turned, free fall, crash web holding him in his chair. I had Fly-By-Night’s w’tsai.” The police had already confiscated that. “He would have killed me if he’d released his crash web in time.”

“He would have killed you anyway! Why would you keep only one ear?”

For an instant I couldn’t speak at all. Then I barely remembered my accent. “I h-heated one for charcoal to paint Fly-By-Night. Packer was wrestling Fly-By-Night when I chopped him up, so Fly-By-Night got the ear. He chewed off the other one. They stole, you stole my wife and child and unborn, my harem, you whasht-meery son of a stray cat! I still haven’t seen them alive. I memorized those whasht-meery Covenants. They only forbid my killing your relatives!”

“Duel me then!” Meebrlee-Ritt shouted. “Back turned, crash web locked, free fall, my claws only, blunt them if you like—”

“Barrister, you will silence your client or I will,” the judge said.

“—And you armed! Prove you can do this!”

Meebrlee-Ritt, I decided, was trying to commit suicide. He didn’t want to go with Rasht-Myowr. Let the Patriarch have him, I owed him nothing.

Almost nothing.

I said, “Judge Dee, if you’ll let me ask a few questions, I may solve some problems here.”

“You came to be questioned, LE Graynor. What did you have in mind?”

“Rasht-Myowr, if a violation of the Covenants can’t be proved, then I take it these prisoners are yours—”

Judge Dee interposed. “They may be assessed for substantial property violations, Graynor. Rescue costs. A passenger ship turned to junk!”

“I will pay the costs,” Rasht-Myowr said.

I asked, “You’ll take them back to your Patriarch?”

“Yah.”

“They’ll be tried publicly, of course.”

The peach-colored Kzin considered, then said, “Of course.”

“The court will have a telepath to question him? They always do.”

“Rrr. Your point?”

“Would you let a telepath find out what Meebrlee-Ritt saw of the telepaths of Sheathclaws? And learn how they live? Really?”

He didn’t get it. I said, “Three hundred years living alongside Humans. Sharing their culture. Their schooling programs. Instead of theft and killing, hang gliding! Meebrlee-Ritt, tell him about Fly-By-Night.”

The prisoner looked at the Patriarch’s voice. He said, “I crawled on my belly for him.”

Rasht-Myowr yowled. “With the -Ritt name on you? How dare you?”

“I meant it.”

“Meant–”

“Do you think I was born with no pride, to take and defend a name like mine? I found I could fly the Outsider hyperdrive! I knew that I must be a -Ritt. Then fortune favored me again. A telepath lost on Shasht, healthy and arrogant, the genetic line that will give us the Longest War!

“Even after questioning, crippled, Nazi Killer tore up one of my unwary Heroes so that we had to leave him. He knew things about me…but Nazi Killer was no threat. Frustrating that we had to kill him, but he’d told us how to retrieve another. It was Fly-By-Night and his slaves who stripped me of everything I am! He killed my Heroes. He became Envoy! Reduced my ship to a falling prison.”

Rasht-Myowr demanded, “Technical Officer, is your alpha officer mad?”

Tech spoke simply; his dignity was still with him. “I followed the telepath’s commands exactly. What he had done to us, to him I followed, how could I face him? With what weapons? But Fly-By-Night was not alone. Kzin and ’man and Jotok, they took our ears.”

I hoped then that there were unseen defenses, that nobody would have set fragile humans undefended among these Kzinti. Rasht-Myowr turned on me a gaping grin that would not let him speak. His alien stench was not that of any creature of Earth, but I knew it was his rage.

“You can’t take them back to the Patriarchy,” I said to Rasht-Myowr. Because they had kept faith.

***

Quickpony and the Van Zild children were with me when Outbound Enterprises thawed two modules of passengers taken from Odysseus. The way they were wrapped, I couldn’t tell who was who until Jeena was wheeled out of the cooker. We clung to each other and waited. If Jeena was alive, so was her mother.

We waited, ice in our veins, and she came.

Footnotes

THE DEADLY FUTURE OF LITTORAL SEA CONTROL

1. British Maritime Doctrine, 3rd ed. (London: Ministry of Defence, 2004), 289.

2. Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988 repub. of 1911 ed.).

3. CAPT Wayne P. Hughes Jr., USN (Ret.), Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000).

4. Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus, vol. 140, no. 3 (June 2011), 45–57. Scott C. Truver, “Taking Mines Seriously: Mine Warfare in China’s Near Seas,” Naval War College Review, vol. 65, no. 2 (Spring 2012), 30–66.

5. Randy Huiss, Proliferation of Precision Strike: Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2012). Frank Gardner, “Hezbollah Missile Threat Assessed,” BBC, 3 August 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5242566.stm.

6. “New 3D Printing Center Aims to Boost US Manufacturing” LiveScience.com, 16 August 2012, www.livescience.com/22443-3d-printing-boost-manufacturing.html.

7. CAPT Wayne Hughes, USN (Ret.), “Take the Small Boat Threat Seriously,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 126, no. 10 (October 2000), 104–6.

8. Molly Dunigan et al., Characterizing and Exploring the Implications of Maritime Irregular Warfare (Arlington, VA: RAND, 2012).

9. The Proliferation of Precision-Guided Weapons and the Future of Naval Irregular Warfare: Assessment and Implications (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010).

10. Richard L. Humphrey, “Warship Damage Rules for Naval Wargaming,” presentation to the TIMS/ORSA Joint National Meeting, Naval Warfare Center, Silver Spring, MD, May 1990. Hughes, Fleet Tactics, Figure 6-1.

11. John C. Schulte, “An Analysis of the Historical Effectiveness of Anti-ship Cruise Missiles in Littoral Warfare” (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School paper, September 1994), https://archive.org/details/analysisofhistor00schu. K. W. Brzozowsky and R. M. Memmesheimer, “The Application of the Sochard Ship Damage Model to World War II Ship Damage” (unpublished Naval Surface Warfare Center monograph, 1988).

12. “Ship RCS Table,” www.mar-it.de/Radar/RCS/Ship_RCS_Table.pdf.

13. Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997). Schulte, “Analysis.”

14. VADM A. K. Cebrowski, USN, and CAPT Wayne P. Hughes Jr., USN (Ret.), “Rebalancing the Fleet,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 125, no. 11 (November 1999), 31–34.

15. Richard C. Arthur, “Patrol Craft Can Maintain Littoral Sea Control,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 125, no. 8 (August 1999), 70–71.

16. “Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval,” DAMIR website, www.acq.osd.mil/damir/.

17. Larry Bond and Chris Carlson, Harpoon 4: Modern Tactical Naval Warfare (Sassamansville, PA: Clash of Arms Games, 1996).

18. “Ship RCS Table.”

19. Maj. Charles D. Melson, USMC (Ret.), Condition Red: Marine Defense Battalions in World War II (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1996). CAPT Wayne P. Hughes Jr., USN (Ret.) and Jeffrey Kline, “A Flotilla to Support a Strategy of Offshore Control” (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School paper, January 2013).

20. CDR Henry J. Hendrix, USN, “More Henderson, Less Bonds,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 136, no. 4 (April 2010), 60–65.

21. Col. T. X. Hammes, USMC (Ret.), “Offshore Control is the Answer,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 138, no. 12 (December 2012), 22–25.

Tap number to return to your place in the text.

MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

NON-FICTION

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

SCIENCE FICTION

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

FANTASY

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

CASTALIA CLASSICS

The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

AUDIOBOOKS

A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

TRANSLATIONS

Särjetty taika

QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravedad Mata

Una Estrella Brillante para Guiarlos

QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal

Uma Magia Perdida

Mantra yang Rusak

La Moneta dal Mercenario

I Ragazzoni non Piangono

QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти

QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand

Grosse Jungs weinen nicht

New Release Newsletter

The Castalia House New Release newsletter is sent out to subscribers when a new book is officially released. It often contains offers for free bonus books. We do not spam our subscribers’ email addresses nor do we sell them to anyone. We average about one new release per month.

Click here to subscribe to the Castalia House New Release newsletter or visit castaliahouse.com and enter your email address in the right sidebar, then click “Subscribe”.

Table of Contents

Cover
Preface
Preface 2015
Reflex
Spanish Man's Grave
Marius
The Soviet Strategic Threat From Space
Ender's Game
A Death in Realtime
Overdose
Saul's Death: Two Sestinas
Project High Frontier
Two Poems
Diasporah
His Truth Goes Marching On
THOR: Orbital Weapon System
The Defenders
Unlimited Warfare
The Battle
Mercenaries and Military Virtue
Ranks of Bronze
I Am Nothing
Call Him Lord
Quiet Village
The Strategy of Technology
The Widow’s Party
There Will Be War Vol. II
Riding the Red Horse
A History of Strategy
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases
Contents
Preface
Preface 2015
The Weapon
Time Lag
The Technological War
Manual of Operations
’Caster
Proud Legions
...And Baby Makes Three
In the Name of the Father
Superiority
Final Muster
Poems
On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen
Cincinnatus
Code-Name Feirefitz
Allamagoosa
Peacekeeper
Riding the Red Horse
The History of Strategy
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases
Notes
Cover
Introduction
The Spectre General
This Earth of Hours
It Is Enough, Ivan
The 'Eathen
The Tools of War
Act of Mercy
The Economics of War
That Day
The Miracle-Workers
The Defense of Europe
Hide and Seek
The Myth of a Liberation
Psi-Rec: Of Sword and Sitar
Silent Leges
Afterword
There Will Be War Vol. IV
Riding the Red Horse
The History of Strategy
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases
Introduction
Macdonough’s Song
The Cloak and the Staff
Winter Snow
A Way Out Maybe
A Letter From the Soviet Union
Emergency Rations
The Proud Foot of the Conqueror
Lepanto
A Cure for Croup
Comment and Discussion
Battle at Kahlkhopolis
The Conqueror of Vectis
Pretty Baby
The Man in the Gray Weapons Suit
Reagan vs. the Scientists
Joined the Space Force to Wear My Blues
Psyops
Three Soldiers
Interim Justice
No Truce With Kings
There Will Be War Vol. II
Riding the Red Horse
The History of Strategy
Books by Jerry Pournelle
Castalia House
New Releases
Foreword 2016

Introduction: Warriors and Statesmen, Jerry Pournelle

He Fell into a Dark Hole, Jerry Pournelle

Coup, Mack Reynolds

The Prevention of War, Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

The Wedding March, Edward P. Hughes

Ford o’ Kabul River, Rudyard Kipling

Fighting Back, Douglas J. Greenlaw and Robert Gleason

Victory, J. P. Boyd
The War Against “Star Wars”, Robert Jastrow
Final Solution, Ames MacKenzie
Masterplay, William F. Wu

Defense in a N-Dimensional World: Technological Surprise Must Be Prevented, Stefan T. Possony

Three Poems
The Interrogation Team, David Drake
A Time of Martyrs, Jim Fiscus
The Road Not Taken, Harry Turtledove

Delusions of Soviet Weakness, Edward N. Luttwak

The Day and the Hour, Duncan Lunan
House of Weapons, Gordon R. Dickson
Notes
There Will Be War Vol. X
Quantum Mortis
Castalia House
Introduction: The Fog of War
Ideological Defeat
Battleground
Surprise
Nonlethal
Abdullah Bulbul Amir
Render Unto Caesar
See Now, a Pilgrim
Information in War
Harmonica Song
Galileo Saw the Truth
By Thought Alone
Doughfoot Sanctum
Learning from Viet Nam
Major Pugachov’s Last Battle
A Glorious Triumph for the People
Poems
Ligdan and the Young Pretender
Decisive Warfare: Retrospect and Prospect
Crown of Thorns
The Eyes of Argos
The Highest Treason
Friction in War
Uncertainty and Defense
Notes
Castalia House
Introduction: Call to Battle
The Tank Lords, by David Drake
We Hold These Rights, by Henry Melton
Battle Cry, by Tim Sarnecki
Test for Tyrants, by Edward P. Hughes

The Roman Centurion’s Song, by Rudyard Kipling

The Islanders, by Rudyard Kipling

Another “Low Dishonest Decade” on the Left, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

The Last Article, by Harry Turtledove

Wizard Weapons, by Stefan T. Possony, Jerry E. Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane

A Soldier’s Best Friend, by Eric Vinicoff
Who’s In Charge Here? by Stefan T. Possony
The Iron Angel, by Don Hawthorne
Psi-Rec: I Gladiator, by Peter Dillingham
Specialization in War, by Reginald Bretnor
Were-Tigers, by Rob Chilson
Remember the Alamo! by T. R. Fehrenbach
Valhalla For Hire, by Lee Brainard
Debating SDI: Opinion or Fact? by Doug Beason
Consequences, by Walter Jon Williams
Afterword
Castalia House
Introduction: Armageddon
Still Time, by James Patrick Kelly
Surviving Armageddon, by Jerry Pournelle
To the Storming Gulf, by Gregory Benford
Dinosaurs, by Geoffrey A. Landis

The Prevention of War: About Unthinking the Thinkable, by Reginald Bretnor

Day of Succession, by Theodore L. Thomas
The Irvhank Effect, by Harry Turtledove
Three Poems
PSI-REC: I LINGER
The Benefactors, by Don Hawthorne
Nuclear Autumn, by Ben Bova

As It Was in the Beginning, by Edward P. Hughes

Triggerman, by Jesse F. Bone

An Old Bankruptcy, a New Currency; by Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing

Through Road No Whither, by Greg Bear
Logan, by Paul Edwin Zimmer
The World Next Door, by Brad Ferguson

Siege At Tarr-Hostigos, by Roland Green and John F. Carr

Castalia House
Table of Contents
After Armageddon: New Beginnings
Preface to the 2016 edition
Kenyons to the Keep!
Holo-Caustic
Collector’s Piece
Half the Battle
Only the Strong Survive
The Last Cruise of the Zeppelin Tempest
The Future of the Great Powers
The Voice of the Cockroach
Song of the Red War-boat
Primum Non Nocere
Horatius at the Bridge
Fear and Survival
The Berendt Conversion
The Contract
The Bodyguard
The Palace at Midnight
Wintergate II: The War of the Worlds
Torch
Bringing Home the Bacon
Journals of the Plague Years
Afterword
There Will Be War Vol. X
Riding the Red Horse
Castalia House
New Releases
Introduction to Volume X
The Man Who Wasn't There by Gregory Benford
Seven Kill Tiger by Charles W. Shao

The 4GW Counterforce by William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele

Battle Station by Ben Bova
The War Memorial by Allen M. Steele
Rules of Engagement by Michael Flynn
War and Migration by Martin van Creveld
The Last Show by Matthew Joseph Harrington
Flashpoint: Titan by Cheah Kai Wai
War at the Speed of Light by Douglas Beason
Boomer by John DeChancie

The Deadly Future of Littoral Sea Control by Phillip E. Pournelle

The Fourth Fleet by Russell Newquist
Canny by Brian J. Noggle
What Price Humanity? by David VanDyke

Flush-and-FFE by Guy R. Hooper And Michael L. McDaniel

Among Thieves by Poul Anderson
“Fly-By-Night” by Larry Niven
Notes
There Will Be War
Riding the Red Horse
Castalia House
New Releases